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  She could feel his hands inside her shorts grasping her buttocks firmly and pressing his stiffening crotch against her now very heated one. Dee wiggled forward slightly, slipping out of the shorts. She fumbled with his shirt, pulling it over his head, and then forced her hands down to the waistband of his shorts. Dee lowered herself down Rackman’s chiseled body, kissing him and slithering like a snake as she brought his shorts over his feet. Dee found herself on her hands and knees looking directly at his manhood standing erect only millimeters in front of her face. She took him into her mouth and caressed him with her tongue and lips and then grasped his shaft with her hand. She worked him gently but firmly for another moment and then pulled away, kissing him there as she worked her way back up to look into his big brown Navy SEAL eyes. Never letting her grip go, she writhed into position above him and directed him inside her. With the insertion she felt a release from the tension and fighting and all the endless missions and getting wounded and the hospital and the endless conflict plague of humanity that her grandmother had brought on them all. She didn’t think about that for the moment. So quickly she felt . . . a release and she realized she was already climaxing.

  Davy rolled Dee over and slid deeper into her. Dee could feel him strongly but gently pushing deeper and deeper with each stroke. She particularly liked the feel of his hands as they firmly grasped at her buttocks and his fingers tightened with each stroke.

  “Oh my God, yes.” She pulled into him and wrapped her legs around his body, interlocking her ankles behind his back.

  “Dee, you are so hot,” Davy whispered in her ear as he nibbled on the lobe. She was peaking again already. Using her legs to force him even harder and deeper into her brought her to the edge . . .

  Chapter 11

  November 7, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 4:42 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “The edge!”

  General Mason Warboys sat on the front of his tank-mode hovertank, lecturing the Warlords tank squadron—his Warlords.

  “The very Goddamned edge! We are at the edge of where humanity has ventured into space, and seem to find remnants of the Separatist faction automated threats everywhere we turn.” Warboys pounded a fist downward onto the hovertank’s armored hull. “I don’t care if we do have some down time. Who knows, at any moment we might find ourselves in another shitstorm with these godforsaken soulless computer-driven attackers. So we’re gonna train. And train. And train. And when we finish we’re gonna train some fucking more. Is that a hoowah?”

  “HOOWAH!” the Warlords answered.

  “Great. Johnny, get us set up, and we’re gonna run this sim again and again until we get through it with zero casualties,” Warboys ordered.

  “Roger that, One,” Warlord Two Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Stacks responded. “All right, you heard the general—everyone load up and let’s get with it.”

  Mason Warboys nodded. He understood that there was a lot of work to be done. His team was new, raw, and from disparate groups throughout the fleet. They were still learning to be a team. He had beaten them into a decent tank squadron over the last eighteen months or so but they weren’t there yet. At least they weren’t where he thought they should be.

  Once the Sienna Madira had been decommissioned and then recommissioned, General Moore—or President Moore, it was confusing to everyone—asked Mason to bring his team along for this long-haul mission. Mason was thrilled by the prospect, but the problem was that the Warlords had already been disbanded and reassigned. Warboys had to start over and pick a new team. While there were plenty of tank drivers in the Army, the Warlords were elite, and Mason only chose the best. The problem was finding elite tank drivers who could and would volunteer for an open-ended, long-duration assignment to unknown locations. In other words, he did the best he could in the picking process. What he couldn’t get in experience, he was damn sure going to make up for it in training.

  Mason slid the cockpit canopy closed and cycled the restraints into his E-suit. His AIC processed the startup sequence and completed the handshaking with the ship’s sim-center computers. Warboys could see the battlescape pop into his direct-to-mind view in full detail. The ten Warlords stood still in a V formation, all in tank mode. The virtual landscape was very similar to the planetoid they had recently been on, but was different in a random-shuffle sort of way. Some of it actually reminded him of the Battle of the Oort years ago. But back then, his team was the shit. Every tank driver in the U.S. Army wanted to be a Warlord.

  Sir, the scenario is loaded and ready to begin, his AIC Major Brenda Bravo One One One Mike Hotel Hotel Two advised him in his mindvoice.

  Roger that. Start it up, Brenda, he thought.

  “All right, Warlords, stay sharp. We have an overwhelming hostile force over the ridge and our AEM brothers are pinned down. Those crazy bastards are outgunned, outnumbered, and outmatched, and if I know Marines, that is a perfect situation for them to attack! They’re going to need our help!”

  Armored Environment Suit U.S. Marine Corp Master Gunnery Sergeant Tommy Suez had always had a talent for driving an armored e-suit. Even as a private, he could unwrap a piece of candy while wearing the suit. The armored heavy gauntlets of the suits typically made that level of control and precision extremely difficult if not impossible, but not for Tommy. Since he’d seen pictures of the suits when he was a child, he had studied everything about them. He had always wanted to be an AEM. He ate, slept, and breathed the function of his suit. The more he understood it the better he could use it. But it was more than just suit function, it was also suit use. He had studied tactics and strategy and performance protocols. He’d read history books on the suits and how they had changed over the years. He had studied the Martian Desert Campaigns and the famous exploits of Major Alexander Moore. As a kid, he had idolized the Marine turned president. He wanted to know how Moore had managed to set the all-time, still-standing record for living in an armored suit for more than a month way back then when the technology was not supportive of such a feat. There had been many of his superiors and friends alike who had suggested he go to Officer Candidate School, but Tommy didn’t want to take the time out of being in the suit and being an AEM. Tommy was most at home in the suit. One day he hoped to test Moore’s record.

  Today, Tommy had the day off due to regulation. In order to protect their leader, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Jones, he’d taken a metal claw in his chest. It had punctured one of his lungs, but his suit had sealed it off before he had any issue with it, and he’d ripped the metal buzzsaw bot bastard to hell and gone. The doctors in the medbay had fixed him up without any problem but rules were rules. He was sidelined for several days, but Tommy liked staying fit and sharp. And really, did any E9 master gunnery sergeant ever have the day off? Being “Top Sergeant” kept him busy, always.

  He clanked down one of the long, abandoned corridors of the Madira in his suit. Tommy fired his jumpboots, launching himself headfirst into a rolling front flip. As his body and suit twisted through the flip, he had his DTM targeting system track protrusions, bolt heads, and rivets in the bulkheads. Red targeting reticles zipped across his mindview in three dimensions all around him. He locked one onto a bolt head on the ceiling a bit aft of his position and fired a simulated shoulder mounted rocket at it. He did all this in less than the second it took to complete the maneuver. He stopped on one knee, with his weapon drawn and targeting objects in front of him. He scanned for movement and mentally took note of the sensor views in his mind. It was really dark in the long corridor, especially with his suit lights off. He pressed on deeper into the ship.

  Occasionally he’d pass a portal that let some light from the planetoid’s star in, but only a little. The blue-gray metal bulkheads did little to brighten up the place. The corridors on this part of the ship were mostly abandoned and lights were only turned on when engineering crews needed them.

  Tommy visually scanned but decided he was going to bu
mp into something if he didn’t switch over to a different view or bring up his suit’s lights. He didn’t want to use the harshness of the lights. There was something sort of serene about working out in the near darkness that he liked. He didn’t want to disturb the darkness.

  Then he checked his AIC for any other sensor movement. The area battlescape came online and switched to full DTM mindview. On full mindview the data was so overwhelming that one couldn’t follow it and visual view at the same time. Typically, on full mindview, the visors went dark to help remove the distraction. Tommy didn’t really need that aid. He’d learned years before to focus his mind just on the sensor view he needed at the moment. Others could do it, but most simply allowed the suit or their AIC chose the best view for the moment. Tommy had programmed his suit and told his AIC not to black out his visor unless ordered to or emergency protocols required it.

  Nothing on QMs or IR? He asked his AIC.

  Nothing. As it should be. They were in an abandoned area of the ship almost all the way to the bow on the starboard side.

  Okay then, let’s switch to pure mindview and I’ll practice maneuvers blind.

  Switching off visible and going to mindview sensor data only.

  Good girl, Jackie, Tommy thought. He looked for the layout of the ship around him in his mindview, but nothing was there. That wasn’t right. The computer always generated a layout map of the ship. There were no actual images from the sensors overlaid on the map. Jackie? DTM the sensors for me.

  The mindview is fully functional, Tommy, his AIC replied. Tommy’s stomach turned over. What you see is what I’ve got.

  What? That makes no sense, he paused to think. They were working fine a hundred meters or more aft when I did the targeting flip.

  Sorry, Tommy, my diagnostics show the DTM is fully functional and operating normally.

  That isn’t right. I should see bulkheads and heat flows and potential targets. But there is nothing DTM. Nothing. Then something occurred to him and he didn’t like it. Eyeballs and full floods! Sims off and weapons online! Get me coms to the bridge!

  Chapter 12

  November 7, 2406 AD

  29 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 4:45 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Nancy? Penzington, do you copy?” DeathRay couldn’t tell if his wife had vaporized on the other side of the energy field or not. As far as he, the engineer’s tech, and the three Marines could tell, there was nothing there in front of them but the wall and the water passing through it.

  Candis? What have you got? Jack thought to his AIC.

  Nothing on sensors or QM coms. It’s like there is nothing beyond that wall.

  Jammed?

  I’d say so, Jack.

  Shit.

  “Everybody stay alert. I don’t like this at all. Marines, converge on me.” Jack scanned the wall with every sensor in his suit and got nothing in return other than the waterflow vectors. “Fuck it. We’re gonna blast it.”

  Jack, wait. There was a last-minute transmission from Allison.

  Huh?

  “Sir, before you do that,” the engineering tech held up a hand. “I’ve got some readings on what happened when Nancy passed through the wall.”

  I think Nancy had Allison send us instructions. I’m unfolding the message now. It is very, very complicated, Candis added into Jack’s mindvoice. The jamming obscured the signal in the noise field. Somehow, Allison managed to get it through.

  “Well, don’t keep it to yourself, Petty Officer. That’s my wife on the other side of this thing.” DeathRay hated when Nancy put herself in these kinds of situations, but she always had managed to get out of them somehow so far.

  “We couldn’t hear it or see it well in the suits and here underwater and all, but all my data looks like there was an electromagnetic signature like that of a quantum membrane teleportation event horizon,” Amari explained.

  “What? You mean she was teleported to somewhere?” Jack really didn’t like this.

  “Yes, sir,” the tech replied.

  “Shit! Where?”

  “No way to tell, sir. But she was definitely teleported. And just before she did, her suit cycled a QM pulse.”

  Candis? he thought to his AIC.

  I’m working it, Jack, but it does appear that she teleported somewhere, and Allison had hacked into some control system using the QM pulse the petty officer detected.

  “Can my suit reproduce that pulse, Amari?” Jack asked.

  “Uh, yes, sir. It is a simple transmission for the QM transceiver. I’m sending it to your AIC now.” ET1 Amari tapped some keys on her forearm sensor panel.

  Candis?

  I have the signal ready for transmission, sir. How Nancy or Allison figured this out is beyond me though. They had to have had some a priori knowledge.

  We’ll ask them when we find them.

  “I’m going in. If you don’t hear from me in ten minutes I want you to snap back to the shuttle and then take it back to the Madira,” Jack ordered.

  “We can’t leave the two of you here,” Amari said.

  “Thanks for the sentiment, Engineer’s Technician First Class, but those are your orders. Franks, you got that? Besides, we can always snap back to the ship with our wristbands.”

  “Roger that, sir. Ten minutes,” Lieutenant Franks replied over the tac-net, but Jack could see them closing on his position. They were only a few tens of meters away, he thought, but with the lighting in the water it was very hard to judge distance without using QM sensors.

  “Start your clocks now,” Jack nodded at the tech.

  Candis, cycle the signal.

  Aye, sir.

  Jack ran through the wall in a flash of dancing light and could hear one of the Marines on the tac-net at the very last second.

  “Sir, incoming—”

  But that was all Jack heard as he was instantly somewhere else.

  “Get down, Boland!” Penzington’s voice rang in his helmet.

  Jack simply dropped and didn’t take time to argue. When it came to his wife, if she said to get down, then she usually had damned good reason to say it. The room around them promptly exploded into flames with debris flying everywhere. Jack could see the remnants of what must have been a bot mecha flying past him in a red and orange exploding and swirling symphony. The only thing going through his mind at the moment was just why in the hell were the enemy mecha here.

  “Behind you!” Penzington shouted.

  Jack rolled over with his HVAR at the ready and immediately let loose several rounds into the buzzsaw bot slashing for him. The bot dropped beside him just as Nancy’s armored foot came pounding down on top of it. She then bounced up, firing her weapon in a wide-area burst. Jack followed suit.

  “What’s going on?” Jack yelled over the weapon fire. Several rounds from an automated defense weapon cut into the wall plating near him, spraying red-hot glowing metal in all directions. Some of it splattered against his suit, but the exterior armor layers were barely even scratched and protected him with no problems.

  “I think we were teleported into a hangar bay, and those are the security guards.” Nancy replied. “But I managed to make a hole two meters behind us where that hovertank used to be. Move!”

  Candis, DTM battleview! Hovertanks?

  Got it, Captain. Egress two point two meters on your five o’clock. Several hovertanks of modified Seppy design and two or three modified Gnats are within sensor view.

  Go full scans. They know we’re here now. Are they attacking us en masse? For a brief instant Jack considered commandeering one of the Seppy Gnat fighters, but wasn’t sure he’d have time to fire it up and hack into it while being shot at.

  Aye, sir. Scanning. Insufficient data to determine attack scenarios as of yet.

  “You coming?” Jack motioned to Nancy as he fired several bursts from the hypervelocity automatic rifle. The HVAR rounds spitapped and exploded a multilegged bot that was skittering toward them. The spiderlike bo
t appeared to have been caught unaware of their presence right up until it exploded.

  “Go!” Nancy bounced her boots against the floor, doing a backflip into a kneeling stance just beside the opening in the wall of the hangar bay. “I got you covered.”

  Reluctantly Jack ran through the opening, hoping his wife would be right behind him. He pumped a few rounds through the opening as he burst through. The opening emptied into a hallway that appeared to have mecha hangar bays on each side. Nancy followed.

  “What is the plan?” he asked his wife.

  “You’re in charge. And by the way, what took you so long?”

  “You know, we stopped for coffee, and then considered just snapping back home, but in the end, I knew I couldn’t leave you alone to have all the fun.” Jack turned and pumped a grenade through the hole in the wall they had just escaped through. “That should buy us some time.”

  “Snapping back might be smart, but I’d sure like to know where we are,” Nancy replied.

  “Well, then, we keep fighting until it is too much. Then we snap back. Agreed?” Jack looked at her.

  “Good plan. They’re not following us.” Nancy checked behind them.

  Jack stopped running and motioned her to do the same. The long corridor had taken a turn to the right and felt as if it was leading upward. The hangar bay doors were getting fewer and farther between. And for whatever reason, the bots had stopped following them. That made Jack nervous.

  “Okay, since we have a second to breathe, how did you know to transmit a QM signal back there?” Jack asked. He kept his eyes and sensors scanning the corridor, hoping for some idea of where to go and what to do. The place looked very familiar but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “I recognized it. This is technology that Tangiers used on Ares during the Separatist war. Ellise Tangiers had a room with a fake wall like that in her mansion. It led to her QMT pad. Allison hacked the security code. I wasn’t expecting it to trigger a teleport, though,” Nancy explained. “This place look familiar to you?”