They were on their way.
MPG Headquarters, New Pittsburgh
0730 hours
"They're on their way?" asked a voice from behind General Jackson in the war room.
He turned and beheld his boss — Governor Laura Whiting. Her presence here alarmed him greatly. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "Why aren't you in the capitol building?"
She reached over and grabbed the half pack of cigarettes from his desk. She pulled one out and put it in her mouth. "I heard you still had some smokes," she said. "Looks like the rumor was true. I ran out yesterday morning and no one else in the capitol has any."
"Laura!" he said, exasperated. "You shouldn't be out on the streets! Did you ride the MarsTrans to get here?"
"I'm just an ordinary citizen like everyone else," she said. "Why shouldn't I ride the MarsTrans?"
"Because every Earthling on the planet and about two percent of the Martians would like to see you dead. Without you this whole revolution falls apart! All it would take is one gangbanger with a gun and that's your ass!"
She shrugged, unconcerned with his concern. "I had my security detail with me," she said, nodding towards the three armed MPG special forces members behind her. "You hand-picked them, didn't you? If I'm not safe with them, I'm not safe with anyone."
He shook his head, knowing that trying to argue with her would be futile. Her stubbornness, after all, was one of the traits that had put her where she was today.
"So," she said, "you gonna light this thing for me, or what?"
"Sure," he said, pulling out his laser lighter. He touched it to the end of her cigarette and she lit up, blowing a plume of smoke out into the room.
"Mmmm," she said. "Now that's rankin' static. I hope this war ends soon so we can get those Earthlings to start shipping us coffee and cigarettes again."
"And booze," said one of her security detail. "Don't forget about the booze. I tried to score some the other night and the only thing left on the shelves is bottled beer, and that's going for five credits a bottle."
"The price of being free," Laura said sadly, enjoying another long drag on her smoke.
"So what are you really doing here?" Jackson asked. "You checkin' up on me?"
"Hardly," she said. "I wouldn't know what incompetence looked like in a military room even if I saw it. Actually, I'm on my way to the freight yards to meet with the cargo handlers. There's some trouble brewing out that way and I need to head it off before it comes to a boil."
"Union trouble again?" Jackson asked. This was becoming an old story since the revolt, one that had played itself out in several vital industries. The leaders of the various labor unions that operated on Mars were — despite the fact that most were Martians — violently opposed to Martian independence. Though unionization of labor had noble beginnings just like the capitalistic constitution of WestHem, over the years the system of organized labor and the leaders that controlled it had become just as corrupt and just as far removed from the people they were supposed to be representing as the politicians themselves. At the time of the revolution most unions had become little more than vassals for the various corporations they were providing labor for, existing only to collect mandatory union dues from the working class and distribute them to the politicians who helped them stay in power. These union leaders were opposed to the revolution for the same reason the corporations were: it changed the status quo in a way they could not control or predict. Every single union on Mars had urged its members to vote no on independence when it came time to make the decision. When that failed, several of them had tried to stop work in vital industries in protest. So far Laura had managed to convince the actual workers of these vital industries that they didn't need the unions in order to remain employed and productive.
"Jack Strough is the leader of cargo handlers union," Laura said. "He's protesting the payment of 'his people', as he calls them, in Martian credits instead of dollars. He says there is nothing in their labor contract about any alternate forms of compensation and he's trying to get them to go on strike immediately until we start paying in dollars again."
"Are they considering going on strike?" Jackson asked, alarmed. There would be big problems for the war effort if the cargo handlers suddenly stopped working. It was they who loaded food stocks from the agricultural cities for distribution to the northern latitude cities. It was they who loaded armaments, fuel, and ammunition from the northern latitude cities for distribution to the equatorial cities. It was they who loaded the tanks and the armor onto the trains for movement from one region of the planet to another. Without them, his soldiers could not be resupplied or transported en masse to reinforce another area if the WestHems decided to shift their forces.
"He's playing at the fears our people have about the new credits very well," she said. "They're starting to get quite riled up. You'll notice he waited until now, when the WestHems are actually moving on our cities, to bring this thing to a head."
"Yes, I did notice that," Jackson said sourly.
"That's classic Jack Strough," she said. "He's a sleazebag extraordinaire. He doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone but himself and his power structure. He doesn't care if his strike ends up killing thousands of MPG members and costing us this war. He doesn't care if the rest of the planet starts starving because food can't get from one place to another. He just wants to remain in power and keep collecting those union dues no matter what. Sometimes I wonder if he's not really an Earthling. He sent me an 'unofficial' message yesterday telling me that he would consider recommending acceptance of the credit as official currency if I were to give his organization a donation of two hundred thousand of them and sign a promissory note that all credits would be reimbursed in dollars from the general fund at twice the going rate if we ended up losing the war."
"Very patriotic of him," Jackson said. "How much do I need to worry about this?"
"You don't need to worry about it at all," she said. "I'm going down there to take care of this problem personally and it will be taken care of, one way or the other. I'm not going to let the freight industry shut down in the middle of a war."
He nodded, not bothering to ask anything further. If Laura said she would take care of it, then it was as good as taken care of. She would do nothing more than talk to the workers using the same brutal honesty that got the revolution voted in in the first place and convince them that Jack Strough was not really their friend. With someone like Jack, whom most of them probably already suspected wasn't their friend, it wouldn't be all that hard to do. "Just be careful out there," he warned. "Why don't you let me send a few extra security personnel with you? I don't really need them here anyway."
"I'll be fine with what I have," she said. "Showing up with a platoon of armed soldiers tends to make me look elitist. I wouldn't even take the three I have if I didn't know you'd ordered them to tie me to a chair before letting me go out alone."
He grinned. "You know me well, don't you?"
"Sometimes I think too well," she replied. "So anyway, you didn't answer my question. Are the marines on their way?"
"They're on their way," he confirmed. "We just got the latest recon-sat video from the KH-91 and the KH-111." He turned to the computer screen on his desk. "Computer, replay latest com-sat videos."
"Replaying," the computer replied. An image appeared showing thousands upon thousands of tiny white objects moving against a gray background, stretching from one end of the screen to the other.
"This is the Eden LZ," Jackson said. "The shot is in infrared because the dust cloud they're creating is obscuring the visual mode. As you can see, they've moved out and are heading in our direction at about thirty kilometers per hour." He began to point at different portions of the image. "Tanks are out in front and on the flanks. APCs are in the middle in ranks of eight, that's two platoons to a rank. Mobile artillery units are behind the APCs. Anti-air vehicles are interspersed throughout the entire formation. Back here, just leaving the LZ, are the supply trains. These are freight car sized units strung together in trains of fifteen cars apiece and towed by six specially modified tanks per train. They carry all the WestHem ammo, food, water, extra air tanks, and spare parts for the armor. These cylindrical cars are full of hydrogen fuel. The trains are formed up in ranks of six trains and they're guarded by the bulk of the WestHem anti-air vehicles, a battalion of tanks, and half a battalion of infantry."