One Day on Mars

12:32 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

The opening in the top of the garbage hauler cracked just wide enough for a bright and blinding splinter of white light to seep through. Just as quickly and silently as the doors opened, they began to close. Through the crack above him, Alexander Moore could see two human figures flailing helplessly, silhouetted in the splinter of light as they fell slowly in the Martian gravity to the floor of the garbage hauler.

"Yes, I see them BIL, thanks." Alexander brought his Separatist HVAR off the sling on his back and lowered it to his hip pointing in the general direction of the two thuds that he heard about seven meters to his left and dead center of the empty garbage hauler.

Abigail, any ID on them? the senator thought to his AIC.

Yes, Senator. They are emitting press badge signatures, Abigail replied.

No shit. The press? No matter where we go, the press is gonna find us, hey? He chuckled and at the same time muttered it under his breath. Goddamned press.

"Nobody moves a muscle," Moore said over the speaker of his esuit and broadcast on the suit-to-suit QMs. He swept the suit lights over their two unlikely stowaways and could tell they weren't hurt, just stunned by falling and landing off balance inside an empty garbage hauling mechanical spider. Perhaps what stunned them the most was that they found people inside it, armed people?

"Who are you?" Gail Fehrer asked holding her hands up in front of her face to block out the bright light from Moore's e-suit helmet.

"I said don't move or I'll shoot you, damnit!" Moore said with more venom and tilted the light away from them just enough for them to notice that not only was he pointing an automatic rifle at her but so was Joanie. "Now, I'll ask the questions. Who the hell are you?"

"Gail Fehrer, MNN," Gail stated sounding as if she were signing off of an on-air report. "And this is my cameraman, uh, Calvin Dean."

"Okay. What are you doing here?" Moore kept the rifle centered on the two reporters.

"We were in the south borough when the supercarrier crashed and have been following the Seppies ever since. We stowed away on one of their convoy tankers here from the south to see what was happening in the main dome. Then we saw the damnedest thing marching across the airport." Fehrer nervously rushed her explanation. Moore could tell that she didn't like staring down the barrel of an automatic weapon known for firing seven-millimeter rounds at ten percent the speed of light with the ability to bring down fighting mecha. In fact, Moore sympathized with her. He didn't like staring down an HVAR either and it was something he had never gotten used to no matter how many times he had been forced to do it.

"Okay, then you are in the wrong place. We are leaving the city, fast. As fast as BIL here can carry us. So I suggest the two of you hop the hell out right now," Moore said.

"Can we ask why you're leaving the city? And who you are?" Fehrer asked.

"Are you transmitting with that thing? Reyez, take it." Moore nodded Jones to the video device that the cameraman was wielding.

Jones grabbed for the camera but Calvin yanked it back and started to put up a fight. Moore gave Calvin a rifle butt to the stomach and then swept his legs out from under him with a sweeping hook kick to the back of the knee. He spun around and placed a jumpboot on Calvin's wrist, pinning the video camera to the floor of the garbage hauler. He then placed the rifle barrel closer to the man's faceplate.

"You sit still, young lady." Joanie Hassed moved in closer to Gail, giving her a nice view of the wrong end of the other Seppy rifle.

"Wait!" Fehrer cried. "Stop, we can't hurt you because we're unarmed. Calvin, give them the damned camera."

Reluctantly, Calvin released his grip on the video device and rolled his head back, pounding the back of his helmet into the floor with disgust. Reyez grabbed the camera and made sure that the transmission and record were turned off. Abigail double-checked it with her QM sensors also just to make sure that Reyez hadn't missed anything.

"Hold on!" Fehrer continued. "We're just following a news story. We've seen the troop movement from here to the far south dome. We can help you. It's obvious that you're not Seppy troops or you wouldn't be hiding in here. Relax. We're on your side."

"Alexander, I think she is telling the truth," Sehera told her husband. Her daughter stood behind her, hugging onto her left leg, hiding her face.

"Yes. We are telling the truth." Calvin Dean rose slowly and pulled himself to his feet, grunting and coughing from the residual pain the rifle butt to the gut had created.

"All right. No sudden moves. And neither of you so much as sneezes without asking me first," the senator warned them. He had never trusted the press as far back as his days at Mississippi State. He had seen them generate news at the expense of his teammates' futures with very little thought. And the way the press handled the Desert Campaigns on Mars was nothing short of treason, but they had gotten away with it. As a politician, granted he was a public person to be scrutinized by the public. But in general, he felt the press had never done anything but cause heartache and hardship. There were occasions for the exception, though, and of course he believed in free speech, but he also believed in ethics and honor. Moore had found that most of the mainstream press had neither ethics nor honor, just a thirst for the power of being a public figure. Moore had seen one or two out of the hundreds of reporters he had met that may have been worth killing, but only one or two. The rest weren't worth the railgun round it would take to blast them. The jury was out on these two at the moment. And Moore wasn't in the mood to put up with much at the moment.

"Ok. Could you lower your lights a bit, though? They're giving me a headache," the cameraman asked.

Abigail, dim the lights.

Yes, Senator.

"BIL, how much longer?" Moore asked out loud.

"We have currently accelerated to top speed of one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour and are about forty-seven minutes from the evacuation coordinates, Senator Moore," BIL quickly responded. Moore cringed when BIL used his title and name. Now he'd have to answer a bunch of damned questions. "I would suggest that you all sit on the floor and make yourselves as comfortable as you can. I will try to reduce the bumpiness of the ride as best I can."

"Thank you, BIL. Just get us there in time." Moore motioned for everyone to have a seat. Once they were all seated facing each other in a circle, he sat down too.

"Senator Moore? Alexander Moore from Mississippi?" Fehrer asked. "You're part of the Arbitration Summit right?"

"Yes."

"That's it? Yes? You're the first politician I've ever seen not in a hurry to wax poetic for the press." Gail laughed, wishing she could get her camera back and record this conversation.

"Well, if you haven't noticed, Miss Fehrer, we are under attack and under siege by a Separatist military force the likes of which hasn't been seen for decades. And my wife, daughter, and I are caught up in the midst of it all. So pardon me if I'm more concerned with the safety and evacuation of my family and these two citizens at the moment than being on the news."

"Sorry, Senator. I understand. Listen. Let Calvin have his camera back. We'll record only and wait to transmit until we are safely away from the Seppies. I wouldn't mind getting out of here either. I promise not to broadcast," Fehrer begged the rifle-wielding statesman.

"All right. But my staffer is QMing you. If you so much as emit one iota from that thing I'll bust some rounds off through it and then squish it with my jumpboots, understand?" Moore eyed the two of them and raised the rifle barrel upward for emphasis, but he could tell they understood.

"Promise, Senator."

"All right then. Reyez, give the man back his camera." Moore nodded to the adventure shop manager and then turned back to the reporter. "I guess you've got questions?"

"Well, my first one is why aren't the troops interested in this . . . thing?" she motioned her arms around meaning the garbage hauler. "I guess you couldn't see it from inside here, but you just walked by hundreds of Separatists troop vehicles all of which were loaded with troops. And not a single one of them paid you any mind at all. Why?"

"Because BIL told them not to?" the senator's daughter giggled.

"I'm sorry, BIL?" Gail asked.

"Yes. BIL, the garbage spider," Deanna replied again.

"BIL is the AI controlling this hauler," Moore started explaining. "He also controls the garbage hauler schedule for the Mons City Reclamation and Redistribution Center. He put on the schedule that this was a routine run out into the desert to pick up a downed vehicle for reclamation. Who pays attention to garbage haulers?"

"I see. Clever. How did you convince him to do this?" Gail asked in her reporter voice.

"We just asked him." Moore smiled at the seasoned reporter halfheartedly wishing that Deanna would stick her tongue out at the woman and say, Duh.

"Hmm. So you were in the city for the Summit meetings with the Separatist Laborers when the attack started?"

"That's right," Moore said.

Laborers' union, now that is a real joke. Laborers' unions don't have heavy drop mecha and thousands and thousands of soldiers. This is a Separatist army and the press is going to have to admit that. Hell, the country is going to have to admit that or we'll never stop this war. And that is what this is . . . war, Moore thought.

Maybe this is your opportunity to tell them, Senator Moore, Abigail suggested.

Maybe, Moore paused a moment and agreed with his AIC. Abigail, you're right. This is a golden opportunity. Maybe we can make some lemonade out of this situation after all.

"Larry, you looked over DeathRay's plans. What'd you think?" Captain Wallace Jefferson had asked his executive officer to go over the final battle plans that the Looney Bin experts had come up with. The two men had been DTMed the final battle plan simulations and were addressing details in the CO's office.

The fleet had been assembled and readied at the northernmost naval base in the Hellas Basin and were poised to jaunt into a hyperspace orbit that would pop them out into normal space in firing range of the Separatist armada that had amassed over the Tharsis Mons region on the other side of the planet.

The Separatist armada consisted of six supercarriers—vintage as they were—and many smaller vessels including commercial and industrial vehicles. The entire lower regions of Olympus Mons and most of the Tharsis territory was now under siege by the Separatists and was covered from above at near-space hovering altitudes all the way up to Mars synchronous orbital altitudes by the makeshift Seppy armada.

"Well, Captain, reminds me a bit of that mess we made out of the civilian quarter in the Cydonian Mountains. Lot of collateral damage can't be helped, maybe tens even hundreds of thousands. But I got to say, if we don't drop in and kick these Seppy bastards out of Tharsis then they're likely to kill millions," The XO, Marine Colonel Larry Chekov, replied.

"Another fine Navy day, hey, Larry?" the CO joked, but then frowned. The Sienna Madira had seen her share of tough scrapes and battles but never one with so many potential civilian lives at risk. And just how many civilian, citizen, lives were acceptable losses? The CO would have to wait for authorization from the Joint Chiefs before an action this size could be ordered. All he could do was to prepare his fleet for battle, offer the Pentagon potential battle plans, and wait for the order to attack.

"Aye, sir." The XO nodded in understanding of the Navy sarcasm.

"Well, this is one of those situations that we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. And the political fallout is going to be hell." Captain Jefferson rubbed his neck and leaned back in his desk chair. "I guess we have no choice. Uncle Timmy?" The CO said out loud to the Madira's AIC.

"Yes, Captain Jefferson?" the AIC of the flagship responded over the speaker on the CO's desk.

"Upload the battle plan to the Pentagon and request authorization."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Well, let's see how big the president's balls are, Larry."