Greenies

voice.

'Three hours?' all four of his sergeants and a good number of the men said in unison.

'I know its not much time,' Callahan allowed. 'Hell, it'll take us most of that time just to get suited and armed up. But that's the way its gonna be, guys. This landing ship will be departing this vessel in three hours and we need to be ready when that happens. So lets get this briefing started, shall we?'

Charlie Company, which Callahan and his platoon were part of, had been tasked with securing the north side of the landing zone. They would exit the landing ship immediately upon touchdown and move overland on foot to a ridgeline two kilometers away. From there they would spread out by platoon to different sectors of the ridge and dig in to guard the perimeter. For at least the first eight hours, possibly more, they would be the only forces in the area. They would have no hover support, no armored vehicle support, and their only artillery support would be from the 150-millimeter guns mounted on the landing ship itself.

'Navigation and targeting is going to be somewhat of a pain in the ass,' Callahan explained. 'The greenies have apparently encrypted all of the signals from their navigation satellites, which means that unless our intelligence division can ferret out the proper code somehow, our GPS systems will not work. Everything will have to be done by inertial navigation, so be sure to zero out your combat computers when you leave the ship.'

'How will we zero out our computers if the ship itself doesn't even know exactly where it is?' asked Sergeant Hamilton.

Callahan grunted a little in frustration. That was exactly the question that he had asked of Major Wild when he had received his briefing. He had not been given an adequate answer. 'It will at least give us a rough estimate of our location,' he said now.

'A rough estimate?' asked Mallory. 'How rough are we talking?'

'Accurate to within five hundred meters,' Callahan said.

Everyone looked at him for a moment to see if he was joking. Finally they were forced to conclude that he wasn't.

'Five hundred meters?' Mallory said. 'That's half a klick. How are supposed to call down artillery with that kind of a margin for error? We could end up calling it down right on top of ourselves.'

'Intelligence seems confident that it will be able to hack into the greenie Internet and get the GPS codes within a day or two,' Callahan said. 'And in the meantime, estimates are that greenie resistance should be non- existent or very light at the LZ itself. Remember, we're three hundred klicks from their main defenses. It's not like they can just drive a division of troops out to engage us.'

'What about those transport aircraft they have?' asked Private Stinson. 'Those Hummingbird things we were briefed on. They can transport a squad, can't they?'

'They are capable of transporting a squad of troops,' Callahan confirmed. 'And they do have the range to fly this far. But our landing ship, as you know, is equipped with a full array of passive and active anti-aircraft sensors. They wouldn't be able to get one of those things within fifty klicks of our position without us picking it up. So unless those troops want to walk fifty klicks across the surface, they won't be able to engage us. Our landing zone will be perfectly secure. That's a good a guarantee as you'll get in this operation I'm told.'

And strangely, though nothing else that they had been told about Martian capabilities had been true so far, everyone felt better having heard this.

Martian Planetary Guard Headquarters Building, New Pittsburgh

August 16, 2146

The official command center for the Martian Planetary Guard operations was on the top floor of the main MPG building near the capital. It was a windowless office, stuffed full of desks with computer terminals mounted on them and bustling with high-ranking officers and lower ranking technical people. On the front wall was a holographic projection of the entire planetary surface, a display that could be zoomed in at any particular point to a resolution of better than ten meters per centimeter. Currently the display was zoomed out and showed blue marks where MPG units were deployed. As of yet, most of the troops were still on stand-by at the headquarters building in each of the cities. At the Eden MPG headquarters, the biggest of them, more than sixty thousand troops were standing by for movement orders.

General Jackson was weary after having spent the past twenty-four hours in this room. His T-shirt was rumpled and marred with sweat stains. His eyes were bleary, with bags beneath them, and his face was unshaven. He had been advised multiple times by his closest staff members that he needed to get some sleep but so far he had refused to heed their advice. Since the WestHem armada had entered Martian orbit he had only grabbed quick catnaps in his chair.

'General,' a voice said in his headset, startling him out of a light doze. It was Captain Edison, who was monitoring the reconnaissance satellites. 'I'm picking up a separation from the armada.'

'Landing craft separation?' Jackson asked, his fatigue instantly falling away.

'Looks like it,' said Edison. 'We're getting good feed from the KH-11 and the KH-17 birds on either side of their orbit. I have a positive landing craft separation from one of the Panamas. Looks like its now maneuvering into a descent corridor.'

'Put it on my screen,' Jackson ordered.

It appeared a moment later, a blurry infrared image of an object drifting above one of the transport ships. The distance between the two objects continued to slowly grow. White flashes from the bottom and sides indicated that the maneuvering thrusters were being fired.

'Keep a track on it,' Jackson said. 'I want course projections as soon as feasible.'

'Working on it now,' Edison said. 'Do you want... stand by.'

'What is it?' Jackson asked.

'Another separation underway,' Edison told him. 'No, make that two.'

'From different ships?'

'Correct, and here's another now. That's a total of four landing craft separating from four different ships.'

Jackson nodded. 'What do you want to bet that they're heading for Eden, New Pittsburgh, Libby and Proctor?' he asked the room at large. Those were the four major cities that General Wrath had told the solar system his forces would be landing at.

'I think that's a bet I'll have to turn down,' Edison answered. 'I've got good passive tracks on all four.'

'Shall we alert the forces at the target cities?' asked Colonel Anderson, who was in charge of logistical deployment.

'Let's keep the combat troops on standby for now,' Jackson said. 'I don't want to send them outside until we're sure where these enemy units are landing. Lets get the artillery units in all cities activated though. There's always the chance that the Earthlings will do something stupid and land close to the cities. If they do, I want arty falling on them from the moment their gear touch the ground.'

'Deploying all artillery units now,' Anderson said, calling up a screen on his computer.

By the time the main engines of the four landing craft began to fire, decelerating them and starting their descent towards the Martian atmosphere, men and women all over the planet were donning their biosuits and racing through airlocks to man their artillery positions. Teams of loaders crawled into heavily fortified fixed sites on the outskirts of every Martian city. Other teams crawled into mobile guns and began to drive across the soil towards their pre-determined firing points. By the time the first of the landing craft made contact with the thin atmosphere ninety minutes later all guns reported ready. The MPG was now capable of raining down horrific destruction on any point within one hundred kilometers of any of its populated areas.

'I have preliminary course paths for all four vessels,' reported Edison.

'Let's have it,' Jackson said, sipping from a cup of coffee.

'Just like we expected,' Edison said. 'Targets Alpha and Delta are in equatorial inclinations. They appear to be heading for the vicinity of Libby and Eden respectively. Targets Bravo and Charlie are in high latitude inclinations. They appear to be heading for New Pittsburgh and Proctor.'

'Just like they told us they would,' Jackson mused. 'Which target will land first?'

'Unless there is some extensive maneuvering, Delta will touch down first near Eden somewhere. Estimated timeframe is approximately twenty-seven minutes.'

'Okay,' Jackson said. 'As soon as they're down on the ground, we get the combat troops moving towards the defensive positions. Full deployment in the cities that have forces land outside of them. All tank crews, all