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the boss. It's on."
    "Thanks. Stand by for my word."
    Another scan of the oncoming enemy. Some were charging ahead of the rest, heedless of the risk as the fruits of victory danced before their eyes. A couple of those enemy soldiers crested the ridge as Stark watched, their shapes suddenly silhouetted against the stars, the symbology on Stark's HUD momentarily superimposed on the actual objects it represented. Perhaps the overeager enemy soldiers had a brief moment to realize the enormity of their mistake. Perhaps not. A hundred rifles fired almost simultaneously, the impacts of the bullets launching their targets backward into space to fall again in long, slow arcs down the reverse slope.
    "Sanchez. How're you coming?"
    "In among them. Wait one."
    A small force of enemy soldiers, not more than a single squad, came around the ridge to the left, trying to avoid the broken terrain by clinging to the slope above it. The Fourth Batt company positioned there waited until the enemy cleared the slope, then opened up a withering barrage that cut down every soldier in seconds. A low snarl came across the comm circuit as the American soldiers reveled in the small victory. "Good job," Stark called. "There's more coming, and they're gonna get the same treatment."
    "Stark." Sanchez, breathing heavily now, but otherwise nothing in his tone revealing he'd been in heavy combat. "We have cleared the hill of enemy soldiers. They are positioning for another assault."
    "That's fine. They're gonna regret it."
    "Then we hold."
    "No. Not yet. Get everybody down into the bunker."
    "The bunker has been breached."
    "You won't be fighting from it. Get under cover! Fast!"
    "Ah. I see."
    On the scale Stark was using for his command scan, the enemy units hurtling to regain their foothold on the hill seemed to merge with the American symbology as he switched circuits. "Grace. Now. Lay it on."
    "Okay, Stark. Those troops up there have got, uh, thirty-five seconds before they get turned into hamburger."
    "Roger." Stark swapped circuits frantically. "Is everybody down in the bunker, Sanch? You've got thirty seconds!"
    "Thirty seconds. Acknowledged. Our rear guard is entering now."
    Stark watched the rounds arcing in from the rear, trying to imagine almost a platoon of soldiers crammed into a single bunker battered by enemy fire. They'd be lying on top of one another, almost immobile except for those closest to any openings, huddled in the dark, feeling that hopeless fear foot soldiers experienced when they know heavy artillery was coming down on them. At such a moment, only chance and the grace of God mattered as training and experience came to nothing. Counting down the last few seconds to impact. Very easy to do with their HUDs helpfully displaying the digits in bright red numbers. Ten seconds as sensors on the surface revealed enemy forces charging onto the crest of the hill, expecting desperate resistance from ground level, then pausing as their own sensors told them of the threat coming from above. Five seconds as the enemy began frantically scrambling into retreat, too late and too slow. Only a few of the incoming American shells blossomed into early death as a result of counterfire from too-distant enemy defenses.
    Zero. Silence. Somewhere hell had come to rest on the Moon's surface, massive shells hurling their fury onto a single, small area. On Stark's HUD, streams of symbology converged on the elevation nicknamed Mango Hill, vanishing on impact. Clean, with no vegetation to block or divert the path of shells. Quiet, with no atmosphere to transmit the unbearable thunder of explosions. Precise, without variables like wind to mess up finely calculated trajectories. Someone who had never experienced a shelling would have no concept from the HUD display, from the serenity of the Moon even a small distance away, of the reality where those shells were falling. Blizzards of metal fragments cutting down everything in their path, explosions rearranging the