planetary guard — the WestHem congress and executive council had stubbornly insisted upon this as a condition of inception). His previous experience had allowed him to be assigned to the special forces division where he had gradually worked his way up to the security detail and one of the coveted full-time, paid positions in the guard. Like all of the security force that watched over high officials, General Jackson had handpicked him personally for the detail and he had been subjected to intense training. He was a very loyal, very competent leader with a knack for his job. He was also one of the few people besides General Jackson himself and a few close, sympathetic friends that knew what was about to happen.
'I'm fine, Mike,' said Laura, who insisted on calling those close to her by their first names. 'I'm just fine. Thank you for asking.'
Warren nodded, looking a little nervous himself. He was dressed in the standard indoor MPG uniform of red shorts and a white T-shirt with the Martian flag on the breast. Over the T-shirt was a Kevlar armor vest that was capable of stopping handgun fire. He had a 4mm sidearm strapped to his belt and an M-24 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. A helmet with a headset sat atop his head and a pair of combat goggles, which were linked to the combat computer/ tactical radio system, were covering his eyes. In the goggles he would be able to see status reports of his troops, maps of the location they were in, and other pieces of vital information superimposed over the display. The goggles gave him an almost insectile appearance but Laura had long since gotten used to that. 'Don't you worry about a thing, Governor,' he told her. 'I'm not gonna let anything happen to you.'
She nodded, offering him a smile. 'Well,' she said, 'there are going to be a lot of upset people out there once I give my speech, that's for sure. But let's hope it doesn't come to violence, shall we?'
'It won't,' he assured her, adjusting the sway of his weapon a little. 'Politicians attack each other in different ways Governor. But just in case some of those tempers get a little too hot, remember that my platoon and I are watching out for you.'
'And I appreciate that, Mike, thank you.'
Warren basked in her praise, feeling a wave of protectiveness towards her that was quite similar to what a mother bear feels for her cubs. He checked the time, which was showing in the upper right hand corner of his vision, seeming to hover in the air before him thanks to the combat goggles. 'It's almost time, Governor,' he said.
'Almost,' Laura agreed. 'Almost.'
The Helvetia Heights section of Eden was perhaps the worst ghetto on the planet of Mars. Located just five kilometers from downtown, it was a ten square kilometer area that had once been where the financial and business offices of the Eden construction industry had been based. Now it was nothing but public housing complexes full of third and fourth generation unemployed and their families. The streets of Helvetia Heights were ruled not by the police, who only came in when they were called and only in teams of four or more, but by the street gangs and the dust dealers. One did not leave one's apartment in Helvetia unless one was prepared to shoot it out with a group of hardened teenage criminals. To live in Helvetia Heights was to live in unending despair and hopelessness.
Helvetia Park was almost directly in the center of this most dangerous area. It was a four square block area that had been a quaint showpiece in happier times; a place where smiling parents took their children to play and feed the ducks in the pond. Now the irrigation system had long since ceased to operate, the trees and shrubs had all been killed and marked with gang graffiti, the grass was an overgrown ugly brown, and the playground equipment was nothing but broken, rusting hulks. Children no longer played in the park. Their parents would have been mad to allow them anywhere near it. These days the park was the domain and home base of the 51st Street Capitalists, a fiercely possessive and well-organized gang that supplied much of the dust that was distributed in the neighborhood.
Matthew Mendez sat upon one of the scarred plastic picnic tables near the south entrance of the park with his friend, Jeff Creek. They each had a bottle of Fruity that they were sipping out of from time to time and a marijuana pipe that they were smoking out of. The alcohol and the marijuana were part of the monthly allotment that was allowed of them by the Martian welfare system. They both had cheap 3mm pistols holstered to the waistbands of their shorts and concealed with oversized T-shirts. The pistols were mostly worn out of habit at this point in their young lives. The Capitalist members would not harass them in any way. Matthew and Jeff had been respected members of the gang until recently 'retiring' as the term went. They had sold dust, had helped produce it, and had fought bitterly with other gangs for territory. Both had drawn the blood of others in the name of dust distribution. As retired veterans they were entitled to free passage through gang controlled areas and respectful treatment by current members. It was part of the code of conduct that the Capitalists had developed over the years and swore blood oaths to uphold upon initiation. Many other gangs in other parts of the city had similar rules.
Matthew had just turned eighteen years old a few days before. He was a tall, well-built young man of Hispanic heritage, the descendant of one of the original Martian agricultural workers that fled WestHem at the beginning of the Agricultural Rush. His ancestors had certainly led a more fulfilling life than he was leading so far. Like most Helvetia inhabitants, he had never been out of the city of Eden in his life. He had not, in fact, ever been out of the neighborhood of Helvetia except to make the occasional drug pick up near the Agricultural processing plants. He, like his father before him, had been born into unemployment and welfare. His grandfather had been the last of the Mendez clan to earn a paycheck.
'So you gonna make it official with Sharon, or what?' Jeff asked as he packed a pinch of the brown waste marijuana that was distributed to the ghetto class into his homemade pipe. 'You're eighteen now and everything's nice and legal. You don't wanna keep livin' with your parents, do you?'
'I don't know, man,' Matthew said with a sigh, taking another sip out of his Fruity. This was the same question that Sharon, the lanky, skinny girl he had been seeing for the past six months continually asked him as well. 'Getting married just seems so... I don't know, programmed into us. I mean, I don't love Sharon. We just like to fuck now and then.'
Jeff shook his head in amusement. 'Love?' he scoffed. 'What the hell does that got to do with it? You think I love Belinda? She's a fuckin' bitch and the less I see of her, the better. But she got me my own apartment, didn't she? And pretty soon she'll get me a kid and the extra money and food that goes along with it. If you go waitin' for love, you're gonna be thirty years old and still living at home. There ain't no love in this place.'
The Martian Welfare laws stated that only a married couple was entitled to a public housing apartment. For this reason it was a ritual among the ghetto class to marry young, almost as soon as they were considered adults by the legal system. And once the couple had the one child they were permitted, they were then entitled to a two- bedroom apartment and an increased food allowance. For this reason young married couples of the ghetto class tended to pump out their one child before their twentieth birthdays. But Matthew did not like doing what everyone else was doing. He could not help but suspect that it was all part of some sinister plan formulated by those that kept everyone in hopeless squalor. 'I just don't think having your own apartment is any reason to get married,' he said, lighting a cigarette. 'That wasn't what the institution of marriage was intended for.'
'Institution? You belong in a fuckin institution,' Jeff accused. 'You are sometimes just too goddamn much to take. Like when you insisted on graduating from high school because it might help you get out of here someday. You remember that?'
'Yeah,' Matthew agreed. 'I remember. I took a lot of shit from the rest of the Capitalists for staying in school.'
'Of course you did,' Jeff said. 'Nobody graduates from high school around here. What's the fuckin' point? You think someone's gonna give you a job? You? A third generation vermin? You just can't accept the fact that you're going to be vermin until you die, can you?'
'I refuse to accept it,' Matthew replied, unoffended by the outburst. He knew that he annoyed the hell out of his peers at times. 'If there's a way out of this ghetto, I'm going to find it. I don't want my kid to grow up in this shithole, do you understand?'
'This shithole is all we got,' Jeff told him. 'We're vermin. Our kids will be vermin. Our kids' kids will be vermin. Nothing is going to change that, man. You hop in a time machine and go forward a couple hundred years and you'll see your great, great, great grandkids hanging out in this park and sellin' dust or whatever people use to get high with then.'
'That's where you're wrong,' he replied firmly, with all the zeal that an eighteen year old could muster. 'I will not have any kids while I live here, while I don't have a job. I won't bring a kid into this life.'
Jeff started laughing, almost spilling his grass out of his pipe. 'You kill me sometimes,' he said. 'Is that why you voted for that stupid bitch Whiting? You think she's gonna get you a job?'
