"Yeah, at least there's that," Nguyen said. "I'd hate to have gone through all that for nothing."
They worked they way down to the bottom of the hill and exited the access point on the back side of it. Two hundred meters east of the access was a landing zone where the wounded were being triaged and flown out. Two APCs from the support battalion were parked here, their doors open. Three medivac hovers were sitting on the ground around them, their engines at idle. Two of them had the rear ramps down, the other was sealed up. As they carried their injured companion in that direction the sealed one suddenly flared bright red in the infrared and lifted in the air. It turned to the east and began heading for Eden, flying low.
The immediate triage area was the easiest to find. It contained the largest number of medics and evac soldiers. It also contained the largest number of wounded.
"Put him down over here," a medic commanded them when they entered the area.
They did so and the medic immediately kneeled down next to him and began running a scanner device over him. They heard him sigh as he examined the findings. He shook his head and stood back up.
"What are you doing?" Nguyen demanded. "His light didn't turn red! The doc says he needs to go out right away!"
"Sorry," the medic said, "but he's a goner. Brain activity almost nothing, heart rate less than thirty a minute, no voluntary respiration. He'll never make it back to Eden."
"You gotta fuckin' try, man!" Nguyen said. "Jesus Christ! You can't just let him lay there and die!"
"He doesn't have a chance," the medic said. "There's a lot of people out here who do have a chance and I'm not gonna take up space on a hover with someone who's gonna be dead before they even make it twenty klicks. I'm sorry, man. That's the way it's gotta be."
Nguyen shook his head angrily and fingered the rifle slung over his shoulder for a moment. He took a few deep breaths, dropped his hand and turned away. "That's fuckin' cold," he said.
"I know," the medic told him. "I wish it didn't have to be this way. This section got hit hard. I gotta go check on the other guys." With that he walked away, heading for the group of casualties closest to the front of the line.
"I'm sorry, Nguyen," Jeff told him, patting him on the back. "That fuckin' bites ass."
"Yeah," Nguyen said. "A lot of things bitin' ass tonight, huh?"
With that he turned and walked away, heading back towards the trench entrance. Jeff watched him go, his feet seemingly unable to follow after him.
Two figures approached him from the direction of one of the hovers. As they came closer and he was able to resolve their facial features with the infrared enhancement, he recognized them as Drogan and Hicks. Both of them were looking a little shell-shocked.
"Did you get your guy down to the hovers?" Jeff asked.
"We got him down there," Hicks said. "He's still waiting to be loaded. The medics said there's worse people that need to go first."
"How about yours?" Drogan asked.
Jeff pointed at the still body on the ground. "He gets to stay here," he said. "Medic says he doesn't have a chance."
They all contemplated that for a few moments, staring at the soldier's wrecked face, at the holes drilled in his leg and neck, at the green light on his suit that suddenly turned a lethal red as he finally, mercifully died.
"I guess he was right," Hicks said.
"Yeah," Jeff agreed. "Is this goin' on all up and down the line, you think? Does every fuckin' hill out here have this many casualties?"
"Not every one," Drogan said. "The medics told us the Earthlings hit the hardest in the center of the gap, where we are. A lot of the hills were hardly touched. They just decided to pound on this one because it's guarding the biggest opening."
"Which means they're gonna pound on it just as hard when they send the infantry after us," Hicks said. "We're on prime fuckin' real estate, man and the next time they're gonna be shooting those eighties at us. We'll be the ones laying down here, abandoned with fuckin' holes in our necks."
"They're not abandoning the living ones," Drogan said. "Just the corpses. You stay alive and they'll get you out of here. I watched how hard the medics are working to save those people."
"That'll make my mom feel real good when she gets the email that the Earthlings blew my face open," Hicks said. "She'll also love to know that they left my dead ass out here for all eternity. That she won't even get my ashes to put in a fuckin' jar."
"So what are you saying, Hicks?" Jeff asked. "You had enough?"
Hicks breathed deeply, looking around at the controlled chaos of the evac area, watching as two more groups of soldiers brought two more casualties down. "I didn't sign up for this shit," he said. "I mean... I knew I could die out here, but I didn't know... you know... that I could die like this."
"I'll admit," Drogan said, "it ain't as pretty as candlelight glinting off a wet pussy."
Her attempt at humor fell short.
"I ain't goin' back up there," Hicks said, looking at the hillside.
"You gonna walk back to Eden?" Drogan asked him.
"If I have to," he said. "Or I could hitch a ride on the back of one the support APCs. They're at least going back to the main line. I can get back from there."
"You're serious about this?" Drogan asked. "You're gonna leave us right before the battle? Abandon your platoon?"
"It ain't my fuckin' platoon," Hicks said. "It's Queen Laura the First's platoon and I ain't dying for her."
Jeff looked at him pointedly and shook his head in disgust. "Ain't that just like a fuckin' Thruster?" he said. "Throwing in the towel as soon as the shit gets a little too heavy."
"Hey, fuck off!" Hicks told him. "This don't have nothin' to do with the Thrusters or the fuckin' Capitalists."
"Sure it does," Jeff said. "This is the reason we kicked your asses off Ninety-Second Street and took over one of the finest dust selling locations in the whole city. We went after you and put the heat on you and you all caved like little kids on the schoolyard. The same fuckin' thing you're doing now."
"I told you, you didn't beat us! We pulled out of there 'cause of the heat, man!"
"You made that excuse to save face with yourselves," Jeff told him. "You know as well as I do that you couldn't take the heat from us. A couple ambush attacks, a couple of your main dealers blown away, and you went crying home and tried to say the cops are what made you do it. That's fuckin' bullshit and so is your Queen Laura rationale. You told me you voted for her, remember? You told me you wanted to fight to make Mars free, that you were fucking willing to die for it, but now that the shells have come flying in, now that you've had to look at people who did die for it, you're pussing out and making excuses about it. Go ahead and fuckin' leave, Hicks. We don't need some Thruster pussy up there anyway."
Jeff could actually see Hicks' face turning red. The increased blood flow showed up quite nicely in infrared. "I don't want to die, man!" he said. "Don't you understand that?"
"You think I want to die?" Jeff asked him. "You think I'm suicidal or something? You think I ain't scared shitless about what's gonna happen when them tanks come rolling on our position the next time? I am, man. I'm fuckin' petrified. But I'm going back up there and I'm gonna fight those assholes until they tell me to stop or until they drag my ass down the hill with half my head blown off. You know why?"
"Why?"
"Because I think we're gonna win this war," he said. "I think we're gonna be free. And twenty years from now, when they're teaching kids in school about the Battle of Jutfield Gap and the Battle of Eden, I wanna be able to say I was there, that I killed Earthlings there, that I fuckin' helped win the war. And if I ain't alive to say that, my fuckin' parents and my fuckin' friends will say it for me. What are you gonna say in twenty years, Hicks? You gonna tell people you was at the Battle of Jutfield Gap but as soon as the enemy shot a couple shells at someone else's fuckin' position you ran away like a little girl who saw a rat in the hallway?"