Greenies

landing craft settled in. He nodded his head in surprised respect. 'Someone up there is doing some thinking,' he told Sprinkle.

'How's that, General?'

'Look at these areas they landed in. They're as flat as anything on the surface of Mars and have no hills for our special forces teams to use to get in close. One's a former river valley and one's a former lake. They landed right in the middle of each of them.'

'So our special forces teams won't be able to land?'

'They will,' Jackson said. 'It will just have to be a little further out, maybe fifteen klicks or so. And they won't be able to get as close in either.' He sighed. 'I hope they don't actually have someone up there who knows what he's doing. That could really complicate things.'

'Keep spread out,' Lon told his squad. 'Stick close to the boulders when you can and for God's sake, keep your eyes peeled for hovers. We have no idea what they're doing at that LZ.'

No one answered him but everyone took his words to heart and kept trudging onward.

They were on the Knoxville Bed, less than two kilometers from where the Hummingbird had dropped them off with more than eight kilometers left to march, all of it through disconcertingly flat terrain in which the only cover was the boulders and rocks that had settled into this area millions of years before. Ahead, they could make out the outlines of the landing ships poking up above the surface and could see the bright flare to the west of two more — the last two they were told — coming in for their own landings. They were the first recon unit scheduled to get a look at what was going on with the WestHems. Though the recon satellites had tracked the ships all the way down to the surface, they lacked the sophistication to see what was happening now that they were on the ground.

'What's the word on them sending some of our tanks out here?' Lisa asked, shifting her anti-aircraft laser from one shoulder to the next. When told that the WestHems were landing just outside the city that was the first rumor that has started flying around — the Martian armor — with its ability to suck oxygen in from the atmosphere — had an un-refueled range that put it well within range of driving out here. If armored forces could arrive in time and in great enough numbers they could easily pin the WestHem armor inside of their landing ships forever. That was exactly why extraterrestrial invasion doctrine dictated that forces landed so far out.

'That's part of what we're coming out here to find out,' Lon said. 'If they haven't unloaded any tanks yet and if they haven't even started to, General Jackson might give the order. He'd be an idiot not to.' Lon shrugged. 'Of course I'm not convinced yet that he's not an idiot.'

'You have to admit,' Horishito said, lugging the SAW across his back, 'he was right about holding back on the shift of forces. He waited until WestHem committed to hitting Eden and New Pittsburgh and then he started moving them. If he hadn't done that one or the other of us would have been virtually defenseless.'

'True,' said Lon, who was willing to admit when a position he'd held in the past had been proven wrong. 'I still say he fucked up big with that not firing on retreating forces bullshit. If he hadn't done that there'd be a fuck of a lot less of them fight out here.'

The conversation petered out — partially because of a lack of new topics, partially because they were getting closer to the WestHem positions and they didn't want to take the chance that a patrol had been sent out that could pick up on their radio emissions. Forty minutes went by and the landing ships grew nearer — near enough that they could now make out details of what was going on.

Lon motioned them to spread out further and take cover. Spreading out was easy enough but taking cover was a little more difficult. The rock cover was pretty sparse out here.

'Switch transmission power down to half,' Lon whispered. 'I know the ships are still out of range but we're looking at direct line of sight here. You don't get better transmission conditions than this.'

Everyone did as was asked.

Lon hunkered behind the largest boulder he could find, which was only about a meter and a half in diameter. The others all did the same, stretching in a line across fifty meters.

'You know something, sarge,' said Jefferson, 'if they send troops out here in APCs looking for us, there's really nowhere to hide. Effective camouflage range might be cut all the way down to two hundred meters or so.'

'I know, Jeffy,' Lon said, adjusting his combat goggles. 'Whoever is making the decisions for these pukes these days is either really smart or really stupid, depending on what their tanks are doing.'

He trained his goggle-enhanced eyes out toward the landing ships. He sighed as he saw what was going on over there. 'It looks like maybe we're dealing with really smart,' he announced.

There were no exposed troops visible around any of the landing ships. There was, however, at least a battalion worth of main battle tanks, two dozen armored bulldozers, and more than fifty APCs moving around. The tanks were taking up positions on the perimeter, pulling into hull-down positions that had been dug by the bulldozers. The APCs mission was a mystery at first but as they watched them it became hideously clear what they were doing. They would travel over to one of the landing ships — one that they identified as a personnel carrier — and park just under the egress ramp. Ten biosuited soldiers would then quickly emerge, go down the ramp (with a few stumbling and tumbling their way down) and then climb into the APC. The APC would then drive half a kilometer across the open ground and disgorge the soldiers next to the personnel entrance to one of the armor carrying ships.

'They're shuttling,' Lon said. 'The APCs are taking the tank crews from the personnel ship to the armor ship so they won't be exposed to mortar fire.'

'They've learned from the first time,' Lisa said, looking through her own combat goggles at the same sight.

'Yeah,' Lon said. 'I think we might not be as effective here as we were in the first LZ.'

'So attacking them with our tanks is out?' Horishito asked.

'Yes,' Lon said. 'At the rate they're deploying their armor they'll have a couple of battalions dug in on their perimeter in two hours. It will take almost three hours to get our armor out here and they'll be facing prepared positions.' He shook his head. 'Nope, I think we're going to have to go traditional here.'

'Damn,' Horishito said. 'I was hoping their stupidity was perpetual.'

'No such luck,' Lon said. 'Jeffy, get this out to command and get some pictures if you can. We need to let them know to abandon the tank attack and start preparing for a traditional military engagement. Let them know that special forces attacks, sniper attacks, and mortar attacks are all going to be of minimal or negative effectiveness while they're still at the LZ. Air attacks on the armor might be possible but they're dug in and the range will be at the extreme end of effectiveness.'

'Sending it out,' Jefferson said.

'All air units moving in on the Eden LZ,' the voice spoke in Matt Mendez's ear. 'Pull out to staging pre- arranged staging positions and circle. Await further instructions there. Return when fuel levels dictate.'

'You hear that, boss?' Matt said with a sigh.

'Yeah,' Brian told him. 'I hear it. You got a plot for me?'

'Gimmee a minute to come up with one. Shouldn't be too hard.'

Brian gave him a minute, continuing to scream low through the mountains to the west of Eden. They had not been given any specific target destination when they'd left but had been assured that special forces teams were approaching the LZ from three sides and would be able to provide them with some kind of targets by the time they got there. Well... apparently that was not the case. Such was war.

'Course is laid in,' Matt told him. 'Continue forward to the next mountain and then turn right to three-five- four. We'll wind through there for six minutes and then come out in a the Carcinas Valley.'

'Got it,' Brian said.

As they and their wingman made their way in that direction, more information came in on Matt's side- net.

'No targets at the LZ right now,' he told Brian. 'They have tanks digging in and bulldozers digging trenches for the tanks. There are a few APCs but they're shuttling tank crews from one ship to the other. Range is outside of eleven klicks from the nearest hillside. No hovers have been launched.'

Brian nodded, letting loose a frustrated sigh. 'Could it be they're getting smart?' he asked. 'I was hoping they'd do something stupid like not put any tanks out. Our tanks could have killed them.'

'We'll get ours,' Matt said. 'We've kicked some serious ass so far.'

'Yeah,' Brian said. 'And how many of those tanks and APCs they're using are ones we would have killed if