Chapter 5: Planning

EastHem Military Intelligence Office

New Rome, EastHem

Thursday, November 17, 2146

“What have we heard from the Foreign Office?” asked Colonel Smith.

Brigadier Bullstrode answered. “The Martians are allowing us to send a thousand voluntary colonists a month. The first ship is returning to Mars in two days with a load of malcontents from Peary and Aristarchus.” Peary City was at the crucial North Lunar Pole, where there were deep deposits of lunar ice. Aristarchus was the second largest EastHem lunar city. Both cities were relatively peaceful and didn’t really have ghettos, but that didn’t mean the residents were completely happy with EastHem rule. Following the Martian Revolution, EastHem had doubled the military force in their lunar cities, to protect them from ‘Martian influence.’ The current batch of ‘voluntary colonists’ wanted independence from both EastHem and the EastHem controlled ‘independent’ Lunar cities. Most of their fellow EastHem citizens considered them to be nutty cranks. Their status as ‘voluntary’ colonists was based on the fact that they were told they had two choices, Mars or an EastHem ghetto in Lagos.

“And they are telling us now?” she asked.

“They didn’t think it was necessary. We’re only Intelligence, so we’re not important. They’re the Foreign Office.” Bullstrode shrugged. “Hey, I only learned this morning. Is there any chance you can work with this?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, not in two days. I can have some agents prepped by next month, but it would take me a couple of days to get somebody to the freighter. They’d stick out like a sore thumb with a group they weren’t trained to join. As soon as Martian intelligence started talking to the other colonists, somebody would tell them they don’t know who this guy is, and he just showed up the day they departed.”

“Yeah, understood.”

“Work up a plan for next month’s departure. I will explain to the Foreign Office that all future shipments of volunteers need to be coordinated with us. They won’t like it, but when we explain it to Councilperson Dortsheer, she will make them behave. She wants to make sure we find out as much as possible about Mars. It’s her ass on the line if somebody screws up.”

“How are we sending people to Mars?” asked Smith.

“Pierre forwarded me the technical plans for the system, and I will forward them to you. Here’s what he sent me.” Bullstrode touched his computer and a bulk freighter appeared on the wall monitor. He zoomed in on one of the massive ship’s internal bays and a dormitory area appeared. It consisted of a series of barracks areas, row upon row of bunk beds, limited bathing facilities, and not much else. Forget about privacy. There were no dining facilities; everybody would be eating military ration packs. Luggage was limited to what you could carry and store under your bunk. Everybody would be stripped naked and given unmarked jumpsuits. If they needed to change clothing, they would get another jumpsuit and the dirty one would be washed at some point. A single petty officer would run things, with assigned help from the passengers.

“They’re going to build these things on every freighter?”

“No, just on a few dozen. The current restrictions are that the Martians will only accept a thousand colonists a month and they have the right to send them back if they don’t like them.” Smith raised an eyebrow at that. “If they are real assholes, for instance. Or if they are immediately discovered to be agents. I was told that the current bunch was informed that if they gave the Martians any grief, the Martians would send them back and the dormitory section of the freighter would be traveling without food, water, or oxygen, so, it would behoove them to behave themselves,” said Bullstrode.

Smith smiled. “A decidedly WestHem approach to things. We in EastHem would never do that.”

Bullstrode nodded. That was for any microphones or video cameras secretly monitoring them. Both officers knew about the Calcutta Evacuation, where shiploads of Muslim separatists were loaded on freighters in the Calcutta harbor, to be taken to Karachi. Over a hundred thousand people were loaded on ships that were then sailed to the middle of the Bay of Bengal, where an EastHem command ship was waiting. That night it traveled from freighter to freighter, where the EastHem crew opened the seacocks and then were removed from the freighter to the command ship. The next morning, the separatist problem was over.

“Well, get your agents prepared. I will have you added to the email list for anything colonist-related. When you see something you can work with, let me know and we’ll slip somebody inside.”

Smith nodded in understanding. “Wait until Mars gets a load of this bunch!”

Westmoreland Military Hospital

Denver, WestHem

Tuesday, November 22, 2146

“I understand you’re well enough to leave,” said Colonel Whitestone. He was leaning against the door to the private ward where his prisoner was secured. Military protocols had to be observed. Regardless of the extraordinary orders issued, the Westmoreland Hospital was still tied to the databases which had Private Norman Wilde listed as a military prisoner, so he was in a secure ward that was kept locked and had an armed Marine guard at the door. They deeply resented that the prisoner was missing the required ankle monitor, shackles, and prison jumpsuit.

Not that Wilde could have done much anyway. After leaving the Butte prison, he had argued Whitestone into taking him to the nearest McD’s franchise for lunch. He had bolted down a Big Mick and drank half a chocolate shake before his body rebelled. He had vomited up everything he had eaten for the last twenty-four hours, then collapsed on the floor while his bowels voided. Whitestone had told him what might happen, so as soon as possible he loaded Wilde in the autoflyer and flew him to the Denver military hospital. They were able to stabilize him and begin feeding him something better than ancient ration packs and McD’s food. Private Wilde was still at least twenty kilos underweight, and Wilde had never been a large man even before his conviction. The odds were that he wouldn’t have survived until the spring.

“So I’m told. I don’t think they like the fact that I’m here. This room is normally used for treating field grade officers, not privates.”

“Think you can be released and not head directly for some junk food outlet at a mall?”

“Colonel, junk food is not sold in WestHem. All foods prepared and served by WestHem corporations are rigorously tested for nutritional balance,” was Wilde’s answer.

“Which was not an answer to my question.”

Wilde shrugged. “I can control my lower impulses. I knew I shouldn’t be doing it even as I was taking that first bite. You know you’re in trouble when a Big Mick looks appealing.”

Whitestone nodded. “Just remember, do that again and I’m sending you back to Butte via butt-kick. If you’re ready, I have your uniform. I had the autodesigner use your measurements from when you were brought here. I don’t know if that means it will be baggy or tight. As you grow back to your proper weight, we’ll get you new uniforms.”

“Thank you.” Wilde got off the bed and went to the closet where Whitestone had hung a plastic uniform bag. He unzipped it and saw that Whitestone had managed to load all his ribbons and commendations on his jacket’s breast pockets. Suddenly his eyes watered; everything he had ever accomplished and been decorated for had been stripped from him following his conviction. He had despaired of ever being recognized as the officer he had once taken pride in being.

Whitestone noticed Wilde’s look. “I’ll be outside. When you are dressed, knock on the door.” So saying, he knocked on the door himself and was let out. Ten minutes later, Wilde knocked on the door and Whitestone opened it for him.

“I look awful in this. I look like a little boy playing dress-up in his father’s uniform.”

Whitestone shrugged and gave a wry smile. “Well, you simply need to eat a balanced diet and work out. You’ll get there. It’s better than staying in Butte, right?”

“I suppose.” He followed Whitestone down the hall. “Now what? Any chance you can find out what happened to my family?”

Colonel Whitestone stopped at that. “Major, this is not going to be easy. You know your wife divorced you, right?”

“Yes. We talked about that at our last meeting before the trial. We both knew I was going to be convicted. She would divorce me and then try to get on with her life. Same with the kids. Why? What happened?”

“It’s not good, Major.” The colonel thought it over a bit and then said, “As part of your public humiliation and shaming, it was decided to have your family humiliated and shamed. Your family was moved into ghetto housing in Aurora. They were placed on the family basic stipend.”

Major White nodded in understanding. That was worse than he had thought would happen. His wife and daughters should have been allowed to live in Denver or move elsewhere. She had a perfectly good teaching degree and could have supported the girls. “And?”

“Later that evening several men went to the apartment and informed your wife that she and your daughters worked for them now. If she wanted to continue living in the apartment, she and your daughters needed to work to pay the tax on the apartment.”

“The tax?”

“It doesn’t matter, Major. The men basically informed your wife that she and your daughters were now their property, and that they were allowed to use their property. Do I have to be more explicit?”

Norman Wilde stood stock still on hearing what had happened. He knew the Executive Council and the corporations were angry about what had happened, but he had thought prison or execution was the limit to what they would do. He could envision it completely. After he died of exposure or overwork, his death would be broadcast on the news channels. The next report would be on the downfall of his family, how his wife and daughters were now drug-addled prostitutes in a ghetto and were dying themselves. It was all a morality play, how failures like Wilde’s destroyed not just the individual, but the entire family.

“How bad?”

“Your youngest is a dusthead and on anti-psychotics. Your oldest is in prison for carving up her pimp and for attempted theft of corporate secrets. Your wife was killed by a customer last month.”

Wilde’s shoulders slumped. ‘Dust’ was a highly addictive waste product with hallucinogenic effects. Used over even a short term it induced psychosis. Most dustheads were on antipsychotics, and frequently sold them for more dust. As far as his oldest daughter was concerned, killing a fellow ghetto dweller was a misdemeanor at most, rating six months in a local jail. Corporate espionage was a capital crime and could be punished by twenty years in a WestHem prison, or even death. Wilde debated crying, but his old life had been over since the trial. He was all cried out. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Whitestone led Wilde from the hospital and took an autoflyer back to his office. Once they landed, they went to his office. “We have a field officer grade barracks suite for you. We’ll get you to it.”

Wilde shrugged. “Yeah. So, what is so important that you managed to haul my ass out of Butte? That must have taken some very serious pull, like Executive Council level pull.”

“Yes, it was, and at that level. I needed assistance from the Adjutant to the Chief of Staff to pull this off. We do this right, it’s permanent. We do this wrong, you’re back in Butte, probably with me as your cellmate.”

“What is it we are trying to do?”

Whitestone smiled. “Win Martian Hammer Two.”

Martian Immigration Facility

New Pittsburgh, Mars

Wednesday, February 8, 2147

Sergeant Tyler Buttstroke. Martian Planetary Guard Special Forces, stood at the front of Assembly Room B-12 and looked out at the people looking back. He was not impressed. As far as he was concerned, this entire immigration and colonization idea was ridiculous. If he wanted to find useless mouths to feed, he could find any number of assholes in the ghettos who hadn’t yet figured out that the new Mars was not the old WestHem.

Assholes like he had once been. He had been one of the last gangbangers in his tower to join the MPG. It had taken him only a few seconds of combat on the plains outside Libby to realize just how different things were. When they finally held the Main Line and repulsed the Marines, Corporal Buttstroke volunteered to transfer to the Special Forces. He enjoyed the difficulty of the training and testing and made sergeant on his graduation. Now, where he once had disgust and scorn at being vermin, now he had pride in being vermin - vermin that had just beat the toughest military in the Solar System!

Earlier, he had been in the background as Major Lars Updike had greeted the new Martian immigrants. Since nobody knew what they were doing with immigration, it was decided the MPG would handle it, at least until they figured something out. Sergeant Buttstroke wondered about the wisdom of that, but he also knew how to keep his mouth shut. Basic training had taught him how to shut up.

There had been just short of a thousand of them brought in by a returning ex-AgriCorp freighter. They had been brought down to New Pittsburgh in a pair of C-12s, which was where the government had decided to locate the immigration office. They had been brought into a giant assembly hall for their initial welcome and education in what Mars was like.

That had been an exercise in futility as far as Sergeant Buttstroke was concerned. The C-12 landers had brought the colonists to a standard landing spot on the New Pittsburgh tarmac and had then been towed into a hangar near the Immigration Facility. Even though they had been told to stay seated as soon as they had landed, they were immediately up and out of their seats, demanding to be let into Mars. That demand was ignored, but they also ignored the warnings that they were still in vacuum conditions, and when one of them tried to open the hatch, was knocked to the floor by a crewmember.

Once in position, a pressurized tube was extended to the lander and the colonists were allowed off the C-12. They went through the tube to a processing area, where MPG soldiers chivvied them into lines. At the head of each line a picture, fingerprint set, and DNA was taken, and their names and identification were checked against the list provided by EastHem. Then they were sent through a set of large doors to the assembly hall, where they found rows of folding chairs waiting for them. Some of them promptly sat down; others decided to rearrange the chairs. MPG personnel immediately waded in and reset the chairs as needed, and when stopped by arguing EastHem colonists, grabbed them and forcibly sat them down in the chairs. Once everybody was in their seats, Major Updike came out onto the stage and said, “Greetings, EastHem colonists. Please be seated and allow me to welcome you to Mars.”