One Good Soldier

July 1, 2394 AD

Sol System, Oort Cloud

Friday, 2:41 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Tommy, why don't you try this on for size?" First Sergeant Tamara McCandless handed the soldier a new insignia patch as they made their way down the corridor heading to the drop-tube hangar bay. All the AEMs had been ordered to battlestations. "Congratulations, Gunnery Sergeant Tommy Suez."

"Thanks, Top." Tamara watched as he pulled the staff sergeant patch from his shoulder and stuck it in his pocket. He smiled thinly as he slapped the new rank insignia onto the shoulder of his UCU top. The patch melded with the fabric and then became seamless with the shirt. "Now I'm making the big bucks," he said with a laugh.

"You and me both, Tommy," Tamara agreed.

"Any idea what is going on?" Tommy asked.

"Yes, the Ross 128 colony just seceded from the Union, and we're going to stop them," Tamara replied with a calm, matter-of-fact tone to her voice. She didn't want to excite her new gunny.

"Holy shit! The president's daughter just went there." Suez had briefly met her before she got all tangled up with the mecha jocks earlier in the day. He had followed Colonel Roberts' orders and went down to the hangar bay to meet the dignitary. He even got her autograph. Suez was a full-blooded true marine through and through, but he was also a Republican at heart. It had been a big thrill for him.

"You would imagine that the most powerful man in the known galaxy would get a little pissed if his daughter were put in harm's way." Tamara hadn't thought of that until now. She had been so busy all morning that she hadn't had any time to think of the dignitary visitor. But the President's daughter was trapped at Ross 128. She hoped somebody was going to go get her.

"Are we going to get her?"

"No, Gunny. We are going to take the QMT facility, transition it to a reserve team, and then drop to the planet below and take it." At least that was how the colonel had described their mission.

About that time a young-looking Marine officer in UCUs rounded the corner in a hurry, headed in the opposite direction. He was the new second lieutenant the Robots were expecting. Tamara and Tommy stepped aside and saluted as he walked by; the new gunnery sergeant gave his best salute to the new second-ranking officer of the Robots.

"Excuse me." Second Lieutenant Zachary Nelms nodded and kept on his way, not returning the salute. He looked very preoccupied to Tamara, but she didn't give a shit. The second lieutenant continued on in the other direction as Tamara and Tommy stood there holding their salutes and looking shunned. Tamara could see that Suez wasn't sure what to do in response, and, in fact, he was probably feeling a bit belittled by the lack of gesture. There were varying protocols for indoor and outdoor salutes, and there had been protocols for them on naval vessels throughout history. But with the advent of mixed forces on the mammoth supercarriers, the philosophy or rule of thumb of "when in doubt, whip it out" had become the standard for saluting. It was a form of showing respect. And Suez and McCandless had just been disrespected.

"Well, that goddamned little shit," Tamara fumed. "Excuse me a moment, Tommy," she told Suez and headed back down the corridor after the young officer.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant, I'd like a moment of your time," Tamara said as she hurried up beside the second lieutenant and looked down at him. She was nearly two meters tall and athletic as hell. She had played both basketball and volleyball in college and probably could have gone pro. She might still after she retired and got her next rejuv, but for now she was happy being the SNCO of Colonel Ramy's Robots of the U.S. Marine Corp 3rd Armored E-suit Marines Forward Recon Unit. She was tall, muscular, and a trained heartbreaker and life-taker. Intimidating would be a good word to describe her.

"Not now, First Sergeant, I'm in hurry," he replied.

Oh, no, he didn't, Tamara thought.

"Well, sir, then I'll walk with you, but you are going to hear what I have to say, sir," Tamara said sharply and right to the goddamned point. Goddamn fresh-outs, she thought.

"All right, First Sergeant, uh, McCandless." He looked at her name tag as if making a mental note to report her later to the CO of the Robots.

"Well, sir, what do you see as the role of senior NCOs, sir?"

"The NCOs are to keep my marines and their equipment functioning as a well-oiled heartbreaking and life-taking machine," the second lieutenant said with a whole lot more than just a hint of annoyance in his voice. He almost sounded perturbed to Tamara. She didn't give a flying rat's ass.

"Yes, sir. That is half of the NCO's job. The other half of it is to act as an experienced advisor and mentor to junior officers, sir. You are a second lieutenant, sir, and have been active duty at best not even a year, sir. Most of the NCOs will have been in service for several years and even decades. Myself, I've been in twenty-one years, and Gunnery Sergeant Suez back there has eight years in, sir. I served at the exodus on the ground at Mons City at the battle for the main dome and at the Battle of the Oort. Gunnery Sergeant Suez back there was absolutely key in the victory at the Battle of the Oort. Saluting is a common courtesy and a show of mutual respect, sir. Mutual respect. And not saluting is a damned piss-poor way to slap the face of an enlisted person, whom you've never met and don't know from Adam, sir. Now, I'm most definitely not saying this out of vanity or need for you to salute me or to toot my own horn, sir. I'm saying this as your first mentoring session. We are about to stick our goddamned heads into the mouth of the lion in a matter of minutes, Lieutenant, and you sure as shit don't want to start off by letting your soldiers think that you think you are above the common courtesy of saluting seasoned veterans of the United States Marine Corps, Sir!" Tamara gave the second lieutenant her best drill-sergeant glare and half expected him to jump down her throat and go tattle to the colonel. But the young officer's facial expression changed in a way that she didn't expect. And he stopped walking toward the elevator.

"Thank you, First Sergeant McCandless for pointing that out to me," he said and turned the other way in an even bigger hurry.

"Huh?" she said, surprised. What, no argument? That just takes all the fun out of this.

Maybe he's a good marine and just needed that lesson, her AIC added.

Well, his file looked good. And the colonel handpicked him out of his class.

Tamara followed him back down the corridor but stayed far enough back to not look like she was following him. She simply kept him in view. Then the young lieutenant did the damndest thing. He chased Gunnery Sergeant Tommy Suez down and apologized to him. Then he shook his hand. And then he saluted him as crisply as any marine could.

Oorah, she thought.

Indeed, her AIC added.

Better send a note to the colonel that the new lieutenant and I had a run-in so it doesn't blindside him if he complains.

Affirmative. Memo sent, First Sergeant. I bet he never brings it up. Might be too embarrassing for him. The colonel is talking to Colonel Warboys, and they have worked out a sketch of a battleplan. He says to get the Robots ready and to quit harassing his new officers. I'm DTMing you the battleplan now.

I see it. Looks awful familiar to me, Tamara thought.

Reminds me of six years ago when we took another QMT facility, the AIC said.

Yeah, and it was a meat grinder then.

"Again, thank you, First Sergeant. Feel free to keep those mentoring sessions coming." The second lieutenant hurried back by her, and she saluted him as he passed. Second Lieutenant Zachary Nelms stopped and returned the salute.

Now we better get our asses in gear. Tamara hurried back in the direction of the hangar bay to catch up with Suez and the rest of the Robots.

"What was that all about?" Tommy asked her.

"Just breaking in the new LT," she replied. "Tommy, get the Robots on line and ready to drop with the Warlords. The colonel is talking to Colonel Warboys right now about our strategy, but we will be dropped on the QMT facility with them, and our mission is to take back that pad. Assuming all that goes well, then we'll most likely be teleported to the planet to hold or take some ground there. We go in hot and loaded with everything we can carry. Got it?"

"Got it."

"All right, all right, let's listen up," Lieutenant Colonel Caroline "Deuce" Leeland shouted from the nose of her FM-12 mecha. She stood there above all the pilots assembled in the aft cat room. Marine and Navy mecha filled the room as far as the eye could see hundreds of meters in either direction and several mecha deep above them. The floor was filled with pilots surrounding her plane. Behind them techs and robots scurried about, loading planes with missiles and ammo and recharging or repairing some component at the last minute. "We have about fifteen minutes before we deploy. Fish!"

"Hooyay!" Lieutenant Commander Karen "Fish" Fisher—DeathRay's wingman—shouted.

"You have the Gods of War. Your mission is to protect the ball with the Madira in the center," Deuce told Fish, meaning that the plan was for the Gods of War to protect a sphere around the supercarrier and keep enemy planes off the hull of the ship.

"Roger that, Deuce!" Fish shouted.

"Poser!"

"Hooyay!" the Navy commander shouted back.

"You take the Demon Dawgs to the bottom half of the ball and keep any resistance off the Utopian Saviors as we go to ground on the QMT facility. Keep those Seppie bastards in the ball and off the ground, got it?"

"Affirmative, Deuce!"

"Okay, Saviors, we are to create a bowl over the Warlords and protect those Army pukes. The Warlords are gonna take a squad of AEMs through enemy lines and take the control room of that facility. Make certain that those AEMs get there, got it?" Deuce shouted.

"Oorah!" was the response from the Marine mecha jocks of the Utopian Saviors.

"The other flight groups are deploying after us and will take on any target of opportunity. Once we have the QMT facility secured, we will then turn our attention to taking and holding that planet." Deuce pulled the zipper tab of her flight suit up and slipped her helmet on with a twisting motion. "All right then, let's mount the fuck up and get it done!"

DeathRay had decided that his best plan of action would be to go through the teleport already deployed from the supercarrier with the hope of slipping off without being noticed. Hopefully, the supercarrier, the flight wings, the drop tanks, the AEMs, and the AAIs would distract the Arcadians enough to not notice one lone Ares-T fighter. Theoretically, Dee's AIC would be broadcasting a QM signal that would in turn enable him to locate her. The signal was spread spectrum on an encoded hopping frequency that wouldn't be detectable without the key code. It would look like noise otherwise. But Jack, Candis actually, had the key code, so he would know where Dee was. That is, assuming that Dee was still in the Ross 128 star system. The beacon only had a range of probably a light-year at best. If Jack didn't find her at Ross 128, he would go to Tau Ceti next. Somehow.

DeathRay had devised—thrown together at the last fucking minute, actually—a plan, and that plan was to rocket in at maximum speed to whereever the hell Dee was, kill everybody around her, and get her the fuck out. Okay, it wasn't a very detailed plan, but DeathRay was good at making up shit as he went along, especially when it came to blowing stuff up. He had two personal QMT projector devices on his wrist. The jump coordinates had been set for the Oval Office. As soon as he managed to grab Dee, he planned to trigger the teleporters, and then the two of them would be out of the shit and safe in Washington, D.C. The trick was going to be finding Dee and probably killing a whole bunch of Seppies along the way. DeathRay worked his mind around what he was about to do. Not just anybody would be crazy enough to put themselves in such situations.

So here he went again into the shit. After six years of uneasy peace, it looked like the time he had been expecting soon had finally come. It was time for war with the Separatists, and all bravado aside, they didn't call him DeathRay for nothing. He was good at war. He hated it with a passion, but he was good at it. Jack and two crew chiefs had loaded his fighter with every piece of gear, sensors, hand-to-hand, and survival equipment that he could squeeze in. He had originally considered taking a trainer, but with the QMT personal projection device, he wouldn't be needing to fly Dee out. He crawled into his fighter off the ladder and sat down.

"Good hunting, DeathRay!" The deck chief in a red shirt snapped a salute from the top of the mecha-support scaffold. He didn't say a thing about all the firearms, grenades, knives, and other weapons stowed in the webbing of DeathRay's armored flight suit. Jack's mission was classified, and the chief knew better than to ask a bunch of questions. He just did his red-shirt chief job, which was to make sure the plane's ordnance was loaded and in proper functioning status. He did make one final comment. "Sir, hope you get to eat that bear you plan on scrapping with, and not the other way around."

"Roger that, Chief. Me, too. I could use a new rug for my quarters." Jack saluted back, and the chief quickly climbed down and was joined by a purple shirt and a fireman in orange coveralls with blue kneepads. They unhooked the power and com umbilicals then moved clear of the launching pad.

Jack locked his helmet and then settled into the cockpit—the one place he felt most at home. He felt the familiar hiss of the cool, dry air rushing into his suit as he plugged the hardwire connection from the universal docking port (UDP) of his fighter into the thin little rugged composite box on the left side of his helmet, which made a direct electrical connection to his AIC implant via skin-contact sensors in his helmet.

"Hardwire UDP is connected and operational. Lieutenant Commander Candis Three Zero Seven Two Four Niner Niner Niner Six ready for duty," Jack's AIC announced over the open com channel and in the cockpit speakers. Then directly to Jack's mind, Let's go get 'em, Captain!

Roger that, Candis!

Jack saluted the yellow-shirt flight-deck officer and started the take-off process. The canopy cycled down and the harness holding the fighter dropped it the last twenty centimeters to the deck. Jack both loved and hated the squishing feel from the landing-gear suspension, because it always reminded him of what he was about to do. He hated the lump in his throat and butterflies in his stomach that had become his natural reflex to the landing-gear squish. Too many times in the past it had meant hurtling out the ass end of the supercarrier into a storm of raining and streaking hell flying from all directions. But there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

Jack swallowed the lump, ignored the butterflies, and followed the launch sequence, as he had hundreds of times before. The green arrows on the deck lit up and pointed the taxiway directions for him to follow to the cat line. He moved his fighter in line for takeoff. He was presently the only one taking off before the QMT teleport of the supercarrier, but he was pressed for time. The jump was expected in just a couple of minutes. Jack caught a glimpse of his wingman, Fish, to his left. She saluted him, and he returned it. He hated leaving her alone. She was talking to Ensign Zeke "Dragon" Franklin. He was new to the Gods of War, and it looked like Fish was going to take him on her wing.

"This is double zero," Jack called over the tac-net to all the pilots in the hangar getting ready to go as well. "This is probably gonna be a mess of a furball, folks, and I want everyone covering their wings and following the plan as usual. Y'all listen to Deuce. Good hunting and good luck." He thought his faceplate down and pulled his mouthpiece closer with his teeth. His DTM mindview kicked in, but he ignored it for now.

"Fighter zero-zero call sign DeathRay, you are cleared for egress. Good hunting, Commander Boland!" the control-tower officer radioed. "Handing off to cat control."

"Roger that, tower." Jack went through his ritual as he had since the first actual combat mission that he'd come back from. "Y'all just keep the beer cold, and good ol' DeathRay will be back soon enough." Jack taxied to the "at bat" slot and braced himself for the "ball," chewing at the bite block and soaking in the fresh oxygen and stimulants.

"Fighter double zero, you are at bat and go for cat! Call the ball."

"Roger cat, double zero has the ball," Boland responded. The little gold catapult field alignment sphere blinked on in his DTM view, overlaying the projected launch window circle in the cat field before his fighter. He sighed a deep breath and focused on relaxing his body from head to toe. He closed his eyes for a split second as he prepared himself.

"Good hunting, DeathRay!" the catapult-field AI announced. Jack throttled the Ares-T forward and switched to hover as the landing gear cycled and extracted. It was always the same when he knew it was a real fight. He was nervous. He bit down hard on the temporomandibular-joint mouthpiece and eased the throttle just a little more forward so that the fighter slipped into the catapult field.

"Roger that. Double zero has the cat! WHOOO! HOOO!" Jack let out his ritual battle yell, and as usual it was muffled through the mouthpiece. The support tube for the bite block started pumping oxygen and stimulants in his face and mouth more rapidly to account for the g-load of the cat field. At over twelve Earth gravities of acceleration, for a brief instant the cats always gave Jack the exhilaration of being on one hell of a ride.

The stars filled his field of view, and the Oort facility was behind him. He pulled his fighter over and looped back along the same vector as the Madira but above it relative to the QMT pad. He pulled into a matching hover orbit about two kilometers above the bridge of the supercarrier. The plan was to QMT in at about a thousand kilometers from the Arcadian QMT facility, and then the supercarrier would accelerate across it dropping troops, tubes, and mecha. Jack would be scanning with his sensors and with his AIC's wireless QM transceiver for Dee. Hopefully, he would find her.

"CO Madira, DeathRay," he called over the net.

"Go DeathRay," RADM Jefferson's voice responded.

"I'm in position, Admiral. Whenever you're ready, sir."

"Roger that, DeathRay. And Jack?"

"Sir?"

"Good luck."

"Thank you. You, too, sir. DeathRay out."