Greenies

Chapter 12

Aboard the WHSS Mammoth, Mars Orbit

August 16, 2146

Lieutenant Callahan came into the berthing area to find his platoon lying listless on their bunks, just as they normally did. As always the smell in the room was of stale sweat and dirty laundry, although after nearly ten weeks he hardly noticed it anymore.

"On your feet, marines," he barked at them. "Assemble immediately for a briefing."

Nobody got to his feet. During the course of the chaotic trip across space, discipline among the men had slipped rather sharply. Where once the men had snapped to obey his every command, they were now quite openly disrespectful, not just to him but to every officer of every rank.

"I got your briefing right here," said Private Stinson as he grabbed his crotch a few times.

"Do you have to yell, LT?" asked Corporal Jones. "I was sleeping."

Callahan sighed, knowing he had helped create this environment he was now living in. He had created it with complacency in the name of soothing the morale problem that had cropped up. Now, however, it was time to start reversing that complacency. Soon they would be going to battle.

"I said on your feet!" Callahan yelled, striding further into the room. "And the next person who throws a smart-ass remark in my direction is going to have my foot up his ass! Assemble for a briefing right now!"

Slowly the men climbed out of their bunks and ambled across the room to assemble before him. It wasn't exactly the military precision that had been the norm in Salta, but at least they were obeying him. And no one threw a smart-ass remark in his direction either. At least not one that he was able to hear, which was, in truth, the best he could hope for.

When they were all more or less lined up he walked to the front, looking them up and down. "I've just come from a meeting with Captain Ayers and Major Wild," he told them. "As you are undoubtedly aware, the 298^th ACR was slated to be first down on the planetary surface today and was to establish the initial beachhead of the Eden attack. Well, as you were probably not aware, the bulk of the 298^th were aboard Pacaderm, the ship that was destroyed in the so-called suicide attack."

"Suicide attack my ass," Stinson was unable to help saying. There were some grumbles from the rest of the men along this line as well.

"Whatever the cause," Callahan interjected, "the fact is that there really is no more 298^th ACR. Someone else needs to secure the Eden beachhead. That someone else is us."

"Us?" asked Sergeant Mallory. "We haven't trained for that! We've been training for armored assault on the city."

And even that training, everyone knew, had been woefully brief. Getting the men to the simulators each day had been a chore that had been just a little too much most of the time.

"We will still be performing assault duty on Eden if that becomes necessary," Callahan said. "But that is after we secure the beachhead itself and facilitate the landing of all of our equipment. This is an upper level decision directly from General Wrath himself. Given the greenie resistance that was encountered during the trip here, it is felt that a combat experienced regiment should be first down in this area of operation. The 314^th is the most combat experienced regiment in the task force. We've been dealing with rebel elements in Argentina for years and so General Wrath feels that if there are any greenies down there waiting for us at the LZ, we'll be the unit that is able to most effectively deal with them."

"And they're just springing this on us now?" Mallory asked. "Christ, when are we supposed to make this landing?"

"In three hours, not including travel time," Callahan said, allowing a hint of his own trepidation to leak into his voice.

"Three hours?" all four of his sergeants and a good number of the men said in unison.

"I know its not much time," Callahan allowed. "Hell, it'll take us most of that time just to get suited and armed up. But that's the way its gonna be, guys. This landing ship will be departing this vessel in three hours and we need to be ready when that happens. So lets get this briefing started, shall we?"

Charlie Company, which Callahan and his platoon were part of, had been tasked with securing the north side of the landing zone. They would exit the landing ship immediately upon touchdown and move overland on foot to a ridgeline two kilometers away. From there they would spread out by platoon to different sectors of the ridge and dig in to guard the perimeter. For at least the first eight hours, possibly more, they would be the only forces in the area. They would have no hover support, no armored vehicle support, and their only artillery support would be from the 150-millimeter guns mounted on the landing ship itself.

"Navigation and targeting is going to be somewhat of a pain in the ass," Callahan explained. "The greenies have apparently encrypted all of the signals from their navigation satellites, which means that unless our intelligence division can ferret out the proper code somehow, our GPS systems will not work. Everything will have to be done by inertial navigation, so be sure to zero out your combat computers when you leave the ship."

"How will we zero out our computers if the ship itself doesn't even know exactly where it is?" asked Sergeant Hamilton.

Callahan grunted a little in frustration. That was exactly the question that he had asked of Major Wild when he had received his briefing. He had not been given an adequate answer. "It will at least give us a rough estimate of our location," he said now.

"A rough estimate?" asked Mallory. "How rough are we talking?"

"Accurate to within five hundred meters," Callahan said.

Everyone looked at him for a moment to see if he was joking. Finally they were forced to conclude that he wasn't.

"Five hundred meters?" Mallory said. "That's half a klick. How are supposed to call down artillery with that kind of a margin for error? We could end up calling it down right on top of ourselves."

"Intelligence seems confident that it will be able to hack into the greenie Internet and get the GPS codes within a day or two," Callahan said. "And in the meantime, estimates are that greenie resistance should be non-existent or very light at the LZ itself. Remember, we're three hundred klicks from their main defenses. It's not like they can just drive a division of troops out to engage us."

"What about those transport aircraft they have?" asked Private Stinson. "Those Hummingbird things we were briefed on. They can transport a squad, can't they?"

"They are capable of transporting a squad of troops," Callahan confirmed. "And they do have the range to fly this far. But our landing ship, as you know, is equipped with a full array of passive and active anti-aircraft sensors. They wouldn't be able to get one of those things within fifty klicks of our position without us picking it up. So unless those troops want to walk fifty klicks across the surface, they won't be able to engage us. Our landing zone will be perfectly secure. That's a good a guarantee as you'll get in this operation I'm told."

And strangely, though nothing else that they had been told about Martian capabilities had been true so far, everyone felt better having heard this.

Martian Planetary Guard Headquarters Building, New Pittsburgh

August 16, 2146

The official command center for the Martian Planetary Guard operations was on the top floor of the main MPG building near the capital. It was a windowless office, stuffed full of desks with computer terminals mounted on them and bustling with high-ranking officers and lower ranking technical people. On the front wall was a holographic projection of the entire planetary surface, a display that could be zoomed in at any particular point to a resolution of better than ten meters per centimeter. Currently the display was zoomed out and showed blue marks where MPG units were deployed. As of yet, most of the troops were still on stand-by at the headquarters building in each of the cities. At the Eden MPG headquarters, the biggest of them, more than sixty thousand troops were standing by for movement orders.

General Jackson was weary after having spent the past twenty-four hours in this room. His T-shirt was rumpled and marred with sweat stains. His eyes were bleary, with bags beneath them, and his face was unshaven. He had been advised multiple times by his closest staff members that he needed to get some sleep but so far he had refused to heed their advice. Since the WestHem armada had entered Martian orbit he had only grabbed quick catnaps in his chair.

"General," a voice said in his headset, startling him out of a light doze. It was Captain Edison, who was monitoring the reconnaissance satellites. "I'm picking up a separation from the armada."

"Landing craft separation?" Jackson asked, his fatigue instantly falling away.

"Looks like it," said Edison. "We're getting good feed from the KH-11 and the KH-17 birds on either side of their orbit. I have a positive landing craft separation from one of the Panamas. Looks like its now maneuvering into a descent corridor."

"Put it on my screen," Jackson ordered.

It appeared a moment later, a blurry infrared image of an object drifting above one of the transport ships. The distance between the two objects continued to slowly grow. White flashes from the bottom and sides indicated that the maneuvering thrusters were being fired.

"Keep a track on it," Jackson said. "I want course projections as soon as feasible."

"Working on it now," Edison said. "Do you want... stand by."

"What is it?" Jackson asked.

"Another separation underway," Edison told him. "No, make that two."

"From different ships?"

"Correct, and here's another now. That's a total of four landing craft separating from four different ships."

Jackson nodded. "What do you want to bet that they're heading for Eden, New Pittsburgh, Libby and Proctor?" he asked the room at large. Those were the four major cities that General Wrath had told the solar system his forces would be landing at.

"I think that's a bet I'll have to turn down," Edison answered. "I've got good passive tracks on all four."

"Shall we alert the forces at the target cities?" asked Colonel Anderson, who was in charge of logistical deployment.

"Let's keep the combat troops on standby for now," Jackson said. "I don't want to send them outside until we're sure where these enemy units are landing. Lets get the artillery units in all cities activated though. There's always the chance that the Earthlings will do something stupid and land close to the cities. If they do, I want arty falling on them from the moment their gear touch the ground."

"Deploying all artillery units now," Anderson said, calling up a screen on his computer.

By the time the main engines of the four landing craft began to fire, decelerating them and starting their descent towards the Martian atmosphere, men and women all over the planet were donning their biosuits and racing through airlocks to man their artillery positions. Teams of loaders crawled into heavily fortified fixed sites on the outskirts of every Martian city. Other teams crawled into mobile guns and began to drive across the soil towards their pre-determined firing points. By the time the first of the landing craft made contact with the thin atmosphere ninety minutes later all guns reported ready. The MPG was now capable of raining down horrific destruction on any point within one hundred kilometers of any of its populated areas.

"I have preliminary course paths for all four vessels," reported Edison.

"Let's have it," Jackson said, sipping from a cup of coffee.

"Just like we expected," Edison said. "Targets Alpha and Delta are in equatorial inclinations. They appear to be heading for the vicinity of Libby and Eden respectively. Targets Bravo and Charlie are in high latitude inclinations. They appear to be heading for New Pittsburgh and Proctor."

"Just like they told us they would," Jackson mused. "Which target will land first?"

"Unless there is some extensive maneuvering, Delta will touch down first near Eden somewhere. Estimated timeframe is approximately twenty-seven minutes."

"Okay," Jackson said. "As soon as they're down on the ground, we get the combat troops moving towards the defensive positions. Full deployment in the cities that have forces land outside of them. All tank crews, all armored cav crews, everything. And I want some special forces teams deployed to each LZ within one hour of its establishment. We start hitting them right away, while they're at their most vulnerable. Those marines are not welcome on this planet and I want them to start experiencing our inhospitality immediately."

Equatorial wastelands, due east of Eden, Mars

August 16, 2146 — 0900 hours

The large landing craft, with 5000 marines aboard, descended rapidly out of the red sky, falling like a rock, its forward momentum more than 900 kilometers per hour. At an altitude of 20,000 meters above the surface, retro-rockets fired, slowing its airspeed and reducing its rate of descent. It came down at a steep angle despite the slowing, much steeper than the Martians had brought down the landing craft from the pre-positioned ships at TNB. This was a combat landing, the first one made since the Jupiter War, and the commander of the craft went by the book even though resistance was expected to be non-existent.

At 0921 hours, Eden time, the craft passed over a ridge of hills and was almost hovering over a large plateau, its descent now only a few meters per second. Steel landing gear shot out from the bottom, ready to bear the weight of the large vehicle and everything within it. As it came close to the ground a cloud of dust was raised by the powerful blast of the retro rockets. The incredible heat fused the Martian soil beneath. Slowly, carefully, the craft inched lower and lower until the gear touched down on the rocky ground. The retro-rockets slowly eased off and the weight settled on the gear.

Even as the engines were being shut down, twenty-millimeter cannons poked out from ports all along the perimeter of the ship. These weapons were equipped with infrared and visual cameras that fed images back to a bank of control screens just below the bridge of the ship. In this room a team of navy gunners stared at the screens and operated joysticks that controlled each individual camera. There were twenty of them in all and they had overlapping fields of fire that could engage any person or light vehicle within five hundred meters of the ship. They panned back and forth, switching frequently between infrared and visual, zooming on different places, searching for biosuited greenies hiding in the rocks or the surrounding hills. They saw nothing but empty landscape.

On the top of the ship two steel doors slid open and three gun turrets — one fore, one aft, and one amidships — slowly rose up. 150-millimeter gun barrels, each ten meters in length, were attached to these turrets. Inside the ship, directly under each turret, a loading crew stood by next to pallets that contained hundreds of 150-millimeter shells. The guns themselves were operated from the same control room the twenty-millimeter gunners worked out of.

The troops that were to actually perform the initial sweep of the landing zone were staging just outside each of the four airlocks that controlled access in and out of the ships. They had put on their biosuits prior to the separation of the landing ship from Mammoth and had been standing around and waiting, their weapons in hand, for the past two hours.

Lieutenant Callahan and his platoon were slated to be the first out through Airlock C on the front part of the ship. They stood closest to the lock, M-24s and SAWs in their hands, all of them weary and feeling slightly claustrophobic from being inside the suits. They were still experiencing standard gravity and the WestHem suits, unlike the MPG's suits, were very heavy and difficult to move in. Though the material of the suit itself was quite similar, the storage tank for air was much bigger and bulged out from the rear in a very unwieldy manner. The environmental controls were also much larger since the suit was designed to be operated in the frigid environment of the Jovian moons instead of the relatively balmy Martian equatorial region.

"How much longer?" asked Mallory as he shifted his rifle from one shoulder to the other.

"When they give us the signal, we'll move," Callahan answered for perhaps the tenth time since they'd landed. "They're still sweeping the area with the cameras to make sure no greenies are about."

"There ain't no fuckin greenies out here," said Stinson. "What do they think? That they just happened to be having a picnic out here or something?"

"We're going by the book here, guys," Callahan told them. "That's the only way to do things."

"The book," said Mallory with a shake of his helmeted head. "The guy who wrote the fuckin book never had to stand around in 1G with a goddamn fifty kilo suit on."

"That's undoubtedly true," agreed Callahan, who was quite uncomfortable himself. "But we're marines, and standing around waiting for something to happen is what we do best, isn't it?"

They stood around grumbling for another twenty minutes before the order was finally given to move into the airlocks. The steel doors slid slowly open and, one by one, Callahan and his men moved into the cramped space. All forty of them were able to fit, but only by pushing tightly together and shifting their weapons and packs into accommodating places.

Once Callahan reported to command that they were all inside, the airlock door slid shut again, sealing them inside. A circuit clicked loudly over their heads and then there was the sound of the pumps running and sucking the air out of the room and into a holding tank where it could be recycled back in for the next group. This process took the better part of five minutes but finally the air pressure matched that of the surface.

"Okay, guys," Callahan told his men, "brace yourselves for lightening. They're gonna shut off the artificial G's to the lock."

The men all looked uneasily at each other for a moment. Although none of them had ever been on the surface of Mars or any other planet except Earth, all had undergone extraterrestrial combat training at Armstrong Naval Base in Earth orbit. A significant part of this course consisted of spending time in a low gravity simulation room and moving about with the biosuits on. All remembered the sensation of lightening quite well but none had experienced it enough to become accustomed to it.

As it turned out, only four of the forty men in the airlock actually vomited when the artificial gravity was switched off although every last one of them groaned and had to fight the sensation. Once the worst of it had passed Callahan polled all of his squad leaders and received assurances that everyone was ready to move.

"Third platoon, ready for egress," he reported to Captain Ayers over the command link.

"I copy, Callahan," Ayers replied. "Ramp is going down now. The sweep of the immediate area shows clear out to half a click. Proceed at best speed to your deployment area."

"You got it, cap," he said, taking a few deep breaths of his air. His combat goggles were turned on and a small graph in the upper right hand of his view showed he had just less than eight hours of oxygen remaining. He looked at his men. "Ramp's going down. We're going to head directly to our objective and secure it. First squad, you'll have point. Lets lock and load."

The door to the outside opened up a second later with a slight hiss of equalizing air pressure. They were looking out over a barren, red landscape dotted with boulders and rocks. About three hundred meters away a series of gentle hills were poking up from the ground. A steady wind was blowing from the west and clouds of dust went drifting by like red snow flurries. From the bottom of the doorway — which was three meters wide — a thin, aluminum ramp began to protrude, extending outward until its weight forced it towards the ground twenty meters below. Finally the end of it was resting on the Martian soil, imparting a forty-degree angle to the ground.

"Okay," Callahan said over the command link. "First squad, get your asses down there."

"You heard the LT," said Sergeant Mallory. "Down the ramp. Stinson, you're on point!"

Private Stinson, destined to be the first Earthling to invade Mars, put his weapon in the port arms position and stepped onto the ramp. He encountered trouble almost immediately. Unfamiliar with moving in low gravity and with his center of gravity thrown off by the weight of his oxygen tank and environmental control unit, the angle proved to be just a bit too much for him. By the second step his balance was shifting wildly back and forth. At first it seemed he was falling forward so he tried shifting his weight back. In doing so, he overcompensated, his body shifting much more than he had intended. Feeling himself falling backwards now, he shifted back forward, once again overcompensating. This time he pitched wildly, his feet coming out from beneath him. He thudded to the ramp, landing on the stock of his M-24, and began to slide downward. Halfway down he grabbed the edge of the ramp to stop himself and only succeeded in spinning his body around ninety degrees, at which point he began to roll like a log. He bumped and thudded and bounced the rest of the way down the ramp until he reached the bottom.

"Well, that was pretty," Callahan said disgustedly. "Is he okay?" he asked Mallory over the command channel.

"You okay down there, Stinson?" Mallory enquired over the tactical channel.

"I think so," Stinson said, rolling onto his stomach.

"You think so, or you are? Do I need to send the medic down after your ass?"

"I'm okay," Stinson barked back. "My suit isn't compromised."

"He's okay," Mallory reported back to Callahan.

"Good," Callahan said. "Then perhaps he'd like to get to his feet and start doing his job?"

Stinson got slowly to his feet, looking a little like a turtle trying to right himself after rolling over. Finally he was standing unsteadily on the surface of Mars, looking out to the north, his weapon held loosely in his gloved hands.

Two by two, the rest of the platoon went down the ramp. Most moved slowly, having taken Stinson's fall as an example of what could happen. Despite this caution however, five more people fell down and tumbled down the ramp and one person — Private Concord — actually rolled off the ramp and fell fifteen meters to the ground, landing hard on his oxygen tank and causing a leak. He was forced to retreat back to the ship for repairs, leaving the platoon short one man.

"This is a clusterfuck in the making," mumbled Callahan as he finally stepped onto the ramp himself. He made it down without falling, but only barely. In all, it had taken nearly fifteen minutes for the platoon to exit the ship, twelve minutes longer than the book prescribed. "Third platoon is on the surface," he reported to Ayers. "Moving in on objective."

The men formed up into a wedge formation and began to move forward towards the hills. They quickly found that walking over the uneven ground was not much easier than descending the ramp. Having lived their entire lives in 1G, they simply weren't accustomed to the way their bodies tried to spring into the air with each step, or with how easy it was to overbalance because your body shifted much more than you wanted it to. All along the formation men tripped and fell, grunting as they hit the ground. They bounced as they landed and then had trouble getting back to their feet. When other marines tried to give them a hand up they inevitably pulled too hard, tossing them into another fall. It would have been comical if it had been happening to someone else.

"Goddammit," yelled Callahan over the tactical channel after the sixth or seventh such episode, "we look like a bunch of fucking clowns out here. Everyone, take short, shuffling steps. Avoid shifting your weight from one side to the other. Remember your ET-combat training. We've all done this before!"

"That was almost ten years ago, LT," complained Stinson. "It'll take us a while to get used to this shit."

"Well get used to it fast," Callahan said. "When we start making contact with the greenies I don't want everyone tripping and falling."

They moved on, gradually becoming a little better as they followed Callahan's advice and took shorter steps. Still their movements were the awkward steps of children learning to ambulate and every minute or so someone would fall down. As they walked, the wind blew a steady stream of dust at them and soon their biosuits were powdered with a fine layer of it.

When they came to the base of the series of hills that were their objective, Callahan called a halt and took a moment to consult the mapping software. He called up the display, which superimposed itself over his view through the goggles. The map itself was constructed from old satellite views of the planet that had been in the military databases prior to the Martian takeover. A red dot represented Callahan's current position. Below this, in red letters, was the message: WARNING. POSITION IS ESTIMATED ONLY. NO GPS LOCK. And sure enough, the dot was not at the base of the hill Callahan was standing next to, but was shown nearly three hundred meters south and east.

"Computer," Callahan said, "move position locater to coordinates 47.855 by 01.455."

POSITION UPDATED flashed on his screen and the dot moved to the proper place on the map.

"Listen up, everyone," he said on the tactical channel. "Update your positions on the mapping software now that we're at a known location. Remember, we're going off of inertial navigation systems, which work by the computer estimating how far we've gone from our last known position. This is a notoriously inaccurate method. Be sure to update every time you get close to something that you can identify on the map."

"Why don't they launch some satellites from the command ship so we can get our own GPS system running?" asked Stinson.

"And how long do you think the greenies would let those satellites sit up there before they blew them up with some of their A-22s?" Callahan responded. "Ten minutes maybe?"

"I guess," Stinson grunted. "This is just a royal pain in the ass."

"So are you, Stinson," Callahan told him. "Now just update your fucking map and lets get up that hill, shall we?"

Going up the hill turned out to be the hardest thing they tried so far. The slope was only twenty to thirty degrees, less than the ramp that had taken them down from the ship, but the ground was uneven, with boulders and rocks strewn everywhere and loose, sandy dirt that did not make for good footing. Whenever a rock would move underfoot, whenever a foot would slip, the men would teeter back and forth trying to regain their balance in an unfamiliar gravitational pull. Several men went tumbling down the slope, bouncing off of boulders and creating small dust storms. Others turned ankles painfully and were forced to limp their way upward. Corporal Peterson of second squad became the first casualty of the ground war when he stepped in a small crevice between two rocks and fell backwards. His foot remained into the crevice while the rest of his body fell backwards, snapping his fibula and tibia at the ankle.

"Goddammit," exclaimed Callahan as he received this report from the squad medic. "This fucking planet is going to kill us before the greenies even get a chance to take their shot."

"Sorry, LT," Peterson said, grimacing through the pain. "I just missed my step. Its hard to walk in this gravity."

"I know, Peterson," Callahan said with a sigh. He motioned to two privates and ordered them to carry him back to the ship for treatment. They picked him up and began to clumsily lug him back the way they had come. Before they even made fifty meters they dropped him twice, causing him to scream out.

"Clusterfuck," Callahan muttered to himself as he resumed his own trek up to the top of the hill. He reached the summit five minutes later, the last of the platoon to do so, and spent a moment surveying the scene. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, was the grimy, bleak Martian landscape, dotted with boulders and rocks and blasted by the dust flying on the prevailing winds. The horizon was very close here, seemingly just over the next rise. Except for the outline of the ship behind him, there was not a single man-made object in view. It was like looking out at a red desert.

"This place is some kind of shithole, ain't it?" asked Sergeant Mallory, who was standing next to him.

"I got to agree with you there," he said. "I can't imagine why those damn greenies are willing to fight for this place."

"Me either."

They continued to scan the immediate area for a moment, both of them checking their map displays and finding that the inertial navigation system still had them more or less locked on target. Both noticed however, that they were not getting an elevation reading.

"It's because the GPS is down," Callahan concluded after a moment's thought. "That's how we usually determine elevation."

"Can't the combat computer use barometric pressure as a back-up?" asked Mallory. "It's giving a temperature reading and a millibars reading. It should be able to compute that into an elevation."

"That doesn't work here," Callahan said. "Remember that briefing they gave us back when we first embarked? Martian atmospheric pressure isn't a constant. It changes day by day as parts of the atmosphere are frozen and thawed at the poles. Not only that, there's no real place to set as the zero elevation. We have oceans on Earth so we use sea level for that number. There ain't no oceans here. The greenies use New Pittsburgh elevation as their base."

"So why can't we do the same thing?" asked Mallory.

"We do," Callahan explained. "All of our elevation readings are based on that if we can manage to get some GPS data. The problem now is that we don't know exactly what the atmospheric pressure at this moment in New Pittsburgh is. And somehow I don't think that the greenies are going to volunteer that information for us. Without that information, we can't calibrate our altimeters."

"So we're not going to know what our elevation is?"

"Not until intelligence manages to hack into the GPS system," he replied.

"Great," said Mallory. "That's really going to play hell with the hover pilots, ain't it?"

"I guess it probably will," he said. "And it'll play hell on our artillery gunners even if they do manage to get an exact position fix. We'll just have to bring arty down the old fashioned way and adjust fire by radio."

"If they don't drop the shells on us first."

Callahan shrugged. "War is hell they say. Like I said though, I don't think we're gonna have to worry about that. The greenies are three hundred klicks away from us. We shouldn't be seeing any until the second or third day of the march at least and by that time, intel should have the GPS up and running again."

"Let's hope you're right," Mallory replied.

"Let's hope," he agreed. "In the meantime, why don't we start digging in up here? Let's get the boys working. I want fighting positions lined with sandbags every ten meters around the top of this hill."

"I'll get them working on it," Mallory said. "At least the gravity should make it easier to dig, huh?"

"At least there's that," Callahan agreed.

Seventy-five kilometers to the northwest, on the other side of the range of small hills, a Hummingbird was flying along at 500 kilometers per hour, twenty meters off the ground. It pulled up and dove down in a near-suicidal manner, barely clearing the rolling hills in its path. It turned and banked, its large wings dipping and rocking as it changed heading every few seconds. Inside of its belly was a ten-person squad of special forces soldiers — Third Squad of Second Platoon of Bravo Company from the Eden Battalion — with Sergeant Lon Fargo in command. The soldiers of this platoon were dressed in their specially modified model 459 biosuits. The modification was in the form of camouflage that helped them maintain invisibility in the Martian landscape. The entire outside layer of the suits had been sprayed with a polymer, granular substance that was remarkably similar in appearance to the Martian soil itself. It was in varying shades of red and would blend in perfectly with the ground when viewed from above or from a distance. Attached to the helmet portions of the suits, in addition to the polymer granules, were artificial rocks of differing size and shape which would help break up the round silhouette of a soldier peering over a ridge or out of a hastily dug foxhole. Each soldier carried a pack on his or her back that contained extra ammunition, a shovel, and spare charges for the anti-tank and anti-aircraft laser Lisa Wong would be packing.

Though this team, as well as all of the other special forces squads in every Martian city, had made many combat drops out in the wastelands since the revolution, the knowledge that this drop was for real, that this was what they had done all of that training for, weighed heavily on every mind. The ammunition they carried in their weapons, in their packs, in magazines stuffed in pockets of their biosuits weighed exactly the same as the training ammunition and was carried in the same amounts, but all the same it felt heavier because it was real. Soon that ammunition would be fired at real enemy soldiers instead of fellow MPG members and it would really wound or kill them when it hit. And those enemy soldiers would be firing real ammunition back at them, would be calling down real artillery shells, would be sending real hovers out in a quest to destroy them. The possibility that some of them, maybe all of them, would die out here, would never see the conclusion of this war they were participating in, was now much more than just an academic thought.

"Ten minutes to LZ," announced Mike Walters, the pilot, over the intercom system. "Ten minutes and closing. Gonna get a little rough now."

"Oh? It's gonna get rough now?" asked Horishito, who's Oriental featured face was visibly green through the tinted helmet. He pulled his SAW a little tighter against his chest and swallowed nervously.

"Sorry, Hoary," Walters apologized. "We're getting strong active sensor activity from the target area now. We're going to drop down a few more meters to make sure they don't get a hit on us."

"I'm all for that," Horishito said. "I just hope I don't puke. I don't really want to spend the next twelve hours out there with puke in my helmet."

"Its funny," said Lisa, who was cradling her laser tube and her weapon as the aircraft began to pitch up and down even more violently than it had been. "I used to think that the insertion wouldn't bother me. I have an iron stomach, I've seen people beaten to death and shot and shitting on themselves out on the streets and its never even made me queasy."

"We all used to think that," Lon told her. "We all heard about how insertions made everyone sick but we thought it could never happen to us. And we were all wrong. I've made well over two hundred insertions now and every last one of them has made me sick."

"Any chance we could talk about something else?" Horishito pleaded. "All this discussion about puking is making me want to do it. Why don't we debate the planetary economy under the Whiting reforms again?"

Everyone had a laugh but they took his words to heart and stopped talking about vomiting and motion sickness. The aircraft bounced and rattled and turned and dove its way onward and they all held tightly to their weapons and equipment as their restraints held them firmly in place. Soon Walters was reporting one minute to the LZ.

"Okay," said Lon, his voice calm but series. "You know the routine. Just like a training mission. Lock and load."

Everyone jacked the first round into their respective weapons and prepared for the violent maneuvering of the landing.

"LZ is in sight," reported Bill Padres, the Mosquito's gunner. "Scanning clear. No signs of enemy activity."

"Coming in now," said Walters. "Brace for landing."

Two seconds later the nose pitched upward and the aircraft began to shudder violently. Everyone was thrown tightly against their restraints as 500 kilometers per hour of forward speed was bled off in a few seconds. They banked sharply to the right for a second and then leveled. The nose went back down and there was a shudder as the landing gear contacted the surface of the planet.

"We're down," Walters' voice announced. "Ramp going down."

The rear of the aircraft opened and the ramp extended downward. There was nothing visible outside since the dust from the landing was obscuring everything. The restraint harnesses released and at an order from Lon, everyone got to their feet and began to move in the careful, orderly way that they had practiced hundreds of times before. Within twenty seconds everyone was belly down on the Martian soil fifty meters from the aircraft, their weapons pointed outward. The ramp went back up on the Mosquito and its powerful semi-rocket engines pushed it back into the air and sent it accelerating on its way.

Back at the landing ship, where a sensor array had been extended upward from the ship to a height of nearly a hundred meters, the heat from the landing and take off had shown up on a technician's screen as dim flares in the high infrared spectrum. The technician dutifully reported this development to his commander, who replayed the brief episode on his own computer screen. Since the flares were bearing only and had not been accompanied by a detection of any kind on the active sensors, he concluded that it must be either a sensor glitch or some sort of Martian atmospheric condition. He did not inform his superior and the detection techs all went back to the boring job of watching their blank screens.

None of the WestHem marines on duty would have any idea that a squad of heavily armed soldiers had just been dropped less than five kilometers from their position.

The landing ship at Libby was the second of the four to touch down. It came down neatly in a flat valley 324 kilometers north of the city. The third ship touched down in the rolling plains 356 kilometers south of the industrial and manufacturing city of Proctor in the mid latitude. The last of the four came to rest 316 miles west of New Pittsburgh in flatlands that had once been a river delta in the days when Mars had featured flowing water. At these three landing sites, just like at the Eden site, the marines exiting the ship looked more comical than fierce as they learned to negotiate in the reduced gravity. A total of sixteen injuries, two of them quite serious, were attributed to falls in the first hour of the WestHem presence on Mars.

In all, more than a thousand troops were deployed at each landing site. They fanned out in four directions, occupying high ground around the perimeter of where the main landing zones would be. They began to dig in so that machine gun and mortar nests could be set up. Almost to the man, they thought they were doing nothing more than going through the motions in order to satisfy the requirements set down in their doctrine. Meanwhile, engineers scoured the rest of the landing zones themselves, setting up navigational beacons for the remaining ships that would soon be coming down.

And, at each site, Mosquitoes dropped off MPG special forces teams just outside of the perimeter. On three occasions sensors were able to pick up the heat flash of the landing Mosquitoes. In none of the cases were these flashes recognized for what they were. None of the troops were sent out to investigate the phenomenon, nor were they informed of it. By the time two hours had gone by since the first touchdown, each landing site had four squads of special forces troops on the ground and moving in towards them.

Corporal Carl Jefferson was Lon's electronics and communications specialist. In addition to his M-24 he carried a powerful communication receiver and transmitter set that was capable of making contact with their command center and receiving radio, infrared, or radar signals from the enemy forces. He was atop a large boulder near the base of a small hill half a kilometer from where they had been dropped. Lon was crouched just below him, clutching his weapon. The rest of the squad was spread out in a circular pattern that had a perimeter of two hundred meters, their eyes alert for enemy patrols.

"What are you getting, Jeffy?" asked Lon as he watched Jefferson peruse the display on his screen.

"All kinds of shit, sarge," Jefferson replied. "I'm getting radar sweeps of the sky every ten seconds, active IR every four seconds, and a shitload of radio waves coming from bearings 96 through 120."

"Can you interpret any of the radio waves?"

"Negative," Jefferson said. "It's all encrypted. I'm just getting bursts of signal that come across as static. The frequency suggests that they're probably biosuit combat computer communications between individual field soldiers. And they're sure chattering a lot out there too. Those communications sets that they use are a lot more powerful than they need to be."

"Well, you know how the Earthlings are," Lon said. "They think more power is better. We should thank them for making their signals strong enough for us to pick up."

"I guess we should," Jefferson agreed.

Of course the Martian forces were communicating with radio signals as well, signals that could potentially be detected by passive sensors in the hands of the Earthlings. The difference however was that the Martian engineers who had designed the MPG tactical sets had made them extremely low power and short range. Tests in the field had shown that even the most powerful receiver could not pick up the radio signals if it was more than a half of a kilometer away. And that half-kilometer distance was under ideal atmospheric conditions and with a direct line of sight.

"Can you lock onto a com sat from here?" Lon asked next.

Jefferson checked his map display for a moment. Unlike what the Earthlings were experiencing, the Martian combat computers were receiving GPS data from the satellites in orbit and, as such, geographic and elevation data, accurate to within fifteen centimeters, were showing. "Yes, we should have a direct line with the 11-C bird from here," he said. "I'll get it set up."

Lon gave him a thumbs-up instead of verbally responding. Despite the fact that the Earthlings wouldn't be able to pick up their transmissions, special forces doctrine was to speak as little as possible in enemy territory, just in case.

Jefferson set his radio down on a relatively flat portion on the highest part of the boulder. The set was twelve centimeters square and plugged into the front of Jefferson's suit. Small legs on the bottom automatically leveled the device. Once level, a tiny laser transmitter extended from the top. Speaking softly to his combat computer, Jefferson commanded the device to lock onto communication satellite 11-C, which was in geosynchronous orbit over Eden. The communications set, utilizing the GPS data, spun the transmitter around to the correct position.

"Ready to go, sarge," Jefferson said.

"Okay," Lon said. "Tell them that we're down safely and in position. Moving in for recon now. Will report composition of enemy forces and make attacks if conditions are favorable."

"Got it," Jefferson replied. He repeated this message to the computer and ordered it transmitted. His words were converted into binary code and then the laser flashed for four tenths of a second. The message hit the dish on the orbiting satellite six centimeters off center and was then transmitted to MPG headquarters in Eden. An acknowledgment was returned two minutes later by an encrypted radio signal from the same satellite.

"No further orders," Jefferson read once his computer decrypted the message. "Just 'proceed with mission, utilize best judgment. Free Mars'."

"All right then," Lon said. He flipped his radio to the command channel, so he could talk to everyone. "No change in orders," he told them. "We're getting a lot of chatter from our Earthling friends coming from bearing 96 through 120. Let's get a little closer and see what there is to see. Matza, you're on point."

"Right, sarge," Matza said, standing up from his position.

"Wong, get that laser charged up and ready. They probably don't have any hovers on the ground yet but we don't know that for sure. Remember doctrine. We hide from them if we can."

"Right, Sarge," she said, pulling a battery from her pocket and sliding it into the tube. She hit the charge button and the energy began to transfer to the laser. Ten seconds later, it was done. "Charged," she reported, putting it back in her pack with the safety switch engaged.

"Good," Lon said, climbing down from the rock. "Let's move out. Wedge formation, ten meters of separation."

They formed up and began to move across the surface. They stepped carefully and confidently, with the air of people that had spent countless hours training in their environment, moving from one hill to the next, not climbing them, just using them for cover. As they walked they left footprints in the dusty surface but within a minute of their passage the constant wind would obscure these tracks with fresh dust. All had their primary weapons out before them, their gloved fingers near the firing buttons, the red targeting recticles bouncing up and down in their combat goggles. Their pace was brisk despite the cautiousness of their steps and they covered more than two kilometers in twenty minutes. As they neared the area of their targets, Lon motioned for them to spread out a bit more.

Soon they were spread at the base of two large hills, which rose thirty to fifty meters above them. Jefferson was still getting bursts of radio transmissions and active sensor sweeps although the bulk of the hills were blocking much of it. Lon gave a series of hand signals to his team and they split up into two elements, half trotting over to the adjoining hill, half staying put. Lisa remained with Lon at the first hill, her M-24 in the firing position as she scanned the hills beyond their position for opposition.

"Everything clear over here, sarge," said Horishito, who was in charge of the group that had gone to the adjoining hill.

"Copy, Hoary," Lon replied. "I think we're getting close. Go on up and let's see what we can see. We'll head up from here. Weapons tight."

"On the way up," Horishito said. "Weapons tight."

Lon gave another signal to his half of the squad and they started up the hill. They made it up in less than three minutes, all of them moving with sure-footed ease. After the hills that they had regularly climbed during their training missions, this particular thirty-degree rise was nothing. When they got within ten meters of the summit, they dropped down to their bellies and crawled, careful to keep their heads close to the surface.

As they peered over the top the view opened up considerably, showing them what they had come to see. Stretching out before them were two small ranges of shallow hills with a broad plain beyond it. The broad plain, they already knew, was where the landing ship had come down. They could see it now, in the distance, a large, straight-edged shape, obviously man-made, in a landscape full of hills and curves. The sensor mast and the three 150 millimeter artillery guns could be plainly seen poking out. Around the ship, moving about here and there, were the tiny figures of men, visible both visually and in the infrared spectrum. Closer in, on most of the hills before them, other soldiers could be seen. Many were in the process of digging into the surface and stacking sandbags. Others were standing around and watching. Almost all of them were carrying objects that were undoubtedly M-24 rifles.

"They're digging in," Lon said. "At least company strength just on this series of hills."

"Standard doctrine?" Lisa asked.

"Standard WestHem doctrine," Lon said with a nod. "Secure a perimeter around the LZ, send out patrols to secure everything out to five klicks, and then bring down the rest of the forces."

"How long until the patrols come out?" Matza asked.

"Probably not until they have their foxholes done. They'll want secure positions to fall back to in case they have to make a stand."

"Seems reasonable," Matza said.

"Yes," Lon agreed, increasing the magnification on his goggles so he could get a better look, "marines are nothing if not by the book. Unfortunately for them, that also makes them predictable."

He continued to stare at the hills before them, his eyes moving from one magnified view to the other, trying to get a rough count of the force composition against him and trying to identify each position that held enemy troops. As he identified and counted each position he made notations on his map screen, updating the schematic with the concentrations and locations. Soon his tactical map was filled with red marks to go along with the blue marks of friendly forces. Since all of their combat computers were data linked, this information showed up on everyone's map.

"Let's send off this data to Eden," he said when he was done. "Jeffy, we got a line of sight?"

"I can still lock onto 11-C from here," he answered from his position on the other hill.

"Good. Get it done. And let them know we'll be moving in closer and setting up to ambush. We'll hit them when they start sending out patrols."

Back at MPG headquarters General Jackson now had a pretty clear idea of the forces that had so far landed on the planet. Reports had come in from all of the special forces teams that had been deployed which allowed him to update the maps with solid intelligence figures. As far as he knew, none of the special forces teams had been detected by the enemy. None had been engaged anyway.

Jackson directed his computer to initiate a conference with Laura Whiting, who was in her own office four kilometers away. The link up took less than thirty seconds to accomplish. If anything, Laura looked even more fatigued than Jackson himself.

"What do we have, Kevin?" she asked him, stifling a yawn.

"Reports are in from the recon elements at all sites," he told her. "We have approximately twenty thousand enemy troops landed, approximately one thousand of them deployed. Battalion strength at each of the landing zones, making a perimeter and digging in according to standard doctrine. No heavy weapons, armor, or hovers have been spotted as of yet. My guess is that those will come down in the second wave."

"So they're vulnerable right now?" she asked.

"I plan to make them vulnerable every second they're on our planet," he answered. "But yes, they are about as defenseless as they'll ever get right now. If we had a couple of battalions of tanks out there we could destroy their beachheads in less than an hour."

"But we don't," she said.

"No," he said with a sigh. "We don't. That's why they land all the way out there after all. Anyway, we do have platoon strength special forces teams at each LZ and more on the way. Mortar teams have just deployed from each of the cities. They should be on the ground within the hour and able to make attacks thirty minutes after that. They will be utilizing shoot and scoot methods. They'll lob some shells into the Earthling perimeter and then pack up and deploy somewhere else and do it again. Before that happens though I expect some of our fire teams out there will start getting on the scoreboard. The Earthlings will be sending out patrols soon."

"It sounds like you have things well in hand," she said. "Why don't you try to get a little sleep? You look like shit and you'll need to be refreshed when the rest of the troops come down."

"I'll catch a few after the first attacks are carried out," he told her. "I don't think I'll be able to turn my mind off until I know that things are working out there." He smiled a little. "I would suggest that you catch a few hours though. You look like someone who's had a few too many cups of coffee."

"I'll make you a deal," she told him. "I'll sleep when you sleep."

He laughed. "Deal," he told her. "I'll keep you updated as things start to happen here."

It was now three and a half hours since the landing ship had come down. Lieutenant Callahan was standing atop of his hill and surveying the work that his platoon had accomplished. All along the top of the hills around them, trenches had been dug to a depth of 1.5 meters. The rocky soil that had been extracted from these holes had been placed into sandbags that now lined the front of each position. The material of each sandbag was reinforced with Kevlar material, which, thought not impervious to high velocity rounds, would, when coupled with the dirt inside and the other layer of Kevlar on the back, prevent them from penetrating through into the hole. They would also stand up quite well to mortar fire in the unlikely event that the greenies managed to throw some at them. Mounted between two sets of the sandbags in each position was one of the squad automatic weapons. Other firing ports for the smaller M-24s had also been constructed. The positions were by the book and very formidable. By staying within them Callahan's single platoon could find off an entire company of greenies provided that they didn't have tank or hover support.

"Not bad, guys," he told his men on the command channel. "This almost looks like a fighting position."

"Yeah," said Stinson, who was manning one of the SAWs, "and I used up a quarter of my fuckin air supply digging it. Talk about a waste of oxygen."

"Well, it's true that we probably won't get much use out of them," Callahan said with feigned sympathy. "But they sure do look pretty. Has anyone taken a picture of them yet? You can impress your grandkids later on. Show them the holes you got to dig on Mars."

There were some dutiful chuckles at his words, but not many.

"What now?" asked Sergeant Mallory, who was sitting on an ammunition box and cradling his rifle.

"I'm real glad you asked that," Callahan said. "Real glad indeed."

A chorus of groans met his words. The men hated it when he talked like that. Experience had taught them that something unpleasant would soon follow.

"Now, let's not get our panties in a bunch, gentlemen," he said, leaning against one of the sandbag walls and looking at his men. "Its not all that bad, we just have to follow doctrine to the letter. Mallory, I need you to take three men and make a patrol of the area."

"Ahhh man," Mallory said. "We gotta go walkin around out on this abortion of a planet?"

"Yeah, LT," Stinson put in. "Can't we just not do it and say we did? There ain't nothing out there but a bunch of fuckin rocks and this goddamned dust."

"That ain't no shit, LT," another of the men put in. "I think we've seen all there is to see right here."

"And you are undoubtedly correct, my good men," Callahan told them, "but doctrine is doctrine. Think of it as training for if we ever have to fight a real war."

The sound of thirty-eight sighs came over the radio set.

"All right," Mallory said, standing up and hefting his weapon. "You heard the lieutenant. Zimmerman, Spanky, Trower, you just volunteered. Grab your weapons and lets get to it."

The three men who had been chosen slowly rose to their feet and grabbed their own weapons.

"Take them out at least two klicks to the north," Callahan said. "You don't have to pretend we're securing a position in Salta or anything, but do at least check around all the hills out there. Its theoretically possible that the greenies made a lucky guess and landed a few recon elements out here before we came down."

"How the hell could they have done that?"

"Lucky guess, like I said. After all, our fearless leader up on the command ship told them what cities we were going to be landing at. They might've put people out at the likely places."

"You don't really believe that do you, LT?" Mallory asked.

"No, of course not, but it is within the realm of possibility, isn't it? So go out there and put our minds at ease. It shouldn't take more than hour, right?"

"I guess not," he sighed, climbing out of the trench. "All right, boys. Lock and load and lets go look at some more rocks and hills. Spanky, you take the point."

"Right," Spanky said. "I'm on the point."

"Let's switch down to sub tach channel Charlie."

They all switched their radio frequencies so that their chatter during the patrol would not bleed onto the main tactical channel.

"Be back in an hour," Mallory told Callahan on the main channel. "How about having some hot food for us?"

"You got it," Callahan said with a grin. "I'll throw a couple of beers on ice too."

"You do that," he said and then turned towards his patrol mates. "Okay, lets get this shit over with. Spanky, lead us off. Check the hills as we go."

They all climbed out of the trench and began to make their way down to the bottom of the hill on the north side. Before they even made it ten steps Zimmerman overbalanced and went tumbling all the way down.

"Shit," Callahan said, shaking his head slowly. "I hope those fuckin greenies give it up soon before we all break our goddamn legs."

Lon and his squad had moved 700 meters closer to the WestHem positions on the north side of the landing zone. They were now spread out in three groups, all of them peering between boulders on the tops of a series of small hills. They were lying on their bellies, their weapons cradled next to them, their goggles set on medium magnification. All had plainly seen the four men climbing off the hill and starting down.

"And here comes a patrol," Lon said quietly, his words broadcast at ultra low power to the rest of the team.

"Did you see that dumbshit fall off the hill?" Horishito asked from the next hill over. "Christ. They can't even walk out here. How the hell do they expect to fight?"

"They're marines, remember?" Matza said, his finger playing over the firing button of his SAW. "They don't have to be able to walk. They can kick ass buried up to their necks in sand. At least that's what they always say."

"All right, guys," Lon said. "Let's keep the chatter to a minimum, shall we? No sense giving ourselves away with leaking radio waves."

Everyone kept quiet, watching as the four men, now safely on the bottom of their hill, formed up in a diamond formation and began to move clumsily forward. They disappeared momentarily behind one of the other hills and then emerged a few minutes later on the other side of it.

"How far out will they go, sarge?" Lisa asked.

"At least two klicks," he responded. "If they follow doctrine that is. We should wait until they're out about as far as they're going to go before we hit them."

"Shadow them?" asked Horishito.

"Yes," he responded. "Three at a time. The rest of the squad will leapfrog around out of sight and set up. Hoary, you and your team will be the first trackers."

"You got it," he said.

"You should be virtually invisible to them at more than three hundred meters as long as you don't silhouette yourselves. Stay low and keep your distance. Just like we've trained."

"Right, sarge," he said. "We're on the motherfucker."

The marine patrol began to angle slightly off to the right. They walked awkwardly and every few minutes one of them would trip and fall down. They would walk up to each hill, make a turn around the base, and then move on to the next one. They kept their weapons slung around their shoulders as they did this. As they came to within half a kilometer of where the special forces team lie on the hill, Horishito, Gavin, and Salinas began to inch backwards, back down to the bottom of their own hill. Once on the ground they began to trot to the east, keeping low, moving from one piece of cover to the next. They stopped behind boulders, at the base of hills, leapfrogging each other one by one until they had moved around to the other side of the advancing marine patrol, which, by this point, had moved out of the view of Lon and the rest of them.

"We got them, sarge," said Horishito's voice. "They're moving northeast around the base of hill 171 right now. They've slowed their pace down a bit. I think they're checking their maps."

"Yes," said Lon thoughtfully, "I guess that makes sense. They'll be running on inertial navigation."

"Wouldn't that be a shame if they got lost out here?" asked Matza.

"A damn shame," Lon agreed. "Come on. Let's displace. We'll hook north around hill 222 there. That should give us defilade from our friends. We'll re-deploy on hills 123 and 201. Everyone clear?"

No one answered, which meant that everyone was clear.

"Okay, let's do it."

Sergeant Mallory was not having a good time. His right ankle was throbbing from the twist he'd given it a few minutes ago and he was nursing a thirst that the water from his supply reservoir simply could not satisfy. His heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest with the exertion of walking in the Martian soil. Christ, why hadn't they exercised more on the trip here? He had not been so out of shape in years, since before being accepted into the Marine Corps more than twelve years ago.

"Motherfuck," grunted Zimmerman as he stepped on a loose rock, which rolled out from beneath him. He tried to keep his balance and would have easily been able to do so had he been in standard gravity but here, with the unfamiliar pull and the awkward suit he was in, he went down. It did not look like a fall on Earth however. It was a slow tumble, looking almost like it was being viewed in slow motion. He landed on his chest, bounced once, and then came to a rest.

"You all right, Zim?" Mallory asked, adjusting his rifle on his shoulder.

"Yeah," he grunted sourly, starting the rolling motion that would get him back to his feet. After a moment he was able to get his knee beneath him and stand up. "Christ, sarge, haven't we gone far enough out yet?"

"Yeah," agreed Spanky. "Their ain't no fuckin greenies out here. Even they're not that dumb."

"Another half a klick or so," Mallory said. "We need to check that group of hills in front of us."

"Christ," Zimmerman swore, brushing dust from his faceplate. "We oughtta just give this fuckin place to the greenies. Who the hell else would want it?"

"Well, Agricorp seems to think it's a nice planet," Mallory said.

"And that's who's giving us our goddamned orders, right?" Spanky asked bitterly.

"Ours is not to question why," Mallory said. "Now lets move out and get this shit over with. Lead off, Spanky."

"Leading off," Spanky said, walking forward.

After a moment, the rest followed. Their eyes were kept on their feet instead of on the terrain around them. You fell down less that way.

"Here they come, right on schedule," Lon said, watching as the group of four emerged from around another of the hills. They were now well out of sight of the ship and the perimeter positions surrounding it. The patrol was almost two kilometers out from their sandbagged positions. Lon and his group were deployed atop three hills 700 meters directly in front of their avenue of advance.

"Still walkin dumb I see," Horishito said. "I bet we can take them right here."

"Undoubtedly," Lon agreed. "But let's let them close a bit more first. We go with ambush plan Alpha-Bravo seven. Everyone got that?"

No answer, which meant that everyone got it. Plan AB-7 was one of many ambush plans they'd practiced over the last few weeks. It was one that fit this particular situation perfectly in that it would not only eliminate the patrol, but also draw a larger group into the same trap.

"I'll assign targets when they come into optimum range," Lon said. "For now, just keep trained on them and keep down."

They waited, watching as the four men walked from hill to hill, circling around and then moving onto the next. They did not look up on the hills as they passed them. They stared downward.

Jesus, Lisa thought to herself as she kept the point man on the patrol covered with her targeting recticle. This is almost too easy.

It took the better part of ten minutes but finally the patrol passed to within 500 meters. They were in a lengthy gully now, open ground all around them, heading directly towards the hill where Lon, Lisa, Matza, and Jefferson were waiting.

"Okay," Lon said, "they're coming up to us. We'll take them down. The rest of you hold in place and mop up anyone if they get away from us. As soon as the shooting's over, we displace to hills 233, 422, and 397 respectively. We need to be off of these hills before they can bring some arty down on us. Everyone got it?"

Everyone got it.

Lon looked at Lisa. "Wong, you take the point man out. You'll shoot first on my command."

"Right, sarge," she said, hiding the nervousness that she felt. "I take the point man."

"I'll take the man right of point," he said next. "Matza, you give a burst to the man on the left of point and then shift fire to the area around the rear man. Wong, you hose down the area around him too, but remember, don't hit him. He has to be able to put out a broadcast or Alpha-Bravo seven is blown." He turned to Jefferson, the communications tech. "Jeffy, you tell me the instant that rear man broadcasts back to the rest of them."

"Right, sarge," he said, his radio set down on a rock, his weapon tucked against his side.

"Let's do it then," Lon said, aiming his rifle out over the open space. "Wong, are you on target?"

She adjusted the barrel of her weapon just a bit, laying the targeting recticle over the faceplate of the man on point. The range indicator told her that his head was 486 meters away. She increased her magnification until his head was practically the only thing in her view. She could see his face beneath the lightly tinted plate. He was a Caucasian and he had a short, neatly trimmed mustache. His mouth was hanging open as if he were breathing hard. He had no idea that he was taking the last breaths of his life. "I'm on target," she said.

"Fire," he told her.

Slowly, smoothly, without stopping to think about what she was doing, she pressed the firing button on her rifle. It kicked against her shoulder with a flash of red fire from the barrel and a sharp crack that sounded loud to her ears but that would be completely inaudible to anyone more than twenty meters away. Sound traveled very slowly and very inefficiently in the thin Martian atmosphere. The bullet that shot out of the barrel moved much more efficiently though. It was four millimeters in diameter and moved nearly ten times faster than the sound waves. There was little in the way of air friction to slow it down or push it off course. It traveled over that 486 meters in two tenths of a second and drilled into the point man's face shield less than two millimeters from where Lisa's targeting recticle was placed. It smashed through the Kevlar reinforced plastic of the shield like it was tissue paper, drilled into the man's face, through his brain, and out the back of his skull with enough velocity left over to punch a hole the size of a man's fist in the back of his helmet. Blood, skull fragments, pieces of brain matter, and chunks of helmet flew in a messy spray behind him. The blood boiled away into a misty red vapor the moment it hit the air. The point man never knew what hit him.

Even before he could fall down Lon and Matza fired too, sending their bullets out towards a lethal intersection with their targets.

It happened so fast that Mallory had a difficult time processing things. One second he was walking in the rear of the formation, putting one foot in front of the other, and the next, all three of his comrades were down. Spanky got it first, his head snapping back in a spray of gore and boiled blood. Zimmerman went a half second later, another headshot, another spray of red vapor, skull chunks, and mushy brain flying out through a large hole in his helmet. And then Trower was hit with a burst of machine gun fire right in the midsection, at least four rounds. They blew out the back of his biosuit, exploding two of the compartmentalized air chambers in the tank with a loud bang. Trower managed a grunt of surprise and then he fell forward in the curious slow motion style that was all the rage on the Martian surface.

"What the..." was all Mallory had time for before bullets were slamming into the ground all around him. They plinked off rocks and kicked up dust around his feet. They whizzed through the air as streaks in the infrared spectrum of his combat goggles. He was under fire! He was under fire and three of his men had already been hit!

Mallory was a veteran of ambush attacks by Argentine rebels. His brain reacted instantly once the message that he was under attack was processed. He threw himself to the ground. Only he didn't drop immediately as he did when he was on Earth in normal gravity. Instead, he seemed to float downward at an almost serene pace. When he hit the dirt, he bounced back up and then slowly landed back down again. Two bullets came plinking in less than a half meter from his head.

"Fuck me!" he barked, feeling the adrenaline start to flow now. There were greenies out there and they were shooting at him! He could see the muzzle flashes from their weapons now, coming from the hills about half a kilometer in front of him. Half a kilometer! They were putting down frighteningly accurate fire from half a klick away. God help him.

He began scrambling to get under cover, trying to crawl behind a large boulder a meter to his right. His movements were ungainly and did little more than kick up more dust for a moment. Finally he started to inch along, bullets still flying all around him. A rock near his right hand was hit and flipped nearly a meter into the air, chips of it exploding everywhere. Finally his hands were on the rock. He pulled himself around it, putting its bulk between him and the enemy, praying that it was large enough to provide cover.

Bullets began to slam into the rock now, throwing chips of it into the air to rain down upon him. Acting quickly, not stopping to wonder how he had been miraculously spared when the other three men had been potted as easily as pop-up targets on a shooting range, not knowing that he was doing exactly what his tormentors wished him to do, he switched his radio frequency to the main tactical channel, calling up his mapping display in the same instant.

"Callahan, this is Mallory. Emergency traffic!" he screamed.

Callahan came on the air immediately. "What is it, Mallory?" he asked, his voice calm.

"I'm taking fire!" he said. "I have a squad sized unit shooting at me from grid three-one-bravo. The hill marked two-three-four. I repeat. Hill two-three-four in grid three-one-bravo. The rest of the patrol is down. Requesting immediate arty support!"

"Confirm the rest of the squad is down?" Callahan asked, his voice kicking up a notch in excitement.

"That's affirm," Mallory said, wincing as another burst of fire came stitching into his rock. "I've got small arms fire coming from that location. I'm pinned down at grid three-one-charlie, half a klick south of the hill! Get some arty down on those fuckers!"

"He's broadcasting, sarge," Jefferson said. "No doubt about it. Encrypted 900 megahertz frequency from his bearing."

Lon nodded, squeezing off another two shots into the dirt around the rock where he was hiding. Beside him Matza blasted an extended burst with the SAW, the expended casings flying out behind him. "Wong, do you got a shot on him?" Lon asked. "He's under cover from my direction."

"Mine too," she said. "I can see part of his foot if you want me to put one there."

"No, no sense torturing the bastard. Hoary," he hailed to the Horishito on the adjoining hill. "You have a clean shot of him from over there?"

"Fuckin' aye, sarge," he answered.

"Take him," Lon said.

Two hundred meters to the east, Horishito moved his weapon and sighted in. The remaining marine was crouched down, as low as he could make himself, but the side of his head was clearly visible from this angle. After all, the poor bastard didn't know that there was another group of armed Martians on the adjoining hill. Horishito felt an instant of pity for him and then buried it deep. He pushed the firing button and watched the marine's head snap to the side with the impact. His body slumped over and lay still.

"He's down," Horishito reported.

"Okay," Lon said. "Let's displace. You all know the drill. Let's get moving."

Within fifteen seconds all ten of them had their weapons and gear stowed and were rushing down to the base of their hills. The entire attack had lasted less than one minute.

"Mallory!" Callahan barked, his voice being transmitted across the ether. "Mallory, your condition?" Nothing but silence answered him. "Goddammit," he muttered.

He called up his map display and ordered it to show the locations of everyone in his platoon. This information was provided by ultra high frequency radio signals from each platoon member's combat computer. It was displayed as blue dots on the terrain of the map. He ignored the cluster of blue dots deployed in the trenches on the hills they occupied, concentrating instead on the four, unmoving dots that were 1600 meters north of this. Three of them lay in a neat diamond pattern, as if they had fallen instantly during their patrol. The fourth lay a few meters out of formation. That one was Mallory. He instructed his combat computer to give him a view from Mallory's combat computer. The computer reported a malfunction from the visual display. Similar malfunctions were reported from Zimmerman's and Spanky's computers. Trower's was able to give him a picture but it wasn't very helpful. It looked only at the ground.

By now everyone else in the platoon was looking at him expectantly. All had heard Mallory's broadcast. All had heard the lethal way it had suddenly been cut off. They had picked up their weapons and were gripping them tightly, itching to go out there and deal a little payback.

"Stand to and get ready to move out," Callahan told them. "I'm gonna get some arty flying at that hill." He switched radio frequencies to the one that had been assigned for fire support. He struggled for a moment to remember his call sign and then began to speak. "Fire control main this is Perimeter five-alpha. I have a fire mission for you."

Nobody answered him and he had to repeat his hail two more times. Finally a weary voice came on.

"Perimeter five-alpha, this is fire control main. What did you just say?"

"I said I have a fire mission for you. Coordinates are..."

"Wait a minute," the voice interrupted. "I haven't received any authorization for a live fire drill."

"This is not a drill, fire control," Callahan said, barely maintaining control of his voice. "One of my patrols has come under fire. Coordinates are..."

"Stand by, perimeter five-alpha," the voice interrupted again. "I need to get authorization for this."

"Authorization?" Callahan nearly screamed. "I just told you my men have come under fire! Now get those guns firing goddammit!"

"Stand by. I need to talk to the captain about this."

"Shit," Callahan said, grunting in frustration.

"Perimeter five-alpha," another voice cut in, this time on the command frequency. Callahan recognized it as belonging to Captain Ayers, the company commander who was, in the tradition of all great commanders, still back on the landing ship. "This is Perimeter five command. What the hell is going on?"

"My patrol has been shot up, cap," he said. "Mallory reported being fired on from hill 234 in grid three-one-bravo. He stopped transmitting a few seconds later. All four of the patrol team are down. Unknown what their status is. That fuckhead in fire control main won't take my fire mission until he checks with his captain."

There was a long pause as Ayers digested this information. Finally he said: "Take two of your squads and start moving in on the location. I'll send the reserve platoon up to cover your position."

"And the arty?"

"I'll have a talk with fire control. The arty will be on its way before you leave the hill."

"Thanks, cap. We're on the way."

"Get those terrorist fucks," Ayers said. "Try to capture one if you can but don't show them any mercy."

"You know it," Callahan promised. He switched back to the tactical frequency. "Second squad, fourth squad, let's move out. Second, you're on the point. First and third squad, maintain security here. The reserve platoon is moving up to reinforce you."

The ten men of second squad and the nine men of fourth quickly jumped out of the trench. After a tumbling, clumsy climb down to the bottom of their hills, they began to form up. And, as promised, before they even started to move out, artillery shells from the 150-millimeter guns on the landing ship began to fly over their heads.

"Arty, incoming," reported Matza. "Eleven o'clock high, moving left to right."

They were deployed on another three hills, this time to the west of where they had ambushed the patrol. They were still overlooking the gully and all ten of them could plainly see the bodies lying in the dirt 400 meters away. At Matza's report everyone looked towards the eleven o'clock position, easily seeing the incoming rounds.

The artillery shells made no noise, at least none that was audible from this distance. They showed up only with the infrared enhancement of the combat goggles. They were white streaks, moving rapidly in a ballistic arc. As they watched they passed over them and disappeared well beyond the hill that they had made the attack from. There were flashes from the explosions but no vibration or sound.

"Jesus," Wong said. "They're at least a kilometer off target."

"We could've stayed on those hills if we'd wanted," Horishito put in.

"They don't have accurate elevation or position data," Lon said. "It throws their shells off course because they don't know where they're firing from, where exactly their target is in relation to their guns, and what exact elevation they're at. That's kind of what we figured would happen in our briefings before they landed. I wasn't sure enough to rely on that though and take the chance of getting us all smeared."

Three more shells came arcing over and then three more and then yet another three. All of them followed the same basic path as the first set, impacting well away from their target area.

"Okay," Lon said. "It would seem that we're safe from artillery. Wong, Hoary, go do your stuff. You know the drill."

"Damn right we do," Horishito said. "Come on Wong. Let's go trap some boobies."

Lisa and Horishito picked up their weapons and quickly scrambled down the backside of the hill. Holding their rifles out before them they began to advance towards the four bodies on the ground.

"How's it look?" Callahan asked Private Scalzi, who was on the point. Of course Callahan could look through Scalzi's combat goggles and see for himself but he didn't like cutting off his own vision in order to do that.

"They're lying on the ground," reported Scalzi, who was peering over a boulder that lay between two hills. Before him was the gully where Mallory and his patrol had fallen almost forty minutes before. "No movement. No outgassing of CO2 on any of them."

"They're dead then," Callahan said, mostly to himself although with the intercom still active. In truth, that was what he had known in his heart the entire time. Greenie terrorists were no different than Argentine terrorists it seemed. They wouldn't leave a man alive on the ground if they had a chance to kill him. "How's the surrounding area look?"

"The target hill looks clear. No heat sources, nothing on visual. It doesn't look like the arty came down there though. I don't see any impact craters."

"Great," Callahan sighed, although that was exactly what he'd suspected would happen.

"What now, LT?" Scalzi asked. "You want me to move up to the bodies?"

"That's right," Callahan said. "Take Hunter, Bingham, and Frank with you. Doc?"

"Yeah, LT?" said O'Leary, the medic.

"Go with them. They're probably KIA but you never know."

"Right, LT," he said.

"Go to it," Callahan ordered. "Everyone else, keep a sharp eye out. I don't like the way this looks out here. Those greenies could be anywhere, and this has the smell of a trap to me."

Scalzi and the four others stepped out into the open and began to move towards their fallen comrades. They spread out into a line formation, five meters separating them, their rifles gripped tightly, fingers on the firing buttons, eyes tracking the terrain before them. And, of course, since they weren't looking at their feet as they walked, one of them — Corporal Bingham — promptly tripped and fell down. His finger twitched on his firing button as he fell and a three round burst shot out of his rifle, blasting into the ground before him and raising a cloud of red dust that was quickly blown away in the wind.

"Sorry, LT," Bingham grunted as he pulled himself back to his feet.

"That's okay, Bingham," Callahan responded. "We all know how it is."

They continued on, all of them relaxing a little when they weren't fired upon. Scalzi, slightly in the lead, reached Mallory first. O'Leary trotted up behind him, took one look, and shook his head.

"Mallory is gone, LT," he said. "The whole side of his helmet is blown out. Clean head shot."

"All right," Callahan said, suppressing a surge of anger and grief. Mallory had been his first sergeant for the last three years and the two of them had been very close. "Check on the rest."

O'Leary and Scalzi walked to the next body, which belonged to Zimmerman. This too was an obvious death, as was evidenced by the huge hole in the back of his helmet. Spanky was in exactly the same condition.

"Holy shit," Scalzi said, as he took this all in. "Three fuckin head shots, LT. I'll tell you what. If those greenies really did this from that hill over there, they're wicked good shots. That's got to be at least a half a klick out."

"It's their home ground," Callahan said slowly, as if the idea were just occurring to him. "They've got combat goggles to line them up nice and neat and they've been practicing out here for weeks."

"Hey," said O'Leary, "look at Trower. He wasn't head shot."

"No?" Scalzi said.

"No, it looks like he took a burst in the torso. Blew out the back of his tank. Help me roll him over. He might still be alive if the suit was able to seal."

Scalzi walked over and leaned down next to the medic, who was reaching down to get a grip on Trower's side. Hearing that he might still be alive, Hunter and Bingham came trotting over as well. Hunter leaned down to grab a piece of Trower while Bingham stood behind them. Private Frank, who had decided that someone should keep an eye on the terrain, hung back about three meters. This was a decision that would end up saving his life.

"Pull," O'Leary said. "Let's get him over."

As one, the three men began to pull on their fallen comrade and in doing so they activated a trip mechanism that Lisa Wong had planted beneath him. When the weight came off of the mechanism a simple spring was allowed to open, therefore completing a circuit. The circuit sent a radio signal out to a Stevenson mine — a little explosive device the MPG research and development teams had come up with ten years before — that Horishito had planted less than two meters away. The mine looked exactly like one of the innumerable Martian rocks that littered the wastelands, but it actually contained one kilogram of high explosive surrounded by thousands of razor sharp slag diamond chips. The mine exploded with a sharp crack, spraying the diamond chips and chunks of rock outward at suicidal velocity. Hunter took the worst of it. The shrapnel ripped through his helmet and upper torso, literally ripping his head and right arm right off his body. Bingham and O'Leary didn't fair much better. Well over a hundred shards tore into the torso portions of their suits, exploding their air tanks, destroying the computers that controlled their environmental controls, and finally penetrating into their chests, tearing apart vital organs and sending their blood boiling out into the atmosphere. Scalzi, who was fortunate enough to have the other three between him and the mine, only had five or six pieces of the shrapnel hit him. Though his air supply tanks remained intact and though the self-sealing material of his suit was able to do its job and keep him pressurized, several major veins and arteries, as well as his right lung, were hit. He fell to the ground, screaming, trying desperately to keep breathing. Only Frank was untouched by shrapnel. Even so, he was thrown nearly two meters backwards by the concussion, which was quite intense in spite of the thin air to carry it. He landed on his back, dazed, wondering just what the hell had happened.

Callahan and the rest of the men with him watched the explosion with horror, all of them crouching downward instinctively, their eyes looking for the perpetrators and seeing nothing, their weapons tracking back and forth, trying to engage something that wasn't there.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Callahan said, watching in horrified fascination as the clouds of red vapor boiled up from the bleeding bodies and was whisked away in the wind.

"What the fuck happened?" someone else, it sounded like Sergeant Hamilton, asked.

"A booby trap," Callahan said. "They rigged a fucking explosive on Mallory!"

"Those motherfuckers!" someone else raged.

"Goddamned terrorist assholes!" said yet another.

Callahan took a deep breath, fighting to remain calm. His only medic had just been blown to pieces and he had at least one wounded man out there. Scalzi's screams were plainly audible to everyone on the tactical channel. "Scalzi, chill out, man," he said soothingly. "We're coming to bring you in. Try to relax."

"I can't... breathe... el... el tee," he gasped.

"Hang in there," Callahan told him. "Frank, you with us?"

"I... uh... I think so," he said softly. "What happened?"

"Are you hurt?"

"I don't... I don't know."

"Okay, just lay there, we're coming to get you. Second squad, move in. Drag Scalzi and Frank back over here and whatever you do, don't touch those other bodies. God only knows what other kind of shit they got rigged up."

Second squad, from which Scalzi, Bingham, and Hunter had been drawn, was down to only seven members. Six of them jumped to their feet to go drag their wounded teammates out of the gully. The seventh, Corporal Dixon, moved up a little to help cover them with his SAW. Fourth squad and Callahan all moved up as well, their weapons trained out over the landscape.

"Let's get this done quick," said Sergeant Hamilton, the leader of second squad.

They were about halfway to their destination, well out into the open, when flashes erupted from the peaks of the hillsides beyond them, three to four flashes on each peak, at least one from a SAW. High velocity bullets slammed into the line of marines, hitting them so fast that most of them didn't have a chance to dive to the dirt. Air tanks exploded, helmets were blown apart, legs were cut out from beneath, and the air was filled with the boiling blood vapor. Screams of pain and horror were broadcast over the tactical frequency. And then, less than five seconds after it had begun, it was over. Six men lay dead or dying on the Martian soil.

The speed and violence of the attack was shocking to the remaining marines who witnessed it from behind their cover. All had experienced hit and run attacks by Argentine rebels in Salta, but none had ever seen six of their comrades shot down in less than five seconds. They all stared for a moment, even Callahan, the most experienced among them, not talking, their mouths gaping under their protective visors.

Corporal Dixon was the first to react. "Motherfuckers!" he screamed in rage, his finger slamming down on the firing button of his SAW. It began to buck on its bipod, sending a stream of bullets out towards the closest of the hills from which the fire had come. He raked it back and forth, thoroughly hosing the top of the hill, watching as a cloud of dust was raised from the impact of his shells.

The sound of his gun firing stirred the rest of the marines to action. Reverting to their training, they began to fire as well, sending three round bursts downrange and peppering the hills. All could plainly see that the flashes from the enemy had stopped but no one let that deter them. Hundreds of rounds flew, the shell casings littering the ground beside them. Callahan fired a few bursts himself and then reverted to his training, which was to act as commander. He radioed fire control main back at the ship and called for an artillery strike on the three hillsides. Having been talked to by Captain Ayers and Major Wild after the last debacle, the support officer on duty immediately relayed the coordinates.

By the time the artillery request was taken care of, most of the marines had fired the first of their 100 round magazines empty and were reloading. Callahan, noting that there still was no enemy fire being returned at them, ordered them to cease fire. Over the intercom several new sets of screams were being broadcast now.

"We need to get out there, LT!" yelled Sergeant Barley, commander of fourth squad. "We need to get the wounded in!"

"Everybody hold in place," Callahan ordered. "You saw what happened when someone walked out there. The fuckin greenies cut them to pieces. We're not giving them any more easy targets."

"But, LT..." Barley said helplessly.

"That's a goddamned order!" Callahan yelled. "Everybody stay right the fuck where you are. Arty is coming in."

"Callahan!" the voice of Captain Ayers suddenly cut in over the command channel. "What in the hell is going on out there?"

"We were ambushed, sir," he answered. "We are in contact with a greenie force of unknown composition, probably squad sized though. They rigged the bodies of our men with explosives and took out the retrieval team. When I sent second squad out to retrieve the wounded from that they hit us from the hillsides with concentrated fire. All of second squad is down now except for Dixon on the SAW. We have several wounded that need to be evacuated and we can't get to them. I just called in arty. It should be coming down any second."

"With only three guns firing," Ayers said. "Goddammit, we need more artillery guns down here and we need some fucking hovers in the air. The greenies probably had a squad positioned out here before we even landed."

"Agree, sir," Callahan said. "And they're very good shots. We need to eliminate them quickly."

"I'm sending second platoon up to reinforce you," Ayers said. "Sweep that area when they get there and make sure every last one of those greenies is neutralized."

"Yes, sir," Callahan told him. "I'll be sending some of the men back with the wounded as soon as we can get them."

"I'll get a shuttle coming down from orbit for evac up to the hospital ship. Update if there is any more contact."

"Yes, sir," Callahan said, signing off.

The artillery rounds came flying overhead a few seconds later. Everyone looked up to see the white streaks moving through the pink sky. It was quite obvious that they weren't going to land anywhere near the target. They arced over the hillsides and disappeared, so far distant that not even the flashes were visible.

"Goddammit," Callahan swore, shaking his head in disgust. He switched frequencies on his radio. "Off target," he told fire control. "I repeat, you are well off target. Adjust back one klick."

"One klick?" the fire control officer said in disbelief. "That's impossible, Lieutenant. We can't be that far off target."

"And I'm telling you that you fucking well are!" he yelled. "I'm sitting here looking at your shells and they just passed over the tops of those hills still more than five hundred meters above the ground. Now adjust back a klick."

"Copy," the man said doubtfully. "Adjusting back a klick."

Twenty seconds went by before another salvo of artillery shells came flying in. This set was closer to the hills but still arced well over the top of them, exploding several hundred meters on the other side.

"Still off target," Callahan reported, his voice flirting with frustration. "Adjust back another 300 meters."

The next salvo landed well short, the shells' proximity fuses detonating them just above the open ground in front of the hills. Callahan had them adjust fire again, and then yet again before the rounds finally started to land where they were supposed to. He told them to fire for effect and they plastered the hills with twelve rounds apiece, raising huge clouds of dust and spraying lethal shrapnel about.

And of course it was all for nothing. Following special forces doctrine, Lon and his squad had vacated the hills in question less than thirty seconds after they fired on the marines. By the time the shells came down on their hiding spots they were nearly half a kilometer to the east, occupying yet another overlook. When Callahan led the reserve platoon forward to check the hills twenty minutes later they found impact craters and scattered piles of expended shell casings but no bodies, no weapons, nothing that indicated any of the greenies that had made the attack had been so much as scratched by either the return fire of the artillery.

In the meantime, Scalzi, who would most likely have been saved had a medic been able to attend to him, slowly died as his right lung collapsed around his heart and strangled the organ. Two of the other wounded, Metzinger and Valdez, both of second squad, also died while awaiting help, both of them bleeding to death from severed arteries. Only Private Frank, who had been blown clear by the detonating mine, and Private Kinnaman, who was hit with three bullets in the leg and lower torso, were eventually pulled alive from the killing zone.

"It appears at this time," General Wrath told the assembled reporters in the briefing room, "that the terrorist elements who are holding Mars somehow got lucky and were able to have a team of their operatives pre-positioned near the north side of the Eden landing site. My guess is that they placed several of these teams in likely locations where they thought our landing ships might come down and that the law of averages simply allowed this particular guess to be a correct one. This group of terrorists engaged some of our marines as they were on patrol around the northern perimeter of the landing zone. My information is that several marines were wounded during the exchange. I have just ordered a shuttle down to the surface to evacuate them. Our troops right now are sweeping the area where the engagement occurred and will capture or destroy these cowardly terrorists before they can make any more such attacks."

"How many were wounded?" asked the crusty old reporter from ICS. "And were any killed?"

"I don't have complete numbers on that yet," Wrath lied, "but my information is that there were a few moderate wounds from the exchange of gunfire and from explosive devices that the terrorists planted."

"Do you believe that any more of these teams might be in the vicinity of any other landing zone?" asked the pretty reporter from InfoServe. "And if so, what steps are you taking to ensure that they will not jeopardize the landing of the rest of the forces?"

Wrath, a veteran of live briefings, pretended to ponder her question, as if the reporter had not been briefed to ask that very thing in those exact words and as if he had not already formulated a response. "Well, Cindy," he said, addressing her by name, "I cannot actually guarantee that there are no other teams of terrorists lying in wait near any of the other landing zones, but I would guess that it is very unlikely. As I said, the terrorists probably placed several teams outside at several of the landing areas in the hope that we would just happen to set down near them. We just happened to show up next to this team. I hardly think that Laura Whiting and her thugs have an unlimited supply of such men to waste on futile attacks such as these. This attack will not affect the landing of the rest of the forces in any way."

There were a few more questions, most of them reworded versions of those that had already been asked, and then Wrath, citing the need to get back to work coordinating his assault teams, brought the briefing to an end.

Two minutes later he was back in the CIC, where Major Wilde delivered more bad news to him.

"Perimeter forces on the west side of the New Pittsburgh LZ are in contact with an unknown size force of greenies," he said. "Reports are that another patrol was taken down in almost the same manner as the patrol at the Eden LZ and that the responding platoon was once again ambushed from cover. Twelve dead, four wounded are the damages so far."

"I see," Wrath said slowly, with barely restrained rage. "And greenie casualties?"

"None as far as can be determined," Wilde told him. "We pounded the area where the fire came from with arty, but, just like at the Eden site, it took far too long for the rounds to get on target. It's the same situation. The lack of GPS data and our unfamiliarity with gunnery in that variable air pressure is making it extremely hard to put down accurate fire. By the time we plastered the hill and got some troops up there, the greenies were long gone. A sweep of the area is underway right now. So far it has turned up nothing."

"Nothing," Wrath said, shaking his head in frustration. Nothing was exactly what a sweep of the Eden ambush zone had turned up as well. "How in the hell are they getting away from us? How can they just disappear into the wastelands like that? There not a goddamned thing for them to hide behind out there."

"We don't know," he answered. "Intel says that the greenie biosuits have a lower infrared signature than the ones we wear, but even so, they have to putting off heat don't they? And then there's the fact that its broad daylight. They should be visible for up to two kilometers with nothing more than an eyeball looking for them. Goddamned if I know where they went, sir."

"Tell the commanders down there to keep sweeping until they find them. I want those landing sites secure in the next three hours so we can start bringing down our heavy equipment before it's dark at the LZ's."

"Yes, sir," Wilde told him. "We'll get them. After all, how many could there possibly be?"

"Those greenies have been supernaturally lucky so far," he said with a grunt. "Their luck will run out as soon as we get our armor down there though." He paused for a moment. "What about the evac shuttle? Is it on its way?"

"Completed it's de-orbit burn about forty minutes ago. It should be entering the atmosphere soon and down on the ground about twenty minutes after that. I sent two doctors, three nurses, and four medics down with it."

"Excellent," he said. "I guess we'd better send another shuttle down for the wounded at the New Pittsburgh LZ."

"I've already taken the liberty of arranging that, General," Wilde told him. "They should be leaving Mercy in about ten minutes. Estimated landing time will be..."

"Major Wilde," a young communications tech suddenly called from his terminal across the room. He sounded excited.

"What is it?" Wilde yelled over to him.

"I just received a message from Colonel Brandywine at the Proctor LZ. A patrol was just ambushed by a force of greenies on the south side."

"Fuck me," Wrath said, his words coming out almost as a groan. It was starting to look like things weren't going to go as smoothly as they had in the simulations.

Lon and his squad had tightened up into two teams of five apiece and were now deployed atop of a high ridgeline just over a kilometer from where they had made their attack on the squad of soldiers. They were all tired and increasingly cognizant that they were in hostile territory and being hunted but their spirits were high, particularly after their successful evasion of the manhunt that had been sent out after them.

After cutting down the squad of soldiers from the hilltops they had fled to the east, taking up observation positions on another set of hills and watching with amusement as the marine gunners tried to hit their previous positions with artillery. Their amusement had turned to fear however when they saw an entire platoon fanning out over the landscape thirty minutes later to track them down. They had moved off of their hillside and put into action their evasion plans, which took advantage not of their speed and agility in the wastelands but of the nearly zero heat emission qualities of their biosuits. They had spread themselves out in a large field of boulders in one of the many gullies, lying down at the base of rocks and remaining immobile. Since it was high noon on the Martian equator, the outside temperature of the air was about as warm as it ever got on the planet, a balmy sixteen degrees Celsius. This made it quite easy for the heat dissipation mechanisms of their suits to keep them exactly the same temperature as the ground around them, which kept them from registering in the infrared spectrum of the marine's combat goggles. And when lying in the boulders the camouflage patterns on their suits made them blend in almost perfectly with the background in the visual spectrum. From anything more than a hundred meters away they would look like nothing but rocks among rocks, dirt among dirt. A squad of marines had walked right by the edge of their hiding spot during the search, had looked directly at them, and had passed on without the slightest hint of recognition.

From there the squad had waited almost an hour and had then moved out again, dashing from one piece of cover to the next until reaching their current position. They were now looking out at the landing ship and the perimeter of the landing zone once more. To the east of them they could see another platoon of marines, or maybe the same one as earlier, still searching from hill to hill, trying to locate them, with no idea that the men they sought were actually between them and the safety of their trenches now. In the other direction, in the trenches themselves, other marines were lounging about, walking to and fro along the trench line, keeping half an eye out towards the wastelands beyond but mostly just chatting with each other based on the amount of radio waves that Jefferson was picking up. Beyond them was the landing zone itself, with the ship sitting on its supports. Well over two hundred marines were moving about in that area, some engineers setting up further landing areas for the rest of the ships to come down, others combat marines that were guarding them.

An encrypted radio message had just been broadcast from Eden special forces headquarters. The message had asked any team on the perimeter — and just how many teams there were neither Lon nor anyone else in the squad knew — to send in an activity report for the LZ itself. The message had not explained why HQ wanted this information but nobody really needed to know why. All of them knew that part of special forces doctrine was to send mortar teams out to the perimeter of any hostile landing zone. And mortars were much more effective when they had accurate targeting information.

"Can we transmit from here safely?" Lon asked Jefferson.

"I'm pretty sure we can," he said. "I can still get a lock on the com sat from here and unless one of those earthling fucks actually gets a visual on me they won't pick up the com laser."

"How about if we send a photo?" Lon asked.

Jefferson thought for a moment. "The transmission time will increase about tenfold for a picture," he said. "But again, it should be fairly safe."

"Okay, do it," Lon ordered. "Snap a frame shot with your combat goggles and be sure to get the ship in the shot. Be sure you label it as coming from the north side. I'm sure they would know that already, but its best to be sure."

"You got it, sarge," Jefferson said.

A moment later the shot was taken. He ordered his computer to download it to the communications computer and to then encrypt it for transmission. The communicator sent up its laser transmitter, locked onto the satellite, and sent out the laser pulse, which in this case took a full five seconds from start to finish. Two minutes later the photo was on the screen of Colonel Bright in the command center. Bright quickly made a few marks on the photo and then transmitted it through the satellite link to the six person mortar team that had been deployed on the east side of the Eden landing zone, about two kilometers from the perimeter, about four from the ship itself, a range that was well within the capabilities of the 80-millimeter weapons they fielded.

Armed with the picture and the GPS data that Bright had noted on it, the team set up their three weapons in a line and programmed the firing computers to stagger the rounds throughout the area of the LZ where the heaviest human activity was taking place. These computers, which knew exactly where the weapon they were mated to was located, exactly where the target area was located, what the barometric pressure was and what the current wind conditions were, quickly leveled the mortars and adjusted them to the proper angle. Green lights flashed telling the operators that the weapons were locked and ready to fire. The gunners then arranged a total of nine high explosive rounds around them — three for each weapon, which was as much as they dared fire from one location — and set them for ten-meter airburst. At a command from the sergeant in charge, the first three rounds were picked up and dropped into the tubes. They fired less than a tenth of a second apart. Before the rounds even reached the top of their ballistic climb, the next rounds were being put in. These too fired off, and then the last rounds were dropped in as well.

Like the artillery shells fired from the 150-millimeter guns, the rounds made no audible sound as they flew through the thin air. A search radar mounted on the landing ship picked them up in flight and automatically calculated their path both backward and forward, telling the operator both where the shells had been fired from and where they were heading, but there simply wasn't enough time to alert anyone. Some of the marines on guard duty saw them coming in as well, white spots in the infrared spectrum against the relatively cool sky. Cries of "incoming!" went out across the emergency frequency. Unfortunately most of the soldiers on duty inside the LZ itself were not combat veterans, and, as such, they did the predictable when they heard the warning. They looked up to see just what was incoming. As a result, most were still standing when the first three mortar rounds exploded ten meters above their heads. Razor sharp shrapnel ripped into a group of engineers that were performing a land survey, blowing off arms, heads, legs, exploding air tanks, shredding internal organs. The next salvo landed twenty meters further west, blasting a squad of MPs who were providing overwatch for the engineers. The third salvo did not cause any casualties but instead destroyed a generator and several equipment carriers. Eleven men were killed outright and eighteen were wounded, five of them serious enough to require immediate evacuation.

In all, the mortar attack lasted only four seconds and the team that had performed it was already packing up their weapons and hustling off into the wastelands by the time the last round exploded. The 150-millimeter guns atop the ship turned towards the west and unleashed a barrage of counter-battery fire, a total of fifteen rounds per gun, none of which landed within 400 meters of the spot that the Martian mortar team had fired from. Even before the counter-battery fire was complete a platoon of marines from the western perimeter were heading out beyond their trenches to try to track down those responsible. By that point they had heard about the ambushes that had taken place and they went out with a sense of wariness that even the combat vets among them had never experienced before. It was starting to seem that these greenies were a little more dangerous than Argentine or Cuban rebels. They stepped carefully and slowly, their fear increasing exponentially with each step that they took away from the safety of their sandbagged positions.

As it turned out, their fear was justified. They made it to the spot where the mortar fire had issued without incident. They found nothing there, not a body, or a limb, or a footprint, or an expended shell casing, or even an impact crater from the counter-battery fire. They turned to the south because their commanding lieutenant figured that that was the most likely direction the sneaking greenies would have fled in. They made it less than a half a kilometer before flashes began winking at them from the hillsides in front of them and bullets began to cut through their ranks. The attack lasted only six seconds, and in it, six of the marines were killed and nine wounded. Of the wounded, three would die before they could be carried back to safety.

The illusion that Callahan and the remains of his platoon held that they were safe inside of their perimeter was shattered about fifteen minutes after the word of the mortar attack on the LZ reached them. They were inside their trenches, looking out to the north. They could see nothing out there, though they knew that two platoons of marines were currently sweeping the area, searching fruitlessly for the greenie infiltrators that were causing them so much trouble. Callahan was feeling quite morose over the loss of so many of his men, including his first sergeant. He had lost people in combat before, of course. Every platoon commander that had served in Argentina had suffered losses. Never before had he had an entire squad decimated at one time though. He still couldn't quite believe it had happened, that they had been cut down almost effortlessly by a bunch of civilian greenies operating three hundred kilometers from their nearest defensive position.

It was now quite clear that his platoon's contact with the greenies was not just an isolated incident either. From the command channel he heard reports of quick, violent engagements from all sides of the perimeter. Hit and run attacks on patrols and the platoons going out to search the area by groups of greenies that struck like lightening and then disappeared into the landscape like smoke. Nor was the Eden LZ the only one under attack. Captain Ayers had told him that all four of the landing sites were reporting similar engagements.

"How in the hell are they doing it?" asked Sergeant Barley, who was sitting atop one of the sandbags, supervising the redeployment of a SAW. "How can they get those teams out there without us seeing them?"

"Those aircraft they have," Callahan said bitterly. "I'll bet you a thousand bucks to a bucket of shit that they're dropping them off outside of our perimeter with those things."

"Why ain't our sensors picking them up then?"

"They probably have a very low IR signature," he speculated. "They're winged aircraft, remember? Designed by greenie engineers to operate in this atmosphere. Since they have wings they don't need to use the same amount of thrust to keep aloft. Less thrust means less heat. They probably glide in low and set down on the flat ground somewhere close by, drop off a squad, and then take off again and go home. They can support them indefinitely that way and then pull them back out again when things get too hot."

"Yeah," Barley said, "but what about..." He got no further in his statement. His head suddenly snapped to the right as a single bullet penetrated through his helmet and blew out the other side. The red vapor that Callahan was starting to become horrifyingly familiar with boiled out of the hole and Barley fell lifelessly into the trench.

"Fuck!" Callahan barked, adrenaline flooding his veins. "Get down!" he called over the tactical channel. "We're under fire!"

Everyone quickly assumed attack positions, sticking their weapons out through the firing holes and manning all of the SAWs, all of them ready to pour fire onto the greenies that were attacking them. But there was no one out there. There were no flashes of weapons firing from the hillsides.

"Where the fuck did that shot come from?" someone yelled.

"A sniper," someone else said. "They got a goddamned sniper out there!"

Yes, Callahan thought sourly, it seemed that a sniper was just what they were dealing with here. He or she had crept up atop some hill, probably nearly a kilometer away, and had potted yet another of his sergeants right through the head. Such things had happened in Argentina from time to time but here there was no sound of a gunshot to help identify the location. "Did anyone see the flash from the shot?" he asked.

There was some muttering on the net, some profanity, even a few death threats, but no one was able to say that he had seen the shot. Even if they did have accurate artillery fire available to them, there was no place to call it down to.

"Everyone keep down from now on," Callahan said. "Don't put your head above the sandbags unless you have to. And if you do, make sure you keep moving. I'm going to get on the air with command and report this."

Captain Ayers was a twenty-year veteran of the Marine Corps. He had risen from a buck private manning a trench in Alaska to commander of Charlie Company of the 314^th. During most of that time he had been stationed in hostile areas — parts of WestHem where the natives just didn't agree with federal rule and usually tried to show that by force of arms. He was about as effective a company commander as the WestHem armed forces — which relied on blind obedience and unwavering political correctness — could produce. And he most certainly didn't like the way his men were being whittled away by the invisible greenies out there in the wastelands.

"Another contact report from my third platoon," he told Lieutenant Colonel West, the commander of 2^nd Battalion. "A sniper hit them while they were in the trenches. Took out a squad sergeant. Potted him right through the head."

Colonel West, who was sitting in a chair before a tactical display on his screen, took a deep breath but kept himself composed. After all, this was not the first contact report that he'd been given today. "Any sign of the greenie that did it?" he asked.

"No, sir," Ayers told him. "No one even saw the flash."

"Great," he sighed, puffing on the cigarette that he was smoking. "And if there's one sniper out there they'll be others."

"That's my thought as well, sir."

"I'll get the word out for everyone to take precautions against this latest threat. I also have more combat troops suiting up for deployment. We're going to keep sweeping this area until we get rid of those sneaking greenie fucks. They can't hide from us forever."

"It would be a lot easier to track them down," Ayers suggested, "if we could get some hovers down here. Right now our men are just chasing ghosts out there. All we're finding are little piles of shell casings and booby traps. And half the time the men get hit from another hillside while they're examining the first ones."

"The hovers are in the cargo landers. You know that."

"We need to bring them down here, sir. We need hovers, more artillery, and some armor to flush these greenies out. Once we can send a few tanks and APCs out there with an umbrella of hover support I don't think the greenies will try to engage us anymore even if we can't find them."

"I've suggested that to General Wrath personally," West said. "He rejected the idea. He won't send down the rest of the landing ships until the LZ's are secure."

"But we can't secure the LZ without armor and hovers. Christ, doesn't he know that?"

"Apparently not," West said with a grunt of frustration. "After all, he's sitting nice and safe up there in orbit. Wrath hasn't been in the field since well before the Jupiter War, you know."

"So I hear," Ayers said with a frown. "And in the meantime, the casualties keep piling up. We have almost thirty wounded that are waiting for evac."

"The first evac shuttle is on its way down now. Should be here in less than twenty minutes in fact."

Ninety kilometers to the west of the Eden landing zone, two Mosquitoes were skimming along the ground at 500 kilometers per hour. Inside the lead Mosquito were Brian Haggerty and Matt Mendez. Both men were concentrating intently upon their respective instruments.

"I've got a definite hit in the high IR from bearing two six eight," Matt told his pilot, his eyes staring at the four bright points of white on his screen. "It's gotta be retro-thrusters on an orbital craft. Nothing else makes that kind of signature."

"I copy two six eight," Brian said, turning the ship in that direction. Behind him his wingman mimicked the motion but no words were exchanged between the two aircraft due to a state of radio silence that had been invoked to keep them from being detected. "Are you tracking?"

"Got a solid lock on it," Matt replied. "The computer is trying to get a range and altitude. Not enough data yet."

"Any active systems from it?"

"Nothing so far," he said. "It looks like the dumb fucks are coming in blind, just assuming that no one is down here waiting for them."

"That does seem to be their forte' doesn't it?"

"What the fuck's a fort-a?" Matt asked.

"Never mind," Brian said with a sigh. He should've known better than to use a big word with Mendez. The kid was intelligent — he had reluctantly concluded that some time ago — but he wasn't very well educated. Though he had graduated high school he was a product of the horrid ghetto school system and the big words just didn't get through to him sometimes.

"Prelim range data coming up," Matt said. "It looks like they're at angels three eight and descending rapidly, forty to sixty kilometers out on bearing two six eight. Their course is zero nine four, speed approximately eleven hundred KPH and slowing. Going to your screen now."

"Got it," Brian said, taking a quick glance down. "Set up an intercept course as quick as you can."

"I'm on it." He began to make notations on his map screen. He worked efficiently even though this particular mission was one that they had not practiced much in training. It had not been thought that the earthlings would be as dumb as they were being and give them such an opportunity as this. Although fighter spacecraft had escorted the shuttle from the moment it had left its mother ship until its contact with the Martian atmosphere, there were no hovers on the surface to escort it the rest of the way in. It was coming down unarmed and alone, the perfect target of opportunity. A little too perfect perhaps.

"Does this bother you at all, boss?" Matt asked as the computer finished grinding up the numbers he had input.

"Does what bother me?"

"Well, that's a medical evac shuttle, ain't it? Its coming down to pick up wounded. Ain't that some kind of war crime, shooting at an evac shuttle?"

"Well, if it were full of wounded being evacuated then yes, it would be a war crime. Right now it's empty so it's a legitimate target of war. And if the earthlings are dumb enough to send it down without an escort then that's too damn bad for them."

"But it can't do any harm to our forces," Matt said. "It doesn't even have guns on it."

Brian took a deep breath. "Look, kid," he said. "To tell you the truth, I don't really like it much either, but you gotta look at the big picture here."

"The big picture?"

"We are on the offensive against an armed force that has invaded our planet. We need to do anything we can to attack these people and convince them that Mars isn't a good place for them to be. One of the ways that we do that is to break their morale. A demoralized soldier is a shitty soldier. A good way to demoralize them is to take away their illusion of safety and security. The special forces teams are down there doing that right now. They're gunning those earthlings down right in the middle of their own camp. They're showing them that they won't be safe anywhere on our planet. We're helping with that by cutting off their escape route. They're down there thinking that at least if they get wounded, someone will take them to safety. When we down that shuttle that illusion will be shattered. It will chip away at their morale a little bit more. It will also force their commander to do what we want in this battle."

"And what's that?"

"It will force him to react to what we are doing instead of the other way around. When you have to react to the other guy's moves you aren't able to make any of your own. That's why we're going after that shuttle. Not because it will make a difference in and of itself, but because it will be just another thing that they'll be forced to adapt to."

"I guess that makes sense," Matt said, after thinking it over for a second. "It don't mean I have to like it though."

"No, it don't mean you have to like it or brag about it in the troop club tonight. But we do have to do it and there is a good reason for it, so let's get it done. How's our course looking?"

"Right on the line," he said. "We're gonna pull up in four two seconds and climb to angels one five, which will be the intercept altitude."

"Copy that. Count me off."

"Counting off," Matt said. "Four zero seconds." A five second pause. "Three five seconds."

The clock ticked down to zero. Brian pulled up and pushed the throttle lever to full military power. The semi-rocket engine screamed with horsepower and the Mosquito shot upward at a nearly seventy-degree angle of attack. Beside and behind them their wingman matched their maneuver. Matt, feeling the exhilarating push of acceleration slamming him backwards, forgot his uneasiness about their mission for the moment and felt a grin spreading on his face. Over the past few months he had learned to love the violent maneuvering of the Mosquito in flight, had learned to relish the sensation of flight unfettered by artificial gravity and inertial damping.

"They've got to have us on their screens by now," Brian said. "No sense in maintaining radio silence any longer. Get me our wing on the line."

Matt's fingers flew over the computer screen, quickly paging through two different menus and sub-menus to set the frequency. "You're live on the air, boss," he told him, going back to the attack screen.

Brian pushed the transmit button on his stick. "Alpha two from alpha one," he said. "You out there, Carlton?"

"I'm here," answered Rick Carlton, the pilot of the other Mosquito. "We've got a solid track on target. Tell your newbie good mapping."

"Naw," Brian answered, fully aware that Matt was monitoring the transmission. "Wouldn't want him to start thinking he's worth a shit, would I?"

"I guess not," Carlton said with a chuckle.

"Let's separate a little bit as we move in," Brian said, turning to business. "Remember, have your sis go for the engines and the fuel tanks. That fuckin thing is a lot bigger than an APC."

"We're on it," Carlton said. "I've got your rear."

"Three zero to intercept," Matt announced from behind him. "I'm bringing the lasers on line now." He pushed the charge button and energy began to feed from the APU into the weapons. He felt a little chill inside as he realized that this was lethal energy that he was loading and not the training charge they normally used. They were really going to shoot at an enemy. They were really going to try to kill a shuttle full of earthlings.

"How's the target looking?" Brian asked. "They have to have us on screen by now. We're lit up like a fuckin firework and transmitting radio signals. Any signs of evasive maneuvering?"

"Nothing," Matt answered. "It's holding its course. Not even any radio transmissions. You'd think they'd be screaming their asses off for help by now."

"Well, there's not really anyone that can help them. Maybe they're hoping we're not really hostile."

"Maybe," Matt said with a shrug. "Two zero seconds. Looks like we're drifting right a bit."

"Evening it up," Brian told him, adjusting his course.

A few seconds later they reached fifteen thousand meters of altitude, just a thousand below the maximum operational altitude of the aircraft, and Brian leveled them off. Their speed increased and they went screaming towards their target, heading towards it at about forty-five degrees off of head-on. Its speed had slowed considerably — down to only 800 kilometers per hour — and its rate of descent had slowed as well. It was, in short, a nice juicy target coming neatly into their kill zone.

"In range," Matt announced when it crossed the invisible line. "Opening fire."

"Take 'em down, kid," Brian said, his eyes watching his display. "Let's see if that training was wasted on you or not."

It was absurdly easy to do, much easier than acquiring and engaging an armored vehicle on the ground. He moved his head to the left and put the targeting recticles on the bright red and white orbital craft in the middle of his screen. The vehicle was huge on his display and his head movements weren't hampered by G-forces. He trained the recticles near the rear, where the main engine and fuel tank would be, and fired both cannons simultaneously. Slightly behind and below them, Steve Winchester, the sis of the wing Mosquito, did the same a few seconds later.

The laser energy was intense, designed to burn through the thick steel armor of a tank or APC. The thin hull of the shuttlecraft didn't stand a chance against it. The energy burned into the engine and destroyed two of the combustion chambers that provided the thrust. Another beam burned into the fuel tank itself, causing a rupture of both the hydrogen and the oxygen. The entire rear of the shuttle exploded in a flash of bright light and strewn debris. The front half of the shuttle, deprived of pressure, gravitation, power, and air, went tumbling downward, falling like the proverbial rock. It would fall for nearly five minutes before impacting the Martian surface hard enough to leave a crater sixty meters across.

"That's a kill," Matt announced, watching in awe at the nothingness that had replaced the shuttle on his display.

"Yep," Brian said with a nod. "Looks like a kill to me. Good job."

The two aircraft turned around a moment later and began heading for home.

"They shot down the fucking shuttle!" Major Wilde told General Wrath up in the CIC.

Wrath looked at his aide for a moment, his mind refusing to process what he was being told. "Who shot down what shuttle?" he finally asked.

"The greenies!" Wilde said, his hands wringing nervously. "They shot down the evac shuttle that was on its way to the Eden LZ!"

"How did they do that?" Wrath asked, perplexed. "Do they have a mobile SAL set up out in the wastelands somewhere? Surely the greenies aren't that lucky."

"They used aircraft. We think they were those damn Mosquitoes. The Eden landing ship picked up the infrared signatures of two of them climbing off the deck two hundred kilometers east of their position. They intercepted the shuttle as it was making its descent and blew it up with anti-tank lasers."

"Jesus," Wrath said, feeling a fury starting within him. His intelligence reports had assured him that the Martian aircraft were incapable of bringing down anything larger than a hover. "Are there any survivors?"

"No, sir. Eden tracked the wreckage all the way in. It hit hard. And there are no escape pods in an evac shuttle."

Wrath shook his head angrily. "Those goddamn terrorists," he swore. "Sniping at us from the hills, shooting down unarmed evac shuttles full of doctors and medics! They're barbarians!"

"Yes, sir," Wilde said. "And that's not all. We have more reports of contact between greenie forces and our perimeter patrols at all four LZ's. There have now been mortar attacks on all four as well. Casualties are mounting, sir. At the Proctor LZ a fuel storage tank for one of the graders was hit with a mortar round and exploded. Eight of the engineers were killed and more than twenty are wounded. At Libby an entire platoon was engaged from three different directions. Twenty of them are confirmed killed, the rest are wounded and still lying where they fell because the area is not secure enough to haul them out. And then there's the evac shuttles heading for the other three LZ's."

"What about them?" he asked.

"I've taken the liberty of pulling them back to orbit," Wilde said.

"You did what?"

"Sir, our data is that the greenies have a wing of those Mosquitoes stationed at all four of the cities where we have established beachheads. They have already shown that they are willing to and capable of shooting down our evac shuttles with those aircraft. We can't bring those shuttles down until we get some hovers down there to escort them. The greenies will just shoot them down again."

Wrath wanted to scream at his adjutant for daring to make such a decision on his own. He wanted to scream at him to reverse that decision immediately, to get those shuttles down so that the many wounded could be evacuated back up to orbit. He wanted to, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew that Wilde was right. "All right," he said with a sigh. "Send word to the field commanders below that the evac shuttles cannot land right now."

"Yes, sir," he said. "And what about bringing down some more troops and heavy equipment?"

"The goddamned LZ's aren't secure yet!" Wrath exclaimed. "The media are in the other room pestering us about whether or not we've caught the terrorist group that hit at Eden. They don't even know about the other three LZ's yet, let alone the fucking shuttle. How am I supposed to tell them that we're breaking doctrine and sending down more equipment before we've even established secure beachheads?"

Wilde had no answer for him. He was there to make suggestions on operational problems, not public relations. "I don't know, sir," he said. "But one thing is for sure, we need some armor and some hovers down there ASAP. I don't think we're going to be able to secure the beachheads otherwise."

"Negative," Wrath said firmly. "You tell those commanders down there that they need to send more men out beyond the perimeter and find those goddamn terrorists squads that are hitting them! I don't care if they have to send the goddamn cooks and toilet washers out there. Those beachheads must be secure before the rest of the landing craft can come down."

"But the wounded, sir," Wilde protested. "We don't have surgical facilities down there. And there is only one doctor and a few medics per ship."

"They'll just have to care for those men the best that they can until we can safely evacuate them. Get it done!"

"Yes, sir," Wilde said, his voice flirting with insubordination.

Lon and his squad made three more deliberate attacks on the marines during the course of that day, each time engaging platoon sized formations with brief, violent, and stunningly accurate fire and then retreating from their positions after the first volley. Twice the marines tried to bring artillery fire down upon them and both times the shells were well off-target. All three times the marines had come looking for them in company strength units but had been unable to see them in their hiding places and had walked right by.

The constant litany of hiding, creeping around, violent though brief encounters, and dashing off to hide again, began to take a physical toll on them. By the time the sun began to sink towards the western horizon all ten of them were quite exhausted. But mentally their morale was as high as it had ever been. All of their training was paying off and they knew they were putting a serious hurt on the invading earthlings, were forcing them to adapt to a different set of rules. Already the timetable of the landings had been thrown off. The marines had planned to bring down the rest of their landing ships by 1300. It was now looking as if they wouldn't be bringing them down that day at all.

However, the approaching night also meant the their best ally — the warm temperature that kept them from being detected — would soon be deserting them. Twenty degrees would soon become 130 below zero, a difference that would make the heat given off from their suits visible even from orbit. After evading the last group of marines searching for them they began to work their way to the east, away from the perimeter and the beachhead. Jefferson made contact with special forces headquarters and set up a pick-up point. They marched to it, set up their own perimeter, and waited.

At 1634 a Hummingbird breasted the hills to their north and swept down upon them. It circled once to check the area and then set down in a great cloud of blown dust and sand. The back ramp opened and the entire squad broke from cover in an orderly fashion and boarded it. The ramp slammed back up and ten seconds later the Hummingbird was back in the air, flying towards home. Their first deployment of the war was over. Now they would go back to the base for some real food and some well-deserved rest.

Over the next ninety minutes, at all four of the landing sites, the same process was repeated over and over as every single team that had been dropped was recovered. None of the 160 special forces members that had been dropped had been killed that day. Two had been wounded by stray rounds but not seriously enough to have to be pulled out of the field early.

MarsGroup had been reporting to the citizens of the planet all day long, giving out what information they had, which wasn't much. General Jackson had understandably wanted to keep the deployments made so far as secret as possible. But now that the enemy had quite graphically been informed of the presence of MPG troops on their perimeters, Jackson gave a live briefing of the events at 1800 Eden time.