On Hill 598, on the northern end of the gap, two shells landed close enough to the front of the trench to open the concrete that guarded it. Six infantry troops were killed here and eight wounded.
On the other hills through the gap another three soldiers were killed and four were wounded by lucky shrapnel that managed to enter a trench at the right angle and strike someone within.
And, in the gap between Hill 577 and Hill 715, another lucky shot just happened to land directly atop an APC that was guarding the gap, exploding it and killing the two crew members inside.
The wounded in the trenches were evacuated in the same manner that the troops themselves planned on retreating when the time came. Each trench system had been built with an escape trench leading out the back of the hill. They were carried out and down the hill where medivac hovers and the medic teams that accompanied them could haul them back to the LZ. This exposed both the medics and the hovers to errant shellfire but they were lucky and only three injuries, one death, and one damaged hover resulted. The wounded were returned to Eden where dip-hoes transported them to nearby hospitals. In most cases, the casualties were under the care of a surgical team less than forty-five minutes after being hit. As for the dead, there was nothing that could be done about them at the moment. Their weapons and ammunition were stripped off of them, their identities were scanned and transmitted to MPG headquarters, and their bodies were moved out of the way. They would have to wait to be recovered until later.
Though it was hours past his normal bedtime, General Wrath was wide awake and listening with growing horror and disbelief at the reports that were coming in from all four of the greenie cities under attack.
"How in the hell are they doing it?" he demanded of Major Wilde. "How can they put down such accurate heavy artillery fire from more than eighty kilometers?"
"We don't know, sir," Wilde replied, fighting to remain calm himself. "What's obvious though is that someone is directing their fire in real time. The only batteries that get hit are the ones that have just stopped to set up their next firing position. None of it is counter-battery fire. Intelligence is clueless about how they're doing it other than to tell us there's no way a ground-based observer or observers could direct such a large and accurate volume of fire."
"That leaves the air," Wrath said. "But you're telling me there's nothing up there."
"No sir," Wilde said. "With all due respect, I said there's nothing up there we can see. My best guess is the Martians are utilizing some sort of stealthy, remotely controlled vehicle to beam telemetry back to their FDC officers. It's probably something too small and flying too high to show up on our screens."
"So there's nothing we can do about it?" Wrath asked.
Wilde sighed. "There is one thing, sir. We can pull our artillery back out of range of those guns."
"Pull them back?" Wrath said. "Are you insane?"
"The Eden artillery units have already taken better than fifty percent losses of guns," Wilde told him. "New Pittsburgh is at about forty percent right now, Libby at thirty-eight, and Proctor is just getting the hell beat out of it. They've lost sixty percent. The volume of fire we're able to place on the Martian trenches is already falling off quite noticeably while the fire from their 250s has not slacked in the least. If we don't get those guns out of there we're not going to have any left to engage the Martian's main line of defense when the time comes."
"But what about their first line of defense?" Wrath said. "That's what we're fighting against now! How can we support an advance on their positions without artillery?"
"Any damage we were going to do with those weapons has already been done," Wilde said. "It would be nice if we could provide covering fire for our ground troops as they advance but it just isn't possible right now. The tanks and the APCs will have to support them themselves."
Wrath thought this over and decided it made sense. "All right," he said. "Let's pull the artillery back in all four theaters and get them refueled and re-armed. Send the tanks and the APCs forward and let's clear out those first positions."
"Yes, sir," Wilde said. "Excellent idea, sir."
Zen Valentine was the gunner of the main battle tank to which he, Xenia, and Sergeant Steve Sanchez were assigned. He sat next to Sanchez in the main crew compartment, watching through a video link as the shells flew back and forth for better than forty minutes. Several of the WestHem shells had burst right over the top of them, showering their tank with shrapnel, even causing it to rock back and forth on its springs once or twice but they remained safe and sound, protected by the top armor.
Xenia was the driver of the tank. She sat in her own little cubicle near the front, underneath the turret, staring out through a video system of her own. "Is it just me," she asked, "or does it seem like there's less and less arty flying in from the Earthling side?"
"No," said Sanchez, "it's not just you. It is less. I think maybe those heavy shells we're firing at them might be having an effect."
"Hopefully it's effecting them quick enough," said Zen. "They've been pounding the fuck out of those poor bastards on the hills. Any word on casualties?"
"Nothing yet," Sanchez said. "The last word I heard from the LT was when the shells first started to fly. Hopefully they'll give us some updates soon."
"I was just talking to Waters on the text," Xenia said. "As of ten minutes ago they're still up there, scared as hell and getting shook up, but the trench is holding."
Zen felt a sharp stab of jealousy at the mention of Waters and the revelation that Xenia had been text messaging him in the middle of a battle. He buried it as deeply as he could and tried not to feel too much ill will towards what was otherwise a pretty static guy. And he was glad that Waters and Hicks were all right, wasn't he? Of course he was. "It's just bad luck that they're even taking fire at all," he said. "If that damn AA-71 wouldn't have gotten through and took a shot of this area their arty would be dropping all over the damn place and they wouldn't even know it. They wouldn't have landed a single shell on target until they got close enough to sight in manually."
"Which would have been close enough for us to engage them," Xenia said. "You're right, Zen. I wish the damn space guard would've got that ship in time."
"And I wish someone was giving me a rim job," said Sanchez, "but all I got on my ass is a vacuum powered shit catcher, you know what I mean?"
"Another microcosm of the war?" asked Zen.
"No, it's more of a loose analogy. It means if wishes were orifices I'd be in pussy for life, but you'll notice I ain't in no pussy right now. There's no sense wishing for what might've been. Just be glad that those trenches seem to be holding. I've been watching up that hill and they've taken some direct shots. The fact that Waters is still alive to send his flirty little texts to Xenia means someone oughtta find the engineers who designed those trenches and suck their cocks for 'em."
"I think we'll let Waters take care of that one," Zen said. "If it's all the same to you."
"It's all the same to me," Xenia said, "but keep in mind that the same engineers designed this hull-down position we're currently sitting in. If it works as well as the trenches on the hill, I might be doing some dick sucking of my own."
"Yeah," said Zen. "A-fucking-men to that."
The hull-down position — which meant that only the very top of the turret and the laser cannon were exposed from the front — was the most favorable defensive posture for a tank or APC to be in. Like the trenches on the hills, the MPG had spent the first ten years of their existence digging and constructing tank and APC positions all along every likely defensive barrier. The one their tank occupied was one of thousands on the surface of the planet. It was a depression in the soil protected from the front by a layer of rock, sand, and concrete with a sheet of solid titanium armor in the middle. Laser shots from the front would be unable to penetrate through with enough energy left over to penetrate the tank itself. Multiple shots in the same place would be required to take out a tank — or so the theory went.