Southern Cross by Windstar

The scream went up before the explosion had even dissipated, and Katya forced herself not to
look. She'd seen nearly twenty percent of her command decimated by the last few hours of
desperate combat, and she just couldn't take the sight of another shattered piece of twisted metal
that used to be a friend.
"Lieutenant!"
Even as the medics labored on the newest casualty, she could hear the thin steady screaming of
the injured man through her com link before she switched channel, her second in command
pounded up.
Her last second in command had been blown apart the first time they'd moved her command
post, she still had his blood stains on her suit. Andresson had been a good man, he had a family,
three children back in Mexico… Firmly the Russian ignored those thoughts.
"You see this ridge here, we'll draw them to it. How many of those nukes we got left?"
The hesitation was clear.
"Nuke's ma'am?"
"Just answer the damn question, how many?"
In the distance, less than a kilometer ahead of her position, marines were desperately pouring
down a torrent of fire at the nightmare like creatures swarming across the surface of mars.
"Three Ma'am."
"Good, put them in a line along the southern edge of this ridge. Move."
The two-meter hard suit whirred as he moved away from her, and she spared a glance at her own
suits read outs. She had another six hours of power left, as long as she didn't start firing the
plasma canon mounted over her suits right shoulder. Most of the rest of her people were in a
worse situation though, close fighting drained power like no body's business. The loss of the
supply shuttles were hurting them, and she wondered how long it would be before people started
having to toss away there hard suits due to lack of power cells.
Another missile streaked overhead and she watched grimly as it slammed into the rear of her
lines. The few heavy tanks that she had left were returning fire, but they were being
overwhelmed. They were making the Bak'ra pay for it in blood, but they were being driven back
towards Mars Base. What had started out as a comfortable hundred kilometer buffer zone was
down to less than half that.
The Bak'ra for there part had to be seen to be believed.