Unfortunately, Ahmi and Fink were still on their feet. Fink was now wearing his helmet, and while Ahmi seemed a bit unsteady, she was somehow still standing—probably immunoboost and stims.
"Don't fucking do it, Alexander!" Ahmi screamed at him almost in a pitch too high for dogs to hear. She had an unconscious Dee by the neck and a railpistol to her head. Fink was on her left with his HVAR leveled on them. He had his back to the window facing the White House lawn and waved the weapon back and forth cautiously.
"Let her go, Elle!" Moore shouted at her. He shifted the weight of his feet and readied himself. For what, he wasn't sure, since he didn't have a plan of action yet.
"Let her go," Sehera said. Sehera was near Thomas at the entrance to the office, and both of them were pointing their rifles at Ahmi, trying to get a line of sight where Dee wasn't in the way. Koodie, Nancy, and DeathRay were on the other side of the couch.
"You shoot me, and my AIC will fire this pistol. Dee will die," Ahmi said. "Now drop the SIF and let us go."
"Dee stays here," Alexander growled.
"Very well, Moore. You win, this time." Ahmi tightened her grip on Dee. Dee started to regain consciousness—they must've given her something as well.
"Don't move, Dee. It'll be all right," Sehera warned her.
"Ma'am, if we're gonna go, let's go," Fink said.
Dee was quickly regaining her feet. "Fuck you, Fink. I am so gonna hunt you down and rip your goddamned head off," Dee shouted.
"Easy, dear," Ahmi said.
Abigail! Ask Nancy's AIC if they can QMT Dee out.
No, sir, they cannot.
Can we track them?
Yes, sir. That was all part of Nancy's plan. Allison, her AIC, is quite brilliant, sir.
Then if we let her go, I can go right to her?
Yes, sir.
Now we're talking.
Yes, sir.
"Go, Ahmi, and don't come back. Your Separatist movement is over," Moore told her.
"We shall see, Alexander. We shall see. Now drop your SIF."
"Drop the SIF, Thomas." The Secret Service bodyguard triggered the SIF generator off.
"Done, sir."
"Let her go. I gave her my word." Moore motioned to the rest of them.
"Yes, you did. You are such an honorable marine, Alexander. I should have killed you long ago!" Ahmi pushed Dee forward and fired three rounds of the railpistol into Moore's chest as spheres of crackling light flashed around her and Fink. Dee dove for the ground, and DeathRay, Nancy, and Sehera pumped railgun rounds through the balls of light to no avail. Thomas and Koodie dove for the President. They covered him until the firing stopped.
"This is Thomas Washington. We have an emergency. The president is critically injured with three rounds to the chest. I repeat. The president has been shot."
"Daddy!" Dee rushed to his side. There was no blood, as his suit and organogel had sealed it off. Immunoboost had been administered, but the rounds were completely through him in three places.
"I'm alive, Dee. And most important, so are you!" Moore smiled as he tried to open his visor. Then he, the bodyguards, Dee, and Sehera vanished from the Oval Office.
They reappeared in a hospital room in someplace unknown to Dee. Sehera tossed her helmet on the floor and helped Thomas and Koodie pull Alexander Moore out of his armor.
"Leave the seal layer on." A team of doctors rushed in around them. "Stand back, we've got this."
"He was wounded pretty badly. His right lung was collapsed and torn asunder. His intestines were cut in half. And his heart had a hole in it big enough to put your thumb through. We did everything we could, ma'am." The doctor looked at Sehera and Dee. Then he looked over their shoulders at the bodyguards and politicians.
"No, Daddy!" Tears flowed down Dee's cheeks.
"Come with me," the doctor told them.
"Dee, shhh. It is okay, baby." Sehera held her daughter's hand and led her by the hand calmly as she followed the doctor.
He led them down a long white corridor to a double door where Thomas stood in his Secret Service–agent black suit and tie and dark sensor glasses. He nodded to them but didn't say a word as they passed through the doors.
The room they entered was a large private hospital room with a single bed in it. Moore was lying in the bed with a blanket covering him. The blanket had the presidential seal on it. They could only see the foot of the bed, as the head of it was blocked by a wraparound curtain that hung from ceiling to floor.
"It will be okay, Dee," Sehera comforted her. Dee was trembling and crying, barely maintaining control.
"Of course it will. Why wouldn't things be okay?" Alexander slid the curtain back. Dee's eyes widened.
"What! Daddy?" She rushed to his side and hugged him.
"Ouch, not too tight, princess, and not too loud, either." He hugged her back.
"Why? Why would you do this to me?" Dee looked angry.
"Shhh, Dee. Listen to your father before you say anything else." Sehera sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Alexander's leg through the blanket. He smiled back at her.
"We have some very hard decisions to make, Dee," Alexander started.
"What do you mean, decisions?" Dee interrupted. "There are no decisions. We go and find Fink and my deranged grandmother and we put about ten bullets into each of their brains. No decision. It is simple!"
"Like father, like daughter." Sehera smiled again. She rubbed Dee on the back with her other hand.
"Well, yes, Dee, we will do that, if that is the right thing to do. And believe me, I agree with you. But Elle Ahmi controls and inspires millions of people. If she suddenly vanishes, there will be chaos and Tau Ceti will tear itself apart. The power-hungry assholes like Fink, Elise Tangiers, and many others will usurp resources and create a world of factions that will continue to be a war zone for generations." Moore paused for a breath and adjusted the tube in his nose. For the first time, Dee noticed it.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
"Ha, nothing. They haven't had time to finish printing me a new lung yet, so I'm still only using one of them. The doctors spent all the time so far printing me a new heart and then a new section of intestine. I'll be fine after my surgery in a few minutes, but first we need to talk. The lung will be printed by then, and the surgery is quite routine. With immunoboost, I'll be back to normal in two hours tops."
"Okay. I love you, Dad." Dee had never seen her father hurt before. He had tackled giant mechanical monsters with his bare hands and come out without so much as a scratch, but he seemed extremely mortal to her now lying in the hospital bed. The feeling scared the hell out of her. The fact that it was her own grandmother that had shot him just made her more certain that Elle Ahmi was nothing more than raw genetic material. If Dee got the chance, she'd kill Ahmi for doing what she had done to her dad.
"So, the decision we have to make, Dee," Sehera added, "is what do we do next? Ahmi can't continue to be in charge of the United Separatist Republic, as she calls it. The U.S. can and will forcibly take the system, but there would be terrorist activity for decades and decades, until every last Separatist is found and killed, if it isn't handled delicately. And who is to say that the next president will have the fortitude your father has had in dealing with them. After all, no matter how much we love him, no president will continue to get reelected forever. Nor should they."
"What are you two saying?"
"We have a plan in mind to take out the heads of all the cells in the Separatist movement and remove their desire and ability to resist the U.S."
"How?"
"It is our family that has caused this mess for humanity for so long. We are going to take on the responsibility to clean it up," Sehera added. "The Separatists are dug in much deeper in our society than the general public knows. There are moles in Congress and the Senate. There are moles here in the White House. There are moles in every colony and territory. There are CEOs and other officers of big corporations and conglomerates involved that will have
to be removed from their positions of power."
"How?"
"The three of us, Captain Jack Boland, Nancy Penzington, and Thomas Washington, are going to end this thing covertly, quietly, and quickly. We'll do it in a way that history will never know about, but mankind will be the better for. We'll start with the Separatist cell leaders today. Over the next year, we'll deal with the others." Moore clicked the remote on his bed and raised the back of it a bit to make him a little more comfortable. "We can't and we will not do this if you aren't with us, Dee. And your mother and I are serious when we say that we will not do this if you don't want to. We can go on the way things are, and you can live your life as you have been. Although we will need to put more security on you."
"I'm in, Daddy. What do I do?"
"That's my girl. Your mother will talk with you about that while I'm in surgery."
"So, there is one thing I need to understand," Dee said. "My grandma was an evil twisted psycho nut batshit crazy bitch?"
Sehera let out a rueful chuckle. "Like father, like daughter."
Chapter 34
July 1, 2394 AD
Ross 128, Arcadia
Friday, 4:45 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
Admiral, I think you'd better get back up here, sir. The XO sent the message to Wallace directly to his mindvoice. Our courier is back from the Sol System.
"On my way," he said audibly. "COB, we'd better get back upstairs."
"Understood, sir." Charlie shook the hand of another wounded Marine pilot, call sign Deuce, as they made their way out of the postoperative ward. The marine would probably be paralyzed for days, until her new spinal column section that had been printed and implanted could heal and her brain could figure out which reconnected nerve went to what body part. It would take her weeks of rehab to relearn how to walk, run, fight, and fly mecha again.
"Hell of a mess, Charlie."
"Yes, sir. That QMT tech saved a lot of lives. We sure could have used it at the Oort or during the Exodus," the COB said. "Or back in the old days, or—"
"Didn't save them all, COB. We still have a lot of letters to write."
"Yes, sir." They turned the corner of the corridor out to the elevator. The COB depressed the button, and they waited patiently.
"Any word on the QMT facility controls, sir?"
"Uncle Timmy says that Ramy's Robots took it. It has been swept, and the warrant officers have it working. They've already QMTed up and down between it and the orbital facility several times. We should be able to operate the QMT facility in a matter of minutes."
"Damn good news, Admiral."
"Indeed."
The elevator ride didn't take long, and after having been with the wounded for a while, neither of them was in the mood to talk a whole bunch. Seeing that many of America's finest maimed, dismembered, and disfigured was disheartening to say the least. On the up side, none of the wounded had low spirits and none of them felt bad about what they had done. That in itself was uplifting. The doors slid open, and it was time to get back to work.
"Admiral on the bridge!" The XO stood from the captain's chair and returned to his station.
"As you were." Wallace took his seat, and the COB took his. "So, what's up, Larry?"
"Sir, the courier just returned. The enemy ships left us earlier because Admiral Walker is leading the rest of the fleet against the Separatists at Tau Ceti. The president sent a message for us to get there somehow and help her out."
"Fullback is probably giving the Seppies hell."
"Yes, sir. I'm sure she is."
"I suppose we can't let her have all the fun." Wallace turned on the DTM battlescape view and ship readouts. His mind had been resting long enough. More information than could be understood visually, audibly, and through touch flooded his mind directly. The DTM mindview allowed for a completely different level of perception of massive amounts of data. "It's been a long day, hey, XO? COB, better mix up some more of your coffee."
"Aye, Admiral," Charlie replied. "It's been one of those fine Navy days, sir. Should I make it strong?"
"You mean there is a strong version of your coffee, COB?"
"Oh, yes, sir. I make the weak stuff because a lot of our junior officers can't take real coffee, sir."
"Then make it strong. And yes, Charlie, it has been a fine Navy day."
"I wouldn't know about Navy days, Admiral, but I don't think even us marines would want too many like the one we've had so far." The XO grinned.
"Do we have full use of the QMT facility yet?" Wallace asked.
"Yes, sir," the STO replied.
"How about that?" Wallace thought about it; things could have been worse. They had jumped into the Ross 128 star system not even sure they had a way home. They knew they were going to have to fight for control of the QMT facility. And fight they had. They had lost an entire supercarrier, with few survivors. "Ground Boss, how we doing down on the planet?"
"We've ground it down to a halt, sir. The fighting is done, unless we want to start taking it house-to-house to look for holdouts," the ground boss replied.
"That's not our call right now. Okay, we'll leave two ships here, and the rest of us will QMT to Tau Ceti and jump right back into the fight." Wallace paused, trying to decide which two stayed. The Roosevelt and the Tyler could hold down the fort in Ross 128 and lick their wounds. The Madira would lead the other four ships that had seen very little of the fighting on to Tau Ceti. He put out the orders to the fleet ship captains.
"Fleet ships, this is Admiral Jefferson. The rest of the fleet has engaged the Separatists at Tau Ceti and needs our help. The Roosevelt and the Tyler will remain here and maintain operations while the rest of us will rendezvous at the orbital QMT facility for the jump to Tau Ceti in thirty minutes. For the ships about to jump, send out the recall to all of your troops and start prepping for battle. I want us loaded up and ready to QMT into battle in thirty minutes. If that means we run the QMTs to get the tanks and mecha on board at the same time the hangar bays are running and the Starhawks are flying, then that is what we do. I hate to have to ask you to jump right back into the fray again, people. I know this has been a long fight already. But our fellow soldiers are in the thick and need our assistance. We will be there for them. So let us all get moving. Good luck, and God bless."
"Andy, you don't have to be here," Joe told the EM1. "You should be in your rack resting."
"Hell, sir, I'm fine. That immunoboost is good stuff," Sanchez replied. "Did it work? I mean, I'd hate to think I got sucked out of the ship and all banged up for nothing."
"Yeah, it did. I'm gonna have to put you in for some sort of commendation. Bravery or something—the kind of thing usually given to jarheads." Joe smiled. "When the air rushed through the dry hull, it was supercooled through a Venturi effect, and that cooled the overheated coolant big time. We also came up with a new way to run the SIFs that will reduce the heat exchange needs by a shitload."
"Just glad I could help, sir."
"I'm just glad we didn't lose you."
"Aw shit, I wasn't never scared of that, sir," Andy lied.
"You sure you're up for duty then?"
"Sir, EM1 Sanchez reporting for duty, sir." He saluted.
"Well, we're headed into the shit in just a few minutes, so find something that needs fixin' and fix it, EM1." Joe returned the salute.
"Aye, sir."
Chapter 35
July 1, 2394 AD
Sol System, Mississippi
Friday, 5:45 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
Friday, 12:45 PM, New Tharsis Standard Time
"Jack, you ready for this?" Penzington asked the mecha jock. She knew that Boland was probably revered as one of the greatest pilots in the fleet, but what they were doing was "wet work," up close and personal. She wanted to make certain that the pilot would kill up close as easily as he could through mindview targeting sights. The distance made it easier for some people, and for some it didn't matter. Nancy never trusted people who coul
d easily kill. She just wanted them to be able to do the job when they had to.
"I'm good, Nancy." Jack slapped the ammo magazine into his HVAR and stepped on the pad with her.
"Good," Nancy said. "We'll take care of the Tangiers first. I know where Elise stays. If they are under attack, then she'll be in her safe house in the mountains. I was a member of the Tangiers inner circle for a while. I know them pretty well. I have her AIC's EM signature saved. As soon as we get near her, I'll be able to pinpoint her."
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