can say you're married and stop having people think you're different?'
'How'd you know that?' Matt asked, wide-eyed.
'It was apparent for the past three weeks. I see the way you act around that loader you've been banging. She's what — twenty-two? Never been married? She starting to put the old pressure on?'
'A little bit,' Matt said. 'And... like... you know... I kind of like Surrender and she's hot in bed and all and she's fuckin' educated. I mean, I ain't never had me no bitch that's even graduated high school before and she's got a fuckin' masters degree and she's kind of hinted that she might be interested in putting her finger on the pad with me. She's never been married because she's spent all of her life workin' on her education.'
'So you're flattered by her attentions and impressed by her accomplishments?'
'Well... yeah,' Matt said. 'And she's really good at sex too. I ain't never done some of the shit she showed me before. I didn't even think people really did that shit.'
'Oh yeah?' Brian asked. 'Like what?'
Matt actually found himself blushing. 'She gave me a rim job,' he said. 'And then she had me do the same thing to her. And then... well... she did this thing with her feet.'
'I get the point,' Brian said.
'But she's also goin' on and on about how much she wants to have her kid and start raising it. And she talks about how nice it would be to have a two-bedroom apartment.'
'Do you love her?' Brian asked.
'Well... I'm not sure,' he said. 'We've only known each other for...'
'If you're not sure, you don't love her,' Brian told him. 'I've never been in love myself, but I've talked to enough people who really were to know that's the God-fucking truth, kid. If you don't know for sure, you don't love her. And if you don't love her, you don't want to marry her.'
'But what if I never find anyone I love?'
Brian shrugged. 'I learned from my first experience,' he said. 'I'm not going to get married again until I know I'm in love and I know she's in love with me. If that never happens then it never happens. I'll just go on fucking everything with a pussy that will let me in and I'll still die happy. Fuck what other people think about that. I mean, what do I care?'
Matt thought that over for a few seconds. 'Damn,' he said. 'That's really fuckin' radical, boss.'
'Ain't it though?'
They'd been watching for almost an hour now. APCs continued to shuttle tank crewmen from one landing ship to another and tanks continued to come down the ramp where they would drive to a staging position and await assignment to a prepared position on the perimeter. Meanwhile the bulldozers continued to work like mad, preparing those hull-down positions.
'No way in hell anything is gonna get in that perimeter,' Lisa observed. 'We could throw every tank in Eden at them and they'd throw them all back in ten minutes.'
'Yep,' agreed Lon. 'And there's too many of them for us to start sniping with our own ATs. We'd hit three or four of them — maybe — and then they'd rake us with eighty-millimeter fire. There's not enough cover or even concealment out here to protect us and the nearest place we can bring down a Hummingbird without having it plastered is six klicks back.'
'We'll have to pound them on the march,' Horishito said.
'But we won't have as much time to do it in,' Jefferson pointed out. 'They're only a hundred and twenty klicks from the city and only seventy-five from the gap.'
'We're gonna have to work twice as hard,' Lisa said. 'So will the Mosquito crews.'
'You got that shit right,' Lon said. 'If we don't slow them down somehow they're gonna get to the gap before our reinforcements get there. If the gap falls without the ACRs inflicting heavy casualties on them the 2nd Infantry might not be able to hold — especially if the reinforcements aren't there yet either.'
They all pondered that thought worriedly, none liking this sudden debut of what appeared to be sensible thinking on the part of the WestHems.
'Our whole doctrine depends on slowing them down,' Jefferson said. 'There has to be a way to do it.'
'Nothing that we're gonna be able to do,' Lon said. 'We're stuck out here observing and reporting. And what we're observing and reporting is bad news.'
The news became worse a few minutes later. It was Lisa — whose sector of responsibility included the middle portion of the landing zone — who spotted it first. She saw flares of heat from one of the ships. Her trained eyes grew wide as she saw that the ship in question was a hover-carrier and that the flares of heat were caused by excess interior atmosphere being vented out due to the opening of many doors on the side of the ship.
'Shit on me,' she said. 'Sarge, take a look at ship two-seven — the hover carrier. They just opened every goddamn door on the side.'
'The launch doors?' Lon asked, alarmed. He quickly reduced the zoom on his goggles and began panning in the direction where the ship designated as twenty-seven was located.
'The launch doors,' Lisa confirmed. 'And now I'm getting heat flare from inside almost all of them. They're sending hovers out! An assload of them.'
The discipline instilled in the special forces members prevented the rest of the team from abandoning their areas of observational responsibility to take a look at what Lisa was reporting. For this reason Corporal Spunkmaster — one of the recent replacements for the two casualties from phase one — was the next to make an observation.
'I'm getting the same thing from landing ship one-eight,' he said. 'That's the other hover-carrier. Multiple doors opening and heat flare of engines from inside.'
'Jesus Christ, sarge,' Jefferson said. 'You think they picked up a transmission from us or from one of the other teams?'
'If they know where we're at we're fuckin' toast,' said Horishito, a hint of fear in his voice. 'There ain't nowhere for us to hide out here!'
'Everyone chill,' Lon said as he finally managed to zoom in and see what Lisa had reported. 'If they knew we were out here they'd hit us with their arty first. This looks like... like an air strike.'
'An air strike?' Horishito said. 'But they haven't set up a forward refuel point. How are they gonna... oh shit,' he said, as the ramifications of his words suddenly struck him.
'Holy shit,' Lon said. 'Now we know why they landed so far forward. They won't need a fucking forward refuel point from here. Eden is within their range!'
'The 250s,' Lisa said. 'That has to be what they're going after! The 250s and maybe the air launch facilities for the Mosquitoes and the Hummingbirds!'
'Shit,' Lon said. 'Why the fuck didn't someone think of this?'
The hovers began to emerge from their ship, easing out on flares of bright heat and then rising into the air and drifting outward. In only twenty seconds more than thirty of them had launched from each ship. They began to form up some two hundred meters above their ships.
'Jefferson,' Lon said, 'send off a priority report about this. Hovers assembling above the LZ in large numbers. Prepare for air strike. Will report more when they move out.'
'Right, sarge,' he said, turning on his communications gear and quickly setting up the message. Before he was even done transcribing it the entire compliment of hovers had launched and assembled.
'What's our count?' Lon asked.
'Sixty-three of them,' Horishito said.
'That's my count too,' Lisa confirmed. 'All of them attack hovers.'
As a unit, the formation of hovers turned and began to move to the east, accelerating as they went, but descending and staying less than one hundred meters above the ground. Before they were out of sight it was clear that they'd accelerated to their top Martian speed of one hundred and seventy kilometers per hour.
'Send the next message,' Lon told Jefferson. 'Six-three attack hovers moving east from the LZ at one- seven-zero, altitude one-zero-zero.'
'Sending it,' Jefferson reported. 'I hope there's someone up there to hit them.'
There was someone up there — three different flights of Mosquitoes circling and awaiting further instructions — but all of them were running low on fuel. Brian and Matt's flight of two were the closest and they'd just sent off
