"Yes," said Lon thoughtfully, "I guess that makes sense. They'll be running on inertial navigation."
"Wouldn't that be a shame if they got lost out here?" asked Matza.
"A damn shame," Lon agreed. "Come on. Let's displace. We'll hook north around hill 222 there. That should give us defilade from our friends. We'll re-deploy on hills 123 and 201. Everyone clear?"
No one answered, which meant that everyone was clear.
"Okay, let's do it."
Sergeant Mallory was not having a good time. His right ankle was throbbing from the twist he'd given it a few minutes ago and he was nursing a thirst that the water from his supply reservoir simply could not satisfy. His heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest with the exertion of walking in the Martian soil. Christ, why hadn't they exercised more on the trip here? He had not been so out of shape in years, since before being accepted into the Marine Corps more than twelve years ago.
"Motherfuck," grunted Zimmerman as he stepped on a loose rock, which rolled out from beneath him. He tried to keep his balance and would have easily been able to do so had he been in standard gravity but here, with the unfamiliar pull and the awkward suit he was in, he went down. It did not look like a fall on Earth however. It was a slow tumble, looking almost like it was being viewed in slow motion. He landed on his chest, bounced once, and then came to a rest.
"You all right, Zim?" Mallory asked, adjusting his rifle on his shoulder.
"Yeah," he grunted sourly, starting the rolling motion that would get him back to his feet. After a moment he was able to get his knee beneath him and stand up. "Christ, sarge, haven't we gone far enough out yet?"
"Yeah," agreed Spanky. "Their ain't no fuckin greenies out here. Even they're not that dumb."
"Another half a klick or so," Mallory said. "We need to check that group of hills in front of us."
"Christ," Zimmerman swore, brushing dust from his faceplate. "We oughtta just give this fuckin place to the greenies. Who the hell else would want it?"
"Well, Agricorp seems to think it's a nice planet," Mallory said.
"And that's who's giving us our goddamned orders, right?" Spanky asked bitterly.
"Ours is not to question why," Mallory said. "Now lets move out and get this shit over with. Lead off, Spanky."
"Leading off," Spanky said, walking forward.
After a moment, the rest followed. Their eyes were kept on their feet instead of on the terrain around them. You fell down less that way.
"Here they come, right on schedule," Lon said, watching as the group of four emerged from around another of the hills. They were now well out of sight of the ship and the perimeter positions surrounding it. The patrol was almost two kilometers out from their sandbagged positions. Lon and his group were deployed atop three hills 700 meters directly in front of their avenue of advance.
"Still walkin dumb I see," Horishito said. "I bet we can take them right here."
"Undoubtedly," Lon agreed. "But let's let them close a bit more first. We go with ambush plan Alpha-Bravo seven. Everyone got that?"
No answer, which meant that everyone got it. Plan AB-7 was one of many ambush plans they'd practiced over the last few weeks. It was one that fit this particular situation perfectly in that it would not only eliminate the patrol, but also draw a larger group into the same trap.
"I'll assign targets when they come into optimum range," Lon said. "For now, just keep trained on them and keep down."
They waited, watching as the four men walked from hill to hill, circling around and then moving onto the next. They did not look up on the hills as they passed them. They stared downward.
Jesus, Lisa thought to herself as she kept the point man on the patrol covered with her targeting recticle. This is almost too easy.
It took the better part of ten minutes but finally the patrol passed to within 500 meters. They were in a lengthy gully now, open ground all around them, heading directly towards the hill where Lon, Lisa, Matza, and Jefferson were waiting.
"Okay," Lon said, "they're coming up to us. We'll take them down. The rest of you hold in place and mop up anyone if they get away from us. As soon as the shooting's over, we displace to hills 233, 422, and 397 respectively. We need to be off of these hills before they can bring some arty down on us. Everyone got it?"
Everyone got it.
Lon looked at Lisa. "Wong, you take the point man out. You'll shoot first on my command."
"Right, sarge," she said, hiding the nervousness that she felt. "I take the point man."
"I'll take the man right of point," he said next. "Matza, you give a burst to the man on the left of point and then shift fire to the area around the rear man. Wong, you hose down the area around him too, but remember, don't hit him. He has to be able to put out a broadcast or Alpha-Bravo seven is blown." He turned to Jefferson, the communications tech. "Jeffy, you tell me the instant that rear man broadcasts back to the rest of them."
"Right, sarge," he said, his radio set down on a rock, his weapon tucked against his side.
"Let's do it then," Lon said, aiming his rifle out over the open space. "Wong, are you on target?"
She adjusted the barrel of her weapon just a bit, laying the targeting recticle over the faceplate of the man on point. The range indicator told her that his head was 486 meters away. She increased her magnification until his head was practically the only thing in her view. She could see his face beneath the lightly tinted plate. He was a Caucasian and he had a short, neatly trimmed mustache. His mouth was hanging open as if he were breathing hard. He had no idea that he was taking the last breaths of his life. "I'm on target," she said.
"Fire," he told her.
Slowly, smoothly, without stopping to think about what she was doing, she pressed the firing button on her rifle. It kicked against her shoulder with a flash of red fire from the barrel and a sharp crack that sounded loud to her ears but that would be completely inaudible to anyone more than twenty meters away. Sound traveled very slowly and very inefficiently in the thin Martian atmosphere. The bullet that shot out of the barrel moved much more efficiently though. It was four millimeters in diameter and moved nearly ten times faster than the sound waves. There was little in the way of air friction to slow it down or push it off course. It traveled over that 486 meters in two tenths of a second and drilled into the point man's face shield less than two millimeters from where Lisa's targeting recticle was placed. It smashed through the Kevlar reinforced plastic of the shield like it was tissue paper, drilled into the man's face, through his brain, and out the back of his skull with enough velocity left over to punch a hole the size of a man's fist in the back of his helmet. Blood, skull fragments, pieces of brain matter, and chunks of helmet flew in a messy spray behind him. The blood boiled away into a misty red vapor the moment it hit the air. The point man never knew what hit him.
Even before he could fall down Lon and Matza fired too, sending their bullets out towards a lethal intersection with their targets.
It happened so fast that Mallory had a difficult time processing things. One second he was walking in the rear of the formation, putting one foot in front of the other, and the next, all three of his comrades were down. Spanky got it first, his head snapping back in a spray of gore and boiled blood. Zimmerman went a half second later, another headshot, another spray of red vapor, skull chunks, and mushy brain flying out through a large hole in his helmet. And then Trower was hit with a burst of machine gun fire right in the midsection, at least four rounds. They blew out the back of his biosuit, exploding two of the compartmentalized air chambers in the tank with a loud bang. Trower managed a grunt of surprise and then he fell forward in the curious slow motion style that was all the rage on the Martian surface.