One Day on Mars

Rabies, her AIC told her.

DTM it, she ordered. The sim started unfolding in her mindview. Hmm. You clever little squid.

The battle plan was constrained. The fighter support had to stay away from the enemy carriers in order for the supercarriers to target them with their big guns. So the engagement zone really was flying cover for the Madira in close proximity to the large fleet flagship. Bigguns liked what she saw. Instead of taking to space and fighting with three dimensions of possible direction from which enemy Gomers could target the FM-12s, Rabies had them staying close to or actually on the hull decks of the supercarrier. This did two things. The first was it cut out half of the enemy's targeting sphere. The other is that it allowed the FM-12s to set up a killing field. The Demon Dawgs would direct the Seppy Gomers with their Ares fighters and appear to be letting them break through the lines to strafe run on the Madira. And that is where the Saviors would be waiting in bot-mode, targeting with their DEGs, cannons, and missiles. Very clever.

I like it. Bigguns grinned and then flushed the toilet.

It could work quite well, her AIC agreed. Nineteen minutes, Janice.

Right.

 

'Don't they realize that we are all gonna start getting hungry and thirsty after a while? They can't just leave us out here crowded together like this.' Rod stood up from the park bench seat he had been on to let a pregnant woman have his seat. The Mons City Central Park Open Court was filled almost to standing-room-only capacity with civilians that the Separatist soldiers had rounded up. It made for a good holding pen.

Once Rod and Vince had been marched into the area, Rod had noticed that the Seppies were setting up a barrier field. In essence, Central Park had become a makeshift prison. On several occasions panicking men and women had tried to rush the troops only to be shot down by Seppy rifles or to be stunned by the barrier field. There were a few public bathrooms and water fountains scattered throughout the park and an occasional vending machine, but there were nowhere near enough supplies to support the tens of thousands that were crowded into the area.

'Hey bud, chill.' Vincent was getting antsy from lack of nicotine. He had run out of cigarettes over an hour earlier and didn't have any neutralizer or immunoboost with him either. So the nicotine withdrawal was beginning to make him, well, edgy. 'I don't think they give a rat's ass about feeding or watering us. I think this is the temporary solution for something more . . . permanent.' Vince grunted.

'More permanent?'

'Well, didn't you read the papers any over the last few years?'

'What'd you mean, Vince?' Rod didn't like where this was going, but he was pretty sure he knew.

'Well, remember what they did to the civilians at Kuiper Station? Or what about on Triton?' Vincent said somberly and with a calm matter-of-fact tone that chilled Rod to his core.

'Yeah. I was afraid of that.' Rod had read the papers and watched the television, but it was always hard to tell how much of the news was real and how much of it was sensationalized for ratings. Most Americans had quit believing the news many decades ago—maybe even centuries ago—and considered it more a form of entertainment, commercials, and a political mouth for whichever party made up its constituent viewers. The news told its readers and watchers and listeners what they wanted to hear. And any particular story could be heard in any particular way depending on the channel, website, or forum.

Fortunately for humanity, though, word of mouth still existed. There were a lot of people throughout the outer realm of the system that had lost family to the Triton Raids or on Kuiper Station at the hands of the Separatists. Something like that just couldn't be kept quiet for too long and the spin from the news could be filtered by the word-of-mouth news.

'Well, if we are dead anyway, Vince, why are we just sitting around here?' Rod asked his long time friend and drinking buddy.

'I'm working on it Rod. I'm working on it.'

'Wow. That is some story, Senator,' Gail Fehrer said into the camera. 'So have you figured out what this extra signal is yet?'

'No, but I'm working on it,' Senator Moore replied. The clock on his visor showed that they were about ten minutes away from the rendezvous. He was ready to have this little adventure behind him and his family safe and far out of harm's way.

'How are you working on it?' the reporter asked.

'Well, my AIC has several AIs from the gambling district working the numbers on it and she has passed the data through BIL along to the Sienna Madira main AIC. I understand that the super AIs of the nation's flagship are cranking away at cracking the encryption. It is only a matter of time now.' Moore was nervous about giving too much information away, but then again, there was no transmission taking place. Abigail was watching the reporters like a hawk and BIL promised to keep a sensor on them too. So for now, the senator was taking in all the free press he could. After all, his day job was as a politician.

Senator?

Yes?

The AEMs want us to update them on our position, Abigail informed him.

We tell nobody our position from here on to the evac point. We don't know how long it will be before the Seppy techs figure out that we are using low-level infrastructure coms for data relay.

Understood, Senator. I'll relay the message.

Just tell them that we will be there. And then we go radio silent until further notice.

 

'Boulder.'