The Tau Ceti Agenda

October 31, 2388 AD

Sol System, Oort Cloud

Satuday, 5:25 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Happy Halloween, Lieutenant, and welcome aboard," Executive Officer USMC Colonel Larry "EndRun" Chekov welcomed Buckley to the flagship of the United States Navy, the U.S.S. Sienna Madira. The Madira was the pride and joy of the U.S. military might and was named for the most revered, popular, and heroic president in history. Every seaman in the service would give their right nut or ovary, whichever the case might be, to serve on her. The marine mecha pilot turned XO saluted the new main propulsion assistant as he stepped from the transport onto the deck.

"Thank you, sir," Lieutenant Joseph Buckley II said, returning the salute. The new crew members filed out of the rapid transport behind them. They had been in hyperspace for nearly eleven and a half weeks on the small crowded ship, and Joe was looking forward to the wide- open spaces of the two-kilometers-long supercarrier flagship.

"The commanding officer wants to talk with you." Chekov led Joe from the hangar deck up to the captain's office.

"Any reason why, sir?" Joe hesitated. "I mean, we just off-loaded fifty new sailors and marines. Why me, uh, sir?"

"Son, that is for the Old Man to tell you, not me." The XO nodded in the direction of the elevator and waited for the new crewman to join him. He tapped thirty-six, the doors closed, and it felt to Joe like they began moving backward. Finally, the backward motion stopped and the elevator moved upward for a few seconds.

"Have you managed to acquaint yourself with the blueprints of the ship yet?" the XO said, making small talk with the young officer.

"Yes, sir, Colonel," Joe replied nervously. Buckley wasn't sure, but he didn't think that he had done anything to warrant the CO's attention in a bad way. Hell, he had been on board the transport, cramped in with fifty other sailors so close that he could smell what kind of toothpaste they each used—and when they didn't. Those damned marines could learn a thing or two about hygiene. There was one Army tankhead that was kind of easy on the eyes, and Buckley had tried on more than one occasion to make time with her only to be shot down.

Since he hadn't been able to implement his favorite pastime with the hot tankhead, he spent his time with his other love—supercarrier propulsion. He had been able to read and reread the Naval Ship's Technical Manual and the Ship Information Book several times. He even used his direct-to-mind (DTM) link with the transport's database to do some further reading on the Sienna Madira's history and design. Occasionally he would eat and sometimes sleep, and never did he get into any mischief or even slack any duties. So he was certain that he was clean. But being singled out by the CO on the first day of duty couldn't be good. He decided that the best approach would be to just keep his mouth shut and listen.

The two men exited the elevator and then wound through the large corridors of the supercarrier's upper decks. The dull gray metal bulkheads were lit by dim red exit signs and white fluorescent lighting overhead. Several times they would go up a ladder, walk a few meters across another corridor, and then go back down a ladder, only to travel a few meters more to go back up another ladder. Eventually they reached the elevator for the command tower and made it to the CO's office.

The XO tapped on the office door and waited for the captain to look up from his papers. "Captain, Lieutenant Joseph Buckley, sir."

"Yes. Come in, Lieutenant. Thank you, Larry. The rest of the crew is being taken care of, I take it?" Captain Wallace Jefferson asked his trusted XO.

"Yes, sir. Looks like a good bunch, sir."

"Good, Larry. Carry on." Jefferson nodded at his XO and longtime friend.

"Aye, sir," Chekov answered. He nodded and winked at the captain and left Buckley standing at full attention. "Good luck, Lieutenant," he whispered with a chuckle on his way out of the CO's office.

"At ease, son." Jefferson grinned and stood from his desk, offering Joe his hand. "I just wanted to shake your hand."

"Sir?" Joe took the captain's hand and shook it firmly, more confused than anything. The captain seemed sincere, and when he began speaking, Joe immediately understood what this was all about.

"Your father was a hull tech under my command on the day the damned Seppies did their mass exodus," the captain said.

"Yes, sir. You wrote his letter, sir. I've read it many times, sir." Joe choked down a lump that was starting to well up in his throat.

"If it hadn't been for Hull Technician Third Class Joe Buckley, we might have lost the ship and the fight. He gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we could stop those bloodthirsty heathens from destroying an entire city and the millions of people in it. Your father was a hero, and I'm proud to have had him serve under my command. We would have never known of his sacrifice had his AIC not downloaded a record of his actions just before they were both incinerated. I tried to capture the feel of what he had done in the letter, but I can let you hear the final report from his AIC if you would like."

"Yes, sir. That would be nice." Buckley thought it would be nice for his grandma to hear, but more than five years had gone by, and he wasn't sure that it would really do anybody any good to bring up those memories.

"I'll have my AIC, Uncle Timmy, pass it along to your AIC. And I hope to see you do your father's memory proud."

"Thank you, sir. I'm proud to serve under your command, and I will do my best, sir."

"Well, I'm afraid there's little time to get acquainted. We're about to start an operation in a little more than an hour from now, and I'm sure we'll need you down in the Engine Room. Good luck, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir." Joe saluted the CO and thought of his father for the next several minutes as he wandered around the ship—absently trying to find his duty post.

"So the Madira will drop out of hyperspace just Solward of the Seppy outpost. We think there are frigates and battle cruisers in the area with the possibility of a hauler. Intelligence does show the area very active with Gomers. The last count showed more than a hundred Gnats and probably as many Stingers." Commander Jack "DeathRay" Boland continued with the recon portion of his premission brief to the pilots. As commander of the air group, or CAG, the pilots, all thirteen hundred or so of them, were his responsibility.

"There we will do rapid deploy and cover. I'll take the Gods of War out first in the initial ingress to the Seppy target and fly support to the Madira. Following the deploy phase, we will take this base. Poser and the rest of the Demon Dawgs will fly cover for the ground forces on the first pass deployment. I want you Dawgs sticking to your wingmen but nobody else. No, and I mean no, groups. The sky should be full of VTF-32s in random two-by-two locations covering the drop tubes so the tankheads make it down safe. There shouldn't be an arcminute of angle that I can't see an Ares-T fighter in." DeathRay paused and scanned the ready room to make certain that his orders were sinking in.

For the last four days he had wargamed this attack over and over in the advanced virtual Battle Operations and Scenarios Simulation Room at the center of the ship, which was officially known as the BOSS but more affectionately called the "Looney Bin." He had every intention that the mission should go off flawlessly. "Any enemy Gnats or Stingers you see out there, bring them down. If any other ships pop out of hyperspace on you, keep them busy. We must take this base at all costs."

"At the same time as the Dawgs are getting spaceborne, Colonel Warboys and the Warlords M3A17 drop tanks—"

"Hooah!" was interjected by one of the tank drivers. Bolan ignored it.

"—along with fifty armored environment-suit marines will be deployed on the enemy facility. The AEMs —"

"Oorah!"

"—and the tankheads will set up lines and hold them here and here. Note for you groundpounders and tankheads: space-time fluctuations around the facility show artificial gravity on the surface of about one-half Earth gravity, and there is no detectable atmosphere." At that point, two locations on the map of the Oort Cloud Separatist facility lit up in the three-dimensional display at the podium as Jack tapped them with the laser pointer.

"At the same time the lines are being formed, Deuce will have the Utopian Saviors in the FM-12 strike mecha crawling around that facility like stink on shit. Remember, we are not to destroy this construct here." Boland shined the green laser beam on a very large octagon shape with multiple towers at the limb of the planetoid facility.

The entire facility consisted of four irregular shaped Oort Cloud objects, each roughly twenty kilometers in diameter. The four icy objects were moored in the center via a large Seppy hauler starship that was about three kilometers long and one kilometer wide. The misshapen objects were stuck together with massive grids and metallic structures. The ships were moored between the four planetoids, and there were metal and composite structures crossing and zigzagging the base in a very makeshift and almost random fashion. Looking at the facility images conjured up thoughts of spliced wiring and miles of duct tape, all of it having gone horribly wrong.

Like an afterthought, or perhaps because the base was unfinished, there was a fifth, much larger, asteroid-sized planetoid about one hundred and fifty kilometers across, looming over the base on the same thousand-year orbit track around Sol. The object was only ten thousand kilometers or so from the main facility. From the surface of the facility, the asteroid would appear twice the size as the Moon does from the Earth.

It would have taken the Seppies generations to tug the asteroids together and build such a construct. Jack couldn't imagine how they had managed to conduct such a massive construction effort right under the noses of the American people. The combining structures and catwalks looked as if they were converted from Separatist battle cruisers and cargo ships.

A large octagonal structure more than ten kilometers in diameter stretched across the entire surface of the icy facility. Jack had his AIC highlight the odd construction in bright red on the image and then zoom in on it. At each vertex of the octagon, there was a tower. There were concentric octagons within it that diminished to a solid tower structure in the middle. The central tower stood more than three times taller than the ones at the periphery and stood from the middle of the hauler, extending in both directions into and out of the surface plane by about a kilometer in height.

"We believe this is the facility that enabled the Seppies to teleport from the system following the Martian Exodus. Also, recall that the existence of this facility is Top Secret and compartmentalized to this operation only. We must capture this facility intact because we need it to determine where the Seppies went and how they did it. And, since they are still guarding it, find out what they plan to do with it."

"DeathRay, you gonna give us some more substantial info on this thing, or do we just assume that it was based on Stonehenge and tinfoil hats?" one of the Army tankheads asked.

"The intel we have on this facility is that it is some sort of teleportation facility. How and why it works is above the classification of this briefing. We were cleared to show the following video." Jack gave a thought command to his AIC and a new three-dimensional movie started playing. The narration of the video first warned of the classified nature of the movie and then filled in some historical background on the Exodus.

"During the Separatist Exodus of 2383, more than thirty million people from the Sol System literally vanished into hyperspace. The majority of them left from the Separatist Reservation in the Martian desert of the Elysium Planitia and the Phlegra Montes and other less- populated regions of Mars. Some Separatist vessels that were equipped for hyperspace travel also left from Earth, the Belt mines, Kuiper Station, Triton, and Luna City. Intelligence reports from a deep-cover CIA operative, which were delivered to the Reservation in the Top Secret project code-named Bachelor Party, uncovered the only information available about the Exodus. The operative has since disappeared."

Jack thought about the last statement. He had delivered that agent himself deep into the Martian Reservation just as the Exodus was beginning. He liked what little he knew about the agent and hoped that she was still alive and well. The acknowledgment that she hadn't been heard from since the Exodus wasn't a particularly good sign.

"The information relayed to the CIA via this operative has led the Joint Chiefs, the secretary of defense, and the director of National Intelligence to the conclusion that the Separatists teleported from the Sol System to Tau Ceti nearly twelve light-years away, which is a capability that nobody had thought possible for mankind. Further analysis of the hyperspace capabilities of the Exodus fleet led to the theory that the Separatists must have escaped by known means of transport to somewhere no farther than the Oort Cloud and from there made their miraculous teleportation. Interrogations of the Separatist terrorists captured from the battles on Mars that day have corroborated the Oort Cloud theory," the narrator explained.

"After four years of searching in the deep space of the Oort Cloud nearly a light-year from Earth, reconnaissance teams have finally found a base that was heavily guarded. On several occasions, the recon teams have even monitored space traffic that literally appeared and disappeared out of nowhere over the large octagonal platform, which was built into the facility's surface structure. The vessel appearances are similar to a vessel entering through a hyperspace conduit, but there are far more gravitational and electromagnetic distortions created. This is not a typical hyperspace activity. Observe."

The video image of the facility zoomed in on the octagonal structure, and a large green and blue sphere of light began to grow, centered directly over the central tower. The sphere grew to several kilometers in diameter and looked like a giant plasma ball resting atop the tallest spire. Then the giant ball of plasma instantaneously collapsed to a flat disk of light with blue and white lightning shooting across the surface. A ripple, like waves on a pond, traveled in a circular wavefront from the center of the disk, and then a Separatist hauler and two support frigates emerged from the event horizon of the disk. As soon as the ships appeared in local space, the disk collapsed inward on itself and vanished with a final flash of white light from the center. The scene almost appeared to be a ship jaunting out of a normal hyperspace conduit—almost. Jack noticed that there were a few oohs and ahs and nodding heads around the room. He saw this as an opportunity to start back into the battle plan.

"Once we've all been deployed and are making our way toward taking this facility," Boland continued as the simulation holo started up again, "the Madira will make a second pass, deploying in mass all active battle-shift pilots. And the entire complement of Army Armored Infantry and the rest of the AEMs will be deployed. We will be putting thousands of troops on the ground. The Looney Bin sims show that at this point of the battle, we would likely be grinding down into a stalemate with the enemy force protecting the facility by digging in deep and holding a line."

"This is when Captain Walker will jaunt from hyperspace on the deep space side of the battle with the brand-new U.S.S. Anthony Blair.

They are already moving into prehyperspace position, and if how Captain Walker performed at the Exodus with the Thatcher is any sign of how her new ship and crew will function, we can expect her to bring all kinds of hell out of hyperspace with her. That hell will include Colonel Masterson's Cardiff's Killers in their FM-12s, along with two full squadrons of VTF-32s. There will also be a drop contingent of seventy-five AEMs from the Blair. If we need more, they will be in reserve on the Blair. Your AICs have further details and blue force tracking codes. There will be a shitload of mecha in the air, so watch the blue-on-blue.

"And one final thing," Jack started. He paused briefly, not certain of how he wanted to handle this next piece of business. "It has been nearly four years since there has been any real combat in this system. I know most of you are hardened with combat from before the Exodus and from that day itself, but we have all had a long time to soften up. Wargames are good but nothing like the real thing. For you rookies, pay attention to your seniors because that's why they are here. Let's keep our heads and kick some Seppy ass!"

Jack told his AIC to stop the virtual display, and the room lights illuminated to an almost annoyingly bright level. He squinted and then asked, "Army, any questions?"

"Hooah!" resounded through the room. Boland nodded in affirmation.

"Marines?"

"Oorah!"

"Navy?"

"Hooyah!"

"All right! Let's mount up then."

"All right, XO, let's mount up," Captain Sharon "Fullback" Walker ordered. She settled into her command chair and scanned the bridge crew for last-minute questions. There were none. It was a good crew. It was a good ship.

Her ship, the U.S.S. Anthony Blair, was the newest supercarrier in the U.S. space fleet and was given to the South England contingent of the Navy to replace the loss of the U.S.S. Margaret Thatcher. Captain Walker had been sitting in the command seat of the Thatcher during the Separatists' Exodus and used the ship as a battering ram to stop an enemy hauler from plummeting into the central part of Mons City on Mars. She managed to break the enemy hauler's structural integrity, causing it to fall apart on reentry into the atmosphere, while at the same time crash-landing her supercarrier onto the side of Olympus Mons. The Thatcher was rendered irreparable, but the city and its millions of occupants were saved. That was how the state of South England had lost one of its two supercarriers.

It lost the other the same day. The start of the attack on Mons City had begun by the U.S.S. Winston Churchill being sabotaged and subsequently crashing into one of the outer domes of Mons City. The Churchill had been totally destroyed with all hands, and to the present date, nobody had been able to figure out how it had been sabotaged.

The politicians in Washington, D.C., had decided that since there was little threat from the Separatist terrorists (now that they had left the system), there was no need to spend the money on new battleships. President Moore had literally threatened Congress with an executive order of police action if they didn't at least approve the appropriations to add one starship to each state that had lost one or more during the Exodus. Nobody was one hundred percent certain where the Separatists had gone, and most certainly nobody knew if they were planning to come back to the Sol System with force. President Moore had warned the public that there could be a war coming and that America had better not be caught with her pants down. In the end, he had convinced the public to put enough pressure on Congress to approve over twelve new supercarriers. Captain Walker was glad that he had because the Blair was an awesome ship and a great command.

"Flight crews and sorties are packed in and stacked up for deployment, ma'am," the XO reported to the captain. Commander Auburn Brasher tapped a few keys on her console and relayed several command thoughts to her AIC and then looked back up and nodded to Fullback. "The AEMs are sardines waiting for the drop."

"COB, how's my boat?" Fullback asked her chief of the boat.

"Good to go, ma'am. The boat is in top order, and there are no complaints from the crew other than the long hours, the shitty pay, and a goddamned slave-driving SOB of a CO." Command Master Chief Petty Officer William H. Edwards had been the COB of the Thatcher, serving under Captain Walker, and he had ridden the supercarrier all the way to the surface of Mars with her. His last-second heroic efforts to bring the power back online to several key systems of the crashing starship enabled them to save Mons City. The COB had gotten a medal for his actions: a metal crowbar that he had been attempting to use as a circuit fuse was explosively thrown through him, impaling his shoulder. After hearing of the story, several members of the bridge crew had found the same crowbar and had it bent into a heart shape and painted it purple. Captain Sharon Walker presented it to the command master chief at the decommissioning ceremony of the Thatcher. The two had a bond from that battle and were nearly inseparable. There were even rumors of a budding romance between the two of them, but nobody could substantiate them or really imagine it. The captain at just under two meters tall with her bodybuilder's frame— hence the callsign Fullback—towered over Edwards by a full head, and the COB looked like he could use some serious PT. Romance or not, that the two most certainly shared something was obvious. But the crew respected them and minded their own business.

Besides, the CMC had earned the unique relationship with the captain in combat. Sharon would allow him to speak frankly to her on most issues at most times when she might be less approachable to other members of the command crew. This relationship had actually led other officers to approach the COB when they were unsure of approaching the captain with "touchy" situations. Edwards had become Sharon's buffer zone and moat dragon.

"As it should be, Bill. Make a note to increase the beatings until morale improves. You should put yourself in for a few lashes as well." Fullback smiled, flashing her brilliant white teeth, which contrasted with her dark ebony skin.

"Aye, ma'am." The COB nodded.

Fullback took a deep breath and concentrated on the ship. Around her head was a virtual display of information about the flight and battle plans, the health of the supercarrier, and millions of other pieces of information continuously moving around her head in multicolored, three-dimensional overlays. The data came from the ship's diagnostics and battle management center and was transmitted to her by DTM link. The virtual information reached out in a sphere around her about a meter in diameter that only she could see.

Marley? she thought to her AIC.

Aye, Captain?

Are the hyperspace calculations set and ready for jaunt?

Aye, Captain.

Okay then, make the announcement.

Aye, Captain.

"General quarters! General quarters. All hands, prepare for hyperspace jaunt in one minute. Prepare for battle stations call," Marley said over the 1MC intercom.

"Boulder, you've got the second deployment group." Colonel John "Burner" Masterson, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps FM-12 strike mecha squadron Cardiff's Killers, went through last-minute strategies with his second-in-command, Marine Captain Jason "Boulder" Cordova. "Once you get thrown out of the cat field, I want you and the other twenty Killers in your group to go to bot mode and get on the ground to find cover. The rest of us will be mixing up to cover you from above and behind. Your only thoughts should be to move forward and take that damned teleporter facility as quickly as you can. Got it?"

"Maximum velocity with maximum ferocity, Burner! Got it, sir."

"Take the hill, marine. And happy Halloween," Burner added.

"Oorah, sir."

"We are gung-fucking-ho, Gunny!" Lance Corporal Tommy Suez shouted as he strapped on the shoulder harness for the ammo can on his armored e-suit. The AEMs of the Sienna Madira filled the deployment hangar and loaded the Starhawk SH-102s with gear. More than a dozen boxy armored troop carriers sat scattered about the hangar bay. Their pilots and gunners ran through systems checks and preflight planning. The marines scurried about the SH-102s with their personal armor, gear and mission-essential supplies. The gray deck plating was covered with armored crates and deployment tubes, which were filled with high-end explosives and ammo for the mission.

Suez locked his jumper boots into safe mode and attached the tether to his helmet, letting it dangle on his back next to the hyper- velocity automatic railgun (HVAR) that was strapped on there. The Seppy teleporter facility was only a few minutes away on the other side of a hyperspace conduit.

"Marines," Gunnery Sergeant Tamara McCandless shouted over the noise of the bustle for their attention. "We've got less than a half hour to get this gear strapped on and good to go. When we get the signal from our goddamned heroic flying angels that we can board these

Starhawks, I want to see it done in record fucking time! Is that understood?"

"Oorah, Gunny!" The hangar echoed with excitement and anxiety that could only be generated by the knowledge that the 3rd Armored E-suit Marines were about to be dropped into a grinder. Intel had uncovered the base and that there was Seppy activity, but there was little more than that. Nobody was quite certain how many Separatist armored troops were actually manning the facility. Some imagery had shown some Seppy mecha—Stinger transfigurable mecha like the U.S. Marine's FM-102s—and Orcus drop tanks like the U.S. Army's M3A17-Ts. The reconnaissance had also shown several squadrons of Gnat fighters and a couple of battle cruisers. So, there was nobody doubting that the base was protected. The question remained, however, as to just how protected.

Lance Corporal Suez had never seen battle before, and the pre- mission preparation was causing sweat to bead on his forehead. He didn't know if the sweat was from nerves or the fact that his e-suit temp was set too high, and he hadn't taken the premission meds. The marine ignored the salty streams for the most part unless they got in his eyes—but even then, he could only blink or shake his head. Rookie or no, the thousands of hours of training he had in the armored e-suits had removed the instinct of trying to wipe away the sweat with his hands. The armored gloves could rip his nose off if he was not careful. But Tommy was good. So good, in fact, that he'd demonstrated earlier to his fellow marines how, with the proper control of mind and body, you could unwrap a piece of Halloween candy and put it in your mouth without crushing the candy or ripping your lips off.

Tommy squinted his eyes a few times and then shook his head, flinging sweat droplets asunder.

"Goddamnit, Suez, watch where you're flinging your slimy funk!" PFC Sandy Cross cursed at him. A droplet of Suez's sweat slowly dribbled down her cheek. "That shit is just fucking nasty."

"Sorry, Private," Suez smirked, emphasizing the word "Private" with disdain. Tapping a few keys on his forearm, he adjusted the temperature of the suit to cool him down. But that would only help a little. The intimate contacting membrane in the seal layer in the suits tended to make the human body's thermal regulation go nuts if the wearer didn't have a helmet on. In some of the earliest suits, perfectly healthy soldiers had actually had heat strokes, while others had developed hypothermia. The problem had been corrected several decades prior, but the effect of not wearing the helmet while wearing the rest of the armored e-suit was still noticeable. Medication had been developed to help the body adapt to the suit, but it was used by only about fifty percent of the marines. Some didn't like the side effects of the meds, while others just accepted the profuse sweating as a badge of honor of being an AEM.

Besides, Suez knew that when he was ready to don his helmet, the suit would pressurize, and the closed thermal environment of the system would function flawlessly and quickly to correct the imbalance. The sweat would be evaporated almost instantly, but another facet of the culture for AEMs was to breathe "real" air until the last minute and then "twist your head on." Part of the reason was that when a marine was finally deployed, there was no certainty as to when they would be able to take the helmet off. Salty sweat in the eyes was a common hazard for AEMs and was a badge of honor that even rookies understood.

"Hey, Suez, give me a hand with this." Sergeant Karen Nicks grabbed one end of a two-ton ammo crate with her armored hands and heaved it off the deck plating.

"Oorah," Suez replied. He fumbled for a handhold on the crate for a second and then managed to get his gloves into the slots designed for the suits.

"Take it easy, Tommy. You need a fucking chill pill?" They hefted the two-thousand-kilogram ammo box and walked it up the ramp of one of the SH-102s. The ramp resounded with a heavy clanking sound from each step of the heavy armored suits. The large troop- mover vehicle had racks on the floor that were designed for the deployment boxes. Tommy and Karen dropped the box into the tracks with a kachunk, and the rails clicked in place. Once they were in flight and ready to jump, a cat field would toss the box out at nearly one hundred kilometers per hour, careening to the surface below. The AEMs would be jumping out right beside the supplies, and hopefully AEMs and supplies would make it to ground unharmed.

"I'm good, Sergeant. I don't like the way the meds make me have to pee."

"They don't do that to me, but I've heard horror stories of marines pissing their suits full." Karen laughed, and then scanned her DTM virtual planning screen for the next box that needed to be loaded. The sergeant pointed at another set of crates and said, "Those two next."

"No shit. It pretty much happened to me at the suit quals. I mean, hell, I know the suit can handle it, but I had to keep drinking nonstop to keep from getting dehydrated. I've never pissed so much in my life. I thought it was gonna make my equipment raw on the inside. I'd rather just sweat." Suez grinned at the sergeant, showing his white, perfect smile. Tommy's smile and stocky build could have opened doors for him as a model if he were a few inches taller, but he was a second-generation AEM. His mother had been an AEM at the end of the Desert Campaigns on Mars and was one of the few survivors. Tommy was her fourth and youngest child, but he was the only one who had followed his mother's footsteps and become a marine.

"You ever do a complete vac drop before, Nicks?" Suez inquired.

"Yeah. I was with the recon team that dropped on Kuiper Station back before the Exodus. Vacuum or not, low atmosphere is low atmosphere, and it will kill you just as quick. You did training drops on Luna, didn't you?" Staff Sergeant Nicks asked, though Suez was certain that she knew what the answer would be. No AEMs were combat- qualified without doing four full vac drops, and the training grounds were just outside the Navy base near Luna City.

"Affirmative," Suez said.

"Then you got nothing to worry about, marine, except for maybe getting your ass shot off." Nicks gave the lance corporal a quick smile. "Come on, we better get the rest of this shit loaded and battened down before Gunny rips us a new one."

Gunnery Sergeant Tamara McCandless filed her way through the sea of helmetless AEMs, Navy aviators, and gunners, and mountains of mission-essential equipment. She nodded at the smooth efficiency and preparedness of her marines. Major Roberts had a good team in the 3rd Armored E-suit Marines Forward Recon Unit, and Tamara was proud to be a part of it. She had been with Roberts' Robots since before Triton when the major was just a lieutenant. She was with him at Mons City during the Seppy Exodus, when he was a captain, and had fought hard beside him on the northwest exterior wall of the main dome against an overwhelming force of Seppy drop tanks and support troops.

She and Roberts were the first soldiers to push past the enemy and into the dome, where they found the mass murder of the civilians taking place by the few Seppy motherfuckers that had stayed behind to fight to the death. The Separatists had gone through the Martian city, herding all of the civilians into central open court locations using force fields. There had been many tens of thousands crowded into the main dome Central Park. Once it was clear to the Seppies that the Exodus was over and that they were the only ones from the Reservation left behind, they started executing the civilians with automatic railgun fire. Men, women, and children were slaughtered. Tamara saw firsthand how horrendously bloodthirsty the Seppy fuckers were, and she had every intent to stay in the AEMs and do as much to stop them as she could. She knew that the major felt the same. That one day on Mars had molded them into hardcore, Seppy-hating, life-taking, motherfucking U.S. Armored ESMs. And Tamara was proud of it.

Tamara, the major wants to see you, her AIC informed the gunnery sergeant.

Where is he, Jolly?

He's in the aft section of the hangar nearest the launch line, AI Sergeant Juliet Oscar One One Yankee Seven Mike, or Jolly, replied.

Roger that. Tamara picked up her pace and turned aft toward the end of the hangar. The red and yellow stripes painted on the deck of the catapult field launch line led her to the end of the Starhawk hangar into the launch bay. Just around the corner was a line of M3A17-T tanks in drop tubes, lined up and ready to be jettisoned. Major Ramy Roberts stood beside the lead tank, talking to a tankhead. Emblazoned on the side of the mecha was "Warlord One," and a full-bird colonel tankhead dressed in his mecha hardpoint armored g-suit leaned against it. The colonel's helmet rested on top of the tank that he was leaning against.

Who's the full bull? she asked Jolly.

That is Colonel Mason Warboys of the tank squadron known as Warboys' Warlords.

Yeah, I figured that's who it was. Heard of him. Tamara thought about it.

Hell, everybody had heard of Warboys' stand against the Seppy line outside Mons City during the Exodus. He alone had been credited with over thirty kills that day! When the tankheads and AEMs had been overrun in the desert outside Mons City, instead of running, Warboys led the charge of his Warlords headfirst into the Seppy line, where he fought them almost to a standstill, until the numbers game finally had caught up with the tankheads. Then, as any good marine knew the story, a group of FM-12 Marines—Cardiff's Killers—had to come in and save their Army asses in the nick of time.

"Tamara, are we clicking along all right?" Major Roberts asked her as she approached them. She half saluted the major who, likewise, half returned it.

"The Robots are a well-oiled, heart-breaking, life-taking machine, sir. They are gung-ho and good to fucking go," Tamara replied with a salute.

"Just what I wanted to hear, Gunny." The major turned and motioned his armored hand toward Warboys. "Gunnery Sergeant Tamara McCandless, I'd like you to meet Colonel Mason Warboys. Mason and I played football at Ohio State together." Major Roberts grinned at Tamara, and she was sure that he knew what her response would be.

"Well, sir, I'll try not to hold that against either of you." Tamara grinned and saluted Warboys, saying, "It is an honor to meet you, Colonel Warboys. You know what the only sign of near sentient life in Columbus is, uh, sir?"

"What's that, Gunny?" Warboys returned her salute and asked with a raised left eyebrow.

"It's just off Highway 33. There's a sign that says Ann Arbor three hundred kilometers."

"You got something against my Buckeyes, Gunny?"

"You see, Mason," Major Roberts interjected, "Tamara here played basketball in college."

"Is that right? Let me guess . . . ."

"Wolverine, sir!" Tamara stuck out her armored chest rigidly and laughed proudly, as any self-respecting student from Michigan would have at least some loathing and seething hatred for Ohio State grads. The two senior officers chuckled for a moment, and then Tamara quickly realized they were ready to talk business. "What can I do for you two, sirs?"

"Well, Tamara, as you know, we are to disperse on the ground with the tank squadron. What I'd like to do is for you to pick a team of recon AEMs to ride down with them." The major had a blank stare for a second as if he were reading something DTM, and then he continued. "The Warlords are likely to burst through to the target first, but they probably will not be able to sustain the location. But a small recon team could get past the enemy lines of defense and wreak havoc from the other side."

"I see, sir," she replied. "Do you have any particular team in mind to do this recon?"

"Your discretion, Sergeant, minus one. I'm going with you. But coordinate with the colonel here and get it done."

"Yes, sir." Tamara had gone to ground in a drop tube before but never one filled with a tank. Her thoughts were that it was going to be a hell of a ride. "Colonel Warboys, I hope your tankheads don't mind getting awfully cozy with a bunch of marines, sir."

"They shouldn't, Gunny, as long as you don't put anybody from Auburn in the tube with Warlord Four. We'd likely not be able to put up with the continuous shouts of 'War Eagle' and 'Roll Tide'!"

"Damn, sir, I don't think we've got anybody in the whole company from the SEC," Tamara responded with disappointment in her voice. "That might've been fun."

"Skinny, once we drop through, you six of the Saviors shag ass to the southwest apex of the octagon," Major Caroline "Deuce" Leeland explained to her second-in-command while she slipped into the organogel layer of her armored g-suit. She slid the cool pseudo-liquid garment up over her naked body, causing her to shiver slightly. But just as soon as the gel layer schurrped into place, the topical drugs and chemicals embedded in it immediately adjusted to Deuce's body temperature. A faint fluorescent hue shimmered down the length of the bodysuit. "I'll take Hawk, Beanhead, and PayDirt through the middle, and then let's work toward each other."

"Roger that, Major," Captain Connie "Skinny" Munk acknowledged, likewise pulling up her organogel bodysuit. Connie and Deuce were veterans of the Exodus and had fought hard along side their previous top pilot, "Bigguns," who had given her life in the battle to save Mons City. Skinny had actually been holding her commander and best friend in her mecha's hand when she had died. Something like that stuck in a pilot's craw, and it didn't increase her love for the Seppies.

Over the years, Deuce had moved into that top spot with the Saviors, and Skinny had moved into the number two. Both of them were very accomplished mecha pilots.

"That suit you, Captain?"

"Yes, ma'am. HoundDog, Goat and Volleyball, and Popstar and Romeo are on me. Since we ain't supposed to damage the target, I guess we just recon for things to kill?"

"They'll be flying their support out of somewhere. Find where it comes from and take it out." She snapped on the thin armor over the organogel and the compression layers and then stood straight to work the suit into place.

"Oo-fuckin'-rah, ma'am!" The marine pilot pulled the zip cord of her armored g-suit up her back and fastened it over her right shoulder. The armor healed over the zip seam and hardened, hiding any evidence of the seam. Skinny picked up her brain bucket, snapped to the tether, and let it hang over her shoulder like a backpack.

"Gung-fucking-ho, marine."