Chapter 21B

General Jackson was going over status reports on the troop movements when Major Sprinkle called. "It's on," he told him. "Recon birds are showing multiple landing ship separations."

Jackson looked at the time display on his monitor. "They're earlier than I thought," he said. "Much earlier."

"Yeah," said Sprinkle. "At least we can be pretty much assured that they weren't laying disinformation on us about the landing sites. Most of the troops are still in Libby and Proctor, aren't they?"

"Most of them," Jackson said. "The first trains just left, although the bulk of the 12^th and the 16^th's APCs are on them. There's not really a way to turn a train around in transit unless it stops and backs up all the way, which would cut the speed down to an eighth or so."

"What if they're going after Ore City," Sprinkle said, "or maybe Viscal?"

"Those are secondary cities, only connected by rail to one other city. Though they'd be easy pickings there's not much value in taking them. They're too isolated from the other cities and all we'd have to do to keep them pinned there indefinitely is to cut our own rail line. That's why we never stationed any significant MPG units there. The four principal cities and Triad are what we've always had to worry about."

"I suppose that makes sense," Sprinkle said.

"What I'm more worried about is that they're not really going to attack Eden and New Pittsburgh, that they're just going to pick one or the other. If they were distributing disinformation for the purpose of rooking us that would have been the best ploy. They get us to divide up their forces and then they slam us on a single target."

"Doesn't their early departure somewhat preclude that option as well?" Sprinkle asked. "As you've pointed out, the bulk of the troops being shifted are still in their home cities."

"It does tend to preclude it," Jackson agreed. "But then nothing is absolute in warfare, is it? I'll feel a lot better when I see that those landing ships are going exactly where we expect them."

This took another hour to determine. The ships formed up into two distinct lines and then, one by one, they moved off into a departure corridor and began their deceleration burns. Once the first four were on their way down it was fairly easy to plot their destination. Half were on a path that would take them in over Eden, the other half were on a path for New Pittsburgh.

"Okay then," Jackson said, relieved. "I'll call Strough and tell him to keep the movement going full throttle ahead. Is MarsGroup still down their photographing the loading process?"

"They are," Sprinkle confirmed. "And they've promised not to broadcast any information about the movements until either the landing ships are all on the ground or the movement is completed. So far they're keeping their word."

"Good for them," Jackson said.

"Although it doesn't really matter that much," Sprinkle said. "You do realize that don't you?"

"Yes, of course," Jackson said. "I'm aware that Mars is rife with WestHem spies and that WestHem marine intelligence has probably been informed about the troop and equipment movements already. But at least we're not actually broadcasting the information and making it official. There's always a little bit of doubt with information from spies."

"That is true," Sprinkle agreed.

"Now that we know where they're going, I need to start mobilizing the ACRs and the artillery forces. I also need to get Colonel Bright's special forces teams ready to launch out there as soon as they touch down. Keep me updated on developments. I want to know exactly when and where they touch down."

"Fuckin' aye, General."

Jackson raised his eyebrows a little at this last statement.

Sprinkle flushed a little bit. "Sorry," he said. "I've been talking to a lot of the new recruits lately and I guess their sayings are starting to brush off on me."

"No worries," Jackson said. "I actually kind of like the way that sounds."

They ended the call and Jackson immediately began contacting the various commanders in each city under threat, ordering them to initiate their plans. "Remember," he told Bright, "if they keep in our range, I want it done just like before. I want your forces on the ground within an hour of them touching down and I want mortars falling on any exposed troops an hour after that. Let's remind them that they are not welcome here."

"My teams are already assembling, General," Bright said. "They'll be in the air as soon as we get information on the landing site."

"You'll get it as soon as I have it," Jackson promised.

Another hour ticked by. Jackson spent much of it reviewing maps and satellite views of the Eden and New Pittsburgh area and checking on the status of the loading of his reinforcements. Finally Sprinkle called him back. He looked worried.

"What is it?" Jackson asked him.

"Both landing forces are approaching the optimum zones according to their doctrine. Both are still over ten thousand meters above the ground, moving fast."

"They're coming in closer?" Jackson said. Browning's initial briefing on the second phase had said they were going to land further out. Though Browning hadn't explained himself to Jackson it was clear that he'd wanted to put his forces beyond the range of the Hummingbirds and Mosquitoes, thus allowing them to secure their area and assemble in peace.

"That's what it looks like, General," Sprinkle said. "If they keep to their current rate of descent they're going to come down awfully close to the range of the 250s, not to mention our tanks."

"They couldn't possibly be that stupid, could they?" Jackson asked. "If they land in gun range those 250s will take their landing ships apart piece by piece."

It turned out they weren't that stupid. The ships began to make their landings, one by one. At the Eden site they touched down directly in the middle of Knoxville Bed — a large, flat area that had once been a shallow lake back in the days when Mars had featured surface water. Located only seventy-five kilometers west of the Jutfield Gap, it was only about twenty kilometers out of range of the MPG heavy guns. At New Pittsburgh they began to land in another large, flat area — this one a wide valley surrounded by tall mountains. Again, they were less than twenty kilometers out of range of the 250s.

"Get this information to special forces command and to air command at both cities," Jackson said. "They have my orders to start planning their deployments as soon as they get it."

"Shipping it now," Sprinkle said. "What do you think they're planning? It's completely against their doctrine to land that close."

"Give me a second to look this over," Jackson said as he flipped back to his map page. It had now been updated with the red dots that indicated confirmed landings. As he watched, two more appeared as two more landing craft settled in. He nodded his head in surprised respect. "Someone up there is doing some thinking," he told Sprinkle.

"How's that, General?"

"Look at these areas they landed in. They're as flat as anything on the surface of Mars and have no hills for our special forces teams to use to get in close. One's a former river valley and one's a former lake. They landed right in the middle of each of them."

"So our special forces teams won't be able to land?"

"They will," Jackson said. "It will just have to be a little further out, maybe fifteen klicks or so. And they won't be able to get as close in either." He sighed. "I hope they don't actually have someone up there who knows what he's doing. That could really complicate things."

"Keep spread out," Lon told his squad. "Stick close to the boulders when you can and for God's sake, keep your eyes peeled for hovers. We have no idea what they're doing at that LZ."

No one answered him but everyone took his words to heart and kept trudging onward.

They were on the Knoxville Bed, less than two kilometers from where the Hummingbird had dropped them off with more than eight kilometers left to march, all of it through disconcertingly flat terrain in which the only cover was the boulders and rocks that had settled into this area millions of years before. Ahead, they could make out the outlines of the landing ships poking up above the surface and could see the bright flare to the west of two more — the last two they were told — coming in for their own landings. They were the first recon unit scheduled to get a look at what was going on with the WestHems. Though the recon satellites had tracked the ships all the way down to the surface, they lacked the sophistication to see what was happening now that they were on the ground.

"What's the word on them sending some of our tanks out here?" Lisa asked, shifting her anti-aircraft laser from one shoulder to the next. When told that the WestHems were landing just outside the city that was the first rumor that has started flying around — the Martian armor — with its ability to suck oxygen in from the atmosphere — had an un-refueled range that put it well within range of driving out here. If armored forces could arrive in time and in great enough numbers they could easily pin the WestHem armor inside of their landing ships forever. That was exactly why extraterrestrial invasion doctrine dictated that forces landed so far out.

"That's part of what we're coming out here to find out," Lon said. "If they haven't unloaded any tanks yet and if they haven't even started to, General Jackson might give the order. He'd be an idiot not to." Lon shrugged. "Of course I'm not convinced yet that he's not an idiot."

"You have to admit," Horishito said, lugging the SAW across his back, "he was right about holding back on the shift of forces. He waited until WestHem committed to hitting Eden and New Pittsburgh and then he started moving them. If he hadn't done that one or the other of us would have been virtually defenseless."

"True," said Lon, who was willing to admit when a position he'd held in the past had been proven wrong. "I still say he fucked up big with that not firing on retreating forces bullshit. If he hadn't done that there'd be a fuck of a lot less of them fight out here."

The conversation petered out — partially because of a lack of new topics, partially because they were getting closer to the WestHem positions and they didn't want to take the chance that a patrol had been sent out that could pick up on their radio emissions. Forty minutes went by and the landing ships grew nearer — near enough that they could now make out details of what was going on.

Lon motioned them to spread out further and take cover. Spreading out was easy enough but taking cover was a little more difficult. The rock cover was pretty sparse out here.

"Switch transmission power down to half," Lon whispered. "I know the ships are still out of range but we're looking at direct line of sight here. You don't get better transmission conditions than this."

Everyone did as was asked.

Lon hunkered behind the largest boulder he could find, which was only about a meter and a half in diameter. The others all did the same, stretching in a line across fifty meters.

"You know something, sarge," said Jefferson, "if they send troops out here in APCs looking for us, there's really nowhere to hide. Effective camouflage range might be cut all the way down to two hundred meters or so."

"I know, Jeffy," Lon said, adjusting his combat goggles. "Whoever is making the decisions for these pukes these days is either really smart or really stupid, depending on what their tanks are doing."

He trained his goggle-enhanced eyes out toward the landing ships. He sighed as he saw what was going on over there. "It looks like maybe we're dealing with really smart," he announced.

There were no exposed troops visible around any of the landing ships. There was, however, at least a battalion worth of main battle tanks, two dozen armored bulldozers, and more than fifty APCs moving around. The tanks were taking up positions on the perimeter, pulling into hull-down positions that had been dug by the bulldozers. The APCs mission was a mystery at first but as they watched them it became hideously clear what they were doing. They would travel over to one of the landing ships — one that they identified as a personnel carrier — and park just under the egress ramp. Ten biosuited soldiers would then quickly emerge, go down the ramp (with a few stumbling and tumbling their way down) and then climb into the APC. The APC would then drive half a kilometer across the open ground and disgorge the soldiers next to the personnel entrance to one of the armor carrying ships.

"They're shuttling," Lon said. "The APCs are taking the tank crews from the personnel ship to the armor ship so they won't be exposed to mortar fire."

"They've learned from the first time," Lisa said, looking through her own combat goggles at the same sight.

"Yeah," Lon said. "I think we might not be as effective here as we were in the first LZ."

"So attacking them with our tanks is out?" Horishito asked.

"Yes," Lon said. "At the rate they're deploying their armor they'll have a couple of battalions dug in on their perimeter in two hours. It will take almost three hours to get our armor out here and they'll be facing prepared positions." He shook his head. "Nope, I think we're going to have to go traditional here."

"Damn," Horishito said. "I was hoping their stupidity was perpetual."