One Good Soldier (13 page)

"Benny?" The admiral turned back to the CHENG.

"Again, sir, I never would have done it in a million years." Benny repeated the same answer.

"And why is that, Captain Harrison?"

"Well, Admiral, I hate to admit this, but I just don't think I'd have ever thought of it, sir." Benny let a thin smile cross his lips briefly.

"Never would have thought of it?" the XO interjected. Joe was afraid the vein throbbing on the side of the Marine's neck was going to burst at any moment. "Am I to believe that you are telling us now that Buckley Jr. here is smarter than our CHENG?"

"I'm afraid so, XO."

"Pardon my French, Admiral, but that just will not fucking do, sir. Goddamnit, it will not fucking do, Admiral."

"Why is that, Larry?" It was clear that the admiral was quite used to the fact that in order to properly function his XO seemed to have the need to profusely spout expletives several times a sentence, or he might keel over. After six years on the
Madira
, Joe was quite aware of that fact himself. He had learned a little too closely a few times. Everybody on board knew that the admiral and the XO had served together for decades, and so the admiral always seemed completely unfazed and mostly immune to the colorful expletives.

"Sir, we are the USS-by-God
Sienna Madira
. The flagship of the fleet. Our marines are the goddamned toughest sonsabitches ever to shit between shoes. Our mecha jocks fly like no other and eat their own vomit for lunch on a regular basis all the while begging for fucking more. Our Army pukes puke better than any. So our by-God CHENG had better be able to out fucking CHENG any other goddamned CHENG in this wonderful fleet of ours, sir."

"And your point, XO?" The admiral looked back and forth between the XO and Buckley. Joe stood motionless, not understanding at all what this was about. He felt the best plan was to stand still and keep his damned mouth shut until he was told to speak.

"Well, sir, if'n our CHENG has done gotten so damned old and outdated that even he admits that Buckley Jr. here can out-CHENG him, then maybe he ought to be thinking about some damned greener pastures somewhere else, sir." The XO sighed. "No offense, Benny."

"None taken, XO." Benny was clearly now straining not to laugh, but Joe was still left out of the joke.

"Well, Benny, just what do you have to say about the XO's comments?" The admiral cocked his right eyebrow.

"Well, sir, I guess he's right. I'll just have to retire, sir."

"Well, damned if that sure doesn't leave us in a bind here, CHENG! We are to ship off to the Oort in a couple hours, and my CHENG is up and quitting on me? When do you plan to leave us?"

"Uh, Admiral, my bags are packed and I plan to make shore before the
Madira
breaks orbit, sir. I've got several weeks leave I put in for. I'm gonna take that, and then my final date is next month, sir. Of course, you already approved my leave, Admiral." Now Benny couldn't control his laughter.

"Well, goddamn, that had slipped my mind. One other thing, sailor—you'll be missed around here, Benny." The admiral held his hand out sincerely and shook Benny's hand. Joe still didn't get the joke.

"Thank you, sir."

"Same goes for me, Benny. You always kept us running while we were in the shit," the XO added and shook hands with the CHENG. "Can't ask for more than that of any CHENG. So, you're not having a party or nothing?"

"I just want to go home to Luna and spend some time with my great-great-grandchildren, sir. Apparently, I have thirty-seven of them." Joe wasn't sure, but he thought he actually saw a tear in the CHENG's eye. "I hate retirement parties."

"Well, by damned you
will
have one, sailor, and that is an order. We'll make a point of it when we get back from the outer system." The admiral slapped Benny's shoulder. "But you are still leaving us in a serious bind."

"No CHENG, sir." The XO nodded in agreement. The gruff Marine went straight back to his normal gridiron hardassed self. "Got to have a CHENG."

"I'm aware of that XO. But who could do the job?" the admiral asked no one in particular.

"If you ask me, sir, I think Buckley here would make a good CHENG someday," Benny said and turned to his assistant chief engineer with a big smile. "Maybe if he were put to work being the CHENG, he wouldn't have enough time to go about tearing up the Engineering Room every time he turns around. And it might make him a little more reluctant to fry himself with X-rays every chance he has a decent excuse to."

"Buckley, you up for it?" The admiral looked Joe square in the eyes, but Joe didn't falter a bit. Well, his mind was racing, his heart was racing, and his stomach was in knots, hard U.S. Navy knots, but he didn't hesitate to answer.

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"Wait a minute, Admiral. There is a problem with that," the XO interrupted again.

"What's that, Larry?"

"The
Blair
has an O5 as their CHENG. We can't have a lower-ranked officer as our CHENG than she does. That just wouldn't be fitting, Admiral." Joe glanced at the old marine only slightly, since he didn't want to take his eyes off Admiral Wallace, but he couldn't tell from the glance if the XO was serious, joking, or just being an ass. But that was usually the way it was with General Chekov.

"You're right, Larry." Rear Admiral Upper Half Wallace Jefferson turned and picked up something from his desk and handed it to Joe. "Open it, son."

Joe opened the little box and found a silver leaf and two melding fabric patches. Each of the patches had three gold stripes at the bottom with a single gold star above them in the middle of the patch. The smaller of the patches was for the collar of his UCU jacket and the larger for his shoulder. Joe didn't say a word.

"Congratulations, Commander Buckley." The admiral offered Joe his hand.

"Take care of her, Joe." Benny slapped his protégé on the back. "Or should I say CHENG?"

The Separatist flagship wasn't like the previous warships of the Separatist fleet. The ships used in major battles at the Martian Exodus and at the Battle of the Oort had been retrofitted cargo haulers. The haulers were large, even bigger than the U.S. supercarrier class ships, but they were still old reconfigured cargo ships that had been turned into makeshift warships. The fact that the old haulers were, well,
old
is what led the U.S. forces to refer to them derogatorily as "rust buckets."

The Separatists had been updating and building new weapons since they had moved from Mars to the Tau Ceti system twelve years ago. There was some intelligence that suggested that the Tau Ceti colony had been in on the Separatist movement all along and perhaps had been developing mecha, weapons, and even the new line of battleships for them. It was unclear who had retrofitted the previous generation of ships for them, although Tau Ceti was the most likely candidate. It was possible that the Separatists had retrofitted the ships in space somewhere deep in the outer parts of the Sol System. After all, they had managed to build a small moon-sized QMT teleport facility in the Oort Cloud right under the U.S. military's nose. And then they managed to plan an exodus of over thirty million citizens from the Sol System to the Oort facility and then on to Tau Ceti.

In twelve years, the thirty million Separatists, along with the thirteen million colonists at Tau Ceti, had managed to manufacture a brand new fleet that was just now coming on line. Four of the new supercarrier-class ships and five new battle cruisers had gone through their checkout flights and were prepping for their maiden voyages. The four supercarriers were equipped with a second generation of Stingers, which were copies of the U.S. FM-12s; new transfigurable Gnats, comparable to the U.S. VTF-32 Ares-Ts; and a new version of Orcus droptanks that had a bot mode similar to that of the U.S. M3A17-Ts. The battle-cruiser class ships carried Gnats and armored troops and were smaller, more maneuverable ships. The haulers and previous generation of ships still existed, but the question was if there were enough personnel available for them to have crew.

The flagship of the United Separatist Republic was the USR
Deborah Sampson
. The
Sampson
, no matter what star system's technology one considered, was a state-of-the-art warship fully equipped with modern SIF generators, directed-energy weapons, missile tubes, a fast hyperspace-jaunt projector, catapult bays for mecha and drop tubes, two hundred kilogram projectile rail cannons, and QMT teleporters with personnel snap-back capability.

The
Sampson
was over three kilometers long and about half that in width and depth. The general design was very similar to the U.S. supercarrier designs. Since that is what she had been designed to fight, the design was perfectly logical. Rumors were that Elle Ahmi had designed the flagship herself, right down to the Mars-red color scheme of the interior décor. The color scheme was most likely the reason for that particular rumor. Every citizen of the U.S.R. understood that Elle Ahmi had a nostalgic soft spot for Mars in her heart—though they also realized that was probably the only soft spot she had anywhere.

The
Sampson
had been on line for several weeks and had a full crew complement. It had made several deep-space hyperspace jaunts as well as several QMT jumps between Tau Ceti and Ross 128. On two separate occasions she had simulated an attack on one of the outer planet moons of Tau Ceti. All of the flight wings were deployed as well as the droptanks and armored troops. The ship and crew combination was a well-oiled machine and definitely deserved the title of flagship to the U.S.R.

Flagship flight-wing crewman Ensign Bella Penrose sat near the viewport in the starboard galley picking at her food and staring out at the large QMT facility. The facility hung in a non-Keplerian orbit hovering over the capital city of the U.S. colony of Arcadia. The Ross 128 colony was as beautiful as Tau Ceti and was far more developed. Tau Ceti had over fifty million people and had been established for a few decades. Ross 128, on the other hand, was nearly a hundred years old and had over one hundred million colonists. The colony was old enough to have several generations of native-born Arcadians.

Penrose looked at the large octagonal structure and towers of the small moon-sized facility just beneath the warship. The facility reminded her of the ones she had seen at the Oort Cloud in the Sol System, and the one above New Tharsis in the Tau Ceti system. The times she had seen those facilities her name had been either Kira Shavi or Nancy Penzington.

Since her return to the Tau Ceti system it had taken the CIA agent almost six years to create a cover that would allow her to get aboard the flagship of the U.S.R., Once before she had infiltrated one of the Seppy ships, but she was discovered and barely managed to escape with her life and some very useful intelligence data. She had managed to get that data back to the Sol System mainly by happenstance. But she did get it back.

Unfortunately, the byproduct of her successful espionage had been that the Seppies had stepped up their efforts to prevent a spy from infiltrating their military infrastructure ever again. Things had become even more difficult for spies, and that was mainly because of her. Twelve years before, she had managed to infiltrate the Seppies, and after that no other agents who had attempted to do so had ever reported back to the CIA. Bella, at the time she was Nancy, had managed to infiltrate the Separatists most likely due to the mass confusion involved in the Seppy attack on Mons City on Mars followed by the exodus of the Separatists.

Allison, any idea what this package is that is of such importance?
she thought to her AIC. Her flight group's orders were to be on standby to support the delivery of a highly important package to the capital city and directly to Ahmi herself. Bella knew that meant trouble. But just how much trouble, she wasn't certain.

Your guess is as good as mine,
the AIC responded.
We'll just have to be patient. It isn't scheduled to arrive for a couple hours.

It had taken Nancy Penzington six months to completely cover her tracks after her return to the Tau Ceti QMT facility six years prior. Once she had managed to get away from the facility by stowing away aboard a troop carrier dirtside to Ares, Nancy spent several weeks considering going native and giving up the spy business. She had made plenty of personal sacrifices for the United States of America. She should have died on the Seppy battle cruiser
Phlegra
when it had tried to make a kamikaze run on Luna City. But, luckily, she hadn't. She still had several covers she could use if she needed them. So she did. Like any good undercover agent who is in country and cut off from home, she had multiple bank accounts, money and weapons caches, and a couple of safe houses under various names throughout New Tharsis and the Madira Valley. She cashed in on some of them and spent several months on the beach outside the spaceport working on her full-body tan.

After the second month of mental recovery, a.k.a. lounging on the nude beaches of Madira Valley, it dawned on her that with the
Phlegra
destroyed near Luna, Elle Ahmi would want a new favorite mode of space transportation. Nancy began formulating a hypothesis that the new supercarrier-sized battleships under construction at the base at the beach might fit that need. After a few fun and not-so-fun nights, with off-duty sailors and contractors, she managed to get enough word-of-mouth information to back up her hypothesis. Elle Ahmi actually spent a significant amount of time visiting one particular ship that was under construction. There had to be something special about that ship, because according to rumor that was the only one Ahmi visited regularly.