"You can't quit now," Lisa told him. "We beat those fuckers back! Mars is still free because of us. If everyone gives up now just because of the losses than it will all be for nothing!"
"You don't need to yell, Lisa," Lon said sourly.
"Somebody needs to fucking yell," she said. "Do you hear what Hoary is talking about here? Do you just want to let them come walking into Eden when they land the next time?"
"We should've been allowed to hit them all the way back," Horishito said. "Jackson broke the faith with us! He let them escape in numbers that can overwhelm us if they concentrate on a single city. He's the one that let our people die for nothing."
"They didn't die for nothing!" Lisa cried. "They died so we can be sitting here on this hill watching them blast off into space with their fucking tails between their legs!"
"But they're coming back, Wong," Horishito said. "Don't you understand that? We haven't won anything! They're gonna come back and take Eden, or New Pittsburgh, or maybe Proctor, but they're gonna come back and they're gonna throw everything they got at our forces!"
"All the more reason why we need to stay and fight them," she said. "We've gone too far to quit now!"
"I'm not saying everyone should quit," Horishito said. "Just me. I've done my part. If someone else wants to get in on this fight for Queen Laura, then let them have it. I'll personally hand them my SAW."
"Lon," Lisa pleaded, "say something here. You're our sergeant. What are you gonna do? Are you quitting too?"
There was silence on the net for the longest time. No one disturbed it. Finally, Lon spoke.
"I'm staying for now," he said.
"You'll be killed for nothing then," Horishito told him.
"No," he said. "I won't. I disagree with General Jackson's decision with every sperm cell in my sacred sack. I think he made a horrible mistake, a mistake that may very well cost us this war, but I'm holding judgement on that for the time being."
"What the fuck you mean holding judgement?" Horishito asked. "We'll be sent out to the slaughter!"
"I won't lead my people out to a slaughter," Lon said. "I will absolutely refuse to do that. The MPG code demands that I refuse any order that will get my people needlessly killed."
"You're contradicting yourself," Horishito accused.
"No," he said. "I'm not. I swore an oath to uphold my orders if they make sense, if they don't recklessly endanger the troops under my command. When the WestHems come back down I'll evaluate the information we have. If there's too many of them, if there's not enough of us to make a difference, then I'll refuse to take you guys out to battle them. That's all there is to it. Until we get to that point, however, I'm staying. Hoary, you want to quit, I'll process your resignation without any ill feelings, but I'm staying."
Horishito didn't answer this, either in the affirmative or the negative. Neither did anyone else. But all absorbed Lon's vow and took comfort from it.
For the next two hours they stayed there, watching the landing craft sit on the Martian surface, growing bored, restless, and longing for the safety of their base and the promised beer, cigarette, alcohol, and bonghit party they'd been promised. Their conversation was sparse and that which did occur remained confined to non-controversial subjects. Finally, the moment they had been waiting for occurred.
"There's heat showing from the thrusters on the landing craft," Lisa reported as engine after engine lit up blue in the infrared.
"Yep," Lon said. "They're getting ready to launch. Jeffy, be sure to get video of it. Command wants to put the shots on MarsGroup."
"Right," Jefferson said.
It took nearly another hour before the first ship lifted off. It was at the front of the formation, one of the armor carriers. The blue of the engine outlets flared bright white. Smoke and dust billowed up from underneath. A dull roar reached their ears, becoming louder as the craft rose awkwardly into the sky. When it reached two thousand meters above ground level it turned, orienting itself to a westerly heading — a heading that kept it away from Eden. It's main engine in the rear lit up and the craft streaked upward. Before it even had a chance to disappear from sight, the next landing craft — the one that had been directly behind it, rose into the air to start its own launch sequence.
In all it took forty-five minutes to launch all of the landing craft. They streaked upward one by one and disappeared, leaving nothing but a few smashed pieces of armor and patches of fused Martian sand to mark where they'd been.
The ground combat troops were not the only ones to benefit from the benevolence of the Eden Police Department and the fledgling Martian government in regards to alcohol and tobacco. The flight crews and all the maintenance technicians who worked on the aircraft they flew had been gifted with a bounty of thirty-six cases of beer, nineteen cases of Fruity, and sixty-three cartons of cigarettes to supply their after-action party. It took place in the aircraft maintenance hanger just adjacent to the airlocks. By order of Major Frank Jorgenson, every member of the attack squadron was ordered to stand down all tasks for the next twenty-four hours. No planes would be worked on or flown, not even to change a tire or to check fluid levels.
"Party hard, people," he'd ordered as he'd taken the first ceremonial sip from a Fruity bottle and followed it up with a huge bonghit from an electric injector bong. "You've all earned it."
They took his orders to heart. By sunset that night every last member of the squadron was intoxicated to some degree and the mood — while a bit darkened by General Jackson's unpopular order and by the knowledge that the WestHems would be back — was quite jovial. MarsGroup was playing on all the video screens, including the huge main screen in the center of the room that was usually reserved for flight status and maintenance status of the individual aircraft and their respective crew and current flight assignments. When the first shots came in of the WestHem landing craft blasting off the Martian surface, heading back up into orbit, the cheer that erupted was deafening.
"That is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life," Brian Haggerty proclaimed as he saw the shot replayed for the third time. "It's better than eighteen year old pussy!"
"Fuckin' aye," replied Matt Mendez, who was sitting next to him and swilling down his seventh beer of the night. "And we helped send those motherfuckers back up there. You and me and that fuckin' AT cannon on the belly of number 06-423."
"I'll smoke to that!" Brian said, giving his sis a quick high five and then sucking up the better part of two bonghits at once.
They were sitting near the center of the room, splayed across the forks of an electric bomb-carrying cart that was currently empty of bombs. Both of them had women sitting next to them — Brian a systems operator for one of his fellow pilots and Matt a fuel transfer technician who worked in the sector responsible for their aircraft. Both were thinking that their prospects for some intimate companionship after the party were looking pretty good, although Matt was feeling a bit self-conscious since the woman he was with was six years older than him and had never been vermin or been with vermin. Still, she seemed receptive to every advance he'd thrown so far and was looking at him in a way that was damn close to worshipful.