Greenies

their precarious hold.

He found himself flying through the air, looking at the ground he was about to strike. This is not good, he had time to think before he landed in the rocky soil on his left side. He felt a blow like a sledgehammer on his ribs, felt several of them snapping like twigs. He bounced, spun head over heals, and then came down on a rock directly on his back. He felt another snap back there, a huge flare of pain, but it was not over. He was now spinning and tumbling across the ground, bending and unbending, striking rocks and feeling bones break every time. He went into an extended roll, a few more snap bounces, and finally the one hundred kilometers per hour inertia he had been saddled with was used up. He came to rest on his side, broken, twisted nearly in half, pain shooting through his entire body, but alive and horribly alert.

'Holy fuck! Sarge!' screamed Zen as he saw him fly free, as he saw him go bouncing across the ground behind them. 'Stop the fuckin' tank! Sergeant Sanchez just went over!'

'I can't,' replied Cleanburn, his voice agonized but determined. 'The WestHems are sniffing up our ass right now! I don't even know if we're gonna make it to the depression!'

'Goddammit, Cleanburn, its Sanchez out there!' Xenia yelled at him. She too had witnessed the fall. 'We need to get him.'

Cleanburn was a part of their company and knew Sanchez well. He had played poker with him, taken bonghits with him, had even been to visit his apartment once. But he didn't stop the tank — he couldn't. 'We'll all die if I do that,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

'Jesus Christ, Cleanburn,' Zen said, near tears. You can't just leave him out there!'

'Yes he can,' a voice groaned. It was weak but they all recognized it as belonging to Sanchez. 'I order it. Don't worry about me.'

'Sarge,' Xenia said. 'Can you get under cover? We'll send a hover to come...'

'I'm broke up pretty bad,' he interrupted. 'Back, both legs, both arms. My suit's leaking in a couple of places and I'm having a hard time breathing.'

'Cleanburn, goddammit!' Zen yelled. 'Get this fucking tank turned around and let's go get him! Let's bring the whole fucking company over there and fight off any WestHem tanks.'

'No,' Sanchez said. 'Don't even... even think about it. The WestHems are coming. They'll find me out here and take me to their... their aid station.'

There seemed to be some logic in this but there also seemed to be some pitfalls. Everyone clung to this the best they could though. In any case, the point was now moot. They were fast approaching the depression and Sanchez was now too far behind them. Even if the company did turn around to fight for him, they wouldn't reach him in time.

'We'll see you later, sarge,' Zen told him solemnly. 'When this is over.'

'Yeah,' Xenia echoed. 'They'll fix you up and we'll have a drink when you get exchanged.'

'Right,' Sanchez said, his voice fading now. 'When I get exchanged. Free... free Mars.'

'Free Mars,' they repeated.

The tank dropped down into the depression, putting it out of view of the pursuing WestHem tanks just seconds before their lasers were recharged.

The six tanks that had been following were the mixed survivors of two different battalions, all from different companies. Each had just watched friends and comrades blown to pieces left and right of them during the battle. They had seen the biosuited body of Sanchez come flying off the tank they'd been chasing and could see it now, lying on the ground ahead of them. Every crewmember on these tanks knew the rules of warfare and what those rules dictated they should do when an enemy combatant was injured and helpless on ground that they occupied. But none of them were much in the mood for compassion after the hell they'd just endured.

They slowed up to less than twenty kilometers per hour and turned in the direction of the fallen Martian. There was some discussion about how many points a fucking greenie terrorist was worth. Eventually they decided he was only worth ten since he wasn't a moving target and therefore not that challenging. There was another discussion — this one quite profane and animated — about which tank was entitled to collect those points. Sergeant Hornsby — the commander of the second tank — finally settled this matter by pulling rank. He ordered his driver to make it slow, just to make sure that accuracy was maintained.

The tank was still in motion and Zen was still clinging quite precariously to the underside of the main gun, but he was wedged in just enough that he could free up his left hand. He opened his computer panel and brought up a menu in his combat goggles. He needed to make sure that Sanchez was okay, that the Earthlings actually did pick him up and get him to medical help. He switched his goggle view so he could see what Sanchez's goggles were seeing. It was an action that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He couldn't have timed it more perfectly. Sanchez was looking southwest, towards the gap that had just fallen to the Earthlings. The tank tread was approaching him slowly, clanking towards his bent and broken legs.

'Oh fuck... oh my god!' Zen yelled, unaware that he was even speaking aloud, overcome by the horror of what he was seeing. 'No!'

The tread rolled up onto Sanchez's legs, smashing them, driving them into the ground. It continued to move forward, inch-by-inch, crushing his pelvis, his back, his stomach. When it reached his chest the video feed suddenly, lethally cut off.

'What is it, Zen?' asked Xenia. 'What is it?'

'Oh my god,' he whispered. He couldn't answer her. It would be years before he would talk to anyone about what he'd seen through that brief video link.

Sergeant Woodman led two platoons into the trench on the right flank of the hill. The opening was small, only a meter and a half in diameter. The men tossed fragmentation grenades through the hole and then went inside right behind them, their weapons ready to shoot anything that moved. But nothing moved. The trench was deserted except for a few dead Martians and thousands of empty shell casings.

'Clear so far, Lieutenant,' Woodman told Callahan, who was hanging back about twenty meters. 'A couple of dead Martians in here so we did manage to pop a few of them off. There's ammo boxes, waste containers, and used food gel packs everywhere in here.'

'No live Martians though?' Callahan asked. 'Not even wounded?'

'Not so far,' he said. 'I'm sending the men forward to check out the rest.'

'Got it. According to Colonel West, the center units are moving upward now too. No opposition. Left flank is up at trench level but is still trying to find the entrance. No opposition there either. Tanks have encircled the hill. They saw a few stragglers heading east but that's about it.'

'What about the other hills?' Woodman asked, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.

'West only touched on that for a minute — after all, we've got our own fucking hill to worry about — but some have fallen, some are still shooting but it's mostly holding action. It looks like they're withdrawing in force from the gap.'

'So we won?'

Callahan looked down below, where a full-scale triage operation was being set up to start getting the many wounded taken care of, where the dead were littering the ground amid the burned out tanks and APCs. 'I wouldn't exactly call this a victory,' he said, 'but the Jutfield Gap seems to be in our hands now. Let's finish getting these trenches secured, huh? We need to get some defensive positions up by sunrise and we need to get everyone resupplied on ammo and air.'

'Sure, LT,' Woodman said. 'We're gettin' it on.'

Woodman trailed behind four of the men, watching as they worked their way forward, deeper into the trench network, their weapons held out before them. The lead man — some private Woodman didn't know and had never seen before the battle — walked close to a sensor imbedded in the wall of the trench, a sensor designed to detect the heat of a biosuit. It triggered a Stevenson mine that had been imbedded in the far wall. The directional explosion ripped through the trench, nearly vaporizing the private and the two men behind him, and sending razor sharp industrial diamond slag through Woodman's face shield and into his face. He fell backward, blinded, the blood boiling out of his head and into the air. Fortunately for him the loss of air pressure killed him long before he was able to suffocate from the lack of air.

Callahan felt the concussion, heard the crack of the explosion, saw the flash of light from the trench above. He tried to contact Woodman to no avail, this despite the fact that his suit was still transmitting.