developed.
Once they were all properly lubricated, talk turned to the day's missions.
'We put a serious hurt on them today,' Lisa said. 'You flyboys decimated their hovers and our mortar teams cut them to pieces on the ground.'
'Any casualties?' Brian asked her.
She nodded sadly. 'A mortar team got hit by arty,' she said. 'Killed all of them except one and he got one of his legs blown off and is paralyzed in the other.'
'Did they manage to zero in their artillery fire?' Brian asked.
'We don't think so,' Lisa said. 'It seems like it was just a lucky shot. The Earthlings were trying to hit the position the team had just fired from but just happened to drop the shells all over them as they were displacing. A one in an hundred shot.'
Brian nodded. 'Our guys had one of those too. A Mosquito got shot down on the east side of the perimeter, probably a chance hit with a hand-held SAL.'
'Motherfucker prob'ly just shot up in the air when they made their run and happened to hit 'em,' Matt said, shaking his head in respectful awe.
'Did they bail out?' Lisa asked.
Brian nodded. 'They were in radio contact after they hit the ground but we lost it before a Hummingbird could get out to them. The marines must've found them. Hopefully they took them into custody.'
'They might've shot them though,' Matt said morosely. 'They were probably mighty pissed off at us by that point.'
'Yeah,' Lisa said, sipping from her beer. 'And I'm sure they still are.'
Lieutenant Callahan sat stiffly in the chair before the conference table. This was not because he felt the need to be at attention before Captain Ayers but because two large chunks of Martian shrapnel had been removed from his back four hours ago and the skin had been fused shut with a cauterizing laser. The pain throbbed sickly through him from his ass cheeks to his shoulder blades and every time he tried to slump down it doubled in intensity.
'Smoke?' Ayers asked him, passing a pack of cigarettes across the table.
'Yeah,' Callahan said. 'It seems like this might be a good time to pick up the habit again.'
He took one and lit up, coughing as the smoke entered his lungs. This sent another spasm of pain radiating outward from his wound but he ignored it and took another drag instead. He shook his head in disbelief. He was still somewhat in shock from the day's events, still wondering why and how he was still alive. This was supposed to be a company command staff meeting but at the moment he and Ayers were the only members of the company who fit that definition. All of the other lieutenants, along with seventy percent of the squad sergeants, were dead; felled by falling aircraft or blasted by mortar rounds or, most commonly, shot down by Martian snipers.
'Are you okay?' Ayers asked him, almost gently, almost father-like.
'They never let up on us out there,' Callahan said, speaking more to himself than his commander. 'We weren't even fighting them anymore, we were just trying to pull the wounded into the APCs but they kept shooting us and they kept dropping those fucking mortars on us.' He shook his head again. 'They killed us out there, cap. They fuckin' killed us.'
'It's starting to look like we may have underestimated our Martian friends a bit, isn't it?' he asked.
'How bad was it?' Callahan asked. 'Did this happen everywhere?'
Ayers nodded. 'Yeah. All three of our perimeter deployments were hit pretty much at the same time and in the same manner. We've lost forty-one hovers at the Eden LZ alone. That is almost half of our air support for this region of the battle. At New Pittsburgh we lost thirty-eight. Sixty-three and seventy-two at Libby and Proctor.'
'That many?'
'Yeah,' Ayers said. 'By the time we sent the cav out into the field at Libby and Proctor the word of what happened here and at New Pittsburgh had already been passed. They sent them out anyway and doubled up the hover coverage. The greenies took them down just as easily. It just took them more passes. The most powerful extra-terrestrial aircraft in our arsenal, the aircraft we were relying on to garner air superiority over our advance, to take out the greenie defensive positions, and those Martians blew them out of the sky like they were nothing.'
'So fast,' Callahan said. 'We didn't even see them at first. And when we did, the anti-air teams never had a chance to lock onto them. They were exposed for less than ten seconds, hell, for less than five.'
'We won't be able to count on air power to soften up the Martian defenses.'
'Soften up their defenses?' Callahan asked. 'Jesus, cap, we haven't even secured out perimeter yet. And there's no way we're going to be able to, not without the hovers!'
'We're not going to secure the perimeter,' Ayers told him. 'We're going to start forming up for the march tomorrow morning.'
Callahan looked at him as if he were mad. 'Tomorrow morning? But the perimeter!'
Ayers sighed. 'The perimeter will have to hold its own on its own,' he said. 'You saw General Wrath's briefing?'
He scoffed. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I caught it while they were fusing my fucking skin back together. Greenie kamikaze pilots dive bombing into our troops? Contaminated fuel causing the hovers to crash? Are people really buying that bullshit?'
'It's not bullshit, it's the truth,' Ayers said firmly. 'And if you want to remain employed, you'd better start accepting it as the truth. Do you understand?'
'Yeah,' he said bitterly. 'I understand.'
'My point is that General Wrath has ordered all cav units to begin marching toward their targets as soon as possible. The thought on the matter is that we've been letting the Martians delay us and draw us out, especially today. They drew us right into a trap. The sooner we get to the cities and capture those MPG bases, the sooner we'll have those aircraft and those special forces soldiers out of commission. Will you be able to join your men?'
'My men?' he asked. 'I've lost more than three quarters of my platoon, including all of my squad sergeants. I don't have that many men left.'
'You'll be given replacements to fill in your losses,' Ayers said. 'But I need you to lead them if you can. The only alternative is to pull a squad sergeant from a green platoon.'
Callahan shook his head violently. 'You'd be sentencing the rest to death if you did that,' he said. 'I'll lead them.'
'Good,' Ayers said. 'Your replacements will report to you first thing in the morning. Field promote a couple of your corporals to fill in the squad sergeant positions. We start loading up first thing in the morning. Two days after that, we'll be in Eden.'
'You think so?' Callahan asked.
Ayers' eyes did not meet his. 'Of course,' he said. 'I wouldn't have said it otherwise.'
Chapter 14
MPG Base, Eden
August 25, 2146
Jeff Waters took a drag off his cigarette and looked at the five cards in his hand thoughtfully. He was pretty new to poker, had only been taught the basics of it a week ago, but in that week, as he and the rest of the 17th ACR spent hour after hour, day after day in the interior assembly area near the outside wall of the base, he'd played the game a lot, enough to know he stood a decent chance of taking the pot this hand. Hicks, who had dealt, had chosen five-card draw, jacks or better to open. He'd given Jeff a pair of fours, a pair of eights, and a deuce. Nobody else around the table was looking particularly enthused with what they held. This suspicion was confirmed when Zen Valentine, who was sitting next to Hicks, and Steve Sanchez, who was sitting next to Zen, both checked, unable to open. That brought the first bet over to Jeff.
He licked his lips for a moment as he thought the situation over. His first instinct, his gut reaction, was to throw down the maximum bet — one credit — immediately. He resisted this impulse. It would probably do nothing
