longer-range transmission systems were being actively jammed. This bothered Senator Moore immensely. Nobody, to his knowledge, realized that the Separatists had that type of advanced jamming technology. Sure, they had tanks and fighters and armored e-suits, but they were old technology and they were years behind the QM transceiver communications technologies used throughout the systems.
Abigail, what is going on? How are they jamming the long-range QMs?
Well, Senator, it appears to have been a full-scale attack on Mons City. A fleet of Navy ships was dispatched but apparently the Separatists were ready for them with surface-to-air missiles. A fleet of ships appeared in orbit out of hyperspace just now. MNN will start running that soon. Don't know about the communications jamming. I'll work on that.
How do you know all the other stuff?
I've tied in directly to the MNN anchor desk's producer AIC. I had to promise you would give them an exclusive later.
Good girl!
I try, Senator.
The ships that appeared in orbit . . . ours?
Apparently not, Senator. It would appear Mons City is surrounded and under siege, sir. And now there is sufficient orbital support. My guess is that it is only a matter of time before the main dome begins filling with Separatist ground forces.
What about those Marines? The 34th Mecha and the rest of the Army? Hell, I'd even settle for the Martian Air Force.
The Marines are cut off on the other side of the southern dome, Senator. They continue to take heavy casualties. The Marine tactical AIC I'm in contact with has received no contact from the 34th but they do expect an evac lift to be available in three to four hours. Since the transport tubes between the south dome and the main dome have also been destroyed they had to turn back. The evac is on the south escarpment of the mountain just outside the south dome. The Marines also expect the entire city to be overrun soon. They are fighting as best they can but with little luck. The attackers have a full fighting force, sir. There is a serious numbers advantage in favor of the invaders right now.
Could we get to them, to the evac lift? Alexander held on to his wife's hand as he thought of possibilities. He knew that if the Separatists found a U.S. senator and family they would be killed as spectacle and shown on a systemwide broadcast. Alexander was not about to allow that. He had spent seventeen years—seventeen hard years—in the Luna City Brigade during the first Martian Desert Campaign and he knew how to fight if he had to.
He had fought in units that had started out with hundreds and ended with two or three and then ended up captured and in a POW camp for years. The Separatists, on the other hand, had fared a little better than he. After years of hard fighting the U.S. with dated weapons and terrorist tactics, the Separatists made the war too expensive for the U.S. to desire to continue with it. So the Americans sued for peace, leaving the desert of Syrtis Major to the Separatists. Most of the Separatists went back to within the 'Reservation' borders near Phlegra and continued on with working on the terraforming of Mars. But others, the leaders of the Separatist armies under the direction of Elle Ahmi, had maintained a continuously growing military structure within the Separatist community. There were weapons stockpile efforts and occasional terrorist activities against American outposts in the outer system outposts like the massacre at Kuiper Station. After seventeen years of the desert war between 2336 and 2352, an uncomfortable peace had lasted a decade or two—depending on which history book you read—and then Elle Ahmi, the general of the Desert Campaigns, finally rose to absolute power within the Separatist Union. It was unclear how exactly that had happened. Peace had been unraveling for several years and skirmishes were popping up throughout the system. And so once again Alexander was called back to Mars, but his time as a diplomat and not as an armored e-suit Marine.
Alexander had fought politically to aid in the peace process and that was why he was on Mars again, he thought. But there was always the nagging thought in the back of his mind that he was just a bone thrown by President Alberts and the Dems of the House to appease the snapping dog of the GOP and the Independent Party. The last time he had been on Mars he was wearing jumpboots and a USMC armored e-suit, but that had been over thirty years before. It didn't matter. There is no such thing as a former Marine, he thought to himself. He would not let his family be killed as a spectacle for terrorists.
There's no way to get out to the evac?
Perhaps, but the Marines are cut off from us, sir. The MNN reporter Gail Fehrer reports enemy mecha positioned along the remains of southern travel tubes and on the periphery of the dome. We would either need to go a long way around them on the outside or over or under them, Abigail explained.
Can't we get an evac to the main dome?
Apparently not, Senator. Without fighter support the Separatist mecha is bringing down most air transport.
Shit! We can't just sit here and wait to be captured. Been there and done that, got the freaking T- shirt. I'm not spending time in a Separatist prison or getting us tortured to death. Moore rubbed his nose and eyes with a thumb and forefinger as he let out a short sigh. There had to be something he could do besides sitting around with his thumbs up his ass.
The Marine AIC says the best bet for civilians is to hold tight.
Did you explain to them who I am? Did you explain to them what would happen to us if the Separatists take us captive?
Yes.
Shit.
Yes, sir. Shit.
All right, tell them we are coming to them and not to leave us. Moore had made up his mind. Sitting around couldn't be the safest thing to do. Download me as detailed a set of maps of Mons City as you can get. I mean down to the architectural and engineering drawings if you can get them. Street maps, tunnels, sewers, power conduits, everything. And get me the coordinates for the evac ship.
