The two strong-willed women locked eyes for a moment. Laura could see the contempt Mindy held for her reflected in those brown orbs. Sell-out, those eyes said to her. You're nothing but a corporate, WestHem sell-out. She ignored the look. She had seen it many times before and would see it many times again. Though it still hurt a little, though it still bothered her to be seen as a traitor to her people, to their ideals, to be considered a tool of oppression, she was getting used to it.

The staging area for the 103^rd WestHem Marine Battalion, the battalion responsible for defending the city of Eden in the event of an EastHem invasion, was a city park located just on the edge of the city perimeter. The park was the showpiece of the business district and was nearly five square kilometers in size. It was surrounded on all four sides by towering high rises, the biggest on the planet. The Agricorp building itself stood across the street from the eastern entrance to the park grounds. It was the tallest building in the solar system at 325 stories. The park itself was mostly grassy fields, groves of trees, and winding walkways that snaked in all directions. There was a zoo and a golf course as well as football and baseball fields and a large duck pond. The roof of the city, which was usually ten meters above the ground over the streets, rose to more than a hundred meters above the park grounds. In addition the roof here was mostly plexiglass instead of a mixture of glass windows and steel support beams. This allowed the pale Martian sun to shine brightly in the park during the daylight hours instead of being broken up into shadow.

Usually the park was filled with a mixture of business types taking lunch hour walks through the nature areas, daycare providers walking groups of children to the play equipment, and unemployed lower-class thugs and gang-members.