Greenies

They formed a protective circle in the boulder field, weapons trained outward.

'Jefferson,' Lon said. 'Are you still in contact with the hummer?'

'They're moving in now, sarge,' Jefferson responded. 'ETA less than a minute.'

The ETA turned out to be accurate. From the north the bulky flying H that was the Hummingbird came over the hills at stall speed, it's wheels down, and then nosed up, it's thrusters showing an intense red on the infrared displays. It dropped out of the sky and thumped to the ground, raising a large cloud of red dust that obscured it completely.

'Get on board,' Lon barked. 'Move, move!'

They moved, rushing over the sandy soil and into the dust cloud, their infrared sensors guiding them to the open ramp. One by one they trotted up and took a seat, quickly strapping themselves in and securing their weapons. Each person called out their name and the word secured once they were ready for flight. When the tenth person was safe and accounted for Dave pushed the ramp button and sealed them up.

'Lifting off,' said Rick, applying throttle even as he did so. The aircraft shuddered and pushed into the sky, moving forward as the thrusters were directed towards the rear. Within a minute they were out of the area.

'Digital perfect,' Lon said, slumping into his seat as they pitched and dived through the hills. 'Good mission, guys. Damn good mission.'

'Van Pelt here, boss,' came the voice over the radio link ten minutes later.

Chin was watching his tactical display as the small blue dots that represented the dismounted infantry moved over the map. More than a hundred soldiers had advanced without opposition to the top of the hills where the ambush had come from. 'Go ahead,' he said, already knowing what was going to be said.

'We found their firing positions,' he responded. 'They've bugged out. No casualties left behind.'

'Damn,' Chin muttered. He had been hoping for at least one 'dead' special forces member. Had any of them been 'killed' in the battle, they would have been left behind by their companions and forced to endure a ride back to the base with the OPFOR in one of the 'dead' tanks or APCs. It was something that had happened a few times before but not often. 'Copy that,' he said into the radio link. 'Are you in pursuit of them?'

'We are,' he confirmed. 'Advance elements are already at the bottom of the hill as you can see on you display. It's not looking real good for catching them though.'

'Give it a shot anyway,' Chin ordered. 'We have to go through the motions, don't we?'

Jeff Creek lived on the 63^rd floor of the Bingham Tower Public Housing building in apartment 6312. Prior to his marriage to his longtime girlfriend Belinda six months before, he had lived on the 79^th floor of the building with his parents. Now that he was married however, he was entitled under the federal and planetary welfare laws to his own one bedroom apartment. In addition to this, every two weeks he and his wife were given 835 dollars for food and clothing, sixty dollars worth of alcoholic beverage credits, and eighty dollars worth of marijuana and tobacco credits. Of course these credits were only redeemable at Agricorp subsidiary intoxicant stores and could only be used to purchase the lowest grades of product available but you took what you could get.

Jeff, like most of the welfare class, rose late in the morning as a habit. Why shouldn't he? There was no job for him to get up and go to nor was there any point in going out to look for one. It was 10:58 when he pulled himself from the cheap mattress that was his bed. Wearing only a pair of tattered shorts Jeff walked to the bathroom of the apartment, which was connected to both the small living room/kitchen portion and the bedroom by connecting doors. He urinated into the rust stained toilet and then told the house computer system to turn on the shower. Recognizing his voice pattern and using his preset temperature preference, it turned on the valves, setting free a feeble spray of warm water that trickled down from the old, leaking pipe. He stripped off his shorts, tossing them into the corner of the room and stepped inside, taking five minutes to scrub himself clean.

'Belinda,' he yelled out into the living room once he was done. 'Where's the fuckin clean laundry?'

Belinda was watching a romance drama on the main Internet screen and sipping from her second Fruity of the day. 'Ain't no fuckin money to do laundry,' she yelled back, not even glancing in his direction. 'We spent it all on food.'

'What the hell am I supposed to wear?' he demanded, stepping out into the living room naked.

'Ask me if I give a fuck,' she said. 'Now shut your ass. I'm trying to watch this.'

'Bitch,' he muttered, trotting back into the bedroom. He dug around in the heaping laundry pile by the door until he found the least offensive shirt and shorts that he could. He pulled them on his body and then donned a pair of leather moccasins, the standard footwear on Mars. He ran a comb through his hair, arranging the strands into something approaching presentable, and then picked up his gun and his PC, stuffing both into the waistband of his shorts. He reached into a drawer on a cheap nightstand and pulled out his bag of marijuana and his pipe.

'Where you going?' Belinda asked as he moved through the living room towards the door.

'Out,' he said simply.

'Well be sure to be back tonight sometime,' she answered listlessly. 'You have to fuck me tonight. I'm ovulating.'

'Whatever,' he said, opening the sliding door and stepping out into the hall.

The hallway of the 63^rd floor had once been carpeted in a fecal-brown industrial grade covering. Years of being urinated on, having cigarettes tapped and dumped upon it, and being painted with gang graffiti had resulted in its condemnation by the health department on one of their bi-decade inspections. Since then it had been removed, leaving only the bare concrete of the floor. Now the concrete itself had gang graffiti and puddles of urine or vomit and thousands of other unidentifiable but equally disgusting markings. The walls were also prime canvas for graffiti and overlapping gang epitaphs from various ages lined it ceiling to floor on both sides in every imaginable color. Doors to other apartments were spaced every five meters on both sides and several cross hallways led off into different parts of the building. A few people were wandering around the halls as he made his way to the elevators, most of them shuffling along and trying to look tough. He passed several current Capitalist members, getting respectful nods from them in deference to his gang tattoo with the large R over the top of it proclaiming his honorably retired status.

He lit a cigarette as he waited for the up elevator to arrive, puffing thoughtfully and wondering if he was even going to be able to produce an erection for that bitch Belinda tonight. It was something that was getting harder and harder to do even though he badly wanted the extra income and bigger apartment that parenthood guaranteed him. He couldn't stand her and he was finding that getting sexually excited for someone that you hated was not as easy as it had once been. He found himself thinking, almost against his will, that maybe his friend Matt was right. Maybe it was a mistake to marry the first person to come along just to achieve the status that went with it.

The elevator doors slid open revealing the dank interior. Two women were inside chatting to each other about the Laura Whiting speech the previous night, their tones animated and profane. Both had baskets of fresh laundry from the laundry room in the basement of the building. Neither acknowledged him in any way as he stepped inside.

'Ninety-three,' he told the elevator computer and it acknowledged him by lighting up the numeral on its display board. The doors clanked shut and the floor indicator began to blur rapidly upward. No movement of any kind was felt inside the elevator itself. Even though they were shooting upwards at more than five floors per second the inertial dampening properties of the artificial gravity field kept them from feeling it.

The numbers came to an abrupt halt at 93 and the doors slid open once more. He stepped out into a hallway that was virtually identical to the one that he had entered from. He turned left and began walking through the halls, following a course he had walked perhaps ten thousand times in his life. Several twists and turns brought him in front of an apartment door marked 9345. A pinhole camera was set into the door at head level and a small button was set into the wall at chest level. He pushed the button, setting off a buzzer inside.

The door slid open a minute later and Andrew Mendez, Matt's father, was standing there. He was a portly man of thirty-seven years, his considerable stomach, bare due to his lack of a shirt, hanging over the waistband of his shorts. He sported a full mustache and beard and on his right arm was the exact same tattoo that Jeff and Matt sported: that of a retired Capitalist.

'What's up, Jeff?' the elder Mendez greeted with a smile.

'My dick, like always,' Jeff replied.

They exchanged the age-old handshake of the Capitalists members: two squeezes, a clasp, and a banging of the fists hard enough to cause momentary pain. Both did it reflexively, without more than a passing thought.