Greenies

comfort of Earth. It was the factor that was supposed to guarantee air superiority over a battlefield, that could smash enemy forces long before the marines on the ground were close enough to even worry about them. The marines faith in these mighty flying tanks had begun to erode a bit over the past week as greenie troops proved themselves able to avoid detection by them and to take them down with their cursed anti-air lasers, but when the attack began on this morning, that faith was instantly and utterly destroyed for all time.

At first, Callahan didn't even know what was happening. He and his platoon had been approaching one of the hills, readying themselves to begin the clumsy climb to its peak. And then suddenly the hover directly over the top of them exploded without warning. Chunks of metal, circuit boards, control surfaces, and engine components came raining down atop them. One of his men was killed when an engine thruster crushed his head. Two others were wounded by smaller debris. The survivors of this hit the ground, their weapons trained outward out of instinct. Callahan wondered if the explosion had been a simple malfunction but then he looked behind and saw two other hovers spinning downward towards the ground, flipping end over end as half of their thrusters were put out and the others stayed lit. They hit the ground and exploded, one falling behind a hillside and out of sight, the other landing directly in the midst of third platoon, causing multiple casualties.

His radio channels began to squawk out overlapping exclamations, his men yelling on one channel, the other platoon leaders yelling on the other.

'What the fuck happened?'

'Where did it come from?'

'It was aircraft!' screamed someone else.

'No, there are greenies on the hillside, six o'clock!' shouted someone else.

Weapons began to fire at this last proclamation, popping from all around. Three marines standing atop one of the closer hills were peppered by it, falling in heaps.

'Cease fire!' someone else screamed. 'Those are friendlies up there! They're fuckin' friendlies!'

'Shit!' said another voice.

The rifles stopped firing, gradually though, not all at once.

'It was aircraft!' one of the other lieutenants insisted. 'Three or four of them! They passed right over the top of us!'

'Bullshit!' another lieutenant countered. 'We would've fuckin' seen them.'

'I did see them!' the first lieutenant countered. 'They came out of the hills and then disappeared again in just a few seconds. They were moving fast.'

'Nothing moves that fast out here, you idiot!' another voice proclaimed.

'Report!' said Captain Ayers' voice, overriding everything else. 'Someone out there give me a goddamn report! Callahan, you there?'

'I'm here, cap,' Callahan said, his eyes searching nervously through the skies and on the hillsides. 'I don't know what the hell just happened but three of the hovers just went down.'

'Four,' the first lieutenant corrected. 'They got another one just before they disappeared.'

'Who got another one?' Ayers demanded.

'Aircraft,' said the lieutenant. 'They came out of the hillside, shot up the hovers, and then disappeared back in the hills.'

'Did you see that, Callahan?' Ayers asked him.

'I didn't see shit, cap,' he said. 'We've got wounded down here though. Start bringing in the... oh shit! Get down!' In his excitement of seeing four greenie aircraft come shooting out of the gap between two hills, he forgot to change his transmission mode back to the tactical channel. As a result, it was only the other lieutenants who got down. The aircraft rushed over the top of him at a speed that seemed impossible in this environment, so fast that his eyes could barely register them. But his eyes did. They were ugly, flimsy looking boomerang-shaped aircraft flying in a line, their engines burning brightly in the infrared spectrum. They were close enough he could hear the muted roar of those engines through the thin air. Four more of the hovers suddenly fell from the sky and another went limping off towards the LZ, trailing smoke behind it. Of the four that went down, two of them landed amid the troops, smashing some, killing others with shrapnel when they exploded, wounding tens of others.

'What's going on Callahan?' Ayers demanded. 'Report, goddammit!'

'It is aircraft!' Callahan yelled. 'Mosquitoes. Four of them in formation. Holy fuck do those things fly fast. How the hell can they hit anything moving that fast?'

'Did they hit the hovers?' Ayers asked.

'Yes!' he screamed. 'Four more down and another damaged. It's heading for...' he trailed off as the fifth one suddenly exploded, raining more debris down on a thankfully empty hillside. 'Never mind,' he finished. 'Five down. They took five down.'

'Five down total?' Ayers asked.

'Five down with this run,' Callahan corrected. 'They got four with the first. There are only three of them left.'

There was silence on the command channel for a few seconds (although not on the tactical channel, that one was filled with more screams, more calls for medics). 'Are you saying,' Ayers finally asked, 'that those four greenie aircraft have taken down nine hovers in less than a minute?'

'That's affirmative,' Callahan said, unable to believe it himself. 'Nine down, three left.'

Ayers didn't quite know what to make of this. Neither did Callahan. While they were still mulling this over the Mosquitoes came back, suddenly appearing from yet another gap in the hills. The other three hovers fell to them, two of them landing amidst the troops, killing another eight and wounding another dozen or so. They were now completely without air cover.

'We need more hovers out here, cap!' Callahan said. 'At least two dozen if you can spare them! And we need dust-off hovers too. We got lots of casualties on the ground.'

'I'll get them out there,' Ayers promised. 'How many flight crew ejections?'

'Most of them got out, I think,' Callahan said, not giving a shit about the flight crews.

'Recover those flight crews as quick as you can and get them inside the APCs. Those fucking idiots are helpless out there alone.'

'We'll do what we can,' Callahan said. 'But right now we've got to worry about...'

He stopped suddenly as the confusing though horribly familiar babble indicative of a sniper in their midst began to come across the airwaves.

'Shit!'

'Get down!'

'Where the fuck did that come from?'

'Sniper!' someone else yelled. 'Two people down... shit! Three people down!'

'Over there! Eight o'clock on the hillside!'

Guns began to fire again, peppering a hillside. There was a long burst of a SAW opening up as well.

'Cease fire!' a panicked voice yelled. 'Stop shooting at us! We're friend...' the voice was cut suddenly and lethally off.

'Jesus,' Callahan said, shaking his head.

Sergeant Bender, moving quick and low suddenly came down next to him. 'LT,' he said. 'I think I saw a flash from...' He didn't finish. His head snapped to the right and his blood came boiling out into the atmosphere. He slumped over and lay still.

'Shit!' Callahan said, rolling quickly to the right and placing a boulder between himself and the direction the shot had come from. It was none too soon. Another shot plunked into the dirt where he'd just been.

'Over there!' a voice yelled. 'On the hillside! Seven o'clock!'

Guns began to open up once more and once more a panicked voice began to scream out for a cease-fire, that they were shooting friendlies.

'Clusterfuck,' Callahan muttered, still coming to grips with the thought that he'd just about been killed. 'A fucking clusterfuck. What the hell else could go wrong?'

That was perhaps not the best question to ask because it was quickly answered.

'Incoming!' multiple voices on both channels began to yell in unison. 'Get down!'

Callahan looked up and saw the streaks of mortar shells flying toward their position from three different