One Day on Mars

'What the hell are they planning for Mons City!?' President Alberts had to think quickly. There was no way to get opinion polls out in time to make a decision on what to do, so he was going to have to do something that no president had done in decades or more, make a decision on his own. That thought literally terrified him.

'Mr. President, the extraction of Senator Moore was obviously a trap and reports have the entire fleet surrounded and in serious jeopardy from the engagement,' the Secretary of Defense Conner Pallatin reiterated to the president. What had started out as a rescue mission for a senator and his family had gone really bad.

'Yes, Conner, I have heard the same reports as you.' The Secretary of defense was really a politician and not a soldier. What did he really know about dealing with such dire situations? The president and several of his predecessors had been fighting the war against the Separatists for decades purely based on political polling data. What could they do to stop this and was there still a way to salvage the next election for the DNC? The president was not very certain on either front.

'We need to show strength, Mr. President,' the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. The Joint Chiefs unanimously agreed. The national security advisor nodded in agreement as well.

'What will the public think if we go into a full-fledged war against the Separatists?' the president's press correspondent asked frantically.

'We need to think about how the public will react about us sending troops into war.' Alberts sighed and pushed back in his chair.

'With all due respect sir, we've lost thousands today already. We are in a full-fledged war,' the chairman replied. 'The Navy, Army, and Marines have been in serious combat for decades spread out across the system fighting these Separatists. We've been at war for a long time.'

'I'm sure the president understands this, General,' the weasel sec def responded.

'If it is war they want then give it to them. Drop all the divisions we have on those fleet ships onto Mons City and shut down those Seppy bastards. And give the fleet authorization to go to full subnuclear arms to stop those ships!' President Alberts was proud of himself and scared out of his wits at the same time. No president had made such a decision without the knowledge that the public was behind him or her since . . . well, since Madira. This would be the end of his legacy. The DNC would excommunicate him from the next convention. He would be lucky even to get an invitation to view it from a long distance via satellite—a very long distance. In other words, politically, he was fucked . . . royally.

'Well, that is just fucking great! The goddamned White House waits until we are already engaged and blasted to shit to give us the go-ahead on gluonium!' The XO was tired of being tossed around by enemy fire and, from his outburst, it was apparent to the CO that he was extremely tired of being jerked around by goddamned spineless, gutless, mindless fucking politicians.

'Check that, XO! Does us no good,' Captain Jefferson told his trusted second-in-command. 'The big bombs are a nonfactor as long as the Seppies have us wrapped up like this. We can't get away from them to go nuke and we are running out of options on tactics. We need a new strategy!'

'Orders, sir?' the XO asked.

'Keep taking it to them, XO. And where in the hell are my goddamned guns? Conventional missiles and mecha fire is not doing the job.'

'Working the guns, sir. Hull tech below says all the coolant reservoirs are overheated and it will take several minutes to get just one battery back on line. He is doubtful on getting more of them up.' The XO maintained a handle on the ship's health monitoring systems and the outlook was getting grim.

'Quartermaster of the Watch!' the XO called.

'Aye sir!'

'Get fire teams down there to help out the hull techs on the coolant levels!' the XO ordered.

'Aye sir!'

'CO! CDC!' came over the net.

'Go, CDC!'

'You should be getting alarms now sir!' Just as the CDC officer of the deck had said that klaxons and flashing red dots went off in three separate locations in the DTM virtual sphere in the CO's head.

'Roger that, CDC! Our vanished Seppy friends I assume?'

'Most likely sir . . . aye sir! We have signature verification coming in now. The autocorrelation software gives a correlation confidence of eight seven percent sir,' the CDC officer replied.

'Copy that, CDC.' The CO studied the battlescape for a brief moment and watched as Uncle Timmy plotted possible trajectory solutions in his mind. The battle had been spread out from near-space of fifty kilometers or so to almost Mars-synchronous orbit of about thirty-three thousand kilometers. The fleet had started with eighteen supercarriers and ten smaller warships. They were down to eight supercarriers with heavy damage and three smaller warships. All of the supercarriers listing helplessly in space still had mecha. Captain Jefferson would make use of that against the four carriers, five haulers, and four smaller passenger sized vessels the Seppies still had fighting.

'Fleet! CO Sienna Madira! All flight worthy and combat-capable vessels are to deploy from all fleet boats immediately! Deploy and engage the enemy!' Jefferson ordered. 'Any drop tanks capable of deployment are to drop on Mons City immediately and take the city back!'

'CO! Air Boss!'

'Go, Air Boss!'

'We have three squads of M3A17-Ts winding up for the drop! One from the Washington and two from the Thatcher are starting the drop now. And the Mother Teresa has a mix of FM-12s and M3A17-Ts on the bounce. The Thatcher has also scrambled seventeen Ares fighters, they have a few dozen more but their cats are down.'

'Roger that. Good. Tell the Teresa to drop the FM-12s below with the tanks. And tell the Air Boss of the Thatcher to blow a hole in the side of the fuckin' ship if they need to but get those goddamned fighters into space now!' Jefferson looked at the virtual space around him. The new Seppy