One Good Soldier (19 page)

"What the hell?" DeathRay jerked himself up via the built-in reflex to the general quarters call. "How long was I asleep, Candis?" He stretched and rubbed at his eyes.

"About thirteen minutes, Captain. I guess there is no rest for the wicked."

"Goddamned right," Jack muttered as he shook himself to and then threw on his UCUs and put a toothbrushing cube in his mouth. "Got any idea what this is about?"

"No, Jack. But the admiral has ordered all the senior officers to the briefing room."

"That doesn't sound good. Start scanning the news feeds for me." He spat out the cube into the sink and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Jack slipped his boots on and pressed the seal tab. They suctioned in place, and the color scheme of his uniform set itself to Navy blue. He slapped on his name tag, insignia, and wings, and stuck the black beret typically worn by mecha jocks in his back pocket. Then he was out the hatch in a mad rush toward the main briefing area.

Ross 128 just seceded from the Union, Jack!
Candis thought to him.

"Down ladder! Make a hole, seamen." Jack turned the corner of the corridor into the mostly full stairwell. The enlisted men in his way hugged the bulkhead or flattened their backs to it.

Oh shit! Dee!
he thought.
They'll shut the QMT gate down first thing. And you know they'll try to nab her.

She is with a bodyguard and a seasoned marine,
the AIC said.

Yeah, against an entire damned planet. Those ain't good odds for Dee.
DeathRay didn't like this situation at all. He really liked the First Daughter and hated to see her get caught up in the middle of bad shit, again.
That kid just has some bad luck, doesn't she?

It's not her fault. And this all seems timed too coincidentally to me,
Candis added.

Good point. Dee just happens to arrive at Ross 128 just moments before they secede from the Union and shut down the teleporter. Yeah, bullshit.
This was another one of those coincidences where the Separatists were concerned. Who knew what that crazy bitch, Elle Ahmi, had up her sleeve. This could be the start of a full-scale invasion. He hoped like hell that Ahmi didn't get her hands on Dee.

"Hold the elevator!" he shouted as he rounded the corner to the main tower elevator. It was filling fast, and there were several officers piling in.

"Captain Boland, you barely made this one." Colonel Warboys held the door for him. Warboys never smiled as far as Jack could tell. The Army man was all business. Even when he cracked a joke, it was sometimes hard to tell if he was laughing or grimacing.

"Thanks, Colonel." Jack caught his breath. "Any idea what's up?"

"Did you hear about Ross 128?" Warboys asked.

"Yeah, and the First Daughter just passed through the QMT."

"Sounds too coincidental if you ask me." Warboys reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of stimgum. "Want a slice?"

"Hey, do I look that bad?" DeathRay grinned and took the gum. Almost as soon as the stick hit his tongue he felt a wave of energy rush through his body, and he was as wide awake as he'd ever been in his life.

"It's been a long day already. And I suspect it is about to get a hell of a lot longer." Warboys looked blank for second. His AIC was telling him something.

"Shit, gonna need something stronger than gum, then, Colonel."

"Me, too, Jack. Me, too."

A matter of minutes later, very short minutes, and the main briefing room one deck below the CDC filled in and the doors were pulled shut. More than a thousand officers and SNCOs filled the room. The more senior ones were seated forward of the room and the lower ranks filed backward. There were hundreds standing against the rear and side bulkheads of the auditorium. Jack and Warboys sat next to each other in the front row. General Chekov marched across the stage and stood at attention.

"Rear Admiral Wallace Jefferson!" the XO grunted. Everybody stood to attention. The admiral walked across the stage and nodded to the XO, who then turned and marched off the stage and stood by a seat in the front row of the auditorium.

"At ease. Be seated," RADM Wallace said calmly. "At fourteen-seventeen Earth eastern standard time, the ambassador from the Ross 128 colony known as Arcadia announced from the White House that the colony was seceding from the United States of America and that they were aligned with the Tau Ceti separatists and their terrorist leader, Elle Ahmi. The ambassador made his statements and then subsequently vanished into thin air in the same manner as is indicative of a top-secret technology to teleport a single individual from one star system to the other without a QMT pad known by mathematicians as a 'snap-back algorithm.' We have no idea where he teleported to at that point. And now we have been ordered to muster rapidly and QMT into the Ross 128 system and take the government and National Guard units by force. The Outer Fleet is mustering here at the Oort Facility as rapidly as possible and will hold here under the direction of Rear Admiral Walker aboard the USS
Anthony Blair.
" The admiral paused briefly to get his breath and gather his thoughts then continued with the briefing.

"The colonists on the other side of the QMT bridge have shut down communications with us. We will have to do a QMT forward projection from our facility with no way of returning home unless we retake the QMT facility there or take the long eighteen-month hyperspace jaunt. Either way, we are going, and we are going to take that system. You senior officers are having all the pertinent mission goals, data, and battle strategies available at this time transmitted to your AICs. You have thirty minutes to put your teams together and prepare your battle plans and tactics, because we QMT for Ross 128 at fifteen hundred hours precisely and will come out on the other side shooting. We are the tip of the spear of this attack. Thirty minutes behind us will be the USS
Abraham Lincoln
, the USS
Theodore Roosevelt
, and the USS
John Tyler
. The rest of the Outer Fleet will hold here unless we need them. We will have a team of couriers on board each ship equipped with top-secret snap-back transmitters that will enable them to bounce back and forth between systems to give status reports until we take the QMT facility and turn the long-range QMT communication systems back on.

"Now, there is someone else who would like to speak with you." RADM Jefferson turned to the big screen behind him and stood at attention. "Mr. President?"

The big screen blinked on, and a three-dimensional projection of President Alexander Moore and the First Lady standing in front of the
Resolute
desk in the Oval Office jumped out on the stage.

"Thank you, Admiral Jefferson. Ladies and gentlemen." Moore nodded at the senior crew of the flagship of the U.S. Navy and appeared to be looking at each and every one of them. "What we are asking you to do today is to go to war. We cannot let another colony effectively secede from our great nation. You, the brave men and women of the U.S. military's ultimate might, the USS
Sienna Madira
, must go forth and take back that system. If we fail today, I fear that we will fall into a horrible war, one that will be far worse than all the previous civil wars combined. We must put a stop to this separatism today! I know that I am asking you to leap into the unknown without a clear path home. But we are faced with a task that must be accomplished, or our way of life as we know it may fade into history. We have to take the fight to these Separatists before they bring it home to the Sol System. Good luck, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America." The president and his wife stood motionless and looking solemnly at the officers. The admiral and the XO turned and waited for the auditorium to come to attention, and then over a thousand men and women saluted. President Moore stood stern and returned the salute. Then the holo projection blinked out.

"All right! You heard the president. Let's get to work." The XO turned and shouted to the crowed. "DeathRay?"

"Sir!" Jack shouted from down front and to the right of the stage.

"Put Deuce on CAG duties right now, and you stay put."

"Yes, sir." Jack stayed put.
Candis, transmit the orders to Deuce to get the battle plan set up and the pilots ready to go.

Yes, sir
.

Jack, the XO, and the admiral waited for the crowd to clear the auditorium, which took about five minutes, five precious minutes. And DeathRay had no idea what this was going to be about. Finally, the auditorium was clear and the hatches automatically shut and locked themselves. The three of them stood on the side of the stage.

"Stand at attention and face the screen, Jack," the admiral said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

"Aye, sir." Jack turned and faced the screen at attention. Then a voice came through the speakers.

"Are we clear, Wally?" It was President Moore's voice.

"Yes, Mr. President," the admiral replied. Then the screen blinked back on, and the three-dimensional projection popped out, and the Moores were standing right in front of the supercarrier officers.

"Good. Captain Boland, good to see you," the First Lady said. "Deanna sent me a message about how wonderful a host you were to her. Thank you very much for that."

"Any time, ma'am. And it's good to see you too, ma'am." Jack wasn't sure how to respond.

"Okay, this is the deal, Captain," President Moore said. "We've got a problem that only DeathRay can handle. Can we depend on you, Captain?"

"Yes, sir. Anything I can do for you, Mr. President."

"Well, Jack, you see . . ." Moore paused as if he had to gather himself. Jack had never seen him like that. "They've got our daughter. The goddamned Separatist bastards kidnapped Dee, and we don't know what they plan to do with her or where they've taken her. As you know, she teleported into Ross 128 for a cadet mecha competition right after she left you. Well, she teleported there just moments before those bastards seceded and shut down the QMT pad on their side. But just before they shut down the long-range comms, the Secret Service received a transmission from her bodyguard's AIC that he and the other student with Dee had been killed and Dee was being kidnapped by Colonel Walt 'Rat' Fink. You met him, I gather?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry to hear this, sir. Whatever I can do, you can count on me, Mr. President."

"That is just what I wanted to hear, Captain Boland. Take whomever you want, whatever you want, and go get my daughter back safely! You hear me, Captain? You do whatever it takes!" Moore's face was furiously red, and the veins on his forehead were throbbing. The man looked ready to explode. And Jack didn't blame him at all.

"Yes, sir. I'll get her back, sir."

"Jack," the First Lady interrupted. Tears formed in her eyes. "She may act all tough, but she is still just a kid. Don't let her do something stupid. And bring her home, please."

"Yes, ma'am. I understand, ma'am."

"And DeathRay," Moore added. "The fewer people that know what's going on, the better chance we'll have. We sure don't want the press in on this."

"Of course, Mr. President."

"Godspeed, Jack. Good luck."

Holy shit!

"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.