Greenies

Chapter 19

Eden MPG base

September 3, 2146

The smell in the outside deployment male locker room was horrid, perhaps the worst olfactory sensation Jeff had ever experienced. The thought that he was contributing to it did nothing to ease his disgust. It was the smell of over a thousand combat soldiers who had been outside for eight days, sweating inside of their biosuits, unable to shower or even evaporate the sweat properly. The moment they began to remove the biosuits in the confined space all those layers of perspiration, most of it old, began to permeate the air like a gas.

"I'm gonna fuckin' puke," said Hicks, who was standing next to Jeff and who did indeed appear to a bit green around the gills.

"Go ahead," Jeff told him, peeling the main portion of his suit downward as gingerly as possible. "It can't possibly make it smell worse in here." He disconnected the urine catheter and eased away from the solid waste tube stuck to his anus. His penis was raw and tender from so many days with a piece of latex on it and he winced as the air hit it. He stepped out of the suit, leaving him standing naked except for the MPG T-shirt he'd donned nine days ago after his last shower. It was pretty much beyond salvage at this point. Even if it was washed and sterilized the smell and the sweat stains would probably remain. He took it off and put it in a plastic bag from his locker, intending to simply throw it away.

He had already unloaded his M-24 and removed all of the magazines from the outside pockets on the suit. He now removed his last waste-pack, his food pack, the water tank and the air supply tank and put them all in his locker. He made a last check of all the pockets, finding two loose M-24 rounds, two rocks he didn't remember picking up, and the wrapper from a food pack. He tossed all these onto a back shelf and then removed the combat computer module that controlled the suit. This he set on a different shelf. Satisfied that the suit was now completely empty he turned it inside out — a process that took the better part of five minutes — and then hung it on a hook on the outside of his locker door.

"You got the Spray-clean?" he asked Hicks, who was still going through his own pockets.

"Yeah, right there, top shelf."

Jeff reached into his locker and grabbed the aerosol can. The contents were something that had been developed by a Martian chemist about five years before and it made the process of cleaning one's biosuit a breeze instead of the agonizing, two to three hour ordeal it had once been. All you did was sprayed the entire inside with the concoction, which was a combination of disinfectant and cleaning compounds that would bind to any foreign matter. The active ingredients were mixed in with a sodium bicarbonate base that would absorb most of the odor. He sprayed nearly a quarter of the can, saturating the entire suit. In two hours all he had to do was wipe it all off with a towel and the suit would be ready for action.

"Thanks," Jeff said, putting the can back. "Now its time for a shower, a shave, and some real fuckin' food."

"I heard they got steaks and artichokes out there for us," Hicks said, starting the process of turning his own suit inside out.

"I heard they got us some beer too," Jeff said, his mouth salivating at the very thought.

"If they don't, I'm gonna find me some. Some smokes too. After eight fuckin' days out in the wastelands I wanna drink and smoke until I barf and my lungs get coughed out."

"Well put," Jeff said, grabbing a towel, some soap, and some shampoo.

"You wanna join me?" he asked. "Me and Zen are gonna hit the Troop Club and see what we can score over there. I heard a rumor that they held some of the booze back for the combat soldiers."

"I got something I need to do," Jeff responded.

"You sure, man?" Hicks said. "Xenia might be there. She's pretty much shot me down at this point but you could probably jack your round into her chamber if you play your cards right."

"Xenia and I have an understanding about that," Jeff said.

"What the fuck you mean?"

"Never mind," he said. "I might head over later on, especially if they got booze and smokes over there. But first I gotta go home."

"Home?" Hicks said, raising his eyebrows a bit. "I thought you hated your old lady like the marines hate the Mosquitoes."

"I do," he said. "And its time for me to do something about it. A little promise I made to myself."

"Ahhh," Hicks said knowingly. "You're gonna tell her to take a flying fuck at Phobos?"

"Yep," he confirmed.

"I can respect that," Hicks told him. He considered for a second. "You gonna tear off one last piece first? A farewell fuck?"

To his surprise, Jeff actually found himself seriously considering this suggestion for a few seconds. Sure he hated Belinda now and she had put on more than thirty kilos since they'd been married and sex with her had been nothing but a chore for the last year or so — a chore that had been unsuccessful in its goal of conceiving their one child so they could get that two-bedroom apartment — but the thought of sliding into her body and rutting atop her until release was strangely compelling at this particular moment in time. Wow, he thought, trying to shake the image off before it produced an erection, I'm really fuckin' horny right now. What the hell is up with that?

"No," he told Hicks when the thought was finally banished. "I may need to get my weapon oiled but I don't need it that bad. I'll score me a little something later at the club."

"Not if I score it first," Hicks told him. "I'm horny enough to fuck Drogan and you know how fuckin' ugly she is. It must be all that death and shit we saw that does it, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," Jeff said as the image of stripping Drogan's manly, yet female body down and slamming into her locked into his consciousness — and not in a bad way either. "I think I know what you mean. I'm gonna go hit the shower. Maybe I'll make it a cold one."

It was quite some time before he actually got to the shower. There were only thirty showerheads in the locker room and there were almost a thousand people wanting to use them at one time. He waited in a long line that stretched all across the back and side walls of the room. The stink of so many naked, disgusting bodies gathered together in close proximity was almost more than he could take at first. Gradually, however, his nose became desensitized to it and he stopped noticing it. Once that happened he was able to engage in conversation with those in line around him. The topics were mostly about the last eight days and what was going on out there now.

"I still can't believe General Jackson called a fuckin' cease-fire on those marines just because they're retreating," said a squad sergeant just behind Jeff in line. "They're just strolling their way back to their LZ right this minute! The Mosquitoes and the special forces teams could be beating the shit out of them!"

"I heard that in Proctor General Azacan almost resigned over that order," said a private in front of Jeff. "He could have gotten his armor in front of the marines and cut them off completely. He could have fuckin' destroyed them, man!" He shook his head. "I'm wondering if Jackson's lost it. Maybe Laura Whiting oughtta replace his ass with Zoloft."

"Amen to that," said the sergeant. "I used to have a lot of respect for Jackson, but now... I'm not so sure."

Jeff listened to the conversations but contributed little to them. He, like most of the troops that had actually put their asses on the line, that had seen friends killed and horribly wounded, that had known that they themselves might die at any moment, had a sincere wish that every WestHem marine on Mars and above it would be killed in some horrible, painful way. He hated the thought that they were just driving at their leisure back to their landing zones where they would launch back into orbit to regroup and then come back down again in overwhelming strength, probably at Eden or New Pittsburgh. The sour taste of their getaway was taking away from what should have been the euphoria of victory. But as for actually replacing Jackson with Zoloft? He wasn't so sure that was a good idea. Nor did many of the others around them.

"Jackson's got us this far," was the common argument among the pro-Jacksonians. "He may have fucked up a wet dream with this cease-fire but he's still the fuckin' man."

"He choked under the pressure," was the common argument among the anti-Jacksonians. "He thinks they're really giving up and he decided not to make them mad."

The entire argument was somewhat of a moot point, of course. General Jackson wasn't offering his resignation, nor was Laura Whiting asking for it. At least that was the story being passed around at the moment. The WestHems in all four theaters were back at their LZs and in the process of loading their equipment back into their ships. Though the main line units were still under deployment, just in case, the ACRs and the support units had been brought back in and given forty-eight hour passes. Another rumor floating about was that many of the soldiers — particularly those in the units that had taken the heaviest losses — weren't planning to come back.

Jeff finally made his way to a showerhead. An MP guarding the entrance to this particular section of the locker room warned him — politely at least — that he only had three minutes to shower and get out.

He made the best of his three minutes, luxuriating under the spray even though it made the abrasions on his penis sting quite badly. He put on a thick layer of soap and scrubbed everywhere with a washcloth, quickly turning it a dingy brown color. He used almost a hundred milliliters of shampoo on his hair and then quickly brushed his teeth before the final rinse-off. When he left the stall for the next soldier in line he felt almost human again — starving, dehydrated, sore, and very tired — but almost human nonetheless.

He walked naked back to his locker and quickly used his laser shaver to take the eight days worth of bristly stubble off his face. He put on some deodorant and combed his hair and then put on a fresh pair of MPG shorts and a fresh MPG T-shirt. He slipped his moccasins on his feet and then headed for the exit and the hopefully fresh air that would be found there.

They were indeed serving steaks and artichokes in the mess hall, along with sautéed mushrooms, garlic baked potatoes, and two bottles of beer for each soldier. The smell alone when he walked into the room was nearly enough to trigger an orgasm. He waited in another line for another twenty minutes before getting his tray. He then went searching for an empty spot at a table. In this endeavor he scored rather well. Not only did he find a place to sit down but it was next to Xenia, who was working on cleaning the rest of the artichoke leaves so she could get to the heart.

"Food has never tasted so fucking good," she told him, her face blissful, her long hair still a little damp from her shower. "It's even better than the shower."

"Where's Zen and Belinda?" he asked, cracking open one of his beers. He took a long, delicious drink of it, savoring the flavor, savoring the warm feeling it put in his empty stomach.

"Zen's grandmother came to town and set up a little apartment for him in the Brophy Towers."

"His grandmother?"

"She's the one who raised him," Xenia said. "His parents were killed in the Jupiter War. A laser strike took out their building while he was visiting her for the day. He's very close to her."

"I didn't know that."

"He sent all the credits he made since he enlisted to her. It's the first time they've had income since she had her medical license taken away. She apparently remembers how to manage money. She used those credits to come here and find him a place to stay. He was very excited about it. It'll be the first place other than public housing he's ever lived in."

"Well that's an ass fuck for him," Jeff said, actually glad he was gone — it was a little less competition for Xenia's affections. "And what about... you know... Belinda?"

The look she gave him was evil. "She went with your friend Drogan."

"Drogan?" he asked, pausing in the act of cutting his first piece of steak. "Where did they go?"

"Back to Drogan's place. She's going to stay with her."

"Stay with her? But... how... I mean, they don't even know each other, do they?"

"They do now," she said. "Drogan came over to the table to talk to me — it seems she has a little crush on me as well — and the next thing you know, they're chatting like they were old friends. Belinda mentioned that she'd been deployed here from NP and didn't have a place to stay..."

"Wait a minute," Jeff interrupted. "I thought she was gonna stay with you."

"She was," Xenia said. "And then I told her about that little emotional blackmail scheme of yours."

"Emotional blackmail scheme?"

"I call things what they are," she said. "That thing about you not fucking me until I say I love you?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it blackmail," he said. "It's just... you know, the way I feel."

"A funny way to feel," she said.

Jeff shrugged, refusing to discuss it any further. "She decided not to move in with you because of that?" he asked. "I would've thought she'd be happier than a marine at full retreat."

She giggled a little. "Good one," she said.

"I just made it up."

"Anyway, I would've thought the same, but Belinda seemed to take it as a challenge to her love for me or some shit like that. She said if you could do it, she could do it too. Now she won't give me no tongue — or anything else — until I tell her I love her."

"No shit?" Jeff asked, unsure how he should feel about this, jealous or relieved.

"No shit," she pouted. "So here I am, all alone and horny while the people who are supposed to love me won't give up the trim."

"Kind of ironic, isn't it?" he asked, utilizing a word he'd just learned a few days before.

"Oh shut the fuck up and eat," she said, though not unkindly.

He shut the fuck up and ate, spending the next ten minutes in an orgy of chewing, chomping, drinking, and swallowing. The steak was easily the best he'd ever had. The artichoke was the first he'd ever had. And the sautéed mushrooms were almost better than sex. Xenia watched him silently as he made a pig of himself, occasionally taking a sip from the remains of her beer or picking at a stray mushroom on her plate.

"So where are you going now?" she asked when he drained the last swallow of his second beer.

"I'm gonna go see the other Belinda in my life," he told her. "And I'm going to tell her she ain't in my life no more."

"Are you doing this just because of me?"

He wanted to lie and tell her he was but he couldn't bring himself to. "No," he said. "Not at all. Belinda was a mistake from the beginning. We've never loved each other — hell, we've hated each other most of our relationship. She was the wife I was programmed to take. It's time to put an end to it."

She nodded. "At least there's no kid to worry about, huh?"

"At least there's that," he said.

"And what are you gonna do after that? You coming to the Troop Club?"

"Wouldn't miss it," he said. "Are you going?"

"Fuckin' aye." Her eyes took on a little shine. "And where are you going after that? I don't imagine your wife will be too keen on you staying with her after you tell her what you have to say."

"Wouldn't want to stay with her anyway," he said. "To tell you the truth, I haven't thought that far ahead. I'll probably go back to the base and crash out there. They have some bachelor quarters available."

"Those are just tents in the exercise yard," she said. "You don't want to sleep there."

"I've been sleeping in a biosuit in a fuckin' trench for the past eight days," he said. "I don't think it will bother me."

"What if you get lucky?" she asked. "I presume you're going to be looking for a little female companionship, right?"

He cast his eyes downward, unsure what to say.

"Oh come on now," she told him. "If you're not gonna fuck me there's no reason why you shouldn't fuck someone else. I certainly have no plans to remain celibate while you and Belinda are having your little hunger strike. I'm gonna find me a guy with a big, hard dick and a girl with a tight, wet pussy and take both of them back to my place and behave like the full-blooded Martian I am."

Jeff felt a minor stab of jealousy at this revelation, but only a mild one. In Martian culture it was not all that unusual to have sex with others for the sheer enjoyment of it, even when in a committed relationship — which he and Xenia certainly were not in. "Yeah," he said. "I guess I wouldn't turn down a little action."

"That's my boy," she said, reaching across the table and caressing his cheek. "So where you gonna take her?"

"Her place?" he asked.

"Or you can take her to my place," she suggested. "I got a spare bedroom you can stay in. No strings attached."

"And you won't try to fuck me?" he asked.

She gave him a saucy smile. "I didn't say that."

"I won't do it," he told her. "I told you how I feel about you. I told you what you have to do to get a piece of me."

"Fine," she pouted. "But the offer is still open."

"I'll think about it," he said.

"You do that. I'll see you at the Troop Club. I'll be the one rubbing my wet pussy over everything in sight."

"Except me," he said.

She stood up and leaned over him, lifting his chin up. She kissed him gently on the mouth, a soft, sensuous kiss that sent chills down his spine. "I didn't promise that either," she said.

She walked away without another word, leaving him with a raging erection.

Jeff found that the MarsTrans system was still operating under emergency operation rules. Although it was back to running on a normal schedule there were armed MPG military police in each car and there was no charge being levied for any passengers. He simply walked past the turnstiles and the empty guard booth and boarded, finding a seat near the rear among many other men and women, most of whom were in MPG shirts and T-shirts like he was.

As he rode towards Helvetia Heights and the place he'd called home since birth, he took out his PC and powered it up for the first time since they'd been deployed outside. The first thing he accessed was the financial software, fearing what he would find. All of the credits he'd been paid since his first day of basic training had been placed into his main bank account, which was a joint account he shared with Belinda. He hadn't talked to her or emailed her since he'd left for basic training three months before but he'd kept an eye on his accounts during that time, watching for her to start spending all of the new form of Martian money. To his surprise, she hadn't. She'd left the credits completely alone but had regularly spent the dollars in the account when they were deposited every two weeks by the Martian welfare system. As he checked now he saw that the credit account was at just over seven hundred — pretty much where it had been before deploying outside although his last bi-weekly pay allotment had been deposited since.

"Dumb bitch," he muttered, shaking his head in amusement. She was too stupid to spend the new money like she'd spent dollars. Oh well, that was good news for him.

He then checked the dollar account to see how bad that was. Typically she had spent the entire eight hundred dollar allotment within days of receiving it. To his utter surprise and suspicion he saw that the balance was not in the negative as he'd expected, or even close to it. There was almost ten thousand dollars in there. Ten times more than had ever been in there at one time in the past.

"What the fuck?" he asked the screen. It had no answers for him. At least not yet. He paged over to the list of recent transactions and the mystery only deepened. There were multitudes of them there, mostly deposits from other personal bank accounts in fifty and one hundred dollar increments. Interspersed among these were other, outgoing transactions of six hundred to seven hundred at a time to other personal bank accounts. Something very strange was going on with his soon to be ex-wife.

The MarsTrans train dropped him off six blocks from his building. As he walked toward it, through streets that he and his fellow gang members had once ruled, he noticed a stark difference from the last time he'd been here. There were still gangs of juveniles about but they didn't seem as tough as they once had, nor as numerous. Though some were drinking Fruity it was the exception rather than the rule — ditto for cigarette smoking. When he passed them they gave him deference and respectful nods, not because of the Capitalist tattoo — for that was covered by the sleeve of his T-shirt — but because of his uniform.

"Free Mars, man," one of them told him as he passed. "You guys kicked some fuckin' ass out there."

"Fuckin' aye," Jeff replied, exchanging a Capitalist shake with him, to their collective delight.

"Were you in the shit, man?" another asked. "Out on the fuckin' line?"

"17^th ACR," he told them, knowing they would know what that meant.

They did. "The fuckin' Jutfield Gap, man!" one said excitedly. "You walked the fuckin' war to 'em out there, man! That was fuckin' static!"

"Hell yeah," another said. "I tried to join up but they wouldn't fuckin' let me 'cause I'm too young still."

"Me too," said another. "I only got two more months to go though and my print's on the fuckin' line, man!"

"Hell yeah!" said several others, which prompted another round of Capitalist shakes.

They tried to prod Jeff for details of the action but he deferred, telling them he had some important shit he had to attend to. They respectfully said their farewells and told him once again how badass he was. He walked away with a smile on his face and shortly arrived before his building.

The building looked the same, from the graffiti in the lobby to the graffiti in the hallways. When he reached the door to apartment 6312 he paused, staring at the numbers for a few moments, bracing himself for the confrontation he was about to embark upon. Finally he put his finger to the door panel, letting it read his print. The door slid open and a smell rushed out at him, a horrid odor of stale alcohol, old urine, and rotting garbage. It was almost as bad as the locker room back at the MPG base.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered, fighting back a gag. He stepped into the living room and looked around in disgusted amazement. Garbage was strewn everywhere. Old laundry, empty beer cans and Fruity bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and food containers from the welfare mart store in the basement of the building. Belinda had never been the best housekeeper in the solar system but this was far beyond her worst episodes of domestic laziness.

The door slid shut behind him and we walked further into the room. Belinda was nowhere in sight. He walked into the kitchen and found an even bigger mess, with more empty bottles and cans, more garbage strewn about, more cigarette butts. He found something else that was very interesting as well. Stacked against the pantry door were more than twenty cases of Fruity, thirty cases of canned beer, and sixty cartons of premium cigarettes.

"Holy shit," he muttered. He turned towards the living room and then stopped. He went over to the cartons of cigarettes and opened one, pulling out a five packs — as much as he could carry. He stuffed all but one in his pockets. The last he opened, extracting one of the smokes. He walked to the stove, pushed aside a week's worth of garbage and dirty dishes, and then lit up using one of the burners, inhaling deeply.

"Nice," he said, savoring the flavor and the instant rush of nicotine to his brain. Those Earthlings were a bunch of corporate worshiping assholes but they sure knew how to make a decent smoke.

He took a few more drags and then tossed the butt into the sink when he started to feel queasy. He then walked through the kitchen and back into the living room. The bedroom door was closed. He hesitated for another second or two and then pushed the button that opened it. It slid on its track revealing what had to be the filthiest room in the house. The old laundry and the booze bottles covered every square centimeter of the floor and most of the bed. The sheets, blankets, and comforter that had been a wedding present from Jeff's parents were piled in a heap with the rest of the laundry. Lying naked on the bare mattress, snoring drunkenly, was Belinda, a half bottle of Fruity still sitting on the nightstand along with an overflowing ashtray and a half burned cigarette. Her legs were slightly spread and a dried crust of semen was plainly visible leaking out of her vagina.

"Belinda!" he barked. No response. He kicked the bed a few times and her eyes gradually fluttered open.

"Whu..." she muttered, trying to focus. "Is that you, Galen? My pussy's already raw from the last fuck."

"It's me," he said dryly. "Your husband. At least for now."

Her eyes opened a little wider and she seemed to come fully awake. Her face grimaced for a moment and then took on an expression of amusement. "It's my soldier boy," she said, her words slurred and thick. "Finally decided to come home from Queen Laura's army, huh?"

"I'm on a forty-eight hour pass," he said. "I've been on the front line for the past eight days. Not that you give a shit."

She laughed drunkenly. "You got that shit right," she said. "It's not like they're paying you in real money. Just those fuckin' credits that won't be worth a shit when the real bosses jack this place back from us."

He didn't want to get into a debate about the war or the revolution with her. They had already hashed that one into the ground in the days before he'd left for basic. "Where'd all the shit in the kitchen come from?" he asked.

She sat up, her breasts, which had actually looked something like alluring while lying, sagged down to mid stomach, the nipples disappearing entirely. Jeff grimaced at the sight.

"You mean the booze and the smokes?" she asked. "It's a little business venture I'm engaged in with Galen Mocker from upstairs. You remember Galen don't you?"

"Yeah," he said, although he didn't. "You're hoarding?"

"Fuck no," she said. "We're selling the shit. I'm bringing in some real fuckin' income while your sad ass is out making useless credits and setting yourself up for a treason charge when the WestHems kick your asses. You have any idea what booze and smokes are selling for these days? We're getting a hundred dollars a bottle for Fruity, fifty dollars a can for beer, and fifty a pack for smokes."

"That's hoarding and profiteering," he said. "It's illegal."

"So is running dust but you didn't used to have any problem with that, did you?"

"That was the past," he said. "I've grown up a little these past few months."

She made a jerking off expression. "You're a Queen Laura man all right," she nearly spat. "The big money comes from coffee though."

"Coffee?"

"Check the closet," she told him slyly.

He walked over and opened it. Where their clothes had once been stored were now over two hundred one kilogram sacks of premium WestHem coffee beans. The smell was potent enough to cut through the funk in the room. "Jesus," he said.

"We're fuckin' rapin' the employed pricks on that shit," Belinda told him with a laugh. "They're paying six hundred dollars a kilo for the shit. Can you fuckin' believe that? And we don't even have to deliver! They come into this shitty ass neighborhood and come begging at my door just to get some of my coffee. We're fuckin' rich, you ungrateful slob! You oughtta get down on your knees and eat my scummy pussy for this."

His anger started to rise. "You're sitting here on top of all this coffee, all that booze, and all those smokes when those of us who put our asses on the line for this planet had to make do with two beers apiece? That's fuckin' criminal, Belinda! It's a fuckin' atrocity!"

"Oh save your bleeding heart shit for the fuckin' MarsGroup bitches," she said. "This is the most money we've ever had in our lives — and we get free booze and smokes too. You're just jealous you didn't think of it first."

"Get dressed," he told her, picking up a filthy pair of shorts and an even filthier shirt from the nearest pile. He tossed them at her. "We need to talk."

"Why don't you give me a fuck first?" she asked, lying back and spreading her legs a little. "Galen's been hosing me while you been gone but his reproductive block is in place. Yours is still off, ain't it?"

"Yeah," he said, ashamed to find himself actually considering her offer — even if it was only for the briefest of seconds. "It's still off."

"Well let's get to fuckin'," she said. "I'm fuckin' ovulatin' right now and I still want me that two bedroom apartment."

"I'm not having a child with you," he said. "I'm not doing anything with you anymore. I came here to tell you we're finished. I'm filing for divorce tomorrow."

She looked at him and then started cackling. "Divorce?" she said. "Are you shitting me? Why the fuck would you wanna divorce me? You got something better lined up?"

"That's not any of your business anymore," he said. "I've grown up, you haven't. I'm fighting for this planet and you're profiteering from it. I never loved you or even liked you very much, and I never will. This is the end, Belinda."

She was shaking her head through this entire speech. "You ain't divorcing me," she said. "I'm not gonna have my welfare benefits cut because you're all fuckin' caught up in this independence bullshit. Now get over here and fuck me. You know you want to."

"You'll have to find someone else," he said. "We're through. I'm filing the forms first thing in the morning."

She stood up, wobbling a little at first but eventually finding equilibrium. She pointed her finger at his chest in little stabbing motions. "You are not divorcing me!" she told him. "Not now. You are gonna fuck me until I'm knocked up first and then you can leave if you want. I won't give a shit then. They'll keep my welfare where its at if I have a kid."

"You're disgusting," he said, turning away from her. "The greatest thing that's ever happened to this planet is going on all around you and you're sitting here trying to make money off of it and pretend it's going to go away." He started to walk toward the door.

Something hit him in the back of the head hard enough to stun him. It was a vase that had been propelled from Belinda's hand. It bounced upward and then shattered on the floor at his feet.

"Don't you walk away from me!" she shouted. "Nobody walks away from me, motherfucker!"

He turned around, anger in his eyes but his emotions still in check. He reached up and felt the back of his head. There was already a bump starting to form there. She swung a roundhouse at him but he blocked it easily. He pushed her back toward the bed, causing her to fall onto her ass on it. "Don't ever hit me with anything again," he warned.

"Fuck you!" she spat, leaping to her feet and rushing at him, her fists clenched, murder in her eyes.

He pushed her back again, this time hard enough to make her roll off the backside of the bed. She got right back up, this time picking up a lamp. Before she could throw it at him he kicked the bed, pushing it at her and knocking her feet out from beneath her. She landed prone on the mattress where she began hitting it with her fists.

"You can't leave me until you knock me up, asshole!" she kept yelling, over and over again. "Nobody fucking leaves me."

"I am," he said. "Now do you wanna talk about this like adults or do you want to keep acting like a spoiled little bitch?"

"Fuck you, motherfucker!" she yelled. She got to her knees on the mattress and reached for the nightstand, where the remains of a chicken dinner from the welfare mart were lying. She picked up a steak knife and charged him, raising it over her head and fully intending to stab it into his chest. He caught her wrist and twisted it, perhaps little harder than was really necessary. The knife dropped to the floor but not before he heard and felt a sickening crunch from her forearm.

Now her screams were from pain. She held her arm out before her, the wrist angulated at an unnatural angle. "You broke my fuckin' arm, asshole!" she screamed. "You motherfucker!"

"You were trying to kill me," he said, his anger peaking once again. "You fuckin' deserved that, bitch!"

"Get me to the fuckin' hospital!" she cried. "I can't believe you did this shit!"

He didn't get her to the hospital. He did what any ghetto inhabitant would do under the circumstances and called for the dip-hoes to take her. They showed up fifteen minutes later, accompanied by two Eden police officers. In that time she continued to rant and scream and cry but she did maintain enough sense of propriety to at least put her clothes on.

"So what happened here?" one of the cops asked while the dip-hoes went about the task of putting a splint on her.

"He broke my fuckin' arm!" Belinda screamed. "He twisted it until it popped!"

"Is that true?" the cop asked him.

"She was trying to stab me with a steak knife," Jeff replied. "I grabbed her arm and twisted it until it dropped. Her arm broke while I was doing that."

The two cops looked at each other, and then at Jeff, and then at Belinda, who was still ranting about abusive husbands.

"You just came home from the line?" the first asked.

"Yeah," he said. "17^th ACR. I came to tell her I was through with her and she didn't like it very much."

"You fuckin' liar!" Belinda screamed. "He's a fucking cook in the MPG! He was never near the line! And he came home and tried to fuck me after being away for months! When I told him no he broke my fuckin' arm just to hear me scream!"

The cops ignored her. "17^th ACR huh?" the second one asked. "You were in the gap?"

He nodded. "Infantry," he said. "I've spent the last eight days in a biosuit in the trenches killing Earthling marines. This is my welfare wife, the one I was programmed to marry before Laura Whiting. I don't want her anymore and I came home to tell her that. She didn't like it much. I didn't mean to break her arm but she was throwin' shit at me — look at my head." He turned so they could see the large goose egg that had formed on his skull.

"That's a nasty bump all right," the first cop said.

"I was trying to fight him off when he started beatin' me!" Belinda yelled.

"She threw a vase at me," Jeff went on, ignoring the interruption. "I pushed her off me a few times and then she picked up the knife and was trying to kill me with it. That's when I broke her arm."

"He's a fuckin' liar!" Belinda yelled. "He came back here looking for some pussy after cooking for the rear echelon motherfuckers and broke my arm when I wouldn't give it up! I wanna press charges against his ass! Take him to fuckin' jail!"

Jeff was angry again. "She's lying, officers," he told them. "But maybe you oughtta take her ass to fuckin' jail instead."

"Are you saying you want to file charges against her?" the first cop asked.

Jeff smiled. "No," he said. "It ain't worth my time. But you know something?"

"What?" the cop asked.

Belinda seemed to realize what he was about to do. "Don't you say shit, asshole!" she screamed. "You do and I know people that will kill your stupid ass!"

He looked at her, triumph in his eyes. "She's hoarding cigarettes, beer, Fruity, and coffee," he told the cops. "She's got a shitload of all of it in this apartment right now. You want me to show you?"

"Hoarding?" the cops said in unison, their eyes widening in anger.

"He's a fucking liar!" Belinda screamed. "That shit is all his! He's been making me buy it and sell it and put it in our fucking bank account!"

One of the cops stayed with Belinda while Jeff led the other into the kitchen and then to the bedroom closet. The cop grew angrier and angrier at each stack of contraband he counted and became particularly incensed by the presence of so much coffee.

"I haven't even had a cup of the welfare coffee in six days and your bitch is sitting on two hundred keys of Costa Rican prime!"

"She ain't my bitch anymore," Jeff told him. "You gonna arrest her, or what?"

"Does a rump ranger like a rimjob?" the cop replied. "She's spouting off about the shit being yours. I trust there's no truth to that?"

"I just got back from combat deployment half an hour ago."

"That's easy enough to check out but she's gonna say that you were running things while you were away, that she was afraid of you."

"So you gonna arrest me too?" he asked.

"Well..." the cop said thoughtfully. "If you were to consent to allow me to examine the communications usage on your PC that might go a long way toward clearing this up."

Jeff shrugged and took out his PC. "Computer, display last two monthly personal communication statements."

"Displaying," the PC replied. Jeff handed it to the cop.

He took it and examined the screen for a few minutes, scrolling from top to bottom. There truthfully wasn't much to look at. "Nothing at all to or from your wife in the past six weeks," he finally said. "It would be kind of hard to run a black market booze, coffee, and cigarette operation from the line without communication, wouldn't it?"

"Fuckin' aye," Jeff agreed.

"And six weeks ago we weren't having the shortages so there really wasn't much of a black market yet."

"True," Jeff said, feeling something like friendliness towards a cop for the first time in his life.

"Okay then," the cop said. "Let me run you through the system and make sure your MPG story checks out. If it does, you're in the clear."

"Sounds like an ass-fuck," Jeff said.

His story checked out, of course. They went back in the living room where Belinda was still drunkenly yelling that she'd been forced to sell all the contraband by Jeff under threat of beatings and even murder.

"She admitted she's selling the shit?" the first cop asked the second. "Not just hoarding it?"

"Oh yeah," the second cop replied. "She even told me how much she charges."

"How much he makes me charge," she corrected.

"Of course," the first cop said. "In any case, you're under arrest for..."

"Me?" she screamed, leaping to her feet. "Haven't you been listening to me? I told you..."

"You are under arrest," he repeated, overriding her. "The charges are hoarding war shortage items and profiteering from war shortage items. We'll investigate to see if any of this shit is stolen and if it is, we'll add a possession of stolen property charge as well."

She began to rant at them. After a minute or so of this, she ran at them, unmindful of the broken wrist. She was wrestled onto the dip-hoes' gurney and her good arm was handcuffed to the side rail. She then tried to strike them with her bad arm and kick them with her feet. They tied her feet down and put another set of handcuffs on the broken arm. The dip-hoes wheeled her away, still screaming, cop number two accompanying them.

When they were gone the first cop looked at Jeff pointedly. "I can't imagine why you would want to divorce that sweet woman."

Jeff smiled wearily, more embarrassed than anything else. "Mars has moved on," he said. "She didn't move on with it."

The cop nodded and then did something that no uniformed police officer had ever done to him before. He held out his hand for a shake and introduced himself. "Zogan Ishiyudo," he said.

Surprised, Jeff shook with him. "Nice to meet you," he said.

"No, it's me who is honored to meet you," Zogan told him. "I'm standing in a city that's still free and unoccupied by WestHem marines because of you and people like you. Let me be the first to thank you sincerely for what you're doing."

Jeff was surprised to find himself near tears for a moment. He choked them back. "I'm just doing what's right," he said, his voice not quite steady. "All of us are."

"I wanted to serve too," Zogan said. "I was in the MPG fifteen years ago, back in the early days, but got out after only five years. I tried to re-enlist after the declaration of independence but they told me that since I was forty-five and not in the best shape that I'd probably serve Mars better by staying on the streets and being a cop."

"You ain't gotta explain yourself to me," Jeff said. "Someone needs to arrest the fuckin' profiteers, don't they?"

"Indeed they do," he agreed. "And we caught ourselves a prime one tonight, didn't we?"

"Yep," Jeff said. "So how long will she stay in jail? Will she do hard time?"

Zogan shook his head sadly. "Governor Whiting is promising radical law enforcement and justice system reform when we get around to writing a new constitution but for now we're still operating under the old system. Even though the laws against hoarding and profiteering are new ones and they wrote in stiff penalties, it's simply not possible to hold anyone for something like that with the system we have. She'll be out on her own recognizance in twenty-four hours and it'll be months before her case comes to trial. It goes without saying that she won't show up for her court date and there aren't enough cops on the streets yet to go tracking down every failure to appear warrant. She'll probably be back doing business within two days, although we'll make an effort to keep an eye on her."

"That's a fuckin' retreat," Jeff said.

"That ain't no shit," the cop agreed. "If you're serious about divorcing that bitch you'd better file tomorrow before she gets out. Ask for an emergency financial settlement from the clerk. He'll clear it with a judge on duty and divide up your accounts into halves. That'll keep her from spending all your money."

"Most of that money in there is from her selling this shit," Jeff said. "I don't want anything to do with that. I just want the credits in the account. I earned those motherfuckers and I don't want her slimy hands touching none of them."

Zogan smiled respectfully. "Tell that to the clerk," he said. "If he's got Martian blood in his veins he'll arrange that for you, especially if he knows you're a combat vet from the Gap."

"I'll do that," Jeff said.

"Of course, you'll still have a hell of a time getting your half of the belongings from this apartment. You'll have to wait until the divorce is actually final for that."

Jeff shrugged. "She can have everything in this fuckin' place," he said. "I don't want none of it."

"Yeah?" Zogan asked slyly. "How about the contraband?"

"Huh?"

"Well, let me clear this with my sergeant, who will probably have to clear it with the lieutenant, but when we catch a hoarder all we have to do is verify the contents of a few containers for the court case and then get a photo of the amount. The actual shit ends up being shipped to a city warehouse where it's taken into custody by the interim government and re-distributed as they see fit. Most of it ends up going to MPG units."

"That must be where they got the beer they gave us tonight," Jeff said.

"Exactly. So how about we just skip the middle man tonight and send the shit directly where it's needed? Are the combat units having a party somewhere tonight?"

"The Troop Club just outside the base," Jeff said. "But..."

"Like I said," Zogan told him. "Let me clear it with the higher ups, but I don't see any reason why we can't get a delivery truck over here and a few cops to act as muscle and carry all this shit downstairs and take it to the Troop Club. You guys deserve it."

"Well fuck my ass," Jeff said in wonder.



The Troop Club did indeed have some beer and smokes for the combat troops, but not enough to satisfy the thirst and nicotine cravings of all who entered its doors. The contributions from Belinda and from the supplies of three other hoarder/profiteers who were busted that night throughout Eden added enough party supplies to guarantee everyone a good time.

Jeff stayed until well after midnight. He drank two bottles of Fruity and six bottles of beer. He smoked four bonghits of potent Agricorp greenbud and more than a pack of cigarettes. He forgot all about Belinda his wife and Belinda his competition for Xenia. He forgot all about the death he had witnessed out in the field, the fear, the horror, the misery, the blinding fatigue and weariness. He listened to music and even tried his hand at dancing when one of the women invited him out onto the floor.

Alas, the male to female ratio was somewhere in the vicinity of six to one, even with the waitresses and bartenders thrown in. Though he was a combat veteran and worthy of the attention of any single female, so was every other male in the place since only those who had been out on the line were allowed into the club on this night. The only offer of sexual congress extended to him was from Xenia, who found him around 2300 when he was working on his last Fruity and his last bonghit.

She was, if anything, even more intoxicated than he. "How's the resolve?" she asked him, looking at him greedily.

"It's been hit with eighties, sixties, and twenties and has crumbled considerably," he replied, getting an erection just looking at her.

"Really?" she asked, reaching out to stroke his arm.

He sighed. "But its still holding," he said. "You won't take it down."

She pouted and said, "we'll see."

They saw. Just over an hour later they left the club and rode the MarsTrans to her apartment. His resolve was protected by the fact that he passed out on her couch before she had a chance to make her move. She cursed a few times in frustration and then sat in the recliner next to him to plot her next move. While she was doing so she passed out as well.

Lon, Lisa, and the rest of the special forces squad spent the bulk of the next day right back on the hills they'd first climbed during the first day of the WestHem landings. For more than eight hours they watched the final loading of the remaining APCs and tanks and artillery pieces and anti-air vehicles. They watched engineers and MPs and other troops walking around in the open, facilitating the process of all this loading. They watched thousands of combat troops — the battered survivors of the bloody campaign — sitting in groups of ten and twenty, prime targets for mortar attack or for sniper attack. But there were no mortars to call down, no snipers to send their lethal bullets flying. There was only Lon and his team on this hill, a few other teams on a few other hills, and their mission was to observe only.

"Well, we observed the shit out of them, didn't we?" Lon asked angrily as the last soldier entered the last landing craft and the last door was sealed shut. The landscape was now empty of all human activity.

"Orders are orders, Lon," Lisa told him, her M-24 curled unfired against her shoulder, her anti-tank laser sitting next to her. "I'm sure General Jackson has a reason for calling a cease-fire."

"I'm sure he does too," Lon said. "I just think it's a stupid reason. You'd think a military genius would know that you never let up on an enemy until they surrender. Those assholes didn't surrender. They're just pulling back to regroup. We could have knocked off another couple thousand of them on their march back. We could have knocked out another hundred APCs. Now we're going to face all that armor again in a couple of weeks."

"Unless we decide not to come back out here," said Horishito, who was nearly as bitter about Jackson's decision as Lon was.

Lisa looked over at him in alarm. "What the fuck are you talking about, Hoary?" she asked him. "You ain't thinking about quitting, are you?"

Horishito shrugged. "I did my part out here," he said. "I hear that a lot of the combat troops are calling it a war now that we've been hamstrung in how we fight it."

This was indeed a prevalent rumor back at the base. The word was the many of the ACR troops and the special forces soldiers — those who had borne the brunt of the recent battles, who had seen the deaths and mayhem that war caused firsthand — had decided they had risked their lives quite enough in this endeavor, that they had done their part. Since there was no such thing as a period of enlistment in the MPG they were free to quit at any time. And, since most of them had been pulled off the line in response to the recent pullback of WestHem troops, the word was that many were taking that option, especially in light of General Jackson's increasingly unpopular cease-fire order.

"You can't quit now," Lisa told him. "We beat those fuckers back! Mars is still free because of us. If everyone gives up now just because of the losses than it will all be for nothing!"

"You don't need to yell, Lisa," Lon said sourly.

"Somebody needs to fucking yell," she said. "Do you hear what Hoary is talking about here? Do you just want to let them come walking into Eden when they land the next time?"

"We should've been allowed to hit them all the way back," Horishito said. "Jackson broke the faith with us! He let them escape in numbers that can overwhelm us if they concentrate on a single city. He's the one that let our people die for nothing."

"They didn't die for nothing!" Lisa cried. "They died so we can be sitting here on this hill watching them blast off into space with their fucking tails between their legs!"

"But they're coming back, Wong," Horishito said. "Don't you understand that? We haven't won anything! They're gonna come back and take Eden, or New Pittsburgh, or maybe Proctor, but they're gonna come back and they're gonna throw everything they got at our forces!"

"All the more reason why we need to stay and fight them," she said. "We've gone too far to quit now!"

"I'm not saying everyone should quit," Horishito said. "Just me. I've done my part. If someone else wants to get in on this fight for Queen Laura, then let them have it. I'll personally hand them my SAW."

"Lon," Lisa pleaded, "say something here. You're our sergeant. What are you gonna do? Are you quitting too?"

There was silence on the net for the longest time. No one disturbed it. Finally, Lon spoke.

"I'm staying for now," he said.

"You'll be killed for nothing then," Horishito told him.

"No," he said. "I won't. I disagree with General Jackson's decision with every sperm cell in my sacred sack. I think he made a horrible mistake, a mistake that may very well cost us this war, but I'm holding judgement on that for the time being."

"What the fuck you mean holding judgement?" Horishito asked. "We'll be sent out to the slaughter!"

"I won't lead my people out to a slaughter," Lon said. "I will absolutely refuse to do that. The MPG code demands that I refuse any order that will get my people needlessly killed."

"You're contradicting yourself," Horishito accused.

"No," he said. "I'm not. I swore an oath to uphold my orders if they make sense, if they don't recklessly endanger the troops under my command. When the WestHems come back down I'll evaluate the information we have. If there's too many of them, if there's not enough of us to make a difference, then I'll refuse to take you guys out to battle them. That's all there is to it. Until we get to that point, however, I'm staying. Hoary, you want to quit, I'll process your resignation without any ill feelings, but I'm staying."

Horishito didn't answer this, either in the affirmative or the negative. Neither did anyone else. But all absorbed Lon's vow and took comfort from it.

For the next two hours they stayed there, watching the landing craft sit on the Martian surface, growing bored, restless, and longing for the safety of their base and the promised beer, cigarette, alcohol, and bonghit party they'd been promised. Their conversation was sparse and that which did occur remained confined to non-controversial subjects. Finally, the moment they had been waiting for occurred.

"There's heat showing from the thrusters on the landing craft," Lisa reported as engine after engine lit up blue in the infrared.

"Yep," Lon said. "They're getting ready to launch. Jeffy, be sure to get video of it. Command wants to put the shots on MarsGroup."

"Right," Jefferson said.

It took nearly another hour before the first ship lifted off. It was at the front of the formation, one of the armor carriers. The blue of the engine outlets flared bright white. Smoke and dust billowed up from underneath. A dull roar reached their ears, becoming louder as the craft rose awkwardly into the sky. When it reached two thousand meters above ground level it turned, orienting itself to a westerly heading — a heading that kept it away from Eden. It's main engine in the rear lit up and the craft streaked upward. Before it even had a chance to disappear from sight, the next landing craft — the one that had been directly behind it, rose into the air to start its own launch sequence.

In all it took forty-five minutes to launch all of the landing craft. They streaked upward one by one and disappeared, leaving nothing but a few smashed pieces of armor and patches of fused Martian sand to mark where they'd been.

The ground combat troops were not the only ones to benefit from the benevolence of the Eden Police Department and the fledgling Martian government in regards to alcohol and tobacco. The flight crews and all the maintenance technicians who worked on the aircraft they flew had been gifted with a bounty of thirty-six cases of beer, nineteen cases of Fruity, and sixty-three cartons of cigarettes to supply their after-action party. It took place in the aircraft maintenance hanger just adjacent to the airlocks. By order of Major Frank Jorgenson, every member of the attack squadron was ordered to stand down all tasks for the next twenty-four hours. No planes would be worked on or flown, not even to change a tire or to check fluid levels.

"Party hard, people," he'd ordered as he'd taken the first ceremonial sip from a Fruity bottle and followed it up with a huge bonghit from an electric injector bong. "You've all earned it."

They took his orders to heart. By sunset that night every last member of the squadron was intoxicated to some degree and the mood — while a bit darkened by General Jackson's unpopular order and by the knowledge that the WestHems would be back — was quite jovial. MarsGroup was playing on all the video screens, including the huge main screen in the center of the room that was usually reserved for flight status and maintenance status of the individual aircraft and their respective crew and current flight assignments. When the first shots came in of the WestHem landing craft blasting off the Martian surface, heading back up into orbit, the cheer that erupted was deafening.

"That is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life," Brian Haggerty proclaimed as he saw the shot replayed for the third time. "It's better than eighteen year old pussy!"

"Fuckin' aye," replied Matt Mendez, who was sitting next to him and swilling down his seventh beer of the night. "And we helped send those motherfuckers back up there. You and me and that fuckin' AT cannon on the belly of number 06-423."

"I'll smoke to that!" Brian said, giving his sis a quick high five and then sucking up the better part of two bonghits at once.

They were sitting near the center of the room, splayed across the forks of an electric bomb-carrying cart that was currently empty of bombs. Both of them had women sitting next to them — Brian a systems operator for one of his fellow pilots and Matt a fuel transfer technician who worked in the sector responsible for their aircraft. Both were thinking that their prospects for some intimate companionship after the party were looking pretty good, although Matt was feeling a bit self-conscious since the woman he was with was six years older than him and had never been vermin or been with vermin. Still, she seemed receptive to every advance he'd thrown so far and was looking at him in a way that was damn close to worshipful.

"General Jackson and Governor Whiting," proclaimed the MarsGroup reporter narrating the story, "are both viewing the departure of the WestHem landing groups as a triumph of Martian military might and ingenuity over a superior power, as a battle won in this struggle for independence. And indeed that is what it seems on the surface. Still, many Martians — particularly those in the MPG who helped facilitate this victory — are having grave reservations over the cease-fire order issued by General Jackson. It is felt, almost to a person, that this failure to carry home the attacks so brilliantly fomented since the WestHem landings may have some rankin' consequences if and when the marines return to the surface."

There followed a serious of interviews with New Pittsburgh area troops — most from the 3^rd and 6^th ACR — regarding their feelings about the cease-fire. Most of the interviewees expressed a deep admiration for General Jackson but puzzlement, even anger, over what was considered a grave mistake.

"It's like victory was in our grasp and shit," said one young tank driver. "And now he's like choking at the vital moment."

"It's like he thinks it's over and shit," said another ACR member, this one an AT gunner. "Them motherfuckers is gonna come back at us."

"It's seditious for them to air this shit," said Brian, shaking his head in consternation. "I mean, what they're saying is true, but they shouldn't be putting it out for everyone to see. We're at war here! They're giving aid to the fuckin' enemy!"

"I must disagree," said Matt's prospect for the night. Her name, interestingly enough, was Surrender.

"What?" he asked, glaring at her.

"With all due respect," she told him. "They're only reporting in the manner that a truly free press should report. Whitewashing over the facts and distorting the stories to make your side seem the sure victor is what the WestHems are doing. It's part of what led to their defeat in the first place."

"Huh?" Brian and Matt said together.

"Where you getting this shit from?" Brian demanded.

"I have a masters degree in human history from UME," she said, blushing a little. "I try to keep that to myself most of the time but when someone says things like what you just said... well, I just can't help myself."

"A fuckin' masters degree?" Matt asked incredulously, his intimidation factor suddenly increasing by a factor of ten or so.

"Sorry," she said, her blush flaring a little brighter in the red spectrum. "I hope that doesn't bother you or nothing."

"No," he said. "Not at all. I've bagged many a masters degree bitch. A few PH-fuckin'-d's too."

She patted his leg affectionately and then turned back to Brian. "Look," she said. "You may think they're demoralizing the troops by reporting the truth, but what is actually going on here is unprecedented in human history. MarsGroup is not simply taking a side and disregarding everything that doesn't agree with the position they've decided to represent. They're actually sticking to the truth. The pure truth for the most part. People are upset by General Jackson's orders. People are worried about what the ramifications of this decision might be. People are worried about what's going to happen when the WestHems come back down for round two. They're not embellishing any of that, are they?"

"Well... no," Brian admitted.

"But they're also telling the good to go with the bad," Surrender said. "They're showing the WestHems blasting back into orbit. They're showing the elation we all feel at having beat those prudes off of this planet. They're being honest, Brian, telling everyone what is really going on instead of using innuendo and disinformation to tell a story that will entertain the masses."

Brian's jaw was hanging nearly to the floor. Matt's was down there with it.

"Sorry," she said, blushing a little. "I don't usually go on like that, but..." she hefted her beer bottle. "You know?"

"Yeah," Brian said respectfully. "I know."

"And look," she said, pointing at the screen. "They're telling the other side now. The side the WestHems are telling."

They all looked and saw that she was right. The MarsGroup reporter was now explaining that they'd downloaded some clips taken from the Big Three — whose broadcasts could still be caught on any home video screen or PC for those who wished to view them.

"This is a press conference given a few hours ago by WestHem Executive Councilperson Loretta Williams," the MarsGroup reporter said. "As you know, Ms. Williams is the representative for the planet Mars on the council and it is she who has acted as executive spokesperson on all Martian matters since Governor Whiting's inauguration day speech. Here she is explaining the removal of General Wrath from command of the Martian task force, his subsequent arrest, and the resulting pullback to space. As you'll see, their version is a bit different from ours."

The screen changed over to a visibly aged Loretta Williams standing behind an executive podium. The shot was mid-conference, having skipped over all of the preliminaries. "... that General Wrath has been engaged in unprecedented levels of corruption, incompetence, and falsification of reports ever since the task force left Earth for Mars. These crimes against WestHem have grown even worse and more deadly to the troops that placed their trust in this fiend since the landings themselves. It has come to light that General Wrath has cut corners on maintenance and oversight of the armored vehicles under his command to the point that hundreds of them in each theater of operation became disabled by breakdowns and accidents. This has left many of the troops that relied on these armored vehicles for transportation to the battle area and support during battle, exposed to terrorist suicide attacks and artillery fire. This caused many casualties, the true numbers of which General Wrath was then under-reporting in his daily briefings. We are also told that he ordered the marines to attack each greenie defensive area they encountered instead of simply bypassing them and heading directly for the edges of the cities where they could have broken through with ease and left the terrorist forces behind them. While his intentions could perhaps be called admirable — he wanted to kill or capture every single greenie terrorist manning every single position — it was an untenable goal militarily and it cost many good men their lives. It is in the Jutfield Gap outside of Eden and in the Formica Gap outside Proctor that this ill advised and horrible plan took the worst toll. Though the General reported casualties of ninety marines in these two battles investigation has revealed that we actually lost more than two hundred. And since then another ninety-seven have fallen."

There was a collective gasp from the reporters assembled for the briefing.

"Madam Councilwoman," asked one of them. "Are you saying that more than three hundred marines have been killed on Mars to this point?"

"Sadly, the count is three hundred and six killed, two hundred wounded," she replied, seeming near tears at the admission. "That is more than twice the expected casualty rate for the entire conflict and we still aren't standing in those Martian cities."

"Three hundred and six?" Matt scoffed. "Do their people really believe that shit? I killed more than that myself!"

"Me too," said Brian's prospect for the night. "There's twelve to an APC and I've got forty-nine confirmed kills caught on camera."

"You didn't kill them," Brian told her. "Those were the ones that broke down because General Wrath cut corners on maintenance."

"Of course," she said, smiling.

"This is exactly what I was talking about," Surrender told them. "The WestHem press is not free, it's corporate owned and the corporations own the government. They report only what they're told. Even bad news like a humiliating defeat is twisted and distorted and blamed on a single person. There's no way they could ever release the actual casualty figures or tell what really happened out there because the WestHem public would be horrified and demand an immediate end to the war."

"But how long can they keep something like that under wraps?" Brian asked. "They've lost thousands of soldiers out here, literally thousands. All of those soldiers have families who will have to be told they're dead."

"And each one of those families," Surrender said, "will assume that their son or husband or father was simply one of the four hundred their press is admitting to. Without any information to the contrary, without any official list of all casualties printed somewhere, how would the families know any different?"

"Wow," Matt said, overwhelmed by the level of deception WestHem was capable of.

"Wow is right," Surrender said. "Listen to this part. She's going to explain why they had to go back to orbit. This should be rich."

It was indeed rich. Loretta Williams told the WestHem public — with a perfectly straight face — that the WestHem marines were fearful of causing too many civilian casualties and destruction and of losing any more of their soldiers by continuing with the horrible plan that General Wrath — the incompetent traitor — had come up with.

"In light of the human shield tactics the greenie terrorists are utilizing and in light of the flawed and costly head-on attacks that General Wrath ordered the marines to use, it was thought by General Browning — the new commander of the Martian taskforce — that it would be prudent to pull everyone back up to the Panamas and regroup. This will give them a chance to replace expended munitions, go over every armored vehicle in detail, and, most importantly to draw up a new plan for the marines to foment the liberation of that planet."

"How long will it be before the marines make new landings?" asked one of the reporters.

"No more than two weeks," Williams promised. "General Browning and his staff are already hard at work on the new liberation plan. I expect a preliminary draft on my desk in twenty-four hours."

The preliminary draft of which she spoke was currently sitting on General Browning's desk — what used to be General Wrath's desk. Browning — now dressed in the Martian red camouflage scheme to impress the viewing audience when he was caught on camera — was going over it in detail with it's author, Major Wilde.

"As you can see, General," Wilde was telling him, "the whole thing starts with an extensive air and space campaign designed to cripple Martian communications, supply efforts, and troop transport abilities. Space fighters will begin fanning out throughout high and low Martian orbit, destroying every satellite they can aim their lasers at. That should start in less than forty-eight hours as it will take the better part of a week to get them all."

"Won't that completely eliminate our ability to use GPS as well?" Browning asked.

"Yes," Wilde admitted, "but we don't have that ability now and it appears the hackers in our intelligence unit are not going to be able to ferret out the encryption codes any time soon. We, however, have learned to operate down there without GPS data. The Martians, on the other hand, have been relying upon their ability to accurately know their position. It's how they put their mortars and their artillery on target with such uncanny accuracy. It's how they are able to call in Mosquitoes and get their special forces teams right where they're needed. If we take communications and navigation away from them, they will be helpless out there."

Browning nodded. "I see," he said. "And then we start strategic surface bombing?"

"We start that simultaneous with the anti-satellite campaign," Wilde said. "The first thing that needs to go is the Alexander Industries ammunition plant outside New Pittsburgh. That is where the Martians are getting all of their bullets, mortars, and artillery shells. We need to send no less than six flights after that target and flatten it. It shouldn't be too hard to do. One good hit in the right spot and the plant will blow itself up."

"I don't want any civilian casualties from this," Browning said. "That doesn't look good on my record. The press is on our side but one thing they love to report on is civilian deaths."

"Civilian casualties would be limited to those who actually work in the plant. The building is located outside the city proper, far enough away that even a catastrophic explosion would not hurt civilian infrastructure."

"Very good," Browning said, nodding. He looked back down at the briefing material. "You have a considerable target list here. Is all of this really necessary?"

"It is absolutely necessary," Wilde said. "Most of these targets, as you can see, are to their rail network that runs between their cities. We hit every bridge, every tunnel, every portion that passes over or under something. This keeps them from making easy repairs and getting the system back in operation in a day or two. If these targets are hit successfully — and there's no reason to think they won't be — Eden will be completely isolated from the other cities by rail. The Martians won't be able to move troops or equipment there. Reinforcement would be impossible and the Martians in Eden would have defend against our entire task force and all of its armor with only the troops they have stationed in that city."

"I like it," Browning said, already envisioning his triumphant march to the Agricorp Building, which he planned to make his headquarters.

"It's simple and direct," Wilde said. "Once the bombing campaign has achieved its goals the landing craft go back down. They land another fifty kilometers out in this wider plain here to the west. It's larger and flatter which would make it more difficult for any Martian special forces teams to operate and would put it at the very extreme range of the Martian Hummingbirds and Mosquitoes. From there, we assemble and rush in at best possible speed to set up a refuel point. We don't stop to engage snipers or other Martians who attack us. We absorb the Mosquito attacks when they come. Less than seventy-two hours after landing, we'll be at the Jutfield Gap in nearly full strength and we'll hit the Martian positions in regimental strength, sweeping them right the hell out of there. We should be able to get through the gap in a matter of hours. Once that happens, we push hard to the main line of defense and slam into them with everything we got. Our advantage should be at least seven to one, maybe closer to eight to one. They'll fall within hours."

"And then we simply occupy Eden and hold onto it?"

"Exactly," Wilde confirmed. "Once we're in those buildings, on those streets, we can probably expect some guerrilla warfare but they won't be able to dislodge us. Not in a million years."

"Okay," Browning said. "You've convinced me. Start getting the flight crews ready for full deployment. I'll look this over in detail and then get it off to the Executive Council."

"Yes, sir," Wilde said. "Oh... there's one more thing."

"What's that?"

"This has to remain top secret if it's going to work. That means we can't brief the reporters on what is going on."

Browning rolled his eyes at him. "I'm not an idiot, Wilde," he said. "I have no intention of briefing reporters on what my attack plan is."

"I'm sure you don't, sir," Wilde said. "It's just that General Wrath used to release operational details before they happened because the press insisted on it. I think a lot of our problems might be because of that."

"I'm not Wrath," Browning said forcefully. "Now go brief in the flight commanders. I want to get this campaign rolling on schedule."

"Yes sir," Wilde said, saluting.