They're flying with wingmen, Moore thought to his AIC.
Amazing. It does appear that way, sir.
They must have detected our evac team. Abigail relayed the information to the agents in order to protect them and then continued to monitor the local wireless traffic for further leads.
"Thomas," Moore called to his bodyguard over the M-blaster and railgun noise.
"Yes, sir?"
"Do you have a plan if our backup can't stabilize the situation?"
"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.
The system was shocked and filled with sorrow when only a year into her third term, President Sienna Madira was killed. Following, there were candlelight vigils for months, and the flag flew at half-mast for nearly a year.
Elle, of course, knew the truth of the matter was that Madira and several of her aides had transformed themselves into a movement to change the government of the Sol System in a manner that, in their minds, would be more natural and beneficial for mankind. Madira and her close followers had long begun to fear that America had become a stagnant welfare state that was being ruled by majority vote. Her inner circle had come to the conclusion that a truly successful nation could not be run by majority, as the majority was not necessarily the smartest group for making tough decisions. Of course, Madira and her followers hadn't bothered to ask the general populace their opinions before making the decision to set events into motion that would change humanity's history forever if they were successful.
To the knowledge of the general public, Air Force One had gone down somewhere in the Kuiper Belt. There were no survivors, and only traces of the spacecraft were found. Madira had her body rejuvenated to that of a woman in her early twenties and let her hair grow long and jet black, which was typical of Martian women and of her heritage. The gray hair and wrinkles gone, Madira was no longer the elder stateswoman. She had become Elle Ahmi, a persona that took credit for the assassination of the greatest president since Lincoln,
Roosevelt, or Reagan. This gave Ahmi immediate credibility as a terrorist organization leader.
After several more years of struggle and terrorist actions, Elle's organization grew and absorbed other cells and factions, making her the undisputed leading terrorist within the Sol System. Ahmi was at the top of every Most Wanted list that the Americans had. Although her name was known throughout the system, she had been extremely cunning in keeping her true appearance and identity unknown. Her body and face had been rejuved; therefore, Ahmi was a young woman who was only videotaped or seen wearing a red, white, and blue ski mask. Only a select few had ever been allowed to see her face. Her true identity being unknown to the general public made it easier for her to operate and to move from location to location without being spotted. It also helped that Elle had been a software engineer most of her life as Madira, and she had spent years preparing and stealing new classified technologies for her movement.
She used her technical savvy to enable productivity within the Separatists that rivaled the economic machine of the United States. She used her carisma to become the catalyst of the Separatist movement, which had taken the Martian Reservation and the Separatist Laborers Guild by emotional storm. After several labor disputes, strikes, walkouts, and some very bloody and devastating battles with the U.S. military, she had risen to the top of the Separatist Reservation and become what could only be described as the supreme ruler of, as she called them, the "Free People."
Even now that she was free from the Sol System and effectively the leader of the Tau Ceti System, she maintained her secret identity. There would always be spies and assassins. And she still had plans to complete. Elle didn't want to rule just the Tau Ceti System. Besides, she doubted that America would let one of its colonies fall to the Separatists' rule for long. So rather than wait for the military might of the Sol System to come to her, she planned on taking the fight back across the stars to Earth—and soon. Everything was going according to plans that she had made and followed for decades and decades. There were plans in motion even at the present, on Ares and on Earth.
Elle turned from the windows and sauntered across the cavernous circular penthouse—her bare feet that squeaked against the hardwood flooring echoed in the mostly empty room with each step. Straightening her blouse and unsnapping one of the fasteners at the top, she sat down at her Queen Anne style desk, not sure whether she should keep on working or take a break. For a brief moment, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair. The DTM information came into her mind fast and furious and continuous even though she made an attempt to relax.
Copernicus?
Ma'am?
Shut off the mindlink for a moment, will you?
Yes, ma'am. The DTM virtual sphere went blank in her mind.
Elle sat quietly and tried to relax her shoulders and her thoughts, but even without the DTM pouring images into her brain at high bandwidth, her mind still raced with anxiety and what-ifs. But exhaustion was slowly taking its toll on her, and after a couple of minutes, she nearly dozed off. Her head slumped forward and startled her awake.
She opened her dark eyes wide and blinked a few times, then rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. Elle exhaled between her lips, making a soft motorboat sound. She gazed out the window across the valley at her dominion, at the results of her decades of planning and action, and took the brief moment to smile triumphantly. Once she had taken in all she could from that viewpoint, she ordered her AIC to increase the magnification of the northern portrait window. The scene zoomed all the way to the northern coastline of the New Tharsis Peninsula, which was sixty kilometers or more away. Separatist haulers, frigates, battle cruisers, and mecha were coming and going like a flurry of insects in a very busy colony—like a colony preparing for a full-scale war.
The colony at Ares had already consisted of nearly seven million people before the Separatist Exodus from the Sol System. More than thirty million had teleported from Sol's Oort Cloud to Tau Ceti nearly five years prior. Since that time, the population of the Tau Ceti System had grown to approximately fifty million. All who were old enough were working hard on the war machine.
For the most part, the fifty million Separatist citizens were free to do whatever they wanted as long as it did not interfere with the overall plans that Ahmi had laid out for them. The society was almost completely capitalist and very open although it was predominately run by networks of businesswomen.
From the beginning, Elle had singled out strong women that she could trust and put them in charge of upper echelon terrorist cells. The main goal of those cells was to usurp as much power from the legitimate Reservation businesses as they could. After several decades, there were no businesses within the Martian Reservation that weren't controlled by the Separatist movement. The women managed to maintain their power positions by following Elle's example and by putting other women they trusted in cells as their lieutenants or as leaders of cells adjacent or beneath them. Sometimes men were put in those positions, but most of the women tended to "be like Elle."
After some time, it became clear that the business leaders of the Separatists were women, and a matriarchal culture of multiple wife families arose as the norm around the business society. Men were still equal, but there were just more women who had made it to the top and managed to stay there.
Purposefully, again from the beginning, Elle had placed men in charge of the actual "boots on the ground" terrorist cells. The outcome of that approach had been to generate a military arm that was led mostly by men. Elle had come to believe from her personal experience with men that it was easier to manipulate them into hostile and dangerous action than it was women. Machismo and bravado were emotions that she could readily manipulate. Men were better at war, and women were better at business, she thought. It was her personal preference, whether there was actual truth to her beliefs or not. Her being the head terrorist-in-charge was enough to make the belief embedded in the culture for good.
As the Separatist Laborers Guild grew and became an extremely powerful economic engine, fiscal classes began to emerge. Effectively, within the Separatist society, there was an upper class of businesswomen and an upper class of warrior men. There were likewise many others in classes from poor to we
althy. The culture mimicked the cellular leadership structure from top to bottom. It was common in most families that the dominant wife led the household and ran it with the help of several other wives, while the men were in some form or other connected to military matters. There were, of course, men in business and women in the military, but the average was the other way around.
Copernicus, normal zoom on all windows, please, she told her AIC.
Yes, ma'am.
The window decreased to normal zoom. The sky was filled with stars, and the limb of the gaseous, giant planet that Ares orbited was beginning to peek over the horizon, bringing a faint violet hue to the night sky that Elle had grown to love. The view from the Capitol Building was nothing less than breathtaking.
Make the dome transparent, Copernicus. And you can turn the DTM desktop back on.
Yes, ma'am. Ah, Sol is rising just above the horizon now. Her AIC switched the polarity of the electromagnetic field on the armor, changing the ceiling of the dome from opaque to clear. Sol was just rising above the Jovian's rings in the constellation Boötes. The star of her birth world, Mars, was nearly twelve light-years away and appeared as a bright, second-magnitude star in the constellation. It was a wonderful view of the heavens but was mostly lost on Elle, as most of her attention reverted back to the datastreams coming in through the direct-to-mind link, describing the macroscopic details of the Separatist Nation.
Ma'am?
Yes?
Scotty would like to see you now if you are available. Your calendar is free for the next few hours. You have a sleep cycle scheduled.
Send him in.
Yes, ma'am. He is bug-free as best we can tell. When Copernicus assured Elle that someone was bug-free, the odds were high that that was indeed the case. Elle had seen to it decades earlier that Copernicus was the smartest AI she could find, and her penthouse had all the latest scanners known to humanity.
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