"Doc!" Jeff hailed when they came close enough to recognize him among the chaos. "We got Drogan here. She's hit in the shoulder and the neck."
"Fuck my ass," the doc replied. "Put her down over here. Let me take a look at her."
They did as requested and Hicks gave a quick report on the first aid they'd rendered so far.
"Good, good," the medic said, nodding, as he did a quick scan of her and determined she was still bleeding despite their measures. "I need to get some sealant on those wounds," he muttered.
"Where are the hovers?" Jeff asked.
"It's not safe for them here anymore," the doc replied. "The WestHems have started shelling this area with their mortars."
"Shelling an evac point?" Hicks asked angrily. "That's a war crime!"
"So is parading our POWs in front of their cameras and charging them with terrorism, but they don't have no problem doing that." He pulled a large syringe from his kit, attached a needle to it, and drew up some kind of milky white liquid from a vial. He pushed it into the neck/shoulder junction of her suit and into her very flesh. He injected some, moved the needle a little, and then injected some more in a different spot.
"You guys saved her ass," he told them as they watched. "If you wouldn't have got her suit patched and the pressure on the wounds she would have either bled to death or decompressed enough to get the bends."
"Is she gonna make it?" he asked.
"If we can get her to surgery in the next hour or so, she'll not only make it, she'll be back out here for more fun in a couple of days."
"Oops," said Jeff. "I guess it wasn't a hundred million credit wound after all."
"Incoming," the doc said calmly, his information received from listening in on a tactical channel on a different frequency.
Jeff and Hicks looked up and, sure enough, the streaks of eighty-millimeter mortar shells were now coming out of the sky towards them. They ducked down, terrified at being in the open.
"Don't worry too much," the doc told them as he protectively covered Drogan's body with his own. "They're just plastering this whole area, probably trying to hit our support teams. No one is directing their fire and it just lands all over the place."
The barrage went on for about a minute or so, with explosions and flashes peppered all over the surrounding square kilometer. None of them even came close to an occupied position.
"Okay," the doc said when it was over. "Get her in that APC there." He pointed to one of the nearer ones. "They'll transport her to the rear of the blue line and a hover can pick her up from there."
They hefted her motionless body up off the ground again and trotted her over to the open APC. Inside were three other wounded infantry troops in various states of distress and another medic. They set her gently down in the only open space available.
"Okay, we're gone," the doc told them. "Get your asses over to your own APC and I'll see you in a bit." He patted each of them on the shoulder. "Free Mars."
"Free Mars," they both replied wearily.
Meanwhile, back in the main infantry trench, Sergeant Walker and Corporal Woo were still shooting at the advancing WestHem troops. The marines were now less than twenty meters away from entering the trench network and most of them were shooting back with both small arms fire and their own grenade launchers. The barrage of tank and APC fire had stopped but this was not particularly good news. It was only because the tanks and APCs in question — realizing that their quarry was retreating — had started to move forward. They were being held somewhat in check by the continued presence of the Martian tanks down below, who were slated to be the very last to withdraw.
A grenade came flying at Walker. He had just enough time to pull his head back in before it detonated in front of his hole, sending a spray of shrapnel through. A few errant pieces dinged off his helmet but none were at the right angle to penetrate.
"Motherfucker!" Woo said, blasting the marine that had fired it to pieces with an extended burst of the SAW.
"Walker!" said a voice in Walker's ear on the command frequency. "Everyone is down. Get the fuck out there right now!"
"Gladly," Walker acknowledged.
"Don't forget to arm your section before you go," he was reminded.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied. He looked at Woo and changed back to the tactical frequency. "Everyone is down. Let's get the fuck out of here."
Woo fired one more burst, not hitting anything but forcing two marines trying to make the final dash to the entrance to dive down under cover. "I'm down with that," he said, pulling the SAW from the hole and picking up the bag behind him that contained the ammo they'd been able to salvage.
They moved quickly through the trenches, stepping over their dead comrades who had been abandoned there, working their way to the egress trench. When they reached it, Walker let Woo go before him and then took one look back. More grenades were exploding and more gunfire was coming in but they were quite safe from it here. He spoke a command to his suit computer, gave an access code, and a radio signal was sent out, turning on a serious of sensing devices that had been deployed throughout the trench network in this section long before they'd made first contact.
"Okay," he said when he received acknowledgment that his actions had taken place. He threw a little salute at the unseen marines who would soon be occupying this particular position. "The place is all yours guys. Hope you enjoy it."
He began to follow Woo downward toward relative safety. With his departure, Hill 657 had officially fallen to the enemy.
"Targets, tanks, two o'clock, three o'clock, and one o'clock," Sanchez reported. "Moving fast."
Zen didn't answer. He simply shifted his view to the nearest — the two o'clock tank — waited for the cannon to catch up, and then fired, blasting it into oblivion. He looked to the next, noting the range was less than half a kilometer now. He blew it up as well.
"I don't mean to nag or anything," Xenia said, her voice trembling with fear, "but how much fucking longer are we talking here?"
"We'll be pulling out any second," Sanchez replied. "The APCs are loaded up and moving out now. We need to make sure we keep the WestHem tanks from coming through here until they're behind Hill 701 and out of range."
Xenia shook her head, wondering why she had been so hot to sign up for the tank corps instead of the infantry. Her hands gripped her controls tightly, ready to back them out of here and get them turned around the microsecond the withdrawal order came down.
"There coming in too fast, sarge," Zen reported. "I can't keep up."
"Do the best you can," he said, carefully controlling his own fear. After all, they needed to get beyond Hill 701 as well.
Another twenty seconds ticked by. Zen popped off two more tanks but more than fifteen were still rushing right at them, intent on revenge for the punishment their colleagues had taken. Finally, the order came.
"All right!" Sanchez said. "It's official. Get us the fuck out of here, Xenia!"
She jerked backward on the controls, pulling them out of the barricade position and then spun them around so they were facing forward. She then put the pedal to the medal and began accelerating at top speed towards Hill 701 and safety. As soon as they started to move, however, she knew something was terribly wrong. A hideous clanking noise was coming from the left side and she had difficulty keeping the vehicle moving in a straight line.
"What the fuck is that?" Zen asked.
"The left tread!" she reported. "It's slipping from the damage on that last hit."
"We gonna make it out of here?" Zen wanted to know.
"The fucking computer doesn't tell me that!" she said. "It just says it's damaged!"
Despite the clanking and the difficulty in control, she accelerated them to top speed, almost one hundred kilometers per hour. They made it about half a kilometer before the left tread snapped in half with a large bang. Everyone was thrown violently to the right as the right tread, still moving at full speed, sent them into a vicious left turn. The left side of the tank actually rose into the air for a moment from the force of it before slamming back down and sending them into something that resembled a skid. The entire tank shuddered and groaned.