One Day on Mars

Good. Send the following email to [email protected]. Kira paused for a second to think of what to say exactly to her case agent back at the directorate of operations at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on Earth.

Hi Mom! The bachelor party was an absolute blast! It was tough to find at first but I ended up getting to it. I picked up a good-looking guy and went home with him. He says he is from Tau Ceti. How about that? I hope it is more than just a one-night stand. Don't worry about me, I'll find a ride home. By the way, I made lots of tips and will buy you a present real soon. Call you when I can. Love you, your daughter.

The message has been sent. About thirty seconds to jaunt now.

You know I like to watch! I can't believe you weren't going to tell me. Kira turned and carefully squeezed out of the narrow bathroom door.

Sorry, Kira. I thought you were so tired that you just wanted to shower and crash. Allison hoped her counterpart wasn't too sore at her. And she didn't want to ask Kira at this point if she didn't think sending the message to HQ was a bit premature. But Kira had always managed to pull them through every tough spot they had been in and there was no need to start second-guessing her human counterpart—her friend— now.

Ask next time. Kira closed the bathroom door and made her way to the small bed, walking naked across the room, too tired to look for something to put on. Kira again knelt on the bed with her palms resting on the windowsill. Mars filled only about a third of the sky from their present orbit and was slipping away fast. She made out several features that she had studied in school at Langley. There was the Planum Boreum ice cap lakes and the Korolev Crater steam plant, the artificial ocean at Syrtis Major Planum due south of that in the middle of the planet, the scarred Elysium Planitia green and red algae fields, and the Tholus and Phlegra mountain regions covered with forests of Martian conifers and oaks she had so recently seen up close and personal—too close and too personal for her tastes.

'All hands, all passengers, this is the captain speaking. Prepare for hyperspace.' A woman's voice sounded over the intercom and was followed by three long blasts of the horn.

A violet and blue reverse cascading shower of sparkles suddenly appeared forward of the Tangier I and a whirling blue tunnel opened at the bottom of the converging iridescent light vortex. Kira leaned quietly in the window and watched Mars and the stars in the background converge into the distance into a single point and then vanish in the collapsing violet sparkles. The hyperspace tunnel swirled around the ship, spreading the whirling blue dim flashes of light over the ship, and washed over Kira's naked body as the absolute beauty and strange magnificence of the interworkings of the other-dimensional conveyance took her mind from her present predicament for a brief but enjoyable moment.

'Well, that's that,' Kira said. Immediately, her mind went back to running scenarios for gaining access to more useful Separatist strategic planning information without getting herself killed. And how the hell was she going to get that information back to Earth? All of that could wait. For now, Kira's mission had been a success. The entire plan was to get somebody on the inside of the Seppy culture who could blend in and work up to a level of trusted status within the Separatist Resistance movement. Kira had planted the seeds for that with Elise. Now all she had to do was play along and wait a while. Access to more detailed information would come, but today was all about phase one of the plan. Phase one was complete. Now Kira could think about phase two, after she took a shower, and maybe after she had eaten something, and maybe after a long, very long, night of sleep.

'Mr. President! It's coming over every known frequency across the system and is playing on millions of websites simultaneously,' The national security advisor informed President Alberts.

'What is it?'

'It is a repeating message saying that General Elle Ahmi is about to make a systemwide statement in one minute.' The NSA nodded to a technician who was adjusting the inputs for the flatscreens in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. The technician nodded that the screens were ready.

'Well, don't keep us hanging here.' Alberts leaned back in his chair and took a sip from his Ohio State coffee mug that the governor of the state had given to him.

'There,' the NSA said as the image on the viewscreen went from blue to the Separatist Resistance flag and a timer counting down. Five, four, three . . .

'Check out the JumboHoloTron.' The pregnant lady sitting next to Rod Taylor pointed toward the main elevator tube at the edge of Mons City Central Park. The giant JumboHoloTron was a three-dimensional upside-down cone that continuously surrounded the elevator shaft with advertisements, terror alert status, stock market data, and breaking news ticker tapes. There was also music videos, commercials, and mini-movies playing on the larger portions of it. The size of the screen was such that it could be seen from most of Central Park. The giant conical holoscreen stretched from the street level up to the thirty-third-floor ceiling and made contact with the top of the dome.

The JumboHoloTron had a very large captive audience today—'captive' being the key word. The Seppies had rounded up and packed several hundred thousand citizens and tourists alike into the main field of the plush green Earthlike city park and then surrounded them with mobile force fields. There were only a few exits to the field and at each of these bottlenecks were several divisions of heavily armed Seppy troops.

'Well, maybe some of this damned waiting will be over with,' Vincent Peterson answered with a bit of an edge to his voice. He sorely needed a cigarette or at least a beer to take the edge off his nicotine habit.

'Well, maybe the Seppies are finally giving up and going back home to the Reservation with their tails between their legs.' Rod didn't use sarcasm normally, but there had been nothing normal about this long Martian day.

'Maybe so, bud.' Vincent didn't care much for the sarcasm either. The Separatist flag being displayed on the giant holographic screen faded out and a familiar face of terror took its place.

'. . . Citizens of Sol's System! I am General Elle Ahmi.' The most-wanted terrorist of the system had been long thought to be dead but apparently the reports of her death had been a bit premature. Ahmi stood in front of a large bot-mode Separatist armored Stinger fighter craft and beside that was an American flag. From the view angles of the video camera it appeared that there was a blue-gray Martian sky behind her that could be seen through an atmosphere dome. Elle Ahmi was somewhere on Mars! She wore a Separatist armored pilot flight suit with the helmet off. She was in full battle rattle as if she actually were going into combat. Over her face was the long renowned red, white, and blue ski mask and her long straight black hair hung freely out the back of it. From the image there was little that could be said about her physical age or attributes other than she was female and about one hundred and ninety centimeters tall and had brown eyes. But there was no doubt to anybody who had seen or heard her before that it was indeed her.

'This is a tumultuous time for the human race. Earlier today the Separatist Freedom Fighters dealt a great blow to the tyranny and oppression of the past century that the Great American Nation has thrust upon the Free People of the United States! Your President Sienna Madira forced the free people of Mars across the planet, slaughtering tens of thousands of them in a tyrannical death march to what is now known as the Reservation more than fifty- eight years ago. We, the Freedom Fighters of the United States of America, have opposed