Martian Justice

 

Copyright

Martian Justice

Copyright © 2021 Rollie Lawson

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-387-92587-2

 

Part 1 - Planning

 

Chapter 1- WestHem

New Pentagon, Military Headquarters

Denver, WestHem

Tuesday, October 4, 2146

“Colonel Whitestone, are you going to accept this assignment?”

Oliver Whitestone, Colonel, WestHem Military Intelligence, looked at the man talking to him. “And which assignment is that, sir? The assignment to slit my throat? Or the assignment to strip off my uniform and march naked down to the ghetto and move in?”

General Wesley Morgan’s lips pressed together tightly. As Adjutant, Chief of Staff, he was the second most powerful military officer in WestHem, the Democratic Alliance of the Western Hemisphere. As adjutant his job was to back up the Chief of Staff and execute the orders General Turner gave him. General Wainwright Turner had been chosen for his job because he was vidstar handsome and utterly reliable at carrying out the orders given to him by the WestHem Executive Council and his corporate sponsors. It didn’t matter if the orders he received were nonsensical or impossible, General Turner was highly proficient at finding somebody to either execute the orders while he took the credit or take the blame when they failed.

General Morgan was often the man who General Turner relied on to get things accomplished. He would never become the Chief of Staff. He was five centimeters too short, fifteen kilos too heavy, and his skin was too dark, courtesy of his grandmother’s dalliance with a Brazilian vidstar fifty years ago. He was also just a touch too independent for the Executive Council or their corporate sponsors to tolerate. He had his own sponsors, primarily from Alexander Industries and Shilling Munitions, but as long as he pushed their products, they didn’t require him to do anything unusual.

Taking the position of Adjutant was Morgan’s crowning achievement in the WestHem military. A successful stint as Adjutant would guarantee his eventual retirement in the Aspen Enclave, the highest possible pension available to the military, and even some shares of Alexander Industries and Shilling Munitions. All he needed to do was hold his nose and determine which category the idiotic orders that Turner gave him fell in. The executable orders he executed; the nonsensical and impossible orders he found an appropriate flunky to take the fall when the shit hit the fan.

“Colonel, I am not planning to put you on InfoGroup lecturing the Executive Council. I need to know what we need to do to prepare for the second invasion, so that it doesn’t become the debacle that the first one became. The reason I have this job is that General Turner got the job when the last Chief of Staff was cashiered after Martian Hammer. You know they are going to demand another invasion, only bigger and better, and if we don’t solve the problems, we’re just going to have a bigger and better disaster.”

Whitestone shook his head. “General, ninety percent of the problems came about because of the orders from the Executive Council and their sponsors. Do you honestly expect that I will explain their screwups and shoot myself in the head at the same time voluntarily?”

“Colonel, please…”

“General, the operations plan for Operation Martian Hammer was a brilliant plan that ultimately failed because of the treason and treachery of Generals Wrath, Browning, and Sega, as well as that of Admirals Jules and Rosewood. The largest problem we had was in the inhumane brutality and unprecedented criminal behavior of the communist Martian terrorists.” Whitestone was simply repeating the official history of Martian Hammer that was being currently taught in all WestHem school systems and being broadcast on WestHem Internet channels.

“Colonel, if I want the party line, I can turn on InfoGroup. What I need is accurate and unbiased information. If you can provide that, fine. If you can’t, I believe you will be a prime candidate to train and lead an armored infantry brigade during the next invasion of Mars. If you are really lucky, I will nominate you to lead the first attacks.”

Whitestone rolled his eyes. “When do you need the information, General?”

“Yesterday, but officially not until after Turner gives me the order for the invasion, which he won’t do until after tomorrow’s Executive Council meeting.”

“Tomorrow? Think that’s cutting it close, General?”

Morgan gave a wry smile at that. “It’s not quite that bad. General Turner will consider the various options available until the next day, at which time he will order me to come up with a new plan. I won’t have to give him the details for three to four days.”

“You want me to come up with an operational plan to win a war against Mars in four days?” Whitestone stared in disbelief. Morgan had a reputation for intelligence and sanity. Neither trait was on display.

The general shook his head. “No, nothing like that. You know and I know that the ultimate plan is going to be a bigger and better version of Martian Hammer. We’ll use the same plans and deployments, only with more ships and more men. This was the brilliant plan developed by the Executive Council and the corporate interests with detailed knowledge of the planet. I need to know what we really need to do. What specifically failed, aside from the treason and treachery you mentioned earlier.”

“Why me?” asked Whitestone.

Morgan answered, “Because you have the unfortunate reputation of preferring honesty and accuracy instead of foolish drivel, and because of that reputation, you will never rise above your current rank. Instead, you will be reduced in rank and forcibly retired when Martian Hammer Two fails, which we both know it will. However, if we succeed, you become a Major General in charge of WestHem Intelligence. You really don’t have much of a choice.”

“General, if I tell you what really went wrong, I’ll be put against a wall, and you’ll be standing next to me.”

“The best I can promise is that nobody from the Council or the corporations will be in the audience when you tell me.”

Whitestone sighed. “Give me a few days.”

***

Oliver Whitestone left General Morgan’s office and took an autoflyer back to his office at Military Intelligence Headquarters. Once there he did some paperwork and then checked out. A second autoflyer took him back to the condominium complex he and his family lived in near Colorado Springs. He gave it a critical look as the autoflyer was on final approach. Colorado Springs was a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood, not as nice as Aspen, where the Executive Council and their corporate bosses lived, but lightyears better than the ghettos surrounding Columbine and Aurora.

He entered his home and was greeted by his wife Cheryl and their two daughters. The girls, twins aged five, ran up to him giggling and squealing and he dropped down to their level so they could tackle him and knock him to the floor. He tickled them in return, and they ran squealing off to their bedroom. Whitestone looked up at his wife.

“Don’t expect me to pick you up,” she laughed.

He rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “I can remember the time you used to run to meet me at the door and then knocked me to the floor and joined me.”

“Remember how that worked out? Twins!”

He snorted and got to his feet, after which Cheryl gave him a quick kiss. She was an astonishingly beautiful woman, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and with a stunning figure. When he first met her, he had been a very junior major and she had been a second lieutenant. She had also been assigned to a position in Public Relations where she could serve as a mistress to the head of Military Appropriations. Her selection as a mistress was not something she could turn down; it was the WestHem way of advancement for professional women, Whitestone had been attracted to her and they had been friendly, but the general involved didn’t like to share his toys. Fortunately, he also liked new toys, so after a year, he tired of her, and she was promoted to first lieutenant and sent back to the PR office. A year later she and the major were married, and she was able to resign her commission.

“Want to work on a few more tonight?” he asked.

“You made general?” she asked. They had talked about a few more children but wanted to wait until he made brigadier. As a member of the military, the population control laws didn’t apply.

“Trust me! Would I lie?”

“Like a rug! How about I put on something naughty, and we practice, instead?”

Whitestone nodded. “It will have to be tonight. Tomorrow I start a new project and will be away for a few days.”

“Anything you can tell me about?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I am planning the ultimate downfall of EastHem and all our other enemies.”

She snorted. “As long as it’s nothing too serious. Try to be home Saturday. The girls have a dance recital.”

“Got it. See what I can do.”

After dinner, he retired to his den and began considering the assignment given to him by General Morgan. In many ways, it was no more voluntary than his wife’s assignment as a mistress to a general. In a wry concession to reality, he realized that both assignments involved getting fucked. He wondered if he should ask Cheryl what the best lube was for bending over and getting fucked up the ass.

He knew how it all started, but there wasn’t much he could do to change it. Morgan knew it as well. Starting in the late Twentieth Century, the consolidation of corporate power began leading to the rise of mega-corporations. Following World War III, the corporations grew even more powerful. Nothing mattered but power and profit. By the end of the Twenty-First Century, the transformation of WestHem society was complete. The corporations competed by sponsoring politicians, bureaucrats, and military officers; the winners got more power and profit while the losers were acquired and shut down.

The system worked great for the corporations, but not so great for anybody else. Militarily it began to break down during the Jupiter War in 2131. EastHem, the European version of WestHem, sent a military force to Jupiter, where WestHem had a military base and a hydrogen fueling facility on the moon of Ganymede. WestHem claimed Jupiter as their property, but EastHem set up a competing operation on the moon of Callisto. The resulting war was ordered and coordinated by the Executive Council and the corporations that ran them, specifically Standard Fuel Supply and Jovian Gases, who lost the lucrative EastHem market when EastHem set up their Callisto operations.

The Jupiter War had been a disaster for the WestHem military. They had lost thirty-one ships and twenty-thousand Marines in three separate attacks on Callisto. That didn’t include the losses when EastHem counterattacked WestHem positions on Mars. There had been almost as many civilian casualties on Mars, which neither WestHem nor the military considered important, but the locals considered otherwise. The war ended with a treaty allowing EastHem to stay on Callisto, but in no way mentioning that WestHem lost the war.

The First Martian War had begun after a traitorous local politician managed to become Governor of Mars. Laura Whiting had been an innocuous politician with the ‘gift of gab’, but once in power she turned out to be a raving communist and converted a significant segment of the population to her radical economic theories. One of those she converted was a man descended from African-Americans named Kevin Jackson, then a captain in the WestHem Marines, roughly the highest a Martian could rise in the Marines. She convinced him to throw in his lot with the Martian Planetary Guard, a ragtag home militia that had been sold as a way to protect Mars in the unlikely case that EastHem attacked and WestHem couldn’t stop them.

Jackson turned out to be a military genius on the order of Washington, Wellington, and Giap. He had played the WestHem military and its corporate overlords like a violin, breaking them to his will and destroying the Marines and Navy with a ragtag collection of odds and sods. Now Whitestone was responsible for figuring out what had gone wrong and how to do it all over again, only this time winning.

Whitestone’s ruminations were interrupted by his wife’s appearance. She was wearing a lacy black top and black high heels, along with some jewelry and a spritz of a banned but very popular EastHem perfume. “Oliver, are you planning to come to bed?”

He looked at her and lewdly licked his lips. “Why don’t you come over here and we can talk about it.”

Cheryl giggled and sat down on his lap. They could go to bed for the next round.

***

Executive Council Meeting Room B

Denver, WestHem

Saturday, October 8, 2146

It had been three hectic days and three hectic nights for Colonel Whitestone, and it was now the time for the results to be disclosed. He had spent seventy-two hours researching the disaster that was Operation Martian Hammer, punctuated by only a few catnaps and breaks, and was sure he looked like a disaster. He could feel the bags under his eyes and only an emergency dry cleaning had saved his uniform.

He looked around the room quickly as he went to the podium. In addition to General Morgan there was a wide collection of other second level officers, assistant division heads and deputy department managers. He recognized more than a few. The division and department heads were the type that looked good on InfoGroup and the other Internet services; their seconds-in-command were the ones who did the thinking. He plugged a specially prepared thumb drive into the projector and took the remote control. Showtime!

“Thank you, General Morgan. The purpose of this briefing is to discuss the failings of Operation Martian Hammer and the ways it could have been improved. I am not here to discuss any political or commercial ramifications. It is well known that the leadership of both the Marines and the Navy had been compromised and were treasonous in their actions.” When his part in this mess became known, Whitestone hoped that this statement would prove sufficient at his court martial to prevent his execution and limit the damage to his dismissal from the service and imprisonment at the Butte Military Detention Center.

A nod from Morgan meant that he was to continue. “This first slide shows the status of forces at the time of the insurrection. Marine ground forces were limited to a division separated into several different barracks in the major cities on Mars. That was a very potent collection of forces, but poor planning and organization proved deadly. The Marine barracks were separated from their heavy weapons and vacuum gear. When the Martian Planetary Guard attacked the Marines, the MPG was able to interdict the Marines from getting to their equipment and gear. Likewise, MPG SpecOps forces were able to isolate the Navy personnel at Triad Naval Base from their ships. Obviously, this was a major factor in the Martian terrorists taking over the planet from the duly elected and appointed government.”

Left unsaid was that separating troops from their weapons was standard operating procedure around the world. Only on the vids did troops have immediate access to their weapons. They were always stored in an armory, lest the troops decide to do something stupid. The same occurred with ships. Warships never had enough room for their crews, so in port you always placed the crews in barracks. The next few slides detailed the specifics of the initial insurrection. Realistically, there wasn’t anything that could have been done about the initial revolt.

The real reason for the briefing was to discuss Operation Martian Hammer, the armed WestHem response to the Revolution. “The plan was for a heavily protected convoy of Marines to be sent to Mars, at which point they would take orbit. Then, fighters from the California-class superdreadnoughts would take out the Martian satellite network, depriving the Martians of surveillance and targeting information. Landing zones at the four largest Martian cities were selected. Subsequent fighter and bomber attacks would isolate each of the cities by attacking and interdicting the rail network around each city. Finally, the Marines would land and assault the isolated strongholds, ultimately to enter the cities, remove the terrorist elements, and restore control to the rightful WestHem government.”

Whitestone ran through the original plans to show how the Martian cities would have been retaken. It took him two full days to dig the original plans out of the computer archives they were buried in. Every time the plans changed the original plans were shoveled into a deep, deep hole.

“Things began to change almost immediately. The convoy planning was based on the prediction that the Martians would be completely unable to operate the ships they captured at Triad Naval Base. They wouldn’t be able to man and operate the ships, nor would they be able to rebuild the targeting and programming on the nuclear weapons. This turned out to be an error. The Martians were able to man and operate the Owls at Triad, and they also rebuilt the nuclear weapons. They didn’t reactivate the Californias or the Seattles, but it seems likely that they simply didn’t have the manpower to run those ships. They did have enough manpower to run the A-12s, F-22s, and AA-71s, the fighters and attack craft that they used later in the conflict.”

Several more slides showed what happened next. “During the convoy stage of the war, Martian terrorist-operated Owls destroyed six Panama-class transports, killing one-hundred thousand Marines and six thousand Naval personnel, along with another five or six thousand in other ships. That is over twenty percent of the initial half-million-man invasion force. That radically changed the odds during the landing and invasion phase of the operation.”

It was time to address the rest of the disaster. “Once in orbit, the original plan was to destroy the Martian satellite network. These satellites provided a variety of advantages to the Martian terrorists including GPS targeting, surveillance, and communication capabilities. We didn’t expect that the Martians would be able to encrypt their GPS signals, but upon learning that, the plan to destroy the satellites became even more critical. That would have evened the odds, to a certain extent. Instead, the Executive Council, for whatever reason, ordered that the Martian satellite network be left alone.”

The reason was left unstated; InfoGroup, ICS, and WIV all ordered their sponsored members of the Executive Council to leave their assets alone. Even though they no longer had control of the satellite network, nor any income from the network, if they retained legal ownership, they didn’t need to write the assets off as losses. Those losses would undoubtedly result in bankruptcy when the house of cards their financing depended on collapsed. Leaving the network in Martian hands was better financially than if the WestHem military destroyed them to win the war.

“Following the destruction of the satellite network, a two-pronged aerial assault would take place. First, the rail network linking the various Martian cities would be cut at numerous places. This would isolate the cities we were marking for attack, drastically limiting the ability to reinforce the Martian terrorists at the four landing zones. At the same time, attacks would be made on the main Martian munitions production sites, the Alexander Industries and Shilling Munitions plants. Prior to the attack, however, it was decided by the Executive Council that the Marines had sufficient firepower to be able to take their objectives without destroying Martian ground assets. Once we took the attack targets, even if it was only one, then we would be able to use the ground transportation network for our eventual victory. Afterwards we could recapture the munitions factories the terrorists were working with slave labor and reconstitute our losses.”

This was another piece of double-speak designed to calm the corporate sponsors who would undoubtedly learn about this briefing, if they weren’t already listening in. The WestHem managers of Alexander Industries and Shilling Munitions ordered that their Martian plants were off limits; MarsTrans ordered the same for their intercity railroads. Again, as long as the assets were simply ‘temporarily out of control’ they did not need to be written off. If the factories were destroyed and the rail lines cut, the financial losses would be unbearable. Better to keep the assets on the books and kill off a few Marines than write off the loss and have the shareholders vote you off the board of directors.

“We could have expected some losses by this point, certainly among the Navy fighter and attack squadrons, but in terms of sheer numbers, that would have been minimal. Without the shutdown of the satellite network, we had severe problems once we landed our forces. Within hours, minutes in some cases, MPG SpecOps forces began attacking the landing zones. They continued the harassment during the entire march from the landing zones to the first line of resistance. This occurred at each landing zone, to the point that we lost another thousand Marines dead and another two thousand wounded before we ever moved out.” Several more slides went up to show the tactics the Martian Special Forces troops used. With each slide Colonel Whitestone discussed the illegal and inhuman tactics used against the WestHem Marines.

“The attacks continued right up until we reached the Main Lines of Resistance. At all four combat zones we suffered severe losses. At that time, it was decided to make a tactical retreat and concentrate our forces on two of the four landing zones. Further, we would switch from landing three hundred kilometers away from the Martian cities to locations just beyond Martian artillery range. In this way we escaped the problems we had during the march from the original landing zones. That plus a concentrated attack on the Martian artillery sites gave us an excellent chance of successfully assaulting the cities of Eden and New Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, the Martians were able to send munitions from stockpiles at Alexander and Shilling to the combat zones via the rail networks to allow the Martian terrorists to hold off the Marines. It is doubtful they had the ability to operate the technology of the munitions factories, but the railroad network was sufficiently automated that even the terrorists could use it.”

“What was the final body count?” asked General Wallace Hollings. Hollings was in charge of WestHem logistics, replacing the martyred General Gullings, who was killed during the Martian counterattack on the logistics train and the artillery park. Gullings was one of the few ‘heroes’ the marines had been able to muster out of the disaster. Martian tanks made a thunder run through the supposedly impassable mountains to erupt into the WestHem rear, rampaging roughshod through the logistics train and the artillery pounding Martian front line positions. They then escaped back through the mountains, though not without taking some losses along the way. Gullings died early in the battle; his death was immortalized by a partial radio message ordering the tank escorts to attack. Left out of the histories was the rest of the message, which ordered his forces to surround the command tracks and abandon the transports.

“We lost approximately one-hundred-and-ten thousand Marines and naval personnel on the convoy transit to Mars. We lost another sixty-five thousand Marines in ground combat. Those are the losses we know about. In addition to those losses, the Martians captured approximately thirty-five thousand WestHem personnel at Triad Naval Base and the Marine bases on Mars. Another twenty-five thousand Marines and sixteen thousand naval personnel were captured after the WestHem forces made their final tactical withdrawal. Those forces were all killed by the Martian terrorists, generally in a fashion even InfoGroup and the other media sources found too awful to broadcast. The final total was in excess of two-hundred-and-twenty thousand of the invasion force, plus the entire Martian garrison and Triad base.”

The final numbers were a brutal slap in the face of the WestHem military leaders present. They had all known that the Executive Council and the corporations were lying about the losses, but the totals were still astonishing. Martian communist terrorists managed to kill damn near forty-four percent of the invading army; initial planning forecast less than a thousand casualties, most of whom would have been merely wounded. They also knew that over seventy-five thousand of the dead weren’t actually dead. The Martians sent the names and identification of every captive both to the WestHem leadership and to EastHem through the semi-independent Swiss. WestHem denied the losses, and their Internet services refused to broadcast the names or the extent of the losses. It was decided that it was better to leave the captured Marines and naval personnel in enemy hands rather than alter the narrative.

“What were the Martian losses?” asked Louise Westerphall. Westerphall was the rare female officer to have risen above the level of mistress to a position of power in the WestHem military. She was now a brigadier in the Communications and Surveillance division of the Military Intelligence unit.

Some things simply couldn’t be stated, at least not in a setting that could be compromised by the Executive Council, or more likely, the officers compromised by their corporate sponsors. It was best to stick to the fictional numbers pushed by InfoGroup. “Unknowable. During active combat, front line officers were estimating a ten-to-one kill ratio of terrorist forces to ours. We know we destroyed six Owls during the convoy operation.” Six was the fanciful number the WestHem Navy had told the Executive Council. “On the ground, we conservatively estimate we killed at least three-quarters of a million terrorists during ground operations. On the plus side, we captured and eliminated another sixty thousand or more communist Martian terrorist spies.”

The ‘spies’ were all of the Martian citizens trapped on Earth and in the WestHem military, mostly the Navy. The Martian citizens were summarily arrested and jailed; half of them had been executed and the other half were in prisons with a low life expectancy. Even the children were being killed. Martian civilians on Earth totaled about forty-five thousand

As for the military, roughly eight percent of the WestHem Navy was Martian-born, about sixteen thousand, and almost all of them had been eliminated out an airlock, often still breathing. That resulted in one of the most bizarre and incriminating military correspondences in history. When the first report arrived at the New Pentagon of Martian spies and traitors being spaced, a response was quickly returned. It did not ban the summary execution of Martian crew members; instead, it specified “…the frozen and desiccated bodies may well prove a hazard to navigation in the future and should be eliminated by anti-meteorite laser…” It was the most damning military communication since the Earl of Stair ordered the Massacre of Glencoe by writing it on a playing card, the Nine of Diamonds.

There were some additional slides, but the extent of the disaster was truly chilling. General Morgan called the meeting to an end, saying, “Thank you, Colonel. See me in two days, please.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Chapter 2 - EastHem

Executive Council Chamber

London, EastHem

Thursday, October 6, 2146

Anthony Billings marched confidently into the EastHem Executive Council chamber. Billings, the Chairperson of the Council, was in a good mood and was smiling broadly for the vid cameras that routinely followed him wherever he went. He was the last of the council to arrive, and he greeted them by name, smiling and shaking hands. Only when that was finished did one of the Public Relations people hovering around outside of camera range shut down the video operation and shoo the reporters and videographers out. Once they were alone, Billings sat down, and the tensions of a public meeting disappeared.

EastHem, the Democratic Republic of the Eastern Hemisphere, was created at the same time as WestHem, during the early days of World War III. Based on the advanced economies and defense capabilities of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, EastHem fought the Asiatic Powers across Eurasia, destroying Russia and the Middle East in the process. Once the war was over, within just a few years, EastHem and WestHem entered an uneasy cold war. Much like their hated rivals, EastHem politicians were bought and sold by European mega-corporations.

It could be reasonably argued that the EastHem corporations got much more for their money than the WestHem corporations. The Jupiter War was the result of A&C Hydrogen’s support for a military base and hydrogen fueling plant on Callisto. The war barely scratched the EastHem Military and Navy, while destroying much of the WestHem Far Space Navy.

The Martian Revolution was an amazing benefit for EastHem. In addition to losing a third of the WestHem Navy to the Martian insurgents, the insurgents brokered a deal with EastHem. For the price of a fairly meaningless recognition of sovereignty and three tankers of hydrogen a month, Mars would export half the food supply they were sending to Earth to EastHem. Billions of tons of food were now available to the EastHem food corporations for the relatively insignificant price of three tankers of hydrogen a month, which would be paid for by the government in any case.

So, there was a reason the EastHem Executive Council was smiling. Granted, Africa was so desperate it could swallow the entirety of the Martian food products without a burp, but it was still a massive aid to the EastHem economy. The EastHem corporations were very grateful and were considering further EastHem initiatives in a positive fashion.

Billings smiled as he looked around the table. Like all modern politicians, he was vidstar handsome and keenly attuned to the wishes of his paymasters. Surprisingly, he was also fairly intelligent, not always a requirement for political leaders. Most were masters of the soundbite, but Billings actually understood what was going on around him and didn’t need an army of aides to tell him what to do.

The woman two seats to his right was probably the second most powerful member of the EastHem Executive Council. Sylvia Dortsheer was the German politician responsible for the area of Africa based on Zimbabwe. Dortsheer had never been to Zimbabwe and never wanted to get anywhere near Zimbabwe, one of the worst EastHem ghettos. She had been only a junior member of the Council, and at forty-five, the youngest. However, she ran the numbers on the Martian treaty and championed its adoption. Billings agreed. Now Dortsheer was a senior member of the council and directly responsible for Martian Affairs. Along the way, she took a month off for a routine annual vacation, returning with a facelift, a new nose and chin, whitened teeth, and a significant breast augmentation. Now, she was on the vidchannels frequently, discussing the wonders of the Martian treaty and the food that was being provided for the EastHem citizenry.

“Sylvia, anything new to report on Martian imports?” Billings asked.

“Nothing significant. Allow me to show what is going on?” she replied. Billings nodded and Dortsheer stood, to move around the table to a place near a video display which dropped from the ceiling. She called up a slide show from the remote control in her hand.

“First, we have been able to integrate the Martian food supply ships into EastHem logistic supply lines with very little effort. Our patriotic corporations have worked tirelessly to seamlessly join with the government to expand or create the infrastructure needed to bring food from the supply vessels down to Earth.” She flipped through a few slides and two videos to illustrate how this was being done. The earth-to-orbit bulk transports were the largest flying machines ever built, and more were being built every day, with even larger models being designed. Her description of the EastHem corporations would assuredly please her sponsors.

“We did have a problem during the WestHem Martian Hammer counterassault. The Martian orbitals were far too dangerous to allow civilian transports to enter the war zone. Operationally speaking, this caused a temporary delay in shipments from Mars to EastHem. This wasn’t a problem, though, since we needed the delay to work some of the bugs out of the orbit-to-Earth system at our end. Now, with the end of hostilities, transports are once again docking at Triad and taking on cargo.”

“On the other side of the equation, tanker operations between Callisto and Mars have been almost flawless. Three tankers a month is just a fraction of our capacity. Again, once we committed the first few tankers, the Martians were able to build up stores before the WestHem Navy was able to respond. We stopped shipments during the conflict but have restarted them since then.” Several slides and vids detailing tanker operations were shown.

“Ms. Dortsheer, a question?” interrupted Wilhelm Gottlieb, member for Eurasia. Gottlieb represented the city of Kiev and the ghetto of Moscow, along with much of Siberia. Dortsheer considered him a lumbering boob, but he was senior enough she didn’t need to piss him off. He was owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by A&C Hydrogen.

She smiled and said, “Of course, Councilman Gottlieb.”

“I have heard disturbing reports that the Martian revolutionaries are planning to build their own fueling station on Jupiter.” Even though Martian imports were only three tankers a month, A&C Hydrogen didn’t want to lose even a kilo of possible sales.

She gave him a curious look. It was Billings who said, “I haven’t heard a question, Wilhelm.”

Gottlieb gave them both a mulish look. “Well? Is it true?”

Dortsheer replied, “I have not heard of any specific plans or timetables. It would not surprise me, though.” She turned to a gaudily uniformed officer at the end of the table. “General DeGrasse, would you care to comment?”

“Certainly, but better yet, I brought the Assistant Commander of Military Intelligence with me. Brigadier Bullstrode has spent the time since the end of WestHem hostilities studying WestHem military capabilities. I asked him to prepare a presentation on future WestHem capabilities. Could I impose on you, Ms. Dortsheer, to allow the brigadier to interrupt your excellent presentation?” General Rene DeGrasse was rugged and handsome but not overly bright. He was, however, possessed of top-notch political skills.

“Of course, General. I was basically done. Brigadier, welcome!” She stepped back and laid the remote on the podium. Let the Army put up with Gottlieb, the idiot.

Archibald Bullstrode was too smart to be allowed to command EastHem Military Intelligence. Instead, his job was to advise the leaders of the EastHem military, and to take the blame when they ignored him. Fortunately, EastHem was in a peaceful and dominant military position. Absent a desire to conquer WestHem, it was a sustainable posture.

Bullstrode took the podium and called up his presentation. “Thank you, Councilperson Dortsheer, Councilperson Billings, General DeGrasse, and all the other members of the Executive Council. I am here to present our current military and naval status of forces and compare that to WestHem’s and Mars. If I might proceed?”

It was a rhetorical question and Bullstrode didn’t delay for more than a few seconds. “As you are all aware, for the last fifteen years EastHem and WestHem military and naval forces have been in a static position. This is a result of the final disposition of the Jupiter War, which we won but which WestHem claims was the result of their gracious sharing of Jovian space.” He rolled his eyes, as did most of the audience.

From there he threw a series of slides onto the screen. The largest military forces, on both sides, were on Earth, facing each other across the Bering Strait and between Australia and the islands of the Southwest Pacific. The Earth orbitals were where the bulk of their navies were located, with each power controlling a network of satellites and space stations. EastHem also had major claims on the Moon, where they had colonies and mining facilities. The primary reason WestHem colonized Mars was to obtain resources that they were unable to procure closer to home.

The most distant military forces in significant numbers were in Jovian space, the moons surrounding Jupiter. Both WestHem and EastHem had a rough equivalence in the sizes of their forces, each protecting a hydrogen fueling station, WestHem’s on Ganymede and EastHem’s on Callisto. The Jupiter War proved the primacy of the defense over the offense. Beyond Jupiter, both superpowers had research stations around the outer planets, but they were unarmed and only occasionally supported by naval forces.

The major sticking point in the Solar System was in between Earth and Jupiter. Mars was a wild card and had been for decades. Following the WestHem colonization of the planet, they built massive facilities and an entire space city, Triad, to act as the gateway to the planet. WestHem based a third of their Navy at Triad and a Quick Reaction Force of Marines on the surface. If EastHem got frisky, WestHem’s Martian forces could have sortied and caused all sorts of trouble on Jupiter. All of that went out the window when the Martian revolutionaries captured Triad Naval Base and the WestHem ships based there.

Bullstrode said, “Our current estimate is that the Martian revolutionaries captured approximately thirty percent of the WestHem navy. To be specific, they captured two entire California superdreadnought groups, including all the fighter and attack craft they carry. They also captured all the fighter and attack craft at Triad. In addition to the Californias, they captured all the support and escort ships, including two squadrons of Seattle anti-stealth escorts, two squadrons of Owl stealth ships, and Panama transports with enough ground attack tanks and APCs to be a real problem if they were to get frisky.”

“Jesus!” muttered one of the male councilmembers. His family had served in the EastHem Navy for generations.

“And what happens when they get frisky?” demanded Gottlieb belligerently.

“Councilperson, I don’t mean to dismiss the possibility of potential for trouble, but that is a potential for many years in the future. For one thing, it is going to be years before we know the result of the Martian-WestHem conflict. One of two things will happen. Either WestHem will somehow manage to recapture Mars, in which case they will recapture some of their fleet, but probably not all, or Mars will kick WestHem out for good. In that case, Mars will control all that equipment, but it isn’t as simple as that. The revolutionaries simply don’t have the officers and crew to man even a fraction of the ships they have now.”

“How so, Brigadier?” asked Billings. He decided to shut down Gottlieb’s complaints.

“They simply don’t have the manpower. During the recent war, the Martians managed to crew only a handful of Owls. An Owl at maximum capacity has a crew of about a hundred officers and spacers. That could probably be cut in half in an emergency. A California, on the other hand, has a crew of about four thousand. There are simply not that many trained Martian Naval personnel. Those ships are currently mothballed. Even using civilian personnel with similar training, such as civilian pilots being trained for fighter and attack plane duty, the ships themselves aren’t going anywhere.”

“Huh.” Billings considered what he knew about military and naval operations. “So, how did the Martians beat WestHem? And how badly did they beat them?”

Bullstrode flipped to a new slide. “The Martians whipped the WestHem Marines badly. The last few months we have been intensely researching WestHem military plans, both the original plans and how they were changed once the war began. The WestHem Marines and Navy had a reasonable operations plan that was developed from their plans for attacking us. Knock out the satellite network, interdict transportation, destroy strategic targets, and then develop localized air control so that you can introduce ground forces in a controlled fashion.” A series of slides showed the textbook description about how to establish a beachhead in a modern environment. “This is really textbook stuff. It is what WestHem would do to us if they were attacking, and what we would do to them if we were attacking. Unfortunately, the WestHem corporations were too venal and self-centered to allow the Navy to destroy the assets necessary to establish a safe landing zone. Meanwhile, Martian Special Operations troops, many of whom had spent years training to defend Mars from an EastHem invasion, were turned loose on WestHem.”

“What was the final count?” asked Billings.

“First, don’t believe anything WestHem has put out about the war. All the accidents and terrorist suicide attacks they said happened? Nonsense! The Martians managed to partially crew about a half-dozen Owls, each of which had at least some nuclear torpedoes. They used standard stealth platform doctrine and destroyed five Panamas and a Seattle, and damaged at least another couple of ships. They only lost a single Owl, though a few others were damaged.” That elicited several gasps. They had all heard rumors, but the brigadier’s matter-of-fact pronouncement seemed ominous. If the Martians could do it to WestHem, then they could also do it to EastHem.

“Next, there are only a few cities on Mars worthy of being invaded and only a few locations near those cities that were large enough to allow mobile forces to be used. Mars is an inhospitable place. Some of the cities are in mountainous terrain and simply can’t be approached by an armored column. Others, such as at Eden, only have a single approach. If you are going to attack, you have to land and then drive through the Jutfield Gap. The locals all know this and know exactly where to put blocking and ambushing forces. It was like that throughout the war.” Bullstrode gave several examples, showing slides and videos of various attacks procured through InfoGroup.

“The final result was that WestHem lost damn near half their invasion force. They sent half a million Marines and sailors to Mars and brought back about half that many.” More than a few members of the Executive Council looked green at that. What would happen if their corporate sponsors wanted them to attack Mars? It would be a bloodbath!

“What is happening now, Brigadier?” came from another councilperson.

“WestHem has already announced they will be sending another task force back to Mars to follow up on Martian Hammer. Specific dates haven’t been released but it is doubtful that they will be able to return for another three or four years. They suffered too many losses in Martian Hammer. They threw away their finest Marine divisions. Their Navy will need to build an entire fleet of Panama transports, both to replace their losses and to carry the increased numbers of Marines they will be recruiting and training.”

Bullstrode then shrugged. “It probably won’t matter. The Martian Navy has already repaired all their Owls and they are now fully manned and armed. Their top officers and crew members have been transferred to the Seattles. They plan to begin anti-stealth patrols well before WestHem can return. There has been no indication they will ever be manning the Californias. If they do, it might be ten years or more. They just don’t have enough spacers to man the ships. The Martian population is roughly eighty million. The WestHem population is on the order of four-and-a-half billion. The numbers just aren’t there.”

“What about their plans to refine their own hydrogen?” demanded Gottlieb.

“Again, it might not happen for a decade. They certainly won’t do anything like that before they finish with WestHem. They probably won’t want to put a fueling station around Jupiter, either. That would be considered very provocative, both by WestHem and by us. What does that leave them? Saturn or Neptune? That is a very long-term investment. It might take them decades, if they try it at all. Certainly, we are seeing nothing in their pronouncements about doing something like that.”

“So what! Their pronouncements mean nothing! They are probably lying!” protested Gottlieb.

Dortsheer stepped forward. “I can answer that. Thank you, Brigadier.” She waited for Bullstrode to sit down before replying to Gottlieb. “Councilperson Gottlieb, I gather you’ve never met or dealt with Martians.”

“Of course not! They’re vermin, ghetto dwellers, scum!”

“Indeed, they are, all of that and more. I despair every time I have to deal with them. They are crude and rude, and I wouldn’t want children to even meet them. However, and this is very important, they are incredibly straightforward. If they tell you they will do something, then they plan to do it. If they say they aren’t going to do something, then they won’t. They may tell you in the most impossibly crude and disgusting way, but you can believe what they tell you. Every time we have asked them their plans, they have only said they want WestHem and EastHem to leave them alone. I believe them. Everything Brigadier Bullstrode reports says that it would be foolish for us to attack them in any way. Let’s trust our military and not attack them.”

It was Billings who ended the meeting. “Thank you, General DeGrasse, Brigadier Bullstrode. Since we don’t have any such plans, I see no reason to change our strategic posture at this time. I do think, however, that we should redouble our efforts to infiltrate the Martian military and political structure with agents.”

“Understood, sir,” both men responded.

Billings was smiling as he closed out the meeting. Not only was EastHem doing well and WestHem doing poorly, but he also had more than sufficient time to enjoy an afternoon with his mistress before heading home to his wife and children.

Chapter 3 - Espionage

New Pentagon, Military Headquarters

Denver, WestHem

Monday, October 10, 2146

“Colonel Whitestone, have you developed a plan to defeat the Martian terrorists yet? And after them, EastHem?” asked General Morgan, smiling with the impossible request.

“Yes, sir, of course. After that we will use the combined strength of our military and naval forces to defeat the Saucer Men from Alpha Centauri.”

Saucer Men was an extremely popular WestHem vid show in which a California-class superdreadnought, with a full crew and wings of fighters and attack craft, was sucked through a space-time vortex to a time twenty-thousand years before. Once there they had to both figure out how they got there and how to get back, as well as defend Earth and defeat an alien invasion by the Saucer Men from Alpha Centauri.

“Excellent! I’ll report the good news to the Executive Council tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir. The difficult we do immediately, the impossible we do tomorrow.”

“And defeating the Martian terrorists?”

“Ask me tomorrow, sir.”

General Morgan snorted out a laugh and sat down in a chair across from Whitestone’s desk. “So, what do you really plan to do about this disaster?”

Whitestone gave an exasperated sigh and shrugged. “There’s two parts to that question, sir. First, I can easily develop a plan to destroy Mars. The problem will be to get the Executive Council to sign off on it. We just need to update the original plan and utilize it.” That earned him a noncommittal grunt. “More important, we need to generate intelligence on our enemy. The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.”

That earned another grunt. “Washington. You forgot the remainder of the quote. All that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon secrecy, success depends in most enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue. Your average politician or military officer would need to look him up on the Internet to learn about him. They would also need to learn the meaning of secrecy.”

“I majored in history, sir, not military science,” Whitestone replied.

“And now we know why you’re a colonel and not a general,” answered Morgan.

“A colonel alive in Denver and not dead in the Jutfield Gap.”

Morgan shrugged. “So, what do we need to do for intelligence?”

“We need to insert spies into Martian society. We are still accessing the information from MarsGroup but we no longer have technical details from the satellite network. This is going to be very difficult.”

“How so?”

“First, how do I insert a spy into Martian society? This is a society of what we consider scum. They call themselves vermin, the name given them by over a century of WestHem Earthlings. Let’s say I find a spy who can fit in perfectly. Now I have to get him there. This isn’t where I can have a submarine surface off the coast of Siberia and send somebody ashore. This is a different planet! I can’t send a stealth ship there and then parachute somebody in. I’ll need to first insert them into EastHem and hope they can finagle their way onto a return trip on a freighter, so they can then find a way to sneak down to the surface and hide on Mars. Finally, if all that works out and our spy works his way into the Martian military and becomes their Chief of Staff, how does he get the information back to us? Subvert somebody at MarsGroup and take over a broadcast? Maybe he can smuggle out a thumb drive in a can of relabeled AgriCorp peas. Or maybe he can build an interplanetary radio so that he can figure out a way to go outside in a stolen biosuit and send us the information back directly.”

“Well, since it is going to take some time to sort things out, you can get your staff to work out the details. Give them the assignment. We have sources in EastHem, right?”

“Of course.”

“Start working on them. I can guarantee they are trying to figure out how to get intelligence back, too.” Whitestone raised an eyebrow and Morgan added, “If the Martians can kick our asses, then EastHem wants to figure out how to kick our asses.”

***

EastHem Military Intelligence Office

New Rome, EastHem

Monday, October 10, 2146

Brigadier Bullstrode returned to EastHem Military Intelligence in New Rome. For security reasons, the EastHem military located their intelligence operation away from the three co-capitals of London, Paris, and Berlin. Those capitals had the highest percentage of spies per capita on the planet. It was better to stay far, far away.

As soon as he arrived in his office, Bullstrode called his staff together. His staff consisted of a small group of colonels and senior majors, all of whom had been undercover in WestHem at one time or another. Only one of them, however, had any experience with Mars or Martians. Lieutenant Colonel Laurel Smith had been assigned as a cultural attaché at the EastHem consulate in New Pittsburgh. Since the Martians had zero interest in EastHem culture, just as they had no interest in WestHem culture, the culture section of the consulate was where EastHem intelligence was stashed.

Bullstrode looked at Smith and smiled. “So, Laurel, you’ve worked on Mars. Just how hard is it going to be to set up a functioning intelligence network there?”

She shrugged and smiled back. “It will be…different. I am sure that it will be easier now than when WestHem ran the place. We were limited to only a handful of people in the consulate and FLEB agents would tail us anytime we left the consulate. Surveillance was so close that you could forget trying dead drops and brush passes. As for digital transfer of information, it was always questionable whether WestHem was reading the mail or not. There were times when they figured out what was being sent to us and they would react immediately. Other times we never heard a peep, but was that because they didn’t know or care what we were doing or because they didn’t break that particular code? It was their home ground after all, and they tended to act like a bull in a China shop.” The FLEB was the Federal Law Enforcement Bureau, WestHem’s premier law enforcement agency.

“Was it hard to set up a network of locals?” asked Colonel Pierre Dupont, a specialist in computer-based espionage.

“It was ridiculously easy. You remember learning about MICE, right? Money, ideology, compromise, and ego? You could close your eyes and just point at any warm body outside an office building and hit somebody you could turn in a heartbeat. Money? Even the employed Martians were kept at low pay levels by their Earthling bosses. Ideology? Trust me, none of them believed any of the crap that WestHem was shoveling. Compromise? Everything is illegal, so it was easy to find something they were guilty of. And ego? There wasn’t a one who didn’t think they were smarter than the assholes dumped on them by Denver and the WestHem corporations. The problem was that anybody we talked to was going to be immediately arrested and questioned. You go to lunch at a local place, five minutes after you left, it would be shut down and everybody working there would be down at FLEB headquarters being questioned. You buy flowers for your girlfriend; the florist shop gets taken apart as they look for bugs.”

“Merde!” he muttered.

“It’s more than that. The only people worth talking to were the people with jobs. They were the only ones with access to anything worth knowing. The vast majority of Martians, however, are unemployed. They live in ghettos and receive nothing more than basic foodstuffs, intoxicants, and Internet, and their main employment is stealing. They steal from WestHem, they steal from the corporations, and they steal from each other.”

“And now?” asked Bullstrode. “Your best guess since the Revolution.”

Smith shook her head and held her hands up in a questionable motion. “I just don’t know. This is unlike any revolutionary movement we’ve ever run across. We have plenty of them in Africa, but those we can figure out a way to compromise the leadership and end the problem. My best guess is that we’ll be able to do something, but maybe not right away. I see two approaches. First is through the new embassy.” Following the Revolution and the EastHem recognition of the new Martian government, the former EastHem Consulate in WestHem territory was upgraded to an Embassy to an independent nation.

“I would assume that the Martians will be following our officers as they attempt to develop contacts, much like WestHem did.”. commented Bullstrode.

“Yes, sir, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We won’t know if they are any good until we try. Still, that’s why I say it’s only one approach. The second approach is through inserting agents into Martian society. We should be able to find agents and send them to Mars on return flights of the bulk food freighters. Once there they can be integrated into Martian society, perhaps as new immigrants. If they are good enough, they might be able to impersonate Martian citizens.”

“All right. That will be sufficient for now. Let’s call it quits for the moment. Lieutenant Colonel, please stay. Thank you.” Everybody in the room stood and came to attention, and then silently left the room. Lieutenant Colonel Smith, however, stayed at attention. Once the others left, Bullstrode said, “As you were.”

Smith relaxed and said, “Yes, sir.”

Bullstrode sat down and pointed towards a chair for Smith. “Laurel, how long before you can find me some answers on inserting agents into Mars?”

“I can probably figure something out by next week, sir. As for actual insertion, I won’t know until we try it.”

He nodded and considered the situation before reaching into his desk. He pulled out a small metal case and pushed it across his desk. She opened the case and found the three gold diamonds of a full colonel. She looked up at him and he said, “You’ll need the rank to get the job done. You’re in charge of our new intelligence unit. We need human intelligence from Mars, as much as we can get, as fast as we can get it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Bullstrode stood and held out his hand. “You’ve earned it, Colonel. Let me know your plans and what I need to do to help.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Smith came to attention and left the office.

***

Martian Planetary Guard Headquarters

New Pittsburgh, Mars

Tuesday, October 11, 2146

Colonel Marcus Slackass, Director of Planetary Intelligence, returned to his office in the newly created Martian Planetary Guard Intelligence Office. His secretary and lover, Genevieve Vermin, was waiting for him. “Have fun?” she asked.

“Every day I get the opportunity to defend our great planet is a day of pleasure,” he replied.

“That bad?”

Marcus sighed and shrugged. “It is what it is.”

She smiled and cupped her substantial breasts through her white MPG t-shirt. “Want me to take your mind off your troubles for a while?”

Marcus grinned at her. “Not during work hours. At 1800 I expect you naked and on your knees, but not a minute before then.”

She pouted theatrically and sat down across from him. The difference between the two was profound. Marcus Slackass was a member of the Martian Planetary Guard since the day it was founded. General Jackson had asked him and a half dozen other Martian-born officers in the WestHem Marines to resign their positions with the Marines and form the MPG. Fortunately, he obtained a position with Shilling Munitions, since only employed Martians were allowed to join the MPG. WestHem was not going to allow unemployed ghetto-dwelling vermin access to weaponry.

Genevieve ‘Jenny’ Vermin had been one of those unemployed ghetto-dwelling vermin at that time. In 2131 she had been six years old, a fourth-generation ghetto child in Libby, just entering what passed for public schools in the Martian ghettos. Ghetto dwellers had been called vermin for so long that at some point in the past her family name became Vermin. She managed to get through enough school so that she could read and write but no more than that. She didn’t need to do more than that to be able to operate a personal computer; there were no jobs for vermin in WestHem corporations.

All that changed for them following the Revolution. After Laura Whiting’s speech on May 26, 2146, she had voted for independence, along with over ninety percent of her fellow Martians. The day after that she went to MPG headquarters in Libby and asked for a job. They didn’t have jobs available, but her name was taken and a few days later she was selected for additional schooling. She was still in school during the war, but as soon as she could free up some time, she returned to the MPG and asked for a job; this time she was hired. It was the first legitimate non-criminal job in four generations of her family.

Marcus met Jenny shortly after taking the post-war position of Director of Planetary Intelligence. Unlike his fellow WestHem officers that then-Captain Jackson recruited, Marcus Slackass had not been a troop commander. He had been a staff officer, probably the most organized officer Jackson had ever met. Prior to the war, Slackass had held a variety of staff positions handling logistics and intelligence. During the war he had been an aide to General Zoloft in Eden, at one point taking command of an armored regiment after a lucky artillery shell took out the colonel commanding the regiment along with his executive officer and immediate staff. Still, he was more comfortable in a staff intelligence position.

Jenny Vermin was selected for him as his secretary and assistant because she had the highest test scores of all the new hires from the vermin who joined the MPG following the war. Under any sort of decent school system, she would have graduated with honors at the collegiate level. Under the WestHem system, Martian vermin weren’t qualified to clean the hallways of a college. Within days of her beginning to work for him, he ordered that she spend half her day attending school. She was too smart to be wasted as a secretary. She was also extraordinarily beautiful and was immediately attracted to the handsome and powerful MPG officer. She became his secretary during the day and his lover during the night.

It was still daylight hours. He sat down behind his desk and said, “I need to see the staff as soon as possible. If they aren’t available, have them contact me by video.”

“Yes, sir. I believe they are all here in New Pittsburgh, but I’ll check on it.”

“Very good.”

“And tonight?” She cupped her breasts and jiggled them at him again.

Slackass laughed and motioned her out of the room.

Half an hour later, Slackass and his secretary entered a conference room near his office. Five officers, all men, were waiting for them. WestHem doctrine did not allow women officers in senior roles; MPG doctrine did not have any such restriction, but there just weren’t very many junior or mid-level female officers with enough experience to promote. All of them were wearing the standard MPG uniform of white t-shirt, red shorts, and white canvas shoes. In the climate-controlled conditions of Martian cities nothing more was needed. Nobody owned anything other than shorts and t-shirts. The gaudy dress uniforms of WestHem and EastHem were laughed at by Martian soldiers.

“Gentlemen…and lady…we have new marching orders from General Jackson.” That comment earned quite a few chuckles around the table. Calling people gentlemen and ladies was a decidedly WestHem thing. “MPG Intelligence is being tasked with figuring out what WestHem is going to do about us, what we are going to do about WestHem, what EastHem is going to do about what WestHem is going to do, what we are going to do about what EastHem is going to do about what WestHem is going to do-…At some point I am going to have a very bad headache.”

“I ran across a phrase in an old mystery novel about spies,” said Astor ‘Ass’ Blaster, Slackass’ deputy. “They called it the wilderness of mirrors. No matter where you looked, all you saw were reflections and reflections of reflections. If you worked at it long enough, you’d go crazy.”

“As if I wasn’t crazy enough already. Alright, let’s break this down into manageable pieces. Anybody here ever been to Earth? Besides me, I mean.” Slackass had done a tour in Argentina as a WestHem second lieutenant. After visiting Earth, he considered an Eden ghetto to be a vacation spot. All he got back were blank looks. He turned to the man on his right. “Harry, start figuring out how we can insert agents on WestHem. How do we do it? Who do we send? What makes it work?” Harry Lloyd nodded back.

Slackass turned to the next man. “Julie, what is WestHem going to do about us?”

Julian ‘Julie’ Flood was gay, which is what earned him his nickname and got him arrested and kicked out of the Marines. He was also very good at the business of divining intentions from limited intelligence. “You mean, their stated intention of returning us to the fold of WestHem civilization and hanging all of us in the process?” That earned him a few chuckles.

“Yeah, but we need to know how they plan to do it and when.”

“Step One is to crank up the Internet and start watching InfoGroup. As soon as the Marines know what they are going to do, they’ll tell InfoGroup, who will tell the entire planet.”

“I am hoping for a little more than Marine press conferences.”

“Got it, boss.”

Slackass turned to the left. “Morey, you were sleeping with that EastHem agent, weren’t you?”

“She was trying to turn me. She had intelligence techniques you would not believe!” Morey Weinstein replied.

Jenny snorted out a laugh at that and the others rolled their eyes.

Marcus smiled. “You are the obvious candidate to return the favor. Not only do you get to fuck her back, but you also get to fuck all of them. We need to know what they are up to, both with us and with WestHem. They are currently an ally of sorts, but that could change in a heartbeat.”

Weinstein nodded, then looked over at Harry Lloyd. “You are going to insert agents into WestHem? Your best method would be to send them via EastHem. We need to figure out a route from here to there.” Harry grunted an assent.

Slackass turned to the man in the center, Joe Ducksass. “Joe, you’re on counterintel. This place must be crawling with spies! WestHem, EastHem, who knows what else! Find them so we can figure out what to do about them. How are they getting their intel back home?”

“Even better, how do we turn them and give them bad intel to send back home?” commented Ass Blaster.

“Now that really is the wilderness of mirrors,” commented Jenny. Even though the meeting was being recorded, she was taking notes with a pen on a pad of paper. Old school, she called it. Blaster gave her a wry smile and nodded. “Did we have any spies in WestHem or EastHem?” she asked.

The others all grimaced at the question. Morey answered for the group. “Not specifically, but we did have civilians, normal people doing normal jobs for AgriCorp and other companies importing products from Mars to WestHem. We often heard from them routinely when they sent greetings to family members and such. You know, how’s Aunt Martha, what are the kids doing, we’re going to be ordering up some additional steel, so my commission is going to be better, that sort of thing.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were arrested and killed, all of them.”

“All of them?”

Slackass replied, “All of them, men, women, and children. Almost forty-five thousand Martian citizens were taken into custody, summarily convicted without benefit of trial, and imprisoned. Most died immediately and the rest are dying slowly. Children, too, even babies.”

“Oh, shit! And EastHem?”

“Not a factor. We didn’t have spies, just innocent civilians who were WestHem citizens. While I am sure that some Martians were and are living in EastHem, I doubt it was more than a handful. No, they just killed every Martian they could lay their hands on. Same in the Navy. Most Martians in the military served in the WestHem Navy. About eight percent of the Navy enlisted ranks were Martian. Most of them went out an airlock, usually still breathing.”

Jenny covered her mouth and ran from the room. The men remaining all looked at each other and shook their heads. “I can’t blame her for being sick. I tossed my cookies, too, when I heard about it,” said Morey. “A cousin of mine was killed as a terrorist spy. The FLEB simply walked up to him on the street and shot him. They showed it on the Internet. It was considered an example of WestHem law enforcement at its finest. He was a fucking AgriCorp clerk, for fuck’s sake!”

“Listen, you guys get started. I’ll calm Jenny down when she gets out of the bathroom. I don’t know what the timetable on the WestHem return is, but we know they are going to return. Ass, you coordinate this. I am not expecting a miracle, just a plan for a miracle. Let’s meet again on this, next Tuesday.” He stood and the meeting ended.

Jenny returned as the officers left. She looked pale and her eyes were red from crying. Slackass closed the door and led her to his couch. He sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulder, hugging her to his chest. She looked up at him and said, “I thought you said nothing until after 1800.”

He hugged her a second time. “This isn’t that. This is just a cuddle. We all need a cuddle every once in a while.”

“Even big tough colonels?”

“Especially big tough colonels.” She looked up at him and realized he was no longer looking at her. He was staring at the far wall, and beyond. “I was assigned as G2, military intelligence, to Colonel Walleye of the 167^th Armored Infantry at the Red Line at Eden. We had just gotten orders to hold the line, but Walleye’s deputies were arguing about withdrawing. He ordered me to step out so they could discuss it. Five seconds after I leave a shell hits a viewing port, million to one shot, kills everybody in the room. I just became the senior officer in the regiment. I gave the order to hold the line, no withdrawal. I lost almost a hundred men that day, and another two hundred casualties, but we held the line and won the battle.” Slackass shook himself and looked down at her. “After the battle, I had to help clean out the trenches, ended up puking in my helmet. Yeah, even big tough colonels get the shakes.”

Jenny kissed his cheek and then began tugging on the waistband of his shorts. “It must be 1800 somewhere.”

Chapter 4 - Spies

EastHem Military Intelligence Office

New Rome, EastHem

Monday, October 17, 2146

Colonel Smith was ushered into Brigadier Bullstrode’s office shortly after lunch. She came to attention, and he nodded in return. “As you were, Colonel. Please be seated.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s been a week since you were assigned the job of getting agents into Mars. Anything for me yet?”

Smith nodded. “Yes, sir.” She held up a thumb drive and Bullstrode pointed towards the monitor across from them. She stood and inserted the drive and grabbed the remote. “Thank you.”

The colonel called up her presentation and began. “There are several aspects of obtaining agents on Mars that we need to consider. From what I have been learning, there is not going to be a single technique that will give us perfect intelligence. Instead, we will need several techniques which will generate imperfect information which we will then need to combine to form a picture of what is happening. It might, however, be a fuzzy picture.”

“Understood, Colonel,” commented the brigadier.

“Yes, sir. Unlike the vids, intelligence never gives us a crystal-clear look at the enemy. In fact, some of our efforts won’t be able to generate positive information, but only negative information.”

“How so?”

“Take the recent war. WestHem information services put detailed operational plans out on the Internet. Where they would land, what their military objectives were, times and dates…they even posted tables of organization and equipment and orders of march! Insanity! Martian forces, on the other hand gave out nothing, not a word. However, and this is important, they also stated that they would only give MarsGroup honest information. If they didn’t give out the information, or didn’t respond to requests, it was for operational reasons. So, if they don’t answer a question about a topic, don’t be surprised. If, however, they do answer a question, then they are probably being honest. It’s a rather novel approach to information warfare.”

Bullstrode gave her an odd look. “Honesty and discretion are novel?”

“It was a pre-WestHem politician who once said that the first casualty of war is the truth.” Bullstrode grunted and motioned for her to continue. Smith said, “So, we have one group of analysts collecting information on what the Martians say they are going to do and what they aren’t saying at all. If nothing else, it will give us something to compare against other intelligence. Another aspect of this effort will be our conventional intelligence efforts in WestHem. Our current WestHem officers and analysts will be probed for what they are developing on Mars. We might find out something useful second hand, as it were. We combine that with our Martian intelligence, and we might find a nugget or two.”

“Okay.”

“A third approach is a very direct approach. We have an embassy there now and an ambassador. There is no reason not to ask the Martians directly. From everything I am hearing from our people, they might just tell us to go pound sand, but they probably won’t lie to us. It doesn’t seem to be their way. These people aren’t WestHem, and they don’t lie for a living. Person-to-person contacts might be very useful,” she said.

Bullstrode scratched his head for a moment. The very concept of asking a WestHem politician for information was almost beyond imagining. “What else?”

“We will still need to insert agents. We can assume they will be tracking our embassy personnel. Fine, but they don’t have infinite resources. We start bringing in additional agents, that stretches them. We have a lot more resources than the Martians have. We start bringing in immigrants, we can flood them.”

“Have you looked into that? How are we going to send them emigrants? And will they take them?”

Smith gave a wry look and shrugged. “Sir, I suspect you are going to have to talk to the Foreign Office about that one. A brigadier general in charge of EastHem intelligence and with the blessing of the Chief of Staff’s office is going to get a lot more assistance than a brand-new colonel.”

“Huh. Figure out who I need to talk to and the questions I need to ask, and then you be in the background.” Smith nodded and smiled. “Did you get any sort of feel for how we would send them people?”

“Not really. The people I talked to all said it would be easy to do. The bulk freighters could easily transport thousands of people on the return trip. The Martians have not indicated they want any technology transfers or equipment. They want to limit trade to what was already negotiated, food for hydrogen. Otherwise, if they want it, they’ll make it themselves or do without.”

Bullstrode gave Colonel Smith a curious look. “Is that realistic? They don’t want anything else?”

Smith replied, “It’s in line with their public statements about WestHem. They don’t want anything that will tie them to the WestHem or EastHem monetary systems. They don’t want anything that will involve any Earth financial system. Their Laura Whiting imposed on them a very strange communist system of finance before she died. Our economists are going crazy trying to sort it out.”

“Do you think they’ll accept people?” he asked.

“Sir…I have no idea. This is just totally new to us. A year ago, the answer would have been no, but that was when we were dealing with WestHem. They didn’t allow anybody from EastHem to come in, like we prohibit anybody from WestHem into the Lunar colonies. We’re going to have to ask.”

“Add it to the list of questions when we talk to the Foreign Office.”

“Yes, sir. Also, we need to consider who we are sending up there. If we bury an agent or two in a thousand people, who are the rest of the thousand? Do we ask for volunteer emigrants? Send them some criminals? Maybe get rid of any malcontents we have, give them a one-way ticket out of EastHem? That’s a question above what a colonel normally answers.”

“Above what a brigadier answers, too. Okay, start writing up a list of questions to ask. What’s next?”

Smith flipped to a new set of slides. “I asked some of our technical people how we get messages back and forth. I was worried we would need to send somebody outside in a biosuit with a radio system. They almost laughed me out of the office. It seems like I was overly nervous. They assured me that there is more than sufficient message traffic back and forth that we can bury stuff in. What with us talking about all that AgriCorp foodstuff, there has been a huge increase in messaging back and forth between Mars and EastHem. They assured me that it would be very easy to bury encrypted messaging in the traffic. We wouldn’t even need to send a thumb drive or microchip with an agent in case they get searched. We would simply need to make the necessary software available on the EastHem nets. An agent could download it and then decrypt it with a passcode that they would memorize ahead of time.”

Bullstrode nodded. “That sounds good. Everybody on Mars has access to a personal computer. They can’t monitor everything all the time.”

“No, sir. They even demonstrated it for me.” Smith put a slide on the screen showing the process.

“All right. Start figuring out what we have to ask the Foreign Office. Then ask every department head to develop the information they will want to discover about the Martians. Assuming we can get agents in, we are going to need to know what specialties the agents will need to be trained in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll find out who I have to talk to in the Foreign Office. I’ll let you know. Thank you.”

“Yes, sir.” Colonel Smith stood up, dismissed. She came to attention and left the office.

***

WestHem Military Intelligence Headquarters

Denver, WestHem

Thursday, October 20, 2146

Colonel Whitestone contacted General Morgan mid-morning. “I have some more information for you, General.”

Morgan looked at his planning system. “Can you do this by vid, or does this need to be face-to-face? I am booked until dinner and beyond.”

“I can do it right now, sir.”

“Very good.”

Whitestone threw a series of slides on the screen. Morgan glanced at them and then at the side screen with Whitestone talking. He nodded receipt and said, “Tell me what I am looking at, Colonel.”

“We’ve been able to sort out some of the questions regarding getting intelligence officers into Mars. First, our technical people say that it should be much easier than I imagined getting information back from Mars. We can either tap into EastHem message traffic or fake our own EastHem traffic and insert it into the Martian Internet. Our encryption systems will be more than adequate to protect the traffic from either Martian or EastHem attempts at counterintelligence.” Whitestone tapped a few of the slides in explanation.

“Very good, Colonel. Next?”

“I just received word late last night that EastHem is going to be discussing immigration with the Martian terrorists.” There was always the chance that the WestHem Internal Protection Service was monitoring their conversation. IPS had the highest security clearance in WestHem and were charged with finding and prosecuting any officer or citizen not sufficiently dedicated to whatever was the political fad being pushed by the Executive Council. They were the most hated branch of the government - and the most feared. Whether the Martians were actually terrorists or communists was something that Oliver Whitestone had no opinion on, but he knew he needed to refer to them as that if he didn’t want to end up in a ghetto or the Butte prison.

Morgan’s image raised an eyebrow. “Continue.”

“We have several agents in EastHem who are reporting that their Foreign Office will be contacting the Martian Embassy about opening immigration channels between EastHem and Mars. If they can do this, then the possibility exists for us to insert officers and agents into the immigrant stream.”

“Doing half our work for us? Why would Mars want to allow EastHem to send people to Mars? Who would want to go, anyway? The entire planet is a giant ghetto!” argued Morgan.

“I don’t know, General. I would simply point out that if they do set up an immigration system of some sort, then they would also be able to send agents back and forth,” commented Whitestone.

“The same could be said for the Martians. How hard would it be for the Martians to send agents to Earth? Even if the EastHem intelligence service was following them closely, how hard would it be for an agent to break surveillance and disappear in a nation of five-and-a-half billion? I don’t care if the Martians are spying on EastHem, but we don’t want them spying on us.”

“Not to take this lightly, sir, but we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Any system that will allow us to send agents one way can be used to send agents the other way.”

“Well, if EastHem allows people transfers as well as food, we’ll just have to get counterintel cranked up. You should probably give them a heads-up.”

“Yes, sir.” Whitestone internally winced as he assented to his boss’ order. WestHem Counterintelligence was incredibly chauvinistic and unsophisticated. As far as they were concerned, WestHem technology and doctrine was the finest in the Solar System, and any enemy attempts to penetrate WestHem military or political planning was doomed to failure before they even got started. A string of WestHem counterintelligence failures had not dented this belief. It had gotten so bad that WestHem Intelligence had a very informal counterintel unit of its own.

“Stay on this. If the Martians are silly enough to let EastHem send people back and forth, we’ll want to take advantage of it. Begin selecting officers. We can use the standard techniques to insert agents into EastHem and then move them on from there.”

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

That was the end of the conversation. Morgan broke down the connection and returned to a report from the Navy concerning emergency ship construction.

***

Martian Planetary Guard Headquarters

New Pittsburgh, Mars

Wednesday, November 9, 2146

“So, what’s the word from the Governor’s office?” asked Morey Weinstein. It was the weekly staff meeting and the EastHem specialist knew that his boss dealt with the Governor’s office regarding the EastHem proposal to send colonists from EastHem to Mars on the return trips by the bulk freighters.

“Why would we let them do that?” asked Ducksass, the counterintelligence specialist. “Every one of them will be an EastHem spy!”

“That was pointed out to the Governor and the rest of the Planetary Security apparatus. The Earth Relations people acknowledge the problem but pointed out that being polite might not be a bad thing for a new nation to attempt. It was also pointed out that not everyone would be a spy; they simply don’t have that many,” replied Slackass.

“That’s not being very helpful, Marcus.”

“Well, we have two months to figure out what to do. Three, actually, since that is the minimum time for a freighter to be loaded with people and be launched back here. The Secretary for EastHem Relations and the Governor have given a limited approval to allow EastHem visitors, tourists, and immigration.”

“Shit!” was the exclamation from most of the room.

‘Ass’ Blaster shrugged and said, “We are going to need something more helpful than ‘Shit!’ We are being tasked with making this work.” As Slackass’ deputy, he had been with Slackass during the meetings with the Planetary Security office.

“What are the parameters they settled on?” asked Weinstein. “Those freighters are so huge they could transport a hundred thousand people if properly equipped.”

Slackass answered, glancing at his video screen for details. “One thousand a month, maximum. No forced emigration. No prisoner releases. We have the right to send back anybody we find objectionable.”

“We have any names?”

Slackass shrugged. “Theoretically, yes, but that’s the best I can say. Supposedly they will give us a list of names before they board, but how honest it will be is anybody’s guess. Even if ninety-nine percent of the people being sent are who they say they are, that leaves ten people every month who might be spies.”

“Or spymasters,” added Lloyd.

“Or spymasters,” agreed Slackass.

“Theoretically, we can send a thousand people a month back to Earth,” said Ducksass. “For the sake of fairness.”

“Right! Because so many former WestHem citizens are going to want to leave the only place they know so they can live in an EastHem ghetto,” said Flood.

That simply got a wry shrug from Slackass.

Blaster said, “I can see some of them being clerk and facilitator types to coordinate food shipments. We had them in WestHem, too. It might not be a bad deal for some people. They will get paid by us in Martian Credits, which are only usable on Mars, and EastHem can pay their living expenses on Earth in EastHem currency. When they come home, they will have a pile of credits they can spend here. Meanwhile, we slip a few agents of our own in the mix. They can slip off the grid and infiltrate either EastHem or WestHem.”

“So, we need to start planning. Harry, you find a few agents we can send back. Add them to any corporate types who need to go. Morey, find out who EastHem is planning to send. Julie, figure out ways to get them from EastHem to WestHem. Keep in mind that some of the agents we send will need to spy on EastHem, not just WestHem. Joe, figure out how we are going to send information back and forth, and how we are going to track whoever EastHem sends us.”

“Got it!” came back from around the room. Slackass and Vermin stood and left the room. Everybody else just rolled their eyes. What in the world had Mars gotten them into now?

***

Butte Military Detention Center

Butte, Montana, WestHem

Wednesday, November 16, 2146

“My name is Colonel Oliver Whitestone. I am here to see Major Norman Wilde.” Wilde was in the office of the Warden, Colonel Phillip Taylor. Taylor was the nephew of General Turner, the WestHem Chief of Staff, and was married to a granddaughter of Henry Tillerman, the Chairperson of the WestHem Executive Council. Of course, that was the new Chairperson. Following the catastrophe that was Martian Hammer, the entire Executive Council was replaced with newer representatives selected by their corporate sponsors.

From what Whitestone had seen so far, Colonel Taylor was quite possibly the stupidest officer in the entire WestHem military. The Butte military prison was probably the safest place to put him and the location he could do the least damage. He was willfully ignorant, vain, stupid, and amazingly arrogant, a wonderful combination which might well guarantee stars in his future. He quietly sighed at the necessity of dealing with Taylor.

“There is no Major Norman Wilde here.”

Whitestone raised an eyebrow. “Major Norman Wilde, sentenced to life at hard labor.” He glanced at the paperwork in his hand and read off the Major’s identification number and date of incarceration. “Is he missing? Dead?”

“We have a Private by that name. He lost his military rank on conviction,” Taylor replied snottily.

“Colonel, I don’t care if you are calling him the Queen of the May. Is he here?”

“I don’t like your attitude, Colonel.”

“I don’t much care, Colonel. I have here an order to visit with Major Wilde and remove him from custody at my discretion,” said Whitestone.

“You can leave now, Colonel, and when you return, you can come back with a better attitude.” Taylor hit a buzzer on his desk, and a large sergeant came in. “Remove him.”

Shaking his head, Whitestone stood and followed the sergeant out of the office. He noticed the nametag of the sergeant said, ‘Jones’. Once outside, the colonel asked, “Mind if I make a phone call first? Before my summary execution?”

Sergeant Jones smiled and nodded. He pointed towards a chair the colonel could sit in and then sat down behind a desk. He only heard half the conversation. “General Morgan…Oliver Whitestone here…Yes, sir, I’m there now…No, sir, I am getting trouble from the Warden…Yes sir, that’s the one…It seems I am not sufficiently in awe of his office or pedigree…Would you please? Thank you.”

The sergeant asked, “Is there to be a delay in your leaving, Colonel?”

“I think that extremely likely, Sergeant Jones.”

Four minutes and thirty-two seconds after leaving Colonel Taylor’s office, the phone on the sergeant’s desk buzzed. He picked it up, listened for a few seconds, and then hung up. He stood and motioned for Whitestone to stand as well. “The Colonel will see you again.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

The sergeant opened the door to Taylor’s office and ushered Whitestone inside. Taylor was red-faced and furious but was holding his tongue. “Sergeant Jones, you will escort Colonel Whitestone to see the prisoner he wants to see and follow his instructions to the letter. Afterwards, you are to report to me the actions taken.”

The sergeant came to attention and said, “Yes, sir,” and escorted Whitestone back out of the office. Once outside, he quietly asked, “Just who did you call?”

“My boss, the Adjutant to the Chief of Staff, who called the Chief of Staff, who called his nephew, the Colonel.”

“Just curious, sir. Thank you. Now, who did you want to see?”

Fifteen minutes later, Colonel Whitestone was in a small interview room. Former Major Norman Wilde was brought in wearing a dirty prison jumpsuit made of a practically indestructible and fireproof material. He was dirty and smelled and unshaven and had obviously lost weight. He was wearing a shackle belt with wrist and ankle shackles, and an ankle monitor.

“Major Wilde, my name is Colonel Oliver Whitestone. I am part of WestHem Military Intelligence, and I am here to speak to you.”

“Well, the only intelligence I can provide currently is that Butte sucks. Did you need a general description or a detailed breakdown?”

“Major, can we assume, for the sake of argument, that I did not fly here from Denver for the chance to hear bad improv comedy and that I might have a reason to talk to you?”

Wilde shrugged his shoulders. “Assume away.”

Whitestone gave him a wintry look. “You were the planner behind the different phases and attacks of Martian Hammer, correct? At least, that is what both Generals Wrath and Browning said at their trials. The trials they received the death penalty at.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Then I can also assume that you knew the details and reasons behind the changes in the plans.”

“Obviously.”

“I have a proposition for you. If you would promise to provide me information and assist me in my endeavors, I have a conditional release and return to active duty. We can leave here this afternoon.”

Wilde stared. “A release?”

“Conditional on your continued assistance.”

“Assistance at what?”

Whitestone shook his head. “Not here.”

Wilde nodded. Everything at the prison was recorded. “And if I fail in my assistance?”

“So much of life is unpredictable, Major Wilde.”

Wilde shrugged. “What the hell. It’s not like I have anything more pressing to do.”

“Excellent. Is this your only clothing?”

“Bathing day is Friday. At that time, we are allowed a cold-water shower and can wash our uniforms. This is questionable for some of the inmates since it gets very cold in Butte in the winter. Friday is also the day a doctor is made available to tend to our medical needs.”

That was a preview of Martian Justice. To read the rest purchase the book.

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