Greenies

Chapter 16

MPG Base, Eden

August 27, 2146

2245 Hours

General Matthew Zoloft — a third generation Martian — was the overall commander of the Eden forces. He was a WestHem Military Academy classmate of General Jackson's who had been a member of the MPG since its inception. In the WestHem marines he had risen to the rank of lieutenant in charge of a tank platoon and was a veteran of the bloody loss that was the Jupiter War. A personal friend of General Jackson's, he had started out his MPG career as commander of the 9^th ACR and had worked his way to Eden commander in only five years. He had been in on the ultimate, secret goal of the MPG — the capture of Mars from WestHem — from the beginning and had helped General Jackson develop the strategy and techniques for obtaining that goal. He was pleased to see that, so far, everything had pretty much gone as they'd always hoped it would. But everything up until now had only been the preliminary stages of the conflict. Soon — in mere minutes — the first head to head combat would take place in his sector of responsibility. Would their unconventional doctrine of focusing energy on killing the ground troops instead of the tanks prove a mistake? Or would it work as they'd always envisioned?

"Lead elements of the enemy formation are now fifteen kilometers out from the Jutfield positions," he told the image of General Jackson on his computer screen. "They're moving in hot. Estimate first contact in less than five minutes."

"Understood," Jackson replied. "I trust your forces are privy to the same telemetry you're receiving?"

"Fuckin' aye," he said with a nod. "I commandeered one of the peepers after the arty withdrew. It is now giving us real-time shots of the enemy advance and the computer is translating them into battlefield telemetry and broadcasting it out to the field units. It updates on every combat soldier's combat computer every six seconds."

"Good enough," Jackson said. "I'll be watching it as well. Remember, hold that gap as long as you can but don't hesitate to pull the ACRs back when its time. No unnecessary sacrifice out there."

"You have my word, Kevin," he told him. "I was on Callisto, remember? Our doctrine on that is sacred to me."

Jackson simply nodded — he, after all, had not been on Callisto — and signed off.

Zoloft looked up at the main display in the front of the war room. It was showing the overall picture of the battlefield. The marines had spread their tanks out in a broad line stretching from one end of the gap to the other. Their APCs were right behind it. Their intent was obvious. They planned a rapid, overwhelming attack on all aspects of the line at once.

"Things are gonna get real busy out there in a few minutes," he told the command staff around him. "Doug, it looks like your guys are gonna make the first contact and the heaviest contact."

"Yeah," said Colonel Martin, commander of the 17^th ACR. "I've given the order for the anti-tank units to engage as soon as the tanks breach the horizon. They'll pound on them until the tanks and the APCs can get in on it. Once the marine APCs come into view, the AT teams will switch targeting priority to them."

"Good," Zoloft said. That, after all, was doctrine. "Hopefully we'll throw them back before the APCs even enter the picture. But remember, if our armor can't keep the tanks contained the AT teams will have to help out. The idea is to force them to dismount their troops and move on our infantry positions so we can chew them up a little. We can't do that if their tanks overwhelm ours and force an early withdrawal from the gap."

"My captains all have standing orders to switch targeting responsibility if needed," Martin told him.

Zoloft turned to Colonel Steve Bridget, who was in charge of the 220 mobile artillery guns assigned to Eden. "Remember, Steve," he said. "Hold all fire until the marines start to dismount and then hit them with everything you got. Thanks to the peepers and the heavy guns, you can fire with complete impunity. No need to shoot and scoot. Just shoot."

"My crews are standing by, rounds in the breeches," Bridget said. "We'll liquefy those fucks as soon as they start to show their faces."

"All right then," Zoloft said, satisfied. "It's up to those folks in the gap now."

Zen Valentine peered at his gunnery screen nervously, watching the empty landscape before him. The tendrils of heat rising up from beyond the horizon had grown thicker, with twists of white in them now. The cloud of dust welling up from the tracks of the approaching tanks caused a faint aqua glow off to the west. There was a slight rumble that could be felt as the vibration caused by the enemy armor traveled along the ground. It was almost time. According to the telemetry being monitored by Sanchez next to him, the first tanks were less than eight kilometers out now. Their own twin laser cannon were six meters above the ground. On the surface of Mars, at that height, the horizon was 3.2 kilometers away.

"The AT teams should be picking them up any time now," Sanchez said.

Since the anti-tank teams were dismounted soldiers up on the hills the horizon was a bit further for them — anywhere from five to seven kilometers, depending on how high they were.

"They shouldn't have any trouble finding targets, huh?" asked Xenia, her voice not exactly composed.

"No, I don't imagine they will," said Sanchez. According to his telemetry there were almost eight hundred tanks moving in on this particular section of the gap. They had sixty-two tanks and around ninety APCs to counter them with. The APCs, however, only sported single barrel anti-tank lasers instead of the dual rapid-charging cannons on the tanks. They were going to need some help from those anti-tank gunners in order to achieve their main goal — keeping the tanks from pushing through the gap and getting behind the dismounted infantry. Although this wouldn't be harmful to the grunts in the hills, it would prevent them from achieving their goal, which was to get the marines to dismount so they could kill more of them before they reached the main line of defense.

"Why the hell don't we have mines out there?" asked Xenia. "We spent years building these defenses and these tanks and those heavy guns. Why didn't we throw down some mines across the gap approaches too?"

"You know the answer to that," Sanchez told her. "Mine warfare is illegal, like chemical weapons and tactical nuclear shells. No one has used them since World War III."

"I don't think a mine falls into the same category as a nuke or as gassing someone," Xenia said.

"You may not, but the civilized world does," he said. "Those things lay out there long after the conflict is over and make vast tracts of land unusable pretty much forever. Even if we had somehow managed to manufacture and deploy mines in secret, we would've been subject to nuclear retaliation once it became known we'd employed them. Not only that, EastHem would be forced to withdraw support of our government."

"Yeah," Xenia said, shaking her head at the madness of it. "I suppose. I just wish..."

"Remember," Sanchez interrupted. "If wishes were orifices..."

"I'd have a mouth on my pussy for life," she dutifully finished.

A minute ticked by, the seconds passing with agonizing slowness, the tension so thick in the tank you could almost smell it. And then finally, the moment they had been both waiting for and dreading came.

"Command reports targets are in sight," Sanchez announced. "AT teams are engaging."

"They sure the fuck are," Xenia said. "Look at the hills!"

Zen looked off to either side, at the hillsides that dotted their line. From every one in his view, the flashes of laser weapons could be seen, reaching out from the hidden trenches. Downrange, where the impacts were occurring, they could still see nothing as the tanks being fired upon were still over the horizon from ground level.

"Kill 'em, guys," Sanchez whispered, his eyes glued to his telemetry. "You protect us and we'll protect you."

"Incoming!" Xenia suddenly said. "A whole assload of it!"

Zen looked forward and saw the streaks of eighty millimeter tank shells heading in at high velocity. There was indeed a whole assload of it, hundreds of streaks all across the horizon. They flew in and slammed into the hillsides where the anti-tank gunners were firing from. Flashes erupted. Dust flew. The faint sound of concussions could be heard from the nearer hills.

"Laura save them," Xenia said, watching in horrified awe.

"Those trenches can take it," Sanchez said. "Look, they've hardly slowed up their shots."

Volley after volley of tank rounds came flying in and the explosions continued. So did the flashes from the lasers within the trenches. Another three minutes ticked by, during which Sanchez noted on the telemetry that the enemy tanks had spread out and were now zigzagging back and forth even though neither one of these actions was an effective deterrent against speed of light weaponry.

"Command reports targets are coming into range of ground level units," Sanchez suddenly yelled. "Get ready, Zen. Do it just like in practice."

"Fuckin' aye," Zen said, feeling adrenaline surging through his body. His hand gripped the firing buttons for his cannons and his targeting recticle moved slowly back and forth with his head movements, waiting for something to put it on.

"Target, tank, eleven o'clock!" Sanchez said. "Light him up, Zen!"

Zen turned his head slightly to the left and saw the tiny white shape of a main battle tank moving across the landscape. Its laser cannon were up, its main gun was spouting fire and sending shells toward them. He moved his head until the targeting recticle covered the vehicle and then smoothly pushed the left firing button.

There was a bright flash from the spot where the target had been. When it cleared, only the bottom half of the tank still sat there. The turret was lying on the ground next to it and the entire structure of the vehicle was glowing bright red with heat.

"Holy fuck!" Zen said, grinning. "That's a fuckin' kill! Did you see that?"

"Saw it," Sanchez said. "Now do it again. Six more tanks — no, eight — just broached the horizon. Fire as fast as you can."

By the time he fired on another target, destroying it with a direct hit, dozens more of the main battle tanks appeared over the horizon. Several of them exploded as other tanks, APCs, or anti-tank crews potted them with their own weapons. At the same time, the flashes of anti-tank laser fire from the enemy tanks began to appear as they returned fire at the defenders.

Zen's first cannon finished its recharge cycle and he quickly sighted on another advancing tank and fired. He turned his head and had to wait another six seconds for the second cannon to finish charging. During that time two of the eighty millimeter shells came arcing in and exploded directly in front of their position. The tank rocked on its springs and the violent pattering of shrapnel peppering their cannon turret sounded throughout the interior. The cannon suffered no damage from this engagement since it had been designed to stand up to artillery and shell fire.

"What the fuck are they firing eighties at us for?" asked Xenia. "Even a direct hit wouldn't cause damage to a tank."

"Who knows?" said Sanchez. "They're probably overwhelmed and not thinking straight. That's just fine for us."

Zen saw the charging light for cannon two change to green. He already had his recticle on another target. He fired, destroying it. By this time cannon one was recharged so he found another and destroyed it as well. Other tanks continued to explode all over the field but nowhere near as fast as other tanks were appearing behind them, all of them flashing main guns and laser cannons. By the time cannon two was charged and ready for the next shot there were literally hundreds of tanks moving in on them.

Suddenly, from directly in front of them, a flash of light overwhelmed the infrared spectrum for a moment. There was no noise associated with it but when the spectrum cleared the entire barrier behind which they hid was glowing bright white with heat. There were two more flashes in quick succession and then one more. The barrier held but had crumbled in several places.

"Those were laser strikes," reported Xenia, who was sitting less than a meter from the back end of the barrier. "The barrier absorbed it. No damage to the tank."

"Yet," said Sanchez. "If they get a burn-through and manage to put another shot in the hole, that's our ass."

"Thanks, sarge," Xenia told him. "You really know how to cheer us up when things get rough, you know that?"

Meanwhile, Zen was listening to their conversation in his headset but absorbing little of it. He was popping off WestHem tanks as fast as his lasers could recharge themselves. The battlefield was now littered with destroyed tanks and they continued to flash and explode from all quarters as the volume of fire against them was maintained but the stream of them was endless. For every one blown up, five more would appear right behind it. Though the lead elements were the most frequent target, they continued to draw closer and closer, until some of them were less than a kilometer away.

From somewhere off to the left of them a bright light flashed, followed by a concussion. Zen immediately knew what it was but tried to bury the knowledge. He didn't want to face it.

Sanchez forced him to. "Tank three is gone," he said solemnly. "Apparently they got a burn-through." Tank three was part of their platoon. It had been in its own prepared hull-down position just thirty meters away. The crew were three people they'd known since the beginning days of the 17^th ACR, people they'd trained with, had gotten drunk with, had been friends with. Now they were gone, erased in an instant.

"Motherfuckers," Zen said, his eyes narrowing behind his helmet. Another flash of laser cannon came blasting into their barricade, this time sending concrete and sand flying into the air.

"They grazed us with that one!" Xenia reported. "Burn-through just above the left tread. It went out the other side though."

"No breach, no damage?" Sanchez asked, alarmed.

"We're good," Xenia told him. "The tread is intact, no vital systems hit."

The spectrum cleared from the latest flashes. Two tanks were now less than eight hundred meters in front of them. Zen sighted on first one and then the other, killing them both. "Take that, assholes," he said with viciousness in his voice.

"Hey, sarge," Xenia asked, "they're getting awfully close here. Just how long are we expected to stand and fight them?"

"We pull back if they get within half a klick in force," he said. "But we have to hold them long enough for the dismounts to clear their trenches and pull back to the blue line."

"There's too many of them," she said. "We can't hold this many tanks back!"

"No," he said. "We can't. They can blast through our line if they're persistent. Our plan is to make it too costly for them to be persistent."

"We're trying," Zen said, wincing as two more laser shots blasted their barrier — fortunately not in the same place as the previous burn through. When the spectrum cleared one of his cannons was charged. He fired again, taking out another tank — this one nine hundred meters away.

Deep in the bowels of Landing Ship 11C, at the Eden Landing Zone, General Dakota Dickinson stared in disbelief at the telemetry that was on his computer display. In the first fifteen minutes of the battle over three hundred tanks had been destroyed, another fifty or so damaged beyond repair. Despite the neutralization of the artillery by the Martian 250s, this was not the result he'd been anticipating. And they weren't even at the main line of defense yet.

"What the hell is going on out there?" he demanded of his subordinates. "We were supposed to sweep right through them! How in the hell are the greenies slaughtering our tanks like that?"

Colonel Houston Fowler was the commander of the 27^th Armored Division. It was his tanks, his men, that were taking the brunt of the Martian resistance at the moment — a shocking development for a division that had, until now, suffered zero casualties in what had otherwise been a very bloody conflict. "My battalion commanders are reporting intense anti-tank fire coming from the hillside positions in the gap," he told Dickinson. "Apparently the artillery did not significantly reduce the numbers of the entrenched Martian troops up there. They seem to have a whole lot of portable anti-tank weapons."

"Was the artillery off target?" Dickenson asked. "Did we spend forty minutes shelling a bunch of empty ground?"

"Negative, sir," Fowler said. "I've seen visuals of the Martian positions sent to me from the lead elements. We tore the hell out of those positions but the Martians are still in them. We're plastering them with direct eighty millimeter fire now and it's not having much of an effect either. Those trenches must be reinforced in some way."

"Great," Dickenson said, watching the screen as another twelve tanks suddenly turned black — meaning they'd stopped sending telemetry — meaning, of course, they were dead. "This is World War III and the AT-9 all over again. Talk about history repeating itself."

The AT-9 he was referring to was the American-made and manufactured portable anti-tank missile that was widely regarded as the weapon that had turned World War III from a quick Asian Powers victory to the bloody, decade long stalemate it had ended up as. Firing from entrenched positions, WestHem infantry soldiers had been able to concentrate murderous fire on vastly superior numbers of advancing armor and, eventually, halt the Asian advance at the Columbia River in Portland and the high desert of southern Idaho.

"Sir," said Fowler, "we're also taking fire from the Martian tanks and the Martian APCs. Return fire is ineffective. The Martian armor are in hull down positions behind some kind of barricades that are absorbing the laser energy from our shots. We've made some kills but it takes multiple shots for a penetration to occur."

"Can we push through?" Dickenson asked.

"At high cost, yes," Fowler said. "If we continue to advance our tanks they'll envelop those positions within twenty minutes or so, but..."

"But?" Dickenson asked.

"Losses will be very high. Also... well... we won't have accomplished anything but clearing their armor out of the gap. The Martian anti-tank crews and the dismounted infantry that are supporting them will still be up on those hills."

"Our plan was for your tanks to eliminate most of them and then to send the dismounts in to clear out their positions," Dickenson said. "It sounds like they're a little thicker up there than we anticipated."

"And a little more well-protected," Fowler agreed. "They're going to be a bitch to dislodge from there, sir."

"What if we just blast through their lines with the tanks as you suggested?" Dickenson asked. "Punch a hole through and then rush the APCs, the fuel trains, the arty, everything right by until we get to the main line of defense. The terrain is wider there and favors us more."

Fowler was shaking his head even before his boss finished. "Again, with all due respect, sir, we have to clear those positions before we can advance further. If we don't, it won't matter that our tanks have enveloped them, they'll still be able to blast at them from all directions as they pass. They'll be able to do the same to the APCs and they might even be able to take out some of our supply trains."

"With anti-tank lasers?" Dickenson scoffed. "That's ridiculous."

"We've seen their marksmanship with those things, sir. If they take out the towing tanks that will bring the trains to a halt. We won't be able to replace the towing tanks with regular tanks in a zone where the Martians can snipe at them because they'll just keep popping off any tanks we try to bring up for the task. And, while the trains are stopped, they could hit one of the ammunition carriers two or three times in exactly the same spot and get a burn-through. If an ammunition carrier goes up it'll take out most of the rest of the train with it. The Martians planned this defense well, sir, as much as I hate to give them any credit. The only way through this gap is to put our soldiers out on the ground and have them fight their way up those hills until the entrenched troops either retreat or until we get enough people up there to kill them all."

Dickenson thought that over for a second, trying to come up with a solution that did not involve sending dismounts up hills under fire. Unfortunately, there really was no other solution. There was no way to outflank the defenders because the mountains closed in on both sides of the gap. The only way to go around them was to take the entire army all the way back to the landing zone and come in by a circuitous route from the north. That would force them to march almost twice as far and they would still have to pass through a gap that was even narrower than Jutfield in order to assault the city. "Okay," he said. "I see your point. Should we go ahead and clear the Martian armor from the gap anyway? At least that way we'll have the positions surrounded when the dismounts go after them."

"I wouldn't advise that, sir," Fowler told him. "We've already lost hundreds of tanks. We'll lose hundreds more pushing their armor out. Not only that, but if we surround their hillsides the Martian anti-tank crews and infantry will no longer have the option of retreat. If we force them to fight to the death our losses will be much heavier. We should let them keep their rear open and hopefully they'll pull back when we start advancing ground troops on them."

Dickenson nodded. "I need to clear this with General Wrath," he said. "But for now, pull your tanks back out of range and have them regroup and re-arm. And then let's get all commanders together so we can hash out a plan to do this right."

"Yes, sir," he said.

Less than two minutes later the order went out. All tank units were to immediately disengage and pull back ten kilometers to the west.

Dickenson and Fowler would never know how close they'd come to forcing a retreat at the Jutfield Gap. They had assumed that if the Martian tanks were overwhelmed and cleared from their covering positions that the entrenched troops would remain behind to fight on — ultimately to the death but inflicting horrifying damage before that could occur. Had they bothered to study up on Martian Planetary Guard doctrine even a little bit before engaging their enemy they would have known that standing orders were for all troops to withdraw to safety when their position was threatened. It was against the MPG code to leave entrenched troops in a position where they were permanently cut off from assistance and withdrawal. In other words, if the supporting tanks and APCs were forced to withdraw, then the dismounted troops would withdraw as well, even if they weren't in immediate danger.

Such a withdrawal had been well under way when Dickenson's order went out. The first troops ordered from their positions had been the combat infantry units, including the platoon Jeff and Hicks belonged to. They were positioned below the anti-tank platoons on the hillside and had watched in terrified fascination as the hoards of WestHem tanks had closed on them and had been attacked by the lasers from above and below. While eighty millimeter fire had raked the hillside above them, sending dust, dirt, and rocks tumbling downward to sift into their trench, they had remained unscathed by a single round since they were not presenting an immediate threat to the tanks. And then, at the height of the battle, as WestHem tanks began to get within five hundred meters, they had been ordered to pick up all the ammunition and supplies they could carry and move as quickly as possible to the rear of the hillside to secure the extraction zone.

Jeff had been almost down on the valley floor, a pack containing seventy-five kilograms of ammunition clips and food packs slung over his back. That was when Walker ordered everyone to hold up.

"Captain Sing reports the WestHem armor is pulling back," he told them.

"Pulling back?" asked Hicks, who was just behind Jeff in the semi-orderly formation.

"Fuckin' aye," Walker said. "They did it. They beat the motherfuckers back."

A symphony of cheers and obscene epitaphs directed at all things Earthling filled the tactical channel for several seconds. They held in place for another five minutes, waiting for confirmation. Finally, it came.

"It's official," Walker said. "The marine tanks have withdrawn back over the horizon. We held. All infantry units return to your former positions."

"Yes!" Jeff said, pumping his fist in victory. "Fuck you, Earthling pigs! You got your asses kicked worse than the Thrusters in the Battle of Ninety-Second Street."

"Hey, watch that shit, dickweed," said Hicks. "You didn't beat us. We gave up Ninety-Second for economic reasons. The anti-dust units of the EPD were making it too hard to get good cash flow on our product."

"Are you fucking dusted right now?" Jeff asked him. "Ninety-Second was premo territory. We was clearing sixteen fucking grand a week down there."

"But what were your arrest stats?" Hicks enquired.

"Uh... if we could put this military tactics discussion on hold for a bit," Walker interrupted, "perhaps we could start shagging our asses back up the hill? We need to get everything re-organized before the marines start sending their dismounts after us."

"Right, sorry, sarge," Jeff told him.

They went back up the hill, working their way through the access trenches step by step. Jeff — though in the best shape of his life at this point — was huffing and puffing almost instantly. The discharge warning indicator appeared in his goggles letting him know he was using more oxygen than his suit was pulling from the atmosphere. By the time they made it back to their trench his reservoir was down to sixty-four percent and sweat was dripping down his face to pool in the neck junction of his helmet and suit. With relief he set his bag of ammo and food down and slumped against the rear of the trench.

"Okay, people," Walker told them. "Let's take about ten minutes to get our air supplies back up to full and then we'll start unloading and re-distributing everything. Remember the rule. No hoarding of food, ammo, or waste-packs or I'll personally back-flow your waste system until shit spews out your mouths."

Jeff stretched a little, relieving the ache in his tired muscles, and then leaned forward into the opening in his sandbags. He looked out over the landscape and saw dozens — no, hundreds — of burned out WestHem tanks, most still glowing red with the heat of their destruction. Beyond the horizon the blue tendrils and white twists of rising heat from the intact armor were still making their way upward.

"Xenia," he whispered, low enough that it was not transmitted over the channel. He felt a sudden stab of worry for her. Was she still alive? During the frantic exchange of laser shots just after the battle had begun he'd seen a bright, lethal-looking flash from somewhere down to the left of them. That was where the tank platoon Xenia, Zen, and Sanchez belonged to were holding their position. Had it been their tank that had bought it?

He called up his text messaging software and brought the holographic keyboard to life. He composed a quick message: ARE YOU STILL ALIVE DOWN THERE? He hesitated for a few moments, afraid to send it for fear of not getting a response. Finally, deciding he had to know, he addressed and shipped it.

A minute ticked by and he became increasingly convinced that she was dead. And then, just when he'd almost resigned himself to her demise, a reply came flashing in.

HANGING IN HERE, it read. TOOK A HIT ON THE LEFT SIDE AND BLEW A HOLE THRU THE CORNER OF THE TANK BUT NO MAJOR DAMAGE. LOPEZ, LEE, AND DEALERMAN BOUGHT IT THOUGH. DIRECT HIT.

Jeff's thrill at hearing that Xenia was still alive was dampened a bit by hearing about Lopez, Lee, and Dealerman. All three of them had been regular attendees at the nightly poker sessions during the waiting period and he knew them well. Now they were burned, blasted bodies in a smashed tank.

SORRY TO HEAR THAT, he responded. I'LL TELL HICKS. GLAD UR OK THOUGH. AND YOU TOOK IT OUT IN SPADES ON THE EARTHLING FUCKS.

YEAH, WE DID, she replied. ZEN GOT 16 CONFIRMED KILLS ON WESTHEM TANKS.

He felt a stab of jealousy at her mention of Zen but ignored it. He was about to reply back to her when Walker's voice suddenly barked over the tactical channel again.

"Hicks, Creek, Drogan," he said. "I'm showing that you three are almost fully charged on air. I got a little job for you."

They all turned in his direction, none of them speaking though, as was the custom in the MPG.

"They got some wounded upstairs," Walker said. "And they don't know when the WestHem armor is gonna come back so they can't release too many of their people to evac them down to the hover LZ. Shag your asses on up there and give 'em a hand. Leave everything but your weapons."

All three nodded and removed everything from their biosuits but their M-24s and their extra ammunition clips. They made their way through their own trench and into the rear access trench that led off of it. Once in the main withdrawal trench, a narrower side trench led off to the north and upwards. They entered it and began to climb. This time, without the extra weight on their backs, their biosuits continued to replace air faster than they were using it.

Jeff told Hicks about Lopez, Lee, and Dealerman.

"That fuckin' bites," he said, his voice a mixture of sadness and anger.

"Yeah," Jeff agreed. "It does."

They finished their climb and entered the main anti-tank trench near the crest of the hill. It was clear at first sight — even in infrared — that this position had not fared well during the battle. Many of the sandbags that lined the front had been blasted open, the shavings from inside of them littering the floor along with dozens upon dozens of spent charging batteries. In several places entire sections of the protective barrier had given way and fallen inside. As they made their way further inside the damage grew worse and the human casualties began to become visible. Pushed down beneath the protective overhang were two still bodies. On one of them the helmet had been blasted open and half of the head was gone. In the other a massive hole could be seen in the chest portion of the suit. All three of them stared at this sight in mute horror and fear.

A hand slapped against the side of Jeff's head, startling him. He looked up and saw a biosuited figure he recognized as Sergeant Johan Wing of the anti-tank platoon attached to his company. Wing's lips were moving behind his helmet but no sound was coming out of Jeff's audio system. Wing, looking frustrated, slapped him on the side of the head again and held up three fingers. He then pointed to the controls for Jeff's biosuit.

"Oh... shit," Jeff said, looking at his companions, who were just as perplexed. "It's a different platoon. We're on the wrong tac channel. Switch to three."

They all switched to channel three on their bank and Wing's voice immediately started chewing their asses. "What the fuck is the matter with you morons?" he asked. "You come walking into another unit's trench without announcing yourself and with your com system on the wrong fucking channel? Are you trying to get your asses shot off before the Earthlings even get here?"

"Sorry, sarge," Jeff said. "We forgot."

"Well don't fuckin' forget again," Wing said. "We just got the shit beat out of us up here and we're a bit jumpy. Fingers get loose on firing buttons when that happens. You here to help us, or what?"

"Yeah," Hicks said. "They sent us up to help evac your wounded."

Wing nodded. "Good," he said. "We got eight that need to be brought down to the LZ right away." He pointed further down the trench. "Go talk to the doc down there. She's the one with the fuckin' red cross on her helmet in case you forgot that too."

They moved further down the trench, passing two more dead bodies stuffed indifferently into the recesses as they went. They then had to push themselves into the recess in order to let a group of four soldiers pass by that were carrying two wounded between them. The group went by fast but not so fast that Jeff didn't see the horrible hole that had been blown open in the chest of one and then sealed with a medical patch.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Drogan said when they were gone.

They continued down the trench, stepping over more discarded batteries and collapsed sandbags, passing two soldiers that were standing watch over the openings, staring down over the battlefield. Finally they came to the group of wounded being attended to by the medic. She was kneeling down next to one of them, drilling something through the leg of his biosuit with a power tool of some sort.

She looked up at them. "Who the fuck are you guys?" she demanded.

"Hicks, Drogan, and Creek," Jeff told her. "We're from second platoon down below."

"Static," she said without much enthusiasm. "Okay, you two," she pointed to Hicks and Drogan. "Take that guy there." She pointed to a supine soldier lying just behind her. "He's a neck and chest wound, probably bleeding internally. Took shrapnel from an eighty through the gap in the sandbags. I've sedated him, patched the suit, decompressed his left lung, and gave him some synthetic blood. Hopefully that'll be enough to get him back to Eden alive. He's tagged priority so be sure to get him over to the priority section of the triage area when you're down there and be as gentle as you can with him."

"Right," Hicks said, squirming past her. Drogan followed him and a second later they picked him up — Drogan at the head, Hicks at the feet — utilizing the handles that had been installed in the biosuits for just that purpose. They squirmed back by in the opposite direction and began heading back the way they'd come.

"Nguyen," the medic barked over the tac channel. "This is doc. Get your ass over here!"

"On the way," a voice replied.

She looked up at Jeff. "Very nasty head wound here," she told him. "An eighty went off just outside his opening while he was firing on a tank. The AT blew up in his face and ripped through his face shield. As you can see..." She took a deep breath, a little of the strain she was under leaking through, "Well... he's hit pretty bad."

Jeff looked at the soldier's face. Her words were perhaps the worst understatement he'd ever heard. His entire face shield had been blown inwards, peppering the poor guy's face with plastic shrapnel and bits of the AT weapon body. A large shard was sticking out of his flesh just to the left of his nose. His entire left eye had been torn out of its socket and had smeared over the remains of his left cheek. The socket was slowly oozing blood down the side of his face even through the gauze the medic had stuffed in there. His teeth had all been smashed in and his tongue appeared to have been ripped in two, part of it hanging out of his mouth, part of it occluding his airway. His right eye was undamaged but obviously sightless, bulging out of its socket from the pressure change the loss of his face shield had caused. She had covered the hole with an opaque film to restore that pressure and had drilled a breathing hole in his neck and hooked an air hose connected to his auxiliary outlet to the fitting that protruded. He was gurgling and twitching, his arms and legs spasming.

"This is an intraosseous line I've just drilled into his tibia," the medic told Jeff. "I'm giving him a sedative/paralytic right now so he'll stop moving around."

"Right," Jeff said, having no idea what she was talking about, staring in horror at the man's ruined face.

She removed the drill and put an air syringe against the port that protruded from his suit. She injected something and a moment later the man stopped twitching and moving.

"There we go," she said. "He'll stay still for the trip now. His suit will automatically keep him ventilated, so don't worry about that. Just get him down there as fast as possible." She looked up at him, her eyes showing sadness even in infrared. "He's probably not gonna make it to surgery. Even if he does live... well... he'll be blind and probably brain damaged." She shook her head. "I have to try though."

"Right," Jeff said again, shuddering, picturing himself in the man's place.

Another soldier suddenly appeared, the Nguyen to whom she'd spoken apparently.

"Yeah, doc?" he asked.

"You and uh..."

"Creek," Jeff provided.

"Right... Creek. You and Creek here get him down to the LZ. Take him to the priority area. If his light turns red on the way, well... just put him in the trenches and come back. Got it?"

Nguyen obviously knew the man they were speaking about. "Yeah, doc," he said. "Does he have... I mean... is he gonna... gonna... make it?"

"It's possible," she said. "Unlikely, but possible. The faster you get him down there the more possible it'll be. Okay?"

"Right," he said, leaning down and grabbing the foot handles. "Come on, Creek. Let's get him down there." He looked meaningfully into Jeff's eyes. "He's a good guy, okay?"

"Right," Jeff said. He reached down and grabbed the upper torso handles. They lifted and began working their way back through the trench. As they went they turned their com sets to the extremely short range frequency to keep their chatter from overloading the main tactical channel.

"We thought we were safe after the arty, you know?" Nguyen told him. "They walked those 150s all over our positions and not a single one of us got so much as a scratch."

"Yeah, us too," Jeff said. "A couple of them blew pretty fuckin' close too."

"But those tanks," Nguyen said, shaking his head. "Goddamn, man. There were so many of them out there and their rounds came flying in from below instead of from above. The barriers absorbed most of them but some got through the holes because that's where they aim 'em. I saw Jenky get her fuckin' head blown clean off — well, not clean, it kinda exploded all over the back of the trench. You should see what happens to blood out here when it comes out. It boils, man. It boils and turns into vapor and goes drifting off into the air in this big fuckin' red cloud."

Jeff tried not to show any reaction to this horrifying description, knowing that it would soon be his fate to see it firsthand when the infantry attacked — or perhaps he wouldn't see it. Perhaps his companions would see his head explode into pieces, his blood go boiling upward. "You held 'em though," he said, fighting to keep his voice even. "You pushed their thieving asses back over the horizon."

"Yeah, at least there's that," Nguyen said. "I'd hate to have gone through all that for nothing."

They worked they way down to the bottom of the hill and exited the access point on the back side of it. Two hundred meters east of the access was a landing zone where the wounded were being triaged and flown out. Two APCs from the support battalion were parked here, their doors open. Three medivac hovers were sitting on the ground around them, their engines at idle. Two of them had the rear ramps down, the other was sealed up. As they carried their injured companion in that direction the sealed one suddenly flared bright red in the infrared and lifted in the air. It turned to the east and began heading for Eden, flying low.

The immediate triage area was the easiest to find. It contained the largest number of medics and evac soldiers. It also contained the largest number of wounded.

"Put him down over here," a medic commanded them when they entered the area.

They did so and the medic immediately kneeled down next to him and began running a scanner device over him. They heard him sigh as he examined the findings. He shook his head and stood back up.

"What are you doing?" Nguyen demanded. "His light didn't turn red! The doc says he needs to go out right away!"

"Sorry," the medic said, "but he's a goner. Brain activity almost nothing, heart rate less than thirty a minute, no voluntary respiration. He'll never make it back to Eden."

"You gotta fuckin' try, man!" Nguyen said. "Jesus Christ! You can't just let him lay there and die!"

"He doesn't have a chance," the medic said. "There's a lot of people out here who do have a chance and I'm not gonna take up space on a hover with someone who's gonna be dead before they even make it twenty klicks. I'm sorry, man. That's the way it's gotta be."

Nguyen shook his head angrily and fingered the rifle slung over his shoulder for a moment. He took a few deep breaths, dropped his hand and turned away. "That's fuckin' cold," he said.

"I know," the medic told him. "I wish it didn't have to be this way. This section got hit hard. I gotta go check on the other guys." With that he walked away, heading for the group of casualties closest to the front of the line.

"I'm sorry, Nguyen," Jeff told him, patting him on the back. "That fuckin' bites ass."

"Yeah," Nguyen said. "A lot of things bitin' ass tonight, huh?"

With that he turned and walked away, heading back towards the trench entrance. Jeff watched him go, his feet seemingly unable to follow after him.

Two figures approached him from the direction of one of the hovers. As they came closer and he was able to resolve their facial features with the infrared enhancement, he recognized them as Drogan and Hicks. Both of them were looking a little shell-shocked.

"Did you get your guy down to the hovers?" Jeff asked.

"We got him down there," Hicks said. "He's still waiting to be loaded. The medics said there's worse people that need to go first."

"How about yours?" Drogan asked.

Jeff pointed at the still body on the ground. "He gets to stay here," he said. "Medic says he doesn't have a chance."

They all contemplated that for a few moments, staring at the soldier's wrecked face, at the holes drilled in his leg and neck, at the green light on his suit that suddenly turned a lethal red as he finally, mercifully died.

"I guess he was right," Hicks said.

"Yeah," Jeff agreed. "Is this goin' on all up and down the line, you think? Does every fuckin' hill out here have this many casualties?"

"Not every one," Drogan said. "The medics told us the Earthlings hit the hardest in the center of the gap, where we are. A lot of the hills were hardly touched. They just decided to pound on this one because it's guarding the biggest opening."

"Which means they're gonna pound on it just as hard when they send the infantry after us," Hicks said. "We're on prime fuckin' real estate, man and the next time they're gonna be shooting those eighties at us. We'll be the ones laying down here, abandoned with fuckin' holes in our necks."

"They're not abandoning the living ones," Drogan said. "Just the corpses. You stay alive and they'll get you out of here. I watched how hard the medics are working to save those people."

"That'll make my mom feel real good when she gets the email that the Earthlings blew my face open," Hicks said. "She'll also love to know that they left my dead ass out here for all eternity. That she won't even get my ashes to put in a fuckin' jar."

"So what are you saying, Hicks?" Jeff asked. "You had enough?"

Hicks breathed deeply, looking around at the controlled chaos of the evac area, watching as two more groups of soldiers brought two more casualties down. "I didn't sign up for this shit," he said. "I mean... I knew I could die out here, but I didn't know... you know... that I could die like this."

"I'll admit," Drogan said, "it ain't as pretty as candlelight glinting off a wet pussy."

Her attempt at humor fell short.

"I ain't goin' back up there," Hicks said, looking at the hillside.

"You gonna walk back to Eden?" Drogan asked him.

"If I have to," he said. "Or I could hitch a ride on the back of one the support APCs. They're at least going back to the main line. I can get back from there."

"You're serious about this?" Drogan asked. "You're gonna leave us right before the battle? Abandon your platoon?"

"It ain't my fuckin' platoon," Hicks said. "It's Queen Laura the First's platoon and I ain't dying for her."

Jeff looked at him pointedly and shook his head in disgust. "Ain't that just like a fuckin' Thruster?" he said. "Throwing in the towel as soon as the shit gets a little too heavy."

"Hey, fuck off!" Hicks told him. "This don't have nothin' to do with the Thrusters or the fuckin' Capitalists."

"Sure it does," Jeff said. "This is the reason we kicked your asses off Ninety-Second Street and took over one of the finest dust selling locations in the whole city. We went after you and put the heat on you and you all caved like little kids on the schoolyard. The same fuckin' thing you're doing now."

"I told you, you didn't beat us! We pulled out of there 'cause of the heat, man!"

"You made that excuse to save face with yourselves," Jeff told him. "You know as well as I do that you couldn't take the heat from us. A couple ambush attacks, a couple of your main dealers blown away, and you went crying home and tried to say the cops are what made you do it. That's fuckin' bullshit and so is your Queen Laura rationale. You told me you voted for her, remember? You told me you wanted to fight to make Mars free, that you were fucking willing to die for it, but now that the shells have come flying in, now that you've had to look at people who did die for it, you're pussing out and making excuses about it. Go ahead and fuckin' leave, Hicks. We don't need some Thruster pussy up there anyway."

Jeff could actually see Hicks' face turning red. The increased blood flow showed up quite nicely in infrared. "I don't want to die, man!" he said. "Don't you understand that?"

"You think I want to die?" Jeff asked him. "You think I'm suicidal or something? You think I ain't scared shitless about what's gonna happen when them tanks come rolling on our position the next time? I am, man. I'm fuckin' petrified. But I'm going back up there and I'm gonna fight those assholes until they tell me to stop or until they drag my ass down the hill with half my head blown off. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because I think we're gonna win this war," he said. "I think we're gonna be free. And twenty years from now, when they're teaching kids in school about the Battle of Jutfield Gap and the Battle of Eden, I wanna be able to say I was there, that I killed Earthlings there, that I fuckin' helped win the war. And if I ain't alive to say that, my fuckin' parents and my fuckin' friends will say it for me. What are you gonna say in twenty years, Hicks? You gonna tell people you was at the Battle of Jutfield Gap but as soon as the enemy shot a couple shells at someone else's fuckin' position you ran away like a little girl who saw a rat in the hallway?"

Hicks looked away from Jeff's face and stared up the hillside again. He shuddered a little and then turned back to them. Slowly he nodded. "You never would let me live that down, would you?" he asked.

"I wouldn't give you a second thought the moment you climbed on that APC and went away," Jeff told him. "But it ain't me you gotta worry about. Would you ever let you live it down?"

"No," Hicks said. "I guess I wouldn't."

"All right then," Jeff said. "So you coming back up the hill with us, or what?"

Hicks shifted his M-24 on his shoulder. "Let's go," he said. "Maybe we can catch a little nap before they come back."

They walked back to the trench entrance and started back up. On the way they passed three more wounded being brought down.

"Casualties are higher than expected," General Jackson told the image of Laura Whiting on his screen. "We held their tanks at the Jutfield Gap, but only barely. We were actually in the process of withdrawing our forces to the blue line behind the gap when they decided they'd had enough and turned back."

"I see," she said, her eyes probing. "What are the numbers?"

"Two hundred and sixty-three dead at Jutfield," he recited. "Half that many wounded and out of action. We lost fourteen tanks and eighteen APCs. A number of the trenches and tank positions got torn up as well and are unsuitable for primary protection in the next engagement. The commanders on scene are shifting units around to plug up those holes."

"And at New Pittsburgh?" she asked.

"It's not as bad there," he told her. "The gap protecting the New Pittsburgh approach is narrower and hillier, allowing us to concentrate more troops in a smaller area. They threw them back after only ten minutes. Seventy-five were killed, ninety wounded. Only eight tanks and twelve APCs lost. We did lose two Mosquitoes and their crews there, however. They apparently crashed into a hillside while making a run. The lead underestimated a turn and went in, the wing followed right behind."

"Inexperienced pilot?" she asked.

"Yes," he confirmed. "That and the fatigue factor is probably the cause of the accident. Some of those guys have done more than a hundred sorties since the invasion started. They're trying to keep the pressure up on the Earthlings and only getting three or four hours of sleep a day."

"Anything else?" she asked.

He nodded. "We also had a hover go down while evacuating wounded out of New Pittsburgh. More than likely that was a mechanical malfunction. Everyone aboard is confirmed dead."

"What about Libby and Proctor?" she asked next.

"It seems General Wrath might have learned from the beating he took at Eden and NP. The tank units were pulled back from Libby and Proctor before they even got in range to engage. That's a mixed blessing. Proctor has the narrowest defensive gap of them all, only fifteen kilometers wide. We would've massacred them in spades there and it's doubtful they would have even got close enough to put accurate fire on our trenches. At Libby, on the other hand, we have the widest first-line defensive corridor. It's almost seventy kilometers wide and there are several places they can flank it if they choose. We're spread extremely thin through that area and we have to keep one of the ACRs uncommitted and in reserve to defend against a flank attack. They more than likely would have been able to push through and open a corridor if they would have concentrated forces on the center."

"So how bad off are we?" Laura asked, not wanting to get into a discussion about what might have happened. "Why were the casualties so high at Eden?"

"I think the very factors that we've been trying to instill in the Earthlings might have worked against us to some degree."

"What do you mean?"

"Fatigue and breakdown of command and control at the platoon and company level," he said. "We've achieved that goal quite admirably. It's apparent just by watching how their units maneuver. They're all over the place out there, in nothing like a military fighting formation. They're more like ants advancing on a piece of chicken, coming in from all directions with little order or organization."

"And that worked against us?"

"When they came in to hit the positions in the Jutfield Gap, they didn't stick to their zones when attacking. Instead, all of the individual tank platoons seemed to fire at whatever they perceived to be the greatest threat against them. As a result, some of our trenches and tank positions took three and four times the volume of fire they were designed to withstand while others remained completely untouched. We didn't count on them being so haphazard in their engagements. We expected them to spread their fire across the entire gap, which we could have easily absorbed except for the occasional lucky shot that happened to make it through a firing hole."

"Is there anything that can be done to rectify this?" she asked.

"Not much we can do about the tank and APC positions," he said. "As for the trenches, I've ordered that any position under overwhelming cannon fire hunker down and that any position not under fire expand their zones to maximum in order to draw fire away. The battalion and company commanders will be the ones to initiate this. Hopefully it'll help."

"And how is troop morale?"

"Variable," he said. "It's in the danger zone on the infantry and tank units that got hit hard and took heavy casualties. Among the units that didn't get hit hard, however, it's about as high as we could expect."

"Desertions?" she asked.

"About a hundred at Eden," he said. "All from the units that took heavy fire. As per standing orders, support battalions are transporting them back to the main line if feasible. They can walk their asses back from there."

"And they're not being persecuted in any way?"

"I know your feelings on that, Laura," he said. "There is no official persecution going on against the deserters. When they make their way back to the city we'll discharge them and note in the personnel computers that they're ineligible for further military service or benefits. As for unofficial persecution from their peers..." He shrugged. "There's not a lot I can do about that."

"Understood," she said. "What's happening out there now?"

"The peepers are showing that they're formed up just over the horizon in all cities under attack. They're re-arming the tanks by APC shuttle from the supply and refuel point."

"Should the Mosquitoes be attacking those re-supply units?" she asked.

"I considered it," he said. "It's what conventional military thinking would dictate. But I still think our air assets are best utilized for doing what they do best — killing the WestHem foot soldiers who will be climbing those hills and trying to dislodge our infantry. For now the Mosquitoes are continuing their attacks on the APCs in their staging positions and leaving the supply units alone. Mortar teams and sniper teams are in the hills surrounding these staging areas. The snipers are directing mortar fire onto the units that are re-loading."

"You're the military expert," she said. "What about the pilot fatigue and the pilot errors that caused the crash in New Pittsburgh. Anything that can be done about that?"

"The fatigue factor is something we're trying to deal with. I've commandeered as much of the coffee supply as I could get my thieving little hands on and I'm feeding it to the air crews and their maintenance crews. As for pilot error, I've sent out an order that only senior pilots with more than five hundred hours logged are allowed to fly lead in a combat sortie. Again, we do what we can."

"And again, understood," she said. "When can we expect them to send in the ground troops?"

"I think they're hoping to have time to regroup before they do that," he replied. "We're actually trying to push them to commit sooner. The air attacks are causing constant attrition on them so hopefully they'll decide to move before they've had time to properly plan an attack and get their people rested in any way."

She smiled, a weak, strained, fatigued smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Did I ever tell you that I'm glad you're on our side, Kevin?" she asked.

"You may have mentioned it once or twice," he said. "Now why don't you get some sleep? I'll have someone wake you when things start to happen again."

"I'll sleep when you sleep," she told him. "That's the rule, General."

"Yo, boss," Matt Mendez said as he shook Brian Haggerty awake from his slumber. "It's midnight. Start of a brand new fucking day."

Brian opened his eyes slowly and shook his head a little, blinking, trying to come awake. He was lying on a sleeping bag in the back corner of the Mosquito hangar. The sounds of ratcheting air wrenches, hissing fuel hoses, and cursing maintenance techs filled the air. "Midnight?" he grunted, rubbing a hand over the three-day stubble on his face. "Already? Seems like I've only been asleep for two hours or so."

"Very funny, boss," Matt said dutifully. Haggerty had been asleep for only two hours. "The ground pounders threw the WestHems back on their first attack. They're staging twenty klicks west of the gap, re-arming and re-supplying for an infantry charge according to Intel. Our bird is done being cycled. They want us wheels-up in thirty minutes to keep the pressure on."

"Thirty minutes?" Brian said. "Are they smoking dust?"

"If they are, it ain't the good shit," Matt said. "Here, I brought you some coffee. They just sent a shitload of it over from a supply warehouse." He handed him a steaming cup.

"No thanks," Brian said. "I can't abide the Martian coffee. It tastes like printer ink mixed with bull sperm."

"No, this is the good shit," Matt said. "Try it. Best fuckin' coffee I've ever had. They tell me its triple strength too."

"Earthling coffee?" he asked, perking up a little.

"General Jackson's orders," Matt confirmed. "Coffee is to be distributed in bulk to all flight crews and aircraft maintenance crews on an unlimited basis. It seems like we lost a flight over in NP because of fatigue and pilot error. This is the way they're fixing that."

Brian took the cup and had a sip. His face took on a near-orgasmic expression. "Oh yeah," he said. "That's the shit. Amazing how you take things for granted, isn't it?"

"Wouldn't know," Matt told him. "I ain't never tasted coffee this good before. All we ever got in the ghetto was the Martian shit. I thought that's what coffee was supposed to taste like."

"Oh, man," Brian said, with genuine sympathy. "You vermin really were deprived. You know that?"

"I'm figuring it out," Matt said. He held up a small disc. "I went ahead and plotted out an initial ingress and egress route for our first sortie. We're coming in from the south this time."

"We're flying lead?" Brian asked. "I thought it was Boreland and Cocksman's turn."

"Not any more," Matt told him. "New orders from the CIC. Whenever possible, no pilot will fly lead on a combat mission unless he has at least five hundred hours of stick time."

"Really?"

"Really," he confirmed. "Cocksman and I composed the plot while you were sleeping. It's solid."

Brian took another sip of his brew. "Have you gotten any sleep?"

"I'm just a sis, boss," he said. "I don't need sleep. I can crash out in the back when we come off target. Come on. Let's go get our biosuits on. Finish your coffee on the way."

"Right," Brian told him, standing up. "Tell the guys to get the engines fired up and have us ready to move in twenty minutes. I'm gonna go to the head and finish this coffee while I'm taking a nice, healthy shit."

"Ain't you gonna check over the plot?" Matt asked.

"No need," Brian told him. "I trust you."

"General, have our lead elements entered any of the Martian cities yet?" asked the reporter from InfoServe during the question and answer period of the impromptu briefing in the pressroom of Nebraska.

Wrath was very tired and fighting a major migraine headache in addition to heartburn that could have powered his flagship long enough to break Martian orbit. Even though this was a staged question — as were all that were asked of him — he winced at the reply he had to give. With every briefing, every press conference, he was digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself. The fact that he was only saying what he'd been ordered to say by the Executive Council didn't matter a bit. If the house of cards finally collapsed he would still get the blame for it. It was how things worked. "In all four cities the lead elements are still completing the job of neutralizing the terrorist positions," he said. "As I've indicated in past briefings, we've encountered an enemy that is not following the civilized rules of warfare and whose goal is to kill as many of our brave soldiers as possible even against the logic of conventional warfare. Their willingness to die in the name of killing our people is something we didn't count on. Not even the Cuban and Argentine rebels have prepared us for the depth of their fanaticism."

"Have our losses been high?" asked another reporter, this one from ICS. "We're hearing from our reporters on the surface that several dozen marines have been killed in Eden alone."

"Unfortunately," Wrath said, "the number is even higher than that. My last count was that almost seventy marines have been killed in these latest engagements at Eden and New Pittsburgh and the Martian insurgents have managed to destroy or disable almost twenty of our main battle tanks. Coming on the heels of their suicide attacks on our hover squadrons, this is a grave situation indeed."

"Twenty tanks?" asked the InfoServe reporter. "Is that planet-wide or just in Eden."

"That is planet-wide," he assured her, his expression never changing, never hinting at the horror of the real numbers. As of fifteen minutes ago, the count at Eden was 633 tanks destroyed outright and another sixty or so damaged. At New Pittsburgh the losses were a little less — only 320 tanks killed and thirty damaged — but the violence and ferocity of the greenie resistance there had been terrifying. They killed all those tanks in less than ten minutes. "As I said, these suicide squads and their swarming attacks with laser weapons are something we honestly weren't prepared to deal with. In order to protect the rest of the armor and the men engaging in this battle, we pulled back a little to re-think our strategy."

"But we'll be engaging them again soon?" asked a WIV reporter.

"We will continue our march on all four of the Martian cities before sunrise," he assured them. "They will not stop us or break our resolve."

The press conference ended a few minutes later. None of the reporters asked the obvious questions. Why weren't the field reporters being allowed out of the ship? Why are the MASH units aboard the landing ships and the hospital ship up in orbit so overwhelmed? Why does there seem to be more than ten casualties returning for each one that you report? Why aren't we allowed to interview any of those casualties or tour the hospital ship? Just how did greenie kamikaze pilots manage to down two entire wings of hovers? All of the reporters knew that something was going on, something they weren't being told. All of them knew they weren't being told even the smallest portion of truth in their daily briefings. But none of them asked about it. The stories fed to them by General Wrath and Admiral Jules were not questioned or investigated. After all, they had their orders.

Wrath left the press room and walked back to the main war room. There he found the command staff studiously peering at their screens and making notations. On the main screen at the center of the room was a telemetric map divided into four squares — each one showing one of the areas of operation on the surface. He glanced up for a moment and saw that nothing had changed since he'd last looked at it — at least not on the map anyway. He went to his elevated command chair near the center of the room and sat down. A steward brought him a cup of coffee, unasked. He didn't bother to thank the man. Instead, he called for Major Wilde.

"Yes, sir?" Wilde said, appearing before him as if by magic.

"I sent a report on the latest battles off to the Executive Council just before my press briefing. It's just after nine in the morning in Denver so they will be reviewing this catastrophe in about twenty minutes. They're not going to be happy with us."

"No, sir," Wilde agreed, "I don't suppose they are."

Though Wrath and Jules both lied about everything to the big three reporters, to their men, to the WestHem public, they did not lie to Executive Council. Every setback, as well as the reasons for them — when such a reason could be found — had been reported in full detail. Needless to say, the politicians running this particular show and their corporate sponsors who ran the Executive Council, were extremely distressed about the shellacking the marines were taking down on the surface.

"I want some good news to give them in the follow-up briefing," Wrath said. "They're on the verge of removing me from command and confining me to the brig for incompetence. We need to achieve victory with this next push. We need to take those cities. They don't care about the casualty rate. They can manipulate that in the media quite easily. But we need to be standing inside those airlocks by the end of the day."

"We're working on it, sir," Wilde said. "The command staff is formulation battle plans as we speak. We'll launch them simultaneously, hitting all four first lines of defense at once with everything we have."

"Good," Wrath said.

"Unfortunately," Wilde said, "the 'everything we have' is getting less and less by the minute. We're unable to support the ground action with artillery or air power and the attrition of our APCs and the men inside of them continues due to the air attacks by Mosquitoes. If we try to dismount the men the mortars come flying in on top of them. And if we're still sitting in place after sunrise, the special forces teams will undoubtedly start hitting the APCs as well."

"So what are you saying?" Wrath asked.

"We need to hit them as soon as possible. Our men are dangerously fatigued and morale is about negative six on a one to ten scale. The quicker we blast through and achieve some sort of victory, the better."

"So you're suggesting we don't wait until sunrise to attack?"

"Yes sir, that is what I'm suggesting. I understand the rationale for waiting. We're allowed to plan more extensively that way, the visual spectrum will be available for the ground troops, and the delay in attack will allow them to get some sleep. The way things are going, however, they're not getting much sleep out there since every five minutes or so they come under air attack. Also, the Martian biosuits will actually be more visible during the night. And as for planning, well, if our units keep getting smaller with each air attack, it negates a lot of the planning on the small unit level because other forces need to be combined and shifted. I think sooner is much better than later."

"Uh huh," Wrath said. "Do we have any explanation for the ineffectiveness of our artillery barrage against those anti-tank positions? Or the ineffectiveness of our tank guns against those same positions?"

"We've been looking into that," Wilde said. "I managed to pull up some pre-war files we had stored on the computers about MPG positions and tactics. They were in the war plans section under strategy for an invasion by EastHem forces and the utilization of the MPG to assist the fast reaction division stationed on Mars. The plan had always been to utilize the MPG as a speed bump out in the wastelands. Their role was to occupy the various chokepoints — the Jutfield Gap is one of the prominent ones — to slow down the EastHem advance long enough for the fast reaction division to cover the positions in the main line of defense just outside the cities. Of course, we disregarded the possible contributions by the MPG air wing and the MPG special forces teams, writing them off as nothing more than a momentary hindrance to an advance."

"A momentary hindrance, huh?" Wrath said, shaking his head.

"We also considered that the MPG, at best, would provide us with twenty-seven hours of delay — just enough to get our division's equipment down from orbit and deployed. That was assuming nearly sixty percent MPG casualties by the way."

"It would seem that maybe those estimates were a tad conservative," Wrath said. "We hit them with three times as many tanks and men as even the worst-case EastHem scenario and we're still sitting out in the wastelands twelve days after touching down."

"And that," said Wilde, "is more in line with the MPG's assessment of their own effectiveness in such an invasion. The reports in the war plans from General Jackson state that MPG doctrine, training, deployment, and equipment is all designed to hold an invading force out in the wastelands for up to eighty days — long enough for reinforcements to arrive from Earth in the event the fast reaction division is deployed elsewhere and the two planets are in conjunction. These reports were thought laughable by our military experts. Now, however, it seems they were probably not that far off. If EastHem had hit with a standard-sized invasion force I think those Martians would have held them back, probably indefinitely."

"But we're not an EastHem invasion force," Wrath said. "We're the WestHem marines trying to liberate this planet from a bunch of terrorists. So tell me how this report is going to help us."

"Of course, sir," Wilde said. "Among the files was a description of the infantry positions and the armor hull-down positions the greenies had constructed in order to fend off attack. There are no actual blueprints of them, but they are described as: 'concrete reinforced bunkers protected by triple layer sandbags for the infantry positions and titanium shielding for the armor positions.' In addition, the infantry bunkers are protected from above by concrete-lined recesses impenetrable to fused artillery shells and highly resistant to penetrating shells."

"Concrete-lined?" Wrath said, shocked. "Titanium shielding? Recessed underlayers?"

"Yes, sir," Wilde said. "It would seem they're not sitting in simple trenches protected by dirt-filled sandbags. In addition, they cite an extensive network of cross trenches at each position that allows them to move between the anti-tank positions on the top and the infantry positions below them, to evac wounded to battalion aid stations or landing zones, and to retreat to the backside of the hills with almost complete defilade from troops, armor, and artillery to the front."

"Why in the hell didn't we know about this?" Wrath demanded. "Intel told us our artillery would destroy their positions with just a few shells!"

"It seems that no one took the greenie reports on combat effectiveness very seriously," Wilde said. "They were written off as MPG propaganda designed to justify their funding from the taxes the Martians placed on themselves. The reports were only accessed sixteen times since being filed fifteen years ago, and one of those sixteen times was me just thirty minutes ago." And most of the other's, he did not mention, were probably EastHem spies who transmitted the information to London.

"No wonder we're having so much trouble dislodging them," Wrath said. "Do the commanders in the field know about this yet?"

"We'll be updating them shortly — with your permission of course."

"Yes, of course!" Wrath almost yelled.

"The regimental commanders all have this information now," Wilde said. "They're using it to plan the ground assault on those positions."

"Is there any way to avoid the losses we experienced with the first assault on these positions?" Wrath asked. "Or do we just need to suck it up? We'll do what we have to do but I'd rather not lose another seven hundred tanks clearing the first line of defense."

"I don't think the losses need be that bad," Wilde told him. "We'll take casualties of course — both in tanks and infantry — but now that we know what we're up against, and after studying some of the live shots from the first engagement, we think we know how to minimize both casualty count and the amount of time it takes to clear those positions."

"How?"

"After reviewing the live shots and the telemetry, it's obvious that our tank division was disorganized in both movement and firepower during the attack. All across the line the units did not stick to their zones of fire, instead, they concentrated on the nearest threats and plastered those positions while leaving others completely untouched. At the positions they were firing upon, they were able to achieve significant suppression of anti-tank fire. The problem was, the untouched positions were able to keep up a heavy volume of laser fire in what was an obvious zone defense. The Martians stuck to their zones, expanded them when necessary, and inflicted heavy damage on us and ultimately forced us to retreat. This goes to show how important the concept of firing zones is. We need to make sure the attacking units utilize this concept and put fire on all of the Martian positions simultaneously. They need to ignore the Martian tanks and APCs until the infantry has climbed the hills and entered the trench networks. Once we've silenced those infantry positions — either by killing all the Martians or forcing their retreat — they can start concentrating fire on the Martian armor. Until that point, however, the grunts up on those hills with the anti-tank weapons are the most deadly foe."

"That makes sense," Wrath said. "And what kind of numbers are we looking at for a successful ground assault?"

"We have to assume that the Martians are probably at least company strength atop every one of those positions. They may only be platoon strength on some, but we won't know which ones since we can't get overheads of the area and, even if we can, they can't show the numbers on the hills. So, accordingly, we need to send battalion strength at each position in order to assure that we dislodge them with minimal friendly casualties and we need to keep the suppressing fire up until the ground troops get within one hundred meters."

"That will be almost our entire infantry force just to clear those gaps," Wrath said.

"Yes, sir," Wilde agreed. "But if we don't clear those gaps, we don't take those cities. This is the only way I see."

"Okay," Wrath said. "Write it up and make it happen. I want the units moving by 0300. Be sure to alert the medical corps to expect heavy casualties."

"They're getting used to that, sir," Wilde said, turning and walking away.