"If something unfortunate was to happen to me?" Callahan said.
"That's right," Bowman told him.
Callahan looked at his M-24 in his lap. He fingered it a few times, marveling over the fact that he had not fired a single round through it in the entire campaign. He looked up at the men around him, seeing their faces staring at him expectantly. Obviously all of them had switched over to the command channel at some point to monitor this conversation. He picked up his rifle and removed the strap from around his body. He threw it out into the open. "Everyone get rid of your weapons," he told them. "If we're going to do this, we need to do it right. It won't do us any good if we're the only ones."
A collective sigh of relief went out across the channel and a vast pile of weapons began to hit the ground.
"Everyone stay in place for now," Callahan said. "I need to talk to some other people first."
Pillbox 72
0740 hours
Captain Steve Daniels was the man in charge of the forces gathered in front of the pillbox adjacent to Callahan's. He, like Callahan, had just received his attack orders and was trying to convince his troops that command was really serious about them.
"This is fuckin' bullshit!" an angry corporal — who was not even supposed to be on this channel — proclaimed to him. "Go up against those positions? Without mortar support? With only a few anti-tank teams? What are they? Pissed off that we managed to live this long and trying to kill us completely?"
Several other unauthorized users checked in on the same channel and expressed their opinions as well. Several people brought up the same point that Bowman had brought up. If they turned around and started heading back, the Martians wouldn't shoot at them anymore.
"This is Captain Callahan," a voice suddenly cut in. "I'm in command of the group on Pillbox 73. Who's in charge there?"
Daniels was surprised. It was quite unorthodox for a commander to get onto another commander's channel. He checked his telemetry screen to see if it was one of his own men playing games and saw that the transmission had, in fact, come from a Captain Callahan over at the Pillbox 73 position. "This is Captain Daniels," he said. "What do you want, Callahan? We're trying to organize for our attack here. Shouldn't you be doing the same?"
"We're not attacking," Callahan told him. "We've thrown down our weapons and we are going to disobey this order. From I've just been monitoring on your channel it sounds like your men are ready to do the same."
Daniels, a veteran of the first phase of the war at Proctor, was not the least bit shocked or outraged by this statement. On the contrary, he felt hope for the first time. "You're not going forward?" he asked.
"The last time we retreated the Martians didn't shoot at us," Callahan said. "We're tired of being shot at. Our gesture would be a lot more meaningful if we weren't the only ones making it."
"I think I speak for all my men when I say we'll be standing next to you when you walk out."
"Very good," Callahan said. "I'm going to talk to the men over at 71 now. Stay in place until I tell you to move.
It took less than ten minutes for Callahan to convince all four groups of marines to throw down their weapons. Pillbox 70 proved to be the most difficult. The men there were commanded by a Captain Stills, who was not a veteran of the first conflict but who had in fact been in charge of the APC maintenance section on one of the landing ships. He accused Callahan of inciting treason, malfeasance of duty, and several other things before a mysterious "sniper" put a round through his head and his second-in-command, Lieutenant Galvin, took over for him.
"We're in," Galvin said. "Just tell us when to start moving back."
"I'll let you know," Callahan promised.
Colonel West wasn't too keen on the adjustment to the battle plan — to say the least. He ordered, threatened, even begged Callahan to have his men pick up their weapons and take the Martian positions.
"We're within thirty minutes of taking this fucking city, Callahan!" he screamed. "We can be standing in Eden an hour from now, basking in our fucking glory! You want to give that all up for a charge of treason?"
"At least we'll be alive to face those charges," Callahan said. "We're coming out."
"The Martians will gun you down like dogs if you walk out into the open like that!"
"I don't think they will," Callahan said. "We're willing to take that chance in any case."
"If they don't gun you down, we will," West said. "I'll order all men at the ditch to shoot you as deserters!"
"I don't think they'll do that either," Callahan said. "Face it, Colonel. We've lost. Why make it any more complicated than that?"
"You'll be held responsible for this, Callahan. I'm warning you."
"I'm willing to accept the consequences, Colonel. You can quote me on that. We're heading out now. See you in a bit."
Xenia Stoner was sitting in the gunner's station in one of the tanks stationed between Pillbox 70 and 69. She had just had a support team reload her eighty millimeter shells and was firing them as fast as they could be put into the breach, sending them out over the endless stream of marines that kept emerging from the anti-tank ditch and heading toward Pillbox 70.
She was the first to spot movement in the opposite direction. She saw a large group of people suddenly enter her field of view from the right. She automatically turned her main gun in that direction, preparing to take a shot at them. The twenty-millimeter, which had been placed under control of the tank's driver, did the same. Xenia stopped, her finger poised over the firing button as she realized that these figures were heading back the way they had come.
"What the fuck?" she muttered.
"You seeing this shit, Jack?" asked the driver — woman named Barbie Goodbud — of the commander, Jack Woo.
"I'm seeing it," Woo said, his hand on the controls of the four millimeter gun, his recticle resting right between two of the mysterious soldiers. "But I'm not quite sure what it is."
"Their hands are up," Xenia said. "They're not carrying weapons with them."
"And they're walking back towards the WestHem positions," Woo said thoughtfully. "Xenia, get a count for me."
"At least three hundred of them," she said, mostly guessing. "More of them coming out every second."
"All of them have their hands up," Goodbud said.
"Hold your fire," Woo told them.
"What about the ones still coming forward from the trench?" Xenia asked.
"Hold you fire on them too," he said. "Let me get command and see what the fuck is going on."
The group walked slowly forward, hands held high, moving step by step over the open ground they'd recently scrambled their way across. A few of the Martian positions opened up on them, mostly out of instinct. More than two dozen were gunned down with bullets. Another two dozen were blown up by tank rounds. The rest kept moving forward, not reacting to the fire, not breaking, not running, trying not to panic. This had been per instructions given by Captain Callahan. After a minute or so, the fire on the formation stopped. As they went further out all enemy fire stopped completely — at least in this sector of the line.
Hundreds of other marines had been rushing forward at the time, having just cleared the lethal anti-tank trench and going for the final dash to what was being called "the assembly point". Many didn't notice at first that the enemy fire had stopped. But as they did they noticed the line of fellow marines walking toward them with their hands in the air. Gradually, the onrushing marines slowed their pace, understanding dawning over them.
Callahan didn't communicate with the onrushing men at all. He didn't have to. They all saw that the death and destruction that had been killing them and maiming them had come to a halt. The only reason this could be so was because the men who had gone before them were retreating. Most concluded that the attack they were racing to join had been aborted. Most didn't bother to speculate why. To a man they stopped in their tracks and waited for the formation to catch up with them. Hands were held up, telling them which tactical channel to turn to.