Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight! Read online

  “Sink it,” Jack replied. “You’ll just be right back where you were before.”

  “Which was ahead of the game,” Nicky said. “All I need to do is keep that trunk out of the wrong hands. I don’t need to possess it to do that.”

  “You don’t want to know what he found out? How he did it? What he might have told his contacts in the free states?”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Nicky said. “Now, hand it over or be blown out of the water.”

  Jack was running out of ways to stall, and the yacht, though well made and outfitted with plenty of firepower, wouldn’t hold up to a torpedo or an assault from the Martians.

  He weighed the benefits and drawbacks of being sunk and probably dying, versus handing over the case and losing what he had come all this way to find. And then, he was sure, dying anyway. Given that, he decided to make Nicky work for his victory. He was about to say so when he heard the drone of approaching airplanes.

  “Looks like the cavalry’s here,” he told Charlie and the other guys on deck. “We just need to hold Nicky off for a few more minutes.”

  “Come on, Jack,” Nicky said from the sub. They were close enough now that he didn’t bother with the megaphone. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Sure about that?” Jack asked. “Maybe there’s no need to rush.”

  “Jack…” Nicky let the sentence trail off. He cocked his head toward the sky, shading his eyes with his hand. “Dammit!” he cried. “Are those yours, Jack?”

  “Could be. It’s always easier to tell the sound when there are just one or two, don’t you think? But that...that’s got to be at least ten or twelve.”

  “Man the guns,” Nicky said to the sailors who had gathered on the open bridge with him. “Looks like we just bought ourselves a fight.”

  The airplanes came out of the sky, strafing the submarine and the Martians. The sub’s crew fired back with its fore and aft 40-mm guns and some 50-caliber guns they broke out of storage and attached to mounts on the main deck, and the Martian spacecraft blazed away with everything they had. Two Martian Killer planes went down right away, smoke streaming behind them as they plowed into the water and broke apart.

  Jack took advantage of the chaos to jump back into the water, unnoticed by Nicky. The hard part would be dodging the rounds from his own allies, and making sure nothing fell out of the sky and landed on him. But he knew that if he and Nicky both survived this day, he would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. One way or another, their long rivalry had to end.

  One of the fighter pilots found a vulnerable target on a Martian ship, and the craft exploded with a ferocious boom. Jack went under the water, swimming as deeply as he could for as long as he could, to shield his ears from the noise and to put as much buffer as he could between himself and falling debris.

  When he surfaced again, nearer the submarine, the Martian ship had fallen into the sea but the aerial battle continued. Nobody had bothered with the yacht, which was essentially harmless by comparison. Nicky was manning one of the sub’s machine guns, firing into the air. His teeth were gritted and his brow, glistening with sweat, furrowed as he worked the gun.

  Jack reached the submarine and starting up the side. A couple of the sub’s crew saw him stalking toward the bridge, but they met his gaze and looked away without taking action. Nicky, focused on the fireworks above, didn’t see Jack until he had ascended to the bridge. When he did, Nicky’s eyes went wide and his jaw gaped open.

  For an instant, Jack could see himself as Nicky did, as if he had inhabited Nicky’s body. He barely recognized himself, but he saw a man leaning into his steps, hands spread wide and clenched into fists. His blond hair was dripping with seawater, his flight suit filthy, torn, and soaked. His unshaven jaw was stubbled, his face bruised, but his blue eyes burned with the fires of vengeance.

  Then his perception righted itself, and he saw Nicky pawing at the sidearm on his belt.

  Jack charged.

  He reached Nicky before the man had his gun out of its holster, and the force of his attack carried them both into the railing. Nicky’s hand was trapped at his side, and Jack kept the pressure on it, leaning into him and raining short jabs into his torso. Finally, Nicky broke free, tagging Jack with a left to the jaw. He reached for the gun again, and Jack aimed a snap kick at his wrist. The gun went flying, bounced once on the main deck and splashed into the sea.

  “It’s just you and me, Nicky,” Jack said, his voice a low growl.

  “Not really,” Nicky replied, giving his wrist a couple of shakes. “You’re on my boat, surrounded by my crew.”

  Jack didn’t shift his gaze from his opponent. He knew the other men were there, but he also knew they were not interfering. This fight was between Nicky and Jack, and they knew it.

  Nicky seemed to realize it, then, and something happened to his eyes. They narrowed, slightly, and the skin between them wrinkled, but it was more than that. It was, Jack thought, as if a light, which had been there moments before, had clicked off. His mouth opened a little and saliva flecked its corners. He let out an inchoate roar and came toward Jack with his arms outstretched.

  Jack dodged Nicky’s grasping hands and threw a powerful punch into the man’s sternum. The blow rocked Nicky back on his heels, but he came back with a fierce jab that landed in Jack’s belly. Jack doubled over, and Nicky followed up with an uppercut that caught Jack’s cheekbone, splitting skin and maybe, Jack feared, fracturing bone. Blood spattered the deck.

  As Jack clenched his teeth against the pain, Nicky got his hands around Jack’s throat. Jack tried to kick one of Nicky’s legs out from under him, but Nicky was ready, stepping and shifting to avoid the attack. His thumbs pressed into Jack’s airway, and Jack’s vision started to go dark at the edges.

  In desperation, he brought his arms up, hard, into Nicky’s wrists, breaking the sub captain’s grip. Jack followed with a left-right-left combination to Nicky’s cheek and chin, not doing much damage but keeping his foe off-balance. Nicky threw a haymaker that Jack easily avoided. Jack countered with a right to Nicky’s left eye. It landed hard, and Jack could feel bone and cartilage give beneath his knuckles. When his hand fell away, Nicky was dazed, the skin of his brow torn and leaking dark red blood. His eyeball floated loosely in its socket, and his face was a mask of agony.

  Jack threw more punches, furiously capitalizing on his momentary edge. He opened the brow more; white gleamed inside the wound, until red slicked it. Nicky’s legs were buckling beneath him, and he clung to the rail for support. Another couple of hits would put him down, Jack knew. He wanted the man taken into custody, tried for treason.

  “Give up, Nicky,” he said. He took a few steps away from his former friend, caught the rail himself, and sucked in a couple of deep breaths. “You’re done.”

  “F-fat chance,” Nicky managed. The words had barely passed his lips when he lurched forward again. This time, Jack saw, he had a knife in his right fist. Jack had a knife, too, but it was sheathed at his ankle. Nicky sliced through the air at him, missed, and corrected. The knife caught Jack’s flight suit and ripped through the fabric, cutting skin but not deeply. “I-I’ll rule Asia and s-see you in ch-chains!” Nicky cried.

  “Never happen, Nick,” Jack countered. He batted away Nicky’s knife hand and slugged him in the jaw. “You’ll never beat me, because I’m a human being, and we don’t bow down to freakin’ three-eyed tyrants!”

  Nicky stabbed toward him again. This time Jack caught his wrist and pulled Nicky forward, drawing him off-balance. At the same time, he stepped into Nicky and threw his right shoulder up. The shoulder slammed into Nicky’s ruined eye. Pain lanced through Nicky with visible effect—his knees locked, his mouth dropped open, and his feet scrabbled for purchase on the deck. He swayed back into the railing.

  Jack saw a brilliant flash in the sky—the last Martian spacecraft exploding—and tried to grab for Nicky. But the deck was slick with seawater and blood, and his foot slipped beneath h
im. Instead of reaching Nicky, he went down on one knee. Nicky was still going, his upper body over the rail, momentum and physics working in tandem with his center of gravity, and Jack lunged for him again but too late. Nicky went over the side, and at the same moment, as if fired by an angel of the heavenly host, a spinning shard of steel from the exploding spacecraft arrowed down from the sky and sliced Nicky nearly in half. Blood and organs exploded onto the main deck.

  Jack stood at the rail, gasping for breath and watching the rest of the Martian ship tumble into the sea.

  Jack turned to one of the seamen who had watched the brawl. “I have to use your radio,” he said. “Right away.”

  “It’s on the conn, sir,” the man said. “Come with me.”

  He led Jack toward the hatch. “Is Renata Mercer on the boat?” Jack asked as they walked.

  “Who?”

  “The Dragon’s Daughter.”

  “Nossir. There’s no woman aboard this vessel.”

  Jack had half-expected her to stick with Nicky, but it made sense that she hadn’t. She needed to maintain her reputation as a pirate leader, independent and out only for herself. And Nicky had wanted to continue his charade of being on the side of the human race. Renata was probably on the junk, somewhere along the China coast.

  He wondered if he would ever see her again. And if he did, what he might say.

  Then he had no more time to think about her, as he was on the conn and being led to the radio. The men on board treated him with respect, and he got the distinct impression that they hadn’t been happy about their captain’s choice of missions.

  After he had made the call he needed to, he returned to the Domina and opened Benjamin Lee’s watertight case. The contents—papers, instruments, and vials of liquid—were remarkably well preserved. It took some time to arrange the documents in order, but once he had, they told a chilling tale.

  “You okay, boss?” Charlie Higgins asked as Jack stacked the pages. “You’re looking a little green, there.”

  “Yeah, Charlie. I’m just…”

  “Just what?”

  “Well, I’m no scientist. But if I’m reading these papers right, the Martians have been up to something so awful I can hardly believe it.”

  “What is it?”

  Jack waved a hand at the liquid samples carefully secured inside the case. “The proof’s right there, though.”

  “Proof of what?” Charlie asked again.

  “They’re messing with the chemistry.”

  “What chemistry?”

  Jack felt shell-shocked, and he wondered how much seawater he had swallowed in the last 72 hours. “The ocean’s chemistry. Adding massive amounts of hydrogen. They’re trying to alter the chemical structure of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because,” Jack said, “they can live here, but it’s not ideal. There’s much more hydrogen in their planet’s atmosphere and water. They want to recreate those conditions here.”

  “What would that do to us?”

  “According to Dr. Lee, they’ll eventually suffocate all the life in the sea. Marine mammals, fish, algae, you name it. There’s already a kind of dead zone, not far from here, and it’s spreading. That’s got to be where the underwater Martian base is.”

  “The base that’s been harassing the shipping lanes?”

  “No. They’ve been a nuisance to shipping, but that was mainly intended to keep anyone from discovering this base. It’s too important for them to draw attention to.”

  “Every now and then, Captain Hawkins would claim to be working on the shipping problems,” Charlie said. “But we never seemed to take much action.” He made a sour face at the memory. “Guess I know why, now.”

  “I don’t know if Nicky knew about the hydrogen. Probably not. That might have been too much, even for him.”

  “What can we do about it?”

  “It’s already being done, Charlie. Just hang on for a little while longer.”

  ‘A little longer’ turned out to be three days. That was how long it took for the Martian Killers to pull together all the parts of Jack’s plan, including creating a diversion in another part of the China Sea sufficient to draw Martian resources away from their undersea base.

  When they were done, though, Jack stood on the deck of a commandeered Chinese freighter with Hunter Noir and Josie Taylor. Hunter cut his typically imposing figure, with his fedora pulled low over one eye and his face swathed in bandages, while Josie—even in a uniform that did its best to conceal the curves and dips and swells of her figure—was simply stunning.

  “You sure this’ll work, Jack?” Hunter asked, his low voice rumbling like distant surf.

  “No,” Jack admitted. “But I haven’t heard any better ideas. Out of all the lousy ideas we’ve come up with, this one is the least suicidal.”

  “Except for you,” Josie said. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll be fine, Josie.” He took her hands in his. “I’ve got you to come back to. Who could resist that?”

  “I’m not saying don’t do it. We all do dangerous things, all the time. It’s the job. I’m just saying, be careful. Come back alive.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Ditto what she said,” Hunter added. “Only without the implied mushiness.”

  Jack laughed, drew Josie into his arms for one long, last kiss, then left the freighter for the submarine floating alongside. With a final wave, he descended into the sub’s conning tower and sealed the hatch.

  The submarine was empty, except for him. He’d been schooled, over the last three days, in its operation. Running the vessel solo would be a challenge, but he wouldn’t have to do much tricky maneuvering, and he wouldn’t be at the helm for long. He would be doing a lot of dashing back and forth, up and down, but for the purpose he had in mind, he could put out the effort for a short while.

  While the sub carried no other people, though, it had plenty of cargo—all of it explosive. The Martian Killers had delivered the payloads from dozens of bombers, and had scrounged other explosive materials from every source they could tap. Demolition experts had rigged it all to detonate upon impact. The thing was a huge, self-propelled torpedo, with Jack Paris steering.

  He had to pilot the thing for fifty miles, through calm seas, submerged enough to be invisible from the air. When he had reached a predetermined location, he shut off the engines and switched to battery power. Now the real work began. He had to shut various exhaust valves and flappers, open vents, rig out the bow planes and place the sub on full dive. The Christmas tree light panel showed all green, indicating that the hull openings that needed to be shut had been, and those that needed to be open were.

  Finally, with the sub diving at a 40-degree angle directly toward the domelike structure of the Martian base, Jack bailed out the conning tower hatch. After the initial dunking, he didn’t mind that the sub was filling with water. He had planned for that, and it would only hasten the vessel’s descent into the dome.

  He swam toward sunlight, propelled by terror and a powerful survival instinct. Breaking the surface, he waved at the chopper that was already headed his way, dragging a rope loop. Its downwash chopped the water and sprayed it in Jack’s eyes, but he managed to grab the loop and shove his head and arms through. As soon as he did, the pilot started a nearly vertical climb, going for height more than distance but a balance of both.

  They were just far enough away when the submarine blew.

  A huge spout of water rose from the sea, accompanied by a concussion wave that nearly tipped the helicopter into the drink. The pilot fought for control. Jack swung on the end of the rope, helpless to check himself. By the time the pilot managed to pull up again, Jack was being dragged through the water at a punishing speed, the impact like a series of hits from every football player who’d ever donned a cleated shoe.

  But in the waterspout, Jack saw pieces of solid matter that could only have come from the Martian dome.

  Despit
e the beating he took, he couldn’t help but smile.

  The plane carrying them back to the States was bigger than the Mossie Jack had flown to China, and more comfortable—and Jack didn’t have to fly it. Instead, he sat in back with Hunter and Josie and Charlie Higgins, who had been recruited to the cause. Someone—he thought Hunter, because that man was as resourceful as they came—had made a bottle and some glasses appear. Light from the setting sun poured in through the airplane’s windows and lent their glasses a soft, amber glow. Jack swished the liquid in his glass and then drank some and let it warm him. He had Josie sitting beside him with her arm and shoulder against his. Hunter and Charlie sat across from them, and the world passed below them. For just a moment, he could trick himself into forgetting that it was embroiled in endless war against an interplanetary menace.

  He thought about the world before the war, and that led him back to the Illinois of his boyhood, and he must have frowned, because Josie said, “What’s the matter, Jack? You look so glum all of a sudden.”

  “Nicky,” he said. “And Renata. It’s like...this whole slice of my life has gone sour. All those memories are kind of tainted, now.”

  Josie punched his arm. “Don’t be a sap. What happened has nothing to do with those memories. They’re yours, for keeps. Who those people were then isn’t affected by who they became. Anyway, Renata helped you, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jack admitted. “I’d never have found Lee’s research if it wasn’t for her.”

  “So she’s not all bad. Maybe you’ll even see her again.”

  “Could be.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “So gorgeous you can hardly believe it.”

  She punched him again, harder this time. “Rat.”

  Jack laughed, and she joined him. “Seriously, though,” she said. “Memories are part of what makes us human, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Just tell me I’m right. Give me that,” Josie said.