Chapter 17B

"Valentine, man the eighty!" Sanchez ordered. "Command reports the marines are reinforcing the units on this flanks. At least two platoons heading this way!"

"What about the tanks?" Zen asked as another laser shot slammed into their barrier, burning through another section of their rapidly crumbling defensive emplacement with enough energy left over to peel a layer off the front of their turret.

"Fuck the tanks!" Sanchez replied. "Our job is to protect the infantry, not ourselves. Those platoons will have to pass right through that open area at two o'clock. Get some fire on them when they do. I'll man the twenty and rake up any stragglers."

"Fuck my ass," Zen said, popping off one last tank and then abandoning his laser cannons. He switched his control set up to the main eighty-millimeter gun, checking to make sure a round was in it. He looked toward the two o'clock position, a small open area about one hundred meters wide and tried to ignore the dozens of tanks and APCs that were still trying to kill them. He had never wanted to be away from any place as much as he wanted to be away from this deathtrap right now.

He had lost count of how many WestHem tanks he'd killed in the last fifteen minutes. The entire battle so far had been a mad, endless, terrifying stream of explosions and flashes, of covering tanks with his recticle and firing, of watching turrets flying into the air, of hearing Xenia cry out the damage being inflicted on their barricade and their tank, of hearing the reports of other tanks being destroyed or damaged when the overwhelming fire against them managed to burn through and hit in just the right place. Of the sixteen tanks of their unit, four had been annihilated with all hands. He supposed that wasn't a bad ratio since their unit was responsible for the destruction of at least seventy marine main battle tanks — their burned out carcasses were everywhere on the battlefield — but the knowledge that he might annihilated at any second, flash-fried by a laser burn-through or, even worse, blown to pieces by detonating ammunition — weighed heavy on him.

There was a clank as Sanchez used his load button to jack the first twenty-millimeter round into the externally mounted cannon. It was belt-fed from a compartment on the outside of the turret. The weapon was fired with remote control from inside by means of a camera/infrared system although the actual gun could be physically reached through the commander's hatch in the event of a jam.

"Artillery coming down out there," Sanchez reported, unnecessarily since Zen could see it as well. "Mortar fire too. They must have them in sight."

"They stopped firing at us," Xenia said. "Did you notice? Since we stopped shooting at them they must think we're dead."

"Let 'em think that," Zen said.

"The illusion will only last until we open fire on their dismounts," Sanchez said. "So enjoy it while it lasts. Xenia, I want you to put us up just long enough to take a few shots. Get back in the hull down position the second I tell you to. Remember, our turret will be exposed to direct fire from the marine MBTs while we're up."

"Got it," she said.

"And remember," put in Zen, "we're sittin' in the fuckin' turret."

"No shit," she said testily. "You put the fire on the marines and I'll get you back down."

The mortars and artillery rounds continued to explode in the open area without let-up, flying in in volleys. It was a strangely beautiful sight if you could forget that people were being blown to pieces by it — people who were intent on killing their comrades up on the hill.

"I've got movement over there," Sanchez said. "On the far side, by those rocky mounds."

Zen looked in that direction and saw two and then three biosuited figures crouched low near the rocks, probably evaluating the terrain before moving on. "Should we hit them now?" he asked. "Keep them pinned in there?"

"We're not here to pin them in anywhere," Sanchez said. "We're here to kill as many of them as possible. We'll wait until they're making the dash."

"Right," Zen said.

They saw the marines waving their hands forward. They then rushed out into the open area, trotting in that clumsy, awkward way Earthlings had. Ten then twenty than thirty then forty appeared behind them, their grouping nothing like an actual formation, more like a bunch of guys who were in a panic as they tried to get out of a killing zone.

"All right, do it, Xenia," Sanchez order. "Get us up there."

"Moving," she said, her hands going to the controls. She backed up six meters, turned to the right a bit, and then moved forward, bringing the tank up a shallow berm on the side of their position.

"Fire as soon as you can get the gun on the them," Sanchez told Zen.

"Bet your ass, sarge," he replied, staring fixedly at his gunnery screen. Slowly the view began to match what he was seeing from the laser turret camera. His targeting recticle appeared and he moved it to the center of the running troops and pushed the range button. "That's good, Xenia," he said. "I got 'em."

She stopped, her hands ready to pull them back down the second she was told.

"Getting range," Zen said, more to himself than anyone else. "Got it. Computer, set round for airburst, one, one, zero, zero meters."

"Set," the computer replied.

"Firing," he said, pushing the button on his console. There was boom as the round was fired and the tank rocked backwards on its treads. The shell streaked out and exploded in the midst of a group of soldiers halfway across the open area. When the flash cleared they were all on the ground, many of them in pieces.

As the automatic loading system ejected the spent shell casing and rolled another into the breech, Sanchez opened up with the twenty millimeter, raking it across other groups of exposed marines. Zen, who was watching the screen and looking for the best place to put his next shot, saw that the marines hit by these rounds weren't just falling down with a little blood boiling out of their wounds. They were being blown apart, arms, legs, heads flying free, some cut in half, some exploding as their air tanks were hit, their blood boiling out of their bodies like geysers.

"Jesus," he said, fascinated, horrified, surprised to find himself feeling something like empathy for the poor bastards on the receiving end of it. War truly was hell. You couldn't really appreciate just what that meant until you'd seen men being blown into pieces before your eyes.

"Loaded," the computer told him. "Default is airburst. State range."

"One, three, zero, zero meters," Zen answered. He pushed the button and sent another shell out, blowing another group of marines — this time cowering behind some small rocks — into oblivion.

"Okay, get us back under cover!" Sanchez ordered. "Move it, Xenia!"

The words weren't even completely out of his mouth before she had them backing down the berm to the relative safety of the flat ground. It was none too soon either. No more than three seconds after they were clear the berm lit up with laser strikes that fused the sand into glass and exploded it all over the front of the tank. She brought them to an abrupt halt and then went forward again, pulling them back behind their barricade. The laser fire shifted and began to slam into the barrier once more. There was a bright flash as one of them burned through. A warning alarm began to blare.

"Burn through!" Xenia reported. "They hit the left tread and damaged it."

"How bad?" asked Sanchez. If one of their treads had been rendered unusable they would be stuck here, unable to do anything but turn in a tight circle.

"Integrity is still intact according to the computer," she replied. "I don't know how long it'll carry us though."

"Okay, I guess we'll worry about it when its time to leave," Sanchez said. "In the meantime, Zen, start popping those tanks again."

"Right," he said, already putting his recticle on one and preparing to fire.

Callahan watched the reinforcements come straggling in, dashing and crawling their way forward, some of them dragging wounded with them, most of them looking panicked as the Martian gunners up above picked them off with SAW fire and M-24 fire. Sergeant Woodman was in charge of them. He found his way up to Callahan's position and threw himself breathlessly to the ground.

"Goddammit, I didn't sign up for this shit," were the first words out of his mouth when they switched to a close range tactical channel.

"Pretty bad coming over?" Callahan asked him, although without much interest. It had been pretty bad waiting for them too. Grenades or rifle fire had killed another ten or so.

"We left the center position with seventy-six men," he said. "We made it here with fifty-two, six of whom are wounded and unable to fight."

"Artillery?" Callahan asked. He had seen the shells coming over the hill, had heard the distant concussions.

"That got some," Woodman said. "And then the Martian tanks hit us when we crossed the open ground. Eighty millimeter shells and twenties." He shook his head, still able to vividly visualize the horror of it. "And then when we rounded the bend and started moving up to here, they opened up on us from the trenches. This just ain't a real good place to be."

"No shit," Callahan answered. "We need to get up there as quick as possible and chase them out of those trenches before they kill us all."

"Leapfrog approach?" Woodman asked.

Callahan shook his head. "Covering fire is completely ineffective against them," he said. "We move up all at once and overwhelm them."

"No covering fire? Just advance into..." He looked up at the hill, where the gun flashes were still lighting up despite the continued peppering from the tanks and APCs. "... into that?"

"It's the only way," Callahan told him. "Brief your men but do it quick. We're moving in five minutes."

Jeff looked out his firing hole, his weapon pointed downward, his targeting recticle bouncing around as he turned his head left and right, looking for people to kill and finding none. All of the marines down there, including the reinforcements they'd just plastered, were hunkered down behind cover, denying him a target.

"All the dumb ones are dead now," said Drogan. "We're dealing with the Darwinian result of survival of the fittest here."

"They still have to come up this fuckin' hill after us," said Hicks.

Even Corporal Woo, one of the reinforcements sent from the center with a grenade launcher attached to his M-24, had not found a target to launch at in the last three minutes or so. In fact, everything was quiet. Most of the tanks and APCs had stopped firing, probably, opined Walker, because they were getting low on ammunition and wanted to conserve what was left for their final push.

"Our AT units are pulling out," Walker said. "They're out of charging batteries. We'll be following shortly."

"Thank you, Laura," Drogan said.

"No more suppressing fire on the armor?" Hicks asked. "Are we going to be able to hold?"

"We're not here to hold, remember?" Walker replied. "We're here to kill as many as we can and then get the fuck out. And you can thank those AT teams for the damage they did. Look at all that burned out armor down there."

This was true. There was an awful lot of dead WestHem tanks and APCs down there. The steel corpses of their mechanized army littered the battlefield. The AT teams had continued hitting the APCs whenever they could even though they had no troops in them. This served the dual purpose of silencing the suppressing fire the APCs provided and denying the marines who had been assigned to them a ride.

"How much longer until we pull back, sarge?" Jeff asked.

"Until we can't keep them contained any more," he replied. "Don't worry. We're not here to fight to the death."

Flashes suddenly began winking at them from out beyond the hill as the surviving tanks and APCs opened fire on them all at once. The rounds began to slam into their position again, exploding more sandbags, rocking the very ground beneath their feet.

"Movement to the front," someone reported. "They're coming in!"

Jeff looked down and saw dozens of marines crawling out of their cover positions and scrambling upward, many more than had advanced on them before.

"Fire at will!" Walker said. "Stick to your zones!"

Drogan sent an extended burst downward with the SAW. Woo sent a grenade down to explode in front of a group of three marines who had made the mistake of being too close together. Jeff put his recticle on the closest marine in his zone and fired, dropping him.

"There's no covering fire!" Hicks said. "They're all coming up at once!"

"We're not gonna hold them back very long," Drogan said. "There's no way we can kill them all before they get up here!"

"I'm talking to the LT now," Walker reported. "They're doing the same thing on the other flank — making a rush uphill without suppressing fire. Their center position is continuing to hold in place. Our center is withdrawing now. As soon as they clear their positions we're getting out of here. The APCs are already moving to the extraction point."

Jeff continued to fire at the exposed troops below but it was difficult at times to find a target since they were moving from outcropping to outcropping, staying as low as possible, almost crawling. These troops had learned from their previous advances. He saw two men make a dash from one piece of cover to the other. He dropped one of them but the other disappeared from view.

"Fuck," he muttered, looking toward the back of his zone where a marine had just poked his head up to scope out his next dash. Jeff put a round into his face and then shot ineffectively at two other marines in the near portion of the zone.

This went on for five long minutes. The marines worked their way upward, little by little, more than a few being shot or blown up but none of them shooting back. Drogan fired her SAW empty and had to change the barrel in addition to the drum. Woo ran out of grenades to launch at them. Their advance sped up until they were within fifty meters of the lower trench openings.

It was just as Drogan stood back up to put the SAW back in the firing hole when a tremendous explosion flashed just outside of it. An eighty-millimeter round had come in and it had been almost perfectly on target. Shrapnel sprayed through the opening and caught the shoulder and neck portion of her suit, ripping it open, shredding the flesh beneath. She made a startled squeal of pain and fear and dropped down into the trench in a heap, the SAW crashing down next to her.

"Shit!" Jeff yelled. "Drogan's hit, sarge. We need doc over here!"

"Doc's dragging some of the other wounded down to the extraction zone," Walker responded. "You and Hicks see what you can do for her. If she's viable we need to get her out of here."

Jeff put his weapon over his shoulder and ran over to Drogan's side. He looked first and foremost at the light on her suit pack. It was still green, which meant the suit was still recording a heartbeat and respiration. He rolled her onto her back and blood vapor came boiling out of the hole ripped in her suit. Her shoulder was torn to pieces, as was part of her neck. Her eyes beneath her helmet were open but dazed, uncomprehending. She was bleeding badly from her wounds and the hole in the suit was too big to seal on its own.

"Oh fuck, no!" Hicks said when he reached them and got a good look at her.

"We need to get a patch on that hole," Jeff said, reaching into the stomach pocket of her suit where the first aid kid and the emergency patching supplies were kept. He pulled out the tube of polymer sealant and opened the top. He squirted a generous amount of it all over the holes and it slowly sank in and hardened, stopping the leak of air pressure from within and putting direct pressure on her wounds, which, unfortunately, also ground into the jagged shrapnel that had caused the wounds. Her eyes widened and she began to scream in pain.

"It's okay, Drogan," Jeff said, unsure if she could hear him, unsure if she could comprehend even if she could.

"Vexal," Hicks said. "Give her some fuckin' Vexal!"

"Right," Jeff said, reaching for the suit computer controls near the chest. Vexal was a synthetic, very potent, very fast acting form of morphine. Every model 459 military biosuit had several vials of it in the inside lining of the stomach portion and both leg portions. Jeff opened a panel on the computer face and pushed the button for the left leg vial. The suit auto-injected the drug into her thigh. Ten seconds later the screaming faded out and her eyes closed.

"That's better," Hicks said.

"How is she?" Walker's voice asked.

"Alive," Jeff said. "Hit bad on the shoulder and neck. We got the suit sealed and got some Vex in her."

"Good job," he replied. "Now get her downstairs. Woo, pick up the SAW and start putting some fire on those marines. They're less than forty meters out now and moving in fast."

"Right, sarge," Woo said.

"Everybody else, pick up as much ammo and supplies as you can carry and then follow Hicks and Creek down. We're pulling out. Woo and I will keep shooting at them until everyone is down and then we'll follow."

Jeff and Hicks grabbed the handles on Drogan's suit and began moving toward the egress trench. They had to step over broken sandbags, empty ammunition boxes, and squeeze around the other squad members who were picking up the full ammunition boxes and putting them in their bags.

"How... how bad?" Drogan's voice asked dreamily, barely loud enough to make it over the link.

"Bad enough to get you sent back to Eden but not bad enough to kill you," Jeff replied, although he was not completely sure of either one of these statements.

"Billion dollar wound," she mumbled. "Static."

"We're switching to credits now, remember?" Jeff said. "It's a one hundred million credit wound. Get your terminology right, Drogan."

She smiled a little, her hand reaching up to grasp his forearm before falling back down. She soon drifted back into la-la land.

They made it to the bottom of the hill and out the back of the access trench in near record time. Spread out before them in a neat line were the APCs that had transported them to this place, their back ramps open, their gunners pointing the cannons and the lasers back towards the opening where any WestHem armor or troops would come through. Every retreating soldier was assigned to one of these APCs and his computer had already been updated to turn the one he or she was assigned to a pale blue color in the infrared spectrum. Hicks and Jeff saw their vehicle was near the center of the line. They didn't head for it. Instead they went towards the casualty collection point fifty meters to the north. There were no hovers there — which was a bit disconcerting — but they did find two support APCs with red crosses on the sides. They also found their medic.

"Doc!" Jeff hailed when they came close enough to recognize him among the chaos. "We got Drogan here. She's hit in the shoulder and the neck."

"Fuck my ass," the doc replied. "Put her down over here. Let me take a look at her."

They did as requested and Hicks gave a quick report on the first aid they'd rendered so far.

"Good, good," the medic said, nodding, as he did a quick scan of her and determined she was still bleeding despite their measures. "I need to get some sealant on those wounds," he muttered.

"Where are the hovers?" Jeff asked.

"It's not safe for them here anymore," the doc replied. "The WestHems have started shelling this area with their mortars."

"Shelling an evac point?" Hicks asked angrily. "That's a war crime!"

"So is parading our POWs in front of their cameras and charging them with terrorism, but they don't have no problem doing that." He pulled a large syringe from his kit, attached a needle to it, and drew up some kind of milky white liquid from a vial. He pushed it into the neck/shoulder junction of her suit and into her very flesh. He injected some, moved the needle a little, and then injected some more in a different spot.

"You guys saved her ass," he told them as they watched. "If you wouldn't have got her suit patched and the pressure on the wounds she would have either bled to death or decompressed enough to get the bends."

"Is she gonna make it?" he asked.

"If we can get her to surgery in the next hour or so, she'll not only make it, she'll be back out here for more fun in a couple of days."

"Oops," said Jeff. "I guess it wasn't a hundred million credit wound after all."

"Incoming," the doc said calmly, his information received from listening in on a tactical channel on a different frequency.

Jeff and Hicks looked up and, sure enough, the streaks of eighty-millimeter mortar shells were now coming out of the sky towards them. They ducked down, terrified at being in the open.

"Don't worry too much," the doc told them as he protectively covered Drogan's body with his own. "They're just plastering this whole area, probably trying to hit our support teams. No one is directing their fire and it just lands all over the place."

The barrage went on for about a minute or so, with explosions and flashes peppered all over the surrounding square kilometer. None of them even came close to an occupied position.