Greenies

Starr put the thought of his dead men as far back in his mind as he could and thought through the problem for a moment. 'Let me throw a company-strength assault at them,' he suggested. 'I'll put all of the men with grenade launchers on their 24s up front and have them blast that greenie position as soon as they're in range. It's simply a question of throwing enough men at them to overwhelm their defenses.'

'Do it,' Forrest told him after only a moment's thought. 'And do it quickly. If they reinforce that position they'll be able to keep us from exiting this way. If they do that, we'll have to put on our biosuits and take that base from the wasteland side. I don't have to tell you that that would be a damn sight more difficult.'

'I'll have them moving within five minutes, sir,' Starr promised.

Unfortunately for the marines, five minutes was just a little too long. While they were still regrouping and getting the grenadiers adjusted to the front ranks, the makeshift platoon that had been formed back at the MPG base trotted up Macarthur Avenue and reported for duty. Espinoza put them to immediate use.

'Send five of your people to the north pedestrian entrance to reinforce them,' he told Sergeant Jan. 'The rest of you, take up position behind this planter with us. Spread out as much as you can but keep the guns massed on that corridor. ROE is weapons free. They're probably going to hit us with at least company-strength on the next assault and we need to engage them as soon as they come into view.'

Lisa, carrying her M-24 and feeling naked without any armor on her chest, took up position about two thirds of the way to the right of center. She gazed down the long corridor, seeing the bodies of those marines that had died in the first breakout attempt. The sight of those corpses, of the blood running slowly towards the drains along the walls, brought home to her the reality of what she was getting herself involved in. 'Jesus,' she muttered, shuddering a little. She was participating in a rebellion against WestHem, a rebellion in which men had been shot and killed.

'You all right, Wong?' a young private from the armor maintenance section asked her. His eyes looked terrified but determined.

'Fine,' she said, giving him a shaky smile. 'Let's kick some Earthling ass, shall we?'

'Fuckin aye,' he replied, gripping his weapon a little tighter.

The attack began a few moments later. From far down the corridor the figures of twenty, then thirty, then fifty men suddenly swarmed forward, keeping low and moving fast, the outlines of their weapons clearly visible.

'Enemy to the front,' Espinoza's voice barked over the command channel. 'Open fire!'

Guns began to crack from all around her and, from the center of the column, the SAW barked to life, sending streaks of bullets into the marines. They began to drop but more of them surged forward. Lisa put her targeting recticle on a figure, centering it over his chest, and pulled the trigger. The weapon jerked in her hand, exploding three rounds out of its barrel, and the figure fell forward, his weapon dropping beneath him. Without pausing to reflect that she had just killed a man, she put her recticle on another and repeated the motion.

Suddenly, all along the line of marines there were bright flashes, much brighter than the individual weapons signatures, and what appeared in the infrared spectrum to be large red blobs streaked at high speed towards them.

'Grenades,' a voice barked on the radio frequency. 'Cover!'

Lisa, along with everyone else, ducked quickly down behind the planter, hiding her head from view. Less than a second later the grenades exploded in the air directly above them, directed to do so by the combat computers of the marines that had fired them. The noise was tremendous, a series of harsh cracks that overwhelmed the eardrums and made the ears ring. The concussion from the displaced air slammed into them, driving the air out of their lungs. Shrapnel rained down, chipping off the cement of the planter, shredding into trees that grew from it, and striking several people. Lisa felt a piece gouge through her lower leg, stitching a burning across her calf. As her ears cleared a little from the concussions, she heard several people yelling that they were hit and calling for a medic. She moved her leg, found that it still worked, and did not add her voice to the chorus. Instead she put her head back up and found another target.

The firing from the line of MPG troops picked up again and the marines rushing down the tunnel began to fall once more. By now many of the marines were firing back, sending a hail of high velocity bullets towards them and trying to force their heads down so they could advance. The tree trunks were peppered with bullets, most flying right through and exiting out the other side. More slammed into the concrete barrier, breaking large chunks of it off and hurling them over the top of their heads. A few of these bullets found their marks. The young private next to Lisa was struck directly in the head, the bullet drilling a neat hole through the front of his helmet and exploding out the back of it in a spray of shattered Kevlar, blood, and brains. He slumped forward lifelessly, his rifle falling from his hands. Lisa ignored this the best she could and continued firing, dropping any marine that she saw moving.

Another volley of grenades came flying at them and this time not everyone ducked in time. The detonations slammed into the line and the private operating the SAW had his face and neck shredded to pieces by the shrapnel. He flew backwards, spraying blood out of his wounds, dragging his weapon down with him. From around them, more screams of 'I'm hit' sounded out.

'Resume firing!' Espinoza yelled frantically, spraying an extended burst with his own weapon. 'They're moving in!'

Lisa popped back up, switching her M-24 to full automatic fire. She put her recticle on a group of four marines that were rushing forward and squeezed the trigger, raking it over them. They spun and fell, crashing to the ground.

'Shimmy,' Espinoza yelled to Corporal Shimamato, one of his regular men, 'take over the SAW and start putting some fire on these fucks!'

Shimamato pried the squad automatic weapon from the private's dead hands and put it on its tripod atop the planter. Not wasting the time it would take to calibrate his combat goggles to it, he simply began to fire, aiming by sight and ripping into the advancing marines once again.

This, combined with the supporting fire from the riflemen and the absolute horror that they had just endured, finally broke the marines. None of them, not even the most experienced veterans of Argentina or Cuba, had ever encountered or even imagined combat as deadly as this was becoming. Bullets were flying everywhere, pinging off of the walls of the corridor and ripping through their lines like some supernatural force. Men were torn in half by the sustained bursts from the SAW. Their heads were blown to pieces by the shots from the M-24s. Blood was flowing freely on the floor of the corridor, more than an inch thick in some places, it was being splashed all over them, obscuring their combat goggles and making their feet slip. And the bodies absolutely littered the ground, some screaming in pain, some deathly silent. And as they got closer to the exit of the corridor, the fire grew exponentially more intense and accurate. There was no official call to retreat, but as the entire front rank of what remained of the company was mowed down by the renewed vigor of the MPG outside, retreat is what occurred. Men turned tail and ran, heading back for the safety of the base as fast as they could, many leaving their weapons behind them.

'They're retreating,' someone told Espinoza as they saw the mad push back towards the far end of the corridor.

'Keep firing,' Espinoza ordered. 'Keep the pressure on them until they're out of sight.

And so the marines suffered the additional horror of being shot in the back as they ran away, a fact that pushed them even further over the edge of panic. When the battered, terrified survivors rushed out of the far end of the corridor, bullets still chasing after them, only 52 of the original 160 were still on their feet.

'Cease fire, cease fire!' Espinoza commanded once the last of them had disappeared.

The guns fell silent after a few last isolated pops, and the haze of gunsmoke that was hanging over the planter began to slowly dissipate. The ground around them was covered with ejected shell casings, chips of concrete and wood, and rivulets of blood. The moans of several wounded could be heard.

'Ammo check,' Espinoza said. 'Everyone make sure your weapon has a fresh mag in it. We don't know when they'll be back or with how many. Let's assume they're gonna hit us again in the next five minutes with battalion strength.' He looked over at private Stinson, a DPHS employee in civilian life and the only medic in the bunch. 'Stinson,' he told him. 'Start checking these people. I'll see what I can do about getting some dip-hoes in here to take away the wounded.'

'Right,' Stinson said, immediately heading for the private lying next to Lisa. He took one look at him and shook his head sadly. 'Not much to do here,' he said, seeing the shattered skull and the dull, dead eyes. He turned towards Lisa, spying the wound on her leg. 'You're gonna need that fused back together,' he told her, reaching in his pack and pulling out some gauze bandages.