Greenies

directly under your control.'

'I think that's a good idea. I'm assuming control of TNB defense as of now.' He paused again while Rosewood instructed his computer to send a copy of his schematics across. Once it arrived he spent a few minutes staring at it intently. 'John,' he said when he came to a decision, 'I need you to pull your men out of the dock area and move them to guarding your command post.'

'But the ships...' Rosewood started.

'The ships can't leave or do anything without commands from where you sit. The MPG won't be able to do anything with them until they have the command post secured. Trust me. You must keep them from taking that command post at all costs until my marines can dock. That means you put every available man with a weapon in front of and inside of the building. I'll upload a deployment schematic for you as soon as I have it.'

'Okay, it'll be done.'

Sega's office looked out over the troop assembly area adjacent to the airlock complexes. From his desk he was able to see the huge, cavernous room that contained the flight area, where his C-12s were sitting idle, and the outside assembly staging. There were ten outdated tanks down there that had nothing but training ammunition to fire as well as twenty-five outdated APCs with the same problem. The vehicles were being ignored as the brigade he had tasked to take the MPG base - those that were left of it anyway - came out of the locker room one by one in their bulky biosuits. They assembled in their pre-determined positions, exactly one arm length apart, their weapons slung over their right shoulders. Soon they would exit through the airlocks and move overland to the main city, where they would breach a hole in the wall, causing the loss of pressure in that particular section. The blast doors surrounding the section would slam down and the marines would enter. They would then seal the hole that they had entered through, thus retaining the integrity of the section, and re-flood it with air by drilling holes through into the undamaged portions of the city. Once the pressure was equalized, they would blast through another wall and start heading for the base. This was the textbook manner of assaulting a pressurized city or structure, something that had been practiced many times but that had never actually been attempted in real combat positions, neither by WestHem or EastHem.

Satisfied that the Martian portion of his plans was going forth as scheduled, Sega instructed his computer to get Colonel Summers, commander of his third brigade, on the screen. Summers and his men were currently gearing up in the locker rooms so that they could move out through the interior gates once they were liberated from the greenies.

'Summers here, General,' he said once he came on line.

'Summers,' Sega said, 'there's a bit of a situation going on up at the naval base. I'll need you to break loose one of your battalions to deal with it.'

'A situation, sir?'

'Greenies are attacking TNB,' Sega said. He then explained the details as quickly as he could.

'Those motherfuckers,' Summers said, outraged. 'We'll kill them. We'll absolutely murder them, General!'

'I'll be satisfied if you just prevent them from gaining control of the base,' Sega told him. 'Scrounge up two of our flight crews and start loading your best battalion into those lifters. I want you launching within thirty minutes.'

'Yes sir,' Summers said, signing off.

Sega gave a quick call to Rosewood to tell him that help would be leaving shortly. Nothing had changed up there - the greenies that had already broken out were still moving through the base, the ones that were pinned down were still stationary, and the ones who were attempting to flank the gate were moving into position.

'Thanks, John,' Rosewood told him gratefully. 'The shifting of troops from the docks to the control room is underway now. If we can keep those greenies contained in the tunnel for a few more minutes, we might be able to keep them in there indefinitely.'

'Yes,' Sega said sourly, thinking of the hundreds of casualties he had just suffered under such circumstances. 'It's not that hard to do.'

He had no sooner signed off from this transmission than two flight crews for the C-12s came rushing out of their ready shack to begin firing up their spacecraft. Ground crewmen followed them out and immediately started the process of hooking starter carts up so that the pre-flight checks could begin. Sega watched in satisfaction as they went about their work. The sooner his marines got up to Triad, the better chance they would have of safeguarding the pre-positioned equipment. And if they were able to do that, he thought, maybe it would become necessary to bring a few tanks and APCs down for his marines to use in retaking the planet. After all, the MPG were using such things in their defense of Eden. It would probably be prudent to fight fire with fire as it were.

Optimism flooding through him, Sega's state of mind shifted almost without his realizing it. Instead of worrying if he was going to be able to safeguard his equipment, he began speculating just what to do with it when it was secured. Surely he wouldn't need an entire division worth of tanks and APCs would he? Probably a brigade's worth would be sufficient. That way he could divide them up into four company-sized units and send one to each of the MPG occupied cities. And as for artillery, well, he wouldn't be needing any of that at all. This would strictly be an indoor conflict, wouldn't it?

As the 640 armed troops slated to head to Mars came marching out of the locker room, their weapons ready, their ammunition and supply backs upon their backs, Sega called up some planning software on his computer and began to formulate just how he was going to retake Eden and the other three cities. As the marines marched up the ramp and crowded into the two surface to orbit craft for the ninety minute trip to Triad, he had the bare beginnings of his plan already formulated.

'General Sega,' came Summer's voice over the terminal a few minutes later. 'We're loaded up and ready to launch.'

Sega glanced at him, giving a little smile. 'Very good,' he said. 'I'm looking at Rosewood's tactical display. The greenies are still moving through the base towards the docks and the housing areas but the main force of them are still pinned in the tunnel. I've ordered all defenders to cover the base control building. There's a good chance the main force of greenies will have broken out of the tunnel by the time you get there, but Rosewood's MPs should hopefully be able to hold them from actually taking control of the place. In any case, it is absolutely vital that you secure that building as quickly as possible. The entire base, not to mention all of the ships at anchor, are controlled from there.'

'Understood, General,' Summer said. 'Can you keep updated schematics of the situation at TNB flowing to me and my men? That would be very useful in letting us know exactly where to land and in what direction to move once we clear the C-12s.'

'I'll see to it,' he promised. 'Now have your pilots get moving. Time's wasting.'

'Yes sir,' Summer told him, offering a salute before signing off.

While the main assault brigade preparing to march out across the wastelands was still assembling, the first of the giant C-12 lifters released it's brakes and powered up its maneuvering thrusters, filling the flight deck with the roar of a hydrogen rocket motor. The brakes were released and the 350 passenger craft began to creep across the floor towards the airlock complex on the far side of the room. The first set of steel doors was standing invitingly open. The C-12 made its way inside and the doors slowly slid shut behind it, sealing it from the rest of the room. The airlock then began its cycle, expelling the majority of the air out into the atmosphere.

Two kilometers away, a ten-man squad of Major Chin's infantry soldiers were huddled inside of a forward defensive trench. The trench was fifty meters long, a meter and a half deep, and had the entire top lined with heavy sandbags filled with dense industrial shavings. The trench had been built more than ten years before as part of the basic line of defense against EastHem invasion. It was but one of more than a thousand such positions in the Eden vicinity alone. The squad had been in their position since being deployed the night before, their mission to help pin the marines inside of their base. They had been staring at the same view all night long and through much of the morning. All were tired but remained alert, especially since the word of what was happening at the main gate of the base inside the city had reached them.

It was one of the privates of this squad, a twenty-one year old junior member of the MPG, that first spotted something different in their area of responsibility. One of the massive airlock doors that led from the interior of the base to the paved flight tarmac was slowly sliding open along its track. 'Movement at the airlocks,' he reported, gripping his M-24 tighter against him. 'Number three lock is opening.'

Around him the other soldiers of his squad stiffened up, peering through the gaps in the sandbags that they