Caucasian and he had a short, neatly trimmed mustache. His mouth was hanging open as if he were breathing hard. He had no idea that he was taking the last breaths of his life. 'I'm on target,' she said.
'Fire,' he told her.
Slowly, smoothly, without stopping to think about what she was doing, she pressed the firing button on her rifle. It kicked against her shoulder with a flash of red fire from the barrel and a sharp crack that sounded loud to her ears but that would be completely inaudible to anyone more than twenty meters away. Sound traveled very slowly and very inefficiently in the thin Martian atmosphere. The bullet that shot out of the barrel moved much more efficiently though. It was four millimeters in diameter and moved nearly ten times faster than the sound waves. There was little in the way of air friction to slow it down or push it off course. It traveled over that 486 meters in two tenths of a second and drilled into the point man's face shield less than two millimeters from where Lisa's targeting recticle was placed. It smashed through the Kevlar reinforced plastic of the shield like it was tissue paper, drilled into the man's face, through his brain, and out the back of his skull with enough velocity left over to punch a hole the size of a man's fist in the back of his helmet. Blood, skull fragments, pieces of brain matter, and chunks of helmet flew in a messy spray behind him. The blood boiled away into a misty red vapor the moment it hit the air. The point man never knew what hit him.
Even before he could fall down Lon and Matza fired too, sending their bullets out towards a lethal intersection with their targets.
It happened so fast that Mallory had a difficult time processing things. One second he was walking in the rear of the formation, putting one foot in front of the other, and the next, all three of his comrades were down. Spanky got it first, his head snapping back in a spray of gore and boiled blood. Zimmerman went a half second later, another headshot, another spray of red vapor, skull chunks, and mushy brain flying out through a large hole in his helmet. And then Trower was hit with a burst of machine gun fire right in the midsection, at least four rounds. They blew out the back of his biosuit, exploding two of the compartmentalized air chambers in the tank with a loud bang. Trower managed a grunt of surprise and then he fell forward in the curious slow motion style that was all the rage on the Martian surface.
'What the...' was all Mallory had time for before bullets were slamming into the ground all around him. They plinked off rocks and kicked up dust around his feet. They whizzed through the air as streaks in the infrared spectrum of his combat goggles. He was under fire! He was under fire and three of his men had already been hit!
Mallory was a veteran of ambush attacks by Argentine rebels. His brain reacted instantly once the message that he was under attack was processed. He threw himself to the ground. Only he didn't drop immediately as he did when he was on Earth in normal gravity. Instead, he seemed to float downward at an almost serene pace. When he hit the dirt, he bounced back up and then slowly landed back down again. Two bullets came plinking in less than a half meter from his head.
'Fuck me!' he barked, feeling the adrenaline start to flow now. There were greenies out there and they were shooting at him! He could see the muzzle flashes from their weapons now, coming from the hills about half a kilometer in front of him. Half a kilometer! They were putting down frighteningly accurate fire from half a klick away. God help him.
He began scrambling to get under cover, trying to crawl behind a large boulder a meter to his right. His movements were ungainly and did little more than kick up more dust for a moment. Finally he started to inch along, bullets still flying all around him. A rock near his right hand was hit and flipped nearly a meter into the air, chips of it exploding everywhere. Finally his hands were on the rock. He pulled himself around it, putting its bulk between him and the enemy, praying that it was large enough to provide cover.
Bullets began to slam into the rock now, throwing chips of it into the air to rain down upon him. Acting quickly, not stopping to wonder how he had been miraculously spared when the other three men had been potted as easily as pop-up targets on a shooting range, not knowing that he was doing exactly what his tormentors wished him to do, he switched his radio frequency to the main tactical channel, calling up his mapping display in the same instant.
'Callahan, this is Mallory. Emergency traffic!' he screamed.
Callahan came on the air immediately. 'What is it, Mallory?' he asked, his voice calm.
'I'm taking fire!' he said. 'I have a squad sized unit shooting at me from grid three-one-bravo. The hill marked two-three-four. I repeat. Hill two-three-four in grid three-one-bravo. The rest of the patrol is down. Requesting immediate arty support!'
'Confirm the rest of the squad is down?' Callahan asked, his voice kicking up a notch in excitement.
'That's affirm,' Mallory said, wincing as another burst of fire came stitching into his rock. 'I've got small arms fire coming from that location. I'm pinned down at grid three-one-charlie, half a klick south of the hill! Get some arty down on those fuckers!'
'He's broadcasting, sarge,' Jefferson said. 'No doubt about it. Encrypted 900 megahertz frequency from his bearing.'
Lon nodded, squeezing off another two shots into the dirt around the rock where he was hiding. Beside him Matza blasted an extended burst with the SAW, the expended casings flying out behind him. 'Wong, do you got a shot on him?' Lon asked. 'He's under cover from my direction.'
'Mine too,' she said. 'I can see part of his foot if you want me to put one there.'
'No, no sense torturing the bastard. Hoary,' he hailed to the Horishito on the adjoining hill. 'You have a clean shot of him from over there?'
'Fuckin' aye, sarge,' he answered.
'Take him,' Lon said.
Two hundred meters to the east, Horishito moved his weapon and sighted in. The remaining marine was crouched down, as low as he could make himself, but the side of his head was clearly visible from this angle. After all, the poor bastard didn't know that there was another group of armed Martians on the adjoining hill. Horishito felt an instant of pity for him and then buried it deep. He pushed the firing button and watched the marine's head snap to the side with the impact. His body slumped over and lay still.
'He's down,' Horishito reported.
'Okay,' Lon said. 'Let's displace. You all know the drill. Let's get moving.'
Within fifteen seconds all ten of them had their weapons and gear stowed and were rushing down to the base of their hills. The entire attack had lasted less than one minute.
'Mallory!' Callahan barked, his voice being transmitted across the ether. 'Mallory, your condition?' Nothing but silence answered him. 'Goddammit,' he muttered.
He called up his map display and ordered it to show the locations of everyone in his platoon. This information was provided by ultra high frequency radio signals from each platoon member's combat computer. It was displayed as blue dots on the terrain of the map. He ignored the cluster of blue dots deployed in the trenches on the hills they occupied, concentrating instead on the four, unmoving dots that were 1600 meters north of this. Three of them lay in a neat diamond pattern, as if they had fallen instantly during their patrol. The fourth lay a few meters out of formation. That one was Mallory. He instructed his combat computer to give him a view from Mallory's combat computer. The computer reported a malfunction from the visual display. Similar malfunctions were reported from Zimmerman's and Spanky's computers. Trower's was able to give him a picture but it wasn't very helpful. It looked only at the ground.
By now everyone else in the platoon was looking at him expectantly. All had heard Mallory's broadcast. All had heard the lethal way it had suddenly been cut off. They had picked up their weapons and were gripping them tightly, itching to go out there and deal a little payback.
'Stand to and get ready to move out,' Callahan told them. 'I'm gonna get some arty flying at that hill.' He switched radio frequencies to the one that had been assigned for fire support. He struggled for a moment to remember his call sign and then began to speak. 'Fire control main this is Perimeter five-alpha. I have a fire mission for you.'
Nobody answered him and he had to repeat his hail two more times. Finally a weary voice came on.
'Perimeter five-alpha, this is fire control main. What did you just say?'
'I said I have a fire mission for you. Coordinates are...'
'Wait a minute,' the voice interrupted. 'I haven't received any authorization for a live fire drill.'
'This is not a drill, fire control,' Callahan said, barely maintaining control of his voice. 'One of my patrols has
