along the ground as fast as possible in the bulky suits in .3G of gravity. It was nothing so organized as an advance, it was a panicked heap of bodies rushing from a killing box, a formation that resembled a stampede.
The shells continued to drop out of the sky, exploding some of the men, wounding others. Rifle and SAW bullets slammed into their ranks, cutting down others. Callahan saw a stream of machine gun bullets go streaking just over the top of his head. Behind him a private from his platoon was cut nearly in half. A shell went off somewhere in front of him and something struck him in the face hard enough to snap his head backward. He looked down and saw an arm, still covered in biosuit material, lying in the dirt.
They passed their intended drop-off point without slowing. This brought them across a shallow indentation in the ground that continued up to the base of the hill. In the center of this indentation was a large field of boulders that had collected over the millennia. Once inside this depression the 150mm artillery fire ceased to be a threat since the hill blocked their passage. This was not true of the mortars, however, since they were fired upward, lobbed actually.
'Get to that boulder field!' Ayers commanded. 'Spread out and take positions behind the rocks!'
Callahan repeated the order to his platoon but it wasn't really necessary. That was where they were all heading anyway, driven by sheer survival instinct. They went scrambling in in a heap, throwing themselves to the ground and crawling forward the last thirty or forty meters to escape the gunfire. Several pushing and shoving matches broke out over ownership of the larger and best-positioned boulders. Callahan saw at least two people shot down after being thrown out into the open by larger, stronger, or more desperate competitors. He himself found a boulder about two meters in diameter. Two marines were already huddling against it. He threw himself between them just as another stream of machine gun fire came stitching in. It blew several chunks off the top of the boulder and then shifted to the right, killing two marines trying to make it two another boulder.
Callahan looked at his two companions and, upon seeing their faces, realized he had no idea who they were. They weren't from his current platoon, nor had they been members of this company as of two days ago. They were talking but their voices weren't coming across his audio system. They were probably displaced extras, piled into first or second platoon — or maybe both — because of the APC shortage.
He called up his mapping software to get a status check on his men. What he saw wasn't encouraging. One entire squad had been killed when a laser struck their APC. Of the remaining four squads (he'd absorbed an extra himself due to the APC shortage) sixteen men were lying still back behind them, either dead or wounded, and another four were no longer transmitting at all, which meant their suit computers or radio equipment had been completely destroyed.
'Doc?' he hailed, calling his latest medic whose name he couldn't remember. He couldn't even remember what his face looked like.
'Doc's dead, LT,' said Corporal Hennesy, who was leading second squad. 'A mortar blew him in half while we were moving up.'
'Great,' Callahan said. 'Just great.' He would have to trust that one of the other platoons medics — assuming
He checked the positioning of his men who were still alive and saw without surprise that they were scattered all over the place, interspersed with the other three platoons. Meanwhile, the gunfire continued to slam into them and the mortars continued to drop down on them in volleys. He switched to the command frequency. 'Cap, you there?' he asked.
'Got a fucking hole blasted in my suit,' Ayers answered, 'but I'm here. About thirty meters from your position. We need to get moving up the hill as quick as possible before the mortar fire takes us out group by group.'
'My very suggestion,' Callahan said. 'We'll cover for first and second if you get 'em moving.'
'Wait a minute,' cut in the corporal in charge of second platoon (neither Callahan nor Ayers could remember his name), his voice sounding whiny and terrified. 'Why do
'This isn't the fucking kindergarten playground, asshole!' Ayers yelled at him. 'Unless you want a friendly fire round through your goddamn nutsack, you'll go when I tell you to go. Is that understood?'
'Yes, sir,' the corporal said. 'I was just trying to point out that...'
'Don't point,' Ayers told him. Just do. Third and fourth platoons, get some covering fire on those Martians! First and second platoon, move up to the base and start putting your fire up there. Move!'
There was no further dissent in the ranks. Callahan passed on the order and his remaining men started firing up at the Martians again. The members of fourth platoon did the same. As soon as the volume of fire was at it's heaviest, first and second got up and began to dash forward.
'They're moving in!' said Walker. 'Keep the fire on them! Make them earn every inch of ground they take!'
Jeff was as scared as he had ever been in his life. Both the tanks and the APCs below continued to fire shells of all calibers directly at their trench, directly at the very holes they were firing from. Corporal Valenzuela had been killed right before his eyes, shrapnel from a sixty-millimeter shell ripping through his throat and upper chest. Private Mullins had been horribly injured. A twenty-millimeter shell made it into her firing hole and tore through her right shoulder, leaving her right arm hanging limp and useless. The trench itself had taken a royal beating. Sandbags were blown open, entire sections were collapsed in some places. Dust and smoke filled the entire length and everywhere you walked you were stepping on piles of expended shell casings.
Still, the damage was nowhere near as bad as what Jeff, Hicks, and Drogan had witnessed in the anti-tank trench above. For the most part the barricades were doing their jobs and absorbing the punishment instead of letting it through to the troops inside. And now they were undergoing their first sustained barrage of small arms fire as a multi-platoon sized unit below tried to keep them from shooting at the other multi-platoon size unit now advancing on them.
'Shoot and move, people,' Walker reminded. 'Don't linger in one hole or you're dead.'
Jeff leaned his body to the right, putting his shoulder and head into one of the firing holes, pointing his weapon downward. He saw the group of marines — sixty to seventy of them — taking short, rapid steps toward the base of the hill, their biosuited bodies crouched low, their weapons held close to their sides. Behind them, from behind the rocks, were dozens of flashes, including streaks of SAW fire. Bullets plinked in everywhere, kicking up dust, breaking rocks, tossing pebbles, slamming into the sandbags. Any one of those bullets could be the one that flew in at just the right angle, that would make it through the hole and into his face or chest or neck.
Drogan fired a long burst with the SAW, the rounds cutting two of the advancing marines down. Jeff covered the nearest marine in his zone with his targeting recticle and pushed his firing button, hitting him right at center mass, dropping him to the ground. He targeted another, shot him down, and then one more. He then pulled out of the firing hole and hunkered down, none too soon as it turned out since a flurry of machine gun fire and three round bursts came flying in as the hole was targeted. Several of the rounds made it through to plink into the backside of the trench. An explosion boomed very close, close enough to rattle his teeth in his mouth. He had heard enough of them now to identify it as a sixty-millimeter shell. A piece of sandbag shredded from the impact and smoke and shrapnel came flying into the hole from the outside.
'Damn,' he muttered, taking a few deep breaths. He then moved two meters to his right, positioned himself in another firing hole and leaned out again to take a few more shots.
'Drogan displacing,' Drogan said to let everyone know the SAW would not be firing for a few moments.
'Make it quick, Drogan,' Walker told her. 'They're moving up fast.'
'Right, sarge,' she said.
'Wouldn't it be a little easier on us,' Hicks asked, 'if the fuckin' AT teams upstairs would stop shooting at the APCs and pick up their M-24s to give us some support down here?'
'Those AT teams are doing just fine the way they are,' Walker responded. 'In case you forgot, those APCs down there didn't just drive these marines up here, they're lobbing sixties and twenties at us. You know those big booms you keep hearing? That big boom that killed Valenzuela? The AT teams are killing them. Haven't you noticed the fire has slacked off?'
'Oh... yeah, I guess,' Hicks said, firing a few shots with his weapon and then pulling back inside.
The first group of marines made it all the way to the base of the hill, minus twelve to fifteen of their number. The survivors, now safe from mortar fire, hit their bellies, taking cover behind some of the rocks and the outcroppings. They began firing up at them, momentarily doubling the volume of fire pouring in.
