Chapter 16A

MPG Base, Eden
August 27, 2146
2245 Hours

General Matthew Zoloft — a third generation Martian — was the overall commander of the Eden forces. He was a WestHem Military Academy classmate of General Jackson's who had been a member of the MPG since its inception. In the WestHem marines he had risen to the rank of lieutenant in charge of a tank platoon and was a veteran of the bloody loss that was the Jupiter War. A personal friend of General Jackson's, he had started out his MPG career as commander of the 9^th ACR and had worked his way to Eden commander in only five years. He had been in on the ultimate, secret goal of the MPG — the capture of Mars from WestHem — from the beginning and had helped General Jackson develop the strategy and techniques for obtaining that goal. He was pleased to see that, so far, everything had pretty much gone as they'd always hoped it would. But everything up until now had only been the preliminary stages of the conflict. Soon — in mere minutes — the first head to head combat would take place in his sector of responsibility. Would their unconventional doctrine of focusing energy on killing the ground troops instead of the tanks prove a mistake? Or would it work as they'd always envisioned?

"Lead elements of the enemy formation are now fifteen kilometers out from the Jutfield positions," he told the image of General Jackson on his computer screen. "They're moving in hot. Estimate first contact in less than five minutes."

"Understood," Jackson replied. "I trust your forces are privy to the same telemetry you're receiving?"

"Fuckin' aye," he said with a nod. "I commandeered one of the peepers after the arty withdrew. It is now giving us real-time shots of the enemy advance and the computer is translating them into battlefield telemetry and broadcasting it out to the field units. It updates on every combat soldier's combat computer every six seconds."

"Good enough," Jackson said. "I'll be watching it as well. Remember, hold that gap as long as you can but don't hesitate to pull the ACRs back when its time. No unnecessary sacrifice out there."

"You have my word, Kevin," he told him. "I was on Callisto, remember? Our doctrine on that is sacred to me."

Jackson simply nodded — he, after all, had not been on Callisto — and signed off.

Zoloft looked up at the main display in the front of the war room. It was showing the overall picture of the battlefield. The marines had spread their tanks out in a broad line stretching from one end of the gap to the other. Their APCs were right behind it. Their intent was obvious. They planned a rapid, overwhelming attack on all aspects of the line at once.

"Things are gonna get real busy out there in a few minutes," he told the command staff around him. "Doug, it looks like your guys are gonna make the first contact and the heaviest contact."

"Yeah," said Colonel Martin, commander of the 17^th ACR. "I've given the order for the anti-tank units to engage as soon as the tanks breach the horizon. They'll pound on them until the tanks and the APCs can get in on it. Once the marine APCs come into view, the AT teams will switch targeting priority to them."

"Good," Zoloft said. That, after all, was doctrine. "Hopefully we'll throw them back before the APCs even enter the picture. But remember, if our armor can't keep the tanks contained the AT teams will have to help out. The idea is to force them to dismount their troops and move on our infantry positions so we can chew them up a little. We can't do that if their tanks overwhelm ours and force an early withdrawal from the gap."

"My captains all have standing orders to switch targeting responsibility if needed," Martin told him.

Zoloft turned to Colonel Steve Bridget, who was in charge of the 220 mobile artillery guns assigned to Eden. "Remember, Steve," he said. "Hold all fire until the marines start to dismount and then hit them with everything you got. Thanks to the peepers and the heavy guns, you can fire with complete impunity. No need to shoot and scoot. Just shoot."

"My crews are standing by, rounds in the breeches," Bridget said. "We'll liquefy those fucks as soon as they start to show their faces."

"All right then," Zoloft said, satisfied. "It's up to those folks in the gap now."

Zen Valentine peered at his gunnery screen nervously, watching the empty landscape before him. The tendrils of heat rising up from beyond the horizon had grown thicker, with twists of white in them now. The cloud of dust welling up from the tracks of the approaching tanks caused a faint aqua glow off to the west. There was a slight rumble that could be felt as the vibration caused by the enemy armor traveled along the ground. It was almost time. According to the telemetry being monitored by Sanchez next to him, the first tanks were less than eight kilometers out now. Their own twin laser cannon were six meters above the ground. On the surface of Mars, at that height, the horizon was 3.2 kilometers away.

"The AT teams should be picking them up any time now," Sanchez said.

Since the anti-tank teams were dismounted soldiers up on the hills the horizon was a bit further for them — anywhere from five to seven kilometers, depending on how high they were.

"They shouldn't have any trouble finding targets, huh?" asked Xenia, her voice not exactly composed.

"No, I don't imagine they will," said Sanchez. According to his telemetry there were almost eight hundred tanks moving in on this particular section of the gap. They had sixty-two tanks and around ninety APCs to counter them with. The APCs, however, only sported single barrel anti-tank lasers instead of the dual rapid-charging cannons on the tanks. They were going to need some help from those anti-tank gunners in order to achieve their main goal — keeping the tanks from pushing through the gap and getting behind the dismounted infantry. Although this wouldn't be harmful to the grunts in the hills, it would prevent them from achieving their goal, which was to get the marines to dismount so they could kill more of them before they reached the main line of defense.

"Why the hell don't we have mines out there?" asked Xenia. "We spent years building these defenses and these tanks and those heavy guns. Why didn't we throw down some mines across the gap approaches too?"

"You know the answer to that," Sanchez told her. "Mine warfare is illegal, like chemical weapons and tactical nuclear shells. No one has used them since World War III."

"I don't think a mine falls into the same category as a nuke or as gassing someone," Xenia said.

"You may not, but the civilized world does," he said. "Those things lay out there long after the conflict is over and make vast tracts of land unusable pretty much forever. Even if we had somehow managed to manufacture and deploy mines in secret, we would've been subject to nuclear retaliation once it became known we'd employed them. Not only that, EastHem would be forced to withdraw support of our government."

"Yeah," Xenia said, shaking her head at the madness of it. "I suppose. I just wish..."

"Remember," Sanchez interrupted. "If wishes were orifices..."

"I'd have a mouth on my pussy for life," she dutifully finished.

A minute ticked by, the seconds passing with agonizing slowness, the tension so thick in the tank you could almost smell it. And then finally, the moment they had been both waiting for and dreading came.

"Command reports targets are in sight," Sanchez announced. "AT teams are engaging."

"They sure the fuck are," Xenia said. "Look at the hills!"

Zen looked off to either side, at the hillsides that dotted their line. From every one in his view, the flashes of laser weapons could be seen, reaching out from the hidden trenches. Downrange, where the impacts were occurring, they could still see nothing as the tanks being fired upon were still over the horizon from ground level.

"Kill 'em, guys," Sanchez whispered, his eyes glued to his telemetry. "You protect us and we'll protect you."

"Incoming!" Xenia suddenly said. "A whole assload of it!"

Zen looked forward and saw the streaks of eighty millimeter tank shells heading in at high velocity. There was indeed a whole assload of it, hundreds of streaks all across the horizon. They flew in and slammed into the hillsides where the anti-tank gunners were firing from. Flashes erupted. Dust flew. The faint sound of concussions could be heard from the nearer hills.

"Laura save them," Xenia said, watching in horrified awe.

"Those trenches can take it," Sanchez said. "Look, they've hardly slowed up their shots."

Volley after volley of tank rounds came flying in and the explosions continued. So did the flashes from the lasers within the trenches. Another three minutes ticked by, during which Sanchez noted on the telemetry that the enemy tanks had spread out and were now zigzagging back and forth even though neither one of these actions was an effective deterrent against speed of light weaponry.

"Command reports targets are coming into range of ground level units," Sanchez suddenly yelled. "Get ready, Zen. Do it just like in practice."

"Fuckin' aye," Zen said, feeling adrenaline surging through his body. His hand gripped the firing buttons for his cannons and his targeting recticle moved slowly back and forth with his head movements, waiting for something to put it on.

"Target, tank, eleven o'clock!" Sanchez said. "Light him up, Zen!"

Zen turned his head slightly to the left and saw the tiny white shape of a main battle tank moving across the landscape. Its laser cannon were up, its main gun was spouting fire and sending shells toward them. He moved his head until the targeting recticle covered the vehicle and then smoothly pushed the left firing button.

There was a bright flash from the spot where the target had been. When it cleared, only the bottom half of the tank still sat there. The turret was lying on the ground next to it and the entire structure of the vehicle was glowing bright red with heat.

"Holy fuck!" Zen said, grinning. "That's a fuckin' kill! Did you see that?"

"Saw it," Sanchez said. "Now do it again. Six more tanks — no, eight — just broached the horizon. Fire as fast as you can."

By the time he fired on another target, destroying it with a direct hit, dozens more of the main battle tanks appeared over the horizon. Several of them exploded as other tanks, APCs, or anti-tank crews potted them with their own weapons. At the same time, the flashes of anti-tank laser fire from the enemy tanks began to appear as they returned fire at the defenders.

Zen's first cannon finished its recharge cycle and he quickly sighted on another advancing tank and fired. He turned his head and had to wait another six seconds for the second cannon to finish charging. During that time two of the eighty millimeter shells came arcing in and exploded directly in front of their position. The tank rocked on its springs and the violent pattering of shrapnel peppering their cannon turret sounded throughout the interior. The cannon suffered no damage from this engagement since it had been designed to stand up to artillery and shell fire.

"What the fuck are they firing eighties at us for?" asked Xenia. "Even a direct hit wouldn't cause damage to a tank."

"Who knows?" said Sanchez. "They're probably overwhelmed and not thinking straight. That's just fine for us."

Zen saw the charging light for cannon two change to green. He already had his recticle on another target. He fired, destroying it. By this time cannon one was recharged so he found another and destroyed it as well. Other tanks continued to explode all over the field but nowhere near as fast as other tanks were appearing behind them, all of them flashing main guns and laser cannons. By the time cannon two was charged and ready for the next shot there were literally hundreds of tanks moving in on them.

Suddenly, from directly in front of them, a flash of light overwhelmed the infrared spectrum for a moment. There was no noise associated with it but when the spectrum cleared the entire barrier behind which they hid was glowing bright white with heat. There were two more flashes in quick succession and then one more. The barrier held but had crumbled in several places.

"Those were laser strikes," reported Xenia, who was sitting less than a meter from the back end of the barrier. "The barrier absorbed it. No damage to the tank."

"Yet," said Sanchez. "If they get a burn-through and manage to put another shot in the hole, that's our ass."

"Thanks, sarge," Xenia told him. "You really know how to cheer us up when things get rough, you know that?"

Meanwhile, Zen was listening to their conversation in his headset but absorbing little of it. He was popping off WestHem tanks as fast as his lasers could recharge themselves. The battlefield was now littered with destroyed tanks and they continued to flash and explode from all quarters as the volume of fire against them was maintained but the stream of them was endless. For every one blown up, five more would appear right behind it. Though the lead elements were the most frequent target, they continued to draw closer and closer, until some of them were less than a kilometer away.

From somewhere off to the left of them a bright light flashed, followed by a concussion. Zen immediately knew what it was but tried to bury the knowledge. He didn't want to face it.

Sanchez forced him to. "Tank three is gone," he said solemnly. "Apparently they got a burn-through." Tank three was part of their platoon. It had been in its own prepared hull-down position just thirty meters away. The crew were three people they'd known since the beginning days of the 17^th ACR, people they'd trained with, had gotten drunk with, had been friends with. Now they were gone, erased in an instant.

"Motherfuckers," Zen said, his eyes narrowing behind his helmet. Another flash of laser cannon came blasting into their barricade, this time sending concrete and sand flying into the air.

"They grazed us with that one!" Xenia reported. "Burn-through just above the left tread. It went out the other side though."

"No breach, no damage?" Sanchez asked, alarmed.

"We're good," Xenia told him. "The tread is intact, no vital systems hit."

The spectrum cleared from the latest flashes. Two tanks were now less than eight hundred meters in front of them. Zen sighted on first one and then the other, killing them both. "Take that, assholes," he said with viciousness in his voice.

"Hey, sarge," Xenia asked, "they're getting awfully close here. Just how long are we expected to stand and fight them?"

"We pull back if they get within half a klick in force," he said. "But we have to hold them long enough for the dismounts to clear their trenches and pull back to the blue line."

"There's too many of them," she said. "We can't hold this many tanks back!"

"No," he said. "We can't. They can blast through our line if they're persistent. Our plan is to make it too costly for them to be persistent."

"We're trying," Zen said, wincing as two more laser shots blasted their barrier — fortunately not in the same place as the previous burn through. When the spectrum cleared one of his cannons was charged. He fired again, taking out another tank — this one nine hundred meters away.

Deep in the bowels of Landing Ship 11C, at the Eden Landing Zone, General Dakota Dickinson stared in disbelief at the telemetry that was on his computer display. In the first fifteen minutes of the battle over three hundred tanks had been destroyed, another fifty or so damaged beyond repair. Despite the neutralization of the artillery by the Martian 250s, this was not the result he'd been anticipating. And they weren't even at the main line of defense yet.

"What the hell is going on out there?" he demanded of his subordinates. "We were supposed to sweep right through them! How in the hell are the greenies slaughtering our tanks like that?"

Colonel Houston Fowler was the commander of the 27^th Armored Division. It was his tanks, his men, that were taking the brunt of the Martian resistance at the moment — a shocking development for a division that had, until now, suffered zero casualties in what had otherwise been a very bloody conflict. "My battalion commanders are reporting intense anti-tank fire coming from the hillside positions in the gap," he told Dickinson. "Apparently the artillery did not significantly reduce the numbers of the entrenched Martian troops up there. They seem to have a whole lot of portable anti-tank weapons."

"Was the artillery off target?" Dickenson asked. "Did we spend forty minutes shelling a bunch of empty ground?"

"Negative, sir," Fowler said. "I've seen visuals of the Martian positions sent to me from the lead elements. We tore the hell out of those positions but the Martians are still in them. We're plastering them with direct eighty millimeter fire now and it's not having much of an effect either. Those trenches must be reinforced in some way."

"Great," Dickenson said, watching the screen as another twelve tanks suddenly turned black — meaning they'd stopped sending telemetry — meaning, of course, they were dead. "This is World War III and the AT-9 all over again. Talk about history repeating itself."

The AT-9 he was referring to was the American-made and manufactured portable anti-tank missile that was widely regarded as the weapon that had turned World War III from a quick Asian Powers victory to the bloody, decade long stalemate it had ended up as. Firing from entrenched positions, WestHem infantry soldiers had been able to concentrate murderous fire on vastly superior numbers of advancing armor and, eventually, halt the Asian advance at the Columbia River in Portland and the high desert of southern Idaho.

"Sir," said Fowler, "we're also taking fire from the Martian tanks and the Martian APCs. Return fire is ineffective. The Martian armor are in hull down positions behind some kind of barricades that are absorbing the laser energy from our shots. We've made some kills but it takes multiple shots for a penetration to occur."

"Can we push through?" Dickenson asked.

"At high cost, yes," Fowler said. "If we continue to advance our tanks they'll envelop those positions within twenty minutes or so, but..."

"But?" Dickenson asked.

"Losses will be very high. Also... well... we won't have accomplished anything but clearing their armor out of the gap. The Martian anti-tank crews and the dismounted infantry that are supporting them will still be up on those hills."

"Our plan was for your tanks to eliminate most of them and then to send the dismounts in to clear out their positions," Dickenson said. "It sounds like they're a little thicker up there than we anticipated."

"And a little more well-protected," Fowler agreed. "They're going to be a bitch to dislodge from there, sir."

"What if we just blast through their lines with the tanks as you suggested?" Dickenson asked. "Punch a hole through and then rush the APCs, the fuel trains, the arty, everything right by until we get to the main line of defense. The terrain is wider there and favors us more."

Fowler was shaking his head even before his boss finished. "Again, with all due respect, sir, we have to clear those positions before we can advance further. If we don't, it won't matter that our tanks have enveloped them, they'll still be able to blast at them from all directions as they pass. They'll be able to do the same to the APCs and they might even be able to take out some of our supply trains."