Chapter 2
February 19, 2407 AD
U.S.S. Sienna Madira II Expeditionary Fleet
Deep Open Space
691 Light-years from the Sol System
Monday, 6:45 A.M. Ship Standard Time
“You know, in some other life, you might be going off to a day job and I might be headed to take the kids to school.” USN Captain Jack “DeathRay” Boland adjusted his UCU top, bumping into his wife as she brushed her teeth.
“Why do you get to take the kids to school and I have to work?” USN Captain Nancy Penzington responded as she spit the robotic toothbrush cube into the sink. The little bot shook itself clean under the flowing water from the faucet, then climbed up on the edge of the sink and retracted itself to about half the size of a sugar cube.
“I just figure you’re the responsible one and all, and that you are more likely to hold down a regular job,” DeathRay replied.
“Why couldn’t we just be independently wealthy and let the kids have private tutors from home? The two of us could just lay around the pool all day drinking fruity drinks filled with ethanol like they serve on the beach near New Tharsis. Hell, we could even live on the beach at New Tharsis.”
“Now you’re talking, Captain. What’d’ya say we snap-back there and call all this soldiering shit quits? It’d be the life,” DeathRay kidded. “You heard the General. Now’s our chance.”
“While I’d love to sit on a beach half naked with you and contemplate how many children we should have and how much fun we’d have making them, I’m not so sure now is the time.” Nancy smiled back at Jack. “Besides, Boland, who’d lead the Archangels boldly into overwhelming numbers of Chiata fighters and who’d command the Hillenkoetter? And somebody has to watch after the Moores. Who would do that if we ain’t here?”
“Just half naked? Why not all naked? Aw shit, we’d get bored anyway.” Jack grabbed Nancy around the waist from behind and pulled her to him. Then he turned her around and looked into her eyes. “I think I’m right where I want to be right now any damned way.”
“Shut up and kiss me, idiot. I’ve got to get to the bridge and you’ve got to get back to the Madira,” Nancy told him.
Commander Joe Buckley Junior, Chief Engineer of the Sienna Madira II, sat across the breakfast table from the armored environment-suit marine he’d been spending most of his free time with for the past year or more. Joe sat leaning on an elbow and playing with the eggs on his plate. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to eat or not. He wasn’t sure he was awake or not. He looked up at Rondi who was already wide-ass awake and in her UCUs. She leaned back in her chair and finished off her coffee.
“Having a hard time getting going this morning, CHENG?”
“Yeah. Guess so. You kept me up too late.” Buckley decided he didn’t want the eggs and then realized from the look on Rondi’s face that he’d said something stupid. He backpedaled as quickly as he could. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’d stay up all night with you any time you’d let me.”
“Ha ha,” Rondi slapped the table. “Good save, CHENG.”
“Listen, I know you’re an AEM and all and you often go traipsing into thick shit that would make the most courageous of soldiers piss themselves, but . . .” he tactically changed the subject and displayed his concern in one move.
Nice move, Joe, his AIC told him in his head.
“But what?” Rondi leaned in closer to him. The little two-person table in the CHENG’s quarters was just small enough that she could almost lean nose to nose with him. Joe looked into her eyes and at her face. He’d never spent as much time with a person before as he had with Rondi. The Master Gunnery Sergeant was tough as nails, but from where Joe sat she was soft and vulnerable and squishy in just the right places.
“But, keep the shield system on and your head down.” He finished. “And, uh, keep it frosty, like you marines like to say.”
“That’s stay frosty. And, well, you keep your helmet on in engineering in case the ship gets hammered by those zig-zagging blue beams, and no crazy-ass Buckley shit if things go bad down there,” she said. Joe was sure she was talking about the now infamous Buckley maneuver where he had damned near sacrificed himself to save the power systems of the ship during a major battle. He could never live that particular incident down, even though he’d been decorated and promoted for it.
At the time it had been the only thing Joe could think of to save the ship and it had worked, but he’d fried his body with radiation in the process. He didn’t have any plans to repeat the process. Almost all of his internal organs had to be replaced and the worst of it was the pain from the immunoboost drugs regrowing his testicles. He felt a bit of unease in the pit of his stomach just thinking about it.
“Well, stay frosty then, and keep your shields up.”
“I’ll be on an extremely hostile alien fucking planet fighting extremely hostile fucking aliens and breathing God only knows what type of toxic hostile fucking alien air. I’ll keep my fucking shit on tight,” Rondi promised. Joe wasn’t exactly sure when or how the two of them had managed to become a thing. In fact, to him, even though they’d known each other only a few years it seemed like forever. He liked her. She was definitely more than just “boat cute.” She was take-home-to-mom-and-dad cute. That was, if his dad were still alive, but his mom would love to meet her, he was certain. He’d just have to ask her not to be so expressive with the “F-word” in front of his mother. While his mother was plenty old enough and seasoned as a longtime military wife, she would curse Joe for cursing in front of her, very hypocritically, as often as she could manage. Joe just didn’t want to throw rocket fuel on that fire.
But, he’d like to take her home nonetheless. Rondi was a bad-ass armored e-suit marine with a body that went with the title. AEMs were hard as rocks, tough, and smart, and Rondi was no exception. Joe also liked the way her glow-in-the-dark tattoo of a snake wrapping itself around her body looked when he got to see the entirety of it. That thought did something else to the pit of his stomach—and a little bit lower.
“Good. I can’t eat these eggs this morning. Want ’em?” He pushed his plate back.
“I’m good. The damned things look too, uh, green almost, for me to eat,” she replied.
“What?” The statement startled him more awake. He looked closer at the eggs and realized there was a slight green tint to them. “Holy shit! Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“What? About the eggs? Hell, the eggs always taste like shit. What’s new?”
“CHENG to Commander Benjamin,” Joe said after his AIC opened a com channel for him.
“Benjamin here. What’s up, Joe?”
“Keri, why are my eggs green this morning?” he asked his second engineer.
“Uh, shit, are they? I haven’t eaten yet. Hold on, Joe,” she said, but left the channel open so he could hear her shouting expletives at one of the petty officers. “When was the last fucking time you checked the Ox mix and the carbon dioxide scrubbers? I don’t give a good goddamn what else was taking place. If we can’t fucking breathe we can’t fucking fight. If we try to put pilots, tankheads, and AEMs in suits after breathing too much pure oxygen they’re gonna get headaches or worse.” There was some garbled talk and more expletives and Joe wasn’t exactly sure who was getting the brunt of it, but Benjamin was giving some poor seaman hell.
“Keri?”
“I got it, Joe. Looks like we had a LOX valve freeze up on the upper tier near the tower. The O2 got too rich and the nitrogen too low. Don’t have to worry about the bends, but there might be some headaches because the carbon dioxide is a bit high now. Only bigwigs like the bridge crew and CHENGs ought to be affected. Four minutes and it’ll be good.”
“Damn right it will,” Joe ordered. “Do I need to come down there and . . .”
“Aye, sir. We’ve got this and I will be on top of it. Is that all?”
“That’s all for now. Get that shit locked down, Keri. Buckley out.”
“Minor emergency already?” Rondi looked at Buckley with a look that told Joe the same thing he was feeling but didn’t want to say. The crew was on edge. Silly shit like letting the air mix getting screwed up just couldn’t be happening. Not on his ship. Not nearly seven hundred light years from home in the middle of nowhere. Not on his ship.
No need to stress, Joe. Commander Benjamin is very competent, his AIC said in his mind.
Of course she is, and I trust her, he thought. But we’ve gotta keep it wired tight and locked down. Silly shit like this will get us dead. I want you running nonstop diagnostics and updating me if there are any even minor changes in the flush water in the heads.
Roger that, Joe.
This mission was crazy as hell and likely a suicide one, but somebody had to do it. If there was a chance in hell that there was a magic device or ally on the distant planetary system they were headed to that would help them stop the Chiata Horde from totally annihilating humanity then they had to go look for it. The way the Chiata had kicked their asses on the fleet’s first encounter with them had rocked all of them to their core. Humanity was way behind, outnumbered, and seriously, laugh-out-loud hilariously outgunned. Somehow, the Expeditionary Fleet would have to change that. Joe had to keep his shit together.
“Do you think the QMT will work within the system?” Rondi broke his AIC conversation trance.
“Dunno.” Joe thought about it for a moment. “If they are using some sort of jamming technology there it will probably suppress all QMTs once in range. Just like Elle Ahmi’s trap at the planet you were stranded in space nearby, on the mission before we found UM61. You could snap in but not out. I suspect it’ll be like that.”
“Well, there was a backdoor there,” Rondi added.
“Yeah, thank God that Captain Penzington and DeathRay found it.”
“And the fleet they found, but Penzington wasn’t a captain then,” Rondi corrected Joe and then looked expressionless as if she were talking to her AIC. “I don’t really have to report anywhere for about an hour after the next jump. How about you?”
Debbie? He thought to his AIC.
Commander Benjamin is there and doesn’t have a scheduled break until after the next jump, unless you feel the need to micromanage her some more. You are not scheduled to be active until time to relieve her, his AIC replied in his mind.
“Keri can handle engineering until I get there, I guess. Hell, I wouldn’t want to be that POFC she’s riding right now. But still, I’ve got some calibrations runs on the increased power conduits on the shield switches and I need to get on recalibrating the QMT subspace detection grids the warrant officers are working on. I plan to use them to look for whatever will be suppressing snap-backs in that system. I’ve really got a lot to do before we get there. Gonna be a long Navy day,” Joe answered. “I long for the days of just hitting a valve with a big fucking wrench and making it work. Now it’s all quantum membrane calibration sensors and hyperspace field manipulator accelerator coils and so on.”
“Well, damn.” Rondi stood and stretched. “I was hoping we might have time for sex.”
“Like I said,” Joe raised an eyebrow. “I’m not scheduled to be on duty for almost an hour.”
“I’m not scheduled to be on duty for almost an hour, Top!” AEM Lance Corporal Jacob Roy pleaded with Sergeant Major Tommy Suez.
“Roy, I don’t give a shit what the duty roster says. Armored environment suit marines of the U.S.S. Sienna Madira II are always on duty if I say they are on duty. You heard the General just now, didn’t you?” Suez wasn’t shouting. In fact, Tommy had more of a calm, matter-of-fact way of speaking sternly than a stereotypical drill instructor. Sergeant Major Tommy Suez looked at the new transfer into the squad. He had not yet been able to size the kid up. He was a true kid of only twenty-five years old, no rejuves yet. Tommy hated seeing kids going to fight. They hadn’t even had a chance to live yet. He had felt the same way about the General’s daughter, who was young, very young he thought. She had certainly seen her time in the shit, some really serious shit. And each time she had fought her way out of it like any other good marine. That was just the way it was and he didn’t make the law. Anybody over twenty-one who wanted to join up could. Anybody over twenty-five could volunteer for combat duty. He didn’t have to like the law. Hell, Tommy felt that you shouldn’t be able to fight until after your first rejuve. But the law was the law and young marines had been going into the shit for centuries. It was up to him to see to it that his marines were best equipped and suited and trained to optimize their chance of coming home in once piece that was still alive.
“I heard the General, Top Sergeant.” Lance corporal Roy responded. “But I didn’t understand that meant to report to duty, Top Sergeant.”
“Skip it, Roy. Get your gear together and rally in the equipment hangar in ten. And get your roomie’s ass up and at ’em as well. Major Sellis wants the squad ready for pre-mission briefing on the double.” Tommy softened slightly. There was plenty of hardnosed shit coming their way in a few hours, he’d bust their balls then. Tommy had fought against the Chiata at Alpha Lyncis. He knew he was one of the few lucky ones who made it home from that fight. He was pretty damned sure that their odds were way worse for coming home this go-around than they had been then.
“Right away, Top!” Lance corporal Roy tossed a pillow across the walkway to hit the curtain on his roommate’s bunk. The AEM quarters were top bunks with private storage and desk space underneath, much like a college dorm room. A sliding soundproof curtain allowed for privacy. “You heard him, Jerry, get your ass up!”
Tommy continued his walk through the squad’s quarters banging his metal coffee mug against the bunk walls as he walked. He didn’t miss the sardine bunks the junior enlisted lived in. E fours and E fives shared an actual quarters and E sixes and above had private quarters. Tommy hadn’t quartered in the sardine can for years. He didn’t miss it at all.
He kept an eye out for the Master Gunnery Sergeant who was usually there before him berating the shit out of some junior, but as far as he could tell she hadn’t reported in yet either. According to the duty roster she wasn’t due for another fifty or so minutes.
Any word on Howser? he thought to his AIC.
Master Gunnery Sergeant Rondi Howser has not reported yet. She is not due yet either, Tommy, his AIC responded.
Where is she?
Master Gunnery Sergeant Rondi Howser is in Commander Buckley’s quarters presently. Would you like me to open a channel?
Ha ha, he thought. It was no secret that Howser had been spending a lot of time with the CHENG. Tommy was glad for her and as far as he could tell, the CHENG was a good soldier for a squid. No. Let her be. She’s a pro. She’ll show up ready to go.
“Good morning, Top.” One of the AEMs walked by him in his underwear with a towel draped over his shoulder.
“Ten minutes, Private Hall.”
“I heard, Top. Roger that.”
Tommy looked down the long corridor that was the AEM bunkroom. The dull gray diamond-grooved metal deck plating clanked beneath each boot as he walked calmly through. Even though he hadn’t slept in bunks like this in years, he could still remember that first day he was getting ready for combat in the Oort back in the Sol System. He was sweating and shaking and needed a chill pill as he pulled himself from his bunk the morning of his first day in combat. To Tommy, these kids seemed to be less concerned than he had been, or they were hiding it better. Maybe they were better trained or the meds were better. Or maybe they just had no idea what the hell was about to happen to them.
“Sir, if I understood the mission videos and debriefs I don’t think there is any way in hell to understand what is about to happen to us.” US Army Colonel Maximillian “Dragon” Slayer, the new leader of the tankheads, stood in front of General Alexander Moore’s desk in the captain’s ready room.
“I agree with you, Max. There is no way anybody can fathom what fighting the Chiata is like until they’ve done it.” Moore nodded for the man to sit down. “General Warboys was as hardcore and badass as they come. I don’t think history will show a tank driver with a better, more courageous career. I knew Mason for a long long time. His loss left quite the void to fill.”
“Yes, sir.” Colonel Slayer replied. “I will do my damnedest, sir!”
“I know you will, Max. That’s why I stole you away from the school to lead my tankheads here. Listen, you know it as well as I do, once Warboys was lost, and we lost several of the other Warlords in that fight, my tank squadron was decimated.”
“Yes, sir. I had a hard time picking up the pieces. Several of the Warlords will never be the same without General Warboys,” Max agreed. Alexander watched the man to gauge his response. After five months he was beginning to feel confidence in his choice for Warboys’ replacement.
“Max, your new Slayers squadron scores have been through the roof on the sims, but as soon as those damned red and green blurs start attacking in massive numbers, the sims go right out the damned window. You understand that, but somehow you have to make these new tank drivers get it before they get hit like a deer in headlights. The Chiata move faster than anything we’ve ever encountered before and kill relentlessly and in droves. It’s a helluva thing you’re being asked to do.” Alexander took a sip of coffee from his favorite mug, which he had acquired while in the White House, as he sized up his new colonel one last time.
“Sir, the men can handle it. We’ve trained for it as best we know how. They’ll either win, die in distress, or die gloriously fighting. It is what it is.”
“I prefer we win, Max. Or, at least, we live to fight ’em another day. Get ’em ready and good luck.”
“Yes, sir.” Colonel Slayer stood and saluted. Alexander returned it in kind and held quiet until the man had exited and closed the cabin door.
Abigail, where is Sehera? He thought.
She is on her way to Deanna’s quarters. Would you like me to open a channel? his AIC replied.
Negative. This, I must do in person.
Yes, sir.
“Time to face the music.” Alexander stood and let out a long sigh before muttering to himself something about soldiers being easier to handle.
The walk to the elevator and down a few floors seemed like it took hours, but it had only taken Alexander about three minutes. The corridors were a flurry of activity with soldiers and crews running to and fro to put out or start some prebattle fire. Each time the crew passed by they would stop and salute, and Moore would nod or salute in return with a smile and an occasional “Carry on.”
Finally, he reached his daughter’s quarters. He buzzed and had Abigail announce to his daughter’s AIC he was at the door. A second or two passed before the door hissed open. His daughter stood before him in her UCU, standing at attention. She was the absolute perfect spitting image of her mother.
“General Moore, sir!” Deanna said to him with a salute. Alexander could see his wife standing a few feet behind her, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
“At ease, princess. This is a daddy visit, not a general visit,” he said to his daughter, and held up his arms, waving her forward to give him a hug.
“Good morning, Daddy.” Deanna hugged him like she was a little girl again. To Alexander she always would be, badass marine or not.
“Morning, princess.” She dragged him in through the door and he tapped the controls, closing it behind him. “I hope you are well this morning.”
“She’s fine, Alexander,” Sehera smiled and put an arm around their daughter’s shoulder. “We should have met for breakfast this morning.”
“Haven’t had time to eat yet. Still can, well, we have about thirty minutes before we jump,” Alexander said as he noticed the countdown clock projected on his daughter’s video screen.
“There isn’t time, Daddy. I have to check in with DeathRay before the jump,” Dee said. “CAG is doing his ‘all call’ prebrief. Mecha jocks gotta be there.”
“Right. I know. I just needed to see the two of you before is all.” Alexander reached for his wife’s hand. “Sure wish I could talk you into going home, Dee.”
“Daddy, that’s a hell of a thing for you to say to me!” Dee sounded almost hurt.
“I had to say it. I know you’re not going anywhere else but into the shit like the mecha jock you are. I just, had to, well . . . what kind of father would I be?” Moore didn’t want to show weakness but she was his little girl. She was his only little girl whom he’d somehow managed to put into harm’s way over and over and over. But she was stubborn like her mother and her old man. She was not one to turn from a fight. Hell, she continuously volunteered for them.
“I know, Daddy. Now let’s not talk about it anymore.” Dee hugged him again.
“Alright,” he said. “You just stay frosty and be safe, Marine.”
“Is that an order, daddy?”
“Alexander, stop babying her. You act like we’ve never been through this before,” Sehera Moore berated her husband. “Our daughter is a pro. She is, by God, United States Marine Corps Major Deanna ‘Apple1’ Moore, mecha jock extraordinaire. She will be fine. You could no more keep her away from this fight than you could me.”
“Well, now that you bring that up,” Alexander stammered over his words a bit, “I was kind of hoping you would snap back at least to UM61 if not home for this one.”
“I have volunteered for duty in the hospital. They need me here,” Sehera said. The irritation in her voice was obvious. “I’m going nowhere.”
“But Sehera, listen to me. This is going to be rough and there is no guarantee that we are even going to be able to come back. It may take weeks, months, or even years to jaunt out of this place without the QMT snap-back gates working. I would feel better knowing that at least one of us was safe.” Alexander hoped that made as much sense to his wife as it had to him. He’d been rehearsing that little speech in his mind for days now. He finally had said it and was sure it didn’t work out nearly as well as he’d planned.
“No,” is all Sehera said. Deanna looked back and forth between her parents, looking as if she were not sure if she should butt in. Alexander didn’t give her the chance.
“You could go and stay with your mother while we do this. Help her plan the next attack wave.”
“No.”
“Just no?” Alexander asked. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
“There is nothing else to say, Alexander. Now drop it. I’m staying with my family right here. If something happens then I will be there when it does. End of story.” Alexander knew when to give up. His wife could be quite formidable when she wanted to be. All those years before, when she’d rescued him from the torture camps on Mars, he had seen just how formidable she could be. He knew that when she decided on something there was no stopping her. He wasn’t stopping her now, and that was clear.
“Very well then. But listen, both of you. I want you to keep those new Buckley shields on at all times. You hear me?” he said, pulling both of them to him in a family embrace. “Nothing can happen to you. You understand me!”
“We love you too, Daddy,” Deanna said to her father.
“I love you, princess. You keep your fucking shields on!” Alexander kissed her on the forehead and then leaned into his wife. A tear formed in the corner of his eye but he managed to fight it and hide it from the women. “You too, Sehera. I love you both with everything I have.”
“I know,” she said.