One Good Soldier

activated the pen. The needle slid out, arming itself, and then he jammed the thing through the seal layer of his armored flight suit into his neck. That hurt, too.

Candis, how long was I out?

Three minutes and fifty-one seconds.

Oh, well, not as bad as I thought. How am I? He could feel the adrenaline, pain meds, and immunoboost rushing over him. The pain had almost completely vanished.

I wouldn't try to move for about five more minutes. The immunoboost should be getting you back on your feet safely by then.

Roger that. What about Dee?

I'm not sure how she is, but I can still detect her AIC's emergency signal. You should try contacting Penzington, perhaps.

Good idea.

Jack was afraid to move his neck yet, but he could survey his predicament fairly well with his peripheral vision and by having his DTM mindview rotate about the axis of his head. His suit and helmet had limited sensors without his fighter, but he could still get simple optical and IR imagery.

He had come down about ten meters from where his mecha had hit and exploded. The gravity on the hull of the Seppy supercarrier must have been along similar protocols as that of the U.S. fleet ships. He felt like he was sitting on about one half of an Earth gravity. That's why his ejection couch hadn't simply bounced off and floated away. He could tell that he had bounced several times until his couch finally lodged itself into a niche in the hull plating. He had barely made it through the QMT gate in time, had barely managed to slow down enough, and had barely managed to eject at just the right time to not get himself killed. He'd have been of no use to the president's daughter dead.

As it was, he needed to let the immunoboost do its job for a few more minutes, figure out where Dee was, and then figure out how to get inside the ship. He was hoping that his CIA buddy on the inside could help him out with that one.

Candis, connect me to Penzington.

Hold on, Jack, she said into his mind. Okay. Got her.

Penzington?

Boland, you made it! Where the hell are you?

I crashed into the hull of the ship. I'm sitting in my ejection seat somewhere, uh, I'd guess near the aft end about midway up the port side.

We've got to move fast. They are about to teleport the president's daughter to the New Tharsis Capitol building.

What? Why there?

Elle Ahmi lives in the penthouse. You want to make a guess?

No. Shit. We've got to get off this ship and down there. Any ideas? Jack would have rubbed his chin in thought if he weren't still afraid to move and in an e-suit on the exterior hull of a spaceship in space.

Well, it's worse than that. We were just given word to go to battlestations and prepare to QMT back to Arcadia. I hope more than just the Madira is gonna be there, because the entire Seppy fleet is headed there!

Shit, I've got to get off this ship and to the planet, fast. Jack hadn't gone through damned near killing himself just to end up getting teleported back to where he started. He had to think of something. He had to get to Dee.

Well, with the SIFs up, you are not gonna get inside. Your best bet would be to get to the QMT facility and go from there. Maybe steal a ship, sneak onto the QMT pad, or something.

Jack decided he felt good enough to move, so he did. He unstrapped himself from the ejection-seat harness and stood up. The Tau Ceti QMT facility was directly over his head about five kilometers. The ship had moved off center of the QMT pad, probably from standard protocol to get out of the way in case some other ships came in from elsewhere. He looked at the ejection chair briefly and scrambled through the inventory of things he had in his suit's webbing. At one-half gravity there was no way he could jump and reach an escape velocity to get off the ship. Hell, that would put escape velocity somewhere around five kilometers per second. In other words, it would be like standing on the surface of Mars and trying to run and jump off the planet into orbit. That wasn't going to happen. He'd need a rocket. On the other hand, the gravity only lasted a few meters above the hull on most ships. Maybe the trick would be to just