"All units are ready," came the voice of Colonel Standish, who was monitoring the take from all five peepers from his terminal at the back of the room. "On my mark, commence firing and fire at will."
Resin opened the link that allowed him to communicate with the men and women of his battery. "Prepare to commence firing," he told them, knowing, of course, that they were already prepared.
The actual guns were located half a kilometer outside the base wall, spread out over an area nearly a kilometer in length. Large concrete and steel reinforced structures housed each gun mechanism and protected the crew inside from casual bombardment or counter-battery fire from 150mm guns if they happened to be in range. The barrels of each gun were thirteen meters in length and, when not in use, could be lowered down into their own concrete reinforced shells to protect them from erosion by the constantly blowing Martian sand. Currently all of the barrels were elevated, pointing to the west, and aligned perfectly to launch their first shots at their first targets. Each of the gun positions were connected to the base itself by an underground tunnel system eight meters in diameter. Through these tunnels the crews were able to move to their positions, retreat from them in case of attack or destructive accident, and, most importantly, a constant stream of shells could be moved to the guns via a conveyer belt that led to the storage area inside the base.
Lieutenant Rich Hotbox was in command of Gun-1, in Captain Resin's battery. He, like all the rest of the gun crews, was dressed in a biosuit with a specially reinforced helmet that would provide hearing protection against the tremendous decibel levels the exploding propellant in the shells would produce. He checked the positioning of his crew one last time — they had loaded the first of the shells into the breech and had all stepped back the required two meters from the mechanism — and then checked the positioning of his barrel on last time. The numbers for his azimuth and elevation matched exactly the targeting information sent to him by command. The gun was ready to fire. All he needed now was the order to do it.
That order came a few seconds later. There was no dramatic speech to along with it, just the simple words from Captain Resin: "Commence firing. Stay on initial targets until told to switch."
"Okay, guys," Hotbox told his crew on the tactical channel. "This is it. Gun is firing now." With that he reached down and flipped up a guard on a simple red button. Without hesitation he put his finger on it and pushed it. A signal moved from the button, through a series of wires and switches, and caused a relay to close in the gun itself. A simple electric charge then ignited a primer in the self-contained shell. The primer ignited the main propellant charge and it exploded with a tremendous bang, propelling the shell out of the barrel on a gout of flame bright enough to momentarily turn the surrounding night brighter than daylight.
"Shot's off," Hotbox said. "Reload sequence."
Two members of the gun crew stepped forward and opened the breech of the weapon. Thin streamers of white smoke drifted out as they reached in and removed the ten kilogram shell casing and rolled it onto the other side of the conveyer where it would eventually make its way back to the base for recycling. The unload team stepped immediately back and the load team stepped forward. There were three of them. One moved a lever allowing the next shell to slide forward and roll into a hydraulic loading tray. Another then activated the hydraulic controls and lifted the shell up, allowing it to roll into the breech. The third then slammed the breech shut and locked it, causing a green light to appear on Hotbox's panel. The team then stepped back beyond the safety margin.
"All clear," said the corporal in charge of the reload team. His words came out less than fifteen seconds after the first shell had been launched.
Hotbox made a brief visual check to make sure everyone really was clear and then said, "gun is firing." He pushed the button again.
"Holy shit, look at that!" an excited voice — it sounded like Drogan — suddenly barked over the tactical channel. It was quickly followed up by other such sentiments.
Jeff wasn't sure what everyone was talking about at first — he had been watching the eastern horizon and those eerie heat tendrils drifting into the air — and then he looked upward and saw the white streaks flying through the sky in groups of four. They moved rapidly from behind, arcing over the top of them and heading off into the distance where they disappeared from sight over the horizon.
"Those are 250s," said Sergeant Walker. "No doubt about it. Nothing else could move like that."
"They're going after the WestHem arty," Hicks said. "That has to be what they're doing."
"Yep," Walker agreed. "The question is, will they be able to hit them?"
Colonel Steve Dallas was in ultimate command of the WestHem artillery battalions in the Eden theater of operations. His command post was a standard APC packed with computer and communications equipment instead of infantry troops. He was located near the rear of the artillery positions, guarded by two anti-air vehicles and two platoons of tanks. He had been watching the clock in the corner of his main display, waiting for it to be precisely 2200 hours so he could begin unleashing explosive death upon the greenies, when the cries of "incoming!" began to sound over his radio link. He looked at the screen in which an outside view, enhanced by infrared, was being displayed. He immediately saw the incoming shells and saw they were heading directly for his guns. This did not immediately worry him. After all, the shells might land in their midst but they had traveled almost a hundred kilometers to get here and they would have to land very close to one of his guns in order to damage it. His gun platforms, after all, were almost as well armored as an APC.
The first volley came down, the shells exploding one by one with tremendous flashes of light, smoke, and flying dust. Dallas began to feel alarmed when he saw that groups of the shells were landing very close together, not all over the field as he'd expected. No sooner had the dust started to settle when more cries of "incoming!" began to sound and more shells came streaking in over the horizon. He looked at his main display, which showed the location and status of each gun and was horrified to see that three of his batteries had been hit, with a total of nine guns no longer transmitting telemetry to him. The second volley of shells came down and six more guns stopped transmitting as well.
"Shit," he said, noting that a third volley of shells was even now appearing over the horizon. He keyed his transmit button. "All batteries, move to your next positions and commence firing immediately. They've got us dialed in! Displace and begin fire and movement procedures!"
"Units are in motion," Captain Resin said as he saw the targets suddenly begin moving. "Cease fire. I repeat — cease fire."
The guns of his battery stopped firing, the crews taking the opportunity to blast a cleaning charge through them to clear out the propellant debris. Resin continued to look at the live video feed from the peeper circling above his area of operation. He could see the hot spots of more than six destroyed gun platforms and identified at least four more that appeared to be damaged beyond the ability to fire shells. Yes, the 250mm shells were working well. Fused to explode a mere eight meters above the ground, if they detonated within fifteen to twenty meters of a gun, it was enough to kill it or at least heavily damage it. But the easy kills had now come to an end. Now the trick would be to train the guns on a WestHem battery the moment it came to a halt and began to set up to fire. To wait any longer would mean the battery would fire its three rounds and be moving again before the heavy shells could reach it.