Greenies

Chapter 17

Martian Wastelands, 20 kilometers west of the Jutfield Gap

0338 hours

"Concrete reinforced trench networks protected by triple layers of dense sandbags?" Callahan repeated slowly, his eyes looking at the solemn, digital image of Captain Ayers.

"That's what we're being told," Ayers confirmed. "They're built with an egress corridor that connects the upper and lower sections and that can facilitate the movement of the units deployed in the network out the back of the trench with almost complete defilade from any frontal or overhead attack."

"So in other words, the arty didn't do shit, the tank fire didn't do shit, and every Martian that stood in those trenches yesterday is still standing in them today?"

"Well, not every one," he said. "We have information that there were significant casualties from the tank engagements. Spies in Eden report the hospitals there are overwhelmed. We are also told there were a number of desertions after the first engagement. Apparently the weekend warriors are starting to show their true colors."

"How many desertions?" Callahan wanted to know.

"Unknown exactly," Ayers admitted. "But the fact that there were any at all proves their morale is slipping, doesn't it? Their will to fight is a finite thing, something that can be broken."

"Not as much as ours is breaking," Callahan said. "The only reason half of our people haven't deserted is there's nowhere for them to go. Even so, I've had almost a dozen of my guys trying to fake some minor injury to get taken off the line and I hear over in Bravo Company some private actually shot himself in the leg and tried to claim it was an accident."

"I heard that one too," Ayers said. "If investigation reveals that is actually the case he'll be put in the brig, court martialed under wartime rules, and will spend the next ten years of his life shoveling snow in the Andes Penal Colony."

Callahan shrugged. "His punishment wasn't the point of my story," he said. "The point is that he tried it at all. We're all tired out here, cap and it gets kind of depressing watching those Mosquitoes come in every five or ten minutes to pop off another thirty or forty of us. I thought we were supposed to start moving by 0300."

"The Martian mortar attacks have delayed the re-arming of the tank division," Ayers said. "About par for the course out here. We should be underway in the next thirty minutes."

"Yeah, so we can go up against concrete lined trenches full of Martian guns."

"We'll be hitting them with overwhelming strength," Ayers said. "Four to one advantage at best, probably closer to six to one at many of the hills. Our entire battalion will be going after this one position. There's no way we can lose."

"You know," Callahan mused, "I wish I had a blowjob for every time someone said there's no way we can lose since we touched down on this place. I wouldn't have to jack off for a month."

Ayers let this go. Instead he sent a copy of their operational map to Callahan's computer (and to the computers of the other three platoon commanders in the company — they were in on the conversation but all so junior they didn't dare talk unless spoken to). "This is the position our battalion will be securing," he said. "It's known as Hill 657 on the Martian maps and it's located in grid Charlie-nine. It rises one hundred and forty meters above the mean ground level of the valley and is one of the most important defensive positions the Martians have to guard the central gap access route. Intel estimates it is staffed with company strength — two platoons of anti-tank infantry, two platoons of straight infantry armed with M-24s, grenade launchers, and eight to ten squad automatic weapons. The flanks of the hill are guarded by a number of APCs and main battle tanks, although the MBT's will probably not be in a position to support the Martian infantry against ground attack. There are at least two eighty-millimeter mortar platoons stationed behind this hill in addition to the Martian mobile guns back at the main line of defense. The artillery will not be subject to counter-battery fire, as you're aware. All of our guns are hiding back out of range of the Martian 250s and being held in reserve for the eventual attack on the main line. However, the Martian 150s will only be effective against us during the dismount period and for the first three hundred meters of the advance. After that, the bulk of the hill itself will serve to protect us from them."

"What about the mortars though?" Callahan asked. "We've seen what they're capable of doing with them."

"They will be able to drop mortar fire on us until we're roughly at the base of the hill," Ayers said. "Their mortar teams, however, will be subject to counter-battery fire from our own mortar teams who will be firing from their APCs two kilometers back."

"Won't the Martians just counter-battery our mortars with their 150s?" he asked.

"They'll be shooting and scooting," Ayers said. "Counter-battery casualties should be minimal."

"That's what we said about our mobile guns," Callahan pointed out. "And they fuckin' massacred them, remember? What makes you think they won't use whatever spies in the sky they have to pinpoint mortar teams as well? Hell, they could even hit them with their 250s, couldn't they?"

"I have no information on that, Callahan," Ayers said testily. "I'm just giving you the briefing that I've been given."

Callahan sighed, stretching back in his command chair for a moment. "Understood, cap," he said. "Please continue."

"Okay," Ayers said. "This is the attack plan in a nutshell. The tanks will roll in first and start putting suppressing fire on their trench network. They'll concentrate on the anti-tank positions first and then switch to the lower positions — where the main resistance against us is going to be coming from — once we start to dismount. Alpha and Bravo Companies will hit the front and lay down heavy suppressing fire of their own once they achieve defilade from the Martian mortars at the base of the hill. Delta Company will hit the left flank of the hill and start working their way up to the trench network on that side. We'll hit the right flank and do the same from that side. Now remember, there are APCs guarding the flanks of the hills. In order to maintain defilade from their machine guns and their 60mm guns, we're going to have to wind through this series of knolls at the hill base here, here, and here." A red line traced its way over the map, showing the route that would keep them out of the line of fire — in defilade — of the Martian APCs.

"From there," he continued, "we climb, moving on our bellies most likely. The slope of this hill is about twenty-five percent on average. It's very rocky and covered with loose sand on the side we'll be ascending. They'll be putting M-24 and SAW fire on us and possibly grenade fire. We'll use heavy covering fire from two platoons while a third advances and the fourth hangs back. Move your platoons up ten and fifteen meters at a time and then leapfrog around each other until we get close enough to start putting grenade fire through the openings in the trenches. That should keep the direct fire suppressed even more. We move up further until we can breach the trench. Once we're inside, we simply clear them out of there. All of this is assuming they don't retreat prior to that point. We're deliberately leaving their rear open so they have that option."

"Hopefully they'll decide to take that option," Callahan said. "Because if they don't, we're gonna take a hell of a lot of casualties."

"Medical teams have been alerted and are moving up," Ayers said. "So far it appears the Martians are not deliberately hindering casualty evacuation from the battlefield, so at least if you get hit, we'll be able to take care of you."

"Yes," said Callahan, "and we're already conveniently pre-zipped into these body bags they call biosuits. Isn't that nice?"

"Enough of that shit, Callahan," Ayers scolded, though without much venom. "If everyone understands their role in the coming attack, why don't you get your squad leaders and the rest of your platoons briefed in. Be sure to let your APC drivers know that they need to follow the goddamn map and stay in formation no matter what. Let your APC gunners know to stick to their zones when laying down suppressing fire. Part of the reason the tanks were hit so hard was they were putting their fire all over the place and leaving a lot of the Martian firing positions uncovered with suppression fire. Stick to those zones and follow the routes we've come up with and we should be able to keep casualties to a minimum."

"And just what is the minimum?" Callahan asked. "Only twenty percent? Forty maybe?"

"You're out of line, Callahan," Ayers said dryly. "Get the briefings done and be ready to move out in thirty minutes."

Among the platoon leaders, only Callahan noticed that Ayers hadn't answered his question.

"They're moving in," said Sergeant Walker to his squad just after 0400. "We have the almost live telemetry again from whatever source Intel is using to spy on them. They're spread out like before, tanks in front coming in hot, APCs behind, mortar teams and support battalions behind that. ETA to first contact, five minutes."

"Oh yeah," said Hicks, who had given up the SAW to Drogan and was now manning a position near the end of the trench with his M-24. "I'm lovin' this now."

"You gotta die sometime, Hicks," Walker told him. "Hopefully it won't be this morning. Command estimates they're going to put suppressing fire on the anti-tank positions first and then bring up their APCs to dismount their troops. Once they start doing that they're more than likely going to start plastering our positions to keep us from firing on them. If the fire gets overwhelming our orders are to hunker down until it eases up. Adjoining hillsides will expand their zones to pick up the slack if they can. Likewise, if one of the hills to the north or south comes under heavy fire we're to expand our zones to take the pressure off them. We have to make sure that no exposed Earthling soldier down there doesn't have someone shooting at him. If they wanna take this hill, they're gonna have to pay the price for it."

"What about arty support?" Drogan asked.

"We have two batteries of 150s committed to this position," Walker replied. "Lieutenant Comesly will be serving as the forward spotter and directing that fire. We also have our mortar teams on the backside of the hill. Platoon lieutenants will be directing that fire and it will be answered based on priority."

"What kinda numbers we looking at to be attackin' us?" asked Jeff.

"Hard to tell by the telemetry at this point," Walker replied. "But you can bet your ass it'll be at least battalion strength hitting every hill, possibly more."

"That would be about four to one or so?" Jeff asked.

"Roughly," Walker said. "You didn't expect them to fight fair now, did you?"

"No, not really," Jeff said, watching as the heat tendrils and the swelling dust cloud grew more distinct.

The rumbling vibration of the approaching vehicles became noticeable again and grew worse. The tension grew thicker and the communication over the tactical channel became less and less frequent. Nobody seemed to have much to say anymore.

"Tanks coming into range," Walker suddenly announced. "AT positions engaging."

His observation was not entirely necessary since everyone could plainly see that the AT teams above them and on the hillsides around them were engaging. The flashes of laser weapons began to light up the night once again. Almost immediately the flashing of tank guns from just over the horizon began to answer back, sending streams of eighty millimeter shells streaking towards them. Explosions began to sound as their hill was hit but it was clear from the first that the volume of return fire was not nearly as intense as it had been during the first attack, when it had seemed like the entire hill was going to collapse atop them.

"Tanks approaching," Drogan announced. "Breaching the horizon across the whole line."

Jeff saw the forms of the main battle tanks becoming visible, three then four then eight then a dozen then two dozen, their laser mounts appearing first followed by their turrets and then the bodies. Some exploded as they were hit with anti-tank fire, one here, five there, three somewhere else, but always more appeared behind them, their cannons and lasers flashing. The ones not hit began to spread out a little, continuing to advance forward despite the horrendous losses they were taking. And still more and more kept appearing.

"Telemetry is showing sixty plus APCs moving toward our position, coming in hot," Walker announced. "They're starting to spread out for what appears a frontal and flank attack. The other hills are all getting about the same and there is a large reserve divided up into company strength units lagging behind them."

"Six hundred men," Jeff said, his adrenaline now flowing quite freely. "All for us."

"How fuckin' thoughtful of them," Hicks said, gripping the handle of his M-24 compulsively.

"This is the real thing, people," Walker said. "They're coming to get us. AT units will shift fire to the APCs as soon as they're in range to try to whittle their numbers down. As soon as they start to dismount, open up on them. Remember, controlled fire, stick to your zones, and try to put your recticle on center mass if you can. Don't try to be a video game hero and get everyone with headshots. A wounded marine is even better than a dead marine. You kill them and they just lay there. You wound them and someone has to take the time and manpower to pull them out. Drogan, remember to go after the large concentrations with that SAW. Keep them pinned in place if you can so the rest of the squad can pick them off individually."

"Right, sarge," she said, her voice cracking just the tiniest bit.

"And when its time to leave, we do it like we practiced," he added. "Take your weapons and as much ammo and supplies as you can carry and walk quickly to the egress point. Don't run, don't push, and don't panic. Panic kills. Remember that."

"The tanks are stopping," Drogan announced.

And indeed they were. They had spread out on a sporadic line about seven hundred meters out, many of them trying to find what cover they could. Some were hiding behind already destroyed tanks from the first engagement. Others were trying to put boulders or small rises in the land between themselves and the hill. The cannon fire began to pick up in intensity, still concentrated above, at the AT positions, still nowhere near as intense as before.

"APCs visible," someone shouted. "Here they come!"

Jeff saw the shapes of the APCs broach the horizon. They were moving fast, faster than the tanks, not zigzagging, just coming straight on. As soon as they became visible they began to fire their own sixty millimeter cannons at the AT positions, adding to the volume of fire. The hill shook harder with the explosions but even as he feared it would be enough to suppress the anti-tank crews, two of the APCs exploded from direct hits.

"Yes," he whispered, his thumb playing over the firing button of his weapon. "Take them out, guys. Take them right the fuck out."

As they drew closer, the APCs began to fire their twenty-millimeter cannons as well, sending high intensity streaks of shells into the hill. And still the AT crews kept after them. Three more exploded, then five more, their hulks stopping dead as smoke and blood vapor rose into the air. But still they came, passing through the ranks of tanks that were trying to protect them and advancing further. Half of them came directly toward the front of the hill. The other half split up into two and began to move towards the sides. Suddenly, they came to a halt, their guns continuing to fire as fast as they could. Their rear ramps came down and the small figures of WestHem marines began to pour out of them.

"They're dismounting!" Walker shouted. "Open fire. Arty and mortars are incoming!"

Jeff's zone was near the right flank of the hill as seen from the enemy perspective. He put his recticle over the figure of a marine and pushed the firing button on his weapon. It kicked in his hand and the figure dropped, a puff of blood vapor coming out of his back. He had just killed his first enemy soldier. He attached no thought or emotion to this save a small feeling of vicious pleasure. He was too scared to feel much else. And before he could even put his recticle on someone else, before Drogan could even open up with her SAW to keep them pinned near their egress points, both the tanks and the APCs shifted fire and began to plaster the infantry trenches.

"Fuck me!" someone yelled as the streaks of eighty, sixty, and twenty millimeter began to pound into their position. Explosions shuddered and concussed through his body. Dirt, sand, and rocks began to fly around the trenches. One of the shells went off right outside his hole and he felt shrapnel pinging off his helmet.

"Fuck me is right," he said. Still he kept his head in his hole and shot another soldier. He then shot another one.

"Fuck me!" Callahan yelled as he stepped out of the APC and into the living hell of the Martian battlefield. Bullets came flying in, pinging off the top of the APC, slamming into the dirt around them. Two of the squad members went down almost instantly, both shot through the torso. He covered behind the rear of the APC the best he could and tried to clear his mind enough to start taking account of his platoon, their positioning, and the best way to advance them to the base of that hill.

The advance forward had been bad enough, horrifying even. They'd rushed inward towards their flank of the hill, sixteen APCs in all, plowing through a broad plain littered with destroyed tanks. As soon as the hill had come in sight, the lasers began to fall on them. The APC directly next to his in the formation had blown up right before his eyes, its turret flying through the air, the blood of its occupants geysering upward and blowing off in the wind. Two and then three other APCs of the company exploded right behind it, another thirty men dead in an instant, the rest of them horribly exposed, their suppressing fire doing next to nothing to slow down the onslaught of laser energy.

"Dismount!" came Ayers' cry, his voice sounding scared, desperate, very unlike the cool, professional tone of command it usually instilled. "Get everyone out and start advancing towards the base."

The APCs stopped and they'd scrambled out in a disorganized heap, two hundred meters short of their planned egress point and without much of anything in the way of natural cover from the gunfire that was erupting around them.

"Callahan, Meyers," Ayers ordered. "Get your platoons to put some covering fire on those hillside positions!"

"Meyers is dead, sir," a terrified voice squeaked back at them. "This is Corporal Jones. I've taken command of fourth platoon."

"Just fuckin' great," Ayers responded. "Alright, Jones, start commanding. Third and fourth platoon cover, first and second advance inward to the original dismount location. Move!"

Callahan repeated the orders to his platoon and then quickly moved behind a medium sized boulder that was ten meters from the APC. No sooner had he stepped away than the APC exploded, struck by an anti-tank laser. It's turret landed exactly where Callahan had just been standing.

"Jesus," he muttered, resisting the urge to stare at the destroyed vehicle. He turned back towards the battlefield and watched as his men got behind anything they could find to use as cover — rocks, undulations in the landscape, destroyed APCs. Several more went down.

"They're killing us down here," Callahan told his men. "Stop crawling around and start shooting! We need some fire on those Martian gun positions or they're gonna pick us off one by one!"

The SAW gunners settled in and quickly set up their weapons. They started firing upward, raking their bullets over the trenches where the flashes from the Martian guns were emanating. The rest of the platoon soon followed, sending three round bursts at the gun flashes with their M-24s. It had no effect whatsoever. The Martians guns kept flashing and men kept getting hit, their weapons falling to the ground, their grunts and groans of pain, their death cries echoing over the tactical channel.

"Incoming!" several voices yelled at once.

Callahan looked up and saw the streaks of artillery and mortar shells coming at them, dropping out of the sky like deadly hailstones. The explosions began a few seconds later. Flashes of light blinded them, concussions slammed into them, and men were blown apart, arms and legs and heads flying from their bodies, torsos tossed through the air on clouds of blood vapor. Shrapnel lanced into Callahan's left arm, slicing neatly through his suit and causing a warning light to appear in his goggles.

First and second platoon took the worst of it, however. They had been rushing forward to their position when the shells started dropping. Their entire front rank was shredded.

"All units, advance!" Captain Ayers yelled. "The arty is killing us. Move forward to the base of the hill! There's defilade from the arty there!"

Callahan didn't have to tell his platoon twice. They stood and began moving inward, hurtling themselves along the ground as fast as possible in the bulky suits in .3G of gravity. It was nothing so organized as an advance, it was a panicked heap of bodies rushing from a killing box, a formation that resembled a stampede.

The shells continued to drop out of the sky, exploding some of the men, wounding others. Rifle and SAW bullets slammed into their ranks, cutting down others. Callahan saw a stream of machine gun bullets go streaking just over the top of his head. Behind him a private from his platoon was cut nearly in half. A shell went off somewhere in front of him and something struck him in the face hard enough to snap his head backward. He looked down and saw an arm, still covered in biosuit material, lying in the dirt.

They passed their intended drop-off point without slowing. This brought them across a shallow indentation in the ground that continued up to the base of the hill. In the center of this indentation was a large field of boulders that had collected over the millennia. Once inside this depression the 150mm artillery fire ceased to be a threat since the hill blocked their passage. This was not true of the mortars, however, since they were fired upward, lobbed actually.

"Get to that boulder field!" Ayers commanded. "Spread out and take positions behind the rocks!"

Callahan repeated the order to his platoon but it wasn't really necessary. That was where they were all heading anyway, driven by sheer survival instinct. They went scrambling in in a heap, throwing themselves to the ground and crawling forward the last thirty or forty meters to escape the gunfire. Several pushing and shoving matches broke out over ownership of the larger and best-positioned boulders. Callahan saw at least two people shot down after being thrown out into the open by larger, stronger, or more desperate competitors. He himself found a boulder about two meters in diameter. Two marines were already huddling against it. He threw himself between them just as another stream of machine gun fire came stitching in. It blew several chunks off the top of the boulder and then shifted to the right, killing two marines trying to make it two another boulder.

Callahan looked at his two companions and, upon seeing their faces, realized he had no idea who they were. They weren't from his current platoon, nor had they been members of this company as of two days ago. They were talking but their voices weren't coming across his audio system. They were probably displaced extras, piled into first or second platoon — or maybe both — because of the APC shortage.

He called up his mapping software to get a status check on his men. What he saw wasn't encouraging. One entire squad had been killed when a laser struck their APC. Of the remaining four squads (he'd absorbed an extra himself due to the APC shortage) sixteen men were lying still back behind them, either dead or wounded, and another four were no longer transmitting at all, which meant their suit computers or radio equipment had been completely destroyed.

"Doc?" he hailed, calling his latest medic whose name he couldn't remember. He couldn't even remember what his face looked like.

"Doc's dead, LT," said Corporal Hennesy, who was leading second squad. "A mortar blew him in half while we were moving up."

"Great," Callahan said. "Just great." He would have to trust that one of the other platoons medics — assuming they were still alive — would take care of his wounded.

He checked the positioning of his men who were still alive and saw without surprise that they were scattered all over the place, interspersed with the other three platoons. Meanwhile, the gunfire continued to slam into them and the mortars continued to drop down on them in volleys. He switched to the command frequency. "Cap, you there?" he asked.

"Got a fucking hole blasted in my suit," Ayers answered, "but I'm here. About thirty meters from your position. We need to get moving up the hill as quick as possible before the mortar fire takes us out group by group."

"My very suggestion," Callahan said. "We'll cover for first and second if you get 'em moving."

"Wait a minute," cut in the corporal in charge of second platoon (neither Callahan nor Ayers could remember his name), his voice sounding whiny and terrified. "Why do we have to move up first? I think it's third and fourth's turn to move first, isn't it?"

"This isn't the fucking kindergarten playground, asshole!" Ayers yelled at him. "Unless you want a friendly fire round through your goddamn nutsack, you'll go when I tell you to go. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," the corporal said. "I was just trying to point out that..."

"Don't point," Ayers told him. Just do. Third and fourth platoons, get some covering fire on those Martians! First and second platoon, move up to the base and start putting your fire up there. Move!"

There was no further dissent in the ranks. Callahan passed on the order and his remaining men started firing up at the Martians again. The members of fourth platoon did the same. As soon as the volume of fire was at it's heaviest, first and second got up and began to dash forward.

"They're moving in!" said Walker. "Keep the fire on them! Make them earn every inch of ground they take!"

Jeff was as scared as he had ever been in his life. Both the tanks and the APCs below continued to fire shells of all calibers directly at their trench, directly at the very holes they were firing from. Corporal Valenzuela had been killed right before his eyes, shrapnel from a sixty-millimeter shell ripping through his throat and upper chest. Private Mullins had been horribly injured. A twenty-millimeter shell made it into her firing hole and tore through her right shoulder, leaving her right arm hanging limp and useless. The trench itself had taken a royal beating. Sandbags were blown open, entire sections were collapsed in some places. Dust and smoke filled the entire length and everywhere you walked you were stepping on piles of expended shell casings.

Still, the damage was nowhere near as bad as what Jeff, Hicks, and Drogan had witnessed in the anti-tank trench above. For the most part the barricades were doing their jobs and absorbing the punishment instead of letting it through to the troops inside. And now they were undergoing their first sustained barrage of small arms fire as a multi-platoon sized unit below tried to keep them from shooting at the other multi-platoon size unit now advancing on them.

"Shoot and move, people," Walker reminded. "Don't linger in one hole or you're dead."

Jeff leaned his body to the right, putting his shoulder and head into one of the firing holes, pointing his weapon downward. He saw the group of marines — sixty to seventy of them — taking short, rapid steps toward the base of the hill, their biosuited bodies crouched low, their weapons held close to their sides. Behind them, from behind the rocks, were dozens of flashes, including streaks of SAW fire. Bullets plinked in everywhere, kicking up dust, breaking rocks, tossing pebbles, slamming into the sandbags. Any one of those bullets could be the one that flew in at just the right angle, that would make it through the hole and into his face or chest or neck.

Drogan fired a long burst with the SAW, the rounds cutting two of the advancing marines down. Jeff covered the nearest marine in his zone with his targeting recticle and pushed his firing button, hitting him right at center mass, dropping him to the ground. He targeted another, shot him down, and then one more. He then pulled out of the firing hole and hunkered down, none too soon as it turned out since a flurry of machine gun fire and three round bursts came flying in as the hole was targeted. Several of the rounds made it through to plink into the backside of the trench. An explosion boomed very close, close enough to rattle his teeth in his mouth. He had heard enough of them now to identify it as a sixty-millimeter shell. A piece of sandbag shredded from the impact and smoke and shrapnel came flying into the hole from the outside.

"Damn," he muttered, taking a few deep breaths. He then moved two meters to his right, positioned himself in another firing hole and leaned out again to take a few more shots.

"Drogan displacing," Drogan said to let everyone know the SAW would not be firing for a few moments.

"Make it quick, Drogan," Walker told her. "They're moving up fast."

"Right, sarge," she said.

"Wouldn't it be a little easier on us," Hicks asked, "if the fuckin' AT teams upstairs would stop shooting at the APCs and pick up their M-24s to give us some support down here?"

"Those AT teams are doing just fine the way they are," Walker responded. "In case you forgot, those APCs down there didn't just drive these marines up here, they're lobbing sixties and twenties at us. You know those big booms you keep hearing? That big boom that killed Valenzuela? The AT teams are killing them. Haven't you noticed the fire has slacked off?"

"Oh... yeah, I guess," Hicks said, firing a few shots with his weapon and then pulling back inside.

The first group of marines made it all the way to the base of the hill, minus twelve to fifteen of their number. The survivors, now safe from mortar fire, hit their bellies, taking cover behind some of the rocks and the outcroppings. They began firing up at them, momentarily doubling the volume of fire pouring in.

"Pull back inside for a few!" Walker ordered. "Reload if you need to and get ready to start hitting the second group when they move in. They're trying the leapfrog maneuver here."

Jeff leaned back against the trench wall — again just ahead of a bullet that came flying in. He checked the ammunition indicator display on the front of his weapon and saw he had five rounds left in his magazine. He ejected it, sliding it into a pocket on his left side where other almost empty magazines were kept for later reloading or in case of emergency. He pulled a fresh magazine from his right side pocket, slammed it into the weapon, and jacked the first round into the chamber. Beside him, Drogan was doing the same, putting a fresh two hundred round drum into the SAW. The two of them shared a look with each other — a look that was half camaraderie, half fear.

The small arms fire slacked off some, although the eighties, sixties, and twenties continued to slam into their position with depressing regularity.

"They're moving up again," Walker told them. "Let's get at 'em. The LT reports the marines at the center of the hill are not advancing and that tank and APC fire is concentrating on the infantry positions to the flanks. They're gonna try to take us from the sides."

"We need more people over here, sarge," Hicks said. "There's only seven of us trying to hold off a whole fuckin' company!"

"They're sending four people from first squad over to reinforce us," Walker told them. "We'll try to delay them as long as we can but as soon as they hit the halfway point up the hill, we're pulling out."

"Finally," Jeff said with a sigh.

"Now put some fire on those marines!" Walker ordered. "Don't let them just walk up this fucking hill!"

Callahan advanced just behind the bulk of his men. The fire from the Martian position above was not murderous by any means — it looked like no more than seven or eight weapons firing at them, not even squad strength. All the same, it was horrifyingly accurate and the covering fire provided by the APCs, the tanks, and two platoons of marines had absolutely no effect on it. Men dropped left and right of him, the blood boiling out of gaping holes in the their backs. SAW fire raked over them from time to time, taking out any group that had bunched up. He saw streaks of bullets go flying over his head several times as his feet struggled to find suitable ground to step upon. He knew he could be killed at any second, that only random chance had kept one of those bullets from slamming into him. This was not a situation he liked to find himself in.

They passed through first and second platoon — who continued to provide covering fire — and started up the hill. The slope was relatively easy, no more than twenty-five percent or so, but the ground itself was rocky and uneven with outcroppings of rock and drifts of loose, powdery soil blown in by the winds. Private Slawson — one of the few original members of Callahan's platoon — got himself a billion dollar wound when he stepped in a crevice and snapped his tibia and fibula at mid-shaft. The rest of them tried to scramble upward as quickly as possible, to get at least twenty meters ahead of their cover positions. Nine more fell to gunfire before they were able to hunker down behind some of the outcroppings.

Callahan saw he had lost one of his SAW gunners on the advance but the other three set up their weapons and began to shoot. The rest of his men began popping three round bursts at the spots where Martian gun flashes were originating.

"First and second platoon," Ayers commanded. "Move up. Third and fourth, keep that covering fire up. We need to suppress those positions!"

First and second started up the hill but they didn't get far. An increased volume of gunfire from the Martian positions — including another SAW — tore into them, dropping eight in the first ten seconds.

"Down!" Ayers yelled. "Get down! They've reinforced that position!"

They dove to the ground, finding cover wherever they could. The bullets followed them, popping off anyone who was exposed in any way, leaving the hillside littered with dead and wounded.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Callahan said as he witnessed this. "Cap, we need more men over here! Can they break loose a platoon or two from the center to reinforce us?"

There was no answer. Callahan knew instantly what this probably meant. Ayers was either dead or horribly wounded. He had been hanging out with first platoon and they had just gotten trounced with gunfire. He looked at his mapping software long enough to locate Ayers' dot on the display. It was still there, which meant the suit was still transmitting but it was lying still in the open. Not an encouraging sign.

Callahan struggled for a moment to remember who was currently leading first platoon. Was it that corporal who had been whining earlier? He thought it was. Now what the hell was his name? Or maybe it was that corporal who had...

A burst of SAW fire blasted into his rock, chipping pebbles off to spray against his helmet, breaking his train of concentration, reminding his over-fatigued, over-stressed mind that he was in the middle of a battle.

"First platoon commander!" he barked on the command channel. "This is Callahan."

"Sergeant Corals here, Callahan," a voice responded. It was neither the whiny voice from earlier or the other corporal. Callahan, in fact, had no idea who Sergeant Corals even was — hadn't even been aware that there was still a sergeant left to command anything at all.

Christ, he thought, shaking his head in terrified amazement. We're supposed to win a battle like this? When we don't even know who is running the fucking platoons in our own company? "Corals, what's the status on Captain Ayers? He's not responding to hails and he's positioned about ten meters behind you, not moving."

"That sounds like his ass then," Corals replied. "That would put you in charge, wouldn't it?"

"Get someone back there to check on him," Callahan ordered. "His radio might be out."

"Callahan, we're under fire here in case you haven't noticed. Ain't none of my men gonna expose themselves to go check on a fuckin' corpse. You're in command of the company now — what's fuckin' left of it. How about you make a command decision and order off this hill?"

"I'm making a command decision and ordering you to get someone back there to check on the captain," Callahan said. "Get someone right this fucking second or you'll be doing it yourself!"

A pause, then an angry voice replied, "Okay, I got some guys moving back there. If I was you, I wouldn't let myself get in their gunsights later if they survive this."

"You make another remark like that and your fucking head will be in my gunsight before you're done making it," Callahan told him. "Is that clear?"

"Sure, whatever," Corals said.

Callahan checked his map display again, watching to make sure Corals wasn't just jerking him off and pretending to send someone. He wasn't. Three dots separated from the rest of the platoon and began to inch their way backward — no doubt crawling on their bellies — toward the dot that represented Ayers.

"He's dead," Corals reported a few seconds after they arrived at their destination. "Took a couple of rounds right in the head and blew it clean open. You happy now?"

"Thrilled," Callahan said, unable to muster up anything like emotion to attach to news that the man who had been his friend for the last six years and his boss for the last two was dead, lying in a heap on some shitty Martian hillside. He was too tired and too scared to care. "Listen up. I want you to hold in place and keep the fire on that hillside. I'm gonna see about getting us some reinforcements."

"Sure," said Corals. "Take your time. We're just lying here under these fucking rocks enjoying the pretty light show."

Callahan ignored this for now. He turned his radio to the platoon frequency and told Corporal Hennesy, the most senior squad leader (which meant he'd been in that position almost thirty-six hours) that third platoon was all his. He then switched to the battalion command frequency and hailed Lieutenant Colonel West, commander of Second Battalion. "This is Lieutenant Callahan," he told him. "Captain Ayers is KIA. I've assumed command of Charlie Company."

"Goddammit!" barked West, who was commanding from an APC far in the rear. "That's two of my company commanders I've lost in the last fifteen minutes!"

"Uh... yes, sir," Callahan said. "We need some..."

"Schafers of Bravo Company over on the left flank got smoked by a mortar shell," West said although Callahan hadn't asked and didn't care. "And now Ayers is gone too? Goddamn! He was like a brother to me. We went to the academy together."

"My sympathies, sir, but..."

"Are you sure he's dead?" West cut in.

"I'm sure," Callahan squeaked as another stream of SAW fire slammed into his rock. "Some of the men checked on him after he stopped transmitting. But anyway..."

"How'd he get it?" West asked. "Was it those fucking mortars?"

"Uh... no, sir, it was bullets, probably SAW fire during the last advance. Took him in the head. Look, sir, we're pinned down here on the side of the hill, just above the base. We've taken heavy casualties and the Martians have reinforced their position. They have two SAWs and at least eight M-24s up there now. We need some more people up here if we're going to make it up that hill."

"No can do, Callahan," West told him. "Bravo and Delta Companies are taking heavy fire in the center of the hill and Alpha is pinned down just like you are."

"Uh... sir," Callahan said carefully, through clenched teeth, "aren't Bravo and Delta just a diversionary force to make the Martians think we're attacking the center? They're not meant to go up the hill until its secured, right?"

"Well... no," West said. "But they are keeping the bulk of the greenies occupied while your company and Alpha Company advance on the flanks. If I start shifting forces from the center they might figure out we're planning to take the hill from the flanks."

An explosion boomed ten meters to Callahan's right as a fragmentation grenade launched from a Martian M-24 detonated over the top of one of his squads. Two of his men rolled lifelessly down the hill. Another simply slumped over. "I think they've already figured that out, sir," he said. "They have at least one grenade launcher up there and they're starting to use it."

"Grenade launchers? Hmmm. Sounds serious."

Another one came flying in, air-bursting over yet another squad of marines, killing two more. "Yes, sir," Callahan said. "I'd say it's pretty fuckin' serious. If we don't get some reinforcements over here in the next five minutes we're gonna have to pull back!"

"There will be no retreat from this hill, Callahan!" West barked at him. "Do you understand that? No retreat! I will not have it be known that my battalion ran away from a bunch of greenies!"

"Then get me some more men over here, sir!" Callahan yelled back. "If you don't, your whole battalion will be dead! We need to get up that hill and stop this fire!"

"Valentine, man the eighty!" Sanchez ordered. "Command reports the marines are reinforcing the units on this flanks. At least two platoons heading this way!"

"What about the tanks?" Zen asked as another laser shot slammed into their barrier, burning through another section of their rapidly crumbling defensive emplacement with enough energy left over to peel a layer off the front of their turret.

"Fuck the tanks!" Sanchez replied. "Our job is to protect the infantry, not ourselves. Those platoons will have to pass right through that open area at two o'clock. Get some fire on them when they do. I'll man the twenty and rake up any stragglers."

"Fuck my ass," Zen said, popping off one last tank and then abandoning his laser cannons. He switched his control set up to the main eighty-millimeter gun, checking to make sure a round was in it. He looked toward the two o'clock position, a small open area about one hundred meters wide and tried to ignore the dozens of tanks and APCs that were still trying to kill them. He had never wanted to be away from any place as much as he wanted to be away from this deathtrap right now.

He had lost count of how many WestHem tanks he'd killed in the last fifteen minutes. The entire battle so far had been a mad, endless, terrifying stream of explosions and flashes, of covering tanks with his recticle and firing, of watching turrets flying into the air, of hearing Xenia cry out the damage being inflicted on their barricade and their tank, of hearing the reports of other tanks being destroyed or damaged when the overwhelming fire against them managed to burn through and hit in just the right place. Of the sixteen tanks of their unit, four had been annihilated with all hands. He supposed that wasn't a bad ratio since their unit was responsible for the destruction of at least seventy marine main battle tanks — their burned out carcasses were everywhere on the battlefield — but the knowledge that he might annihilated at any second, flash-fried by a laser burn-through or, even worse, blown to pieces by detonating ammunition — weighed heavy on him.

There was a clank as Sanchez used his load button to jack the first twenty-millimeter round into the externally mounted cannon. It was belt-fed from a compartment on the outside of the turret. The weapon was fired with remote control from inside by means of a camera/infrared system although the actual gun could be physically reached through the commander's hatch in the event of a jam.

"Artillery coming down out there," Sanchez reported, unnecessarily since Zen could see it as well. "Mortar fire too. They must have them in sight."

"They stopped firing at us," Xenia said. "Did you notice? Since we stopped shooting at them they must think we're dead."

"Let 'em think that," Zen said.

"The illusion will only last until we open fire on their dismounts," Sanchez said. "So enjoy it while it lasts. Xenia, I want you to put us up just long enough to take a few shots. Get back in the hull down position the second I tell you to. Remember, our turret will be exposed to direct fire from the marine MBTs while we're up."

"Got it," she said.

"And remember," put in Zen, "we're sittin' in the fuckin' turret."

"No shit," she said testily. "You put the fire on the marines and I'll get you back down."

The mortars and artillery rounds continued to explode in the open area without let-up, flying in in volleys. It was a strangely beautiful sight if you could forget that people were being blown to pieces by it — people who were intent on killing their comrades up on the hill.

"I've got movement over there," Sanchez said. "On the far side, by those rocky mounds."

Zen looked in that direction and saw two and then three biosuited figures crouched low near the rocks, probably evaluating the terrain before moving on. "Should we hit them now?" he asked. "Keep them pinned in there?"

"We're not here to pin them in anywhere," Sanchez said. "We're here to kill as many of them as possible. We'll wait until they're making the dash."

"Right," Zen said.

They saw the marines waving their hands forward. They then rushed out into the open area, trotting in that clumsy, awkward way Earthlings had. Ten then twenty than thirty then forty appeared behind them, their grouping nothing like an actual formation, more like a bunch of guys who were in a panic as they tried to get out of a killing zone.

"All right, do it, Xenia," Sanchez order. "Get us up there."

"Moving," she said, her hands going to the controls. She backed up six meters, turned to the right a bit, and then moved forward, bringing the tank up a shallow berm on the side of their position.

"Fire as soon as you can get the gun on the them," Sanchez told Zen.

"Bet your ass, sarge," he replied, staring fixedly at his gunnery screen. Slowly the view began to match what he was seeing from the laser turret camera. His targeting recticle appeared and he moved it to the center of the running troops and pushed the range button. "That's good, Xenia," he said. "I got 'em."

She stopped, her hands ready to pull them back down the second she was told.

"Getting range," Zen said, more to himself than anyone else. "Got it. Computer, set round for airburst, one, one, zero, zero meters."

"Set," the computer replied.

"Firing," he said, pushing the button on his console. There was boom as the round was fired and the tank rocked backwards on its treads. The shell streaked out and exploded in the midst of a group of soldiers halfway across the open area. When the flash cleared they were all on the ground, many of them in pieces.

As the automatic loading system ejected the spent shell casing and rolled another into the breech, Sanchez opened up with the twenty millimeter, raking it across other groups of exposed marines. Zen, who was watching the screen and looking for the best place to put his next shot, saw that the marines hit by these rounds weren't just falling down with a little blood boiling out of their wounds. They were being blown apart, arms, legs, heads flying free, some cut in half, some exploding as their air tanks were hit, their blood boiling out of their bodies like geysers.

"Jesus," he said, fascinated, horrified, surprised to find himself feeling something like empathy for the poor bastards on the receiving end of it. War truly was hell. You couldn't really appreciate just what that meant until you'd seen men being blown into pieces before your eyes.

"Loaded," the computer told him. "Default is airburst. State range."

"One, three, zero, zero meters," Zen answered. He pushed the button and sent another shell out, blowing another group of marines — this time cowering behind some small rocks — into oblivion.

"Okay, get us back under cover!" Sanchez ordered. "Move it, Xenia!"

The words weren't even completely out of his mouth before she had them backing down the berm to the relative safety of the flat ground. It was none too soon either. No more than three seconds after they were clear the berm lit up with laser strikes that fused the sand into glass and exploded it all over the front of the tank. She brought them to an abrupt halt and then went forward again, pulling them back behind their barricade. The laser fire shifted and began to slam into the barrier once more. There was a bright flash as one of them burned through. A warning alarm began to blare.

"Burn through!" Xenia reported. "They hit the left tread and damaged it."

"How bad?" asked Sanchez. If one of their treads had been rendered unusable they would be stuck here, unable to do anything but turn in a tight circle.

"Integrity is still intact according to the computer," she replied. "I don't know how long it'll carry us though."

"Okay, I guess we'll worry about it when its time to leave," Sanchez said. "In the meantime, Zen, start popping those tanks again."

"Right," he said, already putting his recticle on one and preparing to fire.

Callahan watched the reinforcements come straggling in, dashing and crawling their way forward, some of them dragging wounded with them, most of them looking panicked as the Martian gunners up above picked them off with SAW fire and M-24 fire. Sergeant Woodman was in charge of them. He found his way up to Callahan's position and threw himself breathlessly to the ground.

"Goddammit, I didn't sign up for this shit," were the first words out of his mouth when they switched to a close range tactical channel.

"Pretty bad coming over?" Callahan asked him, although without much interest. It had been pretty bad waiting for them too. Grenades or rifle fire had killed another ten or so.

"We left the center position with seventy-six men," he said. "We made it here with fifty-two, six of whom are wounded and unable to fight."

"Artillery?" Callahan asked. He had seen the shells coming over the hill, had heard the distant concussions.

"That got some," Woodman said. "And then the Martian tanks hit us when we crossed the open ground. Eighty millimeter shells and twenties." He shook his head, still able to vividly visualize the horror of it. "And then when we rounded the bend and started moving up to here, they opened up on us from the trenches. This just ain't a real good place to be."

"No shit," Callahan answered. "We need to get up there as quick as possible and chase them out of those trenches before they kill us all."

"Leapfrog approach?" Woodman asked.

Callahan shook his head. "Covering fire is completely ineffective against them," he said. "We move up all at once and overwhelm them."

"No covering fire? Just advance into..." He looked up at the hill, where the gun flashes were still lighting up despite the continued peppering from the tanks and APCs. "... into that?"

"It's the only way," Callahan told him. "Brief your men but do it quick. We're moving in five minutes."

Jeff looked out his firing hole, his weapon pointed downward, his targeting recticle bouncing around as he turned his head left and right, looking for people to kill and finding none. All of the marines down there, including the reinforcements they'd just plastered, were hunkered down behind cover, denying him a target.

"All the dumb ones are dead now," said Drogan. "We're dealing with the Darwinian result of survival of the fittest here."

"They still have to come up this fuckin' hill after us," said Hicks.

Even Corporal Woo, one of the reinforcements sent from the center with a grenade launcher attached to his M-24, had not found a target to launch at in the last three minutes or so. In fact, everything was quiet. Most of the tanks and APCs had stopped firing, probably, opined Walker, because they were getting low on ammunition and wanted to conserve what was left for their final push.

"Our AT units are pulling out," Walker said. "They're out of charging batteries. We'll be following shortly."

"Thank you, Laura," Drogan said.

"No more suppressing fire on the armor?" Hicks asked. "Are we going to be able to hold?"

"We're not here to hold, remember?" Walker replied. "We're here to kill as many as we can and then get the fuck out. And you can thank those AT teams for the damage they did. Look at all that burned out armor down there."

This was true. There was an awful lot of dead WestHem tanks and APCs down there. The steel corpses of their mechanized army littered the battlefield. The AT teams had continued hitting the APCs whenever they could even though they had no troops in them. This served the dual purpose of silencing the suppressing fire the APCs provided and denying the marines who had been assigned to them a ride.

"How much longer until we pull back, sarge?" Jeff asked.

"Until we can't keep them contained any more," he replied. "Don't worry. We're not here to fight to the death."

Flashes suddenly began winking at them from out beyond the hill as the surviving tanks and APCs opened fire on them all at once. The rounds began to slam into their position again, exploding more sandbags, rocking the very ground beneath their feet.

"Movement to the front," someone reported. "They're coming in!"

Jeff looked down and saw dozens of marines crawling out of their cover positions and scrambling upward, many more than had advanced on them before.

"Fire at will!" Walker said. "Stick to your zones!"

Drogan sent an extended burst downward with the SAW. Woo sent a grenade down to explode in front of a group of three marines who had made the mistake of being too close together. Jeff put his recticle on the closest marine in his zone and fired, dropping him.

"There's no covering fire!" Hicks said. "They're all coming up at once!"

"We're not gonna hold them back very long," Drogan said. "There's no way we can kill them all before they get up here!"

"I'm talking to the LT now," Walker reported. "They're doing the same thing on the other flank — making a rush uphill without suppressing fire. Their center position is continuing to hold in place. Our center is withdrawing now. As soon as they clear their positions we're getting out of here. The APCs are already moving to the extraction point."

Jeff continued to fire at the exposed troops below but it was difficult at times to find a target since they were moving from outcropping to outcropping, staying as low as possible, almost crawling. These troops had learned from their previous advances. He saw two men make a dash from one piece of cover to the other. He dropped one of them but the other disappeared from view.

"Fuck," he muttered, looking toward the back of his zone where a marine had just poked his head up to scope out his next dash. Jeff put a round into his face and then shot ineffectively at two other marines in the near portion of the zone.

This went on for five long minutes. The marines worked their way upward, little by little, more than a few being shot or blown up but none of them shooting back. Drogan fired her SAW empty and had to change the barrel in addition to the drum. Woo ran out of grenades to launch at them. Their advance sped up until they were within fifty meters of the lower trench openings.

It was just as Drogan stood back up to put the SAW back in the firing hole when a tremendous explosion flashed just outside of it. An eighty-millimeter round had come in and it had been almost perfectly on target. Shrapnel sprayed through the opening and caught the shoulder and neck portion of her suit, ripping it open, shredding the flesh beneath. She made a startled squeal of pain and fear and dropped down into the trench in a heap, the SAW crashing down next to her.

"Shit!" Jeff yelled. "Drogan's hit, sarge. We need doc over here!"

"Doc's dragging some of the other wounded down to the extraction zone," Walker responded. "You and Hicks see what you can do for her. If she's viable we need to get her out of here."

Jeff put his weapon over his shoulder and ran over to Drogan's side. He looked first and foremost at the light on her suit pack. It was still green, which meant the suit was still recording a heartbeat and respiration. He rolled her onto her back and blood vapor came boiling out of the hole ripped in her suit. Her shoulder was torn to pieces, as was part of her neck. Her eyes beneath her helmet were open but dazed, uncomprehending. She was bleeding badly from her wounds and the hole in the suit was too big to seal on its own.

"Oh fuck, no!" Hicks said when he reached them and got a good look at her.

"We need to get a patch on that hole," Jeff said, reaching into the stomach pocket of her suit where the first aid kid and the emergency patching supplies were kept. He pulled out the tube of polymer sealant and opened the top. He squirted a generous amount of it all over the holes and it slowly sank in and hardened, stopping the leak of air pressure from within and putting direct pressure on her wounds, which, unfortunately, also ground into the jagged shrapnel that had caused the wounds. Her eyes widened and she began to scream in pain.

"It's okay, Drogan," Jeff said, unsure if she could hear him, unsure if she could comprehend even if she could.

"Vexal," Hicks said. "Give her some fuckin' Vexal!"

"Right," Jeff said, reaching for the suit computer controls near the chest. Vexal was a synthetic, very potent, very fast acting form of morphine. Every model 459 military biosuit had several vials of it in the inside lining of the stomach portion and both leg portions. Jeff opened a panel on the computer face and pushed the button for the left leg vial. The suit auto-injected the drug into her thigh. Ten seconds later the screaming faded out and her eyes closed.

"That's better," Hicks said.

"How is she?" Walker's voice asked.

"Alive," Jeff said. "Hit bad on the shoulder and neck. We got the suit sealed and got some Vex in her."

"Good job," he replied. "Now get her downstairs. Woo, pick up the SAW and start putting some fire on those marines. They're less than forty meters out now and moving in fast."

"Right, sarge," Woo said.

"Everybody else, pick up as much ammo and supplies as you can carry and then follow Hicks and Creek down. We're pulling out. Woo and I will keep shooting at them until everyone is down and then we'll follow."

Jeff and Hicks grabbed the handles on Drogan's suit and began moving toward the egress trench. They had to step over broken sandbags, empty ammunition boxes, and squeeze around the other squad members who were picking up the full ammunition boxes and putting them in their bags.

"How... how bad?" Drogan's voice asked dreamily, barely loud enough to make it over the link.

"Bad enough to get you sent back to Eden but not bad enough to kill you," Jeff replied, although he was not completely sure of either one of these statements.

"Billion dollar wound," she mumbled. "Static."

"We're switching to credits now, remember?" Jeff said. "It's a one hundred million credit wound. Get your terminology right, Drogan."

She smiled a little, her hand reaching up to grasp his forearm before falling back down. She soon drifted back into la-la land.

They made it to the bottom of the hill and out the back of the access trench in near record time. Spread out before them in a neat line were the APCs that had transported them to this place, their back ramps open, their gunners pointing the cannons and the lasers back towards the opening where any WestHem armor or troops would come through. Every retreating soldier was assigned to one of these APCs and his computer had already been updated to turn the one he or she was assigned to a pale blue color in the infrared spectrum. Hicks and Jeff saw their vehicle was near the center of the line. They didn't head for it. Instead they went towards the casualty collection point fifty meters to the north. There were no hovers there — which was a bit disconcerting — but they did find two support APCs with red crosses on the sides. They also found their medic.

"Doc!" Jeff hailed when they came close enough to recognize him among the chaos. "We got Drogan here. She's hit in the shoulder and the neck."

"Fuck my ass," the doc replied. "Put her down over here. Let me take a look at her."

They did as requested and Hicks gave a quick report on the first aid they'd rendered so far.

"Good, good," the medic said, nodding, as he did a quick scan of her and determined she was still bleeding despite their measures. "I need to get some sealant on those wounds," he muttered.

"Where are the hovers?" Jeff asked.

"It's not safe for them here anymore," the doc replied. "The WestHems have started shelling this area with their mortars."

"Shelling an evac point?" Hicks asked angrily. "That's a war crime!"

"So is parading our POWs in front of their cameras and charging them with terrorism, but they don't have no problem doing that." He pulled a large syringe from his kit, attached a needle to it, and drew up some kind of milky white liquid from a vial. He pushed it into the neck/shoulder junction of her suit and into her very flesh. He injected some, moved the needle a little, and then injected some more in a different spot.

"You guys saved her ass," he told them as they watched. "If you wouldn't have got her suit patched and the pressure on the wounds she would have either bled to death or decompressed enough to get the bends."

"Is she gonna make it?" he asked.

"If we can get her to surgery in the next hour or so, she'll not only make it, she'll be back out here for more fun in a couple of days."

"Oops," said Jeff. "I guess it wasn't a hundred million credit wound after all."

"Incoming," the doc said calmly, his information received from listening in on a tactical channel on a different frequency.

Jeff and Hicks looked up and, sure enough, the streaks of eighty-millimeter mortar shells were now coming out of the sky towards them. They ducked down, terrified at being in the open.

"Don't worry too much," the doc told them as he protectively covered Drogan's body with his own. "They're just plastering this whole area, probably trying to hit our support teams. No one is directing their fire and it just lands all over the place."

The barrage went on for about a minute or so, with explosions and flashes peppered all over the surrounding square kilometer. None of them even came close to an occupied position.

"Okay," the doc said when it was over. "Get her in that APC there." He pointed to one of the nearer ones. "They'll transport her to the rear of the blue line and a hover can pick her up from there."

They hefted her motionless body up off the ground again and trotted her over to the open APC. Inside were three other wounded infantry troops in various states of distress and another medic. They set her gently down in the only open space available.

"Okay, we're gone," the doc told them. "Get your asses over to your own APC and I'll see you in a bit." He patted each of them on the shoulder. "Free Mars."

"Free Mars," they both replied wearily.

Meanwhile, back in the main infantry trench, Sergeant Walker and Corporal Woo were still shooting at the advancing WestHem troops. The marines were now less than twenty meters away from entering the trench network and most of them were shooting back with both small arms fire and their own grenade launchers. The barrage of tank and APC fire had stopped but this was not particularly good news. It was only because the tanks and APCs in question — realizing that their quarry was retreating — had started to move forward. They were being held somewhat in check by the continued presence of the Martian tanks down below, who were slated to be the very last to withdraw.

A grenade came flying at Walker. He had just enough time to pull his head back in before it detonated in front of his hole, sending a spray of shrapnel through. A few errant pieces dinged off his helmet but none were at the right angle to penetrate.

"Motherfucker!" Woo said, blasting the marine that had fired it to pieces with an extended burst of the SAW.

"Walker!" said a voice in Walker's ear on the command frequency. "Everyone is down. Get the fuck out there right now!"

"Gladly," Walker acknowledged.

"Don't forget to arm your section before you go," he was reminded.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied. He looked at Woo and changed back to the tactical frequency. "Everyone is down. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Woo fired one more burst, not hitting anything but forcing two marines trying to make the final dash to the entrance to dive down under cover. "I'm down with that," he said, pulling the SAW from the hole and picking up the bag behind him that contained the ammo they'd been able to salvage.

They moved quickly through the trenches, stepping over their dead comrades who had been abandoned there, working their way to the egress trench. When they reached it, Walker let Woo go before him and then took one look back. More grenades were exploding and more gunfire was coming in but they were quite safe from it here. He spoke a command to his suit computer, gave an access code, and a radio signal was sent out, turning on a serious of sensing devices that had been deployed throughout the trench network in this section long before they'd made first contact.

"Okay," he said when he received acknowledgment that his actions had taken place. He threw a little salute at the unseen marines who would soon be occupying this particular position. "The place is all yours guys. Hope you enjoy it."

He began to follow Woo downward toward relative safety. With his departure, Hill 657 had officially fallen to the enemy.

"Targets, tanks, two o'clock, three o'clock, and one o'clock," Sanchez reported. "Moving fast."

Zen didn't answer. He simply shifted his view to the nearest — the two o'clock tank — waited for the cannon to catch up, and then fired, blasting it into oblivion. He looked to the next, noting the range was less than half a kilometer now. He blew it up as well.

"I don't mean to nag or anything," Xenia said, her voice trembling with fear, "but how much fucking longer are we talking here?"

"We'll be pulling out any second," Sanchez replied. "The APCs are loaded up and moving out now. We need to make sure we keep the WestHem tanks from coming through here until they're behind Hill 701 and out of range."

Xenia shook her head, wondering why she had been so hot to sign up for the tank corps instead of the infantry. Her hands gripped her controls tightly, ready to back them out of here and get them turned around the microsecond the withdrawal order came down.

"There coming in too fast, sarge," Zen reported. "I can't keep up."

"Do the best you can," he said, carefully controlling his own fear. After all, they needed to get beyond Hill 701 as well.

Another twenty seconds ticked by. Zen popped off two more tanks but more than fifteen were still rushing right at them, intent on revenge for the punishment their colleagues had taken. Finally, the order came.

"All right!" Sanchez said. "It's official. Get us the fuck out of here, Xenia!"

She jerked backward on the controls, pulling them out of the barricade position and then spun them around so they were facing forward. She then put the pedal to the medal and began accelerating at top speed towards Hill 701 and safety. As soon as they started to move, however, she knew something was terribly wrong. A hideous clanking noise was coming from the left side and she had difficulty keeping the vehicle moving in a straight line.

"What the fuck is that?" Zen asked.

"The left tread!" she reported. "It's slipping from the damage on that last hit."

"We gonna make it out of here?" Zen wanted to know.

"The fucking computer doesn't tell me that!" she said. "It just says it's damaged!"

Despite the clanking and the difficulty in control, she accelerated them to top speed, almost one hundred kilometers per hour. They made it about half a kilometer before the left tread snapped in half with a large bang. Everyone was thrown violently to the right as the right tread, still moving at full speed, sent them into a vicious left turn. The left side of the tank actually rose into the air for a moment from the force of it before slamming back down and sending them into something that resembled a skid. The entire tank shuddered and groaned.

"We lost it!" Xenia said, a bit of panic in her voice. "The tread's gone!" Her hands using the controls to try to maintain something like control. They skidded, bumped, and bounced for a few seconds before she could bring them to a halt.

"Everyone out!" Sanchez ordered. "Right now!"

They threw their hatches open and scrambled out through them, jumping down onto the Martian soil, not even bothering to grab their M-24s from the holders inside.

"Move towards the hill!" Sanchez said. "Get as far away from this tank as you can! I'll get us some help!"

They began trotting towards the hill, which was three kilometers distant, across a horrifying stretch of open ground upon which they could be gunned down in an instant when the WestHem tanks broke through. Sanchez declared an emergency on the command frequency, explaining that their tank was disabled and they were on foot. One of the other tanks of their company immediately turned around and started heading for them.

It rolled up in a cloud of dust and came to a halt just in front of them. "Climb up and hang on!" it's commander told them. "The WestHem tanks are pushing through the gap right now! They'll be here in seconds!"

Xenia and Zen went up first, pulling themselves onto the body of the tank and then the turret. Xenia laid across it, grasping the twenty millimeter cannon to support herself. Zen went further up, wrapping his hands and legs around the eighty-millimeter gun, his butt resting on solid steel beneath it. Sanchez came up next. With nowhere left to go he climbed to the very top of the turret and grabbed hold of the laser cannon mount. It was very wide, too wide for him to get a good grip on but it would have to do.

"Go!" Sanchez barked on the emergency frequency. "We're on!"

The driver of the tank didn't hesitate. He put the pedal down and they jerked forward, quickly accelerating up to top speed, trying desperately to clear the area.

"Shit," Sanchez muttered in fear as he was bounced up and down from the uneven terrain. His grip started to slip almost immediately. He grasped harder but was unable to bring his hands together to secure himself. He felt himself slipping to the left and tried to right himself by swinging his momentum. It didn't help. His legs pulled him downward and his hands grew further and further apart.

Behind them, six WestHem tanks eased carefully through the gap and then, seeing no opposition directly in front of them, put on the speed. As they came further around they saw the Martian tank that Zen, Xenia, and Sanchez had just abandoned, sitting there motionless, its infrared signature indicating the engine was still running.

"Tank! Eleven o'clock!" burst across their tactical channel from three different voices.

They had to slow down to engage it — at top speed it was difficult if not impossible for a gunner to put his recticle on target. As a unit they slowed to forty kilometers per hour. There was no discussion about who would be taking the shot so all six of them did, all firing both laser cannons within two seconds of each other. The tank before them exploded quite spectacularly, the turret flying off, the body cracking in two and falling into pieces. A celebratory cheer went out over the airwaves.

"There's another one out there!" someone yelled. "Ten o'clock! Moving fast!"

But everyone's laser had been discharged and needed to recharge. It would be about twenty seconds before they could engage it. They gave chase at sixty kilometers per hour while they waited.

"We need to get to the depression!" Sanchez heard Corporal Cleanburn yell over the tactical frequency. "Half a klick, straight ahead. Get us down there and they won't have a shot!"

The driver turned slightly and Sanchez's hands slipped a little bit more from the centrifugal force. He slid backwards a little more, knowing he was about to fall, unable to do anything about it. When they hit a small boulder with the right tread the inevitable happened. The tank jolted upward and he was flung free, his hands ripped from their precarious hold.

He found himself flying through the air, looking at the ground he was about to strike. This is not good, he had time to think before he landed in the rocky soil on his left side. He felt a blow like a sledgehammer on his ribs, felt several of them snapping like twigs. He bounced, spun head over heals, and then came down on a rock directly on his back. He felt another snap back there, a huge flare of pain, but it was not over. He was now spinning and tumbling across the ground, bending and unbending, striking rocks and feeling bones break every time. He went into an extended roll, a few more snap bounces, and finally the one hundred kilometers per hour inertia he had been saddled with was used up. He came to rest on his side, broken, twisted nearly in half, pain shooting through his entire body, but alive and horribly alert.

"Holy fuck! Sarge!" screamed Zen as he saw him fly free, as he saw him go bouncing across the ground behind them. "Stop the fuckin' tank! Sergeant Sanchez just went over!"

"I can't," replied Cleanburn, his voice agonized but determined. "The WestHems are sniffing up our ass right now! I don't even know if we're gonna make it to the depression!"

"Goddammit, Cleanburn, its Sanchez out there!" Xenia yelled at him. She too had witnessed the fall. "We need to get him."

Cleanburn was a part of their company and knew Sanchez well. He had played poker with him, taken bonghits with him, had even been to visit his apartment once. But he didn't stop the tank — he couldn't. "We'll all die if I do that," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Jesus Christ, Cleanburn," Zen said, near tears. You can't just leave him out there!"

"Yes he can," a voice groaned. It was weak but they all recognized it as belonging to Sanchez. "I order it. Don't worry about me."

"Sarge," Xenia said. "Can you get under cover? We'll send a hover to come..."

"I'm broke up pretty bad," he interrupted. "Back, both legs, both arms. My suit's leaking in a couple of places and I'm having a hard time breathing."

"Cleanburn, goddammit!" Zen yelled. "Get this fucking tank turned around and let's go get him! Let's bring the whole fucking company over there and fight off any WestHem tanks."

"No," Sanchez said. "Don't even... even think about it. The WestHems are coming. They'll find me out here and take me to their... their aid station."

There seemed to be some logic in this but there also seemed to be some pitfalls. Everyone clung to this the best they could though. In any case, the point was now moot. They were fast approaching the depression and Sanchez was now too far behind them. Even if the company did turn around to fight for him, they wouldn't reach him in time.

"We'll see you later, sarge," Zen told him solemnly. "When this is over."

"Yeah," Xenia echoed. "They'll fix you up and we'll have a drink when you get exchanged."

"Right," Sanchez said, his voice fading now. "When I get exchanged. Free... free Mars."

"Free Mars," they repeated.

The tank dropped down into the depression, putting it out of view of the pursuing WestHem tanks just seconds before their lasers were recharged.

The six tanks that had been following were the mixed survivors of two different battalions, all from different companies. Each had just watched friends and comrades blown to pieces left and right of them during the battle. They had seen the biosuited body of Sanchez come flying off the tank they'd been chasing and could see it now, lying on the ground ahead of them. Every crewmember on these tanks knew the rules of warfare and what those rules dictated they should do when an enemy combatant was injured and helpless on ground that they occupied. But none of them were much in the mood for compassion after the hell they'd just endured.

They slowed up to less than twenty kilometers per hour and turned in the direction of the fallen Martian. There was some discussion about how many points a fucking greenie terrorist was worth. Eventually they decided he was only worth ten since he wasn't a moving target and therefore not that challenging. There was another discussion — this one quite profane and animated — about which tank was entitled to collect those points. Sergeant Hornsby — the commander of the second tank — finally settled this matter by pulling rank. He ordered his driver to make it slow, just to make sure that accuracy was maintained.

The tank was still in motion and Zen was still clinging quite precariously to the underside of the main gun, but he was wedged in just enough that he could free up his left hand. He opened his computer panel and brought up a menu in his combat goggles. He needed to make sure that Sanchez was okay, that the Earthlings actually did pick him up and get him to medical help. He switched his goggle view so he could see what Sanchez's goggles were seeing. It was an action that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He couldn't have timed it more perfectly. Sanchez was looking southwest, towards the gap that had just fallen to the Earthlings. The tank tread was approaching him slowly, clanking towards his bent and broken legs.

"Oh fuck... oh my god!" Zen yelled, unaware that he was even speaking aloud, overcome by the horror of what he was seeing. "No!"

The tread rolled up onto Sanchez's legs, smashing them, driving them into the ground. It continued to move forward, inch-by-inch, crushing his pelvis, his back, his stomach. When it reached his chest the video feed suddenly, lethally cut off.

"What is it, Zen?" asked Xenia. "What is it?"

"Oh my god," he whispered. He couldn't answer her. It would be years before he would talk to anyone about what he'd seen through that brief video link.

Sergeant Woodman led two platoons into the trench on the right flank of the hill. The opening was small, only a meter and a half in diameter. The men tossed fragmentation grenades through the hole and then went inside right behind them, their weapons ready to shoot anything that moved. But nothing moved. The trench was deserted except for a few dead Martians and thousands of empty shell casings.

"Clear so far, Lieutenant," Woodman told Callahan, who was hanging back about twenty meters. "A couple of dead Martians in here so we did manage to pop a few of them off. There's ammo boxes, waste containers, and used food gel packs everywhere in here."

"No live Martians though?" Callahan asked. "Not even wounded?"

"Not so far," he said. "I'm sending the men forward to check out the rest."

"Got it. According to Colonel West, the center units are moving upward now too. No opposition. Left flank is up at trench level but is still trying to find the entrance. No opposition there either. Tanks have encircled the hill. They saw a few stragglers heading east but that's about it."

"What about the other hills?" Woodman asked, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.

"West only touched on that for a minute — after all, we've got our own fucking hill to worry about — but some have fallen, some are still shooting but it's mostly holding action. It looks like they're withdrawing in force from the gap."

"So we won?"

Callahan looked down below, where a full-scale triage operation was being set up to start getting the many wounded taken care of, where the dead were littering the ground amid the burned out tanks and APCs. "I wouldn't exactly call this a victory," he said, "but the Jutfield Gap seems to be in our hands now. Let's finish getting these trenches secured, huh? We need to get some defensive positions up by sunrise and we need to get everyone resupplied on ammo and air."

"Sure, LT," Woodman said. "We're gettin' it on."

Woodman trailed behind four of the men, watching as they worked their way forward, deeper into the trench network, their weapons held out before them. The lead man — some private Woodman didn't know and had never seen before the battle — walked close to a sensor imbedded in the wall of the trench, a sensor designed to detect the heat of a biosuit. It triggered a Stevenson mine that had been imbedded in the far wall. The directional explosion ripped through the trench, nearly vaporizing the private and the two men behind him, and sending razor sharp industrial diamond slag through Woodman's face shield and into his face. He fell backward, blinded, the blood boiling out of his head and into the air. Fortunately for him the loss of air pressure killed him long before he was able to suffocate from the lack of air.

Callahan felt the concussion, heard the crack of the explosion, saw the flash of light from the trench above. He tried to contact Woodman to no avail, this despite the fact that his suit was still transmitting.

"What the fuck is going on up there now?" he mumbled.

It took the better part of three minutes before it occurred to one of the surviving men in the trench to switch to the command frequency and update him.

"Fuck," he said, shaking his head, feeling like crying. Even the victories in this war were full of pitfalls. "Okay," he told the corporal on the other end of the radio link. "Get everyone out of that trench and back on the outside. We need to get some sappers up here to clear them for us."

"Yes, sir," the corporal replied.

Callahan switched to the battalion frequency. "Colonel West," he hailed. "This is Callahan."

"Go ahead, Callahan," West said. "Is your section of the hill secured yet?"

"No, sir. I've pulled all the men back out of the trench. The Martians have booby traps up there. One of them just went off and killed four men."

"Booby traps?" West said, seething. "You mean mines? The greenies are utilizing mine warfare?"

Callahan sighed. "I suppose that technically they are mines but they fall mostly into the definition of a booby trap. In any case, my thought is that if they've got this trench wired up then they probably got all of the others up and down the gap wired up as well. You might want to pass the word on to regimental about this before anyone else gets hit."

"You're suggesting we pause here until sappers can clear every trench in this gap?" West asked, appalled.

"Yes, sir," he said, not caring if he was being impertinent or not. "That is exactly what I'm suggesting."

West didn't order it right away, deciding that Callahan's men being blown up was just a fluke. Nor did he pass the information along to regimental, so they could pass it on to the division commander, so he could pass it on to General Wrath who then pass it on to the other units currently attacking the other cities.

It was only when three other hills throughout the gap reported the same thing — that troops attempting to clear the recently vacated trenches were being blown up by powerful booby traps — that someone higher in the chain of command made the decision for him.

When the sun came up at 0605 that morning all of the dismounted marines that had survived the Battle of Jutfield Gap were standing on the various hills, waiting patiently for specialized sappers to make their way through the trenches so they could secure them. It was expected to take hours. And in the meantime, the Martian special forces teams, including the mortar squads and the snipers, left their bases in their Hummingbirds and were transported out into the hills around the gap for another day worth of operations.