One Good Soldier

building, looking to the north across Madira Valley at the spaceport several tens of kilometers away. The dome at the vertex of the Separatist leader's home allowed for not only the three hundred and sixty degrees of view through the transparent armored walls but upward in a full hemisphere at the sky as well. Sitting in the quarters gave the impression of sitting on top of a very tall building on top of a high mountain peak with no walls or ceiling. The walls could be blacked out if needed or even have false images displayed on them to represent wood, concrete, or any other building or decorating material. But Elle liked the open view. She liked seeing the stars and the lights of the Tau Ceti capital city below and around her.

Her four-poster bed sat near the east side of the penthouse, so she could watch the Jovian rise several times a day and Tau Ceti rise in the mornings. She also could look out in any direction and see across several states of the Separatist nation. It wasn't the cold, dry desert of Mars, where she had grown up. In fact, it was a far superior planet, with oceans and an atmosphere and climates ranging from subtropical to cold mountainous regions. Ares was beautiful, and the Separatists would make the Tau Ceti system their home away from home. New Tharsis was the capital city, and she lived at the capitol building above the Senate floor.

Elle laughed at that thought. The Senate was nothing more than a gathering of powerful women and men who were her governors and generals overseeing certain regions of the system or large-scale projects. She didn't trust a one of them, and if something ever happened to her total dominating control over them, she feared that they would begin fighting amongst themselves, turning Ares into a world of separate regions controlled by powerful warlords. Elle didn't want the United Separatist Republic to turn into something akin to twenty-first century Africa. She rolled over onto her left side and looked out across the valley at the occasional spaceport traffic flying out of the city as her mind slowly drifted off to sleep and her eyelids grew too heavy to keep open. Elle needed her rest because she had a big day ahead of her, whether she knew it or not.

Chapter 4

July 1, 2394 AD

Sol System, Mars

Friday, 7:40 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

Ramy's Robots 3rd Armored E-suit Marines Forward Recon Unit had bounced alongside the Army tankheads for more than three hours since the war games had started. They had done some fighting along the way against the red-team AEMs, Army Armored Infantry (AAI), and Army tankheads that had dropped on them from the Lincoln and the Tyler, and they had come out on top with only minor losses. The sky was jam-packed with Marine and Navy mecha zigging and zagging through the thin atmosphere, leaving ion trails. Simulated tracer rounds and explosions continuously filled the sky. Modern-day war games looked a lot like the real thing, minus the blood and the terror. For tried and true soldiers who had tested their mettle in real combat, war games generated little more than the urgency to learn new skills or to sharpen old ones. They were so far from the real thing simply because the possibility of death was absent. But war gaming did make the soldiers more proficient in the case of real war, and each and every time they were given the opportunity to war game they brought their A-game. What a soldier might learn in a war game might just pay off in some real situation and save a life or two.

First Sergeant Tamara McCandless and Staff Sergeant Tommy Suez had seen the real thing, and both of them fully expected that the real thing was coming again sooner than most people wanted to admit. The two marines felt compelled to take the games seriously because neither of them wanted to end up a casualty of the real thing when it came. Besides that, there was team pride at stake. The flagship crew couldn't let themselves be defeated by other ships in