Greenies

here in case you haven't noticed.'

'Yeah,' Jeff said, letting a little of the confusion and bitterness show through. 'I seem to have noticed that, especially when one of my squad members got his fuckin' head shot off right in front of me.'

'That's my point,' she said. 'Any of us could die at any time out here. Don't you see what that means? We can't love out here, not when death is so near.'

'Why can't we?' he asked. 'I've never felt like this about anyone before. Never.'

'You want to fuck me?' she asked. 'Okay. We'll do that as soon as they let us inside again — assuming we ever get inside again. We'll change out of these biosuits and we'll fuck, just like Martians have done since the Agricultural Rush.'

'No,' he said. 'I don't wanna fuck you.'

'What?'

'Uh... maybe I should put that another way,' he said. 'I do wanna fuck you — more than anything — but I'm not going to fuck you.'

'You're not going to fuck me?' she asked, confused. 'What are you? One of those God-freaks or something?'

'No, I'm not a God-freak, but what I feel for you is so far beyond just fucking that I won't cheapen it by tearing one off with you. I'm making a vow, Xenia, a fuckin' sacred vow. I will not fuck you until you tell me you love me.'

She looked at him as if he were mad. 'You won't fuck me?'

'Until you tell me you love me,' he confirmed. 'And you have to mean it too.'

'Wow,' she said, shaking her head a little. 'That might be the most counter-productive pick-up line I've ever heard.'

'It's not a pick-up line,' he said. 'It's the truth.'

She thought that over for a few seconds. 'In that case,' she said, 'it's one of the most romantic things anyone has ever said to me.'

He shrugged, a little embarrassed. 'No one ever accused me of being romantic before. I'm just sayin' what's on my mind and shit.'

'Does that include all forms of sex, or just fucking?'

'All forms of sex,' he said.

'You won't let me blow you?'

He wavered a bit but held his ground. 'No. No blow jobs, no muff munching. Not until you tell me you love me.'

She leaned closer to him, so her faceplate was touching his, her brown eyes looking into his through the two layers of plexiglass. 'How about a kiss?' she asked. 'Will you do that?'

He looked at her, his mouth suddenly dry. 'I don't think I could keep from doing that,' he told her.

She pursed her lips and pushed her head forward, so they were touching the inside of her faceplate. He did the same. They touched them together. It didn't carry the physical sensation of a real kiss, but it did carry the emotional one.

They broke apart and looked at each other, both unsure what to say next, what to do next. That was when another biosuited figure appeared over the small rise that hid them from view. Jeff knew, ever before he made a positive visual identification, that it was Hicks. Who else would it be?

'Hey, guys,' Hicks said when he figured out what channel they were conversing on. 'What the fuck's the haps?'

'We was talkin',' Jeff said, trying his best to shoot a murderous glare at Hicks but finding himself hampered by the face shields.

'Oh yeah?' Hicks replied. 'About what? The war and shit?'

'Yeah,' Xenia said, casting a warm look at Jeff. 'Something like that.'

'Well uh... sorry if I interrupted anything,' Hicks told them. He laughed a little. 'It's not like you can fuck out here or anything, right?'

'Was there some reason you came out here, Hicks?' Jeff asked. 'Or did you need help finding the fuckin' bathroom again?'

'Hey, man,' he said. 'Chill your shit a little. I was just coming out here to tell you the main line units are reporting lots of movement from the Earthling positions.'

'What?' they both exclaimed.

'Are they moving in on us?' asked Xenia.

'Why the fuck didn't they broadcast an alert?' asked Jeff.

'They're not moving in on us,' Hicks said. 'The word is they're packing up their equipment into their APCs and getting ready to pull back.'

Xenia and Jeff both forgot about their fledgling romance.

'Pulling back?' Xenia asked. 'Are you sure?'

'No confirmation yet,' Hicks said, 'but that's the word.'

Lisa was looking through her combat goggles, trying to find the next target for her AT laser when the mass movement of marines began. She was on her belly atop a shallow hill on the northern edge of the WestHem positions. The artillery had just pounded the area they were watching and then shifted fire to another position. Suddenly hundreds of marines broke from cover, crawling out from under rocks, from beneath wrecked APCs and tanks, from within hastily constructed foxholes, and began to move in a semi-orderly fashion towards the scattered undamaged APCs to the west.

'Holy shit,' Lisa said. 'You seeing this, sarge?'

'Yep,' Lon said from the next hill over, where he was sequestered with Jefferson and sighting in on potential artillery targets. 'They're going to mount up.'

'All of them?' asked Horishito, who was with Lisa. 'There's not enough APCs for them all. What the fuck are they going to ride in?'

'And look,' said Lisa. 'They're all carrying handfuls of stuff. Ammo boxes, waste packs, food packs. This doesn't look like an advance.'

'It's not,' said Lon. 'It's a retreat.'

'A retreat?' Lisa said, the very word foreign to her in relation to the WestHems. They had been out here for the last three days, moving from position to position mostly on foot, getting resupplied by daily Hummingbird drops, paralleling the marines as they slowly but surely pushed the MPG armored cav units out of each position. They'd inflicted a considerable amount of damage of their own during these battles, sniping at APCs, calling down artillery and mortars on exposed troops, and occasionally — very occasionally — getting into brief, violent firefights with marine units that got too close to them. Each battle had been marked by a hasty retreat of their own before the increasingly accurate WestHem mortar fire could zero in on their position. At one point they'd waited too long — either that or the WestHems had just gotten lucky on their first volleys. Two members of the squad had been hit with shrapnel — one dying right there on the Martian sand, the other with one of his legs blown off. All of them had taken the casualties very hard but Lon — as commander of the squad — had become almost morose.

'A retreat?' Horishito asked. 'Holy fuck. They're pulling back?'

'That's the general definition of the word,' Lon said. 'They know they can't push past our main line with the numbers they have available so they're pulling back. Someone finally made a sound military decision on that side of the war.'

'So what do we do?' Lisa asked.

'We report it,' Lon said, 'and we call down artillery on their asses and kill as many of them as we can while they're exposed. What the fuck else do you think we'd do?'

'Uh... oh... sure, sarge,' Lisa said, a bit taken aback by his tone. 'I guess that's the plan then.'

'Right,' Lon said. 'Jeffy, get on the com and send off a quick report. Take a couple pics of the retreat if you can. While you're doing that, get me a side channel to fire control so I can get some shells flying at these murdering fucks.'

Jefferson made it so. Fire control, however, had to put him on a waiting list.

'A fucking waiting list?' Lon screamed back at them. 'There are exposed WestHem marines all over my sector at this very moment! Get some shells down on them before they get in their APCs!'