line stretching from one side of the hill to another. Walker was right. There were too many of them to count.
An artillery shell landed just down the hill from him. The flash overwhelmed his visual mode. The concussion hammered into him hard enough to drive some of the air from his lungs. Several pieces of smoking shrapnel came flying into his firing hole, one of them pinging off the side of his helmet.
'Jesus,' he mumbled, just as another one exploded a little further up.
Mortar shells, fired from behind them, began to drop in the midst of the APCs, their proximity fuses causing them to explode about ten meters up. And then the marines began to dismount, appearing from around the back of the APCs. The mortar rounds felled some; most began to move forward, toward the base of the hill.
Jeff put his targeting recticle on a concentration of them and opened fire, taking three of them down with one burst. He then shifted and fired at another group that had come out from one of the other APCs. The rest of the squad opened up as well, popping at them with their rifles. Many marines went down but within thirty seconds there were hundreds of them still up and they were moving in.
The APCs began to fire to cover them, sending sixty millimeter shells and twenty millimeter cannon fire at the infantry positions. Riggins, one of the newer members of Jeff's squad, was killed almost immediately as a twenty millimeter round went right through his head. Two of the shells exploded directly in front of Jeff's hole, sending more shrapnel into the trench. A piece of it ripped through the top of Jeff's shoulder but missed the skin beneath.
'Creek, displacing,' he called, letting them know that the SAW would be out of action for a few seconds. He moved to the hole to his right and put it back out there. In the time this took the marines down below had advanced another fifty meters. They were moving in as fast as they could, not shooting back, not crawling, not stopping to help those that had fallen. He opened up on a group of them, raking down six of them but had to stop and pull back inside as a furious barrage of sixty millimeter and twenty millimeter fire began to slam into his position. Sandbags exploded and dust flew. Shrapnel sprayed everywhere. He bent down low and moved back to his original hole. This time he only got three marines before the APCs below started plastering him.
'They're at the base of the hill,' Walker said, unleashing a three round burst from his own weapon. 'They now have defilade from the mortar fire.'
'They're not stopping to regroup, sarge,' Drogan said. 'They're moving up fast, all at once. Not using covering fire.'
'They learned from the last time,' Walker said. 'Keep the fire on them as long as you can, but get ready to pull back. The AT teams have already disengaged.'
The artillery continued to slam into the hill and the marines below continued to climb. Jeff moved from hole to hole, firing the SAW down at them, mowing down two or three at a time and then quickly displacing before the APCs could zero in on him. The other squad members continued to fire their own weapons, most using single shots at individual soldiers. Drogan had a grenade launcher on her M-24 and when they got into range she began to use it. Their shooting was true and the marines fell in considerable numbers but there were simply too many of them over too great an area. Their advance was relentless and terrifying.
When the artillery suddenly stopped, indicating that the marines were close enough that they might get hit with it, the order finally came down. 'Okay, everyone,' Walker said. 'It's time to get the hell out of here. Withdraw to the rear as quickly as you can. Creek, you and I will keep some fire on those marines until everyone is headed down.'
'Right, sarge,' he said, moving in towards the center of the trench and putting his barrel through.
The rest of the squad grabbed all the ammunition, food packs, and waste packs they could carry and started working their way through the trench. Jeff and Walker put bursts of fire down on the advancing marines for about two minutes and then Walker decided that was enough time.
'Let's hit it, Creek,' he said. 'The sooner we get down and in the APC, the sooner your girlfriend down in the tank will be able to pull out too.'
'Fuckin' aye,' Jeff said, firing one last burst down and taking out two more marines. He pulled the SAW back inside and slung it over his back. He followed Walker down to the access trench and they began to work their way down to the bottom.
The APC's were waiting down there and they climbed inside. The doors shut and they began to rumble across the wastelands, heading for the Blue Line to the east. All up and down the line the same thing was occurring. The Jutfield Gap — Eden's most formidable chokepoint on the western approach, the chokepoint responsible for more than seventy percent of the enemy infantry and armor casualties in the first phase of the battle — had fallen to the marines in less than thirty minutes.
Captain Callahan sat halfway up Hill 778, his back against a large boulder, his M-24 resting on his lap. Twenty meters further up the hill was the opening of the trench the Martian infantry troops who had recently vacated this hill had operated from. One of his platoons was carefully approaching it, their weapons ready, peering inside to make sure the former occupants had really left.
'Remember,' Callahan told newly promoted Lieutenant Skag, who was in charge of that particular platoon, 'keep your men well clear of that trench. Those Martians love their booby traps.'
'Yes, sir,' Skag replied. 'We're not going closer than five meters.'
Callahan's company had been one of five that had gone after this particular hill, which had been held by a single company of MPG reinforced with an anti-tank platoon. The hill had fallen with an ease that was almost absurd in light of the heavy price they'd paid during phase one. The anti-tank fire as they'd approached had been very light, with only one or two weapons flashing. They'd lost more APCs to the Martian tanks than from the AT weapons — a stark reversal of the first time. Callahan had lost fourteen of his men on the advance, ten when their APC was hit by one of the tanks, two to the Martian mortar fire as they'd dismounted, the other two to small arms fire from within the trenches as they'd mounted the hill. The other companies involved in the attack were reporting similar casualty rates. Apparently the new plan of moving quickly in overwhelming numbers was having the desired effect.
'Callahan,' said the voice of Captain Boothe on the command channel. 'Why don't you stroll on up the hill for a minute. There's something up here I think you might want to see.'
'On my way,' Callahan said. He stood and began to climb, walking around the edge of the lower trench opening and onto the steeper slope of the hill. The going was a little tough but he relished the fact that he was doing it without being shot at. In about five minutes he made it up, finding Boothe standing near a collapsed heap of sandbags.
'I think we know why the AT fire was so sparse from this position,' Boothe told him after they switched down to a short-range channel.
'Oh?' Callahan asked.
'Take a look,' he said, pointing beyond the sandbags.
Callahan took a few steps closer and looked inside. A large portion of this trench had collapsed, its concrete barricades smashed open, its sandbags blown to pieces. There were more than a dozen dead Martians visible in the rubble, some with limbs blown off, some with heads blown off, most with their protective biosuits shredded by shrapnel. The remains of their AT weapons lay with most of them.
'The arty,' Callahan said.
'Exactly,' Boothe confirmed. 'These trenches are well-designed and well-built but they can't stand up to a sustained artillery barrage with penetrating shells. I talked to Colonel West while you were climbing up here and he confirmed that all up and down the gap we're finding the same thing. We didn't get all of the AT trenches but we got a lot of them. That kept them from blasting us while we moved in and let the APCs and the tanks concentrate fire on the infantry trenches. Coupled with our greater numbers we were able to walk up these hills with minimal opposition.'
'So that air strike we launched did some good after all?'
'It would seem so,' Boothe said. 'We didn't get all of their heavy guns. I saw some of those big-ass shells passing overhead as we moved in, but it was nothing like the first phase. If we can keep our artillery firing and supporting us we're gonna take that fucking city, Callahan.'
'What about when their reinforcements are all in the fight?' Callahan asked. 'We hit them here before they were able to get in on it. What about the Blue Line?'
'We're going after the Blue Line as soon as all of the hills are cleared,' Boothe said. 'That should be in less than an hour.'
'Nice,' Callahan said, looking at the dead Martians with relish. It was nice to see that they were capable of
