Greenies

Chapter 3

Though there had been many advances in communications technology since the beginning of the space colonization age there was one constant that never changed and probably never would. No matter what carrier for the signal was used, be it encrypted laser beams or modulating radio waves, they could move no faster than the speed of light. As such it was impossible for a person on Mars to hold a real-time conversation with a person on Earth. Even at the closest approach of the two planets — a mere fifty-six million kilometers — it took a message more than three minutes to travel from one place to another. Now, three months after the inauguration, with the two planets within ten degrees of being as far apart as they ever got, it took just under twenty minutes. And even that was not the extreme end of the communications lag. Once the sun became positioned between the two planets it would effectively block all radio waves from traveling from one place to the other in a direct line. All correspondence would then have to be routed first to a communications array in orbit around Jupiter, a step that added anywhere from forty minutes to two hours to the trip, depending upon just where Jupiter was located in the great scheme of things at the time. This period of "extended relay lag" as it was known in government documents, came once every twenty-four months and lasted for six weeks at a time. The next such period was calculated to begin in a little over five weeks.

William Smith sincerely wished that it were upon them right now.

He sat in his desk chair behind his desk in his office, a place that he felt he had been spending far too much time in during the last twelve weeks. He had just watched a scathing communiqué from Steve Carlson, CEO and chief stockholder of Agricorp and arguably the richest man in the solar system; a communiqué that had demanded the most immediate response. To say that Carlson was displeased with the recent events on Mars — a planet where seventy-four percent of his company's products were grown or manufactured — was the equivalent of saying that World War III had been a little skirmish. Agricorp stock, once the staple of the New York Stock Exchange, had fallen by more than a hundred dollars a share thanks to the perceived instabilities caused by the current political crisis. And Carlson, who had calmly expected the troublesome Whiting to be either discredited or dead by her second week in office, was now demanding answers of the man that was supposed to have overseen her removal.

"I thought that you knew how to play the game for keeps," he had told Smith in his icy, unforgiving voice. "I thought you knew what measures needed to be utilized to protect corporate interests over on that flying dust ball they call a planet. Maybe entrusting you with the day-to-day operations of our most important holdings was a mistake. Please report back to me immediately with an explanation of why this communist greenie bitch is still in office over there and still ranting about independence and nationalization."

In the world of corporate politics, where everything was said in doublespeak and innuendo, those were harsh, scathing words indeed. Smith knew that he was within bare inches of losing everything he had worked for over the years. All of the grappling and struggling and back-stabbing that he had done to rise to the position he now held, all of it would be for nothing if the Laura Whiting situation was not brought under control one way or the other. What had started out as an annoyance had quickly become the worst crisis of his entire career.

He sighed and opened up his desk drawer, pulling out a sterling silver box that was about the size of a charging battery for a hand-held laser. Inside was an airtight compartment stuffed with clipped marijuana buds harvested from the Agricorp greenhouses. The buds were of course the very finest available, the kind that were only sold in country club bars and exclusive restaurants for more than eighty dollars per hit. Smith received them for free of course. It was one of the perks of his job. In a felt compartment next to the buds was a small pipe that had been carved from genuine ivory, one of the most expensive substances in the solar system. He loaded the pipe up with a healthy sized pinch and ignited it, drawing deeply. He had been smoking a lot of marijuana lately, just to take edge off.

After exhaling and letting the THC work its way to his tired brain, he put his paraphernalia away and put the box back in his drawer. He then looked at his Internet terminal, which was in stand-by mode, the Agricorp logo the only thing showing. "Computer," he said, "communications software."

"Communications software up," the computer answered as the screen changed.

"Addressee is Steve Carlson, CEO." He took another deep breath and consulted some handwritten notes he had composed. "Begin recording."

The camera light on his terminal blinked on and he looked at the screen, his eyes making solid contact with it, his face showing the pleasant, subservient expression he used when talking to those higher on the ladder than himself. He spent a few moments spouting pleasantries, asking about Carlson's wife, children, and mistress just as if this were a normal business communiqué. Once that was accomplished he turned to the meat of the matter.

"I understand completely your concern that the Laura Whiting matter is still going on despite the passage of twelve weeks since her inauguration," he said. "I also understand the fact that you, as the head of the corporation, would question my abilities as CEO of Martian operations for failing to deal with it. I have no doubt that were our positions reversed, I would be asking the same questions of you and would expect detailed answers. I have always been a loyal manager for this corporation and I must tell you that I have done everything within my power here to dislodge Whiting from high office by one means or another. I have pulled out all of the stops and somehow she has managed to think ahead of us at every step of the way. Whiting is not a typical greenie, Steve, not in the least. Sometimes I'm forced to wonder if she's really a greenie at all. Allow me to summarize the measures we've attempted so far and how she has managed to counter them.

"The impeachment attempt. This was our first attempt to remove her from office and, though it had never been used before, it was the pre-planned method for dealing with such a gross abuse of trust on the part of a politician. The set-up for it was executed perfectly and without anything in the way of opposition from competing corporations. After all, Whiting was not just spouting damaging statements towards Agricorp, but towards all corporations and in fact our very way of life. Every Earth-based corporation on this planet rallied their lobbyists within hours of her inauguration speech and began putting pressure on the members of the legislature that they sponsored. Between us we owned every last one of the sixty-two members of this body and she should have been impeached unanimously within a week of taking her oath.

"Well, you already know how that one worked out. Whiting is a very charismatic speaker and she was somehow able to convince the common greenies to put enough pressure on their elected representatives to derail this process before it was even started. What was worse was the fact that she was able to pervert eleven of the representatives over to her point of view before a vote was even called for.

"And I'm afraid that this perversion of the representatives did not end there. As of this morning here in Eden, a grand total of twenty-nine planetary representatives, twelve of whom had been primarily sponsored by Agricorp, have renounced their previous affiliations and announced support for Whiting and her goals. These representatives will no longer take calls from lobbyists of any kind and will not respond to requests for communications from corporate heads. The Speaker of the Legislature is thankfully still in support of the corporations and she is still one of our employees as it were, but even she has been muted to a certain degree by the happenings here on this planet. For all of her power she is still nothing more than an elected representative that is vulnerable to the recall vote from her constituents. This has forced her to walk a very fine line in regards to which laws she votes upon and what other actions she takes. If she is perceived as being too biased towards us or any other corporation, we may very well lose her to a mass recall vote.

"That brings me to the second way we attempted to remove Whiting from office, namely the media blitz of negative publicity. As you are aware this is the most common and most effective way that we have of dealing with a rogue politician and it's something that has worked well since long before the colonization of this miserable planet. In this case I'm afraid that it is failing. Again, this is not due to any lack of participation on the part of other corporations. On the contrary, each one of the big three media conglomerates have been outdoing themselves in this effort. You receive the feeds back on Earth so I'm sure you know that you can hardly turn on a terminal to one of the big three channels or read one of their publications without finding something negative about Whiting. They've done stories about her past ties with militia groups, they've done stories about her business dealings and skewed votes as a representative, they've done stories hinting that she is a lesbian and a child molester. I'm sure that the people of Earth, if they've been watching this, are completely appalled by Whiting and are probably demanding her immediate removal. But here on Mars we're not dealing with rational people. These greenies watch the media shows but instead of demanding her removal or her indictment, they mock them. They regard them as comedy entertainment. Over the past seven weeks it has developed into something of a ritual that they gather in large groups, smoke marijuana and watch the latest show on Whiting so they can laugh at it. They have discussions in the Internet bulletin boards about how ridiculous the accusations were. The more inflammatory the charges brought are, the more amusing they seem to find it. Even Whiting herself has been poking fun at these shows in those damn bi-weekly addresses that she gives on MarsGroup. I'm afraid that we will not be able to count on the media blitz being any sort of deterrent to her behavior or any sort of vehicle for her removal.

"And then there are some of the other options that we've discussed in the past, namely those involving the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau, which as I'm sure you're aware has always been a great friend to all things corporate. I've been in constant contact with Corban Hayes, the director of the Martian FLEB offices here on Mars, ever since this crisis began. My instinct as a manager is to try to blame this fiasco on him and his agents, first for clearing Whiting for high office in the first place and then for failing to get her out once her true colors became known. That is my instinct but in this case I simply cannot assign any blame to him. As early as the third day of this crisis Hayes and his agents began a thorough investigation into Whiting on corruption and bribery charges. After all, she admitted during her inaugural address and in several subsequent speeches that she took unreported money from various corporations including Agricorp. You'll recall that I explained the plan that the two of us concocted to place blame on Sandy Callahan and several of her middle-management team for giving those bribes. While this would have cost us Callahan and a few others, and while it would have cast a slight pall upon our public relations, it should have resulted in Whiting's indictment and removal from office. Hayes was able to secure a search warrant for Whiting's financial records and bank accounts and everything seemed to be going well and then we hit the snag that killed the plan. All of that unreported money that we gave her over the years — every last dollar of it from the time she was an Eden city council member to her election to governor — it's still sitting in her election account. As incredible as that sounds, all twenty-three million dollars was logged and transferred from her personal account to her campaign account and it is still there, duly documented and technically completely legal from her standpoint. She did not spend so much as a dime of it for her own use. It is doubtful that Hayes would even be able to get an indictment of her on that basis, let alone a conviction. So that is how that plan fell through and it also goes to show just how long Whiting has been planning this little scheme of hers.

"That brought Hayes and myself to the final, most drastic plan for Whiting's removal, that of... well... arranging for an assassin to stalk her and remove her permanently. By the time we reached this point we were desperate, having exhausted almost all other options. Hayes was certainly agreeable enough to making the arrangements and he even had a plan in his files for how to go about such a thing. The problem with this plan is not in the conception or the assets but in the execution. Whiting has an elite battalion of the Martian Planetary Guard providing around the clock security for her. Now most of the MPG are bumbling boobs that like to dress up as soldiers on the weekend and play with guns, but the VIP security arm are not cut from this same mold. They are full-time members of the MPG and they train extensively with the latest weapons and techniques. They know their stuff and Hayes is of the opinion that it would be almost as hard to get to Whiting as it would be to get to one of the executive council members. He is, of course, still looking into the possibilities of the assassin plot but I have been told that it probably will not be feasible unless the MPG drops their guard to some degree."

Smith looked up at the ceiling for a moment, taking a deep breath and allowing the camera to keep rolling. He looked back at the screen. "Steve," he said, "that is my explanation for why Whiting is still in office. I hope you accept it and I hope you will agree that I've done all that I possibly can from my end. I'm dealing with greenies here and sometimes I find it hard to believe that they are actually the same species as we are, their thinking is so different. Now that I've had my say I hope you'll continue to listen to me long enough to tell you just how bad things really are here on Mars and how critical it is that something is done about her.

"Whiting's speeches on MarsGroup are the biggest threat. Twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday at 6:00 New Pittsburgh time, she goes live and gives a ten to twenty minute speech. I've sent copies of them to you and I'm sure you'll agree that she sounds like a raving madwoman spouting a bunch of drivel about freedom and independence and government for the people. She's a goddamn communist, no doubt about it. That is how we perceive her speeches however. These ignorant greenies adore her and they hang on her every word. Each one of those speeches gets more than a ninety percent market share of the viewers on the planet. Ninety percent! Think about that for a moment. Ninety percent is an unheard of amount for any one show no matter what it is and this politician is achieving that with her rants. And believe me when I say that the greenies are not watching her for the sheer entertainment value that she represents, they actually buy into what she is saying. These greenies are actually starting to think that they should be free of WestHem. There are increasing reports of pro-separatist graffiti on corporate buildings and property. I'm afraid that if this trend continues we may start to have some sort of work slowdown or other job action in the greenhouses. I don't have to tell you what that might do to profits.

"The most detrimental effect that we're feeling down here though is the loss of control over the legislature, which has always been our most powerful weapon for keeping the greenies of the labor pool under control. Because of the defection of twenty-nine of the representatives in this body and because of the public pressure on the others that Whiting is fomenting, we have been unable to push through a single one of the twelve bills we had planned for this session. Six of these bills were planetary tax breaks towards food production operations and would have saved us nearly a trillion over the course of the year. The other six were easements on health and safety rules that would have saved us another half a trillion. How long will it be before things start working in reverse and this corrupted legislature body starts proposing increased taxes or greater health and safety requirements? I fear it won't be long at all.

"Steve, I've done everything that I can do from my end. I don't think I've slept a complete night since that bitch was sworn in. I've pulled in every favor and I've threatened almost every person with any sort of power on this shithole planet. None of it has worked. I'm sorry I've failed you and failed the company but please believe that it was not for lack of trying. You can replace me of course and I would understand completely if you did, but you have to realize that my replacement would be stuck with the very same problems and he would not have the same connections here on Mars that I have developed.

"The bottom line is that all of the solutions available on this planet for dealing with this problem have been exhausted. What we need is bigger pressure on bigger people and that means the executive council members and the federal apparatus on your end of the solar system. My suggestion would be that you try to get the FLEB director on Earth to allow Hayes and his people to start cracking down on these greenies as hard as they can. Once you start throwing them in jail and hounding them, they'll think twice about being so vocal in their protestations. And most important of all we need to find a way to remove Whiting from office. That will be the thing that will most effectively defuse this situation. The longer she remains in office, the worse this thing is going to get.

"Awaiting your reply and your instructions. Signing off. End recording."

The camera light blinked off and he let his subservient face slack.

"Email is ready," the computer told him. "Would you like to review?"

"No," he replied. "Just send it off. Use the highest level of encryption."

"Sending mail with level five encryption sequence," he was told. "Would you like to compose more mail?"

"No," he said testily. "Shut down communications software and give me some music. Something classical."

As the soft sound of synthetic instruments filled his office he reached in his drawer and pulled out his sterling silver case once again. He set up another hit and began to wait for the reply.

Meanwhile, 325 stories below, a black and white police cart came driving slowly down Agricorp Avenue, in no particular hurry. Brian and Lisa were inside, Brian behind the wheel, Lisa clucking in amusement at the text upon their dispatch screen. They were not often sent into this part of downtown although it was technically their area of responsibility. Not a lot of crime happened in the business district since most of the office buildings, the monstrous Agricorp included, had their own private security force.

"That must be our victim," Lisa said, pointing as they approached the solar system's tallest building. Sitting outside one of the side entrances on a planter in the street was a middle-aged man in a business suit. He was holding a towel to his face while two Agricorp security guards flanked him.

"Must be," Brian said, pulling to the curb next to them. "Looks like an officious Earthling prick to me."

"One of the ones that's been fucking and raping us all these years," she agreed. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to assault him."

"He probably can't either," Brian said.

They stepped out of the cart and shut the doors, both pausing to adjust their weapons belts before walking over to their victim. The security guards, both of whom were undoubtedly Martians, were clearly amused by the predicament of the man they were supposed to be protecting. Dressed in light blue armor that was more decorative than functional, they had barely concealed smiles upon their faces. One of them, the male half of the team, walked over and met them halfway.

"What do we got?" Lisa asked, pulling her patrol computer from her belt and flipping it open. "An upset corporate manager?"

"You know it," the guard said, letting his smile come forth now that he was no longer in view of the victim. "Mr. Ronald Jerome the Third there is one of the bigwigs in the subsidiary accounting division. It seems that as he was leaving the building to go home this afternoon a group of vermin happened across him and roughed him up a bit."

"I guess the vermin are good for something, aren't they?" Brian said whimsically.

"It's only 1500," Lisa said, checking her watch. "What the hell is he doing leaving work now for?"

"He's one of the upper echelon pricks," the guard replied. "They make the fresh meat work ninety hours a week here but the bosses pretty much come and go whenever the hell they feel like it. They come staggering in here between 1100 and 1300 and then go staggering back out again a few hours later. No one is really sure what it is they even do in there but it must not be very important."

"Are you kidding?" Brian said. "They're the ones that keep this great planet running. Where would we be without Agricorp and their bad-ass management team?"

"Free?" Lisa asked.

"You got that shit right," the guard said. "Anyway, he's all livid that he got manhandled by this 'gang of thugs' as he calls them. He's demanding that you go find them and take them to prison."

This cracked both of the cops up. "Prison for simple assault on an Earthling," Lisa said, shaking her head a little. "What fucking planet does he think he lives on? Christ."

"Let's go talk to him," Brian suggested. "This oughtta be fun."

They walked over, both making little effort to put their professional faces back on. There had been a time not too long before when an assault by a welfare class person upon a corporate person would have been a big deal. A full investigation would have been launched and teams of police officers would have been sent out to comb the ghettos until the perpetrator of perpetrators were found. Once arrested they would have had the proverbial book thrown at them, very likely receiving an extended prison sentence. In WestHem society the question was not what the crime was but who the victim had been. Crimes against corporations and corporate employees were considered much graver than crimes — up to and including murder — against working or welfare class.

But that had been before the inauguration of Laura Whiting and her bi-weekly speeches on MarsGroup. Her dissertations on the inner workings of the various corporations, of how they achieved the blatant political manipulation that kept them in perpetual power, had had a tremendous effect on the people of Mars, both welfare and working class. True everyone had always known that the corporations were the real government of the planet and of WestHem itself, but human nature had commanded that they not think about things that they could not change. What Whiting had done was force them to think about the way things were and to think about the fairness of the situation.

"Life is not fair," Whiting had said in one of her speeches shortly after the successful deflection of the impeachment proceedings. "That is one of our most common sayings as a species. Life is not fair and there's nothing you can do about it. We're taught that in school, in our Internet programming, in the movies that we watch and in the literature that we read. Everyone knows — they know — that life is just not fair and that is that. We know that because that is what they tell us. Isn't that right?

"But has it ever occurred to you, fellow Martians, that they only tell people things like that so that we will accept it, so that we will not try to change the system and come up with something that is fair? Because when you think about it, who is life not fair to? Is it not fair to you, the common people of this planet, or is it not fair to the leaders and the corporations that rule us?

"I don't think I have to have an opinion poll put out to hear your answers. You know and I know that life is not fair to you. The advantages go to those that have the money and the power. And if you were to try and take some of those advantages, some of that fairness, and shift it over to your side, that would necessarily take some of it away from their side. They don't want that. So they tell you just to accept the fact that life isn't fair. They tell you that in a thousand different ways each and every day from the time you are born throughout your entire life until you and everyone else becomes convinced that this is an indisputable fact of life, an unbreakable natural law. It carries the same weight as a law of physics. Parents teach this concept to their children, they believe in it so much. Teachers teach it to their students. Life is not fair and you'll just have to live with that and do the best that you can with the crumbs that you've been given. Isn't that how it is?

"But did you ever stop to think, even for a moment, even just fleetingly, why life has to be unfair? There really are no natural laws that say this has to be so. Fairness and unfairness is a human state of mind and their executions are products of human society. Why shouldn't life be fair? Why couldn't it?"

Of all of the speeches of Laura Whiting it had been this one that had done the most to open the eyes of the Martian people. The power of her words lie not in her presentation but in the blatant simplicity. Why couldn't life be fair? Why couldn't a system that insured life was fair to everyone be developed and put in place? There really was no reason except for the obvious one: the corporations and the government that they controlled did not want life to be fair. They did not want fairness and they would fight with everything that they had to keep it away, to banish it from the very thoughts of the people that had been without it for so long.

And after the speech in which the Martians had it explained to them that life did not really have to be unfair, Laura Whiting had then followed this up with other speeches outlining just how things were unfair in specific instances and just how this benefited those in power. She laid out the inner workings of the Martian and the WestHem systems in a way that high school civics instructors would never have dreamed of. "Money," she told them. "Everything comes down to the common denominator of money. Those that have the most of it are able to use it to pervert even the most moral of us to do their bidding. And who has the most money on this planet? Who controls the flow of money on this planet? Who runs the industries that make this planet such a valuable commodity to the WestHem system?"

Nobody had to be told that Earthlings was the answer to this question. Earthlings owned more than ninety-six percent of the holdings on Mars yet they made up less than two percent of the population at any given time. They made decisions each and every day from their glittering high-rise buildings, decisions that could take away the livelihood of thousands upon thousands of Martians, yet the Earthlings were never laid off and sentenced to perpetual welfare status. The Earthlings employed Martians in their corporations and had them do all of the manual labor, all of the paperwork, all of the cleaning and guarding, yet the Martians were rarely, if ever, invited into upper management positions within those companies. Martians were rarely if ever put in charge of decision making. Martians were allowed into the WestHem armed services where they served with distinction in all branches but they were rarely promoted to officer rank and they were never promoted to command rank.

Whiting pointed out these fallacies and many others to the Martian people twice a week and she had succeeded in transforming what had been seething resentment towards the Earthlings into white hot hatred of them. As William Smith had noted to his superiors, anti-Earthling graffiti had begun to spring up everywhere, on every building where Earthlings could be found. Leaflets expounding everything from general strikes to actual terrorist violence had begun to appear on apartment doors and bulletin boards in housing buildings. And reports of violence against Earthlings — usually random in nature and usually little more than minor harassment — had begun to crop up everywhere on the planet. Though Laura Whiting did not advocate these violent acts in her speeches — on the contrary, she begged her people to show restraint — years of frustration and apathy were being released and it was inevitable that many of the Martians would chose the most basic of human natures to express their discontent.

What was perhaps the most startling about this wave of anti-Earthling violence and vandalism was not its existence in the first place but the acceptance that the Martian criminal justice system showed towards it. There had never been any official memos on the matter, there had never even been verbal instruction from superiors, but through a strange form of osmosis the message had been passed up and down the ranks of the system, from the lowliest patrol cops to the judges and lawyers that ran the show: Crimes against corporate Earthlings were no longer the big deal that they had once been. Why should they be? Why should those that exploited and raped the planet receive special treatment? Reports were still taken of course but gone were the days that resources were wasted in any way tracking down the perpetrators of acts that were being looked at less and less as crimes with each passing Laura Whiting speech.

"So," Lisa asked their latest victim, "what seems to be the problem here today?"

"What seems to be the problem?" Mr. Ronald Jerome III asked, his cultured Earthling accent sounded decidedly high-pitched and whiny. "Look at my face!" He took the towel away revealing a left eye that was starting to swell. "Look at what those vermin did to me!"

"Somebody popped you in the face did they?" Lisa said.

"A whole group of them attacked me!" he yelled. "They surrounded me when I came out of the building and they started pushing me from person to person, calling me the most horrible names. They took my PC off of my belt and smashed it on the ground!" He pointed to the remains of his personal computer. It was lying against the base of the planter in a heap of plastic parts and microchips, it's screen broken cleanly in half. He seemed particularly outraged about this.

"That's a shame," Brian said without the slightest trace of sincerity. "That looks like it was one of those top of the line models."

"Probably set you back twelve hundred bucks getting a new one," Lisa added, making a few notations on her computer. "You look like you can afford it though, rich corporate Earthling like you. Hell, what do they pay you here?"

"That's none of your business," he said indignantly.

"I guess not," Lisa agreed. "I was just asking. Being a poor Martian and all, I can't really afford stuff like that."

"I'm not here to talk about your problems," Jerome said sternly.

"Of course you aren't," she said complacently. "Please continue with your narrative."

"Right," he said, nodding carefully, unsure whether he was being condescended to or not but strongly suspecting that he was. "So anyway, after they smashed my PC up, they threw me to the ground and one of them kicked me. He kicked me right in the face!"

"With his foot?" Lisa asked blankly.

"Of course with his foot! What else do people kick with? What's the matter with you people? I've been assaulted by a bunch of vermin! I want you to do something about it!"

"We are doing something about it," Lisa told him. "We're taking a report."

"To hell with your report! I want them caught!" he yelled. "I demand you go out and find them right now!"

"You demand?" Lisa said, letting a little chuckle escape. "Listen to this crap, Bri. He demands."

"He does seem very pushy, doesn't he?" he said, picking at a piece of fuzz on his chest armor.

Jerome looked at them in disbelief, clearly unaccustomed to being treated this way by mere civil servants — and greenie civil servants at that. "Are you telling me that you're not going to do anything about this... this crime?"

"I told you," Lisa said, "we're taking a report. We'll log it as a misdemeanor assault and it'll go into the tracking computer as such."

"And that's it?" he asked.

Lisa shrugged. "The detective division will take a look at it when they get around to it," she told him. "That'll be when they work their way through the felony assaults that they have pending first."

"And how long will that take?"

"Actually," Lisa said with a smile, "they'll probably never get around to it. You see, there are about five times as many felony assaults that come in as there are detectives to handle them. That's because the politicians that your little corporation and the others bribe to do their bidding won't let us kick loose any money to build jails and prisons. Therefore there's nowhere to put criminals even if we do catch them and since the criminals all know they won't be punished, there's really no reason for them not to assault someone when the opportunity arises. But you don't want to hear all about our greenie problems, do you? My point is that they have a hard time closing out the felony assault complaints so the misdemeanor assaults — like what happened to you — just sit there and accumulate month by month. I heard there was more than a hundred thousand of them pending, that sound about right to you, Bri?"

"Yep," Brian agreed. "That sounds pretty much on the mark."

"I am an Agricorp executive," the man said self-righteously. "I was attacked by vermin! Surely you don't consider that an ordinary crime do you?"

"A crime's a crime," Lisa told him.

"And a report's a report," Brian added. "Welcome to the wonderful world of Martian law enforcement. A world that your corporation helped create."

The man kicked at the pieces of his PC angrily. "You can't treat me like this," he told them. "Your administration will hear about this!"

Lisa and Brian both shrugged disinterestedly, both knowing that the captains and the deputy chiefs, career oriented pricks that they were, no longer officially gave a shit what corporate executives complained about. "You go ahead and tell them," Lisa said. "But in the meantime, you wanna make the report or what? It doesn't really matter to me."

"You'll be vermin by the end of the week," the man threatened. "I swear to you. I'll have your jobs!" With that he stomped off, taking his towel with him as he headed for the MarsTrans station two blocks over.

"I guess that'll be a no then," Brian said.

"I guess so," Lisa agreed, clearing the screen of her patrol computer and putting it back on her belt.

Six o'clock that evening found Matt and Jeff sitting in the latter's apartment, each with a fresh bottle of Fruity in their hands, watching the large Internet screen in the living room. They sat in scarred and battered plastic chairs that were older than their parents — furniture that had been purchased in a welfare store when Jeff and his new bride had set up housekeeping. In the kitchen Belinda was mixing up some sort of dish made from the cheap hamburger that was sold in the welfare grocery stores. The smell of cooking meat permeated the small living area.

On the screen Laura Whiting was just getting into her latest speech. The bi-weekly addresses were something that neither of the former gang members ever missed. There was something hypnotic and irresistible about being told by a politician just how they were all being fucked raw by the powers that be. The subject of today's speech was particularly interesting to them. It had to do with the perpetual class struggle between the Martian welfare class and the working class.

"You have to understand," she told her audience, "that this struggle is deliberate and pre-meditated by the corporations and the government that they've imposed upon us. It serves their interests for there to be strife between these two classes of people. If we are busy fighting each other and concentrating our energies on hating each other and what the other group stands for, we are much too distracted to concentrate any energy on the real enemy, the one who has put us in this position in the first place. It is a trick that is as old as repressive governments themselves. The British used it on the Irish Catholics and Protestants. The Americans used it on the poor whites and poor blacks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It's the old conquer by division trick and it has worked well here on Mars ever since the end of the Agricultural Rush.

"Most of those that we flippantly refer to as 'vermin' are not in that position because of their own choice. Most of them would sincerely love to put in an honest day's work and take home money that they've earned instead of having it handed to them by the government. But they cannot. There simply are not enough jobs under this system that we have. And every year the unemployment rate grows worse and worse as the corporations merge and adjust and adapt cost cutting measures in a quest for more profits. How long will it be before we reach forty percent unemployment? How long until four out of every ten people on this planet are called vermin? Not very long if we go on like this. Not very long at all.

"And how, you may ask me, does WestHem and the corporations perpetuate this class struggle between the welfare and the working? I've told you the why, but what about the how? It's quite simple really. They already have human nature working on their side — human nature that just loves to find a group of people that one's own group can hate. All they really have to do is take something from the more advantageous of the two classes and give it to the lesser. In this case I'm talking about welfare money. Working class tax dollars — already outrageously high in comparison to what upper class and corporations pay — is used to buy food, housing, alcohol and marijuana, health insurance, and lawyer insurance for the welfare recipients. It is used to give them their bi-monthly allotments of spending money. Now this act in and of itself is not really a bad thing. We should help those that are disadvantaged. But what it does is cast a stigma on the welfare class and cause resentment among the working class. This resentment is turned to hatred when the prices of food and clothing and housing are raised without a corresponding increase in working class salaries. The working class are forced to struggle to survive, working hard every day just to make enough to keep their children fed and their rent paid and they are given no assistance whatsoever in their endeavor. In a way they are made to feel punished because they work. At the same time the welfare class are handed everything that they need and are discouraged from even looking for work. They are taken care of as far as basic needs but they are forced to endure prejudice and mistreatment by police officers, healthcare workers, and others that they deal with in their lives.

"People, this has got to stop! If we're going to be successful in gaining our independence the welfare and the working classes are going to have to work together. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, you need to stop treating people differently because of their employment status and what kind of health insurance they have. If you participate in this prejudice, you are helping the corporations keep us down. Police officers, teachers, transit workers, you need to stop treating the welfare class differently than you do people with jobs. They are human beings just like yourself and they are Martians — the descendants of those who came to this planet to escape from the squalor of Earth. Just because your family has somehow managed to escape from this engineered squalor so far, you do not need to look down upon and mistreat those whose families have not. The welfare class do not choose to be put on welfare, they do not enjoy taking our handouts, but they simply have no other choice in this world that has been created for us."

"Fuckin aye," Jeff cried, sitting up a little straighter. "That bitch really knows how to tell it. And to think, I blew her off a couple months ago as just another scumbag politician."

"I always told you she was different," Matt said, sipping from his bottle. "I'm starting to think that she just might pull this independence bid off. After all, she's beaten the corporations at every turn so far."

"So far," Jeff agreed. "She's got a long haul ahead of her, but maybe she will."

"And what if she does?" Belinda asked sourly, her words thick and slurred from the two bottles of Fruity that she'd swallowed while cooking. "What if this bitch that everyone's talking about actually does manage to get us independent? Do you really think anything is going to change around here? We'll still be unemployed vermin living off of welfare money and drinking this crappy brew that they make out of apple piss."

Jeff usually ignored his wife when she talked. If he was forced to acknowledge her it was usually in an argumentative tone. This time however, he spoke calmly to her. "So what if nothing does change?" he asked her.

"What?" she asked, not grasping what he was talking about.

"What if Laura Whiting takes over and everyone's worst fear comes true and she turns out to be some Adolph Hitler fascist dictator who only wanted to rule the fuckin world? So what if that happens? Would we be any worse off than we are right now?"

"That's not the point," Belinda said.

"It is the point," he told her. "I personally don't think that anything is going to come of this shit. I think that WestHem is going to find a way to get rid of her pretty soon and everything is going to go back to the way it always has been. But right now, she's tweaking some serious sack among those WestHem fucks and I love every goddamn minute of it. And if there's the slightest chance that we might have our miserable lives improved by what she's doing, shouldn't we support her? Shouldn't we help if we can?"

Belinda shook her head in disgust. "You're getting as bad as your friend there," she told him. "Talking about improvement and independence and shit like that. I guess three generations as vermin hasn't taught you much. Wait 'til you're five generations in like me."

"Fuck off," he told her. "You don't understand shit. Why don't you go finish up that slop you're cooking?"

She did so, after only a minor argument to the contrary. In truth Jeff could see that even Belinda was feeling some hope despite her cynical blabbering to the contrary. Wasn't she always coming in and out of the room when Whiting was speaking, pretending not to be interested but keeping one ear tuned to the screen? Wasn't she always looking through MarsGroup articles regarding the latest Whiting exploits and then pushing them to the background if he happened to come in the room? Belinda's attitude was typical among many of the welfare class. They pretended to be disinterested because they wanted to be able to say "I told you so" if Whiting ultimately failed.

Matt ate dinner with the Creeks, something he did several nights a week, and then, after fortifying themselves with another bottle of Fruity apiece, the two friends donned their darkest clothing and headed out of the building to perform what had become their favorite activity over the last month. They took with them a can apiece of industrial spray paint that they had shoplifted from the welfare mart and they walked through the darkened streets towards the downtown area. They moved beneath the glass roof, a canopy of billions of brightly burning stars visible in the gaps between high rises. Sticking to the sidewalks and walking as close to the buildings as they could get, it took them twenty minutes to reach their target area - a lower-end commercial district on the border between the Heights and downtown. The streets here were lined with shopping complexes and moderate rent office buildings. Since businesses and office buildings — intoxicant shops excepted - were all closed this time of night there were very few people out and about.

"How about there?" Jeff asked, pointing at the entrance to the FurnitureCorp building. This was a 114-story tower that housed the administration of much of the planet's rent-to-own furniture industry, an industry that preyed heavily upon the Martian welfare class and working poor. It was of course owned and operated by Earthlings.

"Nobody's tagged it yet," Matt said with a smile. "Fuckin amazing. Let's do it."

They walked down the street, moving casually, as if they weren't the least bit interested in their surroundings. In reality they were using their peripheral vision to scan all around them, their street senses searching for cops, witnesses, or anyone else that they didn't want or expect to see. Except for a few bums sleeping in the street planters, there was no one. As they passed the entrance to the building they saw a guard sitting behind a desk inside but no one else. The guard was a Martian, as were all security guards on the planet, and probably nothing to worry about. Experience had already taught them that security guards — the closest working people to vermin in stature — would happily look the other way on this kind of mission. The security cameras at the front of the building were something else though. Matt got the first one. Though it was four meters up he was able to hit it with a blast of his spray can by jumping up and twisting around before firing. This was a well-practiced technique, garnered from basketball skills, designed to blind the camera without allowing it to get a digital shot of his face first.

"Good one," Jeff said, impressed. "You're getting better at that." He then proceeded to do the second camera, walking towards it with his head hunched down until the last second. He jumped, twisted in mid-air, and gave a pinpoint blast of red paint right on the lens. A direct shot. Now that both cameras were out of action, it was time to go to work.

On the thick plexiglass of the building front, they each painted their epitaphs. Using broad strokes of the can, Matt wrote FREE MARS in red letters nearly a meter high. He double-underlined it for effect. Jeff's writing was a little more artistic. In calligraphic script he wrote: EARTHLINGS GO HOME. The guard inside of the building clearly saw them doing this but ignored their actions completely except for a slight grin and a quick thumbs up. He would pretend to discover the vandalism later on in his shift.

"Goddamn this is fun," Jeff said as they headed down the street in search of another target. "It's almost as fun as running dust over from the greenhouse supply yards."

It took them awhile to find another target to hit. It was not that there were no corporate owned buildings to deface, it was that most of them had already been tagged several times. FREE MARS, EARTHLINGS GO HOME, FUCK ALL EARTHLINGS, AUTOMONY NOW, and FUCK THE CORPORATIONS were the dominant mottos seen, painted in varying heights and colors on the fronts of nearly every building. Persistence soon paid off however and they found the Caldwell Building, home of the fourth largest lawsuit insurance provider in WestHem. The front windows here were agreeably clean, just begging for a fresh coat of anti-Earthling epitaphs. They provided them and then went out in search of yet another building, a quest they were successful in six blocks over at the Logiburn and Meyers high rise, home to the sixth largest law firm on Mars.

After defacing the law firm's front windows they moved north along the street, searching for another target. They made it about three blocks before hearing the electric hum of police carts approaching from behind them. Veterans of police shakedowns, both knew instantly just by the speed they were traveling, that they were going to stop them. Both instinctively looked around for an escape route out of the area — an alley or a maintenance access road that they could run to and make their escape. There were none in easy reach. It seemed that the cops knew what they were doing, not making their approach until their quarry was well out in the open.

"Oh shit," Matt said, resigned. He was very nervous. They had been defacing corporate buildings after all, an act that would have gained them prison time not too long before. Was it possible that the rumors that they had heard about the cops looking the other way about such things were wrong? It sure seemed so since they were about to stop them.

"Just be static," Jeff said as the two carts pulled to a stop behind them. "Maybe we can talk our way out of this shit."

The four doors of the two carts clanked open and four helmeted, armored Eden police officers stepped out, all of them slipping their tanners into their belts. The cop closest to them — the name badge on his armor identified him as Broward — took two steps towards them. Like any ghetto inhabitants worth their salt, Jeff and Matt pretended not to notice them and kept walking.

"Hold up a second there, you two," Broward said, taking a few more steps closer, his entire body braced to run after them if they tried to make a break for it.

They stopped and turned to face them, tough but neutral expressions upon their face. Both kept their hands at their sides, well clear of the holstered guns they carried under their shirts. Broward looked them up and down and then stepped even closer, his own hand resting on the butt of his tanner. His entourage followed behind him, spreading out a bit to provide cover.

"What are you two doing out here tonight?" Broward asked them.

"Nothin," they both muttered, giving the standard ghetto answer to such an inquiry.

"Nothing huh?" he said, looking from one to the other. "We got a report that a couple of guys were going around the neighborhood spray-painting things on buildings. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"No," Matt said, shaking his head.

"Haven't seen nothin like that," Jeff said.

"Really now?" Broward said. "The report identified these people as gang member looking types, very out of place in this part of town. They're reported to have Capitalist tattoos on their arms, kind of like the ones you two are sporting."

Knowing that they were caught, both Jeff and Matt simply shrugged. What else was there to do? In a minute they would be taken into custody and hauled down to the booking area for processing. It was something that both had gone through several times before, although never for crimes against corporations.

"What's that all over your hands?" Broward asked them next.

They looked at their hands, seeing that they were obviously splattered with paint residue. "I was painting some furniture earlier," Matt said sarcastically. "I forgot to wash up."

"Me too," Jeff put in. "Water don't run too good in the Heights buildings. You know how it is."

"Yeah," Broward said, nodding his head a little. "I heard that about them buildings. So what are you two doing in this part of town? Just taking a little walk to enjoy the night?"

"That's right," Jeff said.

"We like the night," said Matt.

The cop continued to look them up and down for a moment, his blue eyes piercing. Finally he nodded, as if satisfied. "Good enough then," he said. "I guess you've explained yourselves."

"Couldn't be our guys," one of the other cops said.

"Nope," said another. "Just some furniture painters out for a walk in the commercial district. Our mistake."

"Huh?" Matt said, confused, wondering what sort of game they were playing.

Apparently they were not playing a game however. "You two have yourselves a nice night," Broward told them. "We apologize for the inconvenience. And if you see any gang member types going around and painting graffiti on corporate buildings, you give us call, okay?"

"Yes," said one of the others. "That's certainly a crime that we need to stamp out."

"Umm... sure..." Matt said, thinking that this was the most bizarre experience he had ever had. "We'll uh... do that."

Broward gave them a little two-fingered salute. With that, all four of them walked back to their patrol carts, their tanners clanking, and got inside. A moment later they were driving off, their taillights fading quickly with distance.

"Holy shit," Jeff said, watching them go. "Did that really just happen?"

"I think it did," Matt agreed blankly, still unable to believe that they were still standing there after being pretty much caught red handed. They hadn't even scanned them! They hadn't even asked them for their PCs for identification!

They stood there for more than two minutes, looking at the empty street, their brains trying to convince them that they had just hallucinated the entire episode. "Well," Matt finally said, "shall we carry on?"

"I guess so," Jeff said.

They began to walk again, looking for their next target.

Stanley Clinton had been the director of the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau for nearly ten years. As such, he was accustomed to occasionally briefing the WestHem executive council — that group of nine elected representatives that had replaced the single-person presidency shortly after World War III — on various security issues. Never however, had he dreaded a briefing as much as this one.

He had flown from the rooftop of the FLEB building in downtown Denver — the WestHem capital city — in his private, computer operated VTOL craft, landing after a ten-minute flight on the restricted back lawn of the capital building itself. From there he had been escorted inside of the 220 story triangular high-rise, the tallest building on planet earth, and up to the 218^th floor, where the executive briefing room was located.

The briefing room was not very large but it was opulently furnished with genuine oak tables and chairs and top of the line Internet screens equipped with the very best encryption gear available. The window on the western exposure looked out upon the snow capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which were starkly visible in the clear air. Denver had once been one of the smoggiest cities in the nation but smog was now a thing of the distant past thanks to fusion power and hydrogen burning engines.

Only two of the executive council members were present for Clinton's briefing. John Calvato, who represented to eastern North American district of WestHem, and, at three-quarters of the way through his second six-year term, was the senior member. As such he carried more power than the other members and was accorded with the title Chief Executive Councilperson. Like all council members he was tall, physically attractive, and a good actor for the Internet cameras. He was also a third generation billionaire, something that was an unofficial requirement for the highest office. His chief sponsors on the election circuit were Agricorp, who owned six of the nine members, and CompWest, WestHem's primary computer software developer.

The other member present for the briefing was Loretta Williams, a first termer in her early fifties. She was one of the junior members but she was the elected councilperson that was supposedly representing Mars (as well as Ganymede and the Pacific Islands of Earth) although she had only been there once and had never been a resident. She too was owned lock, stock, and barrel by Agricorp and the other food production corporations, having received more than a billion dollars in campaign contributions and other handouts from them over the years of her career. It was Williams who would present the official federal government face to the growing crisis on Mars. Already she had been on Internet multiple times stating in no uncertain terms that Laura Whiting was a corrupt, possibly mentally ill person and that the WestHem government would not now and never would in the future consider negotiating independence with the Martians. "That planet is a part of this great nation," she had been quoted as saying. "It is WestHem that colonized and built that planet and it is WestHem business interests that have paid for everything that is present there. Mars is a part of our union — as much a part as Cuba and Argentina and Ganymede — and they always will be."

That was the official WestHem line on the Martian situation — a line that the corporations who had put the politicians where they were insisted upon. It was a line that Clinton and the sixteen thousand FLEB agents under his command would uphold to the death. It was the line that the big three were feeding the people on Earth and were attempting to feed the people on Mars.

"Welcome, Mr. Clinton," Williams said with an accommodating smile as he entered the room and closed the door behind him. "How was your trip over?"

"It was fine, Madam Councilperson," he said with a slight smile. "The air was very still today, hardly any turbulence to speak of. And the secret service was particularly fast about clearance for landing."

"That's nice to hear," she said. "Sometimes they are a bit too diligent in their duties. Won't you sit down?"

He sat down. Williams exchanged a few more pleasantries with him, most having to do with his family and his office. She then congratulated him on his ongoing campaign against the scourge of software piracy and illegal music file duplication. Since being appointed as director, convictions for those most heinous crimes had increased by more than eighteen percent, as had the prison terms handed out for them. Through this all Calvato simply sat in place, a frowning, irritated expression upon his face, his brown eyes boring into the FLEB director.

"Now then," Williams said once the preliminaries were taken care of, "about this Laura Whiting situation."

"Yes Ma'am," Clinton said with a nod.

"I don't believe I have to tell you that some very important people are becoming increasingly upset about her continued presence in that capital building. It has been more than two months now since she showed us just what kind of person she was; two months and she is still in office, still riling up those greenies into a fury, and still getting on the Internet twice a week shouting about independence. Can you explain this, Mr. Clinton? Because frankly, we on the council and some of our more important constituents are starting to wonder if perhaps a new FLEB director would be able to handle things more efficiently."

"I understand their concern," Clinton said without hesitation. "And I understand how it may seem that we in the bureau are not doing our jobs. To tell you the truth, I never imagined that it would take this long to make Laura Whiting go away but she has proven to be very crafty to this point. Obviously this little independence game is something that she has been planning for years. And her manipulation of the Martian people, well that is quite simply an ability that we had not factored into our equations. What we have on Mars right now is the unsavory reality that the elected representatives of the planet are actually ignoring those who have sponsored them and instead are responding to the demands of the common people."

"That is unacceptable," Calvato said, speaking for the first time. "Having the ignorant greenies making the decisions on that planet is putting at risk trillions of dollars in investments."

"We understand that, sir," Clinton said. "And believe me when I say that we are working as hard as we can to reverse this before it gets any further. As I said, the problem is that Whiting has managed to anticipate and neutralize all of our traditional means of removing a troublesome politician." He then went on to explain everything that had been attempted so far: the criminal investigations of bribery, the media smear campaign, even the assassination plot, and how they had all failed. Williams and Calvato did not seem terribly impressed with his explanations.

"All that we've heard here are excuses," Williams told him. "What we need is action, and quickly. The problem has now spread beyond Laura Whiting. The greenies themselves are on the verge of getting out of control. We have reports that they are distributing fliers on apartment doors about independence, that they are spray-painting epitaphs on corporate buildings. How long will it be until they start rioting in the streets? How long will it be before they start doing more damage to corporate property than mere graffiti? I can even foresee them trying to arrange some sort of general strike or something like that. I don't have to tell you what that could do to the profits of the various WestHem interests on that planet."

"No Ma'am, you don't," he said humbly.

"You need to start cracking down on those greenies," Williams said. "I expect you to continue working on the Whiting problem, which is the root of the matter after all, but these greenies need to have the fear of God put in them, they need to be shown that following and responding to such an obvious madwoman is not in their best interests."

"Crack down on the greenies, Ma'am?" he asked slowly, knowing instinctively that this was a very bad idea and also knowing that neither Williams nor anyone else on the council had been the one to come up with it. No, cracking down sounded like the sort of thing that corporate heads such as Steve Carlson of Agricorp would come up with. To a man used to operating a huge business and corrupting politicians, this would seem the logical course to follow when people were not doing as they were told. After all, it worked with middle management and blue-collar workers didn't it? It worked with politicians (except for Laura Whiting and the Martian planetary legislature) didn't it? Why wouldn't it work with common people? With vermin? And if the idea had come from the corporate heads, the executive council would not be swayed from this course. Being swayed from a direct order by Carlson or his companions would mean that they risked be cracked down upon.

"You heard me correctly," Williams told him. "We want your agents on Mars to let those greenies know, in no uncertain terms, that these acts of defiance against our business interests will not be tolerated. We want them thrown in jail and held there!"

"We've tried that," Clinton said. "The problem is that graffiti and so forth are crimes against the planet, not the federal government. This puts them under the jurisdiction of the planetary criminal justice system: the local police and the local judges. These people are all greenies. And while we'd always considered the judges and lawyers and police chiefs to be... well... reliable, it seems that we were wrong about that. They are simply not taking action against these crimes. I have even received reports that police officers have caught the perpetrators red-handed and just let them go. We are having the same problems with assaults against the managers and officers of the corporations."

"If they're not federal crimes than you make them federal crimes," Williams told him. "You call it terrorism or treason or whatever you want, but you have your agents on Mars start making some arrests. Get the word out on that planet that the feds are now involved in this fight and you get it out quickly, with action. If you start hauling these radical elements off and extraditing them to Earth for trial, I guarantee you that those greenies will think twice about being so vocal or so artistic."

"These are extreme times," Calvato said. "And extreme measures are called for."

"Yes sir, yes Ma'am," Clinton replied, not showing the dread he was feeling at these orders.

"We expect this to be done immediately," Williams said. "And remember, the removal of Laura Whiting is still the highest of your priorities. Get rid of her by whatever means is necessary. Whatever means! If you do not, we'll be getting rid of you."

"Yes Ma'am," he said.

The meeting went on for a while longer — closing pleasantries were required by protocol after all — but that was really what had needed to be said. Soon Clinton was escorted from the building and back out to his VTOL on the lawn.

"Enjoy your flight, sir," the secret service agent that had been his escort told him as he climbed into the cockpit of the aircraft.

"Right," he said sourly, closing the canopy and settling into his seat. He strapped in and then put his finger to the computer screen below the windshield.

The computer analyzed his fingerprint and, after concluding that he was an authorized user of the craft, lit up with the opening display. "Good afternoon, Director Clinton," it told him politely. "Awaiting command."

"Flight mode," he told it. "Destination: FLEB building, Denver."

"Warm up sequence beginning," it replied, the hydrogen turbine engines mounted on the wings immediately flaring to life with a hum. The propellers, which were currently in the take-off/landing position, facing upward, began to turn. Clinton felt cool air from the ventilation system blowing on his face.

He sat back in his seat and tried to relax while the computer sent the aircraft through a pre-flight systems and hardware check and obtained authorization for take-off from the Secret Service air traffic computer system. The authorization was given after only a two-minute wait and the engines wound up to high RPMs for take-off. The aircraft lifted into the sky a moment later, rising slowly to an altitude of one thousand meters above the ground before the engines tilted forward, changing the angle of the propellers and imparting forward flight. Guided by detailed mapping software and an extensive system of global positioning satellites, it darted and banked over the downtown Denver area, automatically avoiding other such aircraft and finally settling down to a soft landing on the roof of the FLEB building five minutes later.

Clinton climbed out and made his way to a secured, private elevator. Two minutes later he was back in his office, loosening his tie and staring at his computer screen. He had one of his staff bring him a stiff bourbon and coke and then called up his communications software.

"This will be a priority message for Corban Hayes, director of Martian field operations."

"Record when ready," the machine told him.

He began to talk, laying out a set of instructions for his underling that were very much against his better judgment.

Two days later, in Eden, Lisa and Brian were working a patrol shift in the downtown area. Their call volume had been much lower over the past month than they were accustomed to and those calls that they did go to seemed to be less violent and less sordid. Once there they had found themselves being subjected to an increasingly dwindling amount of physical and verbal abuse by the welfare class citizens that they dealt with. Though both were hardened, cynical veterans of patrol services, they could think of no other explanation for the drop in crime and abuse than Laura Whiting and her speeches. It seemed that the vermin were taking her words to heart.

"It's eerie in a way," Lisa said as they drove slowly down the daylight streets of the ghetto section of downtown. "Nobody's flipping us off, nobody's grabbing their crotch, nobody's throwing empty Fruity bottles at us. What's the planet come to?"

"They don't love us anymore," Brian said, watching the throngs of vermin that were hanging out on every planter box, in front of every public housing building. They were all doing the usual vermin things — drinking Fruity, smoking from marijuana pipes, watching porno shows on their PCs — but most of them were completely ignoring the passing police cart. A few had even waved at them, something that had been so unusual as to be unheard of not long before. As Lisa had said, it was eerie in a way. It was like everyone had been given some sort of happy gas.

"Incoming call," said the dash-mounted computer, which was linked to the dispatch system via cellular technology. A second later, rows of text appeared on the screen, describing their latest assignment.

"What is it?" asked Lisa, who was behind the wheel.

"A request to assist a FLEB team on a takedown," he said.

"A FLEB team?" Lisa said in disgust. Assisting FLEB agents in apprehension of federal criminals was not a common thing, but it was not exactly uncommon either. "Those assholes? What do they got this time? Another bunch of software pirates?"

"It doesn't say," he told her, reading through the rest of it. "The staging location is over at 101^st and Broadway. They sent over Delta-53 and Bravo-56 as well."

"Three patrol units to help take down someone?" Lisa said, shaking her head a little. "That's a lot of guns for a software pirate."

"Big waste of our time if you ask me," he replied, pushing the acknowledge button on the terminal. "Why can't those federal fucks take care of their own pick-ups?"

"They need someone to tell them how to do it, don't they?" she replied, making both of them chuckle. It was a well known fact that the FLEB agents, though sworn law enforcement officers and despite a tough guy reputation garnered by Internet shows, were severely lacking when it came to street sense and tactical matters. It was said in Martian law enforcement circles that the average FLEB agent couldn't find Phobos with a telescope and a tracking computer.

The trip to 101^st and Broadway took about five minutes. When they arrived there they found two black FLEB vans parked outside in a truck-loading zone behind a low rent apartment complex. The FLEB vans were electric panel trucks with the emblem of their agency stenciled on the sides. Both Lisa and Brian were amused to see that someone had spray-painted FREE MARS on the side of one of them in bright red paint. Standing outside of the vans were ten agents, all of them dressed in heavy Kevlar armor gear and carrying M-24 rifles. They looked a little like accountants playing dress up for a Halloween party. One of them walked over to the police cart as it parked, approaching on the passenger side.

"What's up?" Brian asked, opening his door but not stepping out.

"Special agent Walker," the man introduced himself. He was in his late forties and spoke with a heavy Earthling accent. "I'm in charge of this strike team today."

"Static," Brian answered, deliberately thickening his own Martian accent. "So what's the deal? Got some software pirates or something you need to take down?"

"No," he said with a shake of the head. "Not pirates. Terrorists."

Brian shared a look of puzzlement with Lisa. "Terrorists?" he asked. "What kind of terrorists?"

"A whole group of them," he said. "Violent Martian separatists. We have information that they're planning to plant explosives near federal installations here on the planet."

"Explosives?" Lisa asked incredulously. "Where the hell would vermin get explosives?"

"That's what we're going to find out," Walker assured them. "Our information is that there are at least six of them up there, maybe more. They may be armed."

"Everybody's armed on Mars," Brian said. "This is a WestHem colony. Home of the right to bear arms, remember?"

"Right," Walker said. "So that's why we wanted you locals here with us. We just want the back-up in case we need it. We'll move in as soon as the other two units get here."

Brian and Lisa shared another look. "Uh... just what sort of information do you have that leads you to believe there are terrorists up there?" Lisa asked.

"Sorry," Walker told her. "That's confidential. So anyway, they're up on the 93^rd floor of the building here, apartment 9312. We have a door breach and the plan is to just go in and strike and then get out. Be sure to grab your M-24s when we go up."

"Do we have a warrant for all of this?" Brian asked.

"Of course we do," he told them. "A federal magistrate signed one out less than an hour ago."

"A federal warrant huh?" Lisa said.

"That's right," Walker told her. "Is there a problem with that? If so, we can always contact your watch commander to rectify it."

She scowled at his thinly veiled threat. "It's your show, Mr. Walker," she said, reaching under her seat and unclipping her M-24 from its holder.

The other two patrol units arrived a few minutes later and, after they were briefed on the plan of action, everyone headed into the building. It was a typical public housing building and the lobby was full of the usual assortment of unemployed people sipping from Fruity bottles and smoking out. They all gave curious looks to the armed squad of feds and police officers but kept their distance. Walker, leading the parade, walked to the bank of elevators in the rear.

"Okay," he said to everyone. "Half of you take the left elevator and half of you take the right. Don't let any riders in as you go up and we'll assemble up on the 93^rd. My maps show that 9312 is sixty meters to the south of the elevator bank. Any questions?"

None of the feds had any, but Lisa did. "Excuse me," she said. "I have a suggestion."

"What is it, officer?" he asked somewhat impatiently.

"Well, it's somewhat traditional in a case like this for everyone to assemble on the floor above where the target apartment is and then walk down the closest staircase. That way, you see, if your suspects have a look-out or just happen to be outside at that particular moment, they don't notice you gathering for the strike."

Walker considered that for a moment. "You know," he said brightly, "that's a good idea. Let's do it."

"Christ," Lisa mumbled to herself, resisting the urge to roll her eyes back. Her good idea was basic police academy training.

They did it, all of them riding up to 94 in two shifts. Once up there they went to the back emergency staircase and down a flight. They passed several people in the halls and on the staircase itself, all of them giving an extremely wide berth to the group of armed and armored men and women.

Walker opened the staircase door on 93 and, after a quick, careless look, waved everyone forward into a hallway that was lined with gang graffiti and anti-Earthling sentiments. They all walked along behind him, their weapons clanking, their boots squeaking, until they reached the doorway labeled 9312. Walker and two of his men then prepared to breach the door.

"Look at these morons," Lisa said softly, without moving her lips. Her throat microphone transmitted her words only to the police officers in the group. "They're standing in front of the freakin door while they do that."

"What do they teach them in FLEB academy?" replied Scott James, on of the other real cops. "You'd think for a two year program they'd be a little smarter than that."

"They're college educated you know," Brian put in. "I guess all of that higher learning pushes out the common sense."

While the cops all laughed among themselves about the sad tactical performance they were witnessing, Walker placed the door breach module against the power box of the door. The door breach was a device that sent out a strong but brief electromagnetic pulse, causing disruption of the locking mechanism on cheap automatic doors. It worked it's magic now and the door slid open about half an inch, just enough for another agent to put a crowbar into the gap. He began to pry, forcing the door the rest of the way open. Had the inhabitants of the apartment been armed and willing to, they could have easily gunned down several of the FLEB people since they were standing directly in the doorway instead of off to the side of it like real cops. But they were allowed to get away with it in this instance. With guns raised the FLEB squad rushed inside, all of them screaming at the residents to get down but all of them using different phrases.

"Fucking morons," Lisa said again as she and Brian and the rest of the Eden police officers went through the doorway behind them, M-24s raised in the firing position.

The apartment was a two bedroom with a relatively large living room area. Some old furniture, all of it threadbare and falling apart, all of it undoubtedly from the welfare store or from a rent-to-own shop, was arranged symmetrically on the cheap carpet. On the table next to an Internet terminal was a commercial grade hard-copy printer that could churn out twenty to thirty sheets of hemp paper per minute. Pamphlets, presumably that had come out of the printer, were stacked everywhere, most of them in stacks of a hundred or so and fastened with rubber bands. On the front of them were the words: MARTIAN INDEPENDENCE — NOT JUST A DREAM!

The inhabitants of the apartment — two men and two women, all of them dressed in faded cheap shorts and shirts — were grabbed by their hair or clothing and shoved to the carpet by the FLEB agents. They were thrown roughly down and had steel-toed boots placed against their necks while other agents held the barrels of M-24s to their heads. They were all screaming and yelling, pleading with the black-outfitted agents to tell them what was going on.

"Shut the fuck up, greenie slime," Walker yelled at them, raising his boot and kicking one of the women in the side hard enough to make her gasp out her air.

Brian, Lisa, and the others looked on in shock at the treatment. Though they were no fans of vermin and though they were all of the opinion that they were forced to be too gentle with those they arrested, the unprovoked violence that the FLEB agents were utilizing was appalling to them. What had these people done to deserve this?

"Get 'em cuffed up," Walker ordered his people. "I want them downstairs in the van right away."

The agents applied their cuffs to the various wrists and cinched them down brutally tight, causing actual bleeding in one of the men.

"Walker," Brian said, after witnessing this, "don't you think you're being a little rough here?"

Walker gave him a seething glare. "I am in charge of this operation," he replied. "I do not recall asking you for advice in how to handle my prisoners. If it's a little too much for you to take, you can just go back downstairs."

Brian glared back but said nothing. Soon Walker returned to his task.

The four men and women, all of them moaning and grunting, all of them still asking what they had done, were jerked rudely to their feet and pushed towards the doorway. Six of the FLEB agents went with them and led them down the hallway. This left Walker and three of his agents in addition to Brian, Lisa, and the others. The agents fanned out through the two bedrooms and the kitchen where they began dumping drawers out and upturning beds.

"You locals are dismissed now," Walker said to Brian. "Thanks for your help."

"What the hell is going on here?" Brian demanded. "Are you trying to tell me that those people were terrorists?"

"I'm not trying to tell you anything," Walker said. "They are charged with plotting to attack a federal building. They will be extradited to Earth for trial."

"Extradited to Earth?" Lisa said. "Why the hell would you do that? There's a federal court right here in Eden."

"It is felt that Martian jurors might not be... well... exactly impartial," Walker said. "Considering the recent events on this planet it has been decided that all federal prisoners will be tried in Denver or Sau Paulo."

"Unbelievable," said one of the other cops, a six-year veteran of patrol services. "What kind of trial are they going to get on Earth?"

"A fair one," Walker said. "It's the WestHem way."

"And just where is the evidence that they were planning a bombing?" Brian asked. "All I see here are a bunch of leaflets about Martian independence. Those are protected under the first amendment of the WestHem constitution, are they not?"

"There will be evidence here somewhere," Walker assured them. "They'll have it on their computer files or in their bedroom. There will be something."

"This is not right," Lisa said. "What the hell are you feds trying to pull here?"

"We're not pulling anything," Walker said sternly. "We're just trying to keep some greenie vermin in line. You're cops aren't you? Why the hell are you taking up for these slimebags? I'd think you'd be glad to get them off the streets."

"You thought wrong," Brian said. "They weren't doing anything but printing up fliers. What evidence did you have against them? What information did you use to get your warrant?"

"As I said before, that is not your concern. You folks are dismissed. Thank you for your assistance."

"Walker," Lisa started. "I think..."

"Don't think," he interrupted. "It doesn't suit your... species. You're dismissed. Leave my crime scene immediately or I'll have you charged with interference with a federal investigation."

Lieutenant Margaret Duran was sitting behind a desk in the downtown substation, going over some reports that had been filed by her watch the previous shift. She was smoking a cigarette and sipping out of a bottle of water. Soft music issued from the speakers of her Internet terminal. She was in a good mood, as she had been prone to lately, and she hummed along with the melody as she worked. As a veteran watch commander she was accustomed to dealing with some very sticky issues, both with the troops that she commanded and with the administrative cops that commanded her. Her position was somewhat of a buffer between the management of the police department and the labor that actually performed the work. Strife had always been present between these two groups as the working cops tried to do their jobs with what they'd been given and the captains and deputy chiefs tried to worship the gods of public opinion. But lately, since the push towards Martian independence had really started to take form, things had mellowed between these two groups quite a bit. Management was suddenly not as prone to making new, ever oppressive policies designed to break the backs of the working cops and keep them in line. And the cops were not as prone to slovenliness or morale problems as they had been, probably — in part anyway — because they weren't nearly as busy anymore. It was a strange but true phenomenon that crime had actually dropped significantly since the Whiting inauguration and the defeat of the impeachment movement. Could it be that for the first time the Martian people were experiencing hope? Duran sometimes wondered if that was the case, and as cynical and hardened as twenty-five years of Eden law enforcement had made her, she really could not come up with any other explanation.

"Incoming communication from four-delta-five-nine," her computer terminal suddenly spoke up, relaying a message from the dispatch computer. "Would you like to accept?"

Unit 4-D-59. That was Wong and Haggerty, two of her better cops. She took a moment to wonder why they would bypass their sergeant in the chain of command with whatever problem they had. It was a minor breach in protocol that possibly bespoke of a situation that they didn't think he could deal with on his own. Her happy mood faded just a tad. She had a pretty good idea of what the problem might be. Already some rumors from other parts of the department had filtered her way. "Put them on screen," she told the computer with a sigh.

Haggerty's face appeared a moment later, his eyes showing troublesome concern. "Sorry to bother you, lieutenant," he said. "But there's something that I think we should talk to you about."

"No problem," she said. "What's up?"

"It might be better," he suggested, "if we could meet face to face. I don't really want to put it out on the airwaves. No hurry, just if you get a chance to get out on the streets this shift..."

"I'll be right out," she told him, knowing that it was best not to put requests like that off. "All I was doing was looking over these atrocities you people call reports anyway. How about 35^th Street and 6^th Avenue, in the loading area of the Schuyler building? That's where the night shift cops like to hide and sleep, isn't it?"

Brian chuckled a little. "I wouldn't know anything about that, lieutenant," he said. "But I know the place. We'll be there in about ten minutes."

Duran saved her work on the computer and then stood up from her chair and stretched for a moment, relieving some of the pain in her aching back. She walked to the corner of the office and picked up her armor vest, slipping it over her shoulders and fastening it into place. She then donned her helmet, which had her rank emblem stenciled on the front of it, and activated her exterior radio link. "This is watch commander 5-alpha," she told the dispatch computer through the link. "I'll be out in the field for a bit."

"Watch commander 5-alpha out in the field," the computer acknowledged.

A short walk brought her to the cart parking area of the building. She climbed into the non-descript cart that was assigned to the lieutenants of the downtown district and drove out through the secured gate that guarded access to the building. She wound her way through the crowded downtown streets and five minutes later pulled into the wide unloading zone behind the Schuyler building. The patrol cart belonging to Wong and Haggerty was already there waiting for her. She pulled up next to them and rolled down her window. "Hi, guys," she greeted, lifting the visor on her helmet.

"Thanks for coming, lieutenant," Haggerty said, flipping his own visor up. "We're really sorry to bother you and all."

"Don't sweat it," she said. "It's what they pay me the big bucks for. So what's the problem?"

"Well," Haggerty told her, seemingly unsure how to describe his dilemma, "we just got done with an assist call for some FLEB agents."

"FLEB agents huh?" she said, her suspicions about what this had to do with effectively confirmed.

"A whole shitload of FLEB agents," Wong said. "Ten of them."

"And let me guess," she said. "This was not to go pick up a couple of music or software pirates, was it?"

"No," Haggerty said. "It wasn't." He then went on to describe the experience that they had had in the public housing building.

Duran listened intently and with growing alarm as she was told of the brutality that the FLEB agents had employed in the takedown of the suspected "terrorists". Kicking arrestees in the head? Calling them greenies? Cinching the cuffs down tight enough to cause bleeding? In this world ruled by lawyers and their abuse of force lawsuits, these were shocking actions indeed, events that would have led to a prison sentence had an Eden cop performed them.

"But the violence was just one thing," Wong said when Haggerty was done. "Those people weren't doing anything illegal! All they were doing was printing up pamphlets to distribute on people's doors. The same kind I got on my door the other day! There were no explosives in there, hell, I didn't even see any guns."

"And you never saw the warrant that they had?" Duran asked them.

"They wouldn't discuss it," said Haggerty. "Every time we asked them about their evidence or their warrant, they told us it wasn't our concern. Finally they threatened us with arrest if we didn't clear out of there. When we got back downstairs the people that they'd arrested were already gone."

"Have those people lost their freaking minds?" Wong asked. "How could they do something like that? How can they get away with it?"

Duran sighed. "You're not the only ones that have had this problem," she told them.

"No?" Wong asked, raising her eyebrows.

"I haven't heard anything solid yet, but I've heard rumors that a few other watch commanders throughout the city had some similar meetings with their patrol teams and have been told similar tales. It seems that the FLEB is cracking down on the more vocal anti-Earthling elements."

"What are we going to do about it?" Haggerty demanded. "Lieutenant, I don't ever want to go on one of those raids again. I mean, I never liked helping those pricks take down someone who copied software on their computer but at least that is against the law. This was something that's protected by the fucking constitution. And vermin or not, those people did not deserve to be treated like that."

Duran sighed. "If this would've happened a few months ago," she said, "I would've been forced to tell you that you were stuck. But times have changed in the last few months, haven't they?"

"They sure have," Haggerty agreed. "And it looks like those corporate pricks are sicking their pet thugs on us because of it."

"That's my take on it," she said. "So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you permission to refuse to take part in any FLEB assistance call if they will not show you the warrant and the writ they used to obtain it. If they do show it to you and it looks funky, you have continued permission to refuse to participate."

Haggerty and Wong looked at her wide-eyed. She understood the source of her awe. She had just taken it upon herself to make a broad reaching decision about cooperation with the FLEB. Again, this was something that she wouldn't have dreamed of before the Laura Whiting inauguration. But as she had told her subordinates, times were different now. She suspected that her decision would be backed up by her captain and by the deputy chief above him. She suspected that she might even be applauded for making it.

"Do you have a problem with my orders?" she asked them, hiding a smile.

"No, lieutenant," Wong said. "Not at all."

"Good," she said. "I'll have it shipped to all the patrol units on my watch as well. Report any incidents with FLEB agents to me immediately. In the meantime, I guess I should go arrange a meeting with Deputy Chief Durham, shouldn't I?"

All over the planet that day, teams of FLEB agents fanned out and made arrests of people they called terrorists. They went out in teams of five or ten, in one or two black vans, always with armor and automatic weapons, and usually with teams of unsuspecting local police along as back-up. They breached door after door in welfare and working class apartment buildings alike, throwing to the ground those they found inside and hauling them away to local FLEB offices. In most cases the "terrorists" that they arrested were those that had been printing pamphlets or who had been the organizers of the recall drives that had threatened the legislature. In each case the warrants used were from the local federal magistrate instead of a superior court judge and in each case the writ that was used to obtain the warrant was not shown to any assisting police officers.

The evening news channels all featured the sweeps as their top stories. This included both the big three Internet channels and the MarsGroup channels, although their respective takes on the subject were somewhat different. On the big three stations the newscasters would announce how the diligent and overworked FLEB agents of the various cities had wrapped up a complex and far-reaching terrorist conspiracy investigation by arresting hundreds of alleged terrorists in a coordinated sweep. Video clips would be shown in which scruffy, unshaven Martians were being led out of housing buildings and placed in the FLEB vans with others. Agents were interviewed from each head office and they would describe the "terrorist writings" and "other, more dangerous items" they had uncovered in their search. They described intricate plots that these terrorists were engaged in to blow up federal buildings, spaceports, even the Martian capital itself. The implication was that Laura Whiting and a few of her consorts were behind these groups. While it was true that not very many Martians watched these broadcasts or believed them if they did, they were beamed to Earth and viewed by the WestHem citizens there. On Earth the reaction was blind outrage that radical Martians were getting away with such things.

On the MarsGroup stations however, the reports were a little different. Outraged Martian reporters went on camera to inform the public that innocent citizens executing their constitutional right to free speech and assembly were being dragged away by federal agents. Police officers that had been present at the raids were interviewed (in all cases with the blessings of their department brass) and they described the brutality they had observed as well as the lack of any tangible evidence. A senior reporter on the most popular of the MarsGroup channels demanded of the Earthlings to disclose the evidence that the arrestees were being held under. "Let's see the warrants," she demanded. "Let's see the writs that brought forth those warrants. And most important of all, let's see the evidence against these people that justifies their extradition from our planet!" Laura Whiting herself appeared in a special segment demanding much the same answers from federal authorities. She described the FLEB as "fascist SS troops" bent on destroying the separatist movement that was underway. "They're trying to intimidate you, fellow Martians," she warned the people. "They're trying to intimidate you into dropping this great cause. Don't let them be successful."

By the time the sun set over the Martian cities that night, the populace was in a state of near rebellion. This state was intensified the next morning when MarsGroup shots of the arrestees being marched onto surface to orbit ships bound for Triad and eventually Earth were aired. At ten o'clock Eden time Chief Robert Daniels of the Eden Police Department gave a press conference in which he announced that his department would immediately cease cooperation with the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau. "We will offer no further assistance in the rounding up of what seems to be innocent Martian civilians. We will provide no back-up, no tactical advice, no computer searches, nothing, unless they can provide our administration with detailed arrest writs and proper warrants." By eleven o'clock that morning, three other police departments, including the New Pittsburgh police, had made similar announcements. By noon, all of them had.

This did not stop the FLEB from conducting more raids however. By the end of office hours Eden time, more than sixty more Martians had been taken from their homes and shuttled off to federal holding cells, all of them charged with inciting terrorism or conspiracy to commit terrorism. Most of these incidents were reported upon by MarsGroup stations, fueling the fire even more.

But the biggest event, the one that truly pushed the Martian people over the edge, occurred the following day in New Pittsburgh. A team of ten FLEB agents went to a welfare housing building on the east side of that city and breached an apartment door where six men and women were printing up some admittedly radical pamphlets calling for acts of violence against FLEB "storm troopers". These six people, members of a newly formed group that called themselves the Free Mars Society, saw their door being forced open and knew what it meant. They elected not to go quietly. Using the cheap handguns that nearly every ghetto inhabitant carried, they opened fire the moment the FLEB agents came through the door, aiming for the head and taking down two of them with shots to the face. The remaining FLEB force opened up with their M-24s, spraying bullets throughout the apartment and killing everyone, including a small child asleep in a crib.

The incident might have gone unnoticed or uncommented upon except for the fact that a MarsGroup reporter team had just happened to be in the neighborhood and had spotted the FLEB van parked outside of the building. The reporters and their camera managed to make it up to the apartment in question and get shots of the interior broadcast to their office before the remaining FLEB members took them into custody on incitement charges and smashed their equipment. The clip was played over and over again on the various MarsGroup channels, several times every hour. It was downloaded from MarsGroup Internet sites and emailed all around the planet. By the time the dinner hour fell, nearly everyone on Mars had seen it. When the Martian people saw the bullet riddled corpses of their fellow citizens and the black-suited and armored FLEB agents standing over them with their weapons, chaos erupted.

This chaos was fanned into fury that night by than Laura Whiting during her regular speech.

"These people are Nazis!" she yelled into the camera, her eyes blazing. "They come storming into private homes with automatic weapon waving warrants that are shaky at best and they act surprised when the people take up arms against them? While I do not advocate shooting it out with these FLEB thugs if they should happen to choose your apartment to raid, in truth, what is the option? Our people are being hauled off of their planet to Earth where they will be crucified in staged trials and sentenced to life in some shithole Earthling federal prison. I certainly understand why our citizens in New Pittsburgh, who were doing nothing more than executing their constitutional rights, elected to chose violence to combat this."

It was less than an hour after Whiting's broadcast that a riot erupted at the New Pittsburgh federal building in the downtown portion of that city. Hundreds of angry Martians, welfare and working class alike, gathered at all of the entrances and lay siege to the structure. They fired guns at the entrances, putting countless holes in the tempered plexiglass and badly damaging three of the doors. They painted profane words on the walls and doors — epitaphs that made EARTHLINGS GO HOME seem like a term of endearment. They smashed all of the security cameras and threw bottles of Fruity and Agricorp juice, littering the entryways with broken glass. They managed to get into the back lot of the building where they overturned and smashed six of the black vans that had been used to carry strike teams. Through it all the terrified federal agents and employees barricaded themselves inside, the agents armed with M-24s but knowing that they would not be able to gun down everyone who tried to get them if the crowd somehow managed to make it inside.

The New Pittsburgh Police Department finally broke the riot up after more than two hours of desperate calls for assistance from inside the building. The NPPD officers fired no shots, used no tear gas, and made no threats to the crowd. They simply told them that enough was enough and asked them to give it a rest for the night. Surprisingly enough, the crowd complied, all of them throwing a few last bottles or firing a few last bullets and then wandering away towards the tram stations or their housing complexes. No arrests were made or even attempted and the federal employees actually witnessed some of the rioters shaking hands with the police officers.

Director Hayes, hearing of the event, placed an angry call to the chief of the NPPD, demanding an explanation for the delayed response of his officers and the lack of any arrests. The chief shrugged off the inquiry with a flippant remark and then disconnected him. Subsequent calls were not put through.

When the crowd began to gather outside the building on the next night, the FLEB agents reacted a little differently. This time they were expecting the rioters and they had brought in extra troops and weapons for the occasion. Forty agents, all of them in full gear and armed with M-24s, pushed out the doorway of the building once the crowd of Martians began to swell and surround them. They ordered them to disperse, pointing their weapons as they shouted this. The Martians held their ground and began to lob bottles and other debris, bouncing them off of helmets and armored vests and knocking several of the agents to their knees. No one ever knew who fired the first shot but within seconds the clattering of automatic weapons filled the air and Martians began to drop to the ground, blood flying from their bodies, heads exploding into brains and chunks of skull as the high velocity rounds ripped into them. The surviving rioters ran blindly away in a panic, a few of them returning fire with their handguns but none of them causing a lethal wound. Soon the streets were filled with New Pittsburgh police carts and dip-hoe carts, their crews horrified by the carnage that had resulted. The media, both MarsGroup and the big three, soon followed. The final toll would be 43 Martians killed and 34 wounded.

Laura Whiting made a special address the next morning, demanding an independent investigation into the incident. It was a request that was all but ignored by both the big three media giants and the FLEB themselves. Two days later the FLEB office placed the blame for the shooting on the Martian rioters and the New Pittsburgh Police Department. No suspensions or disciplinary actions against any FLEB agents occurred, a fact that was leaked to MarsGroup reporters by Martian clerical staff who worked for the FLEB. Within hours of the ruling, the entire planet knew about it.

The following day the Martian people expressed their displeasure. The first incident occurred in New Pittsburgh, which was quickly becoming the focal point of much of the anti-fed movement. Two FLEB agents on a routine stakeout of a suspected "terrorist haven" were dragged from their van by an angry mob of Martian welfare class. They had their helmets and armor ripped from their bodies and they were beaten with their own firearms so severely that both were comatose when the police finally broke up the crowd. Though neither would die from their injuries, both would be medically retired because of the incident. No arrests were ever made.

A few hours later, in Libby on the equatorial plain, an entire ten-person team of agents about to conduct a strike were mobbed by a similar crowd as they waited for the elevators to arrive to take them up to their target. In this case two of the agents were killed, shot through the head by their own weapons, and six were beaten badly enough to require hospitalization. Again, no arrests were made by the responding police officers.

Throughout that day and the next, many other, less severe incidents took place in all of the Martian cities as FLEB agents went out to their assignments and angry Martians reacted to the slaughter in New Pittsburgh. These incidents would send several agents to local hospitals and result in the deaths of three Martians. But the biggest incident of retaliation took place three days after the New Pittsburgh Slaughter — as it was being called — in Eden.

"Incoming multiple agency response call," the dispatch computer said in it's calm, cool, collected voice. A second later, rows of text appeared on the screen.

"What is it?" asked Lisa, who was behind the wheel of the cart on this day. It had been another slow shift and she was ready for a little action to break up the monotony. A multiple agency response meant that something big was going down.

"34^th Street and 7^th Avenue," Brian told her, reading from the screen. "Heavy smoke in the streets. Multiple calls from citizens and the fire suppression systems have been activated at that intersection. Some of the call-ins seem to think a vehicle of some sort is burning."

"A vehicle huh?" Lisa said, turning the cart around and flipping on the emergency lights. "That could be nasty if it's a delivery truck carrying chemicals or something."

"Yep," Brian agreed, reaching under his seat and pulling out his gas mask.

In the enclosed environment of the Martian cities, fire was treated with considerably more respect than it was on Earth. On Mars, there was no outside to go to when things started to burn and the smoke had no natural way to escape from the area. Visibility would quickly be obliterated as smoke built up under the glass roof and people blocks away could easily be choked to death on noxious fumes if they were trapped in the vicinity. Though automatic fire suppression sprinklers were every twenty meters on the streets and every five meters in every building, they were good only for extinguishing minor blazes in the earliest stages of development. Major blazes, as this one seemed to be based on the dispatch information, required the use of high-pressure water hoses and lots of manpower. For this reason all public safety employees, the police included, were trained in firefighting and dispatched in large numbers whenever such an incident occurred.

"Holy shit," Brian said as they approached the area. "I guess something's burning all right." Though they were still six blocks away a haze of black smoke was quickly accumulating up along the ceiling. It grew into a thick fog further down the street. Hundreds of people, many of them coughing and with soot on their faces, were rushing out of the area, making it difficult for Lisa to navigate the cart through them. "Computer," he asked, "are any units on scene yet?"

"Negative," the computer replied. "I'm showing you as the closest so far. The next-in unit should be DPHS unit Delta-7. They are currently at 53^rd Street and 7th Avenue."

"Copy, thanks," Brian said. He turned to Lisa. "We'd better get our masks and goggles on. This shit is gonna get thick in a minute."

"Right," she agreed, reaching down and picking up her own mask.

They covered their faces with the gas masks, which were capable of filtering out all but oxygen and nitrogen from the environment. They then pulled their combat goggles down over their eyes, setting them for infrared enhancement, which would allow them to see through the smoke. It was fortunate that they did this because within seconds the smoke became so thick that visibility would have been impossible. The streets however, were now mostly empty of citizens. Martians knew their fire drills well, having been taught since birth that it was imperative to get into a nearby building in the even of a blaze on the street. Buildings in the vicinity were automatically sealed off and imparted with air pressure greater than the street level to keep the smoke out.

A block away from the incident the actual flames became visible as a roaring red pyre in the infrared spectrum. Brian and Lisa could vaguely make out the source as a vehicle of some sort, possibly a panel truck. Their computer informed them that the heat was building up and that it was safe to go no further without protection. Lisa stopped the cart and they got out, going around to the back of it to remove their suppression suits, which were essentially coveralls made of bright yellow, synthetic, fire-proof material that did not conduct heat very well. As they put them on, Brian contacted the dispatch computer again. "Who's in command of this incident?" he asked.

"Battalion Chief 9 of DPHS," the computer told him. "She is still several kilometers away."

"Copy," Brian said, sliding his arms into the sleeves. "Battalion 9, this is EPD four-delta-five-nine."

"Go ahead, delta-five-nine," said the husky voice of the chief.

"We're on scene about a block out," he updated her. "It looks like a fully involved vehicle of some sort. Heavy smoke for four blocks in every direction and high heat in the vicinity. All of the citizens are off the streets as far as I can see. I recommend that when you get enough units close enough to fight it, we shut down the blast doors for a five block radius and start ventilating."

"Copy that, delta-five-nine," she said. "Will do."

"We're suiting up now," he told her next. "We'll move in and try to get some water on it."

They finished donning their suits, zipping them completely over their helmets and faces, leaving only enough room for their masks and goggles to peak out. "You ready?" Lisa asked Brian.

"I'm ready," he replied. "Let's do it."

They began to trot in the direction of the blaze, their combat goggles allowing them to see through the choking smoke, their suits protecting them from the heat. The blaze grew brighter and brighter as they approached and the shape of the object burning grew increasingly distinct.

"That looks like a fuckin FLEB van," Lisa observed.

"Sure does," Brian agreed, noting that it actually seemed to be melting from the intense heat. "And somehow I don't think that fire is accidental."

They split up when they reached the intersection, each of them heading for one of the four "fire stations" that were located at every intersection of streets. The fire stations were locked cabinets in which one hundred meters of six centimeter fire hose was stored, hooked up to a high capacity hydrant. Dip-hoe carts all carried extra hose in case the one hundred meters was not enough to reach a particular incident. In this case however, the burning van was less than thirty meters away from two of the stations.

Brian reached his station first. He looked at the number printed on it and then talked to the dispatch computer. "Computer," he told it. "Unlock fire station 34-7-2."

The computer quickly analyzed his voice pattern and concluded that he had authorization to order such a thing. A second later there was a click and the mechanism slid open. Inside of the compartment the hemp hose was wrapped around a large reel, a large nozzle resting on top of it. Brian grabbed the nozzle and put it over his shoulder. He began to walk towards the fire, the hose unreeling behind him as he pulled. Across the street, Lisa had reached her station and was doing the same.

When he got within ten meters of the blaze, his patrol computer warned him that the heat was becoming too intense for safety. He stopped. "Computer," he said. "Charge up my hose."

The computer complied, opening the main valve on his station and allowing water to rush forth into the hemp. The flat hose on the street suddenly ballooned up as it was filled, the various twists and turns jumping up and down and then resettling. When the water reached the nozzle, the weight of the hose against his shoulder suddenly quadrupled. Brian brought the nozzle down against his chest and then opened it, allowing a powerful stream of water to blast out towards the burning van. The sheer force of it tried to knock him off his feet but he braced himself tightly, just as he always had in the training classes, and kept the stream on the flames. Slowly, he began to move in.

His stream of water was joined by Lisa's less than a minute later. Although there was no negligible effect at first, their streams were soon joined by others as the first dip-hoe team arrived and activated the other two stations at the intersection. The smoke billowed even thicker for a few moments as the battalion chief ordered the blast doors shut around them to contain it. But a few moments later it began to dramatically thin as exhaust ports in the roof were opened up, allowing it to escape into the Martian atmosphere. Ventilation engines in the enclosed areas then kicked into overdrive, blasting fresh air into the area as fast as it was being sucked out by the pressure difference.

Once four water streams were concentrated upon it, the blaze was knocked down in less than five minutes, revealing that the vehicle was indeed a FLEB van, although now a partially melted and grotesquely distorted one. It was when Brian, Lisa, and the other cops and dip-hoes moved in to inspect the interior of the van that they made the shocking discovery that it was still occupied. Ten bodies were inside, all of them little more than grinning, blackened skeletons with melted helmets on their heads and charred body armor over their ribs. Their weapons, which were mostly plastic with steel barrels, were melted lumps in their laps or on the floor.

"Christ," Brian said, glad that he still had his mask on. He could imagine what the smell would be like in there. "What do you think did this?"

"A Molotov cocktail," replied one of the dip-hoes, an old, crusty one that looked like he had at least twenty years on the job. "I've seen them used before during the riots of '28. A little pressurized hydrogen in a Fruity bottle, a simple igniter designed to fire on impact, and you have yourself a hell of a fire."

"Where the hell do they get pressurized hydrogen?" Lisa asked, unable to take her eyes off of the charred bodies.

"Contacts in the agricultural industry," the dip-hoe replied. "The same place they get the chemicals for making dust."

This theory was strengthened by the finding of a large chunk of concrete, blackened but still intact, resting between the front seats of the van.

"Look at that," the old dip-hoe said, pointing it out. "I bet they threw that concrete through first, shattering the window, and then followed it up a second or two later with the Molotov." He smiled a little, seemingly impressed by this. "Pretty smart," he said. "Two simple ballistic throws and you've got ten feds charbroiled. Guess they won't be taking down any pamphlet makers anymore, will they?"

"Or gunning down any protesters in front of their office," one of the other dip-hoes put in.

Brian and Lisa both stared at the blackened corpses for a moment, both knowing that they should feel outraged at the murder of fellow law enforcement officers, both feeling guilt that they didn't. After all, these feds had undoubtedly been on their way to yet another illegal raid upon Martian civilians when the attack occurred. When you came right down to it, shouldn't they expect this sort of thing considering the way they had been operating lately?

"Ten less Earthlings we have to worry about now," Brian said, stepping back away from the van.

"You got that right," Lisa agreed.

Once the smoke was evacuated from the area, the blast doors on the perimeter were opened back up and an all-clear signal was given to the surrounding buildings. From every lobby curious Martians and a few scattered Earthlings came pouring out to resume their business. Human nature being what it always had been, most of them maneuvered themselves so they could pass as closely as possible to the burned out van. A few were even able to catch bare glimpses of the charred corpses inside. The Martians that witnessed this all went away grinning.

Lieutenant Duran and the DPH Battalion Chief showed up at the same time. While the BC went about the task of arranging a fire investigation, Duran rounded up all of the cops on scene. "All right people," she told them with a sigh. "It looks like we got ourselves a multiple homicide investigation to handle here."

"Question, lieutenant?" said Sam Stanislaus, a five-year police officer.

"What is it Sam?" she asked.

"Is it really considered a homicide if the victims are a bunch of fed fucks?" he asked with a smile. "I mean, shouldn't we think of it as more of a public assistance?"

"Or defense of life," another cop put in. "They were probably on their way to jack some poor slobs printing pamphlets."

Everyone had a laugh over this, Duran included. When it died down she said: "While I'm inclined to agree with you, we still have to go through the motions here. So, Haggarty, Wong, Stanislaus, and Ventner, start picking through this crowd and see if you can find any witnesses."

"Oh right, lieutenant," Brian said. "I'm sure that our fellow Martians here will be glad to provide statements about who killed these poor feds. How many statements should we get? Is twenty enough or should we go for thirty?"

This produced another round of laughter. "Just go through the motions, will you?" Duran asked them. "Even shithead feds deserve the same sort of jerk-off treatment that we give to welfare class homicides, don't they?"

Everyone was forced to agree that this might be true. Brian, Lisa, and the other two fanned out through the crowd, asking if anyone had seen anything and each recording "I didn't see nothing" more than a hundred times for the report.

Just as the forensics unit showed up to begin combing the van and its contents for evidence, three more FLEB vans arrived on the scene. They parked less than ten meters away from the crime scene and fully armed and armored agents poured out of their doors, all of them rushing over to the burned van and looking inside, their expressions horror at what they saw. The cops, dip-hoes, and civilians all watched this spectacle as it occurred, more than a few of them making snide remarks. The man in charge of the team, a high-ranking agent by the name of Don Mitchell, found Lieutenant Duran soon after having his worst fears confirmed.

"Any arrests made?" he asked her, glaring at the jeering crowd of Martians.

"Nope," she said. "Nobody saw anything. At least that's their story."

"Somebody saw it happen," he said, taking an angry step towards her. "Some piece of shit greenie can't throw a goddamn chunk of concrete and an incendiary device through the window of one of my vans in broad daylight without someone seeing it. I want some witnesses and I want them now!"

Duran stared at him levelly. "I'll thank you to take a step back from me and lower your tone," she told him sternly. "I don't give a shit who you are, I will not be addressed in that manner."

"Ten of my men are dead!" he yelled, not stepping back. "How dare you..."

Four of the Eden police officers stepped forward, their hands resting on their tanners. "The lieutenant said to step back," one of them told Mitchell menacingly.

"I'd advise you to do as they say," Duran said lightly. "As you've noted, tempers are a little short among us greenies lately, especially when feds are involved."

"Are you threatening me?" he asked her, his face turning red beneath his helmet.

"Take it for what you will," she told him. "But step back and lower your voice when you address me and we'll get along a lot better."

He took a step backwards, to the delight of the crowd watching. He did not, however, lower his voice much. "My men are taking over this investigation," he said. "We're assuming federal authority under the WestHem code."

Duran smiled. "Static," she said. "It's all yours." She keyed her radio up. "All units on the 34^th street incident, turn your reports over to me and resume patrol. Our federal friends are going to handle this investigation by themselves."

Mitchell was somewhat taken aback by how easily she gave it up. "What is this?" he asked her.

"You think we want to stand around here smelling dead fed if we don't have to?" Duran asked him. "Have fun with the investigation. I know you folks have lots of experience with this sort of thing, don't you?"

The sarcasm in her voice was quite evident. Mitchell knew, as well as Duran and all of the other cops, that the federal officers were real good at tracking down copyright violators and computer hackers but despite the Internet shows lauding them, were a little short on actual crime experience. "Well," he said slowly, backpedaling a bit, "we will need to use your forensics unit of course."

"Put your request in through Chief Daniel's office," Duran told him. "But until he tells me otherwise, the forensic unit pulls out as well. And I have a pretty good idea what the chief is going to say."

"Now wait a minute," Mitchell said. "Maybe we're getting off on the wrong foot here..."

"We'll turn over everything we've gathered to this point to you," she said. "Have fun. Hope you find your man."

Five minutes later all of the information was downloaded to the FLEB investigation computers and the Eden police officers, every last one of them, cleared the scene and went about their routine duties. When Chief Daniels was asked to dispatch a forensics team to assist in the investigation thirty minutes later, the request was denied without explanation.

Three hours later, in Denver, FLEB director Stanley Clinton was briefing executive council member Loretta Williams on the firebomb attack on Mars. Word had reached Earth via the big three Internet news stations long before it arrived through official channels. TRAGEDY ON MARS, it was being called, a name which was certainly not the catchiest the media had ever come up with, but which did convey the emotion that the Earthlings were feeling about the loss of ten FLEB agents quite well. The briefing was not a face-to-face one, as it were. Instead, they were accomplishing their meeting via secure Internet transmission from his office to hers.

"We have nothing," he told her, shaking his head angrily. "The Eden police chief has refused to allow our agents the use of their forensics unit or their manpower and the greenies... well, I don't think I have to tell you how much cooperation we're getting out of them. Hayes told me that three of the agents trying to question the crowd outside of that building were physically attacked."

"Why didn't they haul some of those greenies in for questioning anyway?" Williams demanded. "If nothing else, it would've at least shown those savages a thing or two about cooperation."

Clinton carefully kept his expression neutral, despite the disgust he felt at having to explain the basics to this high-browed politician. "Things are already quite volatile on that planet," he said slowly. "I believe that the commander on scene was afraid of forcing another confrontation."

"Forcing another confrontation?" she asked. "What is he, a coward? Did you not just tell me that there were thirty armed agents on the scene? Surely thirty agents could handle any trouble that a crowd of greenies could throw at them."

"Yes," he agreed, letting his composure slip just a bit. "They could have handled it the way they did in New Pittsburgh during the riot."

Williams did not seem to catch his drift however. "Exactly," she said. "That's what we need more of on that planet. It's brutal, that's true, but by God, those agents firing into the crowd dispersed them, did it not?"

"It did," he said quietly. "And I've also had more than ten requests for psychological counseling as a result of it too. That's not to mention that the shooting in New Pittsburgh is probably what precipitated the firebombing of our agents this morning."

"Common terrorists," Williams almost spat. "If you can't catch the ones directly responsible, you simply need to crack down harder on everyone else. You, as a career law enforcement officer, should know that, Clinton. Why do I have to call you up and tell you your job?"

He tried once again. "With all due respect, ma'am," he said. "I will continue to follow your orders of course, but it is my belief that this process of cracking down on the common Martians is causing much more trouble than it's preventing. Every arrest that we make adds fuel to Laura Whiting's fire. Every confrontation between our agents and the greenies infuriates them more and makes them bolder. We've lost the support of the local police departments and the local criminal justice system. My people are not able to walk the streets there anymore."

"They're not paid to walk the streets," she said firmly. "They're paid to keep that planet under control and to protect our business interests. The crackdowns will continue."

"Yes ma'am," he said dejectedly.

"Now let's discuss Laura Whiting herself, shall we? Have you made any progress in her removal?"

"Not exactly," he said, casting his eyes downward.

"Not exactly?" she said. "Clinton, that is not an acceptable answer."

"Ma'am," he explained, "you have to understand that we've looked into every aspect of her life over the past two months. There is simply nothing that we can legally use to file criminal charges against her. We've leaked everything that we've been doing to the big three of course, and they've done a marvelous job of spreading innuendo and half-truths about her all over the screens, but when it comes down to legalities, Whiting has covered herself very well."

"Then make something up," Williams said.

"Ma'am?" he said, genuinely shocked at the suggestion.

"You heard me," she said. "Make up some charges. Get a grand jury here on Earth to indict her on them and issue an arrest warrant. Extradite her back here to Denver for trial. I assure you that the attorney general will cooperate with you."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am," he said. "But I don't think that's a very good idea."

"Why not?" she responded. "Isn't that what you're doing with all of those greenies that you've hauled off the street down there?"

"Well, not exactly," he said. "They were in possession of certain written materials and so forth that could technically be referred to as terrorist writings or incitements. It is a weak justification I will admit, but it is a justification. As far as Whiting goes however, there is nothing like those writings on her computer and her speeches, while they could be said to be inciting the terrorism that's going on, well... I don't think that would stand up in the grand jury room."

"Then you need to come up with something that will stand up in the grand jury room."

"Ma'am," he tried one more time, "if we haul Laura Whiting off of Mars with a flimsy excuse, the greenies are going to go insane. There's no telling what they might do. I think a general strike would be the least damaging course of action that we could expect. Open revolt might be the worst."

Williams shook her head in disgust as she listened to these words. "A general strike?" she asked. "You must be joking. Unemployment is twenty-five percent on Mars. You can't have a general strike with that kind of rate. And as for open revolt? Surely you can't be serious about that. We have a fast action division of WestHem marines stationed on that planet. You don't really think that those greenies would try anything with them there, do you?"

"As unlikely or hopeless as it seems," Clinton said, "I still think that it's a possibility. There could be much bloodshed and disruption of production."

"It won't happen," Williams assured him. "Now do as I say. Get your man on Mars working on something you can feed to a federal grand jury here and then have the attorney general's office pick that grand jury very carefully. I want her indicted by the end of the month, Clinton. I want her on a ship bound for Earth within twenty-four hours of the indictment being issued. And I want her rotting in a federal prison within six months. Do you understand me?"

"Yes ma'am," he said, suppressing a sigh. "I understand."

She signed off a moment later. A minute after that he was composing a secure email to Corban Hayes on Mars.

One fortunate aspect of the recent troubles between the corporations and the Martians had to do with the recent Agricorp/Interplanetary Food merger. With public opinion being so volatile and unpredictable lately, Agricorp upper management, showing rare wisdom, had decided to put off the scheduled "mass reduction in force" that it had planned as a result of the merger. Though they still had every intention of laying of more than sixteen thousand people once things settled back down (as they had every confidence things eventually would), fears of more riots or possible boycotts of Agricorp products compelled them to keep everyone onboard for now.

Because of this decision Lon Fargo, greenhouse maintenance technician of eight years service, was able to remain duly employed for the time being, although with a rather large hammer hanging over his head. As such, he was entitled to remain an active member of the Martian Planetary Guard, where he retained his sergeant rank in the special forces division. Saturday afternoon found him at his training rotation out at the MPG base with the rest of his platoon.

Over the last three months they had trained out in the wastelands almost every rotation, honing and refining their techniques on interdicting and destroying advancing APCs. Their mission this week however, was something different, something strange. And, contrary to normal operating procedure, their reasons for practicing such an unorthodox maneuver had not been explained to them, they had in fact been told not to discuss it with anyone outside of the company.

The entire platoon was inside the back corridors of the base, the long halls and hallways where the weapons and ammunition were stored. This was a tightly secured area of course and everyone except the special forces platoons practicing their new maneuvers had been cleared out for the day. In addition, the steel doors that separated sections of the hallway and the actual storage rooms themselves had been locked in the open position and large sheets of four-centimeter steel that had been shipped all the way from New Pittsburgh had been bolted into the doorways in their place. The task of the special forces teams on this day was to breach these simulated doorways and clear the rooms beyond them of "enemy" troops, which were being played by other special forces platoons and squads.

"What the hell are we doing this for, John?" Lon asked the platoon commander, Lieutenant Yee. "I mean, it's kind of fun and all, ripping down doors with primacord charges, but what's the point? Our whole mission is to prevent EastHem troops from getting out of the wastelands in the first place. If we ever get to the point where we have to clear them out of the buildings, the war is lost anyway."

"It's orders from Colonel Bright himself," Yee said, not for the first time that day. "Now quit asking about it and just do it."

Lon shrugged and went about the task of readying his squad for the next breach, which was to be their responsibility. The target in this case was the door to one of the processed food storage rooms just off the main hallway. The steel that was serving as the door stood between them and the room and the resistance inside could be heavy, light, or non-existent. They would not know until they made entry. "Gavin," he ordered, "get the charge up there on that door."

"Right, sarge," Gavin said, approaching carefully. Primacord was a shaped high explosive charge designed to cut through rock or steel. It was actually a length of black cord that directed an intense, though compact explosion when activated. He unrolled three meters of it from the five hundred meter supply that Horishito was carrying on his back and stuck it to the door, starting at the floor level and moving up to near the top and then back down to the floor again on the other side. When exploded this would cut a one and a half by one meter hole in the steel, allowing both a firing port and an entry point to the room. He set a detonator into the end of the cord and then backed away.

"Matza," Lon told the young man on the SAW. "Get in position. Hose down the interior once we blow it. Make sure there's nobody with a line of fire on us."

"Right, sarge," Matza said, putting the weapon down on its bi-pod on the floor and lying down with it. He trained it directly towards the primacord loop.

"Everybody else," he said, hefting his weapon and flicking off the safety, "get to the sides. We go in fast and low once Matza clears the corridor for us. You know the drill."

They knew the drill. They formed up against the wall on either side of the doorway, their weapons ready, their combat goggles active and in targeting mode. Since they were inside, all of them were dressed in Kevlar armor instead of biosuits. They had additional Kevlar protecting their legs and necks to keep from being injured by the helium filled training rounds.

"Fargo to Yee," Lon said over the command circuit, "we're ready for action."

"Copy," said Yee, who was holding back in the rear with the rest of the platoon. "Breach and enter whenever you're ready. I'll have 2^nd squad guard the corridor. The rest of us will follow you in."

"Right," Lon said. He looked over at Gavin, who held the detonator. "Do it," he told him.

Gavin pushed the button, firing the primacord. There was a bright flash of light and a sharp crack that echoed up and down the corridor. The cord sliced through the steel of the door as easily as a knife through butter, sending the section that had been outlined flying into the room.

Matza, on the SAW, was the first to see that there were troops in the room. They looked surprised at the explosion but they were reacting quickly, the ones in his view turning to put weapons on him. He squeezed the trigger on the SAW and sent bursts of training rounds at them, raking his fire from one group to the other. They stopped in place as they were hit and sat down, their weapons on their laps, their arms rubbing the areas where they had been struck. "Clear!" he yelled, once everyone in his view was either down or under cover.

"Go!" Lon yelled, and one by one his men dove through the doorway, flinging their bodies to the ground and training their weapons about the room. Almost immediately they found targets and began to shoot. The crackle of gunfire was shockingly loud in the enclosed room and quickly grew to an intensity that made conversation almost impossible. Lon himself was the fourth person through the doorway, his sector of responsibility the west wall of the room. Even as he was diving for the ground, he identified a target — Steve Jefferson, the sergeant from 3^rd platoon — bringing a weapon to bear on him. Jefferson fired at him just as he rolled away, his rounds exploding into water next to him. Lon managed to put his targeting recticle on Jefferson's chest a half second later. He squeezed off a three round burst, feeling the weapon kick in his hand. The rounds splashed into Jefferson's chest armor, knocking him out of action. He immediately began to scan for other targets but saw nothing but "dead" ones. He was somewhat dismayed to see that the status report in the upper right hand corner of his goggle view was showing that four members of his squad had been killed by enemy gunfire.

"Entry made," Lon barked into the radio to Yee. "Doorway is secure."

"Coming up," Yee returned.

A moment later the rest of the platoon came rushing through the hole in the door. They began to fan out through the rest of the large storage room, probing behind shelves of food stocks. Every few seconds there were bursts of fire as more enemy were encountered.

Within three minutes the entire room, including the back doorway, was secure. The cost however, was a little high. Had it been a real engagement, Yee's 2^nd platoon would have lost eight men to the enemy's guns.

"We need to do better than that," Yee said once it was over. "Eight casualties is unacceptable."

"We just need more practice," Lon said, clearing his weapon now that session was over.

"I'll tell you what the problem was," said Jefferson, who had been resurrected from the dead and who had come over to shake the hand of the man who had killed him.

"What?" asked Yee.

"Your doorway was too small," he said. "Only one of you could come through at a time. That made it way too easy for us to pick you off as you entered. It also gave us too much time to go get into firing positions in the shelves while you were clearing the entrance. You lost some of the speed and surprise element because of the doorway bottleneck."

"So maybe a little more primacord on the doors then?" Lon asked.

"That might do it," Jefferson told him. "I think the key to this maneuver is getting two people through the door at a time. Think about it. That would double the take-down speed."

"Interesting," Yee said. "But what about...

As the members of the opposing teams got together to talk about what had happened, none of them paid much attention to the security cameras that kept vigil over the room. They were all under the impression that the cameras had been deactivated for the duration of the mission. They were wrong.

In the base control room Colonel Bright was sitting at a chair with General Jackson and Laura Whiting herself. They had just watched the entire mock engagement on the video screens. Jackson did not seem particularly pleased by what he had witnessed.

"Casualties were a little high on the attacking team's part," he told Bright. "Granted, the OPFOR in this case knew they were coming and were probably psychologically prepared for them at least, but still... I'd like to see them pull their entries off a little smoother than that. If they don't, we're gonna have some serious losses up on Triad when the time comes."

Bright was in his late forties and had been with the MPG for ten years. Before joining his planet's service he had served with distinction in the WestHem marines as part of their special forces division, although, being a greenie, his rank had never risen to higher than corporal. He was a skilled tactician and had honed the guerilla warfare arm of the MPG into a highly disciplined, highly trained point during his tenure, turning it from little more than a harassing force to one of the most potent weapons in the MPG arsenal. "This is the first day that they've worked on door breaches," he said in defense of his men. "It's only natural that they're a little rusty on the technique. They're improving. And look at what they're doing now. They're discussing ways that they can improve their entries. The OPFOR is giving them tips on it."

"That is somewhat reassuring," Jackson agreed. "And you'll excuse me if I sound overly critical. It's just that things are reaching a head here pretty soon. Now that someone fried a bunch of feds, we're gonna start seeing more action from them and their efforts against Laura are going to double, if not triple."

Laura, who had been watching the exercise in awe, nodded. "I fear we have less than six weeks left," she told Bright. "Once the Earthlings make the critical step for us, I'm going to have to ask those men to go into battle for me. Now General Jackson assures me that they'll follow my orders now..."

"Oh, you bet your ass they will," Jackson said. "After all of those speeches, after all the shit those Earthlings have put us through, they'll go to hell and back for you now, Laura."

"And that's exactly why I'm concerned," she said. "I don't want them dying unnecessarily. I realize casualties are going to a part of what's coming, but I want them as minimal for our people as possible."

"They'll be drilled incessantly in these breaching techniques for as long as we have the time to drill them," Bright said. "The same thing is going on in New Pittsburgh and the other cities where I have my people stationed. They'll be ready."

"Let's hope so, Colonel," Laura said worriedly. "Let's hope so. Because if these special forces troops of yours cannot accomplish their mission in the first hours, everything will be lost."