Greenies

defensive weapon for city defense, which was basically the only thing worth attacking or defending on Mars. Utilizing the sales and income tax that Laura Whiting had proposed and pushed through the legislature after the Jupiter War, the MPG had bought and modified more than a six hundred of the expensive weapons over the years. The 1^st battalion of the 6^th Armored infantry regiment of the MPG was the main force responsible for point defense of Eden. They had 36 of these ETT-12s as their main striking power. In addition they had 54 top of the line Alexander Industries armored personnel carriers, each of which sported a lower yield anti- tank laser and two light machine guns and could carry a complete squad of infantry apiece. Backing up this force were four mobile anti-air laser vehicles that could fire up to six shots per minute and packed enough power to bring down an orbital lifter if such a thing was needed.

Major Michael Chin, a twelve-year veteran of the MPG (and a middle management employee of Alexander Industries in his real life) was the commander of the 1^st of the 6^th. Chin and the men under his command had been out in the wastelands since before sunrise that morning, their task to play prey for the special forces and air force. It was a role that they had played many times before in the past, pretending to be an enemy column advancing on Eden.

A tall man of Chinese descent and a fourth generation Martian, Chin was in the turret of one of the tanks in the middle of the column, watching through the view screen that was hooked to an infrared enhanced digital camera on the outside. Taking soft, easy breaths of the canned air from his biosuit, he panned back and forth, searching for any signs of the teams that he knew were out there somewhere. Time and time again those teams had cleaned his battalion's clock and, though he knew such training was invaluable for them, he was tired of being massacred by a bunch of kids with toy lasers. Today he was going to try a new tactic. After all, his orders were to make things as difficult as possible without actually cheating. 'Chin to Air-def,' he said on the command channel.

'Air-def here, boss,' said Lieutenant Garcia, who was in command of the sixteen men who made up the air defense section of the battalion. 'Go ahead.'

'Get ready for action,' he told them. 'I can feel those sneaking fucks looking at us now. This is prime ambush ground and they usually call in the Mosquitoes to hit us first.'

'Passive scanners are in acquisition mode,' Garcia responded. 'The lasers are charged and ready to go. Do you want me to go active on the search?'

'Negative on that,' Chin replied. 'The radar can't detect them worth a shit. All they do is give them a beacon to home in on. Just keep your eyes out. It's coming soon, I can feel it.'

'You got it, boss,' Garcia told him. 'Staying passive and keeping the eyes open.'

'Van Pelt,' he said next, calling the captain in charge of the infantry squads.

'Yeah, boss,' Van Pelt answered right back.

'Get ready to initiate the new plan,' he told him. 'The moment those Mosquitoes come into view, get those APCs moving towards the hills. Even split, half to the north and half to the south. We're gonna catch those bastards this time and they're gonna be buying every last one of us bong hits and beers after the exercise.'

'You got it, boss,' Van Pelt said enthusiastically. He had caught some of his commander's optimism.

The special forces teams, though deadly and stealthy, were somewhat predictable in their operation. They had to be with their limited resources. Usually the teams stayed well hidden in the hills above the advance and called in Mosquitoes to make firing runs on the APCs before they showed themselves. MPG doctrine was not to concentrate on the heavy armor but to instead kill as many of the soldiers as possible as far from the battle area as possible, thereby reducing their numbers to ineffective before they got close to their objective. In a battle where the enemy would have to land their ships outside of artillery range of the city defenses (at least 300 kilometers away) and march inward from there, it made the most tactical sense. The MPG was basically a sniping force that fought using guerrilla tactics. Once the Mosquitoes had made their initial runs, the anti-tank crews of the special forces units would open up with their shoulder fired lasers, taking out more of the APCs and forcing the remaining soldiers out into a fight. Once the soldiers unloaded and tried to assemble, the machine gunners and riflemen would open up, picking off as many as they could as quick as they could. They would then withdraw to safety and be extracted by the Hummingbirds before the infantry troops could close with them. Each individual run would not cause serious attrition, but when they came again and again in succession, the numbers quickly added up.

'Not this time,' Chin vowed, continuing to scan back and forth. 'We're gonna make those fuckers pay this time.'

Fifty kilometers to the north, on the other side of the protective hills, two Mosquitoes circled lazily three hundred meters above the ground. Officially called the AA-55 atmospheric attack craft, they were essentially nothing more than flying wings powered by a single hydrogen/methane semi-rocket engine. Looking like a thirty meter boomerang of flimsy design, they could travel through the Martian sky at speeds up to 700 KPH and pull turns of up to 3Gs. Like the Hummingbirds and the MPG biosuits they were functional only on the planet Mars and for this reason the regular WestHem armed forces did not possess them or even acknowledge their possible usefulness.

The name Mosquito came from the derisive comments of a regular WestHem marine general back when the Martian designed and produced aircraft first became a part of the MPG in the early days. This general, who at the time had been the commander of the Marine quick response force stationed on the planetary surface, had been interviewed by one of the Earth based Internet stations for a documentary on the alleged waste of taxpayer money that the MPG represented.

'I don't really see the use for winged aircraft on an extra-terrestrial surface,' he had opined for everyone to hear. 'Sure, they're cute to look at and they can move faster than the traditional hovers that the real forces use, and I'll even give credit to the Martian engineers who were able to design and produce such a craft in the first place. But when it comes down to practicality on the battlefield, I'm afraid they're seriously lacking. There's no way that such a flimsy target could stand up to modern air defenses over an advancing column. They would be nothing more than annoying mosquitoes buzzing around an EastHem advance, waiting to get swatted. In my opinion the so-called General who runs this force would be much wiser to invest the Martian taxpayer dollars in more tanks, which are truly the cornerstone of any defense.'

Of course the Martians had made a habit long ago of holding in contempt nearly everything that was reported on WestHem Internet news. As such, the intended effect of the report, which had been sponsored by none other than Alexander Industries and had been designed to force Jackson and the procurement committee to buy more of their armor, had failed. And the derisive term that had been casually coined by the general had actually endeared itself to the Martians who flew the AA-55 and by those who trained with it. By the time a year had gone by Mosquito was the official name and the fact that mosquitoes had once been one of the deadliest insects on planet Earth had not gone unremarked upon by the Martian forces.

The Mosquito, for all its gracefulness and flimsy design, was basically an armor buster. Mounted on the belly of the craft, in a retractable turret directly beneath the cockpit, was a twin laser cannon nearly as powerful as those on the ETT-12s. This cannon was under direct control of the gunner, who sat behind the pilot, and could be aimed and fired as fast as the gunner could turn his head and put a targeting recticle on a vehicle. The recharge rate of the lasers was a moderate twelve seconds which meant that the standard Mosquito tactic was to rush in at low level from behind surrounding hills or mountains, blast two pieces of armor — usually the APCs in keeping with MPG doctrine — and then buzz back under cover again before anti-air forces could even acquire it. It was a remarkably simple aircraft, with no autopilot and very little avionics besides standard navigation equipment. It was truly a pilot's aircraft in an age when almost everything was computer controlled.

Brian Haggerty was the pilot of the lead Mosquito. He held the stick lightly in his right hand and the throttle lightly in his left, keeping the aircraft in a shallow bank over the staging area. He and his gunner, Colton Rendes, were dressed in standard MPG biosuits and strapped into Martian designed ejection seats that could rocket them clear of the craft in an emergency and then set them gently down on the surface below. The cockpit was a bubble canopy that gave them commanding views of the jagged hills below them. It was a strangely beautiful landscape that neither ever got tired of looking at.

'I'm telling you, Brian,' Colton was saying over their open com link, 'you have to follow through with this email. This is not the time to be apathetic about politicians. Apathy is what got the human race into this mess in the first place.'

Brian snorted a little, half in disgust, half in exasperation. 'You're starting to sound like Lisa, my partner,' he said. 'A goddamn veteran cop and she's spouting on and on about Laura Whiting. She even voted for her. Voted!