One Day on Mars

'Who knows? Maybe it's supposed to be there?'

'Well, we need to stay with it. Let's stow away on it.' Gail crawled out from under the tugship's landing gear and bounced to the nearest ship that could be used for cover. For a brief second she was in the open and viewable and vulnerable but nobody saw her. Calvin, likewise, followed right behind her unnoticed as well.

The reporter and cameraman continued to press their luck, bouncing from cover point to cover point until they were ahead of the spider's path. Finally, in a mad dash, Gail and Calvin bounced three times across a taxiway, on top of a parked cruiser, and then came to a clanking landing on top of the mechanical spider.

Gail landed on her jumpboots but the swaying jerking motion of the spider made her lose her balance causing her to fall face-first into the dingy metal surface of the garbage hauler. Calvin landed with a little better finesse but then fell immediately onto his posterior and then backward onto his head. Gail reached out and grabbed the ankle of his jumpboot in order to keep him from sliding headfirst and upside down off the spider.

As they gained there composure they did their level best at staying out of sight of the troops scurrying about the spaceport below them. But holding on to any crease or bulge in the surface of the beast proved to be harder than they had expected, since the exterior of the garbage hauler was basically smooth and metallic with no bumps or handholds. The two reporters pressed their stomachs to the surface of the thing as best they could keeping their arms and feet spread wide.

The spider's body consisted of two sections. A smaller rounded head section that most likely carried the sensors and control systems and looked as if it could carry a couple of passengers had a forward-looking windscreen and two side windows. This head compartment looked empty. The rearward section was more boxy in shape and had no windows. There were mechanisms that ran beneath the spider's rear compartment that suggested that it could dump that compartment over like a dump truck. There was also a door on the rear of it. But they had seen this only as they rushed to jump on the spider. They were much more intimate with the top of it now.

The top of the spider was much more flat than a biological spider and as they inched their way along on their bellies and toward the center of the thing's back they realized that it caved slightly inward to a seam that ran down the middle of its back. The seam made from two sliding doors, ran parallel with the direction the spider walked.

Once they managed to slide to the bottom of the V shape where the seam ran front to back of the rear compartment and largest section of the spider. Gail and Calvin were able to maintain their position because gravity was assisting them and they were at the bottom of a small gravity well.

'So, what do we do now?' Calvin asked, hanging on for dear life. It was a seriously bumpy ride.

'I don't know,' Gail answered with a shrug, and shifted her weight from left to right and then forward and aft as the spider's odd eight-legged motion jerked her about. 'Be patient.'

'Uh oh, do you feel that?' Calvin felt along the seam where the garage doors met. The doors felt as if they were vibrating and pulling away from each other.

'Feel, whaaaa—'

Chapter 12

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.