One Good Soldier

kilometers off our port bow, sir!'

'Commo!' the admiral shouted.

'Sir?' The communications officer snapped her head up from her console and turned toward the CO.

'Get a command channel open between me and all the fleet ships!'

'Aye, sir.' The comm officer turned back to her panel and then shouted back over her shoulder. 'Channel open, CO.'

'CO Madira to fleet! We've got incoming. Pull into a tight cover formation on the Madira and start teleporting my tank mecha from the QMT facility to the coordinates on the planet my XO is sending you now. My STO is sending the algorithm to automate the QMT process.' Jefferson hit the mute button on his chair arm and turned to the XO and STO. 'Get this done now, guys.'

'Aye, sir!'

'Assume this is an all-out offensive folks, and we're likely to be outnumbered,' he continued over the open channel. 'Get your fighters out now! Good luck and Godspeed.'

Wallace looked outside the ship in his DTM view and zoomed out to the QMT disturbance of the incoming. The light ball was just vanishing, and then eleven red blips appeared on his mindview battlescape. He zoomed in farther and could tell that there were four ships like the one he had seen earlier that might as well be called supercarriers, five of what looked like Seppy battle cruisers, and two old Seppy rustbucket haulers.

Shit, we are so outnumbered, he thought.

Maybe we should jaunt away and come up with a better plan, sir, Uncle Timmy replied.

Negative, Tim. When under attack and outnumbered, the best strategy is always to strike first. But we have got to get our guys off that damned rock, fast.

Aye, sir. Then might I suggest we try to break them up as best we can and create two fronts for them to fight on?

I agree with that. Synchronize our blue-red force trackers with the fleet now.

Done, sir.

'Fleet, CO Madira! Focus all directed energy weapons on bogy two. Looks like a supercarrier, so treat as one. And assume they have personnel QMT, so keep your SIFs rotating or you risk being boarded.'

The fleet vehicles had pulled into position over the QMT facility and had started teleporting the tankheads to the surface one tank—and as many AEMs or AAIs as they could pile on it—at a time. The tankheads, the AEMs, and the AAIs would have to fend for themselves for a while without air support. They should be able to hold their own against the Armored National Guard of the Arcadian Colony, providing the Arcadians didn't get help from the Separatist ships above them.

The fleet supercarriers began pouring directed energy beams onto the targeted Seppy supercarrier. The green DEG beams from the four fleet supercarriers washed the enemy ship from bow to stern. They kept pouring the energy at the vehicle continuously until the SIFs of the ship failed and hull plating began boiling off into space and secondary explosions burst out all across the vessel. The enemy ship listed to port into one of the Seppy haulers, and the rustbucket crumpled as the supercarrier tore into the side. Both ships listed together with explosion after explosion bursting from their seams.

'Those two ships are gonna need a shitload of duct tape,' the COB remarked.

'Gunnery officer, keep pouring on the DEGs until we absolutely have to switch targets,' the admiral ordered.

'Aye, sir!'

Then the rest of the Seppy vehicles spread out and began returning fire.

'All right, let's start the evasive maneuvers and keep the QMT algorithm going.' Jefferson braced himself, expecting impacts from Seppy missiles and guns as soon as they were in range. They were already in DEG range. The speed-of-light limit, though, would make targeting tough at that distance. They had been lucky in that the Seppy ships were stationary. Hitting a maneuvering target at that range was difficult since there was a significant fraction of a second that ticked by between when the ships were targeted in the optical sensor and when the DEG beam actually reached the target.

'How do you want the Air Wing separated, Admiral?' the air boss shouted.

'I want them all to take it to the first Seppy supercarrier that gets in flight range! Navy and Marines both hit that ship as soon as we get in range. No fighters to the planet yet.'

'Aye, sir!'

Two of the enemy supercarriers went into hyperspace and jaunted the gap in less than a second. They popped out of the hyperspace conduit at thirty thousand kilometers