One Day on Mars

2:47 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

"Don't move a muscle," Vincent warned his friends. The railgun fire into the sea of Mons City residents that had been corralled into City Park was continuous and relentless. The screams of victims were getting worse and worse as wounded piled up. The force fields continued to push inward on the remaining survivors and had collapsed to an area smaller than a football field. Vince, Rod, Carla, and several others lay helplessly but unharmed for the moment at the center of the mess, playing dead. At first people had scattered from the gunfire and left the pockets of dead and wounded lying about the park, but unfortunately the collapsing force field was pushing them toward the center where Vincent had led them. Soon they would be overwhelmed with terrified people trampling over them. Vince and Rod could probably handle that, but Carla's unborn baby most certainly could not.

"They're getting closer, Vince. Think of something!" Rod panicked.

"Bud, I'm fresh out of ideas now. It's out of our hands," he replied. A wave of panic-stricken people pushed its way over the bodies toward them and the railgun fire splattered all around them. One of the rounds passed through Vincent's right thigh and then on into the ground beneath him. Vincent screamed at the burning sensation and grabbed his leg. Blood poured profusely out both sides of the wound. He sat up screaming in pain and wrapped both hands around his legs as the red blood squirted around his fingers. The railgun fire continued to track in on the herding people and he could see Rod doing all he could do to cover the pregnant girl with his body.

I'm proud of you, bud. He started feeling light-headed and then several people kicked and trampled over him and somebody fell on top of him. Vincent's leg continued to burn with pain but the weight of the body and the trampling herd of terrified people on top of him kept him from being able to do much about it. He could hear Carla weeping close to him. The wounded's cries all around him was one of the most horrible things he had ever heard in his life and he couldn't help them. He couldn't help himself. All he could do was to wait until one of the railgun rounds had his name on it or he bled to death. All he could do was lie there and wait to die. "Fuckin' Seppy cowards."

The herd moved farther to their left and behind them and Vincent could feel the weight on him move. He pushed at it and it rolled off him. Rod was pushing at the body from the top side.

"Don't move, Vince. We gotta stop that bleeding somehow." Rod looked around not sure what to do.

"Bandage it with something," Carla told him.

"Right. Bandage it." Rod crawled around on his hands and knees trying to find something to use for a bandage and for the moment didn't think about the possibility of being shot down. A blue ion trail streaked across the park overhead and tore into the third-floor balcony where the concentration of sniper fire was coming from. Then the balcony exploded in a bright orange flash and an echoing thunderous sound. Following that explosion came several more and then a continuous spitap, spitap, spitap and zip, zip, zip of massive amounts of railgun fire from all around. The ground began pounding rapidly with the sound of large chunks of metal stamping the sidewalks and pavement in the distance.

"Missiles!" Vince exclaimed and raised his head just enough to see where the fire had come from. There were more than twenty armored transfigurable tanks standing like giant metal gladiators running and firing weapons in different directions. Vince could see armored soldiers with jumpboots jumping across the park and from building to building, street to street, tree to tree, and anywhere else he looked.

"The military is here!" Rod yelled. Carla squeezed Vincent's hand and her whimpers began to turn from sobbing to cheers of joy. "About fucking time," Rod said and started to stand up but his friend stopped him.

"Don't make yourself any more of a target than you already are, bud. Let the soldiers do what they came to do before we start running about all happy and shit." Vince paused and let himself enjoy the possibility that he just might live after all. "Pull that dead guy's shirt off and wrap it around my leg."

"That's right, sir, we've got tens of thousands of wounded here in Central Park and many more than that dead. The goddamn Seppy cowards were just killing them mass-murder style. Women and children, hell, there was even a couple of dead dogs we found. It is just fucking awful, sir," Armored E-suit Marine Gunnery Sergeant Tamara McCandless told her commanding officer, who had taken a group of AEMs to the shelter on the north side. The gunnery sergeant had the assignment of supporting the Army tank squadron in retaking Central Park.

"Yeah, gunny, it's the same pile of shit over here. There has to be fifty thousand dead and as many wounded in the shelter. We're getting word that it is the same all over the city," Captain Roberts responded over the quantum membrane net. The QMs' range had picked up once the jamming had been stopped and full tac-net coms were available. They would be needed just in the mop-up of this horrendous mass murder. Marines, Army, Navy, and Martian Air Force were dropping whatever support they could to help. It was the worst disaster in more than a century.

"What should we do, sir?" Tamara asked her CO.

"Shit, gunny, that is way above my pay grade. But if you've got the area secured then start helping whoever you can help however you can help them," Captain Roberts said. "We're trying to do the same here but it's a goddamn clusterfuck."

"Yes sir, copy on the clusterfuck. We'll do what we can." Tamara couldn't believe that something like this could happen to America. But it had and she had to make certain that the Marines did what they could to help.

"Excuse me, Marine." A civilian with a bloody T-shirt wrapped around his leg approached him.

"Corpsman!" Tamara called a few feet over to the Navy corpsman tending to another wounded civilian. That one was more critical.

"I'm busy right now, gunny!" The corpsman worked diligently in an open chest wound of the victim trying to stop the bleeding.

"Are you still bleeding, sir? Here," Tamara pulled the instaseal bandage from her own pack. "Let me see your leg."

"Uh, no ma'am. I'm fine. Save that bandage for somebody else. We just wanted to know how best we could help." The wounded civilian pointed a thumb over his shoulder at a handful of other civilians including a very young-looking pregnant lady. "And . . . "

"And?"

"You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette on you, would you? I'm dying for a freakin' smoke."

"I don't smoke sir. Hold on." The gunnery sergeant smiled at the man. "PFC Young!"

"Yes, Gunnery Sergeant?" one of the AEMs called from a few meters behind them.

"Give this man a cigarette and show his friends how they can help out."

"Right away, Gunnery Sergeant!"

"Fish, behind you!" Lieutenant Commander Jack Boland warned his wingman but didn't give her time to respond. "Guns, guns, guns!" he grunted after yawing his fighter one hundred and eighty degrees and then going to his DEG. The Seppy Gnat burst into four pieces and flew apart.

"Goddamn, where did that fucking Gnat come from?" Fish said over the net.

"I told you to keep an eye out. Just because the Seppy bastards are beaten don't mean there ain't some hiding out in the wreckage with their power off," Boland reminded his young wingman. He would have thought of her as inexperienced, but after the day they had just been through she had seen more experience than a lot of pilots would in a lifetime. But Jack feared that wasn't going to remain true either. With the Seppies gone to who knows where he feared that the real war was just beginning.

"Demonchild, you've been quiet on that side of the ship for a while. You got anything over there?" Boland looked through the virtual mindview of the wreckage for potential bogies down at the Madira for a brief second. What a fuckin' day.

You got that right, sir, Candis replied.

"We got nothing over here, sir. Must be an hour now that we haven't seen a fuckin' thing," Demonchild said over the tac-net.

"Well, keep your eyes open. We just got one over here." Boland yawed his Ares fighter back over to get a closer look at his wingman. Her little fighter was pockmarked and scarred to hell. It would need a new paint job and probably a shitload of maintenance. They had taken on Gnats and the new Stingers from space to Mars and now back out into space for the mopping up. He could see repair crews in suits and mecha already scurrying over the Madira like worker ants putting it back together.

"Roger that, DeathRay. Hey, you think after today we might get a few days' leave?" Demonchild laughed.

"I was thinking of sleeping on a beach somewhere for a few days," Fish added.

It sounded good to Jack. Hell, he had been up since way before daylight taking care of a high-risk mission and barely had time to eat before being thrust into an even bigger shit storm. As CAG he had a lot of letters to write. It was going to be hard to write the ones for Bigguns and Rabies, they were good pilots, good friends. Hell, it would be hard to write all of them.

Shit, this has been one long fuckin' day.

Yes, sir.

"Gyrene, that is one mean son of a bitch hot shit metal machine you got there, but the damned pilot is the ugliest sorry sock full of shit I ever seen!" Army M3A17 Transfigurable Tank Mecha Commander Lieutenant Colonel Mason Warboys shook his longtime friend's hand, bumped his shoulders, and patted his back.

"Well, you Army puke, that tank mecha ain't so bad either, but goddamn if you ain't rough on the eyes." Marine FM-12 Strike Mecha Commander of Cardiff's Killers Lieutenant Colonel John "Burner" Masterson laughed. "How bad are your boys?"

"Lost a bunch of good tank drivers, John. And you?"

"As far as we know we lost our entire supercarrier. The Killers, well, we lost a lot of good Marines, Mase." Burner looked at the Starlifters dropping in behind their mecha. As soon as they were reloaded they were going to help out with the cleanup of the domes. Normally, other soldiers would step in, but they had lost so many that they were the only seasoned soldiers available. More were on the way from Luna and Earth, but they were reserve units still mustering in North Carolina. It would be hours before they got there and some of the Seppy stragglers could get away by the time reinforcements showed up.

"Your boys okay for more work?"

"We're tired and down, but we can hang with you jarheads. Damn, I'm glad you made it, Burner. When I heard about your boat . . . "

"Yeah, thanks, Mase."

"Warlord One! Lieutenant Colonel Warboys," one of the Starlifter crews was calling him. "Sir?"

"Duty calls, Burner."

"See ya soon. Watch your six!"

"Roger that. You too."

"Chief of the Boat Command Master Chief William Edwards!" Captain Sharon "Fullback" Walker called across the hospital room at her COB. The corpsman working on her leg was finishing up with the instacast. Once the young hospital corpsman first class had shot her full of pain meds and immunoboost, she placed the instacast around her leg and pulled the string. The cast expanded antibiotic gel into the compound fracture wound and then expanded until it forced the bone back into place. Then the gel material hardened enough to support her leg but still give with muscle tissue movement.

"Captain Walker, ma'am!" Bill snapped a salute with his right hand. He had a gelbandage on his left shoulder and his back. Something had impaled him, it appeared. "You've looked better, ma'am, if you don't mind my saying."

"You don't look so hot yourself, Command Master Chief." Fullback smiled at her COB. He single-handedly had saved the Martian city by getting the propulsion back online. "Good work, Bill. Hell, excellent work. I don't know how you did it but I'm putting you in for the medal."

"Captain, I was just doing my job."

"A brilliant leader once said, 'Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do and you've done it,' " Fullback said. "I think that sums up what you did today, Bill."

"I think it fits us all, the entire crew, ma'am. Who said that?"

"Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher." The captain smiled at her COB as he nodded in agreement. "Now, shouldn't you be tending to my crew?"

"Aye sir!"

"Sergeant Clay, PFC Kudaf, Second Lieutenant Washington." Alexander shook the AEM's hands. Of the squad that was deployed to bring him, his wife, and daughter to safety they were the only three that had survived. "Thank you for what you did for us today. Semper Fi."

"Semper Fi!" They nodded to the senator.

"If either of you men ever need anything . . . seriously . . . if y'all need anything all you have to do is have your AICs tag mine and you will get to me directly. Any time," Moore told the Marines.

"We were just doing our jobs, Senator. You take care of yourself." The second lieutenant paused and then saluted him. "Major!"

Moore returned the salute, nodded, and then closed up the hatch of the Starlifter and banged on the door three times with his fist. The AEMs were being transported into various domes of the city to help with mop-up and search and rescue. Moore turned and walked back toward the elevator of the hangar of the giant supercarrier as the Starlifter lifted quietly off the battered flight deck of the ship. The large transport ship along with several other vehicles passed through the airseal force field at the open end of the hangar. A flurry of rescue and resupply vehicles continued in and out of the hangar deck. Medical crews had set up emergency triage units along the bulkheads, and wounded were being attended to there. The walking wounded were unloaded from the rescue vehicles and then directed to other decks.

"That was a very touching moment, Senator. The networks have been running our footage of you fighting to protect your family and the details of your story. They would love to go live in an interview with you." Gail Fehrer stood in front of him at the elevator shaft.

"Can I change clothes first?" Moore looked down at the blood-splattered and dusty e-suit. He had tossed the helmet aside an hour earlier but hadn't had time to change as he was making rounds to see soldiers and civilians and was shaking hands every chance he could. He even had helped carry some gurneys for a while. He was tired and he let out a long sigh.

"It might be more authentic if you didn't." Gail cocked her head sideways and raised her left eyebrow in thought. "Whatever you prefer is fine by me. But they would like to go live as soon as you are ready."

"Gail . . . uh." Moore paused for a second and reached over to the cameraman pushing the camera down. "Turn that off for a minute."

"What?!" Calvin gasped.

"Go ahead, Calvin. Seriously." Gail knew when to turn the cameras on and when not to. And sometimes it was that trick that got you the real story.

"Calvin, stay here a minute." Moore held up a finger at the cameraman. Then he grabbed the reporter by the wrist and led her a few meters to a tool room with a big window in it overlooking the hangar. He pulled her through the doorway to it and then closed the door behind them.

"What's this about, Senator?"

"Gail. There is a story here, a story that could make both of us if we played it right. Oh sure, you are a big correspondent now, but I'm thinking much bigger than that." Moore paused to see if there was any reaction, but the reporter had a good poker face.

"What is this story?"

"Hell, just look out the window at all of that! Look how many wounded are pouring in here and to the hospitals across the city and at the Navy base. It will last for days. Then they will have to start moving the dead. That will take even longer!" Moore thought about how to say what needed to be said.

"Yeah, it is horrible. I get it."

"Oh, you get the fact that this is a horrible thing that happened, but the bigger story is how did this happen. How did America allow this to happen? How did President Alberts allow this to happen? How did the Democratically controlled Congress allow this to happen?" He paused again and pointed at the streams of wounded that continued to pour into the hangar deck. A smile started to grow across Fehrer's face. Moore knew she would get it. A reporter isn't a good reporter if they can't find somebody to make a hero and if they can't think of somebody or many somebodies to crucify.

"I see . . . "

"Think about it. Why didn't we know that the Seppies had that big of an Army and Navy? Where did they get all that mecha and the carriers and the haulers? Either somebody in the government was asleep at the wheel, which is unforgivable, or they were in on it, which is even more unforgivable. And by God I'm gonna find out who." Moore had her now. "We are gonna find out who and fuckin' draw and quarter them, metaphorically speaking of course, on systemwide television."

"And . . . there is always an and or a but. You need something more from me than just me doing my job." Gail was sharp. Moore knew that she would be the right person for the job.

"I never thought of this until now, believe me or not I don't care, but all day long I've only thought of one thing and that was getting my family safe. But now that I've reflected on this for a few moments I want to make certain that this will not happen again in this country or at least it will not happen to us with our pants down and so unsuspecting."

"Mmhm. How will you do that, Senator?"

"That's the key you just said. Senator Alexander Moore from Mississippi can't do a diddly thing about it. But President Alexander Moore could." Moore stopped and stood looking Gail in the eye. "Make me president of the United States and I'll not let this happen again. And you can be an anchor, a White House spokesman, or whatever you want. The right ally in the press could do this. You can do this!"

The press, if they played it right, had the power to sway most anything they wanted. Moore was a good candidate. He had given years as a Marine and showed how powerful and selfless and caring he was on this horrible day on camera. Gail and Calvin had caught it all and America was about to see it. With the right spin he could take the White House in November by a landfall. The GOP would have no choice but to choose him as their candidate. He continued to stare Gail in the eye and didn't make another sound.

"Deal." Gail held up her hand and Moore shook it with a smile. "Now come with me and let's get started on your campaign." Gail opened the tool room office door and led the senator back out to the cameraman, who was standing around perplexed at the shots he was missing by having his camera off.

"So what was that about?" he muttered to his boss.

"Calvin, get the live feed ready. We're about to interview the senator," she replied.

What a day, hey, Abigail? Moore said to his AIC.

She's a good ally, sir.

I know.

Yes, sir. What a day. It has been a long one.

Sir? Your wife and daughter want to go home.

So do I, Abigail. So do I.