One Day on Mars

but for thirty years after they still had mecha pop up here and there in skirmishes and nothing had really been done about it. Alexander was quite certain that the Separatists were much more than just terrorists. The ones he had fought against in the Martian desert thirty years earlier most certainly were soldiers, not terrorists. Again he thought, Terrorists don't have armies, mecha, and air support.

Unless he could somehow get the Separatist representatives to guarantee no further actions and to begin talks of getting back to work, this trip had been nothing more than a Martian vacation for his wife and daughter. If people could only see the devastation on Triton, the bodies from Kuiper Station, and the fighting near the western edge of Elysium they would realize this was a war—a serious war and not just terrorists doing minor damage far away from Earth. Now, if the president had come instead, as the Martian delegation had begged of him, they could have gotten the media coverage to sway the Separatists back to work, Alexander was sure.

'What's a supercarrier, Daddy?' Deanna tugged at Senator Moore's sports coat impatiently, snapping him out of his mind- racing train of thought.

'Let's see. It is a very large spaceship that carries a whole bunch of smaller spaceships and thousands of people and tanks and is an awesome display of America's great strength and power. And Marines! You can't win any real war without a bunch of U.S. Marines!' He smiled and gestured flamboyantly with his hands open wide and his chest out. He then subconsciously turned his U.S. Marine Corps ring a few times. His wife grunted at his answer.

'Don't encourage her, Alexander.' Sehera glanced at him. 'It is a carrier, honey, because it carries other ships and people inside it. It is a supercarrier because it is superdy-duperdy big.'

'I understand, Mommy.' Deanna smiled and went back to swinging between her parents.

The supercarrier was indeed an awesome display of American military might. Its sleek structure over a kilometer and a half long, two-thirds of a kilometer wide, and a quarter kilometer tall, the U.S.S. Winston Churchill hovered over the largest mountain feature on the Martian landscape. The large vehicle turned on a slow arc and looked as if it would pass right overhead in a few moments, casting a giant shadow over the city domes. But the large brilliant orange, yellow, and red fireball erupting from the port side of the spacecraft caused it to list to starboard rapidly. Then the Churchill appeared to have lost all gravity-modification control and the supercarrier started losing altitude.

'Look!' Deanna let go of her parents' handhold and pointed.

'What the hell?' Senator Moore stopped dead in his tracks as the supercarrier lost propulsion and started on a downward trajectory.

'Oh my God!' Sehera instinctively picked up her daughter and held her tight to her, not exactly sure what to do but certain she would protect her child at all costs. The Martian childhood in her triggered years of instinct and hazardous-environment training. Alexander Moore, on the other hand, having grown up in the southeastern North American continent, knew not to stand in fire ants, not to play with copperheads and water moccasins, and to always steer clear of skunks and polecats. His youth couldn't help with the hazards of Mars. But the seventeen years he had spent in the Luna City Brigade Special Forces might.

'That thing is gonna hit one of the domes! We have got to get out of here!' Alexander grabbed his daughter from his wife and turned down an alleyway that led to the stairwell toward the main exit. Fortunately, they were not far from the exterior hall where the circumference interstate circled the city. There was a greenway that ran between the interstate and the dome that had leak shelters placed along it every few kilometers. 'Come on! If that thing hits us we're going to lose atmosphere.'

Abigail!

There is a leak shelter on the northwest wall greenway very near us. The AI staffer anticipated her boss's question.

'Run,' Alexander yelled at his wife.

I have requested a Secret Service detail to pick you up, Senator. But, unfortunately, there are none available. There is a contingent of Martian Marine Reserve that has dispatched a squad of troops to us. They have all rallied to the governor's request for help.

Thanks.

'Stop, Alexander, wait!' Sehera grabbed at his shoulder.

'We'd better hurry and get to the shelter, Sehera,' Alexander warned.

'No! Alexander, the shelter is on the other side of the greenway at the northwesternmost wall of this dome. That is over three kilometers away. It could take us a long time to get there and by then the crowds of tourists and locals will have filled it beyond capacity.' Sehera was running survival plans over and over in her head. Any good Martian would tell you that the first thing to do is put on your suit and grab your air scrubber! And Sehera remembered seeing suits only moments earlier as they had been walking. Fraidy cats live nine lives, she recalled telling her daughter, and she planned to live all of them.

'Alexander, follow me!'

The supercarrier continued to fall on a ballistic trajectory until it clipped the bottom southwest side of the ancient Martian volcano mound. The large rugged ship ricocheted off the side of the mountain and fell right on top of the southernmost secondary dome of Mons City—the six-o'clock borough. The rupture of the side dome flowed precious atmosphere out into the Martian wind. With the air went the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens in a matter of tens of minutes. Rescue crews were scrambled and several Naval Fleet ships were dispatched to the mountain but it would be more than half an hour before the fleet could arrive.

Over one hundred and seventy thousand survivors from the attack had been lucky enough to make it to the main Mons City shelters, and more had taken shelter in the northern, eastern, and western secondary city domes— though the travel tubes to the western, eastern, and main domes had taken some damage from what appeared to be secondary impacts and explosions. It was likely that casualties could reach into the millions by the end of the day.

Fortunately for the Moore family, they had been in the main dome of Mons City, which had not been damaged by the crashing supercarrier or the secondary effects. Senator Moore and his family, however, were too far from the shelters to risk the long hike. If the main dome gave while they were trekking to the shelter they would die in minutes of exposure or suffocation.

'Reyez, those goddamned stray cats got into the storeroom again,' one of the adventure store assistant managers, Rod Taylor, called from the doorway leading into the back stockroom.

'Well, just chase 'em out if they're still in there.' Reyez replied.