Greenies

taking out another tank — this one nine hundred meters away.

Deep in the bowels of Landing Ship 11C, at the Eden Landing Zone, General Dakota Dickinson stared in disbelief at the telemetry that was on his computer display. In the first fifteen minutes of the battle over three hundred tanks had been destroyed, another fifty or so damaged beyond repair. Despite the neutralization of the artillery by the Martian 250s, this was not the result he'd been anticipating. And they weren't even at the main line of defense yet.

'What the hell is going on out there?' he demanded of his subordinates. 'We were supposed to sweep right through them! How in the hell are the greenies slaughtering our tanks like that?'

Colonel Houston Fowler was the commander of the 27^th Armored Division. It was his tanks, his men, that were taking the brunt of the Martian resistance at the moment — a shocking development for a division that had, until now, suffered zero casualties in what had otherwise been a very bloody conflict. 'My battalion commanders are reporting intense anti-tank fire coming from the hillside positions in the gap,' he told Dickinson. 'Apparently the artillery did not significantly reduce the numbers of the entrenched Martian troops up there. They seem to have a whole lot of portable anti-tank weapons.'

'Was the artillery off target?' Dickenson asked. 'Did we spend forty minutes shelling a bunch of empty ground?'

'Negative, sir,' Fowler said. 'I've seen visuals of the Martian positions sent to me from the lead elements. We tore the hell out of those positions but the Martians are still in them. We're plastering them with direct eighty millimeter fire now and it's not having much of an effect either. Those trenches must be reinforced in some way.'

'Great,' Dickenson said, watching the screen as another twelve tanks suddenly turned black — meaning they'd stopped sending telemetry — meaning, of course, they were dead. 'This is World War III and the AT-9 all over again. Talk about history repeating itself.'

The AT-9 he was referring to was the American-made and manufactured portable anti-tank missile that was widely regarded as the weapon that had turned World War III from a quick Asian Powers victory to the bloody, decade long stalemate it had ended up as. Firing from entrenched positions, WestHem infantry soldiers had been able to concentrate murderous fire on vastly superior numbers of advancing armor and, eventually, halt the Asian advance at the Columbia River in Portland and the high desert of southern Idaho.

'Sir,' said Fowler, 'we're also taking fire from the Martian tanks and the Martian APCs. Return fire is ineffective. The Martian armor are in hull down positions behind some kind of barricades that are absorbing the laser energy from our shots. We've made some kills but it takes multiple shots for a penetration to occur.'

'Can we push through?' Dickenson asked.

'At high cost, yes,' Fowler said. 'If we continue to advance our tanks they'll envelop those positions within twenty minutes or so, but...'

'But?' Dickenson asked.

'Losses will be very high. Also... well... we won't have accomplished anything but clearing their armor out of the gap. The Martian anti-tank crews and the dismounted infantry that are supporting them will still be up on those hills.'

'Our plan was for your tanks to eliminate most of them and then to send the dismounts in to clear out their positions,' Dickenson said. 'It sounds like they're a little thicker up there than we anticipated.'

'And a little more well-protected,' Fowler agreed. 'They're going to be a bitch to dislodge from there, sir.'

'What if we just blast through their lines with the tanks as you suggested?' Dickenson asked. 'Punch a hole through and then rush the APCs, the fuel trains, the arty, everything right by until we get to the main line of defense. The terrain is wider there and favors us more.'

Fowler was shaking his head even before his boss finished. 'Again, with all due respect, sir, we have to clear those positions before we can advance further. If we don't, it won't matter that our tanks have enveloped them, they'll still be able to blast at them from all directions as they pass. They'll be able to do the same to the APCs and they might even be able to take out some of our supply trains.'

'With anti-tank lasers?' Dickenson scoffed. 'That's ridiculous.'

'We've seen their marksmanship with those things, sir. If they take out the towing tanks that will bring the trains to a halt. We won't be able to replace the towing tanks with regular tanks in a zone where the Martians can snipe at them because they'll just keep popping off any tanks we try to bring up for the task. And, while the trains are stopped, they could hit one of the ammunition carriers two or three times in exactly the same spot and get a burn-through. If an ammunition carrier goes up it'll take out most of the rest of the train with it. The Martians planned this defense well, sir, as much as I hate to give them any credit. The only way through this gap is to put our soldiers out on the ground and have them fight their way up those hills until the entrenched troops either retreat or until we get enough people up there to kill them all.'

Dickenson thought that over for a second, trying to come up with a solution that did not involve sending dismounts up hills under fire. Unfortunately, there really was no other solution. There was no way to outflank the defenders because the mountains closed in on both sides of the gap. The only way to go around them was to take the entire army all the way back to the landing zone and come in by a circuitous route from the north. That would force them to march almost twice as far and they would still have to pass through a gap that was even narrower than Jutfield in order to assault the city. 'Okay,' he said. 'I see your point. Should we go ahead and clear the Martian armor from the gap anyway? At least that way we'll have the positions surrounded when the dismounts go after them.'

'I wouldn't advise that, sir,' Fowler told him. 'We've already lost hundreds of tanks. We'll lose hundreds more pushing their armor out. Not only that, but if we surround their hillsides the Martian anti-tank crews and infantry will no longer have the option of retreat. If we force them to fight to the death our losses will be much heavier. We should let them keep their rear open and hopefully they'll pull back when we start advancing ground troops on them.'

Dickenson nodded. 'I need to clear this with General Wrath,' he said. 'But for now, pull your tanks back out of range and have them regroup and re-arm. And then let's get all commanders together so we can hash out a plan to do this right.'

'Yes, sir,' he said.

Less than two minutes later the order went out. All tank units were to immediately disengage and pull back ten kilometers to the west.

Dickenson and Fowler would never know how close they'd come to forcing a retreat at the Jutfield Gap. They had assumed that if the Martian tanks were overwhelmed and cleared from their covering positions that the entrenched troops would remain behind to fight on — ultimately to the death but inflicting horrifying damage before that could occur. Had they bothered to study up on Martian Planetary Guard doctrine even a little bit before engaging their enemy they would have known that standing orders were for all troops to withdraw to safety when their position was threatened. It was against the MPG code to leave entrenched troops in a position where they were permanently cut off from assistance and withdrawal. In other words, if the supporting tanks and APCs were forced to withdraw, then the dismounted troops would withdraw as well, even if they weren't in immediate danger.

Such a withdrawal had been well under way when Dickenson's order went out. The first troops ordered from their positions had been the combat infantry units, including the platoon Jeff and Hicks belonged to. They were positioned below the anti-tank platoons on the hillside and had watched in terrified fascination as the hoards of WestHem tanks had closed on them and had been attacked by the lasers from above and below. While eighty millimeter fire had raked the hillside above them, sending dust, dirt, and rocks tumbling downward to sift into their trench, they had remained unscathed by a single round since they were not presenting an immediate threat to the tanks. And then, at the height of the battle, as WestHem tanks began to get within five hundred meters, they had been ordered to pick up all the ammunition and supplies they could carry and move as quickly as possible to the rear of the hillside to secure the extraction zone.

Jeff had been almost down on the valley floor, a pack containing seventy-five kilograms of ammunition clips and food packs slung over his back. That was when Walker ordered everyone to hold up.

'Captain Sing reports the WestHem armor is pulling back,' he told them.

'Pulling back?' asked Hicks, who was just behind Jeff in the semi-orderly formation.