One Good Soldier

July 1, 2394 AD

Tau Ceti, QMT Facility

Friday, 3:42 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"I never thought I'd see you again, Penzington!" DeathRay was so glad to finally do the twist and pull, taking his helmet off. Finally he could rub his neck where it hurt like hell. Penzington had dragged him into the Seppy Lorda that she had commandeered and was running the ship through a take-off cycle.

"Well, there have been times when I'd have thought that nobody ever would. You okay?" She looked over her shoulder at him from the pilot's chair of the enemy troop transport vehicle.

"Penzington?" DeathRay did a double take. "Is that you?"

"It's me, DeathRay. Had to have a little work done to change my look. Hazards of the job."

"Well they sure did good work." DeathRay was pretty sure he looked like hell warmed over.

"The ejection chair absorbed most of the crash landing onto the QMT moon, but my already broken tailbone, back, and neck from the previous crash into the ship hadn't quite healed yet. So it fucking hurt when I hit." Jack gritted his teeth and pulled himself into the copilot's chair. He snapped the safety cap off another shot of immunoboost and jammed it into his neck. He started feeling better almost instantly. "I'll be tip top before we hit the planet. What's our ETA on that? Do we have a plan?"

"ETA depends on where we are going, but we could be on the planet in five to ten minutes. A plan? Well, no. Intel? Yes. Deanna Moore is being held in Elle Ahmi's penthouse suite. We have to get inside there to get her out," Nancy responded. "I can get in as Ensign Bella Penrose to the first or maybe second floor, but there is no way to get to the penthouse through the front door. And there are SIFs around the top floors, so we can't teleport in."

"What else do we know about the penthouse?" Jack rubbed his neck some more and then started pulling off the flight armor suit down to the second skin layer. He slid out a small bag about the size of a deck of playing cards and unfolded the contents from within it. The universal combat uniform top and pants he pulled from the vacuum-packed bag expanded as soon as they hit the air. He shook the no-wrinkle, fire-retardant, nanotube-armored compression materials out and set them aside as he pulled the organogel seal layer off his body. The seal layer schlurrped like pulling a suction cup from wet glass. Then he slipped into the UCUs and put his flight boots back on. He stretched his spine straight briefly and was certain that he'd be fine in five or ten minutes. He pulled an MRE bar from his gear and started crunching on it.

"Hungry?" he offered the CIA agent a bite. "Damned immunoboost and stims make me hungry and thirsty as a horse."

"Uh, no thanks," Nancy said.

"Okay, so what'd we know about the penthouse?"

"There is only one elevator into it, and only Elle Ahmi has the key."

"Well, is it guarded with AA guns as well as SIFs? If not, I say we ram in there with this ship and just take her away. All I have to do is put this on her." Jack showed Nancy the forward QMT teleport device on his wrist. "I push this button, and she'll be teleported to the Oval Office. Well, after we clear the SIFs, of course."

"I don't know about the AA, but I'd imagine it has at least the same protections that the White House would have. And I doubt we could knock out the SIFs long enough to get through them and back out. I used a Lorda and a Stinger once to burst through the SIFs on a battle cruiser, and I barely had time to punch through before they closed back up." Nancy glanced over at Jack and shrugged.

"How are we not being chased down right now?" It had just dawned on Jack that they were in a Seppy troop/cargo transport vehicle—the counterpart to the U.S. Starhawk—and nobody seemed to be looking for them.

"After twelve years of being here, my AIC is really good at negotiating with the Seppy flight-manifest systems. As far as anybody but us knows, we are doing just what we are supposed to be doing," Nancy replied quite confidently.

"Jesus, that's right. You've been here all by yourself a long fucking time. That's a hell of a sacrifice, Penzington." DeathRay had gone into the shit many times over in the past couple of decades, but he hadn't been in it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for over a decade. That had to be hell on your psyche. His respect for the CIA agent went through the roof as he made the realization.

"It's my job, Jack. I volunteered for it, same as you." Nancy shrugged. "So, what is our plan?"

"Can that AIC of yours figure out where the SIF generators for the penthouse are?" Jack finished off the food bar and swigged at some sports drink from a pouch in his flight suit. He was beginning to feel his normal self again.

"She says so. Here, I'll put her on speaker," Nancy said.

Candis, go audible also, he told his AIC.

Roger that.

"Hello, Captain Boland, my name is Allison," Penzington's AIC said. Jack was surprised it was a female AIC. Jack had long known that some women can talk to a female personality easier than a male one. Some couldn't. As fully female as Penzington appeared, he half expected some very male and suave voice. He was always surprised by the story he found inside the cover of books. He thought of Fish. Karen Fisher was more than "boat cute" by a long shot, but she was as much a tomboy as anybody would ever meet. Her AIC was as male as could be.

"Nice to meet you, Allison, Ms. Penzington. I'm Candis."

"Call me Jack, or DeathRay, Allison."

"Yes, Captain," Allison replied.

"So, what can you tell us about the SIF generators on the penthouse?" Nancy asked her AIC audibly.

"Here, I'm transmitting a DTM image of the Capitol Building at New Tharsis. The engineering components of the building are mainly in the basement area here," Allison pointed out in Jack's mindview. He could see the Seppy leader's building, and then it zoomed in and downward to an auxiliary equipment room beneath and behind it.

"Hmm, that is kind of stupid. There are no SIFs around the SIF generators?" Jack pondered out loud.

"Yeah, that seems a bit uncalculated for Ahmi, doesn't it?" Candis added.

"Well, if you take into account that there is a garrison of soldiers that usually stands guard there, I'm not so sure," Allison answered.

"Well, were I to attack from the air or space or even with tankheads, I'd go for the SIF generators first." Jack replied. That gave him an idea.

"Hey, that gives me an idea," Nancy said.

"Me, too. You go first." DeathRay turned to the CIA agent and pointed. He smiled at Nancy. She looked a lot different than he remembered her. Her hair was a different color, and shorter, her body was very tanned from what he could tell, she was in amazing athletic shape, or at least the enemy compression flight suit she wore suggested so, and she looked much younger. Jack was sure she had been rejuved fairly recently, maybe within the last four or five years.

"Okay. We see about commandeering some mecha." Nancy didn't seem to even flinch at the thought of stealing enemy fighters. Jack just figured that her time here must have really made her proficient at getting what she needed. "Stingers or Gnats would be fine. We autopilot the Lorda into the SIF generators, and then we burst into the penthouse with the fighters. There you teleport her out of danger. Then we fight our way out as best we can. Or not."

"Okay. That's more or less my plan. I figured you being a secret agent and all, your plan would be more sneaking around, breaking and entering, and getting out without being detected." Jack smirked at Nancy with his left eyebrow raised.

"I prefer the direct approach sometimes," she said. The tone in her voice almost sounded to Jack like an invitation to flirt with her. Some other time he'd consider it, but right now, saving Dee was the only thing on his mind.

Saving Dee was the only thing on Alexander's mind. He and Sehera and his two loyal Marine bodyguards had rushed across the Sol System to the QMT facility in the Oort Cloud. They boarded the USS Anthony Blair only seconds before the jump to Tau Ceti. Alexander and company were led to the bridge by the XO of the ship as the QMT teleport occurred. Before they reached the bridge, the entire remaining U.S. Naval Fleet had teleported to a three-minute hyperspace jaunt from the planet Ares. That put them about four-and-a-half astronomical units from the planet. Their location was directly out of the ecliptic plane of the Tau Ceti system above Ares.

"Mr. President." Rear Admiral Lower Half Sharon "Fullback" Walker addressed him as he stepped onto the bridge of the supercarrier. The rest of the bridge crew stood at attention and saluted. Moore promptly returned the salute.

"Please, as you all were. Admiral Walker. Thank you for, uh, entertaining us today." Alexander smiled at her through thin lips. His sense of humor had left him about the time he realized his daughter was in trouble. Sehera stood beside him, and the other two marines stood behind him quietly.

"My pleasure, Mr. President. What are your orders, sir?"

"I'm not here to give you orders, Admiral. I know two things about running a supercarrier, and diddly is one of them. We are here to take this system back from the goddamned Separatists, and I am here specifically to find my daughter, who has been kidnapped by Elle Ahmi!"

Admiral Walker gasped. "My God, sir! We had no idea. We are at your disposal, sir."

"No, Admiral. Once we have found Deanna and gotten her safe, we'll get out of your way. My guess is that the Seppies must have detected our QMT by now. Shouldn't we be getting the battle plan under way?" Moore nodded to the admiral.

"Uh, yes, Mr. President. We have. I'll have the long-range sensors looking for your daughter." Walker turned to her crew. "STO, start looking for the First Daughter's AIC emergency beacon as soon as we get into range."

"Aye, ma'am!"

"As soon as you find her, Admiral, my team and I will be teleporting down as close to her as you can manage," Moore said, motioning to his wife and the two bodyguards with him. The four of them were wearing AEM skin suits. "We'll be in the QMT deck getting our suits on."

"Uh, sir, we need to speak . . . privately. If you'd join me in the briefing room."

The president was ready to cut the Admiral off on the spot but looked around the command deck and thought better of it.

"After you, Admiral."

With a nod from the admiral, the STO joined them, as did Sehera and their Secret Servicemen, Thomas and Koodie.

As soon as they were alone, both Admiral Walker and the president started to talk, but the admiral quickly ceded the floor to her commander-in-chief.

"—I know what you're going to say, Admiral, but I don't give a flying damn. I'm going down to that planet, and I'm going to find my little girl and bring her home."

"With all due respect, sir, you aren't. I know what you're feeling, but we will not allow it."

"We?"

"Sir, there's not a single senior officer in this fleet who would allow you to go down to that planet, even if you order them directly, even if you do have snap-back QMT wristbands." The STO had been nodding in agreement with his CO, until a withering glare from the president caused him to tuck in his chin like a plebe being dressed down.

"Knowing we have a way to whisk you away to safety is why I didn't object when you insisted on coming aboard. But it's one thing to know we have got some of the strongest armor and SIFs in the entire fleet between you and harm's way. It's quite another to let you go down to a hostile planet. Unless you're ready to relieve every officer serving in this fleet, you are not going down to that planet, Mr. President."

Moore looked about ready to explode. He glanced at his bodyguards, but they didn't flinch, nod, or wink. They'd been with Moore for too long and seen him do what he damned well had to and Secret Service be damned. Moore looked back at the admiral.

The STO snapped to attention, and spoke. "Mr. President, we cannot allow the enemy a chance to capture you. It is simply unthinkable, sir. It could completely compromise our attack."

President Moore looked ready to chew through a bulkhead until his wife laid a hand upon his clenched arm, breaking his intense glare at the officers.

"Alexander, they're right. And you know it." Something passed between the husband and wife, and President Moore relaxed ever so slightly. Sehera turned to the Secret Service men. "Thomas will get her for us, won't you?"

"Yes, ma'am." Thomas and Koodie stepped forward and nodded.

Abby, we expected this.

Sir.

Move out on our other plans.

Yes, Mr. President, his AIC responded and then added, or is that General?

"Might I suggest we send along a squad or two of AEMs or mecha?" Walker asked.

"No, Admiral," President Moore said. "That would draw too much attention. As long as you make a menace of yourselves elsewhere, that should provide all the diversion . . . they need."

"CO! CDC!"

"Excuse me, sir." Walker tapped a button on her comm. "Go, CDC!"

"CO, long-range sensors have picked up two friendly AIC handshaking signals." Walker turned to Moore inquisitively but said nothing.

"Might be DeathRay and that CIA agent, Alexander," Sehera interjected. "Talk to them!"

"Admiral, can you connect us?"

"Not sure. CDC, can you connect us to the two signals?" Walker asked.

"Hold on, CO." Moore and Walker passed glances back and forth during the brief seconds they waited for an answer. Walker didn't think they were close enough to get a connection with the AICs. Limits were usually about a light-minute with no large repeaters. The Blair had plenty of amplification, but the little AIC on the other end didn't. "Sorry, ma'am. They are too far away."

"Keep at it, CDC. I need to know as soon as you connect to them."

"Mr. President?"

"I say we start getting this attack under way."

"Agreed, sir. We'll jaunt in and attack in five minutes, sir," she said as she snapped a picture-perfect salute, trying to keep the relief from showing on her face.

"So, Nancy, uh, nice place here. And, where did you get these mecha?" Jack asked. They had landed just outside New Tharsis at a fairly nice farmhouse. The hangar in the back acreage of the farm housed two Seppy Gnats.

"Oh, well, I've squirreled away Seppy dollars for years, and I have several safe houses spread about the planet. This is one of the better ones. The mecha are actually part of a requisition error made on an order to the manufacturer. They delivered two more than they were supposed to down at the spaceport in New Tharsis. I happened to be a shipping clerk by the name of Carrie Thomas there about five years ago. I needed to do some training in these, so I managed to get them here. There's also an Orca drop tank out back. The logistics was a little more complicated than it sounds. The point is, I have them. We can use them. Think you can fly one?" Jack tried not to laugh. Nancy had managed to infiltrate the Seppy acquisition system so well that she procured two brand-new Gnats without anybody ever missing them. She and her AIC must be real good at their day job.

Jack started slipping his flight gear back on, and Nancy followed his lead and pulled out some flight armor from a locker in the hangar. The two of them changed and climbed into the mecha.

"Hey, this thing feels almost just like my Ares-T. The controls inside the cockpit are identical down to the coloring," he shouted to Nancy.

"Yeah. They stole the blueprints from the manufacturer. They are as close to a real Ares-T as it gets," she replied.

Jack pulled his helmet down with a twist and lock. Air hissed into his face. Instinctively he started to pull the hardwire UDP connector out and plug it in to his shoulder harness port.

Jack, not sure about going hardwire. It would be harder to firewall attacks from the Seppy AIs, Candis warned him.

Fine with me. He let go the cable, and it reeled itself back into the panel.

"You read me, Nancy?" He spoke into the communications net link he created between his and her fighter. He started toggling through the weapons stores in the mecha. The enemy mecha was loaded for bear. Penzington was prepared. Prepared for what, Jack wasn't certain.

"I got you loud and clear, DeathRay. Try not to damage my hangar as you pull out."

"Roger that, Penzington." Jack thought about it as he cycled the landing gear up and went onto the hoverfield. "Have you filed a flight plan for us, or are we going to hit a bunch of resistance along the way?"

"We should be good right up until the last couple of kilometers. Then we should go thrusters full," Nancy said.

"Right. Good. Let's get on with it."

"Roger that, DeathRay."

Hold on, Dee, we're coming, he thought.