"I never used that word," Xenia said, perhaps a little defensively.
"I did," Sanchez admitted, "but I know now that I was wrong to."
"You guys ain't gotta get all politically correct on us about it," Valentine said. "I was vermin and I admit it. My grandmother was a doctor, you know, a fuckin' doctor pulling in the big dollars but the Earthlings took her medical license away back in 2102 when my dad was just twelve years old. They did that 'cause she was pushin' for better medical care for the vermin. Ever since then, our family has been vermin too, doing just what the definition of the word means, living off of society, using society's resources, and not giving anything back in return. Why should I argue about what I am? Why should I be offended for being called what I am?"
"Yeah!" Hicks said, righteously. "It ain't like it was by choice we're vermin."
"It's just the way things are," Jeff said. "Zen's right. You don't have to worry about offending us."
Xenia and Sanchez looked at each other for a moment and then at their companions. "I understand," Sanchez said. "And that too was very well put."
"Fuckin' aye," said Xenia, "but you can't call yourself that anymore."
"What?" Hicks said.
"Didn't you hear what we just said?" asked Jeff.
"You are contributing to society now," Xenia told them. "You're making the most important contribution possible. The definition no longer applies to you."
Valentine nodded agreeably. "I suppose you have a point," he said.
"Fuckin' aye," agreed Jeff.
"We gonna play some more, or what?" said Hicks. "This shit is getting a little deep."
"Right," said Sanchez. He had been shuffling the cards during the entire conversation. Now he began throwing them down on the table, face down. "Seven card stud. Lowball. Deuces are anti-wild. Ante up."
"Deuces are fuckin' anti-wild?" Xenia said as everyone else anted up. Anti-wild meant that a two would be considered a higher card than a king in a game where getting the lowest cards was the goal.
"You don't like it, deal yourself out," Sanchez said.
She shook her head. "I'll beat your ass anti-wild or no anti-wild. Ante up," she told her PC. It anted.
"Look at it this way," said Jeff. "An anti-wild deuce in lowball is another microcosm of the war."
Everyone looked at him, interested.
"In what way?" Xenia asked.
Jeff looked back at them for a moment and then laughed. "Fuck if I know," he finally said. "It just seemed like some cool shit to say."
A high-pitched tone suddenly sounded throughout the room, loud enough to be heard by everyone over the background noise of the overcrowded staging area. This was the attention signal, its purpose to let everyone know that something of importance was about to come over the video system. Five meter high-resolution screens were mounted on the walls at just above head level, their spacing every twenty meters. Additional, smaller screens hung down from the ceiling every fifty meters in the interior of the room. At the tone everyone stopped whatever they were doing and looked at the screen nearest them. A few people had to shuffle around and change position but by the time the logo of the MPG appeared, the entire regiment was able to see the view.
The face of Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Martin, commanding officer of the 17th ACR, appeared on the screens. Colonel Martin had been known as Captain Martin prior to the revolution and it was his company that had rolled on the southern flank of the WestHem marines and pinned them into their barracks from that side. He had been promoted and placed in charge of integrating a motley collection of new recruits, non-combat assigned MPG members, and veteran combat unit members into a cohesive fighting unit with a hope in hell of taking on a superior force of marines. Like most MPG commanding officers his means of doing this was brutal, realistic, and repetitive training.
"Good evening, men and women of the 17th," he said now. "I'm coming to you live from a room not four hundred meters away, and, like all briefings, this one is being transmitted to you on the closed circuit system only. Unlike our WestHem friends, we prefer to keep our operational briefings confined to the troops who will be operating under them and not broadcast to the general public as popular entertainment. In other words, what I'm about to say here needs to stay here."
"As if we could get out to tell anyone about it anyway," Hicks said, half jokingly, half contemptuously.
"Shut the fuck up," Jeff told him. "This sounds like some important shit he's gonna be spouting."
"You shut the fuck up," Hicks returned. "You're just a fuckin' private like me. You can't be telling me..."
"I'm a fuckin' sergeant," Sanchez interrupted. "So I can be tellin' you and I am tellin' both of you, shut your asses."
They shut their asses even though technically Sanchez — since he wasn't their sergeant or in their unit — wasn't allowed to tell them what to do.
"As you know from last night's briefing," Martin continued, "our special forces units and our air wing put a major hurt on the marine units yesterday, particularly upon their air cover. Our most conservative estimates are that better than thirty percent of the WestHem combat hovers deployed from the Eden LZ were put out of action, our more realistic estimates put that number at our about fifty percent."
Cheers erupted from the ACR troops as well as a considerable amount of profanity and contemptuous crotch grabbing. Martin, who was being fed an audio link to the room, waited until it died down a bit before continuing.
"As for enemy casualties," he said, "we're estimating that the mortar attacks and the sniper attacks alone put better than two hundred marines out of action. That number includes a significant amount of their officers and squad leaders. They were stung and quite badly, just as our doctrine predicted."
Another symphony of cheers, jeers, and general sneers erupted, this time lasting a bit longer.
"But that was yesterday," Martin said. "Today is another story. There are still a shitload of WestHem marines out there and they spent the bulk of today readying themselves to perform the task they came here to do. All day long they've been unloading their armored vehicles from the landing ships, fueling them, supplying them, and getting themselves ready to start their march towards Eden. Now I know you all saw this on the big three channels today since the Earthlings were kind enough to broadcast their preparations for us and transmit them out..."
There were chuckles at his words. The big three had indeed spent the day showing the marines readying for their march with video clips and even live reports from several of the landing ships. Nor was that all. General Wrath had actually gone on live at one point and drawn out on a computer screen the actual formation his units would assemble in and the route they would take to get to both Eden and New Pittsburgh. He had even been kind enough to show the approximate location they planned to set up their fueling and resupply points halfway to their objective.
"... but," Martin continued, "it is still my duty and obligation to give you an official briefing on what is facing us out there and to show you our intelligence department's best guess on their overall intentions. So... with that in mind, let me show you some satellite overheads of the Eden LZ. These were taken just before sunset tonight." The screen changed to show a high-resolution image of the ten square kilometers around the landing zone. The large shapes of the landing ships were plainly visible. Gathered all around them were the tinier shapes of various armored vehicles — a lot of armored vehicles.
"This is what we're going to be facing, people," Martin's voice said. "There are three thousand tanks down there, more than seven thousand armored personnel carriers, six hundred mobile artillery pieces, four hundred anti-air vehicles, and almost three hundred supply train units capable of carrying hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen, extra ammunition of all types, food, water, and portable air packs for the troops. In short, we're looking at a full-scale ground invasion of anywhere from ninety to one hundred thousand troops."