Chapter 31

Eris Carmine-Rodriguez rocketed upwards in her “Angry Knitting Needle” which is the name that she gave the F-231 and every Martian loved that name. Eris and her volunteers had loaded two 50 caliber guns in pods on each stub wing and at the tip of each stub wing, two rocket tubes, each tube carrying 21 2.75 inch rockets. She scanned the coordinates that Marcy called out and there it was. It was an enormous, ugly thing. It looked like two enormous shallow soup bowls glued together, then painted a flat brown. “Ground Pounder One to all Ground Pounders, I’ve got eyes on the prize, follow me in boys,” shouted Eris.

The desire to protect her new home raged in her blood. Now Eris understood why her father and sister enlisted. Now she understood why beaten and broken, Alan responded to the call to return to arms every time he was asked. It wasn’t the enemy before her that drove Eris on; it was the love for the people behind her that drove her into battle.

As she watched through a telescopic camera, the giant dish reared up almost on its back and a door on the belly opened. “What the hell?” Eris wondered, then she noticed the ring of fire high above them. “IT’S GOING TO SHOOT AT BIG BERSERKER!” She tried to calm herself as she armed up her guns and rockets. Then she had to choose which weapon to fire. “Going in hot, follow my lead Ground Pounder flight!”

It was such a pain keeping the nose of her F-231 locked on target; it was so much easier with the F-733’s. She could hit a mining drone from miles away in an F-733. This thing was like trying to pilot a leaf in the wind. Then she remembered this machine steered with attitude thrusters. Instead of the rear of the ship moving because of engine gimballing, attitude thrusters in the nose turned the ship much quicker than gimballing.

Somehow Eris got the open door on the belly of the massive ship in her sights and just as she squeezed the trigger, a Tungsten rod oozed out of the hole. That’s the only way to describe it. It came out slowly, and she wasn’t sure if it was going to come all the way out or not, but finally, it did. It was kind of cool looking. It looked like a giant Phillips screwdriver, without the plastic handle on the end. “I want that thing,” thought Eris. “For the museum.” Which was right where her Angry Knitting Needle was going to go.

When she stopped dreaming about the Martian Self Defense Force Museum, Eris found herself in a flat spin and everything she did to get out of the spin made it worse. “Ground Pounder one!” called Kayla. “Take your hands and feet off the controls.”

It terrified Eris, but she took her hands and feet off the controls and after two rotations, the F-231 went into emergency mode and the attitude thrusters for pitch, yaw, and roll fired on time and it straightened itself out. “Damn! Do they all do this?”

“No, just that scary thing. Put it on the ground before you kill yourself, that’s an order ma’am.”

Eris wanted to say, “I’m a civilian, you can’t give me orders,” but she left when the chance was presented to her. She and her wingman retired from the fray, but the rest of the flying units continued to harass the Polnoye Resheniye. As the fighters buzzed and shot at the big disc, the defensive guns of the Polnoye Resheniye emerged and started shooting. They were lasers, and they slashed at the Martian Berserkers.