"Another fine Navy day, hey, Larry?" the CO joked, but then frowned. The Sienna Madira had seen her share of tough scrapes and battles but never one with so many potential civilian lives at risk. And just how many civilian, citizen, lives were acceptable losses? The CO would have to wait for authorization from the Joint Chiefs before an action this size could be ordered. All he could do was to prepare his fleet for battle, offer the Pentagon potential battle plans, and wait for the order to attack.
"Aye, sir." The XO nodded in understanding of the Navy sarcasm.
"Well, this is one of those situations that we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. And the political fallout is going to be hell." Captain Jefferson rubbed his neck and leaned back in his desk chair. "I guess we have no choice. Uncle Timmy?" The CO said out loud to the Madira's AIC.
"Yes, Captain Jefferson?" the AIC of the flagship responded over the speaker on the CO's desk.
"Upload the battle plan to the Pentagon and request authorization."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Well, let's see how big the president's balls are, Larry."
Chapter 13
12:41 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time
The president of the United States of America sat at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. He focused intently on the opinion poll data being DTMed into his head. Following the outcome of rapid poll data had served the president well for all of his first term and most of the present one.
The present question being put to a rapid online poll, he hoped, would give him a good read on the public's desire for the present situation at Tharsis. Should he or shouldn't he move forward with aggressive action against the Separatist incursion of the Tharsis region of Mars and risk the lives of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of voters in the Martian central mountain territory? There were actually over seventeen million inhabitants in the Tharsis territory and more than thirty percent of them were registered voters. If he took action that killed thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more of the registered voters' family members, it would have serious repercussions on the political outlook of the nation. Currently, the political outlook was one that the president and his party enjoyed. He didn't want to do something that would screw that up. His chief advisors and staff were giving him a moment to think while conducting similar analyses and simulations of their own.
Why did this have to happen now? he thought. To this point his administration had taken the Democratic National Party through nearly seven years with approval ratings near sixty-five percent. In the three strong parties of the American political system those were the best numbers any president—other than Sienna Madira, of course—had had for more than a century. It was likely that his vice president would be able to ride his wake into a whole next era of DNC control. The House and the Senate had benefited from the President's popularity and the DNC had grown to majority status and maintained control of both houses for longer than any other party since before the Sienna Madira years.
"What do you think about all this, Conner?" President Alberts asked his secretary of defense, Conner Pallatin. The poll data was split in three ways almost evenly over the three possibilities: 1) do nothing and ride it out, 2) attack the Separatist forces, or 3) surround the forces and ask for diplomatic discussions. There was a fourth possibility but it was still sensitive and not released on the poll. The forth possibility involved nothing more than a political "cover your ass" maneuver to rescue a member of the opposition party that had managed to get himself into a pickle. But President Alberts didn't want to take the chance that the internal White House Staff polls would get leaked to the press and therefore let the Separatists know that there was an American senator stranded somewhere in Mons City.
"I'm not so certain that the Separatists are going to just go away, sir. Somehow they have managed to amass quite an armada and have complete control of the Tharsis territory. The citizens there are trapped and are really at the mercy of the Separatists, Mr. President." The sec def had seen the polling data as well and wasn't sure of a good way out of this mess either. "We aren't even certain what the Seppies want, sir."
"Conner, you know I don't like that derogatory slang," President Alberts scolded his secretary of defense. "If the press got wind of somebody in my administration using it our approval rating could slide terribly."
"Sorry, Mr. President. As I meant to say, the Separatists have not even given us any demands, sir. We don't know if this is an act of war or if they plan to hold the region hostage as some bargaining aspect at the Summit talks," Conner explained. The reasoning behind the attacks was baffling to everyone in the system. There was no rhyme or reason for it as anybody could see. What advantage did the Separatist leadership think that an all out attack against the much greater force of the United States would gain? There were some at the Pentagon suggesting that the Separatists had way overestimated their capabilities much in the same way that Hitler had near the end of World War II. There was no way the Separatists could hope to maintain such a massive war fighting machine.
William Alberts stood from his chair and stepped away from the long mahogany conference table. The Situation Room had basically the same decor since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had created the Situation Room back in the mid-twentieth century after the Bay of Pigs incident. President Alberts walked slowly around the room where more than ninety-five other presidents had stood and pondered the heavy decisions of their time. The weight of the office bore fully on his shoulders and he looked to history for insight. Was there some approach that his predecessors had used or some profound thought that had kept them on the right path that he could emulate?
How Nixon must have paced the room during the bombings of Hanoi! What did President Carter do as he analyzed the peace talks between Begin and Sadat? What of President Reagan during the many Cold War incidents, what of the father and son Bushes during their respective wars in the middle east? How had William Jefferson Clinton handled the fighting in Old Africa? What of the several presidents to follow and the Global War of Muslim Extremism? And how had the many presidents to follow the "Great Expansion" of humanity handled their various "situations" of slow economies, overpopulation, civil unrest between colonies throughout the Sol system, and political infighting for territorial control? How had President Charlotte Ames dealt with the creation of the New World Government Consolidation Act and the assimilation of all the world governments under one constitution, an America- and United Nations-based constitution? How had President Victor Kolmogorov handled the news of the first interstellar spaceflight and the subsequent missions out of the solar system to other stars? How had the great President Sienna Madira handled the Separatist Secession and the creation of the Reservation in the desert of the red planet?
More important, Alberts thought, how would he handle this situation now in such a way that history would recall him as one of the great presidents of history? How could he salvage this incident for the good of the DNC? He searched the faces of his most trusted military and intelligence and political advisors around the room, but was certain that they waited for his direction. Politics was always that way—few were willing to be the first to stick their necks out onto the political public chopping block.
President Alberts had only made a few other such tough decisions and had used the Situation Room briefly in the past, but they were nowhere near the drastic scale of the decision before him. The Triton invasion was a much smaller mess and was so far away from mainstream America that most voters had paid it little attention. The Kuiper Station raid was even smaller and farther away. Otherwise, the economy had been cruising along steadily—the war didn't hurt that—and most Americans had gone on obliviously about their daily routines. His administration had been a good one. He sure didn't need this damned Separatist uprising so near the end of his term.