Greenies

as the air hit it. He stepped out of the suit, leaving him standing naked except for the MPG T-shirt he'd donned nine days ago after his last shower. It was pretty much beyond salvage at this point. Even if it was washed and sterilized the smell and the sweat stains would probably remain. He took it off and put it in a plastic bag from his locker, intending to simply throw it away.

He had already unloaded his M-24 and removed all of the magazines from the outside pockets on the suit. He now removed his last waste-pack, his food pack, the water tank and the air supply tank and put them all in his locker. He made a last check of all the pockets, finding two loose M-24 rounds, two rocks he didn't remember picking up, and the wrapper from a food pack. He tossed all these onto a back shelf and then removed the combat computer module that controlled the suit. This he set on a different shelf. Satisfied that the suit was now completely empty he turned it inside out — a process that took the better part of five minutes — and then hung it on a hook on the outside of his locker door.

'You got the Spray-clean?' he asked Hicks, who was still going through his own pockets.

'Yeah, right there, top shelf.'

Jeff reached into his locker and grabbed the aerosol can. The contents were something that had been developed by a Martian chemist about five years before and it made the process of cleaning one's biosuit a breeze instead of the agonizing, two to three hour ordeal it had once been. All you did was sprayed the entire inside with the concoction, which was a combination of disinfectant and cleaning compounds that would bind to any foreign matter. The active ingredients were mixed in with a sodium bicarbonate base that would absorb most of the odor. He sprayed nearly a quarter of the can, saturating the entire suit. In two hours all he had to do was wipe it all off with a towel and the suit would be ready for action.

'Thanks,' Jeff said, putting the can back. 'Now its time for a shower, a shave, and some real fuckin' food.'

'I heard they got steaks and artichokes out there for us,' Hicks said, starting the process of turning his own suit inside out.

'I heard they got us some beer too,' Jeff said, his mouth salivating at the very thought.

'If they don't, I'm gonna find me some. Some smokes too. After eight fuckin' days out in the wastelands I wanna drink and smoke until I barf and my lungs get coughed out.'

'Well put,' Jeff said, grabbing a towel, some soap, and some shampoo.

'You wanna join me?' he asked. 'Me and Zen are gonna hit the Troop Club and see what we can score over there. I heard a rumor that they held some of the booze back for the combat soldiers.'

'I got something I need to do,' Jeff responded.

'You sure, man?' Hicks said. 'Xenia might be there. She's pretty much shot me down at this point but you could probably jack your round into her chamber if you play your cards right.'

'Xenia and I have an understanding about that,' Jeff said.

'What the fuck you mean?'

'Never mind,' he said. 'I might head over later on, especially if they got booze and smokes over there. But first I gotta go home.'

'Home?' Hicks said, raising his eyebrows a bit. 'I thought you hated your old lady like the marines hate the Mosquitoes.'

'I do,' he said. 'And its time for me to do something about it. A little promise I made to myself.'

'Ahhh,' Hicks said knowingly. 'You're gonna tell her to take a flying fuck at Phobos?'

'Yep,' he confirmed.

'I can respect that,' Hicks told him. He considered for a second. 'You gonna tear off one last piece first? A farewell fuck?'

To his surprise, Jeff actually found himself seriously considering this suggestion for a few seconds. Sure he hated Belinda now and she had put on more than thirty kilos since they'd been married and sex with her had been nothing but a chore for the last year or so — a chore that had been unsuccessful in its goal of conceiving their one child so they could get that two-bedroom apartment — but the thought of sliding into her body and rutting atop her until release was strangely compelling at this particular moment in time. Wow, he thought, trying to shake the image off before it produced an erection, I'm really fuckin' horny right now. What the hell is up with that?

'No,' he told Hicks when the thought was finally banished. 'I may need to get my weapon oiled but I don't need it that bad. I'll score me a little something later at the club.'

'Not if I score it first,' Hicks told him. 'I'm horny enough to fuck Drogan and you know how fuckin' ugly she is. It must be all that death and shit we saw that does it, you know what I mean?'

'Yeah,' Jeff said as the image of stripping Drogan's manly, yet female body down and slamming into her locked into his consciousness — and not in a bad way either. 'I think I know what you mean. I'm gonna go hit the shower. Maybe I'll make it a cold one.'

It was quite some time before he actually got to the shower. There were only thirty showerheads in the locker room and there were almost a thousand people wanting to use them at one time. He waited in a long line that stretched all across the back and side walls of the room. The stink of so many naked, disgusting bodies gathered together in close proximity was almost more than he could take at first. Gradually, however, his nose became desensitized to it and he stopped noticing it. Once that happened he was able to engage in conversation with those in line around him. The topics were mostly about the last eight days and what was going on out there now.

'I still can't believe General Jackson called a fuckin' cease-fire on those marines just because they're retreating,' said a squad sergeant just behind Jeff in line. 'They're just strolling their way back to their LZ right this minute! The Mosquitoes and the special forces teams could be beating the shit out of them!'

'I heard that in Proctor General Azacan almost resigned over that order,' said a private in front of Jeff. 'He could have gotten his armor in front of the marines and cut them off completely. He could have fuckin' destroyed them, man!' He shook his head. 'I'm wondering if Jackson's lost it. Maybe Laura Whiting oughtta replace his ass with Zoloft.'

'Amen to that,' said the sergeant. 'I used to have a lot of respect for Jackson, but now... I'm not so sure.'

Jeff listened to the conversations but contributed little to them. He, like most of the troops that had actually put their asses on the line, that had seen friends killed and horribly wounded, that had known that they themselves might die at any moment, had a sincere wish that every WestHem marine on Mars and above it would be killed in some horrible, painful way. He hated the thought that they were just driving at their leisure back to their landing zones where they would launch back into orbit to regroup and then come back down again in overwhelming strength, probably at Eden or New Pittsburgh. The sour taste of their getaway was taking away from what should have been the euphoria of victory. But as for actually replacing Jackson with Zoloft? He wasn't so sure that was a good idea. Nor did many of the others around them.

'Jackson's got us this far,' was the common argument among the pro-Jacksonians. 'He may have fucked up a wet dream with this cease-fire but he's still the fuckin' man.'

'He choked under the pressure,' was the common argument among the anti-Jacksonians. 'He thinks they're really giving up and he decided not to make them mad.'

The entire argument was somewhat of a moot point, of course. General Jackson wasn't offering his resignation, nor was Laura Whiting asking for it. At least that was the story being passed around at the moment. The WestHems in all four theaters were back at their LZs and in the process of loading their equipment back into their ships. Though the main line units were still under deployment, just in case, the ACRs and the support units had been brought back in and given forty-eight hour passes. Another rumor floating about was that many of the soldiers — particularly those in the units that had taken the heaviest losses — weren't planning to come back.

Jeff finally made his way to a showerhead. An MP guarding the entrance to this particular section of the locker room warned him — politely at least — that he only had three minutes to shower and get out.

He made the best of his three minutes, luxuriating under the spray even though it made the abrasions on his penis sting quite badly. He put on a thick layer of soap and scrubbed everywhere with a washcloth, quickly turning it a dingy brown color. He used almost a hundred milliliters of shampoo on his hair and then quickly brushed his teeth before the final rinse-off. When he left the stall for the next soldier in line he felt almost human again — starving, dehydrated, sore, and very tired — but almost human nonetheless.