Greenies

Chapter 13

Aboard the WHSS Nebraska

August 24, 2146

"The last one, making atmospheric entry now, sir," reported Major Wild to General Wrath. The two men, along with everyone else in the room, were in the CIC watching the holographic display as it showed the tracks of the remaining thirty landing ships descending towards the planet.

"Very good," Wrath said, sipping from his seventh cup of coffee of the day. Over the past week, since his marines on the planetary surface had come under increasingly violent terrorist attacks and since his timetable was now well over a week off, he had eaten very little. His face was gaunt and he had large bags under his eyes. Had he bothered to weigh himself he would have found he had lost nearly three kilos. "Still no opposition?"

"Standard assault landings, all the way," Wild responded. "The first ships are already approaching the Eden LZ now. No terrorist aircraft detected, no sign of ground fire. Not that the greenies have anything capable of taking a landing craft down."

"We didn't think they could take down an evac shuttle either," Wrath said sourly. "But somehow they managed to keep our wounded pinned down there for a week."

"Yes, sir," Wild said, not bothering to mention that a one hundred thousand ton landing ship was a bit more difficult to destroy than a two hundred ton shuttlecraft. Nor did he mention that the move Wrath had finally ordered — the deployment of the rest of the invasion force — was something that should have been done on day two.

The marines on the planetary surface had been taking quite a beating over the last seven days. They had been sent outside the perimeter in greater and greater numbers over the past six days trying with increasing desperation to eradicate the groups of greenies that were flitting around and attacking them. To date more than six hundred of them — six hundred — had been killed, some by snipers, some by mortar attacks, most by lightening fast hit and run attacks that came without warning from the cover of the hills. In addition, more than three hundred had been wounded badly enough to be taken out of action and all three hundred were still waiting down there for evacuation, the berthing rooms in the landing ships converted into primitive makeshift hospitals where overworked doctors and medics struggled to keep up with the influx. Men were dying in those hospitals of wounds that were easily treated up in orbit but there was no way to get them up there due to the threat of the greenie Mosquitoes.

And in exchange for these six hundred dead, for the three hundred wounded, the marines had confirmed kills on only sixteen greenies and had captured only four. These casualties were the result of two separate engagements where company strength marine units on search and destroy missions out in the wastelands had literally stumbled onto squads of greenies hiding among the rocks and hills. The first engagement had been five days before at the New Pittsburgh landing site. That had accounted for ten kills and no captures. The second had been at the Libby landing site just the previous day. It had resulted in six kills and the four prisoners, one of whom was badly wounded and not expected to make it. In both cases the greenies had fought back hard and fast, pouring fire into the columns of marines before going down, causing many more casualties and deaths than they were taking.

Wrath had been forced to level with the media and, through them, the citizens of WestHem to a certain degree. There was simply no other way to explain the delays in deployment of the rest of the force and the main thrusts of the invasion themselves. Of course he did not give out truthful casualty figures for either side of the engagement. The media were under the impression that the marines were fighting suicidal groups of poorly armed greenie terrorists who had been sent out in crude biosuits laden with explosives and automatic weapons. They were told that there had been less than fifty marines killed and, by best estimations, several hundred greenies killed. They were told the decision to bring down the rest of the landing ships was because the landing zones were finally being declared secured and not because the hovers, armor, and extra men were desperately needed to get the upper hand on groups of well-trained and highly motivated special forces units.

By now Wrath and the rest of the marines down to the platoon level knew exactly how the greenie teams were being deployed. The thermal signatures of the Hummingbird transport ships as they landed and took off from the drop points had finally been identified as the source of the teams and the means by which they egressed before sundown. This knowledge however did very little to help with the situation. The Hummingbirds were constructed of radar absorbent compounds that precluded detection from that particular active system. Their engine signature in level flight was so low that active and passive infrared could not pick them up either. The only time the aircraft were detectable was during the brief landing and take-off periods. This happened so quickly there was no time to get marines to the location before the soldiers the aircraft had transported scattered and disappeared. Nor could they hit them with artillery rounds since, despite seven straight days of trying, they still had not managed to break into the Martian Internet and gain access to the global positioning data to calibrate their guns. Artillery rounds that were fired were usually at least three hundred meters off target, sometimes as much as a kilometer. In more than one incident the marines who were directing the fire were inadvertently hit by it.

The marine intelligence units had also figured out just how the greenies were able to conceal themselves so well. Examination of the biosuits of the dead and captured greenies had shown how effective of a camouflage they provided during the daylight hours. Those suits and the soldiers within them were literally invisible to both visual and, more importantly, to infrared detection if the observer was more than a hundred or so meters away and the greenie was lying still. Again, the knowledge of how the trick was done did little to help counter it. If anything, it had created an almost supernatural fear among the marines that were fighting them. They felt almost like they were fighting ghosts, spectral images that appeared without warning behind a wall of gun flashes and then disappeared like smoke before an effective counter-attack could be mounted.

"Remember," Wrath told Wild now, "I want those hovers unloaded first. Within the hour I want flights in the air searching out and eradicating any greenie teams found."

"Yes, sir," Wild responded. "They've been advised and the hover teams are already getting ready."

"Good," he said, nodding. "And intelligence is certain the FLIR units on the hovers will be able to pick up those damn invisible suits from altitude?"

Wild hesitated for a second before answering. "That's uh... what they tell me," he said. Of course he could not discount the very likely possibility they were simply telling him what they thought he wanted to hear. As an aide to a top general he had had such a thing happen more than a few times in the past, including several times on this very mission.

"Good," Wrath said, either not noticing the hesitant tone or pretending not to. "And I want the rest of the hovers running escort duty for the evac shuttles. Every available shuttle is to head down to the planet the moment the hovers are ready. I want every one of those wounded men on the hospital ship by 1800 tonight. Every last one."

"I'll see that it's done, General," Wild responded. "And what about the media? They've been asking that a pool group be sent over to the hospital ship to interview some of the wounded. We've been delaying them ever since day two of course since they don't know that none of the wounded have made it to the ship yet, but we really should set something up before they get too antsy."

"Go ahead and assign someone to that as soon as the first wounded start arriving," Wrath told him. "Make sure whoever you assign finds someone reliable to tell our media friends what its like down there on the surface." By "reliable" he meant someone who would spout the official line instead of what was really happening. It simply wouldn't do for a WestHem marine to start going on and on about invisible soldiers and heavy casualties.

"I'll give it to Captain Hovel," he said after a moment's thought. "He's bucking for Major pretty hard. He'll handle it with the discretion it deserves."

"Good man," Wrath said. "And how many correspondents went down on the landing ships?"

"A little more than half, sir. They were shuttled over to the transport ships this morning and distributed pretty evenly among the landing ships. Most of them went down to the Eden LZ since that's where the heaviest action is anticipated."

"And my orders to keep them inside the landing ships were understood?"

"Yes, sir," he replied. "They'll be shut inside the VIP quarters until the greenies are completely eradicated on the perimeters."

"What kind of bullshit story did we give them for why we have to do this?"

"Possible problems with the biosuits we reserved for them," he answered. "We told them a manufacturer recall has been issued and we haven't been able to determine if it applies to that model."

"Nice," Wrath said with a smile. "I like that one. It has class. Give an attaboy to whoever came up with it."

"Yes, sir," Wild said. Of course Wrath didn't ask if the reporters had believed the excuse that was being offered to them. It went without saying that they would know it was nothing but a pretext to keep them inside. But, of course, none of them would question it, at least not publicly. Not if their corporate bosses told them not to.

"Major Wild?" a young communications officer suddenly spoke up from a nearby terminal, his voice timid, as if he was hesitant to interrupt the discussion Wild was having Wrath.

"What is it?" Wild said, somewhat impatiently.

"I have an urgent communications request for General Wrath, sir," he said.

Wild gave him an annoyed look. "Refer it to the mail system like all of the other requests," he barked. "Why are you even bothering us with this?"

"Sir, its from the Martian Planetary Guard command facility in New Pittsburgh," he said. "He says he's General Jackson."

This got the attention of both Wild and Wrath. "Oh really?" Wrath said, raising his eyebrows. Jackson had attempted no communication with Wrath or any other Earthling since his infamous "flying fuck at Phobos" statement just before the first landings. Of course Marine intelligence was monitoring and recording his daily briefings to the Martian public, mainly for the purpose of splicing them up into inflammatory, out of context statements for distribution to the WestHem media, but there had been no direct talks of any kind.

Wrath turned to his aide. "Surrender terms perhaps?"

Wild nodded wisely. "They may very well be," he said. "After all, the rest of the landing ships are coming down. They have to know things are almost over for them."

"Put it on the main screen," Wrath said. "Be sure to record it for intelligence."

"Yes, sir," the officer said. He spoke a few words to his terminal then turned back to Wrath. "On screen now, sir."

Wrath looked up at the large screen at the front of the room and saw the face of his counterpart on the planetary surface, the man he had grudgingly accorded a small amount of respect to for the surprises he'd pulled so far, but a man he still saw as a clear inferior. As always he was dressed in his MPG t-shirt. His eyes had bags under them almost as large as Wrath's.

"Mr. Jackson," Wrath said, his words picked up by the microphone near the desk and transmitted, along with his image, to the open broadcast link. "Rather interesting timing you have, communicating with us right now, while our ships are about to touch down on the surface."

Jackson offered a slight smile. "It seemed appropriate under the circumstances," he said. "Besides, there's not a whole hell of a lot going on at the moment, is there?"

"I assume that you called this conference to talk surrender terms," Wrath said. "If that's the case, you can save your breath. Any surrender will be without dictated terms. Unconditional is all we will accept. I believe I've made that clear from the start."

Jackson smiled wearily. "You assumed wrong, Wrath," he said. "My forces have no intention of surrendering to you. We're dug in for the long haul and we have every intention of repelling you from the surface."

"Jackson, as a military officer you have to know that's simply not possible. Simple math will tell you that. My forces are highly trained, professional soldiers, and we outnumber your thugs four to one. Do the honorable thing and stand down. Don't sentence those misguided men to death."

"Look, Wrath," he said wearily. "I know you're just posturing for the media right now, trying to talk tough to impress your citizens when they see this clip in their daily briefing. Any chance we can drop that now and talk as two commanding generals should? I know and you know that my forces have hit yours quite hard. You don't have to give me a rebuttal on this, since that is not what I wanted to talk to you about. You go ahead and keep telling your citizens that terrorist attacks are what are causing the deaths of your soldiers. There's no point in my disputing you because all you do is chop up my statements anyway."

"What is it that you want then?" Wrath said. "And please keep in mind that my patience for your rhetoric is very limited."

"We need to discuss the prisoners that you've captured from our special forces teams," Jackson told him. "Now I know from those briefings you give you're claiming you've taken more than fifty of my men into custody but by my count I have two squads that reported coming under fire and that are now unaccounted for. That's twenty men although my guess is that most of them were killed in the exchange of gunfire."

"The numbers that I reported in the briefing are accurate," Wrath said with an indignant tone, although he was secretly impressed with Jackson's reasoning ability.

"As I said," Jackson said, "my hope is that we can talk like two military men here and you can save the propaganda for your daily briefing. What I expect out of you is that you treat the men you have captured and the bodies you have recovered according to the established Geneva Accords regarding warfare. By this I mean we are to receive a full accounting of our men that have been killed in action that you've been able to identify, an approximate number of the KIAs you have not been able to identify, and, most importantly, that you immediately release to us the identities of all men you have taken into custody and give us an update on their condition. Those men are to be treated as prisoners of war, which means they will not be subjected to torturous interrogation, paraded in front of your media cameras, or charged with criminal offenses."

"Those men are not prisoners of war," Jackson said firmly. "They are separatist terrorists and they will be treated as such. They will be transported back to our landing ships and they will be extradited back to Earth for trial on charges of treason, murder, and terrorist acts. All of the thugs under your command were warned of that well in advance of our landings here."

"Nevertheless," Jackson said, "this is a war we are engaged in. I know it and you know it. Keep in mind that we have captured more than thirty thousand prisoners of war from your armed forces."

"Which you are holding as hostages," Wrath said. "And our reports are that you've tortured and outright killed thousands, if not all of them."

"Again, Wrath," Jackson said with a sigh, "you know that is not true. We have transmitted to WestHem the name, rank, serial number, and physical condition of every single WestHem armed forces member that we have in custody. We have given you a full account of every one of your soldiers that was killed in the battle to capture the planet. Those bodies have been placed in storage for return to Earth. The prisoners are being kept in Geneva Accord standard POW facilities and will be returned to you when this conflict is over. They have been permitted to send mail home although my understanding is that your intelligence is blocking these communications."

"Lies, nothing but outrageous lies," Wrath said, managing to keep a perfectly straight face even though he knew that everything Jackson was saying was true.

Jackson ignored him. "It is my demand as a military officer involved in open warfare that our prisoners and dead be accorded the same treatment, as is required under international law."

"It's not going to happen, Jackson," Wrath told him. "Those men are terrorist criminals and they will be charged and tried as such."

"Then you, General Wrath, will be subject to indictment by a Martian court for war crimes when this conflict is over," Jackson told him.

That actually made Wrath bark out laughter. "Is that the best you can do for a threat?" he asked. "You're going to indict me for war crimes? Jackson, might I remind you my marines will have your entire planet in custody within three days? Might I remind you it will be you and your so-called governor that will be in federal prison awaiting execution six months from now? There will be no Martian indictments. Your planetary government will cease to exist entirely when this conflict is over."

"That is your opinion, General," Jackson responded. "Myself and my soldiers, we have our own opinions on how this war is going to end. My hope is that you will at least entertain the possibility that my forces might defeat yours and that this planet will gain the independence we seek."

"Impossible," he spat.

"And if that happens," Jackson went on, ignoring the interruption, "we will demand the extradition of any war criminals under indictment as part of any armistice agreement. Keep in mind that if we defeat your forces, we will control the supply of food stocks to WestHem. They will have to take our demands seriously."

Wrath yawned. "You'll forgive me if I don't start trembling in my boots."

"I'll forgive you," Jackson said. "But I would suggest you keep my words in mind. We Martians are not quite the pushovers you seem to think we are. Perhaps you'd care to reflect upon the damage we've done to you so far with these terrorist acts you keep talking about, both in space and on the planetary surface. You might also consider that my forces are well motivated to fight and that we've been training ever since the end of the Jupiter War to repel an invasion such as the one you are mounting. Do you remember your military history, Wrath? You went to the same military academy I did. Remember General Cornwallis? Remember General Westmoreland? They both thought victory was assured, that their objectives were a cakewalk, and neither one of them was fighting a force as equitable as the one you're fighting. We may fall in this battle, Wrath. I am able to acknowledge that fact. You need to acknowledge the fact that it might be your forces that fall and make contingency plans for it. That is all I'm telling you."

Wrath refused to entertain even the possibility of his forces defeat, even deep in his own mind where cold hard facts instead of self-serving propaganda were churned over. "All captured combatants in this battle will be arrested and tried as terrorists," he stated as forcefully as he could. "And if you have any compassion whatsoever for the citizens of your planet, you will unconditionally surrender right now, before our armor and our hovers are unloaded and start putting a serious hurt on you."

Jackson seemed saddened, though not particularly surprised by his words. "I was hoping that somewhere inside of you there was still a hint of the military honor that was instilled in us in the academy," he said. "I guess I was wrong." He gave a little one fingered salute. "Get your forces ready for the next act, Wrath. And keep in mind that you have been warned on the subject of war crimes."

"Jackson, listen to reason. You don't have a..." But the image of Jackson had disappeared from the screen.

"He cut off the transmission, sir," the communications officer said apologetically. "Would you like me to try hailing him again?"

"That won't be necessary," Wrath replied. "We have nothing further to talk about." He turned to Wilde once again. "Now how much longer until those landing ships start touching down?"

Lon lay on his belly behind a spill of rocks atop of a hill. His combat goggles were in magnification mode as his eyes tracked over the array of landing ships that had come down on the Eden landing zone. The full compliment was now on the surface. They had come in from the east, touching down in prepared positions one after the other, their retro-rockets blaring bright enough to overwhelm the infrared spectrum, the roar thunderous even from five kilometers away through the thin air. All of the ship mounted 150-millimeter guns were now deployed, as were the 20-millimeter cannons. The marines themselves had remained inside of their ships while the landings were going on, although this was not standard WestHem doctrine. Most likely their commander did not want them exposed to mortar fire until necessary. Now that all of the ships were down however, there was cautious activity taking place. Ramps had come down and groups of engineers had emerged, followed by armed combat soldiers, all of them walking with that clumsy awkwardness that marked newcomers to Martian gravity.

Lon and his squad were spread out just over two kilometers from the nearest WestHem perimeter position, just over four kilometers from the nearest landing ship. This was his team's seventh straight day of deployment. They were all tired but their spirits remained high. They had done their job and done it well, having ambushed more than fifteen groups of marines ranging from four-man patrols to understrength companies, causing well over seventy casualties without so much as a twisted ankle among their own. They had been combat tested, had come out the better for it, and were now a well-drilled killing and hiding machine, the bane of the invading marines. But they also knew that everything that had occurred until now was just a warm-up. The real games would begin today. The marines were about to inject hovers and armor into the equation, two things that would make things exponentially more dangerous. As such, the team was very heavy on anti-tank and anti-aircraft lasers for this deployment, fielding two of the former and three of the latter. Their packs were heavy with the disposable charging batteries that powered the weapons.

"I've got a bay door opening on LS 5," Lon announced quietly as he adjusted the magnification of his goggles even higher. "Right where all of the engineers are gathered."

Everyone looked at the target that had been designated as Landing Ship 5. It was a specially modified ship designed to launch extraterrestrial hovercraft from bays located on both sides. Behind the hovers would be fuel storage tanks and pumping systems, ammunition storage, crew quarters, and maintenance facilities. In short, everything that was needed to deploy and maintain a formidable force of heavily armed combat aircraft.

"How many hovers does that thing hold?" asked Horishito as he watched two of the bay doors slide slowly open.

"Standard load out is one hundred and ten multi-purpose attack hovers," answered Lon. "They also carry ten to twelve transport and medivac hovers. Intelligence says that the Earthlings might've crammed a few more than the standard load in there for this campaign though. You know how they are on that air superiority thing."

"Yeah," Horishito said nervously. "I know how they are."

"Have we ever actually shot down a hover with one of these shoulder-fired lasers?" asked Lisa.

"Us personally? No." Lon answered.

"I mean anyone, anywhere?" she said. "Or is all just theory that we can take them down? Remember the mess in the Jupiter War?" During the Jupiter War one of the main causes cited for the defeat of the WestHem forces had been the lack of effectiveness of their portable anti-aircraft laser systems. The marines had been able to hit the EastHem hovers but had done little more than damage them. Only three had been shot down by the portable weapons in the entire conflict.

"The technology has improved considerably since the Jupiter War," Lon said. "These weapons are more than three times as potent."

"But they've never been combat tested?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. "They've never been combat tested. Just like everything else we've been doing out here, its just theory for the moment."

She nodded, a grim expression on her face. "Let's hope it's a good theory then."

There was a sharp flare of white in the infrared spectrum from the open bay doors. The military personnel that were standing nearby quickly backed away, several of them tripping and falling as they retreated.

"Engine ignition," Lon said. "They're about to come out. Jefferson, send out a report."

"Sending it," said Jefferson, who was on another hill, one hundred meters to the east. His communications gear was already set up and locked onto the com sat. Now that armor and hovers were being deployed the communications loop had been expanded to the point where all of the special forces teams at any particular landing site were being indirectly linked. Jefferson's message, after hitting the dish and being transmitted to Eden, was then rebroadcast through the satellite link to all of the other teams. In addition, position reports of the other teams on the ground were kept updated on each commander's combat computer. This was a calculated risk since any team captured would be able to give away the locations of the others, or at least their last known position, but it was felt that the sharing of the information and locations and, as a natural extension, the combat power, was a benefit that outweighed the risk.

One hover emerged from each bay two minutes later. They eased out and hesitated over the ground for a moment, the four thrusters on the bottom flaring brightly with the intense heat of burning hydrogen fuel. Slowly the thrusters flared brighter and the hovers rose higher into the air, until they were several hundred meters above the top of the landing ship, high enough that the blast from their thrusters were no longer kicking up dust. Two more emerged from the bay right behind them, performing the same maneuver. Once all four were in the air they formed up into a loose diamond shape.

"EHC-750s," Lon said, identifying them by their official military designator. "Very bad news if they get us in their sights."

"That ain't no shit," agreed Horishito, a hint of nervousness in his voice.

The EHC-750 was the latest development of the ever-changing extraterrestrial hovercraft. It was a multi-purpose craft that was capable of air-to-air combat, close air support for ground troops, and even tactical bombing. Its armament consisted of four high-powered anti-air lasers, two twenty-millimeter cannon turrets, and, most frightening to Lon and his troops, a nose mounted eighty-millimeter gun that could fire sixty high explosive rounds per minute. The 750 was, in short, a flying tank. Even its profile was sinister looking. It was triangular in shape, the weapon pods and guns mounted from stubby wing-like protrusions on the sides. The cockpit, where the pilot and gunner sat, sat up high to give a panoramic view.

"You sending off the reports on this, Jeffy?" Lon asked Jefferson.

"Transmitting it now," he reported. "All units are being advised that they're in the air."

"Good," Lon said. "Luckily, those things are brighter than the sun in the IR spectrum. It shouldn't be too hard to see them coming at us."

"Intel is sure our suits are invisible to their FLIR, right?" asked Horishito.

"As sure as they can be," Lon answered. "We don't have any 750s in the MPG to test with though, so I guess we'll be finding out how good their information is, won't we?"

"More theory then, huh?" asked Lisa, who had one of the anti-air lasers in her hand, her thumb nestled near the charge button but not pushing it just yet.

"More theory," he agreed.

Now that the hovers were formed up they began to rise higher into the air. They turned as one towards the east and then lit their rear thrusters, imparting forward motion. They moved off, picking up speed and gaining altitude.

"Where are they going?" asked Horishito.

"Escort duty would be my guess," Lon replied. "Remember, they have all of their wounded stuck in the landing ships. Now that they have some air-to-air capability they can bring down their shuttles to evacuate them. I bet they started the shuttles down right after the last landing. They're probably approaching atmospheric entry now."

"Makes sense," Horishito said.

They continued to watch and ten minutes later, through the same two doors, another four hovers emerged into the air. These too rose into the air and formed up before moving off to the east. Jefferson continued to update Eden and the rest of the forces on the ground on these developments. On Lon's combat display symbols representing the eight aircraft appeared at the edge of his view to remind him that they were out there; as if he could forget.

The bay doors closed again but before another five minutes went by two more opened. Soon there was the flare of heat again and two more 750s came out into the atmosphere. This pair floated up to about five hundred meters above the landing ship and formed up into the classic lead and wing formation.

"I don't think this flight is going out for escort duty," Lon said.

"Perimeter search flight?" asked Lisa.

"Yep, they want to go out greenie hunting. Now we'll see how well these suits stand up, won't we? Jeffy, still updating?"

"You know it, sarge," he said. "The alert just came back to me from Eden. Everyone knows about it."

As they watched, the two hovercrafts turned to the south and lit up their rear thrusters. They picked up speed slowly, until they were moving at just under one hundred kilometers per hour. Jefferson continued to broadcast their speed and position until they disappeared over the next rise. Within thirty seconds a mortar team stationed on that side of the perimeter announced that they had a visual on them and continued the updates. The combat computers, receiving input from Jefferson's set, continually updated the bright red blips on their mapping screens. They all watched in nervous anticipation as the hovers circled around the perimeter, slowing here and there, speeding up again, coming to a hover once in a while, and occasionally disappearing from view for a few minutes as they passed out of visual range of any of the teams.

"So far they haven't passed near any of the teams," Lon said, watching as they completed the wide circle and began to come back around from the other direction. "The nearest they got was about two klicks from C team on the south."

"Maybe we'll get to be the lucky ones then," Lisa said.

"Yes, it always seems to work out like that for us, doesn't it?" Lon sighed. The blips had just passed out of range of Team D on the northern edge of the perimeter. The last update had it moving directly towards Lon's Team B. A tense minute went by and suddenly, from over the top of a series of hills four kilometers to the north, the flare of white appeared once more. It was moving relatively slowly but unmistakably right toward them.

"Okay," Lon said calmly. "It looks like this is it. Get the lasers charged up, guys."

Lisa, Horishito, and Alamar all thumbed their charge switches, sending the energy surging into the laser units. In the twenty seconds that it took for this to be accomplished the hovers moved steadily towards them.

"Let's all just keep still down here and see if the suits keep them from seeing us," Lon ordered. "Don't engage unless it looks like they're setting up to fire on us."

Everyone lay still, gripping their weapons against their chests. Jefferson, after giving one last position report, had broken down his radio and cradled it to his body. The three team members with the anti-air lasers kept them close, their fingers curled around the safety guards on the firing buttons. The hovers grew larger in their view, the searing heat from the thrusters white points on the bottom. The course they were on was going to bring them within half a kilometer.

"Steady everyone," Lon said. "Let's just be static."

The hovers, still moving at just under one hundred kilometers per hour, passed by them without slowing, close enough that they could hear the muted roar of the thrusters, that they could read the identification numbers on the sides. They continued towards the south, maneuvering thrusters on the left side firing a few times to alter their course just a bit.

"They didn't see us," Lisa said with relief. "They passed right over the top of us and didn't see us!"

"It seems that these suits do what they promised," Lon said, relief in his tone as well. "That means we're in business."

"What now?" asked Horishito.

"Now," Lon said, "we test the other theory we were talking about. Let's take them down before they get out of range. Wong, hit the left one. Hoary, hit the right. Alamar, you're the reserve. Get ready to finish the job if the first shots don't do it."

Lon's order was not questioned. Lisa quickly rolled over and pointed her laser at the two hovers. The heat from their rear thrusters was an easy target to lock onto. She moved the weapon until the targeting rectical of her goggles was directly in the center of the left flare. She zoomed in a little to make the shot easier and then reported readiness. On the next hill over Horishito did the same.

"Fire," Lon said. "Let's see what these weapons can do."

Without hesitation Lisa flipped the safety guard up and gently pressed down on the button, just as she had done a hundred times in training deployments. The weapon discharged its laser energy, not making a noise, not kicking, and hardly even making a visual signature. The shot, moving at the speed of light, hit instantly. The results were quite dramatic, much more than she was expecting. The back of the hover suddenly flared even brighter, overwhelming her goggles for a second. When the flare cleared the entire back of the aircraft had been blown away. All of the rear thrusters had been put out of commission by the explosion but the front thrusters were still firing. The aircraft nosed up violently and was suddenly upside down. It began to drop towards the ground, spinning in a reverse motion as it fell. There was another bright flare from the cockpit as the pilot and gunner were automatically ejected. They flew into the air astride their rocket-powered ejection seats, blasting well clear of the crippled aircraft. The aircraft itself hit the ground two seconds later, smashing into a field of boulders and exploding, sending debris out in a spray of shrapnel.

Horishito's hit was a little less dramatic but no less lethal. His laser simply killed all of the thrusters simultaneously, causing the entire machine to fall towards the ground in a ballistic path. Again the two crewmembers were able to eject before the aircraft hit the ground and exploded. Now all four of them were gently dropping to the surface, the retro rockets on the bottoms of their seats acting as parachutes.

"Good kills," Lon said, obviously impressed. "Nice to know the lasers things work too. Now lets get the fuck out of here. They have a lot more artillery guns to shoot now."

Within ten seconds the entire squad was up and moving down the hill at top speed, heading for their next position. They reached it five minutes later, a furious artillery barrage ripping up the ground behind them but still, even though more than thirty guns were now firing, none of the rounds were landing on the hills they'd fired from. Jefferson quickly set up his radio equipment and reported the good news regarding the success of both their suits and their anti-air weapons. Within minutes of being received in Eden this information was broadcast to the teams at the other landing sites as well.

Two hours later, aboard the Nebraska, General Wrath was receiving a not-so-welcome briefing from Major Wild on the day's combat operations so far. The news was not exactly what he had been expecting.

"They've shot down sixteen hovers?" he asked in disbelief. "Sixteen?"

"As of fifteen minutes ago, sir," he said. "There may very well be more by now. We have them patrolling in flights of four now but even that hasn't seemed to stop the greenies from firing on them. They're fielding AT-50 weapons down there, as you know, and those lasers pack quite a punch. A single hit on the engine compartment inevitably destroys the airworthiness of the entire aircraft."

"And we haven't been able to engage a single team?" Wrath said. "How is that possible? How are those goddamned greenies potting our hovers out of the sky like practice targets and we haven't managed to hit a single one of them?"

"Sir, our pilots report the greenies are not showing up on their screens. In several instances the hovers flew directly over the areas where the attacks came from and did not see a thing until the laser flares came. By then of course, it was too late. Even if the greenies are unable to take down the entire flight at once, they are able to reload and recharge their weapons before the remaining hovers can circle around and line up on the spot. The greenies always hit them from behind."

"Goddamned back-shooters," Wrath said angrily, as if he thought that the enemy should shoot at them head on in the interests of fairness.

"As it stands now, sir, all of the hover crews except one have been able to eject and be recovered by ground forces."

"But we're still down sixteen hovers," Wrath said. "And we don't have any way of getting any more of them out here, do we?"

"No, sir," he agreed. "We don't. It's my suggestion that we send them out in flights of six now. Hopefully there will be strength in numbers. As with the patrols in the field, there has to be a number that the greenies won't attack."

"So ordered," Wrath said. "And what's the status of our evac shuttles? And their escorts?"

"All of them down safely. The greenies didn't go after them at all. Wounded and enemy prisoners are being loaded up for return now. The first of them should be lifting off in less than thirty minutes."

"At least something is going right around here," Wrath grumbled. "What's the status of our armor? Is it unloading?"

"Far behind schedule, but getting there," Wild said.

"What's the delay there?"

"Mortar attacks," Wild told him. "Every ten minutes or so the greenies lob a bunch of shells directly down on top of the unloading crews. They damaged ten or fifteen APCs, caused some casualties, and, most importantly, they're pinning down the crews and slowing down the operation."

Wrath shook his head. He knew, of course, that the greenie mortar crews were even more ghostly than the hit and run terrorists. Operating well away from any prepared marine positions, they were able to stage their attacks with complete impunity, firing off twelve to fifteen shells in a few seconds and then retreating to a different position, long before artillery could even be called down, even if there was such a thing as accurate artillery in this conflict. "Just get that armor unloaded and deployed," Wrath ordered. "Send out armored patrols in force, company strength at a minimum with heavy tank and hover support. We'll see how the goddamned greenies deal with that."

August 25, 2146

Eden Landing Zone

Sunrise in the equatorial region of Mars was unlike any sunrise seen on Earth. The Martian air was thin and cloudless, giving nothing but the low flying dust particles to reflect light. There was no gradual lightening of the eastern sky. One second it was black night, with only the diamond points of the stars visible. The next second, the tip of the sun peaked over the horizon and began to rise, a sun smaller in diameter than that seen on Earth. You could stare at this sun for thirty to forty seconds without averting your eyes. In a matter of two minutes the darkness had disappeared, replaced by a rapidly increasing brightness. The stars winked out one by one.

Lieutenant Callahan — dressed in his biosuit and standing next to his command APC — watched this with a feeling of eeriness. Though he had seen a Martian sunrise eight times now, it still seemed unnatural to him, a reminder of how far he was from home and how alien an environment he was in. It had also proven itself to be a reliable harbinger of danger to come. The rising sun would quickly heat up the region. The temperature readout on his heads-up-display currently read 123 degrees below zero. As he watched, it began to tick upward, the rate increasing with each passing second. Within an hour, it would be less than twenty below zero — the temperature where the greenie camouflage suits became effective. Within an hour of that, the greenies would start to deploy, their Hummingbird VTOLs dropping special forces teams and mortar crews all around the perimeter. Within thirty minutes of that, the sniper attacks and mortar barrages would begin. It was the only predictable thing they had discovered about the greenies so far.

Despite the foreboding sensation the sunrise generated, Callahan knew it was simply a Pavlovian reaction, brought on by the humiliating defeats of the previous week. He had every reason to feel confident on the dawn of this day and he believed sincerely in his heart that the dealing of death would now be on the other foot. His platoon — which had taken nearly forty percent casualties so far — had been reinforced with replacements from one of the landing ships that had come down yesterday. They were now up to the full strength of forty men and, most important, they now had armor to protect them. Though it had taken the better part of twenty-four hours to unload the APCs due to the greenie mortar attacks, enough had finally been brought down to fully equip all of Charlie Company of the 314^th ACR. They were spread all over the staging area — twenty in all, each holding ten marines — and the entire company was readying them for battle. In addition, an entire company of tanks had been unloading and would be providing overwatch for the day's operations. Under the command of Captain Ayers (who would of course lead from the safety of the landing ship) their orders were to secure the western flank of the perimeter once and for all. In other words, they were to deploy in force, locate any greenie troops out there, and destroy or capture them. With the overwhelming force they were wielding and with the support of two flights of six hovers apiece, Callahan thought the only question was whether the greenies would bother to show up for the battle or not. The consensus seemed to be that they wouldn't. According to Intelligence — who were monitoring greenie news broadcasts — Martian doctrine was to avoid battle when defeat was certain. Defeat surely couldn't be any more certain now that the armored cavalry was fully equipped, could it? Callahan thought not.

"I hope those green fucks do show their terrorist faces," said Sergeant Bickers, who had replaced Sergeant Mallory in the decimated third squad. "I think we got a little payback for them."

"Me too," Callahan said with utmost sincerity. "Me too."

MPG Headquarters Building, New Pittsburgh

0612 hours

General Jackson and Colonel Bright, commander of the special forces, sat shoulder to shoulder at the general's desk in his office, both of them staring at the computer screen before them. Both men were clean-shaven and refreshed, having slept a full eight hours the night before. They sipped from cups of coffee brewed with Martian-grown beans — what had recently been reserved for welfare recipients and prisons. The planetary supply of Earth grown coffee had run out several weeks before. The Martian coffee was perhaps not even worthy of being called coffee — it tasted more like manufactured sludge — but it had caffeine in it and both men sipped it gratefully.

"Right there," Bright said, pointing at the screen with his finger. The image before them was an infrared shot of the Eden landing zone that had been taken from an MPG reconnaissance satellite less than twenty minutes before. "As we figured, they're deployed in force this morning."

"Fuckin' aye," Jackson agreed as he saw the bright spots of nearly two hundred armored vehicles and nearly a thousand men. "I guess our free ride is over."

"Unfortunately," Bright said. He flipped to another image, this one showing the New Pittsburgh landing site. It showed pretty much the same thing — tanks, APCs, and armed men getting ready to head out into the field on search and destroy missions. He then flipped to the Libby view and then the Proctor view. The marines at these two sites were not yet gearing up, but that was because it was two hours earlier there, well before sunrise. The vehicles for such an operation, however, were plainly visible, just waiting to be occupied and piloted by infantry squads. "They plan to put a major hurt on us today."

"It would seem so," Jackson said. "Does this give you reservations about today's operations?"

Bright let a small frown cross his face. "We've gotten off easy so far," he said. "Less than a dozen troops killed. Only a few captured. No aircraft shot down. That's might change today."

"Perhaps," Jackson said with a nod. "But I don't think so. We've been training for just such an engagement for years, haven't we? Oh, sure, we've pretended it would be the EastHem's who would be the invaders, but that hardly makes a difference, does it? The EastHems and WestHems both have similar doctrine in regards to extra-terrestrial invasion. And the Earthlings are being kind enough to be as predictable as I always thought they would be. Stage one of our defense was an outstanding success. Why is it so hard for you to believe that stage two will be different?"

Bright had to admit Jackson had a point. MPG doctrine was divided into five distinct steps for defending against invasion and each of the five steps had been practiced obsessively. Step one was to slow the deployment of armor and aircraft at the landing zones by means of mortar and small unit attacks from the perimeter. This would serve to buy time to gear up the main defenses and would begin to affect enemy morale and unit cohesion. Step two, which was merely an extension of step one, was to draw the enemy armor and aircraft out into the landing zone perimeters and engage them there utilizing coordinated hit and run tactics. This, it was hoped, would further degrade enemy morale and, most important, would start to significantly whittle away the numerical advantage the enemy had the air superiority. In exercise after exercise over the years, the special forces and air wings had proven that they had the ability to pull this off with minimal casualties. But those had been exercises performed with training charges, conducted with MPG units flying outdated hovers playing the opposition force. This would be the real thing, where the price for losing was not who had to buy the beer and bonghits at the Troop Club, but death or capture. "I'm afraid for the men," Bright said. "This will be the first real test of our tactics, tactics you and I developed. If we're wrong, they'll be slaughtered out there and their deaths will be on our conscience."

"If we're wrong," Jackson said, "then all is lost anyway. The WestHems will defeat us and our cities will be captured."

Bright nodded. That too was a good point. Perhaps the best one. "I'll brief the teams personally today," he said.

"I would expect nothing less," Jackson said. "I'll make sure the air wing is ready to do their part."

Bright certainly hoped the air wing would be ready. They were the key to the success of stage two doctrine. Without them, the WestHem hovers would smash his perimeter teams to pieces one by one.

Eden Landing Zone, aboard the primary landing ship

0710 hours

The combat information center, or CIC, was a much different place than it had been a week ago. Then, it had only been staffed by a skeleton crew — a few technicians to monitor instruments, a few gunnery officers pulling shit duty, and a lowly commanding officer to fill out protocol. Now, after a week of having their asses kicked up and down the perimeter by the greenies, every terminal was staffed, every feed from every instrument was constantly monitored, and the command staff consisted of the most senior and experienced combat officers available. A huge map display lit up the main screen on the front of the room. It showed the landing zone and the surrounding ten square kilometers of Mars, with friendly units showing in blue, their positions constantly updated by radio signal, although, of course, that information was only as accurate as the inertial navigation data being provided.

The commander of the CIC at the moment was Major Jonathan Sparks, second in command of 2^nd Battalion of the 314^th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the unit currently deploying its armor and men outside. He sat in a padded leather chair in the center of the room, his workstation raised above all the other positions. From there he had a view of the main map and, by spinning his chair around, all of the monitoring terminals. He looked at the time display on the main screen and then checked it against his wristwatch. 0710. If the greenies were going to get in the game today, they would begin appearing any minute.

"Status check," he said. "Are all of my units ready?"

"Checking," replied several voices at once. Each officer began utilizing his individual radio link. The air operations liaison was the first to reply.

"Air wing is ready," he reported. "Forty-eight attack hovers in eight flights of six are staffed and ready for take-off in five minutes."

"Copy that," Sparks said. "Orders are to keep them on the ground until the armor is deployed to the battle area. At that point, the air patrol will launch and one wing of hovers will support each area of engagement."

"Understood," reported the air liaison.

"All tank crews are formed up and ready for deployment," reported the armor liaison.

"Infantry squads are all loaded into the APCs," reported the infantry liaison.

Sparks nodded in satisfaction. "Very well," he said. "All we need now are some greenies."

As if on cue, one of the detection technicians suddenly spoke up. "Thermal plume," he reported. "Bearing 246. Range unknown."

"The signature?" Sparks asked.

"Ground level, high infrared range. The same thing we've been seeing all along."

Yes, that was it, Sparks knew. The signature of a greenie Hummingbird utilizing its thrusters to land on the surface. "Anything on active?" he asked next.

All stations reported negative.

"That's the first landing. Get me a estimated range and start plastering the area with artillery."

Estimating range without getting a hit from active sensors was an iffy science at best, particularly in the variable atmosphere of Mars. Still, the computers did their best, utilizing red shift data and triangulation between multiple sensors. Within six seconds of detecting the thermal plume, they had a fix that was accurate to within one kilometer. This information was given to the gunnery officer who immediately ordered an all-out barrage starting in the center of the most likely area. If only they had some accurate gunnery, they might have actually hit something.

"Rounds are outgoing," the gunnery officer reported.

"That's good to know," Sparks said sarcastically. He turned to the armor and infantry liaisons. "Hold in place for now. Let's see where the rest of the greenies land, then we'll go out and get them."

The first thermal plume spotted had come from the Hummingbird Lon and his squad was assigned to but the squad didn't get out. The ramp didn't even come down. Instead, the aircraft merely sat on the ground for twenty-four seconds — the amount of time it usually took to offload a team — and then launched back into the air, creating exactly what the technicians back on the marine landing ships were expecting to see, another thermal plume. The Hummingbird flew on, circling around a few hills, doubling back, doubling back again, and then coming in for yet another landing some four kilometers from their first touchdown position, creating yet another thermal plume for the technicians to detect and chart, another empty place for them to call down an artillery barrage. The ramp remained closed, the special forces team remained in their restraints. Twenty-eight seconds went by and the aircraft took off again. It went through another series of turns and dives, doubling back and forth for the better part of five minutes. Finally it reached the real deployment area six kilometers northwest of the marine perimeter forces. There was another bright flare, another jerking halt, and this time the ramp did come down and the nine men and one woman jumped out onto the rocky Martian surface.

All around the perimeter the other six Hummingbirds involved in dropping off the various teams for the coming battle did the same, some making three false landings prior to the real deployment, some making as many as six. The Hummingbirds then retreated at top speed, heading back to their base where the aircraft would be quickly refueled and then staged for immediate take-off.

"How many of those fucking Hummingbirds do they have?" Callahan asked after watching his map display light up with landing after landing of suspected enemy forces. On the west side of the perimeter alone sixteen thermal plumes had been detected and charted, each prompting a yellow circle to appear. On the east, north, and south, another twenty-eight had been charted as well.

"Intelligence put it at thirty," said Sergeant Bickers. "That was supposed to have been solid information."

Callahan shook his head in disgust. "Fucking Intelligence assholes. What else are they gonna be wrong about?"

"That's an ass-load of greenies they're disgorging out there," said Sergeant Bender, yet another replacement.

"All the more for us to kill," Callahan said. "I say, send every last fucking one of them."

From behind them the artillery guns atop the landing ships continued to fire, sending a rain of high explosive shells off in all directions. The thumping was audible from this close but only barely so. Callahan was encouraged by the sheer volume of fire they were unleashing. Sure, the gunnery sucked ass, but with that much outgoing they were sure to score a few hits by sheer chance, weren't they? Of course, he had no idea that most of the landing zones they were firing at were completely empty, mere deceptions staged by an enemy who liked nothing better than for the marines to waste precious ammunition in an environment where it could not be re-supplied.

"We're moving out," came the voice of Captain Ayers back on the landing ship. "Waypoints are being downloaded to your computers right now. We're going to circle around the outside of the ridgeline at grid 47C. That will keep our space relatively wide-open and keep us from having to narrow up in the chokepoints between the hills."

"Thank God someone has common sense," Callahan muttered. He had been afraid they would be ordered directly through those gaps where the lack of maneuvering room would completely negate their numerical superiority.

"Once past the ridgeline," Ayers continued, "we're going to swing north and clear those hills one by one until we find and engage the greenies that have been dropped. We'll start working outward from the landing positions of the first drop. One of the tank platoons will be on point, one will be guarding our left flank, and one our right flank. As the dismounts are out searching the hillsides you'll be surrounded by heavy armor, not to mention your own APCs and the hovers overhead."

"This is the way marines are supposed to fight," someone, Callahan was unsure who, said over the tactical net.

"Time for some greenie flambé," said someone else.

"Callahan," said Ayers, "you're second in command of the company. Your platoon will be on point, right behind the lead tank platoon."

"Yes, sir," Callahan said with a smile. Being on point meant he and his men would be the first to dismount and start kicking some green ass.

Ayers gave the other platoons their positions in the formation and then gave the order to move out. The tanks went first, taking up the front position. The APCs followed behind them. More tanks formed up on the flanks. As a unit they rumbled out of the perimeter, forming a huge cloud of red dust that kicked up into the air and was blown out to the east, marking their position from ten kilometers away. As they reached the edge of the ridgeline and turned north, into the hilly ground that was the greenie hunting area, twelve hovers formed up above them, spreading out, ready to pounce upon any identified greenie position in an instant.

It took them twenty-five minutes to circle around to the area where the first Hummingbird plume had been detected. The ground here was rocky and hilly, the sort of terrain the greenie teams seemed to favor more than anything. The hovers cruised low over the hills and were able to detect the fused soil from the Hummingbird's thrusters but no greenies. That was unsurprising. Experiments with the captured greenie biosuits had confirmed that the Hummingbirds would have to be directly over a greenie at an altitude of less than four hundred meters to even get a sniff.

"Dismounts," came Ayers' voice. "Let's get out there. Start checking those hills in front of you, one by one. Advance to contact. It's time to flush them out."

"Yes sir," Callahan repeated. The APCs came to a halt and the ramps went down. Two hundred men climbed out onto the Martian surface and began to fan out towards the hills. They stayed bunched together as closely as possible on the theory that a simple squad of greenies would not engage that many marines. Despite all the media hype about the suicide attacks that had caused so many casualties, the marines knew that the greenies were far from suicidal.

The marines were right. The special forces teams were not suicidal and had no intention whatsoever of actually going head to head with an entire company supported by tanks and hovers at once. In fact, Lon and his squad were the only actual combat squad currently deployed on the western side of the Eden LZ and they were almost five kilometers away. They had their normal weapons and their normal assortment of anti-tank and anti-aircraft lasers, but their orders were not to engage unless they were located and under attack themselves. Their job on this particular phase of the operation was to observe and report the position of the marines. All of the other teams that had been dropped on the western perimeter were mortar squads and sniper teams. Utilizing the position fixes fed to them by Lon and his team, who were perched atop a series of high hills and watching the marines through combat goggle magnification, the mortar squads pulled back to their optimum range and began to set up while the sniper teams — each of which consisted of a gunner and a spotter — began to move in. But before these elements could begin to do their work, someone had to do something about the hovers. Fortunately, someone was on the way to do just that.

Sixty kilometers to the west, screaming in at six hundred kilometers per hour, a flight of four Mosquitoes turned and banked through the hills, keeping less than thirty meters above the ground. In the lead Mosquito, piloted by Brian Haverty, Matt Mendez started intently at the screen in front of him, watching as the red dots that signified the marine hovers circled slowly around and around.

"Twelve targets," he told Brian through the intercom system. "Three flights of four but all close enough for mutual support. They're in overlapping patterns, altitude four, zero, zero AGL. I'm plotting a position to best engagement zone right now."

"Right," said Brian, who was focused on keeping the aircraft from smashing into the ground or one of the hillsides. The information Mendez was reciting was coming from a special forces team somewhere out in the wastelands, a team that had the deployment under direct observation and was beaming their observations up to a com sat where it was then being encrypted and broadcast to the flight via a transmitter in Eden. "What do we got on ground forces?"

"Company strength tank forces, company strength armored cav, including four SAL five-sevens spread throughout the armor."

"Great," said Brian. "And those SALs won't be shooting training charges either. We need to keep exposure time at an absolute minimum."

"Fuckin' aye," said Matt. "It's also reported that the armored cav is dismounted now. Two hundred troops on the ground."

"And if they're following doctrine," Brian said, "there will be one hand-held SAL per squad. In case you're a little slow on the math, newbie, that means there are at least twenty portable surface-to-air lasers that will be gunning for us."

"They can't hit us with them things, can they?" Matt asked. "They don't lock on target like the mobile SALs do."

"They may not lock but with twenty of them out there gunning for us the chance of a lucky shot slamming into us increases considerably. Don't underestimate the hand-helds. I've been taken down in training missions more than once by them."

"Thanks, boss," Matt said. "I thought I knew about every fucking thing there was that could kill me out here. It's sure nice of you to add to the fuckin' list."

"Just keep our exposure time to a minimum," Brian repeated. "This is an improv mission at its finest. You're in control of where this whole flight pops out and where it goes back into the hills. Don't fuck it up or you'll get some people killed."

"Right," Matt said. "A trial by fire. I got it."

"You'll do fine," Brian told him. "We've practiced this dozens of times. It's a textbook improv air-to-air strike. Classic phase two warfare. "

Matt nodded and looked down at his screen. The holographic map display showed the hills and valleys in three dimensions, with altitude numbers atop each peak. It really was like a training mission except for the fact that the hovers out there were not MPG owned and the SALs were not firing training charges. He put this out of his mind and his nervousness faded away. His finger began to trace a course across the map, taking them in from the east, skirting around the base of three hills, and then popping up over the last set of hills where the hovers were flying. A blue line trailed behind his finger, marking the projected course. When it entered the firing zone, it turned red. He skirted it along the ridge and then curved it back to the west. Once behind the next hill, the tracing turned blue again.

"I got it," he told Brian. "We'll swing in from the east and pop up to five, zero, zero AGL, egress to the west. Total exposure time, four point three seconds."

"Sounds good," Brian said, violently cutting them to the right around a hill and then leveling them again. "Put it on screen."

"Don't you wanna check it first?"

"Can't take my eyes off the terrain," Brian told him. "I'll have to trust you on this one."

Matt took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "On screen. Shipping it to the other planes." He pushed a button on his screen and locked in the plot. He pushed another button and the plot was beamed to the other three aircraft via a short-range radio burst. The navigation carrot on their heads-up display swung to the right and they began to follow it, homing in on their targets. Matt called out the course corrections as they came up, counting each one down. Soon his ESM display began to make some noise.

"I'm picking up three distinct active IR and radar sweeps from the target area," he announced. "Frequencies indicate SAL-five-seven phased sets on standard search setting. Probability of detection, zero."

"Got it," said Brian.

"Come right to two, seven, three in five, four, three, two, one."

The aircraft banked right, spinning around another set of hills, and leveled out again. They climbed a few feet to clear a smaller hill and then dove back down again. Behind them, one by one, the other three Mosquitoes matched their moves exactly.

"Coming up on the IP," Matt said after the next bank. "Charging the laser, activating air-to-air search mode."

"Copy," said Brian.

"Active IR and radar getting stronger, still no chance of detection."

"That's what I like to hear. No active airborne?"

"Nothing," Matt confirmed. "I guess the hovers don't wanna overload their ESM sets."

"Their mistake," Brian said.

They flew on, skirting through a narrow gully. The laser set beeped, indicating it was charged and ready. They reached the Initial Point, or IP, made their last turn, and then screamed on towards the last hill between them and the marines.

"Let's do this thing," Brian said, putting on some power and pulling up on the stick. The Mosquito began to rise into the air.

Lon, Lisa, and Jefferson were deployed atop Hill 655, five kilometers northwest of the circling hovers and the company of dismounted infantry beneath them. The hovers were clearly visible to them, circling in simple, overlapping, mutually supporting patterns. Some of the infantry and armor were visible as well, but most were obscured by the hills between Hill 655 and the target area. That didn't really matter though. The dust cloud produced by the armor pointed out their position as clearly as a holographic arrow on a simulation screen. And if Lon, Lisa, and Jefferson lost sight of the targets for any reason, Horishito and two other squad members were deployed 450 meters further west on hill 648 and Brannigan and the remaining squad members were deployed 380 meters further east on hill 703.

Lon knew the flight of Mosquitoes was on their firing run. After all, it was he who had given them their target coordinates. He had his eyes peeled and his infrared enhancement mode set to high but even he didn't see them at first, they moved so quickly. The first clue he had they were in the neighborhood was three flashes from the circling hovers as they were struck by anti-tank lasers. One of the hovers, apparently targeted by two of the aircraft at once, simply exploded in mid-air. The other two went spinning wildly out of control.

"Yes!" Lon said, pumping his fist in triumph. "Three down with one run. Not too fucking bad."

Lisa caught the barest glimpse of the Mosquitoes as they dove back downward. Just before disappearing behind a hill there was a flash from the belly of one. One of the other hovers flashed with the telltale signature of a direct hit. It dropped out of the sky like a rock, the pilot and gunner firing free on their ejection seats. "Four," she corrected. "They took another one on the egress."

"Annoying little mosquitoes huh?" Lon said, referring to that long ago WestHem general who had given the aircraft its affectionate name. "I wonder what that asshole thinks about them now?"

"Nothing," Lisa said. "He's one of the military consultants for InfoServe now. They'll never even tell him the Mosquitoes had anything to do with their losses."

"True," agreed Lon.

"Hey, sarge," said Horishito from the next hill. "Fifty bucks says they take at least five on their next run."

Lon thought that over for a second. "You're on," he said. "Those guys are good, but they ain't that good."

"I'll take a little bit of that action," Lisa said. "Fifty on five."

"Covered," Lon told her.

The next run began twenty seconds later. This time they saw the four Mosquitoes pop up over a hill to the north of the hovers. They climbed to altitude and their lasers began to flash. Hovers began to explode and fall out of the sky. Five were hit but only four went down. The fifth began limping its way back toward the landing zone, trailing smoke and wobbling but still airworthy. The Mosquitoes disappeared within seconds.

"You owe me fifty bucks!" Horishito yelled.

"Yep," Lisa agreed. "Me too."

"No fuckin' way," Lon said. "They took four down. The other is still flying."

"We said they'd take five," Lisa said. "The fifth one is out of commission. That means it got took."

"But its still flying," Lon protested. "Take means destroyed."

"The fuck it does!" Horishito said. "You can't go changing the..."

"All right, guys," said Lon. "Let's discuss this later. Too much chatter on the net."

"Oh, now its too much chatter on the net," Horishito said.

The fifth hover reached the outer perimeter of hills, wobbled a little bit more, and then suddenly exploded with a bright flash of light. There was no ejection. By the time the flash faded, even the debris was gone.

"Fifty fuckin' bucks," Lisa said.

"Fuck yeah," agreed Horishito.

"All right," Lon said. "I know when I'm beat."

This left only three hovers still flying over the formation. Though they were inanimate objects it was clear by watching them that the men crewing them were now extremely nervous. They circled faster, putting distance between each vehicle. Jefferson reported that active radar and infrared had come on line from each of them.

"Those guys are shittin' in their pants about now," said Jefferson.

"Let's go double or nothing," Lisa suggested. "I say they take all three on the next run."

"I'm in on that," Horishito said. "All the way to the ground even."

"No thanks," Lon said. "I've learned my lesson about betting the no-pass line."

It was fortunate he didn't take the bet. The Mosquitoes appeared again, this time from the west, and the remaining three hovers fell in less than two seconds.

"Put it out, Jeffy," Lon ordered. "All aircraft down. Friendly aircraft are egressing. Sniper and mortar teams are free to engage."

"Transmitting," Jefferson said.

Atop Hill 474, 1600 meters to the west of the WestHem marine's westernmost troops, Corporal Brogan Goodbud lay nestled between two large boulders, looking through specially engineered combat goggles at the head of one of the WestHem marines. The magnification was so great he could make out the serial number atop the marine's visor, could tell what color eyes his target had. Goodbud held in his highly trained hands an M-64 sniper rifle, a weapon engineered and built by a Martian company specifically for the use he was putting it to. It fired a two-millimeter projectile at hypersonic speed, more than twelve times the speed of sound on the Martian surface, almost twice the velocity of the standard M-24 rifle most of the troops carried. At this velocity, and with modified combat computer support, Goodbud could hit an object the size of an apple from almost two kilometers ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Right now, his target was considerably larger than an apple and considerably closer than two kilometers. The travel time of the bullet to the target would be a mere two tenths of a second. He was as good as dead.

The target was either a sergeant or a lieutenant. He knew this for sure. For the past thirty minutes Rimmer, his observer, had been scanning the radio signals of the troops down on the ground classifying the radio signals that emitted constantly from their biosuit packs. Leaders were easy to identify even though they didn't put rank marking on their biosuits, even though the troops they commanded went to great pains to avoid saluting them or otherwise drawing attention to them with careless actions. Platoon and squad leaders were the only ones who broadcast radio signals on more than one frequency. Lieutenants talked to sergeants and to their commanders back on the landing ship. Sergeants talked to lieutenants and to their squads. The grunts of the operation only talked among themselves. Rimmer had identified more than twenty leaders down there and his combat computer had marked them by changing the color of their helmet to green in Goodbud's goggles. Of course this target locking only worked as long as the targets in question remained in view. When the air-to-air attack had come and the hover debris had started raining down all over the formations and the marines had started diving for cover and running around to attend to the wounded, more than half of his locked targets had disappeared. That was okay though. Once the fun really started, it would be easy for Rimmer to reacquire and re-mark them.

"Message from C Team," Rimmer's voice spoke in Goodbud's ear. "'All aircraft down. Friendly aircraft are egressing. Sniper and mortar teams are free to engage.'"

"Well suck my hairy ass," Goodbud said, making a minute adjustment of his rifle recentering his recticle on the target's face. "It's go time." He pushed the firing button. The weapon discharged with a slight kick, the flash channeled through a flash suppressor and cooled by a simultaneous release of liquid nitrogen as it emerged from the barrel. While it was impossible to completely suppress a gunshot flash, especially in the infrared spectrum, the M-64's suppressor technology did have the effect of making the signature less than one twentieth that of a standard M-24. The bullet hit exactly where it was aimed and the target dropped forward, blood boiling from a hole in the back of his head. Goodbud didn't pause to savor his success. He simply zoomed out until he saw another of the green helmets amid the rapidly expanding chaos. He picked one that was kneeling next to a marine wounded by aircraft debris, zoomed in, placed his recticle on the target's face, and then fired. Another one down. He would make one more shot and then they would pack up and move to the next hill to start all over again.

When Callahan was told later that the initial engagement had taken less than five minutes from start to finish, he thought he was being lied to. For him it seemed to take hours, days even, as he watched a cataclysm of horror and confusion he'd never even conceived of take place all around him.

It started with the hovers. They had been circling three or four hundred meters above, their presence comforting to the dismounted marines crawling up and down the hills (and finding absolutely nothing) and probing through the small gullies. The marine hover had always been considered the pillar of strength for extra-terrestrial operations, the factor that was supposed to insure victory and domination over any enemy fought far from the comfort of Earth. It was the factor that was supposed to guarantee air superiority over a battlefield, that could smash enemy forces long before the marines on the ground were close enough to even worry about them. The marines faith in these mighty flying tanks had begun to erode a bit over the past week as greenie troops proved themselves able to avoid detection by them and to take them down with their cursed anti-air lasers, but when the attack began on this morning, that faith was instantly and utterly destroyed for all time.

At first, Callahan didn't even know what was happening. He and his platoon had been approaching one of the hills, readying themselves to begin the clumsy climb to its peak. And then suddenly the hover directly over the top of them exploded without warning. Chunks of metal, circuit boards, control surfaces, and engine components came raining down atop them. One of his men was killed when an engine thruster crushed his head. Two others were wounded by smaller debris. The survivors of this hit the ground, their weapons trained outward out of instinct. Callahan wondered if the explosion had been a simple malfunction but then he looked behind and saw two other hovers spinning downward towards the ground, flipping end over end as half of their thrusters were put out and the others stayed lit. They hit the ground and exploded, one falling behind a hillside and out of sight, the other landing directly in the midst of third platoon, causing multiple casualties.

His radio channels began to squawk out overlapping exclamations, his men yelling on one channel, the other platoon leaders yelling on the other.

"What the fuck happened?"

"Where did it come from?"

"It was aircraft!" screamed someone else.

"No, there are greenies on the hillside, six o'clock!" shouted someone else.

Weapons began to fire at this last proclamation, popping from all around. Three marines standing atop one of the closer hills were peppered by it, falling in heaps.

"Cease fire!" someone else screamed. "Those are friendlies up there! They're fuckin' friendlies!"

"Shit!" said another voice.

The rifles stopped firing, gradually though, not all at once.

"It was aircraft!" one of the other lieutenants insisted. "Three or four of them! They passed right over the top of us!"

"Bullshit!" another lieutenant countered. "We would've fuckin' seen them."

"I did see them!" the first lieutenant countered. "They came out of the hills and then disappeared again in just a few seconds. They were moving fast."

"Nothing moves that fast out here, you idiot!" another voice proclaimed.

"Report!" said Captain Ayers' voice, overriding everything else. "Someone out there give me a goddamn report! Callahan, you there?"

"I'm here, cap," Callahan said, his eyes searching nervously through the skies and on the hillsides. "I don't know what the hell just happened but three of the hovers just went down."

"Four," the first lieutenant corrected. "They got another one just before they disappeared."

"Who got another one?" Ayers demanded.

"Aircraft," said the lieutenant. "They came out of the hillside, shot up the hovers, and then disappeared back in the hills."

"Did you see that, Callahan?" Ayers asked him.

"I didn't see shit, cap," he said. "We've got wounded down here though. Start bringing in the... oh shit! Get down!" In his excitement of seeing four greenie aircraft come shooting out of the gap between two hills, he forgot to change his transmission mode back to the tactical channel. As a result, it was only the other lieutenants who got down. The aircraft rushed over the top of him at a speed that seemed impossible in this environment, so fast that his eyes could barely register them. But his eyes did. They were ugly, flimsy looking boomerang-shaped aircraft flying in a line, their engines burning brightly in the infrared spectrum. They were close enough he could hear the muted roar of those engines through the thin air. Four more of the hovers suddenly fell from the sky and another went limping off towards the LZ, trailing smoke behind it. Of the four that went down, two of them landed amid the troops, smashing some, killing others with shrapnel when they exploded, wounding tens of others.

"What's going on Callahan?" Ayers demanded. "Report, goddammit!"

"It is aircraft!" Callahan yelled. "Mosquitoes. Four of them in formation. Holy fuck do those things fly fast. How the hell can they hit anything moving that fast?"

"Did they hit the hovers?" Ayers asked.

"Yes!" he screamed. "Four more down and another damaged. It's heading for..." he trailed off as the fifth one suddenly exploded, raining more debris down on a thankfully empty hillside. "Never mind," he finished. "Five down. They took five down."

"Five down total?" Ayers asked.

"Five down with this run," Callahan corrected. "They got four with the first. There are only three of them left."

There was silence on the command channel for a few seconds (although not on the tactical channel, that one was filled with more screams, more calls for medics). "Are you saying," Ayers finally asked, "that those four greenie aircraft have taken down nine hovers in less than a minute?"

"That's affirmative," Callahan said, unable to believe it himself. "Nine down, three left."

Ayers didn't quite know what to make of this. Neither did Callahan. While they were still mulling this over the Mosquitoes came back, suddenly appearing from yet another gap in the hills. The other three hovers fell to them, two of them landing amidst the troops, killing another eight and wounding another dozen or so. They were now completely without air cover.

"We need more hovers out here, cap!" Callahan said. "At least two dozen if you can spare them! And we need dust-off hovers too. We got lots of casualties on the ground."

"I'll get them out there," Ayers promised. "How many flight crew ejections?"

"Most of them got out, I think," Callahan said, not giving a shit about the flight crews.

"Recover those flight crews as quick as you can and get them inside the APCs. Those fucking idiots are helpless out there alone."

"We'll do what we can," Callahan said. "But right now we've got to worry about..."

He stopped suddenly as the confusing though horribly familiar babble indicative of a sniper in their midst began to come across the airwaves.

"Shit!"

"Get down!"

"Where the fuck did that come from?"

"Sniper!" someone else yelled. "Two people down... shit! Three people down!"

"Over there! Eight o'clock on the hillside!"

Guns began to fire again, peppering a hillside. There was a long burst of a SAW opening up as well.

"Cease fire!" a panicked voice yelled. "Stop shooting at us! We're friend..." the voice was cut suddenly and lethally off.

"Jesus," Callahan said, shaking his head.

Sergeant Bender, moving quick and low suddenly came down next to him. "LT," he said. "I think I saw a flash from..." He didn't finish. His head snapped to the right and his blood came boiling out into the atmosphere. He slumped over and lay still.

"Shit!" Callahan said, rolling quickly to the right and placing a boulder between himself and the direction the shot had come from. It was none too soon. Another shot plunked into the dirt where he'd just been.

"Over there!" a voice yelled. "On the hillside! Seven o'clock!"

Guns began to open up once more and once more a panicked voice began to scream out for a cease-fire, that they were shooting friendlies.

"Clusterfuck," Callahan muttered, still coming to grips with the thought that he'd just about been killed. "A fucking clusterfuck. What the hell else could go wrong?"

That was perhaps not the best question to ask because it was quickly answered.

"Incoming!" multiple voices on both channels began to yell in unison. "Get down!"

Callahan looked up and saw the streaks of mortar shells flying toward their position from three different directions. "Oh shit," he said and pulled himself as close to the boulder as he could.

Explosions began to boom from everywhere as the eighty-millimeter proximity fused shells detonated twenty meters over the top of the exposed troops. The ground shook as if an earthquake were jolting them. Dust and smoke flew. Shrapnel rained down at lethal velocity. The screams of pain and terror on the radio channels reached a fever pitch. Callahan felt his boulder move several inches by one of the closer explosions, heard the shrapnel peppering it. Dust obscured everything in his view, dust so thick that even his infrared enhancement couldn't see through it.

"Callahan!" Ayers' voice yelled in his ear. "We're tracking incoming mortar fire from multiple directions! You're under attack!"

"No fucking shit!" Callahan yelled back as another round exploded just behind him. This time he felt shrapnel pinging off his helmet, felt a spike of pain lancing into his back. A warning screen lit up before his eyes, informing him that his suit had been breached and pressurization was being lost.

Ayers said something else — something about counter-battery fire — but it was lost in the overlapping cries of the other men on the channel and Callahan's sudden concern for his own life.

"Your suit has sealed," a pleasant computer voice informed him. "Repressurizing lost air. You must return to a zone of safety as quickly as possible for suit repair and medical evaluation."

How bad am I hit? he wondered. The pain in his back was getting worse. He could feel the liquid sensation of blood on his skin. If it were simply an external injury, the pressure on the suit would keep it sealed and control the bleeding. If it were an internal injury, however... well... the suit couldn't do much for that.

The mortar barrage ended, not gradually, but suddenly. The screams on the radio channels, however, did not. The dust began to clear, blown away by the wind on the surface. It revealed a scene of horror and chaos unlike anything Callahan had ever seen before. Bodies were everywhere, men torn apart, men lying in heaps, shredded by the shrapnel of the mortar rounds, blood vapor boiling up into the air and following the dust on the wind currents. In the sky above, he saw the streaks of friendly artillery shells flying overhead, seeking out the positions the greenie mortars had been fired from. He couldn't even begin to deceive himself that they would actually hit any of them. By now the greenies had cleared those areas and would be moving to other firing positions.

"A trap," Callahan mumbled. "They trapped us as neatly as a spider traps a fly in its web."

The troops that were capable of it began to get to their feet and move around. Medics began to head for the wounded. Callahan saw Lieutenant Powell, commander of fourth platoon, stand up and start moving towards the rest of his men. He made it less than three steps before his head opened up and a spray of blood vapor came boiling out. He dropped soundlessly to the ground. His first sergeant, who was less than twenty meters from him went down two seconds later, felled by another head shot.

"Snipers!" came the yells over the net, overriding the calls for medics and the screams of the wounded. "They're still out there!"

And indeed they were. Within two minutes three squad sergeants and another platoon leader were shot down like dogs, felled by perfect headshots. And no one even saw the flashes of the weapons that had done it.

Callahan stayed in place behind his boulder. He didn't know how the snipers were able to tell the officers and the squad leaders from the grunts but by now it was quite clear that they were able to make the differentiation. It seemed that venturing out there might be a bit dangerous for him. If this wound didn't kill him first.

He tried to remember the name of his new medic and couldn't. Finally he just called him by the standard designator that had been in place since World War II. "Doc," he said. "You there?"

"I'm here, LT," the medic replied. "I took some shrapnel in the shoulder but I'm okay. The suit sealed it up."

"How we looking?" Callahan asked him.

"I'm still making the rounds. We got hit pretty hard though. Most of us were in the open when the mortars came down. At least six dead and nine wounded. Two of the KIAs were the squad leaders. Snipers got them."

"Great," Callahan said with a sigh. "Come over here and look at me when you get a chance. I took some shrapnel in the back."

"On the way, LT," the medic told him. "Do we have dust-offs on the way? We're gonna need a bunch of them."

"I'll check with our fearless leader," Callahan promised. He switched frequencies back to the command net. "Cap, this is Callahan. You there?"

"Your situation, Callahan?" Ayers asked. "I'm not getting anything coherent from the other platoon leaders."

"The mortars hit right in the middle of us," Callahan said. "They inflicted considerable casualties. The greenie gunners have got someone out there directing the fire; probably one of those special forces teams up on a hill somewhere. We're under constant sniper fire. They're going after the platoon leaders and the NCOs. I don't know how they're identifying them but they are. We're not picking up the flashes from their weapons. We need some air cover out here and some dust-offs."

There was a hesitation. Finally, "Air cover is a bit sparse at the moment. The greenies hit on the north and south side of the perimeter at the same time. They used the same technique. Mosquitoes came in and wiped out the hovers in a matter of minutes. Snipers opened up on the troops once the hovers were gone and then mortar fire came down. You can expect more mortar fire as soon as the greenie gunners relocate their positions."

"You're not sending any hovers out here?" Callahan asked, appalled, horrified.

"Command won't release them," Ayers said. "We've already taken too heavy of losses in air support. The hovers are needed to bomb the greenie's main line of defense."

"What about the dust-offs?" Callahan asked.

"They can't go either," Ayers said. "The greenies will just hit them with mortars while they're on the ground picking up the wounded. That's already happened at New Pittsburgh."

"New Pittsburgh?" Callahan asked. "Did this happen there too?"

"Yeah," Ayers said. "They hit us even worse there from what I hear. You'll have to leave the dead where they are and load up the wounded into the APCs. Take command of the company and get back here as quickly as possible."

"Jesus," Callahan said.

"Keep under cover as much as you can. Intelligence isn't sure how the snipers are able to pick out the officers yet but they're thinking it might be from your radio transmissions."

"What?" Callahan asked. "How the fuck could they tell that?"

Ayers didn't get a chance to answer him. Another voice came on the command channel. "Sir! This is Corporal Swans! I'm in charge of fourth platoon now... I guess."

While Ayers and Corporal Swans discussed the fact that his lieutenant and every one of the squad sergeants had been killed by falling aircraft, sniper fire, or mortar shrapnel, Callahan saw a shape coming rapidly toward him. So jumpy was he that he raised his weapon and came within three grams of pressure on the firing button of shooting the man before he realized it was his medic.

"Don't fuckin' shoot me, LT!" the medic screamed in terror.

"Sorry," Callahan said, slowly lowering the rifle. "I thought you were... well... you know."

"Yeah," the medic said. "I know." He shook his head. "I ain't never seen no shit like this before, LT. This is fuckin' horrible!"

"You don't say," Callahan said dryly. "Now take a look at me. How bad am I?"

"Where you hit, sir?"

"On the back," Callahan said, rolling onto his stomach.

The medic took out a body scanner and ran it over the hole in Callahan's back. It sent out a series of X-rays and ultrasonic sound waves to survey the damage done. "You'll be okay, sir," he said when he got the reading. "You got two pieces of shrapnel lodged in the muscle tissue of your back. Bleeding is stopped, no organs hit, and your suit is sealed. Do you need some morphine?"

"No," Callahan replied. "Go tend to the others. No dust-offs will be coming to offload them."

"What?"

"You heard me," Callahan said. "We're gonna have to load all the wounded into..."

"Incoming!" was screamed over the net again, first by one and then by eight to ten other voices. Callahan didn't even bother to look up this time. He pulled himself as close to the boulder as he could and hunkered down.

"Shit my pants," the medic cried, terrified. There was no cover for him here and lying flat was not much protection against proximity-fused shells. He stood and began running towards a field of boulders twenty meters to his right. He made it only three steps before the rounds began to explode overhead. One of them was close enough to send five kilograms of shrapnel ripping through his head, his chest, and his left arm. He flew backwards, trailing boiled blood behind him and dropped lifelessly atop Callahan's boulder. His helmet, broken into several pieces, with chunks of skulls, brain, and skin inside of it and boiling blood rising from its surface, dropped onto Callahan's back and then rolled directly in front of his face. He tried not to look at it.

The explosions continued for about thirty seconds, during which Captain Ayers once again informed him that radar had picked up incoming shells. As soon as people started to move around again two more squad sergeants and another lieutenant fell to sniper fire.

Callahan looked at the carnage around him. He had never felt so far from home in his life.

"The Martians can have this place," he said. "I'll even pay the fucking delivery fee."

At 1930 hours, Eden time, Brian Haggerty and Matt Mendez walked through the doors of The Troop Club outside the Eden MPG base. With them were six other pilots and nine other systems operators, all of whom had seen air-to-air combat that day. This was Matt's first trip to the bar, was in fact his first trip to any bar anywhere. Ghetto inhabitants typically did not have the funding to go to such places, they instead chose to do their drinking and smoking in the more traditional fashion: on the front steps of their housing building or in the nearest park or in the privacy of their own home. But now Matt's banking account was swelled with more than six hundred credits, the new currency that was being distributed to those in the employ of the interim planetary government.

The distribution of the credits had caused another financial crisis when they were first introduced three weeks earlier. The argument against them was that you could not simply make up money to give to people. The credits didn't represent anything, didn't stand for anything, therefore they could not possibly have any value. Economists, accountants, and lawyers (all former corporate Earthlings with nothing better to do now that their jobs had disappeared) had all appeared on MarsTrans channels denouncing Laura Whiting's attempt to pay her revolutionaries with make believe money. For a few days merchants had refused to accept the currency.

"This money is not fabricated," Laura said in one of her daily addresses to the planet, "and it most certainly does represent something. It is credit for work done in the interests of Mars and the Martian people. Currently we are paying vital factory employees, vital mining employees, and, most importantly, our brave military men and women in credits. The exchange rate is one credit for every ten dollars. The credits have this value because the interim legislature and I say it has this value. When we finally defeat the Earthlings and throw them off this planet, the credit will replace the dollar entirely. Granted, if the Earthlings manage to defeat us, the credit will become as worthless as confederate script became after the American Civil War, but for now, they have yet to defeat us, and it is looking more and more like they won't defeat us, so this money is as good as any dollar. It can be used to buy supplies for your shop, to pay employees, to spend when and where you wish. This is Martian money, people! If you have faith in Mars, have faith in our money as well."

Since then the Martian credit had achieved cautious acceptance. Merchants kept them in a separate account and worried incessantly that the war would be lost and it would all be worthless one day, but they accepted it as payment. So far Matt had not spent any of his, it had simply accumulated in the account the MPG had set up for him at their credit union. He had not wanted to come to the club tonight but Brian, the man who had once called him "vermin" and had almost lost his career to avoid flying with him, had insisted quite sternly.

"I'm buying you a fuckin' drink and two fuckin' bonghits, newbie," he told him. "You done real good today and I ain't taking no for an answer."

And so they went. As they entered the bar the mood inside was jubilant, festive even. Music played from the speakers and the cocktail waitresses circulated endlessly, distributing drinks to the standing room only crowd. Every table was full and people were three thick at the bar. The smell of tobacco and marijuana smoke was pungent, almost sickening.

"Twenty-seventh air attack squadron!" Brian shouted as he and his sis and their companions entered the room. This had become traditional among the combat units when they came into The Troop Club, especially when kills had been logged. "We dropped nineteen fucking hovers into the dust today. Nineteen!"

A cheer went up, particularly from the part of the room where the pool tables were located. This was where the special forces teams hung out and the special forces teams owed the flyboys some serious bonghits this evening.

"C'mon, kid," Brian said to Matt. "Let's head over that way. Could be I won't have to buy you that drink after all."

"Uh... sure, why not?" Matt asked, feeling very out of his element but having no intention of backing down.

They pushed their way through the crowd towards the pool tables. As they reached the first one an Asian descended woman came rushing out of the crowd and screamed Haggarty's name.

"Brian!" she yelled. "I knew your ass was too fuckin' stubborn to get shot down!" She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

"Hey, Lisa," Haggerty greeted, returning her hug. "How the fuck are you?"

"Static," she said, pulling back a bit. "Gimmee some tongue, hon."

They exchanged a brief, open-mouthed kiss, which, in Martian society, was the same as a hug in Earthling society. As they did so Jeff took a moment to check her out. That she was a cop was without question. She had that cop look in her eyes, that cop way of speaking. But she was also quite hot looking. Her ass was as tight as a spring, her legs toned and muscled, her breasts alluring beneath her MPG t-shirt.

"Mendez," Brian said when they finally stopped exchanging spit, "this is Lisa Wong. We used to work together out on the streets. She's one of those special forces pukes we were clearing the air for today. Lisa, this is Matt Mendez, the fuckin' vermin they gave me as a sis. He turned out all right though. He mowed through those hovers today like he was playing a video game."

"How you doin'?" Matt said, holding out his right hand to her.

"Good," she said, shaking with him. "Fuckin' static actually. You were out there today?"

"Four runs," he said. "Except the last two they wouldn't put their hovers up."

"You guys did some good work today," she said. "We were the observation squad on the west side. We saw them Earthlings take a pounding. It made me proud to be a Martian."

"Well I guess we owe you a couple of bonghits then, don't we?" Matt asked. "We were the west side anti-air team. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have known where to go."

"The kid's right," Brian agreed. "You brought us to target. Let's load you up."

"I'm already loaded up," she said. "Me and Fargo over there got into a bonghit contest about an hour ago."

"You can never have too much Eden green," said Brian. "Let's smoke."

"Fuck yeah," said Matt. "I ain't smoked none in almost a month now."

She grinned. "You talked me into it."

They pushed their way through the crowd to a relatively quiet corner of the bar. On the way they grabbed a cocktail waiter and told him to set them up with nine hits of the best bud in the house and three beers.

"Fuckin' aye," the waiter replied. "Where you gonna be?"

"Right over there," Brian said, pointing.

The waiter brought their intoxicants very quickly. He had been ordered to give combat troops extra-special treatment. Brian paid the tab and they smoked up their bonghits one by one, passing the electric bong from person to person.

"Holy fuckin' shit," Matt said as he felt the drug slamming into his brain. "I ain't never smoked no weed like this before."

"Welcome to the world of the employed," Brian told him. "Beats the ghetto grass, doesn't it?"

"Fuckin' aye," Matt agreed. He took a long drink of his beer to quench the dry mouth he'd suddenly developed.

Once they were all properly lubricated, talk turned to the day's missions.

"We put a serious hurt on them today," Lisa said. "You flyboys decimated their hovers and our mortar teams cut them to pieces on the ground."

"Any casualties?" Brian asked her.

She nodded sadly. "A mortar team got hit by arty," she said. "Killed all of them except one and he got one of his legs blown off and is paralyzed in the other."

"Did they manage to zero in their artillery fire?" Brian asked.

"We don't think so," Lisa said. "It seems like it was just a lucky shot. The Earthlings were trying to hit the position the team had just fired from but just happened to drop the shells all over them as they were displacing. A one in an hundred shot."

Brian nodded. "Our guys had one of those too. A Mosquito got shot down on the east side of the perimeter, probably a chance hit with a hand-held SAL."

"Motherfucker prob'ly just shot up in the air when they made their run and happened to hit 'em," Matt said, shaking his head in respectful awe.

"Did they bail out?" Lisa asked.

Brian nodded. "They were in radio contact after they hit the ground but we lost it before a Hummingbird could get out to them. The marines must've found them. Hopefully they took them into custody."

"They might've shot them though," Matt said morosely. "They were probably mighty pissed off at us by that point."

"Yeah," Lisa said, sipping from her beer. "And I'm sure they still are."

Lieutenant Callahan sat stiffly in the chair before the conference table. This was not because he felt the need to be at attention before Captain Ayers but because two large chunks of Martian shrapnel had been removed from his back four hours ago and the skin had been fused shut with a cauterizing laser. The pain throbbed sickly through him from his ass cheeks to his shoulder blades and every time he tried to slump down it doubled in intensity.

"Smoke?" Ayers asked him, passing a pack of cigarettes across the table.

"Yeah," Callahan said. "It seems like this might be a good time to pick up the habit again."

He took one and lit up, coughing as the smoke entered his lungs. This sent another spasm of pain radiating outward from his wound but he ignored it and took another drag instead. He shook his head in disbelief. He was still somewhat in shock from the day's events, still wondering why and how he was still alive. This was supposed to be a company command staff meeting but at the moment he and Ayers were the only members of the company who fit that definition. All of the other lieutenants, along with seventy percent of the squad sergeants, were dead; felled by falling aircraft or blasted by mortar rounds or, most commonly, shot down by Martian snipers.

"Are you okay?" Ayers asked him, almost gently, almost father-like.

"They never let up on us out there," Callahan said, speaking more to himself than his commander. "We weren't even fighting them anymore, we were just trying to pull the wounded into the APCs but they kept shooting us and they kept dropping those fucking mortars on us." He shook his head again. "They killed us out there, cap. They fuckin' killed us."

"It's starting to look like we may have underestimated our Martian friends a bit, isn't it?" he asked.

"How bad was it?" Callahan asked. "Did this happen everywhere?"

Ayers nodded. "Yeah. All three of our perimeter deployments were hit pretty much at the same time and in the same manner. We've lost forty-one hovers at the Eden LZ alone. That is almost half of our air support for this region of the battle. At New Pittsburgh we lost thirty-eight. Sixty-three and seventy-two at Libby and Proctor."

"That many?"

"Yeah," Ayers said. "By the time we sent the cav out into the field at Libby and Proctor the word of what happened here and at New Pittsburgh had already been passed. They sent them out anyway and doubled up the hover coverage. The greenies took them down just as easily. It just took them more passes. The most powerful extra-terrestrial aircraft in our arsenal, the aircraft we were relying on to garner air superiority over our advance, to take out the greenie defensive positions, and those Martians blew them out of the sky like they were nothing."

"So fast," Callahan said. "We didn't even see them at first. And when we did, the anti-air teams never had a chance to lock onto them. They were exposed for less than ten seconds, hell, for less than five."

"We won't be able to count on air power to soften up the Martian defenses."

"Soften up their defenses?" Callahan asked. "Jesus, cap, we haven't even secured out perimeter yet. And there's no way we're going to be able to, not without the hovers!"

"We're not going to secure the perimeter," Ayers told him. "We're going to start forming up for the march tomorrow morning."

Callahan looked at him as if he were mad. "Tomorrow morning? But the perimeter!"

Ayers sighed. "The perimeter will have to hold its own on its own," he said. "You saw General Wrath's briefing?"

He scoffed. "Yeah," he said. "I caught it while they were fusing my fucking skin back together. Greenie kamikaze pilots dive bombing into our troops? Contaminated fuel causing the hovers to crash? Are people really buying that bullshit?"

"It's not bullshit, it's the truth," Ayers said firmly. "And if you want to remain employed, you'd better start accepting it as the truth. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," he said bitterly. "I understand."

"My point is that General Wrath has ordered all cav units to begin marching toward their targets as soon as possible. The thought on the matter is that we've been letting the Martians delay us and draw us out, especially today. They drew us right into a trap. The sooner we get to the cities and capture those MPG bases, the sooner we'll have those aircraft and those special forces soldiers out of commission. Will you be able to join your men?"

"My men?" he asked. "I've lost more than three quarters of my platoon, including all of my squad sergeants. I don't have that many men left."

"You'll be given replacements to fill in your losses," Ayers said. "But I need you to lead them if you can. The only alternative is to pull a squad sergeant from a green platoon."

Callahan shook his head violently. "You'd be sentencing the rest to death if you did that," he said. "I'll lead them."

"Good," Ayers said. "Your replacements will report to you first thing in the morning. Field promote a couple of your corporals to fill in the squad sergeant positions. We start loading up first thing in the morning. Two days after that, we'll be in Eden."

"You think so?" Callahan asked.

Ayers' eyes did not meet his. "Of course," he said. "I wouldn't have said it otherwise."