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. s.h.i.t. 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 s.p.a.ceship in s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ceship in s.p.a.ce.

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 Madira is gonna be there, because the entire Seppy fleet is headed there! is gonna be there, because the entire Seppy fleet is headed there!

s.h.i.t, I've got to get off this ship and to the planet, fast. Jack hadn't gone through d.a.m.ned 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. h.e.l.l, 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 manage to get above the artificial gravitational metric of the ship and then somehow push himself toward the QMT facility. Slowing down before he hit the surface of the QMT facility would be another problem to deal with. But first things first.

Can you get off the ship, Penzington? Can you come and get me?

I don't know. I think I can get onto a shuttle that is leaving in a few minutes for the QMT pad, but that is about as good as it gets. Maybe from there I can get out to you. But you'd have to get off the ship first.

s.h.i.t, that ain't gonna work. I've got to get above the ship's gravity well somehow. Any way he thought about it, he was screwed. Jack couldn't think of anything to get him off the ship. He'd need some sort of propulsion system to manage that. Any way he thought about it, he was screwed. Jack couldn't think of anything to get him off the ship. He'd need some sort of propulsion system to manage that.

He went through his webbing and again took inventory of his gear. He had some HE, a handful of grenades, ammo for his railpistol, a couple knives, first-aid gear, about a hundred meters of nanotube filament rope, a few carabiners and clips holding things to his webbing, some duct tape, and whatever he could scavenge from a slightly used ejection couch. He looked the seat over and figured there was little there he could use. The propulsion system for the seat was dead because he had used it all up to keep from plummeting to his death a few minutes before. The QMT facility was right there. It hung just five kilometers or so above his head. If he could get there, he'd figure out a way to the planet.

Jack, I'm on the shuttle, and we are leaving now. You've got maybe five minutes before the ships get here and they all start moving into position to jump. If you're gonna think of something, do it quickly, Penzington warned him through the DTM link. Penzington warned him through the DTM link.

I've got no idea. Can't you take the shuttle by force and come get me?

Well, no. Not yet. I'm in an e-suit in a storage compartment stowed away on it.

I see.

By the time we land and I can get back to you, it would be too late.

I get it.

Good luck.

You, too.

There was a way to do everything, Jack had always told himself. He jumped twice to get to his crash site. His ship had done minimal damage to the hull. There were no material pieces of his fighter left that were larger than a meter long. Sooner or later they would just fall off into s.p.a.ce. Maybe a work crew would get out to remove it on the next exterior-hull maintenance shift. But for now, he had a few chunks of armor-plated fighter plane that he might be able to use for something. He wasn't sure just what.

Time is ticking, Jack.

I know, Candis. You have any bright ideas?

No.

We need propulsion somehow. What could give us that? Jack thought about it, and then he had a very, very bad idea. Jack thought about it, and then he had a very, very bad idea. I got it. Maybe. I got it. Maybe.

What?

Run some sims for me. How much HE would I need to lift the ejection chair with me in it out of the gravity well of this ship with a little extra velocity left over?

How far does the gravity well extend? The Madira' Madira's goes ten meters.

Okay, use that. This ship looks like a knockoff of her anyway.

All right then. According to spec the chair has a ma.s.s of five hundred kilograms. You in your suit and gear are another one fifty. To get to a height of ten meters you would need a minimum energy of thirty-two point five kilojoules. The HE is ten megajoules per kilogram, so you need a minimum of three and a quarter grams to reach escape height with no velocity left. You need less than four cubic centimeters. Like four dice worth.

Okay, got it.

Jack pulled three chunks of the scorched armor plating and piled them beside the ejection seat. Then he rummaged through his webbing and pulled out a bar of the HE. The bar was basically the size of a stick of b.u.t.ter and was sealed in a vacuum package. He guessed at about five cubic centimeters and then added a little extra just in case. He stuck a wireless detonator chip into it and then set the two armor fragments from his destroyed fighter on top of it. Then he began kicking and tugging at the ejection seat until he managed to free it from a piece of loose hull plating on the ship. He dragged the seat on top of the armor fragments-he was glad there was only half a g, or he might never have gotten the couch moved.

Jack looked up. The QMT facility filled most of his overhead view. There was no way he could miss it. He'd more likely kill himself with the HE than drift off into s.p.a.ce. And by that time, if he did miss and was floating off into s.p.a.ce, Penzington might be able to come and get him.

While Jack was looking up, four supercarrier cla.s.s Seppy ships materialized out of hypers.p.a.ce out in front of the ship he was on. Then several new battle cruisers and a couple of older haulers came out of hypers.p.a.ce.

"Holy s.h.i.t! The Madira Madira is gonna be in it deep," he muttered. is gonna be in it deep," he muttered.

You got that right, Candis agreed with him. Candis agreed with him.

Jack adjusted the seat angle to what he hoped was somewhere near the edge of the QMT pad and not into the jump region. He needed to get moving. The ship could start moving into jump position at any moment. He sat down in the chair and strapped himself in. He made sure his feet and arms would be inside the shadow of the chair so no shrapnel or plasma from the explosion could damage him or his suit.

"This is really gonna f.u.c.kin' suck!" Jack pushed his body into the couch as best he could and tucked his chin into his chest.

Okay, Candis, trigger this thing.

Are you sure, DeathRay?

Yes, that is an order Lieutenant Commander!

Yes, sir. Going in five, four, three, two, one...

The high explosives went off from the wireless trigger signal Candis sent to the detonator chip. The stored chemical energy inside the solid material converted to kinetic energy in the form of heat and a plasma moving upward at over three thousand meters per second. The shockwave vaporized the first armor plate and slammed the second one upward into the ejection chair. The ejection chair blasted upward away from the hull of the Seppy supercarrier with about twice the force of a standard ejection seat. In other words, it went up pretty d.a.m.ned fast-fast enough that Jack was slammed into the chair with a force of about ten gravities for about a second. But DeathRay was used to high-g maneuvers that rattled his bones. It didn't hurt as much as he had expected, but that was probably because he had just taken a s.h.i.tload of immun.o.boost and pain meds.

The chair crested the ten meters that he needed in order to clear the ship's gravity well, and it kept on going. It kept on going pretty d.a.m.ned fast. The acceleration was over within microseconds after the blast, and any deceleration was finished once they escaped the Seppy ship's artificial gravity well. DeathRay was in microgravity at this point and was floating freely along a constant velocity vector straight at the QMT facility. Jack could see the surface of the QMT moon starting to get slowly closer. The planet Ares filled his field of view off to his right. The Jovian planet Ares...o...b..ted was behind him now.

What is relative velocity, Candis?

Using objects on the surface for angular-size reference, I can approximate that we are moving at about fifty kilometers per hour with an error bar of about five kilometers per hour.

Okay, the seat was designed to take a fall at fifty-five kilometers per hour with no problem.

Yes, but that a.s.sumed it landed first. Jack, you do realize you are staring at the surface?

Holy s.h.i.t! Is this f.u.c.king nightmare never gonna stop? Okay, we have to rotate the seat.

That would be advisable.

What can we use for a thruster?

You could always throw things.

How about my railpistol? There is a certain amount of recoil to it. Jack had blasted himself out of one predicament into another. But at fifty kilometers per hour or so and the surface five kilometers away, he had about six minutes to figure out what to do. Jack had blasted himself out of one predicament into another. But at fifty kilometers per hour or so and the surface five kilometers away, he had about six minutes to figure out what to do.

That might work.

He pulled his pistol out of the thigh holster and held it straight in front of him with both hands. The safety grip received the safety code from his AIC and unlocked the trigger and safety. Jack thumbed the safety and then pulled the trigger. He waited a few seconds to see if he could tell a difference in his angular orientation. He was moving at about a degree per ten seconds. He needed to move at one hundred and eighty degrees in less than six minutes. Doing the math quickly in his head, he decided that he was rotating five times too slow. So he quickly pumped out four more rounds. He and Candis both worked at calculating his angular velocity and decided that the chair would be as close to the proper orientation as they were going to get with the tools they had in hand. Jack reholstered his weapon and just waited.

Penzington?

Boland?

I'll be on the surface of the QMT facility in five minutes.

Really?

The Seppy supercarriers, battle cruisers, and haulers all moved into position directly over the center of the QMT pad. The big sphere of light formed and then turned into the two-dimensionallooking ripple in s.p.a.ce. Then all the ships and the light show vanished. The Sienna Madira Sienna Madira was about to catch h.e.l.l. was about to catch h.e.l.l.

Hang in there, Madira! Madira! Watch your six, Fish, Watch your six, Fish, DeathRay thought. DeathRay thought.

Amen, Jack. Amen, Candis agreed. Candis agreed.

Chapter 18.

July 1, 2394 AD Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha, a.k.a. Ares New Tharsis Friday, 2:53 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time Friday, 7:53 PM Madira Valley Standard Time Dee had for the most part kept her mouth shut and done her best to ignore her captors. She had her AIC firewall itself and then lock itself down from any inputs other than hers. Apart from the initial rough treatment by Fink, she had been held at arm's length by every other Separatist soldier involved. They did remove the zip ties and put electronic cuffs on her. She was cuffed behind her back, and n.o.body could get the things off unless they had the wireless encryption key. She wasn't sure which of the two was more uncomfortable, the zip ties or the cuffs.

Fink shadowed her every move and was flanked by four regular Seppy soldiers, two on either side of him. They first were led through the ship to a teleport pad near the hangar bay, and then they were QMTed to the Seppy capital city of New Tharsis to somewhere inside a building that she couldn't see out of. The architecture of the building was very much like that in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and similar to the White House, although the decoration style was a mix between ancient Greek and modern. It was quite an unusual mix that still gave Dee no clues as to where exactly she was. She only knew she was in the city of New Tharsis from having overheard the captain of the Seppy ship make mention of that. She guessed by the fact that she had QMTed from Ross 128 that she must be in the Tau Ceti system, planet Ares, somewhere in New Tharsis.

Dee watched as best she could every detail of her path and any and all security sequences and processes, hoping to gather some tidbit of information that would allow her to escape when the opportunity struck. There was still that strange communication over the intercom while she had been held on the Seppy ship. Was it possible that there was really a CIA agent that close to her? Dee found it hard to believe. It didn't matter, because she knew her father and her mother were not going to let something like this happen to her without taking action. And she also knew that she was not going to wait for somebody to save her. She was, by G.o.d, Deanna Moore, the daughter of Alexander Moore, and she was going to stand tall and get herself free as soon as she got the chance. Somewhere along the way she hoped for the opportunity to put a couple bullets into Fink, too.

The guards and Fink led her into an antechamber outside a single elevator. The lights on the elevator showed that it was on the way down and that she was on the second floor. That meant that the teleport pad was somewhere on the second floor. She'd have to remember that, for certain. She thought that she could find her way back to it, but she had gone through three different AIC-negotiated security doors. That would prove difficult to overcome, but she'd figure it out. Hopefully, if she got back to the teleport pad she could use it to teleport herself to safety. Dee had no idea where safety inside the Tau Ceti system might be. She also had no idea how to operate a teleport pad. She'd blow that bridge up when she came to it.

The white elevator light dinged and lit up, indicating that the elevator car had arrived at their floor. The Seppy soldiers moved to an attention pose, but Fink didn't seem to change that much. Dee could tell that he subtly shifted his balance on his feet to a slightly more alert stance. She wasn't sure what that meant, but it left her feeling a bit uneasy.

The elevator doors slid open. There was a lone figure inside. The figure was a tall, slim woman wearing black military UCUs, boots, leather gloves, and a red, white, and blue ski mask. She had long, straight black hair pulled up in a ponytail and out the back of the mask. Every human alive knew who she she was. Dee swallowed a lump in her throat and then felt the barrel of a railpistol press against the back of her head. The four soldiers immediately shifted and pointed their weapons at Fink. was. Dee swallowed a lump in her throat and then felt the barrel of a railpistol press against the back of her head. The four soldiers immediately shifted and pointed their weapons at Fink.

"That is close enough, Madam President," Fink said.

"What are you doing, Fink?" Elle Ahmi asked calmly.

"Just wanting to insure my investment makes a profit. Transfer the money, or I'll simply kill her." She had had to kill this SOB. Jay and Clay deserved at least that much. Fink would pay. to kill this SOB. Jay and Clay deserved at least that much. Fink would pay.

"Your money has been transferred, Colonel. Now step aside and walk away. That is the only opportunity you will get to leave here alive." Elle Ahmi didn't mess around, and Dee felt certain that she could come through with her threat if she so desired.

"Begging your pardon, Madam President. My AIC tells me the money has been transferred as promised. It was a pleasure doing business with you. But there is one more thing." Fink kept the barrel of his pistol against the base of Dee's skull.

"Don't try my patience, Colonel." Ahmi stood calmly in thought. "Very well, what is it?"

"I want in on this revolution of yours. I've played my part bringing her here. Now I want to be one of your generals." Fink lowered his weapon and backed up slowly between the Seppy soldiers. The four of them kept their weapons trained on him.

"You're a funny man, Fink." Ahmi grinned. "And either really brave or really stupid."

"I would be of use to you, ma'am."

"Let him go," Ahmi said and waved the soldiers off Fink. "Escort him out of the building and let him go for now. Become accustomed to our way of life here, General Fink. I'll call you soon, when I need you."

"You're welcome, ma'am. Good day." General Fink of the United Separatist Republic turned and walked away, with the soldiers shadowing him. As soon as the soldiers were out of sight, Dee caught some motion from her peripheral vision, and then a holowall turned off across the room. What had looked like a normal wall with a bust of some old bald guy in front of it wasn't. The wall and bust vanished. Five men in black armored uniforms stood with their weapons drawn. Clearly, they had been there all along. Dee realized that Ahmi kept her bases covered and for some reason wanted her to know that.

"At ease, gentlemen," Ahmi told them.

"I'll get you, Fink," Dee muttered to herself. Ahmi didn't pay any attention to her mutterings.

"Come with me, Ms. Moore." Ahmi held out a hand, leading her to the elevator. "I can remove those cuffs if you promise to behave yourself."

"I'll behave for now. But I'll make you no promises about when I'll decide to change my mind," Dee tried to say calmly, but her clenched teeth gave her anger and stress level away.

Ahmi laughed. "Indeed, you are your father's daughter."

"You're G.o.dd.a.m.ned right I am." Dee almost spat the words.

"No need to be so crude, dear. I wouldn't have wanted you to be anything less." The terrorist ma.s.s murderer smiled through the ski mask at Dee. The smile unsettled her horribly. There was something both vicious and familiar about it.

The cuffs unlocked themselves, and Dee pushed them off and rubbed at her wrists. She had been either zip-tied or cuffed for more than a couple hours, and it was getting old. Her wrists had red marks. Dee wasn't sure what if anything to say, so she quietly stood there for the time being. What do you say to the most wanted ma.s.s murderer in history once they have kidnapped you for uncertain, but most likely sinister, purposes?

"It is an honor to meet you, Deanna. I would love to know more about you. Please tell me more about yourself." The elevator reached the top floor, and the doors slid open. Ahmi led her across a foyer and to another security door. The door slid open, and they stepped into a second elevator. This elevator was a transparent cylinder that only went up one floor. The door to the elevator was half of the cylinder, which slid around inside the other half. The two of them stepped out of it into a very large cylindrical room. The elevator door closed once they stepped free, and then the elevator itself sunk into the floor and disappeared.

"Lights please, Copernicus. Make them sixty percent. And make all the windows transparent. Our guest has never seen the rings rise over New Tharsis," Ahmi said out loud. Dee a.s.sumed that she was talking to her AIC.

Suddenly the walls turned transparent, as did the dome overhead. Other than a few structural members here and there, Dee suddenly felt as if she were standing atop a very tall building that was sitting on top of a very high peak. It was breathtaking, and she nearly lost her balance at first. To the east, the multicolored brilliance of the rings of the fourth planet of the Tau Ceti system filled the horizon. Two other moons were visible on the horizon as well. They were fairly bright. Dee wondered if either of them was the QMT facility she had seen earlier.

"Please, have a seat." Ahmi pointed her to the couch in her seating area. From the look of it, the crazy terrorist didn't entertain much. "Would you like some food or something to drink?"

Dee, the first rule of being a captive is to eat and drink if you get the chance, her AIC told her. her AIC told her. You never know when you'll get that chance again. You never know when you'll get that chance again.

Okay.

"I could eat. And I'm thirsty," she said. She made herself comfortable on the couch of the most wanted woman in humanity. Well, she wasn't really comfortable. In fact, she was shaking with fear and anger, and she just wanted out of there. But Dee was doing her best to stay brave.