"In range," Matt announced when it crossed the invisible line. "Opening fire."
"Take 'em down, kid," Brian said, his eyes watching his display. "Let's see if that training was wasted on you or not."
It was absurdly easy to do, much easier than acquiring and engaging an armored vehicle on the ground. He moved his head to the left and put the targeting recticles on the bright red and white orbital craft in the middle of his screen. The vehicle was huge on his display and his head movements weren't hampered by G-forces. He trained the recticles near the rear, where the main engine and fuel tank would be, and fired both cannons simultaneously. Slightly behind and below them, Steve Winchester, the sis of the wing Mosquito, did the same a few seconds later.
The laser energy was intense, designed to burn through the thick steel armor of a tank or APC. The thin hull of the shuttlecraft didn't stand a chance against it. The energy burned into the engine and destroyed two of the combustion chambers that provided the thrust. Another beam burned into the fuel tank itself, causing a rupture of both the hydrogen and the oxygen. The entire rear of the shuttle exploded in a flash of bright light and strewn debris. The front half of the shuttle, deprived of pressure, gravitation, power, and air, went tumbling downward, falling like the proverbial rock. It would fall for nearly five minutes before impacting the Martian surface hard enough to leave a crater sixty meters across.
"That's a kill," Matt announced, watching in awe at the nothingness that had replaced the shuttle on his display.
"Yep," Brian said with a nod. "Looks like a kill to me. Good job."
The two aircraft turned around a moment later and began heading for home.
"They shot down the fucking shuttle!" Major Wilde told General Wrath up in the CIC.
Wrath looked at his aide for a moment, his mind refusing to process what he was being told. "Who shot down what shuttle?" he finally asked.
"The greenies!" Wilde said, his hands wringing nervously. "They shot down the evac shuttle that was on its way to the Eden LZ!"
"How did they do that?" Wrath asked, perplexed. "Do they have a mobile SAL set up out in the wastelands somewhere? Surely the greenies aren't that lucky."
"They used aircraft. We think they were those damn Mosquitoes. The Eden landing ship picked up the infrared signatures of two of them climbing off the deck two hundred kilometers east of their position. They intercepted the shuttle as it was making its descent and blew it up with anti-tank lasers."
"Jesus," Wrath said, feeling a fury starting within him. His intelligence reports had assured him that the Martian aircraft were incapable of bringing down anything larger than a hover. "Are there any survivors?"
"No, sir. Eden tracked the wreckage all the way in. It hit hard. And there are no escape pods in an evac shuttle."
Wrath shook his head angrily. "Those goddamn terrorists," he swore. "Sniping at us from the hills, shooting down unarmed evac shuttles full of doctors and medics! They're barbarians!"
"Yes, sir," Wilde said. "And that's not all. We have more reports of contact between greenie forces and our perimeter patrols at all four LZ's. There have now been mortar attacks on all four as well. Casualties are mounting, sir. At the Proctor LZ a fuel storage tank for one of the graders was hit with a mortar round and exploded. Eight of the engineers were killed and more than twenty are wounded. At Libby an entire platoon was engaged from three different directions. Twenty of them are confirmed killed, the rest are wounded and still lying where they fell because the area is not secure enough to haul them out. And then there's the evac shuttles heading for the other three LZ's."
"What about them?" he asked.
"I've taken the liberty of pulling them back to orbit," Wilde said.
"You did what?"
"Sir, our data is that the greenies have a wing of those Mosquitoes stationed at all four of the cities where we have established beachheads. They have already shown that they are willing to and capable of shooting down our evac shuttles with those aircraft. We can't bring those shuttles down until we get some hovers down there to escort them. The greenies will just shoot them down again."
Wrath wanted to scream at his adjutant for daring to make such a decision on his own. He wanted to scream at him to reverse that decision immediately, to get those shuttles down so that the many wounded could be evacuated back up to orbit. He wanted to, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew that Wilde was right. "All right," he said with a sigh. "Send word to the field commanders below that the evac shuttles cannot land right now."
"Yes, sir," he said. "And what about bringing down some more troops and heavy equipment?"
"The goddamned LZ's aren't secure yet!" Wrath exclaimed. "The media are in the other room pestering us about whether or not we've caught the terrorist group that hit at Eden. They don't even know about the other three LZ's yet, let alone the fucking shuttle. How am I supposed to tell them that we're breaking doctrine and sending down more equipment before we've even established secure beachheads?"
Wilde had no answer for him. He was there to make suggestions on operational problems, not public relations. "I don't know, sir," he said. "But one thing is for sure, we need some armor and some hovers down there ASAP. I don't think we're going to be able to secure the beachheads otherwise."
"Negative," Wrath said firmly. "You tell those commanders down there that they need to send more men out beyond the perimeter and find those goddamn terrorists squads that are hitting them! I don't care if they have to send the goddamn cooks and toilet washers out there. Those beachheads must be secure before the rest of the landing craft can come down."
"But the wounded, sir," Wilde protested. "We don't have surgical facilities down there. And there is only one doctor and a few medics per ship."
"They'll just have to care for those men the best that they can until we can safely evacuate them. Get it done!"
"Yes, sir," Wilde said, his voice flirting with insubordination.
Lon and his squad made three more deliberate attacks on the marines during the course of that day, each time engaging platoon sized formations with brief, violent, and stunningly accurate fire and then retreating from their positions after the first volley. Twice the marines tried to bring artillery fire down upon them and both times the shells were well off-target. All three times the marines had come looking for them in company strength units but had been unable to see them in their hiding places and had walked right by.
The constant litany of hiding, creeping around, violent though brief encounters, and dashing off to hide again, began to take a physical toll on them. By the time the sun began to sink towards the western horizon all ten of them were quite exhausted. But mentally their morale was as high as it had ever been. All of their training was paying off and they knew they were putting a serious hurt on the invading earthlings, were forcing them to adapt to a different set of rules. Already the timetable of the landings had been thrown off. The marines had planned to bring down the rest of their landing ships by 1300. It was now looking as if they wouldn't be bringing them down that day at all.
However, the approaching night also meant the their best ally — the warm temperature that kept them from being detected — would soon be deserting them. Twenty degrees would soon become 130 below zero, a difference that would make the heat given off from their suits visible even from orbit. After evading the last group of marines searching for them they began to work their way to the east, away from the perimeter and the beachhead. Jefferson made contact with special forces headquarters and set up a pick-up point. They marched to it, set up their own perimeter, and waited.