"Shit!" Reyez had to roll his body sideways to avoid hitting the wing of one of the fighter planes. Anybody other than a base-jumping expert like Reyez would have probably hit the wing of the plane and been dead. As he rolled his body and arched his back he stared eye-to-eye with the mecha's pilot, who seemed just as surprised as he was. Reyez was so close he could read Lieutenant Jason "Boulder" Cordova underneath the fighter's cockpit. He pulled Deanna closer to him and it took him a second or two to stabilize his fall, but he wasn't concerned at all, for this was what Reyez did for a living!
"Wait on the chute, Sehera!" Reyez was now in his element. "Wait!" He held on to the little girl with both hands as hard as he could, squeezing her to him. He reached down and grabbed his belt carabiner and snapped it onto the little girl's e-suit harness.
The floor of the cliff began to loom upward at them. They had fallen well below the edge of the escarpment by hundreds of meters and were picking up speed. Even though the Martian gravity was only thirty-eight percent of that on Earth, just under four meters per second per second of acceleration was pretty appreciable and there was much less air friction to slow down their descent.
"Now!" Reyez shouted. He waited for Sehera's chute to open so that she would be a second or two above them and then he pulled his cord. The chute opened and jerked them to a slow drifting fall. Deanna squeezed the adrenaline junky hard to her.
"This is fun!" she said. "Look!" Two SH-102 Starhawks pulled into hover formation behind them and followed the gliderchutes all the way to the bottom of the cliff.
Chapter 17
1:49 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
Senator! The AI wireless connection to the mecha and sensors! That is the key! Abigail said into the senator's mind. He had been distracted by his charge to protect his family long enough.
What! Moore fired the HVAR until it ran dry and then he dove behind a dead enemy drop tank for cover. "I'm out!" he announced over the QM.
"Shit!" Corporal Shelly bounced about ten meters to his right and her left arm was separated from her body at the shoulder by a cannon round. Before she had time to fall several more rounds chewed her to a red bloody mess into the Martian ground. Major Moore started to rush to her, but the armored Marine sergeant landing on top of him thought otherwise.
"Nothing you can do for her, sir," the sergeant said. The two men belly-crawled under the downed enemy mecha as best they could.
The signal is continuous because it is a disruptive code not a virus. The signal is controlling the sensors, not jamming them. Just like the AI controls the Kitty! Clever! Abigail had figured it out.
What do we do, Abigail?!
Hardwire!
Spread the word! There was still time to really turn the tide of this battle and minimize further losses for certain.
Yes, Senator Moore!
"Listen up! The jamming source is the wireless link between AIC and hardware! Go hardwire on sensors!" Moore shouted over the QM.
"What?" Washington replied. He and private Kootie were still rushing their position. "How the hell do you know that?"
"Hardwire between AIC and hardware is the key! Just do it!" Moore repeated.
Abigail!
I'm explaining it to all the AICs I can reach here sir. They're getting it done, the AIC staffer told her counterpart senator.
"Captain! We've got a solution to the sensor problem spreading throughout the fleet!" the XO said. The flagship was beginning to vent gases from several decks and was getting a severe beating. Nine of the ships of the fleet had already been lost and the Seppies had the advantage due to their ghost ships. The Madira was holding up better than others because it was the first to figure out the tactic of deploying its mecha along the hull to act as gun batteries. That tactic seemed to be buying them time and Captain Jefferson had issued orders that the rest of the surviving fleet should use similar tactics.
I have the solution, Captain, and I am resetting the ship's systems and shutting down any data critical wireless systems and transferring them via hardwire. Now, Uncle Timmy added.
Good, Timmy! the CO replied in his mindvoice. The DTM blinked off then on briefly in the captain's mind and when it came back up it was filled with enemy bogies and target alerts. "Air Boss, direct all the surviving fighters back into the engagement zone immediately!"
"Aye sir!" The Air Boss nodded instinctively and reached out to several icons showing surviving pieces of squadrons and began pulling them together in the virtual battlescape around his head. His DTM now showed the Seppy bogies and they were seriously outnumbered. But the Air Boss knew the limits of the Seppy equipment and although there was an asymmetry in numbers the awesome capabilities of fully functional U.S. fighters and mecha more than made up for the deficit.
"Alright, Demon Dawgs from Hell, y'all heard the Air Boss! We're to form up and insert into the engagement zone at maximum velocity with maximum ferocity!" Lieutenant Commander "Rabies" Chavez ordered his squadron.
"Rabies! I've got sensors and multiple targeting solutions! This is shit hot!"
"Roger that, I suggest we get in there and start giving some of those targeting solutions a go!"
"CO! CDC!"
"Go, CDC!" Captain Jefferson replied. The battle was coming fast at him now, with multiple splinter groups of large fleet ships and enemy ships fighting and evading and with swarms of enemy fighters that hadn't been visible before that now were literally . . . everywhere.
"Captain! Sensor nets have been reset and hardwired throughout the system and we're getting reports of large ship signatures in several different locations across the system that just shouldn't be there," the Combat Direction Center deck officer explained.
"What does that mean, CDC?" The CO had more to worry about right now than some lost ships in the system.
"Sir. They were cloaked like the others until the sensors were reset. That suggests they are Seppy ships, sir!" the CDC explained.
"Shit. How many and where, CDC?"
"Three large haulers and seven smaller passenger-size vehicles at various locations all about two AUs away, sir."
"Time from engagement zone assuming maximum hyperdrive?" More ships into the mix would be bad. The fleet was getting pounded as it was. The CO didn't like this at all. Hopefully, the tide would start turning now that sensors were up.
"Assuming a quarter AU per minute sir that would put them eight minutes out . . . shit!"
"CDC?"
"Sir, reports from Triton station and Luna show hyperdrive conduit signatures and we just lost the ships off the sensor nets! Sir."
"Wire in a DTM alert to me of any new hyperspace activity near us, CDC! I need to know the instant they show up." The CO scanned the virtual battlescape around his head and had Uncle Timmy run through a scenario or two, but never liked what he saw.
Timmy!
Aye?!
Alert the fleet that we've got three haulers and seven passenger-sized enemy craft in hyperspace, probably inbound for us. The CO looked up from his virtual world for a brief moment because the XO momentarily lost his balance owing to the ship listing hard to port from an enemy fighter crashing into the exterior hull plating just below the command tower.
Aye, sir!
"Holy shit, Bigguns!" Second Lieutenant Timothy "Goat" Crow shouted in excitement. "I've got sensors and there are Gomers everywhere!"