Radiation dose is growing rapidly but still within the parameters of the injection, Nancy, Allison informed her.
Mm hm, Nancy thought as she checked the altimeter readout on her visor. She was at five kilometers above the westernmost part of the total destruct zone, flying southward and counterclockwise around the periphery of the aftermath of the nuclear explosion. The sight was anything but tranquil or serene. Fires raged across the outpost city, and secondary explosions triggered every few seconds from gas mains or escaping oxygen. To the north in the distance Nancy could see occasional AA fire and missile contrails. The fighting was getting closer. Time was getting short.
Her plan was to bleed off altitude and drop into the eastern edge of the moderate destruct zone at the three-o'clock position. She put the gliderchute in a slip and checked her tree detection system. The Martian conifer trees could reach as high as three hundred meters tall, so they could cause problems when gliderchuting at night. But her detection system was functioning perfectly. There were just no trees or buildings of much concern. The blast had taken care of that. It had taken care of other things too.
There was very little activity beneath her. The AA fire that had tracked the Ares fighter Jack Boland brought her in had stopped once the nuke detonated, and she could see nothing in the local vicinity flying. The electromagnetic pulse and general mayhem due to the devastating tactical nuclear device had done their job and disabled the local perimeter sensors of the Reservation periphery mountain city defenses. This allowed Nancy to slip in undetected—the plan had been carefully calculated for years. It was all working well, so far. Detonating a small nuke just to infiltrate the Reservation might have seemed like overkill, but all the recent intelligence suggested that bad things were on the horizon from within the Seppy homeland and the CIA needed to know just what those bad things were. After all, the president had approved the plan, including the tactical nuke.
Nancy kept a close eye on the altimeter reading—one thousand meters and dropping. The moderate destruct region of the city surrounding the Separatist missile base looked anything but moderate. The shock wave from the blast had strewn debris to and fro and fires raged in almost every direction. She looked for a dark spot with no fires but they were few and far between. Altimeter reading—six hundred meters and dropping.
There! she thought as she spotted a dark spot in the flames. Allison, zoom in there. She pointed.
Got it. The AIC zoomed in on the dark region and increased the sensitivity levels of the QM sensor suite of her e-suit helmet. Then the spike detector went off.
"What the . . . " Nancy muttered to herself.
Trees. Allison responded matter-of-factly.
Why aren't they burning then?
Who knows? Blast dynamics are weird that way, Allison explained.
Well, whatever. It looks like a park. Those buildings there to the west must have shielded them. Trees around the periphery and a flat field in the middle, looks like a jumperball field, I think. This should do nicely. Nancy brought the gliderchute into a tight spiral over the field, careful of the trees as her altitude was now dropping. She spiraled inside the circumference of the circular field and increased the illumination of the IR and QM sensors, her night vision visor at full intensity. The ground was coming up fast. Altimeter reading was at one hundred meters . . . fifty . . . twenty . . .
Nancy hit her IR diode helmet lights and the ground lit up beneath her just in time for her to flare the gliderchute and stop her descent about one meter from the surface. The gliderchute caught some last-minute ground-effect turbulence and jostled her around, causing her to lose balance. The left wing of the chute dipped and then jerked upward again. Nancy was tossed forward and slammed into the Martian ground, very very hard.
Shrub-grass, she thought as she saw it dragging under her helmet visor a couple of centimeters from her nose. The chords of the gliderchute twisted and turned in the wind, dragging her through the clearing. The chute continued to billow in the eastward chaotic winds and overpowered her senses for a brief moment. Nancy's speed picked up across the small circular plane's floor as she was dragged facedown. She managed to pop the harness from her left shoulder strap, allowing her to roll over onto her back. The harness still held her from the right shoulder and the waist and the chute pulled hard on her rotator cuff, straining her shoulder muscles to keep her arm in place.
Nancy fought against the wild jumbling ride with her free hand managing to stay on her back, but having little luck releasing the right side harness fasteners. She could feel painful impacts against her back but the e-suit's armor protected her from anything serious. Then she saw a tree several meters in diameter streak by her head only a meter or so away. She fought panic because she knew that if she hit a tree trunk at the speeds she was being dragged it could be fatal, especially if her head hit the tree first.
Knife, Nancy! Your knife! Allison screamed in her mind.
Nancy quickly squelched her panic and set about the business at hand. Another tree, near miss. Then another. But Nancy had unsheathed her knife from the left shoulder scabbard and was slicing away at the harness on her right. It gave way, leaving only the attachment at her hip. She sliced at it with one quick motion and then the gliderchute pulled free of her and whisked away with the wind out of sight into the dark Martian night. Nancy rolled over onto her stomach and slammed the knife blade, her free hand, and her toes into the grass to slow her to a stop.
Completely still, Nancy did a quick assessment of her body and decided nothing was permanently damaged. Minor bruises, she thought as she rolled over. There were no stars above her. Between her and the sky was a canopy of conifer trees and beyond that was smoke, dust, and radioactive fallout all glowing in the eerie orange and red tint of the burning city. Nancy stood and dusted herself off and then sheathed her knife. About fifty meters away she could see the remains of her gliderchute tangled high in a conifer tree.
Now, that's a pain in the ass, she thought. How the hell am I going to get up there?
Too high for jumpboots, Allison said.
Chapter 7
10:41 AM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
"Well, it's too damned high for jumpboots. How do you expect to get up there?" Sehera shrugged her shoulders and pointed at the dome ceiling nearly a half of a kilometer high above them.
"The maintenance shaft will take you to the exhaust system about two-thirds the way up the dome," Reyez Jones, the adventure store manager, said. "I've jumped from there before. But I've never jumped from the absolute top of the dome before. Not sure how to get up there. There is a twenty-meter-high electric fence that surrounds the peak of the dome. I've tried to figure out how to get over it, but had no luck. The dome is too slick to use jumpboots to get over it. I'm not sure why the fence is there either."
Abigail? How far will two-thirds of the way get us? Senator Alexander Moore asked his AI staffer.
It will put you a good ten kilometers short, Senator. But with jumpers that is not such a bad run, the AI told him.
"It'll have to do. Who is with us? You can either stay here and be captured when this city is overrun, or you can go with my wife, daughter, and myself," he asked the cadre of tourists taking refuge in the shop. The only takers were Reyez and a woman from Triton, Joanie Hassed, who had seen firsthand what the Separatist soldiers were like. The remaining tourists couldn't believe that Mons City would fall for even the briefest moment. The two assistant managers of the shop, Rod and Vince, had raided a package store next door for food and beverages and were well on their way to being completely inebriated. They were going nowhere. The others were debating on finding the nearest shelter or just staying put in the adventure store.