Martian Balance
Copyright© 2025 by rlfj
Chapter 1: Status Quo
Executive Council Meeting Room A
Denver, WestHem
Wednesday, May 7, 2234
Callum McBride was Chairman of the WestHem Executive Council, the ruling body of the Democratic Alliance of the Western Hemisphere. A generation prior he would have been the Chairperson, but WestHem was going through one of its periodic anti-political correctness campaigns. In addition to changing titles, military and naval bases had been renamed, and the WestHem Internet had been cleansed of anything that smacked of an anti-male bias.
This was considered highly appropriate, since it was women who had caused the failure of Operation Lemondrop, the high-tech plan to use quantum time travel to reverse the Martian Revolution. When it became obvious that the Martian terrorists and their slave population had managed to discover and counter the project, WestHem counterintelligence had traced the leaks to women working on the project. Several of the women had managed to escape, but others, all of whom had protested their innocence, were captured, tried, and executed. InfoGroup, the powerful WestHem Internet news provider, had argued for public trials, but more sensible minds had fortunately disagreed, arguing that Lemondrop was far too dangerous to even speculate about on vid. Instead, the charges were simply restricted to generic treason, aiding and abetting an enemy, and breaking security protocols. The trials weren’t broadcast, only the final sentences, as the women were executed by hanging in Victory Square.
Victory Square was considered more than a bit hyperbolic. It had been created from Victory Avenue, dedicated to the memory of all the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of WestHem after they defeated the Asiatic Alliance following World War III. That was a legitimate victory; WestHem and EastHem had utterly destroyed the Alliance following a war that killed roughly ten percent of Earth’s population.
What happened next wasn’t so victorious. When the Martian Revolutionary Wars had ended, the New Pentagon, the WestHem military and naval headquarters, was in flaming ruins. What was left was relocated to a pair of Welfare Service buildings on Victory Avenue. Over the next ten years the buildings were joined together and converted to the WestHem Alliance Military Headquarters. Meanwhile, Victory Avenue was changed to a public square dedicated to the amazing victories of WestHem over the Martians. What was never stated in public or on the Internet was that there had never been a victory over the Martians. The WestHem Navy and Marines had invaded Mars three times over a period of nine years. Each invasion had been bigger and better than the last, and all that had been accomplished was the deaths of over one-and-a-quarter million Marines and sailors, and the destruction of over one hundred and thirty warships. For their part, the Martians lost eleven thousand soldiers and sailors in combat, sixty thousand Martians stranded on Earth and in the WestHem military before summary execution, and three ships.
Women had been purged throughout government so they could return to proper and virtuous family lives. Virtue was considered to include additional children. For decades the middle class of WestHem had been declining in numbers. The military and navy only recruited from the middle class; nobody wanted the unemployed vermin in the slums surrounding every major city to have access to weaponry. What they were hoping was that the newly unemployed middle-class women would spend their increased free time by spreading their legs and letting their husbands breed more sons who could be drafted into the Marines and Navy. It wasn’t a notably successful strategy, but InfoGroup and the Department of Education simply lied, and celebrated every extra male birth.
It didn’t really matter to McBride. It had been almost eighty years since the Revolutionary Wars, and there was no institutional memory of the debacle. For that entire time InfoGroup and the WestHem government had been systematically lying to the public about what had happened, saying that while there had been minor casualties, they had allowed the Martian terrorists to retain control of Mars rather than chance the massive civilian casualties among the terrorist’s slaves that would occur during the certainly successful invasions if they had been allowed to continue.
The Executive Council Meeting had gone as planned, which wasn’t a surprise. Executive Council meetings were exquisitely scripted. They were planned weeks in advance, so that InfoGroup and NewsSys, InfoGroup’s smaller rival, could make accurate predictions to the viewers about what was being discussed. It would be rousing and inspiring and totally devoid of anything resembling accurate information. McBride had been recorded quizzing each of his department heads and discussing their incredibly positive responses. The news services would report the information as fact and blissfully boast about the wonders of WestHem’s civilization.
Then it was over. The Press Secretary, a man of no known vestige of honesty or truth, smiled and escorted the reporters and cameramen out of the room, refusing to answer any questions. That left the Chairman with his department heads. He began asking real questions, and got back answers, but he just wasn’t sure if anything they told him was true. The need to lie to the WestHem public had infected every part of WestHem’s government. Regardless, he smiled and nodded at their answers. Nobody was fighting anybody, and he simply needed to keep the lid on the myriad problems until he could retire and live in Aspen Colony in luxury.
The final person he spoke to was Justin Thoroughfare, the Secretary of War. He was the man responsible for the Marines and the Navy. If things got hot with EastHem, he would be responsible for fighting it. In some ways, he was the second most important member of the Council, responsible for protecting the six billion citizens of WestHem.
In reality, McBride considered Thoroughfare a total moron. He was personable and handsome, the vidstar perfect face of WestHem’s defense system. Actually he was nothing more than Ares Alexander’s main lobbyist. Ares Alexander was the conglomerate built from Ares Incorporated, the main builder of WestHem’s naval warships, and Alexander Industries, the primary supplier of WestHem’s Marine weapons. Thoroughfare’s job wasn’t to defend WestHem, it was to make sure that Ares Alexander got everything possible from the WestHem budget, and more than what was possible if he could finagle it. That was his current mission.
“We need to be making some changes in our Order of Battle,” Thoroughfare stated.
“How so?” asked McBride. What did Ares Alexander want now? It had taken them fucking forever to rebuild after the last disastrous war! Only their nuclear arsenal had kept EastHem from rolling over them after Martian Vengeance had destroyed their fleet.
“We are somewhat overextended on manpower and readiness. We have too many older ships. We should be disposing of parts of our ghost fleet. That will free up both manpower and lower our maintenance costs.”
McBride nodded concomitantly. “Specifically?”
“We still have some Owls in stock. We get rid of them, and we can pay for at least two more Rattlers.” Rattlers were the popular name of the Rattlesnake, WestHem’s latest stealth ship. They were quiet and deadly, and every test had indicated they were at least as developed as anything EastHem or Mars had produced.
McBride nodded in understanding, still not agreeing. His primary sponsor was AgriCorp, the agricultural giant that produced and distributed almost all food in WestHem. Before the Revolution, the main government sponsor had been InfoGroup, but following their disastrous leadership during the Revolutionary Wars, they had dropped to a second-tier commercial power. Following the surrender and ceasefire, AgriCorp had taken the prime place in the corporate hierarchy, distributing the food they were receiving from Mars. “And?” he asked.
“We can send them to the scrapyard. They’ve been updated a couple of times, but they aren’t up to the Rattlers’ standard.”
McBride just kept nodding. Thoroughfare might have been telling the truth. He might also have been making shit up. It was all about what Ares Alexander wanted to do with the old ships, and a few ancient stealth ships would not change the balance of power throughout the Solar System.
“The scrapyard?”
Thoroughfare nodded and smiled. “They plan to disassemble them in their yard at Gonzo Three.” Gonzo Three was a combination scrapyard and new construction shipyard for small vessels.
McBride nodded and said, “Send over the paperwork. I can review it and sign off on it by the end of the week.” He was curious how much of the money from the scrapping would go toward new construction and how much would end up in somebody’s pocket, but it wasn’t important. The corporations ran the Solar System, and that was the simple truth. It wasn’t worth the trouble to find out and possibly lose his job.
“I’ll get it to you today.”
Executive Council Chamber
London, EastHem
Monday, May 12, 2234
The mood in the EastHem Executive Council was just as positive and upbeat as the one in Denver. The difference was that they were somewhat more justified in thinking so. EastHem’s last major military action was over a century ago, during the Jupiter War. WestHem had created a colony on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons, along with a gas mine that fed Earth’s need for fusion fuel. EastHem had decided to create their own mine and colony around Callisto and stop paying WestHem for hydrogen. WestHem had disagreed and decided to evict EastHem from what they considered their property. It hadn’t worked out so well for WestHem. They sent an invasion force to Jupiter, which was trashed by EastHem. Meanwhile, EastHem retaliated by bombarding WestHem’s forces and cities on Mars. That was a major factor in the Martian Revolt fifteen years later.
Since then the EastHem Navy had mostly managed to avoid combat though there had been a messy attack on Mars’ Saturn colony. EastHem was run by corporate behemoths the same as WestHem was, and A&C Hydrogen had suborned an EastHem Henry-class stealth ship to attack Saturn and the Rhea gas mine. Instead, they were captured without getting off a single shot and sent back to EastHem; the ship, the Gustavus Adolphus, was destroyed after the capture.
Still, other than routine espionage missions to Mars, EastHem’s navy hadn’t done much at all for the last century. Instead, they had learned from WestHem’s various disasters and adjusted their Order of Battle accordingly. Despite their historical inaction, they considered themselves at least as capable as WestHem and probably as capable as the Martian Navy. They just didn’t have any reason to test their beliefs. It was much easier to simply allow Mars and WestHem to fight and weaken each other.
Amelia Westerhaus was the Chairperson of the Democratic Republic of the Eastern Hemisphere’s Executive Council. As such she headed the normal Monday morning Council meeting. As usual, it was a quiet meeting because EastHem wasn’t at war with anybody other than their own dissidents. They ignored the bluster out of WestHem, occasionally running a missile test to remind them that they had their own strength. As for Mars, EastHem behaved. They had concluded a century before that Mars had significant naval strength, and were probably almost as strong as EastHem, despite their smaller size.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.