Vaughn Heppner - Star Fortress

“From the north or south?” Ricardo asked, his voice hardening.

“Does it matter?” Gomez asked, with tears welling in her eyes.

“If we’re going to win this one, it does,” Ricardo said. He couldn’t give up now, not with the entire dead of a planet watching him. He could feel the ghosts behind him and wondered if Mars would always be known as the haunted planet.

Gomez made a bleak sound. “It is over, Captain. We are all dead.”

“The Pancho Villa needs a few more days until we can liftoff.” He had chosen the name. Pancho Villa the legendary rebel had never quit. Marten Kluge always found a way, too. So would he. Mars would fight back, even if from the grave.

Gomez made another of her despairing sounds. “None of us is leaving Mars, Captain. Everyone who emigrated here came to an evolutionary dead end. The human race had its run. Now it is the era of Genus Cyborgus .”

“Wrong!” Ricardo said, as he sat up.

“You are not Marten Kluge,” Gomez said.

“No. I am Captain Ricardo Sandoval of the Martian warship Pancho Villa . I will follow the example of Sub-Strategist Circe.”

“Her?” Gomez cried. “She was a fool. She could have come to Mars and saved a planet. Instead, with ruined ships and low on ordnance, she seeks her doom in the Neptune System where the cyborgs are strongest. Do not seek to emulate her.”

“To win, one must attack,” Ricardo said. It had become his holy creed.

“Staying alive is the first prerequisite for that,” Gomez said. “We cannot even achieve step one. I’m afraid you live on illusions.”

“You are breathing. Therefore, you are alive. Now tell me, from which direction are the cyborgs coming.”

“The north,” Gomez said, as she looked away from the screen.

“Thank you, Secretary-General. I must go, as I have a defense to run.” Ricardo switched her off and brought back the tactical map. So, it was the north… He switched on the communicator and began to issue orders to his men.

Thirty-four minutes later, Ricardo wore his armored suit, rebreather and clutched his gyroc rifle. He stood outside a rounded, ferroconcrete-protected SAM site. Three tracked fighting vehicles were ready and filled with the last Martian Commandoes. The men were poorly-trained compared to those who had died these past months. But you fought with what you had and made do.

“There!” a man said in his headphones.

Ricardo flicked on his helmet’s HUD. He saw the enemy: three big-bellied transports flying low over the valley floor. They were old civilian lifters, put to use by the cyborgs. The enemy cannibalized everything.

As Ricardo watched, the giant, ferroconcrete shell guarding the SAMs whirled open. Three missiles ignited, firing one after another. Like long torpedoes, they sped low over the terrain at the enemy.

“Kill them,” Ricardo whispered. “Kill all of them.” With his HUD, he saw metallic chaff spilling from the transports, attempting to confuse the missiles’ sensors. Then the transports lumbered higher, and bay-doors opened.

“No,” someone said.

Tiny, metallic-colored humanoids spilled out of the transports. Those would be cyborgs, deadly, unbeatable melds of machine and flesh. Some of them might even have been Martians several weeks ago. Their jetpacks flared, giving them lifting power or acting like parachutes.

The missiles hit. Orange fireballs billowed. Metal parts rained onto the valley floor, raising red geysers of iron-oxide dust.

“It’s go-time,” Ricardo said, climbing into his IFV—Infantry Fighting Vehicle. It had four 30mm auto-cannons, two Chavez missile tubes and 77mm of armor, half that of a Martian tank.

The three armored vehicles lurched as they headed toward the enemy: those who had landed and shed their jetpacks. Ricardo turned on the vehicle’s scanner. Because his men were so ill-trained, he had to perform gunner duties as well as being the commander. In seconds, he acquired a target. Individual cyborg troopers bounded with incredible speed and agility, and moved one hundred meters at a leap.

Two jets appeared in the red sky, coming in from the north. They had Planetary Union markings.

“Watch them,” Ricardo said.

At that moment, a beam stabbed down from the heavens. One of the jets separated because of the red slash. The surviving jet jinked hard, screaming toward the bounding cyborgs. Three canisters dropped from its fuselage before the red beam sliced it into pieces, too.

“Why don’t they beam at us?” one of the crewmembers asked.

Ricardo switched the setting of his screen. He brought up the enemy satellite as seen from a Martian space vehicle. The last two Planetary Union drones—hidden until now in near orbital space—zoomed at the laser-firing satellite. The two drones represented the last precious military reserves of Mars Command.

“We had to wait until we saw which satellite they used to launch the attack,” Ricardo said.

“What are you talking about, Captain?” a frightened Commando asked.

Just what he’d said, that seemed clear enough. They had to wait and see which satellite the cyborgs attempted to maneuver into position. It wasn’t easy getting the right angle to beam down into this valley. It meant the satellite had to be almost on top of them.

“If they want to save the satellite, they’re going to have to turn the laser on the drones,” Ricardo said. “That gives us a little time.”

Ahead of them on the valley floor, the canisters hit. The flash of explosions took half the cyborgs down. The other cyborgs kept coming. The melds didn’t fear—they always kept coming.

Their IFV began tracking the enemy. “Here we go,” Ricardo said.

No doubt sensing the tracking devices, the cyborgs went to ground, crawling now, using every centimeter of terrain, the rocks, crevasses and outcroppings of stone.

“Should we deploy outside?” a Commando asked from the second IFV.

If this had been two months ago before Ricardo had gone into New Mexico Dome, he would have said yes. With these poorly-trained Commandoes…

“Stay inside,” Ricardo said. “We’re going to use the heavy weapons to kill cyborgs.”

Targeting lasers pinpointed enemies. Then machine guns and 30mm auto-cannons blasted, destroying seven cyborgs. Unfortunately, one of the melds got close enough to launch a hand-held missile. The squat missile had a short flight-time, too short for the IFV’s counter-battery fire to engage it. A fighting vehicle exploded.

“Retreat!” shouted Ricardo. “Head back to base.” As he spoke, he took over his vehicle’s auto-cannons, firing into the likeliest position where cyborgs might be hiding. It must have worked. No more missiles came from those locations.

Then six cyborgs bounded from hiding, rushing the retreating vehicles.

“Firing arc sixty degrees!” a Commando roared.

Three of the melds died under a hail of cannon shells. The heavy rounds punctured cyborg chest-plates and blew them backward. Two enemy troopers survived and latched onto an IFV. Together, the two cyborgs ripped off the vehicle’s main hatch. The first meld slipped down inside and then the second. Moments later, the IFV swerved hard, and it flipped onto its side.

At the same time, a clang told of a cyborg landing on their IFV.

“What do we do?” a Commando shouted.

An awful metallic screeching began as the cyborg attempted to pry off the hatch. Then the hatch ripped off the IFV. As the machine bounced over the Martian terrain, Ricardo grabbed his gyroc and shoved the barrel through the hatch, firing. He killed the cyborg before it could drop its grenade inside the compartment. The grenade exploded outside the IFV.

As the vehicle slewed over the red sands, Ricardo popped his suited head and shoulders out of the hatch. The cyborg was on the ground, struggling to rise. Ricardo shot it, destroying the creature.