The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7) (2 page)

A Destrier flew through the red haze of a Martian dust storm. Floodlights diffused through the blowing dust creating a glare beneath the heavy transport as it slowed over a landing pad.

More dust kicked up as the ship’s thrusters brought it to a halt against the expanse of black stone. The ship’s landing gear settled down, compressing against the Destrier’s bulk as the thrusters died away.

The fore ramp lowered and the Iron Hearts set foot on the red planet. Technicians and mechanics unlimbered equipment from the cargo bay as the three armor soldiers made their way to a diminutive figure waiting at a roadway leading to an open sally port built into the side of Olympus Mons.

“Hello!” said the man in a lightly armored space suit as he ran up to the Iron Hearts. “I am Mr. Dinkins, Adjutants Core, at your service.” He flipped the cover off a tablet and removed a stylus from a pocket attached to his breastplate.

“I’ll need your full names, serial numbers and dates of your last mandatory training—” Dinkins looked up and saw the Iron Hearts walking toward the mountain. He scampered after the armor, struggling to keep up with the gait of the fifteen-foot-tall suits.

“Hello? Can you hear me? This Martian atmosphere is so thin,” Dinkins said, waving to Kallen.

The armor continued.

“Yes, sorry. I simply must have this information before you go any farther.” Dinkins tapped his slate against Kallen’s leg.

She stopped.

“Thank you. I need your last—” He garbled his last words as Kallen grabbed him by the ankles and lifted him into the air. She dangled him, upside down, in front of her helm.

“Carius,” she said.

Pens and mechanical pencils fell off Dinkins as he swung gently in Kallen’s grasp.

“Unhand me! This is most—” he squealed as Kallen dropped him. She grabbed him by the ankles again before his skull could reach the ground.

“Carius,” she said again.

“He’s inside! Bay three-seven!” Dinkins bent at the waist and grabbed Kallen’s finger. She released his ankles and the adjutant held on by his fingertips. Kallen lowered her hand and flicked him away.

By the time Dinkins found his tablet, the Iron Hearts were at the entrance to the cavern cut into the biggest mountain in the solar system.

The sally port could have fit five armor soldiers abreast. Heavy doors with rock facades and layers of quadrium and reinforced metal hung from massive hinges. Inside, six-wheeled trucks armed with gauss rotary cannons lined the walls. Suited mechanics and Marines in ochre power armor loaded boxes of bullets onto the trucks while others performed last-minute maintenance on the vehicles.

The hangar buzzed with activity…until the Iron Hearts walked past. The room fell quiet, many pointing at the armor and whispering to each other.

“You think they take their admin crap that seriously on Mars?” Bodel said over their private channel.

“Maybe they’ve never seen armor before,” Kallen said.

“Can’t be. There are coffin units in the next hallway,” Elias said, “and we know Carius is here.”

“I don’t like being stared at,” Bodel said. The soldier had been moody, shy even since he was injured defending the Dotok world of Takeni. He’d suffered a stroke, one that left him with a half-slack face and a weakness through the right half of his body.

“There’s nothing subtle about us in armor. Let’s find Carius,” Kallen said.

An access tunnel connected to the back of the hangar curved away in a gentle arc. The center was busy with motor traffic shuttling supplies and personnel. The Iron Hearts strode along the outer edge.

“They were busy while we were away,” Bodel said.

“You think this highway goes all the way around Olympus?” Kallen asked.

A trio of armor soldiers walked toward the Iron Hearts. Elias slammed a fist against his chest in salute as they passed. The lead armor returned the courtesy.

“Vladislav’s Hussars,” Elias said.

“Haven’t seen armor since the Smoking Snakes.” Bodel’s helm twisted around and looked over the rotary cannons attached to the Hussars’ backs opposite their rail cannons. “Would be nice to catch up with the others. Find out about their new toys.”

The Iron Hearts crossed the highway and stopped at a set of tall doors labeled
BAY 37
.

The doors swung open and the Iron Hearts stepped into an air lock. Once an Earth-normal atmosphere surrounded them, the inner doors opened.

Workstations showing Mars from orbit and segments of the surface were manned by tired-looking men and women from the different military branches. None batted an eye at the Iron Hearts’ arrival. A suit of armor held tight in a coffin stood at the end of the bay next to a platform that reached up to the armor’s chest.

A man in plain fatigues and with long white hair that hung loose off his shoulders stood in front of a screen, his arms clasped behind his back. The glint of neural plugs in the base of the old man’s skull twinkled in the low light.

Elias went to the platform, snapped his heels together and struck his fist against his heart.

“Colonel Carius,” Elias said.

The man picked up a cane leaning against the big screen and turned around. He leaned against the cane and returned Elias’ salute. Elias’ gaze went to the cane, polished metal taken from the commanding officer of the Chinese People’s Army Armored Corps after the Battle of Aurukun. General Zhi hadn’t complained—not that he could have after Carius ripped him clean out of his armor.

Elias felt his face pull into a smile. That had been a good day.

“Iron Hearts,” Carius’ flint-gray eyes looked over the three soldiers, “glad to have you back in the fold. You’ve all served with honor, distinction…and some controversy.”

“That paper pusher upset my humors,” Kallen said. “I didn’t hurt him.”

“Don’t be cute with me, Desi. I’m talking about what happened on the
Breitenfeld
.” Carius waved his cane at her like an admonishing finger. “I got Captain Valdar’s complete report and his recommendation that I take away your spurs. Oddly enough, while I was rereading it, all references to something called ‘Malal’ erased themselves. I think Ibarra’s little pet doesn’t want word about this ‘Malal’ getting around.

“But, with no statement to instigate any kind of punishment, there’s nothing I can do to you. I would have told him to shove his recommendation up his ass anyway. I don’t care how famous he is—no one tells me how to lead my troops.” Carius turned and stabbed a button with the tip of his cane. Mars appeared on the big screen.

“Destroying that monster was the right thing to do. We don’t regret it,” Elias said, “and if Valdar wants my armor, he can come and take it.”

Carius chuckled, dry as dead leaves.

“I always liked you three. Even before you became the reason we have so many new bean heads,” Carius said. “What did they tell you about Mars?”

“‘Be on the shuttle at 0900 and get the hell off my ship,’” Bodel said.

“Welcome to Fortress Mars.” Carius stabbed another button and dots appeared across the Martian surface, all spaced almost equally from each other. One of the dots rose from the surface and spread across the screen: a cross section of a massive gun barrel buried deep in the soil. A series of concentric rings extended from the end of the barrel to the surface.

“Macro cannons,” Carius said. “Ibarra took the rail gun and decided to push it to the very limits of physical science. Each of these cannons can fire a round big enough to crack a Xaros leviathan or rip through a few square miles of drones. The impeller rings can bend the munitions a few degrees…gives each cannon more sky to shoot. Mars is geologically dead, which is the only way any of this would work. We try it on Earth and one little quake would wreck the calibrations.”

“How do we get the Xaros to stand still long enough for us to hit them?” Kallen asked.

“You notice that massive fleet over the North Pole on your way in? Admiral Garret’s going to grab the Xaros by the nose and let the cannons pound them to dust,” Carius said. “We’ve got macro cannons all over the planet and can put effective fires on the entire sky from about a thousand kilometers on up. Phobos and Deimos have a cannon each, but we shoot it and those moons will go flying off into space, or into the planet.”

“And if they try to bypass? Or attack Mars?” Bodel asked.

“They try to skirt around and the cannons will beat them to death the entire trip to Earth. They try to outrun the big guns and they’ll just die tired. They come to Mars and Garret will pound them to dust from orbit. This is Fortress Mars, not a vacation spot. No civilians or collateral damage to worry about. Every structure is deep enough to survive a bombardment—so I’m told.” Carius gave a dismissive shrug.

“Now…to the armors’ part of the fight.” Carius hit another key and Mars rotated to show an area full of shallow canyons. A macro cannon emplacement named Nerio blinked several times. “We’re providing near security for each of the cannons. Anything gets through the fleet, the air defense artillery, and the Eagle fighter squadrons assigned to each cannon and it will be dealt with by us armor and the cavalry squadrons you walked past on the way in here.”

“We are the last, last, last…last line of defense,” Bodel smirked.

Carius stabbed the tip of his cane into the platform and the Iron Hearts stiffened.

“This is where we decide the battle, Hans,” Carius said. “The cannons will keep the Xaros away from Earth. Mars is a bone-dry shit pot so I don’t mind tossing kinetic strike munitions at her. We try to have this same fight on Earth and we’ll kick up so much crap it’ll make the nuclear winter of ’32 look like a day on Waikiki. Not a single civilian on this planet, Earth has children. The future.”

“I understand my failing and will not repeat it,” Bodel said, repeating the only acceptable response to a correction from armor training at Fort Knox.

“The big brains on Garret’s staff looked at putting us on the fleet, ship internal security or auxiliary rail cannon support.” Carius spat on the ground. “We are the force of decision. Not some ‘auxiliary’ bullshit. The ships are crammed full of doughboys armed with pneumatic hammers and pissed-off dispositions. They’ve got that covered. That Mars is mostly empty is a plus, and a minus. We can’t concentrate our forces in one point, have to spread out so the cannons are always a threat. Lots of space to cover. Lots of avenues of attack from orbit to the cannons.

“But Mars,” Carius said, raising a finger, “we are armor. No fear of the atmosphere. We are mobile. We are deadly. You three are assigned to Nerio cannon with a troop of bean heads. Keep the Xaros away from the cannon and see that the big guns never tire.”

“A troop?” Elias asked. “Where did you find twelve new recruits and the time to get them through selection? Proccies can’t take the plugs.”

Carius smirked.

“Your troop isn’t human.”

****

The Nerio cemetery held space for twelve suits of armor. The hydraulic lifts, tool benches and repair frames were the same as the
Breitenfeld,
but the walls were bare rock instead of the dull gray bulkheads that Elias was used to staring at.

Elias stood in the repair frame, a metal cage used by technicians to lift armor plates, weapons and heavy battery packs onto his armor.

A tech in a lifter suit carried a pike taller than a man between hydraulic pincers from its transport case to the cage. She set it into a foot-wide cradle attached to a corner bar and the cradle tightened around the pike. The cradle raised the bar with a hiss of compressing air and stopped next to Elias’ right arm where his chief armorer waited for it on a scaffold.

“Brand new,” Chief Aguilar said, “made from composite steel fashioned over a graphene lattice. Aegis shell might take a hit or two from the Xaros.”

The Iron Hearts had inherited Aguilar and his Brazilian crew after the death of the Smoking Snakes. The Iron Hearts lost most of their own techs when the
Breitenfeld
took damage over Takeni. Their lone original technician, Sanders, had managed to pick up enough Portuguese to integrate—mostly cuss words and proper names for tools.

“New aegis armor,” Aguilar said, “new high-energy capacitors and batteries, new pintle cannons. You’re going to smell like factory grease when the Xaros show up.”

“I need to hit the range. My synch rating is bottoming out,” Elias said.

“Always happens with new gear.” Aguilar shoved his hands into an oversized pair of gloves, reached into thin air and closed his hands around an unseen rod. Haptic feedback sensors in the gloves stopped his grip and the hydraulics in the cell synched with his gloves. Aguilar lifted his hands and the cradle with the pike mimicked his action.

Aguilar set the pike into Elias’ forearm housing. He took his hands out of the gloves and picked up a data slate.

“How’s the fit?” he asked.

“Lighter than the last one. Hard to trust it’s an improvement,” Elias said.

“You’ll manage,” Aguilar said. “I’ve got something else for you.” He took a data drive the size of his thumb out of a pocket. “I got the director’s cut of that movie.”