Since then the Martian credit had achieved cautious acceptance. Merchants kept them in a separate account and worried incessantly that the war would be lost and it would all be worthless one day, but they accepted it as payment. So far Matt had not spent any of his, it had simply accumulated in the account the MPG had set up for him at their credit union. He had not wanted to come to the club tonight but Brian, the man who had once called him "vermin" and had almost lost his career to avoid flying with him, had insisted quite sternly.
"I'm buying you a fuckin' drink and two fuckin' bonghits, newbie," he told him. "You done real good today and I ain't taking no for an answer."
And so they went. As they entered the bar the mood inside was jubilant, festive even. Music played from the speakers and the cocktail waitresses circulated endlessly, distributing drinks to the standing room only crowd. Every table was full and people were three thick at the bar. The smell of tobacco and marijuana smoke was pungent, almost sickening.
"Twenty-seventh air attack squadron!" Brian shouted as he and his sis and their companions entered the room. This had become traditional among the combat units when they came into The Troop Club, especially when kills had been logged. "We dropped nineteen fucking hovers into the dust today. Nineteen!"
A cheer went up, particularly from the part of the room where the pool tables were located. This was where the special forces teams hung out and the special forces teams owed the flyboys some serious bonghits this evening.
"C'mon, kid," Brian said to Matt. "Let's head over that way. Could be I won't have to buy you that drink after all."
"Uh... sure, why not?" Matt asked, feeling very out of his element but having no intention of backing down.
They pushed their way through the crowd towards the pool tables. As they reached the first one an Asian descended woman came rushing out of the crowd and screamed Haggarty's name.
"Brian!" she yelled. "I knew your ass was too fuckin' stubborn to get shot down!" She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
"Hey, Lisa," Haggerty greeted, returning her hug. "How the fuck are you?"
"Static," she said, pulling back a bit. "Gimmee some tongue, hon."
They exchanged a brief, open-mouthed kiss, which, in Martian society, was the same as a hug in Earthling society. As they did so Jeff took a moment to check her out. That she was a cop was without question. She had that cop look in her eyes, that cop way of speaking. But she was also quite hot looking. Her ass was as tight as a spring, her legs toned and muscled, her breasts alluring beneath her MPG t-shirt.
"Mendez," Brian said when they finally stopped exchanging spit, "this is Lisa Wong. We used to work together out on the streets. She's one of those special forces pukes we were clearing the air for today. Lisa, this is Matt Mendez, the fuckin' vermin they gave me as a sis. He turned out all right though. He mowed through those hovers today like he was playing a video game."
"How you doin'?" Matt said, holding out his right hand to her.
"Good," she said, shaking with him. "Fuckin' static actually. You were out there today?"
"Four runs," he said. "Except the last two they wouldn't put their hovers up."
"You guys did some good work today," she said. "We were the observation squad on the west side. We saw them Earthlings take a pounding. It made me proud to be a Martian."
"Well I guess we owe you a couple of bonghits then, don't we?" Matt asked. "We were the west side anti-air team. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have known where to go."
"The kid's right," Brian agreed. "You brought us to target. Let's load you up."
"I'm already loaded up," she said. "Me and Fargo over there got into a bonghit contest about an hour ago."
"You can never have too much Eden green," said Brian. "Let's smoke."
"Fuck yeah," said Matt. "I ain't smoked none in almost a month now."
She grinned. "You talked me into it."
They pushed their way through the crowd to a relatively quiet corner of the bar. On the way they grabbed a cocktail waiter and told him to set them up with nine hits of the best bud in the house and three beers.
"Fuckin' aye," the waiter replied. "Where you gonna be?"
"Right over there," Brian said, pointing.
The waiter brought their intoxicants very quickly. He had been ordered to give combat troops extra-special treatment. Brian paid the tab and they smoked up their bonghits one by one, passing the electric bong from person to person.
"Holy fuckin' shit," Matt said as he felt the drug slamming into his brain. "I ain't never smoked no weed like this before."
"Welcome to the world of the employed," Brian told him. "Beats the ghetto grass, doesn't it?"
"Fuckin' aye," Matt agreed. He took a long drink of his beer to quench the dry mouth he'd suddenly developed.
Once they were all properly lubricated, talk turned to the day's missions.
"We put a serious hurt on them today," Lisa said. "You flyboys decimated their hovers and our mortar teams cut them to pieces on the ground."
"Any casualties?" Brian asked her.
She nodded sadly. "A mortar team got hit by arty," she said. "Killed all of them except one and he got one of his legs blown off and is paralyzed in the other."
"Did they manage to zero in their artillery fire?" Brian asked.
"We don't think so," Lisa said. "It seems like it was just a lucky shot. The Earthlings were trying to hit the position the team had just fired from but just happened to drop the shells all over them as they were displacing. A one in an hundred shot."
Brian nodded. "Our guys had one of those too. A Mosquito got shot down on the east side of the perimeter, probably a chance hit with a hand-held SAL."
"Motherfucker prob'ly just shot up in the air when they made their run and happened to hit 'em," Matt said, shaking his head in respectful awe.
"Did they bail out?" Lisa asked.
Brian nodded. "They were in radio contact after they hit the ground but we lost it before a Hummingbird could get out to them. The marines must've found them. Hopefully they took them into custody."
"They might've shot them though," Matt said morosely. "They were probably mighty pissed off at us by that point."
"Yeah," Lisa said, sipping from her beer. "And I'm sure they still are."
Lieutenant Callahan sat stiffly in the chair before the conference table. This was not because he felt the need to be at attention before Captain Ayers but because two large chunks of Martian shrapnel had been removed from his back four hours ago and the skin had been fused shut with a cauterizing laser. The pain throbbed sickly through him from his ass cheeks to his shoulder blades and every time he tried to slump down it doubled in intensity.
"Smoke?" Ayers asked him, passing a pack of cigarettes across the table.
"Yeah," Callahan said. "It seems like this might be a good time to pick up the habit again."
He took one and lit up, coughing as the smoke entered his lungs. This sent another spasm of pain radiating outward from his wound but he ignored it and took another drag instead. He shook his head in disbelief. He was still somewhat in shock from the day's events, still wondering why and how he was still alive. This was supposed to be a company command staff meeting but at the moment he and Ayers were the only members of the company who fit that definition. All of the other lieutenants, along with seventy percent of the squad sergeants, were dead; felled by falling aircraft or blasted by mortar rounds or, most commonly, shot down by Martian snipers.