'Christ,' she said, shaking her head in disbelief. 'It's much worse than I thought. And I'm a realist. How did this happen, Kevin? How is it that the most valuable planet in the solar system, the planet that grows more than half of the food for WestHem, that supplies ninety percent of the steel, that generates trillions in profits for all of those corporations, was left wide-open to capture? How?'
'I think you know the answer to that,' Jackson replied.
'Money,' she spat.
'You got it,' he said, nodding. 'The WestHem government did not want to spend the money to station a defense force here. Why should they? It's never been invaded before, has it? The only soldiers that are ever on the planet are the ones who occasionally come to train at the extraterrestrial proving grounds. And even then there's usually only a few battalions and they only have outdated equipment because the armed forces do not want to spend the money to transport front-line tanks and APCs here. They always figured they could transport troops here from Earth if EastHem ever made a move. After all, the EastHem troops have to come from Earth as well, don't they? But they never figured on a two front war. The possibility that those troops might be needed on one of the Jupiter moons apparently never occurred to them. And now that EastHem has made landings on Callisto, the forces that were slated to prevent an invasion of Mars have been sent there and they only left a token holding force here.'
'That doesn't make any sense,' Laura said. 'Callisto is of no real strategic value to them. It's only worth is as a staging body for a fuel refining operation.'
'That's true,' he agreed. 'But that's what you get when you have politicians on Earth, acting on behalf of Standard Fuel and Jovian Gasses, making the military decisions. The executive council ordered all available troops to the Jupiter system to eject the EastHem marines from Callisto. General Kensington, who's in command of this particular clusterfuck, practically begged them to reconsider and allow him to reinforce Mars first and foremost. But they wouldn't listen to reason. Standard Fuel and Jovian Gas want that EastHem refining operation destroyed and those EastHem marines off of Callisto. They don't give a damn about Mars. All they're concerned with is preventing EastHem from becoming self-sufficient in fuel.'
'But if EastHem invades Mars,' Laura said, unable to keep the exasperation out of her voice, 'WestHem loses their food supply, their steel supply, and most of their shipbuilding and armament industries. The entire economy of WestHem could very well collapse if those things are lost. At the very least EastHem would be the one with the power. They would be able to strangle us.'
'And do you want to know the real irony of all this?' Jackson asked, sipping from his coffee.
'What's that?'
'That battle group that has been sent to Callisto, the one that was supposed to defend Mars, it's going to be slaughtered when it tries to eject that landing force. There's no way in hell it's going to be able to retake that moon if the commander of the EastHem forces is even halfway competent at his job.'
'What do you mean?' she asked him. 'You said that they would have been able to keep EastHem from invading Mars. Why won't they be able to take back a moon? What's the difference?'
'The difference,' he explained, 'is that here on Mars that battle group would have been the defenders. They would have dug in and set up their forces and just waited for the EastHems to try and make a move against them. But on Callisto, the situation is reversed. The EastHem forces were able to make the landings. It is now they who will be dug in, their tanks and artillery all set and pre-positioned in the optimum places. In any battle the advantage goes to the defender. A military rule of thumb is that it takes three times as many troops and equipment to dislodge a position than it does to hold it. The EastHem forces on Callisto are roughly equal to the forces that will be trying to retake it. They're going to be massacred.'
'Christ, Kevin,' Laura said. 'Do you have a lot of friends among that group?'
He nodded. 'Hundreds of men I've trained with and served with everywhere from Ganymede to Cuba. Most will probably be killed during the assault phase. Others will be captured and sent to an EastHem POW camp. The lucky ones will be those who are just wounded and pulled from the battle area. They might just live through the war. Not that we have it much easier here. If EastHem makes landings here we'll fight them as hard as we can but we'll all be killed or captured within a day.' He snorted a little. 'They'll probably write songs about us and make Internet shows and erect monuments to us, just like the Snoqualmie defenders back in World War III. That'll make my mother real proud, won't it?'
'Is there a solution?' Laura asked, knowing that Kevin had to have a reason for telling her all of this.
'Not for the current crisis,' he said. 'Like I told you, if EastHem wants to take this planet, then it's theirs. But there is a chance they won't do that.'
'Why wouldn't they?' she asked eagerly.
'EastHem doesn't really want this war,' he explained. 'At least that is my impression as a military historian. I know that all the Internet channels and the news services are telling us that EastHem is the aggressor and that they are bent upon ruling the entire solar system, but I don't really think that's the case. They just want Callisto and they felt they had a right to colonize it. Whether they are right or wrong is not the issue here. The fact is that they just want to become self sufficient in fuel so they don't have to pay WestHem corporations for it. All they were trying to do was set up a fueling operation on Callisto and we attacked them for it.'
'But why wouldn't they invade Mars though?' she asked. 'I'm not a military expert or anything, but I know that in an all out war like this, doctrine is to press any advantage you have. Invading Mars and cutting WestHem off from their food and their steel, as well as denying them a strategic staging area between Earth and the Jupiter system, would certainly seem advantageous to me.'
'It is,' he agreed. 'And I'm not sure they will be able to resist the temptation now that those idiots have left us wide open, but I'm quite sure that occupying Mars was not one of their original goals. They positioned that invasion force here only as a diversionary tactic, figuring, as any sane commander would, that WestHem would then have to reinforce Mars which would draw troops away from Callisto and therefore give them more time to dig in there. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty impressed by the way EastHem has fought this war so far.'
'We should have such leadership,' Laura observed sourly.
Jackson dismissed this thought. The situation was what the situation was. 'In any case,' he went on, 'EastHem has Callisto now and we're not going to be able to take it back from them any time soon. With any luck they will be satisfied that their war goals are met and try to push for an armistice instead of drawing out the fighting by landing troops here. If that is the case, then that invasion force will stay where it is for now.'
'Will WestHem consider an armistice with them though?' she asked him. 'This is edging into my area of expertise now. If politicians are controlling this war on behalf of their corporate sponsors, then they won't give a damn how many marines die trying to take Callisto back. They'll keep sending wave after wave of troops there to try again.'
'I have no doubt about that,' he told her. 'And that's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.'
'Oh?'
'If WestHem does not sign an armistice soon, if they keep trying to retake that moon from EastHem, then EastHem is eventually going to
'Me?' she asked. 'What can I do? I'm just a city council member.'
'You're a politician, Laura,' he reminded her. 'And as a prominent, upward moving lawmaker, I'm sure you have established certain connections with certain powerful people in the Martian corporate world.'
'Sponsors,' she said. 'Of course. You can't get elected to the PTA board in this life without a corporate sponsor to donate money and tell you how to vote. But I don't have any sponsors from Jovian Gas or Standard Fuel. I only have connections with corporations that operate on Mars.'
'That's my point,' he said. 'Would Agricorp be one of those sponsors?' Agricorp was the owner of the majority of the Martian agricultural industry, which was considerable. Martian crops, which grew in huge greenhouse complexes that surrounded the equatorial cities like Eden, made up the bulk of the exports from the planet. It was an industry worth trillions and Agricorp was easily the most powerful of all of the WestHem corporations.
'Yes they would,' she said. 'One would not get very far in one's political life, either here or on Earth, without Agricorp's consent.' She started to gleam a little of what he was getting at. 'So you think that they'll be able to... influence things?'
'If they understand the seriousness of the situation,' he replied. 'Agricorp wields a whole lot of political
