Greenies

'Okay, new orders coming in,' Zen said. 'We're to disengage from the mobile guns immediately and head west at full throttle.'

'We're going after the secondary target?' Xenia asked.

'Fuckin' aye,' Zen said with a grin.

In less than five minutes the entire group of tanks turned around and formed up into a loose line stretching across more than two kilometers of the valley. They rumbled to the west, moving once again at more than ninety kilometers per hour.

Chapter 24

Eden Theater — behind the WestHem line, 16 kilometers east of the Jutfield Gap

September 14, 2146, 1612 hours

Five hundred and eleven Martian tanks had entered the valley from the Sierra Madres to the north or from the Overlook Mountains to the south to make the surprise attack on the WestHem artillery guns. The mission had cost them sixteen tanks in the brief, but violent exchange with the battalion of tanks guarding the guns. The rest, having completed their primary mission, were now heading west at the best possible speed, their intent to go after their secondary target: The WestHem supply trains, which were sitting back towards the gap in case resupply of the main force became necessary.

Inside one of the tanks toward the middle of the formation, Zen Valentine sat in the commander's chair, looking at the telemetry on one screen and the Intelligence briefing on the other.

'Targets are eleven klicks away, stationary, spread out over one and a half klicks of ground,' he told Belinda and Xenia. 'The supply column consists of sixteen trains with fifteen cars per train. Each train is towed by six modified tanks. Do not waste time or energy engaging the towing tanks. They are pulling engines only and they have no defensive or offensive capabilities. Xenia, you'll know them when you see them because they will be stationed at the front of each train and they have no cannons.'

'Got it,' Xenia said, looking at an identification photo of a towing tank on her own screen.

'The column is protected by twenty-four mobile SALs,' Zen went on. 'They are currently deployed in a circle around the formation. Don't worry about them either. They're bad news for the Mosquitoes but they can't hurt us.'

'Right,' Xenia agreed. She already knew this, of course — it was basic armor school training — but it was good to go over such things for clarity before going into battle.

'Now, onto what we do have to worry about,' Zen said. 'There is a battalion of main battle tanks and a battalion of infantry guarding the column from ground attack. The tanks are grouped into squads and platoons and deployed throughout the perimeter of the column. The infantry is mounted in APCs and they are grouped in the middle of the column. Intelligence says the infantry units are equipped with portable anti-air and portable anti-tank lasers.

'Our platoon is assigned to armor suppression on the northeast side of the column. When we engage, our primary targets will be the tanks, the APCs, and any dismounted infantry troops. Xenia, remember to stick to your zone. There are a thousand WestHem tanks fifteen to twenty minutes behind us so if we're going to do any damage to that column, everyone has to stick to their assignment. Got it?'

'Got it,' she said.

'If you manage to clear all the tanks in your zone you can start hitting the supply cars themselves. Ammunition carriers are the primary target followed by hydrogen carriers and then oxygen carriers. Remember, it will take at least two and maybe as many as four shots in exactly the same place to penetrate the armor on those cars. Take your shot and then put your second shot right on the hot spot you just created and then, once you're recharged, do it again.'

'Fuckin' aye,' Xenia said, feeling her heart hammering in anticipation. 'Do you think we'll be able to knock out all the guard tanks as quick as we did back at the guns?'

'Hopefully,' Zen said. 'And we're getting a little help in that too. Command says that four flights of Mosquitoes are inbound to hit the tanks before we get there. Hopefully they'll do us some good.'

'Four flights?' Belinda asked. 'That's only eight planes.'

'That's all they can spare,' Zen said. 'The rest of them are pounding on the APCs moving in on the line.'

'Oh well,' Xenia said. 'It leaves more targets for me then, doesn't it?'

'Fuckin' aye,' Zen said.

Brian and Matt were one of the planes inbound to deal with the armor. They had been in the plane now for the past twelve hours, landing only to refuel every few hours and then going right back up again. Both men were very tired and very sore, particularly Matt, who still sported an open wound on his gluteus maximus that screamed with pain every time they pulled a turn higher than two Gs — which was to say every turn they made during their firing runs. He could feel wet blood squishing around in the saturated bandage every time he shifted position, could feel rivulets of it running down onto the back of his leg, collecting in the wrinkles where the ill-fitting biosuit he'd stolen from Xavier Goodhit didn't quite provide the proper pressurization.

'How's the ass, kid?' Brian asked as they screamed through one of the valleys. 'You holding up?'

'I forgot all about it until you mentioned it,' Matt told him.

'You sure?'

'Hey, boss,' Matt said, 'how many times I gotta tell you? It's just some skin off my ass.'

Brian nodded, although he believed Matt's words about as much as he believed the big three military briefings. 'You just let me know if it gets too bad. The last fuckin' think in the solar system I need is to have my sis pass out from pain.'

'You know it, boss,' Matt promised. 'You're turning right to two-eight-three in five, four, three, two, one.'

'They cut to the right above a shallow series of hilltops between to mountains, pulling 2.8 Gs according to the meter on their screens. Matt bit his lip against the pain, feeling a fresh glut of blood come pouring out of his body. When they leveled out he took a few deep breaths as the pain slowly faded out. He looked down at his telemetry screen again, trying to memorize the locations of all the tanks in the enemy formation so he wouldn't have to search too hard on the firing run. The WestHems had twenty-four mobile surface-to-air lasers protecting that supply column and twenty-four SALs in such a concentrated area meant they were cutting their exposure time down to three seconds to reduce the risk of being felled by a lucky shot.

'Look at all those tanks we put down there,' Brian said after taking a brief glance down at his own telemetry screen.

'Hell yeah,' Matt said enthusiastically. 'More than five hundred of them. They destroyed those mobile guns in ten minutes, man! Ten fuckin minutes to do what we couldn't do after tryin' all night and all day! How the hell did they get that many tanks in the rear?'

'They had to have moved them in over the mountains,' Brian opined.

'Is that possible?' Matt asked. 'We fly over them mountains all the time. I never saw nothin' down there it looked like you could drive a tank over.'

'Let alone five hundred of them,' Brian said. 'I don't know. I can't think of any other way they could've done it short of driving all the way around the mountains and coming in from behind the LZ itself. That would be a trip of more than four hundred klicks. They would've had to refuel at least twice and probably three times.'

'And how would they have gotten by the LZ?' Matt asked. 'There's still almost a regiment of tanks guarding that and they have visual from the Sierra Madres to the Overlooks. No way five hundred tanks just strolled by without being seen.'

'Well... however they did it, they did it and they killed the shit out of that mobile arty.'

'Ready to change your bad opinion of General Jackson now?' Matt asked.

'I don't know,' Brian said. 'I'll admit that the massive flanking maneuver was a stroke of genius, but don't forget there's a trade-off.'

'What trade-off?'