"We're attacking that line?" asked Lieutenant Strawn, Delta Company's CO. "With only the men and armor we have here?"
"Yes," West said. "Is there a problem with that?"
"Is there a problem with that?" Strawn responded. "Colonel, I've been looking over the reports on that position Intel shipped to us. We can't punch through there without reinforcements."
"And even then we would take heavy casualties," Callahan added. "Have any of you high and mighty battle planners actually looked at what we're facing here?"
Callahan surely had. He had looked over the schematics and briefing material their intelligence department had sent to all company commanders and above. The Martian main defenses, though on much flatter ground and spread across a much greater area than in the Jutfield Gap, were much more formidable. The Martians knew they had to stop an enemy cold with this final defensive network or Eden was lost and they had constructed it with this thought in mind. Stretching all across the vast plain on the western edge of the city was a system of concrete trenches and pillboxes interspersed with concrete and titanium hull-down positions for tanks and APCs. Half a kilometer in front of this were networks of anti-tank ditches and tank traps that would prevent most armor from approaching the line at all and would channel that which did into vicious killing boxes from which there was no escape. Even if there were enough APCs for all the ground troops to mount up in, they wouldn't be able to bring them close to the Martian infantry positions. Any advance would be over five hundred meters of open ground that would be saturated with Martian artillery, mortar fire, heavy and light machine gun fire, tank and APC main gun fire, and, of course, small arms fire from the defending infantry.
"Yes, of course we've read the documents over," West told them. "We understand that our casualties have been a bit heavier than expected, but nevertheless..."
"A bit heavier than expected?" Callahan interrupted. "Save that shit for the media assholes. Those Martians kicked our fucking asses!"
"Goddamn right," agreed Boothe. "How many men have we lost in this sector anyway? I know my company was down almost thirty percent before you sent me that last batch of cooks and dishwashers from the LZ."
"I don't have exact figures on that," West said.
"Bull-fucking-shit," Boothe yelled at him.
"How dare you talk to me like that!" West yelled back.
"Yeah?" Boothe returned. "What are you gonna do about it, sir? Send me to fucking Mars? Oh wait! I'm already here, ain't I? And now you're telling me you want me to lead this ragtag, overtired, ass-kicked company against a defensive emplacement that makes the positions The Corps faced on Callisto look like a kid's tree house? If I'm gonna even consider doing that, I want to know how many goddamn men we've lost and how many we have left. You can throw me in the brig if you want, but that's the way it's gonna be, sir!"
West sighed, seeming to realize he was handling a batch of nitroglycerine that could explode in his face at any second. "We have taken almost eleven thousand casualties moving from the LZ to this point," he admitted.
Silence on the net, stretching out so long it seemed the net was broken.
Eleven thousand casualties? Callahan thought. Jesus fucking Christ! Eleven thousand? And that was just in the Eden sector of operations. How many at Libby? At Proctor? At New Pittsburgh? Not even counting the marines that had been killed in transit by the Martian "suicide attacks" and the so-called "accidents" among the Panamas, they had easily lost more men just getting to the main lines of defense than had been lost in all three attacks on Callisto during the Jupiter War.
"This is insane," whispered Boothe, so softly his words were barely heard.
"Amen to that," agreed Strawn.
"I understand how you men feel," West said. "We underestimated our enemy to a certain degree and we paid the price for it but now we know what kind of positions we're facing. We have a coherent and logical attack plan formulated by the best military minds on this planet and above it."
"Oh really?" said Callahan. "General Jackson was nice enough to come up with an attack plan for us?"
"That's blasphemous, Callahan!" West barked. "Don't ever let me hear you say anything like that again!"
"Truth hurts, doesn't it?" Callahan shot back.
"Look," West said, "I didn't ask you men to like your orders. You are WestHem marines and you will follow them. We will attack at 1300 and we will be standing on the streets of Eden by 1500. Now would you like to hear the briefing on how we're going to do that or not?"
"No," Callahan said. "I wouldn't."
"What?" West demanded.
"I'm sorry, Colonel," he said. "I've been in the Corps my entire career and I've been loyal to the Corps that entire time. I've always believed in our mission no matter where it was — Argentina, Cuba, and even Mars when they first sent us here. But I can't be a party to this. The way I figure it we're standing here with about seventy thousand combat troops and we're facing an enemy of at least twenty-five thousand. That is less than the three to one ratio that doctrine dictates for the best of conditions."
"That is against a professional army," West said. "These are a bunch of greenie weekend warriors we're facing."
"Greenie weekend warriors that have caused eleven thousand fucking casualties with their 'speed bump'," Callahan said. "And you'll note that I said 'the best of conditions'. That is hardly what we're dealing with here. We have lost almost half of our armor and most of us have walked the last thirty kilometers. We've lost most of our captains, lieutenants, and senior NCOs and we have fucking sergeants leading companies (no offense, Rollins), corporals leading platoons, and privates leading squads. We have cooks, dishwashers, toilet plungers, and computer programmers carrying guns out here now. Nobody even knows the names of the people in their unit anymore. We're short on medics, short on ammo, short on breathing air, short on water and food. Each and every one of us that have managed to live this long out here are living on less than six hours of sleep since we left the LZ however many fucking days ago that was. It is impossible for us to take those positions in these numbers under those conditions, sir. Impossible. And I will not order my men to engage this enemy any further unless we are allowed to rest, be fully re-armed, and, most of all, reinforced in some way so we can attack in the strength necessary to achieve our objectives. You can court martial me if you wish, you can execute me on the spot if you feel that's necessary, but I will not walk another foot forward under these conditions, nor will I order my men to walk another foot forward."
"I can't believe you just said that to me, Callahan," West said, his tone sounding more hurt than angry — like that of a father whose son has defied him. "You are relieved of command as of this moment. Your second in command will take over Charlie Company and you will be placed under arrest and transported back to the LZ for processing. I hope you like snow because you're going to be shoveling a lot of it at the penal colony for a very long time."
"At least I'll be alive to shovel it," Callahan said.
"You'd better save some room in the APC for me, Colonel," Captain Boothe said. "I'm with Callahan. I will not order my men forward into a hopeless battle. They will be killed for nothing and I will not be a party to that."
"Put me on the list as well," said Strawn. "That's a meat grinder in front of us."
"Me too," agreed Rollins. "I will not go forward from here."
Now the anger appeared in West's tone. "This is mutiny!" he yelled at them. "I could have you all shot for this!"
"That would certainly help morale, wouldn't it?" asked Callahan.