One Good Soldier

or shit was going to get even worse.

'Admiral, this might be a good time to do a strafing run and turn this damned space ball into a bowl,' the XO suggested.

'Air Boss concurs with the XO on that, Admiral!'

As it stood, the battle was filling a three-dimensional sphere or 'ball,' and it was a common trick for fighter pilots to pull a fight down close to the surface of a ship or planet to take out half of the sphere, turning it into an upside-down bowl. That way bad things couldn't sneak up from underneath. Well, there were mountains, AA fire, and such, but another fighter couldn't get under you if you were hugging the surface. Another good aspect of going to the atmosphere would be that Seppy haulers were no good there. That would limit at least one of the ships that hadn't attacked them from way out in deep orbit yet. Since the other Seppy ships seemed to perform as well or better than the U.S. supercarriers, Wally had no choice but to assume they operated in atmosphere just as well.

'I think you're all correct.' Wallace studied the mindview battlescape closely and then sighed. 'I hate running from a fight just to get into another one.'

'Yes, sir,' the XO grunted. 'We'll get back to them in good time. Or, hell, sir, they'll probably just follow us any damned way.'

'Nav! Prepare for treetop strafing runs on the enemy positions near the governor's mansion. Gunnery Officer Hall, I want you taking hell to those enemy tank lines!'

'Aye, sir!'

'Fleet, this is the Madira! Pull out of the current engagement, and let's put this battle near the surface. If the Seppy bastards want to fight us, they'll have to come down to the atmosphere and do it. I want all ships to jaunt out of this fight in two minutes, to these coordinates. Starting now, I want all ships running the QMT site-to-site algorithm teleporting the fighter squadrons to twenty kilometers above the engagement zone below. If we haven't finished teleporting all the fighters, we still jaunt and will take back up the QMT effort as soon as we materialize back into normal space.' He DTMed his battle plan to the other Navy supercarrier captains. 'Once we are out of the fray and in normal space, we'll lick our wounds for two minutes, and then we hit the deck, blasting away. All fighter squadrons are to take it to the Seppy line in standard layered protection zones and cover the groundpounders and our strafing runs. Air bosses will be sending our flight plan soon.'

'All hands, all hands, prepare for hyperspace jaunt in ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .'

Chapter 24

July 1, 2394 AD

Tau Ceti, QMT Facility

Friday, 3:42 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

'I never thought I'd see you again, Penzington!' DeathRay was so glad to finally do the twist and pull, taking his helmet off. Finally he could rub his neck where it hurt like hell. Penzington had dragged him into the Seppy Lorda that she had commandeered and was running the ship through a take-off cycle.

'Well, there have been times when I'd have thought that nobody ever would. You okay?' She looked over her shoulder at him from the pilot's chair of the enemy troop transport vehicle.

'Penzington?' DeathRay did a double take. 'Is that you?'

'It's me, DeathRay. Had to have a little work done to change my look. Hazards of the job.'

'Well they sure did good work.' DeathRay was pretty sure he looked like hell warmed over.

'The ejection chair absorbed most of the crash landing onto the QMT moon, but my already broken tailbone, back, and neck from the previous crash into the ship hadn't quite healed yet. So it fucking hurt when I hit.' Jack gritted his teeth and pulled himself into the copilot's chair. He snapped the safety cap off another shot of immunoboost and jammed it into his neck. He started feeling better almost instantly. 'I'll be tip top before we hit the planet. What's our ETA on that? Do we have a plan?'

'ETA depends on where we are going, but we could be on the planet in five to