The mecha shook slightly as it lifted from the ground, throwing whirlwinds from underneath each of the wings as the vertical takeoff engines pushed it upward from the ground effect. Elle gripped the throttle and pushed it full force forward with her left hand while controlling the flight path with the stick in her right. The standard hands-on throttle and stick controls mimicked most fighter control systems that had been developed for centuries. The exception, of course, was the direct-to-mind control links between the plane and the pilot and the AIC. The DTM connections enabled modern fighters to do things that no others in history could have.
Ahmi toggled the mode control to bot-mode, which in turn rolled her through a series of twists and rolls that in the end left her in the cockpit in the torso of the fighter mecha as it flew upward headfirst as a giant metal armored robot. The general cut the throttle back and performed a 'head over' into a dive toward the ground, rolling all the way over in a forward flip so as to land on the mecha's feet on the Martian ground with a big
The general known as the most wanted terrorist in the human race flew the high-tech fighter mecha with the giddy joy of a schoolgirl playing hopscotch at recess. She bounced and zigged and zagged the mecha and even attempted a few martial-arts-style rolls, which she flubbed pretty badly. The rolls shook her up momentarily, forcing her to catch her breath cautiously and almost painfully from the air bladders of the pressure suit squeezing on her. Elle wasn't the trained fighter pilot that her soldiers were and she had only a few hundred hours in the machine. Although she didn't intend on flying one into battle unless all things really went to hell, she enjoyed the rush from piloting one for fun. In another life, one without politics and revolutions and insurgency and unfair taxation without representation and second-class citizens, Elle might would enjoy being a test pilot or even a fighter pilot. But that was just a fleeting fantasy.
Chapter 4
7:30 AM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
Senator Alexander Moore held his six-year-old daughter's left hand with his right. His wife, Sehera, held their daughter's other hand, and occasionally little Deanna would pick up her feet and swing from her parents' hold. The swing was a slow pendulous arc in the low Martian gravity that thrilled the precocious child. Deanna was cute in all the ways that a little girl could be and she'd been fortunate enough to acquire the best traits of each parent. Her mother's long full-bodied dark curly hair and milky white smooth Martian skin gave her a baby-doll cute appeal, while her father's Mississippi State University starting-fullback frame made her appear as a physical force to be reckoned with, even at only six Earth years old.
The three of them were thoroughly enjoying their low-gravity stroll through the shopping and mall district of the largest environment dome at the Mons City resort. The unearthly architecture, dim lighting from Sol mixed with city lights, and light gravity of the Martian city were a pleasant and welcome change from Capitol Hill, which was normally where the family spent all their few-and-far-between together moments.
'Look, Mommy!' Deanna pointed to a large holo projection at the doorway of a shop called Mons Adventures at a man hang gliding down the side of Olympus Mons. The image shifted a moment later to a group of carefree adrenaline-junkie tourist adventurers rappelling down the side of a Martian canyon and then again switching to tourist hiking across the open desert in jumpboots taking twenty-meter leaps at a time across the Martian desert scrub brush. 'Neat! Can we do that, Mommy?'
'That looks like fun, doesn't it!' Alexander smiled. The senator missed real-life action-packed fun. His days on Capitol Hill seldom required him to work up a sweat and the only place he managed to do that was in the gym. He missed his more athletic days in college and the military—though he did not miss the pain and daily threat of death from the latter.
'Bah!' Sehera replied. 'That is insanely dangerous and I'd better not ever catch either of you doing it.'
'Mommy, you're a fraidy cat.' Deanna laughed and repeated, 'Fraidy cat, fraidy cat.'
'Fraidy cats live long lives, dear. Nine of them,' her mother said.
The three continued along, looking like nothing more than tourists. Alexander had not been away from the Beltway in a long time and this trip to the Martian Summit was proving to be something other than the political career booster he had originally intended it to be. It was more of a much-needed family vacation.
They continued through the shops along the sidewalks and into an open court area filled with local cuisine and hot dog stands. There were a few trees both of Earth and Martian variety casting shade over the blue-green grass- covered area. The sound of various Earth birds could be heard over the bustle of the tourists and locals with the occasional hovercar screeching by in the background noise.
The dome had a large transparent ceiling and a spectacular view of the south side of the Mons City skyline in the shadow of the great mountain itself. Olympus Mons covered an area nearly the size of the state of Arizona and the mountain was over twenty-five kilometers tall at the peak. Mons City's main dome was built on the escarpment over two hundred kilometers from the peak on the southwest side of the ancient volcano. Summit City was built atop the mountain along the edge of the volcano's ridges and surrounding the caldera of the ancient volcano. The caldera, or pit, of the giant volcano was over eighty kilometers across and more than two and a half kilometers deep. Summit City had sprung up around many different tourist activities that ranged from base-gliding off the caldera, to climbing and rappelling on it, to even the five-kilometer luge that snaked down the north side of the caldera ridge. The southern ridge of the caldera was peppered by several observatories and naval outposts that were adjuncts of the base farther down the mountain.
The caldera floor was covered with dwelling domes of the locals and a major shopping center dome that was nearly twenty kilometers in diameter. Interstate transport tubes covered the floor like a spider's web and turned up the ridge to Summit City at about every forty degrees around the pit's circumference. Smaller street tubes and tunnels cut in and out of the mountain walls. The peak of the giant Martian shield volcano had become a metropolis.
