Chapter 12A

Aboard the WHSS Mammoth, Mars Orbit

August 16, 2146

Lieutenant Callahan came into the berthing area to find his platoon lying listless on their bunks, just as they normally did. As always the smell in the room was of stale sweat and dirty laundry, although after nearly ten weeks he hardly noticed it anymore.

"On your feet, marines," he barked at them. "Assemble immediately for a briefing."

Nobody got to his feet. During the course of the chaotic trip across space, discipline among the men had slipped rather sharply. Where once the men had snapped to obey his every command, they were now quite openly disrespectful, not just to him but to every officer of every rank.

"I got your briefing right here," said Private Stinson as he grabbed his crotch a few times.

"Do you have to yell, LT?" asked Corporal Jones. "I was sleeping."

Callahan sighed, knowing he had helped create this environment he was now living in. He had created it with complacency in the name of soothing the morale problem that had cropped up. Now, however, it was time to start reversing that complacency. Soon they would be going to battle.

"I said on your feet!" Callahan yelled, striding further into the room. "And the next person who throws a smart-ass remark in my direction is going to have my foot up his ass! Assemble for a briefing right now!"

Slowly the men climbed out of their bunks and ambled across the room to assemble before him. It wasn't exactly the military precision that had been the norm in Salta, but at least they were obeying him. And no one threw a smart-ass remark in his direction either. At least not one that he was able to hear, which was, in truth, the best he could hope for.

When they were all more or less lined up he walked to the front, looking them up and down. "I've just come from a meeting with Captain Ayers and Major Wild," he told them. "As you are undoubtedly aware, the 298^th ACR was slated to be first down on the planetary surface today and was to establish the initial beachhead of the Eden attack. Well, as you were probably not aware, the bulk of the 298^th were aboard Pacaderm, the ship that was destroyed in the so-called suicide attack."

"Suicide attack my ass," Stinson was unable to help saying. There were some grumbles from the rest of the men along this line as well.

"Whatever the cause," Callahan interjected, "the fact is that there really is no more 298^th ACR. Someone else needs to secure the Eden beachhead. That someone else is us."

"Us?" asked Sergeant Mallory. "We haven't trained for that! We've been training for armored assault on the city."

And even that training, everyone knew, had been woefully brief. Getting the men to the simulators each day had been a chore that had been just a little too much most of the time.

"We will still be performing assault duty on Eden if that becomes necessary," Callahan said. "But that is after we secure the beachhead itself and facilitate the landing of all of our equipment. This is an upper level decision directly from General Wrath himself. Given the greenie resistance that was encountered during the trip here, it is felt that a combat experienced regiment should be first down in this area of operation. The 314^th is the most combat experienced regiment in the task force. We've been dealing with rebel elements in Argentina for years and so General Wrath feels that if there are any greenies down there waiting for us at the LZ, we'll be the unit that is able to most effectively deal with them."

"And they're just springing this on us now?" Mallory asked. "Christ, when are we supposed to make this landing?"

"In three hours, not including travel time," Callahan said, allowing a hint of his own trepidation to leak into his voice.

"Three hours?" all four of his sergeants and a good number of the men said in unison.

"I know its not much time," Callahan allowed. "Hell, it'll take us most of that time just to get suited and armed up. But that's the way its gonna be, guys. This landing ship will be departing this vessel in three hours and we need to be ready when that happens. So lets get this briefing started, shall we?"

Charlie Company, which Callahan and his platoon were part of, had been tasked with securing the north side of the landing zone. They would exit the landing ship immediately upon touchdown and move overland on foot to a ridgeline two kilometers away. From there they would spread out by platoon to different sectors of the ridge and dig in to guard the perimeter. For at least the first eight hours, possibly more, they would be the only forces in the area. They would have no hover support, no armored vehicle support, and their only artillery support would be from the 150-millimeter guns mounted on the landing ship itself.

"Navigation and targeting is going to be somewhat of a pain in the ass," Callahan explained. "The greenies have apparently encrypted all of the signals from their navigation satellites, which means that unless our intelligence division can ferret out the proper code somehow, our GPS systems will not work. Everything will have to be done by inertial navigation, so be sure to zero out your combat computers when you leave the ship."

"How will we zero out our computers if the ship itself doesn't even know exactly where it is?" asked Sergeant Hamilton.

Callahan grunted a little in frustration. That was exactly the question that he had asked of Major Wild when he had received his briefing. He had not been given an adequate answer. "It will at least give us a rough estimate of our location," he said now.

"A rough estimate?" asked Mallory. "How rough are we talking?"

"Accurate to within five hundred meters," Callahan said.

Everyone looked at him for a moment to see if he was joking. Finally they were forced to conclude that he wasn't.

"Five hundred meters?" Mallory said. "That's half a klick. How are supposed to call down artillery with that kind of a margin for error? We could end up calling it down right on top of ourselves."

"Intelligence seems confident that it will be able to hack into the greenie Internet and get the GPS codes within a day or two," Callahan said. "And in the meantime, estimates are that greenie resistance should be non-existent or very light at the LZ itself. Remember, we're three hundred klicks from their main defenses. It's not like they can just drive a division of troops out to engage us."

"What about those transport aircraft they have?" asked Private Stinson. "Those Hummingbird things we were briefed on. They can transport a squad, can't they?"

"They are capable of transporting a squad of troops," Callahan confirmed. "And they do have the range to fly this far. But our landing ship, as you know, is equipped with a full array of passive and active anti-aircraft sensors. They wouldn't be able to get one of those things within fifty klicks of our position without us picking it up. So unless those troops want to walk fifty klicks across the surface, they won't be able to engage us. Our landing zone will be perfectly secure. That's a good a guarantee as you'll get in this operation I'm told."

And strangely, though nothing else that they had been told about Martian capabilities had been true so far, everyone felt better having heard this.

Martian Planetary Guard Headquarters Building, New Pittsburgh

August 16, 2146

The official command center for the Martian Planetary Guard operations was on the top floor of the main MPG building near the capital. It was a windowless office, stuffed full of desks with computer terminals mounted on them and bustling with high-ranking officers and lower ranking technical people. On the front wall was a holographic projection of the entire planetary surface, a display that could be zoomed in at any particular point to a resolution of better than ten meters per centimeter. Currently the display was zoomed out and showed blue marks where MPG units were deployed. As of yet, most of the troops were still on stand-by at the headquarters building in each of the cities. At the Eden MPG headquarters, the biggest of them, more than sixty thousand troops were standing by for movement orders.

General Jackson was weary after having spent the past twenty-four hours in this room. His T-shirt was rumpled and marred with sweat stains. His eyes were bleary, with bags beneath them, and his face was unshaven. He had been advised multiple times by his closest staff members that he needed to get some sleep but so far he had refused to heed their advice. Since the WestHem armada had entered Martian orbit he had only grabbed quick catnaps in his chair.

"General," a voice said in his headset, startling him out of a light doze. It was Captain Edison, who was monitoring the reconnaissance satellites. "I'm picking up a separation from the armada."

"Landing craft separation?" Jackson asked, his fatigue instantly falling away.

"Looks like it," said Edison. "We're getting good feed from the KH-11 and the KH-17 birds on either side of their orbit. I have a positive landing craft separation from one of the Panamas. Looks like its now maneuvering into a descent corridor."

"Put it on my screen," Jackson ordered.

It appeared a moment later, a blurry infrared image of an object drifting above one of the transport ships. The distance between the two objects continued to slowly grow. White flashes from the bottom and sides indicated that the maneuvering thrusters were being fired.

"Keep a track on it," Jackson said. "I want course projections as soon as feasible."

"Working on it now," Edison said. "Do you want... stand by."

"What is it?" Jackson asked.

"Another separation underway," Edison told him. "No, make that two."

"From different ships?"

"Correct, and here's another now. That's a total of four landing craft separating from four different ships."

Jackson nodded. "What do you want to bet that they're heading for Eden, New Pittsburgh, Libby and Proctor?" he asked the room at large. Those were the four major cities that General Wrath had told the solar system his forces would be landing at.

"I think that's a bet I'll have to turn down," Edison answered. "I've got good passive tracks on all four."

"Shall we alert the forces at the target cities?" asked Colonel Anderson, who was in charge of logistical deployment.

"Let's keep the combat troops on standby for now," Jackson said. "I don't want to send them outside until we're sure where these enemy units are landing. Lets get the artillery units in all cities activated though. There's always the chance that the Earthlings will do something stupid and land close to the cities. If they do, I want arty falling on them from the moment their gear touch the ground."

"Deploying all artillery units now," Anderson said, calling up a screen on his computer.

By the time the main engines of the four landing craft began to fire, decelerating them and starting their descent towards the Martian atmosphere, men and women all over the planet were donning their biosuits and racing through airlocks to man their artillery positions. Teams of loaders crawled into heavily fortified fixed sites on the outskirts of every Martian city. Other teams crawled into mobile guns and began to drive across the soil towards their pre-determined firing points. By the time the first of the landing craft made contact with the thin atmosphere ninety minutes later all guns reported ready. The MPG was now capable of raining down horrific destruction on any point within one hundred kilometers of any of its populated areas.

"I have preliminary course paths for all four vessels," reported Edison.

"Let's have it," Jackson said, sipping from a cup of coffee.

"Just like we expected," Edison said. "Targets Alpha and Delta are in equatorial inclinations. They appear to be heading for the vicinity of Libby and Eden respectively. Targets Bravo and Charlie are in high latitude inclinations. They appear to be heading for New Pittsburgh and Proctor."

"Just like they told us they would," Jackson mused. "Which target will land first?"

"Unless there is some extensive maneuvering, Delta will touch down first near Eden somewhere. Estimated timeframe is approximately twenty-seven minutes."

"Okay," Jackson said. "As soon as they're down on the ground, we get the combat troops moving towards the defensive positions. Full deployment in the cities that have forces land outside of them. All tank crews, all armored cav crews, everything. And I want some special forces teams deployed to each LZ within one hour of its establishment. We start hitting them right away, while they're at their most vulnerable. Those marines are not welcome on this planet and I want them to start experiencing our inhospitality immediately."

Equatorial wastelands, due east of Eden, Mars

August 16, 2146 — 0900 hours

The large landing craft, with 5000 marines aboard, descended rapidly out of the red sky, falling like a rock, its forward momentum more than 900 kilometers per hour. At an altitude of 20,000 meters above the surface, retro-rockets fired, slowing its airspeed and reducing its rate of descent. It came down at a steep angle despite the slowing, much steeper than the Martians had brought down the landing craft from the pre-positioned ships at TNB. This was a combat landing, the first one made since the Jupiter War, and the commander of the craft went by the book even though resistance was expected to be non-existent.

At 0921 hours, Eden time, the craft passed over a ridge of hills and was almost hovering over a large plateau, its descent now only a few meters per second. Steel landing gear shot out from the bottom, ready to bear the weight of the large vehicle and everything within it. As it came close to the ground a cloud of dust was raised by the powerful blast of the retro rockets. The incredible heat fused the Martian soil beneath. Slowly, carefully, the craft inched lower and lower until the gear touched down on the rocky ground. The retro-rockets slowly eased off and the weight settled on the gear.

Even as the engines were being shut down, twenty-millimeter cannons poked out from ports all along the perimeter of the ship. These weapons were equipped with infrared and visual cameras that fed images back to a bank of control screens just below the bridge of the ship. In this room a team of navy gunners stared at the screens and operated joysticks that controlled each individual camera. There were twenty of them in all and they had overlapping fields of fire that could engage any person or light vehicle within five hundred meters of the ship. They panned back and forth, switching frequently between infrared and visual, zooming on different places, searching for biosuited greenies hiding in the rocks or the surrounding hills. They saw nothing but empty landscape.

On the top of the ship two steel doors slid open and three gun turrets — one fore, one aft, and one amidships — slowly rose up. 150-millimeter gun barrels, each ten meters in length, were attached to these turrets. Inside the ship, directly under each turret, a loading crew stood by next to pallets that contained hundreds of 150-millimeter shells. The guns themselves were operated from the same control room the twenty-millimeter gunners worked out of.

The troops that were to actually perform the initial sweep of the landing zone were staging just outside each of the four airlocks that controlled access in and out of the ships. They had put on their biosuits prior to the separation of the landing ship from Mammoth and had been standing around and waiting, their weapons in hand, for the past two hours.

Lieutenant Callahan and his platoon were slated to be the first out through Airlock C on the front part of the ship. They stood closest to the lock, M-24s and SAWs in their hands, all of them weary and feeling slightly claustrophobic from being inside the suits. They were still experiencing standard gravity and the WestHem suits, unlike the MPG's suits, were very heavy and difficult to move in. Though the material of the suit itself was quite similar, the storage tank for air was much bigger and bulged out from the rear in a very unwieldy manner. The environmental controls were also much larger since the suit was designed to be operated in the frigid environment of the Jovian moons instead of the relatively balmy Martian equatorial region.

"How much longer?" asked Mallory as he shifted his rifle from one shoulder to the other.

"When they give us the signal, we'll move," Callahan answered for perhaps the tenth time since they'd landed. "They're still sweeping the area with the cameras to make sure no greenies are about."

"There ain't no fuckin greenies out here," said Stinson. "What do they think? That they just happened to be having a picnic out here or something?"

"We're going by the book here, guys," Callahan told them. "That's the only way to do things."

"The book," said Mallory with a shake of his helmeted head. "The guy who wrote the fuckin book never had to stand around in 1G with a goddamn fifty kilo suit on."

"That's undoubtedly true," agreed Callahan, who was quite uncomfortable himself. "But we're marines, and standing around waiting for something to happen is what we do best, isn't it?"

They stood around grumbling for another twenty minutes before the order was finally given to move into the airlocks. The steel doors slid slowly open and, one by one, Callahan and his men moved into the cramped space. All forty of them were able to fit, but only by pushing tightly together and shifting their weapons and packs into accommodating places.

Once Callahan reported to command that they were all inside, the airlock door slid shut again, sealing them inside. A circuit clicked loudly over their heads and then there was the sound of the pumps running and sucking the air out of the room and into a holding tank where it could be recycled back in for the next group. This process took the better part of five minutes but finally the air pressure matched that of the surface.

"Okay, guys," Callahan told his men, "brace yourselves for lightening. They're gonna shut off the artificial G's to the lock."

The men all looked uneasily at each other for a moment. Although none of them had ever been on the surface of Mars or any other planet except Earth, all had undergone extraterrestrial combat training at Armstrong Naval Base in Earth orbit. A significant part of this course consisted of spending time in a low gravity simulation room and moving about with the biosuits on. All remembered the sensation of lightening quite well but none had experienced it enough to become accustomed to it.

As it turned out, only four of the forty men in the airlock actually vomited when the artificial gravity was switched off although every last one of them groaned and had to fight the sensation. Once the worst of it had passed Callahan polled all of his squad leaders and received assurances that everyone was ready to move.

"Third platoon, ready for egress," he reported to Captain Ayers over the command link.

"I copy, Callahan," Ayers replied. "Ramp is going down now. The sweep of the immediate area shows clear out to half a click. Proceed at best speed to your deployment area."

"You got it, cap," he said, taking a few deep breaths of his air. His combat goggles were turned on and a small graph in the upper right hand of his view showed he had just less than eight hours of oxygen remaining. He looked at his men. "Ramp's going down. We're going to head directly to our objective and secure it. First squad, you'll have point. Lets lock and load."

The door to the outside opened up a second later with a slight hiss of equalizing air pressure. They were looking out over a barren, red landscape dotted with boulders and rocks. About three hundred meters away a series of gentle hills were poking up from the ground. A steady wind was blowing from the west and clouds of dust went drifting by like red snow flurries. From the bottom of the doorway — which was three meters wide — a thin, aluminum ramp began to protrude, extending outward until its weight forced it towards the ground twenty meters below. Finally the end of it was resting on the Martian soil, imparting a forty-degree angle to the ground.

"Okay," Callahan said over the command link. "First squad, get your asses down there."

"You heard the LT," said Sergeant Mallory. "Down the ramp. Stinson, you're on point!"

Private Stinson, destined to be the first Earthling to invade Mars, put his weapon in the port arms position and stepped onto the ramp. He encountered trouble almost immediately. Unfamiliar with moving in low gravity and with his center of gravity thrown off by the weight of his oxygen tank and environmental control unit, the angle proved to be just a bit too much for him. By the second step his balance was shifting wildly back and forth. At first it seemed he was falling forward so he tried shifting his weight back. In doing so, he overcompensated, his body shifting much more than he had intended. Feeling himself falling backwards now, he shifted back forward, once again overcompensating. This time he pitched wildly, his feet coming out from beneath him. He thudded to the ramp, landing on the stock of his M-24, and began to slide downward. Halfway down he grabbed the edge of the ramp to stop himself and only succeeded in spinning his body around ninety degrees, at which point he began to roll like a log. He bumped and thudded and bounced the rest of the way down the ramp until he reached the bottom.

"Well, that was pretty," Callahan said disgustedly. "Is he okay?" he asked Mallory over the command channel.

"You okay down there, Stinson?" Mallory enquired over the tactical channel.

"I think so," Stinson said, rolling onto his stomach.

"You think so, or you are? Do I need to send the medic down after your ass?"

"I'm okay," Stinson barked back. "My suit isn't compromised."

"He's okay," Mallory reported back to Callahan.

"Good," Callahan said. "Then perhaps he'd like to get to his feet and start doing his job?"

Stinson got slowly to his feet, looking a little like a turtle trying to right himself after rolling over. Finally he was standing unsteadily on the surface of Mars, looking out to the north, his weapon held loosely in his gloved hands.

Two by two, the rest of the platoon went down the ramp. Most moved slowly, having taken Stinson's fall as an example of what could happen. Despite this caution however, five more people fell down and tumbled down the ramp and one person — Private Concord — actually rolled off the ramp and fell fifteen meters to the ground, landing hard on his oxygen tank and causing a leak. He was forced to retreat back to the ship for repairs, leaving the platoon short one man.

"This is a clusterfuck in the making," mumbled Callahan as he finally stepped onto the ramp himself. He made it down without falling, but only barely. In all, it had taken nearly fifteen minutes for the platoon to exit the ship, twelve minutes longer than the book prescribed. "Third platoon is on the surface," he reported to Ayers. "Moving in on objective."

The men formed up into a wedge formation and began to move forward towards the hills. They quickly found that walking over the uneven ground was not much easier than descending the ramp. Having lived their entire lives in 1G, they simply weren't accustomed to the way their bodies tried to spring into the air with each step, or with how easy it was to overbalance because your body shifted much more than you wanted it to. All along the formation men tripped and fell, grunting as they hit the ground. They bounced as they landed and then had trouble getting back to their feet. When other marines tried to give them a hand up they inevitably pulled too hard, tossing them into another fall. It would have been comical if it had been happening to someone else.

"Goddammit," yelled Callahan over the tactical channel after the sixth or seventh such episode, "we look like a bunch of fucking clowns out here. Everyone, take short, shuffling steps. Avoid shifting your weight from one side to the other. Remember your ET-combat training. We've all done this before!"

"That was almost ten years ago, LT," complained Stinson. "It'll take us a while to get used to this shit."

"Well get used to it fast," Callahan said. "When we start making contact with the greenies I don't want everyone tripping and falling."

They moved on, gradually becoming a little better as they followed Callahan's advice and took shorter steps. Still their movements were the awkward steps of children learning to ambulate and every minute or so someone would fall down. As they walked, the wind blew a steady stream of dust at them and soon their biosuits were powdered with a fine layer of it.

When they came to the base of the series of hills that were their objective, Callahan called a halt and took a moment to consult the mapping software. He called up the display, which superimposed itself over his view through the goggles. The map itself was constructed from old satellite views of the planet that had been in the military databases prior to the Martian takeover. A red dot represented Callahan's current position. Below this, in red letters, was the message: WARNING. POSITION IS ESTIMATED ONLY. NO GPS LOCK. And sure enough, the dot was not at the base of the hill Callahan was standing next to, but was shown nearly three hundred meters south and east.

"Computer," Callahan said, "move position locater to coordinates 47.855 by 01.455."

POSITION UPDATED flashed on his screen and the dot moved to the proper place on the map.

"Listen up, everyone," he said on the tactical channel. "Update your positions on the mapping software now that we're at a known location. Remember, we're going off of inertial navigation systems, which work by the computer estimating how far we've gone from our last known position. This is a notoriously inaccurate method. Be sure to update every time you get close to something that you can identify on the map."

"Why don't they launch some satellites from the command ship so we can get our own GPS system running?" asked Stinson.

"And how long do you think the greenies would let those satellites sit up there before they blew them up with some of their A-22s?" Callahan responded. "Ten minutes maybe?"

"I guess," Stinson grunted. "This is just a royal pain in the ass."

"So are you, Stinson," Callahan told him. "Now just update your fucking map and lets get up that hill, shall we?"

Going up the hill turned out to be the hardest thing they tried so far. The slope was only twenty to thirty degrees, less than the ramp that had taken them down from the ship, but the ground was uneven, with boulders and rocks strewn everywhere and loose, sandy dirt that did not make for good footing. Whenever a rock would move underfoot, whenever a foot would slip, the men would teeter back and forth trying to regain their balance in an unfamiliar gravitational pull. Several men went tumbling down the slope, bouncing off of boulders and creating small dust storms. Others turned ankles painfully and were forced to limp their way upward. Corporal Peterson of second squad became the first casualty of the ground war when he stepped in a small crevice between two rocks and fell backwards. His foot remained into the crevice while the rest of his body fell backwards, snapping his fibula and tibia at the ankle.

"Goddammit," exclaimed Callahan as he received this report from the squad medic. "This fucking planet is going to kill us before the greenies even get a chance to take their shot."

"Sorry, LT," Peterson said, grimacing through the pain. "I just missed my step. Its hard to walk in this gravity."

"I know, Peterson," Callahan said with a sigh. He motioned to two privates and ordered them to carry him back to the ship for treatment. They picked him up and began to clumsily lug him back the way they had come. Before they even made fifty meters they dropped him twice, causing him to scream out.

"Clusterfuck," Callahan muttered to himself as he resumed his own trek up to the top of the hill. He reached the summit five minutes later, the last of the platoon to do so, and spent a moment surveying the scene. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, was the grimy, bleak Martian landscape, dotted with boulders and rocks and blasted by the dust flying on the prevailing winds. The horizon was very close here, seemingly just over the next rise. Except for the outline of the ship behind him, there was not a single man-made object in view. It was like looking out at a red desert.

"This place is some kind of shithole, ain't it?" asked Sergeant Mallory, who was standing next to him.

"I got to agree with you there," he said. "I can't imagine why those damn greenies are willing to fight for this place."

"Me either."

They continued to scan the immediate area for a moment, both of them checking their map displays and finding that the inertial navigation system still had them more or less locked on target. Both noticed however, that they were not getting an elevation reading.