- from Chapter Eighteen: Like a Wolf on the Fold

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"...That attack this morning was a brilliant piece of work; absolutely brilliant, if I may say so. Worthy of a second desert fox."
        General Derk and General Hoptkins stared at the English general.
        "I've followed everything so far, except this business about a second desert fox," complained Colonel Bohrman. "Could somebody fill me in, please?"
        "Don't tell me you've never heard of Erwin Rommel, Colonel?" said General Wentworth, turning to the communications chief. "The desert fox in World War II, scourge of the allies in the desert?"
        "No, afraid not, sir. History has never been my strong point."
        "Maybe you can tell us about him, General Helmholtz," said General Wentworth, with a mischievous look in his eyes. "You ought to know all about him. He was one of your crowd."

          - from Chapter Twelve: Air Support

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        "Could be their surprise weapon," said Edward. "It's a lot easier to ship predator drones to Mars than it is to ship tanks. Could be they're intending to use them to take out our tanks. Those missiles may be anti-tank weapons."
        "The settlement's not expecting anything like this," said Astrid, her brow deeply furrowed. "High speed jet aircraft armed with anti-tank weapons. It puts the balance in the enemy's favor. All the more reason why we have to get back quickly and warn—"

          - from Chapter Two: Hell Ridge

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       When the robot aircraft did line up, they were about a mile closer than the previous group of three had been. The gunners fired almost at the same instant. Seconds later the first one exploded. Then they locked on the second aircraft, and it too exploded a few seconds later. The third aircraft was now very close, flying straight down the canyon, well within range for releasing its missiles. Freda's heart nearly stopped. It was hard to get used to this.
       The four gunners had their laser beams locked on the third plane the instant the second one exploded, opening up the pathway for the laser beam. They were just too late. In a very fast sequence of events, milliseconds apart, a missile shot from under the port wing, the starboard engine began to explode, a missile shot from under the starboard wing, the port engine started to explode, and finally the whole aircraft disintegrated.
       The starboard missile had been fired too late and began going awry immediately, but the port missile was true, streaking straight for ...

          - from Chapter Nine: Enemy Assault

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        The captain's column of six vehicles, four tanks and two rovers, was making steady if uneventful progress that late afternoon. It was manned by six legionnaires, two of them French, two American, one German and one Irish, all sworn citizens of the Foreign Legion. Despite their diverse nationalities, they were true comrades in arms, ready to die for each other, as only in the Legion.
       They had seen no sign of any recent tracks of enemy vehicles. Just fifteen minutes earlier, three fully-armed coalition predator drones from the Legion base had flown over the column, headed south along Backhead Canyon, assuring the captain that all was well, and that the enemy was nowhere near.
       Nevertheless, the captain was cautious. Experience in desert warfare had taught him that in the desert things are frequently not what they appear to be. On Earth, he had seen enemy tanks suddenly appear out of an apparently empty desert landscape. They had been hidden for days in shallow bunkers dug down into the sand, waiting for an opportunity to surprise their foe.

          - from Chapter Ten: At First Light

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        "Where? I don't see anything."
        "Look! Five objects! Strung out like beads on a necklace. Very faint. Headed north. Look! There!" She quickly moved close to him in the moonlight, pointing due east now, high up, at about a sixty degree angle with the ground.
        "I still can't see anything," cried Edward, staring at the sky. "Are you sure it's not your imagination?"
       By now, Lucy had her field glasses trained on the objects.
        "No way! Absolutely clear now. In formation. Same distance between each pair. Moving a few degrees west of north. That means a polar orbit, doesn't it?"

          - from Chapter One: Desperate Journey

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       The behavior of the two tanks was very regular. They were each guarding a twenty mile long strip of territory, running north south, on both the north and south sides of Iceland Sink. Since it was about forty miles from the south end of Iceland Sink to the nearest part of East Candor Canyon, and forty miles from the north end of Iceland Sink to the nearest part of Juventae Canyon, it was obvious that there had to be four tanks on sentry duty altogether, each one guarding a twenty mile strip of land. The sentry tanks were effectively sealing the entrance to Juventae Passage.

          - from Chapter Four : To Juventae Passage

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        Edward had gone off with the woman that morning at seven, and Lucy had been able to think of nothing else ever since. She was deeply in love with Edward, and could not bear the thought of any other woman near him, especially that blond beauty. ...
        And what were they up to now, she fretted. It was a good two hours' drive down the gully to the floor of Echus Canyon. Had it occurred to him that she, Lucy, might also enjoy a pleasant drive with him down the gully to Echus Canyon, and a break from all this warfare? And that meant a four-hour round trip, the devil in her mind interrupted, if they didn't spend an hour or so down there. Doing what? She found it hard to believe they could be talking about the history of warfare all that time. They had to be getting to know each other's minds very well, and maybe more than that.
        Lucy was working herself into such a state that if Astrid had not stuck her helmet into the tank shortly afterward, and brought her tormented mind back to reality, she might have soon needed help.

          - from Chapter Sixteen: War Crimes

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        Now the colonel was ready. Squinting through the turret slot, he aimed the machine nanogun at the rovers.... He squeezed the trigger, and released a burst of heavy, armor-piercing, fifteen-millimeter nanobullets.
        Meanwhile, the three running figures, now only sixty meters away, had seen the tank turret swivel toward them, and had dropped down and taken cover. They were firing on the tank at the same time, but the bullets ricocheted harmlessly off its armor. None of the bullets went through the turret slot to hinder the colonel's deadly fire.

          - from Chapter Five: Threacherous Edge

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        "What are you driving at?"
        "Just this, John. Sometimes decent, honest men have to fight, even fight ruthlessly, for what is theirs by right of hard work and sacrifice, because otherwise the scoundrels end up with everything. Honest men have to understand that it is wrong to think that they'll lower themselves to the level of the scoundrels if they fight, or that Good will win out over Evil on its own, or that God will look after them. Exactly the opposite is true. It's even more important that a people understand that, and their leaders too. History is full of horrible examples of what happens when they don't. Some of them would break your heart. Thieving, power-hungry scoundrels have trampled many an honest, hard-working people over the centuries. And where they didn't kill them all off, they destroyed their culture and left their descendants to suffer permanent, hopeless degradation; distrusted, discriminated against, and denigrated; sorry, second-class citizens in their own country. It's probably what'll happen to our people if we don't beat this enemy. I believe that, deep down, everyone in the settlement understands that, including you, John. Martians are not just loyal to this settlement and its future, they're intensely loyal. And they'll fight for it with a ferocity to match."

          - from Chapter Seven: North by Northwest

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        The old Senator had died peacefully at home, his great granddaughter and grandson, and other close members of the family, beside him. He had believed it was important that Americans never forget the enlightened principles on which their nation had been founded, and should know all that was done on Mars in their name.
        General Derk knew of the concerns of the shrewd old senator from Massachusetts. He also knew that Beverly had worshipped the old man, and suspected that she shared those concerns.
        Derk's immediate problem with the war correspondent was thus much the same as the colonel's. The general had military goals far more severe than those of his superiors on Earth, and did not want her reporting his conduct of the war.

          - from Chapter Five: Threacherous Edge

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        "My God! No, Edward!" he practically screamed, completely forgetting that the legionnaires were the enemy. "There's no need to do this! You've killed enough of them!"
        Suddenly, he saw a legionnaire come out of the airlock of one of the two remaining rovers, and begin running toward him. That legionnaire had barely gone twenty-five meters when a second legionnaire appeared, at the exit from the other still intact rover.
        But an instant later, missiles hit both rovers, and the second legionnaire disappeared in the blinding flash of a missile explosion, forty kilos of TNT equivalent, as Phil flung himself to the ground.
        The first legionnaire, the one running toward Phil, escaped the full force of the two explosions, but was caught in the shrapnel blast. The legionnaire's momentum kept him going for a few seconds after the explosion, but then he staggered and went down.

          - from Chapter Fourteen: Reversals of Fortune

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       The enemy surveillance aircraft's sensor systems did not seem to be warning them of any danger, as the fighter approached their altitude. They obviously considered the fighter jet friendly.
       Everybody below watched fascinated through their outdoor field glasses, as the fighter got on the tail of one of the enemy drones. A few seconds later the drone exploded, and the wreckage fell forward inside the large crater to the south.
       The other enemy drone reacted a few seconds later, by stopping the routine circling, and taking off in a north by northeast direction, presumably headed for home. Thirty seconds later, the fighter jet was on its tail too. Seconds later that drone exploded, its wreckage falling farther away to the north.

          - from Chapter Eleven: Without Hope

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          - from Chapter Six: Strike Force

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        "Do you think Captain Chartrand knows the location of coalition headquarters, Captain?" she asked at last.
        "He has to, ma'am. He was about to take me there this morning, I'm sure," said Phil. Then frowning, he added: "We're not going to torture him to get it out of him, are we? I'm sure he wouldn't talk anyway, even if we did torture him."
        "Information like that could save us a hundred lives," said the general. "So torturing one man to save a hundred would seem justifiable. But that's always been the argument for torture. If you accept it, pretty soon you're torturing people because just maybe they've information that just maybe could save some lives. And then the enemy starts torturing your people in retaliation, or worse. It's a slippery slope to start down. I'm certain we won't do that."

          - from Chapter Fifteen: Imaginative Deception

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...The human cloning they had thought was rampant on Mars might be bad, but this satanic machine was far worse. It was altogether something appalling.
        One woman had been so shocked she had had a heart attack on the spot, and her death on the way to hospital had caused a media sensation. Before she died, the stricken woman had regained consciousness briefly, and had been heard repeating: "...devils, devils, horrible devils on Mars."

          - from Chapter Three: War Fever

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        Her face contorted, her eyes in tears, she went on to express her anger, horror and grief at the deaths of so many innocent children, and at what the coalition was doing to the Martians, who, she repeated again and again, were innocent, never having harmed anybody. At one point she shook in anger, words failing her. But the obviously genuine anger effectively conveyed her message all the same.
        On Earth, had right-thinking people understood the horror they had unleashed against this small but courageous settlement on Mars, they must surely have sympathized, and forgiven the Martian leader her incendiary emotional outburst against their powerful nations.
        Indeed, the consensus in later years was that the Martian President was only doing what she had to in the circumstances. She had to give a much needed boost to the courage and determination of her beleaguered people, to let them know that she passionately cared about what they were fighting for, and that it really mattered. After all, the Martians were teetering on the brink of total annihilation, both by the superior coalition war machine and the Derk brothers' lust for genocidal revenge.

          - from Chapter Seventeen: A Marshaling of Forces

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        But in spite of General Derk's almost insane obsession with killing Martians and avenging his father, he was still very much a military leader and a born general. And, like all generals, he admired brilliant tactics.
        So, in one way, General Oliver Derk actually admired Denise Lavoisier, the current President of the Martians' governing Council. He knew it was Denise who had long ago chosen the Leaf Valley location for the settlement. In his private opinion, none of the great generals of the past, neither Julius Caeser, Napoleon, Erwin Rommel, Dwight Eisenhower, nor Douglas MacArthur, could have picked a better location from a military point of view. The place was very difficult to attack from the ground, and very easy for any reasonably clever people to defend,...

          - from Chapter Eight: Rogue General

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        The main guns on the four tanks fired one after another, the live shells exploding harmlessly about half a mile away.
        "Fire!" ordered the captain, and the honor guard fired a volley.
        The captain then pressed the controller button again, and the four tanks fired in sequence again.
        "Fire!" he ordered again, and the five legionnaires fired another volley.
        Then the tanks fired again.
        "Fire!" ordered Captain Chartrand, and the legionnaires fired a third volley, in a final salute to their fallen comrades.
        Now there was nothing more they could do for them. The Foreign Legion had buried its fallen with full military honors.

          - from Chapter Thirteen: Diversionary Tactics

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