Greenies

Chapter 7

At 1800 hours, New Pittsburgh time, people all over the planet found an Internet screen and tuned it to the proper channel. Some were gathered around a single screen in the living room of a public housing apartment. Some sat in luxury apartments on the edges of the cities. Many were freshly deployed MPG troops on occupation duties. If they were near a screen they watched it, if they weren't near a screen, they watched their PCs instead.

When the speech began there was no fanfare beforehand, no commentary by reporters, no speculation as to what was to be said, no spurt of advertising commercials. The image simply blinked on, showing Laura Whiting sitting at her desk dressed in her normal garb, a dark blue T-shirt. Her graying hair was styled but not perfect, her face showed strain with large bags under her eyes. In that instant the planet held its breath. And then she began to speak.

"Citizens of the Planet Mars," she said, looking easily into the camera as she'd done so many times before. "By now you undoubtedly know that some rather strange events have been taking place on this planet, most prominently right here at the capital building. I will now explain in detail what has happened today, what steps I have taken, and what I hope will come next.

"I was elected Governor of this planet by a considerable margin. As I've mentioned in my speeches before, I ran under a false flag, proclaiming my allegiance to WestHem, and particularly certain WestHem corporations. This was done so that I could be put into a position where I could fulfill a life-long dream. My dream was not to rule Mars, but to free it from WestHem control and influence. My goal, as I've told you time and time again, was to bring this about peacefully. I offered many times to negotiate with the WestHem government in Denver and the various corporations that control this planet and its assets. I have done this publicly and in private, pleading with the so-called 'powers-that-be' for a transfer of assets over to Martian control that would allow these corporations to maintain a profit while still allowing us self-rule and self-determination.

"They refused to even consider this. Instead, they committed themselves to removing me from office in order to silence my voice. When their attempts at using legal means failed, they attempted to destroy my reputation with their propaganda arm — also known as the Big Three media corporations. When that failed — which it did only because of the intrinsic intelligence of you, the Martian people — they began resorting to other means, namely, the use of the WestHem federal government and it's law enforcement branch.

"Now I know that all of you are aware of this tactic affecting you, the citizens. They arrested hundreds for doing nothing more than exercising their freedom of speech. They shot down others like dogs. But while they were behaving like Nazis in our streets, stomping on our human rights, violating all we hold sacred, another group of them was working in secret, acting directly against me. They put together federal charges — charges that were completely and totally fabricated — against me as a means of removing me once and for all. As you all have undoubtedly heard during the course of this day, a federal indictment with six separate charges was issued against me yesterday in Denver. This indictment was followed up with an arrest warrant today — a warrant that calls for my extradition to Earth for trial. The charges listed in this indictment are as follows: Abuse of high office, solicitation of bribes, racketeering, gross incompetence of high office, and..." she offered a smile to her viewers, "... my personal favorites, incitement of terrorism and trafficking in explosives."

Her face turned back to serious. "These are six very serious federal charges against me. I refused to recognize the legality of this indictment when it was served and I'll explain why. For one, this indictment was handed down by a grand jury in Denver. Denver! On Earth. The members of this grand jury were not citizens of Mars. They were not my peers. I was never given the opportunity to answer to any of these so-called charges leveled against me. I was never questioned a single time about these charges by any federal officers. Does this sound like a fair and impartial investigation?

"Some might say that an indictment is merely a charge and that if I'm innocent it will be proven in court. I'm sorry but I just don't see it that way and I believe that most of my fellow citizens don't either. If I were to have gone to Denver and stood trial, I would have been found guilty on all counts by another jury of Denver citizens, after being defended by a federal defense attorney. No, this indictment was not a response to criminal activity committed by me. It was meant to be my removal from office.

"I have committed no corrupt acts, I have not abused my office, I've accepted no bribes, and I don't believe I've been incompetent in my duties. I have certainly not incited any terrorism or trafficked in any explosives. So when federal agents showed up at the capital building this morning to take me into custody, I refused to go. And I will not go until you, my true peers, tell me that I must go, that the events that took place today must end. As it stands now, I'm guilty of much more than simple corruption. I will now explain what happened today so you can all fully understand what it happening.

"When the agents showed up to arrest me, my security detail was ordered by me to stop them. I will point out that I carefully explained to them that if they thought the indictment should be honored, if they truly thought that I was a corrupt, incompetent governor, then they should not follow my orders, that they should allow the feds entrance to the building and assist them in the arrest. I explained to them that failing to follow the feds' orders might expose them to treason charges later on. Not a single one of my detail backed down.

"My detail attempted to take the FLEB agents into custody until such time as the matter of Martian autonomy was hashed out. Unfortunately the FLEB agents did not surrender peacefully but elected to shoot it out inside the lobby of the capital. My troops returned fire, killing and wounding many of them. Most of the outside detail, as you saw on Internet, were taken peacefully into custody.

"As for the other events at the capital this morning, the reinforcement of the feds, the pull-back of the New Pittsburgh Police Department, the peaceful surrender of the remaining feds, you all saw that on Internet live as it happened. I will not rehash those events right now but I would like to thank Chief Sandoza for pulling his men back at my request. This kept Martian police officers from becoming involved in a firefight with MPG troops and led to the surrender of the federal agents. That is how I was kept from being taken into custody for these fabricated crimes under the guise of this illegal and fabricated indictment.

"But as you know, some other things have taken place on this planet and above during the course of this day, things much more serious than my refusal to surrender to a warrant, things with far-reaching implications for the future of this planet."

She paused for a second, taking a sip from a glass of water that was sitting next to her. She set it down and then looked into the cameras once more. "I have known all along," she said, "that the WestHem powers-that-be would most likely not go along with my plans for a peaceful transition to autonomy. I have hoped for the best but at the same time I have prepared for the worst. I have moved forward under the assumption that most of my fellow Martians favor autonomy and are willing to take certain risks for it. As I've said, you will all have opportunity to judge my actions in this regard.

"Many years ago, long before I was elected your governor, in order to assure that when the time came the citizens of Mars would have the means to make ourselves free, I asked my good friend General Jackson of the Martian Planetary Guard to draw up plans for assuming control of this planet from WestHem authorities if it ever became necessary. That plan was code-named Operation Red Grab and today it was put into effect on my orders. Whether or not it was necessary will be up to the Martian citizens to decide and you will be given the power to shut down this operation if you so desire, but let me explain first what steps were taken and where we stand at this moment.

"When word of the coming indictment and arrest reached my office yesterday afternoon, I put the plan into action. The first thing that happened was a call-up of the entire special forces battalion planet wide. These soldiers were transported up to Triad last night and stationed there to wait for confirmation of the indictment and arrest attempt. At the same time, additional MPG combat troops were called up and activated down here in New Pittsburgh and in Eden. Some of these men helped secure the capital this morning but most of them were stationed outside of the Eden MPG deployment center, where they manned tanks, aircraft, artillery, and infantry positions. They too waited for conformation of the indictment and arrest attempt. When that confirmation came, the special forces battalion, who again, were given the free choice to back down from their task, invaded Triad Naval Base and secured it. As we speak right now, TNB and all of the WestHem naval ships docked there are firmly in our hands. At the same time, the infantry and tank troops outside of Eden moved in to secure the Eden Marine Barracks. That base too is now firmly in our hands, all of its occupants and weapons captured."

She frowned sadly. "Unfortunately these two bases did not meekly surrender to our troops. Thirty-three of our soldiers lost their lives in the fighting. Forty-seven were wounded. Casualty lists are being formed right now and the families of those soldiers killed and wounded will be notified shortly after my speech tonight.

"These deaths weigh heavy on my soul," she said, seeming to stifle a tear. "I know that is what a politician is supposed to say and I know that they rarely mean it but please believe that I am speaking these words with the utmost sincerity. Thirty-three young men died while following orders that initiated with me. Thirty-three people with families, children, lives. I will not try to justify their deaths with a lot of patriotic blathering. This was a tragedy and I want you all to know right now and understand that if we follow through with the course of action that I have set into motion today there will be more tragedies like this, some undoubtedly worse, and maybe too many for us to handle."

She stopped, wiping a tear from her face and clearing her throat before continuing. "Once the fighting began at the two bases, I ordered a general mobilization of the entire MPG. My purpose for this action was nothing less than to take control of this planet, to seize it from WestHem in the name of the citizens of Mars. This goal was successful. As of 1520 hours today, the Planet of Mars is firmly in the hands of the MPG."

She took a deep breath. "This is where my actions will stop without further consent from you, the Martian people. Most of you are probably trying to digest what I have just told you. You are saying to yourselves in disbelief 'My God, Mars has rebelled against WestHem'. But that is not what has happened, not yet. Mars has done nothing, I have. I have initiated preliminary actions to secure this planet in the hope that we will rebel, that we will tell WestHem that we no longer wish to be a part of their corrupt system, that we are going to carve out our own destiny from now on. But I will not, I cannot go any further without the consent of the people in whose name I am doing this.

"I've told you several times during the course of this speech that you will have the opportunity to evaluate my actions. I will now explain just what I mean by that. I am calling for a vote on this matter. I will give you two days to think it over and then you may cast your ballots via your Internet terminals starting at 0800 local time on Friday. The question will be simple. Do you wish to declare autonomy from the Federal Alliance of the Western Hemisphere and enforce this declaration by any means available and necessary?

"This is a question that requires a simple yes or no answer. But this yes or no will be the most important you will ever answer in your lives. Your future, your children's future, and your grandchildren's future rides on this vote so I want you to discuss it with your friends, your families, and then vote how your heart tells you to. Due to the gravity of this decision I will require more than a two-thirds majority of yes votes before I will consider the measure passed. I will also require greater than ninety-five percent voter participation before I will consider a yes vote to be binding.

"If the vote is no, either through lack of participation, lack of two-thirds majority, or outright defeat I will immediately stand down the MPG and release all federal agents and WestHem soldiers. I will turn myself and my conspirators over to federal custody to stand trial on whatever charges they can initiate. Lieutenant Governor Benton will assume the governorship and things, for the most part, will go back to the way they were before. If this is your wish, then vote no. If you do vote no however, you will never again have the right to complain about the unfairness of the WestHem system or the unfairness of their rule.

"But before you vote yes on the matter I want some hard facts out on the table for you to peruse. To gloss these facts over would be the worst sort of hypocrisy on my part. I want to make sure that each and every one of you knows exactly what a yes will get us into.

"Right now the timing for a revolt against WestHem could not be better. Mars and Earth are nearly as far apart as they ever get. It will take at least twelve weeks before WestHem can send any troops our way, but believe me when I say that they will send them. Mars is worth trillions of dollars to WestHem and is a primary source of food and steel. They will not simply let us go. If we want Mars to be free, we are going to have to fight them for it.

"Will we win?" She gave a cynical smile. "I certainly hope so but it will not be a cakewalk in any case. No matter what we do, no matter how prepared we are for them, WestHem marines will establish orbit around this planet. We do not have sufficient resources or people to prevent that. WestHem marines will establish beachheads outside of our cities. We do not have the resources or people to prevent that either.

"'So we cannot win', some of you may be saying right now. That is not true. In order to take this planet from us the WestHem marines are going to have to march from their beachheads to our cities and occupy them. Sounds simple? It would be if not for the Martian Planetary Guard. This is exactly the situation the MPG was formed to prevent in the first place. Now you have all seen Internet shows deriding our planetary guard force, proclaiming it to be nothing more than a 'speed bump', good only for holding off an EastHem invasion long enough for 'real' soldiers from WestHem to get here." She smiled. "Well, I believe we can do a little better than that. Under General Jackson's command the MPG is a highly and specifically trained group with excellent equipment and tactics. Their very reason for existence is to prevent, not just hold off, an armed invasion of our planet and if WestHem comes in here thinking that they're dealing with a simple speed bump they're going to have a nasty surprise in store for them.

"But as the MPG stands right now we do not have enough combat personnel for a prolonged combat operation. We need volunteers to sign up for service and, if you vote for rebellion, we need you right away in order to give us time to train you prior to the arrival of the WestHems. If you sign up you must know that you may die or be horribly wounded in this war. We may, despite all of our preparations, lose this war and you may be arrested and charged with treason if this occurs. I want that to be right up front and in the open.

"We may lose. I cannot, and General Jackson cannot guarantee success. If we lose we will be subjected to occupation by WestHem soldiers for the foreseeable future. We will be subjected to even greater persecution and prejudice than we already have to deal with. We will never be trusted, never! If you need a graphic example of this take a look at the fate of the Asian descendents of Earth. More than a hundred years ago they initiated and lost World War III. On Earth today it is still legal to discriminate against Asians, even those whose ancestors were American or Canadian citizens during the war.

"In addition to the tactics of fighting WestHem we have to worry about one other thing. Fuel. Fuel to run our tanks, our aircraft, our space fighters. This fuel, as you know, comes from Jupiter and is supplied to us by WestHem. It is the one resource that we are not self-sufficient in. If we are to successfully fight WestHem and gain independence, we must secure a fuel supply. Now obviously WestHem is not going to keep sending fuel ships here. That leaves us with the unappetizing necessity of trading with EastHem for fuel.

"Aside from the distastefulness of doing business with an entity that once bombed our cities and killed our people, this opens up several variables to the equation of independence. For one, I have not yet contacted EastHem and asked if they will assist us; if they will trade fuel for our food surplus. They may refuse. If they do, all is lost. EastHem is going to have to make a decision of it's own.

"If EastHem does agree to assist us, WestHem may try to stop them. I don't believe that they will since this will flash the cold war to a quick heated state, but they might. If they do that I cannot predict what the long-term consequences will be. Again, this is a chance we'll have to take if the vote is yes.

"So you can see that our fate is far from certain if you vote yes. If you vote no, you can all go back to your lives in three days. You can continue to work for WestHem masters and continue to be fired at their whim and forced to be quartered in public housing.

"But know this. This is the best and only chance we will ever get to make ourselves free. If we vote no, WestHem will see to it that this opportunity is never repeated. Never. We will spend all of eternity as WestHem subordinates and second-class citizens. We will spend all of eternity as slaves to that corrupt, evil system.

"I urge you all to think very carefully about this decision, to think not just about your own future, but the future of this entire planet and all of your descendents. It is my feeling that we can win this war, that we can throw these greedy, corrupt Earthlings off of our planet and live in a society ruled by common sense and justice. Talk to others and gather information and, most important of all, keep an open mind. Most important of all — vote. For better or for worse, I ask you to give me that 95% turnout in this most critical decision.

"In the meantime, I'm declaring a two day holiday for all except vital services workers. The planet is not under martial law so you may move about your business as normal and I encourage you to do so. The MPG will remain activated until after the vote and will be patrolling our cities to help the police keep order. Earthlings among us, you are free to move about as you wish as well. It is not my intention to make prisoners of you in this conflict. If the vote is for independence you will be allowed to leave the planet if you wish if transportation is available.

"That is my speech for the day. I hope I have explained myself sufficiently and I hope that you will head my words. Good night, and think carefully about what I have told you."

Orbiting City of Departure—Geosynchronous Earth orbit.

Admiral Tanner Jules was the commander-in-chief of the WestHem navy's Far Space fleet. CINCFARSP was his handle. He was the latest in a long line of naval commanders his family had produced, a direct descendant of the first captain of the first space-going warship that WestHem had ever launched. Though he was mainly a bureaucrat these days, he had seen combat as the captain of a California class warship back in the Jupiter War; a ship that had destroyed two EastHem warships before being crippled by a nuclear torpedo from an EastHem stealth attack ship.

He had not been privy to the impending arrest of Governor Whiting on Mars and his day had been filled with routine computer work. He was now at home, with no idea that the worst evening of his life was about to commence.

This really was a pity, because he was engaging in a rather pleasant evening otherwise.His wife was on vacation in Hawaii and he was entertaining a young staff officer that worked in the Far Space Headquarters building at Armstrong Space Force Base, where the space fleet of Earth was based. She was twenty-six years old, blonde, very attractive, and very eager to work her way, as it was, up the Navy bureaucratic ladder. He'd spotted her from almost the instant she'd appeared in her current assignment but this was the first time he'd managed to get her alone. She seemed more than receptive to what his intentions were.

They were in his residence quarters on the —103^rd floor of an exclusive housing building on the outside of Departure. The apartment itself was six hundred square meters, a virtual kingdom aboard a space city. The living room, in which they were currently sitting, featured a large picture window that looked out upon the blue, white Earth floating far below. From the Internet system soft, sensual music was playing and a blazing fire hologram (complete with artificial warmth) was showing in a space specifically designed for it across from the window. The furniture was ultra modern, comfortable, obviously expensive. Jules was in a genuine silk dressing gown, sipping a glass of white wine. The young staff officer, Lieutenant Megan Riley, was wearing a cocktail dress. She was beaming at him delightfully, making his libido soar.

"More herb, my dear?" he asked, inching a little closer to her.

She giggled. "Maybe a little."

He picked up the slender hose that sat on the table before her, putting it to her lips. The other end of the hose led to a small electric bong that sat on the table. The bong had a cartridge of compressed Martian green marijuana in its chamber, perhaps the finest and most expensive variety commercially available (a product of Agricorp). She giggled as he pressed the button on the hose and a water-cooled stream of smoke was ejected. After inhaling deeply he gently pulled the hose from her mouth and put it to his own. A push of the button and his own lungs filled with the sweet, intoxicating smoke. He held it in, staring into her eyes, noting her receptiveness. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him. She came willingly. He knew that when he exhaled the smoke he would kiss her and then the fun would really start, all of the innocent, though politically necessary innuendos cast aside.

The music was suddenly halted, breaking the mood.

"What the hell?" Jules barked, the smoke belching out of him.

"Priority message from Admiral Lucid," the voice of his computer said. "Would you like to answer it or refer it to the mail server?"

He felt his face turning red. What the Christ was this? A priority message? From Lucid? Lucid was the supreme commander of WestHem naval forces — his boss — though he was an idiotic political appointee. He looked at the nearest time display, seeing that it was 2135 hours here in space. That would make it 2035 hours in Denver, long past the time that fat prick should have been gone from his office for the day. What could possibly have come up after office hours that he needed to send a priority message — which Jules was obligated to answer — right now?

He sighed. "Excuse me for one moment, my dear, will you?"

"Of course," she giggled, picking up the marijuana hose again.

As he strolled over to the nearest terminal he shot a glance out the window. Departure was in geo-synch orbit over the west coast of South America. From this vantage point Jules could clearly make out North America. The central portion was in darkness at the moment but free of cloud cover. He could see the tiny blot of light that signified the Denver metropolitan area. He projected a death wish towards it.

"Send the message to terminal two," he spoke into the air.

The computer picked up his voice, performed the normal security check upon it, and then routed the transmission to the living room Internet terminal. The screen filled with the face of Admiral Lucid.

"Hi, Gene," Jules said pleasantly. He was an experienced bureaucrat and allowed no hint of his real feelings in his voice or facial expression. "What's going on?"

"Tanner," Lucid answered, visibly upset. "We've got big problems on Mars."

"Mars?" Jules repeated, alarmed. "Is it EastHem?" In any hot war with EastHem, Mars would most likely be a primary target for attack or invasion.

"No," was the reply. "It's not that bad, but it's close and much more embarrassing for you and me both." He shook his head sadly. "The goddamn greenies have attacked and captured TNB."

"What?" Jules said, his mouth dropping open. The greenies? Triad Naval Base? Attacked it? "How? Who?" he finally asked.

"That's not all they've done," Lucid said. "That bitch Whiting has apparently taken command of the Martian Planetary Guard and they have the entire fucking planet under control. They have possession of all of the ships in dock at TNB and all of the personnel that manned them. They have possession of the nuclear torpedoes on the Owls and the Californias as well."

"Gene," he said in disbelief. "That's insane." He had more than 40,000 people stationed at Triad! He had his entire far space fleet there except for whatever was deployed at Ganymede. "How could they have done something like that?"

"My understanding is that it was a surprise attack by the MPG, forcing entry through the transportation tunnels and cutting their way in with primacord charges. They overwhelmed the security force in less than an hour. General Sega — a fucking jarhead in charge of the Marines on Mars — took command of all the Martian forces and surrendered them." He shook his head. "Surrendered them! To greenies! Can you believe it? That bastard will be court martialed for that little decision, I can tell you that."

Jules paled as a thought occurred to him. "The nuclear torpedoes, Gene, are they still..."

"The security watch crews were able to wipe their programming. It's SOP. I wouldn't think that the greenies would be able to utilize them for anything. But they do still have the physical components."

"Thank God for small favors. But Gene, how could something like this have happened? What the hell are the greenies doing? What could they possibly hope to gain?"

"We don't know but we need to find out," he said, since the transmissions in which Whiting gave her speech to the planet were still on their way across the emptiness of space. "I need you to address the executive council tomorrow morning at 0800 on what has happened and what we're going to do about it."

"The executive council?" he said, fear shooting through the stoned haze of his mind. "I don't know anything about what's happened! How can I brief them? I need someone to brief me! And that will take..."

"You need to get dressed immediately and head for Armstrong. A T-7 will take you down to Colorado Springs. I'll have all of the info we've developed so far on a disk waiting for you. You can get yourself briefed in on the way down. Once you're in Colorado Springs I'll have a room ready for you at VIP quarters. Get on the Internet and start researching from there. You need to have a complete briefing ready for them at 0800 tomorrow even if you have to stay up all night. Include what happened, how it happened, and what the possibilities are that the greenies can get any of those ships operational."

"Operational?" Jules said, puzzled. "How the hell would they do that? They don't have any naval personnel capable of commanding a warship."

"Don't they?" Lucid asked. "They have a hell of a lot of former WestHem navy spacers living on Mars and carrying Martian citizenship. Many of them work on the food and steel transport ships. Is there any possibility that..."

"No," Jules said firmly, wondering why he had to explain something so basic to a man that was allegedly his superior. "No Martian has ever been placed in command of one of our ships since that idiot Belting back in the Jupiter War. And you know what happened there. I'd say that well over ninety percent of the Martians that have served in the navy never made it past enlisted rank. Sure, some of them may have observed command tactics and procedure but it is simply inconceivable that they would be able to operate a single one of those ships. And even if they could, what would they do with them? The most dangerous things they have are the Owls and those are useless without the torpedoes being active."

Lucid seemed somewhat relieved. "That's good to know." He said. "Be sure to come up with hard statistics to back it up when you brief the executive council. I just got the ass chewing of my life from them a few minutes ago. They are extremely worried about the possibilities of the Martians manning those ships. You'll have complete, top secret Internet retrieval access of course."

Jules shook his head again, still unable to believe what he'd just been told, still waiting for Lucid to tell him this was an elaborate joke. But it wasn't.

"Your T-7 pilot has been told to be ready to depart for Colorado Springs in one hour. See to it that you do not make him late."

"Yes sir," Jules said.

The face disappeared from the screen, leaving only the time display. From the speakers the soft music returned. He looked across the room at the young lieutenant. He no longer felt stimulated.

Armstrong Space Force Base — Departure

The T-7, and it's civilian counterpart, the LX-5, were among the smallest Earth-to-orbital vehicles manufactured. They were less than seventy meters in length, ten wide. Their primary purpose was the transportation of the elite, those that did not care to travel with the masses on standard orbital flights. In the civilian world the LX-5s were utilized by corporate heads and upper management. In the military world, they were used by executive committee members and high-ranking command staff. They were obscenely luxurious, equipped with plush seats, carpeting, overlarge Internet screens with full access, drink and marijuana delivery systems in each seat, and inertial dampened comfort to keep the occupants unaware of the stringent pitches, dives, and acceleration/deceleration cycles.

Though Admiral Jules was not important enough to rate his own personal T-7, he was important enough to rate the use of one of the spares that were always in waiting at Armstrong for people such as him. He and his two senior staff members boarded at the prescribed time, each grabbing a seat and plugging the briefing disks they'd been provided into the Internet screens before them. Though the craft was capable of carrying another twenty-two passengers in the same comfort as the Admiral and his staff, the pilot, a senior commander, knew that this was the load for the trip. It seemed an awful waste of the precious fuel that had come all the way from Jupiter to be burned, but that was not his concern. He sealed up the craft and was given immediate departure clearance.

The T-7 broke contact with the docking airlock and fired its starboard maneuvering thruster briefly, causing the orbiter to drift away. As it cleared the docking area, the thrusters were fired again, longer this time, pushing it out into the departure corridor. With further bursts of different maneuvering thrusters the craft spun around so it's main thrusters were facing in the direction of its orbit. This minute maneuvering was the main part of the pilot's job. While he was doing it, the computers calculated all of the factors to bring the craft out of orbit and onto a proper trajectory towards Colorado Springs and a soft landing at the field there.

When the pilot had the craft steady in the corridor he checked with Armstrong control. They gave him the go-ahead and he gave the computer the go-ahead. There was a brief countdown and the main thrusters fired, initiating the de-orbit burn. From the perspective of the T-7, the spacecraft seemed to streak rapidly away from the orbiting city of Departure, leaving it far behind. In actuality it was Departure that was continuing ahead on its normal orbital path while the T-7 was decelerating at three times the force of gravity. It began to drop towards the Earth and it's rendezvous with the atmosphere far below.

Inside the cabin Admiral Jules did not watch the Earth growing in his window and, thanks to the inertial damper, he was not pressed violently backwards into his seat. He was watching in disbelief as the events of the last eight hours were displayed for him on the screen. He watched the news clips of the shoot-out in New Pittsburgh, he watched the initial reports from TNB as the MPG troops attacked it. He replayed several of these over again, as did his staffers.

Just as he got to the cry for reinforcements from Admiral Rosewood to General Sega, the T-7 cut its engines and spun around once more, presenting it's belly to the approaching atmosphere of Earth. It continued to drift downward, pulled by the forces of gravity that were now stronger than its forward momentum. Shortly the craft entered the atmosphere where friction began the job of decelerating it from orbital velocity to atmospheric flight speed. The view out the side windows disappeared, replaced by steaks of fiery red as the tremendous heat of re-entry was bled off.

Normally during re-entry flights Jules would stare out the window at this point, nervously awaiting the reappearance of scenery, which would signify the end of the dangerous friction period. Over the course of history, re-entry had accounted for more spacecraft accidents than anything else. Accidents that were invariably fatal to the occupants. A single flaw in the heat shield, the simple result of a simple maintenance oversight, and the spacecraft in question would incinerate itself and everything inside of it. It was said that it usually happened so quickly that the occupants were dead before they even glimmered that something was wrong. Jules would ponder that knowledge while watching the streaks of intense heat outside his window, wondering what it was like to be there one moment and evaporated into ash the next, wondering if what was said was nothing but propaganda designed to make space travelers ride easier, if they actually died in burning agony, their deaths taking minutes.

But on this flight he paid scant attention to re-entry, not even breathing a sigh of relief when it was over and the many cities of Brazil, Venezuela, and Columbia regions could be seen glowing beneath them once more. As the wings deployed, slowing them further, and the T-7 turned northwest, heading across the Caribbean Sea towards North America, Jules continued his perusal of the attack on TNB, expressing guttural profanity but also feeling, very much against his will, a large measure of respect for the author of the attack. They had been caught with their pants down; nothing more, nothing less. But how could they have anticipated something like this? An attack on the base by so-called friendly forces? They had underestimated the MPG. It would not do to make such a mistake again.

WestHem Capital Building—Denver

The view was impressive from the large picture window in the executive council briefing room. The window looked east, out over the entire expanse of the thirty-eighth most populous city in WestHem; the sixty-third most populous in the solar system. The tops of innumerable high-rise buildings could be seen stretching away for kilometers in every visible direction. Each roof was dotted with landing pads and parked VTOLS, the transportation system for the elite. It was 0745, just fifteen minutes before the start of the workday, and the little craft could be seen buzzing and circling everywhere like flies, the computer systems that ran them delivering their corporate masters to their offices. Beyond the high rises of downtown were the housing complexes of the upper and then the middle class. Beyond those were the slums, which stretched to the horizon and beyond; thousands of square kilometers of unspeakably dangerous neighborhoods populated by more than eight million unemployed and unemployable. Every major city on the planet had similar ghettos of similar proportion.

Like most employed WestHem citizens, Admiral Jules got the screaming horrors at the mere thought of ever having to live in the squalor of WestHem's ghettos; the fate of those that suddenly had their income removed from them. They were the epitome of lawlessness and chaos. The cops themselves did not enter them in anything less than platoon strength; and even then they might take casualties. They only reason they did go in was to track down a person responsible for a crime against an employed person or to enforce the stringent breeding laws. Among themselves the unemployed were free to rape, kill, assault, rob, or even molest each other's children. They were an entity onto themselves with little chance to ever pull themselves free. They were not even counted in the census. As long as they stayed within their boundaries, obeyed the breeding law, and confined their crimes to each other, they were left alone, living on welfare money, free alcohol, free marijuana, free Internet, free substandard housing. He eyed the ghettos nervously from his chair in the briefing room while he awaited the arrival of the rulers of the western hemisphere. The TNB fiasco would be penned as his responsibility. Would they dismiss him for it? Remove his pension? Sentence him to live out his life in those ghettos? He vowed he would kill himself long before it came to that.

He was bleary from lack of sleep and his stomach burned from the three strong cups of coffee he'd consumed with his breakfast. He'd been up until well past 0400 researching and preparing his briefing; perhaps the most important briefing he would ever give in his career. He was dressed in his Class A uniform of course, all of his campaign and service metals neatly in place. Before him, at the large rounded oak table where the guests of the council sat, was an Internet terminal into which he'd already inserted the briefing disk he and his staff had created. At the front of the room, above the elevated seats that the executive council would soon occupy, was a larger screen, onto which his figures and the figures of the other briefers would appear.

Would there be other briefers? he wondered. Currently he and his staff were the only ones in the room besides the secret service team, who stood expressionless at their positions near the doors, the council chairs, and the window. Surely he would not be the only one called on the carpet for what had happened on Mars.

As if in answer to his question the door slid open behind him and General Wrath, the commander in chief of the Far Space marines entered. CINCFARMAR was his designation and Jules knew him well, on a first name basis in fact. The far space navy and marines, though full of the traditional animosity that had existed between the navy and the marines since the 1700s, worked closely together and relied upon each other. Wrath and Jules' jobs were closely entwined. The two were professional acquaintances, quite close in that regards, although not exactly friends.

"Richard," Jules greeted, offering a smile and an outstretched arm as the General and his staff entered the room.

Wrath, dressed in his own class-A uniform, little changed since the early twentieth century, shook his hand warmly. "Tanner," he greeted. "I see you're here for the same purpose as me."

Jules nodded his head cynically. "Yes I am. It seems our bosses want a few questions answered about what happened yesterday."

"Those fuckin' greenies," Wrath commented sourly. "Who the hell would have believed they were capable of this? And that bastard Sega." He shook his head. "He'd better hope the greenies kill his ass. Can you imagine? Surrendering all of the forces with barely a fight? He must've been mad."

The men took their seats, Wrath taking the chair next to Jules, Wrath's staff taking the seats on the other side. The marine general inserted his own briefing disk into the Internet terminal before his chair.

"Were you up all night too?" Jules asked, noting the bags under his counterparts' eyes.

Wrath nodded wearily. "This clusterfuck pulled me out of a formal dinner party. Not that that was upsetting; I hate those fuckin' things. But I spent the next five hours on a flight from Buenos Aires getting briefed in. We then stayed up all night researching and planning how to take that planet back from the greenies if it comes to that."

"Do you think the greenies will really vote for independence?" Jules asked him. "I mean, Whiting didn't exactly make it sound too hopeful in her speech or anything. She actually told them that they might not win. What kind of propaganda is that?"

Wrath shook his head. "I think they just might," he said. "Greenies are not like Earthlings. They don't think the same way we do. Think about where they came from; the unemployed. They actually like speeches like that, they actually like to fight the odds."

"They can't possibly beat us though," Jules pointed out. "What the hell are they thinking?"

"I don't know," Wrath answered. "She told them in her speech that we would send troops to take the planet back and you can bet your ass that we will. She can't possibly think that their little civilian soldier force and their cute little airplanes are going to stop us when we land a half a million troops with tanks, full hover support, artillery, and APCs on that flying shithole. We'll have them routed and mopped up in two days."

"Maybe she is mad," Jules suggested. "Maybe she's trying to go down in Martian history as a martyr; the first woman who ever tried to make Mars free or some shit like that. Who knows what she is thinking but I've been over the figures time and time again and I can see no conceivable way that they can prevent us from landing and taking that planet back."

"There is no way," Wrath agreed. "But whoever said the greenies were smart?"

The door opened once again and yet another briefer entered. This time it was a man that neither Jules nor Wrath had ever met personally though both recognized him on sight thanks to his frequent appearances in Internet news clips. It was FLEB director Stanley Clinton. He was dressed in a neat, conservative suit and had bags under his eyes similar to the two military officers'. He had no staff with him, simply walking alone to a seat well away from the military leaders and their staffs, making not so much as a nod of greeting, and sat down. He inserted a disk of his own into a terminal.

Silence prevailed until 0804 when the set of doors near the front of the room slid open, signaling the entry of the council. Everyone in the room quickly stood to attention as the nine men and three women of the council, all dressed in business suits of their own, strode into the room. Their faces were grim as they took their chairs, taking their time making themselves comfortable. Finally one of them, Loretta Williams, spoke. "You may be seated," she said stiffly.

With a shuffle, everyone resumed their seats.

Williams, as the representative of Mars, was still acting as the spokesperson for the council in this matter. "Begin recording," she told the room computer system. Digital cameras and audio microphones clicked on.

She stared at the assembled group of military officers and the single civilian. Her expression, matching the other council members, was of barely concealed rage. "Gentlemen," she said coldly, "yesterday an unprecedented event took place on the WestHem possession of Mars. An event with such far reaching and cataclysmic implications that, even if the situation is resolved quickly in the next two days, an issue which is doubtful, we will be left unable to predict the long-term consequences." She shook her head angrily. "What in the hell happened here, gentlemen? How in the hell could something like this have been allowed? These are questions that I want you to answer only briefly in as few words as possible before you start explaining to this council how we are going to rectify this situation." She stared at the two military officers in particular. "I trust that we can rectify this situation."

"Yes ma'am," spoke Jules and Wrath in unison.

"I certainly hope so," she said. "I don't need to tell you that the entire WestHem economy is fully dependant upon that little red planet. Ninety-eight percent of our steel comes from there. Forty-six percent of our food, our food, comes from there. The profits from that planet account for more than twenty-nine percent of our tax base. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, more than a third of our navy is in dock under Martian control right now. Admiral Jules, I trust you have prepared a side-briefing on the implications of that."

"Yes ma'am," Jules answered, grateful that he'd taken the time to do that. He almost had not.

"Very well," Williams said. She turned her gaze to Clinton. "Director," she said, "we've already been over the fact of Laura Whiting's election to high Martian office in the first place time and time again with you. We will skip re-hashing that part. But if you will please begin our briefing by explaining how the circumstances of her removal went so badly wrong?"

"Yes ma'am," Clinton replied, standing and activating his Internet terminal.

He explained the fiasco of the previous day in short, concise statements, occasionally using news clips or transmissions from his disk to illustrate some point. The council listened without interrupting. They knew most of the story anyway. When he finished they had only a few questions.

"How many agents do you have on Mars?" Asked one council member.

"Six hundred and forty-three," Clinton replied. "Of course twelve of them were killed at the capital building yesterday."

"Are the whereabouts of all of these agents on Mars accounted for?" was the next question.

"Not officially," he answered. "I know that all ten of my field offices were occupied by Martian troops and that all ten surrendered to them. We can presume that all of the agents in those buildings at that time are in Martian custody. As to the fate of those agents that were either off-duty or out in the field at that time I have no information, nor even a guess as to how many that might be. Unfortunately though, the number of off-duty agents is probably pretty low. When news of the events in New Pittsburgh reached Director Hayes he mobilized the entire force. Many of them were probably inside the buildings when they were taken."

"In any case did the FLEB offices under attack by the MPG request assistance from the local police departments?" asked Williams.

"Ma'am," Clinton replied, "in every case they did and in every case the assistance was refused on orders from the various police chiefs. I have information that in three of the cities; Eden, Dow, and Triad, the mayors attempted to override the orders of the police chiefs in question. The mayors of each Martian city, as you are aware, are subjected to the same scrutiny that legislative and gubernatorial candidates are." By which he meant that the corporations owned them. "In all cases, obviously, the orders were disregarded and no assistance was given. As far as I know not a single Martian police officer lifted a finger to prevent this revolt from occurring. As to the fate of the mayors and city councils involved; I have no information. I suspect they may have been taken into custody but we are currently completely out of communication with Mars; even the Internet feed has been severed from their end."

"So we are no longer receiving Martian Internet transmissions?"

"That is correct; although they are still monitoring our Internet. I ordered that the feed not be cut to Mars on the hope that some of the citizens will be able to access our point of view in this thing; to see the preparations we will be utilizing if they do not surrender themselves. It may assist in having Whiting's proposal voted down."

There was some quiet murmurs among the council at this. Finally Williams said, "That seems a wise move, Director. You may continue to allow outgoing transmissions. Since you brought up this vote that Whiting has asked for, what would you say the chances are that it will be successful? Also do you think there is any possibility of fraud in the vote?"

This was a trick question. Voter fraud and false results were a patent impossibility with the current system of ballot casting. It was done on the Internet by social security number and fingerprint identification. The programs that ran the voting were unalterable and would not allow such a thing. But if the vote were to be in favor of revolution, then the WestHem authorities would of course issue propaganda stating that the election had been rigged and was meaningless. Clinton knew this and knew how he was expected to answer.

"I believe that fraud is the most likely possibility and that we will be unable to trust any election results they send us," he said. "There is no way that Laura Whiting is going to back down now. If the Martians do not vote this measure in — and I don't believe that they are so mad as to do so — then her conspirators will simply change the results to look as if they did." This was of course a bald-faced lie. He knew it, the council knew it, any thinking person would know it; but it was how the game was played. If the Martians voted down Laura Whiting's proposal then WestHem would demand that she abide by her promises. But if the Martians actually did vote for independence, then WestHem would claim the election was rigged and demand she surrender. Of course it didn't matter one way or the other which way they voted. The vote itself did not carry any legal weight under the constitution. But politically, WestHem would never admit that the Martians actually wanted to be independent in overwhelming numbers. They would have to portray the vast majority of the Martians as innocent, loyal WestHem civilians caught up in a conspiracy by a few radical elements acting in self-interest.

There were a few more meaningless questions, which Clinton answered to the best of his ability. Williams then said, "Thank you, Director. You are dismissed. I would like your office to begin immediate research and author some recommendations as to who should be prosecuted and charged after this little revolt is over and done. Should we prosecute every police officer? Every MPG soldier? Every citizen that voted for independence? Please be firm in your recommendations, with an eye towards ensuring that our Martian friends never get any cute ideas like this again. I would also like recommendations as to what we should do with those Martian citizens on Earth or Ganymede at the moment. How many such people are there? Should we take them into custody until this is over? Do they represent an espionage or sabotage threat? Can they be used as leverage?"

"Yes ma'am," Clinton said, standing and gathering his briefing disk. "My staff will get to work on this immediately."

"Fine," she said. "We will expect a briefing on these matters by early next week at the latest."

Once he was out of the room, the council's attention turned to Admiral Jules.

"Admiral Jules," Williams said, staring at him, "you are the current commander in chief of WestHem far space naval fleet, correct?"

"Yes ma'am," Jules answered, not caring at all for the way in which she'd emphasized the word 'current'.

"Please enlighten this council on the events that transpired yesterday on Mars. After this we will have many questions for you I'm sure."

"Yes ma'am," Jules replied, standing up.

His initial chronology of the attack on TNB took nearly thirty minutes. Like with Director Clinton before him, the council simply stared at him or his presentations on the screen; asking no questions, making no comments. Jules knew how the game was played too. He already sensed who the fall guy in the Martian revolt was going to be, General Sega, and he placed blame heavily upon him.

"That last communications we received from TNB stated that the arming and detonation programs for all of the stored nuclear torpedoes, both onboard the ships in dock and in the storage facilities on base, had been wiped. This will, of course, make it impossible for those weapons to be detonated." He spoke a few commands into the screen before him. "You can see here a complete list of all naval ships that were in dock at Triad during the takeover. You will note that it includes nine California class warships, fifteen Owl class attack ships, and our three pre-positioned container ships full of marine landing equipment and supplies. We are formulating a list of the naval personnel captured there. As for the MPs killed in action; we will not know their identity unless the Martians provide us with that information."

Williams looked at him for a moment and then asked, "So it is your opinion Admiral, that had General Sega not ordered the surrender of your MPs, the base might have been saved?"

Again politics was at work here. He knew that the defense of the base had been hopeless. A few hundred lightly armed naval MPs stood no chance of standing up to a battalion of trained, well equipped special forces soldiers. Had Sega not surrendered them, the base would have fallen in the next thirty minutes anyway, only with more dead MPs to add to the list. But that was not what the council wanted to hear. They wanted the blame shifted off of surprise and overwhelming superiority and onto a single man; a traitorous man. They wanted Sega to be blamed for the loss of Mars. The MPG did not take Mars, Sega gave it to them. By the time this made it to the Internet they probably would have "evidence" showing that Sega had been in collusion with the Martians the whole time.

Jules was only too happy to go along with this. He felt a twinge of sorrow for Sega, who had only been doing what he thought was right under the circumstances, but it did serve to shift the blame off of him. WestHem could not admit defeat after all. Someone had to be responsible. He suspected that had they not found Sega as a convenient target, he himself would have been cast in the role. He suppressed a shiver as he realized how close he'd come to becoming a federal scapegoat. They would have said that he'd been criminally negligent in his anti-terrorist preparations for TNB. They probably would have manufactured evidence suggesting that multiple warnings had been issued about an imminent attack on the base and that they'd been disregarded.

"Admiral Jules?" Williams, clearly irritated, barked at him.

"My apologies, ma'am," Jules said with a start, realizing that he'd been so lost in his near-demise that he'd forgotten to answer her. "In my opinion the base would undoubtedly still be in our hands had Sega not surrendered its defenders. At the very worst, the MPG might have eventually taken the base but we would have been able to scramble all of the ships out of docking; keeping them in our hands."

The council members actually smiled at this statement; reinforcing Jules' belief that it was exactly what they wanted to hear. He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling himself slipping off of the proverbial hook.

"Thank you, Admiral, that is as we'd suspected."

There was a brief conversation between the members for a moment, their words whispered. Finally Williams said, "Now that we have a good idea what happened at TNB, I would like to address our primary concern. Will the Martians be able to man any of those ships they have captured and use them against us?"

"Absolutely not," Jules said firmly, grateful to be speaking what he thought was the truth. He spoke a command to the Internet screen and a row of figures appeared on the main screen. "As you can see here I have compiled statistics on all Martian citizens with naval experience. This would be, obviously, experience gained in the WestHem navy. The population of Mars, not including WestHem citizens living there, is just over eighty million as you can see. I asked the Internet to give me a count on all Martian citizens, currently living on Mars, that have naval experience and are between the ages of eighteen and sixty years old." He pointed to one of the figures with a laser pointer. "There are twenty-six thousand, four hundred and sixty-two people who meet this category."

"That certainly sounds like enough to man some ships," Williams replied to this. "If your intent is to make us feel better about this, you're doing a poor job."

"Yes ma'am," Jules nodded, licking his lips nervously. "I know the initial number sounds like a lot, but allow me to explain the other factors involved here. Just to account for the absolute worst scenario, I instructed the computer to assume that all of these Martians are loyal to Mars and will go along with Whiting. Of course I do not believe that will be the case; I believe that many of these are actually loyal WestHem citizens who will..."

"Admiral," Williams interrupted. "Please save the patriotic bullshit for the Internet cameras and continue your briefing."

Jules jumped as if slapped. "My apologies," he said. He took a deep breath to gather his thoughts and then went on. "Of the twenty-six thousand, four hundred and sixty-two, fourteen thousand, five hundred and eleven are over the age of forty and have not served aboard a ship in more than ten years. The technology involved has changed considerably since then and it is unlikely that those people will be of any help to the Martians. That leaves us with a core group of eleven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-one. Of this group only nine hundred and twelve have ever served aboard an actual combat ship capable of doing any harm to our forces. Of that nine hundred and twelve only thirty were ever officers and only sixteen of those were ever officers that had conning responsibilities. Twelve of them on a California, four on an Owl. None of these sixteen except for one — the infamous Lieutenant Commander Matt Belting — has any command experience."

"Belting is still alive?" one of the other council members interjected at this point. "I thought he'd died years ago."

"He's still alive and living in the ghettos of New Pittsburgh. He hasn't held a job of any kind since his release from federal prison five years after the Jupiter War armistice. My guess is that he is an alcoholic or a dust addict that probably doesn't even remember his navy time. In any case, it is quite inconceivable that the greenies could put together enough people to effectively use one of those ships in any manner. And even if they could, they have no pilots capable of operating the F-10s or the A-112s on the Californias and the nuclear torpedoes they've captured are useless to them. Without the torpedoes, the Owls are useless as anything other than a monitoring platform anyway."

"There is no way they can reprogram those torpedoes?" Williams asked.

"It's impossible," Jules said. "Once the computer that controls the detonator has been wiped, it is impossible to reprogram it. It is nothing more than junk after that."

They seemed satisfied.

"The pre-positioned marine ships," another council member spoke up. "What of those? Will the Martians be able to utilize the equipment inside of them?"

Jules replied, "I think that there is a good possibility that they may not even be able to manage the unloading and transfer of this equipment to the planetary surface. It is quite a complex procedure after all. The landing craft that contain the equipment must be launched from the Panama class ship itself and then piloted down to the surface. However I believe it may be prudent..." He cast a glance at his Marine counterpart for a moment, "... and I am actually stepping into General Wrath's briefing here, but in my opinion I believe in assuming the worst; to assume that they will in fact manage to utilize this equipment."

"Do you agree with that assessment, General?" Williams asked him.

"I have taken into account the faint possibility that they will be able to unload those ships," Wrath replied.

Williams nodded. "Very well." She turned her attention back to Jules. "Do we have any assets in the area at all?" She asked him.

Jules nodded. "Yes we do, ma'am. We have an Owl that had been returning to TNB from Ganymede at the time of this revolt. They were in their coasting period between acceleration and deceleration burns, about halfway between the two planets. I ordered them to take up position as close to Mars as they could get without detection. That should be close indeed, probably inside of twenty thousand kilometers. They will be on station in less than a week and able to send us data on what the Martians are up to with the ships at TNB. They should also be able to monitor communications. They are low on consumables and on refrigerant for the anti-detection systems but with rationing they will hopefully be able to remain on station until our forces can get there. We have other assets in place in the Jupiter system; two California groups and two Owls, but frankly, they are needed there in case of trouble with EastHem; particularly with the loss of our marines and their equipment. I'm quite hesitant to break them loose and I don't see what good they would do anyway."

They nodded. "Any other points that you would like to add, Admiral?"

"Yes ma'am," Jules said. "As you are probably aware, we have a number of Martian citizens enlisted in the Navy. Three thousand, nine hundred and forty-six of them are on ships that were not captured by the Martians or on Earth shore stations. I have ordered all of them removed from duty and kept under house arrest for the duration of this crisis and pending a decision on what to do with them."

"Good thinking, Admiral," Williams said. "I want all of them removed from our ships as soon as possible. They are not to be trusted and they are never to be allowed to enlist in our navy again. We will decide later what to do with them when this little revolt is over."

"Would you like my briefing on our naval situation as it stands with the loss of the far space fleet?" Jules asked next.

"Not just now, Admiral," Williams replied. "We'll hear it after General Wrath gives his briefing. You may have to modify your calculations when he tells you what equipment will be needed for the retaking of Mars."

"Yes ma'am," Jules agreed, not mentioning that he already had anticipated the equipment that his counterpart would need.

General Wrath began his briefing in the same manner. Like Jules, he placed the bulk of the blame on the traitorous General Sega, claiming that his Marines could have easily faced off anything the MPG threw at them. Like Jules he knew it was a lie; but he knew how to play the game too. He apologized sincerely for allowing such an incompetent traitor to achieve a position such as commander of Martian marine forces. In a particularly dramatic bit he even proclaimed that he was indirectly responsible and offered his resignation if the council so desired.

"I don't think that will be necessary just yet, General," Williams responded, smiling at him. She seemed quite touched by his offer however. "I would like to hear you plan for regaining control of the planet though."

"Yes ma'am," Wrath responded. He called up some maps and plans on his screen. "My staff and I worked well into the morning hours on this plan, taking many things into consideration. Chief among them is the avoidance of WestHem casualties during the operation. I have taken the liberty of naming the operation. I would call it 'Martian Hammer'."

The council exchanged pleased glances as they tossed the name around. It had become customary back in the late twentieth century to give a catchy name to military operations; all the better to ensnare public support for it.

"Now I could undoubtedly retake that planet with one hundred thousand troops complete with hover support, tanks, APCs, and support troops. We are dealing with a poorly trained civilian force after all. But I believe that unacceptable casualties may result." By this he meant more than two hundred or so WestHem soldiers killed. Enough to displease the masses. "So the plan I have developed, though it may seem a bit excessive, will ensure that minimal WestHem casualties are taken, while at the same time, heavy damage is inflicted upon the MPG. Damage that they will remember for generations if they are so foolish as to not surrender immediately."

"Yes, General," Williams said. "Your proposal please?"

"I propose a force of five hundred thousand marines equipped with massive tank support, heavy hover support, and heavy artillery support hit that planet all at once."

"Five hundred thousand?" Williams said after a moment of disbelieving muttering from the other council members.

"Yes ma'am," Wrath said enthusiastically. "And I propose that we start assembling this plan today, right after the briefing, with full media coverage. Since you are allowing Internet transmissions to be returned to Mars, there is a good possibility that the Martians may surrender or vote Whiting's proposal down when they see what we are sending their way. If they do not, we will offer them one more chance after we establish orbit, warning them that once the landings take place, we will make unrestricted war upon their planet. I believe that will do the trick if the initial phase does not, but, on the off-chance that they still insist on non-surrender, we will make landings at the following places." He pointed out cities on a map of Mars. "Eden, New Pittsburgh, Dow, Libby, and Procter. We will establish beachheads according to doctrine, three times the distance of artillery range from the nearest enemy position. On Mars, with it's thin atmosphere, that means we land three hundred kilometers from each city. We unload our equipment and assemble the tank columns and artillery. We give them one last chance to surrender, and if they don't..." He paused dramatically. "We move in. It's a two-day march across the wastelands from those distances. We send in the hovers ahead of our tanks and pound on their defensive positions. We then move the artillery forward and pound on them some more. If they still insist upon fighting, we roll forward with our tanks and continue the job of destroying them. Four days after landing we'll have those key cities under our control. They will have no choice but to give up then."

"You said unrestricted warfare, General," Williams asked. "Surely you don't really mean that?"

"Of course not, ma'am," Wrath replied. "We are not EastHem after all. We have to use that planet after we take it back from the Martians. Obviously we cannot do many of the things that the EastHems would. We cannot shell or bomb the agricultural complexes or the cities themselves. We cannot go after the power reactors. We can only concentrate upon the MPG equipment itself and, in truth, I'd prefer not to destroy too much of that. It is, after all, top of the line military equipment that our future forces on Mars can use. But the Martians won't know this. We need to make them believe that we are willing to destroy that planet before we let them have it. We need to appeal to the common Martian that our fight is not against them, but against Whiting and her forces. I believe there's a good chance that we can end this conflict without a shot being fired. But if we can't, we'll outnumber the Martian troops by more than four to one in both personnel and equipment; even assuming the use of our pre-positioned supplies. At worst, I cannot conceive of losing more than a hundred men in this fight or having it take more than a week once we land."

"They have a space guard at Triad," one of the other council members pointed out. "Will they be able to use it against our forces in orbit?"

"I'll refer that particular question to Admiral Jules," Wrath replied. "Fleet defense is more his line of expertise."

"Admiral?" Williams asked.

"No," Jules answered immediately. "Their space guard poses no threat to us as Whiting herself pointed out. Their purpose it to prevent attack upon Triad and upon the communications satellites. The wing that they have there would have to fight its way through our combat space patrol and then through our fleet anti-spacecraft defense systems before they could even get in range to attack any ships. They would have to attack with every ship that they had at once to even hope to get four or five ships in close enough to fire their lasers with any accuracy. These four or five would not be able to do much damage and it would leave Triad undefended except for its fixed laser sites. No military commander, no matter how incompetent, would ever take such a suicidal risk. It's a lesson we learned in the Jupiter War. Fighters and bombers cannot go up against space stations or heavy ships.

"On the other hand, we will not be able to attack Triad for the very same reasons and we will be forced to establish our orbit well away from Triad, preferably on the other side of the planet. The only way to get Triad back is to have it surrender to us."

"Which they will do," Wrath picked up the thread, "once their ground forces are defeated."

"Do we have sufficient forces and equipment readily available to initiate this operation?" was the next question.

"Speaking from the marine standpoint," Wrath said, "I have the equipment readily available from units in training and from supply warehouses throughout WestHem. I propose that we start moving it to Colorado Springs, Edwards, Buenos Aires, and Dallas for transport up to Admiral Jules' ships. As for the men, I can pull them from Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Hawaii, and Alaska. The army can send in replacement troops in Alaska and as for the rest, I can call up reserves to replace them."

"And the navy?" Williams asked Jules. "Do you have sufficient ships available to transport and defend the operation and still maintain security in the event of a conflict with EastHem?"

Jules consulted some figure before him. "It will be a little overcrowded," he finally said. "And I won't have as many Owls and Californias in defense as I'd like, but I can do it. We can put the troops and their equipment into eighteen Panama class transports. We can escort them with three California groups and four Owls. This will leave us with enough ships to defend Earth and Ganymede in the event of a conflict."

The council seemed satisfied with this. "Operation Martian Hammer it is then," Williams said happily. "We'll have our staff contact the media groups today so we can start pushing it."

Capital Building — New Pittsburgh

The time difference between Denver and Eden was variable, dependant upon the differing rotational periods of the two planets. On Mars time was kept differently than on Earth in order to account for the slightly longer amount of time it took the latter to rotate once. This was augmented by the long delay in the reception of transmissions. In Denver it was 6:00 PM, nearing the end of a frantic workday. It was 1:24 AM in Eden, the early morning hours after the capture of the planet.

Laura, General Jackson, and several of Jackson's command staff were in the Capital briefing room viewing the Internet news programs from Earth. Though they had expected just what they were seeing in one form or another, it was still infuriating to watch the lies the WestHem media were formulating. The media, in their normal fashion, had turned the Martian revolt into popular entertainment.

Crisis on Mars was the heading flashed on the screen every time that the program returned from an advertising break. The words took up the bulk of the screen and were etched in 3D against a Martian red background. A dramatic flare of trumpets accompanied each flash of this motto. The news reports had initially consisted of rumors only, sketchy reports of fighting between "rogue elements of the MPG" and WestHem forces on the planet. It was reported that Whiting had touched off this fighting when federal forces attempted to take her into custody on corruption charges. There were reports of executions and atrocities committed by these rogue elements. It was even reported that the MPG was running rampant through the streets of the cities, killing those MPG troops that were not loyal to Whiting and raping any convenient women that happened to be around.

Finally WestHem executive council member Williams, her expression sober and concerned (executive council members had to be, above all else, good actors), appeared before the cameras for the first official statement.

"My fellow WestHems," she said, staring into the camera. "By now you have heard reports of some unbelievable events taking place on the WestHem federal colony of Mars. Events that began early this morning, our time, and are continuing as I speak. When these events were first brought to the attention of the council we viewed them, as many of you undoubtedly are doing, with shock and disbelief. Mars after all is full of WestHem citizens, innocents for the most part. We expressed shock that such events were even possible in the first place. We did not address you prior to this because we wanted to get as many answers as we could before we passed the facts on. I believe that we now have an accurate summary of all that took place yesterday."

"This should be good," Jackson commented sourly.

"Yesterday afternoon, Denver time, a federal grand jury issued an indictment and an arrest warrant for Martian Governor Laura Whiting. This indictment was handed down after the grand jury heard more than a week's worth of testimony from various sources and examined pages upon pages of computer documentation from Mars. The charges consisted of corruption, incitement of terrorism, graft, trafficking in explosives, and gross incompetence. As you are aware from previous news reports, Governor Whiting has been quite a nightmare for the Planet Mars since her inauguration when she revealed herself to be a radical separatist.

"This woman and her core of followers have managed to intimidate other members of the planetary legislature into not impeaching her. Her conspirators were quite canny in covering their tracks and we were able to produce no proof that this heinous perversion of democracy took place. Under the law, Whiting had to remain in office."

"This is actually pretty amusing," Laura pointed out. "It is sad to think that most of the WestHems will actually believe it."

"If you see it on Internet," Jackson said, "then that's what happened. Right?"

"But our FLEB agents stationed on the planet Mars were not intimidated by Ms. Whiting and her thugs," Williams was saying. "They watched her every move knowing that criminals like Whiting always make mistakes. Well Whiting made many of them and she was caught at them. A legal indictment was issued, an indictment which Whiting says she will not honor, and our brave, diligent FLEB officers in Eden went to arrest her as they were commanded to do."

She paused, staring into the camera, anger spreading across her face. "Those federal agents were ambushed by followers of Whiting as they entered the capital building. We have confirmation that more than ten of them were killed, gunned down by thugs masquerading as soldiers, using the very weapons that our military has provided for planetary defense."

"Notice how she doesn't mention," Jackson said, "that we taxed ourselves to pay for those weapons."

"The whole thing is a production," Laura said. "God forbid they admit that there are discontented people. God forbid they admit that they'll fight to the death for this planet because of money. Oh no. There have to be oppressed people and horrible human rights abuses. Earthlings are so shallow."

They turned their attention back to Williams, who was now talking about the attack on TNB.

"These terrorist criminals entered Triad Naval Base under cover of darkness. They were led by this man." A graphic of Jackson was placed on the screen.

"Hey," Jackson said to the applause of the assembled staffers, "there I am. But what the hell did they do to my face?" The image of Jackson had been worked on by someone. His handsome face had been altered to look evil and scowling. His eyes had been darkened considerably giving him an almost demonic appearance. And the blackness of his flesh had been enhanced, making it appear darker than it really was.

"So-called General, Kevin Jackson. The man Laura Whiting appointed as the head of the Martian Planetary Guard. This man, who we believe to be Whiting's chief conspirator, led a group of armed, radical separatists, equipped with MPG weapons, to the gates of Triad Naval Base. They were allowed entrance to the base by this man."

"Allowed entrance?" Jackson asked no one in particular. "We blasted our way in."

"Who the hell is that?" asked Whiting. "He's not one of our people."

Jackson looked, his eyes widening in surprise. "That's Sega!" he exclaimed. "The Martian marine commander for the expeditionary force."

"General Ronald Sega," Williams confirmed. "And I am sad to state that this man is not a separatist. He is not even a Martian citizen. He is, or rather was, a highly trusted commanding general in the WestHem marines."

"Holy shit," Jackson said, shaking his head. "They're gonna blame Sega for all of this!"

"This man was in charge of the marine forces on the planet of Mars." Williams said with utmost sincerity. "He was also the highest ranking military officer on that planet. We now know that he is the worst traitor this great hemisphere has produced since Benedict Arnold in the American Revolutionary War. General Sega apparently provided Kevin Jackson with access codes that allowed him and his thugs entrance to Triad Naval Base. The MPs on the base responded quickly to the intrusion and managed to pin the invaders near the front gate of the base. General Sega, as I mentioned before, was the highest-ranking officer on the planet. He declared an emergency and then sent a message to all WestHem military personnel ordering them to surrender to the Martians. To surrender! To throw down their arms. He stated to the brave commanders leading these MPs at Triad, as well as his very own marines at Eden Marine Barracks, that the situation was hopeless, that fighting on would only get them killed. And these brave soldiers, who lacked the information to make any decision to the contrary, who had no information to tell them that their commander was exaggerating things horribly, did as they were ordered.

"Thanks to General Sega, Martian separatists have taken control of all of our military assets on that planet. We have information that the separatists then marched onto TNB and executed more than a hundred of the MPs that were fighting them!"

"Executed?" Jackson nearly screamed at Williams' image. "You have got to be..."

"Shhh!" Laura hushed him.

"Before communications with the naval base were shut down we received frantic cries for help and horrid descriptions of these thugs lining up the MPs and spraying them with machine gun fire, of shooting grenades at them. These are atrocities on the magnitude of the Asian Powers during World War III. Worse even. At least the Asian Powers were humane about how they killed prisoners."

"Laura," Jackson said, "are you sure we should be allowing this feed out to the entire planet. Some of our people might believe this crap. This could alter the vote."

Laura simply smiled. "On the contrary, Kevin," she said. "I have a little more faith in the intrinsic common-sense of our citizens than that. I believe these broadcasts will do nothing but help our cause."

Jackson was doubtful but he knew that Laura was almost supernaturally adept at reading the pulse of the citizens. He would trust her judgment over his own.

Williams lies continued. She claimed that General Sega himself had executed scores of marines after the base fell. She claimed there was evidence of a sexual relationship between Sega and Whiting. She claimed that thousands of MPG troops had been shot or imprisoned by the "rogue elements" when they refused to take up arms against WestHem. "It appears now that Generals Jackson and Sega have purged the MPG of all soldiers that have professed allegiance to WestHem," she said. "And unfortunately, all of our soldiers on that planet have been captured. Their fate is unknown and our prayers are with them. Our prayers are also with all of those loyal Martians and WestHems trapped as hostages on that planet by this terrorist take-over."

"Terrorist take-over?" Jackson said in disgust. "Hostages? Shit."

"Did you really expect anything else?" Laura asked him.

"No," he admitted.

"But you can be assured," Williams proclaimed firmly, "that this lawlessness and terror will not be allowed to continue. As we speak, preparations are being made to send a force of WestHem marines to Mars to restore order and to effect the arrest of those responsible for this situation. As you all know it takes some time to travel to Mars; approximately eight weeks at the current planetary configuration. It will take at least two weeks to assemble the forces and equipment necessary for this operation.

"We on the council realize that this leaves two and a half months for the current situation on Mars to continue. As horrible as that sounds, leaving those poor people under those conditions for that length of time, there is no other option. We will of course commence negotiations with Laura Whiting and her cohorts and let them know in no uncertain terms that what they are attempting will not be tolerated and that we will hold them responsible for any lives lost during this period. We will try to convince her to surrender herself and her thugs before our Marines land.

"But if she refuses, then our Marines will land on that planet and forcibly return it to the citizens of Mars and it's proper place in the WestHem system. Ms. Whiting," Williams stared meaningfully, "if you are listening, and I suspect you are, then I advise you to stop this madness before it goes any further. If you really care about the Martians, if you have a single ounce of empathy for them, you will stop this dangerous game before our troops arrive.

"Since I doubt that you will do this and, since I have received information that this broadcast may be still visible to the citizens of Mars, it is Whiting's sympathizers that I am now addressing. I'm talking to the men who have, for whatever twisted reason, volunteered to take up arms against WestHem at this evil woman's direction. Drop those arms now, right this minute, before it is too late. We have no wish to land on your planet and kill you; our quarrel is with the leadership you have followed. If you have not killed anyone, if you have simply gone with the crowd out of peer pressure, than you are in no trouble as long as your weapons are dropped by the time our forces land.

"Because, believe me, they will land and they will take control of the planet. I hope with all of my heart that this is a peaceful process, but if it must be a violent one, you stand absolutely no chance of preventing our re-occupation. None. I do not wish to see a lot of misguided people killed for no reason, so I plead with you, I beg of you, drop your arms. Do it now, today, this very moment, and do not pick them up again. That is the worst path that you could possibly follow."

That was the end of Williams' speech. The news conference continued on with a question and answer period in which the reporters began inquiries into such things as what the name of the operation would be and when bids on the advertising and marketing contract would be accepted.

Laura ordered the computer to reduce the volume. "She got in some good blows there near the end," she was forced to admit. "She must have a hell of a speech writer."

"Do you think anyone will listen to her?" Jackson asked. "Do you think it will change the vote?"

Laura smiled. "Maybe a little," she admitted. "But I still think that our citizens have had quite enough of WestHem and their lies. I think most of them will see right through that speech."

"But what about the threats?" Jackson asked. "Many will believe in that even if they don't believe anything else. It would be ironic indeed if our citizens voted for autonomy and then no one volunteered to fight for it."

Laura stared at him, anger now apparent on her face, anger that had not flared this brightly even during the worst part of Williams' inflammatory speech. "Do you really think that our citizens are that shallow?" she asked him coldly. "Do you really think that they would vote for freedom and then ask someone else to fight for it?"

Jackson looked back at her, upset by her anger but unwilling to concede her point. "I certainly hope not, Laura."

Martian Planetary Guard Base Troop Club — Eden

The smell of marijuana smoke hung thickly in the air, overpowering even the odor of alcohol and tobacco smoke. The ventilators in the room struggled to keep up with the outpouring but it was a hopeless task. Scores of off-duty MPG soldiers of all ranks, sexes, and ages were sitting at the bar or at cocktail tables; smoking and drinking the intoxicating substances, unwinding from the stressful twenty-four hours that had just occurred. Even though the bar contained about twice as many MPG members as usual, particularly for a weekday, the absence of any marine personnel was conspicuous and a constant reminder of what had occurred.

The speech that Whiting and Jackson had just witnessed had been played in the club on the large Internet screen above the bar; the sound reproduced perfectly by speakers at every table. During the speech itself the room had been eerily quiet, the silence broken only by the occasional outraged muttering from a soldier that knew what Williams was saying was a lie. But the final part of her speech, the part addressed to the soldiers in this room, had been met with stony, worried silence.

When the speech ended conversation erupted everywhere, much of it angry, some of it terrified and hysterical.

At a table near the rear of the room, Lisa Wong and Brian Haggerty sat together. Lisa was taking a thoughtful draw off a bong the server had brought to her. She had paid for the double hit with her debit card; forking over six dollars for it, and was now smoking the last of it. Across from her Brian was sipping out of a bottle of beer. He'd declined the marijuana, not caring much for it. The two partners had coincidentally run into each other at the front door of the club an hour ago and decided to sit together.

"Brian," Lisa said, "you're in a combat branch and I'm only in admin so I want you to give me an honest opinion."

"Okay," Brian agreed, already knowing what she was going to ask.

"Can we win this thing? Can we actually hope to defeat the WestHem marines when they land here? I mean really? I know most of what that WestHem bitch said was bullshit, but she wasn't bullshitting about them sending marines over here to take this planet back from us."

"No," he agreed thoughtfully, "she wasn't. They're gonna send a shitload of them here."

"So are we fighting a hopeless cause here? I don't mind fighting for Mars. In fact I'd be more than proud to do it. And since Whiting is opening up combat branches for women, I'll volunteer for combat duty." She smiled. "I should be able to get in given my background, don't you think?"

Brian nodded.

"I don't even mind fighting if the odds are way against us. I will gladly take the consequences of losing too. But are there any odds? Is there any chance at all we'll win? I don't want to sacrifice myself for no chance at all. I don't want to be a martyr if it's hopeless before we begin."

Brian picked up his beer and took a sip from it. He stared at his partner thoughtfully, thinking of a way to say what was on his mind. "I met General Jackson a few times," he finally said.

"Oh?"

"I did more than just meet him once. We were at a formal party for MPG promotions and I actually got to sit down and talk to him for a while. He's a very smart man. You can tell that just from a few minutes of talking to him."

"What did you talk about?" Lisa asked, suspecting that whatever they talked about had bearing on her questions.

"Military history," Brian replied. "Of course I never got much further than tech school. I'm not one of the elite that was allowed into our university system. But I have studied quite a bit of military history on my own. Do you know what General Jackson's degree is in?"

"Military history," she answered. "Any MPG member knows that."

"That's right," he said. "Military history is his passion. In the fifteen-minute conversation I had with him I could see that he was more than an expert on the subject. He is the authority on it. And do you know what particular wars interested him the most?"

"What?"

"There were three of them that fascinated him. Three that he told me he'd studied extensively. One is very famous; the war that brought the beginnings of what would become WestHem eventually."

"The American Revolution," Lisa replied. "The birth of capitalism and so-called democracy."

"Right," he said. "But the other two wars were very obscure conflicts. Most school kids today have probably never even heard of them. The first was called the Vietnam War. The second was called the Afghanistan War. Both took place in the second half of the twentieth century. All three of these wars have a single thing in common. Do you know what that is?"

Lisa's mind, assaulted by cannabis, could not think of a common thread. She shook her head.

"In all three of these wars," he told her, "an enemy that was better equipped, in better numbers, and that was absolutely sure of victory, invaded a smaller country expecting the conflict to be over in a matter of weeks with their unconditional victory. And in all three cases the under-equipped, undertrained, understaffed inhabitants of those lands defeated those enemies. Soundly defeated them."

"I'm not sure I'm following you," she said, although she was starting to get a glimmer.

"In all three of these cases the enemy — the Russians in Afghanistan, the French and the Americans in Vietnam, and the British in the revolutionary war — were invading unfamiliar terrain at the end of long supply lines. They were fighting an enemy on their home ground, an enemy that was committed to not being pacified, an enemy that was fighting for independence from a superior power, an enemy that had something to fight for. In each case the invaders did not really care for the task that they were embarked upon. They had no passion for the battle. They only wanted to get the job done and get out of what they considered to be a shithole. What do all of the Earthlings call this place?"

"A shithole," Lisa replied. "Or worse."

"Do you think any of the WestHem marines are going to want to die for this place? To give their life to return Mars to the WestHem corporations? Because no matter what kind of bullshit the WestHem ruling council slings via the media, anyone with any intelligence on that planet is going to know what the real reason for the war is. That includes the marines. When they start seeing their friends die, when they realize that this war is not a cakewalk, their morale is going to go down the shitter. Troops with poor morale are the perfect setting for defeat."

"So you think we can defeat them?" she asked. "Drive them off this planet with poor morale? Even though they'll have five times the equipment that we do?"

Brian pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one with a laser lighter. He drew deeply, exhaling a plume of smoke into the air. "I've been thinking about this a lot lately," he told his partner, his friend. "It goes back to those three wars. Now General Jackson hasn't confided his plans in me or anything, but I can make a few guesses as to what he's going to do. Do you know what the major factor in the victory of those three wars was?"

"Home ground?" she ventured.

He nodded. "Exactly. The victors were on their home ground. They knew every nook and cranny of the battlefields. And they all made extensive use of guerrilla warfare. They were all under-equipped forces, with inferior weaponry. They rarely, if ever, hit the enemy head on. What they did was pick at them, piece by piece in their own rear areas. A few squads of harassment troops here and there, squads whose job was to pick off soldiers one by one, when they were least expecting it. The concept is simple. Never give your enemy a place where he can feel safe. Even in their own heavily guarded encampments they were hit by snipers, or mortar fire, or rockets. They made the enemy feel that as long as they were anywhere in those godforsaken places that they were in peril, that they could be killed without warning at any time.

"I believe General Jackson is going to employ a lot of special forces teams whose job it will be to do just that. To go out into the wastelands, to their very landing sites, and pick at them. To position themselves along the march and hit their tanks and APCs with lasers. To knock them off one by one and to degrade their morale."

"And that can win the war?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "Although in all of the above cases it was a long, protracted process that cost a lot of the defenders their lives. They all took horrible casualties doing this. It took years in every case. With the Vietnamese it took nearly a generation. But they all achieved their goals in the end."

"So you're saying we're going to have to fight them for years?" she asked, depressed at the thought.

"Well," he said, "there's a basic difference between them and us."

"What's that?"

"The Americans, the Vietnamese, and the Afghans were all under-equipped and poorly trained forces. We, on the other hand, though numerically inferior, have the same equipment that the WestHems have. In fact, we have equipment specifically designed for use on Mars, something WestHem lacks. We also have training that's better than the WestHems."

"So how does that fit the equation?"

He smiled. "I think that WestHem is in for a big surprise when they come over here. A shocking surprise. In any case, to answer your question, this war is far from hopeless. I think we're gonna kick some Earthling ass."

All over the planet people did as Laura Whiting had instructed. They talked to each other. They discussed the question. In some cases there were arguments. In some cases the arguments were violent. In a few they were deadly.

In Libby a man shot his wife to death when she refused to change her mind on how she was going to vote.

In Procter two street gang members shot another when he told them that he was going to vote no and they disagreed with his choice.

On Triad there was another violent voting argument between gang members. Shots were fired in the heat of the disagreement and two were killed.

There were other episodes of violence during the period between Laura Whiting's speech and the vote itself. In the industrial city of Dow, for instance, the regional manager of MarsTrans corporation headed for his office as he usually did the morning after Laura Whiting's speech. His wife, a high society Earthling who hated her husband's assignment on Mars, protested, warning him that it wasn't safe but he scoffed at her and headed out of the two hundred and eighth floor apartment, intending to take a first class tram downtown and begin calling each of his managerial staff and ordering them to come in. Where did that Martian bitch Whiting get off declaring a work holiday anyway? He was going to show those greenies a thing or two about playing hardball. He made it less than a block from the front of his apartment before an angry group of middle-class Martians, many of them employees of MarsTrans, attacked him and beat him to death.

But for the most part the presence of the MPG on the streets kept the planet in order. In every city roving patrols on foot and in clanking APCs took up positions on major street intersections and augmented the police force. The actual incidents of street crime — already at an all-time low — took an additional dive.

The cities of Mars were confined to the Western Hemisphere of the planet and stretched across only nine of the twenty-four Martian time zones. The prime meridian for the planet ran through New Pittsburgh, the first of the Martian cities. The furthest city to the east was Dow, a mining city in the northern latitudes with a population of five million. Dow was three hours ahead of the prime meridian. It was here that the polls first opened on the morning of the vote; at 0800 Dow time, 0500 New Pittsburgh time.

Voting was accomplished by calling up the ballot program on an Internet screen. The main computer that controlled it was in the capital building in New Pittsburgh. The computer had been instructed to allow only those people who were Martian citizens to vote. It obtained a list of these people from the census computer and downloaded their names, social security numbers, and fingerprint information. The voters would identify themselves by placing their right index finger on the pad of the screen they were using.

Once the terminal sent the identification information to the main voting computer and the main voting computer was satisfied that that person was a Martian citizen of voting age that had not already voted once, the ballot was sent. In this case the ballot had a single issue on it that required either a yes or a no vote. When the voter made his or her decision it was sent back to the main computer and logged.

The program that controlled voting, aside from being completely tamper-proof (attempts to change the programming would erase the program completely), would not allow the release of any results until all polls had closed planetwide. This was because in the past it had been found that the release of such information as it was collected tended to discourage many people from voting at all. After all, what was the point of casting your ballot if the issue already seemed decided? This was a particular problem among the western time zone cities both on Mars and Earth. Since 2070 the new system of non-release had been in place and all but the media, who used to delight in making daylong newscasts out of Election Day, seemed to like it.

The westernmost city on Mars was Procter, an agricultural city of six million. It was six hours behind New Pittsburgh and Eden, nine hours behind Dow. At 2000 Procter time, the polls were shut down. In Eden it was 0200 the next day. In Dow it was 0500. Despite the late hour, not many Martians were asleep.

The department of voting office was on the seventy-third floor of the capital building. The head of the department, Jackie Yee, heard her computer terminal send a simple message to her. "Voting is complete. All polls are closed. Would you like to release the results?"

She sighed deeply, her body tingling with anticipation. "Not just yet," she told the computer. "Get me the governor."

It took less than fifteen seconds for Laura Whiting's face to appear on her screen.

"Are all votes in?" she asked Jackie. If the governor was nervous, she certainly didn't show it.

"Yes, Governor," Jackie replied. "Would you like me to release the results now?"

"Yes I would," Whiting answered. "It's time we found out what we'll be doing tomorrow."

"I'll order them released immediately," Jackie said. "And Governor?"

"Yes?"

"I voted yes," she said. "And I hope everyone else did too. Free Mars."

"Thank you, Jackie," Whiting replied, smiling. "Now go ahead and release the results so we can all stop wondering."

"They'll be out in less than a minute."

Jackie instructed the computer to make public the results of the vote. The actual results would now be stored forever in its memory bank and would be accessible to anyone, anywhere with an Internet terminal, which meant pretty much everybody in the solar system. As a perk of the job Jackie was the first person to actually see the tally. Her screen filled with figures listing the number of voters on the planet that fit the requirements, the number of those voters who had actually voted, and finally, a breakdown of yes and no votes.

"Wow," she said simply, staring at it.

A second later a counter near the bottom of her screen began to whir rapidly upward. It was an indicator of the number of requests for information from the voting computer. In less than fifteen seconds it had spun well past sixty thousand.

In her office Laura Whiting sat with Kevin Jackson. Outside the window the stars were visible, shining as brilliantly as the lights from the surrounding high rises.

"Well," said Jackson. "Shall we see?"

She nodded. "Let's find out if we're going to be in jail tomorrow or not." She took a deep, nervous breath. "Computer, access Martian voting computer and display results for last ballot issue."

"Accessing," replied the computer, which had no idea of the magnitude of what it was doing.

It took less than four seconds and the screen lit up with the requested information. Jackson and Whiting stared at it, eyes wide, mouths agape.

"Well would you look at that," Laura said softly, unable to develop a reaction just yet.

"I can't believe it," Jackson mumbled beside her.

MARTIAN SPECIAL ELECTION 041513

WILL THE PLANET OF MARS DECLARE INDEPENDENCE FROM THE FEDERAL ALLIANCE OF WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND ENFORCE THIS DECLARATION BY ANY MEANS AVAILABLE? YES OR NO?

PARAMETERS FOR PASSAGE:

1. MUST HAVE GREATER THAN 95% VOTER PARTICIPATION

2. MUST PASS WITH 66.667% YES VOTE OR GREATER TO BE CONSIDERED BINDING

RESULTS

NUMBER OF PLANETARY INHABITANTS OF VOTING AGE WITH MARTIAN CITIZENSHIP:

49,346,412

NUMBER OF ABOVE THAT PARTICIPATED IN THIS ELECTION:

49,005,922

PERCENTAGE OF VOTER PARTICIPATION:

99.310%

WITHIN PARAMETERS?

YES

YES VOTES:

45,820,537 93.504%

NO VOTES:

3,185,385 6.496%

YES VOTES ARE MAJORITY

GREATER THAN 66.667%?

YES

RESOLUTION IS PASSED

Capital Building, New Pittsburgh

May 26, 2146

Like her speech before, this one was going out live all over the planet. The media had been informed of its imminence and had been reporting it since the votes had been counted the previous night. The planet was abuzz with the news of the successful vote and very few people had slept. And like the previous speech it was being transmitted to both WestHem and EastHem on Earth.

Laura was dressed again in a simple cotton shirt, produced from the vast cotton fields of Mars. She wore no make-up and her eyes were bleary, with obvious bags under them. But her face was radiant and happy.

"Citizens of Planet Mars," she began her address. "Today that phrase has entirely new meaning. By an overwhelming majority you have sent a strong message to me and to WestHem. We are no longer citizens of the WestHem colony of Mars, we are truly, for the first time, citizens of the independent Planet of Mars. We have voted for freedom. Let today, May 26, be forever known as Martian Independence Day. Though we have yet to put a constitution in place I do not think it will be too forward of me to declare this day as our first planetary holiday.

"As I've promised time and time again, a free Mars is meant to be a Mars of the people." She stared into the camera. "Of the people, not of the corporations, not of the rich. Our goal should be the betterment and prosperity of Mars and everyone on it, everyone, not just those with money and power. Not just those with political clout, and most certainly not those from Earth who own everything."

She smiled wickedly, knowingly. "Did I say own? I must have misspoken myself. As of yesterday at the close of polls, this is an independent planet. All industries, including of course, the vast agricultural and steel industries that forged this planet, that made it what it is today, belong to the people of Mars. The goal of these industries will not be profits for powerful corporate conglomerates on Earth, but the betterment of the Martian people. Each and every Martian person will benefit from them. All of you. I give my sacred vow that this will be so.

"When things settle down a bit on this planet, when we get the necessary steps that need to be taken in these first days taken, we will convene a committee to begin work on a new constitution for our planet; a constitution that will guarantee for perpetuity that Mars will forever remain a planet of the people and that the horrible abuses of the old system will never be repeated.

"But in the meantime we have much to do and little time in which to do it. Our most daunting task of course, is to keep the forces of WestHem from taking this planet back from us. We must not allow this to happen. If it does, never again will we be given opportunity to free ourselves. We've made our move, now it is time to enforce it. For that we need to beef up our military forces. To do that, we need volunteers.

"As I explained in my first speech this will be a voluntary war. We may be defeated and the fate of the military personnel if that should happen is unknown. You may be killed in battle whether we win or lose. But if we're to win, we're going to need as many new soldiers as we can get our hands upon. This includes men and women, employed and unemployed. You are all Martian citizens and you all should have the opportunity to fight for Mars if you choose. So please, sign up for service.

"We have approximately ten weeks before WestHem marines land on this planet with the intent to return us to WestHem rule. We'll take military volunteers at any time of course, but we really need people to sign up as soon as possible so we'll have time to train you prior to deployment. The more training we can instill in you, the better chance you'll have of surviving this conflict and the better chance we'll have of remaining free.

"In addition to military personnel, we'll need other things for the coming conflict. Weapons, tanks, artillery pieces, ammunition. All of these things are produced here on Mars in the manufacturing cities near the steel belts. For those workers that are vital to those operations, I ask that you remain in your jobs. You will be much more valuable to us there. We need to gear up production in our war industries and that also means we need to gear up production in the steel fields and the mining industry. I ask that all of these industries, and in fact, all places of employment on Mars, please return to work tomorrow.

"I realize that your WestHem managers will not be there. But you never needed them in the first place now, did you? For the most part their job was to count and distribute the money and to hire and fire people. All of you that performed the actual work are still Martians though and I'm confident that you'll be able to run the various facilities in their absence. First and foremost we must continue productivity on this planet during these trying days. Food must continue to be harvested and packaged, products and services must still be available to all. I wish for all manufacturing and agricultural facilities to please give as much productivity as possible. In the case of agriculture, we will need that food as a trading chip with EastHem if they agree to supply us with fuel for the coming conflict.

"So please, return to work and be productive. Let us have no fighting over who is going to do what in the management levels now that the Earthlings are gone. There is no time for that. Work something out and get back to work.

"As for the unemployed among us we are going to need your help also. We need volunteers for the military and we need workers for the factories and industries. I realize that there is a certain amount of strife between the employed and unemployed. There are different values, different points of view and the two groups have not gotten along well in the past.

"Please use your common sense and believe me when I say that this antagonism is of WestHem making. The unemployed have been kept segregated from the rest of society, made to feel inferior while the employed have been encouraged to feel superior. This must stop. We are all in this together.

"Some of our unemployed have not been able to work in generations. Well this is your opportunity. We are all descendants of a people who left Earth looking for employment, who were so desperate for it that they were willing to leave their planet behind and travel to an artificial environment just to get a job. I know that some of that courage rests in the majority of the unemployed and I hope to see it now. We need you; we need everyone to help here. And if we are successful in this coming conflict you need never be unemployed again. You will also have access to higher education if you so desire. It is you unemployed who stand to gain the most from this new freedom, but we may not be able to win it without your support.

"And for those at the factories and industries that will be hiring these people, I ask that you put aside your hostility towards ghetto inhabitants. Put them to work, train them, and try not to hold any pre-conceived notions about them. I'm confident you will be pleasantly surprised at the productivity.

"For the time being we will consider ourselves under planetary government rule with myself as titular head and the remaining members of the planetary legislature as my balance system. All of the current laws and regulations will remain in effect. Public assistance monies will continue to flow to the unemployed as they always have. Workers will continue to be paid at their current rate. Stores will remain open. As you will quickly see, we are perfectly capable of surviving without WestHem's assistance.

"The Martian Planetary Guard will be pulled out of the streets of the cities to commence training for the upcoming conflict. General Jackson will of course be in charge of future deployments and training sites.

"This is the time for all Martians to pull together towards a single goal. This is not the time for petty, insignificant differences to be aired. We must unite, we MUST! If we do not, WestHem will prevail.

"A declaration of independence will be sent to WestHem and EastHem later today. A copy of this will be available on the Internet for examination.

"Thank you for your time, and please, please, remember my words. Mars is now free. Let's keep it that way."