Greenies

Chapter 15

Martian wastelands — 148 kilometers west of Eden

August 27, 2146, 0330 hours Eden/New Pittsburgh time

Callahan looked at the bleak landscape around him, seeing everything in the eerie shades of green and gray produced by infrared enhancement. He saw hillsides and gullies between them. He saw swirling dust. He saw rocks and boulders and pebbles. But aside from the forty men of his platoon who were spread widely around him, he saw little else.

"Nothing," he reported to Captain Ayers, who was four kilometers away at the refuel and resupply point. "There's not a goddamn thing out here."

"Are you sure?" Ayers returned, his voice transmitted on the same tactical channel the platoon members, the sergeants, and the individual men used in order to avoid making Callahan a target of Martian snipers.

"Am I sure?" Callahan shot back. "What the hell kind of a question is that? You either see something or you don't see something and we ain't seeing shit!" He knew he was well into the land of impertinence towards a superior officer but he didn't really care. What could they do to him? Send him to Mars?

"You're standing exactly where the last mortar attack came from," Ayers told him, ignoring the insolence for the moment. "It's only been ten minutes since the last shot was fired. There have been no landing signatures from Hummingbirds and it's more than two hundred below out there, well outside the visibility parameters of the Martian biosuits. There's no way they could have gotten out of view yet!"

"No hot spots, no footprints, no expended mortar shells, no Martians," Callahan said. "Just a whole lot of emptiness."

"Where the hell did they go?" Ayers demanded, his voice transmitting the strain and fatigue everyone was under.

Callahan shared his frustration, as did his men. They had really thought they were going to get one over on the Martians this time but the Martians had once again proved themselves a little wilier than they'd been given credit for.

"Clusterfuck," Callahan muttered. "This whole war is nothing but a clusterfuck."

Things had seemed to be looking up a little after that first devastating ambush the previous morning. New orders came down from General Wrath himself, orders that almost seemed to make sense. The formation had moved out, their aim to reach and secure the fueling point as quickly as possible and set up a forward airfield. They'd hugged the northern edge of the valley, tanks thickly guarding the left flank, close enough to engage any further ambush attempts immediately. This hadn't stopped the Martians, of course — Callahan had come to accept that nothing was going to completely stop them — but it had brought the attrition down to an almost acceptable level. The Mosquitoes still came in with depressing regularity, picking off APCs three and four at a time, and there was still nothing in the marine arsenal to counter this, but there was no more mass slaughter of APCs from Martian special forces teams hidden in the hills. They still attacked but generally they would not fire more than one volley of shots off before the tanks would drive them away. And since the long-standing order of engaging any team with ground forces once they dared to attack an armored column had been rescinded, they had lost no more men to sniper fire or mortar attack. The lead elements had pulled into the grid assigned as the refuel point just after 1600 yesterday. The establishment of the perimeter and the setting up of the supply units had gone even faster than expected. And then the trouble had started.

The moment that refueling and resupply operations began, mortars began to fly in, bursting directly over the top of APCs and tanks being pumped full of fuel and liquid oxygen, directly over the top of other armored vehicles being loaded with fresh ammunition and air canisters. Exposed troops were shredded. Supply hoses were destroyed. A few spectacular explosions occurred when the Martian shells detonated in exactly the right spot and caught an exposed fuel tank in just the right way. Artillery units tried to counter the mortar fire with little success. Intelligence still hadn't hacked into the Martian Internet and cracked the GPS satellite data. Troops sent out to engage the mortar teams were ambushed by squad-sized special forces units, just like on the landing zone perimeter. When command elected to stop sending the troops out after the mortar squads the special forces units began sniping at the APCs again with anti-tank lasers, exploding them in place. When command tried to counter this by ordering the troops inside of those APCs to dismount the Martians continued to explode the vacated vehicles but also started raining down some of the mortars on the exposed troops and cutting them down with sniper fire. The worst disaster, however, occurred when an attempt was made to move up some of the hovers from the landing ships to the newly established forward airfield at the re-fuel point. Twenty-four hovers left the LZ. None of them made it to their destination. They were pounced upon by a flight of eight Mosquitoes sixty kilometers out and methodically shot out of the sky. Hindsight would suggest that the Martians still had a special forces team or two watching the LZ from the surrounding hills and had vectored in the ambush.

Finally, after almost three hours of having men picked off by sniper bullets, blown up by mortars, of having APCs randomly explode in groups of four all over the formation, the sun had gone down, bringing blessed night to the landscape. It was thought that the Martians were unable to operate at night since their biosuits were no longer invisible and since the stealth aspects of their aircraft would be cut in half. Men were ordered back into their APCs to get some sleep. Refueling and resupply operations were ordered resumed at full speed. It was hoped that the bulk of the combat and artillery units would be ready to roll on Eden by sunrise. In addition another flight of sixteen hovers was ordered to move up from the LZ, their task to start bombing the Martian fixed heavy artillery sites outside of the MPG base.

The first indication that the Martians could, in fact, operate at night if they chose to came when all sixteen of the hovers were ambushed and shot down by Mosquitoes in almost exactly the same spot as the first twenty-four had been. This left the Eden operational area with only twenty combat hovers still capable of flight and those were all assigned to escort the many medivac shuttles that were transporting the many wounded back up to the hospital ship.

"It's official now," Callahan told Ayers when the news of the second flight of downed hovers had reached him. "The Martians have complete and total air superiority over this battlefield. We have nothing left to counter it."

"Air superiority doesn't win wars," Ayers responded. "Taking the enemy's positions does and we're still quite superior in armor and sheer manpower."

"For the moment," Callahan said. "They keep knocking us off like this that just might be in question too."

"Never happen," Ayers assured him. "Now that it's dark the Martians have all gone back inside their base. We'll get our units resupplied, get the ground troops a little rest, and we'll be at the Jutfield Gap by noon. When we meet those Martians head on we'll start kicking some serious ass."

They would not be at the Jutfield Gap by noon. Nor would the ground troops be getting much sleep. No sooner had the words come out of Ayers' mouth than the first of the thought-to-be-impossible nighttime mortar barrages had come rolling in, blasting two refuel teams into oblivion, destroying three hydrogen and oxygen hose systems, and exploding one APC. A few minutes later another barrage came in, this time from a different direction. A few minutes after that, yet another from yet another direction. It was determined that there were at least four squads out there, each with three weapons. Counter battery fire from the marine artillery units was as useless as it always was. No one could even begin to delude themselves that the Martians were firing blind, just hoping that their shells would land in the right place because their shells were landing in just the right place each and every time. Without fail they would come down atop a fueling or re-loading operation, or a group of exposed troops. Someone was within line of sight and was directing the fire. But who? And how? If they were in line of sight then they should be able to be seen in the infrared spectrum. But there was nothing, not even a hint of heat showing out there.

The Mosquitoes came soon after, popping out of the hillsides and blasting APCs, the fact that it was night not making an iota of difference in their targeting, aiming, or navigation skills. As soon as the Mosquitoes disappeared, more mortar fire would come in. As soon as the mortar fire died out, another group of Mosquitoes would come in. The fueling operation slowed to a crawl once again and marines continued to die with depressing regularity. Tanks plastered the surrounding hillsides with eighty millimeter cannon fire, hoping to blunder upon the person or persons directing the fire. This accomplished nothing but a waste of precious ammunition. There were simply too many hillsides, too much potential ground to cover.

Callahan spent most of the night huddled beneath the wreckage of an APC that had been struck hours before, watching the shells come arcing in, the explosions as they detonated, the laser flashes from the ghostly Mosquitoes, the impotent return fire of the marine tanks and anti-air units, and wishing he'd decided to join the army instead of the fucking marines.

And then, at 0300, just as he had finally started to drift into a fitful state that could technically be called sleep, someone had the idea of sending a few platoons out into the hills to seek out and destroy the mortar teams. In all, two companies worth of platoons were picked for this task and marched over to the hillsides on foot (more than one of them coming under fire from the mortars they were going to silence) and positioned themselves to make a quick rush inward. Another barrage came flying out and Callahan and his platoon had just happened to be closest. They'd moved in as fast as possible (which wasn't terribly fast at all, most of them were still quite clumsy in the Martian gravity) and found nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Apparently none of the other platoons that had rushed in to silence the other mortar teams had found anything either.

"There is one thing," said Ayers now, "there hasn't been any more mortar fire since we sent the platoons in after them."

This should have comforted Callahan, made him feel he had accomplished something. It didn't. It implied that they were under surveillance, that Martian eyes were gazing at them right now, this very second. That gave him the creeps. "So what are you saying?" Callahan asked. "Do they want us to stay out here?"

"That's affirmative," Ayers replied. "If you're keeping the mortar fire down by being out there then we want that to continue. That'll only leave us the Mosquitoes to worry about."

"We're totally cut off from assistance out here, cap," Callahan said.

"Obviously whoever is out there, however they're managing to keep out of sight, they don't want to try to take on a platoon. Just hang tough. Take up defensive positions. Hell, you're probably safer out there than you are back here."

"I suppose," Callahan said.

At that moment Corporal Grigsby, who had taken over for a dead sergeant in command of third squad, suddenly keeled over, his helmet smashed open, blood vapor boiling out of it — the tell-tale signature of a Martian sniper at work. Everyone hit the ground, their weapons pointing outward, their chatter suddenly filling the airwaves with fearful expletives.

"What the hell is going on?" Ayers demanded.

"Sniper," Callahan replied. "He took out Grigsby on third squad."

"Did you get him?" Ayers asked. "He has to be visible in infrared if he was close enough to shoot someone!"

"Did anyone see a shot?" Callahan asked the platoon at large.

No one had. A few minutes later the word was passed that two of the other platoons looking for two of the other mortar teams had also come under sniper fire and, furthermore, that the snipers in question had both taken out squad leaders.

"Get out of there," Ayers ordered in disgust. "As fast as you can. And don't talk on the frequency unless you absolutely have to."

They got out of there. They didn't talk. No one else shot at them but within ten minutes of leaving the hillsides the mortars began to fly again.

At 0723 a Hummingbird banked in and came to a landing four kilometers from the position Callahan and his platoon had been chased from four hours before. The ramp came down and Lon and his squad descended into the dust cloud formed by the landing. They were moving much slower than normal as each was heavily laden with almost fifty kilograms of weight they didn't normally bring into the field with them. Still they made it clear of the aircraft and into a defensive position in less than forty seconds. The ramp of the aircraft closed and it ascended back into the sky.

"Okay, let's move it," Lon said. "You never know when those Earthlings are going to start hitting the broad side of a greenhouse with their arty."

They got to their feet and lumbered quickly across the flat area, heading for a hill half a kilometer to the south. Sure enough, before they were even halfway there the white streaks of incoming artillery rounds came flying over the hills, trying to intersect with the flare of heat they'd detected with their passive systems. As was usually the case, they weren't even close. The rounds impacted so far away they didn't even see the flashes.

They made it safely to the hill and, after a brief check of the terrain, began to move closer to the marine positions. The sniper/observation teams already in position out here had let them know that no dismounted marines were currently in the neighborhood but you could never be too careful. There was always the miniscule chance that a marine patrol had somehow managed to slip by in the middle of the night without being seen. They walked in a spread out formation, lumbering under the extra weight but cautious, their eyes searching pre-assigned zones for anything that shouldn't be there.

"Charlie-five is just around the next hill," Jefferson reported about two kilometers in. "Close enough for direct-com. Do you want me to try a hail?"

"Yeah, give it a shot," Lon said. He knew that mortar team C-5, who was assigned to this sector, was receiving telemetry showing the location of Lon and his team, but making radio contact was still a good idea. After all, the team had been up all night, shooting and hiding from the marines and they were probably a bit jumpy.

"I got 'em," Jefferson reported a minute later. "They're standing by on the south side of the hill, ready for the meet."

"Static," Lon said. "Let's get over there and get rid of all this shit."

It took them another five minutes to walk around the base of the hill. Though the faith the team held in the invisibility of their biosuits have never been in question since the day the marine hover had passed right over the top of them without seeing them, it still did their hearts good when they stared at the spot where the mortar team was purported to be and saw nothing but rocks and hillside. It was only when the sergeant in charge of the team stood and waved at them, deliberately showing himself, that the illusion of nothingness was spoiled, and then only for that one man.

"That's eerie," Lisa said. "We're only two hundred meters away, he's standing up and he still seems to blend into the background. If I didn't know he was there I wouldn't have noticed him at all."

"Laura Whiting has blessed us with bad-ass military engineers," Lon agreed. "Come on, let's get over there."

As they came closer and closer the other five members of the mortar team became gradually visible one by one, at first just as vague outlines in the visual spectrum and then gradually firming up into human-like shapes. They stepped out from their hiding hole when Lon's team got within twenty meters.

"Lon Fargo, you old dick smoker," said the sergeant in charge of them. "Ain't the fuckin' Earthlings rid the planet of your greasy ass yet?"

"Not yet," Lon replied, stepping closer. "But they've sure as shit been trying. One of them tank shells passed about a meter over my head yesterday. How you doing, Mike?"

Handshakes were difficult to accomplish in a biosuit. The two of them greeted in the manner that had evolved to replace this ancient ritual when out in the field — they banged their right fists together three times.

"I'm tired as a motherfucker," Mike said. "Hungry too. I hear you brought us some breakfast."

"Yep," Lon agreed. "Ten fresh food gel packs, five of them beef paste, five chicken paste. You all can fight over who gets what."

"We've long since gotten over that," Mike said. "They all taste like shit anyway."

"I hear our paste tastes like filet mignon compared to the WestHem paste," one of Mike's men interjected. "They don't even try to flavor theirs. It's just raw nutrients."

"That has to be pretty damn disgusting," Lisa said. "I'm surprised they eat at all."

Mike's men all took a minute to look at Lisa with varying degrees of curiosity. All had heard about the female special forces member, of course, and a few had even met her before, but this was the first time they'd ever seen her out in the field, packing a weapon and lugging a huge equipment bag.

Lisa noticed their perusal. "Yeah, I got tits and a pussy all right," she said sweetly. "Don't I guys?"

"Yep," Jefferson said. "I've seen 'em."

"She is definitely not a boy," Horishito agreed.

Lon simply smiled, amused at the discomfort Lisa was causing the mortar team. "Anyway," he said. "We brought the marines some breakfast too. Sixty eighty millimeter mortar shells, fresh off the Alexander Industries assembly line. Will that hold you until you're relieved?"

"Hope so," Horishito said. "It's all we could fuckin' carry."

"Six apiece?" one of Mike's men said. "Is that all? Hell, we carry ten apiece when we deploy."

"Do you now?" Lisa asked. "And do you carry a twelve kilo anti-tank laser and thirty kilos worth of charging batteries and twelve kilos worth of extra ammunition as well? We sure as shit did."

The man grinned through his helmet. "You seem to fit in with Fargo and his team pretty good, Wong," he said. "No, we don't carry all that, although we do have to carry the actual mortars around. Those weigh a kilo or two."

"Point taken," Lisa said.

"Yes," said Lon, "and if we're done measuring dicks here, how about you guys relieve us of this shit before I get a fuckin' hernia? Where do you want it?"

"Right this way," Mike said. "Let me show you to our supply closet."

He led them along the side of the hill and between a couple of large boulders. There, in the dark recesses behind the larger of the boulders, he lifted a piece of firm plastic imbedded with fake Martian rocks and covered with dust that had blown in. Beneath it was a hole about a meter deep, two meters long, and a meter and a half wide. Twenty or so eighty millimeter shells and a few boxes of ammunition were neatly stacked inside.

"Nice," said Lon as he hefted his pack from his shoulders and set it down on the ground. "You guys dug this yesterday?"

"Took about an hour," Mike confirmed. "Our own hidey holes are about six meters that way." He pointed further along the hill, towards another scattering of boulders. "Those took longer to dig but we were ready for action by the time the sun went down."

"The cover insulation worked as advertised?" Lisa asked, referring to the insulating material that had been developed to keep the heat released from a biosuit from seeping out into the nighttime atmosphere and therefore giving away an underground position.

"Like a charm," he replied. "Ambient temp went up about two degrees every ten minutes when we were sealed inside, that's how well it was keeping the heat from escaping. Around 0330 the Earthlings sent a platoon strength unit in here after us. Some of them were less than ninety meters away and didn't see us."

"That had to have been a bit tense," Lon said.

"When they first showed up it was," Mike said. "I mean, there's six of us and forty of them and we don't even have a SAW out here, just our M-24s. But after a minute or so of looking at them through the periscopes we could see they weren't gonna find us even if they walked right over the top of us. The real tension started when they didn't leave right away, they just kinda stood out there, looking around. If they would've stayed more than an hour enough heat would've built up in our holes to start leaching through the insulation."

"How'd you get rid of them?" Lon asked.

"You know Meyers?" Mike asked.

"Ziff Meyers?"

"That's him," Mike confirmed. "He's our overwatch sniper and our recon guy. He and his observer got their own hidey hole about two clicks south, on top of one of the hills out there. They were the ones feeding us our targeting information last night. They were also the ones who warned us the Earthling dismounts were making a run into the hills. Anyway, they were scanning the transmissions, found the guy who was talking the most, and Ziff put a round right through his fuckin' skull."

"From two klicks?" Horishito said, visibly impressed.

"From two fuckin' klicks," Mike confirmed. "And there was a forty kph wind blowin' too. That is some serious-ass marksmanship there. It was beautiful. I saw the flash from his weapon but only because I knew where to look for it. None of the Earthlings saw shit."

"That's awesome," Lon said. "Do we have any confirmation the guy blabbing his mouth the most is a squad leader?" One coup the marines had managed to score in the conflict was figuring out how the snipers and the other special forces teams were managing to pinpoint their leaders. The job had become somewhat more difficult since they'd started confining their conversations to only one channel while dismounted or while in their APCs. MPG Intelligence had suggested that the more a person talked the more likely it was that he was a leader of some sort.

"We ran the scanner over him," Mike said, referring to the micro-chip reader all MPG units at the squad level and above carried. It was capable of reading the information from the identity chip imbedded in the arm and chest of every WestHem and Martian soldier and transmitting that information via satellite link back to MPG headquarters. The reason for this was to facilitate identification of both enemy and friendly KIAs for purposes of notification under Geneva accords in the case of the former and notification of next of kin in the case of the latter.

"And?" Lon asked.

"Corporal John Grigsby was his name," Mike said with a shrug. "Could be he was just the biggest loudmouth in the platoon or it could be he'd been promoted to squad or even platoon leader because we already got the other leaders in that platoon. We'll probably never know."

"Probably not," Lon agreed, "but Colonel Bright briefed us personally this morning. He says to keep going after the noisy ones."

Mike shrugged again. "I guess it pays to keep your mouth shut in the WestHem marines these days." He turned to his men. "Come on, guys. Let's get these shells stowed so we can get some breakfast and then crash out for a bit."

"You're on stand-down?" Lisa asked.

Mike nodded. "Team echo should be on the ground by the time you get into position. We're gonna catch five hours and then be on station for the afternoon festivities."

"Well don't let us keep you from sleep," Lon said, he turned to his team. "Let's unload, people. And then we can go say a hearty good morning to our WestHem friends."

"Callahan! Callahan, you there?" a voice barked in his helmet. He heard it but didn't respond at first, he couldn't. His fatigued mind was simply too far gone to comprehend that he was supposed to respond.

He grunted once and rolled over, his biosuit pushing into a jagged piece of frame protruding from the smashed APC he was lying against. He began to drift off again.

"Callahan!" the voice barked again. "Jesus Christ, don't tell me they got him now."

The drifting came to an end. His mind snapped back into something approximating functionality and he opened his eyes. He was looking at Martian soil stained with hydraulic fluid and metal fragments. The display in his combat goggles told him it was 1433 hours, less than twenty minutes since blissful unconsciousness had taken him.

"I'm here, cap," he told Ayers. "Sorry, I was trying to catch a nap. What's up?"

"Oh thank God," Ayers said. "I thought I was going to have to replace you with Sergeant Billfold. The orders just came through. All artillery and combat units are refueled and re-armed. We're moving out at 1500. Start loading your platoon into your APCs."

He blinked a few times and then yawned deeply. "Right, cap," he said. "I'll start loading."

While Ayers began barking to Sergeant Billfold on the same channel, telling him to get his platoon moving as well, Callahan rolled over and stood up, his eyes immediately scanning the surrounding hillsides, looking for flying mortar shells or diving Mosquitoes. Everything was quiet. He picked up his M-24, which had been half buried in Martian dust in the twenty minutes he'd been down, and shook it off. He slung it over his shoulder and looked at the landscape around him.

Wrecked APCs were everywhere but were particularly thick around the fueling and resupply trains. Near the center of the formation a morgue of sorts had been set up and dozens, perhaps hundreds of marines were laid side by side awaiting a lull in the fighting so they could be transported back to the LZ and eventually returned to the Panamas for their flag-draped trip homeward. On the east side of the formation, beyond the fueling operation area, a battalion aid station had been set up. Every medivac hover available was constantly coming and going from this position, transporting the many wounded back to the LZ for evac back to orbit. So far the Martians had not attacked any of these hovers, although they had already proven they could take them down as easily as a man could take down a gnat. And surrounding the entire formation like a ring were the tanks. At last count there were still 3034 of them, not including the supply train transport tanks. That was twelve less than they had left the LZ with and those twelve had been lost due to mechanical malfunction, not enemy fire. The Martians had not killed a single main battle tank in this entire conflict. Again, this was something that should have comforted Callahan, should have made him feel this war was in the bag once they went head to head. But again, he didn't feel better, he felt a nervous sense of doom at the curious disinterest the Martian showed for WestHem heavy armor.

They're not afraid of our tanks, his mind insisted on whispering to him. We outnumber them ten to one in heavy armor and they just don't give a shit. Why?

He didn't know, couldn't begin to imagine. The very idea of not putting tanks at the top of the priority of targets list was so foreign to conventional military thinking that attempts to find reason behind it died for lack of something to grasp onto. Nor was that the only thing the Martians were ignoring. All six hundred of the self-propelled 150 millimeter artillery guns were still intact as well, without a single Martian laser being fired at a single one of them. These were the guns that would be ripping up their prepared infantry positions in the Jutfield Gap in a few hours, that would be killing the ground troops within those trenches. Why weren't the Martians trying to take them out? Why were they sending their air assets and their special forces teams after simple foot soldiers and the APCs that carried them? What did they hope gain by it?

"Oh, and Callahan," Ayers said, "I'm sending twelve more men over to your platoon. You'll need to find room for them in your APCs."

"What?" Callahan responded. "Twelve more men? What the hell?"

"The Martians knocked out a bunch of empty APCs down here. There's not enough to transport everyone at one squad per vehicle anymore. Just cram them in and make them part of your platoon."

Callahan sighed. Though his platoon was understrength again — four men had been killed and two wounded — they were also down an APC. It had been blown to pieces around 1300 today as the driver had been moving it to the fueling station. "Okay," he replied, knowing that argument was futile. He would just have to have a few guys sit on each other's laps. Such was war. "Send 'em over."

They did not move out at 1500 as scheduled. It took until almost 1600 just to get everyone loaded up — the process hampered by continuing air attacks from Mosquitoes, continuing laser attacks from the hills, and, just for good measure, the occasional sniper attack which usually befell someone of command rank.

At last, at 1648, the tanks began to roll, forming up into their far from impervious barrier along the formation's left flank. The APCs formed up next, still in ranks of eight but with more space between them. The artillery units formed up in ranks of ten behind this, their positions protected by a ring of tanks and anti-air vehicles. The dust cloud formed and began to blow northeastward, on the prevailing winds. Behind the formation the pale Martian sun sank towards the horizon.

At 2015 hours that night the lead units of the formation marching on Eden crossed an invisible line in the sand. They were now exactly one hundred kilometers from their target city's western edge. This meant they were now in range of the fixed heavy artillery guns that protected the approaches to Eden's most vulnerable side.

These guns had been the subject of much derision on the part of Earthling military officers and analysts during the MPG's formative years and beyond. Each gun was a huge behemoth that crewed fifteen and fired shells that were 250 millimeters in diameter, two meters in length, and weighed three hundred kilograms. These shells could be fired up to one hundred kilometers through the thin Martian atmosphere and against the weak Martian gravity. As impressive as this all sounded, the guns were thought to be next to useless in a modern military conflict. Heavy artillery was a thing of the past, made obsolete by the advent of airpower and cruise missiles back in the post-World War II era. What good was a heavy gun if it could simply be destroyed by airpower long before any targets it could hope to engage came into range? But now it was the airpower that had been destroyed — all of the hovers set to streak in low and plaster the sites with eighty millimeter armor-piercing shells and high intensity laser blasts had been dropped onto the Martian soil. The guns still stood. Every last one of them — twenty in all covering Eden.

Commanders began watching the night sky nervously, braced for an onslaught of high-explosive heavy shells to come arcing over the horizon into their midst. They wondered what effect this would have. In pre-war planning no one had ever considered, even as a remote possibility, that these guns would not be neutralized. As such, no one had ever taken the time to research just what the guns were capable of. How accurate were they? What was their rate of fire? Most of all, what kind of damage could they inflict on an APC? With 150mm guns — the standard artillery weapon of EastHem, WestHem, and the Martians — it would take a direct hit with an armor piercing shell atop one of the armored vehicles to destroy it. Was this also the case with the 250mm? Or would a near-miss be sufficient? No one knew, but they were all convinced they would soon be finding out.

But a strange thing happened as they crossed the invisible one hundred kilometer mark one by one and rolled onward. The Mosquito attacks continued as the walls of the valley gradually began to narrow inward, funneling them toward the twenty-five kilometer wide Jutfield Gap, but no heavy shells appeared. Not a single one.

As had been the case with Callahan earlier, this seemingly favorable development was met with more unease than anything else. Why did the Martians pay all of that money to design, engineer, install, equip, and arm these guns, why did they have more than five hundred men who might otherwise have been put on the front line trained and operating these guns if they weren't going to use them?

"Counter-battery fire," a few marines were heard to suggest. "Maybe they think they can take our arty out with them."

This suggestion was almost universally scoffed at. WestHem artillery units used the tried and true "shoot and scoot" technique when engaging targets. This meant that each battery of guns would fire three rounds apiece and then quickly move to another location before counter-battery units could bring down answering fire upon them. With six hundred guns firing just for the Eden assault alone, at least one battalion could be firing at any given time while the others were in motion. This was enough to insure a constant barrage would be falling on the Martian positions while keeping the marine guns safe from any form of counter-battery fire, whether they were heavy fixed guns or the Martians own 150mm mobile guns.

No, the consensus was, the marine artillery units had nothing to fear from the Martian 250s. There had to be another reason for the lack of engagement. Maybe, some of the higher-ups in the chain of command suggested, the damn guns didn't even work. After all, they were designed, built, and operated by a bunch of greenies, weren't they?

When they closed to within twenty-five kilometers of the Jutfield Gap the tanks pulled away from the left flank of the formation and the bulk of them moved back to the front, forming the vanguard for the coming assault on the Martian positions. Once in position, they stopped, engines idling. The APCs then spread out into assault positions behind them. They too stopped. In the rear, some five kilometers back, the six hundred guns of the artillery began to spread out as well, setting up to begin their bombardment of the Martian infantry positions.

In APC number 34-A17-06, near the center of the formation, Callahan was in the commander's seat, his helmeted head in his hands, his eyes tracking over the telemetry on his screen that showed the location of his platoon and the rest of his company. He was as tired as he ever remembered being, having gotten less than fifteen minutes of sleep since they'd pulled away from the re-fuel point. His mind was having trouble processing information, making decisions. Even reciting the alphabet in correct order seemed a challenge.

"Platoon leaders," said Captain Ayers' voice in his headset. "Switch over to command-five. Acknowledge."

That brought Callahan awake a little more. Switch over to a command channel? That would mean he would be broadcasting on more than one frequency. That was how the Martians got you!

"Henderson acknowledging," said Sergeant Henderson, who was commanding first platoon.

"Stagway acknowledging," said the voice of a former corporal who was now a recently field-promoted sergeant who was now commanding an entire platoon because all of the other sergeants were dead.

"Billfold acknowledging," said Sergeant Billfold, who had been third sergeant in fourth platoon before the lieutenant and the first two sergeants had bought it.

Jesus, Callahan thought to himself in horrified wonder, we're supposed to fight with this bunch? I don't even know their fucking names!

"Callahan, you there?" Ayers enquired, clearly irritated with the lack of response.

"Uh... sorry, cap," he said. "I was having some problems with my transmit key. Is it safe to switch up to a command channel?"

"It's only the Martian ground units that go after us based on multiple radio frequencies," Ayers told him. "And it's night now so they're not currently operating. Well... they're not firing at us anyway. Besides, we're gonna need to switch back to multi-frequency operations when we go into head-to-head combat. There's no way we can run a full scale battle with all of us talking on the same channel."

"Oh... okay then," Callahan said, too wasted to question this wisdom. "Switching to command-five."

Once everyone had made the switch Ayers wasted little time on idle chitchat. "We've acquired some fresh overheads of our first objective area," he said. A second later the computer beeped, indicating a successful download. "These shots were taken about thirty minutes ago by an AA-71 launched from the Nebraska up in orbit. It managed to get through the Martian combat space patrol and into position. The crew captured the shot and were able to transmit the telemetry back to Nebraska before Martian spacecraft destroyed them."

Callahan woke up a little at the prospect of seeing some up-to-date intelligence on what they would soon be facing. This was a commodity that had been in woefully short supply so far. The ships up in orbit were not in the right position to take close-up shots of the operational areas. They had no satellites in orbit to peer down with. They had no hovers to send on recon flights. Reconnaissance probes were usually engaged and blown to pieces by Martian Space Guard F-22s the moment they entered the envelope of Martian controlled space. Even the mighty AA-71 Falcons — the atmospheric attack craft launched from the Californias which were capable of diving down into the Martian atmosphere and hitting targets on the surface with high energy lasers — recorded nearly fifty percent losses every time they attempted a recon mission, whether they were escorted by fighters or not. This was so high of a number that Admiral Jules had stopped sending them. In short, intelligence had been nearly blinded to what the Martians were doing at their defensive lines ever since establishing orbit.

"Open download," Callahan told his computer.

A second later his screen filled with a high resolution shot of the Jutfield Gap and the area surrounding it. It was a night shot with the features of interest visible in the infrared spectrum. The marking on the shot indicated it had been taken from an altitude of seventy thousand meters above ground level.

"As you can see from the shot," Ayers said, "there are approximately three regiments of armored cavalry deployed through the gap. Tanks and APCs are spaced pretty evenly between the low hillsides."

"Three regiments?" Callahan asked. "I thought they only had two manned ACR units assigned to Eden."

"Intelligence has confirmed through their network of loyalists on the planet that at some point the Martians did manage to successfully unload the armored vehicles and equipment from the pre-positioned Panamas that belonged to the fast reaction division. It appears they deployed some of those armored vehicles to the Eden theater of operations and formed a new armored cav regiment with them."

"Where'd they get the staffing?" Billfold asked.

"Their recruitment efforts during our travel time apparently were successful enough to provide this staffing. However their training time was less than ten weeks. Estimates are that at least one of these ACRs are staffed almost completely with new recruits."

"They're throwing people out to the slaughter," Henderson said.

"Indeed they are," Ayers said. "We're told that a lot of these new recruits might be young kids, elderly, even women."

"Women?" said Stagway with contempt. "Are you shitting, cap?"

"Intelligence tells us that the Martians are so desperate for recruits that they're even conscripting women," Ayers confirmed. "Don't let that soften you up though. There were plenty of women shooting guns at us in Salta, right Callahan?"

"Damn right," Callahan agreed. "You just put 'em down like anyone else."

"Not that you would be able to tell which were the women or the kids or the old people anyway," Ayers said. "If they pick up arms against you, you kill them. That's the rule. In any case, division command feels that the most likely outcome once we engage will be a complete collapse of their lines and a disorganized retreat. This will probably occur once the artillery starts to fall on them, which should be in less than twenty minutes now."

"Thank God," Billfold said.

"Amen to that," said Henderson.

"In any case," Ayers went on, "we need to make preparations for our assault in the unlikely event that the Martians do manage to hold through the artillery and the tank assault. So let's go over our area of operation. Look at grid 17-A. As you can see, it is mostly flat plain dotted with areas of raised elevation ranging anywhere from thirty to one hundred meters above mean ground level. The Martian tanks and APCs are in prepared positions in the gaps between these hills and their dismounted infantry are in prepared positions atop the hills. We can see the armored vehicles and get an accurate count of them but apparently the Martians have some sort of overhead cover on their dismount positions. We can tell they're manned by the heat escaping from them but we can't get a count on personnel or weaponry from the overheads. What is plain to see, however, is that this is the ideal place for our foe to make a first stand against us — or so it would seem to them. These hills in the gap provide them with overlapping fields of fire of both small arms and man-portable anti-armor weapons."

"If we engage them head to head we're gonna take some pretty good casualties before we push them off those hills," Callahan said, looking at the shimmer of heat that stretched from one end of the gap to the other.

"True," agreed Ayers. "That is why we're not going to be engaging them head to head. The artillery is going to pound them for at least an hour before any of the other units even move into range. If they don't surrender or flee from that — or if they're not all killed from the bombardment — the tanks will move in next and destroy their tanks and APCs and then mop up any survivors in the dismount positions with their main guns. At that point we will move in and occupy the ground."

"Seems simple enough," said Henderson.

"Yeah," said Callahan, the uneasy feeling coming on him again. "But so has everything else so far and it's yet to turn out that way. What about their artillery?"

"The approaches to the gap are within range of both their heavy guns and their mobile 150s," Ayers said. "However, once our artillery units pound the shit out of their trenches, they're going to move up for counter-battery fire of the Martian artillery. We should be able to take those hills without too much of a problem. After the gap, the terrain widens out considerably, allowing us more room to maneuver."

"All right," said Stagway, confidence in his voice. "Looks like this thing is finally starting to turn around."

No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than a flight of Mosquitoes came in from the hillsides to the south and blasted four APCs into oblivion. The first to fall was the one that held Stagway and the squad with him.

The dance of the WestHem marine's artillery battalions was an intricate and well-rehearsed affair. They spread out all across the valley, forming up by battery, each of which contained six guns. The commanders in charge of each battery had a map on their screen which indicated firing positions they were to head to after each firing sequence. Each battery had more than twenty such positions pre-programmed in as waypoints on the navigation screen. Their doctrine commanded they fire three rounds apiece and then immediately begin moving to the next waypoint. At the same time they were to begin moving, another battery somewhere else would begin firing on the same target.

In all, more than three thousand men were directly involved in the artillery operation for the Eden theater alone. At 2145 hours all six hundred guns were in their initial positions, their barrels elevated and ready to begin firing, their order of firing and their initial target info on their screens. They were only waiting the command to go before they started unleashing 150mm high explosive shells towards their primary targets: the entrenched ground troops of the greenie ACRs in the Jutfield Gap. Utilizing the latest recon shots from the AA-71 and matching them to their existing maps and existing positions, they were finally, for the first time, able to have confidence that their rounds would actually land within twenty or thirty meters of where they wanted them. The rounds they were to fire were a mixture of fused shells that would explode twenty meters above the ground and penetrating shells that would lodge into the ground before exploding. To a man the artillery units thought that they were the ones who would begin dealing some payback to the greenies that had tormented the corps for so long.

Unbeknownst to anyone currently in biosuits below, including the Martians in their trenches and armored vehicles, five tiny aircraft were circling eight thousand meters above the battlefield. The aircraft were called "peepers" by the Martians who operated them and they were each less than three hundred millimeters in length, with a wingspan of one meter. Unmanned, of course, and powered by electric batteries that turned a four-bladed propeller, the aircraft were constructed of radar-absorbent, heat-dampening material that made them completely invisible to any electronic detection device in possession of the enemy at the height at which they operated. Each was equipped with a high resolution infrared camera, a high resolution visual camera, and a directional radio antenna which could transmit a tight, encrypted beam to either a communications satellite or a receiver dish high atop the Agricorp Building.

Monitoring the real-time take from each of these aircraft were the FDCs, or fire direction centers, for the MPG 5^th Heavy Artillery Battalion. There were twenty of the 250-millimeter guns divided into five batteries of four guns apiece. Thus, each FDC was responsible for directing the rounds for four of the guns. All five of the FDC teams were located in the same building, deep within the Eden MPG base. The actual FDC officers were captains — all of them long-time members of the MPG — overseen by a lieutenant colonel who had overall command of the battalion.

Captain Rod Resin was in charge of the 3^rd Battery of the 5^th Heavy Artillery Battalion. He sat at his terminal staring at the images on his screen, touching each grid that contained a marine 150mm battery and marking its location. He too began assigning an order of fire, as did his three counterparts.

Atop Hill 657 in the Jutfield Gap, Jeff Waters came slowly awake as he heard the volume of chatter on the tactical channel pick up. He yawned, stretched a little, and looked around, seeing nothing but blackness and vague shapes around him and stars shining overhead. It was full dark outside, which meant he'd been asleep at least three hours. The fullness of his bladder told him it had been more like four or five. He tapped the control panel on his leg and brought his combat goggles into infrared mode. Instantly the occupants of the trench became visible, as did the time display in the upper right corner of his view. It was 2149 hours. Almost five hours since he'd nodded off.

The trench they occupied was more than just a simple ditch dug in the rocky ground, it was somewhat of an engineering marvel in its own right. Sixty meters long and staffed with both first and second platoon, it curved and twisted along the summit of the hill and was liberally stuffed with extra ammunition, food gel packs, and waste packs, both used and new. The front of the trench, which faced the wastelands where the enemy would be coming from, was protected by a triple layer of heavy sandbags full of industrial shavings and cemented together with polymer glue. In front of this, buried beneath the soil, was a barrier of dense concrete designed to channel the blasts from penetrating artillery shells upward instead of inward. The trench itself had been dug so the bottom of it angled downward and inward, underneath the protective sandbags and concrete. This would prevent shrapnel from airbursts from reaching the troops during an artillery barrage. This was just one of more than three thousand similar trenches constructed at the approaches to all the Martian cities in the first ten years of the MPG's operations.

"How was your beauty sleep?" asked Hicks, who was manning the SAW position two meters to Waters' left.

"Static," Jeff said, standing up and stretching out. This allowed him to look out through the opening in the sandbags he was assigned to and view the terrain where they would soon be doing battle. It was empty out there as it had always been, even on high magnification, but there was something new, something ominous showing in the air beyond the horizon. There were flows and eddies of dark blue streaming upward into the sky and slowly dissipating, thousands of them, some brighter than other, some longer lasting than others. "What the fuck is that?" he asked.

"The little blue streamers?" asked Hicks.

"Yeah."

"It's the fuckin' Earthlings, man," he said. "We started seeing that about an hour ago."

"The Earthlings?"

"It's the heat rising into the air from thousands of armored vehicles just over the horizon," said Sergeant Walker, their squad leader. "We can't see them yet, but they're less than thirty klicks away, forming up to move in on us."

The knowledge of what was causing the phenomenon made it seem even more ominous. He had been in this trench for thirty-eight hours now, peeing into a relief tube, shitting into a waste-pack, drinking processed water and eating food gel and looking out at a whole lot of nothing but now the reality that he was actually going to be in battle soon — real battle, not just another training battle — struck home to him. With this revelation game the logical extension of it. I could die out here. I'm only nineteen years old and I could be dead in the next twelve hours.

He shuddered a little and quickly sat down so he wouldn't have to look at it anymore.

"You okay?" Hicks asked him.

"Yeah," Jeff said. "Just need to take a shit, that's all."

"Oh, for the love of Laura Whiting," said a female voice in his headset. That was Private Cynthia Drogan, one of the other new recruits to the 17^th ACR. She was on the other side of Hicks, her M-24 gripped against her chest. "What is up with you guys and the need to announce your bodily functions for all of us to hear? Can't you just do your business quietly and not talk about it like a civilized human being?"

"Want me to leave my comm link open so you can hear the grunts?" asked Jeff, who knew that Drogan's chiding was mostly good-natured.

"No," she said firmly, "and you can also spare us the description of the consistency, length, and liquidity of your stool as well, thank you very much."

Jeff smiled and flipped off the transmit button on his comm link. He let go with a stream of urine, which was sucked down a condom catheter attached to his penis, through a hose, and into the suit's liquid waste storage system where the water in it would be recycled and dumped into his drinking reservoir and the rest of the compounds would be shipped to the solid waste pack mounted just below his right leg. He then assumed the defecation position, which was a sitting position with the pelvis suspended slightly off the ground. A flip of a button on his suit and a custom-molded suction cup device pressed itself over his anal opening, forming somewhat of a seal. A vacuum began to run from within the suit creating a sensation that Jeff found disturbingly unpleasant but that others admitted — usually under the influence of alcohol — to enjoying greatly. He grunted, pushing with the proper muscles and voided himself for the better part of three minutes, the waste material moving down the hose and into the storage pack. When he was finished with his business a warning indicator in his combat goggles lit up, letting him know that the solid waste reservoir was now eighty-six percent full and that he should change it. This he did, opening the compartment on his leg and removing the old. He tossed it into a pile of other used packs and retrieved an empty one from another pile. He plugged it in and then closed the compartment once again.

"Did you wash your hands?" Hicks asked him when he was done.

"Hell yeah," Jeff replied. "Didn't you see me?"

"Disgusting," said Drogan. "Men are all disgusting pigs."

"Is that why you only eat tuna casserole, Drogan?" Hicks asked her.

"I don't only eat tuna casserole," she replied. "It's just my preference. I like a good beefsteak every now and then too."

"Yeah?" Jeff asked, surprised. He had thought she was a strict lesbian.

"Yeah," she confirmed, "although I must admit I prefer it with a little tuna on the side, if you know what I mean."

Laughter filled the channel for a few seconds and then slowly petered away. Before someone else could make another joke and keep it going, Sergeant Walker asked for everyone's attention.

"Uh oh," said Jeff. "That must mean something's about to go down."

"Actually," said Walker, "something is about to come down. Namely, artillery on top of our fuckin' heads. The LT just got the word from battalion that the marine artillery units are in position and appear to be readying for the preliminary barrage against us."

"Oh great," moaned Hicks. "The moment we've all been waiting for."

"Indeed," Walker said. "And there's some more bad news to go along with it. The WestHem navy managed to get a recon ship through our fighters and it was able to take some shots of the deployment area and transmit them back. Intel estimates that they might have got a clear enough shot to zero in their guns with. There's at least a fifty percent chance their arty might actually be accurate."

Everyone pondered this information for a moment with varying degrees of fear and trepidation.

"They have six hundred guns out there?" asked Jeff. "I know these trenches are designed to take a beating, but can they withstand a prolonged barrage of accurate artillery?"

"That's never been tested," Walker said. "Obviously, if enough fire is concentrated on a particular spot though, the integrity of the trenches will have to fail at some point."

"Wow," said Drogan. "You got any more encouraging words for us, sarge?"

"I'm told that the marine artillery will be quickly neutralized," Walker said. "That comes directly from Colonel Martin himself."

"How the fuck are they gonna neutralize six hundred guns?" asked Hicks.

"They didn't share their plans with me," Walker said. "But my guess would be our heavy artillery battalion will have something to do with it."

"The 250s?" asked Jeff. "Can they shoot them things a hundred klicks and have them come down close enough to hit the marine guns?"

"In theory they can," Walker replied. "If someone is directing the fire for them."

"Like the special forces teams?"

Walker sounded a little doubtful about this. "There would have to be a lot of special forces teams in order to do that. From ground level they wouldn't be able to see all of the guns, much less accurately graph their location."

"Then how the fuck are they gonna do it?" Hicks demanded.

"We'll just have to wait and see," Waters said. "Everyone man your positions for now. The moment you see shells coming in, we get our asses down in the bombardment position. Get it?"

Everyone got it.

Captain Resin looked at his screen, seeing that the enemy 150mm guns in his sector of responsibility were still just sitting there, not moving, not firing. They were probably waiting for it to be exactly 2200 hours. One of the things EastHem and WestHem were both quite fond of was having battles start exactly on the hour. This was for no other reason than it looked good when written up in the Internet news files. That was just fine with Resin though. Having the targets sit still made his job infinitely easier. Now it was time to see if all of the expense and man-hours that went into these heavy guns had been worth it. It not, the poor slobs in the trenches out there were really going to catch hell.

"All units are ready," came the voice of Colonel Standish, who was monitoring the take from all five peepers from his terminal at the back of the room. "On my mark, commence firing and fire at will."

Resin opened the link that allowed him to communicate with the men and women of his battery. "Prepare to commence firing," he told them, knowing, of course, that they were already prepared.

The actual guns were located half a kilometer outside the base wall, spread out over an area nearly a kilometer in length. Large concrete and steel reinforced structures housed each gun mechanism and protected the crew inside from casual bombardment or counter-battery fire from 150mm guns if they happened to be in range. The barrels of each gun were thirteen meters in length and, when not in use, could be lowered down into their own concrete reinforced shells to protect them from erosion by the constantly blowing Martian sand. Currently all of the barrels were elevated, pointing to the west, and aligned perfectly to launch their first shots at their first targets. Each of the gun positions were connected to the base itself by an underground tunnel system eight meters in diameter. Through these tunnels the crews were able to move to their positions, retreat from them in case of attack or destructive accident, and, most importantly, a constant stream of shells could be moved to the guns via a conveyer belt that led to the storage area inside the base.

Lieutenant Rich Hotbox was in command of Gun-1, in Captain Resin's battery. He, like all the rest of the gun crews, was dressed in a biosuit with a specially reinforced helmet that would provide hearing protection against the tremendous decibel levels the exploding propellant in the shells would produce. He checked the positioning of his crew one last time — they had loaded the first of the shells into the breech and had all stepped back the required two meters from the mechanism — and then checked the positioning of his barrel on last time. The numbers for his azimuth and elevation matched exactly the targeting information sent to him by command. The gun was ready to fire. All he needed now was the order to do it.

That order came a few seconds later. There was no dramatic speech to along with it, just the simple words from Captain Resin: "Commence firing. Stay on initial targets until told to switch."

"Okay, guys," Hotbox told his crew on the tactical channel. "This is it. Gun is firing now." With that he reached down and flipped up a guard on a simple red button. Without hesitation he put his finger on it and pushed it. A signal moved from the button, through a series of wires and switches, and caused a relay to close in the gun itself. A simple electric charge then ignited a primer in the self-contained shell. The primer ignited the main propellant charge and it exploded with a tremendous bang, propelling the shell out of the barrel on a gout of flame bright enough to momentarily turn the surrounding night brighter than daylight.

"Shot's off," Hotbox said. "Reload sequence."

Two members of the gun crew stepped forward and opened the breech of the weapon. Thin streamers of white smoke drifted out as they reached in and removed the ten kilogram shell casing and rolled it onto the other side of the conveyer where it would eventually make its way back to the base for recycling. The unload team stepped immediately back and the load team stepped forward. There were three of them. One moved a lever allowing the next shell to slide forward and roll into a hydraulic loading tray. Another then activated the hydraulic controls and lifted the shell up, allowing it to roll into the breech. The third then slammed the breech shut and locked it, causing a green light to appear on Hotbox's panel. The team then stepped back beyond the safety margin.

"All clear," said the corporal in charge of the reload team. His words came out less than fifteen seconds after the first shell had been launched.

Hotbox made a brief visual check to make sure everyone really was clear and then said, "gun is firing." He pushed the button again.

"Holy shit, look at that!" an excited voice — it sounded like Drogan — suddenly barked over the tactical channel. It was quickly followed up by other such sentiments.

Jeff wasn't sure what everyone was talking about at first — he had been watching the eastern horizon and those eerie heat tendrils drifting into the air — and then he looked upward and saw the white streaks flying through the sky in groups of four. They moved rapidly from behind, arcing over the top of them and heading off into the distance where they disappeared from sight over the horizon.

"Those are 250s," said Sergeant Walker. "No doubt about it. Nothing else could move like that."

"They're going after the WestHem arty," Hicks said. "That has to be what they're doing."

"Yep," Walker agreed. "The question is, will they be able to hit them?"

Colonel Steve Dallas was in ultimate command of the WestHem artillery battalions in the Eden theater of operations. His command post was a standard APC packed with computer and communications equipment instead of infantry troops. He was located near the rear of the artillery positions, guarded by two anti-air vehicles and two platoons of tanks. He had been watching the clock in the corner of his main display, waiting for it to be precisely 2200 hours so he could begin unleashing explosive death upon the greenies, when the cries of "incoming!" began to sound over his radio link. He looked at the screen in which an outside view, enhanced by infrared, was being displayed. He immediately saw the incoming shells and saw they were heading directly for his guns. This did not immediately worry him. After all, the shells might land in their midst but they had traveled almost a hundred kilometers to get here and they would have to land very close to one of his guns in order to damage it. His gun platforms, after all, were almost as well armored as an APC.

The first volley came down, the shells exploding one by one with tremendous flashes of light, smoke, and flying dust. Dallas began to feel alarmed when he saw that groups of the shells were landing very close together, not all over the field as he'd expected. No sooner had the dust started to settle when more cries of "incoming!" began to sound and more shells came streaking in over the horizon. He looked at his main display, which showed the location and status of each gun and was horrified to see that three of his batteries had been hit, with a total of nine guns no longer transmitting telemetry to him. The second volley of shells came down and six more guns stopped transmitting as well.

"Shit," he said, noting that a third volley of shells was even now appearing over the horizon. He keyed his transmit button. "All batteries, move to your next positions and commence firing immediately. They've got us dialed in! Displace and begin fire and movement procedures!"

"Units are in motion," Captain Resin said as he saw the targets suddenly begin moving. "Cease fire. I repeat — cease fire."

The guns of his battery stopped firing, the crews taking the opportunity to blast a cleaning charge through them to clear out the propellant debris. Resin continued to look at the live video feed from the peeper circling above his area of operation. He could see the hot spots of more than six destroyed gun platforms and identified at least four more that appeared to be damaged beyond the ability to fire shells. Yes, the 250mm shells were working well. Fused to explode a mere eight meters above the ground, if they detonated within fifteen to twenty meters of a gun, it was enough to kill it or at least heavily damage it. But the easy kills had now come to an end. Now the trick would be to train the guns on a WestHem battery the moment it came to a halt and began to set up to fire. To wait any longer would mean the battery would fire its three rounds and be moving again before the heavy shells could reach it.

His eyes stayed glued to the tiny red machines as they circled and turned. He watched as a battery formed up into a line and stopped. Ignoring everything else on the screen he quickly drew a circle around the six weapons and told the computer to lock it. Using known navigational points on the mapping software — points that had been dialed in long before with GPS data — the computer triangulated the circle from four such points and came up with a position fix that would be accurate to within a meter. A set of coordinates appeared on Resin's screen and he immediately transmitted these coordinates to his gun battery.

"Targeting info shipped," he told the gun crews. "Guns adjusting."

The firing computer in each gun took the targeting information, combined it with other information it was being fed from the Eden Climatological Department regarding current winds, atmospheric pressure, and humidity and came up with an azimuth and elevation reading for each gun to put their shells on that target area. This took less than six tenths of a second to accomplish. The actual movement of the gun barrels took a little longer — almost eight seconds. Once in position the targeting data on Resin's screen turned green, as it did on each gun commander's screen.

"Fire," Resin ordered.

The four guns of his battery began to fire once more. Resin watched the screen as they did so, paying particular attention to the six guns he'd targeted. While waiting for his shells to begin landing he noticed that many of the other WestHem guns in his view had begun their own barrages. Flash after flash filled his screen and he saw the smaller streaks of the 150mm shells heading east. He hoped the ground troops he was here to protect would be able to stand up to it for a little while.

The guns he had targeted managed to get off one volley of their own before his shells began to come down. They came in less than a second apart, two of them landing within the circle he'd drawn on the screen, the other two landing just outside of it. The flashes overwhelmed the infrared spectrum for a few seconds but when it cleared he saw that two of the guns had been blown to pieces and one other appeared to have had its barrel blown off. The remaining three guns continued to fire and got two more shots off before the second volley of shells came flying in. This time all four shells landed in the circle. When the spectrum cleared two more enemy guns were completely destroyed and one more was damaged.

"Yes," Resin said, smiling to himself. "I think this just might work."

Meanwhile, in their trench in the Jutfield Gap, Jeff Waters and the rest of his platoon had no idea of the successes the heavy guns were having against their foe. All they knew is that death seemed quite imminent. The WestHem gunners had indeed managed to get some accurate targeting information or they were just getting really goddamn lucky because the shells were exploding all around them. The entire trench would shake with each near-hit, causing dust and pebbles to come cascading down, sending concussions blasting through their bodies even through the protection of the biosuits. The shells made no sound as they came in since the Martian air was too thin to produce or carry such a noise so there was no warning that a close shellburst was approaching, nothing until the explosion itself.

"Oh yeah," said Hicks after a particularly violent concussion rocked them, his voice flirting with terror, "this is what I signed up for. How about you, Waters?"

"Shut your ass," Jeff told him, cowering as close to the front of the trench as possible. Several times he'd heard shell fragments bouncing off the walls behind him.

Uncharacteristically, Hicks did as requested. The explosions boomed on for another minute or two and then suddenly ceased, at least over the top of them. They could still hear the faint concussions of other shells landing on other trenches though.

"Why'd they stop?" someone asked.

"They didn't," Walker said. "They've just shifted target for the time being. They'll get back to us. Don't worry."

"Great," Jeff said. "How long will this go on?"

"If we don't neutralize their guns it will keep going on until they actually have ground troops climbing this hill."

Nobody had anything to say to that.

Jeff linked his combat goggles to a small periscope camera that was installed at the top of the trench. The view around him disappeared and was replaced with a view of the outside. As he turned his head from direction to direction, the camera turned as well letting him see the entire battle area in infrared glory. "Wow," he whispered in awe. "Now that is some shit."

He could see the streaks of hundreds of incoming artillery shells flying in from the west and impacting on or about the various hills through the Jutfield Gap. He could also see the larger, though less numerous streaks of outgoing shells, passing above and through the WestHem streaks, as the MPG heavy guns continued to provide counter-battery fire.

There was a beep in his headset and an icon suddenly appeared in his display, indicating someone had just sent him a text message. He opened it and saw it was from Private Xenia Stoner. She and the rest of her tank crew were down in the gap between this hilltop position and the one to the northwest. He was gratified to see it was addressed only to him.

HOW ARE YOU DOING UP THERE? ANY CASUALTIES? X

He got rid of the outside view and called up his keyboard control, which generated an image of a computer panel in the air between his legs. He quickly typed out: HANGING IN HERE SO FAR. TRENCH IS HOLDING UP. YOU? He addressed it and sent it off. A few moments later the reply came back.

STILL DOWN HERE GUARDING YOUR NAKED ASSES. IT'S WHAT WE DO.

Outside of Eden the battle of the artillery went on for another forty minutes. The heavy shells continued to come down and destroy the WestHem mobile guns, in each case within a minute of the battery in question stopping to set up their next firing position. It took Colonel Dallas almost fifteen minutes and the loss of more than forty of his guns before he realized he was not dealing with simple counter-battery fire here. The greenie gunners were not using the path of his guns shells to aim their own shells, someone, somewhere was feeding them horrifyingly accurate positioning information. But how? Simple observation teams couldn't possibly be close enough to discern every gun and its exact positioning, nor could satellites in orbit. That left something in the air, something circling above? But what? It couldn't be a Mosquito or a Hummingbird. Though those aircraft were stealthy at ground level during the day there was no way in hell one could circle unobserved above the top of them at night. No way in hell!

Nevertheless he ordered his anti-air assets to scour the sky above and to shoot at anything that showed even the smallest trace of heat. And, of course, the gunners saw nothing, found nothing to shoot at, and his artillery guns, the guns that were supposed to blast open the greenie line and send them reeling back to Eden in disarray, continued to fall victim to 250mm shells at the rate of four or five every two minutes.

At the same time, however, the remaining WestHem guns continued to fire their volleys at their targets and their shells continued to land. Most of these shells landed just a bit off target, showering the back side or the front side of the hills with shrapnel. Of those that were on target, most of these had their energy absorbed by the engineering of the Martian protective positions. But some did get through and the MPG began to experience their first real casualties of the war.

On Hill 703, two kilometers south of Jeff Waters' position, one of the penetrating shells came down with odds-defying perfection and passed right through a gap in the sandbags and into the manned trench. It blew the top off the trench, hurtling sandbags and concrete shrapnel more than twenty meters in the air. Sixteen infantry troops were killed instantly, another twenty-three horribly wounded.

On Hill 598, on the northern end of the gap, two shells landed close enough to the front of the trench to open the concrete that guarded it. Six infantry troops were killed here and eight wounded.

On the other hills through the gap another three soldiers were killed and four were wounded by lucky shrapnel that managed to enter a trench at the right angle and strike someone within.

And, in the gap between Hill 577 and Hill 715, another lucky shot just happened to land directly atop an APC that was guarding the gap, exploding it and killing the two crew members inside.

The wounded in the trenches were evacuated in the same manner that the troops themselves planned on retreating when the time came. Each trench system had been built with an escape trench leading out the back of the hill. They were carried out and down the hill where medivac hovers and the medic teams that accompanied them could haul them back to the LZ. This exposed both the medics and the hovers to errant shellfire but they were lucky and only three injuries, one death, and one damaged hover resulted. The wounded were returned to Eden where dip-hoes transported them to nearby hospitals. In most cases, the casualties were under the care of a surgical team less than forty-five minutes after being hit. As for the dead, there was nothing that could be done about them at the moment. Their weapons and ammunition were stripped off of them, their identities were scanned and transmitted to MPG headquarters, and their bodies were moved out of the way. They would have to wait to be recovered until later.

Though it was hours past his normal bedtime, General Wrath was wide awake and listening with growing horror and disbelief at the reports that were coming in from all four of the greenie cities under attack.

"How in the hell are they doing it?" he demanded of Major Wilde. "How can they put down such accurate heavy artillery fire from more than eighty kilometers?"

"We don't know, sir," Wilde replied, fighting to remain calm himself. "What's obvious though is that someone is directing their fire in real time. The only batteries that get hit are the ones that have just stopped to set up their next firing position. None of it is counter-battery fire. Intelligence is clueless about how they're doing it other than to tell us there's no way a ground-based observer or observers could direct such a large and accurate volume of fire."

"That leaves the air," Wrath said. "But you're telling me there's nothing up there."

"No sir," Wilde said. "With all due respect, I said there's nothing up there we can see. My best guess is the Martians are utilizing some sort of stealthy, remotely controlled vehicle to beam telemetry back to their FDC officers. It's probably something too small and flying too high to show up on our screens."

"So there's nothing we can do about it?" Wrath asked.

Wilde sighed. "There is one thing, sir. We can pull our artillery back out of range of those guns."

"Pull them back?" Wrath said. "Are you insane?"

"The Eden artillery units have already taken better than fifty percent losses of guns," Wilde told him. "New Pittsburgh is at about forty percent right now, Libby at thirty-eight, and Proctor is just getting the hell beat out of it. They've lost sixty percent. The volume of fire we're able to place on the Martian trenches is already falling off quite noticeably while the fire from their 250s has not slacked in the least. If we don't get those guns out of there we're not going to have any left to engage the Martian's main line of defense when the time comes."

"But what about their first line of defense?" Wrath said. "That's what we're fighting against now! How can we support an advance on their positions without artillery?"

"Any damage we were going to do with those weapons has already been done," Wilde said. "It would be nice if we could provide covering fire for our ground troops as they advance but it just isn't possible right now. The tanks and the APCs will have to support them themselves."

Wrath thought this over and decided it made sense. "All right," he said. "Let's pull the artillery back in all four theaters and get them refueled and re-armed. Send the tanks and the APCs forward and let's clear out those first positions."

"Yes, sir," Wilde said. "Excellent idea, sir."

Zen Valentine was the gunner of the main battle tank to which he, Xenia, and Sergeant Steve Sanchez were assigned. He sat next to Sanchez in the main crew compartment, watching through a video link as the shells flew back and forth for better than forty minutes. Several of the WestHem shells had burst right over the top of them, showering their tank with shrapnel, even causing it to rock back and forth on its springs once or twice but they remained safe and sound, protected by the top armor.

Xenia was the driver of the tank. She sat in her own little cubicle near the front, underneath the turret, staring out through a video system of her own. "Is it just me," she asked, "or does it seem like there's less and less arty flying in from the Earthling side?"

"No," said Sanchez, "it's not just you. It is less. I think maybe those heavy shells we're firing at them might be having an effect."

"Hopefully it's effecting them quick enough," said Zen. "They've been pounding the fuck out of those poor bastards on the hills. Any word on casualties?"

"Nothing yet," Sanchez said. "The last word I heard from the LT was when the shells first started to fly. Hopefully they'll give us some updates soon."

"I was just talking to Waters on the text," Xenia said. "As of ten minutes ago they're still up there, scared as hell and getting shook up, but the trench is holding."

Zen felt a sharp stab of jealousy at the mention of Waters and the revelation that Xenia had been text messaging him in the middle of a battle. He buried it as deeply as he could and tried not to feel too much ill will towards what was otherwise a pretty static guy. And he was glad that Waters and Hicks were all right, wasn't he? Of course he was. "It's just bad luck that they're even taking fire at all," he said. "If that damn AA-71 wouldn't have gotten through and took a shot of this area their arty would be dropping all over the damn place and they wouldn't even know it. They wouldn't have landed a single shell on target until they got close enough to sight in manually."

"Which would have been close enough for us to engage them," Xenia said. "You're right, Zen. I wish the damn space guard would've got that ship in time."

"And I wish someone was giving me a rim job," said Sanchez, "but all I got on my ass is a vacuum powered shit catcher, you know what I mean?"

"Another microcosm of the war?" asked Zen.

"No, it's more of a loose analogy. It means if wishes were orifices I'd be in pussy for life, but you'll notice I ain't in no pussy right now. There's no sense wishing for what might've been. Just be glad that those trenches seem to be holding. I've been watching up that hill and they've taken some direct shots. The fact that Waters is still alive to send his flirty little texts to Xenia means someone oughtta find the engineers who designed those trenches and suck their cocks for 'em."

"I think we'll let Waters take care of that one," Zen said. "If it's all the same to you."

"It's all the same to me," Xenia said, "but keep in mind that the same engineers designed this hull-down position we're currently sitting in. If it works as well as the trenches on the hill, I might be doing some dick sucking of my own."

"Yeah," said Zen. "A-fucking-men to that."

The hull-down position — which meant that only the very top of the turret and the laser cannon were exposed from the front — was the most favorable defensive posture for a tank or APC to be in. Like the trenches on the hills, the MPG had spent the first ten years of their existence digging and constructing tank and APC positions all along every likely defensive barrier. The one their tank occupied was one of thousands on the surface of the planet. It was a depression in the soil protected from the front by a layer of rock, sand, and concrete with a sheet of solid titanium armor in the middle. Laser shots from the front would be unable to penetrate through with enough energy left over to penetrate the tank itself. Multiple shots in the same place would be required to take out a tank — or so the theory went.

"Hey," said Xenia, "the arty has stopped."

Sanchez and Valentine looked up and saw that indeed it had. There were still groups of outgoing shells from the Martian guns but all of the incoming rounds had suddenly stopped, almost as if a switch had been thrown.

"What do you think that means, sarge?" Zen asked.

"It means the barrage has stopped," Sanchez replied. "And that usually means the next phase of the advance is about to begin."

"And the next phase is sending in the tanks, isn't it?" asked Xenia.

"Fuckin' aye," Sanchez agreed. "I think our time is coming real soon now."