This thing is an absolute dream, Copernicus, she thought to her AIC while she maneuvered the mecha into a full-speed run across the northern Martian planes, bouncing and flipping the vehicle over dunes and rocks and crevasses.
Let's hope so, General.
Don't be such a pessimist, Copernicus, she thought, and then was forced to grunt gutturally and squeeze her leg muscles tight as the flipping maneuver imposed a lot of g-forces on her body.
Yes, ma'am.
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.
Ma'am, it is approaching seven thirty am in Tharsis, her AIC told her.
Right then. I guess I should order the attack to start, she replied.
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. Summit City was more like Las Vegas back on Earth than it was like New York City. Mons City, on the other hand, rivaled any of the huge megalopolises on Earth. It spiraled and grew out over most of the southwestern face of Olympus Mons from the escarpment to the summit.
The peak of the mountain was littered with hundreds of minor domes and highway tubules, but there were five major domes that were considered boroughs of Mons City by the locals. The main dome was over thirty kilometers in diameter with four ten-kilometer domes spread out equally around it. The four secondary domes of Mons City were spread out across the face of the southern side of the giant state-sized mountain at the three, six, nine, and twelve o'clock positions about the main dome. The domes were really cities within themselves. But the entire complex was the largest construct in mankind's history.
A little farther east and up the mountain one could see the naval base. There was continuous air and space traffic in and out of the base, a sign that there was more going on than day-to-day travel—like, a war. A war that had been waging on and off for more than three or four decades. A war that most of the American population wouldn't admit was even a war.
"What's that, Daddy?" Deanna asked, and pointed toward the large supercarrier hovering over the outskirts of the naval base.
Abigail? Senator Moore asked his staffer AI.
Yes, Senator. That is the U.S.S. Supercarrier Winston Churchill.
"That, my dear . . . " Senator Moore paused for dramatic effect, a trick he'd often used on the senate floor. "That is the U.S.S. Supercarrier Winston Churchill from the great state of South England."