Prologue

June 30, 2131
Eden, Mars

Laura Whiting was a politician and she was doing what politicians were expected to do at times such as these. She was "touring" the area of devastation. Whenever something was devastated — be it by war, by industrial accident, or by acts of divinity — an elected official was expected to tour it, to see the damage firsthand. As to why they needed to perform this tour, as to what possible good was being accomplished with their presence, the answer to that depended upon whom you talked to. Most politicians would answer that they needed an "eyes-on" assessment of the damage in order to help calculate the cost of replacing it. That sounded good on the surface, the sort of thing that played good on Internet, but of course it was not really the reason. There were engineers and insurance claims settlement specialists and hundreds of other people who were much more qualified than a politician to assess damage and calculate cost. Laura — who had the unusual political trait of brutal self-honesty — knew that the real reason was so the politician in question could give the impression that he or she cared about their constituents and their neighborhoods. Such affairs were always rife with Internet cameras. The politician was expected to look properly solemn while viewing the destruction and then give an appropriately moving speech promising aid or an end to the cause or some other such thing.

Laura, though she was only a city council member, was expert in the art and science of politics. She should be. Her father, now retired and living the life of luxury on Earth, had had a long and distinguished elected career that had climaxed with two terms as the Governor of Mars. She had begun to learn politics about the time she had begun to learn to walk. Conventional wisdom among the Martian movers and shakers was that Laura herself would follow in his footsteps by the time she was fifty. Laura was a little more optimistic than that. She hoped to take the oath of high Martian office in ten years; by the time she was forty. But she did not wish this for exactly the same reason everyone thought.

"As you can see," intoned Assistant Chief Henderson of the Eden Department of Public Health and Safety, "the blast doors that were designed into the basic structure of the city did their job very well. They activated within two seconds of the laser strike and sealed off the damaged section, preventing further loss of life and property. Without those blast doors, we would not be able to stand right here at this moment. This entire building would have been reduced to the outside atmospheric pressure."

Laura and the other two city council members who had gone on the tour with her were standing on the sixty-eighth floor of the MarsTrans building looking downward through the thick plexiglass windows. Around them rose countless other high-rise buildings, stretching upward into the red Martian sky. The high rise was the staple of life on Mars. People lived in them, worked in them, did business in them. A Martian city was nothing more than a compact collection of tall buildings that were located in a grid pattern of streets. The street level was where people moved from one building to another. All streets were enclosed by a steel and plexiglass roof thirty meters above the ground, and by plexiglass walls on the sides. This kept the air pressure inside, where it belonged, and the thin Martian atmosphere outside, where it belonged. The buildings did not actually touch each other but they were all connected to the street level complex making Eden, in effect, one giant, interconnected, airtight structure that was home to more than twelve million people. Then entire city was kept at standard Earth sea-level air pressure by means of a system of huge fusion powered machines that extracted the traces of oxygen and nitrogen from the thin Martian atmosphere and pumped it inside. This system of pressurization and air supply was what made human life on Mars possible, but it was a system that depended upon the airtight integrity of the city remaining intact.

The MarsTrans building stood across the street from the Red Towers housing complex — an upper end luxury apartment building. From their vantage point they could clearly see the large hole that had been burned through the steel of the building from the fortieth floor all the way to street level and below. Several floors of the building had collapsed from the force of the blast, burying the victims beneath tons of rubble. Many other sections had remained intact but had decompressed, smothering those inside of them. The street outside the building had also lost pressure, killing all who happened to have been walking about at that moment. The death toll from this one blast had been confirmed at more than nine hundred so far and was expected to rise even higher as more rubble was cleared away. Eden Public Health and Safety workers, commonly known as dip-hoes because of the acronym of their department, could be seen patiently digging through the debris or moving about within the building. All of them were outfitted in protective bio-suits that covered the body from head to toe. The bio-suits were the only way people could exist outside of the pressurization.

"Those blast doors and the other safety features were indeed a godsend," proclaimed Councilman Dan Steeling, a senior member and, according to the movers and shakers, the man slated to be the next mayor of Eden. He was pretending to address Assistant Chief Henderson but was in actuality talking to the group of Internet reporters who were standing clustered behind them, just in front of the group of uniformed Eden police officers providing security. The reporters all had digital image recorders with microphones attached to them and they were all pointing them at Dan. "It is fortunate indeed that, even in the midst of this horrible tragedy we are viewing, we are able to at least receive reassured proof that the safety systems in place in this great city work as they were designed. While it is true that the loss of life and property from this strike, and from the others that took place on other parts of Mars, was horrific, it could have been much, much worse."

Laura, who knew she was partially in the frame of some of the cameras, kept the proper expression of saddened, though elated agreement on her face. She nodded a few times during his statement, just slightly, just enough to relate to anyone taking notice of her on the Internet screens that she was just as torn up about all of this as everyone else. In truth, had her natural expression been allowed to come through, it would have been one of horror. As she looked at the twisted steel and exposed apartments of the Red Towers, she had to clench her fists in anger at what had happened. Eden, her city, the city she had been born and raised in, had been attacked by EastHem atmospheric craft. Attacked! They had blown holes in it, decompressing entire sections like a child popping a balloon, killing thousands so far. And it was not just Eden either. Though Eden was the largest city on the Western Hemispheric Alliance's federal colony of Mars, it was just one of twelve large cities on the surface. So far, with the war only one week old, six of them had been hit, two quite badly. Triad, the orbiting space-platform that was home to more than six hundred thousand, had been attacked particularly fiercely, with more than six thousand citizens dead up there. And what was it for? Why were all of these Martians dying?

Because of greed. Simple greed.

They were calling it the Jupiter War, although the point in dispute was actually one of Jupiter's moons: Callisto. The atmospheric gas of Jupiter, which was composed primarily of hydrogen, was used as propellant for fusion-powered spacecraft and as conventional fuel for tanks, aircraft, and surface to orbit craft. It was a substance that was vital for continuation of the space-faring society and particularly for military operations. WestHem, of which Mars was a part, currently held the monopoly on the supply of this gas. Nearly sixty years before, WestHem corporations, most notably Standard Fuel Supply and Jovian Gases Inc. constructed a large space station in orbit around Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. From the space station, which was actually an orbiting city, collection ships made the short trip to the gas giant and dove into the atmosphere, collecting a hold full of the hydrogen concoction before clawing their way back out and returning. The raw gas would then be refined into liquid hydrogen and stored in huge orbiting pressure tanks. Tanker ships, the largest moving objects ever constructed, would then fill up and transport the gas across the solar system either to Mars or Earth.

Nearly half of this gas was sold to EastHem who, although they were bitter enemies of WestHem and had been since the end of World War III, needed a fuel supply as well. Since EastHem did not have a secure supply of its own it was forced to buy it from the two WestHem corporations at top dollar. Not only was this expensive and not only did it take EastHem currency out of the hemisphere, it also meant that their fuel supply was subject to being cut off during times of crisis, which was usually when they needed it most from a military standpoint. It also meant that WestHem held an advantage in the complex relationship between the two halves of the Earth.

Three years before, tensions between the two powers began to grow as it became apparent that EastHem was constructing the components of an orbiting fuel refining and shipment platform in lunar orbit using mined steel from beneath the surface of the moon. These components, which were loaded into cargo ships nearly as large as a fuel tanker, could only be destined for one of the moons of Jupiter. Though Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were all gas giant planets with atmospheres very similar to Jupiter's, colonizing one of the outer gas giants was clearly impractical due to the distance involved and because such a supply line would be impossible to defend during a conflict. WestHem, realizing this, insisted in the sternest manner that the entire Jupiter system belonged to them, not just the single moon of Ganymede. EastHem, not bothering to deny its intentions, countered with the argument that WestHem had no right to claim an entire planetary system when they had no settlements on the planet in question.

This war of words went on and on as the construction process neared conclusion and the cargo ships, with an escort of heavy battle cruisers and stealth attack ships, began to prepare for departure. As the armada left lunar orbit heading for Jupiter, WestHem issued an ultimatum. It warned EastHem that if any of its ships entered the Jovian system, they would be attacked. EastHem ignored this threat and continued, probably figuring that WestHem would back down. WestHem didn't. When the first of the ships crossed the invisible line that had been drawn, the WestHem Marines attacked with short-range space fighters based at Standard City. The cold war that had been the status quo for the past one hundred and twenty years suddenly became very hot.

Mars, as a strategically placed point located between the orbits of Jupiter and Earth, was immediately bombed once hostilities commenced. The WestHem navy had a large base in orbit around the red planet with many of their ships stationed there. Aside from that, Triad, the orbiting space station in geosynchronous orbit, was home to the three major shipbuilding companies that supplied warships for the navy and for cargo transportation. EastHem forces, as they passed, had dropped off three battle cruiser groups complete with attack craft, assault landing ships, and support vessels. They were on station just outside of laser range of the WestHem battle groups, which had been forced to stay in position to counter them. It was ironic indeed that the Martian cities, which were hundreds of millions of kilometers from both the moon in dispute and from the planet that had spawned the combatants, were the most heavily damaged during the fighting. Even on Earth itself, where the two powers were separated by a mere twenty kilometers at the Bering Straight, not so much as an artillery shell or a bomb was detonated.

Laura Whiting, as she looked at the devastation that a single laser blast from a single EastHem attack craft had caused, felt an angry hatred she had never experienced before. It was not EastHem she directed this anger towards however. It was directed towards WestHem, towards the so-called government that supposedly represented and protected the interests of the Martian people, and towards the powerful untenable corporations that controlled that government.

The official WestHem reason for attacking EastHem and trying to prevent their colonization of Callisto was that they, WestHem, needed to protect their deep space defensive positions and not allow those godless fascists of EastHem a toehold in the same planetary system. They told their citizens and their soldiers that to allow EastHem to establish themselves on one of the moons of Jupiter would be as good as signing the death warrant for the glorious WestHem way of life. Within a decade, it was suggested, EastHem would have enough forces and enough equipment on Callisto to evict us from Jupiter and to strangle our fuel supply. A few years after that, EastHem tanks would come rolling into the western hemisphere itself, bent on the final takeover. The rhetoric was unwavering from its course. No EastHem ships will enter the Jovian system. No EastHem installations will be established on Callisto or any other moon. Jupiter and all that orbited it were WestHem property.

Of course it was apparent to any thinking person, and Laura White, like most Martians, certainly fit that category, what the real reason for the war was. If EastHem began gathering and refining their own fuel from Jupiter's atmosphere, Standard Fuel and Jovian Gasses and the other industries that relied upon gas refining and shipping would lose more than half of their business. The WestHem government, which imposed export taxes upon those sales, would lose all of that income from its yearly budget. In addition to the loss of revenue, WestHem would lose one of its trump cards in any future conflict. It would never again be able to threaten EastHem with a fuel embargo. That could simply not be allowed. And so, even though there was enough hydrogen in the atmosphere of Jupiter to supply both halves of the Earth and all of their colonies for thousands of generations, a vicious war erupted over the issue.

But Laura, above all, was a politician. She could not show, could not say how she really felt about the subject. She could not even say what the people she served wanted her to say or feel. She said and felt, in public anyway, what her sponsors — those who had contributed to her campaigns, who had bankrolled her election — wanted her to say and feel. That was how you stayed in the game. There had been a time when she had not wanted to stay in the game anymore, when she had not wanted to be a part of the perverse and sickening process that was modern government. That time had not been so long before. But now that Martian cities were having holes blasted in them, that Martian citizens were being killed because those corporate sponsors didn't want to lose their profit margins, she had decided it was her duty to stay in the game. She did not like the game but she would play it and she would play it well. She would kiss every ass, would spout every company line, would do whatever she needed to do to advance her political career. And hopefully one day, years from now, when she was in a position much higher than a mere Eden city council member, she would change the game.

She turned her face from the window before her, putting the view of the destroyed housing building out of her sight. The reporters approached her, fishing for a statement. Laura had a gift for public speaking, an ability to turn even the most benign utterance into a passionate narrative. She cleared her throat and began to spout about devastation and the evils of fascist EastHem and how the great people of WestHem were going to defeat the tyranny that was trying to destroy all they held dear and sacred. The reporters loved it, as they always did statements from her. All except for one.

"Ms. Whiting," said a short, Asian descended reporter from MarsGroup Information Services. "There has been much worry about the landing ships EastHem has stationed near our planet just outside of orbital range. In the event of an EastHem invasion of Mars, I was curious how you would rate our city's defenses?"

That was a loaded question and it was not surprising that Mindy Ming, the MarsGroup reporter, was the only one to ask it. All of the other reporters represented either InfoServe Internet Communications stations or SpacialNet Communications stations. Those were the two major providers of Internet media and literature in WestHem and though they pretended to be antagonistic to government and corporate motivations and elected officials, they were actually little more than the propaganda arm. Again, anyone with any thinking capacity knew this. But MarsGroup was a Mars based, independent Internet media corporation. It's owners and investors were all Martian-born who had no financial ties to any Earth-based corporations. They were often derided in the popular press and had been sued for libel so many times it would be years before all of the cases came to court. They were a constant thorn in the side of many a politician or corporation. Laura, though publicly she denounced MarsGroup like everyone else, secretly admired them greatly. MarsGroup news services, in her mind, was what news reporting should be like. They strove to find the truth instead of simply repeating what their masters told them to repeat.

"Well," Laura said lightly, as if the question were a ridiculous annoyance, "I don't think we really have much to worry about in terms of an EastHem invasion. My understanding is that our space forces in orbit and at Triad are more than sufficient to keep them from attempting such a feat."

"Really?" Mindy said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. "Is it not true that a good portion of our space-based attack craft were destroyed attempting to repel this battle group?"

Laura feigned a sigh, as if she were dealing with a complete paranoid. Again this was just for appearances. Mindy's military source, whomever he or she was, was obviously very highly placed. Though the general public did not know it yet, both sides in the conflict had recently discovered the fallacy of trying to attack heavily defended space cruisers or stations with small attack craft. The anti-spacecraft lasers could pick them off like ducks in a skeet range. Well over three quarters of the front-line defense craft based at Triad had been blown to pieces in three separate attacks without putting a single EastHem ship out of commission. Well over half of the crews of those ships had been killed or captured.

"I am not the one to ask about military matters," Laura said shortly. "I'm just a councilwoman. I have every confidence however, that our armed forces have the situation above our planet well in hand. And as for city defenses, as you are aware by the itinerary we supplied you with, we will be visiting the staging area for the WestHem marine forces that have been assigned to Eden next."

The two strong-willed women locked eyes for a moment. Laura could see the contempt Mindy held for her reflected in those brown orbs. Sell-out, those eyes said to her. You're nothing but a corporate, WestHem sell-out. She ignored the look. She had seen it many times before and would see it many times again. Though it still hurt a little, though it still bothered her to be seen as a traitor to her people, to their ideals, to be considered a tool of oppression, she was getting used to it.

The staging area for the 103^rd WestHem Marine Battalion, the battalion responsible for defending the city of Eden in the event of an EastHem invasion, was a city park located just on the edge of the city perimeter. The park was the showpiece of the business district and was nearly five square kilometers in size. It was surrounded on all four sides by towering high rises, the biggest on the planet. The Agricorp building itself stood across the street from the eastern entrance to the park grounds. It was the tallest building in the solar system at 325 stories. The park itself was mostly grassy fields, groves of trees, and winding walkways that snaked in all directions. There was a zoo and a golf course as well as football and baseball fields and a large duck pond. The roof of the city, which was usually ten meters above the ground over the streets, rose to more than a hundred meters above the park grounds. In addition the roof here was mostly plexiglass instead of a mixture of glass windows and steel support beams. This allowed the pale Martian sun to shine brightly in the park during the daylight hours instead of being broken up into shadow.

Usually the park was filled with a mixture of business types taking lunch hour walks through the nature areas, daycare providers walking groups of children to the play equipment, and unemployed lower-class thugs and gang-members. But that had been during peacetime. Now the marines had occupied the sports fields, the golf course, and every other piece of open land in the park. They had set up inflatable tents in geometric clusters near the west side. Near the south side were a collection of mobile command posts and latrines. In between, a calisthenics and jogging area had been fashioned. Near the north side entrance, the closest entrance to the actual edge of the city, was a storage depot for weapons and bio-suits. Off duty marines could be seen walking everywhere through the park, most dressed in the blue shorts and white T-shirts they wore inside of a protected area. Most were between the ages of twenty and thirty years old and, since they were combat troops, all were men. They gathered in clusters of two, four, six, sometimes more. They walked to and from the mess hall. They exercised in the calisthenics area. To the uneducated eye their numbers appeared generous indeed, more than a match for any EastHem invasion force, particularly when you considered that nearly a third of them were on-duty outside of the safety of the city, out in the Martian wastelands.

Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ron Herald, greeted the tour of Eden city council members personally. He was dressed the same as his men, in a pair of blue shorts with the marine emblem upon the leg and a white T-shirt with his name and rank on the breast. His hair was short, as were all marines' hair, and his body was trim and fit. He looked like that kind of man that you would like to have in charge of your city's defenses. He practically oozed confidence.

He greeted each council member personally, addressing him or her by name and offering whispered reassurances that their city was perfectly safe in the hands of his men. "Landing here and attacking this city," he told Laura, "would be the worst mistake those EastHem fascists ever made. My battalion would eat them for breakfast."

"That's good to know, Colonel," Laura beamed right back, putting the reassured expression upon her face.

Herald gave them a tour of the staging area, leading them around from place to place and pointing out every cluster of tents. Of course the entourage of reporters followed along behind, Mindy Ming included. They saw the inside of a typical tent, in which squads of marines were housed on small inflatable mattresses. They were shown the primitive latrine facilities where the marines took care of their bodily functions. They walked through the mess hall, which was full of empty tables and filled with the smell of dinner being constructed. Finally they were led to the staging area itself.

A large guarded reinforced tent housed the marine equipment. Herald led them past two armed guards out front and into the interior, which was mostly a huge locker room. Rows of gray plastic storage cabinets sat before rows of plastic benches. The smell was that of locker rooms solar system wide; of stale sweat and dirty clothing.

"It is in here," Herald explained, "where the marines under my command change into the biosuits which allow them to operate outside of the pressurization of the city. The biosuits are completely self-contained and supply oxygen, food paste, water, and even excretory containers for the soldiers wearing them. With the supply carried within the suit the soldier can stay outside the safety of this artificial environment for twelve hours at a time. The suits are somewhat bulky of course but modern WestHem engineering and manufacturing have managed to keep the fully loaded weight down to less than forty kilograms. That is five kilograms less, I might add, than the standard EastHem biosuit. This weight advantage, which translates into increased mobility in the field and the ability to carry more equipment, is but one advantage that my soldiers have over their EastHem counterparts."

He then led them to the other side of the room, towards another guarded opening to the tent. This one led to the park's exit and the wide, heavily traveled 3^rd Street, a major downtown movement corridor.

"From here," the Colonel continued, "each company of soldiers, after donning their suits and gathering their personal weapons, will march down 3^rd Street to the airlock complex in the city corporation yard. Just outside of those airlocks is the staging area for our tanks, armored personnel carriers, and hovers. Upon deployment most of the soldiers will enter the armored vehicles and proceed to their defensive positions near the approaches to the city. Others will climb into the hovers and be transported to the artillery emplacements or antiaircraft bunkers. Of course I cannot give you the exact locations of these defensive positions for security reasons, but rest assured that they are formidable."

The tour wrapped up a few minutes later with Laura and Dan Steeling both giving inspirational speeches to the Internet cameras about how safe they felt in the presence of Colonel Herald and his marines. Steeling even managed to throw in a pitch about buying war bonds. There were only two pointed questions from Mindy Ming and Herald, though new to such blatant inquiries, handled them very well. Everybody thanked the Colonel for his time and for the steadfast watch he was providing. The Internet reporters, with nothing left to report on, quickly left the scene.

Herald, his work done, excused himself and asked his aide, a young lieutenant, to lead his "honored guests" back to the entrance of the park and their police department security detail. Halfway there, as they were passing a group of marines doing push-ups on the trampled grass, a voice hailed Laura.

"Ms. Whiting?" it called, it's owner trotting over from his position near the physical training leader. He was an African-American descended man of about thirty and Laura had already placed him as a Martian born person based on his accent. A better look revealed his identity. Though she had not seen him in well over ten years, she had once known this man very well.

"Kevin Jackson," she said, putting her politician's smile upon her face. She stepped towards him, holding out her hand for a shake. "Or should I say, Captain Jackson," she corrected, reading the insignia upon his shirt.

Jackson had been a college classmate of hers at the University of Mars at Eden. She had been going for the required degree in political theory prior to law school and he had been working on his military science degree. The very fact that he had been admitted to an institute of higher learning had spoken volumes about his family connections and intelligence. In modern WestHem society less than two percent of those who graduated high school were admitted to college. Most young men and women of the working class were doomed to self-funded technical schools that taught them the specific job skills they were striving for. She had shared several general education and history classes with Jackson over the years and they had developed a very close friendship that eventually led to a brief love affair. They had parted amicably enough after both had been advised by betters of the potential career damage their relationship might cause. Though interracial love affairs carried no stigma in Martian culture, they were still considered an anomaly in WestHem culture and those who participated in them were deemed to be somewhat less than normal. Though the physical aspects of their affair ended, their friendship had continued until graduation. From there they had parted. Jackson had gone on with his career in the corps. Whiting had gone on to law school and her political career.

"Captain as of five days ago," he told her, grasping her small hand in his large one and shaking vigorously. "Easy promotions are the one fortunate aspect of wartime."

Laura, ever the lady, made the required introductions to her colleagues. Hands were shaken and kind comments were passed between Jackson and Steeling and the others. Laura saw that despite their jovial expressions her fellow councilmen were impatiently awaiting the end of her conversation. She put an accommodating look upon her face and told them to go on without her, that she would find her own way back to city hall.

Chapter 1A »