Chapter 24A

Eden Theater — behind the WestHem line, 16 kilometers east of the Jutfield Gap
September 14, 2146, 1612 hours

Five hundred and eleven Martian tanks had entered the valley from the Sierra Madres to the north or from the Overlook Mountains to the south to make the surprise attack on the WestHem artillery guns. The mission had cost them sixteen tanks in the brief, but violent exchange with the battalion of tanks guarding the guns. The rest, having completed their primary mission, were now heading west at the best possible speed, their intent to go after their secondary target: The WestHem supply trains, which were sitting back towards the gap in case resupply of the main force became necessary.

Inside one of the tanks toward the middle of the formation, Zen Valentine sat in the commander's chair, looking at the telemetry on one screen and the Intelligence briefing on the other.

"Targets are eleven klicks away, stationary, spread out over one and a half klicks of ground," he told Belinda and Xenia. "The supply column consists of sixteen trains with fifteen cars per train. Each train is towed by six modified tanks. Do not waste time or energy engaging the towing tanks. They are pulling engines only and they have no defensive or offensive capabilities. Xenia, you'll know them when you see them because they will be stationed at the front of each train and they have no cannons."

"Got it," Xenia said, looking at an identification photo of a towing tank on her own screen.

"The column is protected by twenty-four mobile SALs," Zen went on. "They are currently deployed in a circle around the formation. Don't worry about them either. They're bad news for the Mosquitoes but they can't hurt us."

"Right," Xenia agreed. She already knew this, of course — it was basic armor school training — but it was good to go over such things for clarity before going into battle.

"Now, onto what we do have to worry about," Zen said. "There is a battalion of main battle tanks and a battalion of infantry guarding the column from ground attack. The tanks are grouped into squads and platoons and deployed throughout the perimeter of the column. The infantry is mounted in APCs and they are grouped in the middle of the column. Intelligence says the infantry units are equipped with portable anti-air and portable anti-tank lasers.

"Our platoon is assigned to armor suppression on the northeast side of the column. When we engage, our primary targets will be the tanks, the APCs, and any dismounted infantry troops. Xenia, remember to stick to your zone. There are a thousand WestHem tanks fifteen to twenty minutes behind us so if we're going to do any damage to that column, everyone has to stick to their assignment. Got it?"

"Got it," she said.

"If you manage to clear all the tanks in your zone you can start hitting the supply cars themselves. Ammunition carriers are the primary target followed by hydrogen carriers and then oxygen carriers. Remember, it will take at least two and maybe as many as four shots in exactly the same place to penetrate the armor on those cars. Take your shot and then put your second shot right on the hot spot you just created and then, once you're recharged, do it again."

"Fuckin' aye," Xenia said, feeling her heart hammering in anticipation. "Do you think we'll be able to knock out all the guard tanks as quick as we did back at the guns?"

"Hopefully," Zen said. "And we're getting a little help in that too. Command says that four flights of Mosquitoes are inbound to hit the tanks before we get there. Hopefully they'll do us some good."

"Four flights?" Belinda asked. "That's only eight planes."

"That's all they can spare," Zen said. "The rest of them are pounding on the APCs moving in on the line."

"Oh well," Xenia said. "It leaves more targets for me then, doesn't it?"

"Fuckin' aye," Zen said.

Brian and Matt were one of the planes inbound to deal with the armor. They had been in the plane now for the past twelve hours, landing only to refuel every few hours and then going right back up again. Both men were very tired and very sore, particularly Matt, who still sported an open wound on his gluteus maximus that screamed with pain every time they pulled a turn higher than two Gs — which was to say every turn they made during their firing runs. He could feel wet blood squishing around in the saturated bandage every time he shifted position, could feel rivulets of it running down onto the back of his leg, collecting in the wrinkles where the ill-fitting biosuit he'd stolen from Xavier Goodhit didn't quite provide the proper pressurization.

"How's the ass, kid?" Brian asked as they screamed through one of the valleys. "You holding up?"

"I forgot all about it until you mentioned it," Matt told him.

"You sure?"

"Hey, boss," Matt said, "how many times I gotta tell you? It's just some skin off my ass."

Brian nodded, although he believed Matt's words about as much as he believed the big three military briefings. "You just let me know if it gets too bad. The last fuckin' think in the solar system I need is to have my sis pass out from pain."

"You know it, boss," Matt promised. "You're turning right to two-eight-three in five, four, three, two, one."

"They cut to the right above a shallow series of hilltops between to mountains, pulling 2.8 Gs according to the meter on their screens. Matt bit his lip against the pain, feeling a fresh glut of blood come pouring out of his body. When they leveled out he took a few deep breaths as the pain slowly faded out. He looked down at his telemetry screen again, trying to memorize the locations of all the tanks in the enemy formation so he wouldn't have to search too hard on the firing run. The WestHems had twenty-four mobile surface-to-air lasers protecting that supply column and twenty-four SALs in such a concentrated area meant they were cutting their exposure time down to three seconds to reduce the risk of being felled by a lucky shot.

"Look at all those tanks we put down there," Brian said after taking a brief glance down at his own telemetry screen.

"Hell yeah," Matt said enthusiastically. "More than five hundred of them. They destroyed those mobile guns in ten minutes, man! Ten fuckin minutes to do what we couldn't do after tryin' all night and all day! How the hell did they get that many tanks in the rear?"

"They had to have moved them in over the mountains," Brian opined.

"Is that possible?" Matt asked. "We fly over them mountains all the time. I never saw nothin' down there it looked like you could drive a tank over."

"Let alone five hundred of them," Brian said. "I don't know. I can't think of any other way they could've done it short of driving all the way around the mountains and coming in from behind the LZ itself. That would be a trip of more than four hundred klicks. They would've had to refuel at least twice and probably three times."

"And how would they have gotten by the LZ?" Matt asked. "There's still almost a regiment of tanks guarding that and they have visual from the Sierra Madres to the Overlooks. No way five hundred tanks just strolled by without being seen."

"Well... however they did it, they did it and they killed the shit out of that mobile arty."

"Ready to change your bad opinion of General Jackson now?" Matt asked.

"I don't know," Brian said. "I'll admit that the massive flanking maneuver was a stroke of genius, but don't forget there's a trade-off."

"What trade-off?"

"They neutralized the arty so the ground pounders won't have to get pulverized into oblivion anymore. That's good. And now they're going after the supply column to keep the WestHems from resupplying. That's good too — if it's successful. But don't forget, while those five hundred tanks are out here, the main line is now missing more than a third of it's tank support to help fight off the main thrust. If they push through the main line because we don't have enough tanks to fight them off... well, they'll occupy Eden in a few hours. If that happens this whole brilliant maneuver was for nothing, wasn't it?"

"Well... yeah, I guess you have kind of a point there."

"I sure as shit wouldn't want to be one of those poor slobs in the trenches," Brian said. "When those WestHem marines start moving on them a lot of them are going to get a lot worse than just some skin off their asses."

They flew on, making another course change and then another, their wing following their motions blindly, acting on faith in Brian's skills and Matt's navigation. Soon they reached the IP.

"Thirty seconds to target," Matt said. "I'm picking up multiple search radars and active IR from the column. Nothing strong enough to get a hit off us. Mostly leaky signals coming around the peak."

"Static," Brian said, screwing up his concentration to the max. "Your lasers?"

"Charged and ready," Matt said. "I'm gonna try to hit two tanks per pass but three seconds ain't much time when they're scattered among the supply train."

"Do the best you can," Brian said. "That's all you can do. You got my vectors?"

"When you clear the last hill cut hard right to two-seven-seven. When the carrot moves cut right again to zero-zero-three and pull up to three-four-seven meters AGL."

"Got it," Brian said. "And here we go."

They shot out over the valley and cut hard to the right. Matt felt the sting in his ass again, felt more blood gush out, but he hardly noticed, so intent was he on the mass of targets that suddenly appeared on his screen. He saw towing tanks and SALs and dozens upon dozens of tanker cars and boxcars. But the targets were more than six kilometers away and the plane was moving fast. Matt wasn't able to spot and turn his targeting recticle on an actual main battle tank until they were already turning back toward the mountains and safety. He pushed the firing button for cannon number one and saw the distinctive double flash of a direct hit. A second later, before he could even begin to target a second MBT, they were back in the hills, all the targets gone from his screen. This was one more tank then their wing managed to hit.

"Damn," Matt mumbled. "Only one hit."

"You'll do better next time," Brian said. "It's a bitch of a mission. You got our return course up?"

"Left to two-nine-eight in three, two, one," Matt said.

They circled around again, coming in from further to the west this time and targeting the rear of the formation. Once again Matt was only able to hit one tank but this time the wing managed to hit two. As they disappeared back into the hills there came an eruption of flashes from the SALs as they opened up, trying desperately to make one of those coveted lucky shots. The two planes disappeared without incident. They then came in from the east again two minutes later. This time Matt managed to hit two tanks and the wing hit one.

"Now we're sucking some clit!" Brian said as he dove into the safety of the hills once again.

In all the eight planes made five runs apiece. None of them were hit by the SALs although Brian and Matt's wing had one of the lasers pass within two meters of them (they would never know this, however, and so therefore would never be bothered by how close to death or capture they'd come). In all they managed to kill a grand total of twenty-seven of the fifty-eight tanks of the protection battalion before they were recalled.

"Why are they pulling us back?" Brian asked. "We're on a fuckin' roll here."

"Our tanks are moving in," Matt replied. "They'll be in engagement range in less than thirty seconds."

"All right then," Brian said. "Wish them luck. Get us a course back to the main line so we can take out a few more APCs before we have to go in for fuel."

"You'll have it in one minute, boss," Matt told him.

Four hundred and ninety-five Martian main battle tanks waded into the supply column, forming a semi-circle around it, and began to fire their lasers. The lead tanks in each sector, including the one crewed by Zen, Belinda, and Xenia, were tasked with anti-armor duties. The rest went after the tanker cars and the ammunition carriers.

"Target, tank!" Zen called out to Xenia as two tanks in their line suddenly exploded. "One o'clock. Get the fucker, X!"

She got him, blowing a hole in it and sending the turret flying with a single shot. She panned back and forth, searching for more tanks and found one peeking out between two of the supply cars. It's lasers flashed and two more Martian tanks exploded. Xenia fired on it, killing it.

The first of the ammunition carriers went up a few seconds later. There was a brilliant flash and the entire car was ripped to shreds, the concussion enough to overturn the two adjacent cars in its line, the shrapnel ripping into one with enough force to cause it to explode as well. This overturned two of the hydrogen carriers. Soon, other ammo cars began to explode too.

"They're reporting that three shots will take out an ammo carrier," Zen said. "They have to be exactly in the same place though, not just overlapping a little."

"I got another tank," Xenia said, panning that way, waiting impatiently for her laser to recharge. "It just came into my zone. It's not firing at the moment."

"Probably recharging," Belinda said as she brought them in a little closer.

Xenia's charge light came on. She fired at the tank and watched it explode. "Target down," she said. "You see anything else in the zone, Zen?"

"No more MBTs in our zone," he reported. "It sounds like we already got most of them across the board. Start hitting the hydrogen carriers."

"Fuckin' aye," she said, putting her targeting recticle on one of the cylindrical cars. When the charge light came on she fired, hitting it dead center and causing a bright flash to flare. As the flare faded there was a solid heat signature left behind. She kept her recticle directly on it until the other cannon was charged. She fired. The flash came again and the heat signature grew brighter. She waited impatiently until the first charge light came on again. She fired. Once again there was a bright flash but no penetration of the tank.

"Damn, that is some tough-ass armor plating they got there," she said.

Her other cannon reported charged and she fired for the fourth time. This time she achieved a burn-through of the armor. The results weren't all that dramatic. The side of the tanker buckled open and a cloud of vapor suddenly rushed out at high speed, engulfing the car for a few seconds before rising into the air and dissipating. Though hydrogen was one of the most flammable gases in existence there was not enough oxygen in the Martian atmosphere for it to burn even when a high intensity laser seared into it. But drama wasn't what they were going for here. The gas was all gone for that tanker, floating in the Martian atmosphere now, useless to the WestHem marines who relied on it to fuel their military machines.

Ammunition cars began to explode with more regularity now, scattering the cars around them, occasionally causing secondary explosions, a few times causing chain reaction explosions of four or five cars at a time. Within five minutes the entire column was in tatters, with overturned cars and debris lying everywhere. A giant but brief fireball erupted at one point when the dissipating hydrogen from one tanker mixed with the dissipating oxygen from another tanker and was penetrated by one of the lasers, thus fulfilling the three requirements of combustion — fuel, oxidizer, and ignition source.

"That was some shit," Xenia said, blinking her eyes to clear the afterimages the flash had caused. The concussion from the blast had been strong enough to rock their tank.

"That ain't propaganda," Zen agreed.

While Xenia went to work on her next target a platoon of dismounted marines suddenly appeared from the carnage, anti-tank lasers in their hands. "Zen!" Xenia said, alarmed as they began to set up their shots.

"Keep firing," Zen said. "I've got 'em." He grabbed the controls for the 4mm machine gun and put his recticle on the center of the platoon. He opened up, spraying bullets across them, killing many, and causing the others to go diving for cover back in the carnage. Other tanks took up the cause as well, sending their own machine gun fire after them. A few sent eighty-millimeter shells in their direction, proximity bursting them and blowing the exposed marines to pieces. The threat from the dismounts was neutralized before they could get off a single shot.

"All units," a voice said in Zen's ear. "Lead elements of the WestHem tank forces are now less than eight klicks out. Disengage and begin moving to the pre-planned egress point."

"We're pulling out," Zen said as Xenia ruptured an oxygen tanker. "Cease firing, X. B, get us the fuck out of here. Course should be on your screen now."

The Martian tanks turned away from the supply column and began to run at high speed away from the carnage they'd caused. Half headed northwest, the other half southwest, their plan to disappear the same way they'd come: into the mountains.

It was a good plan but it hadn't taken several things into account. They hadn't counted on an entire regiment of WestHem tanks to be less than ten minutes behind them and they hadn't counted on the fact that the survivors from the supply column would radio command and let them know the direction of travel of their tormentors as they'd left. Thus the WestHem tanks in pursuit of them divided into two, half chasing after the northern section, the other half after the southern. The last thing not taken into account was how long it would take to get more than two hundred tanks through a small opening between the hills and into the pass beyond it. A bottleneck quickly developed on both egress points, with lines of tanks waiting impatiently for those in front to clear the pass. And that was how the lead elements of the WestHem tanks found their enemy when they came into range.

"We're under fire!" Zen announced as tanks began to explode all around them. "Xenia, get the cannons turned around and start returning it!"

She did as she was told, turning and looking out on a landscape that was now dotted with main battle tanks, their lasers flashing. She immediately began to shoot back, exploding two of them within ten seconds. Her heart hammered in fear as she waited for her cannons to recharge.

The other tanks massed near the pass turned their cannons on the WestHems as well. There were plenty of targets and as the tanks continued to work their way into the mountains an epic slaughter developed on both sides as tanks exploded left and right, as flashes of lasers winked from every direction.

"We're forming up in lines," Zen told Belinda. "A lot of us are overlapping fire or blocking each other's shots. Get us moved twenty meters right."

"Moving," Belinda said, hitting the accelerator and moving the T-bar, lining their tank up against the others near them. Two of them exploded suddenly and she almost panicked. "Zen, when do we get out of here?"

"When command calls our squad and tells us to move," Zen said. "Until then, we hold and try to keep them off of us."

It went on for the better part of ten minutes. The WestHem tanks stopped their advance and spread out to give themselves better firing positions. The Martian tanks did the same and the intensity of the battle picked up, with tanks on both sides blowing into oblivion with horrifying regularity.