forth, seemingly randomly and with no forewarning of any kind. This coupled with the lack of outside visual references and the heavy knowledge that only a slight miscalculation on Rick's part would smash them into a hillside at more than 600 KPH, made for very unstable stomachs. They gripped their weapons tightly and most of them followed Lon's example and kept their eyes tightly shut.
Rick circled in a roundabout path through the Sierra Madres Mountains and down to the foothills that bordered it. On the other side of these rolling hills was a broad expanse of relatively flat terrain some five kilometers wide and more than sixty kilometers in length. Such terrain and other cuts through the surface like it were the most likely avenue of advance for any invasion force attacking the planet since they were flat enough to both support a group of orbit to surface landing craft and to move tanks, artillery, and other armored vehicles through. It was in these valleys that the Eden area MPG troops did most of their training.
'One minute to the LZ,' Dave announced as they exited from the mountainous area and began to dive through the smaller foothills. 'Going in hot.'
'Copy,' Lon said, fighting with his gorge. It had been a long time since he'd puked during an insertion but it was always a struggle.
Rick slowed to just above stall speed, easing up on the up and down motion a little bit. He banked sharply around the base of a hill and turned back to the east, towards a small gully that was known only by its map coordinates. 'LZ in sight,' he announced. 'Get ready for insertion.'
Dave, as the gunner, examined the ground around the landing zone carefully through his scope. An infrared enhanced camera mounted on the belly panned back and forth under magnification, searching for the telltale signatures of biosuits of 'enemy' soldiers. It was possible, though very unlikely, that the MPG armored forces that were acting as the opposing force, or OPFOR, in the drill might have sent out patrols of the area. These training sessions were designed to be executed as realistically as possible. 'I'm scanning clear,' he announced as he saw nothing but empty ground.
'Copy, scanning clear,' Lon echoed. He opened his eyes and looked at his troops. 'Lock and load guys. It's time to play.'
Everyone jacked rounds into the chambers of their weapons. 'Let's get the fuck out of this deathtrap,' Horishito said.
'Coming in,' Rick said, picking his put down spot. He lowered the landing gear. 'Brace for landing.'
The transition from straight and level flight to a controlled vertical landing was a rather violent affair. Rick pitched upward and simultaneously changed the angle of the engines, directing the thrust downward. The entire aircraft shuddered as if in seizure as airspeed was bled off in a matter of seconds. The nose rose upward at more than forty-five degrees and the occupants were subjected to a jaw-wrenching 3G of deceleration. Once their forward airspeed fell to less than 30 KPH Rick nosed down, bringing them back level and reduced thrust, allowing gravity to pull them to the surface. The heavy duty, puncture-proof tires slammed down onto the dusty surface, bounced once, and then settled into a soft roll which was quickly halted with the brakes.
'On the ground,' Rick said, keeping the thrusters at just over idle.
Dave pushed the button that opened the loading ramp. As it clanked downward, thumping to the ground, he pushed another button that released the restraint harnesses of the back passengers. 'Go,' he told them, continuing to peer into his scope for enemy soldiers. Had he seen any he could have engaged them with the twenty-millimeter cannon.
'Let's go,' Lon said, getting carefully to his feet. Though the image of special forces troops was that they jumped up and ran everywhere, the fact was that on the surface of Mars in less than a third of normal gravity, you
In an orderly fashion all ten of them moved down the ramp and out onto the surface of the planet, their suit boots tramping through the powdery, rocky soil. Dust blown up from the landing and the continued thrust of the engines obscured the terrain around them. Once outside the aircraft they spread apart in a well-practiced maneuver and lay down on the ground ten meters from the ramp, forming a loose circle with all of them facing outward, weapons ready to engage any targets that might be encountered.
'We're down,' Lon barked into his radio link, letting the pilot know that he could get back into the air. As long as the Hummingbird was on the ground both it and the troops that it had inserted were vulnerable.
'Copy,' Rick's voice said into his ear. 'Lifting off. Kick some ass out here.'
A moment later the blowing dust grew worse as the thrusters fired back up to full throttle, lifting the aircraft back into the air. When it was ten meters above the ground the thrusters turned slowly back to the rear, restoring forward flight. It moved faster and faster until it was once more capable of sustained flight again. It banked around to the north and moved away, keeping low to the ground. None of the men watched it go.
After a moment the dust began to settle or drift off in the 40 KPH wind and the men began to bark off that the area in front of them was clear.
'Okay,' Lon said, gripping the stock of his M-24. 'Jefferson, Horishito, Powell, Yamata, Salinas, move off to that group of boulders at my four o'clock. We'll cover. Matza, keep sharp with that SAW.'
One by one the five men that Lon had named got to their feet and trotted across the uneven ground. They formed up in a wedge formation, their weapons ready for action, their equipment clanking on their backs. They stepped gingerly, each footfall a deliberate movement designed to keep them from losing their balance in the reduced gravity. Though their movements looked almost comical they were able to move surprisingly quickly and within a minute of exiting the ramp they were in position in the boulder field.
'It's clear over here, sarge,' Corporal Salinas, his second-in-command, told him on the closed radio link they used. It was an ultra high frequency channel of minute power, incapable of being picked up more than a half- kilometer away unless a power boost was used. And even if it were picked up, the transmissions were encoded.
'Copy,' Lon said. 'We're coming up.' He waved to the men left with him and they all got to their feet. Utilizing the same trot as those before them, they moved across the landscape and joined their companions. Once they were reunited Lon punched a command into the access panel on the sleeve of his biosuit. A detail map of the area they were in appeared before his eyes. A small red dot in the center of the map, placed there by the suit computer utilizing global positioning satellites in geosynchronous orbit, marked his current location on it. 'Right on target,' he said, studying the view. He looked to the south, towards a series of small hills. 'Right over there,' he pointed. 'Hill 2718 and Hill 2712. They overlook the AOA of the OPFOR. Salinas, take Gavin and Horishito over to 2718 and hole up with those AT launchers. The rest of us will take 2712 and provide anti-personnel cover. Retreat rally position is going to be that boulder field at grid 7C on your maps.'
'Right, sarge,' Salinas said, shifting his weapon a little. 'Let's go guys,' he told Gavin and Horishito. They began to trot across the landscape in that direction.
'Powell,' Lon said to one of his more experienced privates, 'you take point. Matza, linger back with me with the SAW. Let's move.'
They moved, the seven of them assembling into a wedge and moving quickly towards the hill.
The ETT-12 main battle tank was state of the art armor for the WestHem armed forces extra-terrestrial operations. Built in the Alexander Industries armament factory in New Pittsburgh, they weighed in at nearly sixty metric tons (in standard 1G gravity) and could travel at more than one hundred kilometers per hour across nearly any terrain. The engine was a high horsepower hydrogen-burning turbine that required very little maintenance. Crewing three, they sported twin high capacity anti-armor lasers protruding from a housing atop the turret. These lasers were their main guns and could put a hole in just about anything that they hit, no matter how thick or how reinforced. However, as handy a thing as lasers were for anti-vehicle or anti-structure assaults, they did have their limitations. Lasers with a capacity high enough to kill required significant amounts of power and they needed to be charged up before firing, something that took an average of eight to fifteen seconds, depending on the capacity and the power source. This made them virtually useless against personnel or massed light vehicles since rapid fire was impossible. For this reason the ETT-12 was equipped with an 80mm, high explosive round main gun, a 20 mm, high velocity cannon capable of firing nearly three hundred rounds per minute and a smaller, 4mm high velocity commander's weapon capable of firing nearly six hundred rounds per minute. These weapons were of course compatible with the firing computers of the crewmembers' biosuits making it quite easy to put bullets on target.
The Martian Planetary guard, which was technically an arm of the WestHem armed forces (though you would never hear an MPG member
