"I'm working on it, Mr. President, but I don't think it will come to that." Thomas looked upward and nodded toward a squadron of Marine FM-12 strike mecha zooming in from overhead. "I doubt there are enough flying elephants in the world to overpower a squadron of marines in fighting mecha!"
"Semper fi, sir," Clay added.
"Oorah," the once Major Moore replied. But then again, all marines knew that there was no such thing as a former marine.
"Keep your head down, Dee," Sehera scolded her preteen. The girl was so much like her father that it was all Sehera could do to keep her from trying to run out and kick one of the advancing robots in the crotch. Sehera kept her body on top of her daughter and wedged between the rock wall and the sidewalk on the back side of the amphitheater as far out of the action as they could get—which amounted to about three meters behind the others. One of the bodyguards stretched over the two of them with her weapons drawn but not firing. The president had ordered them not to draw attention to themselves.
"Listen to your mother, Miss Alexander. Now is not the time for you to be thinking of any action movie heroics," the agent reinforced the First Lady's scolding and emphasized the similarities between Dee and her father. "It would only take one hit from one of those railgun rounds to do a little girl in."
"That's not stopping Daddy! I want to help. I hate just hiding here like a coward."
"You're not hiding like a coward, Dee," Sehera said. "You're taking cover like a wise person should."
"I can shoot. Give me a gun. I wanna help like Dad. Why does he get to help and we don't?" Deanna squirmed against her bodyguard and her mother's grip. The twelve-year-old was most definitely her father made over. Sehera could hear the railgun rounds ionizing the rock wall all around them. There were strange-looking robots marching toward them and flying overhead shooting at them. Most twelve- year-olds would have been frightened out of their minds beyond reason. But Sehera frowned and kissed her daughter on the forehead, knowing that Dee was pissed off and not scared—just as Alexander had been so many years ago as a POW when they first met.
Moore had been tortured nearly to death and beyond what any human being should have had to endure. The only thing he had been afraid of then was dying before he could get up and impose vengeance upon the bastards who had been inflicting the pain upon him. Once Sehera had managed to help him escape, he didn't leave the Martian desert to return home; instead, he gathered his wits and a whole lot of ordnance and returned in a wake of Hell and damnation. The Separatist soldiers at the encampment far outnumbered him, but they didn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of stopping him.
Sehera could see that same look on her daughter's face. Dee would have her vengeance for ruining her one and only trip to Disney World. And Heaven help the poor bastards if she ever got loose on them.
"If Dad can do it, so can I!" she resounded defiantly.
"Sweetheart, you will stay put and do what we tell you, and that is enough of that for now. The Secret Service is here to protect us."
"Then why is Daddy fighting?" The tone in Deanna's voice rang true. The three of them looked across the theater benches to see the president rising to fire a handgun several rounds and then duck down for cover behind the rock wall.
"Because, Dee, he is Alexander Moore." Sehera hung her head. There was just no other explanation that would suffice.
Chapter 5
October 31, 2388 AD
Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha (aka Ares)
New Tharsis Peninsula
Saturday, 5:36 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
Saturday, 1:36 AM, Madira Valley Standard Time
Elle Ahmi stood at one of the tall arched windows at the penthouse of the capitol building, looking to the north across Madira Valley at the spaceport several tens of kilometers away. The dome at the vertex of the Separatist leader's home allowed for three hundred and sixty degrees of view through the transparent armored walls. The giant arched windows sat side by side, completely around the office. The lack of opaque materials of the office would frighten sufferers of agoraphobia beyond their wits. But Elle was paying little attention to it, since her DTM links were buzzing at full bandwidth with battle-plan simulations, planetwide logistics data, food-distribution issues, and a million other things that the Separatist general-turned-leader had to deal with.
The room was reminiscent of the Oval Office in the White House on Earth in that it was a room with a circular floor plan, and it was the room the leader of the nation called his or her office. Where it differed was that Elle actually lived in the room. Her four-poster bed made of Martian oak sat near the east window, so she could watch the Jovian rise several times a day and Tau Ceti rise in the mornings. She also could look out in any direction and see across several states of the Separatist Nation. So maybe it really wasn't like the Oval Office at all—Elle thought of it as better.
The Ares Capitol Building was atop the highest peak of the capitol city of New Tharsis. The peak was an eons-dormant volcano at the center of a broad peninsula that had stretched as high as six kilometers above the Tharsis Sea. To the south, the mountain base stretched all the way to the ocean and then again several kilometers below sea level. That side of the mountain had kilometers of black sandy beaches covered with ancient lava stones. Even before Ares had become the new Separatist Nation, the Earth colonists had chosen the area as an ideal resort location. That side of the mountain was as much like Mauna Kea in Hawaii as any volcano mankind had discovered. At the shore were condominiums and resorts that spread across the beaches. The south-side beaches were the most relaxed culture in the entire nation, and clothing—along with most morals—was definitely optional.
To the north, the mountain stretched down into a plush green valley that wound its way to the northern side of the peninsula and to the ocean. The mountain was covered with tall vegetation and large trees resembling the hybrid Martian oak trees of the Sol System and some that resembled the giant conifers of the western parts of North America on Earth. As the valley twisted toward the ocean, the giant trees stopped, and there flourished canopy trees that resembled those in Costa Rica and Belize. The New Tharsis Peninsula environment encompassed everything from extremely high mountains to tropical rain forests, all within the confines of one Virginia-size peninsula. The area had been a haven for planetary ecologists and biologists when it had first been discovered over a century before.
The northern face Madira Valley was named for one of the greatest and most widely loved presidents in U.S. history, Sienna Madira. Elle always got a smile from that as only a handful of humans alive knew the truth about Sienna Madira. Madira had indeed led the American forces to squash the Martian secession movements and forced them into the Reservation. She had indeed led the Sol System firmly and passionately and fostered a great era for the American people. She had been a great president.
But Sienna Madira hadn't died when the Separatist terrorist cell managed to shoot down Air Force One while on a routine campaign tour of Kuiper Station, as most of humanity thought. Instead, it had been an inside job from the beginning that had been planned for years, even before Madira's unprecedented third term in office. It had taken a system-wide grassroots effort, but enough congressional support was drummed up to overturn the Twenty-Second Amendment of the United States Constitution that had limited presidential terms to two. With the advent of the rejuvenation procedures and medications, people pretty much could live forever or until they were hit by a truck or shot through the head by an HVAR or had a Separatist hauler crash on them. The oldest human to date had been recorded as over three centuries old. This new technology, and the fact that Madira was so loved by the public, made spreading the seed to amend the Constitution easy. There were no longer any term limits for the office of president.