"Are you okay?" Ayers asked him, almost gently, almost father-like.
"They never let up on us out there," Callahan said, speaking more to himself than his commander. "We weren't even fighting them anymore, we were just trying to pull the wounded into the APCs but they kept shooting us and they kept dropping those fucking mortars on us." He shook his head again. "They killed us out there, cap. They fuckin' killed us."
"It's starting to look like we may have underestimated our Martian friends a bit, isn't it?" he asked.
"How bad was it?" Callahan asked. "Did this happen everywhere?"
Ayers nodded. "Yeah. All three of our perimeter deployments were hit pretty much at the same time and in the same manner. We've lost forty-one hovers at the Eden LZ alone. That is almost half of our air support for this region of the battle. At New Pittsburgh we lost thirty-eight. Sixty-three and seventy-two at Libby and Proctor."
"That many?"
"Yeah," Ayers said. "By the time we sent the cav out into the field at Libby and Proctor the word of what happened here and at New Pittsburgh had already been passed. They sent them out anyway and doubled up the hover coverage. The greenies took them down just as easily. It just took them more passes. The most powerful extra-terrestrial aircraft in our arsenal, the aircraft we were relying on to garner air superiority over our advance, to take out the greenie defensive positions, and those Martians blew them out of the sky like they were nothing."
"So fast," Callahan said. "We didn't even see them at first. And when we did, the anti-air teams never had a chance to lock onto them. They were exposed for less than ten seconds, hell, for less than five."
"We won't be able to count on air power to soften up the Martian defenses."
"Soften up their defenses?" Callahan asked. "Jesus, cap, we haven't even secured out perimeter yet. And there's no way we're going to be able to, not without the hovers!"
"We're not going to secure the perimeter," Ayers told him. "We're going to start forming up for the march tomorrow morning."
Callahan looked at him as if he were mad. "Tomorrow morning? But the perimeter!"
Ayers sighed. "The perimeter will have to hold its own on its own," he said. "You saw General Wrath's briefing?"
He scoffed. "Yeah," he said. "I caught it while they were fusing my fucking skin back together. Greenie kamikaze pilots dive bombing into our troops? Contaminated fuel causing the hovers to crash? Are people really buying that bullshit?"
"It's not bullshit, it's the truth," Ayers said firmly. "And if you want to remain employed, you'd better start accepting it as the truth. Do you understand?"
"Yeah," he said bitterly. "I understand."
"My point is that General Wrath has ordered all cav units to begin marching toward their targets as soon as possible. The thought on the matter is that we've been letting the Martians delay us and draw us out, especially today. They drew us right into a trap. The sooner we get to the cities and capture those MPG bases, the sooner we'll have those aircraft and those special forces soldiers out of commission. Will you be able to join your men?"
"My men?" he asked. "I've lost more than three quarters of my platoon, including all of my squad sergeants. I don't have that many men left."
"You'll be given replacements to fill in your losses," Ayers said. "But I need you to lead them if you can. The only alternative is to pull a squad sergeant from a green platoon."
Callahan shook his head violently. "You'd be sentencing the rest to death if you did that," he said. "I'll lead them."
"Good," Ayers said. "Your replacements will report to you first thing in the morning. Field promote a couple of your corporals to fill in the squad sergeant positions. We start loading up first thing in the morning. Two days after that, we'll be in Eden."
"You think so?" Callahan asked.
Ayers' eyes did not meet his. "Of course," he said. "I wouldn't have said it otherwise."
Chapter 14
MPG Base, Eden
August 25, 2146
Jeff Waters took a drag off his cigarette and looked at the five cards in his hand thoughtfully. He was pretty new to poker, had only been taught the basics of it a week ago, but in that week, as he and the rest of the 17th ACR spent hour after hour, day after day in the interior assembly area near the outside wall of the base, he'd played the game a lot, enough to know he stood a decent chance of taking the pot this hand. Hicks, who had dealt, had chosen five-card draw, jacks or better to open. He'd given Jeff a pair of fours, a pair of eights, and a deuce. Nobody else around the table was looking particularly enthused with what they held. This suspicion was confirmed when Zen Valentine, who was sitting next to Hicks, and Steve Sanchez, who was sitting next to Zen, both checked, unable to open. That brought the first bet over to Jeff.
He licked his lips for a moment as he thought the situation over. His first instinct, his gut reaction, was to throw down the maximum bet — one credit — immediately. He resisted this impulse. It would probably do nothing more than make the entire table fold at once, leaving his pot nothing more than the half of a credit that made up the ante. It would be better if he played them up a little first, drew them in.
"I'll open for two tenths," he said.
His PC, which was open before him and utilizing the standard poker program he'd downloaded when the game was first introduced to him, heard his words and automatically subtracted .2 credits from his bank account and transferred it to Hicks' computer, where it was stored in an escrow folder known as "the pot".
"Fuck my ass," said Xenia Stoner, who sitting next to him. She was dressed in her MPG T-shirt and shorts like everyone else but the lack of a bra beneath it was plainly obvious and quite a distraction to the males at the table. "I'll bump you a tenth."
"Three tenths to me, huh?" said Hicks. "What the fuck? It's only credits. I'm in. What about you, Zen?"
"I'm in this motherfucker too," said Valentine. "Three tenths."
Steve Sanchez, at sergeant, was both the oldest and the highest ranking at the table, the only one among them who had been a member of the MPG prior to the revolution. He made a look of disgust. "I'm out," he said, throwing his cards down. "Somehow I don't think this jack-high I'm holding is gonna be improved much."
This brought it back around to Jeff. "You still in, Waters?" Hicks asked. "Or do you need to call your mommy first to check?"
"Still in," Jeff said. "Another tenth to the pot."
Hicks' PC made the announcement that the pot was now right with one point seven Martian credits in it.
The five of them at the poker table were all members of the 17th Armored Cavalry Regiment, as was every one of the other 1736 men and 755 women currently stuffed into this particular staging area. It was very crowded, very noisy in here, with a haze of tobacco smoke obscuring the view across the room. The entire regiment had been deployed to their defensive positions the day the first Earthling landings took place but they'd been pulled back into the base as soon as it became clear the Earthlings were following strict doctrine and would have to march to the city to fight. The 17th ACR had been on what was called "one hour readiness" ever since. This meant that every last one of them could be back in those defensive positions, armed, armored, supplied, and ready to fight, in less than sixty minutes if the call-up came. Unfortunately, the only way to insure this one hour state of readiness was to keep all of the personnel in a holding area close to their biosuits and the airlocks to the outside. They couldn't drink alcohol or smoke marijuana. They were not allowed to make voice or text message or to send any other form of communication out of the base. They could shower and shave but that was only about once every three days at the rate the waiting list was going. To make it all worse, the cigarette supply — which came from Earth and was therefore getting pretty low planetwide — was quickly dwindling to the point that packs of smokes were going for twenty credits apiece or two hundred and fifty dollars.