"We're forming up in lines," Zen told Belinda. "A lot of us are overlapping fire or blocking each other's shots. Get us moved twenty meters right."
"Moving," Belinda said, hitting the accelerator and moving the T-bar, lining their tank up against the others near them. Two of them exploded suddenly and she almost panicked. "Zen, when do we get out of here?"
"When command calls our squad and tells us to move," Zen said. "Until then, we hold and try to keep them off of us."
It went on for the better part of ten minutes. The WestHem tanks stopped their advance and spread out to give themselves better firing positions. The Martian tanks did the same and the intensity of the battle picked up, with tanks on both sides blowing into oblivion with horrifying regularity.
"Okay, we're up!" Zen suddenly said. "Get us the fuck out of here, B!"
"Goddamn right," she said, turning them around and putting the accelerator to the floor.
They rumbled across the last of the flatland, heading for the opening. They were less than fifty meters away from safety when the entire tank suddenly shuddered and spun violently to the left. Zen felt himself slammed against the side of the tank from the violence of the centrifugal force. They spun, bounced, tipped onto their side momentarily, and then finally shuddered to a halt.
"Motherfuck!" Belinda exclaimed.
"Report, B!" Zen said.
"They got the left tread," she said. "We're immobile."
"Goddammit!" Xenia said. "Twice in one fucking war is too much for this shit!"
"Everyone out!" Zen ordered. "Start heading on foot for the pass!"
They popped their hatches open and scrambled out. Like last time, they didn't bother grabbing their weapons. Once their feet were on the ground they began to move as quickly as possible towards the opening. On both sides of them other Martian tanks went screaming past, all of them avoiding hitting the pedestrians, none of them stopping to help them however.
They were twenty-five meters away when an eighty-millimeter shell, fired from one of the WestHem tanks, came screaming in. It exploded prematurely and off-target — a result of the targeting difficulties caused by the marines' continuing unfamiliarity with Martian atmospheric pressure. Even so, it sent a hail of deadly shrapnel flying toward them at suicidal speed. Most of the fragments passed over the top of them but not all. A good portion slammed into Zen, who was taking up the rear, ripping through the left side of his biosuit and tearing into his body. He thumped to the ground, breathless, feeling pain unlike anything he'd ever imagined before.
"Zen's down!" Xenia said, stopping in her tracks and rushing over to him.
"Goddammit, no!" Belinda cried, doing the same.
"Go," Zen gasped at them. "Get the fuck out of here! Forget about me!"
"Fuck that shit," Xenia said. "B, grab his uppers. I'll get the lowers."
"I can't... breath," Zen said. "I think I'm done for. Leave me."
"You ain't gonna die, Zen," Belinda told him. "Not today. We're getting your ass outta here. Now shut up."
He shut up. He no longer had the energy to talk anyway. The two women picked him up by the handles on his biosuit and began carrying him toward the entrance to the pass. Another eighty-millimeter shell streaked towards them and exploded. Once again it was too high over their heads. The concussion knocked them to the ground but the shrapnel missed them entirely. Belinda and Xenia slowly picked themselves back up and moved on.
They were forced to carry Zen partially up the side of the hill that guarded the pass in order to avoid the continuing rush of tanks that were making entry on the flat ground. They scrambled down the other side to where the pass opened up, to where some of the tanks were starting to spread out and encircle the hill.
Xenia got on the emergency channel and called command, giving their location and letting them know they had a gravely injured soldier with them. Command vectored one of the spare tanks over to them. It pulled up and stopped just at the base of the backside of the hill. The commander — someone they didn't know — popped his head out of the hatch and spoke to them on the emergency channel.
"You need to climb up on the sides," he told them. "One of you get the injured guy on the tread guard and hold him there. We're gonna take you to the rendezvous at the valley."
"Great," Xenia muttered. "Riding on the outside again."
"We need to stabilize Zen a little first," Belinda said. "Let's put him down."
"Hurry the fuck up," the commander said. "Those WestHem tanks are gonna try to follow us in here."
Zen was barely conscious now, his breathing rapid and shallow, his eyes half-lidded, seeing little. His suit was leaking in several places, where holes too big to seal on their own had been ripped. There was no active bleeding — at least not externally. Xenia pulled out the emergency supplies from her own suit and used the sealer to cover the holes. That was about all they could do.
"We need to get a medic to him as quickly as possible," Belinda told the commander.
"Command says special forces teams from the arty site are being flown out to the rendezvous point. They have medics with them. Will he make it that far?"
The trip to the rendezvous point in Gibbons Valley was nearly twenty minutes. Xenia and Belinda looked at each other doubtfully. "I guess he's gonna have to," Xenia finally said.
They hefted him up onto the tread guard, laying him flat on his back, his head towards the front of the tank. Xenia climbed onto the turret just above him and curled her legs around his chest. She held onto the twenty-millimeter cannon. Belinda climbed up a little further towards the back, holding onto the main hatch handle and curling her legs around Zen's legs.
"Okay," Xenia said. "Let's do it."
"We'll keep it slow," the commander promised. "There are a few up and down portions."
"We'll hold onto him," Xenia said forcefully. "I'm not letting another one fall."
The commander looked at her quizzically and then disappeared back inside his tank. A moment later they began to move. Xenia and Belinda both held on.
Meanwhile, the rest of the tanks — those that had survived the battle — had made it inside the pass. The WestHems tried to follow them in, intent upon finalizing the revenge mission they'd been sent on, but the commander of the Martian tanks had already foreseen this. Two companies of tanks had been assigned as rear guards and had positioned themselves atop hills just inside the pass — their cannons pointing downward towards the narrow entrance. Every time a WestHem tank attempted to enter it was blown to pieces. Within five minutes the pass was choked with burned out tanks and the WestHem commanders had lost their taste for the pursuit and pulled back.
When the tank bearing Belinda, Xenia, and the injured Zen pulled into Gibbons Valley they were directed to the center of the small valley where a landing zone had been established. Sitting on the ground here were two hummingbirds, their ramps open. Three soldiers bearing the extra camouflage of special forces members came trotting over to them. The lead soldier held up five fingers to them, indicating which short-range channel they should switch down to. Xenia and Belinda both did so.
"I'm Sergeant Fargo," the lead soldier told them. "This is Corporal Wong and Corporal Horishito. How bad is your guy here?"
"Pretty fuckin' bad," Xenia said. "He took shrapnel from an eighty in the back. He's having trouble breathing."
Fargo looked down at him and winced. "You ain't shitting," he said. The poor bastard's face was a visible shade of blue beneath his helmet. He was barely breathing at all now. "Let's get him to doc right away. Priority."
"Right," said Wong, reaching over and grabbing the upper handles on Zen's suit.
"We'll carry him," Xenia said forcefully, jumping down onto the ground and grabbing the handles away from her.