Chapter 6: Immigration

WestHem Military Intelligence Office

Denver, WestHem

Friday, February 10, 2147

“We are going to try to put some agents into the next EastHem emigration shipment,” said Colonel Whitestone.

“Exactly who are they sending to Mars?” asked General Morgan.

“Every political prisoner and malcontent they can lay their hands on. With five-and-a-half billion people in EastHem, it isn’t hard for them to find a thousand people to send away. The first batch they cleaned out their lunar colonies, or at least a large chunk of them.”

“And what happens if the Martian decide they don’t want EastHem’s problem children?” asked the general.

Whitestone shrugged. “My understanding is that they were informed that if the Martians rejected them, they would be taken back to EastHem like the rest of the cargo. In other words, no food, no water, and very likely no air. No idea if that actually occurred or not.”

“Typical EastHem brutality,” Morgan said, mostly for any hidden microphones.

“Will you have anybody ready to insert in the next shipment?”

Whitestone nodded. “I think so. I have an officer who has been in and out of EastHem. He has a reputation as being a bit of a dissident, but not too loudly. It lets him meet with people of like mind; he can flip them without them even knowing it. We ordered him to find a way to get into the next shipment. Supposedly this one is cleaning out the dissidents from London and Greater Britain.”

Morgan raised a wry eyebrow. “EastHem plans to use this immigration plan to get rid of their malcontents?”

Whitestone nodded. “They have five-point-five billion over there. Not all of them are happy. A thousand a month, twelve thousand a year, that’s something like two percent of a percent of a percent. A tiny fraction. They can clean that out of a ghetto and never tell the difference. Anyway, we ordered him to be a more than usual nuisance and got grabbed for his troubles. He is already on the way. He should leave for Mars in a matter of weeks.”

“And after that?”

“He does the usual recruitment. We should be able to stick one or two people on board a freighter every month. I ordered our Human Intel division to begin training and preparing additional officers and agents. It might be spotty for the next few months, but after that it should be a steady supply.”

“Excellent. What about the other operation, developing war plans for the next invasion?”

“It’s moving forward. I have a picked group of analysts determining how Wrath and Browning screwed up the last invasion. Do we have a name for the operation yet?”

“I am told the Public Relations Office got together with InfoGroup and they have determined that Martian Justice is appropriate. We will be punishing the Martian terrorists and bringing them to justice.”

“Operation Martian Justice. Very appropriate, sir.” Even as he said it, both he and General Morgan were rolling their eyes at each other.

Morgan nodded. “Very good. Keep me informed.”

Whitestone came to attention and left, wondering just how much General Morgan was going to allow him to tinker with the plans.

Birmingham Municipal Detention Facility

Birmingham, Greater Britain, EastHem

Sunday, February 12, 2147

Walker Stevens looked around the cell he was in curiously. It looked to be a standard three-meter by four-meter cell with two built-in bunks, a seatless toilet, and a sink. He was sure that if he looked up EastHem prison regulations this would be the standard cell for two people. He was also reasonably sure that ever since it was built, it had never held less than four people; currently it housed six. Aside from himself, it had two goons who were in their early twenties and a father in his early thirties who was nervously looking out for his young sons.

It hadn’t been hard for Stevens to be arrested and put into the Birmingham jail. All he needed to do was to mouth off about the injustice of the EastHem economic system and suggest that the corporations be made to pay for some improvements to their way of life. A pair of unpleasant EastHem Scotland Yard agents knocked on the door of his apartment and grabbed him, giving him a mid-range thumping along the way. To his mind, that meant he had some bruised ribs and some black and blue on his stomach, but no marks that would show up on his face. A five-minute trial without an attorney sentenced him to voluntary emigration to Mars.

The nervous young father was another voluntary emigrant, along with his sons. He had complained to the guard that he hadn’t said anything; it was his wife who was unhappy with the way things were. That made no difference, and he was backhanded across the face as they pushed him into the cell. Now he sat there holding his boys to him, with blood dripping from his lip.

Stevens knew there would be trouble. Some people just do not do well in prison. He had been around prisons, on one side of the bars or the other, more than once. There were those who survived and those who didn’t. The guy with the kids was the latter. That was confirmed when the thugs decided that the guards were far enough away that they wouldn’t hear them having some afternoon fun with the little boys, who looked to be six and eight years old. One of them had long greasy blond hair and said, “Hey, boys, want to play a game?”

Their father said, “Leave them alone. Thank you.” Stevens winced at that.

The second punk had dark hair and dark skin. “Go fuck yourself, Pops. There’s a tax and they need to pay it.”

Dad tried to push the boys behind him, but Blondie was too quick. He laughed and grabbed the father with his left hand and then punched him viciously in the face. Then he threw him backwards against the cell wall, stunning him. He slid to the floor only partially conscious. Darkie grabbed for the boys...

Only he didn’t succeed. Searing pain shot from his groin as a hand reached between his legs from behind and grabbed his crotch in an iron grip. Even as he screamed in pain, he was lifted off his feet and thrown down on the floor of the cell, face forward. A boot to the base of his skull shattered his spinal column and killed him.

Blondie looked at Stevens who was standing over the body, looking bored. Stevens said, “Now, sit down and behave.”

“FUCK YOU!” Blondie roared and moved forward, only Stevens wasn’t there. He slipped to the side and brought an elbow up, slamming it into Blondie’s temple. Blondie dropped on top of his friend, dying of a crushed skull.

Stevens sat back down on the bunk and lay back, his hands behind his head. The boys were crying and reviving their father, who just stared at the carnage. After a few minutes, he said, “Thank you.”

“You need to toughen up, buddy, or you aren’t going to survive in here, and those boys are going to be sucking cocks the rest of their very short lives.”

“Uh, yeah, uh, thanks.”

As far as Walker Stevens was concerned, this was a perfect way to start his assignment. Walker Stevens had been born John Taylor Hargrove in Pittsburgh, East America, WestHem. His parents were not wealthy but were solidly upper-middle-class residents of the Youngstown suburbs. They had raised him to be properly patriotic and were thrilled when he had been selected to attend the West Point Military Academy, WestHem’s oldest and most prestigious military school. Unbeknownst to them, Stevens had been selected early on for something well beyond the usual combat officer system. He was just a little too smart and a little too smartass for a typical infantry or armor officer. Instead, his senior year he had been approached by an officer in the uniform of the WestHem Military Intelligence service and offered a position in intelligence.

Following training at the Kansas City Intelligence College, he had been turned loose in Australia, recruiting agents and infiltrating the EastHem Navy’s Canberra Design Bureau. His work was considered nothing short of miraculous, returning with the design specifications of the Henry -class stealth attack ship. Later missions were considered just as successful, setting up networks throughout Australia, New Zealand, and finally Greater Britain, one of the three capital regions of EastHem.

In both EastHem and WestHem, the military had a saying, the reward for a successful job was a tougher job. John Taylor Hargrove had almost forgotten his real name by that point. His parents had died of natural causes five years before, but he hadn’t been able to attend their funeral and only visited the gravesite two years later. He was now on his toughest job yet, infiltrate the new Martian government and figure out what in the world they were going to do to fuck over WestHem. He knew full well just how fucked up WestHem was, but he preferred it to EastHem, and it was inconceivable that they could defeat WestHem. That thought just didn’t register with him.

So, Walker Stevens made himself a nuisance in Greater Britain. He had been working there for several years, building a network of agents, when the orders came to take a vacation in Bermuda, the Caribbean Dependency, WestHem. After he arrived, he was approached by a superior officer and given orders to get to Mars and develop a network there. He was given passcodes and techniques to get information back to Earth, and then turned loose. The rest of his vacation he spent drinking and screwing the local talent before heading back to Greater Britain.

Now, in the Birmingham jail, he was in excellent shape to develop a network. The EastHem police wouldn’t care that two animals like Blondie and Darkie were dead. Instead, once he and the father were put on the freighter to Mars, he had his first agent. Dad would probably talk to some of the others on the freighter, saying how Walker Stevens was a stand-up guy. By the time they arrived at Mars, Stevens would be a trusted member of the ‘resistance’ and they would all vouch for him to whatever the Martian authorities were.

He was right, too. The next time the guards came through, they ignored the corpses on the floor. Instead, Stevens and the three family members were removed, leaving the bodies behind, and herded into a giant assembly room. The father, by then known as Paul Winston, saw his wife and tried to move towards her, but was stopped by a guard and smacked for his presumption. Stevens simply shook his head and said, “Wait. You’ve got your boys. At some point you’ll see her.”

“Right! Thanks!”

Stevens nodded and stayed where the guards had placed him. Winston did manage to wave to his wife, who he said was named Mary and was a nurse. He even held his sons up so they could see their mother. Otherwise, he kept them together and listened to Stevens for suggestions. Four hours later they were on an interplanetary freighter. An EastHem Naval rating ordered everybody to grab a bunk and otherwise keep their mouths shut. The schedule would be given over the intercom. At that point, Winston noticed that women were in the group. “Do you think Mary might be here, too?”

“Paul, you need to grow a pair of balls. The only way to know is to go out and find her. I’ll watch the boys.”

“Thanks!” Paul told his sons to stay with their new buddy and he went wandering through the crowd, calling for his wife. He was just one of many. Twenty minutes later he returned, smiling, with Mary Winston in tow. The two boys’ faces lit up and they ran screaming to their mother. She was crying with them, and then came to Stevens and hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. She was a pretty woman, and he wouldn’t have minded banging her a few times, but that would not have helped his mission.

Stevens grabbed a bottom bunk a row over. The Winstons put their sons together in a top bunk and shared a bottom bunk. Unsurprisingly, at night, most of the married couples pulled the sheet up and covered up that they were stripping off their jumpsuits and getting busy. Interestingly, the word got out that Walker Stevens was a good guy to know, and by the end of the voyage several of the unattached women invited themselves to his bunk when the lights were turned down. Some of them were good-looking and some were less so, but all cats are gray in the dark, and every one of them helped build his cover.

Martian Immigration Facility

New Pittsburgh, Mars

Monday, May 22, 2147

By this point, the immigration procedure was somewhat routine. This was the fourth immigrant group and the Martians had figured out a system. A small tower had been quickly built near the tarmac and the immigrants were offloaded into the new building. The new building had the assembly rooms and interview rooms built in; nobody entered New Pittsburgh until after they were screened. MPG soldiers were still the muscle, but most of the other positions were taken by civilian staff members of the Martian Immigration Service.