The Tau Ceti Agenda

October 31, 2388 AD

Oort Cloud

Saturday, 7:39 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"CO, CDC!"

"Go, CDC," Captain Jefferson said. "What now?"

"Sir, we're getting that same electromagnetic disturbance buildup near the rearward battle cruiser."

"Understood." Jefferson knew there was nothing he could do about it but hoped that DeathRay had a plan, somehow. The Madira was dead. The engines had taken such a beating that it was going nowhere for a long time. The CHENG had managed to divert any new power to the forward SIFs and to the DEGs, but that was failing every other minute. And any minute now, that battle cruiser was about to teleport to Earthspace and destroy Luna City.

"Captain, the Blair has tossed her load, and our fighters are all now in the mix. It's pretty even fighter-to-fighter, but with the battle cruisers and the hauler for support, that can't last long," the air boss said.

"Ground isn't much better, sir. The line is a stalemate, for now."

"All right, just hang in there people. We're just getting started." Captain Jefferson white-knuckled his chair in anger. There had to be something that could turn the tide.

"Helmsman, keep that damned Seppy rust bucket between us and that mass driver no matter what it takes," Captain Walker ordered. The Blair continued to be hammered by the hualer and the battle cruisers. The enemy forces seemed to realize that the Madira was down for the count and were focusing on the Blair instead.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Captain, the aft SIFs are at ten percent, and the forward deck SIFs are at nineteen percent. And they are dropping." The STO looked out the window at the giant Seppy ship just above them, firing at near point-blank range into the forward hull of the the supercarrier. The SIF fields rippled opalescent blue with each new hit. "I say we divert the DEGs to the SIFs and go to missiles and cannons only."

"Too close for missiles, STO," the XO warned.

"CHENG! Where is my goddamned jaunt drive?"

"Still working it, Captain. There's just too much power drain from the SIFs. We might be able to manage one jump in a minute or two, but that would put us as dead as the Madira is."

"Understood. That's better than sitting here getting the shit kicked out of us. Do it!" Fullback slapped her chair arm.

"Captain." Bill took a sip from his coffee mug.

"Yes, COB."

"This reminds me of that time on Mars where we put all the SIFs forward and rammed a hauler. That worked out, sort of."

"I seem to remember some serious casualties from that, Bill. Us included," Sharon replied.

"Yes, ma'am. But that was a hauler. There are other smaller ships around here we could ram."

"That's not a bad idea, COB," Commander Brasher replied from the XO's station. "We could ram through one of the battle cruisers and then jaunt free for a few minutes and make some repairs."

"Shit." Sharon had never wanted to use another supercarrier as a battering ram as long as she lived, but Navy captains didn't always get what they wanted.

The crackle and pop of the white light stopped and Robert's Robots, minus a few including the major, found themselves in an identical room as the one they had been in, which was filled with a giant mass driver system. But this room was full of people scurrying about operating the railgun. Most of them were extremely surprised by the sudden teleportation of a handful of Armored E-suit Marines.

"Shit! Move, Robots!" Noonez shouted. His mask dropped in place about as automatically as his HVAR pulled up and started firing.

"Look out, Pagoolas!" Sergeant Nicks pushed him to the ground behind a pallet lifter and then bounced behind one of the railgun bullets, all the while firing her rifle from the hip.

"Get the fuck down or shoot, Bates!" Tommy stood his ground firing his rifle in full auto. Yellow Xs filled his visor and his mindview, and he swept his HVAR around, spitapping rounds at every one of them. The hypervelocity automatic railgun fire streamed across the room, leaving light purple fluorescent tracks in the atmosphere where the superfast pellets ionized air molecules in their paths.

"Cover the exits, Suez!" the lieutenant shouted.

"Got it, sir!" Tommy bounced his jumpboots against the floor, tossing him across the cavernous room to the double doorway on the other side, and landed on a fleeing man in a pair of gray coveralls. He kicked the doors at the center a little too hard, and they burst off their hinges flying across the anteroom into an elevator shaft opening at the other side. There was nobody there, so he turned with his back to the doorway and kept picking targets to take out.

A few tens of seconds later and there were no Separatists kicking or screaming. The AEM unit had taken them all out. The Seppies hadn't expected a ground unit to infiltrate that deep into their facilities. Tommy ignored the carnage and went straight to work, looking over the big gun's instrument panels. Not that he was a rocket scientist. But a gun was a gun. And Tommy knew guns.

"Where are we?" PFC Bates asked.

"My guess would be the moon planetoid. That's where the computer said all the crew for the mass drivers had gone. They must've used that miniature version of the big teleporter like we just did. Wonder why they only have one crew for two guns?"

"Maybe it was the other crew's day off." Bates grinned.

"Pagoolas!" Sergeant Nicks shouted. "How many goddamned fucking times have I told you not to go around fucking with shit that you had no clue about? Who told you to push that goddamned button?"

"Uh, I don't know, Sergeant."

"When we get home, we're gonna have a motherfucking talk!"

"LT. Check it out. This thing is charged and locked on to the Blair, but the Blair is hiding behind that Seppy hauler." Tommy pointed to the sensor flatscreen above the joystick console. The sensors were zoomed on the supercarrier, but there was no way to get a clear shot at it. The captain of the Blair was clever.

"Can you unlock it from the Blair and lock on to a different target, Tommy?"

Yes, we can, his AIC responded.

How?

It was in the data we hacked from below. This is basically a user's manual. Here, I'll walk you through it.

"Uh, my AIC says we can, LT."

"Then do it!"

Tommy stood at the console, carefully touching buttons with a single finger as lightly as he possibly could. His armored hand was twice the size of a normal hand and therefore made the task a bit clumsier. A few minutes of tapping buttons and turning keys unlocked the target acquisition system. At that point, his AIC took control and put the targeting display in his DTM and virtual control system.

"Okay, sir. I've got control of it. Target the hauler first?" Tommy stood still in his suit, watching the battlefield through the railgun's sensor system in his mindview. The hauler looked like it was right in front of him, as if he could reach out and touch it.

"Sounds good to me, Lance Corporal Suez. Fire at will."

"Yes, sir. I don't know who Will is, but if he's on that hauler, he's about to have a bad fucking day." Tommy toggled the virtual fire command.

The room whined with the hum of thousands of repulsor fields firing at once. There was a short whoosh of air rushing upward, and out of the tunnel, the metal rails tracked up. Almost immediately following, there was a rapid flash of light against the hull of the Seppy hauler.

"These bars here show the charging of the power banks. They're red because we just fired. When they are green, we can fire again. My AIC says that will take about thirty-one seconds." Tommy pointed out the controls to the rest of the AEMs with a smile.

"Yes! Marines with a big fucking gun!" Pagoolas cheered. "Oo- fuckin'-rah!"

The conveyor kicked on, loading another one of the large metal blocks forward and into place at the bottom of the two-beam metal rails. An automated giant lifter pad loaded it from the conveyor upward into the hole in the ceiling.

"The thing seems mostly automated. I wonder what all those damned Seppies were doing," Bates asked.

"Goldbricking," Pagoolas replied.

"Probably maintenance. Big things like this got to need a lot of spit- polish and jiffy-lube," the lieutenant put it plainly. "Tommy, keep at it. Hammer those motherfuckers into oblivion. I'd better call this in to the major."

"Hold it, Tamara . . . . Yes, Johnny?" Major Roberts held a finger up to Gunny to be quiet. They had been sitting patiently watching the control room topside for several minutes. It had been fairly uneventful once they had left they hangar. "You're fucking where? Uh huh. That is fucking outstanding, marine. We better patch this through up top. Hold on."

"They did what?" Captain Jefferson shook his head in surprise.

"Yes, sir. The Seppies fired the mass driver at the hauler. It was a direct hit. It looks like a large section of the forward section was blown completely out." The STO was just as amazed by the outcome as anybody else.

"Well, damned if that wasn't helpful," the XO replied.

"What the hell would they do that for?" the STO asked.

"CO?"

"Go, Ground Boss."

"I've got Lieutenant Johnny Noonez from Roberts' Robots on the horn. He says that he and his recon unit have commandeered the mass driver on the moon and, sir, he's asking if it is okay to keep firing," the ground boss said with a smile.

"Your goddamned right it is! Tell him to immediately target the straggling battle cruiser! Now!" Captain Wallace orderd over the cheers on the bridge.

"How the hell did they get up there?" the COB asked, looking out the viewer at the small planetoid moon more than ten thousand kilometers away.

"Who gives a damn, Charlie? They're up there. Let's use 'em," the XO replied.

"You heard me, Tommy. That battle cruiser right now," the lieutenant ordered, pointing his gray armored finger at the formation- lagging battle cruiser on the flatscreen view.

"Yes, sir." Tommy put the yellow X over the battle cruiser and locked it on. The X turned red. He waited patiently for the yellow bars on the charger graphic to turn green.

"Look! It's about to teleport," Nicks said.

The final bar went green, and Tommy depressed the trigger.