Chapter 13b

The marines were right. The special forces teams were not suicidal and had no intention whatsoever of actually going head to head with an entire company supported by tanks and hovers at once. In fact, Lon and his squad were the only actual combat squad currently deployed on the western side of the Eden LZ and they were almost five kilometers away. They had their normal weapons and their normal assortment of anti-tank and anti-aircraft lasers, but their orders were not to engage unless they were located and under attack themselves. Their job on this particular phase of the operation was to observe and report the position of the marines. All of the other teams that had been dropped on the western perimeter were mortar squads and sniper teams. Utilizing the position fixes fed to them by Lon and his team, who were perched atop a series of high hills and watching the marines through combat goggle magnification, the mortar squads pulled back to their optimum range and began to set up while the sniper teams — each of which consisted of a gunner and a spotter — began to move in. But before these elements could begin to do their work, someone had to do something about the hovers. Fortunately, someone was on the way to do just that.

Sixty kilometers to the west, screaming in at six hundred kilometers per hour, a flight of four Mosquitoes turned and banked through the hills, keeping less than thirty meters above the ground. In the lead Mosquito, piloted by Brian Haverty, Matt Mendez started intently at the screen in front of him, watching as the red dots that signified the marine hovers circled slowly around and around.

"Twelve targets," he told Brian through the intercom system. "Three flights of four but all close enough for mutual support. They're in overlapping patterns, altitude four, zero, zero AGL. I'm plotting a position to best engagement zone right now."

"Right," said Brian, who was focused on keeping the aircraft from smashing into the ground or one of the hillsides. The information Mendez was reciting was coming from a special forces team somewhere out in the wastelands, a team that had the deployment under direct observation and was beaming their observations up to a com sat where it was then being encrypted and broadcast to the flight via a transmitter in Eden. "What do we got on ground forces?"

"Company strength tank forces, company strength armored cav, including four SAL five-sevens spread throughout the armor."

"Great," said Brian. "And those SALs won't be shooting training charges either. We need to keep exposure time at an absolute minimum."

"Fuckin' aye," said Matt. "It's also reported that the armored cav is dismounted now. Two hundred troops on the ground."

"And if they're following doctrine," Brian said, "there will be one hand-held SAL per squad. In case you're a little slow on the math, newbie, that means there are at least twenty portable surface-to-air lasers that will be gunning for us."

"They can't hit us with them things, can they?" Matt asked. "They don't lock on target like the mobile SALs do."

"They may not lock but with twenty of them out there gunning for us the chance of a lucky shot slamming into us increases considerably. Don't underestimate the hand-helds. I've been taken down in training missions more than once by them."

"Thanks, boss," Matt said. "I thought I knew about every fucking thing there was that could kill me out here. It's sure nice of you to add to the fuckin' list."

"Just keep our exposure time to a minimum," Brian repeated. "This is an improv mission at its finest. You're in control of where this whole flight pops out and where it goes back into the hills. Don't fuck it up or you'll get some people killed."

"Right," Matt said. "A trial by fire. I got it."

"You'll do fine," Brian told him. "We've practiced this dozens of times. It's a textbook improv air-to-air strike. Classic phase two warfare. "

Matt nodded and looked down at his screen. The holographic map display showed the hills and valleys in three dimensions, with altitude numbers atop each peak. It really was like a training mission except for the fact that the hovers out there were not MPG owned and the SALs were not firing training charges. He put this out of his mind and his nervousness faded away. His finger began to trace a course across the map, taking them in from the east, skirting around the base of three hills, and then popping up over the last set of hills where the hovers were flying. A blue line trailed behind his finger, marking the projected course. When it entered the firing zone, it turned red. He skirted it along the ridge and then curved it back to the west. Once behind the next hill, the tracing turned blue again.

"I got it," he told Brian. "We'll swing in from the east and pop up to five, zero, zero AGL, egress to the west. Total exposure time, four point three seconds."

"Sounds good," Brian said, violently cutting them to the right around a hill and then leveling them again. "Put it on screen."

"Don't you wanna check it first?"

"Can't take my eyes off the terrain," Brian told him. "I'll have to trust you on this one."

Matt took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "On screen. Shipping it to the other planes." He pushed a button on his screen and locked in the plot. He pushed another button and the plot was beamed to the other three aircraft via a short-range radio burst. The navigation carrot on their heads-up display swung to the right and they began to follow it, homing in on their targets. Matt called out the course corrections as they came up, counting each one down. Soon his ESM display began to make some noise.

"I'm picking up three distinct active IR and radar sweeps from the target area," he announced. "Frequencies indicate SAL-five-seven phased sets on standard search setting. Probability of detection, zero."

"Got it," said Brian.

"Come right to two, seven, three in five, four, three, two, one."

The aircraft banked right, spinning around another set of hills, and leveled out again. They climbed a few feet to clear a smaller hill and then dove back down again. Behind them, one by one, the other three Mosquitoes matched their moves exactly.

"Coming up on the IP," Matt said after the next bank. "Charging the laser, activating air-to-air search mode."

"Copy," said Brian.

"Active IR and radar getting stronger, still no chance of detection."

"That's what I like to hear. No active airborne?"

"Nothing," Matt confirmed. "I guess the hovers don't wanna overload their ESM sets."

"Their mistake," Brian said.

They flew on, skirting through a narrow gully. The laser set beeped, indicating it was charged and ready. They reached the Initial Point, or IP, made their last turn, and then screamed on towards the last hill between them and the marines.

"Let's do this thing," Brian said, putting on some power and pulling up on the stick. The Mosquito began to rise into the air.

Lon, Lisa, and Jefferson were deployed atop Hill 655, five kilometers northwest of the circling hovers and the company of dismounted infantry beneath them. The hovers were clearly visible to them, circling in simple, overlapping, mutually supporting patterns. Some of the infantry and armor were visible as well, but most were obscured by the hills between Hill 655 and the target area. That didn't really matter though. The dust cloud produced by the armor pointed out their position as clearly as a holographic arrow on a simulation screen. And if Lon, Lisa, and Jefferson lost sight of the targets for any reason, Horishito and two other squad members were deployed 450 meters further west on hill 648 and Brannigan and the remaining squad members were deployed 380 meters further east on hill 703.

Lon knew the flight of Mosquitoes was on their firing run. After all, it was he who had given them their target coordinates. He had his eyes peeled and his infrared enhancement mode set to high but even he didn't see them at first, they moved so quickly. The first clue he had they were in the neighborhood was three flashes from the circling hovers as they were struck by anti-tank lasers. One of the hovers, apparently targeted by two of the aircraft at once, simply exploded in mid-air. The other two went spinning wildly out of control.

"Yes!" Lon said, pumping his fist in triumph. "Three down with one run. Not too fucking bad."

Lisa caught the barest glimpse of the Mosquitoes as they dove back downward. Just before disappearing behind a hill there was a flash from the belly of one. One of the other hovers flashed with the telltale signature of a direct hit. It dropped out of the sky like a rock, the pilot and gunner firing free on their ejection seats. "Four," she corrected. "They took another one on the egress."

"Annoying little mosquitoes huh?" Lon said, referring to that long ago WestHem general who had given the aircraft its affectionate name. "I wonder what that asshole thinks about them now?"

"Nothing," Lisa said. "He's one of the military consultants for InfoServe now. They'll never even tell him the Mosquitoes had anything to do with their losses."

"True," agreed Lon.

"Hey, sarge," said Horishito from the next hill. "Fifty bucks says they take at least five on their next run."

Lon thought that over for a second. "You're on," he said. "Those guys are good, but they ain't that good."

"I'll take a little bit of that action," Lisa said. "Fifty on five."

"Covered," Lon told her.

The next run began twenty seconds later. This time they saw the four Mosquitoes pop up over a hill to the north of the hovers. They climbed to altitude and their lasers began to flash. Hovers began to explode and fall out of the sky. Five were hit but only four went down. The fifth began limping its way back toward the landing zone, trailing smoke and wobbling but still airworthy. The Mosquitoes disappeared within seconds.

"You owe me fifty bucks!" Horishito yelled.

"Yep," Lisa agreed. "Me too."

"No fuckin' way," Lon said. "They took four down. The other is still flying."

"We said they'd take five," Lisa said. "The fifth one is out of commission. That means it got took."

"But its still flying," Lon protested. "Take means destroyed."

"The fuck it does!" Horishito said. "You can't go changing the..."

"All right, guys," said Lon. "Let's discuss this later. Too much chatter on the net."

"Oh, now its too much chatter on the net," Horishito said.

The fifth hover reached the outer perimeter of hills, wobbled a little bit more, and then suddenly exploded with a bright flash of light. There was no ejection. By the time the flash faded, even the debris was gone.

"Fifty fuckin' bucks," Lisa said.

"Fuck yeah," agreed Horishito.

"All right," Lon said. "I know when I'm beat."

This left only three hovers still flying over the formation. Though they were inanimate objects it was clear by watching them that the men crewing them were now extremely nervous. They circled faster, putting distance between each vehicle. Jefferson reported that active radar and infrared had come on line from each of them.

"Those guys are shittin' in their pants about now," said Jefferson.

"Let's go double or nothing," Lisa suggested. "I say they take all three on the next run."

"I'm in on that," Horishito said. "All the way to the ground even."

"No thanks," Lon said. "I've learned my lesson about betting the no-pass line."

It was fortunate he didn't take the bet. The Mosquitoes appeared again, this time from the west, and the remaining three hovers fell in less than two seconds.

"Put it out, Jeffy," Lon ordered. "All aircraft down. Friendly aircraft are egressing. Sniper and mortar teams are free to engage."

"Transmitting," Jefferson said.

Atop Hill 474, 1600 meters to the west of the WestHem marine's westernmost troops, Corporal Brogan Goodbud lay nestled between two large boulders, looking through specially engineered combat goggles at the head of one of the WestHem marines. The magnification was so great he could make out the serial number atop the marine's visor, could tell what color eyes his target had. Goodbud held in his highly trained hands an M-64 sniper rifle, a weapon engineered and built by a Martian company specifically for the use he was putting it to. It fired a two-millimeter projectile at hypersonic speed, more than twelve times the speed of sound on the Martian surface, almost twice the velocity of the standard M-24 rifle most of the troops carried. At this velocity, and with modified combat computer support, Goodbud could hit an object the size of an apple from almost two kilometers ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Right now, his target was considerably larger than an apple and considerably closer than two kilometers. The travel time of the bullet to the target would be a mere two tenths of a second. He was as good as dead.

The target was either a sergeant or a lieutenant. He knew this for sure. For the past thirty minutes Rimmer, his observer, had been scanning the radio signals of the troops down on the ground classifying the radio signals that emitted constantly from their biosuit packs. Leaders were easy to identify even though they didn't put rank marking on their biosuits, even though the troops they commanded went to great pains to avoid saluting them or otherwise drawing attention to them with careless actions. Platoon and squad leaders were the only ones who broadcast radio signals on more than one frequency. Lieutenants talked to sergeants and to their commanders back on the landing ship. Sergeants talked to lieutenants and to their squads. The grunts of the operation only talked among themselves. Rimmer had identified more than twenty leaders down there and his combat computer had marked them by changing the color of their helmet to green in Goodbud's goggles. Of course this target locking only worked as long as the targets in question remained in view. When the air-to-air attack had come and the hover debris had started raining down all over the formations and the marines had started diving for cover and running around to attend to the wounded, more than half of his locked targets had disappeared. That was okay though. Once the fun really started, it would be easy for Rimmer to reacquire and re-mark them.

"Message from C Team," Rimmer's voice spoke in Goodbud's ear. "'All aircraft down. Friendly aircraft are egressing. Sniper and mortar teams are free to engage.'"

"Well suck my hairy ass," Goodbud said, making a minute adjustment of his rifle recentering his recticle on the target's face. "It's go time." He pushed the firing button. The weapon discharged with a slight kick, the flash channeled through a flash suppressor and cooled by a simultaneous release of liquid nitrogen as it emerged from the barrel. While it was impossible to completely suppress a gunshot flash, especially in the infrared spectrum, the M-64's suppressor technology did have the effect of making the signature less than one twentieth that of a standard M-24. The bullet hit exactly where it was aimed and the target dropped forward, blood boiling from a hole in the back of his head. Goodbud didn't pause to savor his success. He simply zoomed out until he saw another of the green helmets amid the rapidly expanding chaos. He picked one that was kneeling next to a marine wounded by aircraft debris, zoomed in, placed his recticle on the target's face, and then fired. Another one down. He would make one more shot and then they would pack up and move to the next hill to start all over again.

When Callahan was told later that the initial engagement had taken less than five minutes from start to finish, he thought he was being lied to. For him it seemed to take hours, days even, as he watched a cataclysm of horror and confusion he'd never even conceived of take place all around him.

It started with the hovers. They had been circling three or four hundred meters above, their presence comforting to the dismounted marines crawling up and down the hills (and finding absolutely nothing) and probing through the small gullies. The marine hover had always been considered the pillar of strength for extra-terrestrial operations, the factor that was supposed to insure victory and domination over any enemy fought far from the comfort of Earth. It was the factor that was supposed to guarantee air superiority over a battlefield, that could smash enemy forces long before the marines on the ground were close enough to even worry about them. The marines faith in these mighty flying tanks had begun to erode a bit over the past week as greenie troops proved themselves able to avoid detection by them and to take them down with their cursed anti-air lasers, but when the attack began on this morning, that faith was instantly and utterly destroyed for all time.

At first, Callahan didn't even know what was happening. He and his platoon had been approaching one of the hills, readying themselves to begin the clumsy climb to its peak. And then suddenly the hover directly over the top of them exploded without warning. Chunks of metal, circuit boards, control surfaces, and engine components came raining down atop them. One of his men was killed when an engine thruster crushed his head. Two others were wounded by smaller debris. The survivors of this hit the ground, their weapons trained outward out of instinct. Callahan wondered if the explosion had been a simple malfunction but then he looked behind and saw two other hovers spinning downward towards the ground, flipping end over end as half of their thrusters were put out and the others stayed lit. They hit the ground and exploded, one falling behind a hillside and out of sight, the other landing directly in the midst of third platoon, causing multiple casualties.

His radio channels began to squawk out overlapping exclamations, his men yelling on one channel, the other platoon leaders yelling on the other.

"What the fuck happened?"

"Where did it come from?"

"It was aircraft!" screamed someone else.

"No, there are greenies on the hillside, six o'clock!" shouted someone else.

Weapons began to fire at this last proclamation, popping from all around. Three marines standing atop one of the closer hills were peppered by it, falling in heaps.

"Cease fire!" someone else screamed. "Those are friendlies up there! They're fuckin' friendlies!"

"Shit!" said another voice.

The rifles stopped firing, gradually though, not all at once.

"It was aircraft!" one of the other lieutenants insisted. "Three or four of them! They passed right over the top of us!"

"Bullshit!" another lieutenant countered. "We would've fuckin' seen them."

"I did see them!" the first lieutenant countered. "They came out of the hills and then disappeared again in just a few seconds. They were moving fast."

"Nothing moves that fast out here, you idiot!" another voice proclaimed.

"Report!" said Captain Ayers' voice, overriding everything else. "Someone out there give me a goddamn report! Callahan, you there?"

"I'm here, cap," Callahan said, his eyes searching nervously through the skies and on the hillsides. "I don't know what the hell just happened but three of the hovers just went down."

"Four," the first lieutenant corrected. "They got another one just before they disappeared."

"Who got another one?" Ayers demanded.

"Aircraft," said the lieutenant. "They came out of the hillside, shot up the hovers, and then disappeared back in the hills."

"Did you see that, Callahan?" Ayers asked him.

"I didn't see shit, cap," he said. "We've got wounded down here though. Start bringing in the... oh shit! Get down!" In his excitement of seeing four greenie aircraft come shooting out of the gap between two hills, he forgot to change his transmission mode back to the tactical channel. As a result, it was only the other lieutenants who got down. The aircraft rushed over the top of him at a speed that seemed impossible in this environment, so fast that his eyes could barely register them. But his eyes did. They were ugly, flimsy looking boomerang-shaped aircraft flying in a line, their engines burning brightly in the infrared spectrum. They were close enough he could hear the muted roar of those engines through the thin air. Four more of the hovers suddenly fell from the sky and another went limping off towards the LZ, trailing smoke behind it. Of the four that went down, two of them landed amid the troops, smashing some, killing others with shrapnel when they exploded, wounding tens of others.

"What's going on Callahan?" Ayers demanded. "Report, goddammit!"

"It is aircraft!" Callahan yelled. "Mosquitoes. Four of them in formation. Holy fuck do those things fly fast. How the hell can they hit anything moving that fast?"

"Did they hit the hovers?" Ayers asked.

"Yes!" he screamed. "Four more down and another damaged. It's heading for..." he trailed off as the fifth one suddenly exploded, raining more debris down on a thankfully empty hillside. "Never mind," he finished. "Five down. They took five down."

"Five down total?" Ayers asked.

"Five down with this run," Callahan corrected. "They got four with the first. There are only three of them left."

There was silence on the command channel for a few seconds (although not on the tactical channel, that one was filled with more screams, more calls for medics). "Are you saying," Ayers finally asked, "that those four greenie aircraft have taken down nine hovers in less than a minute?"

"That's affirmative," Callahan said, unable to believe it himself. "Nine down, three left."

Ayers didn't quite know what to make of this. Neither did Callahan. While they were still mulling this over the Mosquitoes came back, suddenly appearing from yet another gap in the hills. The other three hovers fell to them, two of them landing amidst the troops, killing another eight and wounding another dozen or so. They were now completely without air cover.

"We need more hovers out here, cap!" Callahan said. "At least two dozen if you can spare them! And we need dust-off hovers too. We got lots of casualties on the ground."

"I'll get them out there," Ayers promised. "How many flight crew ejections?"

"Most of them got out, I think," Callahan said, not giving a shit about the flight crews.

"Recover those flight crews as quick as you can and get them inside the APCs. Those fucking idiots are helpless out there alone."

"We'll do what we can," Callahan said. "But right now we've got to worry about..."

He stopped suddenly as the confusing though horribly familiar babble indicative of a sniper in their midst began to come across the airwaves.

"Shit!"

"Get down!"

"Where the fuck did that come from?"

"Sniper!" someone else yelled. "Two people down... shit! Three people down!"

"Over there! Eight o'clock on the hillside!"

Guns began to fire again, peppering a hillside. There was a long burst of a SAW opening up as well.

"Cease fire!" a panicked voice yelled. "Stop shooting at us! We're friend..." the voice was cut suddenly and lethally off.

"Jesus," Callahan said, shaking his head.

Sergeant Bender, moving quick and low suddenly came down next to him. "LT," he said. "I think I saw a flash from..." He didn't finish. His head snapped to the right and his blood came boiling out into the atmosphere. He slumped over and lay still.

"Shit!" Callahan said, rolling quickly to the right and placing a boulder between himself and the direction the shot had come from. It was none too soon. Another shot plunked into the dirt where he'd just been.

"Over there!" a voice yelled. "On the hillside! Seven o'clock!"

Guns began to open up once more and once more a panicked voice began to scream out for a cease-fire, that they were shooting friendlies.

"Clusterfuck," Callahan muttered, still coming to grips with the thought that he'd just about been killed. "A fucking clusterfuck. What the hell else could go wrong?"

That was perhaps not the best question to ask because it was quickly answered.

"Incoming!" multiple voices on both channels began to yell in unison. "Get down!"