One Day on Mars

1:59 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

"I am so glad that bitch finally shut the fuck up!" President Alberts pounded his fist against the Situation Room table. Wind from his fist flung papers scattering across the long mahogany table. The Joint Chiefs of Staff traded looks back and forth at each other in amusement.

"Sir, what are your orders? Mr. President?" The chairman asked.

"What the hell are they planning for Mons City!?" President Alberts had to think quickly. There was no way to get opinion polls out in time to make a decision on what to do, so he was going to have to do something that no president had done in decades or more, make a decision on his own. That thought literally terrified him.

"Mr. President, the extraction of Senator Moore was obviously a trap and reports have the entire fleet surrounded and in serious jeopardy from the engagement," the Secretary of Defense Conner Pallatin reiterated to the president. What had started out as a rescue mission for a senator and his family had gone really bad.

"Yes, Conner, I have heard the same reports as you." The Secretary of defense was really a politician and not a soldier. What did he really know about dealing with such dire situations? The president and several of his predecessors had been fighting the war against the Separatists for decades purely based on political polling data. What could they do to stop this and was there still a way to salvage the next election for the DNC? The president was not very certain on either front.

"We need to show strength, Mr. President," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. The Joint Chiefs unanimously agreed. The national security advisor nodded in agreement as well.

"What will the public think if we go into a full-fledged war against the Separatists?" the president's press correspondent asked frantically.

"We need to think about how the public will react about us sending troops into war." Alberts sighed and pushed back in his chair.

"With all due respect sir, we've lost thousands today already. We are in a full-fledged war," the chairman replied. "The Navy, Army, and Marines have been in serious combat for decades spread out across the system fighting these Separatists. We've been at war for a long time."

"I'm sure the president understands this, General," the weasel sec def responded.

"If it is war they want then give it to them. Drop all the divisions we have on those fleet ships onto Mons City and shut down those Seppy bastards. And give the fleet authorization to go to full subnuclear arms to stop those ships!" President Alberts was proud of himself and scared out of his wits at the same time. No president had made such a decision without the knowledge that the public was behind him or her since . . . well, since Madira. This would be the end of his legacy. The DNC would excommunicate him from the next convention. He would be lucky even to get an invitation to view it from a long distance via satellite—a very long distance. In other words, politically, he was fucked . . . royally.

"Well, that is just fucking great! The goddamned White House waits until we are already engaged and blasted to shit to give us the go-ahead on gluonium!" The XO was tired of being tossed around by enemy fire and, from his outburst, it was apparent to the CO that he was extremely tired of being jerked around by goddamned spineless, gutless, mindless fucking politicians.

"Check that, XO! Does us no good," Captain Jefferson told his trusted second-in-command. "The big bombs are a nonfactor as long as the Seppies have us wrapped up like this. We can't get away from them to go nuke and we are running out of options on tactics. We need a new strategy!"

"Orders, sir?" the XO asked.

"Keep taking it to them, XO. And where in the hell are my goddamned guns? Conventional missiles and mecha fire is not doing the job."

"Working the guns, sir. Hull tech below says all the coolant reservoirs are overheated and it will take several minutes to get just one battery back on line. He is doubtful on getting more of them up." The XO maintained a handle on the ship's health monitoring systems and the outlook was getting grim.

"Quartermaster of the Watch!" the XO called.

"Aye sir!"

"Get fire teams down there to help out the hull techs on the coolant levels!" the XO ordered.

"Aye sir!"

"CO! CDC!" came over the net.

"Go, CDC!"

"You should be getting alarms now sir!" Just as the CDC officer of the deck had said that klaxons and flashing red dots went off in three separate locations in the DTM virtual sphere in the CO's head.

"Roger that, CDC! Our vanished Seppy friends I assume?"

"Most likely sir . . . aye sir! We have signature verification coming in now. The autocorrelation software gives a correlation confidence of eight seven percent sir," the CDC officer replied.

"Copy that, CDC." The CO studied the battlescape for a brief moment and watched as Uncle Timmy plotted possible trajectory solutions in his mind. The battle had been spread out from near-space of fifty kilometers or so to almost Mars-synchronous orbit of about thirty-three thousand kilometers. The fleet had started with eighteen supercarriers and ten smaller warships. They were down to eight supercarriers with heavy damage and three smaller warships. All of the supercarriers listing helplessly in space still had mecha. Captain Jefferson would make use of that against the four carriers, five haulers, and four smaller passenger sized vessels the Seppies still had fighting.

"Fleet! CO Sienna Madira! All flight worthy and combat-capable vessels are to deploy from all fleet boats immediately! Deploy and engage the enemy!" Jefferson ordered. "Any drop tanks capable of deployment are to drop on Mons City immediately and take the city back!"

"CO! Air Boss!"

"Go, Air Boss!"

"We have three squads of M3A17-Ts winding up for the drop! One from the Washington and two from the Thatcher are starting the drop now. And the Mother Teresa has a mix of FM-12s and M3A17-Ts on the bounce. The Thatcher has also scrambled seventeen Ares fighters, they have a few dozen more but their cats are down."

"Roger that. Good. Tell the Teresa to drop the FM-12s below with the tanks. And tell the Air Boss of the Thatcher to blow a hole in the side of the fuckin' ship if they need to but get those goddamned fighters into space now!" Jefferson looked at the virtual space around him. The new Seppy ships had entered into normal space at high orbit and at maximum velocity but separated by thousands of kilometers. Several of the smaller Seppy ships already in theater had pulled from engaging and started retreating toward two of the ships that were closest together.

"CO Madira! CO Franklin!"

"Go, CO Franklin!"

"We're closest to the main group of Seppies, Wally. Give me the Andy Jackson, Bryant, and the Patrick Henry and we'll take it upstairs to them," the CO of the Benjamin Franklin requested.

"Roger that, Mike! Good hunting! Madira out!" Captain Jefferson turned his attention back to the ships on the other side of the battlescape.

Captain?

Go Timmy.

Thatcher has blown the lower deck plating from the aft hanger deck and Ares pilots are flying out from the gaping hole.

Son of a bitch. That Captain Walker is hardcore.

Aye sir.

"Holy shit! Sir!" Helmsman Marks screamed following the brilliant flash about ten thousand kilometers above them.

"What the . . . ?" Jefferson had to squint his eyes from the virtual space flicker created in his mind that was in the general direction of the splinter fleet that the Franklin and three other fleet supercarriers had gone after. Subnuclear detonation proximity klaxons started blearing throughout the ship.

"CO! CDC!"

"Go CDC!"

"We've got a gluonium detonation from the enemy ships at—"

"Roger that, CDC, we see it." The CO cut him off as the virtual sphere reset itself. There were two missing Separatist haulers, several smaller ships, and there were four missing U.S. supercarriers. "Fuck!" He slammed his fist against his chair. "It was a goddamned trap!"

"CO, do we want to get close to the other Seppy hauler?" the XO asked.

"Negative. Fleet. CO Madira! Engage Seppy hauler at distance only. Repeat. Seppy hauler is to be engaged from distance only. Suspect WMD booby traps!"

Captain?

Go, Timmy.

New plot of the hauler's trajectory suggests it is on a collision course for the main dome of Mons City!

Goddamnit, Timmy. We've got to stop it. The CO concentrated for a fleeting second hoping for a spark of some tactic that might help. Suicide bombers.

Sir?

How do you stop suicide bombers?

Sir?

Fight fire with fire, Timmy! Can we clear the fighters in time to hit that thing with a subnuke?

We would suffer major losses but could possibly save the city.

Shit.

"Fleet! CO Madira! Steer clear of enemy vessel on trajectory for planet's surface. Retreat to maximum safe distance now and prepare for subnuclear detonation," Captain Jefferson ordered and started drawing out new vectors in his virtual battle for the surviving members of the fleet.

"Sir?!" the XO said. "A suicide mission?"

"Well, goddamnit Larry, if you'd get me my main guns back we might not have to go to such extremes!"

"Yes, XO! Aye sir! Aye sir!" Hull Technician Joe Buckley almost saluted the tac-net screen. The Sienna Madira was forced on a suicide run and there were only a couple of minutes left to get the main gun up to save it. It was possible that one of the systems would cool down enough for a shot or two in two to five minutes but Joe didn't think that was likely. They were screwed.

Hull Tech Buckley had worked in the bowels of the flagship of the U.S. Navy fleet for seven years and knew every nook and cranny of the coolant flow systems and there was just nothing left to do. The liquid metal flowing around the ship to cool any of the large heat-generating systems such as the engines, the catapults, the SIF generators, and the main DEGs was all overheated—all of it. There wasn't a flow system left that wasn't overheated. It had been rerouted and rerouted and rerouted again in order to keep the SIFs up or the DEGs firing. Joe had never seen the flagship in such a tight spot.

"Well, Fireman's Apprentice King, I guess this is going to be a typical Navy day!" Buckley told his subordinate. The sarcasm wasn't lost on the fireman's apprentice.

"Goddamn it, HT. This is a bunch of shit! I don't want to fuckin' die!" The new guy in the "shithole" had just picked the wrong week to join up and that was all there was to it. Some guys do life in the military and never see any action, not one fucking iota. But then some poor dumb unlucky bastard draws the short end of the stick and has to rush Normandy on his first combat mission, or has to guard the embassy during the Tet offensive, or has to raid the Seppy farms on the first day of the Desert Campaigns, or, in Fireman's Apprentice James King's case, work in the bowels of the shit flow pipes for the flagship of the United States Navy during the mass Exodus of the entire Separatist population in the system.

"That's right, Jimmy, this is just a bunch of shit. Seppy motherfuckers!" Hull Tech Buckley shouted at the top of his lungs and banged his fist against the bulkhead. They only needed a small flow loop. Just enough to give them a few seconds of the main gun! One little flow loop of coolant. Hell, they didn't even need anything exotic for just a few seconds. Just one little goddamned flow loop that wasn't already overheated.

Jimmy's right, Mija. This is a sock full of shit! Buckley thought to his AIC. It was nice knowing ya.

You too, Joe. Somebody has to take the shit and I guess there's nobody better trained for it than us, Mija replied, almost lightheartedly. Sorry, Joe.

Shit . . . shit . . . Joe shook his head and then a thought struck him, almost.

Joe? Are you all right?

Shit . . . Hull Technician Petty Officer Third Class Joe Buckley was in the makings of a moment of genius. Not Nobel Prize–winning genius but perhaps ass-saving genius.

Hull Technician Joe Buckley? His AIC grew worried. She had never seen Buckley react this way.

"Shit!" Joe screamed at the top of his lungs again. "Shit, shit, shit and more shit! That's what we have plenty of down here in the shit hole! Shit!" Buckley paused for just a second and smiled like a madman on a mission and hell-bent for something.

"Uh, HT? You okay?" Jimmy asked.

"Fireman's Apprentice, grab that BFW on the console over there and get over here! I want you to beat the flying fuck out of this empty flow pipe at this juncture." Joe pointed Jimmy to the big fucking wrench and a joint where the DEG liquid metal coolant could be routed to flow through.

Mija, lock off this part of the pipe and flush it, then turn off the SIF on this joint for a moment, he thought to his AIC.

Pipe is empty and SIF is off, HT3 Buckley, Mija responded. There was a faint swooshing sound through the pipe for a split second.

Great.

"Jimmy, start banging!" Joe pointed at the juncture on the pipe.

"If you say so, HT3." Jimmy grabbed the BFW and started pounding away at the flow conduit juncture. Clang, clang, clang. Clang, clang, clang.

"Mija, I'm going voice so Jimmy can hear this too. Turn the SIF back on in that pipe." Joe brought up the heat pipe flows in his virtual DTM and highlighted the flow loop on the two forward DEG batteries. "We've got two sewer plants and one water reservoir on this ship. Mija, how much of that would it take once flushed into the system to cool off and allow us to fire the forward DEGs for a few seconds?"

"Quick and dirty calculations show all of the water and one full sewer plant," Mija announced over the deck intercom speakers. "We would need the water in there to keep the sludge from solidifying."

"Okay. I figured we'd need the water. We have to purge the hot liquid metal out of the pipes now! There is no place to do that quickly but here," Joe said as he pointed to the pipe that Jimmy had been beating with the big fucking wrench.

"Joe, that will kill us," Fireman's Apprentice King said in a panic.

"Like we weren't dead already . . . but maybe not if I'm in the shithole," Joe said. "Jimmy, get the hell out of here now, that is an order."

"Joe, we can't fit in there. The biggest openings are only thirty centimeter pipes into the topside of it. And the topside is four stories up," Mija corrected him.

"I know that, Mija Kitty. Once Jimmy is out you will close off this room including all electronic hatches and exhaust ports. This is gonna be some shit." Hull Technician Joe Buckley took the big fucking wrench from King and stood in front of the main pressure-drain valve on the bottom of the sewage bladder and started banging the living shit out of it. "Jimmy, I thought I told you to get the fuck out of here."

"Sorry, HT. Guess I'm just hardheaded." Jimmy picked up a second BFW. "You're gonna need some help to bust that one. It's too big."

"Suit yourself. But once it goes you get as high as you can on the aft wall. Mija, the instant this deck is filling with shit you purge the heat pipes for the forward DEGs into this room and then flow the water and the shit through the DEG coolant pipes. Got it?"

Joe raised the giant pipe wrench and brought it down against the valve stem at the boot of sewage tank. Clang. Then Jimmy hit it with his giant crescent wrench, clang, then Joe, clang. Clang, clang, clang went the BFWs against the shitter's release valve.

"Goddamnit, let go!" Clang. Buckley hit the valve stem one last time and then ka-thunk went the valve head as it was blown across the room into the far bulkhead from the pressurized sewer bladder. Joe and Jimmy dropped their makeshift hammers and looked for a spot with higher ground. Jimmy made it to the top of some tool shelving on the aft wall of the shithole, but the high-pressure flow coming out of the sewage release valve had him cut off from anything other than standing on the deck.

The SIF fields around the bladder squeezed it inward and forced it empty, throwing a fire-hydrant force flow of human waste across the room. The pressure of the flow ricocheted across the room and quickly washed Buckley off his feet, covering him from head to toe with shit. The pressure burst the nasty brown liquid into his nostrils, ears, eyes, and mouth, choking him.

Joe Buckley swam through the lake of shit as it filled the room with the mixed methane smells of decomposing waste from thirty thousand human beings and he began to lose the fight against the high pressure current and the horrendous stench.

Now, Mija! Joe thought. He took one last nauseating breath of the methane-filled air and fought harder to keep his head up.

The structural technician AIC triggered the software per Buckley's orders and a string of valves were released in order to allow the flow of the DEG liquid metal coolant to flow through the damaged heat-pipe conduit. The extreme pressures in the flow loop didn't take long to overcome the weakened metal in the pipe. Mija released the structural integrity field around the pipe at that location and the eight-hundred-degree-Celsius liquid sodium-potassium alloy flowed out of the pipe in a high-velocity jet with nearly explosive force. A small rupture in the pipe vented the liquid metal like a rocket nozzle that passed through both of Buckley's legs, cutting them off instantly and cauterizing them almost as quickly.

The heat pipe forced more and more of the liquid metals into the raw sewage that at the same time was converted quickly to steam. The heavy-liquid metals began to settle into the bottom of the pool of sewage and were forming dense methane gas clouds just above the surface of the brown sludge. Buckley had had a good idea from a mechanical and industrial flow point of view what would happen, but his lack of chemistry knowledge was going to be his undoing.

The chemical reaction of sodium and potassium metal and water created sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, heat—which was already in abundance—and hydrogen gas, which was highly explosive and had a very low flashpoint to boot. Plus there was a cloud of methane vapor rapidly forming just below the cloud of hydrogen rapidly percolating to the top of the room. The natural buoyancy of the two gases forced the heavy methane to pool on the surface of the sludge and the lighter hydrogen to pool at the top of the room. The sewage continued to drain into the compartment and was just as rapidly vaporized by the influx of molten liquid sodium-potassium alloy that was now covering the deck of the engineering room and beginning to eat away at the deck coverings.

Fireman's Apprentice James King had held on firmly to the aft bulkhead, as Hull Technician Joe Buckley had ordered him to do. The sight of the young sailor was one of the last things Joe would ever see as he struggled to keep his head above the surface. As if the searing pain from his amputated legs, the noxious gas fumes that were burning at his lungs, and the sodium and potassium hydroxide eating away at his skin weren't enough, finally the heat from the searing liquid metal exploded out of another failing part of the conduit, spraying his face with a mist of the molten vapors, melting his face and eyes to beyond flesh all the way to the bone.

Mija . . .

Rest, Joe. I'm here.

Did it work . . . ?

Rest, Joe. I'm here. Mija uploaded the control code to Uncle Timmy with priority status since she knew that she would not last long enough to execute the final commands of the flow system that Buckley had engineered. The AIC had figured out the chemistry a little too late herself to warn her counterpart, but in time that they wouldn't die in vain.

Finally the hydrogen gas cloud reached critical density for the heat in the room, the heat from the liquid metal, and the exothermic reaction. The overpressured clouds of gases and lack of oxygen had kept the room from igniting initially, but the heat of reaction and molten metal had finally reached the flashpoint for the volatile mixture. It ignited with explosive force. In turn, the compressed hydrogen gas cloud explosion ignited the methane fog with the force of several tons of explosives that blew a hole forty meters in diameter and out the three decks below and into space and upward six decks, killing hundreds of unsuspecting sailors. The explosion did blow out the fires created by the failing heat flow systems in the engineering decks but in the process it covered hundreds of sailors with septic human waste products on several decks. Several members of the crew were lost from explosive decompression and others just simply suffocated before they could make it to oxygen bottles. The remains of the sewage and the liquid metal quickly vented into the vacuum of space. The remains of Hull Technician Petty Officer Third Class Joe Buckley and Fireman's Apprentice James King would never be found.