Greenies

Chapter 4

The WSS Mermaid, an Owl-Class, stealth attack ship, cruised silently and unseen in an elongated polar orbit around Ganymede. Her twin fusion engines were both at idle, allowing the ship to drift along without emitting any heat. Her extensive array of passive sensors kept watch on the space around them for any sign of intruders, particularly EastHem stealth attack ships trying to gather intelligence. Mermaid was ninety meters in length with a beam of ten meters. She crewed sixty. Though she was not particularly impressive to look at and though she was downright uncomfortable to serve in, she and her sister ships were among the most sophisticated and expensive machines ever built by mankind. They and their EastHem counterparts, the Henry's, possessed an ability that no other spacecraft could; the ability to move and work in space undetected by the sensors of other spacecraft.

Large spacecraft such as the California Class super dreadnoughts, or the tankers that moved hydrogen from the Jupiter system about the solar system, or even the smaller naval support vessels that carried extra supplies and fuel, were impossible to conceal from an enemy. The problem was not the radar signatures of such monsters. Radar absorbent alloys were commonplace and easily manufactured and were in fact used to build most of the planetary military craft of WestHem, EastHem, and the MPG. But in large interplanetary spacecraft there was little point in using radar absorbent alloys since the ships in question could be detected at much greater range without the use of radar at all. Passive infrared sensors could pick up and identify a California class in its acceleration cycle from more than half a million kilometers away simply by reading the heat signature from the fusion engines. And when the California was not in its acceleration cycle, when it was simply barreling through empty space between planets awaiting turn-around and orbital deceleration, there were radio signals and forward looking radar beams (used to probe ahead for potentially lethal meteors or other space debris in their path) being constantly emitted, things that were quite easy to home in on with passive electromagnetic sensors. And even if a California were to shut all of its radar, navigation, and radio equipment off — something that never happened, but which theoretically could — they would still emit enough heat and radiation to be detected from one hundred thousand kilometers distance. A California crewed more than four thousand people, employed full inertial damping and artificial gravity, and required tremendous amounts of electrical power just to maintain basic functions. All of this added up to heat and electromagnetic radiation being produced. Large ships simply could not move stealthily through space, no matter what measures they took.

A stealth attack ship, on the other hand, was not a very large vessel and could move about without being noticed. This class of ships was constructed of radar absorbent material that was angled in various places to insure that even the miniscule amount of radar energy that did get reflected back was reflected in the wrong direction. On top of the layer of radar absorbent alloy was another specially made alloy, several inches thick, which inhibited the absorption of heat, both from inside of the ship itself and from external sources, such as solar radiation. The engine and waste heat generated by the people and the electronics inside of the vessel was radiated into a pressurized space between the inner and outer hulls and was then carefully dumped off in controlled bursts through a series of exhaust ports. When underway, a stealth ship used the minimum power possible for acceleration and deceleration and did not vent their plasma directly out of the exhaust ports as regular ships did, instead, sending it through a cooling cycle first. Since artificial gravity generators and the inertial dampers that were a byproduct of them created significant heat, they were not used or in fact even installed, forcing the crews to endure long voyages in minimal gravity (when under acceleration or deceleration) or no gravity at all. Active sensors, including meteor detecting radar sweeps, were not utilized on typical missions, making the possibility of running into an errant piece of space junk while at suicidal velocity a very real possibility. All of these measures, while making for cramped, uncomfortable, and often dangerous duty, made Owls and Henry's nearly invisible out in space. An Owl class, which was touted as being the best of the two superpowers' (of course the EastHem navy said that the Henry was really the best), could drift to within a few dozen kilometers of a London class super dreadnought or one of its fighters without being detected by either passive or active systems.

Mermaid had been on her patrol station for a month and was only awaiting the arrival of relief before setting course for her home base: Triad Naval Base in orbit around Mars. It had been an uneventful cruise, with only routine contacts of EastHem military and civilian vessels logged. The crew was getting quite antsy after two months away from their families (and in fact, any women at all) and the comforting standard gravity of Triad. Their hair was long and unkempt since there was no one onboard who knew how to cut it. Their faces were pale and slightly sunken from the lack of sunlight and gravity. Their clothing — shorts and T-shirts with their rank and last name printed upon them, were horribly faded and in most cases much looser in fit than they had been at the start of the voyage. Tempers had been rather heated lately with fights breaking out between enlisted men over such things as whose turn it was to use the bathing room or who had arrived at the relief tube first.

Because of the lack of gravity generators aboard, the Mermaid, like all Owls and Henry's, was oriented inside to up and down instead of to fore and aft like gravitated spacecraft. It was as if the entire ship was a small building, standing upright, with the torpedo storage and launching rooms making up the top deck and the engine rooms making up the bottom. Access between the decks was accomplished through small hatches. During periods of drifting, personnel simply floated from one level to the other, as if swimming underwater. During acceleration and deceleration however, up to a quarter of a G of gravity was imported to the ship, allowing people to stand solidly on the floor and forcing them to use small ladders to move between decks. The bridge was located just below the torpedo access rooms. It was a small, cramped area, only four meters by six, with five main stations in addition to the captain's and executive officer's chairs. Computer terminals were mounted into a semi-circular console with ergonomically designed seats before each. The captain and the executive officer sat just behind this console, just in front of the security hatch that led down to the next level. There were no windows on the bridge, or anywhere else on the ship for that matter. Cameras and sensors gave all of the input that was needed to run and navigate the ship.

Spacer first class Brett Ingram sat at the tracking and acquisition station on the bridge. Since the vessel was currently at drift and in zero G, he was strapped securely into his chair with a Velcro lap restraint. His coffee cup, which was sealed shut and imparted with a small amount of air pressure, had a magnet on the bottom to keep it in place. The display station before him was holographic, allowing a three dimensional map of the surrounding space to be generated, with the Mermaid's position as the exact center. The map showed dozens of small dots of varying color and size, most of them moving slowly in one direction or another. These dots represented the contacts that he was tracking with the passive sensors and the ship's computer system. All of the known contacts had a small designator superimposed next to them, identifying their status. One labeled S-7 for instance, was a Standard Fuel hydrogen tanker making its way from Standard City to Triad. It was coded dark green, as were all WestHem civilian contacts. About six thousand kilometers above and two thousand kilometers to the right of S-7 — about two centimeters on the map — was S-9, a California Class warship in a high equatorial orbit of Ganymede. It was coded blue, as were all WestHem military contacts. Light green meant EastHem civilian ships and there were four of those — all hydrogen tankers making their way to Earth from Callisto — near the far edge of the map. Red was the color that symbolized EastHem military contacts. There were two of those in Mermaid's field of detection, one, a London Class warship escorting the tankers and the other an anti-stealth ship escorting the London. Yellow represented contacts that had not been identified as of yet. There were none of those on his display at the moment but Ingram thought that maybe that would change in a moment. A flickering on his computer screen next to the display was starting to alert his senses.

"Con, detection," he said to Lieutenant Commander Braxton, the executive officer of the Mermaid. Braxton was sitting in the captain's chair at the moment since Commander Hoffman, the captain, was currently asleep in his quarters. "I'm picking up some errant readings on a bearing of 148 mark 70."

Braxton looked at the detection tech with an unmasked measure of annoyance. "Errant readings?" he asked. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you have a contact or don't you?"

"Unsure, sir," Ingram replied, his voice neutral. As a ten-year enlisted man with Martian ancestry, he knew not to allow emotion into his tone when addressing Earthling officers, especially pricks like Braxton, who thought Martians were good for cooking meals and scrubbing dishes but not much else. "I'm getting some flickers in the high infrared spectrum. They've been coming and going for about two minutes now. I can't seem to get a lock on it."

"Flickers?" Braxton said, using his hand to call up a duplicate of Ingram's screen on his own terminal. He stared at it for a moment. "I don't see anything."

"Wait for a minute, sir," Ingram said, staring intently at the spot. Finally the slight flare of white, less than a pinpoint, flashed for half of a second or so and then disappeared. "There," he said to Braxton. "Did you see it?"

"That?" Braxton scoffed. "That's what you're calling an errant reading? That was probably nothing but a vapor formation from a urine dump that some ship performed twenty years ago." The other members of the bridge crew, every last one of them Earthlings, snickered at his comment.

"Maybe, sir," Ingram agreed dutifully, ignoring the snickers, "but it is in the same spectrum as a Henry's maneuvering thruster. I recommend that we swing around and try to get a fix on it, just to be sure."

"And risk being detected from our own thrusters?" Braxton asked sarcastically. "I don't think so."

Ingram looked at the XO, a man who was three years younger than him and had two years less time in Owl's, but who, because of institutional prejudice against those of extraterrestrial birth, had been able to attend the WestHem Naval Academy at Triad and would one day soon command one while Brett was stuck forever at spacer first. "Sir," he said, "I really think that this might be a legitimate contact."

"Do you now?" he asked, smiling the smile of condescension. "And what makes you think that?"

"I don't know exactly, sir," he said. "Mostly instinct I guess. And..."

"Instinct?" Braxton said, barking out a laugh, as if the thought that a Martian developing instinct was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard of. "You look at a floating pile of old piss vapor from the Jupiter War and you see a Henry in it? That's what you call instinct? Tell me something, Ingram. Do you see Henry's when you use the relief tube too? What do you see when you take a shit? London classes?"

"Sir," he tried again, "this flickering is right in the orbital plain that a Henry captain would use to observe our operations on Ganymede. It's basically the same inclination that we use when we spy on Callisto. When you couple that with the spectrum being the same as that of a Henry's maneuvering thrusters, the index of suspicion raises up. If I could get my array more focused in that direction I might be able to..."

"Your opinion has been noted, Ingram," he interrupted coldly. "And it's been filed for what its worth. Carry on."

"Yes sir," Ingram said, his voice still neutral. He went back to watching his screen.

"And why don't you pay more attention to the 0 mark 180 area?" Braxton suggested. "That's where the Dolphin is going to be coming from. If they detect us before we get them the captain's gonna have your ass." It was an age-old competition between Owl crews relieving each other on station to see who could detect whom first. The losing crew owed beers and bong hits to the winners the first time they found themselves in port together.

"I'm watching it, sir," Ingram told him. "No sign yet."

"If I have to buy that asshole Stinson on Dolphin a bong hit, I'm gonna take it out of your ass, greenie, you hear me?"

"I hear you, sir," he said, suppressing a sigh.

Dolphin did not show up over the next two hours, but several more times Ingram saw the flickering in the low infrared spectrum, each time from a slightly different bearing. He continued to watch that area closely, looking for anything else that might give a hint towards what was out there. Eventually, just as the captain came floating in from his quarters to take the con, he got it. The tiniest flash of blue, indicating a lower level in the spectrum, appeared just beside the white for a moment. It quickly faded away and did not reappear, but it had been there, he was sure of it. "Con, detection," he said again. "I'm getting more flickers in the lower spectrums from 151 mark 70."

"Another puddle of piss, Ingram?" Braxton said with a sigh. "I thought I told you to give that a rest. You're supposed to be looking for Dolphin."

"What's this?" said the captain, who was still hovering in the air next to the command chair. "Flickers in the lower spectrum?"

"Ingram is getting heat shine off of a damn urine dump or something and trying to convince us that he sees a Henry out there," Braxton explained.

"That bearing places it in the high orbital plain," the captain said. "Are you sure..."

"Stan, I looked at it when he first reported it," Braxton said. "It's nothing."

"Sir," Ingram said, looking directly at the captain, who, though he was as prejudiced against those of Martian birth as any other Earthling, could at least admit that they were occasionally useful for something, "I just got a reading in the lower spectrum. That's the same spectrum as a Henry venting waste heat. I really think we should maneuver to bring the sensors to bear."

The captain looked from his XO to his greenie detection tech for a moment. Finally he pushed off of the chair and floated gracefully across the bridge to hover just over Ingram's shoulder. "Show me what you got," he told him.

"Stan," Braxton said, rolling his eyes upward, "there aren't any Henry's out there. I told you, I looked at his contact when he first reported it. It's nothing. Dolphin is going to be here any minute now and I for one don't want to pay for any buds back at Triad."

"Let me just take a look," the captain told him soothingly. "You're probably right but I'd like to just see what we're dealing with here. Ingram's not too bad at this technician shit." He considered for a moment. "For a greenie anyway."

Ingram let the insult slide off his back. It was something that he had a lot of experience with. He pointed to the screen where the tiny flicks of white were still occasionally showing themselves. He then had the computer replay the brief episode of blue. The captain watched all of this carefully, scowling as he absorbed it.

"Hmm," the captain said. "My green friend, it's probably nothing more than a few scraps of metal from an ancient booster or something, but it's definitely worth a closer look." He looked up at the other stations on the bridge. "Helm, roll us to 331 mark 70. Keep those thrusters at absolute minimum. Assume there's a Henry out there until we prove otherwise."

"Aye sir," the young helmsman responded, his fingers going to the controls.

While Braxton shook his head in disgust at the lack of attention being paid to the approach lane of the Dolphin, the maneuvering thrusters on the outside of the ship fired with minute blasts of burned hydrogen gas, slowly rolling the ship around on its axis so that the sensor arrays could point towards the contact.

"331mark 70, sir," the helmsman reported a minute later. "Holding steady."

"Thank you, helm," the captain said, still looking over Ingram's shoulder at the display. "Well, Ingram?" he asked. "Where's your contact now?"

"Focusing, sir," he replied, adjusting the gain on his terminal. After a moment, his efforts paid off. A few light blue lines appeared.

"Well look at that," the captain said wonderingly.

"What is it?" Braxton asked.

"Solid contact in the low infrared spectrum," Ingram reported. "Just a hint, but there."

Braxton switched his display over to get a duplicate view. He frowned at what he was seeing. "That's not very much of a hit," he said. "It could just be a sensor anomaly."

"It's the same spectrum as a Henry's hot spot near the plasma outlets," Ingram said.

"And it's definitely enough of a hit to investigate. Helm, get ready to move us a little. Let's see if we can get a range on this thing."

"Yes sir," the helmsman said.

"Ingram, designate a contact for that thing and put it on the big screen."

"Yes sir," he said, his fingers moving over his terminal. "We'll call it Sierra 21. It's now on the screen as an unknown, bearing only contact."

The captain pushed off of Ingram's chair and drifted back over to his own. "I've got the con," he told Braxton, hovering above him as the XO unstrapped himself and floated over to his own chair. Once he seated himself and strapped in he turned on the ship's intercom system. "All personnel," he said, his voice being amplified throughout the ship. "General quarters, prepare for acceleration and contact prosecution."

The general quarters alarm blared and on all decks men dropped what they were doing and stowed any loose items that were in their vicinity. Kitchen crews put away their knives and forks and pressure cookers. Cleaning crews (all of whom were Martians) stowed their rags and spray bottles. Everyone on board reached into small fanny packs that they wore around their waists and pulled out emergency decompression suits, which they unfolded and slipped on. In the event of a hull breach, these suits would automatically inflate and allow the person to survive for a short time in the vacuum that would result. Once in their suits, everyone propelled themselves as quickly as possible to their GQ station. The engine crewmen all assumed their stations in the reactor room. The torpedo room crews passed through a security access hatch and into the room where Mermaid's twelve thermonuclear torpedoes were stored. Two additional crewmen floated up to the bridge and assumed secondary terminals where they could control the four eighty millimeter anti-ship lasers and the two ten millimeter anti-torpedo/fighter lasers.

"All stations report manned and ready, captain," Braxton said three minutes after general quarters had been called.

"Very good," he replied, obviously a little perturbed about the slow response but keeping it to himself. "Helm," he said, "sound acceleration alarm and initiate a point one zero G burn. Heading 100 mark 50.

"Aye aye sir," the helmsman said, activated his maneuvering thrusters and sounding the acceleration alarm. Once the ship was pointed in the proper direction — a task that the computer oversaw rather than the human instructing it — the main engines began their burn. It was of course, not actually a burn since the method of propulsion was a fusion reaction acting against a propellant of liquid hydrogen, but the term, which was as old as space flight itself, remained in use.

Fusion engines did not produce significant acceleration. Their advantage over chemical rockets was not how fast they could burn but how long they could burn. Fusion power allowed a ship to build up velocity over a period of days, gently pushing it faster and faster. Even a California class warship, which sported the most powerful engines of anything spaceborne, could accelerate at no more than one half of standard gravity. For an Owl, which had to cloak and cool the plasma exhaust to keep from being counter detected, the maximum acceleration was one quarter of a G. At one tenth of a G, there was just enough gravity produced for the personnel on board to feel the slightest downward push against their chairs. Slowly, ever so slowly, the stealth ship moved higher in its orbit and began to ease closer to the contact they were prosecuting; hopefully without giving away their own location.

For more than an hour they built up velocity. Ingram continued to track the elusive flickers of blue and occasional white in the infrared spectrum, comparing different bearings from different locations, the contact gradually firming up into a solid reading. "I'm starting to get enough for a range estimate, sir," he announced.

"Give it to me," the captain replied.

"This is tentative, but we're looking at six to eight thousand kilometers in a standard Ganymede semi-polar orbit. Also I've got enough readings from the various spectrums to confirm that it's a spacecraft and not a random piece of metal."

"Sounds good, Ingram," he said. "Weapons control, start working on a solution."

Of course they would not really fire at the ship even if it were identified as being an EastHem Henry. Though there was a cold war going on it had not been hot since the Jupiter War armistice was signed. And though the Henry — if that's what it was — was violating WestHem space by being within one hundred thousand kilometers of Ganymede, this was actually a fairly common violation, something that both sides did with frequency. If they were able to catch them there the report would be forwarded to Rear Admiral Cirby, the commander in chief of far space command, or CINCFARSPCOM, back on Earth. A formal protest would be lodged at the EastHem embassy and the EastHem government would be embarrassed and forced to apologize. It was something that had happened on both side many times before.

It took another hour before Mermaid had moved close enough to get a firm lock on their target. By then the fusion drives had been shut down, allowing the ship to drift once again and therefore reduce the possibility of counter detection. Once Ingram had multiple spectrum analysis of the target, he was able to positively identify it. The blue of the spectrum near the plasma outlets, the white of the thrusters when they fired, the darker blue of the occasional waste heat dump, and the very low end readings everywhere else all added up to one thing.

"I'm gonna call a positive ID on this, captain," Ingram announced. "It's definitely a Henry class stealth attack ship. Range is solid at eight hundred kilometers, velocity is standard orbital for Ganymede."

"Are you sure it's not the Dolphin playing games with us?" Braxton asked snootily. "An Owl and a Henry can be remarkably similar on the displays you know. And we are expecting Dolphin to show up at any time."

"It's not Dolphin," Ingram said tonelessly. "It's not one of ours. I've detected more than a few Owls during exercises. Our heat vents and our exhaust ports are both in a different spectrum."

"Mark it on the display," the captain said. "Fire control, do you have a solution?"

"On the mark, sir," the fire control technician said. "We're too close for torpedoes but we could really pound the shit out of them with the lasers if we wanted to."

"Good enough," he said. "Keep them locked up. I'm gonna make a little call to SCNB and report our discovery." He turned to Ingram. "God help you if you're wrong about this, greenie."

"Yes sir," Ingram said.

He wasn't wrong. The captain sent an encrypted message to Standard City Naval Base by means of a pulsed laser burst aimed directly at their receiver. Ten minutes later a flight of six A-12 attack ships, each armed with high intensity, rapid charging lasers and two thermonuclear torpedoes, roared out of the base and up into the high orbit. Ingram and the rest of the bridge crew were able to see them as bright white plumes on the display. The tracking crew of the Henry was undoubtedly able to see them as well and had to know that they meant the jig was up. Within minutes the A-12s went active with their sensors, probing the area with radar beams and infrared energy, searching for the hidden intruder. It didn't take them long to find it once they knew where to look. Ingram, who was scanning all of the emissions in the area, was able to pick up the guard frequency transmission from the control room of SCNB. With the captain's permission, he put it on the screen.

"Attention EastHem vessel in orbit around Ganymede," said Admiral John Cates, commander of the base, his weathered face stern and unforgiving. "You are illegally in WestHem space. Identify yourself immediately and state your intentions or you will be fired upon."

The captain of the Henry, knowing he was caught, did as he was told. A moment later a young, German featured face appeared on the screen. When he spoke his words were thick with an EastHem accent. "This is Commander Mark Beil of the ESS Granite," he said. "It would seem that we've made a minor navigational error and strayed into your space. We offer our sincere apologies. We will of course vacate the area at best speed immediately."

"And we will of course escort you back to international space," Cates said. "You have five minutes to start heading that direction."

"My apologies again, Admiral," Beil said, offering a small salute. With that he signed off.

Of course everyone knew that Beil and the Granite had not simply strayed into WestHem space. They had been spying, something that stealth attack ships were uniquely suited for. But diplomacy was delicate between the two superpowers and the game was played this way. Granite lit up its engines four minutes later and began to accelerate to escape velocity. The A-12s, their active sensors still pounding the invader with energy, turned and matched velocities to follow. Ingram and the rest of the Mermaid bridge crew watched the departure on the tactical display, Ingram recording every second of energy being radiated from Granite's engines for later intelligence reports.

"Secure from general quarters," the captain told Braxton, unzipping his pressure suit.

"Right," Braxton responded. He repeated the order over the ship's intercom system.

"Sir," said the communications technician from his console. "I have a hail from SCNB."

"Put it on the screen," the captain told him.

"Aye sir."

A moment later the face of Admiral Cates was back on the screen, his features much friendlier now. "Commander Hoffman," he greeted the captain warmly. "I just wanted to tell you that you did an excellent job locating that Henry. Thanks to you our EastHem friends will have a lot of explaining to do at the next summit conference."

"It was nothing, sir," the captain replied modestly. "I was just doing my job."

"Well, let me assure you that you did you job very well," he said. "I'm going to recommend you for an official accommodation. How does that sound?"

"That sounds just fine," the captain shot back at him. "Thank you very much, sir."

They signed off a minute later. The captain never once mentioned his bridge crew or his greenie detection technician as being deserving of praise. After all, a captain was responsible for everything that happened on the ship, wasn't he?

Two hours later Ingram was lying on his rack in one of the berthing rooms. It was a small room, one of four crammed onto that particular deck, and there were five other racks, stacked three high on each wall, in the room with his. Since they were just above the starboard engine room the noise and vibration from the fusion drive hummed loudly and imparted an unpleasant thrumming to the walls. There were only six Martians on Mermaid's crew and strangely enough, all six of them were housed in this room, although four were currently at duty stations and absent at the moment. Steve Sugiyoto, a cooks assistant (which meant that he washed the dishes and cut the food into portions) was lying in his underwear on his own rack directly underneath Ingram. Since Dolphin had arrived and relieved them, Mermaid was currently under maximum acceleration, just starting the long trip back to Triad Naval Base. As such neither man needed the Velcro straps to hold them onto their racks. The acceleration of the ship imparted them with one tenth of their natural weight. In Ingram's case this was a whopping eight kilograms, just enough to keep him firmly on the floor or whatever ever surface he put himself upon.

"That's total bullshit, Brett," said Sugiyoto from beneath him, his voice low, almost a whisper. "I heard what went down up on that bridge. You were the one that found that fuckin Henry and you were the one that had to beg the old man to prosecute it. Where the hell does he get off takin all the credit for it?"

"It's the way of the solar system, Sugi," Ingram sighed, stretching out a little. As the senior Martian on the crew there was an unwritten rule that he was responsible for keeping the other Martians in line

"Yeah," he said bitterly. "Fuck the greenies over every chance you get. That's the way of the solar system all right. That's why I'm trained in fusion engineering and they got me working in the kitchen."

"Shit, Sugi," Ingram told him with a laugh, "this is what, your second cruise on the great Mermaid?"

"That's right," he said.

"You ain't seen shit as far as fuckin over greenies goes then," he told him. "Wait'll you get ten years on these things like I have and then you can bitch to me about greenie fucking. I was a trained computer systems operator and analyst when I went on my first cruise. And do you know what they had me doing?"

"What's that?"

"The fucking laundry," he told him. "I spent my first year of space duty down in the goddamn laundry room washing the shit stains out of those Earthling's shorts. My second year I was graduated to the kitchen detail. My third year they finally trusted me to start working in the torpedo room as a lifter. It took me six years and twelve cruises before they finally put me on the bridge where I belong. If I were an Earthling, I'd be at least a lieutenant commander by now. I'd be at least an XO on one of these tubs and probably in line for a command. Instead, I'm a damn spacer first, just two grades higher then you are, and if I somehow make it another ten years in this place, I'll retire as a spacer first."

Sugiyoto shook his head angrily. "That's depressing," he said. "Why do we put up with this shit? Why have you stayed here so long?"

"It beats being vermin doesn't it?" Ingram said. "What else can I do? There ain't much call for a detection tech in the civilian market now, is there? Even if there were, the Earthlings wouldn't hire no greenie to do it."

They laid in silence for a few minutes, each of them contemplating their second class citizen status. It was Sugiyoto that brought up the subject of Laura Whiting, asking if there had been any more news heard.

"All I hear is what the bridge crew has to say about it," Ingram told him. "And all they watch to get their information is big three stations. They all seem to think that she should be thrown in prison for inciting terrorism."

"No way to get MarsGroup stations out here?"

"Not these days," Ingram said. "Before all of this shit hit the fan we used to be able to catch MarsGroup in the enlisted lounge. The Earthlings would make fun of us for watching it of course, but they'd at least let us keep it on for a while sometimes. Now though, I wouldn't let anyone catch you trying to watch it. I wouldn't even talk about it. Things are bad enough as is without making them more suspicious of us."

They talked a little more about the sad state of Martian affairs in an Earthling ruled solar system. Finally, tiring of that subject, they drifted off to sleep, both trying to catch as much as possible before their next watch. As they snored in the miniscule gravity, the ship kept pushing them faster and faster towards home.

"More trouble?" Laura Whiting asked General Jackson as he entered her office early Tuesday morning. It was not really a question of course. On Mars these days there was always more trouble. The question was how bad the trouble was this time.

Jackson was dressed in his standard day uniform of red shorts and a white T-shirt. He nodded solemnly as he helped himself to a cup of coffee from the dispenser next to her desk. "I just got word," he told her. "There was another mass shooting of civilians by FLEB agents. This time up on Triad. They're still sorting through the mess up there as we speak, but preliminary reports are sixteen dead, twice that many wounded."

"Jesus," she said, shaking her head and feeling mixed emotions. On the one hand she knew that she had set the stage for these confrontation and had put the wheels in motion. She had done that deliberately, with the hope of inciting the rebellion that was now about to boil over. But she had not counted on the price that was being paid in blood. "What happened?"

"There was an attempt to block the transfer of the Martians that were rounded up in yesterday's sweeps," he said. The day before, in response to the firebombing of their van and their agents, the FLEB had performed a planet wide sweep of all of the cities, rounding up and arresting more than two hundred Martian separatists.

"An organized protest?" Laura asked.

"Pretty much," he said. "It was the Triad chapter of the Martian Retirement Club that staged it. They tried to block the prisoners from being placed on the trains to TNB. About four to five hundred people put themselves in front of the access tunnels on the main loading platform. The agents fired on them almost immediately, which made everyone scatter of course, and then they rushed the prisoners onto the trains. They left the scene before any of the Triad authorities showed up. When the cops and the dip-hoes arrived there wasn't a single FLEB agent there."

"Bastards," Laura said, shocked.

"There was a news team there covering the protest when it happened. The whole thing was caught on MarsGroup cameras. It should be on the news now if you want to watch it."

She nodded and instructed her computer to turn on MarsGroup primary. The screen flickered to life and a live shot of the main access platform to Triad Naval Base was shown. The loading platform was a wide, open area enclosed by the thick plexiglass and steel walls that made up the edge of the orbiting city. It was here where personnel were cleared through security and loaded onto one of the trains that transported them through one of four one kilometer tram tunnels that connected the city to the huge base. Except for flying in in a spacecraft of some sort, these tunnels were the only way to get to TNB. The platform was usually an orderly place, swept clean and scrubbed daily by enlisted spacers from the base and guarded by armed military police. Now it was the scene of chaos as the camera panned from place to place, showing dozens of Triad police officers and dip-hoes sorting through masses of bloody bodies lying on the ground.

"Most of the more seriously wounded have already been taken away by health and safety personnel," a shocked MarsGroup reporter was voicing over. "What you see here are the more lightly wounded and the dead, who are being sorted out for transport or relocation to the temporary morgue on the Triad end of the platform. As you can see from these shots, many of the protesters that were gunned down by the FLEB agents were elderly since those over age sixty make up the majority of the civilian population of Triad. Reports from the Triad police state that none of the protesters were found to be armed. Most of them, as you can see, were carrying protests signs only." The signs in question could be seen lying next to many of the screaming or deathly silent protestors. The motto: FREE OUR PEOPLE! was the most prevalent, although there were a few others. Bullet holes could plainly be seen in a few of the signs.

"Kevin," she said, feeling tears forming in her eyes. "My God! What are we doing here?"

"I know how you feel," he said, sitting down next to her and putting a comforting arm around her shoulders. "These were old people. Grandmothers and grandfathers trying to pick up our fight for us. They were gunned down like dogs."

"And we caused this, Kevin," she said. "We knew that the FLEB would crack down on people! We counted on it to further our cause!"

"We did not cause this, Laura," he told her firmly. "Nor could we have predicted that things would come to this."

"People are dying because I've challenged the Earthlings and riled up the Martians! They're dying! They're being gunned down in the streets, hauled away to Earth prisons! Don't tell me we didn't cause this! My whole intent was to make things intolerable for the people so that they would support a revolt!"

"And that is what's happening," Jackson said. "This incident will come close to breaking the camel's back I would think. But you did not make those FLEB agents fire on citizens. You did not order the FLEB agents to crack down and haul anyone off. All that you did was force the Earthlings to behave in a way that you knew they were capable of when threatened. You provided the threat, Laura, they provided the violence, and unfortunately, this is the only way we have to get our people to follow us."

"It's manipulative," she said. "I'm pushing them around like chess pieces in order to further my goals."

"Not your goals Laura, our goals. The goals of the Martians. What we've set in motion is a necessary evil in order to achieve freedom. You had to make the Earthlings step over the line. You had to break the chain of tolerance that has kept us subservient for generations. It was the only way."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," she said. "And it doesn't help me sleep at night."

"And you wouldn't be the person you are if it didn't bother you," he said. "I'm sure you feel like you're as manipulative and soulless as a corporate manager, but you're not. You have a conscience, Laura and its no surprise that yours is being dinged by what is going on here. But try to keep the big picture in mind. We're doing the right thing."

She sighed, her eyes still watching the horrifying scenes from Triad on the monitor. The camera was showing a man of about eighty. He had two bullet holes in his forehead and a puddle of brains and blood beneath him. His eyes were wide open and staring, an expression of shock and horror forever frozen upon his face. "I'm trying," she said. "It gets harder every day, but I'm trying."

"MarsGroup will be calling soon, trying to get a statement from you," he told her gently.

"I'll be ready," she said.

"Good." He gave her one more brief hug of comfort and then released her. "Keep the faith, Laura," he said. "My contacts on Earth tell me that a grand jury is being assembled in Denver. They seem to think it may be for you."

"How much longer will it take if it is?" she asked.

"A week or so to assemble and investigate the jury members," he said. "Another two weeks or so to present whatever evidence they whipped up. I'd say that within a month they'll come looking to take you out of here. Can you hold out that long?"

"I can hold out forever," she said. "The question is will the people hold out that long?"

Laura gave a scathing statement to the MarsGroup channels less than an hour later. She called for an immediate independent investigation into the events on Triad and the arrest and trial of the FLEB agents that had fired on the protestors. "Those people are common murderers," she said, her words being transmitted all over the planet. "They fired without provocation on an unarmed, peaceful protest against their fascist tactics. They belong in prison for what they did and if there is any justice in this solar system — something that seems more and more doubtful every day — they will be put there."

The big three media channels downplayed the incident as much as they could. Though they were competing corporations, all three reported the story virtually the same way. Their take on the matter was that a violent group of protestors attempted to free a band of hardened terrorists that were being extradited to Earth for trial. In the ensuing scuffle the "besieged" FLEB agents were "forced" to fire their weapons to protect themselves and prevent the escape of violent criminals. It was reported that "a few" people were killed or injured in the fracas. No video clips or interviews were shown and the entire segment carried less than a thousand lines of text on the print sites, less than thirty seconds of coverage on the video sites.

That evening, at 6:00 PM New Pittsburgh time, Laura Whiting gave one of her speeches. The primary topic was the Second Martian Massacre (that phrase had already achieved proper noun status among the Martians) and what she felt the reaction to it should be.

"It's easy," she told the Martian people, ninety-six percent of whom we're recorded as watching, "to blame the FLEB and their agents for what has happened on this planet over the past few weeks. After all, it is they who we see snatching our people out of their homes at gunpoint. It is they who are seen marching them onto Triad Naval Base for extradition to Earth. It is they who are gunning us down like rabid dogs when we protest their actions. But try, fellow Martians, to remember that FLEB tactics and responses are only the enforcement arm of the opposition against us. Somebody is commanding the FLEB to act in the way that they are and I think we all know who those somebodies are. They are not the executive council back in Denver, although I'm sure that's where the official orders originated. No, these orders came from the corporate boardrooms back on Earth, by the very people who are threatened the most by our drive for independence and autonomy.

"We've been over this before in previous speeches that I have given. I have explained to you all how these corporations and their CEOs are really the ones who rule WestHem. They rule with their money and the absolute power of corruption that it wields. They are motivated by greed and self-interest and the quest for ever increasing power. Sure, the FLEB agents are cracking down on us and cracking down hard, but they are doing it on the indirect orders of Steve Carlson of Agricorp, Brent Holland of IPC computers, Roger Fairling of MarsTrans, and a hundred other CEOs — the men and women who control ninety-eight percent of WestHem's wealth. These people have blocked our attempts at negotiation for independence with the WestHem government and they remain our true enemy in this fight."

She looked into the camera, her expression anger. "I believe that it is time we stop throwing ourselves at the FLEB agents. That is doing nothing but getting people killed and wounded. I believe that we should attack the real enemy and attack them in a way that hurts them badly: their pocketbook. I'm asking all Martian citizens that work for an Earth based corporation to band together in a general strike starting next Monday, four days from now, and lasting until the following Friday. That means everybody that works in any way for any business that is owned at any level by Earthlings, with the exception of hospital personnel and commuter transportation personnel.

"I know that I'm asking a lot of you, particularly those in the blue collar class. You will not be paid for the days that you miss and you will be risking your very jobs by taking this drastic action. However, if everyone sticks together, if everyone does what I ask, unity will provide the protection you need, just as it did for the legislature when they were pressured to impeach me. A general strike of this scale will hurt these corporate Earthlings very badly even if it were just one day. If it is carried out for an entire week, it will be devastating to their productivity and their profit margin. My staff reports that they will lose more than sixty billion dollars of raw profit from being shut down for a week. This, my fellow Martians, is a language that they will understand. I propose that you undertake this general strike for one five-day period and then, if these corporations do not allow negotiations for our independence to commence, that we extend it to a two week period, and then a three week period, as long as it takes before they agree to listen to our demands and bargain in good faith for our freedom. And believe me, they will be forced to listen to us. A halt of productivity is something that they will not be able to tolerate or absorb.

"Fellow Martians, let this be our most potent weapon against the greed that is ruling us. Undertake this general strike on Monday and deliver a staggering blow to the very heart of that which controls us. You have stood beside me before when the corporations tried to expel me from my position. I ask you now to take the unity that you showed then a step further. Pass the word to everyone. General strike against the corporations! General strike for freedom and self-destiny! Show those Earthlings what we are capable of! United we stand, fellow Martians! Remain united and we will not fall!"

Lieutenant Eric Callahan was a ten-year member of the WestHem Marine Corps. He was thirty-three years old and a native of Dallas in the Texas subsection of the state of North-Southern on the North American landmass. A dark-haired Caucasian of American descent, he was handsome and superbly fit in a physical sense. He commanded the 3^rd platoon of the 2^nd Battalion of the 314^th armored cavalry regiment stationed in Salta, Argentina sector, a mountainous, hellish part of the Earth snugged right up against the towering peaks of the Andes.

Salta, a small city of only two million, was at the center of the thickest concentration of Argentine nationalists in the northern portion of the troubled province. In the mountains to the west of the city were thousands of pockets of poorly armed and trained rebels that were willing to die in their cause to usurp WestHem rule, which, since the end of World War III, they had never accepted as being legal. The mission of the marines from Foxx Barracks, just outside the city, was not keeping Salta itself secure and under control — that was the job of the army — but to patrol and keep secure the perimeter and the outskirts. Platoon strength units regularly forged into the high mountains to seek out the pockets of rebels and eliminate or capture them. It was this mission that Callahan and the forty men under his command were undertaking now as they marched up through the foothills to the higher peaks above.

It was mid-autumn in Earth's southern hemisphere and, as such, it was the beginning of the rainy season. A constant drizzle fell from the leaden sky above, the drops little more than a mist but steady enough and thick enough to require the camouflage rain gear. Callahan was marching near the center of the formation, his M-24 held at ready, his heavy combat boots squelching wetly through the mud and pine needles of the terrain. He, like all of the men, wore a Kevlar helmet upon his head and a pair of combat goggles upon his face. Thick Kevlar armor, heavier even than that which police officers wore, adorned his chest and upper abdomen. The armor was covered by web gear that contained a combat computer, several fragmentation grenades, and extra sixty round magazines for his rifle. He had no rank markings of any kind upon him and had instructed his men not to salute him or give any other indication that he was the man in charge lest the rebels single him out for a sniper's bullet. The targeting recticle of his combat goggles bobbed up and down with each step that he took, the range display changing constantly as different features were crossed by it. Less than two hundred meters to the right of the platoon was a paved road leading higher up into the mountains, but Callahan was far too experienced to do anything as stupid as lead his men along a predictable route. Though the rebels, as a fighting force, were almost hopelessly outmatched by the marines, there was no sense in sending out open invitations for an ambush.

"Hammy," he said into his command radio link, his words being transmitted via a throat microphone to his four squad leaders, "spread your guys out a little more, will you? That right flank looks like shit."

"You bet, skipper," Sergeant Hamilton, one of his newer and greener squad sergeants replied back. Hamilton and his squad had been forced upon him a month ago after a long stint in the boredom of Alaska region, which contained the heaviest concentration of military forces in all of WestHem but which never saw any action of any kind. They seemed like they might make the grade some day but every last one of them had yet to have his cherry popped, as the term for combat went in the corps.

Callahan watched in semi-satisfaction as Hamilton adjusted the inverse wedge that his squad had been in into something approaching a proper formation. He turned his attention forward again, his eyes sweeping over the towering peaks rising into the mist before them. There were literally thousands of places up there that could potentially contain teams of rebels ready to attack them with ancient weaponry for the sheer harassment value of it. Most of the fighters were the direct descendents of those that had fought the WestHem army and marines during the initial occupation after World War III. They knew these mountains better than anyone else ever could or would and usually the first sign that they were there was when the bullets started coming in. From interrogating prisoners of the past, it was well known that an Argentine nationalist considered it a great victory if they could kill one marine for every ten of their own that was lost. They were willing to lose a hundred in order to kill that one though. And often that was just how many it took.

"You ever wonder why we're doing this?" asked Sergeant Mallory, his first sergeant and the second in command of the platoon. His squad was taking rear guard on this particular march and he had maneuvered himself to be next to his commander. He had turned off his radio link so that he could talk freely, without everyone else in his squad listening in.

Callahan flipped off his own link and looked at his closest friend in the corps. "Doing what?" he asked, although he was pretty sure he knew what he was referring to.

"Laying our asses on the line up here in these mountains, chasing these gomers around every damn day." He grunted a little. "I mean, really, what's the damn point of it? We can protect the base and most of the area around it and the gomers aren't really that much of a threat anyway. So why do it? Why not just let them be up there in their mountains?"

"Because the powers that be think it's a good idea to go kill them," Callahan answered. "They want us to suppress this rebellion and to suppress it firmly, so it doesn't spread to other places, so that those who are fighting it are kept at the lowest level of morale possible. If we didn't go out and slaughter them on a regular basis, pretty soon we'd be elbow deep in gomers. And then where would we be?"

"I suppose," Mallory replied doubtfully, spitting a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. "When you come right down to it though, I'm forced to wonder what the hell WestHem even wants with this shithole province in the first place. What's here that's valuable? This entire province is nothing but mountains and desert populated by vermin and thieves. Hell, most of them have refused to learn English even. What would we lose if we let these gomers be independent? It's not like they're Mars, which is actually worth something. I say give them their fuckin independence and see how they do with it. Once we stop given them welfare and food shipments they'll come crawling back to us."

"They're part of the empire," Callahan told him. "And once you let one part of the empire go, the rest will start fighting for it too. Right now we have Cuba and Argentina wanting to rebel."

"And Mars," Mallory put in. "Don't forget about them."

"And Mars," he allowed, although he obviously had little regard for the way that they were going about it. "Anyway, if WestHem were to grant Argentina or Cuba their freedom, within a year you'd have all of those other provinces that used to be their own countries trying to do the same. Can you imagine what it would be like if Brazil or Mexico or Canada tried to break out of the union. Shit, this whole nation would fall apart. We'd have to quadruple the corps and the army just to keep our own people under control."

"I suppose," Mallory said again, wondering why anyone would want out of WestHem. After all, they were the greatest democracy that ever existed. The Internet and the schools always said so.

They marched on, gradually tightening up as they entered the steeper terrain. Point men stared into crevices and around the bases of trees, searching for trip wires or loosely covered pits. Fingers tightened imperceptivity on the stocks of weapons. This was the extreme danger zone, the area where the mountains met the foothills, the area where the Argentines loved to initiate their ambushes since it allowed them to strike at their quarry in relatively open terrain while keeping themselves concealed on the peaks and in the thick vegetation. The platoon was ready for trouble and they were expecting trouble. It wasn't long before they encountered it.

As was almost always the case, the first sign that the rebels were attacking was the flashing of their weapons from the hillsides above. They came from a thick stand of pine trees, bright strobes of orange, at least four distinct rifles firing. A second or two later the bullets came whizzing in. The old M-16s and AK-47s that the rebels used had a very slow rate of fire and a pathetic muzzle velocity compared to the modern M-24s that the marines carried. This meant that the rounds would not actually penetrate the Kevlar armor that the marines wore. As such, the only way that the rebels could score a kill was to hit their targets directly in the face or neck, a task that was quite difficult from a range of nearly three hundred meters without combat computer assistance. The only real hope that rebels had of scoring a good kill was in the first few seconds of the battle, before the marines had a chance to react to the incoming gunfire.

In this case the experience of the marines prevented any lethal casualties. Once the flashes were spotted thirty of the forty men dove instantly to the ground, even before the sound of the shots reached them. As bullets came whizzing in, slapping into the mud and zinging into the trees, the only two men left standing were Sergeant Hamilton and a green private, fresh from boot camp, in second squad. Fortunately for them the rebels had not been aiming at them and they were not struck. And once they realized exactly what was happening, they too managed to get into the mud before the second wave of gunfire came rolling in.

"On the hillside! Ten o'clock!" Callahan barked calmly into his throat microphone. "First and third squad, get some fire on them! Second and fourth, get under cover!"

The marines acted as they had been trained. The front two squads began firing up into the hillside, their M-24s chattering rapidly and spewing expended shells onto the ground, the rounds showing up in goggles as almost solid streams of white. The men carrying the squad automatic weapons quickly set up their guns and added their heavier penetration power to the fight, hosing down the entire tree line for suppression. While they were doing this the rear squads scrambled along on their bellies to find rocks or trees or mounds of mud to hide behind, therefore improving their positioning. Within a few seconds they had all found such things and they too began to fire.

Callahan, positioned behind a large pine tree, did not fire his weapon. He kept it by his side and instead concentrated on the big picture around them. He ordered first and third squad to displace and get under better cover. They did so, all of them sliding through the mud, one of them getting hit in the leg by a lucky shot. One of the men crawling in front of him backtracked and dragged him clear. Callahan nodded in satisfaction as he saw this and then frowned as he saw how Hamilton was responding to the situation. He and his entire squad were bunched behind a single fallen log in neat line, all of them shoulder to shoulder. "Hammy!" he yelled at him. "Get your people spread out more! This isn't Alaska, motherfucker! For Christ's sake, if they have an RPG or a mortar they're gonna take you all out at once."

"Right, skipper," Hamilton said, his voice bordering on the verge of terror.

"Fuckin newbies," Callahan muttered, not bothering to damp his link first. A few bullets came plunking into the mud within a meter of him. He didn't even flinch. He called up the geographic display from his combat computer and a moment later a map of the terrain was superimposed on his view through the combat goggles. The map was extremely detailed and very accurate, composed from years of satellite digitals and radar imagery of this most active hot zone. The location of every one of his men — information that was provided by GPS links on their computers and radio linked to his own — was represented as green dots. The location of the enemy position — which the goggles and the computer had automatically pinpointed based on the infrared signature of their weapons flashes — was represented as a series of red dots. "Computer, secure link with fire support!" he said. "Priority one."

"Priority one link established," his computer told him in his earpiece.

"Who's this?" Callahan asked over the encrypted frequency, not bothering with niceties and knowing that whomever he was talking to would understand.

"Lieutenant Burgess here," said a calm voice. "Is that you, Callahan?"

"It's me, Burger," he answered, using Burgess' nickname. "I'm in contact with a squad sized group of gomers. I need some thirty meter fused HE rounds dropped at coordinates 34.17, 41.12."

"On the way," Burgess said.

"Thanks, Burger," he said, edging a little closer to the tree that was providing him with cover. "We'll adjust if need be." He switched back to the command frequency. "We have arty on the way, guys," he told his sergeants. "As soon as they hit I'll get an air strike rolling."

None of them acknowledged him. They had been trained not to. About twenty seconds later four 150 millimeter artillery shells came screaming in from the east, their approach marked by distinct, fast-moving white blurs in the infrared spectrum and the low-pitched whistling produced by their passage through the air. They exploded thirty meters above the tree line where the rebels were firing from, showering them with deadly shrapnel. There was no need to adjust fire; the coordinates and the gunnery had been perfect.

"On target!" Callahan told Burgess. "Fire for effect! Pound those motherfuckers!"

"Copy, on target," Burgess responded. "Firing for effect."

A few seconds later more shells came arcing in over the hills, exploding with fury over the target area. The concussions of the high explosive rounds thundered through the mountains, echoing and re-echoing, hammering into the chests of the marines. The enemy fire came to an abrupt halt.

But Callahan wasn't done yet. He switched his radio to the command frequency and asked for an air strike. The marine aviation unit, which always kept planes in the air and on stand-by during the day, quickly directed a flight of two A-50 light attack planes to the coordinates. Just as the artillery barrage let up, the small, stubby jet aircraft came banking in from the south, their engines screaming horsepower, lethal ordinance hanging from their wing pods. The A-50s had been designed as close support aircraft for anti-tank missions but they worked just fine against the non-armored rebels as well.

"Fast movers coming in," Callahan announced over the command net. "Everyone get ready for the big bang!"

The aircraft shot less than 400 meters over the top of them and dropped two cluster bombs apiece. For a second it looked as if a mistake had been made, that the bombs had been dropped directly atop of the marines themselves, but, moving at 700 kilometers per hour, they quickly passed over and zeroed in on the hillside. At about 100 meters above the target area the bomb casings split open, raining submunitions down over the tree line. The explosions were a series of sharp cracks and the trees that had been concealing the enemy were suddenly engulfed in flame and smoke, branches and bark flying in all directions.

The aircraft banked sharply to the left and spun around to make another run. Less than a minute later they were back, dropping another two cluster bombs apiece on the area immediately uphill from the first. More explosions ripped the area and more trees disintegrated under the onslaught. With that the A-50s banked back around and headed lazily off the way they had come in.

"All right now," Callahan said in satisfaction, looking at the smoking ruins that had been left behind. "That's overkill if I've ever seen it. First and third squad, advance up that hill and check it out. Second and fourth, keep hunkered up and cover them. Move!"

First squad, which was the most experienced of the platoon, quickly jumped to their feet and spread out, forming up into two distinct wedges for the advance. Third squad, which was the newbies, was a little slower on the uptake, most of them plainly reluctant to stick their heads up despite the horrific firestorm that they'd just witnessed in the target area. Still their training as marines directed they do so and eventually all of them did. Hamilton did a half decent job of forming them up for an uphill advance.

Under the direction of Sergeant Mallory the two groups moved in, weapons ready for action. They closed in from two different directions on the obliterated tree line while the rest of the platoon kept an eye out to their flanks. Hamilton, after checking on the wounded corporal from second squad and ordering a helicopter for him, directed his combat goggles to patch into the combat computer of Private Wesley, who was on the point for the advance. Once the patch was made Callahan was able to see what Wesley was seeing through his goggles. Though it kept him from seeing what was going on around his own body he trusted the other marines would keep him safe and warn him of any danger.

"You patched in, skipper?" Mallory asked him a few minutes later, as they entered the kill zone.

"Yeah," he replied, watching without emotion as Wesley looked back and forth. "It looks like we got 'em all right."

And indeed it did. Scattered everywhere throughout the hillside where the torn shreds of what had once been four Argentine rebels. Smoking arms, legs, pieces of skull and bone fragments were spread among the smoldering tree branches, bark, and mud. It was impossible to tell exactly how many men had been up there by the body parts but the broken pieces of their rifles were more easily identifiable. Three M-16s and one AK-47 — the latter with a burned hand still clutching the stock — were pieced together.

"I'd put that down as four confirmed kills, skipper," Mallory told him on the command net. "You know the gomers would rather die before they leave their weapons behind."

"I agree," he said. "Why don't you check out the area above the target real quick just to make sure they don't have any friends up there. I'm gonna release second squad from cover duty and have them set up an LZ for the dust-off bird."

The area beyond checked clear. By the time the two squads worked their way back down the hill the wounded man had been loaded onto the medivac helicopter and was on his way to the military hospital in Salta. Callahan noticed that the men of Hamilton's squad, including Hamilton himself, looked a little green. He walked over to them, hefting his unfired weapon onto his shoulder as he went.

"Not very pretty up there, is it?" he asked the squad at large.

The men all kept quiet, their eyes turned downward. Hamilton however, was able to find his voice. "It was quite, uh... impressive what those explosive rounds did to those rebels," he offered weakly.

"That's how we deal with rebels in the corps," Mallory told them. "We respond to any acts of aggression against us with brute force — as much brute force as we can possibly bring down upon them. To do any less would encourage further attacks. Do any of you men have a problem with that?"

"No sir," they all mumbled, although with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

"Get used to the Argentina way, newbies," he said. "This is combat. It's not quite what we trained to do against the EastHem fascists, but it's combat nonetheless. We're part of an armored cavalry division, true, but we don't ride around in our APCs and we don't surge in force against enemy armor. Our mission is a little different in this part of the solar system. We fight rebels here. Whining, crawling, sneaking, piece of shit rebels who think they want to be free of WestHem — as if they'd be able to take care of themselves if we allowed it. They're hopelessly misguided fanatics who think nothing of killing themselves just to take you out. This was a small attack and fortunately only one of us got hurt. If you learn to be careful out here and learn to get your asses in the mud when the shooting starts, you'll live through your stint in the 314^th and some day you'll be able to transfer back to Alaska or Iceland or Texas and look down upon all of the cherries at the bases there. Learn to love these skirmishes out here. Learn to love seeing those Argentine fucks all shredded up by artillery and cluster bombs. Learn to love it because you're gonna get a lot of it out here."

As the weekend fell upon the planet Mars the general strike call by Laura Whiting once more forced the so-called movers and shakers to abandon their leisure time and spend the days of rest in their towering high rise offices. What had first been taken as a joke by the top executives of the corporations — the thought that the greenies would actually respond to her ridiculous request — gradually changed into ever-increasing alarm that maybe they really would. Though the big three, acting on the theory that to fail to acknowledge something was to mitigate its existence, remained mostly mute on the subject of the general strike, MarsGroup naturally did not. On every channel, on every web site, in every news publication, the story of Laura Whiting's latest speech and the ramifications of it were the top subject. Interviews with blue-collar workers, all of them vowing to honor her request and asking that others do the same, were printed and aired in every news update. Calculations, all of them made by Martian born auditors and accountants, speculating on just how much revenue a five day shutdown of Martian productivity would cost the corporations were printed in exacting detail and downloaded millions of times over. Hard copies of these figures were printed out and posted on union bulletin boards throughout the planet; they were emailed back and forth from person to person so often that they flooded the system and forced it to a near crawl.

To make matters worse, Laura Whiting expanded her normal speech schedule of twice a week and began to make appearances every night. She would repeat the figures compiled by the accountants and repeat her requests for all Martian workers employed by an Earthling corporation to participate. As always, Whiting's speeches were the highest rated broadcasts of all time and the powers that be realized that the Martians were not watching them because they found them amusing.

In an attempt to head off the strike the corporate heads called a press conference to address the planet on Sunday night. In doing so they took the unusual step of asking for this press conference to be aired on MarsGroup in addition to the normal big three broadcast stations. MarsGroup, more out of a sense of sensationalism than anything else, quickly agreed and sent reporters to the Agricorp building, where the conference was being staged.

This conference took place in the large briefing room on the 300^th floor where corporate training was usually held, a locale with spectacular views of the city and the wastelands in all directions. Representing the corporations were William Smith who, as the titular head of corporate interests on Mars had been elected as the spokesperson in this matter. With him were the heads of more than thirty other corporations that relied on Martian productivity for profits, everything from transportation to manufacturing to mining to food producers that competed with Agricorp itself. This group of CEOs stood as a unified force against the rebellion that was sweeping their breadbasket. Dressed in their finest, most expensive business suits they stood shoulder to shoulder, an impressive gathering for a single purpose.

"We, the leaders of the various business interests that operate on this planet," said Smith in a carefully written speech, "are sympathetic to the problems that are occurring of late in the Martian cities. We have denounced the overzealous tactics displayed by federal officials in regards to indiscriminate gunfire and we are appalled by the deaths that have occurred so far. However, we, the corporations, are not to blame for this. We are only here to provide goods and services to the people of WestHem and to provide jobs for the people of Mars. We must take a firm stance against anyone who threatens our productivity. So, with that in mind, let me make it perfectly clear to the people of Mars who are considering partaking in this illegal and subversive action tomorrow. Anyone who fails to show up for work tomorrow will be dismissed from their duties and will go into our hiring computer as unfit prospects for future consideration. This decree will be enforced uniformly, for both skilled and unskilled workers, for both management positions and general workforce. In short, if you strike, you will be fired and barred from future employment with any corporation represented here for the rest of your life. You will lose all health and lawsuit insurance and other benefits that come with employment. This decree applies not only to Agricorp, which I myself speak for, but any corporation that is represented here today. We are firm and committed to this action so I will advise you all to think very carefully before you decide not to show up for work in the morning. Production on this planet is vital to the continuation of WestHem and it will go on. Must I be forced to remind you that there is a better than twenty-five percent unemployment rate on Mars? If the members of the current working class decide to throw their jobs away in this ridiculous work action requested by Governor Whiting, I'm sure that there are millions of unemployed that would be perfectly willing to join the ranks of the employed to replace you."

The press conference went on for another hour, though mostly it was the other corporate heads spouting variations of Smith's words. The media computers that monitored such things reported that seventy-four percent of Martian viewers had tuned in to watch the conference initially but that the number had dwindled to less than ten percent by the time it ended. Smith and his acquaintances were unsure how to interpret this data but eventually they managed to convince themselves that it was good news. They figured that they had made their point quite nicely to the ignorant greenies and congratulated each other on outthinking that bitch Whiting.

8:00 AM Monday morning dawned first in the cities of Libby and Ore City, which were located in the easternmost populated time zone. Libby was an agricultural city along the equator, the center of the third largest expanse of greenhouse complexes on the planet. Ore City was a mining and manufacturing city located 2100 kilometers due north. As the workday began in these places less than two percent of the total workforce showed up for their jobs. The public transportation trains ran through their Monday morning routes with hardly any passengers on them. The teaming high-rise office buildings of their downtowns were virtually deserted of Martian workers. The steel processing plants and the mines remained empty and non-productive. The greenhouses went unworked, their equipment going without maintenance.

Smith and his cohorts listened to reports in disbelief as the red planet turned slowly on its axis, bringing the next set of Martian cities towards the 8:00 hour. Never, in their wildest dreams, in their worst nightmares did they imagine that so many people would actually put their jobs at risk like that. Their disbelief grew as the scene was repeated every hour as more cities moved themselves into the workday and the vast majority of the Martian workers were not there to help run it. In all it was estimated that more than ninety-six percent of the total Martian workforce that were employed by Earth-based corporations elected to honor the general strike. Of the four percent that did show up, most of them were simply sent home again since their various occupations could not run without the other workers.

On this Monday no food was picked or tended or processed or packed for shipping on the planet Mars. No boxes were loaded onto trains for the trip to the spaceports and no ships already loaded took off for Triad for distribution. No iron ore was pulled from the ground or processed into steel. No bartenders showed up to work in corporate pubs and no checkers or clerks showed up to sell things in corporate owned grocery or supply stores. Even the big three media conglomerates themselves were forced to virtually shut down much of their Martian operations as their cameramen and computer technicians — men and women that they had thought loyal despite their heritage — abandoned their equipment and went home. Mars and nearly everything on it ground to a halt, strangling profits for the day and, despite the savings in salary outlay enjoyed by the lack of workers to pay, cost every Earth-based corporation, large and small, billions of dollars.

Encouraged by the response to her words, Laura Whiting congratulated the Martian people that night during her speech and continued to encourage them to follow through for the entire week. Smith and company gave another speech that night, this one directed at the welfare class. He invited them to several locations in each city to sign up for job training to replace the unskilled workers that were on strike. It was a fairly good gamble that they made but unfortunately it was a losing one. Less than two hundred people planet wide showed up for his job seminars on Tuesday morning and all of them were sent away in disgust when their numbers were realized. As for participation in the strike, nearly ninety-nine percent of the workforce stayed home on this day.

For the rest of the workweek this went on. Smith would beg and threaten the Martians at night on Internet addresses with what would happen if they continued to defy their employers and the next day his words would go unheeded and no one would show up for work. Back on Earth the stock market actually went into a free fall as food stocks and manufactured goods were virtually cut off at the knees. Pharmaceutical supplies, of which Mars manufactured greater than eighty percent for all of WestHem, dropped to an alarming level for certain brands in a shortage that would reverterbrate for weeks across the solar system.

When Saturday dawned on Mars, the first general strike officially came to an end. The first workers to return to their jobs were those who worked weekends: the maintenance techs and the service personnel, less than six percent of the grand total. They found their work backed up beyond belief but still waiting for them. No reports of dismissals were reported from any portion of the planet. The same occurred when the rest of the workforce returned the following Monday. Once again the commuter trains were full of Martians heading to their jobs and the various industries were able to staff themselves and get some work done. No one was fired or disciplined, they were simply told to get back to work.

"The first strike was a rousing success," Laura Whiting told the planet that night on MarsGroup. "I'm sure you've all noticed your various employers trying to pretend it was no big deal, that they all enjoyed their little vacations, but believe me, you folks hurt them badly. I congratulate you on your unprecedented unity. But this is only the beginning. This is only a taste of what we are really capable of. We must now follow up our actions with demands. Please allow me the liberty of making these demands for you. Since the corporations now know that their workers are capable of crippling them, we must demand that they open negotiations with us within the week for a peaceful transfer of assets and recognized autonomy for our planet. If they do not, then we must initiate another general strike fourteen days from now, this time for two weeks."

Corban Hayes was a man who looked ten years older than he had just a few months before. The stress of trying to keep a handle on the Laura Whiting situation while forcing his underlings to participate in a crackdown of citizens not seen since the beginning of World War III were taking their toll on him. He had already been treated by his private physician for a bleeding ulcer and irritable bowel syndrome, afflictions he had never been bothered with before. His face was now gaunt and drawn, streaked with age lines that had not been there at the beginning of this miserable year. And now one of the worst fears of all had just come to pass. A general strike had occurred on the planet, a strike that had shut down everything and everyone and had come on his watch. And that bitch Whiting was already trying to arrange another, even longer one. He could almost feel his head rolling across the table.

The door to his office slid open late Tuesday afternoon to reveal Don Mitchell, one of his senior field agents, the man who had led the New Pittsburgh portion of the crackdown. Mitchell was not a very bright person and certainly was not the best-qualified agent for the position that he held. But, in the world of the FLEB bureaucracy, which was WestHem politics at its finest, that factor was not often considered when promotions and assignments were handed out. Walker was well-connected and had the ear of Director Clinton himself since he was married to Clinton's daughter, thus he would more than likely be the man to replace Hayes when he (Hayes) was eventually reassigned to some shithole office management job in South America or Greenland.

"You called for me, Corban?" Mitchell asked him, using Hayes' first name when hardly anyone else would dare to.

Hayes let it slide, as he almost always did. "Yes, Don," he told him, waving him to a seat. "It's about the Laura Whiting investigation."

Mitchell smiled predatorily. The Whiting case had of course been handed to him once the Eden crackdown got up and rolling. He and a team of fourteen agents had been working twelve-hour days on it ever since the order from Clinton had come in. "We're pretty close to having an airtight case file drawn up," he said. "It's a lot easier to build a case when you don't have to worry about things like real evidence." He seemed to find this deliciously funny.

Hayes on the other hand, did not. He had at first been unable to believe his ears when the order to draw up false charges against Whiting had come across his terminal on the secure link. Though he had bent the law to his liking many, many times in his career, he had never been asked before to actually make up charges and back them up with falsified evidence. And in such an important, potentially explosive case at that! He strongly suspected that Clinton and those controlling him were forcing him to pull the pin on a hand grenade. Nevertheless he had followed orders. It was all that he knew how to do. "I've just received a communiqué from Director Clinton himself," he told Mitchell.

"Ah, my good father in law," Mitchell said affectionately. "What did he have to say?"

"Nothing very good," he said. "It seems that the various business interests of Earth and the executive council are rather upset about the little strike we just had. They are even more upset at the prospect of another, even longer one. The picking of the grand jury in Denver is being fast-tracked even faster and they are quite eager to have the complete case file against Whiting so they can get her out before she has a chance to get another strike organized. How close to finished are you?"

"We're just drawing up the final documents now," he said. "You know? Making them look all nice and official, cross-referencing a few of our sources. We could probably have it done in another three days if we rushed."

"Rush even faster," Hayes told him. "Even if it means that it's not quite as pretty looking or complete. Clinton wants the entire file transmitted to him within twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-four hours?" Mitchell said doubtfully.

"That's what your father in law tells me," he confirmed. "And as you know, what he says goes. So get your people together, get some coffee brewing, hell, go buy some dust from one of the vermin if you need to, but have that report finished by 0900 tomorrow."

"We will," he said.

Two days later, in Denver, Nora Hathaway, the WestHem attorney general, was reviewing the Whiting file from her office atop the Department of Justice building. She was a portly woman of sixty-two years, an appointee of the last administration that had managed to hang on due to her astute political savvy. She scanned through the hundreds of pages of evidentiary documents, getting a thorough read on just what the charges against Whiting were going to consist of and how good of a job the FLEB agents had done "gathering" the evidence. Once she had the basics of it down she put in a call to FLEB director Clinton on her terminal.

"What do you think?" he asked her once his face appeared. "I've been going over the file since I received it on this end and it looks pretty solid to me."

"I like it," Hathaway said. "The charges themselves are beyond reproach. Solicitation of bribery from corporate officials, incitement of terrorism, trafficking in explosives. It couldn't get much better, especially after all of the media publicity that Whiting's been getting here on Earth."

"My feelings exactly," Clinton replied. "For once this year my agents on Mars actually did something right."

"It would seem so," she said. "But I do foresee some future problems with this."

"Such as?"

"Such as the trial," she replied. "This file will be enough to get her indicted on the charges, but once we put her on trial we'll have to come up with some corroborating witnesses for these statements in here. How are you going to do that?"

"Several of the corporations involved have volunteered their services in that regard," he told her. "For instance Smith at Agricorp will have a few of his lobbyists testify on our behalf that Whiting asked for bribes from them and threatened them if they did not produce them. The names on the statements are of the actual people involved. And as for the terrorism charges, well, those statements are from... non-people I guess we could say."

"You mean they're completely fabricated by your agents," said Hathaway, who did not enjoy mincing words when she did not have to.

"Well... yes," he admitted. "But in any case, our contacts at InfoServe, the biggest of the big three, have promised to supply us with actors who will pretend to be these people we interviewed at the trial. We'll make a big production out of them, tell the solar system how they'd been caught red-handed and gave up Whiting for a plea bargain, have them testify, and then we'll pretend to sentence them to prison. The pay-off for them will be a billion dollars apiece and new identities when its over."

"A lot of money," she observed. "Who's paying for it?"

"The coalition of corporations that are fighting against Whiting will pay for half," he told her. "The federal government will pick up the other half. Of course its possible that some accidents might be arranged for these people instead. It is awfully dangerous to let them walk around after a production like that."

"That would seem the wiser course," she said.

"In any case, the important thing is the now. We need to get Whiting out of office and on a ship to Earth before the next general strike. We'll have plenty of time to worry about the trial later. I'm sure we'll be able to delay and put off the proceedings for at least four years. You know how our justice system works."

"Yes, God love it," she agreed. "I have more good news for you as well. Our grand jury selection is now complete."

"Is it?" he asked, delighted. Of course the grand jury did not know that it was being convened to investigate the Laura Whiting matter, they thought they were just another routine body being pulled together to serve for a year and investigate whatever federal matters came up in the course of that time. "How's the composition?"

"We have twelve of the biggest morons in Denver sitting on that panel," she told him. "Each one of them has been following the Whiting story on the big three and have only received input from those sources. Not one of them has any contact with anyone who lives on Mars or ever has. They'll believe anything our prosecutor tells them."

"Beautiful," Clinton said, pleased with this news.

"I've already called my two top prosecutors up here. They'll be going over the file in less than an hour. It's Thursday now so I'll have them work the entire weekend on it. The grand jury will convene for the first time this Monday morning. We'll zip them through an abbreviated orientation in the morning and then start hitting them with the Whiting matter after lunch."

"And how long will it take once it's started?" Clinton wanted to know.

"Shouldn't take too long," she said. "I'll have them present the worst of the evidence quickly. I'd say two days should do it and we'll have that indictment."

"Wednesday then," Clinton said, nodding, a happy smile upon his face. Soon this entire Laura Whiting mess would be but a memory. "I'll be eagerly awaiting it."

Hathaway's prediction of two days turned out to be an accurate one. The Denver federal grand jury, which consisted of seven women and five men, were horrified at the crimes that Laura Whiting, current governor of Mars, was accused of participating in. The evidence that they were presented, coupled with the extensive media coverage of the events that all had been following of late, prompted them to issue a six-page indictment against her on six distinct federal charges, all of which carried lengthy prison sentences if the accused was found guilty.

The two prosecuting attorneys who had presented the case thanked the grand jury for their time and then dismissed them, reminding all that they had agreed to serve for a year and could be called up again. The twelve members left the federal courthouse and went about their business, all of them proud to have served and eagerly awaiting their next assignment, blissfully unaware that the justice system had no intention of ever using them again. They had served their purpose.

The text of their indictment was on Hathaway's terminal before the first of the jury members were even able to board a commuter train for their homes. She quickly read it over and then sent it on to Clinton's office via a secure landline. Clinton read it over ten minutes later and then composed a voice mail giving instructions for Hayes.

"Take her into custody tomorrow morning," he told his subordinate. "Take enough teams with you to insure that she will not be liberated from you by her security forces or pissed off greenie civilians. The most important thing to remember is that she be taken alive and unharmed. I don't want a single hair on her head to be damaged, nor a single piece of her clothing rumpled. If she were to be hurt or killed during the arrest we would have hell to pay among those Martians. She is not to become a martyr, do you understand?"

When he finished the voice mail he attached a certified copy of the arrest indictment to it and then told the computer to send it on the secure channel to the FLEB headquarters in New Pittsburgh. The documents and his mail were digitized, encrypted, and then sent through the WestHem Internet system to a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the coast of Brazil. Since the main communications computer knew that direct communication with the planet Mars was now impossible thanks to the sun being directly in the path, the signal was sent across the solar system to another communications satellite in orbit around Ganymede. It took forty-eight minutes for it to arrive there at which point it was re-routed and sent to another satellite in orbit around Mars. This leg of the trip only took eighteen minutes. And so, one hour and six minutes after being sent, the message and the indictment arrived at the terminal of Corban Hayes.

Hayes watched the email message and then looked over the indictment very carefully. He had a very bad feeling about what he was being asked to do but nevertheless he began to make the arrangements to carry it out. He called Mitchell and several other of his top agents into his office and told them the news. All of them were delighted that the greenie bitch was finally going to go down. They went over the basic plan to take her into custody the next morning.

"We need to make sure that we tip the big three first thing in the morning so they'll have cameras and reporters there to watch us taking her away," Hayes told them. "However, if we tip them too early, they'll start asking questions before we want them too. Those media people are helpful but they're also very annoying at times. So, until tomorrow, nobody says a word to anyone about the indictment. This is top secret stuff, okay?"

Everyone agreed to keep it under their hats for the time being. They were dismissed so they could start drawing up their plans and of course the secret leaked within ten minutes to some of the civilian staff. An agent named Skeller, who was trying to penetrate the pants of a young secretary named Darla, was the first to spill the beans. Darla asked him in her flirtatious way just what the big meeting had been all about. Since Darla was an Earthling and very loyal to the FLEB, he didn't see any harm in telling her. "We have an indictment for Whiting," he whispered in her ear. "We're gonna take her into custody tomorrow morning and send her back to Earth for trial."

Darla quickly told another Earthling secretary the good news and that secretary quickly told another. It wasn't very long until the word reached the ears of a Martian receptionist down in the front lobby of the building.

Lisa Vaughn was a fourth generation Martian who worked in the FLEB office because it was the only job that she had ever been able to get and the only thing that kept her from vermin status. She hated Earthlings, particularly the federal variety that were her bosses, but she endured this miserable employment in order to keep her child from growing up in the ghetto. Her ex-husband, the man who had fathered her one legally allowed child, was already vermin, having lost his job in a merger of two computer software companies two years before, so he was of no help to her. If she had had any other prospect of employment over the years, she would have gladly taken it. But, since jobs were few and far between she had stayed on and, some months before, a man from the MPG intelligence division had recruited her to report to him various information about the daily operations of the agency. She was, in short, a Martian spy. She received no money or anything else in exchange for the information she passed on. She did it only out of sheer loyalty to her heritage and out of sheer hatred of the Earthlings that worked in this building; Earthlings that treated her as a piece of furniture at best and with open hostility at worst. How many times had agents or civilian staff come into the building and called her a greenie to her face? How many times had they excluded her from their gossip circles, from their after work parties or gatherings? How many times had she heard them mocking her Martian accent as they talked about her? It had not taken terribly much for the handsome MPG lieutenant to convince her to pass a few things on to him.

It was as she was in the lobby level staff restroom that she first heard about the indictment of Laura Whiting and the plan to take her into custody the next morning. Lisa had been in one of the toilet stalls, relieving her bladder of the coffee she had consumed when two female secretaries for the piracy section of the office had entered to re-apply their make-up after their lunch break. For more than five minutes she sat there silently, listening to them flippantly discuss how "that greenie bitch" Whiting was finally going to get what was coming to her.

"I told you she was involved in all of the terrorism going on in this place," one said to the other.

"I never had any doubt about it," the other responded. "So they're going to take her tomorrow morning?"

"First thing," she agreed. "At least that's what I heard from..."

Soon the two women finished their work and left the room. Lisa waited another three minutes before getting up and returning to her desk. She had been briefed to keep her ears out for just such talk and to report it as quickly as possible. Of course she could not use the main terminal on her desk to make the notification. That would be madness even though the message would seem innocent on the surface. Instead she unclipped her PC from her waist and flipped open the small screen.

"Call Gina Hawkins," she told it, referring to one of the names in her address files. To anyone overhearing her or homing in on her conversation with electronic devices, it would seem she was doing nothing more than conducting a personal call during business hours, something that was against the rules but fairly commonplace. No one would know that she had no friend named Gina Hawkins or that the number she was using to get hold of her was actually a relay station for MPG intelligence.

A pleasant faced female appeared on her screen a moment later. "Hi, this is Gina," she said in a thick Martian accent. "I'm not able to answer your call at the moment. Please leave your name and number and I'll get right back to you."

"Hi, Gina," she said into it lightly. "This is Lisa Vaughn. I just wanted to see if you were interested in going out to O'Riley's tonight after work. Give me a call back if it sounds good. If not, maybe I can stop by your apartment tomorrow morning on the way to work. I have to pick up that blouse I let you borrow. See ya."

With that, she clicked off and put her PC back on her waist. She returned to her duties. At the relay station the computer terminal that took her call identified the code phrase — "Hi Gina, this is Lisa Vaughn" - and automatically sent a copy of the message through several other relay stations. Two minutes later it arrived at the desk of Major Tim Sprinkle, head of MPG intelligence. He took one look at Lisa's message and knew, just by the words it was composed of that an indictment for Laura Whiting had been received at the FLEB office and that agents were going to attempt to pick her up the next morning. Within seconds he was on the terminal to General Jackson.

Laura knew that push had come to shove when Jackson entered her office an hour later. She could tell just by looking at his face. "The indictment?" she asked him, half-fearing it, half welcoming it.

"It was issued by the grand jury earlier today in Denver," he confirmed. "I have some sources on Earth that were able to confirm this for me. Six counts, all of them high federal felonies. Just like you predicted."

She offered a weak smile, feeling her stomach knotting up. "It's not that hard to put yourself into the corporate mindset," she said. "I left them with no other option short of actually negotiating our independence. And we know they would never do that. An indictment and a quick removal probably seems like a brilliant solution to them."

"It's brilliant all right," he said. "They'll be giving us the final catalyst that we need tomorrow morning."

"That's when they're coming to get me?" she asked, impressed as always with the quality of Jackson's information.

"We have a source inside the FLEB building," he told her, nodding. "We got a message from her not too long ago. She confirms that the indictment has been received and tells us that they're planning to take you tomorrow morning."

"Does she know how many agents? How many guns?" Laura asked.

"We don't know at this time," he said. "All we have at the moment from her is a code phrase telling us that it's going down. One of our intelligence teams will meet with her tonight to try for a better debrief. In the meantime, it's time we initiated the first stage of operation Red Grab. The first elements need to get rolling as soon as possible if they're going to be in position in time."

"The special forces soldiers," she said. It was not a question. She knew almost as much about the details of operation Red Grab as Jackson himself.

"Right, I need you to give me a governor's order activating them. I'll put the call out and get them on the transports to Triad. When the time comes, they'll be ready to move."

"Will they do it?" she asked pointedly. "We'll be asking them to commit treason and murder. Have things gone far enough so that they'll do it?"

"Time will tell," Jackson told her. "I think that they probably will but we won't know until we ask them."

"If they can't complete their portion of Red Grab," she told him, "then we might as well just surrender tomorrow."

"I know," he said. "Believe me, I know."

"But remember my conditions," she warned.

"Everyone is a volunteer for this," he recited. "All of the soldiers will be briefed on what the mission is and what the stakes are. They will all be given the opportunity to back out without recourse if they wish. No trickery or lies will be employed to get them to complete their portion of the mission."

"Right," she said. "I know it probably makes things harder for you, Kevin, but no matter how this turns out in the end, I don't want to go down in history as being the woman that tricked people into fighting for her cause. If they're not willing to fight for our freedom, then I guess it's not worth having, is it?"

"That's the truth, Laura," he said. "And I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Good."

"But from this point on, you don't leave this building until its over," he said. "The capital is now your home. I don't want to take the chance that our information is wrong. If they grab you at your apartment tonight then everything will collapse."

She did not particularly like the idea of remaining in the capital for another two days or so but she understood Jackson's reasons. "I'll stay here," she said. "I'll order in a pizza tonight."

"Good," he said. "And I'll brief your security platoon in that its time to act. When the FLEB comes to take you, they'll be ready."

Lon Fargo was behind the wheel of his maintenance truck, his partner Brent by his side. They were on their way to one of the soybean greenhouses to fix a broken fan unit on the environmental supply system. As always they were passing through other greenhouses in order to get to the one they were after, driving their lift truck along the maintenance roads along the walls. This greenhouse was one that grew rice, one of the staples of the Agricorp productivity. Stretching off to the far wall were acres and acres of neatly engineered rice paddies, all of them green and glimmering with an approaching harvest. Brent, who was smoking a cigarette on the passenger seat, was bitching about the loss of a week's pay that the general strike had imposed upon him.

"I'm telling you, man," he whined, "I don't know what I'm gonna do if we have to go through another two weeks of that shit. I mean, as it is I was barely able to make my rent payment and still pay for enough groceries to get us through until next time."

"Maybe if you cut down on the buds you smoke you'll be able to absorb it better," suggested Lon, who had also felt the sting of losing half his pay for the pay period but who was proud to endure it.

"Heretic!" Brent accused. "What kind of man are you? Cut down on my buds? That's uncivilized!"

"These are trying times," Lon said, rolling down his window to ventilate the smoke from his partner's cigarette. "Just be sure to follow through the next time Whiting asks us to strike. The only way we're gonna beat those fucks is to hit them in the wallet."

"Shit, I know that," Brent said defensively. "I wasn't saying I was gonna cross the line or anything. I'm just saying that it's a bitch going without a week's pay. It'll be a bigger bitch to go without two weeks."

"No matter how much of a bitch it is to you, it's five times as much of a bitch to them. Remember, nothing moves, nothing happens, no money gets made when we strike. That hurts 'em bad."

"Yeah yeah," Brent said, taking an especially long drag. "I just wish they'd give us a little more time to recover before the next strike comes."

Lon was about to answer him — something to the effect of how his recovery time was also their recovery time — when his PC began to buzz on his belt, indicating an incoming communication. He unclipped it and opened up the screen, which was showing the communications software and the incoming call information. He expected to see that Barb, the girl that he had been seeing over the past week, was calling to chat with him. Had that been the case he intended to send the communication to his mail system. Barb was becoming too clingy lately and he had no desire to talk with her just now. Instead of Barb's number however, he saw that it was the MPG headquarters communication system. "What the hell?" he muttered.

"Who is it?" Brent asked. "Is it that crotch you been slamming?"

"No," he said.

"Too bad," Brent offered, grinning lasciviously. "She's a pretty tasty looking piece."

"Answer," Lon told his computer, ignoring his partner.

The screen changed showing the face of Major Mike Queen, commanding officer of the Eden special forces battalion. It was not a live shot, but rather a pre-recorded message. "All special forces members," his image said. "We have a special training exercise today beginning as soon as everyone can be assembled. Report immediately to your duty station. This is an official call up. It is very important that all members attend this session. All employers are expected to honor time-off requests. I repeat..." He repeated.

"A call up?" Brent, who had been listening in, asked. "What kind of shit is that? They're calling you up for training?"

"They've done it a couple of times in the past," he said, puzzled. "Although usually its for a multi-company drill on the weekend. I don't ever remember them doing it on a weekday before."

"You can't just leave work," Brent said.

"I have to," he said. "I can't refuse a call-up. That's part of the MPG code."

"What's Pittman gonna say about that?" Brent asked, referring to their supervisor.

"I guess he can take it up with Governor Whiting if he doesn't like it," he told him, stopping the truck and starting the process of turning it around. "She's the one that put in the constitutional amendment about release from work duties."

Pittman, one of the lowest level managers in the entire Agricorp chain of command, certainly did not like it a bit that one of his people was skipping off for MPG training in the middle of the day. Though Pittman was a Martian by birth, he had been one of the one percent that had not participated in the general strike, apparently feeling that his bosses higher up the ladder would respect him for this and not eliminate his position when the cuts finally came. Whether or not that was the case still remained to be seen, since Agricorp was still waiting for things to settle down before proceeding with their eliminations. One thing that had resulted from his lack of participation however, was that he was now universally despised by all those he supervised instead of being merely disliked, which had been the case before the strike.

"You can't just leave in the middle of the goddamn day because the freakin' MPG is holding some sort of training session," he said from behind his cheap metal desk in the dispatch office. "Get your ass back out there and finish your assignment."

"Sorry, Pitt," Lon told him, shaking his head without a trace of regret. "This is an official call-up. I'm not allowed to disregard it and you're not allowed to discipline me for responding to it. It's the law."

"I don't think the law applies to training," he replied. "It's meant for an invasion of the planet by EastHem."

"The constitution doesn't say that," Lon told him. "All it says is that you are expected to honor an official call-up of forces. I've been given an official call-up and I'm leaving. I won't let the door slide shut on me on the way out."

"Fargo, I'm warning you," he said sternly. "You are not to leave early for this. If you do, don't bother coming back."

Lon was not impressed with his words. "You don't have the authority to fire me, Pitt," he told him. "Don't even pretend that you do. You're just a greenie like me, although apparently you forgot that back during the strike. All you can do is compose a disciplinary notice for me and recommend that I get fired but middle management is the one who makes that decision and I hardly think that they'll go up against a constitutional issue for something as petty as this. So find someone else to fix that fan unit and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye now."

He walked through the door, letting it slide shut behind him. Pittman was too astonished and too angry to even make a parting reply. Instead he started yelling at Brent, who had been hiding a chuckle the entire time.

Lon, knowing that he had a spare uniform in his locker at the MPG base, didn't even bother going home first. He left the Agricorp maintenance building and made his way to the nearest commuter train station. He walked up the stairway and, coming to the gates that guarded access to the platform, used a fund transfer port in the back of his PC to transfer the cost of the fare to the MarsTrans bank account. The gate then slid open, allowing him access.

A train arrived six minutes later, only four minutes behind schedule, and he climbed aboard, finding a seat near the back among a few elderly Martians and a few gang member types that were probably delivering dust chemicals back to the ghetto. The commuter trains ran atop the street level roof and the train itself, which rode on a magnetic track, cruised along at 45 kilometers per hour, jerking to a halt every few minutes and then, after passengers embarked or disembarked, powered up again for the next leg. Buildings flashed past and turns were negotiated at high speed. None of the motion being produced was felt by Lon or any of the other passengers thanks to the inertial damping system. If you closed your eyes it felt as if you were standing still. When they reached a hub station ten minutes later Lon disembarked that train and waited another ten minutes for another one. When it arrived he climbed aboard and rode it to the station nearest the MPG base.

Since it had taken him quite a while to come in from the greenhouse he'd been traveling through, Lon was the last of his squad to arrive. The rest of his team were gathered in the platoon's briefing room, all of them looking a little confused and gossiping among themselves as to what the meaning of the call-up was and what form the "special training" would take. Lieutenant Yee, whose presence on the base had been confirmed by other members, was conspicuously absent at the moment, probably in an officer's briefing.

Lon was of course inundated with questions from his men and from the other sergeants in the room, as if he were in possession of some information that they didn't have. "I don't know," he told them all. "I've never heard of them calling us up for special training on a weekday before. Nobody told me shit."

They waited. A few more stragglers from the platoon came into the room and starting the entire round of questioning and speculation over again. All forty men did show up however, many with tales of unhappy supervisors or managers.

Finally Lieutenant Yee arrived. Since the MPG was light on military formality, no one stood up or saluted him but they did all quiet down respectfully to await his orders.

"Okay, people," Yee said slowly, "here's the deal. I just received a briefing from Captain Armand and he wanted me to tell you all that we are not really here for a training mission. That was just a ruse to keep WestHem authorities from taking alarm at our call up. The real reason we have been called up is because of possible action up on Triad. I was not told much more than that. All I know is that it is not just the Eden area company, it is the entire battalion. All of us our going to be moved as quickly as possible up to Triad for a possible active service in defense of Mars."

There were some amazed stares at his words. The entire special forces battalion? That was four companies of troops, one from each of the four key surface cities thought most likely to be attacked. At 160 soldiers per company, that added up to 640 men! Never before had the entire battalion been called together for a single mission. Special forces worked in small teams employing hit and run tactics. And just what kind of active service were they talking about? Was there a threat from an EastHem invasion force? If so, why were only the special forces teams being called to arms? It didn't make any sense. It was the marines' responsibility to protect Triad and the naval base if an attack occurred. They had an entire division stationed at their barracks and enough surface to orbit craft to move more than a thousand men up at a time. The only surface to orbit transports the Eden area MPG troops possessed were two old C-8 lifters from the Jupiter War era, lifters that could carry only 150 troops at a time. Since each round trip to Triad and back would take three hours, it would be nine hours before everyone could even get up there.

Yee waited for the babble of voices to quiet down. "That's all that I know at the moment, people," he told them. "We're being called up and shipped up to Triad for an unknown purpose. Governor Whiting herself signed the order making it so. If any of you do not wish to participate in this, it is your right under our charter to back out. I was also assured that everyone will be given this opportunity again if the mission that we are being considered for gets a green light. Anyone who wishes to leave, please get up and do so right now. You will be held at the base until the completion or cancellation of the mission and then you will be allowed to return to regular duties. Any takers?"

Not a single person stood up. Lon didn't know for sure what everyone else was thinking, but his curiosity was certainly piqued. He was definitely in for the long haul.

"I didn't think that there would be," Yee said with a smile. "But I did have to ask. All right, let's talk about load outs, shall we? Our load outs will be full interior armor and combat goggles with regular ammunition, not training rounds. Each squad will equip itself with four M-24s with grenade launchers and thirty smart frags per weapon. The SAW men will each draw four thousand rounds of ammunition for their weapons, the riflemen one thousand rounds. In addition, each squad will carry no less than four hundred meters of primacord for door breaching. Biosuits will not be needed but everyone is to draw a gas mask and wear their heavy boots. Don't worry about food packs but do get some canteens. I'm told that you'll need them. Does everyone understand the load out?"

Everyone understood the requirements of it.

"Let's get moving then," Yee told them. "We're going to start loading onto the C-8s in the order we get equipped. I don't want my platoon sucking hind tit here, so lets make it fast."

It took the better part of an hour for the entire company to draw their weapons and ammunition and get suited up. They talked among themselves as they went through this process, all of them speculating on just what it was they were going to be asked to do. A large majority seemed to feel that a secret EastHem invasion force was going to try to make landings of some sort at either the naval base or the Triad commercial spaceport. After all, Mars and Earth were at opposite sides of the sun and Jupiter was situated relatively close to Mars at the moment. This was the planetary configuration that had long been feared as the ripest for such an attack since EastHem ships would legitimately be in the area. As for why the MPG special forces would be the ones to repel such an invasion, it was felt that this was because the intelligence that had uncovered the plot had come from the MPG instead of the CIA or FLEB. Perhaps WestHem authorities had disregarded the information forcing General Jackson to act alone. That would be just like those WestHem pricks. All of this sounded plausible enough that soon it was regarded as the official rumor. There were only a few dissenting opinions, a few of which actually suggested the real reason for the deployment, although they would not know it for some time. Everyone, no matter what their opinion of the coming conflict, felt a sharp edge of nervousness and anticipation however. Though the MPG trained obsessively, it had never seen actual combat before and only a few of the special forces troops had done any time in the WestHem army or marines. Of those that had, only three had seen actual shooting in Argentina or Cuba. Now, the prospect of actual fighting, the possibility of delivering or receiving death was upon them.

Once weapons were drawn the company was moved to a rarely used loading terminal that led to the outside. One of the C-8s that the MPG possessed was docked with the terminal just outside the taxiway entrance. The C-8, like all Martian based surface to orbit craft, was essentially a reinforced terrestrial aircraft fuselage without the wings or tail. On the ground, in the loading position, it rested horizontally upon landing gear that folded out from the bottom. The two pilots were clearly visible through the windscreen going through their pre-launch checks. The bottom of the fuselage was covered with a layer of heat resistant material that was able to withstand the inferno of atmospheric re-entry and the aft end was fitted with two rocket outlets capable of propelling the craft to orbital speed. Only the front third of the spacecraft was capable of carrying passengers or cargo. The rear two-thirds were taken up by the engine components and the tanks of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that fueled them. The outside of the craft was painted as were all MPG equipment: in the shades of red camouflage scheme.

The passenger seats had been removed from the spacecraft in order to create more room. Though it wouldn't be a very comfortable flight, the entire company of 160 people and their equipment were able to fit into one C-8. Lon and his squad were among the first to embark. Since the C-8 was at idle and its artificial gravity field was operating, there had been no period of lightening. Lon found himself sitting near one of the windows, his weapon resting against his shoulder, his pack pushing against the wall behind him, two of his men pushing at him from either side. His legs began to ache almost immediately from the cramped position. He, like the rest of the company, kept his thoughts mostly silent as the doors were sealed up and the spacecraft began to move away from the building.

They rolled out across the sandy taxiways, out to the very far reaches of the outside base area, where the thrust from the rocket engines would not cause any damage. The trip took nearly twenty minutes but finally they arrived at the launch platform, a hydraulically operated lift built into the ground. The spacecraft positioned itself carefully and there was a clank as the magnetic arms locked onto them, holding them firmly into place. Soon the lift moved into action, tilting the aircraft upward to the optimum launch angle of seventy degrees. Watching out the window, Lon was able to see the ground tilting away from them but he felt no pull of gravity towards the rear of the spacecraft. The artificial gravity field kept everyone oriented to the inside of the spacecraft instead of to the planetary surface outside. He could have, if he'd wished, stood up and walked around normally, just as if he was on level ground.

"Take-off in ten seconds," the pilot announced over the intercom. He then began a countdown. When he reached zero the roar of the engines could be heard reverterbrating throughout the ship. There was a slight sense of vibration but nothing else as they left the ground and streaked into the sky on a fountain of orange rocket exhaust. Though they were accelerating at more than three times the force of standard gravity, no one was pushed backwards and no one had to brace themselves. That was the inertial damping system at work.

Lon continued to watch out the window as the ground receded beneath them. Within two minutes they were more than twenty thousand meters above Eden and he could see the high rises and the agricultural greenhouses spread out beneath like a relief map. He tried to pick out the MPG base that they had launched from and might have been able to after a moment's study had they not rolled to a different attitude, obscuring his view.

Within five minutes of launch they were clear of the atmosphere and moving at orbital velocity. The main engines of the C-8 shut off for the moment and the maneuvering thrusters kicked on, angling them upward. When the proper attitude had been reached the main engines fired up again, although only at half power, so they could be forced into a higher orbit for the rendezvous with the orbiting city. Triad was in geosynchronous orbit over the opposite hemisphere. In order to reach it a spacecraft had to climb to an altitude of 17,000 kilometers, which, when at orbital speed, would perpetually keep it over the same point on the surface. The flight computers in the cockpit of course did all of this orbital maneuvering and positioning. A mere man could conceivably figure all of this out with paper and a pencil but it might take him several weeks to do so.

The majority of the trip was spent coasting along in the high orbit, slowly catching up with their target. From Lon's perspective near the window, he never saw Triad approaching at all. There was only the blackness of space, the brilliance of the stars, and the nothingness that was the night side of Mars far below. Finally, ninety minutes after launch, the maneuvering thrusters fired again, slowing their approach. Lon saw the lights of a few other spacecraft in the distance, none close enough or clear enough for him to identify, and then, suddenly, there was the outline of Triad before him.

Orbiting space cities were engineering marvels, truly the culmination of all that man had learned about construction and space flight. More than just a space station where cargo was loaded and unloaded, Triad was home to more than 600,000 people and contained all of the amenities that any modern city had to offer. There was a level that could be referred to as a main street level. It contained parks, duck ponds, even a golf course and a football stadium. It was crisscrossed with a grid pattern of streets where pedestrians could walk or ride the trams from one place to another. It was on the main level where the spaceport was attached that huge tanker ships and cargo ships bound for Jupiter or Earth could dock, that passengers could load and unload for trips to Earth or down to the Martian planetary surface. Large food and steel carriers launched from Mars — much bigger versions of the C-8 that Lon was now flying in —would transfer their cargo to the larger, interplanetary ships. Huge hydrogen carriers from Ganymede would disgorge liquid hydrogen and methane into storage tanks. This busy spaceport, which employed over thirty thousand, was Triad's main reason for existence.

Like other Martian cities, Triad construction took advantage of vertical space instead of horizontal. But in orbit, vertical space went two ways instead of one. From the main street level huge building rose both up and down. There were office buildings of course, and apartment buildings (virtually no one on Mars or above it owned a domicile) where people lived. The more expensive and exclusive buildings tended to be near the edges of the station while the low-rent and public housing buildings where the lower class and the hundred thousand some-odd unemployed lived, were in the center. The farther away from street level you got, the more the apartment would cost you. The most exclusive buildings, both offices and apartments, were on the outside, below street level, since these tended to have beautiful views of Mars hovering far below.

From his perspective in the spacecraft window, Lon was able to see the most exclusive of these buildings stretching both above and below him, their lighted windows glittering majestically against the blackness. At the street level he could see the tiny figures of people moving to and fro through the glass roof. They went busily about their business, for despite the fact that it was midnight below on the Martian surface, that distinction meant nothing on Triad, which followed New Pittsburgh time as its standard.

They traveled along the edge of the city for some minutes as the maneuvering thrusters fired from various parts of the ship, slowing them and easing them into an invisible travel corridor. Lon had only been to Triad once before, when he was a child, and he stared wide-eyed out the window as they passed different sections of it. Soon they came drifting up to a docking port that protruded out from the MPG space guard base. There was more thruster activity as they eased into position and then there was a solid clank as the mating took place.

"Welcome to Triad," the pilot told them over the intercom. "Docking is complete and we'll be opening the doors in about one minute."

The cramped and weary men of the Eden company pulled themselves to their feet and prepared to disembark. Lon had to stretch and flex his legs for a moment to restore circulation to them. He was not the only one performing this maneuver.

"Okay, guys," said Captain Armand, commanding officer of the Eden company, "I know it wasn't exactly a first class flight, but we're here now. Let's get ourselves off of this thing in an orderly fashion so they can go to New Pittsburgh and pick up another company. Form up by platoon on the other side and we'll take you to the staging area."

The doors opened up and one by one they marched through the docking port and into the main cargo receiving point for the base. Shipping containers were stacked against three of the walls and electric forklifts cruised back and forth, moving them from one place to another or stacking them on electric carts for transport to other parts of the base. The men and women driving the forklifts or unpacking the containers paid no attention to the arrival of the special forces team.

The front wall of the room was fitted with large windows that looked out on space and the docked C-8. The men formed up in front of this window, making four lines of forty soldiers apiece. They had to scrunch a little closer than one arms length apart in order to accomplish this without hitting the walls on either side. As soon as everyone was settled, Armand waved at them to follow and began walking towards the far end of the room. They trailed behind him, keeping somewhat in formation but not actually marching. The MPG did not march since their philosophy dictated that their precious training time be spent learning something useful instead of how to walk from one place to another in a way that looked aesthetically pleasing.

Armand led them through a series of dank hallways and into a hanger complex full of parked F-20 fighters. These circular space fighters were sitting atop their ground wheels in neat lines, lethal laser cannons protruding from turrets on the front, their canopies open in the alert position. Several of them were undergoing maintenance by spacecraft mechanics in coveralls. A few of the mechanics looked up at the formation as it marched through their hanger and then went back to what they were doing, seemingly uninterested. On the spaceward wall of the hanger were a series of airlocks that the fighters could pass through to be launched. All of the doors were securely closed and locked and marked with yellow danger lines on the floor.

A set of doorways at the far end of the hanger led them to another hanger, this one empty and abandoned looking. Though the floor looked as if it had recently been cleaned and mopped, all of the parking areas were devoid of spacecraft and the airlocks had a layer of dust on the doors. When the last man was in the hanger Armand brought them to a halt and then walked over to the door and issued a command to the computer terminal that guarded it. The doors all slid shut with a clank that echoed back and forth several times.

"All right, guys," he said to his company. "This is it. We'll be staging in this room for the immediate future. Everyone find yourself a place to call your own and get settled in. Blankets and pillows will be brought in later and we'll be having our meals brought to us here. There are bathrooms at the far end through those doors, but other than that, no one is to leave this room. There is to be no communication out of here and to enforce this rule, the cellular antennas have all been shut down so your PCs won't work."

The men broke ranks and began looking for a favorable piece of the floor to camp out in. They settled in for a long wait. Through the remainder of that day, the rest of the special forces battalion was transported up and marched to the hanger to join them. By 8:00 PM, Eden time, all 640 men were present and accounted for. They waited, unsure what their purpose in being there was but anxious to get on with it anyway.

The WestHem marine intelligence unit, which was quartered at the barracks in Eden and attached to the fast reaction division, had noted that a number of Martian Planetary Guard soldiers were transported up to Triad. They could hardly have failed to note it since the unusual event of a C-8 surface to orbit craft taking off from the various bases around the planet had clearly been seen by tens of thousands of people. The Major in charge of the unit simply filed the information away in his computer, not really giving it a second thought. After all, who cared what the pretend soldiers were doing? He never bothered to try finding out just how many soldiers had been taken up there or what they were equipped with or what their purpose might have been. By the time he went to bed that night he'd forgotten all about the information. He would remember it the next day however, once it was too late.

The FLEB agents, who tried to monitor everything the greenies did these days, noted the same thing. The information was passed all the way up to Corban Hayes himself, who simply shrugged and disregarded it. He was anxious about the Laura Whiting takedown scheduled for the next morning and wondered why his underlings had even bothered to bring the movement of MPG troops to his attention. So they shipped some people up to Triad? Who cared? It never occurred to him that there might be a connection between this information and the Laura Whiting matter. It would be a matter that he would later deeply regret ignoring.

There was a group of people that did take notice of the troop movement and that did find it very interesting in light of recent events on Mars. That group was the EastHem Office of Military Intelligence, or OMI, which operated out of a guarded building in the EastHem capital city of London. The OMI was receiving the take from a Henry that was currently in high orbit over Mars, its sensors peering down at all that orbited the red planet. They too had seen the liftoff of a C-8 lifter from all four of the key Martian cities and had tracked it each time to the space guard base at Triad. In addition to this, they had intercepted the call up message earlier that day asking for all special forces teams to report to their duty stations. It did not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the MPG had just moved 640 of its most highly trained soldiers to a staging location at its spaceborne base. When analysts evaluated the data back in London, the correct conclusion was almost immediately drawn.

It is interesting to note that the OMI and the EastHem government they served had much greater knowledge of and respect for the MPG than the WestHem government that it was a part of. After all, it was the OMI's job to evaluate the opposition in the event that they ever decided to invade Mars. Ever since the MPGs first fledgling days as a group, Henry's had been spying on their maneuvers and listening in on their transmissions when they could. Operatives on the planet itself, some under diplomatic cover, some illegal spies posing as Earthlings or Martians, had gathered everything they could on the composition of forces and the tactics they employed. There was a file on General Jackson and all of the other commanding officers complete with detailed biographies and up to date photographs. The OMI admired Jackson tremendously and knew that if they ever tried to take Mars from WestHem, that he and his troops would give them quite a rough time of it.

The OMI had been following closely the recent events on Mars, both by monitoring the media transmissions and by observing from stealth ships in orbit. With the cool analysis that came with not being involved, they had long since figured out where Laura Whiting and General Jackson were heading.

"What do you think?" the head of the covert intelligence division asked his boss when the information was confirmed.

"Let me get this straight," asked the deputy director as he looked the data over. "You're saying that the MPG moved their entire special forces division up to Triad today?"

"That's correct," he said. "We have about as absolute of a confirmation as we're going to get on that one. Three different sources. We intercepted the call up order as it was put out, three of our operatives were able to observe known members of these teams entering their bases this afternoon, and the asset we have in orbit was able to observe a lifter moving from the four key bases and docking at the Triad MPG base."

"And in Denver?"

"The information is not as solid but its still high on the scale," he said. "It seems that a federal indictment and arrest warrant were issued by a grand jury accusing Laura Whiting of various crimes. One of our operatives there was able to actually talk to one of those members. It seemed that this young women, who was not very smart I understand, did not take her oath of secrecy very seriously."

"And do we have any idea if the MPG knows about this arrest warrant?"

"We have no way of knowing for sure," he said, "but I can't believe that they wouldn't. Jackson, as you know, has a pretty impressive array of agents, both on Earth and Mars, including civilian workers in the FLEB building itself. He keeps his ear to the ground and his job is made a lot easier by the contempt that the WestHem people have for him and his organization."

"So you're saying that if a warrant was issued and transmitted to Earth, Jackson and Whiting would most likely know about it?"

"Correct."

The deputy director smiled. "My friend," he said. "I think that food is going to become a bit cheaper in EastHem in the near future."

"Shall we wake the executive council with this data?"

"I think we should. And I think that we're in for a jolly good show on Mars tomorrow morning."