produced by the armor pointed out their position as clearly as a holographic arrow on a simulation screen. And if Lon, Lisa, and Jefferson lost sight of the targets for any reason, Horishito and two other squad members were deployed 450 meters further west on hill 648 and Brannigan and the remaining squad members were deployed 380 meters further east on hill 703.
Lon knew the flight of Mosquitoes was on their firing run. After all, it was he who had given them their target coordinates. He had his eyes peeled and his infrared enhancement mode set to high but even he didn't see them at first, they moved so quickly. The first clue he had they were in the neighborhood was three flashes from the circling hovers as they were struck by anti-tank lasers. One of the hovers, apparently targeted by two of the aircraft at once, simply exploded in mid-air. The other two went spinning wildly out of control.
'Yes!' Lon said, pumping his fist in triumph. 'Three down with one run. Not too fucking bad.'
Lisa caught the barest glimpse of the Mosquitoes as they dove back downward. Just before disappearing behind a hill there was a flash from the belly of one. One of the other hovers flashed with the telltale signature of a direct hit. It dropped out of the sky like a rock, the pilot and gunner firing free on their ejection seats. 'Four,' she corrected. 'They took another one on the egress.'
'Annoying little mosquitoes huh?' Lon said, referring to that long ago WestHem general who had given the aircraft its affectionate name. 'I wonder what that asshole thinks about them now?'
'Nothing,' Lisa said. 'He's one of the military consultants for InfoServe now. They'll never even tell him the Mosquitoes had anything to do with their losses.'
'True,' agreed Lon.
'Hey, sarge,' said Horishito from the next hill. 'Fifty bucks says they take at least five on their next run.'
Lon thought that over for a second. 'You're on,' he said. 'Those guys are good, but they ain't that good.'
'I'll take a little bit of that action,' Lisa said. 'Fifty on five.'
'Covered,' Lon told her.
The next run began twenty seconds later. This time they saw the four Mosquitoes pop up over a hill to the north of the hovers. They climbed to altitude and their lasers began to flash. Hovers began to explode and fall out of the sky. Five were hit but only four went down. The fifth began limping its way back toward the landing zone, trailing smoke and wobbling but still airworthy. The Mosquitoes disappeared within seconds.
'You owe me fifty bucks!' Horishito yelled.
'Yep,' Lisa agreed. 'Me too.'
'No fuckin' way,' Lon said. 'They took four down. The other is still flying.'
'We said they'd
'But its still flying,' Lon protested. 'Take means destroyed.'
'The fuck it does!' Horishito said. 'You can't go changing the...'
'All right, guys,' said Lon. 'Let's discuss this later. Too much chatter on the net.'
'Oh,
The fifth hover reached the outer perimeter of hills, wobbled a little bit more, and then suddenly exploded with a bright flash of light. There was no ejection. By the time the flash faded, even the debris was gone.
'Fifty fuckin' bucks,' Lisa said.
'Fuck yeah,' agreed Horishito.
'All right,' Lon said. 'I know when I'm beat.'
This left only three hovers still flying over the formation. Though they were inanimate objects it was clear by watching them that the men crewing them were now extremely nervous. They circled faster, putting distance between each vehicle. Jefferson reported that active radar and infrared had come on line from each of them.
'Those guys are shittin' in their pants about now,' said Jefferson.
'Let's go double or nothing,' Lisa suggested. 'I say they take all three on the next run.'
'I'm in on that,' Horishito said. 'All the way to the ground even.'
'No thanks,' Lon said. 'I've learned my lesson about betting the no-pass line.'
It was fortunate he didn't take the bet. The Mosquitoes appeared again, this time from the west, and the remaining three hovers fell in less than two seconds.
'Put it out, Jeffy,' Lon ordered. 'All aircraft down. Friendly aircraft are egressing. Sniper and mortar teams are free to engage.'
'Transmitting,' Jefferson said.
Atop Hill 474, 1600 meters to the west of the WestHem marine's westernmost troops, Corporal Brogan Goodbud lay nestled between two large boulders, looking through specially engineered combat goggles at the head of one of the WestHem marines. The magnification was so great he could make out the serial number atop the marine's visor, could tell what color eyes his target had. Goodbud held in his highly trained hands an M-64 sniper rifle, a weapon engineered and built by a Martian company specifically for the use he was putting it to. It fired a two-millimeter projectile at hypersonic speed, more than twelve times the speed of sound on the Martian surface, almost twice the velocity of the standard M-24 rifle most of the troops carried. At this velocity, and with modified combat computer support, Goodbud could hit an object the size of an apple from almost two kilometers ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Right now, his target was considerably larger than an apple and considerably closer than two kilometers. The travel time of the bullet to the target would be a mere two tenths of a second. He was as good as dead.
The target was either a sergeant or a lieutenant. He knew this for sure. For the past thirty minutes Rimmer, his observer, had been scanning the radio signals of the troops down on the ground classifying the radio signals that emitted constantly from their biosuit packs. Leaders were easy to identify even though they didn't put rank marking on their biosuits, even though the troops they commanded went to great pains to avoid saluting them or otherwise drawing attention to them with careless actions. Platoon and squad leaders were the only ones who broadcast radio signals on more than one frequency. Lieutenants talked to sergeants and to their commanders back on the landing ship. Sergeants talked to lieutenants and to their squads. The grunts of the operation only talked among themselves. Rimmer had identified more than twenty leaders down there and his combat computer had marked them by changing the color of their helmet to green in Goodbud's goggles. Of course this target locking only worked as long as the targets in question remained in view. When the air-to-air attack had come and the hover debris had started raining down all over the formations and the marines had started diving for cover and running around to attend to the wounded, more than half of his locked targets had disappeared. That was okay though. Once the fun really started, it would be easy for Rimmer to reacquire and re-mark them.
'Message from C Team,' Rimmer's voice spoke in Goodbud's ear. ''All aircraft down. Friendly aircraft are egressing. Sniper and mortar teams are free to engage.''
'Well suck my hairy ass,' Goodbud said, making a minute adjustment of his rifle recentering his recticle on the target's face. 'It's go time.' He pushed the firing button. The weapon discharged with a slight kick, the flash channeled through a flash suppressor and cooled by a simultaneous release of liquid nitrogen as it emerged from the barrel. While it was impossible to
When Callahan was told later that the initial engagement had taken less than five minutes from start to finish, he thought he was being lied to. For him it seemed to take hours, days even, as he watched a cataclysm of horror and confusion he'd never even conceived of take place all around him.
It started with the hovers. They had been circling three or four hundred meters above, their presence comforting to the dismounted marines crawling up and down the hills (and finding absolutely nothing) and probing through the small gullies. The marine hover had always been considered the pillar of strength for extra-terrestrial operations, the factor that was supposed to insure victory and domination over any enemy fought far from the
