Chapter 18A

Martian wastelands — 12 kilometers west of Eden
September 1, 2146

The latest artillery bombardment came raining down across the area, shells bursting just above the ground sending shrapnel into anyone unfortunate enough to be underneath and unprotected. Callahan was jerked awake once more as he felt the ground quake beneath him, as he felt the concussions hammer into him. He checked his time display and saw it had been less than fifteen minutes since he'd gone unconscious. That was typical. His body was crying out for sleep, was demanding it with every fiber, every molecule, every atom, but he had only been able to provide it with about three hours or so of that most precious commodity since they'd taken the Jutfield Gap seventy-seven hours ago — and that had all been snatched in ten to twenty minute grabs.

Callahan, along with his ever-battered, ever-changing, understrength company, the battalion it was part of, the regiment it was part of, and the division they were all a part of, along with the remaining tanks and APCs, were now less than six kilometers from the Martian main line of defense. If he were to climb out of the hole beneath the burned out APC he was hiding under and stand up he would be able to see the skyline of Eden off to the east, including the AgriCorp Building. Of course he was not so mad as to actually poke his head or any other body part out just to admire the pretty buildings — not with artillery and mortar fire coming in every ten minutes or so, not with Martian snipers hiding in the surrounding hillsides. To show yourself out there was to invite a quick and nasty death.

The artillery barrage went on for another three minutes or so and then petered out, the fire shifting to another sector of what was being called "the line". Callahan stretched out as much as possible, trying in vain to loosen up his sore and cramped muscles. During the battle of Jutfield Gap the division's APCs had been hit very hard — losses were well over fifty percent of the original vehicles. Losses in men, while heavy, were not as bad. What this meant was that there were no longer enough APCs to transport all of the ground troops no matter how many they crammed into each one. He and the remainder of his battalion had basically walked from the Jutfield Gap to here — a distance of more than thirty kilometers.

Of course it had not been a casual stroll through the majestic Martian landscape. Not at all. After pulling back from the gap the Martian forces had installed themselves in another set of hills ten kilometers to the east, forcing yet another bloody battle in which even more APCs were smashed, even more tanks were destroyed, and even more marines were mowed down by gunfire or artillery fire or mortar fire. And when they'd forced the Martians out of those positions — with depressingly little evidence of enemy casualties found — the Martians had fallen back another eight kilometers to yet another set of prepared positions where the entire process started over once again. In all, they'd engaged the Martian armored cavalry regiments a total of four times before finally forcing them off of the last set of hills. While it was true that the engagements became easier and faster as the valley leading to Eden opened up and forced the Martians to spread themselves out thinner and thinner when they made each successive stand — they'd bloodied the marines badly each time, destroying morale and overwhelming the medical resources with wounded.

Callahan took a drink of the lukewarm water from his reservoir — a very small drink. The reservoir was down to twenty-eight percent and there was not enough spare water to go around. The same was true of food paste, waste packs, and even air bottles. Nor was this the only shortage they were dealing with. Ammunition was being severely rationed, with orders given to no longer utilize suppressing fire when advancing, to no longer engage a target unless there was reasonable chance of hitting it. It was absolute madness, and a madness that was destroying the very discipline that held an army together in combat.

"No more suppressing fire?" Corporal Cayenne, the newest leader of his second platoon, said during a private conference Callahan had held with his "officers" (although only one of them was even an NCO at this point) after they'd dug in at this latest position. "How the fuck are we supposed to take a position without suppressing fire?"

"Shit," said Sergeant Nichols, a recent transfer to the company from another unit and the highest-ranking person after Callahan himself, "the fucking suppressing fire doesn't do any good against them anyway. Why shoot the fucking guns at all? We might as well just shoot thirty percent of the troops ourselves and then walk up the hill and save the Martians some time."

"Alexander Industries wouldn't like that very much," one of the other corporals put it. "They wouldn't get to sell us the replacement ammo."

"And meanwhile," Nichols said, "the Martians have all the ammo they need because they've got a secure supply line back to Eden and their base."

"Their wounded get to the hospital right away too," Cayenne said. "They just take them out the back side of them hills and fly them right to the base. When we get hit we have to lie there until the battle is over before a medic even comes to take care of us."

"That's it then," said Corporal Senate, who was leading third platoon, "I'm joining the greenies. They got better benefits, better healthcare, and unlimited ammo."

This was good enough for a small chuckle from the group but Callahan knew there was an underlying message to it. Everything they'd faced to this point had been nothing but a warm-up. Now that the main event was upon them they were being told not to shoot as much, not to breathe as much air, not to eat and drink as much, not to shit as much. In short, they were being told to do something that couldn't be done.

"All company commanders, this is Colonel West," Callahan's radio link suddenly spoke up. "I need you to make your way over to my APC for a conference."

"Fuck that," said the voice of Sergeant Mike Rollins, who was now in charge of Bravo Company (a fucking sergeant leading a company, Callahan thought in amazement every time he was reminded of this).

"What did you just say, Rollins?" West demanded. "I think I must have misheard you."

"Then let me repeat myself," Rollins told him. "I said 'fuck that'. Do you have a death wish or something? What do you think is gonna happen when those Martian snipers see four men go trotting through the open and climb into the same APC? Why don't you just put a fucking sign up that says 'command staff meeting right here, please put a laser through our asses'?"

There was silence on the channel for a few moments and then West said, "You do have a good point, Rollins, but you need to watch how you make them. You were being impertinent to a superior officer. Just because you've been put in charge of a company doesn't mean you can start talking to a lieutenant colonel like he was a plebe in the academy."

"If he wasn't gonna do it, I would've," Callahan said. "I'm sorry, Colonel, but if you want to have a conference I think we'd better all just stay right where we are and do it over the command channel."

"I'm willing to concede that point," West hissed. "But I will not have lieutenants and sergeants speaking to me in that manner."

"Whatever," said Rollins, and you could almost see the jerking-off motion he was making. "So what do you got for us?"

"A pull-back order I trust," said Captain Boothe, commander of Alpha Company. That had been the prevailing rumor of late, what had been deemed to be the only viable solution.

"Of course we're not pulling back," West said, shocked that one of his captains would make such a suggestions. "I've got our battle plans and objectives for penetrating the greenie main line of defense. We will start moving in at 1300 hours. This will be your battle briefing."

Since all four of the company commanders were separated by anywhere from thirty to one hundred meters it wasn't really possible for them to share a disbelieving look with each other — but somehow they managed it anyway.

"We're attacking that line?" asked Lieutenant Strawn, Delta Company's CO. "With only the men and armor we have here?"

"Yes," West said. "Is there a problem with that?"

"Is there a problem with that?" Strawn responded. "Colonel, I've been looking over the reports on that position Intel shipped to us. We can't punch through there without reinforcements."

"And even then we would take heavy casualties," Callahan added. "Have any of you high and mighty battle planners actually looked at what we're facing here?"

Callahan surely had. He had looked over the schematics and briefing material their intelligence department had sent to all company commanders and above. The Martian main defenses, though on much flatter ground and spread across a much greater area than in the Jutfield Gap, were much more formidable. The Martians knew they had to stop an enemy cold with this final defensive network or Eden was lost and they had constructed it with this thought in mind. Stretching all across the vast plain on the western edge of the city was a system of concrete trenches and pillboxes interspersed with concrete and titanium hull-down positions for tanks and APCs. Half a kilometer in front of this were networks of anti-tank ditches and tank traps that would prevent most armor from approaching the line at all and would channel that which did into vicious killing boxes from which there was no escape. Even if there were enough APCs for all the ground troops to mount up in, they wouldn't be able to bring them close to the Martian infantry positions. Any advance would be over five hundred meters of open ground that would be saturated with Martian artillery, mortar fire, heavy and light machine gun fire, tank and APC main gun fire, and, of course, small arms fire from the defending infantry.

"Yes, of course we've read the documents over," West told them. "We understand that our casualties have been a bit heavier than expected, but nevertheless..."

"A bit heavier than expected?" Callahan interrupted. "Save that shit for the media assholes. Those Martians kicked our fucking asses!"

"Goddamn right," agreed Boothe. "How many men have we lost in this sector anyway? I know my company was down almost thirty percent before you sent me that last batch of cooks and dishwashers from the LZ."

"I don't have exact figures on that," West said.

"Bull-fucking-shit," Boothe yelled at him.

"How dare you talk to me like that!" West yelled back.

"Yeah?" Boothe returned. "What are you gonna do about it, sir? Send me to fucking Mars? Oh wait! I'm already here, ain't I? And now you're telling me you want me to lead this ragtag, overtired, ass-kicked company against a defensive emplacement that makes the positions The Corps faced on Callisto look like a kid's tree house? If I'm gonna even consider doing that, I want to know how many goddamn men we've lost and how many we have left. You can throw me in the brig if you want, but that's the way it's gonna be, sir!"

West sighed, seeming to realize he was handling a batch of nitroglycerine that could explode in his face at any second. "We have taken almost eleven thousand casualties moving from the LZ to this point," he admitted.

Silence on the net, stretching out so long it seemed the net was broken.

Eleven thousand casualties? Callahan thought. Jesus fucking Christ! Eleven thousand? And that was just in the Eden sector of operations. How many at Libby? At Proctor? At New Pittsburgh? Not even counting the marines that had been killed in transit by the Martian "suicide attacks" and the so-called "accidents" among the Panamas, they had easily lost more men just getting to the main lines of defense than had been lost in all three attacks on Callisto during the Jupiter War.

"This is insane," whispered Boothe, so softly his words were barely heard.

"Amen to that," agreed Strawn.

"I understand how you men feel," West said. "We underestimated our enemy to a certain degree and we paid the price for it but now we know what kind of positions we're facing. We have a coherent and logical attack plan formulated by the best military minds on this planet and above it."

"Oh really?" said Callahan. "General Jackson was nice enough to come up with an attack plan for us?"

"That's blasphemous, Callahan!" West barked. "Don't ever let me hear you say anything like that again!"

"Truth hurts, doesn't it?" Callahan shot back.

"Look," West said, "I didn't ask you men to like your orders. You are WestHem marines and you will follow them. We will attack at 1300 and we will be standing on the streets of Eden by 1500. Now would you like to hear the briefing on how we're going to do that or not?"

"No," Callahan said. "I wouldn't."

"What?" West demanded.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," he said. "I've been in the Corps my entire career and I've been loyal to the Corps that entire time. I've always believed in our mission no matter where it was — Argentina, Cuba, and even Mars when they first sent us here. But I can't be a party to this. The way I figure it we're standing here with about seventy thousand combat troops and we're facing an enemy of at least twenty-five thousand. That is less than the three to one ratio that doctrine dictates for the best of conditions."

"That is against a professional army," West said. "These are a bunch of greenie weekend warriors we're facing."

"Greenie weekend warriors that have caused eleven thousand fucking casualties with their 'speed bump'," Callahan said. "And you'll note that I said 'the best of conditions'. That is hardly what we're dealing with here. We have lost almost half of our armor and most of us have walked the last thirty kilometers. We've lost most of our captains, lieutenants, and senior NCOs and we have fucking sergeants leading companies (no offense, Rollins), corporals leading platoons, and privates leading squads. We have cooks, dishwashers, toilet plungers, and computer programmers carrying guns out here now. Nobody even knows the names of the people in their unit anymore. We're short on medics, short on ammo, short on breathing air, short on water and food. Each and every one of us that have managed to live this long out here are living on less than six hours of sleep since we left the LZ however many fucking days ago that was. It is impossible for us to take those positions in these numbers under those conditions, sir. Impossible. And I will not order my men to engage this enemy any further unless we are allowed to rest, be fully re-armed, and, most of all, reinforced in some way so we can attack in the strength necessary to achieve our objectives. You can court martial me if you wish, you can execute me on the spot if you feel that's necessary, but I will not walk another foot forward under these conditions, nor will I order my men to walk another foot forward."

"I can't believe you just said that to me, Callahan," West said, his tone sounding more hurt than angry — like that of a father whose son has defied him. "You are relieved of command as of this moment. Your second in command will take over Charlie Company and you will be placed under arrest and transported back to the LZ for processing. I hope you like snow because you're going to be shoveling a lot of it at the penal colony for a very long time."

"At least I'll be alive to shovel it," Callahan said.

"You'd better save some room in the APC for me, Colonel," Captain Boothe said. "I'm with Callahan. I will not order my men forward into a hopeless battle. They will be killed for nothing and I will not be a party to that."

"Put me on the list as well," said Strawn. "That's a meat grinder in front of us."

"Me too," agreed Rollins. "I will not go forward from here."

Now the anger appeared in West's tone. "This is mutiny!" he yelled at them. "I could have you all shot for this!"

"That would certainly help morale, wouldn't it?" asked Callahan.

"Look, Colonel," Boothe said. "None of us are making this decision lightly, I can assure you of that. You're asking too much of us. You're asking us to commit our men to death when there is no possible hope of victory. Now you can sit there and debate the fine points of the legality of our position if you want, but my suggestion would be that you contact regimental command and let them know what we've done. My guess is we're not the only ones."

Colonel West did just that. And it turned out that Boothe was entirely correct.

Mars Orbit

Aboard the WSS Nebraska

General Wrath had just finished another briefing of the WestHem media in which he'd explained yet again why his forces were still not standing in the Martian cities. The story now was that the greenie terrorists manning the main line positions were utilizing "human shields" in the form of Martian civilians and captured Earthling non-combatants. They were placing these hapless civilians in the very trenches they were defending their cities from in order to keep the WestHem marines from unleashing the full fury of their superior training and firepower.

"They've committed this cowardly, unprecedented act in all four of the cities in which combat operations are under way," he'd explained with his usual straight face. "This is an action that defies any and all civilized rules of warfare, an action even more appalling than their use of suicide attacks against troop concentrations and unarmed transit ships. While this will not break our resolve or even bend it, and while we will neutralize and occupy those positions in a matter of hours no matter what, we have pulled back a bit and held in place in order to evaluate the best way to deal with this new tactic in a way that will eliminate or at least minimize the possibility of innocent deaths in this conflict."

And that was it. The explanation was accepted as the gospel without any questions about how the marines knew the Martians were putting civilians into the trenches, about how the Martians were getting these civilians outfitted in biosuits and marching them out there. And there were definitely no questions about the twenty-six thousand men who had been killed in the last three days, or about the thirteen thousand that had been wounded.

Major Wilde was waiting for him in the hallway when he left the pressroom. His expression was one of trepidation mixed with a little bit of sorrow.

"New developments?" Wrath asked, popping his fifteenth antacid tablet of the day.

"Yes sir," Wilde told him.

"By the look on your face I'm guessing it is not a favorable development."

"No sir," Wilde agreed. "Should we talk in your office?"

Wrath sighed and then nodded. They walked through the halls, past a few marine sentries, and entered the luxurious, blue-carpeted office just adjacent to the war room. A large window in the wall looked out over the surface of Mars far below. It was view that had seemed to mock him for days now.

Wrath sat down behind his desk, practically falling into his custom-made chair. Wilde took a seat before the desk without waiting for permission. The two men had long since ceased to adhere to such formalities.

"What is it?" Wrath asked, already bracing himself.

"It's what I was afraid would happen," Wilde said. "The morale problem among the combat units down on the surface has reached the breaking point."

"What do you mean?"

"In all four theaters of operations, company commanders and, in some cases, battalion commanders, are refusing to follow orders to advance."

"Refusing to follow orders?" Wrath repeated. Though Wilde had warned him that something like this might happen just twelve hours before the very concept was so foreign to a man who had spent his life in the Corps that he had trouble acknowledging what he was being told. "You mean... refusing? As in, 'I'm not going to do that'?"

"Yes sir, that's exactly what I mean."

"How many?"

Wilde sighed, almost ashamed to admit the truth even though he had foreseen this. "Nearly all of them," he said. "The dissent is pretty much unanimous at the company level in Eden and New Pittsburgh. In Libby, several of the battalion commanders are in on it too. At Proctor... well... you know how things are going there."

"Yes," Wrath said bitterly. He did. At New Pittsburgh and Eden the units were in position to attack the main line of defense that guarded the cities themselves. In Libby, they had already attacked it once and had been soundly repulsed. But in Proctor — the most mountainous of the four cities and the one protected by the narrowest approaches — the marines had still, after three days of vicious fighting, not pushed through the first line of defense. Every attempt had failed, resulting in bloody, agonizing defeats.

"Everyone from battalion level down to the platoon leaders — those that are left — are refusing to mount another attack on that line. They have defied General Baggenstein's orders and have actually pulled back thirty kilometers, out of the range of the Martian artillery. A message sent to Baggenstein read that we could come down and shoot every last one of them if we wanted but they were not going to attack their objectives any more."

"That's mutinous," Wrath said angrily. "It's absolutely mutinous!"

"I agree," Wilde said. "But it's also the reality we're dealing with."

"You send a message to those men down there that I order them to follow their goddamn orders and take those cities!" Wrath yelled. "How dare they defy me like that!"

"Sir," Wilde said, "I think you need to face some facts here."

"What facts?"

"The Martians have achieved their objectives in this first phase of the conflict."

"They've what?"

"We cannot take their cities, sir. Not with the configuration of forces we now have. I've been over this again and again in the past twenty-four hours and there is simply no way, short of utilizing tactical nuclear weapons, that we can clear those defensive positions with the men we have available. In every one of the theaters of operation our ratio is down to less than a three to one advantage in combat troops. Our armor has been decimated, particularly the APCs. The Martians have air superiority and the ability to suppress our artillery with impunity. Most of all, our unit cohesion has been destroyed by the loss of so many officers and NCOs. The commanders down there on the surface are not throwing a fit or trying to be difficult, they simply realize there is nothing to be gained by pushing forward but the needless deaths of their men. You can punish them if you want but they're only responding to the reality of the situation."