One Good Soldier s-3

by Travis S. Taylor

  Then suddenly she was thrown back and forth from incoming cannon fire—the goddamned Gnat that she had missed had managed to stay on her through all the shit. The armor and the SIFs held as Deuce shook the previous second's mess out of her mind and accepted her current predicament. That was what mecha pilots had to do. Forget the past and watch the present.

  She had a Seppy Gnat trying to lock her up as she was climbing up into the gray area between the supercarrier's bowl and the bigger engagement ball. The enemy version of the Navy Ares fighter barrel-rolled around her trajectory line, trying to get a good shot at her. And she had pulled so far away from her wingman that there was no way he would get to her in time to help. She was on her own.

  Deuce pulled the HOTAS back to her stomach and pushed full throttle forward, sending the FM-12 into a full-speed high g-load dive toward the enemy supercarrier and back into the bowl. She left her stomach somewhere at the top of her direction reversal, and she had to choke the bile back down as best she could. Her suit soaked up the rest fairly quickly. She managed the vector reversal just in time, as she was about to slip into a swarm of Gnats and Ares-Ts going at it above her.

  She recognized several friendlies whizzing by as she pressed downward into her dive. A U.S. Navy Ares-T in bot mode passed by her so close she could read the pilot's helmet. It said "Poser."

  "Watch out, Marine! You've got a Gomer on your six!" Poser warned her.

  "I see him, Poser!" Deuce replied. She pushed down on the right foot pedal and pulled up on the left one, throwing a hard yaw into her flight path so she could target with her DEG as well as her cannons. She was flying backward and upside down, facing the Seppy fighter accelerating into her flight path. She rolled the nose around, trying to keep the enemy in view. No matter what she did, she couldn't seem to lock up the bastard.

  "Warning, enemy targeting radar detected. Warning, enemy targeting radar detected," her Bitchin' Betty warned her. The cannon tracers flying by her in every direction were a bit of a hint as well.

  There he is, Deuce! her AIC alerted her, already downloading the vector to her DTM.

  Got it! Deuce yawed another thirty degrees and pitched up. Her missile-guidance sensor sounded a tone, and the yellow X in her mind turned red.

  "Warning, enemy targeting lock imminent. Warning, enemy targeting lock imminent."

  "Fox three!" Deuce shouted. "Not any fucking more! Aaaaaahh, woo, hoo!" She grunted through the bone-crushing maneuver, trying to force more blood and oxygen back into her brain. The missile flew out from under her wing toward the enemy fighter and into the thing's cockpit. Just before the missile hit, the canopy blew and the ejection seat launched into space. The Seppy Gnat exploded into a white and orange fireball, almost engulfing its pilot.

  Great shot, Deuce!

  Let's get back on the deck. Deuce toggled to fighter mode and corrected her flight path back into a strafing dive toward the enemy supercarrier's hull.

  "Goat, where the hell are you?" she shouted out to her wingman as she pulled up over the hull of the ship. Her DTM mindview showed him close by, bouncing on the deck, but she couldn't find him visually.

  "Great flying, boss. Now see if you can help me get this Stinger off my ass!"

  "Roger that, Goat. I see 'im!" Deuce increased her acceleration to the deck until she reached the point that she wouldn't be able to flare out of the dive if she didn't back off. "Guns, guns, guns!"

  Tracer rounds tracked out of the cannons and pounded against the SIF-reinforced hull of the Seppy supercarrier on either side of the enemy Stinger. The enemy fighter was in bot mode and chasing Goat around and about the hull. Goat was diving for cover as best he could and running about trying to stay ahead of his pursuer. Deuce kept pouring the rounds into the deck at the enemy bot but couldn't lock up on him. Her speed was such that she was going to overtake the bot and Goat in about two seconds. She'd have to bleed off most of her speed in order to get behind the enemy Stinger.

  "Goat! Go to eagle mode now and pull out at full throttle!" She hoped the Stinger would take the bait. The Stinger's cannons started tracking at Deuce and firing.

  "Warning, enemy targeting radar detected! Warning, enemy targeting radar detected!"

  "Hell!" Deuce rolled about her flight path, still holding the trigger of her guns. She caught a glimpse of Goat's mecha launching from the hull out and up, away from the enemy bot. The enemy transfigured to fighter and took off after him while still firing its topside cannons backward at Deuce.

  She rolled around and around the firing solution of the rearward cannon fire, taking a few tracers into her nose plating. Her armor and SIFs held. As Goat screamed away and the enemy pursued hot on his tail, it pulled their vectors out in front of Deuce's really hot approach. She pulled the throttle full back, slamming her forward into her restraints.

  "Unh! Goddamned fuck!" she screamed at the negative g-load. "Faster, Goat! Faster!"

  Deuce continued to roll and adjust her trajectory so as not to overshoot the enemy fighter. She managed to control her kinetic energy just enough that she pulled up right on top of the Stinger. As she rolled cockpit toward the enemy fighter, she could see him looking up at her only meters away. The two of them bounced around each other several times, the Stinger in fighter mode and Deuce's FM-12 in eagle mode.

  "Fuck this," she muttered. Deuce pulled out away from the enemy fighter far enough to roll one hundred and eight degrees over, putting her eagle-mode talons and hands toward the enemy fighter. She stomped at the cockpit with her claws and gripped them. The two mecha locked together and pitched forward madly. The nose of Deuce's mecha slammed into the empennage of the enemy fighter. Then she used her right fist and punched it through the armor of the fighter repeatedly until she hit the power core. Finally, the cockpit tore free, and she spun off of the fighter, still gripping it in her talons. Sparks and air vented from the enemy plane, and then the ejection seat blew just as the fighter exploded from within, throwing the wings off in two different directions. One of the wings ricocheted off her canopy but did no damage she could detect.

  "Savior Team One, we have got to get our focus back on to those SIF generators!" She straightened out her flight path and pulled her trajectory back around to the supercarrier. "Jawbone, Popstar? You with me?"

  "Roger that, Deuce," Jawbone replied.

  "I'm on Jaw's wing," Popstar added.

  "Good. Goat, wing up with me, and let's get back down there and get those damned SIFs knocked out!"

  Other than the enemy supercarrier and the hauler that the fleet ships had managed to knock out of commission at the start, the battle had not gone that great. The Roosevelt and the Madira had managed to catch one of the supercarriers in a cross fire just above the QMT facility and did overtax that ship's SIFs and armor briefly. The sensors had shown that they were ablating the hull and that atmosphere was venting from the enemy ship into space. Then RADM Wallace Jefferson realized that the damned Seppy bastards were pulling the same trick on him. The lone ship advancing on them from the rear was just bait.

  As soon as the Madira and the Roosevelt pulled away from the Lincoln and Tyler, three enemy battle cruiser–class ships jaunted into position, splitting the fleet into two groups. Now they were in a mix of two enemy supercarriers at thirty-thousand kilometers altitude above the planet in non-Keplerian hover orbits. Just above them were the Lincoln and the Tyler. Above the Lincoln and Tyler were the three enemy battle cruisers that had just jaunted into position. Then came the Madira, with the QMT facility off to starboard. Above the Madira was another enemy supercarrier, and beyond that enemy ship was the Roosevelt. There were still two battle cruisers, a supercarrier, and one hauler that the enemy was holding in reserve, way out around two hundred and fifty kilometers or so. Wallace wasn't quite sure why they were waiting to swoop in for the kill. But at the moment he had too much on his mind to worry about the ships that were not engaging him and the fleet.

  "CO! CHENG!"

  "Go, CHENG!" the admiral answer
ed from his captain's chair. The Madira was rocking left and right and up and down from the overwhelming punishment she was taking. Wally kept his seat belt pulled tight against his midsection.

  "Admiral! We're gonna lose the SIF generators in three minutes if this pounding continues. They just can't take it any longer," Commander Joe Buckley Jr. warned him.

  "Keep them running, Joe! If those SIFs go out, we'll get boarded for certain!" the admiral ordered. He turned to his executive officer off-mike. "XO, better get marines stationed at all critical systems of the ship, and I want everybody carrying a sidearm or an HVAR."

  "Aye, sir." The XO turned and started sending orders to onboard security details.

  "Sorry, sir," the CHENG continued. "There will be nothing we can do unless we can jaunt out of here and cool off for a few minutes. The DEGs and AA systems are running full bore and have taxed the coolant systems to the max. Which would you rather lose first, sir, the SIFs or the DEGs or the AA guns?"

  "I don't want to lose any of 'em, CHENG! Figure it out!" the admiral ordered his new chief engineer.

  "Yes, sir. But I just wanted to advise you, sir, that if the SIFs go, everything is gonna go quickly, sir!" Commander Buckley's voice sounded pretty certain. Wallace was fairly good at determining if his officers were exaggerating a situation due to fear, and he didn't think Joe was that type of officer. Hell, he knew Buckley wasn't. The kid had already damned near killed himself to protect the ship. Wallace figured he'd better take his advice.

  "Very well, CHENG." Wallace thought for a second or two, trying to figure out what tactic to take. "Keep at it, Joe."

  "CO!" the ground boss called for his attention.

  "Go, James."

  "Sir, we desperately need to get some air support dirtside. Our tanks and AEMs are taking a pounding. The Robots, the Warlords, and the entire AAI battalion are constantly calling for support, sir. Casualty rates are growing beyond acceptable rates, sir." The one-star Army general also sounded certain that things were getting rough downstairs. This battleplan wasn't working worth a damn, and Wallace knew he needed to make a change in his tactics quickly or shit was going to get even worse.

  "Admiral, this might be a good time to do a strafing run and turn this damned space ball into a bowl," the XO suggested.

  "Air Boss concurs with the XO on that, Admiral!"

  As it stood, the battle was filling a three-dimensional sphere or "ball," and it was a common trick for fighter pilots to pull a fight down close to the surface of a ship or planet to take out half of the sphere, turning it into an upside-down bowl. That way bad things couldn't sneak up from underneath. Well, there were mountains, AA fire, and such, but another fighter couldn't get under you if you were hugging the surface. Another good aspect of going to the atmosphere would be that Seppy haulers were no good there. That would limit at least one of the ships that hadn't attacked them from way out in deep orbit yet. Since the other Seppy ships seemed to perform as well or better than the U.S. supercarriers, Wally had no choice but to assume they operated in atmosphere just as well.

  "I think you're all correct." Wallace studied the mindview battlescape closely and then sighed. "I hate running from a fight just to get into another one."

  "Yes, sir," the XO grunted. "We'll get back to them in good time. Or, hell, sir, they'll probably just follow us any damned way."

  "Nav! Prepare for treetop strafing runs on the enemy positions near the governor's mansion. Gunnery Officer Hall, I want you taking hell to those enemy tank lines!"

  "Aye, sir!"

  "Fleet, this is the Madira! Pull out of the current engagement, and let's put this battle near the surface. If the Seppy bastards want to fight us, they'll have to come down to the atmosphere and do it. I want all ships to jaunt out of this fight in two minutes, to these coordinates. Starting now, I want all ships running the QMT site-to-site algorithm teleporting the fighter squadrons to twenty kilometers above the engagement zone below. If we haven't finished teleporting all the fighters, we still jaunt and will take back up the QMT effort as soon as we materialize back into normal space." He DTMed his battle plan to the other Navy supercarrier captains. "Once we are out of the fray and in normal space, we'll lick our wounds for two minutes, and then we hit the deck, blasting away. All fighter squadrons are to take it to the Seppy line in standard layered protection zones and cover the groundpounders and our strafing runs. Air bosses will be sending our flight plan soon."

  "All hands, all hands, prepare for hyperspace jaunt in ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . ."

  Chapter 24

  July 1, 2394 AD

  Tau Ceti, QMT Facility

  Friday, 3:42 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  "I never thought I'd see you again, Penzington!" DeathRay was so glad to finally do the twist and pull, taking his helmet off. Finally he could rub his neck where it hurt like hell. Penzington had dragged him into the Seppy Lorda that she had commandeered and was running the ship through a take-off cycle.

  "Well, there have been times when I'd have thought that nobody ever would. You okay?" She looked over her shoulder at him from the pilot's chair of the enemy troop transport vehicle.

  "Penzington?" DeathRay did a double take. "Is that you?"

  "It's me, DeathRay. Had to have a little work done to change my look. Hazards of the job."

  "Well they sure did good work." DeathRay was pretty sure he looked like hell warmed over.

  "The ejection chair absorbed most of the crash landing onto the QMT moon, but my already broken tailbone, back, and neck from the previous crash into the ship hadn't quite healed yet. So it fucking hurt when I hit." Jack gritted his teeth and pulled himself into the copilot's chair. He snapped the safety cap off another shot of immunoboost and jammed it into his neck. He started feeling better almost instantly. "I'll be tip top before we hit the planet. What's our ETA on that? Do we have a plan?"

  "ETA depends on where we are going, but we could be on the planet in five to ten minutes. A plan? Well, no. Intel? Yes. Deanna Moore is being held in Elle Ahmi's penthouse suite. We have to get inside there to get her out," Nancy responded. "I can get in as Ensign Bella Penrose to the first or maybe second floor, but there is no way to get to the penthouse through the front door. And there are SIFs around the top floors, so we can't teleport in."

  "What else do we know about the penthouse?" Jack rubbed his neck some more and then started pulling off the flight armor suit down to the second skin layer. He slid out a small bag about the size of a deck of playing cards and unfolded the contents from within it. The universal combat uniform top and pants he pulled from the vacuum-packed bag expanded as soon as they hit the air. He shook the no-wrinkle, fire-retardant, nanotube-armored compression materials out and set them aside as he pulled the organogel seal layer off his body. The seal layer schlurrped like pulling a suction cup from wet glass. Then he slipped into the UCUs and put his flight boots back on. He stretched his spine straight briefly and was certain that he'd be fine in five or ten minutes. He pulled an MRE bar from his gear and started crunching on it.

  "Hungry?" he offered the CIA agent a bite. "Damned immunoboost and stims make me hungry and thirsty as a horse."

  "Uh, no thanks," Nancy said.

  "Okay, so what'd we know about the penthouse?"

  "There is only one elevator into it, and only Elle Ahmi has the key."

  "Well, is it guarded with AA guns as well as SIFs? If not, I say we ram in there with this ship and just take her away. All I have to do is put this on her." Jack showed Nancy the forward QMT teleport device on his wrist. "I push this button, and she'll be teleported to the Oval Office. Well, after we clear the SIFs, of course."

  "I don't know about the AA, but I'd imagine it has at least the same protections that the White House would have. And I doubt we could knock out the SIFs long enough to get through them and back out. I used a Lorda and a Stinger once to burst through the SIFs on a battle cruiser, and I barely had time to punch through before they closed back up." Nancy
glanced over at Jack and shrugged.

  "How are we not being chased down right now?" It had just dawned on Jack that they were in a Seppy troop/cargo transport vehicle—the counterpart to the U.S. Starhawk—and nobody seemed to be looking for them.

  "After twelve years of being here, my AIC is really good at negotiating with the Seppy flight-manifest systems. As far as anybody but us knows, we are doing just what we are supposed to be doing," Nancy replied quite confidently.

  "Jesus, that's right. You've been here all by yourself a long fucking time. That's a hell of a sacrifice, Penzington." DeathRay had gone into the shit many times over in the past couple of decades, but he hadn't been in it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for over a decade. That had to be hell on your psyche. His respect for the CIA agent went through the roof as he made the realization.