"Aw shit!" Alexander moaned. He grabbed the body closest to the elevator door and dragged it out by the feet. "Get out of my way if you can't help," he told Reyez.
"No, I can help. I just never . . . uh!" Reyez began to heave again. Alexander just pushed him away from the elevator door with a swift kick in the ass and then set about moving the other body.
"Soft kids these days." Joanie Hassed, the little Triton woman, stepped in over the first dead body and gave Alexander a hand. "Saw a lot more than this on Triton during the raids."
Alexander understood what she meant. The raids on Triton were some of the bloodiest battles in the past decade—in human history, for that matter. Even the civilians ended up fighting for their lives. The Great American Plan to bring peace throughout Sol and the four colonies was still a long way from being successful. Many of the kids from this generation and one prior who lived on Earth or the Moon and a few places on Mars—like Mons City—had no idea of the utter horror humanity was still inflicting upon itself elsewhere.
"Thanks. We need to . . . " Alexander was about to explain that they needed to strip the two men of their e-suits and take all their weapons and gear, but the little Triton native was halfway through the process on the first body.
"Uh huh." Joanie nodded.
"Right then." Alexander smiled. A good Marine had to smile when he saw a real survivor.
" . . . Manuel . . . Charlie . . . are you there? Report!" Alexander heard faintly out of one of the e-suit helmets.
These suits are still keyed into the Seppy coms! The Seppies had older, less state-of-the-art, suits that did not go encrypted when the occupant was incapacitated like the American e-suits did. That technology had to be fifty years old.
ON IT! Abigail immediately started handshaking with the suit's low-level AI functions.
Can you spoof it?
Just a second. There. You can eavesdrop on this channel. I'll keep the audio open for you, Abigail replied.
Great work. Are they connected to the jamming signal at all? Alexander asked the AIC.
No. Not as I can tell.
Damn.
Yes, sir. Damn.
Well, keep on it. That jamming signal was the key to this whole mess, Alexander just knew it was.
Senator? the AIC added.
Yes, Abigail?
These suits are keyed into the Seppie IFF. The AIC said into Alexander's mind with what felt to him like excitement. The IFF or Identify Friend and Foe system in the Separatist e-suit helmets were keyed to understand the encrypted wireless signals and signatures of the Seppy troops and enabled their locations to be followed and mapped in HUDs or direct-to-mind maps. The U.S. troops used similar systems but ones that were more state-of-the-art. DTM had been the way of the warrior for many generations—it went as far back as the first Martian War in Sienna Madira's day.
Can you transfer the code to me? Senator Moore thought.
I think so, sir. But it will take a minute or two. And I'm not sure we have a minute or two. We'll have company soon.
Can we take his helmet?
No sir, we'd need his AIC. The average Seppy didn't carry an AIC but years of intelligence on the troops showed that they apparently did. Or perhaps, Elle Ahmi required it so she could keep tabs on all of them. General Ahmi was either brilliant at understanding and managing massive amounts of data or was a stone cold paranoid whack job—or maybe a little of both.
Where is it?
Here. The image of the Seppy appeared in Alexander's mind with a spot on the back of the dead man's head highlighted in red.
"Uh huh." Moore grunted and unsheathed the knife he'd liberated from the adventure shop and then twisted the man's e-suit helmet off. "This is gonna be gross." He nodded to Joanie to look away but instead she took the blade from him. Reyez looked as if he'd vomit again.
"Wait. I've done that before." The little woman from Triton hefted the dull gray two-decimeter-long monomolecular blade in her hand and studied its point for a second. "This'll do."
Joanie slid the point of the blade just behind the man's ear and pounded the base of the grip with the palm of her hand hard enough to crack through the skull bones. She twisted the knife and then pulled it out slowly. Dark red blood oozed out around the blade. She then repeated the process, this time slightly to the right of the previous bloody stab wound. Then she yanked the blade upward fairly hard and with a twist, causing bloody gray matter and pale white and pink skull bone fragments to crack free and spring upward being held together only by hair and skin. Joanie slid her finger into the man's brainpan just behind his left ear and fished around for a second.
"There it is." She pulled out a small orange and bloody red plastic device about the size and shape of a sunflower seed in its shell.
She did it, Senator. We have to go, now. They are coming down alternative elevators and stairwells. Here and here. Abigail showed him on a three-dimensional city map in his mind. I'll let you know when I get the IFF transfer.
"Great work, Joanie." Moore took the implant from her.
"You know you have to smash that thing or they can track us?"
"I'm counting on that . . . and a few other things. We have to get out of here now," he said as he listened to the Seppy open channel. The Seppies were missing their two buddies and were sending someone else to look for them. The dead Seppy's AICs could have alerted others to their presence, as Abigail couldn't be sure if her jamming attempts had worked or not. At least now they had two rifles, a handful of ordnance, and access to the enemy communications channel. And soon, hopefully very soon, they would have the enemy IFF.
"Look, Daddy." Deanna tugged at her father's arm pointing to a line of small holes in the drywall down the hallway.
Moore knelt beside his daughter. "What is it, baby?"
"Mommy and I were right here." Deanna pulled her father around the corner at the hallway crossing and crawled down onto the floor on all fours as best she could in the child-sized e-suit. "See?"
Alexander did see. Not only was his daughter smart, but she was lucky. The HVAR rounds that had gone off in a random spray during his scuffle with the Seppy soldiers had penetrated the wall in the main hallway and continued right on through the crossing hallway just above where Deanna and Sehera had been hiding. Reyez and Joanie had been on the other side of the hallway, but Moore's family had been right in the line of fire and very lucky and he had been very stupid.
"Jesus!" Alexander and Sehera both grabbed their daughter and began running their hands over her suit looking for puncture wounds. There were none. "Are you okay, sweetheart? You're okay, right?" Alexander gulped hard. "Sehera, you sure you're not hit?"
Abigail ran a quick vitals sweep with her QM sensors. They are unharmed, Senator.
Shit, that was so stupid of me. We have got to get them out of here.
"Alexander." Sehera looked at her husband sternly. "We cannot do that again."
"I know. I'm so sorry, dear. We have to get out of here."
"Look, I hate to break this up and all," Joanie interrupted. "But we should keep moving. Everybody is all right here, yes?" She nodded knowingly at Moore.
"Right, let's get moving."
Lieutenant Commander Jack Boland wiped the sweat off of his face and set his helmet on the seat of his Ares fighter. For some reason the squadron had been recalled and the fighters were zipping in through the braking field and slamming into the landing deck as fast as they could ingress.