Chapter 18B

Lisa was looking through her combat goggles, trying to find the next target for her AT laser when the mass movement of marines began. She was on her belly atop a shallow hill on the northern edge of the WestHem positions. The artillery had just pounded the area they were watching and then shifted fire to another position. Suddenly hundreds of marines broke from cover, crawling out from under rocks, from beneath wrecked APCs and tanks, from within hastily constructed foxholes, and began to move in a semi-orderly fashion towards the scattered undamaged APCs to the west.

"Holy shit," Lisa said. "You seeing this, sarge?"

"Yep," Lon said from the next hill over, where he was sequestered with Jefferson and sighting in on potential artillery targets. "They're going to mount up."

"All of them?" asked Horishito, who was with Lisa. "There's not enough APCs for them all. What the fuck are they going to ride in?"

"And look," said Lisa. "They're all carrying handfuls of stuff. Ammo boxes, waste packs, food packs. This doesn't look like an advance."

"It's not," said Lon. "It's a retreat."

"A retreat?" Lisa said, the very word foreign to her in relation to the WestHems. They had been out here for the last three days, moving from position to position mostly on foot, getting resupplied by daily Hummingbird drops, paralleling the marines as they slowly but surely pushed the MPG armored cav units out of each position. They'd inflicted a considerable amount of damage of their own during these battles, sniping at APCs, calling down artillery and mortars on exposed troops, and occasionally — very occasionally — getting into brief, violent firefights with marine units that got too close to them. Each battle had been marked by a hasty retreat of their own before the increasingly accurate WestHem mortar fire could zero in on their position. At one point they'd waited too long — either that or the WestHems had just gotten lucky on their first volleys. Two members of the squad had been hit with shrapnel — one dying right there on the Martian sand, the other with one of his legs blown off. All of them had taken the casualties very hard but Lon — as commander of the squad — had become almost morose.

"A retreat?" Horishito asked. "Holy fuck. They're pulling back?"

"That's the general definition of the word," Lon said. "They know they can't push past our main line with the numbers they have available so they're pulling back. Someone finally made a sound military decision on that side of the war."

"So what do we do?" Lisa asked.

"We report it," Lon said, "and we call down artillery on their asses and kill as many of them as we can while they're exposed. What the fuck else do you think we'd do?"

"Uh... oh... sure, sarge," Lisa said, a bit taken aback by his tone. "I guess that's the plan then."

"Right," Lon said. "Jeffy, get on the com and send off a quick report. Take a couple pics of the retreat if you can. While you're doing that, get me a side channel to fire control so I can get some shells flying at these murdering fucks."

Jefferson made it so. Fire control, however, had to put him on a waiting list.

"A fucking waiting list?" Lon screamed back at them. "There are exposed WestHem marines all over my sector at this very moment! Get some shells down on them before they get in their APCs!"

"Sorry, Lon," the lieutenant on the other end of the link told him. "The same thing is happening all up and down the line. They're pulling back in force. There are too many fucking targets for us to hit them all."

"What the hell are we supposed to do then?" Lon asked.

"When your sector is up I'll get hold of you again for current targeting info. Should be ten or fifteen minutes."

"Shit," Lon said in disgust before breaking the connection.

They went back to watching. The marines continued to appear from nowhere and move backwards, deliciously exposed in large numbers but there was nothing they could do. A few of them fell here and there as the snipers hidden on the other hills took potshots at the target-rich environment but Lon knew if they were to engage they would hit ten, maybe twelve of them before they'd have to retreat from the answering mortar fire. Since the deaths of two of his men he liked to make the body count worthwhile before he committed to an engagement.

"Look what they're doing," Horishito said. "There's a squad of APCs pulling out three klicks to the west, at three o'clock."

Lisa looked over there and saw what she was talking about. The APCs had been presumably stuffed as full as possible on the inside and then other troops — eight to ten on each vehicle — had climbed onto the outside as well. They were clinging to the gun mounts, sitting on the tread guards, sitting atop the turret. "There has to be twenty-five marines to each APC."

"And they can't go much more than ten or fifteen klicks an hour that way," Jefferson said. "They're sitting ducks."

"You want us to engage them, sarge?" Lisa asked. "We have four AT lasers. We can kill a hundred or so right now before they get out of range. That's a good body count, ain't it?"

"Goddamn right," he agreed, something like emotion in his voice for the first time in days. "AT teams, light those APCs up. Everyone, get ready to displace as soon as they burn."

Lisa sighted in on the slow moving formation, picking the furthest forward of the APCs. She zoomed in with her goggles until she could see the individual marines holding onto the sides for dear life. They looked a bit pathetic, even though she couldn't actually see their faces, and she felt a bit squeamish at the thought that she would have to put her laser shot right through one of them to get it into the main body of the vehicle where it belonged. Oh well, she thought as she put the recticle on the man's chest, you gotta do what you gotta do. At least he would go fast. "I got the three o'clock tank," she said, letting the other AT holders know not to target that one.

"I got twelve," said Morales, on the next hill hover.

"Sarge," interrupted Jefferson before the next AT holder could chime in. "I got a priority message just came in from command."

"Give it to us after we pop these fuckers," Lon said. "Who's taking six o'clock?"

"Sarge," Jefferson said, "I think you need to listen to this. It's a cease fire order."

"What?" Lon said, his voice picking up a notch. "What the hell are you talking about? A cease fire order for us?"

"For everyone," Jefferson said. "Let me read it to you. 'All MPG units on Eden defensive line are to cease offensive action until further notice. Do not, repeat — do not fire on any WestHem unit, vehicle, or personnel unless fired upon or unless they are advancing toward an occupied MPG position. Defensive measures only until further notice.'"

Lon was appalled. "What in the fuck is that shit about?" he asked no one in particular. "Don't fire at them while they're at their most vulnerable? Who in the fuck ordered that?"

"It didn't say, sarge," Jefferson told him. "It came directly from Eden command and was correctly coded."

Lon shook his head. He seriously considered just ordering his AT teams to engage anyway. They would be able to claim they'd fired before getting this most asinine order. In the end, however, he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. "Discharge your weapons," he told them. "Let's see if maybe they want us to bring those poor marines some food packs or something next."

Lisa and the rest of the team discharged their lasers, feeding the energy back into the charging batteries. They put the weapons back down and watched helplessly as the mass exodus of marines continued, as more and more of them piled into and atop APCs and began to move slowly off to the west, unharmed and untouched. They noticed that even the artillery had stopped.

Thirty-six kilometers north of Lon and his squad, Brian Haggerty and Matt Mendez were in the cockpit of their Mosquito, screaming in through the hills preparing to make their fourth firing run of the day. It had been very productive so far. They'd had last night off and had lifted off for the first time at 0700, well rested and well fed. Nineteen marine APCs had fallen to the their flight of two so far and the news that their targets were now in motion, going slow, and chock full of marines inside and out, had instilled the blood lust in them. Since flight crews had the luxury of not having to see the people they killed — before, during, or after their strikes — the thought of massacring twenty or thirty per shot was not the least bit repugnant to them. After all, their mission was to kill marines, wasn't it?

But now this puzzling message had come across the all units network just a minute or so before they reached their IP. Matt read it to him as it decoded, wondering just what the hell this was about. "All units on the Eden defensive line?" Matt asked. "That doesn't apply to us, does it?"

"Well, we're not on the defensive line, that's for sure," Brian said, his eyes continuing to track on the terrain before him, turning and diving as they moved closer and closer. "It must be just for the ground pounders, although I can't imagine who would order something like that."

"Maybe they surrendered?" Matt asked.

Brian shook his head. "No way in hell," he said. "They may be pulling back but it's only to regroup. They're not giving up yet."

"Then why the fuck would they tell anyone to stop shooting them? That's against the rules of war, ain't it?"

"It's certainly against conventional military thinking," Brian agreed. "In any case, I can't believe that message was meant for the air crews. We'll finish this firing run and then get clarification after we withdraw and break radio silence."

"You're the boss, boss," Matt said happily, pushing the buttons to charge up his lasers. "You're turning right to one-seven-zero in five, four, three..." A distinctive beep sounded in his headset, alerting him to a priority message from Air Ops Command. "Shit. Priority message."

Brian made the turn and then leveled off. "Bring it up fast," he said. "IP in less than thirty now."

Matt quickly changed to the communications screen and ordered his computer to decrypt and display the message. This took two and a half seconds. He stared at the words on his screen, wondering if the whole planet had been smoking dust. "All air units disengage immediately from hostile action," he read. "Do not fire upon enemy vehicles or aircraft except in self defense. Units on firing runs return immediately to your staging areas and await further instructions."

"Fuck my ass," Brian said helplessly. "What in the hell is going on around here?"

"Someone got some explaining to do, that's for sure," Matt agreed. "You want me to go manual and plot us back to staging?"

"Yeah," Brian sighed. "I guess you'd better. I guess it's okay to break radio silence too. Get me our wing on my channel."

Matt pushed a few tabs on his screen. "You're on," he said.

Fifteen seconds later both aircraft spun around the hill that was supposed to have been their initial point for their run and headed back the way they had come, their lasers unfired.

The cease-fire order had been transmitted not just to the units deployed at Eden, but planetwide — to New Pittsburgh, to Proctor, and to Libby as well. It was an order that was universally derided as asinine, as idiocy, as against all rules of military logic by every soldier of every rank who heard of it. Most wondered just who in the hell it had originated from and what kind of hell General Jackson was going to raise when he heard of it. Only the highest of the command staff — at the moment anyway — knew that General Jackson was the one who had sent the order.

"Kevin," pleaded General Zoloft, commander of Eden forces, "you are being criminally negligent by letting those marines walk away from the lines untouched. They haven't agreed to a cease-fire, they haven't asked for terms of withdrawal. We are still in active combat with them! You can't just let them retreat to regroup in safety!"

"I can and I will," Jackson replied. They were on a video link with the other generals in charge of the other cities' defenses. "We will not shoot at a retreating enemy. That is MPG doctrine."

"But they're not retreating from the war!" cried General Montoya — commander of the New Pittsburgh forces. "They're only pulling back to regroup. You know as well as I do that they're just going to launch back up to orbit and then come down in a single group, probably at Eden or New Pittsburgh. Every one of them that we let back to their LZ is a soldier we'll face in the next battle."

"I understand your logic, Frank," Jackson told him. "I even agree with it. But you're not following my logic."

"What fucking logic?" asked General Azacan, commander of Proctor forces. "My people beat the shit out of those fucks. They never even broke through my first line! My tanks and my APCs are more than ninety-eight percent intact while theirs are down more than seventy percent! Do you know what that means, Kevin? I can counter-attack them while they retreat and while they're vulnerable. I can use my armor to circle ahead of them and cut them off at the entrance to the gap! We'll kill or capture all of their combat units that are left! How can you possibly order me not to do that?"

"Because it would be a bloody battle that would unnecessarily kill MPG troops and because it would go against the precedent I'm trying to set for the WestHems with this unpopular order of mine."

"What precedent?" demanded Zoloft. "What the hell are you trying to accomplish by letting them walk away untouched? They're going to hit us again!"

"Yes," Jackson said. "I know they're going to hit us again. That's why I'm doing this. I want every WestHem soldier that fights in this war to know that we will not shoot at them if they retreat. I want them to know at all times that retreat means their safety, that it means an end to the death and the bloodshed. I want them to be able to walk away from a battle with us at any time because if they know that, eventually, when we push them enough, they'll do it."