Friday, 2:41 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
Ensign Bella Penrose, a.k.a. Nancy Penzington or Kira Shavi or a hundred other classified cover aliases, decided the best place to pick up gossip on the U.S.R. flagship was either in the galley or down in the hangar bay. She had been in the galley earlier, and it was dead in there, so she tried the hangar bay. She could always use the excuse that she was checking on her mecha. Hell, she was an officer of the flight wing, so she really wouldn't have to offer any excuses to the enlisted crew in the hangar.
Bella casually sauntered out of the main shaft elevator that led from top to bottom of the supercarrier as it opened onto the large open corridor leading to the hangar about ten meters across from it. There were crews in multiple colors of uniforms, shirts, or coveralls running to and fro. The hangar bay wasn't unlike any other she had ever been in. She followed the taped off pathway toward her almost brand-new second-generation Gnat. She had only been out in it maybe twenty times. According to the flight records, she was the first pilot assigned to it. She came to a stop at the nose of the fighter. The little fighter was a knockoff of the U.S. Ares-T mecha. The Seppy engineers must have gone to great lengths to reverse engineer a downed Ares-T, or they had stolen plans or perhaps a little of both. The result was a new generation of transfigurable and very fast fighting mecha. One thing that Bella was interested in was the fact that nobody during her training process had so much as mentioned, much less trained her on, the U.S. Navy pilot maneuver where the vehicle would spin about in every direction madly killing everything in sight. Perhaps the targeting system for that capability hadn't been reproduced by the Seppy engineers. Perhaps they just hadn't thought about it because few Seppy pilots ever returned from such attacks.
'How's it hanging down there, sailor?' she asked a man in a purple shirt crawling around under her fighter. 'Something up with my bird?'
'Uh, no, ma'am. Just doing the hundred-hour inspection.' The petty officer first class crawled out from under the mecha and stood. 'What can I do for you, Ensign Penrose?'
'Nothing. I just thought I'd get some air and couldn't think of a better place.' She smiled her best girl-in-heat smile. That was always a good technique for greasing the lips of young male soldiers.
'I dunno, I could think of better places,' the petty officer said as he unscrewed an umbilical from the empennage and started to drag it across to the next plane on his list.
'Need a hand?' Bella grabbed the umbilical farther behind him and tugged on it and helped him drag it.
'Uh, thanks, ma'am. Did you see all the hubbub a few minutes ago?' he asked her.
'No, what hubbub?' Now she was getting somewhere.
'Well, we had this shuttle come in just a bit ago. Some guy in a U.S. military school outfit led some young girl in a cadet uniform of some type around at the end of a pistol. She was zip-tied, and her mouth was duct-taped. Several fully armed grunts met them and marched them up to the elevator. Fireman Tibbs claims the elevator didn't stop till it went to the top, but she could just be making that shit up.'
'That is interesting. Any idea who they were?' Bella had missed that somehow.
'Nope. Somebody said they thought the girl looked like somebody famous, but nobody could put their finger on just who.' The sailor turned back to the umbilical and plugged it into the Gnat beside Bella's. 'If you don't mind, ma'am, I better get this shit done before the chief rains down on my ass, ma'am.'
'Sure, sorry to bother you, Simms,' she read off his name tag. 'Thanks for the gossip.'
'You're welcome, ma'am.'
