fucking days ago that was. It is impossible for us to take those positions in these numbers under those conditions, sir. Impossible. And I will not order my men to engage this enemy any further unless we are allowed to rest, be fully re-armed, and, most of all, reinforced in some way so we can attack in the strength necessary to achieve our objectives. You can court martial me if you wish, you can execute me on the spot if you feel that's necessary, but I will not walk another foot forward under these conditions, nor will I order my men to walk another foot forward.'
'I can't believe you just said that to me, Callahan,' West said, his tone sounding more hurt than angry — like that of a father whose son has defied him. 'You are relieved of command as of this moment. Your second in command will take over Charlie Company and you will be placed under arrest and transported back to the LZ for processing. I hope you like snow because you're going to be shoveling a lot of it at the penal colony for a very long time.'
'At least I'll be alive to shovel it,' Callahan said.
'You'd better save some room in the APC for me, Colonel,' Captain Boothe said. 'I'm with Callahan. I will not order my men forward into a hopeless battle. They will be killed for nothing and I will not be a party to that.'
'Put me on the list as well,' said Strawn. 'That's a meat grinder in front of us.'
'Me too,' agreed Rollins. 'I will not go forward from here.'
Now the anger appeared in West's tone. 'This is mutiny!' he yelled at them. 'I could have you all shot for this!'
'That would certainly help morale, wouldn't it?' asked Callahan.
'Look, Colonel,' Boothe said. 'None of us are making this decision lightly, I can assure you of that. You're asking too much of us. You're asking us to commit our men to death when there is no possible hope of victory. Now you can sit there and debate the fine points of the legality of our position if you want, but my suggestion would be that you contact regimental command and let them know what we've done. My guess is we're not the only ones.'
Colonel West did just that. And it turned out that Boothe was entirely correct.
Mars Orbit
Aboard the WSS Nebraska
General Wrath had just finished another briefing of the WestHem media in which he'd explained yet again why his forces were still not standing in the Martian cities. The story now was that the greenie terrorists manning the main line positions were utilizing 'human shields' in the form of Martian civilians and captured Earthling non- combatants. They were placing these hapless civilians in the very trenches they were defending their cities from in order to keep the WestHem marines from unleashing the full fury of their superior training and firepower.
'They've committed this cowardly, unprecedented act in all four of the cities in which combat operations are under way,' he'd explained with his usual straight face. 'This is an action that defies any and all civilized rules of warfare, an action even more appalling than their use of suicide attacks against troop concentrations and unarmed transit ships. While this will not break our resolve or even bend it, and while we will neutralize and occupy those positions in a matter of hours no matter what, we have pulled back a bit and held in place in order to evaluate the best way to deal with this new tactic in a way that will eliminate or at least minimize the possibility of innocent deaths in this conflict.'
And that was it. The explanation was accepted as the gospel without any questions about how the marines knew the Martians were putting civilians into the trenches, about how the Martians were getting these civilians outfitted in biosuits and marching them out there. And there were definitely no questions about the twenty-six thousand men who had been killed in the last three days, or about the thirteen thousand that had been wounded.
Major Wilde was waiting for him in the hallway when he left the pressroom. His expression was one of trepidation mixed with a little bit of sorrow.
'New developments?' Wrath asked, popping his fifteenth antacid tablet of the day.
'Yes sir,' Wilde told him.
'By the look on your face I'm guessing it is not a favorable development.'
'No sir,' Wilde agreed. 'Should we talk in your office?'
Wrath sighed and then nodded. They walked through the halls, past a few marine sentries, and entered the luxurious, blue-carpeted office just adjacent to the war room. A large window in the wall looked out over the surface of Mars far below. It was view that had seemed to mock him for days now.
Wrath sat down behind his desk, practically falling into his custom-made chair. Wilde took a seat before the desk without waiting for permission. The two men had long since ceased to adhere to such formalities.
'What is it?' Wrath asked, already bracing himself.
'It's what I was afraid would happen,' Wilde said. 'The morale problem among the combat units down on the surface has reached the breaking point.'
'What do you mean?'
'In all four theaters of operations, company commanders and, in some cases, battalion commanders, are refusing to follow orders to advance.'
'Refusing to follow orders?' Wrath repeated. Though Wilde had warned him that something like this might happen just twelve hours before the very concept was so foreign to a man who had spent his life in the Corps that he had trouble acknowledging what he was being told. 'You mean... refusing? As in, 'I'm not going to do that'?'
'Yes sir, that's exactly what I mean.'
'How many?'
Wilde sighed, almost ashamed to admit the truth even though he had foreseen this. 'Nearly all of them,' he said. 'The dissent is pretty much unanimous at the company level in Eden and New Pittsburgh. In Libby, several of the battalion commanders are in on it too. At Proctor... well... you know how things are going there.'
'Yes,' Wrath said bitterly. He did. At New Pittsburgh and Eden the units were in position to attack the main line of defense that guarded the cities themselves. In Libby, they had already attacked it once and had been soundly repulsed. But in Proctor — the most mountainous of the four cities and the one protected by the narrowest approaches — the marines had still, after three days of vicious fighting, not pushed through the first line of defense. Every attempt had failed, resulting in bloody, agonizing defeats.
'Everyone from battalion level down to the platoon leaders — those that are left — are refusing to mount another attack on that line. They have defied General Baggenstein's orders and have actually pulled back thirty kilometers, out of the range of the Martian artillery. A message sent to Baggenstein read that we could come down and shoot every last one of them if we wanted but they were not going to attack their objectives any more.'
'That's mutinous,' Wrath said angrily. 'It's absolutely mutinous!'
'I agree,' Wilde said. 'But it's also the reality we're dealing with.'
'You send a message to those men down there that I order them to follow their goddamn orders and take those cities!' Wrath yelled. 'How dare they defy me like that!'
'Sir,' Wilde said, 'I think you need to face some facts here.'
'What facts?'
'The Martians have achieved their objectives in this first phase of the conflict.'
'They've what?'
'We cannot take their cities, sir. Not with the configuration of forces we now have. I've been over this again and again in the past twenty-four hours and there is simply no way, short of utilizing tactical nuclear weapons, that we can clear those defensive positions with the men we have available. In every one of the theaters of operation our ratio is down to less than a three to one advantage in combat troops. Our armor has been decimated, particularly the APCs. The Martians have air superiority and the ability to suppress our artillery with impunity. Most of all, our unit cohesion has been destroyed by the loss of so many officers and NCOs. The commanders down there on the surface are not throwing a fit or trying to be difficult, they simply realize there is nothing to be gained by pushing forward but the needless deaths of their men. You can punish them if you want but they're only responding to the reality of the situation.'
This was a very hard pill for Wrath to swallow. 'So you're saying... we've lost?'
'We've lost this battle, sir. We haven't lost the war. We can still come out of this with a victory but we need to take some drastic steps.'
