One Good Soldier

July 1, 2394 AD

Ross 128, Arcadia

Friday, 3:48 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Admiral! The enemy ships are disengaging, sir!" the CDC officer radioed up to the bridge.

"Yeah, I see that, CDC. STO? Any ideas?" Wallace watched in his DTM as the enemy ships pulled away from the planet, heading out of atmosphere.

"Sir, looks like their fighters are going with them. Do we pursue?" the air boss asked.

"Where are they going?" the XO asked. "Come back and fight, you chickenshits!" He waved a fist in the air as he growled.

"I got it, sir," the STO finally replied. "They are clearing the atmosphere and starting to jaunt. The first one is already popping out at the QMT jump sphere zone."

"They're leaving?" the COB asked. "Good damned riddance if you ask me. It'll give the CHENG and the firecrews time to get us back in shape, sir."

"Why are they leaving?" the ground boss asked. "Do they know something we don't?"

"Maybe they do. We don't care for now," RADM Wallace Jefferson responded. "Our orders were to take this system, and it looks like all that is left to do in achieving that goal is the mop up. So, let's mop up."

"Damn right, sir," the XO agreed in as much an enthusiastic manner as the old Marine mecha jock ever spoke.

"XO, get us a courier back to find out what is going on. Hopefully, soon we'll be able to control that facility and won't need the damned couriers."

"Aye, sir." General Chekov turned and in his gruff Marine voice shouted for the quartermaster of the watch.

"CO! The enemy ships just jumped. As far as I can tell, they are out of the system," the STO announced.

"Good . . . I think." Wallace studied the battlescape in his mindview for a few seconds, scrolled through the casualty list, glanced at the piling-up damage reports, and lingered on the intel. There had yet to be any sign of the Arcadian government officials. Well, he didn't expect they would find them on this trip anyway. He'd wait to see what the marines dug up from inside the bunker under where the governor's mansion used to be. He laughed to himself about that damned Ramy Roberts and his Robots. Then he focused in on how the ground campaign was moving along.

The tank numbers had been more than replenished from the new supercarriers in the system. Marine and Navy mecha had dropped on the ground in overwhelming numbers. AEMs and AAIs filled the gaps where they needed to. All said and done, there were over thirty thousand troops covering the planet in state-of-the-art military fashion. The first waves of mecha needed a rest.

"Air Boss, Ground Boss, pull back our guys to rear positions and give them a break for a while. I'm passing along similar orders to the Roosevelt and the Tyler."

"Aye, sir," the ground boss replied.

"Sir, it might be a good idea to bring in the mecha to reload them. Just in case, sir," the Air Boss said.

"Just in case of what, Michelle?" the XO interjected.

"Well, XO, in case they come back, sir."

"She's got a point, Admiral."

"All right. Order all the first wave mecha back in." Wallace unbuckled his seat belt. They hadn't been hit by a missile, DEG, or so much as a spitwad in a while now, so he wanted to get up and stretch his legs. "I'd say a seventh-inning stretch is in order. Good job, folks. Good job. COB, I think I'm gonna walk around my ship for a while. Care to join me?"

"I'd love to, Admiral." Charlie grabbed his coffee mug and released the magnetic base from his console. "Would you like one to go, sir?"

"Don't mind if I do, Charlie. Larry, you have the bridge."

"Aye, sir. I'll let you know when that courier gets back."

"Keep me posted if anything happens."

"Aye."

The COB handed the admiral a cup of his special coffee, and the two of them stepped out the bridge hatch into the foyer by the elevator. Wallace sipped at the coffee and tried not to make a face. Goddamned COB's coffee had been known to kill junior officers just from the smell. It took a tried and true boat captain to take a real swig of it. It took a fleet admiral to take a gulp of it and not keel over. Wallace took another hit of the stuff. And then hit the elevator button.

"Seven, sir?" the COB asked. Wallace didn't even think about it. The COB knew where they were going. He just nodded in agreement.

The three times they had survived bad scrapes over the last decade or two, the first place Wallace wanted to go was to the triage and see his wounded troops. He had done that back before the Martian Exodus, during the Seppy Reservation skirmishes, and the Battle of Triton. He had done that at Kuiper Station. As long as he sat in the captain's chair, he would do it.

The door opened to the mid level just outside sickbay that had been retrofitted with a QMT pad. Before the QMTs, the casualties would be brought in by Starhawks in the hangar bays. The QMTs had made a big difference in reaction time to extract the wounded, and Wallace hoped it would reduce the number of fatalities to zero.

"Admiral on deck!" an ensign near the hatch shouted through the room.

"As you were! As you all were!" He turned and saluted the young pilot standing near the hatch. He was in Navy pilot gear, and his left arm was gone from the elbow down. It was sealed in an organogel patch. His nametag said Wheeler. "What's your call sign, pilot?"

"Tarzan, Admiral. Ensign Francis 'Tarzan' Wheeler at your service, sir."

"Glad you're with us, Tarzan. You're a Demon Dawg, right?" Wallace double-checked with Uncle Timmy before he said it.

"Yes, sir."

"It was thick out there, huh?" the COB asked.

"If you don't mind my sayin,' COB, it was thick as shit."

"Yeah, you did good, Ensign. Thanks." Wallace shook the ensign's hand and turned toward the next wounded soldier. By the insignia on his UCU top, it was an AEM. The PFC was missing his right leg from the knee down. The kid's name was Willingham. Wallace smiled at the marine and looked around the basketball court–sized triage area. This was going to take some time. He'd be there awhile, if there were no urgent calls from the bridge.

"All right, Gunny, there is floor about ten meters down. There's an elevator and a stairwell." PFC Howser shined her suit lights around the room, looking for signs of life or booby traps. She didn't see any. "Clear."

"Bates, go." Tommy told the corporal. Then he dropped in behind him. The rest of the Robots dropped in behind them.

"I've got an elevator shaft, Tommy," Bates called to him.

The room was pitch black. The explosion of Tommy's suit power core had knocked out every system in the place at that level. It had been strong enough to overload the SIF that was being projected around the control bunker. The AEMs had to keep their visors down and their QMs and IRs going. The visor and DTM displays were just as vivid as if they were standing in bright daylight on a perfectly clear day.

"I bet that ain't gonna work, Bates." The second lieutenant bounced in carefully beside Suez. "See if you can get it open."

"Yes, sir." Bates started fumbling around, trying to get a grip on the crease where the two elevator doors met. "Hell with that," he said and then kicked the shit out of it.

The door caved in, and he reached down and tore it the rest of the way off.

"Hey, look at that," Howser said. "The elevator car isn't here." She looked over the edge of the shaft and pinged it with her rangefinder. "Shit, the bottom of this thing is one hundred and fifty meters down."

"Get back, Howser," Top ordered the private. Bates and Tommy quickly dropped back from the opening, pulling their rifles up to ready.

"What gives, Gunny?" Howser asked.

"The last time we were at the bottom of an elevator shaft, we ended up in a firefight. Think about it, Howser. The elevator car is at the bottom. Elevator cars wait where they were last used until somebody presses a button somewhere else." Tommy had a feeling that the shit wasn't over for the day just yet. That was the life of a marine—always in the shit.

"What d'you think, Colonel?" Tommy asked Roberts.

"It's tight quarters, but there ain't but one way to do it," Roberts replied.

"Shit, I figured that. Looks like we'll need to be careful and climb a good eighty meters or so down. Tommy held his HVAR over the edge and pointed it down. He used the sighting-scope system to give him a zoomed view of the shaft. There was a ladder up the shaft, but it would be tough to climb in an e-suit.

"Colonel, wait. We should just get the Madira to QMT us down there," Lieutenant Nelms told him. The LT just kept giving Tommy reasons to like him.

"Fuckin' A," Bates whispered to himself.

"Second Lieutenant Nelms, that is a goddamned stellar idea," Roberts replied. "But first we'll have them send down a gas bomb or two. We don't want to damage the facility, but we may get lucky and catch them sleeping with their faceplates up. Stay alert, Robots, but chill while I set this up."

It didn't take long for Colonel Roberts to get the QMT approved. The QM sensors on the suits managed to generate enough data to create rough a map of the underground facility. At the bottom of the shaft was a very large chamber with other side chambers. The colonel decided to have the marines teleported to the center of that room.

"Okay, Robots, we're doing this from an outward-facing circle defensive posture," Top told them. "Visors down, form up." Howser, Bates, Cross, Hubbard, and Suez knelt in a circle and Top, the second lieutenant, and the colonel stood in the center back-to-back. One instant the AEMs were standing in the top-floor room of the blown-to-shit governor's mansion and the next they were in the middle of a room the size of a hangar bay. There were consoles lining the walls and equipment strewn about, but there were no signs of any kind of life.

"Fan out," the colonel ordered. "Recon. And keep those visors down—there should be plenty of residual gas floating around."

The team spread out in every direction, pinging away with sensors and being careful. They were alert, with all sensors and eyes looking for booby traps. The best they could tell, there were none. Tommy was pretty sure the place had been abandoned. That would mean that there was a QMT pad down here somewhere. He kept an eye out for that. And he was going to make damned certain to keep Bates away from any panels resembling a personnel QMT pad. The last one they found at the Battle of the Oort, Bates managed to teleport them into a room full of Seppy scientists.

"I'm getting no motion or hotspots. No bodies, either. Is anybody else getting anything?" Tommy asked.

"I've got nothing, Gunny," Howser replied.

"We're clear over here," Bates said.

"I think there must be a QMT pad down here, and they all went up to the facility or to those Seppy ships." Tommy offered his theory.

"Makes sense, Gunny," the lieutenant agreed.

"Here! I've got a pad over here, and there are lights on some of these panels, so there must be power coming from somewhere," Sergeant Hubbard announced.

"Everybody stay alert!" Top reminded them. "We make certain this place is clear before we call in the experts to start pushing buttons."

"Roger that, Top. I've got several panels and two doors here," Hubbard said.

It took another five minutes or so before Colonel Roberts and Top were convinced that the room was clear of booby traps, land mines, and assholes hiding in the closets. A generator and lights were QMTed down, and the marines went about setting it up. A couple more minutes and the place was lit up like noon, every door was opened, and there were lights placed in each exterior room. Then the experts came down. There were three of them this time, wearing their engineering armor. The highest ranking one, a CWO4, went right to work. As soon as he arrived, it was like he had seen the place before. He knew which panel to go to and which buttons to start pushing.

After a minute or two, he popped off his helmet and plugged a hardwire from the universal data port into a device that he stuck to his head behind his ear. The other two warrant officers did the same.

"We need to check this thing out," the CWO4 said. Tommy noticed that his name tag said Ransom.

"Colonel Roberts," he said. "I think we are ready to try our hand at controlling this pad. Would you and your AEMs be willing to teleport up to the counterpart to this room in orbit?"

"No problem, Mr. Ransom."

"Okay, sir. Whenever you're ready."

"Marines, circle the wagons," the colonel said as he stepped onto the middle of the pad.