"Can you take out their supply trains?" she asked.
"It would be possible but very difficult," he replied. "Some of their best military technology went into the armor coating on those supply cars, particularly the hydrogen tankers. It would take at least two laser hits in the exact same spot in order to breach one of those things."
"Then why don't they put that kind of armor on their tanks and their APCs?" she asked.
"It's too heavy," he said. "It's four times as thick and eight times as heavy as the alloy used on armored vehicles and spacecraft. If they made tanks out of it they'd be a lot tougher on the battlefield but they wouldn't be able to move much faster than twenty or twenty-five klicks an hour and they would have a range of about sixty klicks."
"Oh... I see," Laura said.
"As it is, it takes six super-modified tanks to tow each train. The modifications are that everything has been removed but the engine, which has been increased in size from the standard tank. They have no guns, no lasers, and only one crewmember. The extra room they use to hold extra fuel. Even so, they can only pull along at thirty klicks an hour and they have to have a supply hose connected to one of the hydrogen tankers in the train. They are the reason why the formation moves so slowly."
"What if you took out the tanks towing them?" Laura asked. "Are they covered in that special armor too?"
"No, they're actually easier to take out than a regular tank, but all that would do is slow them down a little. Regular tanks can replace the towing tanks if need be, although it takes twice as many. We do have contingency plans for delaying and even destroying the supply trains if it's deemed necessary but remember what our doctrine is. We are not out there to kill supplies. We're out there to kill marines. And we don't necessarily want to slow them down at this point. If Interdiction hadn't worked as well as it did I might have considered hitting the supplies in order to keep them out in the wastelands longer and give us more time to focus on the numerical advantage. As it is though, the quicker we get them to our first line of defense the quicker we can start chewing them up in large numbers."
She nodded. "I see what you mean," she said. "You're the military expert. I haven't questioned you so far, I see no reason to start now."
He smiled. "That's the way it should be," he said. "In any case, that's the way things are looking outside of Eden. They look pretty much the same outside New Pittsburgh. In both cities I have the special forces teams and the Mosquitoes already gearing up for the day's action. They should start hitting them in less than an hour. At Libby and Proctor the sun is just now coming up. The latest overheads from there show thousands of engines running at the LZ's and thousands of people loading onto their armor but no movement as of yet. That will probably change within the hour as well."
He was right, of course. By the time Laura Whiting made it to her meeting, the columns at the Libby and Proctor LZs had begun to move in as well. And, as at New Pittsburgh and Eden, special forces teams began to move in too.
Lon and his squad saw the dust cloud long before they saw the first of the WestHem armor coming down the valley below them. They were spread out atop four different hills on the south side of the valley, some forty-five kilometers from the landing ships, just outside of the effective range of the 150-millimeter guns on the ships. They were heavily laden with anti-tank lasers and charging batteries. Supporting them were two sniper teams on hills to the east and west of them and two mortar teams further south. On the other side of the valley — which was just over thirty kilometers wide at this point — was another team of the same configuration.
"What do you think, sarge?" asked Lisa as she spied the dust drifting hundreds of meters into the air and blowing towards them on the wind currents. "They taking the middle?"
"Looks like they're going right down the old poop chute all right," Lon agreed. Though the WestHem marines probably thought that sticking to the center of the valley afforded them protection since it was as far as they could get from the hills, it was actually exactly what the Martians wanted them to do. If they were in the middle it meant they were in range from both sides of the valley instead of just one. It also greatly increased the time it would take for WestHem infantry troops to get to the ambush sites.
"Want me to send a report?" asked Jefferson. "I can get a good lock on the sat from here."
"Not yet," Lon replied. "The Mosquitoes are already in the air, circling about a hundred klicks behind us. Let's wait until we have an actual visual on the OPFOR so we can give them exact targeting data."
"Right, sarge," Jefferson said. "Standing by on the update."
The dust cloud grew closer and closer and soon began to drift over the top of them, obscuring everything beyond twenty meters or so in the visual spectrum. The team switched their combat goggles to full infrared, allowing them to peer through the dust. Soon the ground began to shake as the vibration from thousands of tank and armored vehicle treads was transmitted along it. The shaking was hardly noticeably at first but it grew steadily more intense, to the point where you could feel it rattling your teeth and your bones. It was not a pleasant sensation.
"That feels evil," Lisa said. "I know it makes me sound like a girl to say that, but..."
"I'm just glad you said it first, Wong," Horishito put in, "because you're totally down with it. It is evil."
"Look," said Jefferson, who was on the easternmost hill. "They're starting to come into view now."
They all looked and saw the tiny forms of WestHem main battle tanks appearing one by one, stretching across more than a kilometer of the valley floor.
"Wow," said Horishito. "Look at all of them."
"I am," said Lon. "And this is only the vanguard."
Another ten minutes went by, during which more and more tanks came into view, rumbling along at just below thirty kilometers per hour, kicking up tons of dust. The vibration of the ground grew worse, to the point that small pebbles and rocks were starting to move and roll down the hill.
"Okay, Jeffy," Lon said. "Send off the first report. Vanguard in sight, moving westward at approximately thirty klicks, holding to a one and a half klick area in the valley center. Tanks in front, semi-circular formation, multi-battalion strength."
"Got it," Jefferson said. "Sending it off."
When the front tanks reached the point where Lon and his squad could have engaged them if they'd wished, the APCs began to come into view. They were grouped tighter together in ranks of eight. More tanks were spread out to either side of them.
"Send another position report," Lon ordered. "And then start scanning for command vehicles and marking them."
"You got it, sarge," Jefferson said. He spoke to his computer for a second and it sent off a com laser to the satellite. He then began focusing his ESM detector on the APCs, scanning for any vehicle that was utilizing more than one radio frequency. Like with the individual soldiers on the ground, anything using more than one frequency was more than likely an officer — a lieutenant at least, possibly even a captain or a lieutenant colonel.