"I'm sorry," Xenia said. "He was my friend too. I'm gonna miss him."
"Just like a fuckin' Thruster," Jeff said, feeling a tear wanting to form in his eye. "Doesn't know when to hit the fuckin' floor."
"How bad did you get hit?" Xenia asked him, running her finger over the patch on his left flank.
"I got some shrapnel in my side and a couple of little pieces in my thighs. Nothing big. No major vessels or organs hit. Doc patched me up the best he could. I'll live." He shrugged. "At least for now."
"Yeah," Xenia said, looking off towards the west. "They'll be moving in anytime now."
They both stared off into the distance, towards the specters of the concrete pillboxes standing sentinel over the city. All was quiet now. There wasn't even any outgoing artillery or mortar fire. That would soon change.
"How's Belinda?" Jeff asked her.
She gave him a sour look. "Do you really care?" she asked. "Or are you just trying to be polite?"
He shrugged. "I'm not really sure," he replied. "I know you care about her very much and that if anything happened to her you would be upset. I don't want you to be upset."
"I tried to seduce her out there," she said.
"In a biosuit?" he asked.
"In a greenhouse. That's where we staged before we headed into the mountains. We were able to push our biosuits down."
"I see," Jeff said. "And what happened?"
"She wouldn't do it," Xenia said. "I was horny as hell, Jeff. I'd just let some greasy loader feel up my tits in exchange for half a pack of smokes and I was hotter than hell. I attacked her when we got in the tank and she pushed me away."
"Because you wouldn't say you loved her?"
"I did say I loved her," she said. "She still wouldn't do it."
Jeff was stunned, feeling jealousy worming through his body. "You said you loved her?"
"I was desperate," Xenia said. "I blurted it out to her. Apparently she didn't think I really meant it."
"Did you?"
She sighed. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything. I care for her very much. I care for you very much. It might be love — hell, it probably is. I'm just afraid to say it."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I think if I say it to one of you or to both of you... that you'll die out here, that I'll be signing your death warrant."
"That's crazy, Xenia," he said.
"I know. It's something that happens in movies on MarsGroup and intellectually I know that saying what I feel — what I might be feeling — won't have any effect on your chances out here. We're in a war and any one of us could be killed. I've almost been killed so many times I can't count them anymore. And you... you're walking in the fuckin' valley every time those WestHem marines come at your position. I just can't bring myself to make a declaration like that, not while this is all going on."
"I understand," he said. "But I don't agree." He reached up and took the sides of her helmet in his gloved hands, turning her head to face him. "I love you, Xenia. I want you to know that, to fuckin' understand that. At least that way if you die out here you'll die knowing that someone loves you, that someone will cry over you."
"That's sweet, Jeff," she said.
"Yeah," he said, "sometimes I come up with them, don't I? And... well... as much as I hate to admit it, I know that Belinda feels the same way about you. She loves you too."
"Christ," Xenia said. "Why are we even talking about this now? We could all be dead in another thirty minutes."
"That's true," Jeff said, "but we might all be alive when this is over too. What's gonna happen then?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Me either, but we're all gonna have to do something about this situation, won't we?"
"Too much to think about right now," Xenia said. "This is exactly why I won't say... won't say how much I care for you."
"Well... at least we're getting somewhere, huh?"
A signal suddenly blared over the command net, piercing into their ears. They looked at each other, both knowing the time had come.
"All units on the Eden MLD," a voice spoke over the channel. "WestHem units are moving in towards the line. Estimate contact in ten minutes. Forces screens are being updated every six seconds."
"I need to get to my tank," Xenia said. She grasped his hands, squeezing them, and then blew him a kiss. "I'll see you when it's over. We'll talk more then."
"Fuckin' aye," he told her.
She turned and began trotting off. Within seconds she was out of his view. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
Chapter 25
Eden Main Line of Defense
September 14, 2146
1730 hours
The tanks were the first to move against the line — thousands of them rumbling forward in tight, well-formed ranks stretching across two kilometers, their main guns pointing forward, their lasers charged, their ammunition magazines full of fresh rounds from the last resupply operation. Most had full fuel and oxygen tanks but about eight hundred and fifty — the survivors of the battle with the Martian tanks behind the line — were sporting less than a third of their capacity of fuel and oxidizer. Having so many of the monstrous machines in so concentrated of an area going against an enemy tank force a tenth their size, should have been enough to force victory right there. But the MPG engineers had long since taken steps to rob a superior foe of such an easy win.
As the tanks grew closer to the line they encountered a series of steep, artificial berms they could not drive over. They encountered other areas filled with steel tank traps that would break a tread if they were struck. And they encountered lines and lines of anti-tank ditches that were flat out impassible. All of this caused the tanks to bunch of tighter, to lose some of the unit cohesion, to narrow their formations in such a manner that it would be difficult for all of the tanks to fire simultaneously. Eventually they were funneled into narrow corridors only fifteen to twenty tanks wide, reducing the wide scope of fire they'd hoped to enjoy.
It was as they started to narrow up and lose their maneuvering room that the Martian armor opened up on them from their hull-down positions between the pillboxes. Tanks began to explode with frightening regularity all up and down the advance line. Turrets flew, men were shredded, and the dead hulks served to hamper the advance forward of the other tanks, forcing some to simply push their dead companions off into the ditch in order to keep open a corridor for the tanks behind and the APCs to drive through.
The WestHem tanks returned fire from the first moment they were fired upon, blasting within their zones of responsibility as fast as their cannons could be discharged and then recharged. The entire line lit up with the flashes of laser impact. Concrete dust and smashed sections of the protective barriers flew everywhere but the Martian tanks were unaffected as of yet. It would take many shots in exactly the same place to burn through the titanium shielding beneath the concrete.
The WestHem tanks were forced to stop three hundred meters west of the pillboxes. Before them was the main anti-tank ditch. Four meters deep, six meters across, lined with concrete, and running unbroken the entire length of the main line, it was impassible to any vehicle without the assistance of a complete engineering battalion equipped with heavy-duty bridging materials — something the WestHem marines were conspicuously lacking.
The laser fire between the entrenched Martian armor and the exposed WestHem tanks reached a furious pace. With each WestHem tank that was blown up, two more would move forward to take its place. Their crews prayed to whatever deity they believed in that the ground forces would advance quickly and silence those murderous positions.