Chapter 15A

Martian wastelands — 148 kilometers west of Eden

August 27, 2146, 0330 hours Eden/New Pittsburgh time

Callahan looked at the bleak landscape around him, seeing everything in the eerie shades of green and gray produced by infrared enhancement. He saw hillsides and gullies between them. He saw swirling dust. He saw rocks and boulders and pebbles. But aside from the forty men of his platoon who were spread widely around him, he saw little else.

"Nothing," he reported to Captain Ayers, who was four kilometers away at the refuel and resupply point. "There's not a goddamn thing out here."

"Are you sure?" Ayers returned, his voice transmitted on the same tactical channel the platoon members, the sergeants, and the individual men used in order to avoid making Callahan a target of Martian snipers.

"Am I sure?" Callahan shot back. "What the hell kind of a question is that? You either see something or you don't see something and we ain't seeing shit!" He knew he was well into the land of impertinence towards a superior officer but he didn't really care. What could they do to him? Send him to Mars?

"You're standing exactly where the last mortar attack came from," Ayers told him, ignoring the insolence for the moment. "It's only been ten minutes since the last shot was fired. There have been no landing signatures from Hummingbirds and it's more than two hundred below out there, well outside the visibility parameters of the Martian biosuits. There's no way they could have gotten out of view yet!"

"No hot spots, no footprints, no expended mortar shells, no Martians," Callahan said. "Just a whole lot of emptiness."

"Where the hell did they go?" Ayers demanded, his voice transmitting the strain and fatigue everyone was under.

Callahan shared his frustration, as did his men. They had really thought they were going to get one over on the Martians this time but the Martians had once again proved themselves a little wilier than they'd been given credit for.

"Clusterfuck," Callahan muttered. "This whole war is nothing but a clusterfuck."

Things had seemed to be looking up a little after that first devastating ambush the previous morning. New orders came down from General Wrath himself, orders that almost seemed to make sense. The formation had moved out, their aim to reach and secure the fueling point as quickly as possible and set up a forward airfield. They'd hugged the northern edge of the valley, tanks thickly guarding the left flank, close enough to engage any further ambush attempts immediately. This hadn't stopped the Martians, of course — Callahan had come to accept that nothing was going to completely stop them — but it had brought the attrition down to an almost acceptable level. The Mosquitoes still came in with depressing regularity, picking off APCs three and four at a time, and there was still nothing in the marine arsenal to counter this, but there was no more mass slaughter of APCs from Martian special forces teams hidden in the hills. They still attacked but generally they would not fire more than one volley of shots off before the tanks would drive them away. And since the long-standing order of engaging any team with ground forces once they dared to attack an armored column had been rescinded, they had lost no more men to sniper fire or mortar attack. The lead elements had pulled into the grid assigned as the refuel point just after 1600 yesterday. The establishment of the perimeter and the setting up of the supply units had gone even faster than expected. And then the trouble had started.

The moment that refueling and resupply operations began, mortars began to fly in, bursting directly over the top of APCs and tanks being pumped full of fuel and liquid oxygen, directly over the top of other armored vehicles being loaded with fresh ammunition and air canisters. Exposed troops were shredded. Supply hoses were destroyed. A few spectacular explosions occurred when the Martian shells detonated in exactly the right spot and caught an exposed fuel tank in just the right way. Artillery units tried to counter the mortar fire with little success. Intelligence still hadn't hacked into the Martian Internet and cracked the GPS satellite data. Troops sent out to engage the mortar teams were ambushed by squad-sized special forces units, just like on the landing zone perimeter. When command elected to stop sending the troops out after the mortar squads the special forces units began sniping at the APCs again with anti-tank lasers, exploding them in place. When command tried to counter this by ordering the troops inside of those APCs to dismount the Martians continued to explode the vacated vehicles but also started raining down some of the mortars on the exposed troops and cutting them down with sniper fire. The worst disaster, however, occurred when an attempt was made to move up some of the hovers from the landing ships to the newly established forward airfield at the re-fuel point. Twenty-four hovers left the LZ. None of them made it to their destination. They were pounced upon by a flight of eight Mosquitoes sixty kilometers out and methodically shot out of the sky. Hindsight would suggest that the Martians still had a special forces team or two watching the LZ from the surrounding hills and had vectored in the ambush.

Finally, after almost three hours of having men picked off by sniper bullets, blown up by mortars, of having APCs randomly explode in groups of four all over the formation, the sun had gone down, bringing blessed night to the landscape. It was thought that the Martians were unable to operate at night since their biosuits were no longer invisible and since the stealth aspects of their aircraft would be cut in half. Men were ordered back into their APCs to get some sleep. Refueling and resupply operations were ordered resumed at full speed. It was hoped that the bulk of the combat and artillery units would be ready to roll on Eden by sunrise. In addition another flight of sixteen hovers was ordered to move up from the LZ, their task to start bombing the Martian fixed heavy artillery sites outside of the MPG base.

The first indication that the Martians could, in fact, operate at night if they chose to came when all sixteen of the hovers were ambushed and shot down by Mosquitoes in almost exactly the same spot as the first twenty-four had been. This left the Eden operational area with only twenty combat hovers still capable of flight and those were all assigned to escort the many medivac shuttles that were transporting the many wounded back up to the hospital ship.

"It's official now," Callahan told Ayers when the news of the second flight of downed hovers had reached him. "The Martians have complete and total air superiority over this battlefield. We have nothing left to counter it."

"Air superiority doesn't win wars," Ayers responded. "Taking the enemy's positions does and we're still quite superior in armor and sheer manpower."

"For the moment," Callahan said. "They keep knocking us off like this that just might be in question too."

"Never happen," Ayers assured him. "Now that it's dark the Martians have all gone back inside their base. We'll get our units resupplied, get the ground troops a little rest, and we'll be at the Jutfield Gap by noon. When we meet those Martians head on we'll start kicking some serious ass."

They would not be at the Jutfield Gap by noon. Nor would the ground troops be getting much sleep. No sooner had the words come out of Ayers' mouth than the first of the thought-to-be-impossible nighttime mortar barrages had come rolling in, blasting two refuel teams into oblivion, destroying three hydrogen and oxygen hose systems, and exploding one APC. A few minutes later another barrage came in, this time from a different direction. A few minutes after that, yet another from yet another direction. It was determined that there were at least four squads out there, each with three weapons. Counter battery fire from the marine artillery units was as useless as it always was. No one could even begin to delude themselves that the Martians were firing blind, just hoping that their shells would land in the right place because their shells were landing in just the right place each and every time. Without fail they would come down atop a fueling or re-loading operation, or a group of exposed troops. Someone was within line of sight and was directing the fire. But who? And how? If they were in line of sight then they should be able to be seen in the infrared spectrum. But there was nothing, not even a hint of heat showing out there.

The Mosquitoes came soon after, popping out of the hillsides and blasting APCs, the fact that it was night not making an iota of difference in their targeting, aiming, or navigation skills. As soon as the Mosquitoes disappeared, more mortar fire would come in. As soon as the mortar fire died out, another group of Mosquitoes would come in. The fueling operation slowed to a crawl once again and marines continued to die with depressing regularity. Tanks plastered the surrounding hillsides with eighty millimeter cannon fire, hoping to blunder upon the person or persons directing the fire. This accomplished nothing but a waste of precious ammunition. There were simply too many hillsides, too much potential ground to cover.

Callahan spent most of the night huddled beneath the wreckage of an APC that had been struck hours before, watching the shells come arcing in, the explosions as they detonated, the laser flashes from the ghostly Mosquitoes, the impotent return fire of the marine tanks and anti-air units, and wishing he'd decided to join the army instead of the fucking marines.

And then, at 0300, just as he had finally started to drift into a fitful state that could technically be called sleep, someone had the idea of sending a few platoons out into the hills to seek out and destroy the mortar teams. In all, two companies worth of platoons were picked for this task and marched over to the hillsides on foot (more than one of them coming under fire from the mortars they were going to silence) and positioned themselves to make a quick rush inward. Another barrage came flying out and Callahan and his platoon had just happened to be closest. They'd moved in as fast as possible (which wasn't terribly fast at all, most of them were still quite clumsy in the Martian gravity) and found nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Apparently none of the other platoons that had rushed in to silence the other mortar teams had found anything either.

"There is one thing," said Ayers now, "there hasn't been any more mortar fire since we sent the platoons in after them."

This should have comforted Callahan, made him feel he had accomplished something. It didn't. It implied that they were under surveillance, that Martian eyes were gazing at them right now, this very second. That gave him the creeps. "So what are you saying?" Callahan asked. "Do they want us to stay out here?"

"That's affirmative," Ayers replied. "If you're keeping the mortar fire down by being out there then we want that to continue. That'll only leave us the Mosquitoes to worry about."

"We're totally cut off from assistance out here, cap," Callahan said.

"Obviously whoever is out there, however they're managing to keep out of sight, they don't want to try to take on a platoon. Just hang tough. Take up defensive positions. Hell, you're probably safer out there than you are back here."

"I suppose," Callahan said.

At that moment Corporal Grigsby, who had taken over for a dead sergeant in command of third squad, suddenly keeled over, his helmet smashed open, blood vapor boiling out of it — the tell-tale signature of a Martian sniper at work. Everyone hit the ground, their weapons pointing outward, their chatter suddenly filling the airwaves with fearful expletives.

"What the hell is going on?" Ayers demanded.

"Sniper," Callahan replied. "He took out Grigsby on third squad."

"Did you get him?" Ayers asked. "He has to be visible in infrared if he was close enough to shoot someone!"

"Did anyone see a shot?" Callahan asked the platoon at large.

No one had. A few minutes later the word was passed that two of the other platoons looking for two of the other mortar teams had also come under sniper fire and, furthermore, that the snipers in question had both taken out squad leaders.

"Get out of there," Ayers ordered in disgust. "As fast as you can. And don't talk on the frequency unless you absolutely have to."

They got out of there. They didn't talk. No one else shot at them but within ten minutes of leaving the hillsides the mortars began to fly again.

At 0723 a Hummingbird banked in and came to a landing four kilometers from the position Callahan and his platoon had been chased from four hours before. The ramp came down and Lon and his squad descended into the dust cloud formed by the landing. They were moving much slower than normal as each was heavily laden with almost fifty kilograms of weight they didn't normally bring into the field with them. Still they made it clear of the aircraft and into a defensive position in less than forty seconds. The ramp of the aircraft closed and it ascended back into the sky.

"Okay, let's move it," Lon said. "You never know when those Earthlings are going to start hitting the broad side of a greenhouse with their arty."

They got to their feet and lumbered quickly across the flat area, heading for a hill half a kilometer to the south. Sure enough, before they were even halfway there the white streaks of incoming artillery rounds came flying over the hills, trying to intersect with the flare of heat they'd detected with their passive systems. As was usually the case, they weren't even close. The rounds impacted so far away they didn't even see the flashes.

They made it safely to the hill and, after a brief check of the terrain, began to move closer to the marine positions. The sniper/observation teams already in position out here had let them know that no dismounted marines were currently in the neighborhood but you could never be too careful. There was always the miniscule chance that a marine patrol had somehow managed to slip by in the middle of the night without being seen. They walked in a spread out formation, lumbering under the extra weight but cautious, their eyes searching pre-assigned zones for anything that shouldn't be there.

"Charlie-five is just around the next hill," Jefferson reported about two kilometers in. "Close enough for direct-com. Do you want me to try a hail?"

"Yeah, give it a shot," Lon said. He knew that mortar team C-5, who was assigned to this sector, was receiving telemetry showing the location of Lon and his team, but making radio contact was still a good idea. After all, the team had been up all night, shooting and hiding from the marines and they were probably a bit jumpy.

"I got 'em," Jefferson reported a minute later. "They're standing by on the south side of the hill, ready for the meet."

"Static," Lon said. "Let's get over there and get rid of all this shit."

It took them another five minutes to walk around the base of the hill. Though the faith the team held in the invisibility of their biosuits have never been in question since the day the marine hover had passed right over the top of them without seeing them, it still did their hearts good when they stared at the spot where the mortar team was purported to be and saw nothing but rocks and hillside. It was only when the sergeant in charge of the team stood and waved at them, deliberately showing himself, that the illusion of nothingness was spoiled, and then only for that one man.

"That's eerie," Lisa said. "We're only two hundred meters away, he's standing up and he still seems to blend into the background. If I didn't know he was there I wouldn't have noticed him at all."

"Laura Whiting has blessed us with bad-ass military engineers," Lon agreed. "Come on, let's get over there."

As they came closer and closer the other five members of the mortar team became gradually visible one by one, at first just as vague outlines in the visual spectrum and then gradually firming up into human-like shapes. They stepped out from their hiding hole when Lon's team got within twenty meters.

"Lon Fargo, you old dick smoker," said the sergeant in charge of them. "Ain't the fuckin' Earthlings rid the planet of your greasy ass yet?"

"Not yet," Lon replied, stepping closer. "But they've sure as shit been trying. One of them tank shells passed about a meter over my head yesterday. How you doing, Mike?"

Handshakes were difficult to accomplish in a biosuit. The two of them greeted in the manner that had evolved to replace this ancient ritual when out in the field — they banged their right fists together three times.

"I'm tired as a motherfucker," Mike said. "Hungry too. I hear you brought us some breakfast."

"Yep," Lon agreed. "Ten fresh food gel packs, five of them beef paste, five chicken paste. You all can fight over who gets what."

"We've long since gotten over that," Mike said. "They all taste like shit anyway."

"I hear our paste tastes like filet mignon compared to the WestHem paste," one of Mike's men interjected. "They don't even try to flavor theirs. It's just raw nutrients."

"That has to be pretty damn disgusting," Lisa said. "I'm surprised they eat at all."

Mike's men all took a minute to look at Lisa with varying degrees of curiosity. All had heard about the female special forces member, of course, and a few had even met her before, but this was the first time they'd ever seen her out in the field, packing a weapon and lugging a huge equipment bag.

Lisa noticed their perusal. "Yeah, I got tits and a pussy all right," she said sweetly. "Don't I guys?"

"Yep," Jefferson said. "I've seen 'em."

"She is definitely not a boy," Horishito agreed.

Lon simply smiled, amused at the discomfort Lisa was causing the mortar team. "Anyway," he said. "We brought the marines some breakfast too. Sixty eighty millimeter mortar shells, fresh off the Alexander Industries assembly line. Will that hold you until you're relieved?"

"Hope so," Horishito said. "It's all we could fuckin' carry."

"Six apiece?" one of Mike's men said. "Is that all? Hell, we carry ten apiece when we deploy."

"Do you now?" Lisa asked. "And do you carry a twelve kilo anti-tank laser and thirty kilos worth of charging batteries and twelve kilos worth of extra ammunition as well? We sure as shit did."

The man grinned through his helmet. "You seem to fit in with Fargo and his team pretty good, Wong," he said. "No, we don't carry all that, although we do have to carry the actual mortars around. Those weigh a kilo or two."

"Point taken," Lisa said.

"Yes," said Lon, "and if we're done measuring dicks here, how about you guys relieve us of this shit before I get a fuckin' hernia? Where do you want it?"

"Right this way," Mike said. "Let me show you to our supply closet."

He led them along the side of the hill and between a couple of large boulders. There, in the dark recesses behind the larger of the boulders, he lifted a piece of firm plastic imbedded with fake Martian rocks and covered with dust that had blown in. Beneath it was a hole about a meter deep, two meters long, and a meter and a half wide. Twenty or so eighty millimeter shells and a few boxes of ammunition were neatly stacked inside.

"Nice," said Lon as he hefted his pack from his shoulders and set it down on the ground. "You guys dug this yesterday?"

"Took about an hour," Mike confirmed. "Our own hidey holes are about six meters that way." He pointed further along the hill, towards another scattering of boulders. "Those took longer to dig but we were ready for action by the time the sun went down."

"The cover insulation worked as advertised?" Lisa asked, referring to the insulating material that had been developed to keep the heat released from a biosuit from seeping out into the nighttime atmosphere and therefore giving away an underground position.

"Like a charm," he replied. "Ambient temp went up about two degrees every ten minutes when we were sealed inside, that's how well it was keeping the heat from escaping. Around 0330 the Earthlings sent a platoon strength unit in here after us. Some of them were less than ninety meters away and didn't see us."

"That had to have been a bit tense," Lon said.

"When they first showed up it was," Mike said. "I mean, there's six of us and forty of them and we don't even have a SAW out here, just our M-24s. But after a minute or so of looking at them through the periscopes we could see they weren't gonna find us even if they walked right over the top of us. The real tension started when they didn't leave right away, they just kinda stood out there, looking around. If they would've stayed more than an hour enough heat would've built up in our holes to start leaching through the insulation."

"How'd you get rid of them?" Lon asked.

"You know Meyers?" Mike asked.

"Ziff Meyers?"

"That's him," Mike confirmed. "He's our overwatch sniper and our recon guy. He and his observer got their own hidey hole about two clicks south, on top of one of the hills out there. They were the ones feeding us our targeting information last night. They were also the ones who warned us the Earthling dismounts were making a run into the hills. Anyway, they were scanning the transmissions, found the guy who was talking the most, and Ziff put a round right through his fuckin' skull."

"From two klicks?" Horishito said, visibly impressed.

"From two fuckin' klicks," Mike confirmed. "And there was a forty kph wind blowin' too. That is some serious-ass marksmanship there. It was beautiful. I saw the flash from his weapon but only because I knew where to look for it. None of the Earthlings saw shit."