Greenies

take them on. They listened to General Wrath and Admiral Jules give their briefings each day, explaining how they would outnumber the Martians four to one and how they would destroy the MPG if they did not peacefully surrender the moment that the landings were made. They watched the news briefings of the huge numbers of marines being loaded onto the Panamas for the trip. They watched the thousands of pieces of WestHem armor being loaded up as well. They listened to WestHem military experts in the employ of the various media corporations explaining how a force the size of the MPG could not possibly stand up against the might and sheer numbers that were being deployed against it.

Many of them could not help but lose their nerve in the face of this information. None of the Martians knew about the existence of Operation Interdiction and even if they had, it probably would have made very little difference. A reverse exodus of volunteers from the MPG took place as thousands of people resigned their positions in order to escape the fate that was being promised. It was a mass resignation that threatened to undermine the entire revolution if something was not done to stop it or at least staunch the flow a bit.

It was General Jackson, making a rare appearance before the MarsGroup cameras, who managed to bring things back under control in this instance.

'The MPG is a volunteer fighting force,' he told the planet. 'It always has been, and always will be. If you don't think you can take the fight, if you don't think the independence of the planet and the ability to carve out our own destiny is worth fighting for, than get the hell out. I don't want you. But know this, citizens of Mars. The only way that we'll get to be free is to fight. I wouldn't have started this fight if I didn't think we had a damn good chance of winning it. We'll be fighting on our home ground, using equipment that has been specifically designed to fight here, and I have more than a few tricks up my sleeve. I'm not sending people to the slaughter here. I have more than thirty years of experience as a commanding soldier and I think I know what I'm doing and I have always made sure that my officers in charge know what they are doing as well. If we stick together, I'm confident we will beat these Earthlings. And if it looks to me at any point like we will not be able to beat them, then I will order hostilities to cease immediately. But if I keep losing people at the rate I'm losing them now, if my soldiers keep resigning on me, we're going to reach that point before the Earthlings even make their landings and everything that we've done so far will be for nothing. So do me the favor of thinking about that for a minute before you resign and hope that others will do your fighting for you.'

Over the next week the resignations trickled down to nearly a halt and a sharp spike in the number of enlistments was registered as well. The pace of training, particularly of infantry crews and special forces soldiers, continued.

Triad Naval Base

July 1, 2146

Admiral Belting and General Jackson sat side by side in the control room of the naval base, their eyes watching the live pictures on the Internet screen, their ears tuned into the radio transmissions that were being beamed back and forth. The camera view was a long pan of the WHSS Tripoli Harbor, one of the four pre-positioned Panama class transports. The shot was being taken from an A-12 that was hovering thirty kilometers above it. This was the day that they were to try to bring down the landing craft within it and unload the combat equipment on the surface. In all more than a hundred people were involved in the operation, not a single one of whom had ever performed such an act before.

'Test fire of thrusters is within parameters,' said the voice of Lieutenant Kipling, who had been placed in command of Tripoli Harbor herself. In his former life he had been the second officer on board a civilian cargo ship that had done the Triad to Earth route. He had spent the past three weeks studying up on the systems of the Panama and training a crew to help fly it.

'I copy the thrusters are within parameters,' Belting told him in reply. 'Proceed when ready.'

The ship was undocked from its clamps five minutes later, the first time it had free from its moorings in more than six years. Only one of the four fusion reactors had been lit and that was only to provide power and environmental controls to the ship. The fusion engines themselves would not be needed for the operation.

'Thrusting away,' Kipling's voice said once they were free. The flare of white appeared from the fore and aft sides and the massive ship slowly began to move away from the dock. It took nearly thirty minutes for it to move out into the departure corridor and stabilize its orbit once again.

'Good job,' Belting congratulated once they reported that they were in position. 'My compliments to your crew.'

'My crew thanks you, Admiral,' Kipling responded. 'Now lets see if those pilots you hired can do their stuff. Opening the cargo door now.'

On the top of the ship a massive door began to swing upward, powered by a set of thirty hydraulic arms. This was the main cargo off-load door. Immediately beneath it were the sixteen landing craft in which one quarter of a fighting division's gear was stored. The landing craft were connected to a system of airtight access tunnels and airlocks.

'Which ones are you bringing out first?' Jackson asked Belting as the door reached the top of its climb. They could only launch four landing craft at a time because they only had four pilots that could fly them. Or at least it was hoped that they could fly them. All of those recruited had come from the civilian spaceports at Eden and New Pittsburgh, where their jobs had been flying the cargo lifters that delivered food products and steel to Triad. None of the four had ever flown a Panama lifter before except in the simulation programs that they had activated at the TNB training center.

'The A through D will come out first,' Belting said. 'They have the tanks and the APCs on them. Once the pilots land we'll have a C-12 bring them back up again and we'll start working on the next four.'

'So a couple of days to get everything down?'

'Assuming that nothing goes wrong, yes.'

Jackson nodded thoughtfully, sipping out of his coffee.

'LS-A is reporting a good engine start,' Kipling reported over the radio link. 'He's beginning the pre-flight checks now.'

Within a minute the other three ships reported successful engine starts as well. The pre-flight checks on the landing craft took the better part of forty minutes to complete. Belting and Jackson passed the time by discussing Operation Interdiction. So far the secrecy of the operation appeared to have been maintained despite the fact that Marlin had managed to get out a brief radio message before being destroyed. Both men concluded, based upon the arrogant attitudes of the Marlin's commanding officers, who had been pulled from the wreckage by the rescue crews, interrogated at length by Belting himself, and then shipped down to the POW camp in Libby, that even if the Earthlings received the message they would have a hard time putting stock in it.

'They're arrogance is what is going to lose the war for them,' Jackson said with a sad shake of the head. 'Just the way it happened in the Jupiter War.'

'Thank God for their arrogance then,' said Belting.

The pre-flight checks were completed a few minutes later with no problems or reasons to delay being found. Lieutenant Carrie Sing, the pilot of ship A was the first on the radio to announce she was ready to separate from the Panama.

'Go with separation sequence LS-A,' Kipling's voice told her. 'Releasing docking clamps on your order.'

'Release the clamps,' she said, her voice not showing so much as a trace of the nervousness she had to have been feeling.

The clamps were released and a moment later the first craft began to rise from the hull of the massive Panama, drifting slowly upward, meter by meter, until it was well above the arc of the loading door.

'I'm one hundred meters above the door,' Sing said. 'Beginning to maneuver.'

'Beginning to maneuver,' Kipling acknowledged.

The thrusters on the front of the ship came to life, slowing it just a bit and allowing it to drift backwards in the corridor. The top thrusters fired a few times as well, stabilizing the ship and keeping it from drifting any higher. Once the ship was well away from the Panama the front thrusters went quiet and the opposing corner thrusters lit up, slowly turning the ship around, so that the main engines on the rear were facing towards the direction of orbit. Just as it got turned around and positioned for the de-orbit burn, the second of the landing craft began to rise out of the Panama.

It took another twenty minutes for all four landing craft to exit the ship, get turned around in their orbits, and