One Good Soldier

July 1, 2394 AD

Sol System, Mississippi

Friday, 5:45 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

Friday, 12:45 PM, New Tharsis Standard Time

"Jack, you ready for this?" Penzington asked the mecha jock. She knew that Boland was probably revered as one of the greatest pilots in the fleet, but what they were doing was "wet work," up close and personal. She wanted to make certain that the pilot would kill up close as easily as he could through mindview targeting sights. The distance made it easier for some people, and for some it didn't matter. Nancy never trusted people who could easily kill. She just wanted them to be able to do the job when they had to.

"I'm good, Nancy." Jack slapped the ammo magazine into his HVAR and stepped on the pad with her.

"Good," Nancy said. "We'll take care of the Tangiers first. I know where Elise stays. If they are under attack, then she'll be in her safe house in the mountains. I was a member of the Tangiers inner circle for a while. I know them pretty well. I have her AIC's EM signature saved. As soon as we get near her, I'll be able to pinpoint her."

"Good. By the time you get back, I should be well enough to join you," President Moore said. He had squirreled away one of the original QMT prototype pads more than a year prior, as if he had been planning this all along. The pad was in an old abandoned airport outside Jackson, Mississippi, near where he had grown up. Nancy thought that he was a very resourceful and clever man. He would have made a good spy. He made a great marine, and not too bad a president.

"I've had my AIC train yours, Dee's, and Sehera's external AIC on the operation of the pad. All you have to do is tell them what you want, and they can get you where you need to be. We managed to put backdoors in all the QMT pads known to us. So we can operate any of them, anywhere, and bounce between the network of jump pads. From here, we can QMT through ships or Mars or out to the Oort, and from there anywhere forward and back with a snap-back algorithm. I think this must be what Ahmi was trying to figure out how to do, but she didn't have the advantage of having access to all of the QMTs everywhere. We'll see you in a bit."

"Good hunting, Nancy, DeathRay." Dee waved to them. Then the pad lit up and they were gone to Mars for a fraction of a second, then through the Oort Cloud facility to the big one at Tau Ceti.

A fraction of a second later they were in the northern mountainous region of the Tharsis continent of Ares, inside a hallway with hardwood floors and lavish interior décor. There were paintings on the walls that Nancy knew were priceless, and there were sculptures, suits of armor, and other artifacts aligned down the hall that were each artifacts of antiquity from human history.

"Look at all this shit." Jack whistled softly.

"Elise is a collector. If it is expensive, she wants two of them. You should see her antique cars." Nancy scanned each direction to get her bearings. "This way."

The two of them slipped through the halls until they came past several suites and then an elevator. The elevator had a stairwell to the right of it. Nancy eased the door to the stairwell open and poked her HVAR around the doorjamb.

"Clear. Come on. They'll be two floors down, in her shipping operations room."

"If you knew that, why didn't we go there?"

"I couldn't be sure I had the coordinates right. We didn't want to teleport into a wall or something. I had measured where we came in before because I was going to fly a bomb in there if I ever got the opportunity. I never got it. But what I did get is her SIF encryption sequence. Even though she changed it, she follows the same algorithm. Allison just cycled through the algorithm until she hit the right key code. Ergo, we're in."

"I see." Jack widened his eyes and tried not to grin. "What is this place, anyway?"

"Bunker, hideout, ski resort, spa, whatever she wants it to be. She has more money and power than God. The only person she answers to is Elle Ahmi herself. They are tight, apparently. I didn't find that out until six years ago, and it nearly got me killed then."

They quickly dropped down the stairs to the door into the operations room. There were no guards standing around that far inside the compound, because nobody could get through the layered defenses and security to that point—unless they had QMT teleport technology and the geospatial coordinate information to circumvent those layers.

Nancy motioned DeathRay forward until they came to the operations room entrance. Inside, they could hear people talking and rushing around. This would be the nerve center for the logistics tail of the Separatist army. Taking out this room and its occupants would stall the Seppies' ability to run their defense. The might of the U.S. fleet had been in-system for more than an hour and was pounding away at the mix of Seppy civilian-turned-military vessels, plus the seven Seppy supercarriers that had returned from Ross 128. The battle up top had become a stalemate. Nancy and Jack were about to change that.

Nancy, I've got a fix on Elise, Allison told her.

Where is she?

You're not going to believe this, but she is on the ski slope.

Skiing?

She's moving up the mountain at about two kilometers per hour.

Ski lift.

Probably, her AIC agreed.

Okay, calculate the jump to get us there as soon as we blow the operations room.

Done.

Wait for my order.

You got it.

"Now, Jack." Nancy motioned to him.

They burst into the room, letting loose nonstop railgun fire until nothing else moved in the room. Then Nancy pulled out an HE pack and armed it.

"Be ready, Jack."

"Like I'm not now," he said.

Now, Allison. Nancy pulled the pin on the HE and dropped it at her feet. They flashed out, and the room exploded. They reappeared atop a snowpeaked mountain behind a ski-lift shack.

"Goddamn, Nancy, you couldn't have found a colder place to go?" Jack laughed.

"Shh. Our target is getting off that lift in about sixty seconds." They hid behind the shack. There was nobody else on the peak or the slopes as far as they could see.

"You're telling me that this lady is going snow skiing while her planet is under attack?"

"She lives in a different world, Jack."

"She must."

"I've got this." Nancy leaned around the corner to see the lift seats coming up the hill. She raised her HVAR and opened the sight link in her DTM view. The targeting X appeared in her vision. She zoomed the scope and put the X right on Elise Tangiers's forehead. She breathed out softly and squeezed the trigger. She could see the back of the woman's head blow out, and then her body slumped forward.

"You got her," Jack said, looking through his sight. "Let's move on."

"Right."

Allison, Mississippi.

Done.

"Dee, you hold the fort down for now," Alexander told his daughter as he, Sehera, Thomas, Jack, and Nancy stepped onto the pad. From the QMT usage that Nancy's AIC had managed to download on their trip to Ares, she had figured out that there had been a QMT to the outer-planet moon pad that they had detected earlier. It had to be Ahmi.

"Okay, Daddy. I don't know why I can't go now, though."

"Because, dear," Sehera told her, "I don't want you around her ever again."

"Don't worry. We'll be back soon, Dee," Alexander reassured his daughter as they flashed out.

They popped into realspace on a small personnel transport QMT pad in the middle of a larger cylindrical-shaped room with a domed roof. The room was mostly transparent and looked right out into space. There was a blue-green Uranus-sized gas giant filling the horizon. There was a red, white, and blue ski mask lying next to a photograph of President Sienna Madira being sworn in on a desk nearby.

"What the hell!" Sehera said at the odd view. Elle Ahmi was sitting in a chair, staring blankly as if in a trance. She wasn't moving at all. "Ahmi! Elle Ahmi!" She poked at her with her railgun rifle.

"Ah, hello, dear," Ahmi's face gained color, and her eyes no longer looked vacant. "I figured this wasn't over with yet."

"It is now." Alexander stepped beside his wife and put the gun to Ahmi's head. "Sweep the place." He motioned to the rest of the team. They spread out and started searching the room.

"It looks clear, sir," Thomas said.

"There's a door over here, but it's locked from the inside," Jack added.

"Oh, Alexander, don't bother. I'm the only one here," Ahmi said. "So, you gonna pull that trigger or what, son?"

"We need to know the leaders of the cells, Elle," Sehera said. Tears started to form in her eyes.

"So, this is it, then. I tell you what you need to know just like that, and then you take me out?"

"Yes, something like that," Alexander told her.

Sir, her AIC is trying to hack me, Abigail warned him. He's hacking into all of us, sir.

Are you okay?

For now, sir! Allison is helping! But, sir, her AIC, is, is . . .

Abby? Abby!

Alexander slapped Ahmi upside her head with the butt of his HVAR very hard.

"Stop trying to hack my AIC! Now!"

"Mother! Tell me what I need to know. You have to help me." Sehera pushed the barrel of her rifle harder against her forehead. "Please, Mother. I can end this today! We must end this today! But we will need your help. Damnit, Mother, if you ever loved me, if you are even still in there, help us."

"Fuck this," Nancy said. "I owe this bitch." She walked over and started to put a round into Ahmi before her AIC could hack theirs. Nancy had never believed there could be an AIC stronger than hers, or even close. But this AIC was attempting to hack a top-secret AIC, a very, very brilliant one in Abigail, and a top-of-the-line mecha jock's AIC all at the same time, and doing a pretty good job of it.

"No!" Sehera turned to her. Alexander stepped in Nancy's way.

"Not yet," he said.

"Elle!" Sehera started to cry. "Sienna Madira, are you in there? Help us. Help us!"

"Alexander," Ahmi looked over at him. "You . . . I—I'm sorry I tortured you, son."

"Help us, then."

"Sehera, I love you. Copernicus, stop it! Copernicus, no! I'm in control here!" Ahmi fell forward, holding her head and screaming. Blood started to trickle from her left ear, and then it poured. "Stop it!" She rose up, lunging forward into Sehera and taking the railpistol from her daughter's side holster.

"Mother! Tell us who the Separatist cell leaders are!" Sehera pushed her away, not realizing her pistol had been taken.

"Show, unh, Dee who her grandfather was." Elle stood, held the railpistol to the side of her head, and pulled the trigger.

"No!" Alexander shouted.

Sehera stood looking over mother's body. There should have been more blood and gray matter, she thought. She knelt beside the body of the one hundred eleventh president of the United States, of the most wanted mass-murdering terrorist in human history, of her daughter's grandmother. Sehera reached out and closed her dead mother's eyes.

"You two are the White House moles!" Nancy stepped forward and swept her weapon between Alexander and Sehera. Thomas instantly turned and raised his weapon on Nancy. DeathRay looked unsure of whom to point his weapon at.

"No, we're not," Alexander said. "Sehera is just one of many victims of her mother's schemes, and I'm the White House double-agent. Ms. Nancy Marie Bloomfeld, I would think a woman playing the role of somebody else for most of her life could understand the concept."

"But you have been involved with her. Your wife is her daughter? How can we trust you?"

"Before you were even an itch in your daddy's pants, Ms. Bloomfeld, I fought this woman with every fiber of my being. I watched her slaughter, capture, torture, maim, and kill my men. She tortured me to near-death on several occasions. I swore then I'd stop her no matter what it took. And believe me, it has taken a lot."

"Still, your wife is her daughter. How can we trust you?" Nancy repeated.

Sehera answered her. "Put down your weapon, and I'll show you. Plus, I'll save your AICs." Sehera wiped tears from her face. Then she rolled her mother's head over, revealing the exit wound. Sehera reached in and wrapped her fingers around something inside her mother's skull and pulled a gray and bloody deformed mass the size of an egg out. There were clear slimy tendrils extending into her head. Sehera continued to pull until she had extracted the thing from her. Her mother's neck twisted and popped a few times as she pulled. The plastic-coated device looked more like a jellyfish than it did anything else. She tossed it on the floor next to her husband.

"What the hell is that?" Jack asked, alarmed at the sight.

"The root of mother's evil," Sehera replied. Alexander stomped a boot on the thing, shattering it to pieces. He stomped it a few more times and twisted the ball of his foot over the plastic pieces until they were nothing more than a bloody stain rubbed into the hardwood floor.

"That was a prototype top-secret super AIC from over eighty-five years ago," Moore said. "And this used to be President Sienna Madira, until that damned thing went nuts and started taking over her mind. She became Elle Ahmi after that."

"And she was my mother," Sehera continued to cry softly. "As I grew up, I saw her go through multiple personality periods and wild mood swings and amazing periods of brilliance and amoral evil. I always knew something was wrong with her, that she was more than just a terrorist. Alexander and I figured it out during the Martian Desert Campaign, while he was in the torture camps. Being a student of history, he recognized who she really was from things she said and mannerisms she had."

"And it has taken us decades to figure out how to stop her." Alexander put his hand on his wife's shoulder. "How to stop it. And the crazy damned plans twisted around other plans within plans. There was always a glitch in the plans, though. Madira was still in there and was somehow fighting to hold the AI in check. And it looks like she finally won out in the end."

"What did she mean about telling Dee who her grandfather was?" Thomas asked.

"Sehera's father was former Supreme Court Chief Justice Scotty P. Mueller, and Ahmi's partner until she killed him," Alexander said. "I guess she wants her to know who he was."

"Scotty? There was a Scotty who helped me escape on that kamikaze battle cruiser for Luna City six years ago. Was that him?" Nancy asked.

"He let you go?" Sehera asked.

"Yes, he did. If it weren't for him, I'd be dead, and that ship would've probably hit Luna City. After Ahmi and this crazy doctor tortured me, he snuck in and cut me loose," Nancy explained.

"That sounds like my father," Sehera asked.

"You're why she killed him, then. She said he had betrayed her," Moore said. "And I bet I met that crazy doctor of yours forty years ago. I'd like a few minutes alone with that sonofabitch!"

"I killed him."

"Can't think of someone who deserved it more," Moore said with disdain for Ahmi's torture expert. That sadistic bastard had needed killing.

"Wait, wait. This is all too much. You talked to Elle Ahmi after the Battle for the Oort?" Jack asked.

"Yes, I did. We had to keep stringing her along until we found out how deep her Separatists were within the government. We've kept in contact with her and acted like we were part of her plans for decades," Moore said grudgingly. "I couldn't think of a better plan, DeathRay. We had a chance to stop her entire plan, not just her. We had to stay the course. And we had also simulated the outcome of just killing her. The colonies and Mars would have been thrown into a period where warlords fought each other for bits of the power vacuum that would follow."

"I was just asking, sir."

"Jesus, I've got a top-secret super AIC in my head, throughout my body. Could that happen to me?" Nancy asked.

"We've read your file, Nancy. The technology is decades ahead of what President Madira had implanted," Moore told her. "Besides, Abby really likes Allison and assures me that she is perfectly healthy."

"Ahmi, or Madira, whoever, didn't say 'tell Dee who her grandfather was,' " Nancy said as she lowered her weapon. Apparently, she believed Alexander and Sehera—or at least wanted to give that impression.

"What?" Sehera looked up at her sharply.

"No, Allison just played it back for me in my head. She said 'show Dee who her grandfather was,' and her emphasis was on the word show." Nancy repeated the dead president.

"Abby says the same," Moore agreed.

"She never said anything or did anything without it meaning something else, or having design." Sehera rose to her feet. "She was trying to tell us something without giving it away to the AIC."

"Fan out. Look for a picture of Scotty P. Mueller," Moore ordered.

"I saw it earlier." Sehera walked over to the desk and picked up the ski mask. She held it in her hands briefly and then stuck it in her pocket. "Here it is."

She picked up the picture and examined it closer. It was in a very nice Mars cherry-tree-wood frame and covered with an antiglare pane of glass. The picture was of the newly elected Democratic president, Sienna Madira, shaking the hands of freshly congressionally approved Republican Supreme Court chief justice, Scotty P. Mueller. The chief justice had just sworn in the new president, and they were shaking hands. There was handwriting on the picture that read:

The best minds are not in government;

if they were, business would hire them away.

Thanks, Sienna Madira,

President of the

United States of America

They all examined it closely but didn't see any double meaning. Sehera rolled the frame over in her hands a few times. They looked at the back of it and noticed fingernail marks on one side of the backing. Sehera pulled the frame open, and there was a piece of silica about the size of a microscope slide inside it.

"What is that?" Thomas asked.

"Thomas, my boy, I'll just bet you that there is data on that thing. And I'll bet it is data about who is who in the Separatist organization." Alexander smiled.

"Ma'am, we hadn't heard from you in a couple of hours. We feared the worst!" U.S.R. Fleet Admiral Sterling Maximillian said. "The battle is not going well, ma'am. The Americans have decimated our fleet. We have but a couple of ships still fighting."

"Put me on a systemwide broadcast, Admiral."

"Yes, ma'am. You're on, now."

"People of the United Separatist Republic, you have all fought so bravely and made such sacrifice. I love you, each and every one, with all of my heart. But the time has come that I must ask you all to lay down your weapons and surrender. There is no longer any need for us to continue the bloodshed. Our Separatist movement has been heard in history and throughout all of humanity, from Washington, D.C. to the deserts of Mars, to the Oort Cloud of Sol, and to colonies light-years from where man first crawled out of the muck. We have made our point to all of humanity, to our brethren. It is time now for us to make our amends with them. I ask you all to stand down. Thank you, and God bless you all."

"You are clear, ma'am," Maximillian said.

"Stand down, Admiral. Ahmi out." The holoscreen blanked out, and the view of the blue-green gas giant filled the horizon again.

"How was that?" Sehera pulled her hair out of the hole in her mother's ski mask and slipped it the rest of the way off.

"Perfect." Alexander smiled at his wife. "Let's go home."