One Day on Mars

12:30 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

"So BIL, have you seen any other people wander through here lately?" Sehera tried to hold on to a handhold in the wall of the belly of the mechanical beast. The several-ton robotic spider-thing sprang with tremendous agility from one mound of garbage to the next and made its way toward the large elevator, making it a bumpy ride.

"No, ma'am. You are the first humans I've seen in more than four years. The union strike that started the pull out of the Separatist workers in 2379 caused the government to cancel the contract for the human workers here. It has been . . . lonely since then." The AI garbage hauler vehicle sounded almost sad. "I am very happy to greet you. It has been a long time since my auditory systems have been put to use."

"That's sad, BIL." Deanna pouted and stuck her bottom lip out for effect but it was lost on the garbage drone as there were no optical sensors in its belly.

"Yes, I guess it is," he replied.

"So BIL, do you have any communication with the outside world at all? I mean, how do you know what to do?" Joanie asked the AI. The bouncing of the garbage hauler launched the little Triton woman nearly a meter into the air with each stride. It grew tiresome, but Joanie and Sehera had managed to make it a game with Deanna. Alexander was only paying them partial attention.

"Oh, it is simple. This pile of plastics over here must be moved to there and that pile of metals there needs to be loaded into the smelting system. The piles are always there and so I always have plenty to do," BIL answered.

"But what about the outside world?" Senator Moore asked.

"Sure, I am connected to all the local and wide area network systems including the infrastructure QM. I have to schedule with the other domes on how much of what materials they need or are sending here. That way I can be certain which pile to work on first. And many times we get orders from elsewhere for particular materials." BIL continued to explain his mundane daily routine.

"I'm not sure I follow, BIL." Reyez laughed nervously. The expression on his face plainly stated that he couldn't believe that he was talking to a garbage bug, much less inside one hanging on for dear life as the thing skittered up and down the mountains of garbage in the reclamation and redistribution center. When this adventure was over and the war calmed down, Alexander was certain that Reyez would work an adventure store angle on riding in, or maybe on, a giant robotic garbage hauler. After all, the ride was invigorating and exciting, if smelly. But, adrenaline junkies would endure serious discomfort for a new thrill. What was a little stench?

"Yes, let me see. The naval vessels often need to drop waste here and I schedule that—a really good source for methane distillation and soil composting that. Hold on," BIL warned his passengers just before he made a quick squatting bend and then bounced high across a crevasse in the mountain of refuse.

"Wheeee!" Deanna screamed and touched her toes cheerleader style as she did the splits in the air. The ride was more like a parabolic flight trajectory to simulate weightlessness than it was a roller coaster. It was like putting a children's moonbounce in the back of a flatbed truck and then driving it across seriously unleveled and rocky terrain. Add to that the extremely dim lighting in the belly of the robot spider-thing, accentuated by the bouncing white lights of the e-suit helmets, and the effect was a full-up bouncing disco on steroids. The only thing missing was the dance music. At least it stunk.

"How much further?" Joanie asked. The bouncing was beginning to take a toll on her physical strength. She was sweating profusely in her suit, but the seal layer would absorb that and reclaim the water and salts.

"Almost there." BIL replied over the speaker system.

"So BIL." Alexander was making a point to minimize his physical effort as he might need his strength later so he had let the bouncing of the beast throw him around and used his jumpboots to soften the landings. If the giant bug had been equipped with seats this ride would have been a snap. "Tell me more about your outside contacts. When was the last one you had?"

"Well, I get them pretty much continuously. It is a big system." It was obvious that the AI had longed to talk because he took twice as long to say what needed to be said. "This morning I received an alert that there were no loads of frozen algae coming in from Elysium and a few seconds ago I was given instruction that there was a need in Luna City for aluminum, iron, and titanium. I've called the shipping companies trying to schedule a barge but for some reason they are all grounded today." BIL's voice sounded as if he had shrugged when he made the last statement.

"Wait a minute, BIL. You just a few seconds ago talked to Luna City?" Senator Moore asked.

"Yes."

Abigail!

Yes sir, I heard it. I'll talk directly with him to get access to his communications protocols. Perhaps we could get some communications outside this jamming phenomena. Moore had confidence that his AIC understood what she needed to do. She just had to convince the AI garbage hauler to cooperate. The way the poor AI was longing for attention it probably would agree to anything within the law and maybe even then some. And if he was communicating outside the jamming field then that meant that the Separatists techs had missed the infrastructure layer of communications. Unless they had missed it on purpose.

Hull Technician Third Class Joe Buckley was reading over his current set of orders that were continuously being updated by the brains up in the Looney Bin. Typically, his orders were always the same whether or not the Madira was going to battle or not. But then again, the Sienna Madira was always going into battle, or at least it had been ever since he had been on board her. His duties were actually quite simple. He was to make sure the reclamation systems were not overflowing and that there were no deficiencies in the materials bins. In other words, make sure the sewer didn't get too full of shit and that the officers had plenty of toilet paper. He also was in charge of keeping the ship's coolant flow systems operational. But, also being in charge of sewer duties meant that he often had to put up with a lot of shit—in more ways than one.

Joe prayed for the days where his spot in the flight deck cleaning rotation was due. On those lovely days he would get to walk back and forth on the upper flight catapults picking up trash, removing bird shit—those hybrid Martian vultures were nasty critters—and checking for exterior hull plates that were outgassing that weren't supposed to be outgassing. Yes, those days were bliss compared to his weeks at a time in the "shithole." Otherwise he never saw the outside of the ship.

Looks like another shitty day. His AIC told the same old, very old, joke that she had told him every day for the entire sixteen months of Buckley's tour on the Madira.

Yeah. Into the never-ending fray for God and Country we go. Forever protecting our best's and brightest's wonderful shithole! he recited. Mija, it looks like we are about to get really into the thick of some bad stuff so we better start running the combat readiness flush and purge sequences.

Buckley scrolled through the daily task orders in his planner. The battle drill was simple. Batten down all the toilet lids, which was a euphemism for turning valves to certain plumbing systems. And to close up the shitter so that when the ship started listing left, right, and up, and down that smelly stuff didn't burst out of the miles of plumbing throughout the massive ship or rupture the Olympic-swimming- pool-sized septic bladder.

Roger that, Joe, Petty Officer Third Class Mike India Juliet Alpha Kilo One Tango Edgar, "Mija Kitty," replied.

Buckley and Mija had been through hours of training classes explaining how any excess human waste in the plumbing system during high g-force compensation maneuvers could stress the structural integrity of the plumbing system and therefore create a smelly safety hazard during a combat situation. On more than several occasions they had been in the wrong corridor at the wrong time when the plumbing failed because some deck petty officer on a different shift neglected to flush the system, purge it with compressed dry air, and then lock it down before a maneuver. Buckley was often jeered at for having a "shitty job," and needless to say, he kept his immunobooster shot current and gave it a good workout. But Buckley took to heart the words the captain had proclaimed on several occasions in all-hands briefings, "There is no job on my boat that is less important than any other. Remember, this is the flagship of the United States Space Naval Fleet." Buckley repeated that to himself every night before he could manage to go to sleep. He managed to maintain a level of pride about the job he did. Hell, it was an important job. What if a flow system went out near some important electronics system? There were toilets, sinks, and disposals on every deck and getting the refuse moved around safely without damaging other complex technical systems on board the supercarrier was indeed serious business. Perhaps it wasn't a glamorous job like being a fighter jock, but his life expectancy was a hell of a lot higher.

Buckley was just finishing up the organization of his battle plan task list when the order of his tasks reshuffled and slipped each order down a notch on the screen in front of him.

"Aw shit. I just got those straightened out and prioritized. Now what?" He rolled his eyes, leaned back in his chair and sighed.

Looks like we have a new order request, Joe. It appears to be from the Mons City Rec and Redist AI, Mija told him. She was just as surprised as Buckley was.

Order number one was an information packet from the Mons City reclamation and redistribution tracking AI, of all places, marked "Deliver to Captain Sienna Madira Immediately."

Mija, can you open this? This isn't some kinda joke, is it? The hull technician petty officer third class had seen his share of tasteless jokes.

Okay, Joe. Here. Mija Kitty paused for a second. I don't think this is a joke!

"What the hell," Buckley muttered to himself.

"That is un-fucking-believable, sir! And out-goddamned-standing if you don't mind my saying it." Sergeant Jackson couldn't believe what he was hearing. This Senator Moore, as it turns out USMC Major Moore retired, had somehow managed to find a crack in the local Seppy jamming field and was in direct contact with the Sienna Madira's captain.

"You got that right, Sergeant. Tammie has Burner's AIC continuously linked with the Madira now. We do have an extraction plan. And we have a means to coordinate the other troops across the region back to the main fleet. I might have to move to Mississippi so I can vote for this Marine," Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington said.

"Semper Fi, sir," Kootie added.

Washington sat on the left shoulder of Burner's FM-12 strike mecha and Sergeant Jackson sat on the right. Each of them were straddling the forty-millimeter cannons mounted there, the barrels extending out between the armored e-suits' legs like giant and deadly robotic phalluses. Kootie and Shelly rode similarly on Boulder's transfigurable fighting mecha. The ten-meter-tall armored vehicles trotted and jumped from block to block in bot-mode, looking like giant gladiators hiding behind the city skyscrapers. A handful of the fighting mecha skittered around them in eagle-mode with their DEGs at ready in their armored left hands. Every now and then the AEMs could catch a glimpse of one or two of the fighting mecha in fighter-mode just above the city building tops.

"So what is the game plan, Lieutenant?" Corporal Shelly asked.

"We stick with the Killers all the way. They can cover the ground a lot better than we can. And they're better armed and sensored up." Washington was a lot more hopeful of their chances of surviving this mission and actually being successful at it now that they had a complete squadron of Marine fighting mecha with them. Two dozen FM-12s and four AEMs were a significant fighting force.

"Second Lieutenant Washington," Burner interrupted.

"Sir?"

"I just got a map of the evac area downloaded and I overlaid it with our tactical plan." Burner started explaining the plan as the topographical three-dimensional map was DTMed to all of the AEMs and mecha pilots. "You can see here that just to the south of the extraction zone is a sheer cliff wall over a thousand meters of drop-off." The image of the cliff wall highlighted in the DTM image.

"Roger that." Washington instinctively nodded in his e-suit helmet.

"Worst case, if things go to hell, you AEMs hang on to one of us and we'll drop off the edge there for cover. Best case, we'll go to eagle-mode and hold on to you and just fly out to the supercarrier," Burner ordered.

"Sounds like a plan, sir!" the second lieutenant replied.

Simply flying out of the region to another city or base wasn't an option, at least not without cover from space or larger vessels. The intelligence from the Madira showed that there were at least six Separatist carriers in the region. The anti-aircraft systems and fighter squads of a carrier would be hell on his fighters out in the open without any cover. Fighters were better adapted to close-in agile maneuvering along the surface of a city or even a carrier, but given that there could be six carriers' worth of Seppy aircraft in the area a fly-out operation might prove suicidal. Burner knew it would be best for them to lay low until they had some cover from the Madira and a few dozen Navy Ares fighters.

As they neared the wall of the dome just south of the gaping hole made by the crash of the Churchill, the slope of it changed dramatically. The buildings were not as tall in this part of the city. From the view of the almost now vertical dome wall, it was apparent that the four AEMs and the two dozen FM-12s from Cardiff's Killers would soon be at the edge of the city. There they would escape out into the Martian mountainside and then make their way toward the evac—fighting all the way if need be. The clouds overhead grew darker, thicker, and swirled more violently as they approached the massive leak in the dome.

"This is where we go up, Deanna," BIL told the little girl bouncing tirelessly and joyously in the belly of the AI garbage hauler. The AI had enjoyed talking to actual humans, especially the child. He had also especially enjoyed being able to speak, and to listen in on and pass through data, with all the AICs and humans now using his data link for communications. BIL was a reclamation and scheduling AI and had paid little attention to politics or the war but he could tell that his companions seemed to think all of this was extremely important and that their lives depended on it.

"Thank you, BIL. Have you ever been out of the garbage room before? It sure does stink in there," the little girl asked.

"Only to the top hangar floor to take in or deliver a load of materials. The smell doesn't bother me as I don't have a nose," he told her, adding a tone of humor to his artificial voice.

"That's silly. No nose." Deanna laughed and made a funny face at her mother and the Triton woman.

"The big metal spider has no nose." Joannie laughed with the little girl.

"I'm quite looking forward to traveling out into the actual Martian atmosphere with you. I've never been out of the dome before," BIL replied. He really liked the little girl and didn't want to see any harm come to her. He was deciding that the garbage could wait and that his current cargo was more precious. BIL was also fairly certain from his wireless interaction with the senator's AI staffer that his keeping the little precocious first-grader entertained was much appreciated. BIL didn't really know a lot about humans, but he was pretty sure that these ones were tired and very frightened of something.

The big robot spider-thing scampered its four-ton body onto the giant lift. BIL shifted his weight onto seven legs and pushed some debris out of the way so he could completely work his body onto the front right corner of the platform. He wirelessly activated it, triggering the actuator field. The elevator, surprisingly, moved rather rapidly upward for its size and BIL had to adjust his weight on his eight legs to adjust for the added g-forces of the lift acceleration. The large platform passed through the first subsurface floor and then to the surface in about twenty seconds and came to a stop in the loading end of a vast hangar that at one end had the largest airseam on Mars. Through the dome could be seen an expansive landing port and there were several barge cars and smaller cargo vessels sitting on the landing field. A few privately owned aircraft and space-faring vehicles sat on the periphery of the hangar and outside on the airfield. Some of the vehicles were white and silvery and shiny and obviously very expensive while others were dinged up, oily black, and grimy from use and continuous repair and obviously held together on a shoestring budget. The scene was reminiscent of practically any airfield and spaceport across the system.

The landing field and the hangar were buzzing with activity that, on the other hand, was not typical of any civilian airfield. There were hovertrucks and Separatist drop mecha running here and there that were carting armored Separatist soldiers in and out to their various assigned defensive or offensive positions. Every few seconds an Orcus drop tank would either land or take off across the Martian landscape to some unseen designation. Armed and armored e-suited Separatists were bouncing outside by the dozens loading and unloading materials and their wounded. At the far end on the northeast side of the airfield was a hospital tent that had been inflated just outside the far edge of the airseam. Medevac aircraft landed almost nonstop on several of the pads and even on the taxiways of the northeast side of the spaceport. Ambulances came and went from the front of the tent then through the airseam, probably headed into Mons City to make use of some of the better hospital facilities in the city. As far as the garbage hauler AI was concerned, the sight was magnificent. There were people everywhere—including other AIs.

"BIL, we cannot be captured by those people," Senator Moore told the AI. There were no windows or screens in the belly of the garbage hauler but the hauler did have cameras and sensors on the outside to aid it in its daily reclamation job. BIL had worked directly with Abigail, the senator's AIC, to develop a mosaic algorithm for the sensor images and linked them DTM to the senator.

"I understand, Senator. What would you have me do?" BIL asked.

"Why don't we just walk out like we are on a standard garbage dump or something?" Sehera suggested. The bouncy ride through the garbage cavern had tired them all and the two women and the little girl were sitting down and leaning against one of the sticky smelly walls of the garbage hauler's interior. The smell inside the vehicle would have been more than the humans could withstand were it not for their e-suits. With the helmets sealed off, the scrubber filters would remove any of the unwanted pathogens, allergens, and chemicals.

"Well ma'am, there are no dumps into the local Martian region. All the garden zones are further south a bit," BIL explained.

"Mommy, who would know that?" Deanna asked her mother.

"What do you mean, dear?"

"Yes, of course." Moore was continually amazed by his daughter's ability to see the obvious. "BIL, these Seppy troops will have no idea what your job is. Just tell them that you are on a scheduled job to go south to reclaim an abandoned dwelling dome. Can you do that?"

"Certainly, if it will help you secure your safety. I can even change the schedule in the infrastructure system to show that I am supposed to be doing just that." BIL liked his companions and didn't want to see anything happen to them and a little freedom with the scheduling system wouldn't hurt. BIL was wondering why he had never thought of doing that before. Unbeknownst to him, Abigail had taken some liberties with the AI's regulations and ethics protocol software. Of course, Abigail could not alter his being—after all, AIs were living entities—but she could rewrite the rules that he was told to follow. As far as BIL was concerned, he had just never thought of going for a walk outside.

"Thank you, BIL," Sehera said in a maternal tone. "Be careful."

"Very well. To the airseam then. Hold on please." The spider's legs again started quickly shifting back and forth one over the other like the giant hybrid granddaddy longlegs spiders of the Elysium Planitia algae fields.

Once Gail and her cameraman had made their way into the main dome of Mons City they had been forced to take refuge in a convenience store at the edge of the hangar deck of the airfield. There had been so much Separatist troop movement coming and going that they had decided to lay low for a few moments and take a much needed break. They had been through several close calls as it was. One of them actually while they had been broadcasting live to MNN. They had had to cut their report short and take cover. It had never occurred to her that the Seppies had to have the technology to track the video link transmissions back to the main MNN router system. Apparently, the Separatists were not interested in stopping the news, but Gail didn't think of that. She was more concerned with hiding and not being captured—she had seen what happened to reporters captured by the Seppies on Triton. Not good.

And Gail and her cameraman were getting hungry. The convenience store made perfect sense. Once they had sneaked by the troop movement and into the back door of the little store they had relaxed a bit and helped themselves to the junk food and sodas stocked on the shelves and in the coolers. They were even able to reload the e-suit reservoirs with water. Having been outside and before that in the damaged borough of the southern domes the two of them had been sealed up in their e-suits for hours and used up a lot of their water. There was another aspect of being sealed up in an e-suit that required patience or regular breaks and that was the claustrophobia aspect. Being in the main dome that was not yet breached was literally a breath of fresh air to them and a chance to take off their helmets and stretch their necks, scratch their heads, and run their fingers through their hair for a bit. And it made eating and drinking stolen junk food a whole lot easier.

"Hold on, Calvin. What the hell is that?" Gail Fehrer had paid little attention to the lift platform at first. In her mind it was just a very large cargo elevator. But then she realized that something was out of place that was riding on the lift platform. At first all she could make out of the scene was that the lift rose and was littered with recyclable materials and general trash, but then a very large section of the trash started to move on its own, which startled her. Then she had realized that it was a giant metallic gray mechanical spider, which was completely unexpected and a little bit unsettling.

"That thing is odd-looking. What is that?" the MNN cameraman asked, and choked down the last of a candy bar since he knew that break time was over. He had been with Gail long enough to know that she would want to take a closer look at anything out of the ordinary. And a giant mechanical spider traipsing around in the midst of a bunch of Separatist troops could at the least be described as "out of the ordinary."

"I don't know. But whatever it is, get it on video." It was news Gail was certain of it. "We've got to figure out how to get closer and get a better look at that thing."

"Preferably without getting caught, Gail," Calvin added. "Gail, are you listening to me?" Obviously, she was not, so Calvin just sighed and continued to gather himself up to follow her off into some foolish and quite dangerous journalistic endeavor, as he always did.

The metal beast began to gingerly scamper across the large lift platform toward the airseam field, its eight long legs moving back and forth almost too quickly for the eyes to make sense of. To their surprise, so far, the Separatist troops were paying it little or no attention. Gail wasn't sure what to make of the sight, but her seasoned journalist's insight understood when something was newsworthy.

"Come on. Let's follow it and see what it's up to," she told Calvin while twisting her e-suit helmet seal ring tight. "I smell a story."

"Somehow, Gail, I knew you were going to say that." The camera and communications tech grabbed the gear, which consisted of a small repulsor field stabilized camera platform and QM wireless transceiver all no larger than a softball, and swigged one last swallow of the Dr. Deimos in his hand. Calvin dropped the silver lettered maroon can on the floor then squished it under his right jumpboot heal. "Ready when you are," he told her, and twisted his helmet into place.

The small storefront was typical of the industrial end of the city and was sandwiched between an aviation mechanical shop and a plumbing store. The stores faced the street that made up the east face of the hangar entrance that was on the city side of the hangar. There were large windows on the front of the marscrete and plastic construction buildings all of which had multicolored logos and advertisements painted on them.

The store owners had apparently left for the shelters in such a hurry that they had neglected to bring in the newsstands and potato chip racks from outside the front door. Originally, Calvin had to cut through the lock on the back door—camera techs had to be resourceful in the network news industry.

Their search for useful tools in the store uncovered a set of keys that allowed them to unlock the front door. This made it easier on them to follow the mechanical robot and keep it in sight. Had they been forced to take the back door the spider might have been gone before they could make it down the back building alleyway to the next street crossing nearest the hangar entrance.

"Let's go and keep the camera running." Gail eased out the front door of the little convenience shop and stayed as close to the walls of the buildings on their side of the street as she could. Calvin followed her lead and made every attempt at staying in the shadows while at the same time keeping the giant metal bug in the camera viewer.

They slipped silently down the street until there were no more buildings to stick close too. The street turned ninety degrees southward and followed the outer wall of the hangar bay until it met the taxiway for the space traffic. There were loading docks and cargo movers parked along the hangar bay wall. There was also the occasional privately owned aircraft parked in a small paved parking lot at the dome wall side of the taxiway. Gail and Calvin ducked behind parked forklifts and private planes leapfrogging each other from one to the next until they reached the edge of the dome near the airseam field generator just to the right of the adit.

The spider-thing had made its way to the edge of the airseam field with little if any attention being paid to it. Then the airseam light went green and the giant bug scampered out into the Martian atmosphere. As it passed through the seam's force field, an iridescent hue of violet and blue rippled across the large plane of the opening.

"Come on." Gail grabbed Calvin by the wrist and bounced three times along the dome wall and then through the airseam field right behind the metal beast, again generating the iridescent ripples in the field. Once outside the dome wall they took cover underneath a parked tugship's landing skids about fifty meters from the spider. "You're getting it, right?"

"You have to ask? After all these years?" Calvin smiled at his partner but kept the video centered on the bug.

"Sorry. Why do you suppose nobody is paying that thing any attention at all?" It didn't make sense to Gail. If a giant metal spider came traipsing along in front of her she'd damned well pay it some attention—especially during the middle of an all out attack.

"Who knows? Maybe it's supposed to be there?"

"Well, we need to stay with it. Let's stow away on it." Gail crawled out from under the tugship's landing gear and bounced to the nearest ship that could be used for cover. For a brief second she was in the open and viewable and vulnerable but nobody saw her. Calvin, likewise, followed right behind her unnoticed as well.

The reporter and cameraman continued to press their luck, bouncing from cover point to cover point until they were ahead of the spider's path. Finally, in a mad dash, Gail and Calvin bounced three times across a taxiway, on top of a parked cruiser, and then came to a clanking landing on top of the mechanical spider.

Gail landed on her jumpboots but the swaying jerking motion of the spider made her lose her balance causing her to fall face-first into the dingy metal surface of the garbage hauler. Calvin landed with a little better finesse but then fell immediately onto his posterior and then backward onto his head. Gail reached out and grabbed the ankle of his jumpboot in order to keep him from sliding headfirst and upside down off the spider.

As they gained there composure they did their level best at staying out of sight of the troops scurrying about the spaceport below them. But holding on to any crease or bulge in the surface of the beast proved to be harder than they had expected, since the exterior of the garbage hauler was basically smooth and metallic with no bumps or handholds. The two reporters pressed their stomachs to the surface of the thing as best they could keeping their arms and feet spread wide.

The spider's body consisted of two sections. A smaller rounded head section that most likely carried the sensors and control systems and looked as if it could carry a couple of passengers had a forward-looking windscreen and two side windows. This head compartment looked empty. The rearward section was more boxy in shape and had no windows. There were mechanisms that ran beneath the spider's rear compartment that suggested that it could dump that compartment over like a dump truck. There was also a door on the rear of it. But they had seen this only as they rushed to jump on the spider. They were much more intimate with the top of it now.

The top of the spider was much more flat than a biological spider and as they inched their way along on their bellies and toward the center of the thing's back they realized that it caved slightly inward to a seam that ran down the middle of its back. The seam made from two sliding doors, ran parallel with the direction the spider walked.

Once they managed to slide to the bottom of the V shape where the seam ran front to back of the rear compartment and largest section of the spider. Gail and Calvin were able to maintain their position because gravity was assisting them and they were at the bottom of a small gravity well.

"So, what do we do now?" Calvin asked, hanging on for dear life. It was a seriously bumpy ride.

"I don't know," Gail answered with a shrug, and shifted her weight from left to right and then forward and aft as the spider's odd eight-legged motion jerked her about. "Be patient."

"Uh oh, do you feel that?" Calvin felt along the seam where the garage doors met. The doors felt as if they were vibrating and pulling away from each other.

"Feel, whaaaa—"