One Good Soldier

ten minutes. A plan? Well, no. Intel? Yes. Deanna Moore is being held in Elle Ahmi's penthouse suite. We have to get inside there to get her out,' Nancy responded. 'I can get in as Ensign Bella Penrose to the first or maybe second floor, but there is no way to get to the penthouse through the front door. And there are SIFs around the top floors, so we can't teleport in.'

'What else do we know about the penthouse?' Jack rubbed his neck some more and then started pulling off the flight armor suit down to the second skin layer. He slid out a small bag about the size of a deck of playing cards and unfolded the contents from within it. The universal combat uniform top and pants he pulled from the vacuum-packed bag expanded as soon as they hit the air. He shook the no-wrinkle, fire-retardant, nanotube-armored compression materials out and set them aside as he pulled the organogel seal layer off his body. The seal layer schlurrped like pulling a suction cup from wet glass. Then he slipped into the UCUs and put his flight boots back on. He stretched his spine straight briefly and was certain that he'd be fine in five or ten minutes. He pulled an MRE bar from his gear and started crunching on it.

'Hungry?' he offered the CIA agent a bite. 'Damned immunoboost and stims make me hungry and thirsty as a horse.'

'Uh, no thanks,' Nancy said.

'Okay, so what'd we know about the penthouse?'

'There is only one elevator into it, and only Elle Ahmi has the key.'

'Well, is it guarded with AA guns as well as SIFs? If not, I say we ram in there with this ship and just take her away. All I have to do is put this on her.' Jack showed Nancy the forward QMT teleport device on his wrist. 'I push this button, and she'll be teleported to the Oval Office. Well, after we clear the SIFs, of course.'

'I don't know about the AA, but I'd imagine it has at least the same protections that the White House would have. And I doubt we could knock out the SIFs long enough to get through them and back out. I used a Lorda and a Stinger once to burst through the SIFs on a battle cruiser, and I barely had time to punch through before they closed back up.' Nancy glanced over at Jack and shrugged.

'How are we not being chased down right now?' It had just dawned on Jack that they were in a Seppy troop/cargo transport vehicle—the counterpart to the U.S. Starhawk—and nobody seemed to be looking for them.

'After twelve years of being here, my AIC is really good at negotiating with the Seppy flight-manifest systems. As far as anybody but us knows, we are doing just what we are supposed to be doing,' Nancy replied quite confidently.

'Jesus, that's right. You've been here all by yourself a long fucking time. That's a hell of a sacrifice, Penzington.' DeathRay had gone into the shit many times over in the past couple of decades, but he hadn't been in it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for over a decade. That had to be hell on your psyche. His respect for the CIA agent went through the roof as he made the realization.

'It's my job, Jack. I volunteered for it, same as you.' Nancy shrugged. 'So, what is our plan?'

'Can that AIC of yours figure out where the SIF generators for the penthouse are?' Jack finished off the food bar and swigged at some sports drink from a pouch in his flight suit. He was beginning to feel his normal self again.

'She says so. Here, I'll put her on speaker,' Nancy said.

Candis, go audible also, he told his AIC.

Roger that.

'Hello, Captain Boland, my name is Allison,' Penzington's AIC said. Jack was surprised it was a female AIC. Jack had long known that some women can talk to a female personality easier than a male one. Some couldn't. As fully female as Penzington appeared, he half expected some very male and suave voice. He was always surprised by the story he found inside the cover of books. He thought of Fish. Karen Fisher was more than 'boat cute' by a long shot, but she was as much a tomboy as anybody would ever meet. Her AIC was as male as could be.

'Nice to meet you, Allison, Ms. Penzington. I'm Candis.'

'Call me Jack, or DeathRay, Allison.'

'Yes, Captain,' Allison replied.

'So, what can you tell us about the SIF generators on the penthouse?' Nancy asked her AIC audibly.

'Here, I'm transmitting a DTM image of the Capitol Building at New Tharsis. The engineering components of the building are mainly in the basement area here,' Allison pointed out in Jack's mindview. He could see the Seppy leader's building, and then it zoomed in and