One Day on Mars s-1

by Travis S. Taylor

  "What, Deanna?" The senator tried not to show his temper.

  "Can't we just go down a floor and get on the elevator?" she asked.

  I can't believe it. Of course we can, sir. There are seven floors beneath us containing infrastructure equipment. We would have to do some backtracking to get down there though. Abigail illuminated a city tourist map showing the maintenance levels. It just never dawned on me to go down. Sorry Senator.

  "You are something, you know that?" Alexander grabbed his daughter in a hug and tried to kiss her through the open faceshield. When that didn't work he just hugged her again and then patted her little helmeted head. "Follow me. We'd better hurry." He turned back the way they had come toward the nearest entrance to the maintenance and infrastructure levels.

  We are running out of time, Nancy. We had better hurry. Allison warned of the impending second wave of the aerial assault on the mountain range.

  I know, I know. I wasn't expecting this. Where are all the people? she asked. They had been bouncing for several kilometers from the landing site and had yet to see a single body, screaming or walking wounded, or any sign of human life. It's almost as if the city had been warned and had been evacuated before the bomb had hit.

  That is nearly impossible. Only you and I, a handful of operations analysts, the deputy director, the director, the NSA, the sec def, and the president know of our mission. Unlikely one of them is a mole, Allison responded.

  Yeah, well, it's just plain weird if you ask me. Where the hell is everybody?

  Nancy continued bouncing eastward and directly radially outward from the center of the bomb blast. The map on her visor showed her position at about twenty-seven kilometers from the center of the blast zone. There was little sign of the explosion at this range other than the occasional strewn debris that could have been blown around by the Martian winds anyway. Oh, and there was the small matter of the radioactive fallout, but the injection she had taken beforehand was taking care of that.

  The region was little more than a rural outpost of the city that had been littered with lightweight trash and debris from the lingering winds of the nuclear blast. The streets were Martian soil mostly and were more like paths that had been pounded out by jumpboots, buggies, and hovercraft. There were domes and rock dwellings and shops scattered about the mountain's side but there was no sign of people.

  Nancy bounced up on top of one of the geodesic domes that was probably a single family dwelling for a better vantage point. She scanned full-circle around her for motion and to get a better understanding of her path. The city behind her was still aflame and dying with occasional explosive bursts and pressurized environments explosively decompressing into the Martian atmosphere.

  There is wireless activity ahead. Must be that we have found the evacuees. Alison alerted Nancy. There is a lot of multi-path and I am having a bit of trouble locating the transmitters but it looks like multiple transceivers. I'm training a neural net on it.

  Just keep me posted. Maybe some of the other sensors will work better.

  Nancy looked up at the sky briefly and for the first time could see stars through the dust cloud. There was Jupiter shining brightly overhead and Saturn not far above it. The sky to the west was still covered with clouds of dust and smoke and every now and then a star would twinkle through the cracks between them.

  Motion, Nancy! Coupling the motion sensors and the wireless multi-path I've trained the sensors to locate the motion Looks like multiple bogies The nearest is about four hundred meters away, Allison warned her biological counterpart.

  The three-dimensional view in Nancy's mind zoomed slightly northeast and down the street about four hundred meters. The starlight, IR, and QM sensor systems gave a data fusion image that was crystal clear in the pitch black Martian night.

  A child? Nancy thought as she studied the image. She zoomed in on what appeared to be a child-sized e-suit rummaging through a storage bin on the outside wall of a small dwelling dome. Then a second set of views highlighted and zoomed in her visor, and a third, and then the tracking algorithms learned how to spot the motion and hundreds of targets began to pop up on her map. They all appeared to be evacuating in generally the same direction, some moving more slowly than others. The plan was working.

  Nancy focused back on the child and the motion nearest it. The algorithm generated tracking trajectories that suggested the two nearby regions of motion appeared to be tracking the child. One a few blocks south of the child and the other a few blocks east. Further zoom revealed that the two tracks were adult-sized e-suits.

  They're looking for the child. Nancy thought.

  Most likely, Allison agreed. They had better get out of here within the next ten minutes because all hell is about to rain down on this city. Same goes for us by the way.

  Right. I've got an idea. Are these three suits broadcasting? Nancy highlighted the child and the two near it.

  Yes, standard wireless with no encryption around twelve gigahertz, Allison replied.

  Open the channel.

  Open.

  ". . . Kira . . . Kira . . . where are you?" a female child voice repeated.

  " . . . Lelandra! WHERE ARE YOU? Come here to your mother right now!"

  ". . . Listen to your mother, sweetie! Come on, we have got to go!"

  ". . . But we can't leave Kira, Daddy!" the little girl said.

  Any idea what Kira might be, Allison?

  I'm scanning . . . Allison ran the e-suit's sensors across the spectrum for any type of signature in the local area around the girl. There were several low-level controller systems in household appliances and a few entertainment systems that the electromagnetic pulse from the nuke had not disrupted.

  There! An AIK broadcasting spread spectrum center pulse at two three three six megahertz! Allison highlighted a region behind several large storage canisters stacked at the edge of a garage dome about ten meters from the little girl. Has to be what she is looking for.

  Great work, Allison. Got it. Can you soothe the thing?

  Already on it. Allison communicated code to the low-level artificial intelligence that would put it in a calm state.

  Nancy leapt from the top of the dome she had taken perch on in a high sweeping arch toward the "AI Kitty" or AIK. In four quick bounds she landed atop the storage canisters beside the little mechanical kitten and grabbed it before it had a chance to run off. Then she stroked it gently with her gloved hand and then bounced quietly about thirty meters to the west of the child.

  "Hello? Hellooo!" Nancy broadcast on the open channel in her trained Martian accent. From the abrupt motion changes of the three tracks she was calling to she was certain she had startled them. "Is anybody there?" Nancy stepped onto the street behind the little girl where there was just enough light for the child to see her and her artificial-intelligence kitten. Nancy could feel the little AIK purring in her grip.

  "Kira!" The little girl ran to Nancy, taking the AIK and hugging it to her.

  This is gonna work. List the common Separatist last names for me.

  Allison began scrolling a list of names in Nancy's mind until Nancy stopped her.

  That one will do nicely, Allison. Open the backstory files. She ordered the AIC. A complex and detailed life story had been developed for the mission that had been kept classified even from her until it was time to implement the cover. It was an ideal way to maintain an undercover identity—the fewer who knew the cover, the fewer who could blow it. There, that is a good one. I'll use it. Set the emotional tags in the story to stimulate my hypothalamus accordingly.

  "Is this your kitty?" Nancy knelt beside the little girl and looked into her face. "Where are your parents?"

  "Kira! I thought you were gone. Don't run off like that again! You could have missed the train!" the little girl scolded her kitty. The little red mechanical kitten purred and nuzzled the little girl with her neck. From just looking and holding the cat there was no way to tell that it wasn't real.

  "Hello, whoever yo
u are, grab my daughter please and tell me what street you are on," the mother's voice exclaimed.

  "Hi, we are on . . . " Nancy ran through the map in her mind quickly. "Uh, looks like the corner of Tholus and Valley."

  "Great! I'm almost there," the girl's father replied over the wireless.

  "Me too!" her mother said.

  Nancy reached over and patted the little girl on the top of her helmet and smiled at her.

  "What's your name?" the child asked.

  "Oh, I'm Kira Shavi. And you are?" Nancy began sinking herself into her cover persona. She emphasized the pronunciation of Shavi as "Shaaa-VEE" with similarities to the pronunciation of Elle Ahmi apparent.

  "My name is Lelandra but you can call me Lela and this is Kira. Wow, you have the same name as my kitty."

  "Isn't that funny?" Nancy laughed with Lelandra. The two adults rounded different street corners from opposite directions and bounced toward them. The larger of the two, whom Nancy assumed was the father grabbed ,his daughter and held her to him.

  "Don't ever run off from us like that again, you hear me! You scared us to death!"

  Nancy, five minutes.

  Right!

  The parents continued to scold their daughter, paying little notice to Nancy. Nancy had Allison run the suit's scanners on the three. For the most part they were common low-end e-suits that intel had suggested most of the Separatists on the Reservation wore.

  "Excuse me," Nancy interrupted. "It hasn't been that long since the Americans bombed the mountain. I suspect they'll be back soon."

  "You're right," the mother said nervously. "We still have at least a couple of minutes or so. But you are right. We should be getting underground to the evac train."

  They are evacuating. Do they know of the coming second wave or is it just a good idea to evacuate after a nuclear attack? Allison asked. Nancy could barely conceive that a mole could get that deep into the United States of America to know of the details of this operation.

  Unlikely they know? Most likely they are playing it smart, Nancy thought nervously.

  Play it carefully.

  Agreed. But we should hurry them along as best we can.

  "Are you separated from your unit?" the man asked, noting the more elaborate e-suit Nancy wore. Her suit was of the type the resistance fighters wore.

  The cover seems to be working . . .

  So far it does, Allison replied.

  So far! Be more optimistic.

  "You could say that. My brothers and I were retooling the long-range SAMs at the foothills when the attack started. They were all killed by American mecha and their death from above . . . pah, cowards! I returned to the mountains to regroup with others but was delayed by the nuclear blast." Nancy recited her cover-story memories as she read them in her head.

  "How did you end up here?" the man asked.

  "Enough, Fayad, we must go now. The train for the evac ships leaves in twenty minutes," the small-framed woman in the e-suit, obviously his Prime Wife, ordered. "Kira, you should come with us. If your unit is sacrificed there is little else you can do from here. Ahmi has been served. You can rejoin with your family at the rendezvous."

  Evac ships? Ships to where? Nancy thought.

  Now we are getting somewhere.

  "Very well. But I am alone. My family was killed at Elysium a year ago."

  "Then you can come with us," Lelandra said.

  "I'd like that." Nancy agreed and nodded her helmet. "But we should hurry, I think."

  The three adults, one child, and one robot cat bounced farther northeast and away from the nuclear blast area. As they bounced, Nancy caught glimpses of many more evacuees' motion with her esuit sensors. The QM and IR revealed pockets of e-suits bouncing through the small rural dome outcroppings and all of them were bouncing in generally the same direction. There were actually casualties and some minor wounded that they would stop and help from time to time, but there was no wounded on the order that would have been expected from a nuclear blast. No, the Separatists had left the blast region or were in the process of leaving before the nuke was dropped. Nancy hoped to find out why.

  Allison?

  Yes, Nancy?

  I'm Nancy no more. For now on, I'm Kira Shavi, understood?

  Yes, Kira.

  Right.

  Chapter 8

  11:01 AM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

  "We'd better fucking hurry, Lieutenant Colonel, sir!" Corporal Shelly downloaded the QM map from his visor to the Marine strike mecha through the optical line-of-sight port. They could communicate with each other on the QM wireless but Lieutenant Colonel John Masterson's AIC had warned him that the Seppies didn't know they were there and since they were spoofing the QM communications and jamming the long-range it might give away the fact that an entire squadron of U.S. Marine strike mecha survived the crash of the Churchill. The long-range coms were still being jammed completely.

  "Roger that, Corporal. Looks like your second lieutenant and sergeant are in a heap of shit." Masterson adjusted his optical sensor net to update continuously from the QM data collected by the two armored e-suit Marines that had run into his strike squadron. That way only the presence of the two AEMs would be compromised. Of course, the fact that his squadron had wiped out several handfuls of Seppy mecha since the crash may have exposed them anyway. But until he knew for certain he was going to use every advantage and take every precaution.

  "Okay, Cardiff's Killers, let's get in there and pull these two Marines out of the fire before it's too late. Converge on Dome Circle and kill those bloody Seppy bastards."

  "Die, you Seppy bastards!" Sergeant Clay Jackson ducked back behind the steel and concrete fountain wall surrounding the giant metallic statue of Sienna Madira for cover. The Seppy ground support troops and the mecha were literally only tens of meters from them and had only halted their progression due to the horrendous return of hypervelocity automatic railgun fire that the sergeant and second lieutenant had managed to maintain. But the two of them were running out of ammo and had to take more precise shots with very little defilading fire. Both of the Marines had exhausted their complement of grenades and it was unlikely that hand-to-mecha combat would turn out in their favor. They were outgunned, flanked, and seriously outnumbered. Not to mention that the second lieutenant had a big fucking hunk of metal sticking through his leg.

  "It's been an honor, Clay!" Second Lieutenant Thomas Washington rose to a knee and took four aimed shots at a drop tank in bot-mode lumbering cautiously toward them. The shots hit the right ankle joint, toppling the mecha forward onto the battlefield between them and a small group of approaching Seppy ground troops. The flailing mecha formed a nice barricade. Washington dropped back below the fountain wall.

  "Right back at you sir!" Clay took his turn taking shots. Forty-millimeter cannon fire from the enemy mecha spitanged against the statue, flinging hot metal against the sergeant's armored shoulder. A piece of shrapnel penetrated the armor and seared its way through the seal layer and into the flesh of his shoulder. "Shit!" he grunted in agony as he fired fifty or so rounds off by accident into the smoke and dust and approaching enemy troops.

  "You all right, Sarge?"

  "Just a flesh wound, I hope. Burns like goddamned hell." He rubbed at the hole in his armored shoulder and looked at the seal layer as it healed itself over the hole in his arm.

  "Any ideas, Sarge?"

  "Well, lieutenant, other than dying, I'm fresh out." The sergeant leaned back against the wall of the fountain and panted for breath a few times.

  "I was afraid of that. I wonder if they'd let us surrender?" The second lieutenant cracked a somber grimacing smile and rose to fire a few more rounds until his HVAR weapon clicked and displayed the out-of-ammo warning on his visor. "Shit, I'm out!"

  Sergeant Jackson held his railgun barrel up over the fountain wall and peered at the visor display for a target. There were plenty. The QM tracking and sighting system showed forty-three known targets while his ammo deposit
ory displayed one hundred and seven rounds left. He aimed as best he could from behind the wall at the nearest mass of ground troops hammering away at them with railgun fire and depressed the trigger. The Seppy troops were moving too fast for an over-the-head shot to be useful as a pinpoint shot, but as cover fire it slowed the ground troop advance some—if a second or two could be counted as some.

  A whining screech and then an explosion a few tens of meters on the enemy side of the fountain sent shrapnel flinging into the already black smoke-filled part of the city. Brilliant flashes of mecha cannon fire and directed energy weapons lit up the smoky battlescape of the largest driving circle in the solar system. The whirling winds caused by the gaping hole in the dome continued to whip the smoke and debris into small dust devils and gustnados. They were illuminated by bright orange and red flashes from mecha exploding. Several more whining screeches followed with explosions and then forty-millimeter cannon fire picked up continuously. The spitanging of HVAR rounds on the fountain and statue ceased but the spitap spitap spitap of HVAR rounds being fired only increased flinging shrapnel buzzing around the other side of the fountain like many angry bees.

  Lieutenant Colonel "Burner" Masterson ran his configurable FM-12 strike mecha at full trot in bot-mode onto the north side of Dome Circle and pierced through the whirling smoke clouds into the opening firing anti-mecha missiles into three Seppy drop tanks and then fired his jump thrusters launching the sleek Mars red humanoid-formed fighter mecha into a full forward flip while multiple beams pulsed from the main directed energy gun in the left hand of the FM-12. The mecha looked like a giant robot with an armored cockpit in its upper mid torso through where a head should be, flanked on either shoulder with swiveling forty-millimeter HVAR cannons.

  "Fox three!" Multiple mecha-to-mecha missile tubes stacked along the torso of the lethal vehicle left faint blue and purple ionization trails as the missiles scattered from the FM-12 seeking Seppy targets to kill.

  "Whew!" Masterson grunted to offset the g-loading on his lower extremities. The heads-up display on the canopy was lit up with multiple targets having locked on to him and his warning klaxons and the "Bitching Betty" were ringing loud in his ears. "Now come get me! Guns 1, Guns 2!" He let out a howl and released multiple bursts from the shoulder mounted cannons and several DEG bursts.