"That thing gonna work for you?" Brian said, looking at it dubiously.
"I'll make it work," he said, tugging at the leg portion. "What's the mission?"
"We're going after the arty."
"The arty?"
"The air strike took out fifteen of our heavy guns. The rest won't be able to suppress the WestHem arty enough to force them out of range. The ground pounders need us out there to start settling the score."
"What about the APCs?" Matt asked. "Killing their ground troops is our primary mission."
"I know," Brian said. "It's bad news no matter which way you look at it. We're being forced to react to something the WestHems did instead of the other way around."
"And that's not good," Matt said.
"Fuckin' aye," Brian agreed. "That's how you lose wars. Now come on. Get that thing on. They got a brand new plane for us, right off the assembly line. We get to bust its cherry."
Matt, Brian, and their cohorts did their very best to even that score. They weren't terribly successful in their endeavor. Major Wilde up in orbit had anticipated the possibility that the Martian aircraft would start targeting the mobile artillery as it marched and had made sure that the tracked guns did not travel in a formation. Instead, he interspersed it throughout the rest of the formation, putting it particularly heavy in the middle of the tanks. Looking through infrared enhancement and traveling faster than sound while trying to identify tiny vehicles that looked very similar to tanks proved to be a little more difficult than most of the Mosquito gunners could handle. Though none of them were shot down and all of them combined scored an average of 1.3 hits per pass, they simply couldn't positively ID their targets in the time they had on each pass. They ended up killing a lot of tanks — four for every one artillery gun they hit. By the time the lead elements of the WestHem divisions passed into the range of the 250s, the Martian air force had only managed to kill twenty-four of them.
The special forces squads faired a little better in their mission. With more time to identify their targets they scored hits pretty much every time they fired. But the formation was moving steadily along at twenty-five kilometers per hour. They did not stop to engage enemy forces that fired upon them. They did not stop to check on their comrades that had been hit. They just marched steadily forward, moving inexorably towards the Jutfield Gap and the coming battle. By the time of engagement the special forces teams, operating from both sides of the valley, had chalked only forty-two kills of the mobile artillery guns.
The formation marched forward until they got within thirty kilometers of the Jutfield Gap. At this point the artillery guns separated from the main column and began to set up into firing positions. They still had their targeting data from the first battle and they put it to use. In a complex ballet of shooting and scooting they began to fire, raining shells down upon the first Martian line of defense. The air crews continued to pound on them as much as they could and the special forces teams moved forward and began to do the same and the remaining five guns, guided by two circling peepers, did their own part to send heavy shells into the guns.
The WestHem's lost many guns to this onslaught but the rate of attrition was simply too slow. The Martians could not, no matter how hard they tried, neutrilize the artillery. And while all the airpower and the special forces teams concentrated on this task, they were unable to fulfill their primary mission: that of killing the APCs and the enemy soldiers within them. Those APCs arrived at the Jutfield Gap just before 0130 on the morning of September 14. They had lost less than ten of their number on the way — four of those from simple mechanical breakdowns instead of enemy fire. The entire compliment of 180,000 ground troops slated to push on Eden had reached the first line of defense intact.
The tanks formed up around them and they began to move in.
The artillery barrage had been going on for ten minutes now, the 150mm shells dropping atop their hill, exploding and shaking everything. It did not match the ferocity of the barrage they'd endured during the first phase but all knew there would be no let-up this time.
"Tanks moving in!" said a voice over the net. "Battalion strength. Our tanks and the AT teams are engaging."
Jeff was huddled against the back of the trench, his head down low, the SAW curled up against his chest. He didn't get up to look at the tanks. He wasn't putting his head in one of the firing holes until he absolutely had to.
More explosions began to rock the hillside as the tanks opened up on the anti-tank positions above them, raking them with a terrifying volume of eighty-millimeter fire. It sounded like they were blowing the entire top of the hill off. He felt fear unlike anything he'd experienced to this point. Soon those guns would be shooting at his position, supporting the advance of the ground troops. He felt fear for Xenia as well. She was down in her tank with Valentine and Belinda Maxely facing twice as many tanks as they ever had before. She could be dead already, her beautiful body fried to a pulp by a WestHem tank laser. That was a thought he tried to push out of his mind but it refused to go.
"APCs moving in," said another voice. "A whole fucking shitload of them!"
"I got 'em," said Sergeant Walker, who was peering through one of the periscope cameras. "Too many to count. If they're fully loaded with dismounts we're looking at multi-battalion strength coming after our position."
"Fuck me," said Hicks, his eyes wide and terrified.
"Where the fuck are those reinforcements?" asked Drogan. "We only have two platoons on this hill. We can't hold off that many marines!"
"No, we can't," Walker said. "The LT says it's the same situation up and down the line. We're gonna be pulling back real quick."
"How quick?" Jeff wanted to know. "I vote for fuckin' now!"
"We need to bloody them up a bit first," Walker said. "AT teams and the tanks are engaging the APCs now. They've knocked out about ten of them."
"Any word on friendly tank losses?" Jeff asked.
"No," Walker said. "No word. Okay, everyone. This is it! APCs are stopping about two hundred meters short of the hill. Get in position and open fire as soon as they start to dismount. Remember, stick to your zones!"
Jeff stood up and put the barrel of the SAW through the firing hole. He looked out into a sea of muzzle flashes from tanks, smoke and explosions from return fire, and laser flashes from anti-tank fire. The APCs were in a broad line stretching from one side of the hill to another. Walker was right. There were too many of them to count.
An artillery shell landed just down the hill from him. The flash overwhelmed his visual mode. The concussion hammered into him hard enough to drive some of the air from his lungs. Several pieces of smoking shrapnel came flying into his firing hole, one of them pinging off the side of his helmet.
"Jesus," he mumbled, just as another one exploded a little further up.
Mortar shells, fired from behind them, began to drop in the midst of the APCs, their proximity fuses causing them to explode about ten meters up. And then the marines began to dismount, appearing from around the back of the APCs. The mortar rounds felled some; most began to move forward, toward the base of the hill.
Jeff put his targeting recticle on a concentration of them and opened fire, taking three of them down with one burst. He then shifted and fired at another group that had come out from one of the other APCs. The rest of the squad opened up as well, popping at them with their rifles. Many marines went down but within thirty seconds there were hundreds of them still up and they were moving in.
The APCs began to fire to cover them, sending sixty millimeter shells and twenty millimeter cannon fire at the infantry positions. Riggins, one of the newer members of Jeff's squad, was killed almost immediately as a twenty millimeter round went right through his head. Two of the shells exploded directly in front of Jeff's hole, sending more shrapnel into the trench. A piece of it ripped through the top of Jeff's shoulder but missed the skin beneath.