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He
actually thought we were there for a reason.  Shaw and Edley were soldiers like
the rest of us, but they were human beings too.  Bowers was just a soldier.
    I lucked out and ended up in the same squad as
Greeley.  We were under Major Edley, which was another piece of good fortune,
but we still had to deal with Bowers from time to time.  It might be an
impromptu kit inspection or extraordinary detail or something, but he could be
relied on to be a pain in the ass.  I never liked that guy.
    We settled in quickly.  Within a few days we were
going out into Marineris on patrols or calls.  It was all pretty lightweight
stuff.  I had a cousin in the police on Earth and what we did was a walk in the
park compared the stories he had told me about policing London.
    Although there was the occasional theft or
domestic bust-up most of what we did involved the bars, especially on
Friday and Saturday nights.  I’d heard that in the early days of settlement
alcohol had been banned.  I don’t know whose idea it was to lift that ban, but
sometimes on a Friday night I’d wish they had never been born.
    Things were good on Mars.  We got all the streams
from Earth, we were a long way from the war and living was easy.  Now and then
I felt a little guilty watching the news from home.  World War IV was in its fifth
year by then and, although the USAN military were relatively safe, it still
felt like we were dodging our duty out here on this cushy posting.
    There was a new thing going on, too.  It was
called the Commander Program, and it was all over the news.  Someone had the
great idea that our soldiers were too safe, or something.  Wouldn’t it be great
to roll back a hundred and fifty years of technological development and put
soldiers back on the battlefield?  Somehow this madness had caught on and there
were now special forces where mechs were piloted - I mean
literally, not remotely - by soldiers on the battlefield.  They
dressed it up by talking about situational awareness and stuff like that, but
to me it just seemed like macho bullshit.  Soldiering was risky business, we
all knew that.  Peacekeeping forces were regularly attacked, and it wasn’t unknown
for forward support bases to be overrun.  But deliberately putting soldiers at
the heart of the fighting just seemed barbaric and unnecessary.  They were all
volunteers, too.  Probably jock assholes, trying to impress each other.
    After a year I was used to living on Mars.  I’d
adapted to the gravity and I didn’t miss open outdoor spaces as much as I
thought I would.  The garrison was in central Marineris, which was the only
conurbation on Mars.  There were a few far-flung outposts with a
smattering of personnel, but Marineris was where it was at for humans on Mars.
    Marineris was bigger than I had expected.  The
population was about ninety thousand or so, and it covered a good few square
kilometres.  Most of the buildings were underground, with domes or skylights at
the surface.  The road system was dropped below ground, again with Plexiglas
overhead, allowing natural light.
    There were a few large public domes in Marineris,
which were as close as you could get to an outdoor space.  They tended to be parks
or bathing areas, though I heard there were some private ones for fancy
housing.
    So life on Mars was good for a young USAN
soldier.  Stay out of Bowers’ way, put your hours in and wait for your tour to
play itself out.  That was all we had to do.
     
     
    I guess it all changed part of the way through
’41.  Charles Venkdt, the top boy at Venkdt Mars Corp, decided that he was
going to rock the boat and pull Mars out of the USAN.  I didn’t even pick up on
it at first.  I’ve never followed the news all that closely and the odd bits I
did hear about it just seemed ridiculous.  The war had just ended at home and I
suppose lots of things were changing.  I guess this crazy idea just got jumbled
up in all of that and I didn’t really