"I don't give a rat's ass how costly it is," Browning said. "I just want to know how long it will take. I promised the media we'd be standing in Eden by sunset tonight!"
Wilde couldn't suppress a sigh. Browning didn't give a damn about the thousands of lives that would be lost. All he cared about was keeping to the timeline he'd promised the media. "We'll either be standing in Eden tonight," he said, "or we'll be defeated, with many of our troops captured and on their way to POW camps."
"What do you mean?" Browning asked. This, at least, alarmed him to some degree.
"There will be no second chance here," Wilde explained. "The initial reports I'm getting from the supply column are that two hundred and twelve of the two hundred and forty supply cars in the train have either been destroyed completely or have had their contents released into the atmosphere. Of those that are left, most are overturned or pinned in by the remains of those that were destroyed. There will be no way for us to resupply any of the units in the field. This includes ammunition for the infantry troops, charging batteries for the portable SALs and the portable ATs, and shells for the tanks and APCs. Most notably it also means we have no way to refuel our vehicles. Getting the APCs back in the event we have to retreat will be very tight."
"I don't want to hear you talking about retreat," Browning said forcefully.
"I'm just trying to lay out the possibilities, sir," Wilde said. "The APCs might be able to make it back if they came back slow but the tanks we sent out in pursuit of the Martian tanks... well, they have just enough fuel to make it back to Eden and fight for an hour or two. They won't make it more than twenty kilometers if they have to pull back."
"There will be no pull back!" Browning said forcefully. "Talking about what you have to do if defeated means you're already half-convinced that will happen! I won't tolerate this any more, Wilde. We will push forward and we will take that city! Is that clear?"
"We'll try, sir," Wilde said. "There's not much else to do at this point."
"Now that's the spirit," Browning said. "You and I will be standing in the lounge of the Eden spaceport by midnight. Mark my words."
"Yes sir."
"Okay. Now that we've agreed to that, how about you tell me your thoughts for making it happen?"
Typical, Wilde thought, feeling his ulcer burning again. He tells me what we're going to do and then asks me how to go about doing it. "Well, sir," he said. "It's my thought that we should concentrate the bulk of our firepower and our infantry advance on the center of the Martian line."
"What about the flanks?" Browning asked.
"We don't need to worry much about the flanks at this point. If we punch through that line and get behind it we'll be able to move into the MPG base itself. All we need to do is secure a corridor large enough to move our people in. We breach into the base and pour as many marines through the hole as we can. Once the base is occupied the Martians on the flanks will be effectively cut off from their supplies and equipment."
Browning nodded wisely. "I like it," he said. "I like it a lot."
"As I said, sir, it's bound to be costly but it's the option with the most chance of success. The units are staging now, ready to move in at your order. I suggest you update your movement orders and get them moving. Every minute we sit here another one of our APCs gets blown up by the Martian aircraft or the special forces teams."
"Then I'd better get on that right away," Browning said. "Do you have those movement orders drawn up for me?"
Wilde sighed again. "Give me about ten minutes sir and I'll have a detailed advance plan for you."
MPG Headquarters, New Pittsburgh
1700 hours
General Jackson was well beyond expressing outrage and condemnation at Laura Whiting when she came strolling into his office, once again completely alone, without benefit of a single one of her security detail. It had gotten to the point where she simply came and went as she pleased, walking on the meanest of the New Pittsburgh streets, riding unescorted on the MarsTrans, just like she was another middle-aged woman out to see the sights.
"Sometimes I wonder," Jackson told her as she sat in the chair next to his desk, "if you're actually trying to get yourself killed, Laura."
"Why on Mars would I try to do that?" she asked him.
"I don't know," he said. "As long as I've known you and as close as we've been over the years, even I don't always know what's going on in that brain of yours."
"Sometimes I don't either," she said. "I was just over at NP General Hospital, visiting some of the wounded." She frowned. "There are a lot of them to visit over there."
"Yeah," he agreed. "I won't argue with you there. How was their morale?"
"Much better than I would have thought, actually," she said. "They all seem to think we're going to hold this city. They're proud to have been a part of that. A few of them even cried when they saw me."
"That's good," he said. "I think the fighting spirit of our people is going to be a major factor in this thing — something the WestHems haven't counted on."
"So you think we're going to hold New Pittsburgh?" she asked.
He nodded. "Yes, I think we're going to hold it. The WestHems have taken a hell of a beating clearing our first lines here. They're in the middle of their refuel and rearm about twelve klicks west of the main line. Best estimates say they've taken at least fifteen percent casualties so far, that their tanks have been cut down by almost forty percent, and their APC are down at least thirty percent. Like in the first phase, a lot of them had to walk forward from the Red Line. We're keeping the pressure on them with arty, air attacks, mortar attacks, and special forces attacks. When they move forward to the main line we'll chop them up like hamburger. I think they just might break under the pressure at that point. Even if they don't, I don't think they have enough men or enough ammo to push through, not with our positions still intact."
"That's good news indeed," Laura said, pleased. "I'm really fond of this city and I'd hate to have to leave it."
"Me too," Jackson agreed.
"And how about Eden?" Laura asked. "I understand your flanking maneuver was successful in its mission?"
"It was," Jackson said, "but at considerable cost. They moved through the mountains undetected and caught the WestHem mobile guns completely by surprise, killing all but eleven of them according to telemetry sent to us from the peepers. They then went after the WestHem supply column. Our air strikes took out about half of the WestHem tanks guarding the column and the tanks themselves took out the rest in the first five minutes of the attack. We then blasted and blew up more than ninety percent of the cargo, fuel, and oxygen cars. Unfortunately the marines responded quicker and in larger numbers than we'd anticipated. It took us longer to get our tanks back into the safety of the mountains after the attack then we thought it would. We were engaged by a superior force of WestHem tanks on the north and the south egress points. This cost us one hundred and twelve tanks."
Laura shook her head quietly. "So many," she said.
He nodded. "Most of those were kills too. It's really hard to live through a direct hit from an anti-tank laser. We only collected twenty-three wounded from the engagement — all of them the victims of machine gun fire or eighty millimeter shrapnel after they went out on foot after their tanks were disabled by indirect hits."
"They're safe now?" she asked.
"Yes, the wounded have all been flown out and transferred to Eden hospitals. The tanks and their crews are staging in the Gibbons Valley ten klicks north of the main valley or the Cypress Valley twelve klicks south of it. We're going to fly some cargo carriers fitted with hydrogen and oxygen tanks out to them so they can refuel. I'm hoping to have them in the air before dark but... well... it's an improvised solution and you know how those go."