One Good Soldier s-3

by Travis S. Taylor

  "It's nice to see you again, Ms. Moore," Delilah added and shook her hand and then shook Jay's as well. Dee could tell by the way her wingman was eyeing the Marine major that he thought she was easy on the eyes or hard on something else, and she wasn't quite sure which was distressing her cohort the most. Dee had to admit that Jawbone was worth looking at twice. Hell, all of them, men and women alike, in that group of transfigurable mecha pilots were rock-hard super athletes, but there were a few that had more than just the killer physique. There were a few that had the "it" factor. And Jawbone and one of the other female mecha jocks there had "it." Dee looked twice at Poser and Jawbone and wondered why they weren't in another line of work. Of course, that is exactly what people said about her. But she understood exactly why the two women were there. They were there to fly state-of-the-art fighting mecha!

  "Ms. Moore." Colonel Warboys stepped forward and offered his hand. "You may not realize this, but we met very briefly when you were about six years old on the precipice of a bluff at Mons City on Mars. I was leading the tank squadron that met you and your family there that horrible day. Then I met you a little later on in the afternoon as well, when I got to meet your father for the first time. He is a great man."

  "Oh! Yes. You are Warlord One! I remember you like it was yesterday." Dee turned to her bodyguard and pointed a thumb at him. "Clay Jackson was there right beside me in that foxhole, Colonel. He was a sergeant AEM at the time. It is good to finally put a face to the giant metal monster I remember. I'm sorry I don't recall meeting you out of your armor."

  "Ma'am. You were very tired and had had a very long day. It's understandable." Warboys smiled a very personable, warm grin at her that reminded her of her father.

  "Colonel." Clay shook the hand that Warboys offered. "It was a damned good thing the Warlords and those mechaheads from the Blair arrived when you did that day."

  "Sergeant." Clay nodded solemnly as Warboys shook his hand. "That was a bad day for certain."

  "One day on Mars that I wouldn't want to relive, Colonel," the bodyguard replied.

  "Amen to that," Fish said. "I think everybody but Jawbone here was there that day."

  "Ms. Moore and I had our fun elsewhere, didn't we, ma'am?" Jawbone added.

  "I don't recall thinking of any of it as fun," Dee replied.

  "Me, neither," Jawbone agreed. "Lost a couple good friends that day."

  "I read about that on the Web," Lieutenant Colonel Leeland added. "We've all somehow or other been in it together. The Saviors, including Skinny and myself, were crawling around on that enemy hauler that was trying to crash on top of you during the Seppy Exodus. We tore that rust bucket to shreds but couldn't stop it."

  "Right." DeathRay stepped in to change the subject. "Who wants to go for a ride in some mecha?"

  "Can we?" Dee tried her best not to grin from ear to ear like the little girl the soldiers remembered from that day on Mars or from watching her grow up on television.

  "Well, I'll have to ask the CAG first," DeathRay said almost a bit too smugly not to notice.

  "Oh, Jesus! You're a corny ham, sir." His wingman laughed at him, not with him.

  "For those not in on the joke," Commander Hill said with a smirk, "Captain Boland here is the commander of the Air Group and has been for more than a decade. Of course, what he probably wouldn't tell you is that he was the CAG before that once, but he managed to get himself busted out of it for blowing up a civilian terraformer dome in the southern Martian desert."

  "All right, all right, you don't have to go bringing up that, Poser." Boland smiled his best action-hero smile. There must've been some funny and embarrassing story behind the marine's call sign. Dee was afraid to ask.

  Bree, any idea how Poser got her call sign? she thought to her AIC.

  I'll see what I can dig up. Hold on. The AIC paused briefly. I did find that Wendy Hill appeared in a men's magazine in a article titled "Women of the Military." Perhaps that is the reason?

  Dee laughed to herself. She got the joke. She wondered how Captain Boland had gotten his call sign, and kept her attention on his smile. She really liked it. A lot.

  "Just so happens I have three trainers set up," DeathRay said. "Two Ares-Ts and one FM-12. I thought we might play a little three-on-three dogfight if you're up for it?"

  "Up for it?" Dee almost shouted. "Jay and I are more than up for it. Right, Jay?"

  "You bet!" Stavros replied eagerly.

  "Well, we're gonna play this game a little differently than you two might be used to. One of you will be my wingman in the Ares-T, with Fish riding backseat for you, and the other will be Deuce's wingman, with Jawbone riding backseat. Skinny will fly with the Marine team. Poser can fly Colonel Fink with her if the colonel is up for a ride."

  "You bet, Captain," Fink responded.

  "So, who wants to be the navy aviator and who wants to be a jarhead?" Boland looked at Jay first. Then he rested his gaze on Dee. Dee almost volunteered to ride with him.

  "Should we flip for it?" Dee asked, although she really wanted to be in the FM-12. She was almost torn, because she wouldn't mind being DeathRay's wingman—among other things—but flying a Marine FM-12 would be the shit. So, she was only almost torn about the decision. She was certain Jay felt the same way about flying with Major Strong, but he'd have a win-win situation there being in an FM-12 with the hot marine that seemed to be getting his hackles up.

  "Flip for it, Dee," Jay replied and was clearly as excited as she was.

  "Ms. Moore, I'm not so sure that would be a good idea, ma'am," Clay stepped forward and warned her. "There would be no protective services there."

  "Oh, Clay, you're just a nervous old lady. You can't always be with me. I can take care of myself, and the fine mecha jocks will be right there with me the whole way. I'll have America's finest to protect me in your absence. That is, unless you want to ride in one of the fighters." Dee gave him a look that she borrowed from her father that he used with them to say without words that the discussion was over.

  "Like father, like daughter," Clay mumbled to himself. Dee ignored it, mostly. She also loved it when people said that.

  "What's that?" She smiled at the giant bodyguard.

  "Since I can't talk you out of it, ma'am, please be careful."

  "Bah. These great pilots will be right there with me, Clay. And so will Colonel Fink. You really need to consider trying to relax." Dee knew that careful was for old ladies and not for upcoming young hotshot fighter pilots.

  "I will one day, ma'am, but not while I'm with you." Clay smiled at the President's daughter. Dee ignored the comment.

  "So let me get this straight, Wally." Rear Admiral Lower Half (RDML) Sharon "Fullback" Walker towered over the two-star admiral and smiled. "You mean my marines were trapped and sitting ducks because some petty officer—"

  "Petty officer first class," Admiral Jefferson corrected his longtime colleague, friend, and recent simulated enemy.

  "Uh, petty officer first class, right. Because some petty officer first class was doing a regularly scheduled maintenance on the main tower elevator and it was therefore locked down because of safety regs?" Sharon finished her rhetorical question.

  "That is absolutely right, Fullback. Care for a snort?" Wallace sat down behind his desk and motioned at the one-star admiral and CO of the Blair to have a seat.

  "Don't mind if I do." Sharon sat down and crossed her legs all ladylike. But Wallace knew better than to think of her as anything but tougher than nails and then some. Fullback had been her call sign because way back in her Navy Academy days, she had played fullback for the Navy, which was not a position that many females played. It was especially not a position that many females played with the expertise and drive that Sharon had. Sharon was built more like a stack of bricks, a big stack of very big and mean bricks, and had a face that her mother might say was "handsome." More recently, Wally had been hearing rumors that her COB, Command Master Chief Petty Officer Bill Edwards, might think of her as more t
han handsome, but rumors never bothered Wally as long as they didn't bother the people they were about and didn't impact the performance of the sailors involved. And, besides, it wasn't any of his damned business. Good for Sharon, was his opinion.

  Besides, what Sharon lacked in the beauty department she more than made up for in the brawn and brain department. She could have been a champion bodybuilder at the Academy, but she was more ambitious and way smarter. And on top of that she could run a four-point-one second forty-yard dash and do it over and over for four quarters while being hit hard by big, mean Army linebackers. She was definitely Navy Fleet Officer material. Wallace had played lineman a couple of the years with Sharon running behind him. The two admirals had been teammates for a very long time. That's what made this situation so damned funny.

  "So, do you have a problem with a ship's crew keeping up with its routine maintenance schedule, Sharon?" Wallace had to grit his teeth to keep from laughing while he handed his friend two fingers of scotch he poured from the bottle in his desk.

  "Hell, no, Wally. But if you asked me, and I know you didn't, it was kind of like cheating or gaming the system." Sharon smiled, her whiter-than-white teeth contrasting against her ebony skin. She took the drink and took a tall pull from it.

  "Now, you aren't gonna start claiming the refs made a bad call and that's why the Blair lost the game, are you?"

  "You know me, Wally. I'd never use a bad call as an excuse. We should have had a better battle plan, or my marines should've improvised better when they got trapped. I must say that your crew was quite creative with their improvisational skills."

  "Yeah, I don't know whether to reprimand or promote them. But it did sure as hell work." Wallace refilled his glass then stretched across his desk to do the same for Sharon. "I do have some concerns, though."

  "Such as?"

  "Well, sure we won the war game, but to win it we treated it like a game. On both sides we were just gaming. What would your marines have done if it were a real firefight?" Wallace leaned back and exhaled in an attempt to relax.

  "They would have done what marines do, what soldiers and sailors always do, Wally. Improvise, fight, die, succeed. And not necessarily in that order," Sharon replied.

  "Sure, but think of it a bit more fleet-wide. We haven't been in a real shooting engagement for nearly six years now. How ready are we going to be when the president finally decides to take it to the Seppies in their own star system? You know that is coming soon. You can't just secede from the Union. Wasn't it Zachary Taylor that said something like he would personally lead the Army against persons taken in rebellion against the Union, and that he would hang them with less reluctance than he would spies?"

  Uncle Timmy? He double-checked with his AIC.

  Aye, sir. It was Zachary Taylor, the twelfth president and a military man to boot, Uncle Timmy quickly responded. Do you need more, sir?

  That'll do, Tim.

  "You were the military-history major, not me," Sharon replied.

  "Something just doesn't set right with the way things are right now," Wallace continued. "We haven't seen hide nor hair of the Seppies since the Battle of the Oort. President Moore has been doing his best to fight the idiots in Congress to build up the fleet, but that has been slow and marginal. You know that Ahmi hasn't had the same problem dealing with her constituents."

  "If she did, she'd have them killed. Or do it herself. She's a bloodthirsty bitch, that one," Sharon agreed.

  "We better get ready. I think America is in for the culmination of the last hundred years of strife between the Martian working class, the colonists, and the manifest-destiny explorers."

  "Yeah, I believe it is coming sooner than we realize, but who knows? God help us is all I can say. But the Seppies haven't been in a shooting war for the same amount of time, either." Sharon finished her drink and sat it back down at the edge of Wallace's desk.

  "Good point. Want another?"

  "No, Admiral, I'm on duty. I've got to get back to the Blair and get ready for our jaunt in a few hours."

  "Yeah, me, too. Did you want to meet the First Daughter while you're here?"

  "No, thanks, I just don't have time. And stop being such a Wally-worry-wart, Admiral, it'll give you heartburn, headaches, and hemorrhoids. We've got good troops, you and me. They'll do what has to be done to get the job done." Sharon stood up and saluted the two-star admiral. "As always, a pleasure, Admiral Jefferson."

  "Right back at you, Admiral Walker." Wallace returned the salute. He was slightly startled by a crackling and sizzling sound and a bright flash of white light, and then Sharon vanished from right in front of him. "Goddamn, I'm never gonna get used to that."

  Chapter 8

  July 1, 2394 AD

  Mars Orbit, Sol System

  Friday, 11:05 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  "Lieutenant Commander Buckley and Captain Harrison are here, Admiral." The XO stood at ease in the hatch of the admiral's office.

  "Come in, Larry, come in."

  Joe wasn't sure what all this was about other than the fact that he had been ordered to report to the CHENG and the XO as soon as he got the "goddamned elevator back on line." That had been the XO's exact words.

  "At ease, gentlemen." RADM Jefferson stood with a deadpan expression and his arms behind his back. Joe tried to relax just enough as not to look too at ease. Joe knew that the admiral liked him. Well, at least he thought he did. He had given the admiral every reason to like him. Hell, Joe's dad had sacrificed himself to save the ship for Captain Jefferson years ago. And then Joe had done nearly the same damned thing on his first day on the job. Hopefully, if there was some ass chewing about the elevator trick, then his past performance would soften it. And there was always the nagging fact that his antics helped them defeat the Blair in the war game. Being on the winning side was always better than being on the losing one, especially when it came to ass chewings.

  "Sir." He and Benny responded almost in harmony with each other. Benny's voice was a little more baritone than Joe's, and couldn't neither one of them carry a damned tune in a bucket.

  "Benny, I have to tell you, your presence in the Engineering Room most certainly was missed today. Did you hear about all the crazy things that went on down there in the Engineering Room of my ship?"

  "Aye, Admiral, I did," Benny replied.

  "Lieutenant Commander Joeseph Buckley Jr., what are we supposed to do with you?" The admiral turned from Benny to Joe. "That trick with the elevator you pulled today, son, well, it was underhanded, and dirty pool. Let me tell you, Admiral Walker ain't none too happy about it, either. And the audacity of putting up the notice sign . . ."

  "Sir." Joe looked straight ahead and tried not to let his voice crack. "Just following procedure for the elevator maintenance, Admiral."

  "Benny, what do you think about it?" the CO asked.

  "Admiral, if you ask me, I'd say it was clever, sneaky, and I never would've done it in a million years. The sign was a nice touch."

  Oh, great—Benny is selling me out, Joe thought. The sign had actually been Andy's doing, but Joe wasn't going to cause his engineer's mate any undue strife by giving up that information. No, sir, he'd take the lumps for that sign. Hell, Benny was right—it was a nice touch. And it was funny as hell.

  Relax, Joe. Debbie tried to calm his nerves, but his heart rate was through the roof. You know that Benny wouldn't sell you out.

  "And what about wrecking a perfectly good piece of hardware on my ship just to win a sim, and then go about sabotaging the propulsion systems because he didn't want to have to fight off a few wussy marines—"

  "Ahem!" USMC Brigadier General Larry Chekov grunted.

  "No disrespect intended, EndRun, just making a point." The admiral grinned at his XO. The XO muttered something about squids, but not loud enough for any of them to make out.

  "What's that, XO?"

  "Nothing, Admiral. Just clearing my throat."

  "Benny?" The admiral turned back to the CHE
NG.

  "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."