One Day on Mars

Best case, we'll go to eagle-mode and hold on to you and just fly out to the supercarrier,' Burner ordered.

'Sounds like a plan, sir!' the second lieutenant replied.

Simply flying out of the region to another city or base wasn't an option, at least not without cover from space or larger vessels. The intelligence from the Madira showed that there were at least six Separatist carriers in the region. The anti-aircraft systems and fighter squads of a carrier would be hell on his fighters out in the open without any cover. Fighters were better adapted to close-in agile maneuvering along the surface of a city or even a carrier, but given that there could be six carriers' worth of Seppy aircraft in the area a fly-out operation might prove suicidal. Burner knew it would be best for them to lay low until they had some cover from the Madira and a few dozen Navy Ares fighters.

As they neared the wall of the dome just south of the gaping hole made by the crash of the Churchill, the slope of it changed dramatically. The buildings were not as tall in this part of the city. From the view of the almost now vertical dome wall, it was apparent that the four AEMs and the two dozen FM-12s from Cardiff's Killers would soon be at the edge of the city. There they would escape out into the Martian mountainside and then make their way toward the evac—fighting all the way if need be. The clouds overhead grew darker, thicker, and swirled more violently as they approached the massive leak in the dome.

'This is where we go up, Deanna,' BIL told the little girl bouncing tirelessly and joyously in the belly of the AI garbage hauler. The AI had enjoyed talking to actual humans, especially the child. He had also especially enjoyed being able to speak, and to listen in on and pass through data, with all the AICs and humans now using his data link for communications. BIL was a reclamation and scheduling AI and had paid little attention to politics or the war but he could tell that his companions seemed to think all of this was extremely important and that their lives depended on it.

'Thank you, BIL. Have you ever been out of the garbage room before? It sure does stink in there,' the little girl asked.

'Only to the top hangar floor to take in or deliver a load of materials. The smell doesn't bother me as I don't have a nose,' he told her, adding a tone of humor to his artificial voice.

'That's silly. No nose.' Deanna laughed and made a funny face at her mother and the Triton woman.

'The big metal spider has no nose.' Joannie laughed with the little girl.

'I'm quite looking forward to traveling out into the actual Martian atmosphere with you. I've never been out of the dome before,' BIL replied. He really liked the little girl and didn't want to see any harm come to her. He was deciding that the garbage could wait and that his current cargo was more precious. BIL was also fairly certain from his wireless interaction with the senator's AI staffer that his keeping the little precocious first-grader entertained was much appreciated. BIL didn't really know a lot about humans, but he was pretty sure that these ones were tired and very frightened of something.

The big robot spider-thing scampered its four-ton body onto the giant lift. BIL shifted his weight onto seven legs and pushed some debris out of the way so he could completely work his body onto the front right corner of the platform. He wirelessly activated it, triggering the actuator field. The elevator, surprisingly, moved rather rapidly upward for its size and BIL had to adjust his weight on his eight legs to adjust for the added g-forces of the lift acceleration. The large platform passed through the first subsurface floor and then to the surface in about twenty seconds and came to a stop in the loading end of a vast hangar that at one end had the largest airseam on Mars. Through the dome could be seen an expansive landing port and there were several barge cars and smaller cargo vessels sitting on the landing field. A few privately owned aircraft and space-faring vehicles sat on the periphery of the hangar and outside on the airfield. Some of the vehicles were white and silvery and shiny and obviously very expensive while others were dinged up, oily black, and grimy from use and continuous repair and obviously held together on a shoestring budget. The scene was reminiscent of practically any airfield and spaceport across the system.

The landing field and the hangar were buzzing with activity that, on the other hand, was not typical of any civilian airfield. There were hovertrucks and Separatist drop mecha running here and there that were carting armored Separatist soldiers in and out to their various assigned defensive or offensive positions. Every few seconds an Orcus drop tank would either land or take off across the Martian landscape to some unseen designation. Armed and armored e-suited Separatists were bouncing outside by the dozens loading and unloading materials and their wounded. At the far end on the northeast side of the airfield was a hospital tent that had been inflated just outside the far edge of the airseam. Medevac aircraft landed almost nonstop on several of the pads and even on the taxiways of the northeast side of the spaceport. Ambulances came and went from the front of the tent then through the airseam, probably headed into Mons City to make use of some of the better hospital facilities in the city. As far as the garbage hauler AI was concerned, the sight was magnificent. There were people everywhere—including other AIs.

'BIL, we cannot be captured by those people,' Senator Moore told the AI. There were no windows or screens in the belly of the garbage hauler but the hauler did have cameras and sensors on the outside to aid it in its daily reclamation job. BIL had worked directly with Abigail, the senator's AIC, to develop a mosaic algorithm for the sensor images and linked them DTM to the senator.

'I understand, Senator. What would you have me do?' BIL asked.

'Why don't we just walk out like we are on a standard garbage dump or something?' Sehera suggested. The bouncy ride through the garbage cavern had tired them all and the two women and the little girl were sitting down and leaning against one of the sticky smelly walls of the garbage hauler's interior. The smell inside the vehicle would have been more than the humans could withstand were it not for their e-suits. With the helmets sealed off, the scrubber filters would remove any of the unwanted pathogens, allergens, and chemicals.

'Well ma'am, there are no dumps into the local Martian region. All the garden zones are further south a bit,' BIL explained.

'Mommy, who would know that?' Deanna asked her mother.

'What do you mean, dear?'

'Yes, of course.' Moore was continually amazed by his daughter's ability to see the obvious. 'BIL, these Seppy troops will have no idea what your job is. Just tell them that you are on a scheduled job to go south to reclaim an abandoned dwelling dome. Can you do that?'

'Certainly, if it will help you secure your safety. I can even change the schedule in the infrastructure system to show that I am supposed to be doing just that.' BIL liked his companions and didn't want to see anything happen to them and a little freedom with the scheduling system wouldn't hurt. BIL was wondering why he had never thought of doing that before. Unbeknownst to him, Abigail had taken some liberties with the AI's regulations and ethics protocol software. Of course, Abigail could not alter his being—after all, AIs were living entities—but she could rewrite the rules that he was told to follow. As far as BIL was concerned, he had just never thought of going for a walk outside.