"We're clear up to the lower level," he said. "Now start moving up and securing it. I'm going up to the top."
"Right, lieutenant," the voice of the sergeant replied.
With that Hunter continued upward. Again he was not blown to pieces by a Martian booby trap. It occurred to him that the Martians hadn't been expecting to be pushed out of this position and that if they were they would know the end was near. Perhaps that was why they hadn't bothered rigging it up with anything. It was as good a theory as any.
The upper level was empty of live Martians as well. There was a lot more concrete dust up here and two dead Martians lying near the firing ports. There were hundreds upon hundreds of expended laser batteries piled everywhere. He walked out onto the main floor of this level and then turned to the rear, surprised to see the huge openings in the wall that faced toward the city.
"What in the fuck did they do that for?" he asked himself, as puzzled as Jeff Creek had been over this seemingly asinine oversight.
Footsteps bounded up the stairs and a squad of marines appeared, led by the sergeant who had refused to go up first.
"We're clearing the lower floor, sir," the sergeant said to him. "So far, no signs of booby-traps, although we wouldn't really know what one looked like anyway."
"True," Hunter said, "but I find the fact that none have gone off yet to be good news. Did you see these huge openings in the back wall?"
"We saw them," the sergeant said. "I've ordered the men to stay clear of them. The Martians out in that back trench might be able to get a shot off at us if we walk in front of them."
"Why would they build such large openings in a protective structure?" Hunter asked. "It does nothing but increase exposure and weaken the entire emplacement."
"I don't know, sir," the sergeant said. "It's enough that we noticed them and are keeping clear. Come and look at this though." He led him over to the side wall, the one that faced north. Over here the firing opening was much smaller. "Take a look, sir."
Hunter put his face in the opening. Below, he could see the stretch of ground between this pillbox and the next. And since they were now well above, he could see two Martian tanks and four Martian APCs in their hull-down positions, firing out over the battlefield. "We can take them out from up here," he said. "We're high enough to put laser fire right down on top of them."
"Goddamn right, sir," the sergeant said. "All we need is to get some AT teams up here and we can clear this whole fucking area."
Hunter nodded. "Continue clearing this level," he said. "I'll get on with Captain Callahan and have them send some AT units up."
"Right on," the sergeant said. He switched his channel and ordered an entire platoon's worth of men into the room, ordering them to stay well clear of the rear opening and to man positions at the main firing ports along the walls. He ordered another squad to crawl over just to the sides of the rear openings and keep an eye out to their rear. That was, after all, where the Martians were.
Down below, Callahan, still huddled on the west side of the pillbox, listened to the report from Lieutenant Hunter with something like glee. "Perfect," he said. "Absolutely fucking perfect. I'll get West to put some AT teams in with the next wave of men. With luck we'll have our corridor open within thirty minutes and then we can start moving enough men in here to force our way past those final positions."
Jeff Creek had his M-24 pointed out toward the rear of the pillbox, the magnification on his goggles set at high. In his view was the face of one of the WestHem marines on the top level of the position. He was peeking slightly out around the corner of the opening, thinking that he was safe from being shot. He was so wrong. Jeff itched to pull the trigger, to put a 4mm round right through that Earthling asshole's face. But he didn't. He and the rest of the two platoons deployed her had been ordered not to fire.
"We could rake those fuckers right now," he told Drogan, who was deployed next to him, manning a SAW.
"Yep," she said. "Now we know why those openings are so big in the rear. When the enemy takes that position they won't have the same protection from it that we had."
"I should've known it made some kinda sense," Jeff said. "You gotta hand it to the engineers who designed this place. But why won't they let us shoot them? They've been exposed half a dozen times on both levels. I bet if we started pouring fire in there we'd hit a dozen or so."
"I don't know," Drogan said. "But we'd better do something fast. Pretty soon they'll get some AT teams up there. If they do that, they'll be able to force the armor out of the spaces in between."
The ground began to rumble around them, the soft, insistent vibration that bespoke of a heavy armored vehicle approaching. Jeff looked behind and saw two main battle tanks coming their way, one from the north and one from the south, both sticking close to the outside of the MPG base. When they made it directly behind the trench the platoons were in they turned and began heading forward, toward the pillbox.
Jeff and Drogan looked at each other, grinning. Now they understood what those big openings in the rear were really for.
"Sir!" the sergeant's voice suddenly barked in Hunter's ear. "We've got tanks approaching from the rear."
"Tanks?" he asked, alarmed. "From behind us?" In an instant he suddenly figured out the same thing as Jeff and Drogan. Why hadn't this occurred to him earlier?"
"They're setting up to fire, sir!" the sergeant said, panic in his voice now.
"Everyone back to the stairways!" Hunter yelled. "Now!"
A panicked rush began but it was far too late. The tanks outside opened up with their eighty-millimeter guns, putting the rounds directly through the large openings. They flew in, hit the front wall, and exploded with a tremendous crack, sending shrapnel ricocheting in all directions. Men were blown to pieces if they were near the front wall, riddled with shrapnel if they were near the rear. Hunter was hit with the second volley. The concussion blew him against the side wall and then shrapnel sprayed through his chest, neck, and face, ending his life in an instant. Of the one hundred and sixteen marines inside of the pillbox, sixty-eight of them were killed or so gravely wounded they couldn't stand. The rest managed to scramble into the staircases where they were safe from the exploding shells. They huddled there, still trying to comprehend what had happened, what they should do now. And then Captain Zogor Fattie, the commander of the pillbox before it fell, pushed a series of buttons on an electronic radio transmitter from within the trench behind. The booby traps that lined each stairway were detonated simultaneously, killing every man within.
Aboard the WSS Nebraska, Mars orbit
1830 hours
Major Wilde was receiving the confused and disjointed reports from the Eden Theater of operations and trying to assemble some kind of a picture of what was going on down there. The only thing that was really clear was that they were taking horrifying casualties, most in the anti-tank trenches where the ground troops were trying to assemble or on the advance from those trenches forward.
"From what I understand," he told General Browning, pointing to a schematic of the Eden area on his computer screen, "we've pushed through and forced the Martians out of their pillbox positions in six different places on the line. Here, here, here, here, here, and here. You'll notice, however, that none of those positions are adjoining each other, therefore we have not been able to open up a movement corridor through to the rear."
"Why not?" Browning asked.
Wilde clenched his fists a few times but kept his feelings off of his face. "Because, sir, these pillboxes overlap their fields of fire and the Martians still have armor in hull-down positions in the spaces in between. Our hope had been to occupy the pillboxes we forced them out of but... well... those latest reports kind of eliminate that possibility."