One Day on Mars

10:41 AM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

"Well, it's too damned high for jumpboots. How do you expect to get up there?" Sehera shrugged her shoulders and pointed at the dome ceiling nearly a half of a kilometer high above them.

"The maintenance shaft will take you to the exhaust system about two-thirds the way up the dome," Reyez Jones, the adventure store manager, said. "I've jumped from there before. But I've never jumped from the absolute top of the dome before. Not sure how to get up there. There is a twenty-meter-high electric fence that surrounds the peak of the dome. I've tried to figure out how to get over it, but had no luck. The dome is too slick to use jumpboots to get over it. I'm not sure why the fence is there either."

Abigail? How far will two-thirds of the way get us? Senator Alexander Moore asked his AI staffer.

It will put you a good ten kilometers short, Senator. But with jumpers that is not such a bad run, the AI told him.

"It'll have to do. Who is with us? You can either stay here and be captured when this city is overrun, or you can go with my wife, daughter, and myself," he asked the cadre of tourists taking refuge in the shop. The only takers were Reyez and a woman from Triton, Joanie Hassed, who had seen firsthand what the Separatist soldiers were like. The remaining tourists couldn't believe that Mons City would fall for even the briefest moment. The two assistant managers of the shop, Rod and Vince, had raided a package store next door for food and beverages and were well on their way to being completely inebriated. They were going nowhere. The others were debating on finding the nearest shelter or just staying put in the adventure store.

"The U.S. Navy will take care of us," the little fat man that Deanna had stuck her tongue out at earlier replied. He stuffed chips in his mouth through the open visor and then sipped at a Mons Light.

"Hear, hear! To the Navy!" Rod and Vince held their beer bottles up in toast.

"Though I prefer the Air Force," Rod replied as he tilted his bottle again and took a swig.

"Yeah, you were in for what, six weeks," his coworker goaded him.

"Hey, it was a medical." Rod tried to think of a better comeback, but taking another swig from his beer was the best he could manage.

"Suit yourselves." Senator Moore didn't really care for the extra baggage of tourists and drunks anyway. "We're going."

Reyez, Alexander, and Sehera packed the gliderchutes under Reyez's instruction. Alexander had made hundreds of jumps decades ago, but these were new civilian systems and he was smart enough to listen to an expert when he had one. Reyez carefully inspected the four packs and harnesses and ran through a quick explanation of how to guide them. Then there was a brief uncomfortable moment where Reyez was afraid to ask who was tandem-flying the child. In Reyez's mind, there was no question that he was the only person in the group qualified to do that. Alexander caught on to the apprehension and squelched it immediately.

"Deanna rides with me," he said.

"Sir, are you sure you can handle that? I've jumped with thousands of kids in tandem before," Reyez protested.

"Listen to the man, Alexander," Sehera warned. She didn't talk that often but when she did it was always with the authority of a woman who wouldn't take no for an answer.

"No. I've got hundreds of jumps into a helluva lot worse situations. I'll take her. She's my daughter, I'll be responsible for her," he said in a tone that clearly stated the topic was no longer up for discussion. Deanna looked back and forth at her parents and never said a word. Alexander wasn't certain his daughter really grasped the magnitude of the predicament they were in and of that he was glad.

"Okay. Let me go through the tandem harness with you, at least?"

"Absolutely." Alexander smiled a diplomatic grin. "Then let's get on with it and get the hell out of here."

"Kootie, lay down cover fire on that tank!" Sergeant Jackson shouted. The Seppy drop tanks were moving into flanking positions on the north and east sides of the driving circle. They had been staying in the smoke cloud that was being sucked from the city as cover but for some reason several tanks were hovering through the interstate system southward out of the smoke. Some were in bot-mode running. The tanks were more vulnerable that way, but much more maneuverable. Occasionally, one of the tanks would fire defilading fire backward into the cloud. Every now and then one of them would fire a mecha-to-mecha missile back into the smoke as well. It was obvious that this handful of Seppy drop mecha were running from something and they had not expected to run into a team of U.S. Marines.

"Got it, Sarge!"

"Sergeant Jackson?" the second lieutenant called over the QM wireless.

"LT?" Jackson turned the aiming and trajectory sighting computer on the Seppy drop mecha in bot-mode running behind several city buildings trying to get a flanking shot at the Marines. Sergeant Jackson's sighting system chimed and turned red on his visor screen as he depressed the trigger of the HVAR. Hypervelocity railgun rounds chewed the buildings up as they tracked across the mecha's path, intercepting it at the joint where the legs meet the tank canopy. The left leg of the mecha gave way with a white-hot plasma-spewing explosion that in turn caused the mecha to tumble forward canopy-first.

"Sarge, I can see more than a dozen or so drop tanks between our north and east flanks. We are so outnumbered here. I think we're gonna have to make a run for it," Second Lieutenant Washington said.

"Sir, let's go over 'em!" Private Packer offered. She jumped twice, bounced up the side of a building, and then across a side street to the top of a building to the left, all the while tracking an enemy tank with her HVAR. The arm of the mecha flew off in a shower of sparks and began spewing hydraulics as the railgun fire tracked through the now weakened armor of the canopy and punched through the pilot.

"Packer, goddamnit, get your narrow ass back down here!" Corporal Shelly ordered her.

Packer flipped backward off the building onto a lower one and then zigzagged from one building to the next until she bounced a few meters to the right of Kootie and then slid prone into a cover firing position and continued laying down cover with Kootie. The sergeant smiled and just shook his head left and right.

"LT, that ain't necessarily a bad idea. What if we go through 'em? They appear to be running from something." Jackson offered.

"Well, we can't stay here for long." The rubble pile that the lieutenant was using for cover unexpectedly exploded, throwing debris and shrapnel around him at deadly velocities. A metallic shard about a half meter long with concrete still attached at one end penetrated his left leg midway between the knee and hip. The leak-seal layer of the esuit closed off around it before his air could leak out and before he lost too much blood.

"Jesus, fucking, goddamned, shit!" The lieutenant was flung backward onto the center lane of the driving circle in the open and was overcome by the hot searing pain in his leg. He screamed madly and flailed wildly like a fish out of water flopping on the ground for a second or two longer.

Thomas! Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington! Return fire! Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington return fire! his AIC screamed in his mind. Studies had shown that an authoritative voice using the full name and rank tended to snap soldiers out of panicked behavior. Theories were that it was conditioning learned in basic training listening to the barking orders from drill sergeants. Whatever the reason, it worked.

"You motherfucker!" The second lieutenant pulled his HVAR up and depressed the trigger, releasing a full auto spread. The wound nearly throwing him into shock had affected his aim and he wasn't hitting any critical points of the tank, but it was enough to force the mecha to take evasive action.

"Lieutenant!" Packer leapt from her cover position forward and somersaulted in mid air above the mecha. She fired the HVAR directly downward at near point blank range into the tank. The tank stopped moving and grew quiet before Packer ever bounced to ground on the other side of it. Just as her jumpboots hit the ground she was cut in half by a forty millimeter cannon round from the mecha's wingman. The cannon round passed through her stomach, taking out most of the vital organs of her abdomen. The malfunctioning e-suit tried to seal the wound but the gaping hole was just too large.

"Oh God . . . " she whispered through blood-soaked lips. Her life signs went dead and her blue force tracking signal converted to a fatal casualty location and her AIC set up a downed soldier beacon transmission to the CMTOC.

"Goddamnit!" Sergeant Jackson bounced in serpentine trajectory to the second lieutenant and swept him up as he landed beside him. With a continuing bounce he managed to dodge cannon fire and roll the two of them behind the iron statue of Sienna Madira in the middle of the driving circle. Jackson struggled to hold the lieutenant down while he grabbed the pain injection from the lieutenant's right breastpack. He unsheathed the needle, slid back the armor plate on the lieutenant's neck and jabbed the needle in. With a hiss and a click the pain medication rushed over the lieutenant's body. The sergeant tossed the needle aside, slapped the neck armor back down, and rolled his back to the statue, preparing to fire.

"Shit." The second lieutenant shook his head as the pain in his leg went away. He managed to force himself to look down at the large piece of metal protruding from his armored leg. He had expected to see blood, but the seal layer closed quickly enough that none escaped out the front of his e-suit. He wasn't sure about the back side of his leg.

"Kudaf and Shelly disperse, immediately! Get out of harm's way and make for evac as best you can!" he ordered. He tried to catch his breath as the pain meds and adrenaline began washing away the aftereffects of trauma and shock. Then he raised his rifle to ready.

"Well, this is just like Triton, hey, Lieutenant," Jackson said, and nodded at the second lieutenant.

"I don't see how, Clay. As I recall, it was you who was wounded and at least there the other guys had a fighting chance!" he said, and rolled around to the side of the statue, careful not to bang the metal sticking out of his leg, and disseminated cover fire, ducked and covered quickly, and then repeated as needed.

Tammie, is there no contact with anybody close enough to help?

None that I have been able to contact, Lieutenant.

Drop mecha had them flanked and were overrunning their position quickly. The sergeant checked his visor for Corporal Shelly and Private Kudaf. From the three-dimensional map in his head he could see that they had taken to the underground tunnels on the west of the driving circle and would come up ahead of them to the northeast a few klicks well into the smoke cloud and closer to the crash site of the Churchill. That would put them farther from the evac point.

What the hell were they thinking? Jackson crouched behind the fountain wall of the statue and eased counterclockwise to view the north flank. He rose quickly and fired the HVAR, cutting down another mecha. Without precise aiming, however, the railgun pellets spalled in showers of ionization on the thicker tank armor, doing little damage. The mecha on the other hand were cutting away at the iron statue and the concrete fountain with the forty-millimeter cannons fairly rapidly. The second lieutenant and the sergeant were sitting ducks waiting to be cut up and fried for dinner.

"There is the main elevator to the maintenance floor." Reyez pointed at an elevator tube more than a kilometer across the middle of the shopping district open court. The shaft was a shiny metal rectangular tube that extended upward more than thirty floors. The city opened up and spread out around it like the inside of a hotel. The shops and offices were on the outer wall of the Open Court Mall with balconies and overhanging restaurants and shops teetering on the edge of walkways over the fishponds and greenery below. The Open Court was on the periphery of a very large Central Park.

"The maintenance floor is on the top, floor thirty-seven. There we switch to the other elevator for seven floors and then we climb a service ladder about ten meters to the dome exhaust catwalk," Reyez explained.

"Okay. Sounds good to me." Senator Moore peeked around the edge of the alleyway and looked as far down each open avenue as he could. There was no sign of any activity other than the occasional looter breaking a window of a shop and running off with an armful of something. "We stay together and as close to the building walls as we can."

"Alexander." Sehera took her daughter's hand. "I'll watch her. You should take the lead." She nodded her helmet.

"Good. Reyez, you take the rear, all right?"

"Sure, man."

"You keep a watch behind us for anything," Moore ordered him.

Abigail?

Yes, Sir?

Can you patch into any of the local street and security cams and track around our position for activity?

Already on it, sir. We are clear right now. Just like back in Elysium, huh?

Shit, I hope not, the senator thought. What about the communications? Ever get anywhere with what is jamming us?

Only one thing. There is a sporadic blip in the data rates between all of the other AIs locally and myself, but the blip seems to be causing an increase in data rate rather than an increased error rate as usually occurs with jamming.

Like that time at Tholus Summit? Moore recalled a battle from decades passed.

Exactly like it, Senator. Abigail emphasized the word "exactly."

That . . . can't be. Can it? He thought about how General Ahmi had spoofed the mecha coms in the battle of the Summit by inserting a virus into the system that simply told the communications algorithms that there was no data and to shut down. The virus had been simple and ingenious. But Ahmi here? Now? That was unexpected.

The frequency shift is the same region of the spectrum but I don't know where to start in order to find the frequency-hopping sequence. I've got several of the casino AICs from the north dome gambling district working on cracking it. I'll keep you posted. The AIC understood that the problem was multifaceted. The spectrum-hopping transmission was broadcast at a large range of different frequencies and only one or two of those frequencies would be transmitting at a time and for just a few bits of data. Then the frequency would hop to another set. In order to crack the transmission Abigail would need to determine what range of frequencies the transmission was using and in what order the transmission would hop from frequency to frequency and how often.

Good girl! I'll think on it too. Maybe she has said something in her various public rants over the years that will give us a clue to the spectrum sequence. The sequence could be generated by any random string of numbers or it could be a string of numbers that meant something. Sometimes the sequence was randomly generated by a computer but in many cases it was based on some type of code scheme so that other members of your team or cell or squad could decode it.

Alexander thought of all the latest video footage of Ahmi. She had sent out video clips of her madwoman rants at a fairly steady rate of a few per year, but that had stopped about three years prior. He thought of the years in the Separatist POW camp where he and the other prisoners were tortured and had heard her rants over the intercom daily and nightly. He tried to think of everything she had ever said. Maybe something in there would help to uncover the frequency-hopping sequence code.

I'll do the same. And in the meantime run a dictionary hack on it. Abigail paused for a brief moment and then continued. Senator, there is a convoy of mecha and Separatist troops entering through an airseam on the southwest wall. It appears as if they will be on a direct coincident path with us if we don't hurry. Also, the troops to the north have been overrun and we will probably soon see more Separatist soldiers coming in from that direction . . . very soon. The gambling district AIs tell me that the north dome is basically an occupied territory.

Got it. Time is short.

"Let's move fast people. No telling when the Seppies will show up." Moore nodded knowingly to his wife. She got the message and did what she could do to hurry her daughter and the Triton woman Joanie along. Alexander had begged Sehera to get an AIC in the past, which would have been beneficial at moments like this, but the Martian in her led her to have bad feelings toward AICs. After all, it was "tainted" AICs that allowed General Ahmi and her thought police to mass-murder American sympathizers and Sehera had seen it as a girl. Some things from the past were hard to shake. So, visual cues, gestures, and communications over the e-suit's QM would have to do.

Alexander bounced them cautiously from one street intersection to the next and then would cross together in one jump each time. Abigail kept close monitor on the approaching troops and their little fleeing refugee pack's progress to see when and if they would converge. Unfortunately, her simulations never had them making it to the elevator before the troops got there.

Too late, Senator. We just are not going to make it.

Shit. We need a new plan or route. Ideas?

Not really.

"Okay, listen up. We are too late. The Seppies are already at the open court," he said over the QM com. "Reyez, is there another way up the dome?"

"Daddy," Deanna interrupted.

"Just a minute, baby, Daddy is trying to think." Alexander replied, and continued to scan the area for a new approach.

"I don't know of any other ways." Reyez Jones shrugged. In the esuit it was a gesture that was hard to do and just as hard to notice.

"But Daddy." Deanna pulled away from her mother's handhold.

"What, Deanna?" The senator tried not to show his temper.

"Can't we just go down a floor and get on the elevator?" she asked.

I can't believe it. Of course we can, sir. There are seven floors beneath us containing infrastructure equipment. We would have to do some backtracking to get down there though. Abigail illuminated a city tourist map showing the maintenance levels. It just never dawned on me to go down. Sorry Senator.

"You are something, you know that?" Alexander grabbed his daughter in a hug and tried to kiss her through the open faceshield. When that didn't work he just hugged her again and then patted her little helmeted head. "Follow me. We'd better hurry." He turned back the way they had come toward the nearest entrance to the maintenance and infrastructure levels.

We are running out of time, Nancy. We had better hurry. Allison warned of the impending second wave of the aerial assault on the mountain range.

I know, I know. I wasn't expecting this. Where are all the people? she asked. They had been bouncing for several kilometers from the landing site and had yet to see a single body, screaming or walking wounded, or any sign of human life. It's almost as if the city had been warned and had been evacuated before the bomb had hit.

That is nearly impossible. Only you and I, a handful of operations analysts, the deputy director, the director, the NSA, the sec def, and the president know of our mission. Unlikely one of them is a mole, Allison responded.

Yeah, well, it's just plain weird if you ask me. Where the hell is everybody?

Nancy continued bouncing eastward and directly radially outward from the center of the bomb blast. The map on her visor showed her position at about twenty-seven kilometers from the center of the blast zone. There was little sign of the explosion at this range other than the occasional strewn debris that could have been blown around by the Martian winds anyway. Oh, and there was the small matter of the radioactive fallout, but the injection she had taken beforehand was taking care of that.

The region was little more than a rural outpost of the city that had been littered with lightweight trash and debris from the lingering winds of the nuclear blast. The streets were Martian soil mostly and were more like paths that had been pounded out by jumpboots, buggies, and hovercraft. There were domes and rock dwellings and shops scattered about the mountain's side but there was no sign of people.

Nancy bounced up on top of one of the geodesic domes that was probably a single family dwelling for a better vantage point. She scanned full-circle around her for motion and to get a better understanding of her path. The city behind her was still aflame and dying with occasional explosive bursts and pressurized environments explosively decompressing into the Martian atmosphere.

There is wireless activity ahead. Must be that we have found the evacuees. Alison alerted Nancy. There is a lot of multi-path and I am having a bit of trouble locating the transmitters but it looks like multiple transceivers. I'm training a neural net on it.

Just keep me posted. Maybe some of the other sensors will work better.

Nancy looked up at the sky briefly and for the first time could see stars through the dust cloud. There was Jupiter shining brightly overhead and Saturn not far above it. The sky to the west was still covered with clouds of dust and smoke and every now and then a star would twinkle through the cracks between them.

Motion, Nancy! Coupling the motion sensors and the wireless multi-path I've trained the sensors to locate the motion Looks like multiple bogies The nearest is about four hundred meters away, Allison warned her biological counterpart.

The three-dimensional view in Nancy's mind zoomed slightly northeast and down the street about four hundred meters. The starlight, IR, and QM sensor systems gave a data fusion image that was crystal clear in the pitch black Martian night.

A child? Nancy thought as she studied the image. She zoomed in on what appeared to be a child-sized e-suit rummaging through a storage bin on the outside wall of a small dwelling dome. Then a second set of views highlighted and zoomed in her visor, and a third, and then the tracking algorithms learned how to spot the motion and hundreds of targets began to pop up on her map. They all appeared to be evacuating in generally the same direction, some moving more slowly than others. The plan was working.

Nancy focused back on the child and the motion nearest it. The algorithm generated tracking trajectories that suggested the two nearby regions of motion appeared to be tracking the child. One a few blocks south of the child and the other a few blocks east. Further zoom revealed that the two tracks were adult-sized e-suits.

They're looking for the child. Nancy thought.

Most likely, Allison agreed. They had better get out of here within the next ten minutes because all hell is about to rain down on this city. Same goes for us by the way.

Right. I've got an idea. Are these three suits broadcasting? Nancy highlighted the child and the two near it.

Yes, standard wireless with no encryption around twelve gigahertz, Allison replied.

Open the channel.

Open.

". . . Kira . . . Kira . . . where are you?" a female child voice repeated.

" . . . Lelandra! WHERE ARE YOU? Come here to your mother right now!"

". . . Listen to your mother, sweetie! Come on, we have got to go!"

". . . But we can't leave Kira, Daddy!" the little girl said.

Any idea what Kira might be, Allison?

I'm scanning . . . Allison ran the e-suit's sensors across the spectrum for any type of signature in the local area around the girl. There were several low-level controller systems in household appliances and a few entertainment systems that the electromagnetic pulse from the nuke had not disrupted.

There! An AIK broadcasting spread spectrum center pulse at two three three six megahertz! Allison highlighted a region behind several large storage canisters stacked at the edge of a garage dome about ten meters from the little girl. Has to be what she is looking for.

Great work, Allison. Got it. Can you soothe the thing?

Already on it. Allison communicated code to the low-level artificial intelligence that would put it in a calm state.

Nancy leapt from the top of the dome she had taken perch on in a high sweeping arch toward the "AI Kitty" or AIK. In four quick bounds she landed atop the storage canisters beside the little mechanical kitten and grabbed it before it had a chance to run off. Then she stroked it gently with her gloved hand and then bounced quietly about thirty meters to the west of the child.

"Hello? Hellooo!" Nancy broadcast on the open channel in her trained Martian accent. From the abrupt motion changes of the three tracks she was calling to she was certain she had startled them. "Is anybody there?" Nancy stepped onto the street behind the little girl where there was just enough light for the child to see her and her artificial-intelligence kitten. Nancy could feel the little AIK purring in her grip.

"Kira!" The little girl ran to Nancy, taking the AIK and hugging it to her.

This is gonna work. List the common Separatist last names for me.

Allison began scrolling a list of names in Nancy's mind until Nancy stopped her.

That one will do nicely, Allison. Open the backstory files. She ordered the AIC. A complex and detailed life story had been developed for the mission that had been kept classified even from her until it was time to implement the cover. It was an ideal way to maintain an undercover identity—the fewer who knew the cover, the fewer who could blow it. There, that is a good one. I'll use it. Set the emotional tags in the story to stimulate my hypothalamus accordingly.

"Is this your kitty?" Nancy knelt beside the little girl and looked into her face. "Where are your parents?"

"Kira! I thought you were gone. Don't run off like that again! You could have missed the train!" the little girl scolded her kitty. The little red mechanical kitten purred and nuzzled the little girl with her neck. From just looking and holding the cat there was no way to tell that it wasn't real.

"Hello, whoever you are, grab my daughter please and tell me what street you are on," the mother's voice exclaimed.

"Hi, we are on . . . " Nancy ran through the map in her mind quickly. "Uh, looks like the corner of Tholus and Valley."

"Great! I'm almost there," the girl's father replied over the wireless.

"Me too!" her mother said.

Nancy reached over and patted the little girl on the top of her helmet and smiled at her.

"What's your name?" the child asked.

"Oh, I'm Kira Shavi. And you are?" Nancy began sinking herself into her cover persona. She emphasized the pronunciation of Shavi as "Shaaa-VEE" with similarities to the pronunciation of Elle Ahmi apparent.

"My name is Lelandra but you can call me Lela and this is Kira. Wow, you have the same name as my kitty."

"Isn't that funny?" Nancy laughed with Lelandra. The two adults rounded different street corners from opposite directions and bounced toward them. The larger of the two, whom Nancy assumed was the father grabbed ,his daughter and held her to him.

"Don't ever run off from us like that again, you hear me! You scared us to death!"

Nancy, five minutes.

Right!

The parents continued to scold their daughter, paying little notice to Nancy. Nancy had Allison run the suit's scanners on the three. For the most part they were common low-end e-suits that intel had suggested most of the Separatists on the Reservation wore.

"Excuse me," Nancy interrupted. "It hasn't been that long since the Americans bombed the mountain. I suspect they'll be back soon."

"You're right," the mother said nervously. "We still have at least a couple of minutes or so. But you are right. We should be getting underground to the evac train."

They are evacuating. Do they know of the coming second wave or is it just a good idea to evacuate after a nuclear attack? Allison asked. Nancy could barely conceive that a mole could get that deep into the United States of America to know of the details of this operation.

Unlikely they know? Most likely they are playing it smart, Nancy thought nervously.

Play it carefully.

Agreed. But we should hurry them along as best we can.

"Are you separated from your unit?" the man asked, noting the more elaborate e-suit Nancy wore. Her suit was of the type the resistance fighters wore.

The cover seems to be working . . .

So far it does, Allison replied.

So far! Be more optimistic.

"You could say that. My brothers and I were retooling the long-range SAMs at the foothills when the attack started. They were all killed by American mecha and their death from above . . . pah, cowards! I returned to the mountains to regroup with others but was delayed by the nuclear blast." Nancy recited her cover-story memories as she read them in her head.

"How did you end up here?" the man asked.

"Enough, Fayad, we must go now. The train for the evac ships leaves in twenty minutes," the small-framed woman in the e-suit, obviously his Prime Wife, ordered. "Kira, you should come with us. If your unit is sacrificed there is little else you can do from here. Ahmi has been served. You can rejoin with your family at the rendezvous."

Evac ships? Ships to where? Nancy thought.

Now we are getting somewhere.

"Very well. But I am alone. My family was killed at Elysium a year ago."

"Then you can come with us," Lelandra said.

"I'd like that." Nancy agreed and nodded her helmet. "But we should hurry, I think."

The three adults, one child, and one robot cat bounced farther northeast and away from the nuclear blast area. As they bounced, Nancy caught glimpses of many more evacuees' motion with her esuit sensors. The QM and IR revealed pockets of e-suits bouncing through the small rural dome outcroppings and all of them were bouncing in generally the same direction. There were actually casualties and some minor wounded that they would stop and help from time to time, but there was no wounded on the order that would have been expected from a nuclear blast. No, the Separatists had left the blast region or were in the process of leaving before the nuke was dropped. Nancy hoped to find out why.

Allison?

Yes, Nancy?

I'm Nancy no more. For now on, I'm Kira Shavi, understood?

Yes, Kira.

Right.