Greenies

Chapter 2

The morning following the inauguration of the new Martian governor was also a Saturday morning in the western hemisphere of Mars, where all of the terrestrial cities were located. Being a Saturday it meant that a regular training rotation for the MPG was scheduled at the base on the southern edge of Eden. Of course all of the Eden area MPG members could not train regularly at one time. There were simply too many of them for that to be feasible on a weekly basis. As such, the MPG volunteers — and they were all volunteers except for a few, select positions — were divided into one of four training rotations. This particular week was B rotation's turn. From all over the city men and women woke up early on what was traditionally a day of rest, donned their red shorts and white MPG t-shirts, and headed for tram stations near their homes. The paid twenty dollars to board the MarsTrans public transportation trains which carried them through a belt line and a serious of spokes to the base, the entrance to which was located in one of the more dangerous parts of town. Once there they waited in line for more than thirty minutes to clear the security checkpoints and worked their way to their assigned buildings.

The base itself consisted of four high-rise buildings, a large hangar complex, an armored vehicle parking area complete with airlock complexes, and more than two square kilometers of enclosed, pressurized and gravitated parkland upon which troops could assemble and exercise. Assembly time was typically 0700, except for a few specialized groups that met earlier. By 0730 the vast majority of the troops were out on the exercise grounds, performing the traditional calisthenics or running on the track that circled the base. As they ran and did their pushups on this morning the normal loose discipline that the MPG practiced was even looser than normal as everyone talked about the events of the previous evening. For the most part they cheered Laura Whiting and her idea, telling each other that it was about goddamn time that someone spoke up to the corporations. Many of them talked of the emails that they had composed and sent to their elected representatives. Only a few volunteered that they had not composed such correspondence. Those that did were quickly chided by their peers to do so and quickly, before the legislature opened an investigation.

"You don't think that will really work, do you?" asked corporal Salinas of the special forces division of his squad leader, Sergeant Fargo.

They were well into their fourth kilometer of the warm-up run and starting to breathe a little heavy. "It might not," Lon allowed, wiping sweat from his forehead. "But then she'll sure as shit go down within a week if we don't. If those prick politicians get enough mail threatening a recall vote if they try to impeach Whiting, that just might make them think twice. And it doesn't take much to compose one either. No real reason not to do it."

"And it feels damn good to tell off one of them fuckers too," put in Lieutenant Yee, their platoon commander and a twelve year veteran of special forces. "I went to bed happy last night after I sent mine off. Give it a shot, you'll like it."

"I guess I will then," Salinas said thoughtfully. "What's to lose?"

After their morning workout, Lon and his squad went into the base operations building for their briefing. They were to participate in yet another field operations drill today, their third in the last four months. The last year had brought a heavier than normal training schedule, particularly for the tank, special forces, and flight crews. No one at the operational level knew why although rumors always flew about a possible EastHem invasion in the works. Tensions had been rather high between the two governments lately since EastHem was stationing more warships at their naval base on Callisto, pushing the limits of a treaty signed as part of the Jupiter War armistice. None of Lon's squad minded the increased training in the least. It meant that instead of staying in the classroom all day learning new techniques, or instead of going to the gunnery range to practice old ones, they would don their biosuits and fly out into the wastelands to do what they did best: attack things and blow things up. Today's mission was going to be a fairly realistic anti-tank drill performed with real tanks from the MPG's first battalion.

After each of the four squads under Yee's command was given their operational area, they retreated to the bottom floor of the building where they drew their weapons and their biosuits from the armory.

"Okay, everyone," Lon told his men, "the standard load out will be the M-24 and six hundred rounds per man. Please be sure that you have training ammo instead of the real thing."

Everyone had a little chuckle over that. The training ammunition was an under-appreciated marvel designed by Martian engineers years before. The training rounds were made out of a thin synthetic material injected with helium. They came in everything from four millimeter all the way up to eighty-millimeter tank shells. They were the same size and would fire at the same suicidal velocity out of the various weapons, but instead of penetrating through the biosuits and the flesh beneath as a standard armor piercing round would, they would simply vaporize on contact.

"Matza," Lon said to his most junior member, "you're on the SAW today. Draw two thousand rounds for it."

"Right, sarge," Matza told him, excited to be in charge of the squad's machine gun.

"Galvan and Horishito, you two have the AT's," he said next, referring to the AT-50s, which were portable, shoulder fired anti-tank lasers. "Be sure to load up at least ten charges apiece, twelve if you can fit them. And again, make sure you have the training charges. We wouldn't want to blow the hell out of our own tanks."

"Right," Galvan and Horishito both agreed.

"Appleman," he said to the squad's medic. "You got your kit ready to roll?"

"I sleep with it, sarge," he assured him, hefting it up.

"All right then," Lon said with a smile. "Let's get to it. Our ride will be ready in sixty minutes."

The weapons draw went relatively quickly but it took them the bulk of their time to get into their biosuits. They wore standard MPG suits, the same as the ones the grunts and the tank crews wore out in the field. Each suit was custom fitted to its user and colored in the shades of red camouflage scheme that allowed it to blend in remarkably well in the bleak landscape of the wastelands. They were a vast improvement over the biosuits that the regular WestHem soldiers wore because the MPG suits were specifically designed for use on Mars instead of for use in any extra-terrestrial environment. A WestHem suit had a finite air supply for its user — usually four to six hours worth. In order to stay out in the field longer, a WestHem soldier needed to have spare tanks dropped to him. Martian suits, on the other hand, manufactured their own air from the thin Martian atmosphere. This added up to a smaller storage tank and a considerably less bulky suit. WestHem suits also emitted much more heat during operation, which made them much easier to detect by infrared sensors. An MPG biosuit was designed to slowly vent the body heat that its user produced, expelling it through evaporation via a series of pores all over the surface layer. In a way, it shed heat the same way a human body did, by transferring it into a liquid and then letting the liquid rise to the surface and outgas. Again, this was something that was only possible to do on the surface of Mars, which had an atmosphere, thin as it was. A soldier attempting to use an MPG biosuit on the surface of Ganymede or one of the other Jovian moons would die very quickly.

Once the suits were donned and powered up, a few minutes were spent dialing in the operations frequency that was to be used and calibrating the GPS links that helped them navigate on the surface. Each member of the squad had a radio link constantly open with Lon, who, as the squad leader, had a second link open with the platoon commander. After the radio and navigation tasks were taken care of, each man calibrated his weapon with the combat goggles built into the helmet. The computer in the goggles was hooked to sensors on the outside of the helmet that measured temperature, humidity, wind speed, and several other factors on an ongoing basis. When this information was calibrated with the particular weapon and ammunition type and tied into a sensor on the front of the weapon itself, a targeting recticle would appear in the user's field of vision when the weapon was brought up, showing where the rounds would hit if they were fired at that particular moment. The sensor on the weapon was of the binocular type, meaning that it could judge distance with fairly good accuracy, thus allowing for wind drift and gravity drop on targets that were further away. A small readout in the upper right of the goggle display showed the estimated distance to the target.

Lon sighted his M-24 back and forth a few times at various objects, testing the equipment. He aimed at the walls of the weapons room and then at the far door, watching as the small red circle followed his every move. The readouts seemed to work fine so he lowered the weapon once more and snugged it against his right side.

"Is everyone ready?" he asked his men once they had all finished their own sight-ins.

They were.

"Then lets do it. We got a Hummingbird to catch."

Hummingbird was the slang term for the ETH-70 transport craft that the special forces teams traveled in. It was one of two types of aircraft that had been specifically designed by Martian engineers for the Martian Planetary Guard. Like the biosuits, the Martian aircraft were only useful on the surface of Mars and had been designed to take advantage of the meager atmosphere. Hovers, which were the primary means that WestHem and EastHem troops moved about on the surface of extraterrestrial bodies, were bulky machines that kept aloft by means of directional thrusters on the bottom and back. Hovers were fairly slow moving and horrible gulpers of fuel, with a range of less than two hundred kilometers in the Martian gravity. The Hummingbirds, on the other hand, had two sets of large wings, which could be folded up for easy storage and extended to their full length once outside. These wings eliminated the need for vertical thrusters while in flight, increasing speed and fuel economy. A Hummingbird could haul twelve fully armed troops into the air and transport them more than four hundred kilometers out into the wastelands and back with fuel to spare.

When Lon and his squad entered the hangar deck of the base at 0945 that morning, activity was everywhere. The staging areas were filled with both the smaller Mosquito anti-armor planes — which were gearing up for some training of their own — and the larger, bulkier Hummingbirds. The crew chiefs were walking around most of the aircraft, making final checks of components and armament while the pilots and gunners went through pre-flight checks inside the cockpits. The Hummingbirds all had their back ramps extended into the loading position, awaiting the embarkation of their assigned troops. Their thrusters, which were located under each of the four wing positions, were all in the level flight positioning, facing backward, heat shimmering from their nozzles as they idled. The twenty-millimeter cannons, which were attached to a revolving turret below the nose, were all in the neutral position, facing forward.

"How you doin' today, Lon?" asked Mike Saxton, the crew chief for their assigned Hummingbird as they approached. He was a large man of African descent, dressed in pair of oily red and white coveralls. Since the aircraft hangar was fully pressurized and gravitated, there was no need for him to be dressed in a biosuit.

"Not too bad, Mike," Lon told him after making sure the external speaker for his suit was on. "Is this bucket of bolts airworthy today?"

"Don't be making fun of my hummer," he warned, only half jokingly. "I'll tell Rick to leave your asses out there in the waste."

"My apologies," Lon said, slapping him on the back. "Is this fine piece of machinery ready to take us to our destination?"

"That's better," Mike grinned. "She's all ready for you. Go ahead and board when you're ready."

They boarded, each walking up the thin alloy ramp and into the cramped interior. Though the Hummingbird could transport twelve loaded troops with ease, comfort was not part of the bargain. They crammed in five to a side and strapped themselves into small seats that folded out from the wall. Their weapons they kept against their chests, their packs full of extra ammo and food paste pushed into their backs. In the cockpit in front of them, Rick, the pilot, and Dave Yamata, the systems operator, were running through the pre-flight checklist. Since the aircraft would be depressurized once outside of the hangar, both of them were wearing biosuits as well.

"Ready to move out, sarge?" Rick asked as the pre-flight was completed. "The sooner we blow this scene, the less time we'll have to wait for an airlock."

"We're ready when you are," Lon told him.

"Okay," he said, turning to Dave. "Close us up and run through the final pressure check."

"Closing up," Dave said, pushing a button on the panel. The ramp rose up, pulled by hydraulic arms, and latched into place with a firm clank. "Pressure check in progress... and I got three greens on the panel."

"Copy three greens," Rick said. "Let's get clearance to taxi."

The clearance came a minute later and they began to move as Rick throttled up the hydrogen engine just enough to get them moving. The aircraft turned onto the taxiway and began to make its way towards the airlock complex on the far side of the hanger. Only one Hummingbird sized craft could fit into a single airlock at a time so they had to wait for nearly ten minutes while four Hummingbirds and three Mosquitoes went in front of them. As they waited, talk turned back to Laura Whiting and her now famous speech of the night before.

"I couldn't believe she actually said shit like that on Internet," proclaimed Gavin — who was a high school teacher by trade. "I mean, she told it like it was. She laid out how fucked up our political system is for everyone to hear."

"It was beautiful," agreed Horishito, who was a tram technician for MarsTrans. "I thought she was joking at first. When I realized she was serious, I just about shit my pants."

"I bet those pricks at Agricorp headquarters were the ones to shit their pants," Lon, who was of course an Agricorp employee as of the merger, said with a grin. "I would've loved to seen their faces when she told everyone how evil they were, or how much money they gave her to get her elected. That must've been priceless. Absolutely goddamn priceless."

"Yeah," said Gavin, shifting his AT-50 from one shoulder to the next, "but what are they gonna do to her now?"

"Nothing they can do if the legislature doesn't impeach her," Lon said. "And if everyone sends those pricks the email like Whiting asked, I don't think they'll have the balls to do it."

"They'll do it anyway," Horishito predicted gloomily.

"If they do, then we need to follow through and vote out our fuckin reps if they voted against her," said Mark Corning, a construction worker. "Hell, we need to do that if they even vote to open an investigation. When I sent my letter that's what I told Hennesy I'd do."

"You don't really think Hennesy is watching all of those emails, do you?" asked Horishito.

"Of course not," Corning said. "I bet the bitch don't look at a single fuckin one of them. But someone on her staff does and if enough people sent them in, she'll have to think twice about doing what Agricorp or whatever other fuckin corp that owns her, tells her to do."

Even Horishito had to admit that there was a point there. But he refused to accept that Laura Whiting would simply be allowed to stay in office. "There's no way in hell she'll keep the governor's office after what she said. I respect her for it and all, but you can bet your ass they're gonna find a way to get rid of her as quick as they can by whatever means they can."

"I think if they did that," said Lon, "it would be a very big mistake. Maybe the biggest that anyone has ever made."

With that the talk turned to other matters deemed more important, namely the marijuana they were going to smoke after training today and the women they were going to try to score with. This was a discussion that was as timeless as it was graphic, as crude as it was a part of the male psyche. Just as they were really getting on a roll however, they were given clearance to enter the airlock, something that none of them particularly looked forward to.

"I hate this part," Horishito said, bracing himself against his seat and closing his eyes. He received no words of disagreement.

Rick brought the Hummingbird forward across the taxiway, using small blasts of the thrusters to propel them. The large steel blast doors were standing open on the base side and the aircraft passed through with less than two meters of clearance on each side. He throttled back down once inside, bringing the engines to idle, and then applied the ground brakes when the nose was near the blast doors on the opposite side. "In position," he reported both to the airlock controller and to the special forces team in the back.

"Airlock closing," the computer generated voice replied over the radio link.

The blast doors behind them slid slowly shut upon their tracks, sealing off the airlock from the interior of the base. The moment they were closed the fans began to eject the air from the inside, lowering the atmospheric pressure to the level of the outside.

"Prepare for cessation of artificial gravity," the computer generated voice told Rick and Dave.

"Okay, guys," Rick told his cargo. "Get ready for lightening."

There was no gradual way to shut off the artificial gravity field that existed inside the building areas. It was either on or it was off. It could not be gently lowered from 1G to .3 Gs, the natural gravitational pull of Mars. A computer circuit cut power to the conductor that gravitated the airlock and just like that, everyone and everything, the plane, the weapons, the suit, the fluids within each person's body, lost two-thirds of it's weight. It was not considered to be one of life's great experiences. It gave a terrifying, dizzying sense of falling and spatial disorientation that lasted for almost a minute. Most people who experienced the sensation for the first time became sick to their stomach and vomited. Only the fact that all of Lon's team had been through lightening dozens of times kept them from heaving inside of their helmets.

"Ohhhh," Lon groaned miserably, feeling his stomach turning over. "Sometimes I wonder why I took this fucking job."

Everyone else in the aircraft, pilot and gunner included, matched his sentiments. But, as veterans of the process, all of them recovered by the time the fans finished evacuating the air from the lock.

"Decompression complete," the computer voice told Rick and Dave. "Airlock doors opening."

The blast doors on the exterior side of the lock slid slowly open, revealing a long taxiway that led out to the runways beyond. Red drift sand, a common problem on the Martian surface, marred the paved surface in a few places despite the fact that it had been freshly plowed less than an hour before. Rick throttled up a little and released the brakes, bringing the aircraft out of the lock and onto the staging area just beyond it. Once it was clear the blast doors immediately began to shut behind them to prepare for another cycle.

"Decompressing the aircraft," Dave said, pushing a pad on his computer screen. It was necessary to bleed the air out of the Hummingbird since the troops would be exiting it when they reached their landing area. If this step were not taken then they would all be blown out quite violently the moment the door was opened.

"I copy decompressing," Rick said. He pushed a pad on his own screen. "Unfolding wings."

The four large wings began to extend outward in sections, each piece pushed by mini-hydraulics and clanking neatly into place until the full thirty-meter span was out and ready for flight. This took about twenty seconds to accomplish and once it was done the aircraft, when viewed from above, resembled a very thin letter H turned on its side.

"Six greens on the gear locks," Rick reported.

"Decompression complete," Dave reported right after. "We're now at anticipated pressure for the LZ."

"Copy," said Rick. "Ready to taxi for take-off."

After gaining clearance he throttled up once more and began to roll forward, bumping along on the synthetic rubber landing gear until reaching the end of the north-south runway. Once in position he told the troops to brace for takeoff. Though most air and spacecraft were equipped with artificial gravity and inertial dampers to make the ride as smooth as standing on the surface, combat atmospheric craft did not come with that particular luxury. The heat that such devices produced made detection of the craft far too easy for an enemy.

"Lifting off," Rick said as he pushed the throttles forward to the maximum.

The roar of the hydrogen burning engines filled the craft with noise and vibration as the sudden acceleration pushed everyone towards the rear. Outside, the landscape began to blur by as they went from zero to more than 400 kilometers per hour in less than ten seconds. Because of the thin atmosphere of Mars, the speed one had to travel in order to obtain lift from the wings was considerable. When they reached 480 KPH of forward speed, considerably faster than the speed of sound in that environment, Dave pulled back on the stick and the Hummingbird's wheels broke contact with the runway. They climbed slowly, wobbling a little in the meager ground effect and then climbing above it. Dave pulled a lever next to his seat and the landing gear retracted into the belly of the craft with a thump. He then banked hard to the right, taking them to the east, out over the seemingly endless expanse of greenhouse complexes.

"ETA to the LZ is fifteen minutes," Dave told the troops over the intercom. "This is a combat insertion as you know. Get ready for a bouncing ride."

"Just the way we like it," Lon groaned, closing his eyes and waiting for it to be over. The flight in was his least favorite aspect of his job.

Rick kept them at two hundred meters above the greenhouses in order to keep from violating planetary flight regulations. Once they passed over the last group of them however, he dropped down to less than thirty meters above the ground, hugging the hilly terrain to keep from being detected. The Hummingbird was a bulky aircraft and not terribly maneuverable, especially at the speed it was moving, but he expertly kept it within two meters of his target altitude as they moved over and between hills, as they shot through valleys and old watersheds. He stared forward intently as the terrain moved up and down before him, his hands making adjustments to the stick and throttle.

In the back the ten men of Lon's squad fought down nausea as they pitched up and down, banked back and forth, seemingly randomly and with no forewarning of any kind. This coupled with the lack of outside visual references and the heavy knowledge that only a slight miscalculation on Rick's part would smash them into a hillside at more than 600 KPH, made for very unstable stomachs. They gripped their weapons tightly and most of them followed Lon's example and kept their eyes tightly shut.

Rick circled in a roundabout path through the Sierra Madres Mountains and down to the foothills that bordered it. On the other side of these rolling hills was a broad expanse of relatively flat terrain some five kilometers wide and more than sixty kilometers in length. Such terrain and other cuts through the surface like it were the most likely avenue of advance for any invasion force attacking the planet since they were flat enough to both support a group of orbit to surface landing craft and to move tanks, artillery, and other armored vehicles through. It was in these valleys that the Eden area MPG troops did most of their training.

"One minute to the LZ," Dave announced as they exited from the mountainous area and began to dive through the smaller foothills. "Going in hot."

"Copy," Lon said, fighting with his gorge. It had been a long time since he'd puked during an insertion but it was always a struggle.

Rick slowed to just above stall speed, easing up on the up and down motion a little bit. He banked sharply around the base of a hill and turned back to the east, towards a small gully that was known only by its map coordinates. "LZ in sight," he announced. "Get ready for insertion."

Dave, as the gunner, examined the ground around the landing zone carefully through his scope. An infrared enhanced camera mounted on the belly panned back and forth under magnification, searching for the telltale signatures of biosuits of "enemy" soldiers. It was possible, though very unlikely, that the MPG armored forces that were acting as the opposing force, or OPFOR, in the drill might have sent out patrols of the area. These training sessions were designed to be executed as realistically as possible. "I'm scanning clear," he announced as he saw nothing but empty ground.

"Copy, scanning clear," Lon echoed. He opened his eyes and looked at his troops. "Lock and load guys. It's time to play."

Everyone jacked rounds into the chambers of their weapons. "Let's get the fuck out of this deathtrap," Horishito said.

"Coming in," Rick said, picking his put down spot. He lowered the landing gear. "Brace for landing."

The transition from straight and level flight to a controlled vertical landing was a rather violent affair. Rick pitched upward and simultaneously changed the angle of the engines, directing the thrust downward. The entire aircraft shuddered as if in seizure as airspeed was bled off in a matter of seconds. The nose rose upward at more than forty-five degrees and the occupants were subjected to a jaw-wrenching 3G of deceleration. Once their forward airspeed fell to less than 30 KPH Rick nosed down, bringing them back level and reduced thrust, allowing gravity to pull them to the surface. The heavy duty, puncture-proof tires slammed down onto the dusty surface, bounced once, and then settled into a soft roll which was quickly halted with the brakes.

"On the ground," Rick said, keeping the thrusters at just over idle.

Dave pushed the button that opened the loading ramp. As it clanked downward, thumping to the ground, he pushed another button that released the restraint harnesses of the back passengers. "Go," he told them, continuing to peer into his scope for enemy soldiers. Had he seen any he could have engaged them with the twenty-millimeter cannon.

"Let's go," Lon said, getting carefully to his feet. Though the image of special forces troops was that they jumped up and ran everywhere, the fact was that on the surface of Mars in less than a third of normal gravity, you had to move carefully.

In an orderly fashion all ten of them moved down the ramp and out onto the surface of the planet, their suit boots tramping through the powdery, rocky soil. Dust blown up from the landing and the continued thrust of the engines obscured the terrain around them. Once outside the aircraft they spread apart in a well-practiced maneuver and lay down on the ground ten meters from the ramp, forming a loose circle with all of them facing outward, weapons ready to engage any targets that might be encountered.

"We're down," Lon barked into his radio link, letting the pilot know that he could get back into the air. As long as the Hummingbird was on the ground both it and the troops that it had inserted were vulnerable.

"Copy," Rick's voice said into his ear. "Lifting off. Kick some ass out here."

A moment later the blowing dust grew worse as the thrusters fired back up to full throttle, lifting the aircraft back into the air. When it was ten meters above the ground the thrusters turned slowly back to the rear, restoring forward flight. It moved faster and faster until it was once more capable of sustained flight again. It banked around to the north and moved away, keeping low to the ground. None of the men watched it go.

After a moment the dust began to settle or drift off in the 40 KPH wind and the men began to bark off that the area in front of them was clear.

"Okay," Lon said, gripping the stock of his M-24. "Jefferson, Horishito, Powell, Yamata, Salinas, move off to that group of boulders at my four o'clock. We'll cover. Matza, keep sharp with that SAW."

One by one the five men that Lon had named got to their feet and trotted across the uneven ground. They formed up in a wedge formation, their weapons ready for action, their equipment clanking on their backs. They stepped gingerly, each footfall a deliberate movement designed to keep them from losing their balance in the reduced gravity. Though their movements looked almost comical they were able to move surprisingly quickly and within a minute of exiting the ramp they were in position in the boulder field.

"It's clear over here, sarge," Corporal Salinas, his second-in-command, told him on the closed radio link they used. It was an ultra high frequency channel of minute power, incapable of being picked up more than a half-kilometer away unless a power boost was used. And even if it were picked up, the transmissions were encoded.

"Copy," Lon said. "We're coming up." He waved to the men left with him and they all got to their feet. Utilizing the same trot as those before them, they moved across the landscape and joined their companions. Once they were reunited Lon punched a command into the access panel on the sleeve of his biosuit. A detail map of the area they were in appeared before his eyes. A small red dot in the center of the map, placed there by the suit computer utilizing global positioning satellites in geosynchronous orbit, marked his current location on it. "Right on target," he said, studying the view. He looked to the south, towards a series of small hills. "Right over there," he pointed. "Hill 2718 and Hill 2712. They overlook the AOA of the OPFOR. Salinas, take Gavin and Horishito over to 2718 and hole up with those AT launchers. The rest of us will take 2712 and provide anti-personnel cover. Retreat rally position is going to be that boulder field at grid 7C on your maps."

"Right, sarge," Salinas said, shifting his weapon a little. "Let's go guys," he told Gavin and Horishito. They began to trot across the landscape in that direction.

"Powell," Lon said to one of his more experienced privates, "you take point. Matza, linger back with me with the SAW. Let's move."

They moved, the seven of them assembling into a wedge and moving quickly towards the hill.

The ETT-12 main battle tank was state of the art armor for the WestHem armed forces extra-terrestrial operations. Built in the Alexander Industries armament factory in New Pittsburgh, they weighed in at nearly sixty metric tons (in standard 1G gravity) and could travel at more than one hundred kilometers per hour across nearly any terrain. The engine was a high horsepower hydrogen-burning turbine that required very little maintenance. Crewing three, they sported twin high capacity anti-armor lasers protruding from a housing atop the turret. These lasers were their main guns and could put a hole in just about anything that they hit, no matter how thick or how reinforced. However, as handy a thing as lasers were for anti-vehicle or anti-structure assaults, they did have their limitations. Lasers with a capacity high enough to kill required significant amounts of power and they needed to be charged up before firing, something that took an average of eight to fifteen seconds, depending on the capacity and the power source. This made them virtually useless against personnel or massed light vehicles since rapid fire was impossible. For this reason the ETT-12 was equipped with an 80mm, high explosive round main gun, a 20 mm, high velocity cannon capable of firing nearly three hundred rounds per minute and a smaller, 4mm high velocity commander's weapon capable of firing nearly six hundred rounds per minute. These weapons were of course compatible with the firing computers of the crewmembers' biosuits making it quite easy to put bullets on target.

The Martian Planetary guard, which was technically an arm of the WestHem armed forces (though you would never hear an MPG member or a WestHem marine say so), used the ETT-12 as their main defensive weapon for city defense, which was basically the only thing worth attacking or defending on Mars. Utilizing the sales and income tax that Laura Whiting had proposed and pushed through the legislature after the Jupiter War, the MPG had bought and modified more than a six hundred of the expensive weapons over the years. The 1^st battalion of the 6^th Armored infantry regiment of the MPG was the main force responsible for point defense of Eden. They had 36 of these ETT-12s as their main striking power. In addition they had 54 top of the line Alexander Industries armored personnel carriers, each of which sported a lower yield anti-tank laser and two light machine guns and could carry a complete squad of infantry apiece. Backing up this force were four mobile anti-air laser vehicles that could fire up to six shots per minute and packed enough power to bring down an orbital lifter if such a thing was needed.

Major Michael Chin, a twelve-year veteran of the MPG (and a middle management employee of Alexander Industries in his real life) was the commander of the 1^st of the 6^th. Chin and the men under his command had been out in the wastelands since before sunrise that morning, their task to play prey for the special forces and air force. It was a role that they had played many times before in the past, pretending to be an enemy column advancing on Eden.

A tall man of Chinese descent and a fourth generation Martian, Chin was in the turret of one of the tanks in the middle of the column, watching through the view screen that was hooked to an infrared enhanced digital camera on the outside. Taking soft, easy breaths of the canned air from his biosuit, he panned back and forth, searching for any signs of the teams that he knew were out there somewhere. Time and time again those teams had cleaned his battalion's clock and, though he knew such training was invaluable for them, he was tired of being massacred by a bunch of kids with toy lasers. Today he was going to try a new tactic. After all, his orders were to make things as difficult as possible without actually cheating. "Chin to Air-def," he said on the command channel.

"Air-def here, boss," said Lieutenant Garcia, who was in command of the sixteen men who made up the air defense section of the battalion. "Go ahead."

"Get ready for action," he told them. "I can feel those sneaking fucks looking at us now. This is prime ambush ground and they usually call in the Mosquitoes to hit us first."

"Passive scanners are in acquisition mode," Garcia responded. "The lasers are charged and ready to go. Do you want me to go active on the search?"

"Negative on that," Chin replied. "The radar can't detect them worth a shit. All they do is give them a beacon to home in on. Just keep your eyes out. It's coming soon, I can feel it."

"You got it, boss," Garcia told him. "Staying passive and keeping the eyes open."

"Van Pelt," he said next, calling the captain in charge of the infantry squads.

"Yeah, boss," Van Pelt answered right back.

"Get ready to initiate the new plan," he told him. "The moment those Mosquitoes come into view, get those APCs moving towards the hills. Even split, half to the north and half to the south. We're gonna catch those bastards this time and they're gonna be buying every last one of us bong hits and beers after the exercise."

"You got it, boss," Van Pelt said enthusiastically. He had caught some of his commander's optimism.

The special forces teams, though deadly and stealthy, were somewhat predictable in their operation. They had to be with their limited resources. Usually the teams stayed well hidden in the hills above the advance and called in Mosquitoes to make firing runs on the APCs before they showed themselves. MPG doctrine was not to concentrate on the heavy armor but to instead kill as many of the soldiers as possible as far from the battle area as possible, thereby reducing their numbers to ineffective before they got close to their objective. In a battle where the enemy would have to land their ships outside of artillery range of the city defenses (at least 300 kilometers away) and march inward from there, it made the most tactical sense. The MPG was basically a sniping force that fought using guerrilla tactics. Once the Mosquitoes had made their initial runs, the anti-tank crews of the special forces units would open up with their shoulder fired lasers, taking out more of the APCs and forcing the remaining soldiers out into a fight. Once the soldiers unloaded and tried to assemble, the machine gunners and riflemen would open up, picking off as many as they could as quick as they could. They would then withdraw to safety and be extracted by the Hummingbirds before the infantry troops could close with them. Each individual run would not cause serious attrition, but when they came again and again in succession, the numbers quickly added up.

"Not this time," Chin vowed, continuing to scan back and forth. "We're gonna make those fuckers pay this time."

Fifty kilometers to the north, on the other side of the protective hills, two Mosquitoes circled lazily three hundred meters above the ground. Officially called the AA-55 atmospheric attack craft, they were essentially nothing more than flying wings powered by a single hydrogen/methane semi-rocket engine. Looking like a thirty meter boomerang of flimsy design, they could travel through the Martian sky at speeds up to 700 KPH and pull turns of up to 3Gs. Like the Hummingbirds and the MPG biosuits they were functional only on the planet Mars and for this reason the regular WestHem armed forces did not possess them or even acknowledge their possible usefulness.

The name Mosquito came from the derisive comments of a regular WestHem marine general back when the Martian designed and produced aircraft first became a part of the MPG in the early days. This general, who at the time had been the commander of the Marine quick response force stationed on the planetary surface, had been interviewed by one of the Earth based Internet stations for a documentary on the alleged waste of taxpayer money that the MPG represented.

"I don't really see the use for winged aircraft on an extra-terrestrial surface," he had opined for everyone to hear. "Sure, they're cute to look at and they can move faster than the traditional hovers that the real forces use, and I'll even give credit to the Martian engineers who were able to design and produce such a craft in the first place. But when it comes down to practicality on the battlefield, I'm afraid they're seriously lacking. There's no way that such a flimsy target could stand up to modern air defenses over an advancing column. They would be nothing more than annoying mosquitoes buzzing around an EastHem advance, waiting to get swatted. In my opinion the so-called General who runs this force would be much wiser to invest the Martian taxpayer dollars in more tanks, which are truly the cornerstone of any defense."

Of course the Martians had made a habit long ago of holding in contempt nearly everything that was reported on WestHem Internet news. As such, the intended effect of the report, which had been sponsored by none other than Alexander Industries and had been designed to force Jackson and the procurement committee to buy more of their armor, had failed. And the derisive term that had been casually coined by the general had actually endeared itself to the Martians who flew the AA-55 and by those who trained with it. By the time a year had gone by Mosquito was the official name and the fact that mosquitoes had once been one of the deadliest insects on planet Earth had not gone unremarked upon by the Martian forces.

The Mosquito, for all its gracefulness and flimsy design, was basically an armor buster. Mounted on the belly of the craft, in a retractable turret directly beneath the cockpit, was a twin laser cannon nearly as powerful as those on the ETT-12s. This cannon was under direct control of the gunner, who sat behind the pilot, and could be aimed and fired as fast as the gunner could turn his head and put a targeting recticle on a vehicle. The recharge rate of the lasers was a moderate twelve seconds which meant that the standard Mosquito tactic was to rush in at low level from behind surrounding hills or mountains, blast two pieces of armor — usually the APCs in keeping with MPG doctrine — and then buzz back under cover again before anti-air forces could even acquire it. It was a remarkably simple aircraft, with no autopilot and very little avionics besides standard navigation equipment. It was truly a pilot's aircraft in an age when almost everything was computer controlled.

Brian Haggerty was the pilot of the lead Mosquito. He held the stick lightly in his right hand and the throttle lightly in his left, keeping the aircraft in a shallow bank over the staging area. He and his gunner, Colton Rendes, were dressed in standard MPG biosuits and strapped into Martian designed ejection seats that could rocket them clear of the craft in an emergency and then set them gently down on the surface below. The cockpit was a bubble canopy that gave them commanding views of the jagged hills below them. It was a strangely beautiful landscape that neither ever got tired of looking at.

"I'm telling you, Brian," Colton was saying over their open com link, "you have to follow through with this email. This is not the time to be apathetic about politicians. Apathy is what got the human race into this mess in the first place."

Brian snorted a little, half in disgust, half in exasperation. "You're starting to sound like Lisa, my partner," he said. "A goddamn veteran cop and she's spouting on and on about Laura Whiting. She even voted for her. Voted! She was nagging me at end of watch last night to compose that friggin email to my legislature, just like she asked us to do. Like it's really gonna do any fucking good."

"You heard Whiting last night, didn't you?" asked Colton, who was a flight engineer on a MarsTrans surface to orbit craft. "Did that sound like typical political rhetoric to you?"

"That was quite an eye-opening speech," he said. "I'll give you that. And I'll even go so far as to admit that maybe Whiting really is trying to push for independence. But if she really thinks that WestHem is ever going to let us go under any circumstances, she's fucking schizo. Why should I waste my time threatening that dick-wipe politician that fucking Agricorp has assigned to my district? He doesn't give a shit what I say or what I think. All he gives a shit about is what his sponsors, those rich prick Earthling corporate assholes, want him to do. And what they want him to do is impeach Whiting. I'll be surprised if she makes it through the week."

"I'll be surprised if she makes it through the week too," Colton told him. "Believe me, I have as much common sense as any Martian. I know how the fucking system works. But would you agree that it would be better for us to keep Whiting in office than it would be to get rid of her."

"Well... sure," he said. "Anything that pisses off those corporate fucks is all right in my book."

"And since it only takes five minutes to tell your legislature member that you'll sign a petition to have him recalled and that you'll then vote to do it, why shouldn't you take the time? It's not like it costs you anything."

"I just don't think it'll do any good," Brian said. "They don't listen to anyone who doesn't command a corporation."

"Who cares whether it does any good or not?" he asked, a little exasperated. "If he does vote to impeach Whiting and someone does put a petition screen in front of you to recall him, would you put your print on it?"

"Shit, I'd do it now," Brian said.

"And if there were enough signatures to recall the bastard and there was a vote scheduled on that very issue, would you log on and vote to oust him?"

"I suppose I would," he said.

"Then compose an email and tell the prick that," Colton said. "Tell him. Whiting got up on that stage last night and she showed some fucking huevos. Can you imagine what it took for her to do that? The least you could do in return is stand in front of your fucking terminal tonight and compose a little email. If enough people do that today maybe, just maybe, those fucks will be forced to make a decision. And just maybe enough of them will make the decision that we need: to keep Whiting in office. What can it hurt?"

Brian had to admit that he had a point. "What the hell?" he said with a shrug. "I guess I could do it to pay her back for the sheer entertainment value of that speech."

"See?" Colton said, reaching forward and patting him on the shoulder of his suit. "You do have some damn common sense in there."

"Here they come," Lon said, looking at the cloud of dust that was approaching from the eastern horizon. A complete armored battalion was impossible to move from one place to another undetected. It was not the sort of thing that just slipped by while you weren't looking.

"Fuckin aye," said Jackson, who was all the way over on the next hill, maybe a half kilometer away, but who was connected via the UHF radio link. "Right down the old poop shoot."

Lon and those with him were sequestered among a group of fairly large boulders near the crest of the hill. The ancient lava rocks were nice and solid and had been in place here for perhaps that last billion years or so. They would make good cover for the coming fight, especially since the 20mm cannons on the tanks and APCs would be loaded with training rounds. These rounds would hit hard enough to knock a man clean off his feet if impact occurred, but they would not penetrate or cause damage to the biosuits themselves. The rule was that once a man was hit in a vital area such as the chest or head, he was deemed to be dead. His suit, the computer controlling it having been placed in training mode, would then cut off all communications with the other team members unless an emergency override code was given (the utilization of which would automatically cause a cease-fire to be called in the simulated battle) and would render his weapons unable to be fired. Thus the "killed" team member could no longer be of assistance in the battle but could tag along with them as they moved in order to avoid being left behind. The same principal applied to the OPFOR equipment. If a man was hit, his suit computer would take him out of the action. If a tank were hit with the low yield training laser charges, that tank would be shut down and not allowed to participate further in the battle. If an APC took a lethal hit on the sides or top while troops were on board, all of the troops would have their communications links and weapons shut down. If the anti-air vehicles were hit, they too were rendered incapable of firing any further. All of these computer enhancements, be they to the biosuits, the weapons, or the vehicles themselves, were Martian adaptations available only on MPG equipment and designed specifically to make training missions more realistic. The regular WestHem forces, by contrast, exercised mostly in computer simulations to save money and wear and tear on their equipment.

Lon set his M-24 down for a moment and adjusted the magnification of his combat goggles. Instantly, with the help of infrared enhancement, he was able to pick out the individual tanks of the column even though they were still nearly twenty kilometers distant. "Looks like an armored cavalry column of battalion strength," he reported to his men. They had not been privy to what the strength of the OPFOR was going to be. "They have fifty plus APCs, we're talking five hundred troops if they're fully loaded. I also have three... no four SAL-50 anti-air vehicles in the front, middle, and rear of the column."

"I'm reading the same," said Jefferson from his perch. "Moving at about forty KPH."

"That gives us an ETA to contact of about thirty minutes," Lon said. "I'm gonna get hold of the Mosquitoes." He flipped another switch on his computer panel and dialed into the encoded laser frequency. "Striker flight one," he said, keying the radio link. "This is Shadow team six. Are you there?" In order to avoid giving themselves away by leaking radio emissions, his words were converted to digital pulses, which were shot upward 18,000 kilometers by a laser beam to a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The suit computer used GPS data to keep a constant fix on the satellite's location in the sky. If Lon had been in a position where the laser was blocked by an obstacle, an indicator in his goggles would have lit up, telling him this.

The delay from talking to reception was about three seconds. "Shadow six, this is striker one," came the voice of Brian Haggerty, one of the many pilots they worked in tandem with on a regular basis. "Go ahead. I'm tracking your current position."

"Copy that you're tracking us," Lon said. In addition to providing secure communications, the laser system also carried placement data, allowing support units to have an accurate fix on friendlies. "We have a visual on an armored column of battalion strength moving eastward through the cut. We count thirty plus ETT-12s, fifty plus APCs, and four SAL-50s. The SAL-50s are at the ends and middle of the column. They're moving west at approximately forty klicks. Estimated time to our position, thirty minutes. I repeat, three zero minutes."

"Copy thirty minutes," Haggerty said. "Get back with us five minutes to strike time with an update and we'll wake them up for you."

"Will do," Lon said. "Shadow six out."

They watched mostly in silence as the column drew closer and closer. The dust cloud that it raised expanded and continued to blow off to the south, carried by the prevailing seasonal winds. Though the sound of the advance did not reach them — sound did not travel very far or very well through the Martian air — the vibration and the rumbling of the ground did. The movement of nearly ninety armored vehicles was enough to shake loose small rocks. It was as they began to come into view without magnification assist that Lon began to notice something different about their formation. It took him a few minutes to pin down exactly what it was. Usually the APCs traveled in a protective ring of tank platoons, all the better to cover the soldiers within. Now the tanks were mostly forward and to the rear, with only a few token pieces covering the flanks.

"Look at how the APCs are formed up," he said when it finally came home to him. "That's not a standard marching formation."

"No," Jefferson said. "It sure ain't. Why do you think they're doing that?"

"That crafty little fuck Chin is up to something," Lon said. "He's trying to screw us out of our beer tonight."

"What's he planning?" asked Gavin. "Why would he leave the APCs bare like that? It doesn't make sense."

"It does if he wants them free for a charge," Jefferson opined. "You think he's trying to spring a little trap on us, sarge?"

"I think that may very well be his intention," Lon said, his eyes tracking over the column. He thought for a few moments as he watched them, his mind whirring in overdrive. His troops respectfully remained silent, allowing him to think. "Maybe," he said at last, "we have become a little too predictable. Maybe we should change things just a bit on this attack."

"Change things?" Jefferson asked. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that Chin left his APCs unprotected on the flanks and maybe we can take a little advantage of that. Jefferson, get on the secure link to our Hummingbird and tell them to lift off and get ready for extraction."

"Right, sarge," he said.

"Everyone else, listen up. This is the new plan." He began to talk. Everyone liked what he said.

Brian listened to the update from the special forces team observing the column. Fargo, the squad leader, wanted to go with a change in normal operations, something that was not particularly discouraged in the MPG. It sounded like a fairly good plan so he raised no objections to it, something that would have been his right had there been some question of the safety of the aircraft.

"That sounds doable, shadow six," he answered back once the details were heard. "We're on the way now. ETA to strike is five minutes. We'll let you know when we're thirty seconds out."

"We'll be waiting," Lon's voice assured him after the normal delay. "Shadow six standing by."

Brian switched his frequency switch back to the channel that allowed him to communicate with the plane on his wing. "Did you copy all of that, John?" he asked.

"I copied," John Valenzuela, the pilot of the plane, told him. "Sounds like fun, going in without much opposition for once."

"Well, don't get too happy about it," Brian warned. "They still have a shitload of handheld anti-air lasers down there. They're harder to track on but it only takes one."

"Happy?" John asked with a laugh. "Who the hell could be happy around here? Let's do it. I'm right on your ass."

"Where you belong," Brian said, applying throttle and banking sharply to the right.

Moving almost as one object, the two Mosquitoes dove down towards the ground and leveled off at less than twenty meters about it. They accelerated to optimum low-level penetration speed and headed for the hills that guarded the valley. Using a map window on his heads up display to navigate with, Brian shot between hills and dove through gullies, cutting back and forth, up and down, but always moving towards the target area.

"Charge up the laser," Brian told Colton. "Targets will be the APCs, as always."

"Charging," Colton said, looking at his panel. "And I confirm we're in training mode. Low yield shots only."

"Three minutes to target area," Brian said, cutting hard to the right to avoid a particularly large hill. "I'm gonna come up from the west, right over the top of the team on the ground and then head back in over the hills beyond them."

"Sounds like a plan," John answered.

They flew on, heading into the larger hills now, forcing them to maneuver more violently. They bounced about, cut back and forth and the red hills flashed around them on both sides, nothing but blurs. The wings bent and flexed, dipping up and down with the turns. The engine thrummed, gulping fuel and oxygen as it was accelerated and decelerated. Brian kept them in the valleys as much as he could, denying the OPFOR infrared sensors even the barest glimpse of them. It was what Mosquito pilots were best at.

"Thirty seconds," Brian announced over the laser net when they got close. "Do your stuff, shadow six."

"Gavin, Horishito," Lon said when he heard this. "Strike is thirty seconds out. Do it!"

"Copy," both said in unison. From their own perches atop their hill, in the safety of the boulders, they aimed their charged AT-50 tubes down on the column below. Both had already been assigned their targets — two of the anti-air vehicles — and, with the assistance of the magnification setting on their goggles, they sighted in and put their crosshairs directly on the sides, where the engines were.

Less than a second apart they pushed the discharge buttons sending the laser energy out at the speed of light. They scored two direct hits and just like that the advancing column had lost half of its anti-air capabilities.

"Sir," came the excited voice of sergeant Bracken, the second-in-command of the anti-air division. "Two laser flashes from the hills. We've lost two of the SALs! The lieutenant was in one of them."

"What the fuck?" Chin said, panning madly to see what was happening. Other reports began to come in on the frequency now, all of them reporting laser flashes on the hillside. What the hell was this? Had the special forces teams changed the way they operated?

To give him credit, Chin reacted quickly to the situation. "All tank units," he said into the tactical channel. "Open up on the hillside where the flashes came from. Put some fire on those fuckers! Van Pelt!"

"Here, boss," Van Pelt said instantly.

"Move your people in! I want every soldier you have converging on that hill group!"

"Copy," he said.

"Displace," Jefferson yelled the moment the lasers were fired. "Get the fuck out of here before the return fire comes in."

Gavin and Horishito did not have to be told twice. They rolled backwards, down the hill, and then crawled to the right, dragging their laser tubes with them. Jefferson, holding his M-24, brought up the rear. Before they could even get ten feet away training rounds, both large and small caliber, began slamming into the rocks around them, hitting with thuds loud enough to be heard even through the thin air and the insulating biosuit helmet. Tiny bits of soft plastic shrapnel sprayed over them. Other rounds whizzed overhead, an experience that was more sensed than felt or seen.

As soon as they reached their new positions both men ejected the spent charging batteries from their lasers, letting them fall to the ground. The charges were plastic, fifteen centimeters square by four centimeters thick, and colored yellow, indicating they were for training only. They grabbed fresh ones from their packs and slammed them into the slots, pushing the charge button as soon as they were in place.

Fire belched from the main guns of the tanks as well as the smaller, commanders' weapons. Hundreds of rounds per second were launched towards the spot where the two laser flashes had come in the hope that the offenders would be hit by one of them. Meanwhile the APCs, on order from Van Pelt, had all turned and were rushing at top speed at the hills, the soldiers inside of them anxious to get in the fight and put a hurt on the special forces teams that had tormented them for so long. They knew that if they could get to those hills in time they could catch the teams before they retreated to the safety of their Hummingbird.

"Keep up the covering fire on that hill," Chin ordered. "Spread it out a little. Plaster that whole fucking area!"

Before the tanks could begin to spread their volume around a little bit however, the Mosquitoes joined the battle.

"Coming into firing range," Brian announced to both his gunner and his wingman. "Let's pop some APCs!"

He pulled up over the last hill, flying almost directly over the top of Lon and his men. With a quick bank to the right he was now paralleling the valley, streaking along the side of it at more than seven hundred kilometers per hour. In the back seat Colton was looking out the canopy, his goggles placing an X on wherever the laser cannon would hit if fired at the moment. As he turned his head, so did the X, as he looked up or down, so did it. On the belly of the aircraft, the twin cannon complex moved back and forth with his motions as well, swiveling on its turret. The targets came suddenly into view, an entire line of tiny APCs rolling across the ground below. He moved his head and put the X on one of them, simultaneously pushing the firing button in his hand. The laser flashed and instantly was hitting the target, telling its computer to shut it down and to declare the twelve men inside of it dead. Another turn of the head and the X was on another APC. Another push of the button and another vehicle and everyone in it were out of the battle. Behind them John and his gunner did the same.

And then it was time to get out. Brian cut sharply back to the right while the lasers went into automatic recharge mode for another run. Before the remaining anti-air vehicles of the column even realized that an attack was underway, the Mosquitoes were back in the safety of the hills and out of range. It was a picture perfect Mosquito run.

"Charged," yelled Horishito from his new firing position. A second later this declaration was echoed by Gavin.

"Good," said Jefferson, who was peering out at the column below from between the rocks. He watched the advancing APCs and the flashing of the tank guns. Rounds were now starting to hit around them as the tanks spread out their fire. "Now take out those other two SALs," he ordered. "Gavin, you get the left one. Horishito, you take the right. Let's clear the air for the Mosquitoes before those bastards overrun us."

Without bothering to acknowledge their orders they aimed their weapons downward, each of them seeking the distinctive box shape of the surface to air laser vehicles. Horishito found his first. He moved his weapon until the firing recticle rested on its side and then he gently squeezed the trigger. There was no kick from the laser as it discharged, nor was there any sound or any light visible in anything other than the infrared spectrum. But down on the target there was a bright flash as the laser energy expended itself against the steel side of the vehicle.

"That's a kill," Horishito announced, rolling out of his position and preparing to crawl to the next.

Gavin fired a few seconds later, just as the tanks switched their concentration on the new firing hole. His shot was also a kill, which he gleefully announced.

"Strike one," Lon announced over the secure net. "The SALs are all down. I repeat, the SALs are all down. We have APCs closing our position. We could use a little help over here."

"On the way back," Brian's voice replied. "We're coming in from the north and egressing to the west this time."

Chin watched helplessly as his tactical display showed all four of his anti-air assets a lethal red color. He no longer had the ability to fight off the Mosquitoes without dismounting some of his infantry troops. "Those bastards," he whispered to himself, shaking his head. He could not help however, feeling a sincere measure of respect for them.

He keyed up his radio link. "Van Pelt," he said, shouting over the sound of the guns on his command tank. "They've knocked out our SALs. Get some dismounts out with anti-air lasers as quick as you can. Those Mosquitoes will be coming back! They'll chew us up if we don't have something to swat them away with."

"Copy, boss," Van Pelt answered, his voice resigned. Chin understood. A perfect plan to catch the special forces team with their pants down had just gone to shit. By changing tactics they had forced him to take his soldiers out of their APCs and put them on the ground where they were most vulnerable.

The Mosquitoes shot back over the battlefield, rising up from behind the hills and making an almost leisurely run. Lon, watching them as they passed, saw their lasers flash in the infrared and just like that four more of the APCs were dead. They banked off to the left and disappeared, spinning around to make another run.

"We've got troops dismounting," Jefferson announced from his position with the laser team. "Four o'clock."

Lon looked down and saw that eight of the APCs had stopped. Their guns were now blazing to provide cover for the biosuited infantry troops taking up position behind them. Many of the troops had laser tubes in their hands. They began to pan through the sky, searching for the Mosquitoes. "Horishito, Gavin," he said, "keep blasting those APCs as quick as you can get your weapons charged. Displace between shots. Go for the lead ones first."

"Copy," Horishito and Gavin answered in unison.

"The rest of you," Lon said, "start putting fire on those troops."

Following his own orders, Lon aimed his M-24 through a gap in the rocks and put his recticle on a group covering behind one of the APCs. His weapon was set for three round bursts. He pushed the firing button smoothly and the rifle fired with short, high pitched pops, the casings ejecting to the right and behind him, falling with exaggerated slowness in the weak gravity and clattering on the rocks. Though the bullets were being launched from the weapon at extremely high velocity, the recoil was negligible thanks to the design of the rifle's action. The rounds could be seen in the infrared spectrum as rapid streaks of red moving downrange. He moved the recticle slightly and fired again. Dust began to rise from the area where the bullets were impacting and several of the troops were hit in the chest and head. From around him came the pops and crackles of other weapons, including the 5mm squad automatic weapon being fired by Matza. Lon was gratified to see that the newest member of his squad was operating the bipod mounted SAW very well. He was using short, controlled bursts and aiming at the greatest concentrations of troops.

"Strike one," Lon said into the laser link as he fired. "This is shadow six. Be advised, dismounts are out with hand held SALs. We're engaging them with small arms fire."

"Copy, shadow six," Haggarty's voice replied. "Keep 'em occupied if you can. We're coming up for another pass in about ten seconds."

"Van Pelt," Chin yelled over the continued thumping of the tank guns, "get some fire on those small arms positions. They're killing the anti-air crews!"

"Just gave the order, boss," Van Pelt replied. "Sections five through eight are shifting fire. I'll have the empty APCs keep plastering the AT-50 positions."

"How long until we can get some dismounts on those hills?"

"Another thirty seconds or so," Van Pelt told him. "The first units are coming into position now."

Even as he said this an infrared flash appeared from the hill and another APC died. Two seconds later, before fire could even be shifted to the new position, another flash took out another one.

"Goddamn they're good with those things," Chin said with frustrated admiration. He already knew that he had lost the battle. The simple ten man squad of special forces soldiers and their air cover had already "killed" fifteen of his vehicles and more than a hundred men. All he could hope to do now was catch them before they escaped; something that was doubtful at best.

"Mosquitoes! Six o'clock low!" someone screamed over the net.

Chin looked behind him and saw the distinctive thin shapes of the anti-tank craft screaming out of the hills and heading directly for them. He could see the cannon turrets on the bottom spinning back and forth, seeking new targets. The dismounted soldiers, most of whom were cowering behind the meager cover of their APCs, began panning their hand-held lasers back and forth, trying to get a fix on one of the aircraft. One of the men stood to free up his range of motion and was promptly hit in the head by automatic weapons fire, the rounds spraying misty vapor off of his helmet and instantly shutting him down. He kicked the dirt in frustration and then sat down to wait out the battle.

The cannons on the Mosquitoes flashed and four more of the APCs were dead in the dirt. Six of the anti-air crews managed to pull off a shot at them but none hit. They whizzed over the far end of the column and disappeared back into the hills.

Tank and APC rounds were now slamming into their positions with alarming frequency. Rocks, dust, and soft shrapnel were flying through the air in an actual cloud, pelting everyone's helmet with debris. Down in the valley the APC's were pulling up to the hillside, positioning themselves to dismount their ground troops, who would then start moving in force up the slope to engage them. Though the tactical display showing in his goggles told him that all of his men were still alive, he knew that would change if they stayed much longer. It was time to do what special forces did best.

"Displace and retreat," Lon ordered, firing one more burst down at the soldiers below. "Rally at the LZ. Let's get the fuck out of here."

In an orderly fashion the men pulled their weapons in and rolled down the back of the hill until they were safe from stray rounds. Matza safed the SAW and slung it over his back. Gavin and Horishito did the same to their AT-50s. Everyone else slung their M-24s on their shoulders and began moving as rapidly as possible down the hill.

"Strike one," Lon said to the Mosquito crews. "We're bugging out. No casualties taken. Thanks for the fun, guys."

"Anytime, Lonnie," Haggarty told him. "We owe you guys a bong hit tonight for slamming those SALs for us. This was the most fun I've had in a year."

"We'll take you up on that, Brian," Lon answered. "See you there."

It took them only a few minutes to reach the bottom of the hills. Once there they trotted as fast as they could to the north, putting a few more hills between themselves and the battle area. They puffed hard as they went, all of them showing discharge warnings on their air supply screen. This was understandable and expected in post-combat maneuvers. Finally they rounded the last hill and they were at the landing zone.

"Deploy in defensive positions," Lon told them.

They formed a protective circle in the boulder field, weapons trained outward.

"Jefferson," Lon said. "Are you still in contact with the hummer?"

"They're moving in now, sarge," Jefferson responded. "ETA less than a minute."

The ETA turned out to be accurate. From the north the bulky flying H that was the Hummingbird came over the hills at stall speed, it's wheels down, and then nosed up, it's thrusters showing an intense red on the infrared displays. It dropped out of the sky and thumped to the ground, raising a large cloud of red dust that obscured it completely.

"Get on board," Lon barked. "Move, move!"

They moved, rushing over the sandy soil and into the dust cloud, their infrared sensors guiding them to the open ramp. One by one they trotted up and took a seat, quickly strapping themselves in and securing their weapons. Each person called out their name and the word secured once they were ready for flight. When the tenth person was safe and accounted for Dave pushed the ramp button and sealed them up.

"Lifting off," said Rick, applying throttle even as he did so. The aircraft shuddered and pushed into the sky, moving forward as the thrusters were directed towards the rear. Within a minute they were out of the area.

"Digital perfect," Lon said, slumping into his seat as they pitched and dived through the hills. "Good mission, guys. Damn good mission."

"Van Pelt here, boss," came the voice over the radio link ten minutes later.

Chin was watching his tactical display as the small blue dots that represented the dismounted infantry moved over the map. More than a hundred soldiers had advanced without opposition to the top of the hills where the ambush had come from. "Go ahead," he said, already knowing what was going to be said.

"We found their firing positions," he responded. "They've bugged out. No casualties left behind."

"Damn," Chin muttered. He had been hoping for at least one "dead" special forces member. Had any of them been "killed" in the battle, they would have been left behind by their companions and forced to endure a ride back to the base with the OPFOR in one of the "dead" tanks or APCs. It was something that had happened a few times before but not often. "Copy that," he said into the radio link. "Are you in pursuit of them?"

"We are," he confirmed. "Advance elements are already at the bottom of the hill as you can see on you display. It's not looking real good for catching them though."

"Give it a shot anyway," Chin ordered. "We have to go through the motions, don't we?"

Jeff Creek lived on the 63^rd floor of the Bingham Tower Public Housing building in apartment 6312. Prior to his marriage to his longtime girlfriend Belinda six months before, he had lived on the 79^th floor of the building with his parents. Now that he was married however, he was entitled under the federal and planetary welfare laws to his own one bedroom apartment. In addition to this, every two weeks he and his wife were given 835 dollars for food and clothing, sixty dollars worth of alcoholic beverage credits, and eighty dollars worth of marijuana and tobacco credits. Of course these credits were only redeemable at Agricorp subsidiary intoxicant stores and could only be used to purchase the lowest grades of product available but you took what you could get.

Jeff, like most of the welfare class, rose late in the morning as a habit. Why shouldn't he? There was no job for him to get up and go to nor was there any point in going out to look for one. It was 10:58 when he pulled himself from the cheap mattress that was his bed. Wearing only a pair of tattered shorts Jeff walked to the bathroom of the apartment, which was connected to both the small living room/kitchen portion and the bedroom by connecting doors. He urinated into the rust stained toilet and then told the house computer system to turn on the shower. Recognizing his voice pattern and using his preset temperature preference, it turned on the valves, setting free a feeble spray of warm water that trickled down from the old, leaking pipe. He stripped off his shorts, tossing them into the corner of the room and stepped inside, taking five minutes to scrub himself clean.

"Belinda," he yelled out into the living room once he was done. "Where's the fuckin clean laundry?"

Belinda was watching a romance drama on the main Internet screen and sipping from her second Fruity of the day. "Ain't no fuckin money to do laundry," she yelled back, not even glancing in his direction. "We spent it all on food."

"What the hell am I supposed to wear?" he demanded, stepping out into the living room naked.

"Ask me if I give a fuck," she said. "Now shut your ass. I'm trying to watch this."

"Bitch," he muttered, trotting back into the bedroom. He dug around in the heaping laundry pile by the door until he found the least offensive shirt and shorts that he could. He pulled them on his body and then donned a pair of leather moccasins, the standard footwear on Mars. He ran a comb through his hair, arranging the strands into something approaching presentable, and then picked up his gun and his PC, stuffing both into the waistband of his shorts. He reached into a drawer on a cheap nightstand and pulled out his bag of marijuana and his pipe.

"Where you going?" Belinda asked as he moved through the living room towards the door.

"Out," he said simply.

"Well be sure to be back tonight sometime," she answered listlessly. "You have to fuck me tonight. I'm ovulating."

"Whatever," he said, opening the sliding door and stepping out into the hall.

The hallway of the 63^rd floor had once been carpeted in a fecal-brown industrial grade covering. Years of being urinated on, having cigarettes tapped and dumped upon it, and being painted with gang graffiti had resulted in its condemnation by the health department on one of their bi-decade inspections. Since then it had been removed, leaving only the bare concrete of the floor. Now the concrete itself had gang graffiti and puddles of urine or vomit and thousands of other unidentifiable but equally disgusting markings. The walls were also prime canvas for graffiti and overlapping gang epitaphs from various ages lined it ceiling to floor on both sides in every imaginable color. Doors to other apartments were spaced every five meters on both sides and several cross hallways led off into different parts of the building. A few people were wandering around the halls as he made his way to the elevators, most of them shuffling along and trying to look tough. He passed several current Capitalist members, getting respectful nods from them in deference to his gang tattoo with the large R over the top of it proclaiming his honorably retired status.

He lit a cigarette as he waited for the up elevator to arrive, puffing thoughtfully and wondering if he was even going to be able to produce an erection for that bitch Belinda tonight. It was something that was getting harder and harder to do even though he badly wanted the extra income and bigger apartment that parenthood guaranteed him. He couldn't stand her and he was finding that getting sexually excited for someone that you hated was not as easy as it had once been. He found himself thinking, almost against his will, that maybe his friend Matt was right. Maybe it was a mistake to marry the first person to come along just to achieve the status that went with it.

The elevator doors slid open revealing the dank interior. Two women were inside chatting to each other about the Laura Whiting speech the previous night, their tones animated and profane. Both had baskets of fresh laundry from the laundry room in the basement of the building. Neither acknowledged him in any way as he stepped inside.

"Ninety-three," he told the elevator computer and it acknowledged him by lighting up the numeral on its display board. The doors clanked shut and the floor indicator began to blur rapidly upward. No movement of any kind was felt inside the elevator itself. Even though they were shooting upwards at more than five floors per second the inertial dampening properties of the artificial gravity field kept them from feeling it.

The numbers came to an abrupt halt at 93 and the doors slid open once more. He stepped out into a hallway that was virtually identical to the one that he had entered from. He turned left and began walking through the halls, following a course he had walked perhaps ten thousand times in his life. Several twists and turns brought him in front of an apartment door marked 9345. A pinhole camera was set into the door at head level and a small button was set into the wall at chest level. He pushed the button, setting off a buzzer inside.

The door slid open a minute later and Andrew Mendez, Matt's father, was standing there. He was a portly man of thirty-seven years, his considerable stomach, bare due to his lack of a shirt, hanging over the waistband of his shorts. He sported a full mustache and beard and on his right arm was the exact same tattoo that Jeff and Matt sported: that of a retired Capitalist.

"What's up, Jeff?" the elder Mendez greeted with a smile.

"My dick, like always," Jeff replied.

They exchanged the age-old handshake of the Capitalists members: two squeezes, a clasp, and a banging of the fists hard enough to cause momentary pain. Both did it reflexively, without more than a passing thought.

"Is Matt around?" Jeff asked once the preliminaries were taken care of.

Andrew sighed. "He's always around," he said. "Can't get the little bastard to leave this place. Imagine, eighteen years old and still living at home. When are you gonna talk him into marrying that Sharon bitch so we can have this house to ourselves?"

"I've been trying, Mr. M," Jeff told him. "You know how Matt is though."

"Oh yeah," he said, stepping aside and letting him in. "He brews dust with his own recipe, that's for sure. He's in his bedroom, doing something on the terminal like always."

"Thanks, Mr. M," he said, heading that way.

Carla Mendez was in the kitchen. She was a thin woman with prematurely graying hair. That and the hopeless expression that was always on her face conspired to make her look nearly fifty years old instead of the thirty-six that she was. She was scrubbing dishes with an old washrag and setting them in the rinse tray. Though the apartment possessed an automatic dishwasher it was more than sixty years old and had not worked in generations. It was now utilized for storage space, which was always short in welfare apartments. "Hi, Jeff," she greeted as he passed. "Is your wife knocked up yet?"

"Not yet," he told her politely. "We have a fuck scheduled for tonight. Maybe I'll be able to plant something."

"Best of luck to you," she said, picking up another dish from the soapy water. "It's so nice to have the bigger apartment."

"I can't wait for it," he said sincerely.

He knocked on the door of Matt's room and a moment later it slid open, allowing him entry. Like all secondary bedrooms in public housing, it was very small, only four meters by three. A simple mattress on the floor was his bed and a simple plastic desk beside it held his main Internet terminal. A few bits of laundry and a few empty Fruity bottles littered the floor. Matt himself was sitting at the desk watching a news program on one of the big three channels.

"What's the word, brother?" Matt greeted, leaning back in his chair and extending his hand.

"Fuckin boredom, that's the word," Jeff said. They exchanged the Capitalist shake. "What the hell you watching now?"

"A smear program on Whiting," he said. "It didn't take them long to get one together. It's pretty damn funny actually. They're saying that she's a secret communist with ties to EastHem fascist groups. They even have people that claim to be acquaintances of hers that go to the meetings with her."

"They do work fast, don't they?" Jeff said, rolling his eyes a little. He grabbed a seat on Matt's mattress. He pulled out his bag of marijuana and his pipe. "Strange how none of this ever came up before the speech last night. Want to burn some?"

"Sure, fire up," Matt said. While Jeff started stuffing the pipe he changed back to the MarsGroup primary channel, which was showing a special feature on the inauguration speech the night before. Mindy Ming, one of the senior anchors, was analyzing it line-by-line, paying particular attention to the economic plans.

"Can't you put some fuckin porn on?" Jeff asked. "I'm sick of hearing about that Whiting bitch."

"This is a historical moment, bro," Matt told him. "Mark my words. You'll be glad I made you watch all this shit later on."

"Let's pretend I'm glad now and put on some porn," he replied, striking a light with his laser igniter. He applied it to the pipe and took a tremendous hit.

"You can get porn anytime," Jeff told him, taking the offered pipe and lighter. "How often do you get to see the corporations smeared on Internet? I'm telling you, bro, it's a beautiful thing that Whiting said last night, fuckin beautiful. That speech is going to immortalized no matter how this shit all turns out, it's going to be right up there with the Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King's I have a dream spiel."

Jeff blew out his hit, releasing a cloud of acrid smelling smoke into the unventilated room. He shook his head a little. "You are undoubtedly the strangest fucking person I've ever hung out with," he said. "Why do I come over here so much?"

"Because deep down, you know I'm right," Matt told him with a grin. He struck a light and inhaled his first hit of the day. He passed the pipe back over. "So," he squeaked, holding the smoke in his lungs, "did you compose that email to Vic Cargill?"

"No, I didn't compose any goddamn email to Vic Cargill," he said. "I told you I wasn't going to. I don't correspond with fucking politicians. They don't represent me or my family and they don't do shit for me."

"Change ain't gonna happen unless we get involved," Matt said. "The only way the legislature is gonna be stopped from impeaching her is if enough emails roll in to convince those sell-out bastards that we're serious about recalling them if they do. That asshole Cargill represents the Helvetia district..."

"He ain't ever lived in the hood," Jeff said. "Who made him represent us? I didn't vote for him."

"Neither did I," Matt said. "He lives on the edge of downtown, just south of the Garden, in a little sliver of the city that was added to the Helvetia voting district just so someone like him could squeak in instead of a true ghetto dweller. I looked up his record on the Internet last night. Do you know that he was elected by less than a thousand votes? And that's not the margin, that's the total. Only those pricks in the two housing buildings that are part of the Helvetia district were the ones to vote in the election is what I'm thinking. But that don't matter. Vermin or not, we're entitled to organize and sign recall petitions and we're entitled to vote in the recall election whether we voted for him in the first place or not. We need to let him know that we'll hold him accountable for his actions."

"It's a waste of fucking time," Jeff insisted.

"So what? Time is all we got here. What else you gonna do? Go to work? Go fuck your wife? Hell, just do it. You don't have to be polite or nothing. All you have do is tell him that you won't stand for him trying to impeach Whiting. If my parents could do it than you can do it. And it feels good to tell one of those pricks off. It feels real good."

"Really?" he asked, actually starting to warm to the idea a little. He could see how it would be gratifying to talk to a politician in his own words, even if it was a slim to none chance that the politician would ever watch it.

"Really," Matt assured him. "Just give it a shot. You can use my terminal."

Jeff took another large hit, holding it in while he mulled the suggestion over. Finally he blew it out. "What the hell?" he said with a shrug. "Set me up and I'll do it."

"That's the way to show some common sense," Mark said with a grin. He turned to the Internet terminal. "Computer, bring up email program and authorize user Jeff Creek to patch in."

The screen cleared from the MarsGroup program and brought up the email program in its place. "User Jeff Creek's voice print is on file. Proceed when ready."

Matt got up from his chair and waved his best friend to it. "It's all you, bro," he said.

Jeff handed the pipe and the lighter over and then took his place in Matt's chair, sitting down before the screen. "What do I say?" he asked.

"Just make it short and sweet," he told him. "Identify yourself to him and then explain that you will sign a petition to recall him and then vote for the same if he votes to open an impeachment investigation into Laura Whiting. Don't threaten him with violence or anything like that though. You'd be breaking the law if you did that."

"I wouldn't want to break the law now, would I?"

"Nope, not here," Matt said. "Just tell him the facts and send it off. His address is already in my database so don't worry about looking it up."

"All right," he said. "But give me the pipe back. It's part of my image."

Matt chuckled and handed it over.

Jeff looked at the screen. "Computer, compose mail from me to Vic Cargill."

"User Jeff Creek confirmed," the computer told him. "The address of Martian Planetary Legislature representative Victor Cargill of the Helvetia Heights district is on file. Record when ready."

Jeff thought for a moment and then said: "Record." The red light on the screen lit up and the small camera on the screen locked onto his face. Jeff smiled and took a large hit of his pipe, blowing the smoke directly onto the camera. "Check it, fuckface," he said, putting a tough expression on his face. "The name's Jeff Creek and I'm one of your constituents here in this shithole known as Helvetia Heights. I ain't never voted for nothing or no one before but you can bet your ass that if you start fucking around and trying to impeach Laura Whiting, I'll be the first motherfucker to sign a petition to kick your ass out of office. And then once that petition is all signed and legal and they ask us to vote to get rid of you, I'll be signing on to do that shit too. Don't fuck with Whiting, my man. Don't even think of fucking with her. That's all." He put the pipe to his mouth and took another hit. "End recording," he squeaked. The camera blinked back off. "How was that?" he asked Matt.

"Absolutely fucking beautiful," Matt said. "You got a way with words, you know that?"

"Shit," Jeff said. "I can't believe I just did that."

"Email composed," the computer told him. "Would you like to review it?"

"Naw, baby," he replied. "Just send the shit off before I change my mind."

"Email sent," the computer told him.

"Now how about we smoke out a little more and then go score some Fruity?" he asked.

"Sounds like a plan," Matt said.

The Troop Club was a chain of taverns that was owned by a subsidiary of Barkling Agricultural Industries, the third largest food producer on Mars now that the Agricorp-Interplanetary Food merger had been consummated. Only a minute portion of the intoxicant distribution holdings of BAI, Troop Club taverns were nevertheless a lucrative, low overhead venture. Located just outside of military establishments throughout WestHem's territory, they had managed to snare an incredible thirty-eight percent of the "off-duty military personnel market" and their very name had achieved the coveted status of "generic product identification" among their target group. What this meant is that when a soldier, whether stationed in Standard City or on Triad or in Alaska or anywhere else, wanted to go for a drink after duties, the phrase used was inevitably "let's go to the Troop Club" whether or not they were actually going to that particular tavern or whether or not there even was an official Troop Club branch operating outside of their base. The Troop Club had achieved the same status with this label as Coke had when carbonated cola was discussed or as Tylenol had when over-the-counter acetaminophen was discussed.

Indeed in Eden there was an entire three-block section lined with drinking and smoking establishments, all of them corporate owned of course, just outside of the main Martian Planetary Guard base and the main WestHem Marine Barracks. Though on Friday and Saturday nights all of these bars would be filled to capacity with both marines and MPG troops, it was The Troop Club that was the largest, with a capacity of more than six hundred, and the first to fill up. Soldiers only tended to spill over to the other establishments when The Troop Club became too crowded to accommodate any others.

The scene inside of the Eden Troop Club was fairly typical on this particular Saturday afternoon. The majority of the MPG troops had finished their training rotations for the day and many of them had gone over to drink reasonably cheap beers or harder alcohol and to smoke BAI Sensimilian buds. Cocktail waitresses, all of them dressed in tight shorts and chest-hugging tops, all of them physically attractive, circulated between the tables and the gaming areas where darts and billiards were being played. Twelve bartenders were on duty behind the three bar complexes that lined the walls mixing drinks and distributing pipes to the customers. Loud modern music, heavy with synthesized bass and drums, played from the surround sound system at a level that was just below the conversation hampering point. As always in this particular part of the solar system, the MPG troops and the marines segregated themselves from each other with the former occupying the largest main bar and the pool tables while the latter stuck to the dart boards and the smaller secondary bars.

Lon Fargo and Brian Haggarty, the two men primarily responsible for giving Major Michael Chin the worst pounding of the day were sitting at one of the tables near the bar drinking icy cold Martian Storm beers supplied by the very man they had pounded. Chin was sitting with them, drinking a Martian Storm of his own and smoking from a custom-made marijuana pipe that he carried with him in a small felt lined case.

"This shit's not bad," he commented, exhaling a fairly large hit of the house Sensimilian. "It's too bad you can't get that nice green that they serve in O'Riley's here though. In my opinion that's the finest bud in the solar system."

"But it's grown by Agricorp," Lon said, stuffing a hit into a bar pipe. "I should know. I've serviced enough humidifiers in the greenhouse since the merger. They got plants six meters high and spaced every meter that are just packed with buds. The smell in the place is enough to get you loaded all by itself."

"You ever try to stuff a few in your pocket?" asked Brian who, though he was a sworn police officer, had no moral problem with the idea of stealing something from Agricorp.

"Are you kidding?" Lon said. "The security in the bud greenhouses is as tight as at the damn fusion plants. Tighter even. They scan you when you go into the place and again when you go out. And one of the fuckin security guards follows you around while you're in there and watches everything you do."

"Wouldn't want any of those buds to slip away without someone paying for them, would we?" asked Chin sarcastically. "That might cut Agricorp's profits down a couple thousand from the trillions that it is."

"Yes," said Brian, sipping from his bottle. "It's a fine line, isn't it? The whole economy could collapse if you let something like that happen."

"That's what's so funny about the whole thing," Lon told them. "All that security equipment and personnel has to cost more every year than they would lose from theft by not having it. The picking is done automatically by stripping machines. Hell, the only ones allowed in the greenhouses are the horticulture teams and the maintenance guys. And the horticulture guys are smart enough to grow their own if they want some."

"Corporate mentality," Chin said. "Protect profits at all costs. We get it over at Alexander too. Even if it means spending a billion to prevent the potential loss of a million, they'll do it. They just can't stand the idea that someone might be getting high somewhere for free."

"Kind of like we are right now?" Lon said, grinning at the man he had defeated. "Those of us that kicked the shit out of a mechanized battalion today?" This caused a burst of laughter from the special forces troops at all of the surrounding tables.

"Fuck you," Chin said sourly, taking a slug from his beer. "You bastards got lucky. It'll never happen again."

"I read your mind out there, Chin," Lon told him, begging to differ. "When I saw your APCs all lined up nice and neat without tanks covering their flanks I knew you were up to something. And it wasn't a bad plan either. You almost caught us up there."

"Yeah," Chin said, "and I almost didn't lose two hundred of my men to those portable anti-tank lasers you have. You little sneaking fucks are unnatural, you know that?"

"It's what we do best," Lon agreed.

As Chin, Lon, and Brian drank at one table, their men drank with their counterparts at others. Captains and lieutenants of the armored cav shared spaces with the corporals and the privates that had massacred them out in the wastelands that day. There was a mutual respect between them that was independent of their respective ranks within the MPG. Though WestHem troops tended to segregate themselves along clear rank lines in their off hours, there was no such custom among the volunteers of the planetary guard. The officers of the cav did not feel superior to the privates of the special forces. All were merely weekend warriors with other, more menial jobs on the outside.

Of course a prevalent topic of conversation among the various groups, other than the exercises that had just taken place, was the Laura Whiting speech and the aftermath of it. At nearly every table, as men and women sipped beers and puffed from pipes, the talk would circle around and always end up again with the discussion of the upcoming legislature assembly on Monday morning. The vast majority of the troops agreed with the principal of what Whiting was doing but felt that she had not the slightest chance of succeeding in her venture. Despite this cynicism however, well over three-quarters of those Martians present admitted to having sent email to their representative threatening a recall vote. Of the quarter that had not, nearly every last one took the stance that it was only because they felt it was a waste of time. It wasn't that they liked their representatives or they thought they were representing them honestly and fairly. No one actually expressed that view. They just couldn't conceive of change happening in their lifetime, or in their children's lifetime. The solar system was what the solar system was.

It was here that a queer form of peer pressure took over. As more alcohol and more THC flowed through more bloodstreams, those that had sent email began to chide those who hadn't. They used the same arguments that were being used planet wide by other such groups, although with perhaps a bit more profanity. And, as it was doing all over the planet, the peer pressure began to have an effect. Personal computers were unclipped from waistbands and communications software was accessed. Drunken MPG member after drunken MPG member gave ranting speeches to their respective representatives in the legislature, most slurring their words quite badly, a few forgetting what they were talking about and having to revise, but everyone gleefully having their say. Major Chin himself, who had neglected to send an email of his own because of fears of repercussion from his employer (not an unreasonable fear, he was about as high on the corporate ladder at Alexander Industries as a person of Martian birth could climb), took one last pipe hit and then stood up on the table to compose his message. This started a trend among the other members and soon every table had someone standing on it and reciting a rambling, often obscene message to their local politician.

All of this revelry soon attracted attention from the other side of the establishment, where the WestHem regular marines were drinking and smoking. In WestHem culture the Marine Corps were considered an elite group of fighting men, the most respected and revered in the armed services profession. In a society with nearly thirty percent unemployment it was deemed a great honor to be allowed to join the marines and usually such appointments were given to those with family connections or those who scored extremely high on the ASVAB testing and the physical agility exam — a test that was grueling indeed. Though the majority of the marines in the bar were either enlisted rank or NCOs, they were all well built specimens of masculinity and all had been trained in various techniques of hand-to-hand combat. They also tended to be arrogant, almost bullying types that had little respect or regard for their Martian counterparts.

A particularly large squad sergeant was the first to foment the confrontation between the two groups. He had been stationed on Mars, which he considered a shithole, for nearly two years now and he hated everything and everyone that had been born on the miserable rock that they called a planet. And now, just as the football game piped to the bar's Internet screen was starting to really take shape, the ranting and yells coming from the tables on the other side of the room was drowning out all of the sound. He stood up and said a few words to the group of sergeants and corporals around him. They stood up and walked with him to the nearest table where a young MPG private of the armored cav — a man who had been "killed" early in the day when his APC had been blasted by a Mosquito — was just finishing up his email to his representative. Without saying a word the marine sergeant walked up to the table and kicked it over, sending the young private crashing to the ground and causing his PC to smash to pieces.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, asshole?" demanded a drunken MPG lieutenant who had been sitting at the table. He stood and stepped up to the hulking marine where the top of his head came to approximately shoulder level.

"I'm quieting you fucking greenies down," said the sergeant. "You're getting on my goddamn nerves."

"You don't like it?" the MPG lieutenant told him. "Go drink somewhere else then."

The marine sergeant's eyes burned into him. "Why don't you and the rest of these little pretend soldiers go somewhere else," he countered. "This is a bar for real fighting men, not a bunch of greenie want-to-be boy scouts whose mommies let them out once a week to jerk off on their tanks."

This junior high school level insult had little effect on the Martians in the room. They were used to such comments from the Earthlings that lived on their planet. It did seem to cause quite a bit of hilarity among the marines however. They laughed as if this was the wittiest thing they had ever heard.

"Look," said the MPG lieutenant, "why don't you just stay over on your half of the bar and we'll stay on ours. We don't bitch at you when you start cheering and throwing shit at the terminals because of some sports game, so why should you..."

The marine sergeant put his hand on his chest and pushed him backwards, sending him crashing into the young private who had been picking up the pieces of his shattered computer. The marines behind and around all broke up into another round of derisive laughter at this spectacle. Immediately the men that served in the insulted lieutenant's platoon jumped to their feet, their hands balled into fists, ready to do battle. They moved in on their targets. The moment the other marines saw this, they began to move in as well. Though the numbers were pretty much even on each side, the marines were much bigger than the MPG members. There was little doubt what the outcome of a battle would be.

"Stand down!" a Martian accented voice shouted from behind the MPG members. It was voice with unmistakable command in it. It belonged to Major Chin. The MPG members, hearing it, all stopped in their tracks, whether they were members of Chin's chain of command or not.

"What's a matter with the little pussy greenies?" asked the marine sergeant in a baby voice as he saw them halt. "Don't wanna fight the real men? Afraid you might hurt your little hands?"

"Remember our prime directive, people," Chin said. "It applies here as much as it does on the battlefield."

It was exactly the right thing to say. The prime directive of the MPG, penned by General Jackson himself, was: Pick your fights carefully, try not to get hurt, and never fight face to face if you could avoid it. The MPG were sneaking, sniping cowards and proud of it. The MPG members all turned their cheeks and walked back to their seats. The lieutenant and the private picked themselves off the floor and dusted themselves off. They swallowed their pride and began righting their table. Though the marines tried to get another rise out of their quarry, they found themselves ignored. Soon they went back to the bar and started watching the game again, confident that they had bested their enemy.

Vic Cargill had been elected as the representative of district 38 for the past three terms. Though he was responsible for a district of one million Martian citizens, just like every other representative, he had the dubious honor of having the lowest voter participation on the planet three terms running. This was because the vast majority of his district encompassed the huge Helvetia Heights section of Eden, a horrid, squalid ghetto that he had never actually set foot in. Had his district encompassed only Helvetia Heights it was entirely possible that he, or anyone else for the matter, would not have received even a single vote to put him into office. The ghetto inhabitants simply did not vote. But the people that had drawn the district boundaries had been smart enough to extend district 38 just a little bit into the adjoining downtown neighborhood, allowing it to include several upper-end and lower-upper-end housing complexes. It was in these complexes that Cargill himself lived and it was from these complexes that all of his votes came — less than a thousand of them in the last election.

Cargill was basically a minor league player in the great political game that was Martian politics. He was a second generation Martian and a first generation politician, encouraged to go into the business by his father, who was an upper management partner in a semi-prestigious law firm. Vic's main sponsor in his political career was Equatorial Real Estate Holdings, a multi-billion dollar corporation that had made its fortune by developing, purchasing, and constructing housing units in the Eden and Libby areas. In Eden ERE boasted a 22 percent share of the upper and middle income housing market and a whopping 45 percent share of the government compensated housing market (in other words: the welfare apartments). Vic's job, as one of their mules, was to push through and vote on laws that helped increase the amount that the Martian government would pay to house "disadvantaged" people in ERE apartments. It was a job that he had done fairly well since his first term. He and the other politicians owned by ERE had already managed to increase government rent responsibilities by two percent in the last session alone. This success had led to increased campaign contributions and increased "gifts" from his grateful sponsor.

Cargill had naturally been as shocked and horrified as any other politician when he had heard Laura Whiting's speech the night before. This had not been because he liked or respected Whiting. On the contrary, Whiting was in the opposing political party and she was also sponsored by Agricorp, a corporation whose interests were in opposition to ERE's. After all, if the government paid more money for welfare housing for the vermin, that meant there was less money available for the vermin to spend on Agricorp products. Whiting and her other Agricorp sponsored chums had killed several of his bills in committee in the past, actions that always angered the ERE lobbyists that controlled his life. No, the reason Cargill had been so horrified at the events of the previous night had not been personal, they had been professional. The thought that any politician would get up before a live audience and tell them what the political game was really like, the fact that she would denounce all politicians as corrupt and living only for their sponsors, that was what was offensive. The public simply could not be told things like that. True, most Martians knew these things anyway, but she had legitimized these thoughts, had confirmed them. Even if ERE lobbyists from all levels on the ladder had not been emailing and conferencing him non-stop since the speech had ended, he still would have been a prime mover to get that bitch out of office.

He was in his own office now; a small rented space on the 182^nd floor of a low-rent downtown office building. He had a window, something that only about a third of the offices in this building featured, but he may as well not have. All it looked out upon was the office building across the street and the ones on either side. Only by standing directly against the window and looking directly upward could he see the red Martian sky. Only by looking directly down could he see the street level. His office was a place that he had rarely been in on a weekend before but the current crisis had forced him, as well as most of the other representatives, in on their traditional day of rest.

At the moment he was sitting behind his desk, staring at his Internet terminal, kissing the ass of yet another high-level ERE lobbyist, most of whom had also been called in on days off. "I understand," he was telling the suited image before him. "Believe me, I don't think any of the reps, no matter what party they're in, no matter what corporation funded their campaign, will have any problem voting for an investigation into Whiting. She's crossed way over the line. She's no longer one of us."

"That's what we thought as well," the lobbyist told him testily. "But we've already received some disturbing rebuffs from the other reps we do business with. Two of them are starting to hint that public pressure may force them to reconsider their previous stance."

"Public pressure?" Cargill scoffed, feeling nothing but contempt. "What the hell does that mean? There ain't no such thing, especially not in my district, where nine out of ten of the vermin have never earned a dollar in their lives. I'd be surprised if those ignorant animals are smart enough to turn on their Internet terminals, let alone use them to vote with. Hell, I would venture to say that most of them don't even know who Laura Whiting is or what she did last night."

"Those are our feelings as well," the lobbyist said, his Earthling accent thick and crisp. "But we just wanted to make sure that everyone that we've... helped over the years does the right thing when the time comes."

"Oh you can bet your ass that I'll do the right thing," Cargill said. "Whiting is as good as gone."

"We're glad to hear you say that," he said with a smile.

They exchanged a few more pleasantries with each other and then signed off. Once the terminal was blank Cargill sighed and opened his desk drawer, taking out a bottle of Vodka. He poured himself a healthy shot and put it in his stomach. He then lit up a cigarette and took a long, satisfying puff.

His terminal flared to life again a moment later, his secretary's face staring out if it. "Sir," she said to him, "do you have a minute?"

"Why?" he asked wearily. "Is another one of those damn lobbyists calling? How many more goddamned times do I have to reassure them?"

"It's not a lobbyist," she told him. "It's Linda. She'd like to have a word with you."

Linda Clark was his chief of staff. She was also his mistress of more than six years. "Send her in," he said, smiling at the thought of a little sexual tryst in his office.

But Linda was not interested in sexual activity at the moment. Her young, pretty face was all business as she came in through the sliding door. "Vic," she told him, "we have a problem."

"Who the hell doesn't have a problem today?" he asked rhetorically.

"It's about your constituents," she said, sitting in the chair before the desk without waiting for an invitation.

He rolled his eyes upward. "You mean the vermin? What possible problem could there be with them? As long as their Internet programs run and their intoxicant credits keep rolling, they stay in their little shithole apartments."

"They've been sending emails to you," she told him. "A lot of emails. All of them threatening recall proceedings if you vote to open an investigation into Whiting."

He was having trouble believing her. "A lot of emails from the vermin? Impossible. How many are we talking about? A few hundred? That can't possibly..."

"Try two hundred and ninety-six thousand," she interrupted. "And that's as of the last five minutes or so. They're still pouring in at a rate of more than a three hundred per minute."

"Two hundred and ninety six thousand?" he asked incredulously, sure that he had heard her wrong.

He hadn't. "That's correct," she assured him. "One hundred and sixty-three thousand came in last night, within the two hour time period following Whiting's speech. Now it seems that a second wave of them is underway. The numbers started to pick up about 10:30 and have been steadily climbing since. Of course we haven't been able to open them all — there's simply too many for that — but we've had the computer scan them all for basic content and every last one of them is a threat for recall if you vote for Whiting's investigation."

Cargill shook his head a little. "Incredible," he whispered, unable to think of anything else.

"Let me show you a typical one," she said, "Just so you know what we're dealing with here." She looked at the ceiling, where the computer voice recognition microphone was installed. "Computer, load and play one of the emails received in the last hour. Select randomly."

"Loading," the computer's voice said.

A moment later the screen cleared and showed a scruffy, thug-like young man in his late teens. The text on the bottom identified the sender as: Jeffrey Creek, Age 19. Creek was taking a puff on a cheap marijuana pipe that had been fashioned from discarded food containers. He held the smoke for a moment and then blew it directly onto the camera lens, momentarily blurring the image. When it cleared, he began to talk. "Check it, fuckface. The name's Jeff Creek and I'm one of your constituents here in this shithole known as Helvetia Heights. I ain't never voted for nothing or no one before but you can bet your ass that if you start fucking around and trying to impeach Laura Whiting, I'll be the first motherfucker to sign a petition to kick your ass out of office. And then once that petition is all signed and legal and they ask us to vote to get rid of you, I'll be signing on to do that shit too. Don't fuck with Whiting, my man. Don't even think of fucking with her. That's all." The image blinked off and the computer informed them that the recording was at an end.

"How uncouth," Vic said, disgusted. "Do they really expect me to take that kind of thing seriously?"

"That's a pretty typical recording," Linda said. "I've looked at several hundred of them myself and his sentiments are basically what they're saying."

"Who really cares what those ignorant vermin are saying?" Vic asked. "So they figured out how to log onto the email program and send mail. What of it? You don't really think they'd actually be able to mount a recall campaign against me, do you?"

"I didn't think so at first," she said. "But now... now that two hundred and ninety-six thousand of them have sent email saying the same thing, I'm not so sure."

"What?"

"More than a quarter of a million and counting," she said. "All of them angry, embittered shouts by the people you represent. Whiting told them that they have a constitutional right to vote you out of office and they've apparently locked onto that thought and embraced it. Surely among quarter of a million there are a few with the drive and the intelligence to organize petition drives and to rouse up others to go collect signatures."

"I hardly think so," he said. "That requires work, something that the vermin avoid like the plague."

She shook her head. "Don't underestimate them, Vic," she said. "They may be unemployed but they are not ignorant. They're frustrated with the system and they blame the politicians and the corporations for keeping them where they are."

"That's ridiculous," he said, automatically spouting the company line.

"Ridiculous or not," she said. "It's what they believe. They will be watching the assembly on Monday morning. They'll be watching and when the Lieutenant Governor asks the legislature to open hearings into Laura Whiting, they will take note of how you vote. It is all public record under the constitution. And if you vote to impeach her, I have no doubt that by the time the day is over there will be hundreds if not thousands of vermin out in the Heights getting fingerprints on petition screens. Within a matter of days your recall will be on the ballet and they will vote you out. They can have you back in the private sector in less than a month."

Vic's mouth was wide as he listened to her. What she was saying was so bizarre, so unheard of. "How can I tell my sponsor that I'm not going to vote the way they want? How can I tell them that? If I don't do what they tell me to, they'll withdraw their funding for my campaigns and they'll find someone else to give it to."

She shrugged. "Which action will kill you first?" she asked. "You can at least rest assured that you're not going through this alone. From what I hear all of the other reps are getting email in even bigger numbers."

Barbara Garcia was a two term representative from the Shiloh Park section of Eden. Her constituents were a mixture of working class Martians that lived in the northern part of the district and welfare class that lived in the southern. She had grown up the daughter of an agricultural worker and she was — thanks to her intelligence and frightfully high placement scores — the first in eight generations to attend college. With her degree in political theory from the University of Mars at Eden, she had gone on to law school and the Eden city council, the usual stepping-stone for a career in Martian politics. From there her popularity with her main sponsor — Agricorp — had made her a shoe-in for the Planetary Legislature.

Barbara had always played the game well during her career, knowing that it was the only game in town and that in order to succeed she would have to follow the established rules. She had taken campaign contributions from Agricorp and others ever since her first run at the city council. She had gone on the all expenses paid space cruises to Saturn and Neptune and Mercury, riding in luxury cabins and being pampered to her heart's delight. She had even taken unreported contributions when they were offered, contributions that had swollen her net worth to well over two million dollars. But despite these "perks of the job", as they were called when they were discussed at all, she had always felt more than a little disgusted with herself. She knew that politics was not supposed to be this way, that she was part of a perversion that had gone on for centuries now. There had been a time when she had tried to tell herself that she was only staying in the game for the good of the people she represented but those naïve thoughts had long since died within her.

Except now Laura Whiting had reawakened them. What Whiting had done the night before had been incredible, outrageous, the most shocking thing imaginable and Barbara could not help but feel a strong surge of respect for the woman. She was trying to change the game! After all of these years, after all of the lies and back dealing and jerking off of the public, someone was actually trying to make a difference! Amazing.

Granted, Barbara had initially had every intention of doing exactly what her sponsors wished of her and voting for an impeachment investigation of the new governor. After all, though she respected Whiting for her stand, political survival was still the most important thing in her life. She was qualified to do nothing else in this life but serve in the legislature. As much as she found herself admiring Whiting and her views, she knew that Whiting was as good as gone and the game would then go on as it always had and as it always would. She had planned to have a drink in Whiting's honor the next time she tipped a glass but also to vote as was required and to even deride the governor in the media if reporters asked her questions.

And then the emails had started to roll in. An incredible three hundred thousand of them were sent to her staff in the first three hours following Whiting's speech. Another one hundred and eighty thousand had come in since. Nearly half of her constituents, including a good portion of the welfare class, had taken the time to compose messages to her and according to the computer scans all of the messages, every last one said the same thing: vote to open an investigation into Whiting and you're gone. Had someone told her two days before that something like this would happen, she would have thought them insane. Martians never got involved in politics, especially not the welfare class. They rarely voted, they rarely protested anything in an organized fashion, and they never tried to recall their representatives. But now they were threatening just that, and in no uncertain terms either. Barbara and her chief of staff were both of the opinion that these were not idle threats either. Whiting had really riled the people up.

"So what are you going to do?" Steve Ying, the chief of staff in question, asked her now as they sat in her office.

Barbara's office was somewhat nicer than Vic Cargill's, mostly because of the higher campaign contribution rate that she drew. She actually had something of a view from her window. She was at the edge of the developed area and could see the spaceport off to the left about twenty kilometers distant. As she considered her subordinate's question she watched an orbital craft, probably filled with agricultural products, lift into the sky, its hydrogen powered engine spewing white-hot flame as it ascended. "I was just sworn in for my second term yesterday," she said thoughtfully after the craft had disappeared beyond the horizon.

"Yes," Steve said. "That's one possible way to look at it. You have another eighteen months before you have to start worrying about re-election. No matter how much you piss off Agricorp and your other sponsors, you can't be drummed out until the end of your term, at least not unless they take an active role in getting rid of you."

Barbara knew well what that meant. An active role was a drastic action designed to get rid of a troublesome politician in a hurry. It was in fact what they were trying to do to Whiting. It meant that the corporations pulled out all of the stops and did everything in their power to discredit and smear the person and force public outrage upon them. "I don't think that they would go that far for little old me," she said. "If it was just me and me alone who voted no on the investigation, perhaps they would, but it isn't going to be just me, is it?"

He shook his head. "From what I hear, every representative is getting about the same volume of email from their constituents. Even Vic Cargill is being overwhelmed and you know what his district is like."

"Yes," she said, "Helvetia Heights. A most pleasant area of town. It's remarkable that the people in his district have embraced this cause as well. Truly remarkable."

Steve nodded. "My thoughts exactly," he said. "It goes to show just how deep this thing has become. We're truly in uncharted territory here."

"And the water is infested with sharks," she agreed. "What we do now is going to have some very long lasting implications."

"So it sounds like you're going to vote no on the investigation?" he asked her.

"I don't really see another option. I should be safe enough from any drastic repercussions. Agricorp will be mightily pissed off at me and it's possible they may be forced to withdraw their support for me in the next election, but..."

"But?"

"But if Laura Whiting succeeds in her plan, there will be no next election."

Steve looked at her as if she were mad. "You think there's a chance she'll gain independence for us?" he asked her.

"She has the support of the people," Barbara said. "And she has a gift for riling them up. As long as she is given Internet time to speak her views — and MarsGroup will undoubtedly grant her that — there's virtually no limit to what she can do."

"The corporations and the WestHem government will never allow it," Steve said. "The best that Whiting can hope for is to survive the impeachment attempt. She'll probably be able to do that but she'll still be gone within the month. They'll find some way to get rid of her, legal or not. I wouldn't even put arranging an assassination past them."

"Nor would I," Barbara told him. "But did you ever think for a minute that Whiting is smart enough to have taken that into consideration? She's been playing the political game perfectly for years, all the time planning to do what she did last night. Her goal is to make us independent. She has to know that those in power will do almost anything to get rid of her. And knowing that, she has to have taken precautions against it, just as she took precautions against impeachment. She's not naïve, Steve. I believe that she knows exactly what she is doing and I believe that she may even be ultimately successful."

Steve was having a hard time with this concept although her arguments did sound logical. "So what are you saying, Barb?" he asked.

"I'm saying that I'm going to support her."

"Support her?" he asked, wide-eyed. "Surely you don't mean what I think you mean."

"I do," she confirmed. "Start arranging a press conference for me tonight. I'm going to go live and denounce my sponsorship and announce my support for the new governor and for Martian independence."

Steve was appalled. "Barbara, that's madness," he told her. "Even if you think that Whiting has a small chance of succeeding, you must realize that in all likelihood she will not. If you just vote no on the impeachment because of public pressure, you might be able to survive politically. Agricorp will probably be able to forgive you for that since everyone else will be forced to do it as well. But if you actually announce that you support Whiting, you're dead, maybe even literally!"

Barbara shook her head at him sadly. "You don't understand, do you?" she asked him.

"Understand what?"

"Laura Whiting is right for what she's doing. This has gone beyond a political issue. When you have the vermin contacting politicians and threatening recall of them in the numbers that we've seen, you have an issue that they feel rather strongly about. The people want to be free of WestHem and it is our job as their elected representatives to do everything in our power to bring that about. I've done what my sponsors have wanted me to do my entire career, ever since I was voting for beverage contracts on the school board. I've never been able to do what the people who elected me wanted done. My soul aches because of that and it always has. I'm a Martian and its time to start balancing the scales a little bit. I'll probably go down in flames for this stand, but at least I'll go down a hero to the Martian people and not a corrupt politician."

"My God," Steve said frightfully. "You've gone ideological."

She laughed a little. "That I have. You're a very good chief of staff, Steve, but if you do not wish to be a part of what I'm going to be doing, I'll accept you resignation. You shouldn't have much trouble getting hired with someone else."

He thought about that for the briefest of moments. "I guess I'll stick with you," he told her fatalistically. "What the hell? I'm a Martian too, ain't I?"

"I guess you are," she said happily. "Now how about scheduling that press conference for me."

"I'll get right on it."

"And let my secretary know that I'm no longer taking calls from lobbyists."

"Right."

At 325 stories in height — nearly 1800 meters from base to roof — the Agricorp building was the tallest in the solar system. It stood sentinel over the downtown Eden area, towering more than 300 meters higher than any of its neighbors. More than three hundred thousand people worked in the building, most of them for the entity that had lent its name to the structure. Lobbyists, accountants, security consultants, management types, auditors, and hundreds of other job classifications all poured into the building each and every day and toiled there for eight to twelve hours or more — all of them working to keep the great empire's Martian operations running and profitable.

William Smith, as the CEO of Martian operations, naturally had his office on the very top of the building. The view was commanding. Looking southward from his huge picture window, he could see the thousands of other high rises that made up Eden and the stark border on the edge of the city where the wastelands began. The Sierra Madres Mountains could easily be seen as well, the peaks poking up over the horizon. It was a view that other men might have killed for in a city where all that could usually be seen out one's window was the bulk of another building. It was a view that Smith had long since ceased to even notice.

As the sun sank behind the horizon to the west, Smith was sitting at his large desk, his bottom planted in a genuine leather chair that had cost more than beginning apple pickers earned in a month. There were two Internet terminals on the desk before him and he was using one to hold a conference call while the other was tuned to a big three station.

"What in the hell is going on around here?" he demanded of his caller. "Has everyone gone completely insane?"

"Sir," said Corban Hayes, the Martian director of the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau office, "I realize that maybe things are starting to spiral a little out of control here, but..."

"A little out of control?" Smith shouted, leaning closer to the screen. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but did I or did I not just watch three of the planetary legislature members — politicians that have been bought and paid for and are supposed to be representing our goddamn interests here — go on live Internet and say that they support Laura Whiting? That they support independence for Mars? Maybe you saw something different than I did, Hayes, but it sure as hell looked a lot like that to me."

"That is true, sir," Hayes told him complacently. "Three of them did do that. And I will also agree that a good portion of the rest of them will be forced to vote against opening an impeachment investigation into Whiting."

"So that greenie bitch is going to remain in office!" he yelled. "She is going to remain the governor of this planet and she has somehow managed to pervert three of our reps over to her twisted way of thinking. This is not a little out of control, Hayes, this is a goddamn nightmare."

"I'll admit that I was somewhat surprised by the response of the greenies to her speech," he said. "Who would have thought that greenies would respond in the sheer numbers that they did to her call for recall email? It's inconceivable."

"It's inconceivable but it has happened," Smith said. "That woman has to go and go quickly before she does any more damage here."

"You have the big three working on a discreditation campaign," Hayes reminded. "I saw a few of the programs that they managed to get out today. Very impressive. I particularly liked the one that linked her with EastHem interests."

"Yes," Smith said. "That was very good, very fast work on the part of the big three. The problem is that hardly any Martians watched it. I talked to Lancaster over at InfoServe a few minutes before I called you. He says that according to the media tracking computers most of the greenies are watching MarsGroup channels. MarsGroup! That sleazy, rabble-rousing excuse for a legitimate corporation. And all MarsGroup has been publishing or airing has been favorable profiles and bios on Whiting. They're canonizing the bitch and those greenies are eating it up!"

Hayes shook his head a little, as if bewildered. "That's a pattern we've noted in the past with the greenies," he said. "They put very little stock in the legitimate news programs for some reason. They prefer the bland, left-wing drivel that they get on MarsGroup, God knows why."

"Is there any way to shut MarsGroup down?" he asked. "Some federal law against inciting riots or something like that?"

"We could probably swing a federal order of some sort on that basis," Hayes told him. "But I'm afraid that that would be a bad idea. We would technically be violating our own constitution by doing that and no matter what reason we offered the greenies for doing it, they would perceive that it was to silence the Whiting viewpoint. I don't even want to imagine what chaos would result from that."

"Those ignorant greenies?" Smith said with contempt. "What trouble could they be? I say go ahead and do it."

"Those ignorant greenies have just sent in more than forty million emails to their elected representatives," Hayes reminded him. "Like it or not, they've achieved organization on this matter and they have very strong feelings about it. I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think that shutting MarsGroup down via federal order will serve WestHem interests very well. I'll run it by my superiors in Denver of course, but I'm going to recommend that it not be done. It's too dangerous."

"Then how are we going to keep them from getting riled up any further?"

"The main goal, the only goal remains to get rid of Whiting as quickly as possible. Without her leading them the greenies will quickly go back to the way they always have been — troublesome, ignorant, but controllable."

"Which brings us back to the question of how we do it," he said. "The discreditation campaign is being ignored and the impeachment is probably going to fail. What does that leave us? Can you arrange an accident for her? Or a lunatic assassin?"

"That's a possibility," he said without hesitation. "And it's one that I'll have my most trusted people look into. A more likely possibility is one that we've already discussed: a corruption indictment. Like you said before, Whiting admitted to taking unreported campaign contributions throughout her career. Granted, all politicians engage in this habit, but that does not present much of a problem. We're only talking about Whiting here. We can leave the other politicians completely out of the argument."

"Didn't you say that you would have to indict the corporate people for offering these contributions? I seem to recall you speaking out against this course of action yesterday."

"I did then," Hayes said. "But I didn't realize that more conventional methods of removal would be neutralized. I'm now starting to think we might have to resort to that."

"And what about the return indictments?" Smith wanted to know. "I can't have you discrediting Agricorp or one of our sister corporations on charges of bribery. It's bad for public relations. Do you have a way around that?"

"You'll need a scapegoat that you can blame it on," Hayes told him. "Pick some upper-level management type that you can live without and make it look like he and he alone got a little overzealous in trying to recruit Whiting. Rewrite your financial records so that it looks like he embezzled the money out of your assets to transfer them to Whiting. His motive could be movement up the corporate ladder. He was after your job, sir, and was willing to go to any lengths, break any rules to get it. After all, your position is worth much more in terms of money and prestige than anything he could have embezzled, right?"

Smith nodded his head thoughtfully. "Not bad," he said. "And I think I have just the person in mind."

"Great," Hayes said. "Of course you'll also have to burn a lobbyist or two and a few middle management types in order to make this work, but I'm sure you'll have no problem thinning a few out."

"No, no problem at all," he said without hesitation or emotion.

"Okay then," Hayes said with a smile. "Assuming of course that the impeachment attempt flops, I'll get my guys working on the bribery investigation first thing tomorrow. It shouldn't take too much to get a subpoena for Whiting's bank account and financial records issued in light of her admissions during her speech. Once we have your money tracked to her I'll get back with you and we'll work out a way to weave the trail into the people you pick. If all goes well we should have enough to indict her in about two weeks."

Sunday was usually a day of rest on Mars, much the same as it always had been on Earth. Office buildings were typically closed and empty of everyone but the security force. The public transportation system ran fewer trains across the tops of the city roofs and those that they did run were usually half-empty at best. Even the crime rate had been noted to take a significant dip on Sundays. Seemingly even the criminals needed a day to kick back and relax as well.

On this particular Sunday on Mars there was not much resting going on however, at least not among the movers and the shakers of the planet. Emails continued to roll in to the legislature representatives, at a slower rate than the day before but still quite rapidly. The representatives that received them all spent the greater part of the day in their respective offices, all of them planning strategy on how to deal with the coming flak of the Whiting impeachment proceedings. During the course of the day eight more representatives — six women and two men, all Martians of more than three generations — called press conferences to announce their support of Whiting and her goal. All of them banned lobbyists of any kind from their offices and publicly denounced all corporate contacts.

The lobbyists themselves spent their day in front of their Internet terminals trying to cajole the remaining representatives to vote for impeachment proceedings the following day. They begged, pleaded, threatened, offered bribes, and did every other underhanded thing they had learned over the years to try to convince the men and women to act in accordance with the corporate wishes. It was all to no avail. Every last one of them, even the Speaker of the Assembly herself, was forced to tell their sponsor's representatives that they simply could not do it this time, that too much was at stake. Most of them apologized sincerely for not being able to play by the rules but they were firm in their refusals and unwavering in their responses.

The corporate heads of the various Martian operations were also forced to spend most of their day in their offices as well. Their job was to take reports from their lobbyists and then call up the various representatives personally to offer one last round of threats and pleas. Again, despite the warnings of removed support in the next election, the legislature stood firm. As Vic Cargill had been told the previous day, it was a simple matter of what would kill the politicians' career first and most assuredly. In every case they were forced to conclude that they would be out for good in weeks if they voted for impeachment proceedings but that they just might survive if they voted against it. After all, the corporations couldn't withdraw support from all of them, could they?

The small red planet turned on its axis and Sunday passed into Monday morning. At precisely 9:00 AM, Eden time, the entire planetary legislature assembled in their chambers in the capital building to be welcomed for their new session. MarsGroup and all of the big three media corporations carried the meeting live on their networks. The ratings computers confirmed that more than forty-five million households, an incredible, unheard of ninety-six percent of all viewers, were watching the meeting, most of them on the MarsGroup stations. The speaker conducted the roll and then turned the floor over to the newly inaugurated Lieutenant Governor at the latter's request.

Scott Benton took the podium and gave a very passionate, very moving ten-minute speech regarding the fallacies of the new governor. He was an exceptional public speaker and he almost managed to sound sincere as he lauded the legislature to open impeachment hearings on the grounds of misrepresentation of office. He asked the speaker to please put the issue on the floor immediately and to follow it up with a vote. The speaker, as she was honor bound to do, did so.

"There is a motion on the floor at the request of Lieutenant Governor Benton," she said tonelessly into her microphone. "The motion is that this assembly of planetary representatives open an impeachment investigation into Governor Laura Whiting. Do I have a second for the motion?"

The assembly chamber remained silent as a mouse. The motion died right there on the floor for lack of a second. In a way, it was almost anticlimactic.

"The motion will be shelved," the speaker said blandly, as if she were dismissing nothing more important than a motion on what to have for lunch that day.

"Wait a minute," Benton said, standing and approaching her. "You can't just..."

"You are out of order, Lieutenant Governor," the speaker said, looking at him. "The motion has died. Resume your seat please."

"You don't understand," he said. "This motion has to be..."

"Take your seat," she repeated. "If you do not do so immediately, I will have security remove you."

He took his seat, fuming as he went.

"And now," the speaker said, "I have another special request. This one is from Governor Whiting. She has asked to say a few words to you before we convene the session and I have granted her request. Governor?"

Laura Whiting came onto the stage, dressed in a simple pair of dress shorts and a cotton blouse. Her long brown hair was down around her shoulders instead of pinned into a bun. She had a smile upon her face as she took the podium and thanked the speaker.

"Members of the Planetary Legislature and people of Mars that are watching this broadcast, I thank both of you for the support you've given me so far. With your help I have passed the first hurdle in my path to securing Martian independence."