One Day on Mars s-1

by Travis S. Taylor

  "The big metal spider has no nose." Joannie laughed with the little girl.

  "I'm quite looking forward to traveling out into the actual Martian atmosphere with you. I've never been out of the dome before," BIL replied. He really liked the little girl and didn't want to see any harm come to her. He was deciding that the garbage could wait and that his current cargo was more precious. BIL was also fairly certain from his wireless interaction with the senator's AI staffer that his keeping the little precocious first-grader entertained was much appreciated. BIL didn't really know a lot about humans, but he was pretty sure that these ones were tired and very frightened of something.

  The big robot spider-thing scampered its four-ton body onto the giant lift. BIL shifted his weight onto seven legs and pushed some debris out of the way so he could completely work his body onto the front right corner of the platform. He wirelessly activated it, triggering the actuator field. The elevator, surprisingly, moved rather rapidly upward for its size and BIL had to adjust his weight on his eight legs to adjust for the added g-forces of the lift acceleration. The large platform passed through the first subsurface floor and then to the surface in about twenty seconds and came to a stop in the loading end of a vast hangar that at one end had the largest airseam on Mars. Through the dome could be seen an expansive landing port and there were several barge cars and smaller cargo vessels sitting on the landing field. A few privately owned aircraft and space-faring vehicles sat on the periphery of the hangar and outside on the airfield. Some of the vehicles were white and silvery and shiny and obviously very expensive while others were dinged up, oily black, and grimy from use and continuous repair and obviously held together on a shoestring budget. The scene was reminiscent of practically any airfield and spaceport across the system.

  The landing field and the hangar were buzzing with activity that, on the other hand, was not typical of any civilian airfield. There were hovertrucks and Separatist drop mecha running here and there that were carting armored Separatist soldiers in and out to their various assigned defensive or offensive positions. Every few seconds an Orcus drop tank would either land or take off across the Martian landscape to some unseen designation. Armed and armored e-suited Separatists were bouncing outside by the dozens loading and unloading materials and their wounded. At the far end on the northeast side of the airfield was a hospital tent that had been inflated just outside the far edge of the airseam. Medevac aircraft landed almost nonstop on several of the pads and even on the taxiways of the northeast side of the spaceport. Ambulances came and went from the front of the tent then through the airseam, probably headed into Mons City to make use of some of the better hospital facilities in the city. As far as the garbage hauler AI was concerned, the sight was magnificent. There were people everywhere—including other AIs.

  "BIL, we cannot be captured by those people," Senator Moore told the AI. There were no windows or screens in the belly of the garbage hauler but the hauler did have cameras and sensors on the outside to aid it in its daily reclamation job. BIL had worked directly with Abigail, the senator's AIC, to develop a mosaic algorithm for the sensor images and linked them DTM to the senator.

  "I understand, Senator. What would you have me do?" BIL asked.

  "Why don't we just walk out like we are on a standard garbage dump or something?" Sehera suggested. The bouncy ride through the garbage cavern had tired them all and the two women and the little girl were sitting down and leaning against one of the sticky smelly walls of the garbage hauler's interior. The smell inside the vehicle would have been more than the humans could withstand were it not for their e-suits. With the helmets sealed off, the scrubber filters would remove any of the unwanted pathogens, allergens, and chemicals.

  "Well ma'am, there are no dumps into the local Martian region. All the garden zones are further south a bit," BIL explained.

  "Mommy, who would know that?" Deanna asked her mother.

  "What do you mean, dear?"

  "Yes, of course." Moore was continually amazed by his daughter's ability to see the obvious. "BIL, these Seppy troops will have no idea what your job is. Just tell them that you are on a scheduled job to go south to reclaim an abandoned dwelling dome. Can you do that?"

  "Certainly, if it will help you secure your safety. I can even change the schedule in the infrastructure system to show that I am supposed to be doing just that." BIL liked his companions and didn't want to see anything happen to them and a little freedom with the scheduling system wouldn't hurt. BIL was wondering why he had never thought of doing that before. Unbeknownst to him, Abigail had taken some liberties with the AI's regulations and ethics protocol software. Of course, Abigail could not alter his being—after all, AIs were living entities—but she could rewrite the rules that he was told to follow. As far as BIL was concerned, he had just never thought of going for a walk outside.

  "Thank you, BIL," Sehera said in a maternal tone. "Be careful."

  "Very well. To the airseam then. Hold on please." The spider's legs again started quickly shifting back and forth one over the other like the giant hybrid granddaddy longlegs spiders of the Elysium Planitia algae fields.

  Once Gail and her cameraman had made their way into the main dome of Mons City they had been forced to take refuge in a convenience store at the edge of the hangar deck of the airfield. There had been so much Separatist troop movement coming and going that they had decided to lay low for a few moments and take a much needed break. They had been through several close calls as it was. One of them actually while they had been broadcasting live to MNN. They had had to cut their report short and take cover. It had never occurred to her that the Seppies had to have the technology to track the video link transmissions back to the main MNN router system. Apparently, the Separatists were not interested in stopping the news, but Gail didn't think of that. She was more concerned with hiding and not being captured—she had seen what happened to reporters captured by the Seppies on Triton. Not good.

  And Gail and her cameraman were getting hungry. The convenience store made perfect sense. Once they had sneaked by the troop movement and into the back door of the little store they had relaxed a bit and helped themselves to the junk food and sodas stocked on the shelves and in the coolers. They were even able to reload the e-suit reservoirs with water. Having been outside and before that in the damaged borough of the southern domes the two of them had been sealed up in their e-suits for hours and used up a lot of their water. There was another aspect of being sealed up in an e-suit that required patience or regular breaks and that was the claustrophobia aspect. Being in the main dome that was not yet breached was literally a breath of fresh air to them and a chance to take off their helmets and stretch their necks, scratch their heads, and run their fingers through their hair for a bit. And it made eating and drinking stolen junk food a whole lot easier.

  "Hold on, Calvin. What the hell is that?" Gail Fehrer had paid little attention to the lift platform at first. In her mind it was just a very large cargo elevator. But then she realized that something was out of place that was riding on the lift platform. At first all she could make out of the scene was that the lift rose and was littered with recyclable materials and general trash, but then a very large section of the trash started to move on its own, which startled her. Then she had realized that it was a giant metallic gray mechanical spider, which was completely unexpected and a little bit unsettling.

  "That thing is odd-looking. What is that?" the MNN cameraman asked, and choked down the last of a candy bar since he knew that break time was over. He had been with Gail long enough to know that she would want to take a closer look at anything out of the ordinary. And a giant mechanical spider traipsing around in the midst of a bunch of Separatist troops could at the least be described as "out of the ordinary."

  "I don't know. But whatever it is, get it on video." It was news Gail was certain of it. "We've got to figure out how to get closer and get a better look at that thing."

  "Preferably without getting
caught, Gail," Calvin added. "Gail, are you listening to me?" Obviously, she was not, so Calvin just sighed and continued to gather himself up to follow her off into some foolish and quite dangerous journalistic endeavor, as he always did.

  The metal beast began to gingerly scamper across the large lift platform toward the airseam field, its eight long legs moving back and forth almost too quickly for the eyes to make sense of. To their surprise, so far, the Separatist troops were paying it little or no attention. Gail wasn't sure what to make of the sight, but her seasoned journalist's insight understood when something was newsworthy.

  "Come on. Let's follow it and see what it's up to," she told Calvin while twisting her e-suit helmet seal ring tight. "I smell a story."

  "Somehow, Gail, I knew you were going to say that." The camera and communications tech grabbed the gear, which consisted of a small repulsor field stabilized camera platform and QM wireless transceiver all no larger than a softball, and swigged one last swallow of the Dr. Deimos in his hand. Calvin dropped the silver lettered maroon can on the floor then squished it under his right jumpboot heal. "Ready when you are," he told her, and twisted his helmet into place.

  The small storefront was typical of the industrial end of the city and was sandwiched between an aviation mechanical shop and a plumbing store. The stores faced the street that made up the east face of the hangar entrance that was on the city side of the hangar. There were large windows on the front of the marscrete and plastic construction buildings all of which had multicolored logos and advertisements painted on them.

  The store owners had apparently left for the shelters in such a hurry that they had neglected to bring in the newsstands and potato chip racks from outside the front door. Originally, Calvin had to cut through the lock on the back door—camera techs had to be resourceful in the network news industry.

  Their search for useful tools in the store uncovered a set of keys that allowed them to unlock the front door. This made it easier on them to follow the mechanical robot and keep it in sight. Had they been forced to take the back door the spider might have been gone before they could make it down the back building alleyway to the next street crossing nearest the hangar entrance.

  "Let's go and keep the camera running." Gail eased out the front door of the little convenience shop and stayed as close to the walls of the buildings on their side of the street as she could. Calvin followed her lead and made every attempt at staying in the shadows while at the same time keeping the giant metal bug in the camera viewer.

  They slipped silently down the street until there were no more buildings to stick close too. The street turned ninety degrees southward and followed the outer wall of the hangar bay until it met the taxiway for the space traffic. There were loading docks and cargo movers parked along the hangar bay wall. There was also the occasional privately owned aircraft parked in a small paved parking lot at the dome wall side of the taxiway. Gail and Calvin ducked behind parked forklifts and private planes leapfrogging each other from one to the next until they reached the edge of the dome near the airseam field generator just to the right of the adit.

  The spider-thing had made its way to the edge of the airseam field with little if any attention being paid to it. Then the airseam light went green and the giant bug scampered out into the Martian atmosphere. As it passed through the seam's force field, an iridescent hue of violet and blue rippled across the large plane of the opening.

  "Come on." Gail grabbed Calvin by the wrist and bounced three times along the dome wall and then through the airseam field right behind the metal beast, again generating the iridescent ripples in the field. Once outside the dome wall they took cover underneath a parked tugship's landing skids about fifty meters from the spider. "You're getting it, right?"

  "You have to ask? After all these years?" Calvin smiled at his partner but kept the video centered on the bug.

  "Sorry. Why do you suppose nobody is paying that thing any attention at all?" It didn't make sense to Gail. If a giant metal spider came traipsing along in front of her she'd damned well pay it some attention—especially during the middle of an all out attack.

  "Who knows? Maybe it's supposed to be there?"

  "Well, we need to stay with it. Let's stow away on it." Gail crawled out from under the tugship's landing gear and bounced to the nearest ship that could be used for cover. For a brief second she was in the open and viewable and vulnerable but nobody saw her. Calvin, likewise, followed right behind her unnoticed as well.

  The reporter and cameraman continued to press their luck, bouncing from cover point to cover point until they were ahead of the spider's path. Finally, in a mad dash, Gail and Calvin bounced three times across a taxiway, on top of a parked cruiser, and then came to a clanking landing on top of the mechanical spider.

  Gail landed on her jumpboots but the swaying jerking motion of the spider made her lose her balance causing her to fall face-first into the dingy metal surface of the garbage hauler. Calvin landed with a little better finesse but then fell immediately onto his posterior and then backward onto his head. Gail reached out and grabbed the ankle of his jumpboot in order to keep him from sliding headfirst and upside down off the spider.

  As they gained there composure they did their level best at staying out of sight of the troops scurrying about the spaceport below them. But holding on to any crease or bulge in the surface of the beast proved to be harder than they had expected, since the exterior of the garbage hauler was basically smooth and metallic with no bumps or handholds. The two reporters pressed their stomachs to the surface of the thing as best they could keeping their arms and feet spread wide.

  The spider's body consisted of two sections. A smaller rounded head section that most likely carried the sensors and control systems and looked as if it could carry a couple of passengers had a forward-looking windscreen and two side windows. This head compartment looked empty. The rearward section was more boxy in shape and had no windows. There were mechanisms that ran beneath the spider's rear compartment that suggested that it could dump that compartment over like a dump truck. There was also a door on the rear of it. But they had seen this only as they rushed to jump on the spider. They were much more intimate with the top of it now.

  The top of the spider was much more flat than a biological spider and as they inched their way along on their bellies and toward the center of the thing's back they realized that it caved slightly inward to a seam that ran down the middle of its back. The seam made from two sliding doors, ran parallel with the direction the spider walked.

  Once they managed to slide to the bottom of the V shape where the seam ran front to back of the rear compartment and largest section of the spider. Gail and Calvin were able to maintain their position because gravity was assisting them and they were at the bottom of a small gravity well.

  "So, what do we do now?" Calvin asked, hanging on for dear life. It was a seriously bumpy ride.

  "I don't know," Gail answered with a shrug, and shifted her weight from left to right and then forward and aft as the spider's odd eight-legged motion jerked her about. "Be patient."

  "Uh oh, do you feel that?" Calvin felt along the seam where the garage doors met. The doors felt as if they were vibrating and pulling away from each other.

  "Feel, whaaaa—"

  Chapter 12

  12:32 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

  The opening in the top of the garbage hauler cracked just wide enough for a bright and blinding splinter of white light to seep through. Just as quickly and silently as the doors opened, they began to close. Through the crack above him, Alexander Moore could see two human figures flailing helplessly, silhouetted in the splinter of light as they fell slowly in the Martian gravity to the floor of the garbage hauler.

  "Yes, I see them BIL, thanks." Alexander brought his Separatist HVAR off the sling on his back and lowered it to his hip pointing in the general direction of the two thuds that he heard about seven meters to his left and dead center of the empty garbag
e hauler.

  Abigail, any ID on them? the senator thought to his AIC.

  Yes, Senator. They are emitting press badge signatures, Abigail replied.

  No shit. The press? No matter where we go, the press is gonna find us, hey? He chuckled and at the same time muttered it under his breath. Goddamned press.

  "Nobody moves a muscle," Moore said over the speaker of his esuit and broadcast on the suit-to-suit QMs. He swept the suit lights over their two unlikely stowaways and could tell they weren't hurt, just stunned by falling and landing off balance inside an empty garbage hauling mechanical spider. Perhaps what stunned them the most was that they found people inside it, armed people?

  "Who are you?" Gail Fehrer asked holding her hands up in front of her face to block out the bright light from Moore's e-suit helmet.

  "I said don't move or I'll shoot you, damnit!" Moore said with more venom and tilted the light away from them just enough for them to notice that not only was he pointing an automatic rifle at her but so was Joanie. "Now, I'll ask the questions. Who the hell are you?"

  "Gail Fehrer, MNN," Gail stated sounding as if she were signing off of an on-air report. "And this is my cameraman, uh, Calvin Dean."

  "Okay. What are you doing here?" Moore kept the rifle centered on the two reporters.

  "We were in the south borough when the supercarrier crashed and have been following the Seppies ever since. We stowed away on one of their convoy tankers here from the south to see what was happening in the main dome. Then we saw the damnedest thing marching across the airport." Fehrer nervously rushed her explanation. Moore could tell that she didn't like staring down the barrel of an automatic weapon known for firing seven-millimeter rounds at ten percent the speed of light with the ability to bring down fighting mecha. In fact, Moore sympathized with her. He didn't like staring down an HVAR either and it was something he had never gotten used to no matter how many times he had been forced to do it.