later, his men began to move in.
The pedestrian stations were not terribly busy at this time of the day but still, there were upwards of fifty people, most of them working their way through the security checkpoints, at each one. At the truck entrance things were a little better. Since delivery trucks were a phenomenon of the night on Mars, this platform was virtually deserted. Each one of the stations was guarded by a four-man team of military police, each of whom was armed with a sidearm and an M-24 without combat goggle enhancement. Their command posts were glass-encased booths equipped with computer terminals and communications gear.
When the MPG troops stormed the stations, the squad leaders shouting at everyone to get down, one of the MPs at the north station reached for his rifle out of instinct. He was pummeled by rifle fire and dropped like a rock. The rest of the guards at that particular station, seeing this, immediately threw their hands up in surrender. At the other stations, all of the guards surrendered peacefully once they saw what they were up against.
'Civilians and non-uniformed personnel,' shouted the squad leaders at each place, 'off the platform and out of the area, right now! Move it!'
They moved it, rushing in a near panic down Macarthur Avenue and disappearing out of sight. The MPs were quickly disarmed and pointed in the direction of the base. 'Get in there and stay in there,' they were told. 'Tell your commanders that we have the entrances guarded and that anyone trying to get out will be fired upon.'
The MPs wasted no time in sprinting through the gates and down the entrance corridor. All three groups of them reached the main avenue of the base at approximately the same time. It was only the three that had guarded the north entrance, the entrance closest to the MPG base, that encountered marines massing for a march.
Colonel Frank Forrest was the commander in charge of the brigade that Sega had tasked with capturing the MPG base. He and most of his men were assembled on the exercise lawn undergoing final weapons checks and radio calibration prior to marching out. The men were in neat, precise military rows on the green grass, lined up by platoon and squad. Sergeants and lieutenants circulated among them, making last minute inspections and giving inspirational speeches. When the three MPs, stripped of their weapons and red-faced with terror, came bursting into the columns, they were very nearly shot by more than one startled soldier.
'What the fuck is going on here?' an angry sergeant screamed at the three men. 'Corporal,' he told the highest ranking of them, 'you'd better have a goddamn good explanation for this!'
'Sir,' he said breathlessly, coming to a partial state of attention, 'greenies just stormed our checkpoint! They took our guns and sent us back in here!'
'Greenies?' the sergeant yelled. 'What the fuck are you talking about, boy?'
He managed to spit out the story in a coherent fashion, coherent enough that the sergeant immediately brought him to his lieutenant where the story was repeated. From there they went to the captain of that particular company and from there, to the Major that commanded the battalion. Ten minutes after the storming of the guard posts, the three MPs were finally led before Colonel Forrest himself, by which point they had calmed enough to tell their tale without stuttering or repeating themselves.
'How many of them were there?' Forrest asked, only a little worried at the thought of armed greenies at his point of egress.
'Twenty or thirty,' they all agreed, their minds wildly exaggerating their memories.
Forrest nodded. 'And they were armed with M-24s?'
'Yes sir,' the corporal told him, unaware that the troops with the SAWs had held back in cover positions during the charge.
'And they shot one of your men?'
'Yes sir,' he said. 'They blew Bill damn near in half for no reason.'
Forrest's face scrunched into an expression of anger. 'Goddamn greenies,' he spat. 'They're nothing more than terrorists!' He turned to his majors and captains, who were gathered near him. 'Get on the com link and find out about the other checkpoints,' he told them. 'If they captured one they probably captured them all.'
It took less than five minutes to confirm that all three checkpoints had in fact fallen to MPG troops. In the other two instances the estimations of the troop strength were the same as that offered by the first: about twenty troops armed with M-24s.
'We need to push out of here right now,' Forrest told his subordinates, 'before they are able to move enough troops in to really be an annoyance to us.' He looked at Major Starr, commander of his first battalion. 'Starr,' he told him, 'get your recon elements moving and recapture the checkpoint that our young corporal and his friends came from. Once its secure we'll move the rest of the brigade out to our main objective and send the rest of your battalion to go capture the other two positions.'
'Yes sir,' Starr said, hiding the dejection in his voice. He had wanted to be a part of the main thrust into the MPG base. But orders were orders. He trotted off towards his men, talking on his command link as he went. Within five minutes they were moving towards the exit corridor, his recon platoon breaking trail.
Meanwhile, back at the checkpoint in question, the MPG squad that was guarding it had pulled back to positions of cover on Macarthur Avenue. They kneeled behind the cement planter that lined the middle of the street, their weapons trained on the entrance, their combat goggles down and set for infrared enhancement. The young private that operated the squad automatic weapon was in the center of the formation, his field of fire such that he could sweep the entire corridor from one side to the other. Four extra drums of ammunition, each containing 600 rounds, were stacked neatly next to his leg.
The marine recon platoon, its members among the most highly trained in the corps, didn't make it within one hundred meters of the Macarthur side of the access corridor. Though they were moving along the walls, making themselves as small of targets as possible, there was simply nothing to use for cover or concealment and they were spotted almost as soon as they started heading for their objective.
Espinoza ordered the SAW gunner to fire a few bursts down the middle of the corridor on the theory that this would drive them back without having to kill any of them. It was a hopeful thought but one that didn't quite pan out. The private unleashed twenty rounds, the gun barking loudly, the rounds flying at high velocity right between the two elements of the platoon. Instead of retreating however, they began firing back, simultaneously pushing forward.
'Fucking idiots,' Espinoza said in disgust as rounds began to slam into the concrete around them and whiz over their head. 'Open fire,' he told his men. 'Take them out.'
It was far too easy, sickeningly so. The private on the SAW swept it back and forth, moving his recticle across the figures of the marines while firing controlled bursts. The other squad members opened up with their M- 24s, putting their own bursts on the men who were diving to get out of the way of the automatic weapons fire. The forty marines were pummeled with bullets, their bodies twisting and turning and dropping to the ground, every last one of them dead or dying in the space of twenty seconds. Not a single MPG soldier was hit during the exchange.
'Good job, guys,' Espinoza told them as the last echoes of the gunfire faded away. The fact that they had just killed WestHem soldiers, that they had just actively partaken in a revolution, seemed to hang in the air.
Nobody said anything in reply.
'Let's do an ammo check,' Espinoza said. 'They'll be back soon and there'll be a lot more of them.'
Starr, waiting safely back on the base, had watched the entire thing through his combat goggles by patching into the platoon commander's goggles. Never having been in actual combat before, he was horrified at the speed and violence with which forty of his men had just perished. He had in fact been holding his breath throughout the entire episode.
'Starr, report!' screamed the voice of Colonel Forrest in his radio link. 'What the hell was all of that shooting?'
'Sir,' he said slowly, his voice strangely calm despite the adrenaline surging through him, 'the greenies fired on the recon platoon. They're down.'
'All of them?' Forrest said in disbelief.
'All of them,' he confirmed.
'Jesus fucking Christ,' Forrest said. 'How many guns do they got out there now?'
'It looked like no more than fifteen to me,' Starr told him. 'They're behind the planter on Macarthur Avenue, situated directly across from the entrance.'
There was silence on the link for a moment. Finally Forrest came back on. 'We need to take that position immediately,' he said. 'You had an eyeball on it. Suggestions?'
