One Day on Mars

12:41 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

The president of the United States of America sat at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. He focused intently on the opinion poll data being DTMed into his head. Following the outcome of rapid poll data had served the president well for all of his first term and most of the present one.

The present question being put to a rapid online poll, he hoped, would give him a good read on the public's desire for the present situation at Tharsis. Should he or shouldn't he move forward with aggressive action against the Separatist incursion of the Tharsis region of Mars and risk the lives of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of voters in the Martian central mountain territory? There were actually over seventeen million inhabitants in the Tharsis territory and more than thirty percent of them were registered voters. If he took action that killed thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more of the registered voters' family members, it would have serious repercussions on the political outlook of the nation. Currently, the political outlook was one that the president and his party enjoyed. He didn't want to do something that would screw that up. His chief advisors and staff were giving him a moment to think while conducting similar analyses and simulations of their own.

Why did this have to happen now? he thought. To this point his administration had taken the Democratic National Party through nearly seven years with approval ratings near sixty-five percent. In the three strong parties of the American political system those were the best numbers any president—other than Sienna Madira, of course—had had for more than a century. It was likely that his vice president would be able to ride his wake into a whole next era of DNC control. The House and the Senate had benefited from the President's popularity and the DNC had grown to majority status and maintained control of both houses for longer than any other party since before the Sienna Madira years.

"What do you think about all this, Conner?" President Alberts asked his secretary of defense, Conner Pallatin. The poll data was split in three ways almost evenly over the three possibilities: 1) do nothing and ride it out, 2) attack the Separatist forces, or 3) surround the forces and ask for diplomatic discussions. There was a fourth possibility but it was still sensitive and not released on the poll. The forth possibility involved nothing more than a political "cover your ass" maneuver to rescue a member of the opposition party that had managed to get himself into a pickle. But President Alberts didn't want to take the chance that the internal White House Staff polls would get leaked to the press and therefore let the Separatists know that there was an American senator stranded somewhere in Mons City.

"I'm not so certain that the Separatists are going to just go away, sir. Somehow they have managed to amass quite an armada and have complete control of the Tharsis territory. The citizens there are trapped and are really at the mercy of the Separatists, Mr. President." The sec def had seen the polling data as well and wasn't sure of a good way out of this mess either. "We aren't even certain what the Seppies want, sir."

"Conner, you know I don't like that derogatory slang," President Alberts scolded his secretary of defense. "If the press got wind of somebody in my administration using it our approval rating could slide terribly."

"Sorry, Mr. President. As I meant to say, the Separatists have not even given us any demands, sir. We don't know if this is an act of war or if they plan to hold the region hostage as some bargaining aspect at the Summit talks," Conner explained. The reasoning behind the attacks was baffling to everyone in the system. There was no rhyme or reason for it as anybody could see. What advantage did the Separatist leadership think that an all out attack against the much greater force of the United States would gain? There were some at the Pentagon suggesting that the Separatists had way overestimated their capabilities much in the same way that Hitler had near the end of World War II. There was no way the Separatists could hope to maintain such a massive war fighting machine.

William Alberts stood from his chair and stepped away from the long mahogany conference table. The Situation Room had basically the same decor since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had created the Situation Room back in the mid-twentieth century after the Bay of Pigs incident. President Alberts walked slowly around the room where more than ninety-five other presidents had stood and pondered the heavy decisions of their time. The weight of the office bore fully on his shoulders and he looked to history for insight. Was there some approach that his predecessors had used or some profound thought that had kept them on the right path that he could emulate?

How Nixon must have paced the room during the bombings of Hanoi! What did President Carter do as he analyzed the peace talks between Begin and Sadat? What of President Reagan during the many Cold War incidents, what of the father and son Bushes during their respective wars in the middle east? How had William Jefferson Clinton handled the fighting in Old Africa? What of the several presidents to follow and the Global War of Muslim Extremism? And how had the many presidents to follow the "Great Expansion" of humanity handled their various "situations" of slow economies, overpopulation, civil unrest between colonies throughout the Sol system, and political infighting for territorial control? How had President Charlotte Ames dealt with the creation of the New World Government Consolidation Act and the assimilation of all the world governments under one constitution, an America- and United Nations-based constitution? How had President Victor Kolmogorov handled the news of the first interstellar spaceflight and the subsequent missions out of the solar system to other stars? How had the great President Sienna Madira handled the Separatist Secession and the creation of the Reservation in the desert of the red planet?

More important, Alberts thought, how would he handle this situation now in such a way that history would recall him as one of the great presidents of history? How could he salvage this incident for the good of the DNC? He searched the faces of his most trusted military and intelligence and political advisors around the room, but was certain that they waited for his direction. Politics was always that way—few were willing to be the first to stick their necks out onto the political public chopping block.

President Alberts had only made a few other such tough decisions and had used the Situation Room briefly in the past, but they were nowhere near the drastic scale of the decision before him. The Triton invasion was a much smaller mess and was so far away from mainstream America that most voters had paid it little attention. The Kuiper Station raid was even smaller and farther away. Otherwise, the economy had been cruising along steadily—the war didn't hurt that—and most Americans had gone on obliviously about their daily routines. His administration had been a good one. He sure didn't need this damned Separatist uprising so near the end of his term.

"Well, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't." The president paused for a brief moment and added more. "Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace."

"Mr. President?" Secretary Conner raised an eyebrow in question of the comment.

"John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States of America, said that. So true in 1841 and perfectly meaningful in 2383. Just when we've got the approval from the public that we need, something like this comes along and inevitably will destroy all we've worked for. Possibly overnight, and maybe even in a few short minutes."

"Yes sir." Conner nodded agreement. "I understand sir."

"Damnit." Alberts paused for a second as if he were going to change his mind but then thought better of it. "We don't attack. At least not all out."

"Sir? The longer we let them dig in, the harder it will be to dig them out," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs advised from the other side of the table.

"I realize that, Sandy. But we really need to know what they are up to. My director of national intelligence seems to be a little short on data in that regards, right Mike?" the president scolded his DNI. The DNI only grunted in acknowledgment.

"We support the withdrawal of Senator Moore and that is all we do on the ground. The press would have a field day if I let a Republican senator get killed and do nothing to try and get him out. Beyond that, we take out the Separatist armada of ships above Tharsis. We do not go to ground with full mecha divisions. One division of tanks and one squadron of fighter support. Understood?"

"What about our troops still left on the ground in the region, sir?" The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked. "We're not leaving them behind to die, are we?"

"They'll just have to hold out a little while longer while we look for a diplomatic solution." Alberts scanned the room for further insights but there were none. Again, the political chopping block was a lonely place to stick one's neck. It was obvious that the Joint Chiefs did not like his decision but wouldn't risk their careers to contradict him. But that was okay, they didn't have to like the order. They just had to follow it. "Let us move on it, people."

"Yes sir, " Conner replied, and immediately began passing along strings of orders to the senior advisors in the room and across the system via AIC QM.

Alberts decided to take a stroll around the West Wing and wait for further developments. The end of his era was going to come soon and he feared now with much less praise than he had hoped for. His legacy was changing dramatically by the second.

"CAG on deck!"

"At ease." Lieutenant Commander Jack Boland stepped up to the podium in the front of the briefing room. The large gray conference room was more than thirty meters wide and twice that deep and could hold a seated audience of more than a thousand people in the stadium seating. The room was crowded and standing-room-only at present.

"All right, here is our game plan fresh from the Looney Bin, up the food chain, and White House blessed," Jack started, sarcastically. "Before I go into that I want to make certain that everybody has been briefed on the new Seppie Stinger mecha that is comparable in capabilities to the Marine FM-12s. Everybody has been briefed at this point, right?" Jack paused and saw affirmitive nods and grunts and saw no hands go up.

"Good. Okay here is how it will work. We are going to have two fronts of attack. The first is a support and cover mission for the fleet's frontal assault on the Seppy armada in space hover over the Tharsis territory. The electronic warfare and recon air wings will be deployed immediately following exit from hyperspace. Then, Lieutenant Commander Chavez, you will take the Demon Dawgs in your Ares fighters and cover the Madira and, Rabies, keep the CO free of any Gomer Gnats and Stingers that might decide to pester him while he is giving what-for to those damned Seppy rust tubs out there. You are to fly protection for the fleet not to engage the Seppy boats. The main fleet will be firing their supercannons, missiles, and DEG batteries full bore. Maintain full IFF squawk and stay out of the firing solutions." Boland paused for a moment and moistened his lips.

The sims he had completed in the Looney Bin had suggested as much as fifteen percent casualties for this mission. Out of the fifteen hundred or so pilots in the room about one thousand of them were combat pilots—the others were support, rescue, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and rearming/supply vehicle pilots. The casualties within that group of pilots was usually fairly low. For this mission two hundred of the combat wing would be held in reserve. Out of the eight hundred combat pilots that would be deployed for the mission more than one hundred and twenty of them might not make it back. Jack never liked thinking about that part of the mission planning.

"Second layer cover for the Madira will be provided by Captain Cameron's Utopian Saviors and their FM-12s." Jack nodded at Captain Janice "Bigguns" Cameron. There were those with less pure minds who often thought that Janice had gotten her call sign because of two fairly large assets that she sported proudly, but her nickname had originally been "Big Guns" because she was a very large caliber gun nut. Her other assets simply acted as a catalyst to the evolution of her call sign, which eventually became officially "Bigguns." Jack had had nothing to do with her call sign.

"Lieutenant Cameron, tag up with Rabies after the briefing. Any questions on the first attack wing?" Jack paused and waited for questions. He scanned the room and saw nothing but professional acknowledgment there. The Madira had the best pilots in the system.

"The second group will be air and ground support for the extraction of a small force of lost armored e-suit gyrenes and a handful of civilians. Note that one of these civilians is a United States senator and is to be protected and extracted at all costs. Gods of War will fly cover and Lieutenant Colonel Warboys and Warboys' Warlords will drop the Army M3A17 transfigurable tanks for ground and heavy fire support. At this point the SH-102 Starhawk rescue vehicles will be dropped to extract the evacuees and any wounded. Gods of War, make certain to support the colonel's extraction once the targets have been evacced. Also, we have intel that there is heavy Seppy drop tank activity in the area and there are some reported SAM mobile sites as well. Watch for that. Your AICs have the particulars."

"Another note here is that we expect to have the full contingent of Cardiff's Killers gyrene FM-12 strike mecha from the Churchill along for the ride planetside. Keep in mind that the Killers, the AEMs, and the civilians have been fighting their way to this evac for several hours now and they are battered and tired and probably running low on ammo. We have to cover their backs and get them out. Let's step in and do the fighting so they can retreat ladies, and gentlemen. Finally, as soon as the civilians are gathered, immediately evac them to the Madira or the nearest orbital platform taking the least amount of heat at that time. Once all the civilians and the Killers are evacuated, the Starlifters will drop in and load the tanks pulling out the Warboys. The Gods of War are last out, flying cover."

"Are there any questions?"

There was dead silence in the large conference auditorium. The pilots knew their jobs and didn't have to ask about the odds for survival. They had all seen enough combat to understand when things were going to get bad and they knew that some things were best left unasked.

"Very good. We hit hyperspace in twenty-six minutes."

"Hey, jarhead, wait up a sec." Navy Lieutenant Armando "Rabies" Chavez pushed a Navy ensign and an Army lieutenant out of his way down the stairs as he was "going below" and trying to tag up with Bigguns. The stairwell, or ladder in Navy-speak, was just big enough for him to squeeze by the junior officers. Rabies always enjoyed being paired up with Bigguns and not necessarily because she was a female. Hell, Bigguns was more than just "boat cute," a term applying to female sailors that weren't cute in a skimpy red bikini on a sunny day at the beach, but would be after three months away from port. In fact, Bigguns would be something to see in a bikini simply due to her call-sign-bearing assets, but she wasn't a supermodel either. Bigguns sported her red hair in the typical spiky short-cropped haircut of the Marine pilots. Her skin was milky and she was about one hundred and eighty centimeters tall, which was typical of Martian women. She wasn't hard to look at, but that was only part of why Chavez enjoyed her company. Rabies had been through several scrapes with her and her Marines and they all were good at their job and goddamned "Uncle Sam and apple pie" all the way. Besides that, the girl could shoot damned good and Chavez was a bit of a mad dog about guns himself.

"What's up, deck spotter?" Bigguns used the derogatory term for her Navy colleague meaning that he was no good at making carrier landings because he was so stupid that he would be panic stricken and stare at the deck rather than watch the ball like he was supposed to when on approach. Of course, Rabies was an expert pilot and had seldom had to be waved off, but a Marine pilot would never admit such about a squid pilot.

"Hey," Chavez almost made another petty comment, but time was short and they had too much business to take care of. "I've gone through the Looney Bin sims on our sorties and I have an idea."

"Make it quick, Rabies. Before I hit the hangar I need to send a Marine to sea." Bigguns meant she needed to stop at the head, but Rabies understood. He wouldn't mind a Combat Dump himself if time permitted.

"Okay. The Dawgs are going to protect the Madira. Wherever the Seppy fighters concentrate is where we will be. If we go standard second wave we will just fill in the weak spots of the ship's coverage." Rabies had to stop walking down the corridor because Bigguns stopped to turn left to go to the head.

"So you want to do what?" Bigguns wasn't annoyed, she just had to go, bad.

"Look, I'll get my AIC to send you my sim and you can study on the pot." Rabies laughed.

"Good idea. Thanks." Bigguns nodded to the Navy lieutenant and rushed into the head looking for an unoccupied stall. "Squeeze it off, seaman, I need that stall."

Janice, I have the sim from Rabies, her AIC told her.

DTM it, she ordered. The sim started unfolding in her mindview. Hmm. You clever little squid.

The battle plan was constrained. The fighter support had to stay away from the enemy carriers in order for the supercarriers to target them with their big guns. So the engagement zone really was flying cover for the Madira in close proximity to the large fleet flagship. Bigguns liked what she saw. Instead of taking to space and fighting with three dimensions of possible direction from which enemy Gomers could target the FM-12s, Rabies had them staying close to or actually on the hull decks of the supercarrier. This did two things. The first was it cut out half of the enemy's targeting sphere. The other is that it allowed the FM-12s to set up a killing field. The Demon Dawgs would direct the Seppy Gomers with their Ares fighters and appear to be letting them break through the lines to strafe run on the Madira. And that is where the Saviors would be waiting in bot-mode, targeting with their DEGs, cannons, and missiles. Very clever.

I like it. Bigguns grinned and then flushed the toilet.

It could work quite well, her AIC agreed. Nineteen minutes, Janice.

Right.

"Don't they realize that we are all gonna start getting hungry and thirsty after a while? They can't just leave us out here crowded together like this." Rod stood up from the park bench seat he had been on to let a pregnant woman have his seat. The Mons City Central Park Open Court was filled almost to standing-room-only capacity with civilians that the Separatist soldiers had rounded up. It made for a good holding pen.

Once Rod and Vince had been marched into the area, Rod had noticed that the Seppies were setting up a barrier field. In essence, Central Park had become a makeshift prison. On several occasions panicking men and women had tried to rush the troops only to be shot down by Seppy rifles or to be stunned by the barrier field. There were a few public bathrooms and water fountains scattered throughout the park and an occasional vending machine, but there were nowhere near enough supplies to support the tens of thousands that were crowded into the area.

"Hey bud, chill." Vincent was getting antsy from lack of nicotine. He had run out of cigarettes over an hour earlier and didn't have any neutralizer or immunoboost with him either. So the nicotine withdrawal was beginning to make him, well, edgy. "I don't think they give a rat's ass about feeding or watering us. I think this is the temporary solution for something more . . . permanent." Vince grunted.

"More permanent?"

"Well, didn't you read the papers any over the last few years?"

"What'd you mean, Vince?" Rod didn't like where this was going, but he was pretty sure he knew.

"Well, remember what they did to the civilians at Kuiper Station? Or what about on Triton?" Vincent said somberly and with a calm matter-of-fact tone that chilled Rod to his core.

"Yeah. I was afraid of that." Rod had read the papers and watched the television, but it was always hard to tell how much of the news was real and how much of it was sensationalized for ratings. Most Americans had quit believing the news many decades ago—maybe even centuries ago—and considered it more a form of entertainment, commercials, and a political mouth for whichever party made up its constituent viewers. The news told its readers and watchers and listeners what they wanted to hear. And any particular story could be heard in any particular way depending on the channel, website, or forum.

Fortunately for humanity, though, word of mouth still existed. There were a lot of people throughout the outer realm of the system that had lost family to the Triton Raids or on Kuiper Station at the hands of the Separatists. Something like that just couldn't be kept quiet for too long and the spin from the news could be filtered by the word-of-mouth news.

"Well, if we are dead anyway, Vince, why are we just sitting around here?" Rod asked his long time friend and drinking buddy.

"I'm working on it Rod. I'm working on it."

"Wow. That is some story, Senator," Gail Fehrer said into the camera. "So have you figured out what this extra signal is yet?"

"No, but I'm working on it," Senator Moore replied. The clock on his visor showed that they were about ten minutes away from the rendezvous. He was ready to have this little adventure behind him and his family safe and far out of harm's way.

"How are you working on it?" the reporter asked.

"Well, my AIC has several AIs from the gambling district working the numbers on it and she has passed the data through BIL along to the Sienna Madira main AIC. I understand that the super AIs of the nation's flagship are cranking away at cracking the encryption. It is only a matter of time now." Moore was nervous about giving too much information away, but then again, there was no transmission taking place. Abigail was watching the reporters like a hawk and BIL promised to keep a sensor on them too. So for now, the senator was taking in all the free press he could. After all, his day job was as a politician.

Senator?

Yes?

The AEMs want us to update them on our position, Abigail informed him.

We tell nobody our position from here on to the evac point. We don't know how long it will be before the Seppy techs figure out that we are using low-level infrastructure coms for data relay.

Understood, Senator. I'll relay the message.

Just tell them that we will be there. And then we go radio silent until further notice.

"Boulder."

"Yes sir, Burner?" Lieutenant Jason Cordova replied to his boss over the optical net.

"I want you, Ace in the Hole, One Night, Bama, Epoxy, and BullNutz on the ground in eagle-mode and covering the AEMs." Burner trotted across the Martian soil in bot-mode beside Boulder, each with two Marines riding on their shoulders. The bot-mode mecha could hold a pace of over eighty kilometers per hour on solid ground in one full Earth gravity. On Mars they could better that by about twenty percent. Of course, in fighter-mode the FM-12s could reach escape velocity of most of the planets in the system and they were equipped for short-range space combat. Each mission had its own speed requirements. This particular mission required finesse not speed. Burner checked his passive sensors systems and the active LIDAR and saw no signs of Seppy Gomers. They had been lucky since they left the dome and had been alone as they crossed the lower desert drop of the southern foothills of Olympus Mons. The AICs that had linked together across the city had warned that the majority of Seppy activity was located between the domes and moving mostly toward the main dome. This far south seemed to be of little interest to them. However, one thing that bothered Burner was that the Seppies had been jamming their sensors all day. There could be drop tanks just over the hills and they would never know it until they were on top of them. Burner didn't like running blind, but it beat sitting around with thumbs up your ass and blind.

"Got it, Burner."

"Washington, I want your AEMs on the ground bouncing underneath Boulder and company, got it?"

"Yes sir," Washington responded, eager to get on with this mission.

"Lieutenant, you keep pinging away with your QMs for any activity. Jammed or not, we might get that encryption downloaded from the fleet at any second and I want to know if our sensors start working," Burner ordered the AEM leader.

"Affirmative, Colonel." Washington switched over on his NCO channel and touched base with Clay. "Sergeant, you stick with Kootie. Keep the private out of trouble. However the VIP shows up, let's get to them quick and move out quick. And keep your QMs pinging."

"Yes sir, Lieutenant." Sergeant Clay Jackson was ready to get this mission over with as well. It had been a losing battle since the start and he was ready to make something positive out it.

"Okay AEMs," the second lieutenant QMed his personnel. "I know it's a lot of fun joyriding on this here fine Marine mecha but we need to quit goldbricking and start earning our pay." Washington pulled his HVAR up in front of his visor and checked the weapon. He was ready to go. "Sergeant, you and Shelly take the left flank. Kootie, you're on me. We stay low and under the Killers."

"Oorah, sir!"

Washington pushed himself up to his feet, balancing on the barrel turret of the shoulder-mounted forty-millimeter cannon of the striding bot-mode FM-12. Before the running mecha's bouncing could throw him off balance Washington did a backflip off the giant robot and bounced to his feet on the Martian soil, bringing his left knee down as he impacted the red soil. The immunobooster and the pain meds must have worked well, because other than feeling a little clammy on the forehead, Washington was a new man. He was a heartbreaker and a goddamned life taker. He was an armored e-suit Marine!

Oorah, Lieutenant, Tammie, his AIC, added. The second lieutenant was running on all adrenaline.

Sergeant Jackson, Corporal Shelly, and Private Kudaf followed the second lieutenant's lead. The four Marines bounced at more than seventy kilometers per hour in the open desert. Running downhill helped too. The Martian soil of the mountainside consisted of pebbles no larger than a marble embedded in red granular dust. There were occasional outcroppings of millennia-old lava boulders but they were few and far between. The AEMs and mecha bounced faster downhill kicking up a rooster tail and dust trail of gray-red Martian regolith.

The rendezvous with the VIP and evac was on the south side of the mountain, a good piece downhill from the south borough dome. It had to be more than fifty or sixty kilometers south and east of the main dome where the senator was coming from. Unless they could fly or had commandeered some sort of transport it was difficult to see how they would make it to the rendezvous in time. But the AICs had contacted each other and assured the Marines that the rendezvous was on schedule and going to happen.

The AEMs Shelly and Kudaf leaped from Boulder's mecha in long separating arcs. Shelly's arch landing just left of the second lieutenant and Kudaf's slightly behind the sergeant. As the AEMs hit the ground bouncing, Boulder's FM-12 transfigured itself from a full-sprint running robot to an eagle-mode mecha. The g-forces from the mecha transfiguration process had to be one hell of a ride for the mecha pilot. Five other of the sleek killing transfigurable fighting machines pulled into close formation overhead only a few tens of meters above the bouncing AEMs. The wings of the mecha were only a few meters apart from each other.

Lieutenant Colonel John "Burner" Masterson's mecha stayed in bot-mode and was flanked by two fighters on his left in bot-mode and three on his right. The bot-mode mechas serpentined down the mountainside and took giant leaps from side to side over each other in a concert of confusing patterns designed to disrupt mecha-to-mecha radar-guided missiles. Behind and in front of them were six of the FM-12s in fighter-mode.

In fighter-mode, the stealthy profile of the Mars red camo painted fighter plane resembled many of the iterations of the old joint strike fighter concepts crossed with a more modern, turned-up wingtips and dual tail fins design. Above and below the empennage of the fighter were the forty-millimeter cannon turrets and below the nose cone was attached the DEG. Just above the DEG and below the forward sitting canopy of the fighter were small canards that resembled meat cleavers.

The Marines were coming to the rendezvous at a full run and with guns blazing. So far they had encountered no resistance on the southern side of the mountain. The Marines hoped it stayed that way. But if it didn't, like any good squadron of Marines, they were ready to bring hell.