Greenies

down before proceeding with their eliminations. One thing that had resulted from his lack of participation however, was that he was now universally despised by all those he supervised instead of being merely disliked, which had been the case before the strike.

'You can't just leave in the middle of the goddamn day because the freakin' MPG is holding some sort of training session,' he said from behind his cheap metal desk in the dispatch office. 'Get your ass back out there and finish your assignment.'

'Sorry, Pitt,' Lon told him, shaking his head without a trace of regret. 'This is an official call-up. I'm not allowed to disregard it and you're not allowed to discipline me for responding to it. It's the law.'

'I don't think the law applies to training,' he replied. 'It's meant for an invasion of the planet by EastHem.'

'The constitution doesn't say that,' Lon told him. 'All it says is that you are expected to honor an official call-up of forces. I've been given an official call-up and I'm leaving. I won't let the door slide shut on me on the way out.'

'Fargo, I'm warning you,' he said sternly. 'You are not to leave early for this. If you do, don't bother coming back.'

Lon was not impressed with his words. 'You don't have the authority to fire me, Pitt,' he told him. 'Don't even pretend that you do. You're just a greenie like me, although apparently you forgot that back during the strike. All you can do is compose a disciplinary notice for me and recommend that I get fired but middle management is the one who makes that decision and I hardly think that they'll go up against a constitutional issue for something as petty as this. So find someone else to fix that fan unit and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye now.'

He walked through the door, letting it slide shut behind him. Pittman was too astonished and too angry to even make a parting reply. Instead he started yelling at Brent, who had been hiding a chuckle the entire time.

Lon, knowing that he had a spare uniform in his locker at the MPG base, didn't even bother going home first. He left the Agricorp maintenance building and made his way to the nearest commuter train station. He walked up the stairway and, coming to the gates that guarded access to the platform, used a fund transfer port in the back of his PC to transfer the cost of the fare to the MarsTrans bank account. The gate then slid open, allowing him access.

A train arrived six minutes later, only four minutes behind schedule, and he climbed aboard, finding a seat near the back among a few elderly Martians and a few gang member types that were probably delivering dust chemicals back to the ghetto. The commuter trains ran atop the street level roof and the train itself, which rode on a magnetic track, cruised along at 45 kilometers per hour, jerking to a halt every few minutes and then, after passengers embarked or disembarked, powered up again for the next leg. Buildings flashed past and turns were negotiated at high speed. None of the motion being produced was felt by Lon or any of the other passengers thanks to the inertial damping system. If you closed your eyes it felt as if you were standing still. When they reached a hub station ten minutes later Lon disembarked that train and waited another ten minutes for another one. When it arrived he climbed aboard and rode it to the station nearest the MPG base.

Since it had taken him quite a while to come in from the greenhouse he'd been traveling through, Lon was the last of his squad to arrive. The rest of his team were gathered in the platoon's briefing room, all of them looking a little confused and gossiping among themselves as to what the meaning of the call-up was and what form the 'special training' would take. Lieutenant Yee, whose presence on the base had been confirmed by other members, was conspicuously absent at the moment, probably in an officer's briefing.

Lon was of course inundated with questions from his men and from the other sergeants in the room, as if he were in possession of some information that they didn't have. 'I don't know,' he told them all. 'I've never heard of them calling us up for special training on a weekday before. Nobody told me shit.'

They waited. A few more stragglers from the platoon came into the room and starting the entire round of questioning and speculation over again. All forty men did show up however, many with tales of unhappy supervisors or managers.

Finally Lieutenant Yee arrived. Since the MPG was light on military formality, no one stood up or saluted him but they did all quiet down respectfully to await his orders.

'Okay, people,' Yee said slowly, 'here's the deal. I just received a briefing from Captain Armand and he wanted me to tell you all that we are not really here for a training mission. That was just a ruse to keep WestHem authorities from taking alarm at our call up. The real reason we have been called up is because of possible action up on Triad. I was not told much more than that. All I know is that it is not just the Eden area company, it is the entire battalion. All of us our going to be moved as quickly as possible up to Triad for a possible active service in defense of Mars.'

There were some amazed stares at his words. The entire special forces battalion? That was four companies of troops, one from each of the four key surface cities thought most likely to be attacked. At 160 soldiers per company, that added up to 640 men! Never before had the entire battalion been called together for a single mission. Special forces worked in small teams employing hit and run tactics. And just what kind of active service were they talking about? Was there a threat from an EastHem invasion force? If so, why were only the special forces teams being called to arms? It didn't make any sense. It was the marines' responsibility to protect Triad and the naval base if an attack occurred. They had an entire division stationed at their barracks and enough surface to orbit craft to move more than a thousand men up at a time. The only surface to orbit transports the Eden area MPG troops possessed were two old C-8 lifters from the Jupiter War era, lifters that could carry only 150 troops at a time. Since each round trip to Triad and back would take three hours, it would be nine hours before everyone could even get up there.

Yee waited for the babble of voices to quiet down. 'That's all that I know at the moment, people,' he told them. 'We're being called up and shipped up to Triad for an unknown purpose. Governor Whiting herself signed the order making it so. If any of you do not wish to participate in this, it is your right under our charter to back out. I was also assured that everyone will be given this opportunity again if the mission that we are being considered for gets a green light. Anyone who wishes to leave, please get up and do so right now. You will be held at the base until the completion or cancellation of the mission and then you will be allowed to return to regular duties. Any takers?'

Not a single person stood up. Lon didn't know for sure what everyone else was thinking, but his curiosity was certainly piqued. He was definitely in for the long haul.

'I didn't think that there would be,' Yee said with a smile. 'But I did have to ask. All right, let's talk about load outs, shall we? Our load outs will be full interior armor and combat goggles with regular ammunition, not training rounds. Each squad will equip itself with four M-24s with grenade launchers and thirty smart frags per weapon. The SAW men will each draw four thousand rounds of ammunition for their weapons, the riflemen one thousand rounds. In addition, each squad will carry no less than four hundred meters of primacord for door breaching. Biosuits will not be needed but everyone is to draw a gas mask and wear their heavy boots. Don't worry about food packs but do get some canteens. I'm told that you'll need them. Does everyone understand the load out?'

Everyone understood the requirements of it.

'Let's get moving then,' Yee told them. 'We're going to start loading onto the C-8s in the order we get equipped. I don't want my platoon sucking hind tit here, so lets make it fast.'

It took the better part of an hour for the entire company to draw their weapons and ammunition and get suited up. They talked among themselves as they went through this process, all of them speculating on just what it was they were going to be asked to do. A large majority seemed to feel that a secret EastHem invasion force was going to try to make landings of some sort at either the naval base or the Triad commercial spaceport. After all, Mars and Earth were at opposite sides of the sun and Jupiter was situated relatively close to Mars at the moment. This was the planetary configuration that had long been feared as the ripest for such an attack since EastHem ships would legitimately be in the area. As for why the MPG special forces would be the ones to repel such an invasion, it was felt that this was because the intelligence that had uncovered the plot had come from the MPG instead of the CIA or FLEB. Perhaps WestHem authorities had disregarded the information forcing General Jackson to act alone. That would be just like those WestHem pricks. All of this sounded plausible enough that soon it was regarded as the official rumor. There were only a few dissenting opinions, a few of which actually suggested the real reason for the deployment, although they would not know it for some time. Everyone, no matter what their opinion of the coming conflict, felt a sharp edge of nervousness and anticipation however.