pillboxes with eighty-millimeter fire. The APCs began to fire their sixty-millimeter guns at these positions as well. It looked impressive enough as explosions, smoke, and debris obscured the entire top half of the pillboxes but the frequency of the laser fire coming back at them did not ease up even a little bit. APCs continued to flash and explode all around them.
Callahan checked his command screen as they bumped and bounced over the last two hundred meters before the dismount point. His company was now down three complete squads — one lost during the attack on the first line, one lost in the staging area, and now, one lost in the advance to the main line. Fortunately all were from different platoons and many of his platoons had been reinforced with an extra squad due to the shortage of APCs. He made sure his communications gear was set to the command channel. He keyed up and addressed his platoon leaders.
'Listen up, guys,' he said, his voice strangely steady despite his terror. 'Dismount is in just a few seconds. They're gonna pour every conceivable kind of fire they got on us the second we step out of these APCs. Get your men through the tanks and into that anti-tank ditch as quick as possible. Don't return fire at the pillboxes. Small arms fire ain't gonna do shit to those positions. Get everyone into the ditch where we'll at least have defilade from everything but the arty and the mortars. We'll regroup and then move in from there to the base of the pillboxes. Is everyone clear on that?'
One by one they responded that they were clear.
'Very well,' he said. 'Things are gonna be ugly the next hour or so. Keep the faith, keep pushing forward, and God willing we'll be standing inside Eden soon. Remember, we got the numbers on them. Let's use them wisely.'
No one answered him. The APCs began to grind to a halt a few seconds later. The ramps swung down and he and his men emerged into a living hell of noise, confusion, and death. Explosions hammered into them as proximity fused one hundred and fifty millimeter shells and eighty-millimeter mortars came raining out of the sky. Men were blown to pieces, arms, legs, heads flying off, bodies ripped in half and tossed about. Bullets were streaking in from everywhere, machine gun fire, single shots, three round bursts, cutting others down like ducks in a shooting range. Blood vapor and dust filled the air, making it difficult to see. Callahan watched the sergeant and two of the men from the squad he was with shot down the moment they stepped away from the relative safety of the APC's rear end.
'Down!' he yelled on the command channel. 'Get your men on the their bellies! Crawl to that fucking ditch and get inside!' With that, he followed his own advice and threw himself to the ground.
Gradually all the men in his company, in the other companies, in the two battalions tasked to take the pillboxes, did the same. This kept them safe from most of the small arms fire since the tanks were now able to block it. It did very little, however, to protect them from the artillery and the mortars. They continued to boom up and down the line, spraying lethal shrapnel onto the marines below, sending clouds of blood vapor welling upward in their wake.
The first of the troops reached the line of tanks and paused there, trying to regroup a little before pushing forward to the ditch. Callahan reached the rear of one of the tanks — as of yet unscathed in any way — and raised himself up to a kneeling position just behind the right tread of the vehicle. A quick check of his forces screen showed he'd lost thirty of the one hundred and fifty men he'd dismounted with, including one of his lieutenants.
'This will
Another wave of artillery shells came arcing in, exploding up and down the line, killing or maiming more men. Callahan heard shrapnel bouncing off the tank he was hiding behind, saw two more of his men go down.
By this point the men from his company were mixed up with men from the other companies, even men from other battalions. It was not quite a panicked run yet but it was heading that way. More than two hundred men rushed from the cover provided by the tanks and moved across the open ground, heading for the ditch. More were shot down by the small arms fire. Callahan saw one man try to cross in front of a tank just as it fired its main gun. The shell did not explode but the sheer power of the muzzle blast blew the man into hundreds of pieces, scattering some of them more than thirty meters away.
'Christ,' Callahan muttered, trying to pick out the path he would take for his own dash.
The first wave of men reached the edge of the ditch and threw themselves inside. Another wave followed right after them. That was when his lieutenants began to scream on the command channel, something incomprehensible. He heard the word 'rebar' and 'impaled' several times. The rest was gibberish. At the edge of the trench the third wave of men suddenly halted, trying desperately to avoid going in, this despite the fact that small arms fire was cutting them down as they stood there.
'What the fuck is going on?' Callahan demanded. 'Somebody chill the fuck out and give me a report!'
'Beyers here, sir,' said the lieutenant in charge of his fourth platoon. 'The Martians have rebar sticking up from the bottom of that ditch! They've sharpened the points into spears! We couldn't see it because of all the dust that's blown in there. The men went down and... fuck, sir... I never seen nothing like this. They're impaled down there!'
'Jesus fucking Christ,' Callahan said, horrified.
Men began to pile up at the edge of the ditch. Others, panicked, not knowing what was going on, slammed into them. Many fell in. The panic increased when the machine gun and rifle fire picked up in intensity, slamming into them. And then another wave of artillery fire, targeted directly over the tanks where most of the other men were piling up, started to explode above them. More men from the tank positions rushed forward, pushing more men from the front into the ditch. Fights broke out and several men on the edge began to shoot at their own troops with their M-24s, desperate to avoid being pushed over.
The force of the troops pushing from behind was much greater than the resistance of the troops trying to stand firm on the edge of the ditch. Dozens and then hundreds fell in. At this point those on the edge stopped hesitating and simply allowed themselves to be carried in. Callahan thought he had an idea why the resistance had stopped.
Another shell exploded very close behind him, close enough that the concussion pushed him forward onto the tank's tread guard. Bullets came slamming in just in front of him, ricocheting off the steel hull of the tank less than half a meter in front of his face. He pushed himself backwards, until he was standing on the ground again and then made his dash to the ditch. He stopped for a second on the edge and saw that his suspicions had been correct. Dozens of marines were down on the bottom, impaled by the sharpened rebar points. Some were dead, the points penetrating through their chests, their stomachs. Others were less fortunate. One man had slid down the concrete side and had ended up impaled right through his groin. He was squirming and twisting, probably screaming as well although Callahan couldn't hear him. Others had the spikes through their lower legs, their thighs, their hips. What this had all served to do, however, was to cushion the landing for those behind them. It was distasteful to use the corpse of another marine as a landing pad but things were down to sheer survival now. Knowing that he would be haunted by it later — assuming he lived long enough for there to be a later — Callahan slid down the eighty degree concrete slope and into the ditch, his feet landing firmly on the chest of one man and the head of another, his weight driving the lethal spikes even further into their lifeless bodies. He stepped forward, using the corpses of others to make his way over and between the spikes until he made it to the far side of the ditch. He leaned against the concrete wall, catching his breath, trying to control the fear and horror.
There was defilade from the mortars and the artillery fire here since the airburst shell fragments were coming in at an angle. Other men had figured this out as well and it was crowded on this side. Most looked like they had no intention of leaving. Others were continuing to leap into the ditch and it was soon full of men, pushing chest to chest, legs to legs. They had to go up the other side and make the final dash to the base of the pillboxes. Callahan spoke on his command channel, trying to tell his platoon leaders to start moving but no one was listening to him. He tried on the tactical channels, speaking directly to the men but all he got for his efforts was insubordinate profanity.
'Fuck that shit, sir,' someone yelled back at him. 'I'm staying here.'
'Goddamn right,' someone else added. 'If you're so fucking hot to get up there and get your head blown off, be my fuckin' guest!'
'We need to move up all at once, all along the line,' Callahan said. 'It's the only way that any of us are going to get out of here alive!'
