One Day on Mars

'BIL is the AI controlling this hauler,' Moore started explaining. 'He also controls the garbage hauler schedule for the Mons City Reclamation and Redistribution Center. He put on the schedule that this was a routine run out into the desert to pick up a downed vehicle for reclamation. Who pays attention to garbage haulers?'

'I see. Clever. How did you convince him to do this?' Gail asked in her reporter voice.

'We just asked him.' Moore smiled at the seasoned reporter halfheartedly wishing that Deanna would stick her tongue out at the woman and say, Duh.

'Hmm. So you were in the city for the Summit meetings with the Separatist Laborers when the attack started?'

'That's right,' Moore said.

Laborers' union, now that is a real joke. Laborers' unions don't have heavy drop mecha and thousands and thousands of soldiers. This is a Separatist army and the press is going to have to admit that. Hell, the country is going to have to admit that or we'll never stop this war. And that is what this is . . . war, Moore thought.

Maybe this is your opportunity to tell them, Senator Moore, Abigail suggested.

Maybe, Moore paused a moment and agreed with his AIC. Abigail, you're right. This is a golden opportunity. Maybe we can make some lemonade out of this situation after all.

 

'Larry, you looked over DeathRay's plans. What'd you think?' Captain Wallace Jefferson had asked his executive officer to go over the final battle plans that the Looney Bin experts had come up with. The two men had been DTMed the final battle plan simulations and were addressing details in the CO's office.

The fleet had been assembled and readied at the northernmost naval base in the Hellas Basin and were poised to jaunt into a hyperspace orbit that would pop them out into normal space in firing range of the Separatist armada that had amassed over the Tharsis Mons region on the other side of the planet.

The Separatist armada consisted of six supercarriers—vintage as they were—and many smaller vessels including commercial and industrial vehicles. The entire lower regions of Olympus Mons and most of the Tharsis territory was now under siege by the Separatists and was covered from above at near-space hovering altitudes all the way up to Mars synchronous orbital altitudes by the makeshift Seppy armada.

'Well, Captain, reminds me a bit of that mess we made out of the civilian quarter in the Cydonian Mountains. Lot of collateral damage can't be helped, maybe tens even hundreds of thousands. But I got to say, if we don't drop in and kick these Seppy bastards out of Tharsis then they're likely to kill millions,' The XO, Marine Colonel Larry Chekov, replied.

'Another fine Navy day, hey, Larry?' the CO joked, but then frowned. The Sienna Madira had seen her share of tough scrapes and battles but never one with so many potential civilian lives at risk. And just how many civilian, citizen, lives were acceptable losses? The CO would have to wait for authorization from the Joint Chiefs before an action this size could be ordered. All he could do was to prepare his fleet for battle, offer the Pentagon potential battle plans, and wait for the order to attack.

'Aye, sir.' The XO nodded in understanding of the Navy sarcasm.

'Well, this is one of those situations that we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. And the political fallout is going to be hell.' Captain Jefferson rubbed his neck and leaned back in his desk chair. 'I guess we have no choice. Uncle Timmy?' The CO said out loud to the Madira's AIC.

'Yes, Captain Jefferson?' the AIC of the flagship responded over the speaker on the CO's desk.

'Upload the battle plan to the Pentagon and request authorization.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

'Well, let's see how big the president's balls are, Larry.'

Chapter 13

12:41 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

The president of the United States of America sat at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. He focused intently on the opinion poll data being DTMed into his head. Following the outcome of rapid poll data had served the president well for all of his first term and most of the present one.

The present question being put to a rapid online poll, he hoped, would give him a good read on the public's desire for the present situation at Tharsis. Should he or shouldn't he move forward with aggressive action against the Separatist incursion of the Tharsis region of Mars and risk the lives of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of voters in the Martian central mountain territory? There were actually over seventeen million inhabitants in the Tharsis territory and more than thirty percent of them were registered voters. If he took action that killed thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more of the registered voters' family members, it would have serious repercussions on the political outlook of the nation. Currently, the political outlook was one that the president and his party enjoyed. He didn't want to do something that would screw that up. His chief advisors and staff were giving him a moment to think while conducting similar analyses and simulations of their own.

Why did this have to happen now? he thought. To this point his administration had taken the Democratic National Party through nearly seven years with approval ratings near sixty-five percent. In the three strong parties of the American political system those were the best numbers any president—other than Sienna Madira, of course—had had for more than a century. It was likely that his vice president would be able to ride his wake into a whole next era of DNC control. The House and the Senate had benefited from the President's popularity and the DNC had grown to majority status and maintained control of both houses for longer than any other party since before the Sienna Madira years.

'What do you think about all this, Conner?' President Alberts asked his secretary of defense, Conner Pallatin. The poll data was split in three ways almost evenly over the three possibilities: 1) do nothing and ride it out, 2)