Greenies

have no choice but to give up then.'

'You said unrestricted warfare, General,' Williams asked. 'Surely you don't really mean that?'

'Of course not, ma'am,' Wrath replied. 'We are not EastHem after all. We have to use that planet after we take it back from the Martians. Obviously we cannot do many of the things that the EastHems would. We cannot shell or bomb the agricultural complexes or the cities themselves. We cannot go after the power reactors. We can only concentrate upon the MPG equipment itself and, in truth, I'd prefer not to destroy too much of that. It is, after all, top of the line military equipment that our future forces on Mars can use. But the Martians won't know this. We need to make them believe that we are willing to destroy that planet before we let them have it. We need to appeal to the common Martian that our fight is not against them, but against Whiting and her forces. I believe there's a good chance that we can end this conflict without a shot being fired. But if we can't, we'll outnumber the Martian troops by more than four to one in both personnel and equipment; even assuming the use of our pre-positioned supplies. At worst, I cannot conceive of losing more than a hundred men in this fight or having it take more than a week once we land.'

'They have a space guard at Triad,' one of the other council members pointed out. 'Will they be able to use it against our forces in orbit?'

'I'll refer that particular question to Admiral Jules,' Wrath replied. 'Fleet defense is more his line of expertise.'

'Admiral?' Williams asked.

'No,' Jules answered immediately. 'Their space guard poses no threat to us as Whiting herself pointed out. Their purpose it to prevent attack upon Triad and upon the communications satellites. The wing that they have there would have to fight its way through our combat space patrol and then through our fleet anti-spacecraft defense systems before they could even get in range to attack any ships. They would have to attack with every ship that they had at once to even hope to get four or five ships in close enough to fire their lasers with any accuracy. These four or five would not be able to do much damage and it would leave Triad undefended except for its fixed laser sites. No military commander, no matter how incompetent, would ever take such a suicidal risk. It's a lesson we learned in the Jupiter War. Fighters and bombers cannot go up against space stations or heavy ships.

'On the other hand, we will not be able to attack Triad for the very same reasons and we will be forced to establish our orbit well away from Triad, preferably on the other side of the planet. The only way to get Triad back is to have it surrender to us.'

'Which they will do,' Wrath picked up the thread, 'once their ground forces are defeated.'

'Do we have sufficient forces and equipment readily available to initiate this operation?' was the next question.

'Speaking from the marine standpoint,' Wrath said, 'I have the equipment readily available from units in training and from supply warehouses throughout WestHem. I propose that we start moving it to Colorado Springs, Edwards, Buenos Aires, and Dallas for transport up to Admiral Jules' ships. As for the men, I can pull them from Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Hawaii, and Alaska. The army can send in replacement troops in Alaska and as for the rest, I can call up reserves to replace them.'

'And the navy?' Williams asked Jules. 'Do you have sufficient ships available to transport and defend the operation and still maintain security in the event of a conflict with EastHem?'

Jules consulted some figure before him. 'It will be a little overcrowded,' he finally said. 'And I won't have as many Owls and Californias in defense as I'd like, but I can do it. We can put the troops and their equipment into eighteen Panama class transports. We can escort them with three California groups and four Owls. This will leave us with enough ships to defend Earth and Ganymede in the event of a conflict.'

The council seemed satisfied with this. 'Operation Martian Hammer it is then,' Williams said happily. 'We'll have our staff contact the media groups today so we can start pushing it.'

Capital Building — New Pittsburgh

The time difference between Denver and Eden was variable, dependant upon the differing rotational periods of the two planets. On Mars time was kept differently than on Earth in order to account for the slightly longer amount of time it took the latter to rotate once. This was augmented by the long delay in the reception of transmissions. In Denver it was 6:00 PM, nearing the end of a frantic workday. It was 1:24 AM in Eden, the early morning hours after the capture of the planet.

Laura, General Jackson, and several of Jackson's command staff were in the Capital briefing room viewing the Internet news programs from Earth. Though they had expected just what they were seeing in one form or another, it was still infuriating to watch the lies the WestHem media were formulating. The media, in their normal fashion, had turned the Martian revolt into popular entertainment.

Crisis on Mars was the heading flashed on the screen every time that the program returned from an advertising break. The words took up the bulk of the screen and were etched in 3D against a Martian red background. A dramatic flare of trumpets accompanied each flash of this motto. The news reports had initially consisted of rumors only, sketchy reports of fighting between 'rogue elements of the MPG' and WestHem forces on the planet. It was reported that Whiting had touched off this fighting when federal forces attempted to take her into custody on corruption charges. There were reports of executions and atrocities committed by these rogue elements. It was even reported that the MPG was running rampant through the streets of the cities, killing those MPG troops that were not loyal to Whiting and raping any convenient women that happened to be around.

Finally WestHem executive council member Williams, her expression sober and concerned (executive council members had to be, above all else, good actors), appeared before the cameras for the first official statement.

'My fellow WestHems,' she said, staring into the camera. 'By now you have heard reports of some unbelievable events taking place on the WestHem federal colony of Mars. Events that began early this morning, our time, and are continuing as I speak. When these events were first brought to the attention of the council we viewed them, as many of you undoubtedly are doing, with shock and disbelief. Mars after all is full of WestHem citizens, innocents for the most part. We expressed shock that such events were even possible in the first place. We did not address you prior to this because we wanted to get as many answers as we could before we passed the facts on. I believe that we now have an accurate summary of all that took place yesterday.'

'This should be good,' Jackson commented sourly.

'Yesterday afternoon, Denver time, a federal grand jury issued an indictment and an arrest warrant for Martian Governor Laura Whiting. This indictment was handed down after the grand jury heard more than a week's worth of testimony from various sources and examined pages upon pages of computer documentation from Mars. The charges consisted of corruption, incitement of terrorism, graft, trafficking in explosives, and gross incompetence. As you are aware from previous news reports, Governor Whiting has been quite a nightmare for the Planet Mars since her inauguration when she revealed herself to be a radical separatist.

'This woman and her core of followers have managed to intimidate other members of the planetary legislature into not impeaching her. Her conspirators were quite canny in covering their tracks and we were able to produce no proof that this heinous perversion of democracy took place. Under the law, Whiting had to remain in office.'

'This is actually pretty amusing,' Laura pointed out. 'It is sad to think that most of the WestHems will actually believe it.'

'If you see it on Internet,' Jackson said, 'then that's what happened. Right?'

'But our FLEB agents stationed on the planet Mars were not intimidated by Ms. Whiting and her thugs,' Williams was saying. 'They watched her every move knowing that criminals like Whiting always make mistakes. Well Whiting made many of them and she was caught at them. A legal indictment was issued, an indictment which Whiting says she will not honor, and our brave, diligent FLEB officers in Eden went to arrest her as they were commanded to do.'

She paused, staring into the camera, anger spreading across her face. 'Those federal agents were ambushed by followers of Whiting as they entered the capital building. We have confirmation that more than ten of them were killed, gunned down by thugs masquerading as soldiers, using the very weapons that our military has provided for planetary defense.'

'Notice how she doesn't mention,' Jackson said, 'that we taxed ourselves to pay for those weapons.'

'The whole thing is a production,' Laura said. 'God forbid they admit that there are discontented people. God forbid they admit that they'll fight to the death for this planet because of money. Oh no. There have to be oppressed