Greenies

before we stand down for the day.'

July 26, 2146

Sector Bravo-7, 60 kilometers west of Eden

The hill stood 234 meters above the surrounding terrain and was nearly a kilometer in diameter at the base. Four APC's, all with the WestHem Marines emblem painted over and the Martian Flag stenciled on instead, rolled slowly up to the base of it on the south side and stopped. While gunners stood by at their mounted weapons, the back doors of the vehicles opened and ten fully equipped and bio-suited soldiers climbed out of each one, their weapons in hands. They quickly formed a defensive perimeter away from the APC's, weapons pointed outward and ready to engage any targets they found. Of course they knew that they wouldn't find any targets out here since the training mission they were engaged upon had not yet started, but their lieutenant insisted that they treat every drill as if it were the real thing.

'Clear,' said Sergeant Walker, the second-in-command of third platoon of Baker company of the 1^st Battalion of the fledgling 17^th Armored Cavalry Regiment. The entire 1^st of the 17^th was engaged in this particular drill, which was designed to be a realistic simulation of the situation that they would soon be encountering with the approaching WestHem marines.

'I copy clear,' said Lieutenant Fernandez, the platoon commander. He slowly got to his feet, looking over his assembled troops with a practiced eye. They were not exactly in perfect formation, but they were better than they had been a few days before. At least if they had been fired on they might've been able to return it with some effectiveness. 'On your feet, platoon,' he told them.

One by one they stood up. Jeff Waters, who had been tasked with a squad automatic weapon today, flipped on the safety and slung it over the shoulder of his biosuit. He took a few breaths of the manufactured air and then flipped down the water dispensing straw with his tongue and had a small drink. He was facing back towards Eden and he could see the distant high rises poking up over the horizon. Next to him was Hicks, his constant nemesis, and the man who always seemed to be on his heel or in front of him. Hicks was looking at the buildings too.

'We're way in the hell out here,' Hicks said whimsically.

'Missing you mommy?' Jeff asked him.

'No, missing yours. She always did have the tightest pussy.'

Jeff let that one go. In truth the banter between them had evolved to the point where it was almost friendly in nature. Now when they were actually mad at each other they didn't talk at all.

'Waters and Hicks,' said Fernandez, 'if you two are done with your little chat, maybe we could proceed with the briefing, huh?'

'Sorry, LT,' Jeff said.

'Go ahead, LT,' said Hicks.

'Thank you,' Fernandez said. 'Now then. What we're standing at the base of is Hill 678. It is one of many hills that overlooks the main route that an attacking enemy will use to approach the west side of Eden which, as I'm sure you're aware, is where both the spaceport and the MPG base are located. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where the battle is going to take place. This is where first contact with the WestHem marines is going to occur. This series of hills that stretches twenty some-odd kilometers from north to south, is our first line of defense.

'Now hopefully the special forces teams will whittle their numbers down a bit before they get here. And I'm sure that you've also heard rumor that we've formed a Navy of sorts and that even as we speak they are out there knocking off a few of those transports for us.'

'You mean that those ships didn't just collide with each other?' asked Hicks, to the amusement of all. The official WestHem explanation for the destroyed transport ships and the fact that the ships that had collided had not really been anywhere near each other in the formation was not something that had escaped the notice of the Martian people. Though the interim Martian government refused to comment on the events, it was a known fact that a number of the Owls that had been captured at Triad Naval Base were no longer docked there.

'Be that as it may,' Fernandez continued, 'our job out here is to train for the worst case scenario and the worst case scenario is that an entire army is going to be marching towards this line, equipped with tanks, APCs, and heavy hover and artillery support. We have an understrength division of inexperienced troops to hold that off. Our task is to keep them away from Eden. We, the dismounted infantry, will play a key role in that task. We will occupy this hill, along with Lieutenant Zander's platoon of anti-armor troops. Zander and his people will use their shoulder fired AT-lasers to blast the armor that approaches. This will force the WestHems to take this hill away from us before they can move through this section in safety. That is what we are here to prevent.

'Now the enemy will pound us with heavy artillery, mortars, and hover attacks. But the only way that they can actually take this hill away from us is to march their own dismounted infantry up here and occupy our positions. Our part of the battle will be nothing different than what our great-great-great grandfathers did back in World War III on Earth. We will engage in gunfights from our high ground and our trenches with armed men trying to move upward on us. It will be warfare brought down to its most basic level. We're the grunts people, the dogfaces, the doughboys, the whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-us. And this is where we're going to make our first stand against them.

'So what we're out here to do today is to practice this ancient art of warfare. We are but one hill among many on this line of approach. The entire 1^st of the 17^th is going to go up against the entire 16^th ACR, our most experienced and oldest MPG unit. Even as we speak, they are out there in the wastelands, moving in on us. This will be the most comprehensive and realistic exercise that we've performed so far. So let's get ourselves up that hill, get our training rounds loaded, and start doing what soldiers do best: waiting for the opposition to arrive.'

One by one, in a loose formation and moving rapidly, the men and women of third platoon moved up the hill and occupied the trenches that had been dug there long before.

The training battle raged for almost forty hours. Though the 16^th ACR, under the command of Colonel Chin, took heavy simulated casualties from the 1^st of the 17^th, they pushed them methodically off of each hill, clearing an open path westward. The remnants of the 1^st battalion fell back to other hills and fought on, inflicting more casualties as they made a new stand but were soon pushed even further backwards. When it was all said and done, the western edge of Eden fell to the 16^th ACR and the bulk of the 1^st Battalion were either simulated casualties or simulated POWs.

Thought they lost the exercise, and though the men and women who had stayed awake for nearly two days, firing thousands of helium-filled projectiles down at the their attackers, were dispirited by the apparent ease with which they were dislodged, their commanders were quite pleased. The exercise had been designed to be nearly impossible to win, with every advantage going to the attacker. Now the 1^st of the 17^th had a taste of what battle would be like, the unpredictability of it, the mind-numbing fatigue of it, and most important of all, the mechanics of it.

After a two-day stand-down for rest, Colonel Chin's regiment would be out in the wastelands again, this time attacking the 2^nd Battalion of the 17^th ACR. Four days after that, they would attack the 3^rd of the 17^th.

July 28^th, 2146

Deep space, between the orbits of Mercury and Venus

The armada continued on, coasting through space at seventy kilometers per second. Because of the attacks made by Mermaid, it was now an armada that was significantly more alert than it had been on the outset. All active detection systems on all ships were powered up and sweeping through designated sectors. A full wing of attack and detection craft now maintained a 24-hour combat space patrol, circling around on all sides in overlapping patterns. However, despite all of this surveillance of the flight path, it had been more than a week now since Mermaid's attacks and no one really believed that there could be any more Owls out there gunning for them. As a result, reactions were a bit lapsed and judgment was a bit overconfident once again. The perfect environment for disaster.

Swordfish was the second of the Owls that had been launched from Triad Naval Base. Ron Bales, her commander, a former detection technician in the WestHem navy like Brett, employed the same classic attack pattern Mermaid had used. He set his ship right in the path of the advance, relatively motionless from the perspective of the fast-moving armada. When the time was right, Bales gave the order and Swordfish's weapons crew unleashed two nuclear torpedoes — each at a Panama transport ship — from a distance of 320,000 kilometers. She then turned and moved clear of the firing