constantly as different features were crossed by it. Less than two hundred meters to the right of the platoon was a paved road leading higher up into the mountains, but Callahan was far too experienced to do anything as stupid as lead his men along a predictable route. Though the rebels, as a fighting force, were almost hopelessly outmatched by the marines, there was no sense in sending out open invitations for an ambush.
'Hammy,' he said into his command radio link, his words being transmitted via a throat microphone to his four squad leaders, 'spread your guys out a little more, will you? That right flank looks like shit.'
'You bet, skipper,' Sergeant Hamilton, one of his newer and greener squad sergeants replied back. Hamilton and his squad had been forced upon him a month ago after a long stint in the boredom of Alaska region, which contained the heaviest concentration of military forces in all of WestHem but which never saw any action of any kind. They seemed like they might make the grade some day but every last one of them had yet to have his cherry popped, as the term for combat went in the corps.
Callahan watched in semi-satisfaction as Hamilton adjusted the inverse wedge that his squad had been in into something approaching a proper formation. He turned his attention forward again, his eyes sweeping over the towering peaks rising into the mist before them. There were literally thousands of places up there that could potentially contain teams of rebels ready to attack them with ancient weaponry for the sheer harassment value of it. Most of the fighters were the direct descendents of those that had fought the WestHem army and marines during the initial occupation after World War III. They knew these mountains better than anyone else ever could or would and usually the first sign that they were there was when the bullets started coming in. From interrogating prisoners of the past, it was well known that an Argentine nationalist considered it a great victory if they could kill one marine for every ten of their own that was lost. They were willing to lose a hundred in order to kill that one though. And often that was just how many it took.
'You ever wonder why we're doing this?' asked Sergeant Mallory, his first sergeant and the second in command of the platoon. His squad was taking rear guard on this particular march and he had maneuvered himself to be next to his commander. He had turned off his radio link so that he could talk freely, without everyone else in his squad listening in.
Callahan flipped off his own link and looked at his closest friend in the corps. 'Doing what?' he asked, although he was pretty sure he knew what he was referring to.
'Laying our asses on the line up here in these mountains, chasing these gomers around every damn day.' He grunted a little. 'I mean, really, what's the damn point of it? We can protect the base and most of the area around it and the gomers aren't really that much of a threat anyway. So why do it? Why not just let them be up there in their mountains?'
'Because the powers that be think it's a good idea to go kill them,' Callahan answered. 'They want us to suppress this rebellion and to suppress it firmly, so it doesn't spread to other places, so that those who are fighting it are kept at the lowest level of morale possible. If we didn't go out and slaughter them on a regular basis, pretty soon we'd be elbow deep in gomers. And then where would we be?'
'I suppose,' Mallory replied doubtfully, spitting a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. 'When you come right down to it though, I'm forced to wonder what the hell WestHem even wants with this shithole province in the first place. What's here that's valuable? This entire province is nothing but mountains and desert populated by vermin and thieves. Hell, most of them have refused to learn English even. What would we lose if we let these gomers be independent? It's not like they're Mars, which is actually worth something. I say give them their fuckin independence and see how they do with it. Once we stop given them welfare and food shipments they'll come crawling back to us.'
'They're part of the empire,' Callahan told him. 'And once you let one part of the empire go, the rest will start fighting for it too. Right now we have Cuba and Argentina wanting to rebel.'
'And Mars,' Mallory put in. 'Don't forget about them.'
'And Mars,' he allowed, although he obviously had little regard for the way that they were going about it. 'Anyway, if WestHem were to grant Argentina or Cuba their freedom, within a year you'd have all of those other provinces that used to be their own countries trying to do the same. Can you imagine what it would be like if Brazil or Mexico or Canada tried to break out of the union. Shit, this whole nation would fall apart. We'd have to quadruple the corps and the army just to keep our own people under control.'
'I suppose,' Mallory said again, wondering why anyone would want out of WestHem. After all, they were the greatest democracy that ever existed. The Internet and the schools always said so.
They marched on, gradually tightening up as they entered the steeper terrain. Point men stared into crevices and around the bases of trees, searching for trip wires or loosely covered pits. Fingers tightened imperceptivity on the stocks of weapons. This was the extreme danger zone, the area where the mountains met the foothills, the area where the Argentines loved to initiate their ambushes since it allowed them to strike at their quarry in relatively open terrain while keeping themselves concealed on the peaks and in the thick vegetation. The platoon was ready for trouble and they were expecting trouble. It wasn't long before they encountered it.
As was almost always the case, the first sign that the rebels were attacking was the flashing of their weapons from the hillsides above. They came from a thick stand of pine trees, bright strobes of orange, at least four distinct rifles firing. A second or two later the bullets came whizzing in. The old M-16s and AK-47s that the rebels used had a very slow rate of fire and a pathetic muzzle velocity compared to the modern M-24s that the marines carried. This meant that the rounds would not actually penetrate the Kevlar armor that the marines wore. As such, the only way that the rebels could score a kill was to hit their targets directly in the face or neck, a task that was quite difficult from a range of nearly three hundred meters without combat computer assistance. The only real hope that rebels had of scoring a good kill was in the first few seconds of the battle, before the marines had a chance to react to the incoming gunfire.
In this case the experience of the marines prevented any lethal casualties. Once the flashes were spotted thirty of the forty men dove instantly to the ground, even before the sound of the shots reached them. As bullets came whizzing in, slapping into the mud and zinging into the trees, the only two men left standing were Sergeant Hamilton and a green private, fresh from boot camp, in second squad. Fortunately for them the rebels had not been aiming at them and they were not struck. And once they realized exactly what was happening, they too managed to get into the mud before the second wave of gunfire came rolling in.
'On the hillside! Ten o'clock!' Callahan barked calmly into his throat microphone. 'First and third squad, get some fire on them! Second and fourth, get under cover!'
The marines acted as they had been trained. The front two squads began firing up into the hillside, their M- 24s chattering rapidly and spewing expended shells onto the ground, the rounds showing up in goggles as almost solid streams of white. The men carrying the squad automatic weapons quickly set up their guns and added their heavier penetration power to the fight, hosing down the entire tree line for suppression. While they were doing this the rear squads scrambled along on their bellies to find rocks or trees or mounds of mud to hide behind, therefore improving their positioning. Within a few seconds they had all found such things and they too began to fire.
Callahan, positioned behind a large pine tree, did not fire his weapon. He kept it by his side and instead concentrated on the big picture around them. He ordered first and third squad to displace and get under better cover. They did so, all of them sliding through the mud, one of them getting hit in the leg by a lucky shot. One of the men crawling in front of him backtracked and dragged him clear. Callahan nodded in satisfaction as he saw this and then frowned as he saw how Hamilton was responding to the situation. He and his entire squad were bunched behind a single fallen log in neat line, all of them shoulder to shoulder. 'Hammy!' he yelled at him. 'Get your people spread out more! This isn't Alaska, motherfucker! For Christ's sake, if they have an RPG or a mortar they're gonna take you all out at once.'
'Right, skipper,' Hamilton said, his voice bordering on the verge of terror.
'Fuckin newbies,' Callahan muttered, not bothering to damp his link first. A few bullets came plunking into the mud within a meter of him. He didn't even flinch. He called up the geographic display from his combat computer and a moment later a map of the terrain was superimposed on his view through the combat goggles. The map was extremely detailed and very accurate, composed from years of satellite digitals and radar imagery of this most active hot zone. The location of every one of his men — information that was provided by GPS links on their computers and radio linked to his own — was represented as green dots. The location of the enemy position — which the goggles and the computer had automatically pinpointed based on the infrared signature of their weapons flashes — was represented as a series of red dots. 'Computer, secure link with fire support!' he said. 'Priority one.'
