Greenies

trench.'

'Copy,' Callahan said. 'I'm sending another platoon sized unit around from the other side of the pillbox. Once you get in there you should be able to return fire on them from a better vantage point.'

'My thoughts exactly, sir,' Hunter said. 'I'm moving in with the next group. I'll give you a report once I'm inside.'

'Copy.'

Hunter looked at the thirty or so men gathered with him. He took a few deep breaths, bracing himself for the exposure to enemy fire again. 'Okay, guys,' he said. 'Let's do it. Keep low and move fast.'

They kept low and moved fast. Eight of them were shot down on the trip. Hunter was not one of them. Moving faster than he would have thought possible he elbowed and kneed his way across the rocky ground and virtually threw himself into the narrow trench. He then made his way back to the west, towards the opening of the pillbox. The entryway was about six meters square and was crowded with the troops that had already made it inside. At the far end was a concrete staircase, leading up to a small landing where it switched back.

'Anyone gone up there yet?' Hunter asked as he made his way forward.

'No one,' one of the sergeants replied. 'We're kind of wondering about booby traps. Remember how the Martians had their trenches rigged in the gap?'

'I remember,' Hunter said. 'We still have to get up there though.'

'We need to wait for the sappers to come up and clear the position,' the sergeant said.

'The sappers can't move forward until we open a corridor to get troops through,' Hunter replied. 'We can't do that until we clear this position.'

'I'm not going up there first,' the sergeant said. Most of the men around him nodded their heads, indicating they felt the same.

Hunter sighed, knowing that simply ordering someone up wouldn't work. It would probably only serve to get him fragged, something he'd heard rumor of happening over the past few days when a sergeant or a lieutenant ordered something unpopular. 'All right,' he said, trying not to show how terrified he was, 'I'll go up. If I make it to the top, you all need to follow me. Deal?'

'It's your funeral,' the sergeant said. 'But yeah, if you make it up there, we'll follow.'

He started up, his M-24 held out before him, his feet taking each step with the knowledge that it might really be his last this time. He made it to the landing without incident and then slowly turned the corner, peeking up the next section of stairway. He saw nothing. He started up this section and again made it to the top without incident. Here there was a passageway that led into the lower level of the pillbox. It was empty of Martian troops except for a couple of dead ones. Shell casings and ammo boxes were everywhere. The mounted machine guns that had killed so many of them were still in place.

'We're clear up to the lower level,' he said. 'Now start moving up and securing it. I'm going up to the top.'

'Right, lieutenant,' the voice of the sergeant replied.

With that Hunter continued upward. Again he was not blown to pieces by a Martian booby trap. It occurred to him that the Martians hadn't been expecting to be pushed out of this position and that if they were they would know the end was near. Perhaps that was why they hadn't bothered rigging it up with anything. It was as good a theory as any.

The upper level was empty of live Martians as well. There was a lot more concrete dust up here and two dead Martians lying near the firing ports. There were hundreds upon hundreds of expended laser batteries piled everywhere. He walked out onto the main floor of this level and then turned to the rear, surprised to see the huge openings in the wall that faced toward the city.

'What in the fuck did they do that for?' he asked himself, as puzzled as Jeff Creek had been over this seemingly asinine oversight.

Footsteps bounded up the stairs and a squad of marines appeared, led by the sergeant who had refused to go up first.

'We're clearing the lower floor, sir,' the sergeant said to him. 'So far, no signs of booby-traps, although we wouldn't really know what one looked like anyway.'

'True,' Hunter said, 'but I find the fact that none have gone off yet to be good news. Did you see these huge openings in the back wall?'

'We saw them,' the sergeant said. 'I've ordered the men to stay clear of them. The Martians out in that back trench might be able to get a shot off at us if we walk in front of them.'

'Why would they build such large openings in a protective structure?' Hunter asked. 'It does nothing but increase exposure and weaken the entire emplacement.'

'I don't know, sir,' the sergeant said. 'It's enough that we noticed them and are keeping clear. Come and look at this though.' He led him over to the side wall, the one that faced north. Over here the firing opening was much smaller. 'Take a look, sir.'

Hunter put his face in the opening. Below, he could see the stretch of ground between this pillbox and the next. And since they were now well above, he could see two Martian tanks and four Martian APCs in their hull-down positions, firing out over the battlefield. 'We can take them out from up here,' he said. 'We're high enough to put laser fire right down on top of them.'

'Goddamn right, sir,' the sergeant said. 'All we need is to get some AT teams up here and we can clear this whole fucking area.'

Hunter nodded. 'Continue clearing this level,' he said. 'I'll get on with Captain Callahan and have them send some AT units up.'

'Right on,' the sergeant said. He switched his channel and ordered an entire platoon's worth of men into the room, ordering them to stay well clear of the rear opening and to man positions at the main firing ports along the walls. He ordered another squad to crawl over just to the sides of the rear openings and keep an eye out to their rear. That was, after all, where the Martians were.

Down below, Callahan, still huddled on the west side of the pillbox, listened to the report from Lieutenant Hunter with something like glee. 'Perfect,' he said. 'Absolutely fucking perfect. I'll get West to put some AT teams in with the next wave of men. With luck we'll have our corridor open within thirty minutes and then we can start moving enough men in here to force our way past those final positions.'

Jeff Creek had his M-24 pointed out toward the rear of the pillbox, the magnification on his goggles set at high. In his view was the face of one of the WestHem marines on the top level of the position. He was peeking slightly out around the corner of the opening, thinking that he was safe from being shot. He was so wrong. Jeff itched to pull the trigger, to put a 4mm round right through that Earthling asshole's face. But he didn't. He and the rest of the two platoons deployed her had been ordered not to fire.

'We could rake those fuckers right now,' he told Drogan, who was deployed next to him, manning a SAW.

'Yep,' she said. 'Now we know why those openings are so big in the rear. When the enemy takes that position they won't have the same protection from it that we had.'

'I should've known it made some kinda sense,' Jeff said. 'You gotta hand it to the engineers who designed this place. But why won't they let us shoot them? They've been exposed half a dozen times on both levels. I bet if we started pouring fire in there we'd hit a dozen or so.'

'I don't know,' Drogan said. 'But we'd better do something fast. Pretty soon they'll get some AT teams up there. If they do that, they'll be able to force the armor out of the spaces in between.'

The ground began to rumble around them, the soft, insistent vibration that bespoke of a heavy armored vehicle approaching. Jeff looked behind and saw two main battle tanks coming their way, one from the north and one from the south, both sticking close to the outside of the MPG base. When they made it directly behind the trench the platoons were in they turned and began heading forward, toward the pillbox.

Jeff and Drogan looked at each other, grinning. Now they understood what those big openings in the rear were really for.

'Sir!' the sergeant's voice suddenly barked in Hunter's ear. 'We've got tanks approaching from the rear.'

'Tanks?' he asked, alarmed. 'From behind us?' In an instant he suddenly figured out the same thing as Jeff and Drogan. Why hadn't this occurred to him earlier?'