wastelands, but it actually contained one kilogram of high explosive surrounded by thousands of razor sharp slag diamond chips. The mine exploded with a sharp crack, spraying the diamond chips and chunks of rock outward at suicidal velocity. Hunter took the worst of it. The shrapnel ripped through his helmet and upper torso, literally ripping his head and right arm right off his body. Bingham and O'Leary didn't fair much better. Well over a hundred shards tore into the torso portions of their suits, exploding their air tanks, destroying the computers that controlled their environmental controls, and finally penetrating into their chests, tearing apart vital organs and sending their blood boiling out into the atmosphere. Scalzi, who was fortunate enough to have the other three between him and the mine, only had five or six pieces of the shrapnel hit him. Though his air supply tanks remained intact and though the self-sealing material of his suit was able to do its job and keep him pressurized, several major veins and arteries, as well as his right lung, were hit. He fell to the ground, screaming, trying desperately to keep breathing. Only Frank was untouched by shrapnel. Even so, he was thrown nearly two meters backwards by the concussion, which was quite intense in spite of the thin air to carry it. He landed on his back, dazed, wondering just what the hell had happened.
Callahan and the rest of the men with him watched the explosion with horror, all of them crouching downward instinctively, their eyes looking for the perpetrators and seeing nothing, their weapons tracking back and forth, trying to engage something that wasn't there.
'Jesus fucking Christ,' Callahan said, watching in horrified fascination as the clouds of red vapor boiled up from the bleeding bodies and was whisked away in the wind.
'What the fuck happened?' someone else, it sounded like Sergeant Hamilton, asked.
'A booby trap,' Callahan said. 'They rigged a fucking explosive on Mallory!'
'Those motherfuckers!' someone else raged.
'Goddamned terrorist assholes!' said yet another.
Callahan took a deep breath, fighting to remain calm. His only medic had just been blown to pieces and he had at least one wounded man out there. Scalzi's screams were plainly audible to everyone on the tactical channel. 'Scalzi, chill out, man,' he said soothingly. 'We're coming to bring you in. Try to relax.'
'I can't... breathe... el... el tee,' he gasped.
'Hang in there,' Callahan told him. 'Frank, you with us?'
'I... uh... I think so,' he said softly. 'What happened?'
'Are you hurt?'
'I don't... I don't know.'
'Okay, just lay there, we're coming to get you. Second squad, move in. Drag Scalzi and Frank back over here and whatever you do, don't touch those other bodies. God only knows what other kind of shit they got rigged up.'
Second squad, from which Scalzi, Bingham, and Hunter had been drawn, was down to only seven members. Six of them jumped to their feet to go drag their wounded teammates out of the gully. The seventh, Corporal Dixon, moved up a little to help cover them with his SAW. Fourth squad and Callahan all moved up as well, their weapons trained out over the landscape.
'Let's get this done quick,' said Sergeant Hamilton, the leader of second squad.
They were about halfway to their destination, well out into the open, when flashes erupted from the peaks of the hillsides beyond them, three to four flashes on each peak, at least one from a SAW. High velocity bullets slammed into the line of marines, hitting them so fast that most of them didn't have a chance to dive to the dirt. Air tanks exploded, helmets were blown apart, legs were cut out from beneath, and the air was filled with the boiling blood vapor. Screams of pain and horror were broadcast over the tactical frequency. And then, less than five seconds after it had begun, it was over. Six men lay dead or dying on the Martian soil.
The speed and violence of the attack was shocking to the remaining marines who witnessed it from behind their cover. All had experienced hit and run attacks by Argentine rebels in Salta, but none had ever seen six of their comrades shot down in less than five seconds. They all stared for a moment, even Callahan, the most experienced among them, not talking, their mouths gaping under their protective visors.
Corporal Dixon was the first to react. 'Motherfuckers!' he screamed in rage, his finger slamming down on the firing button of his SAW. It began to buck on its bipod, sending a stream of bullets out towards the closest of the hills from which the fire had come. He raked it back and forth, thoroughly hosing the top of the hill, watching as a cloud of dust was raised from the impact of his shells.
The sound of his gun firing stirred the rest of the marines to action. Reverting to their training, they began to fire as well, sending three round bursts downrange and peppering the hills. All could plainly see that the flashes from the enemy had stopped but no one let that deter them. Hundreds of rounds flew, the shell casings littering the ground beside them. Callahan fired a few bursts himself and then reverted to
By the time the artillery request was taken care of, most of the marines had fired the first of their 100 round magazines empty and were reloading. Callahan, noting that there still was no enemy fire being returned at them, ordered them to cease fire. Over the intercom several new sets of screams were being broadcast now.
'We need to get out there, LT!' yelled Sergeant Barley, commander of fourth squad. 'We need to get the wounded in!'
'Everybody hold in place,' Callahan ordered. 'You saw what happened when someone walked out there. The fuckin greenies cut them to pieces. We're not giving them any more easy targets.'
'But, LT...' Barley said helplessly.
'That's a goddamned order!' Callahan yelled. 'Everybody stay right the fuck where you are. Arty is coming in.'
'Callahan!' the voice of Captain Ayers suddenly cut in over the command channel. 'What in the hell is going on out there?'
'We were ambushed, sir,' he answered. 'We are in contact with a greenie force of unknown composition, probably squad sized though. They rigged the bodies of our men with explosives and took out the retrieval team. When I sent second squad out to retrieve the wounded from that they hit us from the hillsides with concentrated fire. All of second squad is down now except for Dixon on the SAW. We have several wounded that need to be evacuated and we can't get to them. I just called in arty. It should be coming down any second.'
'With only three guns firing,' Ayers said. 'Goddammit, we need more artillery guns down here and we need some fucking hovers in the air. The greenies probably had a squad positioned out here before we even landed.'
'Agree, sir,' Callahan said. 'And they're very good shots. We need to eliminate them quickly.'
'I'm sending second platoon up to reinforce you,' Ayers said. 'Sweep that area when they get there and make sure every last one of those greenies is neutralized.'
'Yes, sir,' Callahan told him. 'I'll be sending some of the men back with the wounded as soon as we can get them.'
'I'll get a shuttle coming down from orbit for evac up to the hospital ship. Update if there is any more contact.'
'Yes, sir,' Callahan said, signing off.
The artillery rounds came flying overhead a few seconds later. Everyone looked up to see the white streaks moving through the pink sky. It was quite obvious that they weren't going to land anywhere near the target. They arced over the hillsides and disappeared, so far distant that not even the flashes were visible.
'Goddammit,' Callahan swore, shaking his head in disgust. He switched frequencies on his radio. 'Off target,' he told fire control. 'I repeat, you are well off target. Adjust back one klick.'
'One
'And I'm telling you that you fucking well are!' he yelled. 'I'm sitting here looking at your shells and they just passed over the tops of those hills still more than five hundred meters above the ground. Now adjust back a klick.'
'Copy,' the man said doubtfully. 'Adjusting back a klick.'
Twenty seconds went by before another salvo of artillery shells came flying in. This set was closer to the hills
