The run had taken less than ten minutes, but the evening was beginning to take its toll on her. Kira was tired and looked a mess. Sweat and seawater poured off her forehead and down her back. If her pants hadn't been baggy battle dress, she was certain there'd be sweat-soaked spots running down her legs. She rinsed her face off with a handful of seawater and ran her wet fingers through her red hair. That reminded her.
Kira reached into her back pocket and pulled out a small tube, then squirted all the contents of it into her hand. She rubbed her hands together and then massaged the gel quickly into her hair and scalp. The gel reacted with the red hair chemicals and returned it to a more natural Martian black. Once she was certain the gel had been worked in thoroughly, she tossed the tube into the ocean.
'Let's see, this won't do.' She pulled at her sweat-soaked top and flapped it to cool her off. The black T-shirt had to go. She removed it and used the only dry corner of it left to wipe off her face. Then she tossed it out into the water, leaving her in nothing but her synthskin black jogbra. The material was microfiber and thinner than paper but did wonders for support and wicking sweat from the body. It left very little to the imagination, however. She was on the beach, so it would do. Kira looked at the camouflage pants she was wearing and the black combat boots and thought they would have to do too. Even though she had been dragged across a parking lot by a runaway gliderchute, the pants had only minor frays and merely looked worn.
Kira walked casually up the steps leading from the beach to the club's deck. There was a hybrid hardcore rock and thrashfunk band playing on stage that was all the rage with the Seppy youth. There were literally hundreds of people there partying and paying no attention to the fact that a flaming fighter mecha had just whizzed overhead and crashed into the city. Kira doubted that they'd have cared if they knew. And that was exactly the crowd that she needed to be within.
Kira paid a bouncer at the top of the stairs the cover charge and paid little attention to the way he ogled at her nipples protruding through the thin material of her jogbra. She managed her way into the lake of people jumping and thrusting their fingers in the air to the music. Once she stopped to dance with a purple-haired thrashfunker, who was wearing nothing but pink and green cotton boxer shorts and flip-flops. Kira let her buy her a drink and finally managed to tear away from her with the excuse that she needed to go to the restroom.
She managed to force her way through the crowd to the restroom, where she freshened up a little more. Then she returned to the bar on the other side of the deck opposite the band and ordered another drink. And then she ordered another one. Allison used a fake account to pay the tab. After a couple drinks more, she stumbled to the front door and bought a bright green T-shirt that read 'Beat it. Grab it. Suck it. Swallow it.' The shirt had something to do with a new cocktail specialty of the club that was mixed and drunk from within the peeling of a local citrus fruit. Kira hoped to come back and see what that was about someday.
She took a cab to the Madira Beach Spaceport. At the spaceport, she changed her hair color again, this time to blond, and then took another cab farther out of town to a local rural airfield and tipped the cabbie an extra fifty bucks to forget he ever saw her, saying something about her husband not needing to know where she had been.
When she had slipped out of the mansion at New Tharsis to 'go for a drink' several hours earlier, she had rented a single-engine plane under an alias and flown it to the rural airport several kilometers outside of Madira Beach City. The plane was still there, and nobody seemed concerned one way or the other that she was getting in her plane and heading out at that time of night. Small airports had been that way for centuries. Pilots could come and go any time of day or night with no need to get clearance from any tower or airport authority.
Chapter 7
October 31, 2388 AD
Sol System; Orlando, Florida
Saturday, 5:55 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
' . . . thank you for joining us for this Earth News Network Breaking News Alert. I'm Gail Fehrer coming to you live from the anchor desk in Washington, D.C. Sources tell us that a detachment of U.S. Marines have been deployed to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We have no information as to why this has occurred this morning, but we do have reports of gunfire and several explosions taking place at the Magic Kingdom. There is also a report that there are several troop carriers loaded with U.S. Army Airborne Armored E-suit Soldiers headed in that direction. Again, we are not certain why. Another note here is that my inside sources at the White House tell me that the president was taking an unannounced vacation with his wife and daughter, and it is believed that they were spending the evening at the amusement park after hours. If this is true, we can only speculate as to what this means. Is there an attack on the president? Are President Moore and his family in any danger?' Gail Fehrer tapped the desk with her fingers repetitively and then looked into another view angle.
'We're going to go now to Orlando to field correspondent Calvin Dean. Good morning, Calvin,' the anchorwoman said into the screen.
'Good morning, Gail.' The screen split, showing Gail's once- cameraman turned famous action correspondent. He nodded at her as if he were looking right at her. Of course, he could see her in his DTM link as if she were right there in front of him.
'Calvin, what can you tell us?'
'Well, Gail, as you can see in the distance, there is Cinderella's castle at the Magic Kingdom. Seconds ago, there were several serious explosions and what we think sounded like gunfire. We tried to get an aerial view, but for some reason, the airspace from here all the way to Orlando International has been completely restricted and has been all night according to my sources. We did get this shot earlier.' The screen switched to an image of Air
