sound over his radio link. He looked at the screen in which an outside view, enhanced by infrared, was being displayed. He immediately saw the incoming shells and saw they were heading directly for his guns. This did not immediately worry him. After all, the shells might land in their midst but they had traveled almost a hundred kilometers to get here and they would have to land very close to one of his guns in order to damage it. His gun platforms, after all, were almost as well armored as an APC.
The first volley came down, the shells exploding one by one with tremendous flashes of light, smoke, and flying dust. Dallas began to feel alarmed when he saw that groups of the shells were landing very close together, not all over the field as he'd expected. No sooner had the dust started to settle when more cries of 'incoming!' began to sound and more shells came streaking in over the horizon. He looked at his main display, which showed the location and status of each gun and was horrified to see that three of his batteries had been hit, with a total of nine guns no longer transmitting telemetry to him. The second volley of shells came down and six more guns stopped transmitting as well.
'Shit,' he said, noting that a third volley of shells was even now appearing over the horizon. He keyed his transmit button. 'All batteries, move to your next positions and commence firing immediately. They've got us dialed in! Displace and begin fire and movement procedures!'
'Units are in motion,' Captain Resin said as he saw the targets suddenly begin moving. 'Cease fire. I repeat — cease fire.'
The guns of his battery stopped firing, the crews taking the opportunity to blast a cleaning charge through them to clear out the propellant debris. Resin continued to look at the live video feed from the peeper circling above his area of operation. He could see the hot spots of more than six destroyed gun platforms and identified at least four more that appeared to be damaged beyond the ability to fire shells. Yes, the 250mm shells were working well. Fused to explode a mere eight meters above the ground, if they detonated within fifteen to twenty meters of a gun, it was enough to kill it or at least heavily damage it. But the easy kills had now come to an end. Now the trick would be to train the guns on a WestHem battery the moment it came to a halt and began to set up to fire. To wait any longer would mean the battery would fire its three rounds and be moving again before the heavy shells could reach it.
His eyes stayed glued to the tiny red machines as they circled and turned. He watched as a battery formed up into a line and stopped. Ignoring everything else on the screen he quickly drew a circle around the six weapons and told the computer to lock it. Using known navigational points on the mapping software — points that had been dialed in long before with GPS data — the computer triangulated the circle from four such points and came up with a position fix that would be accurate to within a meter. A set of coordinates appeared on Resin's screen and he immediately transmitted these coordinates to his gun battery.
'Targeting info shipped,' he told the gun crews. 'Guns adjusting.'
The firing computer in each gun took the targeting information, combined it with other information it was being fed from the Eden Climatological Department regarding current winds, atmospheric pressure, and humidity and came up with an azimuth and elevation reading for each gun to put their shells on that target area. This took less than six tenths of a second to accomplish. The actual movement of the gun barrels took a little longer — almost eight seconds. Once in position the targeting data on Resin's screen turned green, as it did on each gun commander's screen.
'Fire,' Resin ordered.
The four guns of his battery began to fire once more. Resin watched the screen as they did so, paying particular attention to the six guns he'd targeted. While waiting for his shells to begin landing he noticed that many of the other WestHem guns in his view had begun their own barrages. Flash after flash filled his screen and he saw the smaller streaks of the 150mm shells heading east. He hoped the ground troops he was here to protect would be able to stand up to it for a little while.
The guns he had targeted managed to get off one volley of their own before his shells began to come down. They came in less than a second apart, two of them landing within the circle he'd drawn on the screen, the other two landing just outside of it. The flashes overwhelmed the infrared spectrum for a few seconds but when it cleared he saw that two of the guns had been blown to pieces and one other appeared to have had its barrel blown off. The remaining three guns continued to fire and got two more shots off before the second volley of shells came flying in. This time all four shells landed in the circle. When the spectrum cleared two more enemy guns were completely destroyed and one more was damaged.
'Yes,' Resin said, smiling to himself. 'I think this just might work.'
Meanwhile, in their trench in the Jutfield Gap, Jeff Waters and the rest of his platoon had no idea of the successes the heavy guns were having against their foe. All they knew is that death seemed quite imminent. The WestHem gunners had indeed managed to get some accurate targeting information or they were just getting really goddamn lucky because the shells were exploding all around them. The entire trench would shake with each near- hit, causing dust and pebbles to come cascading down, sending concussions blasting through their bodies even through the protection of the biosuits. The shells made no sound as they came in since the Martian air was too thin to produce or carry such a noise so there was no warning that a close shellburst was approaching, nothing until the explosion itself.
'Oh yeah,' said Hicks after a particularly violent concussion rocked them, his voice flirting with terror, 'this is what I signed up for. How about you, Waters?'
'Shut your ass,' Jeff told him, cowering as close to the front of the trench as possible. Several times he'd heard shell fragments bouncing off the walls behind him.
Uncharacteristically, Hicks did as requested. The explosions boomed on for another minute or two and then suddenly ceased, at least over the top of them. They could still hear the faint concussions of other shells landing on other trenches though.
'Why'd they stop?' someone asked.
'They didn't,' Walker said. 'They've just shifted target for the time being. They'll get back to us. Don't worry.'
'Great,' Jeff said. 'How long will this go on?'
'If we don't neutralize their guns it will keep going on until they actually have ground troops climbing this hill.'
Nobody had anything to say to that.
Jeff linked his combat goggles to a small periscope camera that was installed at the top of the trench. The view around him disappeared and was replaced with a view of the outside. As he turned his head from direction to direction, the camera turned as well letting him see the entire battle area in infrared glory. 'Wow,' he whispered in awe. 'Now that is some shit.'
He could see the streaks of hundreds of incoming artillery shells flying in from the west and impacting on or about the various hills through the Jutfield Gap. He could also see the larger, though less numerous streaks of outgoing shells, passing above and through the WestHem streaks, as the MPG heavy guns continued to provide counter-battery fire.
There was a beep in his headset and an icon suddenly appeared in his display, indicating someone had just sent him a text message. He opened it and saw it was from Private Xenia Stoner. She and the rest of her tank crew were down in the gap between this hilltop position and the one to the northwest. He was gratified to see it was addressed only to him.
HOW ARE YOU DOING UP THERE? ANY CASUALTIES? X
He got rid of the outside view and called up his keyboard control, which generated an image of a computer panel in the air between his legs. He quickly typed out: HANGING IN HERE SO FAR. TRENCH IS HOLDING UP. YOU? He addressed it and sent it off. A few moments later the reply came back.
STILL DOWN HERE GUARDING YOUR NAKED ASSES. IT'S WHAT WE DO.
Outside of Eden the battle of the artillery went on for another forty minutes. The heavy shells continued to come down and destroy the WestHem mobile guns, in each case within a minute of the battery in question stopping to set up their next firing position. It took Colonel Dallas almost fifteen minutes and the loss of more than forty of his guns before he realized he was not dealing with simple counter-battery fire here. The greenie gunners were not using the path of his guns shells to aim their own shells, someone, somewhere was feeding them horrifyingly accurate positioning information. But how? Simple observation teams couldn't possibly be close enough to discern every gun and its exact positioning, nor could satellites in orbit. That left something in the air, something circling
