Trail of Evil - eARC (16 page)

Chapter 23

November 8, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Tuesday, 8:13 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“Attention!” Karen “Fish” Fisher shouted to the pilots assembled in the main aft hangar bay of the commandeered starship. “CAG on deck!”

DeathRay nodded at his former wingman and saluted her. He smiled thinly at her as she saluted back. DeathRay and Fish had gone way back together. They had fought through some seriously bad shit in the Seppy Exodus and subsequent wars. She was as good a pilot as he’d ever had the pleasure to fly with. Deanna Moore was probably the only other pilot he’d flown with and trained with who was as dedicated and likely to ever exceed DeathRay in skills.

“At ease.” Jack turned to the assembled pilots and approached the podium. “I’m glad to see all of you here today in one piece. As far as I can tell we are only missing three pilots from our ranks and all of them are expected to make full recoveries today. They will return to active duty in three days.”

Jack paused for a second and thought about Dee. He also noted that the other two pilots were search and rescue (SAR) pilots whom also acted on rescue teams. They were moving wounded from the line the last few moments of the battle aboard the
Madira
. They were brought down by bots. Fortunately, according to the logs, the QMT teleporter started functioning just in time to save them.

“My AIC has run an inventory of equipment that managed to make it here from the
Madira
. We only managed to save four FM-12s and that is it. Those planes were on patrol at the time we lost the ship.” DeathRay brought the equipment roster for the new ship up into his DTM.

Candis, bring this view up to all the pilots.

Roger that, DeathRay
. His AIC said in his mind.

“As you can see in your DTM views this ship is loaded with Stingers, Gnats, and Starlifters. Each of those are counterparts to what we are used to. The Stingers are a direct copy of FM-12s, Gnats of the VTF-32Ares-Ts, and the Starlifters are an older version of the SARS SH-102s. We have equipment.”

DeathRay waited for a moment for the crew to catch up. “Look around you. The planes are right here in this hangar.”

“I’m uploading protocols to each of you,” he continued. “The CHENG and his crew have hacked and loaded our flight protocols into the software. Your AICs should have a bird identified that is yours. You will also find a flight suit in the locker room. Again, I have uploaded your equipment assignments to your AICs. For right now we are to get dressed, find our planes, and get familiar with them. Training sorties are being scheduled as we speak and your flight schedules will be sent to you as soon as I figure them all out. One more note here—I have worked through this with General Moore and we have decided to mix up the Flight Wing the way we used to do it. Navy aviators will fly the Gnats and Marines will take the Stingers. Spare parts are no longer an issue. As for my service mixed squadron, the Archangels will go to the Gnats. This way we will have two Gnat squadrons and two Stinger squadrons.”

DeathRay looked up at his pilots. There were forty mecha jocks and eighteen SARS and troop carrier pilots in the room besides himself. They were all seasoned pros. He knew they could handle it. Jack hesitated with his last thought but he had to ask.

“Are there any questions?”

More than forty hands went up at once.

Shit.
He thought.

Roger that.
His AIC agreed.

“Go ahead Blue.” He pointed at one of Jawbone’s Maniacs.

“Sir, what about personal stuff? I mean, all of my clothes and other personal hygiene gear is gone. My AIC has been uploaded with my new quarters assignment and there are Seppy uniforms in the stockroom, but do we expect to get real supplies soon? I mean, sir, as a U.S. Marine, sir, I hate being out of uniform.”

“Yeah right,” general agreement echoed in the hangar.

“How are we expected to fight under these circumstances,” Lieutenant Cory “Skater” Davis, Poser’s wingman added.

“Listen up!” Fish shouted to quiet the room.

“Alright, I get it.” DeathRay held up his hand palm outward to calm everyone down. “We’ve been on this strange ship for thirty-six hours and we are living with twenty-year-old Seppy junk. We have water and we have nonperishable foodstuffs. We have mecha and we have weapons. We’re soldiers and we are in the middle of space with a newly commandeered fleet that we must protect. For whatever reason, this fleet is here and what that suggests is . . . well, I don’t even want to speculate. So, I promised the general that I would have our flight regiment ready to protect us at a moments’ notice if we need protecting and that we would start standard patrols immediately. Now I’m certain the general is working out how to get our personal amenities brought up to Navy, Marine, and Army standards as soon as he can figure that out. If any of you have a problem with how the general is taking care of things then you have my permission to take it up with him.”

With that last statement all the hands went down. DeathRay hated to invoke a threat of “the general” but no single person on the ship wanted to second-guess Alexander Moore.

“Any other questions?” DeathRay waited for hands. Only one went up. It was Jawbone.

“Lieutenant Colonel Strong?”

Delilah stood up. “With all due respect Captain.” She stared across the room with a look that could cut through steel. The colonel appeared to be ready to begin a good old-fashioned Marine Corp ass whuppin’ if anybody crossed her path. DeathRay suspected what was coming. “Sir, firstly, I’d like to apologize for my Maniacs sounding overly needy. I
will
deal with that.”

“Very well, Lieutenant Colonel Strong.” DeathRay was glad that he wasn’t Blue at that moment. He suspected that the Marine wouldn’t get a break for another twenty four hours or more for his question. “Is there anything else, Jaw?”

“Yes, sir.” Delilah replied gruffly. “I was just curious at what point you squid pilots were gonna quit whining so that us Marines can get back to work!”

“Oo-fuckin’-ra ma’am!” somebody else shouted. Obviously, it was one of the other Marine pilots.

“Hooyay, sir. I can personally guarantee the CAG that the Navy pilots of the Demon Dawgs are good and goddamned ready to get at it.” U.S. Navy Commander Wendy “Poser” Hill stood up too. Poser glared as menacingly as Jawbone had at her pilots. “Dawgs?”

“Hooyay,” all of the Navy squadron affirmed enthusiastically or frightened or both.

“Go to your assignments.” DeathRay said dryly. “Dismissed.”

What the fuck have we gotten ourselves into
, he thought

Don’t worry, Jack, they’re all good troops
. Candis replied.

“Dismissed!” the XO released the bridge crew and several of the support teams as he turned to the COB. “Chief, this is straight from the general. I want you to personally take a squad of AEMs, a fire team, and an engineering team and scrub another one of these ships from top to bottom. Make sure it is bot free, report to me, and then move to the next one. Got it?”

“Be my pleasure, sir. You know I spent some time on some old Seppy haulers after the war. Those were rustbuckets. But I gotta tell ya, Firestorm, these ships look good as new for them to be twenty years old.”

“Weird as hell, if you ask me, Jeff,” Firestorm replied. “Be careful over there.”

“Roger that, XO.”

“XO, we have brought the fleet to a stop at a parking orbit ten thousand kilometers from the planetoid facility and one hundred thousand kilometers from the last location of the
Sienna Madira
.” Nav officer Commander Penny Swain said over her shoulder. “We’re tracking the debris field for any trajectories non-Keplerian. If there are any bots left over out there we’ll find them.”

“Good, Nav. We should be plenty far enough not to worry about any stray bots. If you find any, you have open fire permission to call DEGs on them. Ground Boss?” The XO then turned to commander of the Ground Combat Mecha U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Tonya “Hailstorm” Briggs.

“XO?”

“As soon as Warboys is ready to check out the Warlords on the Orcus droptanks you are clear to go. I’d like for them to have another go on that facility down there just to see if there are any other bots outside. Then we’ll sweep it again with the AEMs. The general wants to make this our staging ground.” Firestorm turned and sat down in the oversized captain’s chair. She really wished the general would get back up there with details of what the next step for the expedition would be. Were they going home or pushing forward?

“Roger that XO. General Warboys says they are two hours from being ready to drop,” the ground boss replied.

“Well, kick him in the ass and tell him to get a move on it.”

Chapter 24

November 8, 2406 AD

27 Light-years from the Sol System

Tuesday, 8:15 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

“Do we need to kick you in the ass so you’ll get a move on it?” Rondi said to the CHENG. The Marine had never seen Buckley this way. He’d been moping about for the past day and a half like somebody had shot his dog and killed his grandma both at the same time. The
Sienna Madira
had been his true love and now it was gone. Rondi had forty-five minutes before she had to report to duty and she had hoped to spend a few minutes having lunch with Buckley.

“Rondi, there is so much to do here that I don’t know where to start.” Buckley looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. The two of them were in what Joe had commandeered as the CHENG’s office door closed.

“It’s like eating a bear or running a marathon, Joe,” Rondi told him. “One bite at a time and one step at a time. Just find a place and start moving forward.” Sometimes the Marine had little patience when folks just wouldn’t put one foot in front of the other. But that likely wasn’t Joe’s problem. Joe was the hardest-working engineer she’d ever met. Rondi had seen him work for seventy-two hours without taking a nap until the doctor forced him to.

“I could run the marathon; I just need to know where the starting line is.” Joe shrugged again.

“Okay, if this was your first day on the
Madira
what would you do?”

“Uh . . .”

“Wait Joe, that is it. Your AIC has the logs. Your first day on the
Madira
what
did
you do? Just start there.” Rondi looked him in the eye and could see that he was tired and sad. “You couldn’t save her Joe. Even frying yourself with X-rays wouldn’t have saved her. She was overrun with a hostile enemy force and there was nothing we could have done.”

“Uh huh.” Joe grunted. “You’re right, though. My first day on the Madira I ran a diagnostic on the propulsion systems. Then the weapons, SIFs, and powerplants subsequently.”

“There ya go!” Rondi smiled and winked at him. “Maybe I’ll ask for a promotion to CHENG.”

“You wouldn’t like it. It’s not dangerous enough for you and you never get to eat your own vomit. Maybe you should consider being a mecha jock.” Joe finally smiled. She knew that her puking deathblossom in a freefalling AEM suit had become infamous in her squad and figured it would make its way around the ship soon enough. Apparently, the story had already made it to engineering.

“With all due respect, CHENG, sir,” Rondi grinned with a raised eyebrow. “up yours.”

“Gunny, if you need anything, and I mean anything, you only have to ask for it.” Alexander looked at Tommy Suez and held out his hand. Tommy shook it like a Marine. “That is not a platitude, Tommy. I mean that from all my heart. Thank you for what you did for my little girl.”

“With all due respect, General,” Tommy stood stiffly. “Your
little girl
was giving the bastards hell like any good Marine. I was proud to be there fighting with her, sir and I would by God do it again. And that young SEAL was a hardened ass-kicker too, sir.”

“Yes, I will be talking to Lieutenant Rackman soon.” Moore rubbed at the stubble on his chin and then he tugged at the Seppy uniform. He hated that thing. He would change into a Marine uniform as soon as the first supply ship returned from Earthspace via QMT. Supply teams should be coming in literally as they spoke. He made a mental note to send his chief of staff after a uniform. “By the way, Gunny, what were those two doing out there in the abandoned part of the ship? I mean, what were they doing when you found them?”

“Sir, uh, they were doing the same thing I was.”

“And that was?”

“Close quarters techniques, sir,” Tommy replied. Moore wasn’t sure he believed it, but it wasn’t the top sergeant’s place to out two officers. “Thanks, Top. Why don’t you take a three day R and R and snap-back home?”

“If it’s all the same to you sir, I don’t really have any family and I’d just as soon stay here.” said Tommy.

“Suit yourself, Top. But, I don’t want you hitting a lick at a snake for three days and that’s an order.” Moore saluted the Marine and then shook his hand. “Dismissed.”

Alexander waited for the senior NCO to leave his newly acquired office. The captain’s office just off the bridge was fairly spacious with a very large window on the port side. He looked down at the planetoid facility below and wondered just how much longer it would be before the Warlords dropped as he had ordered.

A lot was going through his mind. Dee and Rackman had been working on the A-recon team together for eighteen months nearly and it was common for teams to hang out off duty. But if Dee and Rackman were involved they shouldn’t to be on the same squad. Moore didn’t care who his daughter fraternized with as long as it didn’t put either of them in danger. He had come down hard on Dee’s boyfriends in the past, but that was before she was old enough to know how to handle them. Alexander trusted that she was a full-grown woman how and as Top had just said, one hell of a Marine. She could take care of herself. The memory of her as a little girl telling him that she wanted to be like him flashed in his mind.

“Come in, Dad,” she had said to him as he stood outside her bedroom in the White House. She was twelve and it had been a long horrible couple of days after Elle Ahmi had attacked them at Disney World. Dee had recovered from the ordeal as though it were no big deal. She was ready for bed and sitting up against the headboard, reading. Alexander remembered the book she was reading like it had been yesterday, even though it was nearly fifteen years ago. He had looked at the book with some interest. The cover of it featured popular science drawings of modern military mecha and weapons.

“Some light reading, baby?” he had asked.

“Uh, no. I’m just educating myself on all the mecha that I’ve seen.” Deanna sat the book down and looked up at her father. Alexander would never forget the look in her eyes—pure determination. “Dad?”

“What, baby?”

“I’m not a baby, Dad.”

“I know, princess. But you’ll always be my baby.” Moore had smiled. The memory made him smile again.

“Uh, Dad.” Dee frowned at him the way kids do when they reach that age where they don’t want to be called a baby. Again Moore smiled to himself. He felt emotions building up and his heart rate increased a bit. He had tears in his eyes beginning to blur his vision slightly.

“What do you need? Are you okay?”

“Oh, sure. I wanted to ask you about the future. Do you think you will win the election?” Moore was looking at his next term as president. After the events of the past couple days he was likely to be a shoe in.

“It looks like it. Is that what’s bothering you?”

“No. I was just wanting to tell you that I want to be like you when I grow up.” Dee looked up at him seriously. It was this moment that he would remember in vivid detail no matter how old he got. He would never forget the look on his little girl’s face.

“Oh? You think you want to be President of the United States?” he asked her proudly.

“No, Dad. Yuck, politics is gross.” Dee made a sour face. Moore thought back on it and he was certain he must have seen this coming. But he knew he hadn’t. If he had, and if he knew then what he knew now he would have headed it off earlier on.

“Then I don’t understand what you mean.” Alexander shrugged his shoulders, holding his hands palms up.

“I want to be a Marine,” Deanna had told him. And from that day forward her every waking thought was on being a Marine mecha jock. Dee had studied every aspect of what it would take to become the life-taking heartbreaking soldier her father had been. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. But Alexander really wanted his princess to have a long and happy, fulfilling life. Her recent activities had been completely opposed to that goal.

Moore understood doing your own thing. It was what he and his wife had always done. There was no way he could stand in the way of his daughter’s path. So, he had to let her walk down it, or barrel ass down it in full armored mecha blasting the piss out of anything in her way. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t take precautions to help ensure her longevity. Being a former president and the ranking officer of the mission helped. So, he clearly needed to get a little more involved in her safety.

Alexander decided he’d have DeathRay assess the situation. Dee needed to be spending more time in fighter planes anyway. She was safer in an armored flight suit inside her armored flying mecha than she was just in an AEM suit. Alexander wasn’t sure he could take much more of her close calls. Emotionally, he was a bigger mess than he’d ever been in his life and that included the time he had spent in Elle Ahmi’s torture camp on Mars.

His daughter had been seriously injured twice in a period of a week. He’d had two fairly large engagements with casualties. And he had lost his ship. Events seemed to be leading them toward something more complex and perhaps more sinister than he had originally considered. He couldn’t help but think this was all somehow one of his mother in-law’s plans within a plan within a plan. He couldn’t help but feel they were following intentionally placed breadcrumbs along some long forgotten trail of evil.

As things stood at present, there was still a chance to complete the mission. Alexander just really had to get a handle on their situation and determine the right course of action. As far he could see it, the mission had three functions. One was to find all remnants of the AIC bots and Seppy war machine. Two was to remove those remnants from existence. Those first two were the main component of the mission as most people back home, including Congress, understood. Three, was to determine just what the extra-terrestrial communication to then-senator Sienna Madira had to do with all of this mess. The third, only the current president, his national security advisor, the secretary of defense, the director of National Intelligence, and the chairpersons of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had any notion of. The only other people that knew of the third reason were on board the ship with him. Well, there was one other person, Thomas Washington, his former Secret Service bodyguard, but Thomas had been left behind to keep an eye on things back in the Sol System. He was given specific orders to watch for signs of Copernicus’ influence back home and deal with it as he needed to. Besides, Thomas hadn’t wanted to come along on this mission because he was done soldiering for a while. He had told Alexander that he would just have to take care of himself and his family without him on this mission. Alexander suspected the bodyguard didn’t want to be cooped up in a spaceship for such a long duration deep space mission. And it had turned out to be a
very
deep space mission. .