Greenies

Chapter 25

Eden Main Line of Defense

September 14, 2146

1730 hours

The tanks were the first to move against the line — thousands of them rumbling forward in tight, well-formed ranks stretching across two kilometers, their main guns pointing forward, their lasers charged, their ammunition magazines full of fresh rounds from the last resupply operation. Most had full fuel and oxygen tanks but about eight hundred and fifty — the survivors of the battle with the Martian tanks behind the line — were sporting less than a third of their capacity of fuel and oxidizer. Having so many of the monstrous machines in so concentrated of an area going against an enemy tank force a tenth their size, should have been enough to force victory right there. But the MPG engineers had long since taken steps to rob a superior foe of such an easy win.

As the tanks grew closer to the line they encountered a series of steep, artificial berms they could not drive over. They encountered other areas filled with steel tank traps that would break a tread if they were struck. And they encountered lines and lines of anti-tank ditches that were flat out impassible. All of this caused the tanks to bunch of tighter, to lose some of the unit cohesion, to narrow their formations in such a manner that it would be difficult for all of the tanks to fire simultaneously. Eventually they were funneled into narrow corridors only fifteen to twenty tanks wide, reducing the wide scope of fire they'd hoped to enjoy.

It was as they started to narrow up and lose their maneuvering room that the Martian armor opened up on them from their hull-down positions between the pillboxes. Tanks began to explode with frightening regularity all up and down the advance line. Turrets flew, men were shredded, and the dead hulks served to hamper the advance forward of the other tanks, forcing some to simply push their dead companions off into the ditch in order to keep open a corridor for the tanks behind and the APCs to drive through.

The WestHem tanks returned fire from the first moment they were fired upon, blasting within their zones of responsibility as fast as their cannons could be discharged and then recharged. The entire line lit up with the flashes of laser impact. Concrete dust and smashed sections of the protective barriers flew everywhere but the Martian tanks were unaffected as of yet. It would take many shots in exactly the same place to burn through the titanium shielding beneath the concrete.

The WestHem tanks were forced to stop three hundred meters west of the pillboxes. Before them was the main anti-tank ditch. Four meters deep, six meters across, lined with concrete, and running unbroken the entire length of the main line, it was impassible to any vehicle without the assistance of a complete engineering battalion equipped with heavy-duty bridging materials — something the WestHem marines were conspicuously lacking.

The laser fire between the entrenched Martian armor and the exposed WestHem tanks reached a furious pace. With each WestHem tank that was blown up, two more would move forward to take its place. Their crews prayed to whatever deity they believed in that the ground forces would advance quickly and silence those murderous positions.

Captain Callahan watched from his commander's hatch as they advanced forward. Thousand of armored personnel carriers entered the obstacle-ridden maze the tanks had just passed through although they now had the added obstacles of dead tanks and live tanks caught in a massive traffic jam to go around and weave through. Like the tanks, the APCs began to draw heavy laser fire from the Martians as soon as they were forced to bunch close together. This fire did not come from the Martian armor, however. It came from high on the pillboxes, from the heavily fortified Martian anti-tank positions.

APCs blew up all around them. There was no warning, no way to tell which APC was targeted until it simply flashed and exploded, shredding and incinerating everyone inside. Callahan watched in horror, trying to discern some sort of pattern to the death and destruction, trying to give himself some sort of reassurance that something other than random chance was at work here. He was woefully unsuccessful in this venture. An APC blew up right next to his, taking out one of his squads, and then five more blew up somewhere else, both in front and behind, some close enough for the concussion to rock him. It was as random as anything could be. There was no skill involved in surviving here. It was simply luck.

The tanks lining the anti-tank ditch began to fire their main guns, plastering the upper sections of the pillboxes with eighty-millimeter fire. The APCs began to fire their sixty-millimeter guns at these positions as well. It looked impressive enough as explosions, smoke, and debris obscured the entire top half of the pillboxes but the frequency of the laser fire coming back at them did not ease up even a little bit. APCs continued to flash and explode all around them.

Callahan checked his command screen as they bumped and bounced over the last two hundred meters before the dismount point. His company was now down three complete squads — one lost during the attack on the first line, one lost in the staging area, and now, one lost in the advance to the main line. Fortunately all were from different platoons and many of his platoons had been reinforced with an extra squad due to the shortage of APCs. He made sure his communications gear was set to the command channel. He keyed up and addressed his platoon leaders.

"Listen up, guys," he said, his voice strangely steady despite his terror. "Dismount is in just a few seconds. They're gonna pour every conceivable kind of fire they got on us the second we step out of these APCs. Get your men through the tanks and into that anti-tank ditch as quick as possible. Don't return fire at the pillboxes. Small arms fire ain't gonna do shit to those positions. Get everyone into the ditch where we'll at least have defilade from everything but the arty and the mortars. We'll regroup and then move in from there to the base of the pillboxes. Is everyone clear on that?"

One by one they responded that they were clear.

"Very well," he said. "Things are gonna be ugly the next hour or so. Keep the faith, keep pushing forward, and God willing we'll be standing inside Eden soon. Remember, we got the numbers on them. Let's use them wisely."

No one answered him. The APCs began to grind to a halt a few seconds later. The ramps swung down and he and his men emerged into a living hell of noise, confusion, and death. Explosions hammered into them as proximity fused one hundred and fifty millimeter shells and eighty-millimeter mortars came raining out of the sky. Men were blown to pieces, arms, legs, heads flying off, bodies ripped in half and tossed about. Bullets were streaking in from everywhere, machine gun fire, single shots, three round bursts, cutting others down like ducks in a shooting range. Blood vapor and dust filled the air, making it difficult to see. Callahan watched the sergeant and two of the men from the squad he was with shot down the moment they stepped away from the relative safety of the APC's rear end.

"Down!" he yelled on the command channel. "Get your men on the their bellies! Crawl to that fucking ditch and get inside!" With that, he followed his own advice and threw himself to the ground.

Gradually all the men in his company, in the other companies, in the two battalions tasked to take the pillboxes, did the same. This kept them safe from most of the small arms fire since the tanks were now able to block it. It did very little, however, to protect them from the artillery and the mortars. They continued to boom up and down the line, spraying lethal shrapnel onto the marines below, sending clouds of blood vapor welling upward in their wake.

The first of the troops reached the line of tanks and paused there, trying to regroup a little before pushing forward to the ditch. Callahan reached the rear of one of the tanks — as of yet unscathed in any way — and raised himself up to a kneeling position just behind the right tread of the vehicle. A quick check of his forces screen showed he'd lost thirty of the one hundred and fifty men he'd dismounted with, including one of his lieutenants.

"This will not be a clusterfuck," he told himself, knowing even as he spoke the words that he was lying. "I won't let it."

Another wave of artillery shells came arcing in, exploding up and down the line, killing or maiming more men. Callahan heard shrapnel bouncing off the tank he was hiding behind, saw two more of his men go down.

By this point the men from his company were mixed up with men from the other companies, even men from other battalions. It was not quite a panicked run yet but it was heading that way. More than two hundred men rushed from the cover provided by the tanks and moved across the open ground, heading for the ditch. More were shot down by the small arms fire. Callahan saw one man try to cross in front of a tank just as it fired its main gun. The shell did not explode but the sheer power of the muzzle blast blew the man into hundreds of pieces, scattering some of them more than thirty meters away.

"Christ," Callahan muttered, trying to pick out the path he would take for his own dash.

The first wave of men reached the edge of the ditch and threw themselves inside. Another wave followed right after them. That was when his lieutenants began to scream on the command channel, something incomprehensible. He heard the word "rebar" and "impaled" several times. The rest was gibberish. At the edge of the trench the third wave of men suddenly halted, trying desperately to avoid going in, this despite the fact that small arms fire was cutting them down as they stood there.

"What the fuck is going on?" Callahan demanded. "Somebody chill the fuck out and give me a report!"

"Beyers here, sir," said the lieutenant in charge of his fourth platoon. "The Martians have rebar sticking up from the bottom of that ditch! They've sharpened the points into spears! We couldn't see it because of all the dust that's blown in there. The men went down and... fuck, sir... I never seen nothing like this. They're impaled down there!"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Callahan said, horrified.

Men began to pile up at the edge of the ditch. Others, panicked, not knowing what was going on, slammed into them. Many fell in. The panic increased when the machine gun and rifle fire picked up in intensity, slamming into them. And then another wave of artillery fire, targeted directly over the tanks where most of the other men were piling up, started to explode above them. More men from the tank positions rushed forward, pushing more men from the front into the ditch. Fights broke out and several men on the edge began to shoot at their own troops with their M-24s, desperate to avoid being pushed over.

The force of the troops pushing from behind was much greater than the resistance of the troops trying to stand firm on the edge of the ditch. Dozens and then hundreds fell in. At this point those on the edge stopped hesitating and simply allowed themselves to be carried in. Callahan thought he had an idea why the resistance had stopped.

Another shell exploded very close behind him, close enough that the concussion pushed him forward onto the tank's tread guard. Bullets came slamming in just in front of him, ricocheting off the steel hull of the tank less than half a meter in front of his face. He pushed himself backwards, until he was standing on the ground again and then made his dash to the ditch. He stopped for a second on the edge and saw that his suspicions had been correct. Dozens of marines were down on the bottom, impaled by the sharpened rebar points. Some were dead, the points penetrating through their chests, their stomachs. Others were less fortunate. One man had slid down the concrete side and had ended up impaled right through his groin. He was squirming and twisting, probably screaming as well although Callahan couldn't hear him. Others had the spikes through their lower legs, their thighs, their hips. What this had all served to do, however, was to cushion the landing for those behind them. It was distasteful to use the corpse of another marine as a landing pad but things were down to sheer survival now. Knowing that he would be haunted by it later — assuming he lived long enough for there to be a later — Callahan slid down the eighty degree concrete slope and into the ditch, his feet landing firmly on the chest of one man and the head of another, his weight driving the lethal spikes even further into their lifeless bodies. He stepped forward, using the corpses of others to make his way over and between the spikes until he made it to the far side of the ditch. He leaned against the concrete wall, catching his breath, trying to control the fear and horror.

There was defilade from the mortars and the artillery fire here since the airburst shell fragments were coming in at an angle. Other men had figured this out as well and it was crowded on this side. Most looked like they had no intention of leaving. Others were continuing to leap into the ditch and it was soon full of men, pushing chest to chest, legs to legs. They had to go up the other side and make the final dash to the base of the pillboxes. Callahan spoke on his command channel, trying to tell his platoon leaders to start moving but no one was listening to him. He tried on the tactical channels, speaking directly to the men but all he got for his efforts was insubordinate profanity.

"Fuck that shit, sir," someone yelled back at him. "I'm staying here."

"Goddamn right," someone else added. "If you're so fucking hot to get up there and get your head blown off, be my fuckin' guest!"

"We need to move up all at once, all along the line," Callahan said. "It's the only way that any of us are going to get out of here alive!"

"I know how to get out of here alive," one of his sergeants said. "We go back up the other side and start heading back to the APCs. Remember what happened the first time? The Martians stop shooting at you when you retreat!"

"I vote for that!" someone else put in. "Let's get the fuck out of here! Let the goddamn greenies keep this fucking place if they want it that bad."

Other voices quickly echoed this sentiment. Callahan wasn't listening in on the other companies' channels but he suspected the other captains were probably getting similar dissent. He was actually starting to think that what they were suggesting was sensible when the Martians pulled their next surprise on them.

Mortar shells began to fall into the trench, exploding not in the air but when they hit the bottom. Men were blown apart, splattered against the sides of the trench, ripped apart by the shrapnel, gutted by pieces of rebar that were blown loose and hurtled through the air at high speed. This happened all along the length of the ditch, the shells dropping neatly inside as if they'd been lofted from directly above.

It's a fucking trap! Callahan's mind screamed at him, panic starting to flow freely. They have this entire ditch pre-sighted and they're dropping impact-fused mortars inside of it! They've probably been practicing this for years!

"Get out!" Callahan yelled at his men. "Start helping each other up to the top! We need to get out of here or they're gonna blow all of us to pieces!"

This time the men were a little more willing to listen to him. The edge of the ditch was four meters above their heads. The men against the wall formed stirrups with their hands and other men moved forward, putting their feet in them and getting lifted up to the edge. Once they grabbed the edge the lower man would give the upper a shove, sending him up onto the ground. Many of the men hefted up came tumbling back down again, shot to pieces by the Martian small arms fire from the pillboxes.

"Faster!" Callahan yelled. "And more! We need to get everyone up at once if anyone is going to live! Come on! Move, move, move!"

His men picked up the pace. The other companies did the same although Callahan didn't know if they were simply following his example or had figured out the same thing on their own. But soon hundreds of men all along the length of the occupied portion of the ditch were shoving their comrades upward as fast as they could, trying desperately to get out of the frying pan of the mortar ridden trench and into the fire of the open ground beyond.

Jeff Creek, the rest of his platoon, and two other 17^th ACR infantry platoons had been moved from the reserve staging area to Pillbox 73 when it became apparent that the marines were making a push to the center. Pillbox 73 was two kilometers west of the personnel airlocks for the MPG base, one of the primary defensive positions guarding the approach to the most important section of the city. They had been driven over to the rear of it in four of the agricultural trucks and had accessed it by means of the movement trench that led to a small opening in the rear. From there they'd climbed several sets of concrete stairs and entered the lower infantry level where a company of 2^nd Infantry Division troops had already been engaged with the advancing marines who, at that point, had just dismounted from their APCs.

The interior of the pillbox was open and cavernous, with a high ceiling. The floor behind them was covered with steel crates full of ammunition, grenades, extra weapons, and other supplies. The firing ports lined the western, northern, and southern walls and consisted of open spaces about half a meter high and two meters long, each protected by an extra layer of concrete. Jeff had been assigned to a mounted 7mm heavy machine gun in the south corner of the pillbox. Drogan and the other members of his squad were in the firing ports around him, lined up with their M-24s and a SAW three to a port. The floor at their feet was littered with hundreds upon hundreds of empty shell casings.

The pillbox was as formidable of a defensive position as they'd been promised. For the past thirty minutes now the WestHem tanks and APCs had been slamming wave after wave of eighty millimeter, sixty millimeter, and twenty millimeter directly into them. The explosions were terrifying, to say the least, and much of the concrete had crumbled away under the onslaught, but so far the barrier was holding. Of the one hundred and ninety troops occupying this particular pillbox only two had been killed and six wounded — all the result of shrapnel flying into their ports at exactly the right angle and making a lucky strike.

What bothered Jeff about the pillbox, however, was not the protection it offered from the front and from the sides, but the apparent lack of protection it offered from the rear. Instead of small openings to fire through like on the other three walls, the rear had huge openings in the concrete, two of them, each one ten meters long by five meters high, going from floor to ceiling. They were, in effect, paneless windows to the outside large enough that he could see the mortar teams and some of the agricultural trucks parked out there. He could see the buildings rising beyond the MPG base, could see the sky and the ground through them. True, they would not generally experience enemy fire coming in from the rear — if they did they were in a lot of trouble — but wouldn't you think they would have enclosed it back there just for general principals? He couldn't think of any rational explanation for this somewhat glaring oversight.

"Creek, displace!" sergeant Walker commanded him. "They're starting to pound on your position again."

"Right, sarge," he said, pulling the barrel and the body of the heavy machine gun backwards, removing it from the firing port.

The gun he had been assigned weighed almost a hundred kilos even in the reduced gravity of outside. It was fed by a drum that contained nine hundred 7mm depleted uranium, armor-piercing rounds. It could fire that drum empty — if he so desired — in less than forty-five seconds, although he generally shot in short bursts. The barrel was cooled by a liquid nitrogen circulation system that made it unnecessary to ever change barrels. The entire unit was clipped to a rail that ran the length of the pillbox just beneath the firing ports. He folded it upward now and then slid to the left, pulling it along its rail until he reached the last firing port on the southwest corner. He then pushed it back downward and slid it out through the firing port. He looked outside, searching for his next targets in his zone of responsibility.

The landscape he looked out over was a scene of almost incomprehensible death and destruction. Out beyond the main anti-tank ditch, in the area that was called "the armor maze", were hundreds of smashed and burned WestHem tanks and APCs with hundreds of dead and gravely wounded marines lying in groups all around them. Other, undamaged tanks were interspersed around them, their main guns flashing as they launched more eighty-millimeter shells, their anti-tank laser cannons flashing as they tried to kill the entrenched armor. Undamaged APCs added their fire as well and a steady, seemingly endless stream of more continued to appear from over the horizon, making their way into the tank maze to disgorge more marines to come charging into the maelstrom. Artillery rounds exploded out among the advancing troops with steady regularity and bullets continued to fly in high volume, cutting into any exposed men out there. A cloud of smoke and dust had billowed into the sky, illuminated by the setting sun. Most disturbing, however, was the fog of red vapor that was intermingled with the smoke and dust. It was barely noticeable over the armor formations but thick enough to cast a shadow over the anti-tank trench. It was blood, Jeff knew, the blood of thousands of dead and dying marines. Thousands were dead, but still they kept swarming forward, seemingly undaunted by their losses.

"Shift your fire to the trench now, Creek," Waters ordered. "They're starting to make it out of there."

"Right," Jeff said, pushing the barrel downward a bit. His zone of responsibility had been the APC staging area prior to this, the area where the marines were leaving the relative safety of their armored vehicles and starting to push forward to the trench. He'd mowed down dozens in the past ten minutes, raking his fire up and down the line, putting his targeting recticle on one group after another, shooting some while they were running, some while they were crawling, others while they were trying to hide. Those that made it to the front of the tanks were being engaged by other platoons, other heavy machine guns. As they'd actually jumped into the trench itself Jeff had found himself feeling almost sorry for the poor bastards.

"We got rebar in those trenches," one of the 2^nd Infantry guys had told him earlier. "It's sticking up almost a meter from the bottom and spaced every half a meter. The ends have been sharpened with a steel grinder until the tips are fine enough to sew with. The dust covers them up. They won't know until the start jumping in there."

"How do you know about it?" Jeff had asked.

"Who the hell do you think maintains the trench?" he'd asked. "And that's not the only surprise we got in store once they jump into the trench."

And indeed it hadn't been. Once the trench was full of marines the mortar squads, using impact-detonating shells, had started to drop their rounds right into the trench. It was a maneuver they'd practiced time and time again in pre-war days with helium-filled practice rounds, all of the coordinates from every conceivable position, using every conceivable atmospheric pressure pre-programmed into each weapon's memory. That was when the cloud of red fog had started to get really thick.

"It's over for them," Jeff had exclaimed happily. "There's no way in hell they can live through that!"

"I wouldn't be too optimistic," Walker returned. "Remember, there's almost two hundred thousand of the motherfuckers out there. No matter what we do, they're still advancing."

Walker had been right, of course. Within minutes of the first mortar shells dropping into the trench, the marines had started climbing out the other side. It had been sporadic at first, with those being tossed up easily shot down, usually before they could even get their feet beneath them. But now they were starting to come up faster, one after the other, all along the length of the trench. The gunners were cutting them down, leaving their corpses spread all over the open ground, but it was starting to get hard to keep up.

Jeff saw that a group of about sixty had just emerged all at once in his sector. He opened up on them, starting at the right side and raking his fire to the left. They spun and fell, their legs chopped out from, their heads exploding, their chests and stomachs ripped open. Drogan and the others added their fire as well, picking up any stragglers. But by the time they'd taken out everyone in that wave another wave of more than a hundred had emerged in their place, all of them running as fast as they possible could toward the base of the pillbox.

"Why can't we get some fucking arty on them?" Jeff asked as he opened up again, mowing six of them down in one burst.

"The range is too short," Walker responded, firing a three round burst of his own. "We're less than two klicks from the guns, remember?"

"Yeah," Jeff said, firing another burst at the marines closest to their goal. "I guess so. Maybe they should shift the mortar fire back though."

"It's killing a lot more of them right where it's at," Walker replied. "They're trapped in there with spikes underneath them, mortars blowing the shit out of them, and gunfire in front of them. If this don't break their will to fight, nothing will."

It didn't break their will to fight. They kept pouring out of the trench like ants, moving forward relentlessly despite the brutal losses they were taking. The tanks and the APCs guarding the spaces in between the pillboxes opened up on them, air bursting eighty and sixty millimeter shells directly in front of them, blowing others to pieces with their twenty millimeter cannons, but still they came on. Soon the inevitable happened and several groups managed to make it all the way across and disappear from sight. They were now directly underneath the front wall of the pillbox.

Callahan's heart was hammering in his chest as he felt the blessed safety of the concrete pillbox up against his back. His breath was tearing in and out of his throat, his legs and back trying to cramp up on him, adrenaline flooding through his body like a potent and possibly malevolent drug. Somehow he had made it, running across that open ground while other men were shot down and blown up all around him. The man running next to him had been hit with twenty-millimeter fire and had been cut in half. The man on the other side had been hit with heavy machine gun fire, blowing his back open and sending most of his internal organs out onto the battlefield. But Callahan had not even had so much as a close call. None of the bullets had even come close to him.

"My luck can't last much longer," he said when he'd recovered enough to speak.

He looked around him, seeing very few familiar faces among the two dozen or so men who had managed to make it here with him. There was absolutely no order to the advance, no cohesion of any kind. It was simply a bunch of terrified men running for their lives. That needed to change if they were going to get any further.

He grabbed the man next to him and turned him so he was facing him. He reached down and turned the man's communication set onto his company's tactical channel. "I'm Captain Callahan," he said. "Charlie Company of second battalion. 314^th."

"Sergeant Coolidge," the man replied, his voice shaky and scared. "Bravo Company of third battalion. 322^nd."

"I'm taking command of everyone in this position until someone higher ranking shows up," Callahan said. "We need to get everyone on the same tac channel. Start getting everyone to switch. Pass the word up and down the line."

"Right, sir," Coolidge said. He turned to the man next to him and went through the same motions. That man then turned to the man next to him and did the same.

While they were doing that another dozen or so men managed to make it to safety. They were immediately grabbed and made to switch their channels as well. Callahan, meanwhile, got back on the command channel and hailed Colonel West, who had been placed in charge of this particular section of the line.

"Where are you, Callahan?" West asked him from the relative safety of his own APC some six kilometers back. "What's your situation?"

"I'm in position at pillbox seven-three," he said. "I have about thirty men with me and more are trickling in. We're in defilade from Martian fire at the moment but pinned here. We can't advance to the rear of the pillbox and gain entry until we get more men. There's at least a hundred Martians up in that position, maybe more. I'm gonna need some SAWs, some grenade launchers, and a whole shitload of riflemen before we can put this pillbox out of action."

"I'll send out the word for everyone in that section to move to your position," West promised. "How many men will it take?"

"When I've got a hundred or so over here and enough machine guns and grenade launchers, we'll make the attack."

"What about the Martian armor on the flanks?"

"They're in hull-down positions as far as I can tell. They won't be able to engage us with their guns unless they pull out of them a little. If they do that, our tanks will be able to plaster them."

"Got it," West said. "Keep holding. Once we take one pillbox we can get some AT crews in there to slip around the back of the Martian armor and take them from there. That will let us move men to the next pillbox. If we can capture and hold just two of them and then push the armor out, we can start moving men in without having them mowed down."

"That's my idea, sir," Callahan said.

"Are the losses as bad as I'm being told?"

"Worse," Callahan answered. "They're exterminating us out here. The sooner we open a corridor the sooner we can stop it."

"Right," West said. "The order is going out now."

Callahan switched back to the tactical channel and addressed the men who had gathered. "I'm Captain Callahan," he told them. "And I'm not thrilled to be in charge of this clusterfuck but there's no one else here to do it. I know we're all from different units but we need to organize if we're going to live through the next hour. Get yourselves organized into something like squads. As more men arrive, incorporate them into your units. Once we have enough, we're going to circle around to the front of this pillbox so we can put it out of business. Once we do that we should be able to open a corridor to get more troops in here and then we can bring up the engineers and move up to the MPG base. That's the plan for now. Do I have any lieutenants here?"

"Lieutenant Hunter here, sir," a voice spoke up.

Callahan actually knew him. He was a platoon leader from Alpha Company from his own battalion. "Glad to hear you made it, Hunter," he said. "You're second in command of this abortion. Get everyone organized the best you can and make sure everyone else who makes it here gets switched over to this channel."

"Right, sir," Hunter said.

Ten minutes went by, during which another thirty-seven men managed to make it through the open ground and join them. From across the ditch the tank fire that was supporting them began to get erratic, slowing down noticeably.

"They're running out of ammo," Hunter said.

"It's not like they were doing us much good anyway," Callahan said. "All they've done for us is bring a bunch of concrete chips down on our heads."

"Well, at least we're safe here," Hunter replied.

He was proven wrong a minute later. Something thumped to the ground about twenty meters to Callahan's right. He just had time to look over there when a sharp explosion cracked through the air. One of the men was blown straight up into the air, his left leg flying off his body. Two other men went down on the other side of him and stayed down, blood vapor rising from their bodies.

Something else thumped down to Callahan's left.

"Grenade!" someone yelled as men tried to scatter away from it. Most made it. One didn't. The shrapnel ripped into his back, dropping him. Two more grenades came down from different positions. The men began to panic now, some of them running back out into the field where they were gunned down.

"They're dropping them out of their firing ports!" Hunter yelled. "We need to get out of here!"

"There's nowhere to go!" Callahan shouted back, his mind trying to figure a way to deal with this problem.

Some decided to go anyway. Two men rushed around the corner of the pillbox and were immediately blown to pieces by machine gun fire from one of the APCs stationed out there. Three more went running back toward the anti-tank ditch. They were shot down one by one by the Martian riflemen above them about thirty meters out.

More grenades came dropping down. Someone tried to pick one of them up and throw it further out but he didn't do it quickly enough. It exploded in his hand, shredding the entire top of his body.

Callahan felt panic wanting to overtake him and fought it down. He looked out at the three men who had gone running back the way they'd come and suddenly something occurred to him. "Everyone!" he yelled. "Move away from the wall about ten meters. We'll still have defilade there! Move out and get down on your bellies!"

The men didn't have to be told twice. They ran out as a group and threw themselves to the ground. This kept them far enough away from the pillbox that the dropped grenades couldn't hurt them but close enough that they still weren't in sight of the gunners up above.

"Christ," Callahan said, feeling like he was standing on a high wire above a crocodile cage. "How much longer?"

Just fifteen meters above their heads, the machine guns and the rifles fired on, trying desperately to cut down the numbers of men making it across the open ground. Jeff Creek had changed drums on his heavy machine gun three times now and was over three quarters of the way through the fourth. Out on the open ground the red fog of blood vapor was becoming nearly as thick as the one over the anti-tank ditch. The corpses of marines absolutely littered the battlefield but still they kept coming forward, crawling out of the trench and making the life or death sprint towards the safety of the pillbox shadow.

"There's more of them now," Drogan said, firing the rest of her magazine empty at a group making their final approach.

"They're reinforcing this position," Walker said. "They've probably shifted some of their troops assigned to take down other pillboxes here."

"Aren't we the lucky ones?" Jeff asked, cutting down yet another group, although six of them managed to escape and make it to safety.

"The tank fire has stopped though," Drogan said. "Anyone notice that?"

Jeff actually hadn't noticed that, but now that she mentioned it, it seemed like it had been the better part of five minutes since an eighty or a sixty shell had last exploded against the concrete. "Out of ammo, you think?"

"Fuckin' aye," Walker said. "And there ain't no way to..." He paused, listening to someone on the command channel. "Fuck me," he said at last.

"What is it, sarge?"

"We're pulling out of here," he said. "Everyone start gathering as much supplies as you can and start heading for the egress points. Creek, you'll be the last to go. Stay on that gun until the rest of us are down."

"Why are we leaving?" Drogan asked, alarmed. "I thought this was the last line of defense."

"There are almost a hundred marines down below now," Walker said. "They're gonna move on us at any time."

"We can fight them off!" Jeff said. "They'll have to move up those narrow staircases in order to flush us out of here! We can't let this position fall!"

"We'll do what we're ordered," Walker said. "And that's that. MPG doctrine is to not allow a position to become enveloped. I'm told this is a standard part of the defense plan. Now hurry the fuck up, people. They want us out of here as quickly as possible."

The troops inside the pillbox picked up as much as they could carry and made their way down the steps, leaving only Jeff and the three other heavy machine gunners to hold the fort. Jeff continued to mow down all he could shoot and the tanks and APCs guarding the flanks continued to do the same. Even so, the number of marines making it across the open ground grew exponentially with the reduction in fire.

"Creek," Walker's voice barked in his ear. "We're down. Get your weapon and get your ass down here too. We're rallying in the ditch just outside the pillbox."

"Right, sarge," Jeff said. "What about the seven millimeter? Do I disable it?"

"Don't worry about it," Walker said. "It's mounted to the wall and would take twenty minutes to dismount. The marines won't have any use for it other than to shoot at their own men."

"Right," Jeff said, taking his hands off it. He picked up his pack and his M-24 and headed for the stairs. The trip down took him less than two minutes. Once in the access trench he began following it east until he caught up with the rest of the troops that had evacuated the pillbox. They were moving rapidly toward the rear.

"Where the fuck are we going?" Drogan asked.

"There are small trenches lined with sandbags two hundred meters further down. We're going to occupy those and make the marines lives a little more miserable."

"Move, marines, move!" Callahan ordered less than a minute later. "They're pulling out of the position."

His make-shift company — which was staffed with only ten people who had originally been assigned to him — moved back up against the wall of the pillbox and began to edge along it, turning the south corner and heading for the access point.

"Hunter," he said, talking to his second-in-command, "keep close to that wall and keep low. The tanks and the APCs shouldn't be able to hit you along that side. Be careful when you get to the east side. The Martians who just left might be in firing positions."

"Right, Captain," Hunter replied, passing that order along to the rest of the men.

"And remember," Callahan said, "we don't know for sure they evacuated that position. This could be a trap. They could be waiting up there to gun us all down as soon as we enter. And be careful even if they did evacuate. The Martians love to booby-trap things."

"Yes, sir," Hunter replied.

He led the men forward, keeping them hugging the wall. They passed around the corner without incident although all of them nervously eyed the Martian tank position located less than one hundred meters away. They could hear the booms as it fired its main gun out at the advancing troops in the open ground, could hear the stuttering of its twenty millimeter gun and its four millimeter commander's gun. It paid them no attention, however. It couldn't fire on them even if it wanted to since it was below their line of sight.

The lead men made it to the southeast corner of the pillbox without incident. As they slipped around this corner, however, intending to drop into the access trench thirty meters away, small arms fire erupted from about two hundred meters east of them. Bullets came flying in, slamming into the concrete wall, dropping several of the men to the ground. Cries of "Get Down!" began to overlap on the net.

"Move forward! Move forward!" Hunter ordered. "Get into that trench!"

The men were now well oriented to what to do when under fire. Most of them had hit the ground the moment the fire had come in. They did not return fire. Instead they crawled forward on hands and knees as quickly as they could. Some got hit and dropped where they were. Most made it through and were able to throw themselves inside.

"What's the situation, Hunter?" Callahan asked as the next group of men turned the corner and started crawling forward.

"We're taking fire from a sandbagged position about three hundred meters behind the pillbox," Hunter replied. "Looks like company strength at least. They opened up as soon as we exposed ourselves over here."

"Can you get some covering fire on them?"

"Not from this position," he answered. "Not that will do any good anyway. We're both at ground level and they're behind sandbags. The men are moving forward on their bellies. Most are making it into the access trench."

"Copy," Callahan said. "I'm sending another platoon sized unit around from the other side of the pillbox. Once you get in there you should be able to return fire on them from a better vantage point."

"My thoughts exactly, sir," Hunter said. "I'm moving in with the next group. I'll give you a report once I'm inside."

"Copy."

Hunter looked at the thirty or so men gathered with him. He took a few deep breaths, bracing himself for the exposure to enemy fire again. "Okay, guys," he said. "Let's do it. Keep low and move fast."

They kept low and moved fast. Eight of them were shot down on the trip. Hunter was not one of them. Moving faster than he would have thought possible he elbowed and kneed his way across the rocky ground and virtually threw himself into the narrow trench. He then made his way back to the west, towards the opening of the pillbox. The entryway was about six meters square and was crowded with the troops that had already made it inside. At the far end was a concrete staircase, leading up to a small landing where it switched back.

"Anyone gone up there yet?" Hunter asked as he made his way forward.

"No one," one of the sergeants replied. "We're kind of wondering about booby traps. Remember how the Martians had their trenches rigged in the gap?"

"I remember," Hunter said. "We still have to get up there though."

"We need to wait for the sappers to come up and clear the position," the sergeant said.

"The sappers can't move forward until we open a corridor to get troops through," Hunter replied. "We can't do that until we clear this position."

"I'm not going up there first," the sergeant said. Most of the men around him nodded their heads, indicating they felt the same.

Hunter sighed, knowing that simply ordering someone up wouldn't work. It would probably only serve to get him fragged, something he'd heard rumor of happening over the past few days when a sergeant or a lieutenant ordered something unpopular. "All right," he said, trying not to show how terrified he was, "I'll go up. If I make it to the top, you all need to follow me. Deal?"

"It's your funeral," the sergeant said. "But yeah, if you make it up there, we'll follow."

He started up, his M-24 held out before him, his feet taking each step with the knowledge that it might really be his last this time. He made it to the landing without incident and then slowly turned the corner, peeking up the next section of stairway. He saw nothing. He started up this section and again made it to the top without incident. Here there was a passageway that led into the lower level of the pillbox. It was empty of Martian troops except for a couple of dead ones. Shell casings and ammo boxes were everywhere. The mounted machine guns that had killed so many of them were still in place.

"We're clear up to the lower level," he said. "Now start moving up and securing it. I'm going up to the top."

"Right, lieutenant," the voice of the sergeant replied.

With that Hunter continued upward. Again he was not blown to pieces by a Martian booby trap. It occurred to him that the Martians hadn't been expecting to be pushed out of this position and that if they were they would know the end was near. Perhaps that was why they hadn't bothered rigging it up with anything. It was as good a theory as any.

The upper level was empty of live Martians as well. There was a lot more concrete dust up here and two dead Martians lying near the firing ports. There were hundreds upon hundreds of expended laser batteries piled everywhere. He walked out onto the main floor of this level and then turned to the rear, surprised to see the huge openings in the wall that faced toward the city.

"What in the fuck did they do that for?" he asked himself, as puzzled as Jeff Creek had been over this seemingly asinine oversight.

Footsteps bounded up the stairs and a squad of marines appeared, led by the sergeant who had refused to go up first.

"We're clearing the lower floor, sir," the sergeant said to him. "So far, no signs of booby-traps, although we wouldn't really know what one looked like anyway."

"True," Hunter said, "but I find the fact that none have gone off yet to be good news. Did you see these huge openings in the back wall?"

"We saw them," the sergeant said. "I've ordered the men to stay clear of them. The Martians out in that back trench might be able to get a shot off at us if we walk in front of them."

"Why would they build such large openings in a protective structure?" Hunter asked. "It does nothing but increase exposure and weaken the entire emplacement."

"I don't know, sir," the sergeant said. "It's enough that we noticed them and are keeping clear. Come and look at this though." He led him over to the side wall, the one that faced north. Over here the firing opening was much smaller. "Take a look, sir."

Hunter put his face in the opening. Below, he could see the stretch of ground between this pillbox and the next. And since they were now well above, he could see two Martian tanks and four Martian APCs in their hull-down positions, firing out over the battlefield. "We can take them out from up here," he said. "We're high enough to put laser fire right down on top of them."

"Goddamn right, sir," the sergeant said. "All we need is to get some AT teams up here and we can clear this whole fucking area."

Hunter nodded. "Continue clearing this level," he said. "I'll get on with Captain Callahan and have them send some AT units up."

"Right on," the sergeant said. He switched his channel and ordered an entire platoon's worth of men into the room, ordering them to stay well clear of the rear opening and to man positions at the main firing ports along the walls. He ordered another squad to crawl over just to the sides of the rear openings and keep an eye out to their rear. That was, after all, where the Martians were.

Down below, Callahan, still huddled on the west side of the pillbox, listened to the report from Lieutenant Hunter with something like glee. "Perfect," he said. "Absolutely fucking perfect. I'll get West to put some AT teams in with the next wave of men. With luck we'll have our corridor open within thirty minutes and then we can start moving enough men in here to force our way past those final positions."

Jeff Creek had his M-24 pointed out toward the rear of the pillbox, the magnification on his goggles set at high. In his view was the face of one of the WestHem marines on the top level of the position. He was peeking slightly out around the corner of the opening, thinking that he was safe from being shot. He was so wrong. Jeff itched to pull the trigger, to put a 4mm round right through that Earthling asshole's face. But he didn't. He and the rest of the two platoons deployed her had been ordered not to fire.

"We could rake those fuckers right now," he told Drogan, who was deployed next to him, manning a SAW.

"Yep," she said. "Now we know why those openings are so big in the rear. When the enemy takes that position they won't have the same protection from it that we had."

"I should've known it made some kinda sense," Jeff said. "You gotta hand it to the engineers who designed this place. But why won't they let us shoot them? They've been exposed half a dozen times on both levels. I bet if we started pouring fire in there we'd hit a dozen or so."

"I don't know," Drogan said. "But we'd better do something fast. Pretty soon they'll get some AT teams up there. If they do that, they'll be able to force the armor out of the spaces in between."

The ground began to rumble around them, the soft, insistent vibration that bespoke of a heavy armored vehicle approaching. Jeff looked behind and saw two main battle tanks coming their way, one from the north and one from the south, both sticking close to the outside of the MPG base. When they made it directly behind the trench the platoons were in they turned and began heading forward, toward the pillbox.

Jeff and Drogan looked at each other, grinning. Now they understood what those big openings in the rear were really for.

"Sir!" the sergeant's voice suddenly barked in Hunter's ear. "We've got tanks approaching from the rear."

"Tanks?" he asked, alarmed. "From behind us?" In an instant he suddenly figured out the same thing as Jeff and Drogan. Why hadn't this occurred to him earlier?"

"They're setting up to fire, sir!" the sergeant said, panic in his voice now.

"Everyone back to the stairways!" Hunter yelled. "Now!"

A panicked rush began but it was far too late. The tanks outside opened up with their eighty-millimeter guns, putting the rounds directly through the large openings. They flew in, hit the front wall, and exploded with a tremendous crack, sending shrapnel ricocheting in all directions. Men were blown to pieces if they were near the front wall, riddled with shrapnel if they were near the rear. Hunter was hit with the second volley. The concussion blew him against the side wall and then shrapnel sprayed through his chest, neck, and face, ending his life in an instant. Of the one hundred and sixteen marines inside of the pillbox, sixty-eight of them were killed or so gravely wounded they couldn't stand. The rest managed to scramble into the staircases where they were safe from the exploding shells. They huddled there, still trying to comprehend what had happened, what they should do now. And then Captain Zogor Fattie, the commander of the pillbox before it fell, pushed a series of buttons on an electronic radio transmitter from within the trench behind. The booby traps that lined each stairway were detonated simultaneously, killing every man within.

Aboard the WSS Nebraska, Mars orbit

1830 hours

Major Wilde was receiving the confused and disjointed reports from the Eden Theater of operations and trying to assemble some kind of a picture of what was going on down there. The only thing that was really clear was that they were taking horrifying casualties, most in the anti-tank trenches where the ground troops were trying to assemble or on the advance from those trenches forward.

"From what I understand," he told General Browning, pointing to a schematic of the Eden area on his computer screen, "we've pushed through and forced the Martians out of their pillbox positions in six different places on the line. Here, here, here, here, here, and here. You'll notice, however, that none of those positions are adjoining each other, therefore we have not been able to open up a movement corridor through to the rear."

"Why not?" Browning asked.

Wilde clenched his fists a few times but kept his feelings off of his face. "Because, sir, these pillboxes overlap their fields of fire and the Martians still have armor in hull-down positions in the spaces in between. Our hope had been to occupy the pillboxes we forced them out of but... well... those latest reports kind of eliminate that possibility."

The latest reports he was referring to were those that had described the traps the Martians had laid, allowing the troops inside the pillboxes and then bringing in tanks to blast through large openings in the rear. Once the troops that had survived this attack went into the stairwells, booby traps concealed in the walls were detonated. This had happened at three of the six positions so far, enough that an order had gone out for troops to not enter any of the other pillboxes.

"So are they winning?" Browning asked. "Is that what you're trying to say?"

"No, sir," Wilde said. "They just have a very good final defense. They're not giving up any ground easily. We still have enough men down there to push through those positions and open those corridors up, it's just going to cost us a lot."

"How long will it take? The press is already hounding me about not being in Eden by sunset. Sunset took place ten minutes ago down there."

"We need to keep bringing troops forward, running them through the gauntlet of the trench and the open ground. We need to occupy several adjacent pillbox positions and chase the Martians out of them. And then we need to get some AT units up there with hand-held lasers. Once we have all that, we can push forward. The Martians we chase out of the pillboxes are taking up positions in trenches just forward of the wall. We'll have to engage them with the infantry while the AT units destroy or chase off any armored vehicles."

"Sounds like a plan," Browning said. "But how long will it take? Can we get it done in the next half hour?"

Wilde shook his head in frustration. Browning just wasn't listening to him. "It'll take as long as it takes, sir. That's the only answer I can give you. We need to send out orders to start having the troops advance more towards the areas surrounding Pillbox 73 here in the middle, especially the two positions immediately north of it. If we can take Pillbox 72 and 71, it will link up with Pillbox 70, which we already hold. That will allow us to move the AT teams forward and assemble enough to move against the positions behind it."

"I like it," Browning said. "So can you do all this in the next thirty minutes? I'd like to give my victory briefing on the hour if possible."

Eden Main Life of Defense, Pillbox 73

0735 hours

Captain Callahan was up against the western wall of the pillbox again, his M-24 sitting in his lap, his mind flirting with the very edge of sanity. There were several hundred marines gathered around him, most sitting down, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, most with the empty, disbelieving expression that came with finding one's self alive after so many of one's companions have been horribly killed. From both sides of them the chattering of machine guns and explosive rounds fired from the Martian armor went on and on, cutting into the groups of marines still trying to reach one of the four positions that were now held on the line. The Martian armor was being resupplied from an apparently endless supply of fresh ammo. Out beyond the anti-tank ditch, however, the WestHem armor was completely out. There had not been a round of any caliber fired in more than forty-five minutes now.

Another group of marines came staggering in from the open ground, throwing themselves to the ground and just lying there, staring up at the alien sky. It was a common reaction upon arrival.

"Bowman," Callahan said to Lieutenant Bowman, his new second-in-command after the first one had been slaughtered in the pillbox. "How many do we have now?"

"I'm counting six hundred and sixty-four including that last bunch to make it in here," Bowman replied. "We're gonna start running out room in the defilade areas pretty soon."

"I don't think we'll have to worry about that too much," Callahan replied. "I just got the plan shipped to me from operations."

"What is it?"

"Pillboxes 70, 71, and 72 are now in our hands — or at least we've chased the Martians out of them. They sent an entire company of AT teams forward to join our unit. Only about half of them made it but we are still able to field twenty portable ATs for the next advance."

"We're advancing, sir?" Bowman asked.

"Did you think we were just going to have a picnic here?" Callahan shot back. "We're going to push into that corridor and take on the Martian trench that's guarding the wall. That's their absolute last line. The AT teams are going to go after the armor in between. I'm told that all of the other positions are going to be doing the same."

"Uh... sir," Bowman said, "What about getting some mortar teams up here for support? What about some sappers so we can clear these pillboxes and use them for overhead fire? I mean... the AT teams would be able to engage the tanks a lot better from up there."

"They won't send support units forward until we open a corridor for them," Callahan said. "We need to push to the wall the length of these four pillbox positions and then they'll send everyone forward."

There was a long silence on the net.

"Bowman?" asked Callahan. "Are you still there?"

"I'm still here," he said.

"Is there a problem with the orders?"

Another long silence. Finally, "Yeah."

Callahan had been half expecting this. In a way, he welcomed it. "And what might that be?" he asked.

"There's a lot of talk down here on the tac channels, Captain," Bowman said. "A lot of the men were afraid the plan was just what you said it would be."

"And?"

"And... well... they're saying they just made it through hell to get here and they're not willing to go through it again. Those fuckin' assholes back in the rear are wanting us to go up against entrenched positions that will probably be supported by armor. Is that what the situation is?"

"Yes, Bowman. That's what the situation is. Keep talking."

"We respect you and all, Captain," Bowman said. "But if we do that we'll take fifty percent casualties, maybe more. The men have had enough of that shit. I've had enough of that shit. We lived this long and we'd kind of like to keep on living, you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean," Callahan said. "So why don't you reiterate what you mean so we're both clear on it."

"This is kind of delicate, sir," Bowman said. "But it's like this. The last time we were down here we had to retreat. When we retreated the Martians stopped shooting at us. You remember that? The second we turned around and started heading back to the LZ, they stopped firing and they didn't kill a single fuckin' person, a single piece of armor. It's the thought of most of us gathered here that if we were to throw down these guns and start walking back to that trench, back to our APCs, they'd stop shooting again and let us go."

"So you're suggesting we disobey orders to push forward and retreat?" Callahan asked, just for clarity.

"The men giving them orders ain't standing down here," Bowman said. "They didn't go through that ditch or run across that open ground. They don't have to think about going up against another slaughter like that. All except for you, Captain. You went through that with us. Do you want to go out there again?"

"No," Callahan said without hesitation. "I don't."

"Then it seems that maybe we've reached an agreement here."

"I didn't say I agreed with your position, Lieutenant," Callahan said.

"No? Then I'd suggest you watch out real careful like, Captain," Bowman told him. "It might be that someone's gun might just go off accidentally when they're near you, if you know what I mean."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Take it for what you will, Captain," Bowman said. "But I can guarantee you one thing. Ain't none of these men going forward under the plan you just gave me. We've already agreed to that. What you do is your own decision but I'd suggest you make it wisely. I heard what you did the last time we went up against this main line. I respect you for that and I hope you can do it again. If you won't... well... I'm next in command. I will do it."

"If something unfortunate was to happen to me?" Callahan said.

"That's right," Bowman told him.

Callahan looked at his M-24 in his lap. He fingered it a few times, marveling over the fact that he had not fired a single round through it in the entire campaign. He looked up at the men around him, seeing their faces staring at him expectantly. Obviously all of them had switched over to the command channel at some point to monitor this conversation. He picked up his rifle and removed the strap from around his body. He threw it out into the open. "Everyone get rid of your weapons," he told them. "If we're going to do this, we need to do it right. It won't do us any good if we're the only ones."

A collective sigh of relief went out across the channel and a vast pile of weapons began to hit the ground.

"Everyone stay in place for now," Callahan said. "I need to talk to some other people first."

Pillbox 72

0740 hours

Captain Steve Daniels was the man in charge of the forces gathered in front of the pillbox adjacent to Callahan's. He, like Callahan, had just received his attack orders and was trying to convince his troops that command was really serious about them.

"This is fuckin' bullshit!" an angry corporal — who was not even supposed to be on this channel — proclaimed to him. "Go up against those positions? Without mortar support? With only a few anti-tank teams? What are they? Pissed off that we managed to live this long and trying to kill us completely?"

Several other unauthorized users checked in on the same channel and expressed their opinions as well. Several people brought up the same point that Bowman had brought up. If they turned around and started heading back, the Martians wouldn't shoot at them anymore.

"This is Captain Callahan," a voice suddenly cut in. "I'm in command of the group on Pillbox 73. Who's in charge there?"

Daniels was surprised. It was quite unorthodox for a commander to get onto another commander's channel. He checked his telemetry screen to see if it was one of his own men playing games and saw that the transmission had, in fact, come from a Captain Callahan over at the Pillbox 73 position. "This is Captain Daniels," he said. "What do you want, Callahan? We're trying to organize for our attack here. Shouldn't you be doing the same?"

"We're not attacking," Callahan told him. "We've thrown down our weapons and we are going to disobey this order. From I've just been monitoring on your channel it sounds like your men are ready to do the same."

Daniels, a veteran of the first phase of the war at Proctor, was not the least bit shocked or outraged by this statement. On the contrary, he felt hope for the first time. "You're not going forward?" he asked.

"The last time we retreated the Martians didn't shoot at us," Callahan said. "We're tired of being shot at. Our gesture would be a lot more meaningful if we weren't the only ones making it."

"I think I speak for all my men when I say we'll be standing next to you when you walk out."

"Very good," Callahan said. "I'm going to talk to the men over at 71 now. Stay in place until I tell you to move.

It took less than ten minutes for Callahan to convince all four groups of marines to throw down their weapons. Pillbox 70 proved to be the most difficult. The men there were commanded by a Captain Stills, who was not a veteran of the first conflict but who had in fact been in charge of the APC maintenance section on one of the landing ships. He accused Callahan of inciting treason, malfeasance of duty, and several other things before a mysterious "sniper" put a round through his head and his second-in-command, Lieutenant Galvin, took over for him.

"We're in," Galvin said. "Just tell us when to start moving back."

"I'll let you know," Callahan promised.

Colonel West wasn't too keen on the adjustment to the battle plan — to say the least. He ordered, threatened, even begged Callahan to have his men pick up their weapons and take the Martian positions.

"We're within thirty minutes of taking this fucking city, Callahan!" he screamed. "We can be standing in Eden an hour from now, basking in our fucking glory! You want to give that all up for a charge of treason?"

"At least we'll be alive to face those charges," Callahan said. "We're coming out."

"The Martians will gun you down like dogs if you walk out into the open like that!"

"I don't think they will," Callahan said. "We're willing to take that chance in any case."

"If they don't gun you down, we will," West said. "I'll order all men at the ditch to shoot you as deserters!"

"I don't think they'll do that either," Callahan said. "Face it, Colonel. We've lost. Why make it any more complicated than that?"

"You'll be held responsible for this, Callahan. I'm warning you."

"I'm willing to accept the consequences, Colonel. You can quote me on that. We're heading out now. See you in a bit."

Xenia Stoner was sitting in the gunner's station in one of the tanks stationed between Pillbox 70 and 69. She had just had a support team reload her eighty millimeter shells and was firing them as fast as they could be put into the breach, sending them out over the endless stream of marines that kept emerging from the anti-tank ditch and heading toward Pillbox 70.

She was the first to spot movement in the opposite direction. She saw a large group of people suddenly enter her field of view from the right. She automatically turned her main gun in that direction, preparing to take a shot at them. The twenty-millimeter, which had been placed under control of the tank's driver, did the same. Xenia stopped, her finger poised over the firing button as she realized that these figures were heading back the way they had come.

"What the fuck?" she muttered.

"You seeing this shit, Jack?" asked the driver — woman named Barbie Goodbud — of the commander, Jack Woo.

"I'm seeing it," Woo said, his hand on the controls of the four millimeter gun, his recticle resting right between two of the mysterious soldiers. "But I'm not quite sure what it is."

"Their hands are up," Xenia said. "They're not carrying weapons with them."

"And they're walking back towards the WestHem positions," Woo said thoughtfully. "Xenia, get a count for me."

"At least three hundred of them," she said, mostly guessing. "More of them coming out every second."

"All of them have their hands up," Goodbud said.

"Hold your fire," Woo told them.

"What about the ones still coming forward from the trench?" Xenia asked.

"Hold you fire on them too," he said. "Let me get command and see what the fuck is going on."

The group walked slowly forward, hands held high, moving step by step over the open ground they'd recently scrambled their way across. A few of the Martian positions opened up on them, mostly out of instinct. More than two dozen were gunned down with bullets. Another two dozen were blown up by tank rounds. The rest kept moving forward, not reacting to the fire, not breaking, not running, trying not to panic. This had been per instructions given by Captain Callahan. After a minute or so, the fire on the formation stopped. As they went further out all enemy fire stopped completely — at least in this sector of the line.

Hundreds of other marines had been rushing forward at the time, having just cleared the lethal anti-tank trench and going for the final dash to what was being called "the assembly point". Many didn't notice at first that the enemy fire had stopped. But as they did they noticed the line of fellow marines walking toward them with their hands in the air. Gradually, the onrushing marines slowed their pace, understanding dawning over them.

Callahan didn't communicate with the onrushing men at all. He didn't have to. They all saw that the death and destruction that had been killing them and maiming them had come to a halt. The only reason this could be so was because the men who had gone before them were retreating. Most concluded that the attack they were racing to join had been aborted. Most didn't bother to speculate why. To a man they stopped in their tracks and waited for the formation to catch up with them. Hands were held up, telling them which tactical channel to turn to.

"We're done," was the universal message delivered to these men. "Throw down your gun and join us or go forward and get killed. It's your choice."

Nobody in this sector of the battle chose the latter option. They threw down their guns and turned around, joining the group and going back the way they had come.

The rebellion against orders spread very quickly. It started in the adjoining sectors. Men going forward saw the others going backwards with no guns, their hands held high. They saw that the men doing this were not under fire. They threw down their weapons and joined them. The men in the sections adjoining these saw the same thing and repeated this action. Within fifteen minutes the entire line had given up, most with unspeakable gratitude. For the first time in hours all of the Martian guns went silent.

For all intents and purposes, the Battle for Eden was over. The will of the WestHem marines had been broken.