They were on station just outside of laser range of the WestHem battle groups, which had been forced to stay in position to counter them. It was ironic indeed that the Martian cities, which were hundreds of millions of kilometers from both the moon in dispute and from the planet that had spawned the combatants, were the most heavily damaged during the fighting. Even on Earth itself, where the two powers were separated by a mere twenty kilometers at the Bering Straight, not so much as an artillery shell or a bomb was detonated.

Laura Whiting, as she looked at the devastation that a single laser blast from a single EastHem attack craft had caused, felt an angry hatred she had never experienced before. It was not EastHem she directed this anger towards however. It was directed towards WestHem, towards the so-called government that supposedly represented and protected the interests of the Martian people, and towards the powerful untenable corporations that controlled that government.

The official WestHem reason for attacking EastHem and trying to prevent their colonization of Callisto was that they, WestHem, needed to protect their deep space defensive positions and not allow those godless fascists of EastHem a toehold in the same planetary system. They told their citizens and their soldiers that to allow EastHem to establish themselves on one of the moons of Jupiter would be as good as signing the death warrant for the glorious WestHem way of life. Within a decade, it was suggested, EastHem would have enough forces and enough equipment on Callisto to evict us from Jupiter and to strangle our fuel supply. A few years after that, EastHem tanks would come rolling into the western hemisphere itself, bent on the final takeover. The rhetoric was unwavering from its course. No EastHem ships will enter the Jovian system. No EastHem installations will be established on Callisto or any other moon. Jupiter and all that orbited it were WestHem property.