“Gross domestic products worldwide are higher than ever, Adam. There are sixteen million personnel in the Terran Defense Force throughout the galaxy and another seven million in the Fleet. We have a colonial presence on twenty-one worlds. Things are better than ever on Earth.”
Crawley shook his head. “I disagree, and I don’t want to argue about this. I’d rather talk about what happens when I find this subject and collect her.”
“You’re ordered to euthanize her immediately. On-site.”
“No. I want the data she’ll have onboard. And contrary to your personal beliefs, she is a human being and has a right to live.”
Neige flared. “She is responsible for two of my agents’ deaths. There is no telling what else she is capable of doing or inciting. I will not let her walk the Earth a moment longer than necessary. If she turns up on a public-camera sweep, I’ll call in my own forces if you fail to respond.”
Crawley replied slowly, “What happens if they meet the same fate as your agents, Penny? How many people is it going to take before you let my people do our work instead? You said a moment ago your staff had better things to do, and now you’re threatening the subject with your collective forces. Which is it going to be?”
Neige sat back and smiled at him warmly. “You missed your calling by not going into politics, Adam. You should have taken my advice all those years ago.”
Crawley allowed an almost-natural smile to form on his face. They’d been friends, true friends, once before in another lifetime. Working together before the Great War on special logistical projects forged a connection between them. The pretty Parisian girl of his youth always had a harder edge than anyone else. Being the best and the brightest was not enough for her. He’d always known she’d move up the chain faster than he would. She was willing to do whatever it took from an early age. Experience had taught Crawley he’d have to do the same to make any appreciable difference. Kieran and the girl could make that difference. And there were more besides them.
As their dinner arrived on trays, steaming with the succulent smell of rich, braised beef, Crawley decided it was time to call her bluff. She wanted the sleeper program extinct, and he would not acquiesce. The future would depend on it, especially if Kieran was successful on Mars.
That would change everything.
Hangar five was one of the twelve hangars at Fleet Station Elysium, and it sat farthest away from the main base, a full twenty-minute walk. Since it was a weekend morning, the tram wasn’t available. I could have taken one of the portable electronic bikes, but the walk would give me a chance to lay out my thoughts and clear my head before my fight with Bussot. Ever since I’d told Crawley that I would give the whole Fleet thing a try, I’d doubted my decision. Eight months earlier, I’d planned on surfing every day, not flying a hypersonic exocraft.
Flying was really pretty simple. Once I understood how the power aspect worked, controlling an aircraft with a deft touch came naturally. Where things started to go crazy was when the additional responsibilities of flying in a combat aircraft piled up. Maintaining radio communications was pretty easy, except that I had six or eight channels to monitor. Leadership wasn’t typically easy when I was standing still, and at five hundred knots, it was almost impossible.
An oblong window to my right showed a view of the wide, desolate plains of Mars. Things like command and control were a little easier when we could breathe the air outside. There was so much more to being a pilot than actually flying. A combat environment doubled down on those stressors. Communicating and controlling a fight were virtually impossible with an enemy that was trying to kill me, and air combat maneuvering was a lot more complicated than one pilot versus another. That wasn’t going to matter this morning.
I was not a fan of dogfighting, but it was how pilots judged each other. That was exactly what Bussot wanted to do, undoubtedly, by trying to put me in my place once and for all. Call it climbing the pyramid or establishing the pecking order. It came down to one aircraft versus another, and I’d bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Truth was, I loved flying, but all of the other shit that went with it could be a little overwhelming. She wanted a one-on-one fight to prove a point about my ability to fly. I intended to give her one.
Along the corridor, the oval windows reminded me I was a long way from home. The Elysium Planitia stretched into the distance, more flat than mountainous. Earth would rise soon. That small blue dot in the sky was a stark reminder that while Earth was not the only planet in the universe, humans were woefully alone despite their allies. Fighting the Greys would take every sentient species.
Through the hatch into hangar five, I could hear Bussot screaming at the handling crews. Something about being late and holding up training.
<
I pushed through the door and immediately stopped to watch the carnage. In the main portion of the hangar, the ready bay, sat two aircraft. To the left was a large twin-scramjet beast with the distinctive aggressor camouflage the instructors coveted. The Devastator was the fastest exocraft in the Fleet and could do a ground-to-Mars orbit takeoff in less than three minutes or go through Earth’s thicker atmosphere in six minutes. Its gravitational dampeners could keep a pilot sipping tea in a fifteen-G turn. Capable of carrying more ordnance than a B-52 bomber from my time could have, it was supposed to be the ultimate exocraft for both interception and close air support. In the bar at night, there were too many complaints from both pilots and maintainers that someone had made a lot of money off the Fleet for a marginally capable aircraft. In the hands of a great pilot, it was a phenomenal machine. In the hands of a mediocre pilot, it was a flying deathtrap.
The ground crew, ten scrambling individuals, raced back and forth, doing precombat checks. Standing with her hands on her flight-suited hips, Bussot kept screaming at them to do this to her aircraft and tighten that on her aircraft, a chaotic litany of commands. I was glad she did not see me duck into the hangar.
Across the open space was a completely different scene. A smaller, single-engine aircraft sat to the side. After training in Ospreys and Falcons for the majority of time, I recognized it and realized that I’d never been trained to fly it.
<>
The Skyhawk. I grinned. There’d been another aircraft I loved with that name, and if memory served me right, it had a great history in dissimilar air combat maneuvering. I’m starting to sound like a pilot.
<
Across the hangar, I heard Bussot screaming, “Ten minutes! We’re airborne in ten minutes, or the whole lot of you are on report!”
Not looking at her or the poor, scrambling ground crew, I made my way toward the Skyhawk. A woman holding a tablet caught my eye. Her baseball hat said “Crew Chief,” and her long red hair curled around her neck in a twisted braid that draped over her right shoulder. Her name tag read “Veer.”
“Good morning, sir.” She saluted.
I returned the salute and extended my hand. “Good morning.”
Her hand was warm and calloused. A senior noncommissioned officer not afraid of turning a wrench. Impressed, I inspected the sleek aircraft’s profile and nodded. “She’s a little thing, isn’t she?”
Veer nodded. “I’m partial to her. Have you ever flown one?”
“Nope,” I said. “What do I need to know?”
“You’re not checked out in this aircraft? And you’re flying a one versus one against Commander Bussot?” Veer gave me a pitying smile. “That’s not exactly fair.”
When she looked away, I could tell she thought she’d said too much. Working with instructors, especially those who were full of themselves, had to be a living hell. “I suppose that’s pretty normal, huh?”
“Yes, sir.” Veer sighed and compressed her lips into a thin white line. T
here was a lot she, and the others, obviously wanted to say. “I’ll get you started on the neural connection. Would you like to do a walk-around?”
“Absolutely. Teach me everything I need to know.” I laughed as I said it and got the result I was looking for—a slight smile. The basic premise that all service members were people first was lost on some. All too often, we became things to covet, hoard, and stand upon.
Veer sized me up. I finally noticed her master sergeant insignia. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She was younger than most of the senior sergeants, but there was experience in her eyes.
“What’s your first impression when you look at her?”
The delta-winged exocraft was everything that the Devastator was not. It looked as if it were already flying Mach 4. The thin, curving fuselage was sleeker than anything I’d seen. The triangular planform swept back from the longish pointed nose to a single tail assembly that rested above the engine and its maneuverable engine nozzle. Thrust vectoring would allow the little jet to turn on a dime. “She looks fast.”
Veer grinned. “The Devastator has more thrust to weight ratio, but its bulk is one of the things that makes it hard to fly.”
“Fleet tells us it’s the best thing flying.”
“Do me a favor, sir. Tell me that when you come back from this flight.” Veer studied me with one corner of her mouth raised in a half smile. “The newest and best technology is seldom that. Most of the time, an older, trusted platform in the hands of an experienced operator will perform better.”
A quote sprang to my mind, but I couldn’t put my finger on the exact words. “Something about not trusting youth and strength?” That was why I was alive a second time. Crawley and his friends were betting that I could outperform others with experience and wisdom not learned from a holo textbook.
“More or less, sir.” For the next few minutes, I was silent except for a question or two. The more I considered the Skyhawk, the more it looked like the original. Lily confirmed that it shared a lot of design features with the first and that in most of the dissimilar dogfights in training environments—places called Top Gun and Red Flag—it had outperformed newer, more powerful jets.
The instructors are flying the wrong damned planes, aren’t they?
<>
Bussot wants to bias her own results even further—find a shortcut up the pyramid. That’s why she assigned me a plane I’ve never flown, right?
<
I couldn’t deny Lily’s analysis, but I couldn’t help but think I had an advantage. Admiral LeConté had given me poignant information about Bussot’s ability in a dogfight, and I was just crazy enough to do things that Bussot wouldn’t expect. I really had a chance to beat her. Imagining her anger at that outcome almost made me smile until I realized a simple fact: win or lose, the only way I was going to graduate from her beloved program involved either going along with her or risking everything. At the cockpit ladder, a flimsy contraption that deployed from the fuselage, Veer handed me the tablet to “sign” for the aircraft. I checked the appropriate boxes and handed it back to her.
“Good luck, sir. Keep her horizontal, and you’ll be fine.” Veer disappeared under the nosecone of the Skyhawk.
I climbed the ladder and stepped into the small cockpit. The feel was claustrophobic at first, but as my shoulders slipped beneath the canopy rail, the seat felt… right. I’d flown half a dozen aircraft, and all of them had their idiosyncrasies. Flying the Osprey felt like riding inside a bathtub. In the Falcon, I felt as if I was sitting exposed on the nose of a rocket. The Skyhawk was vastly different in a good way.
Are you sure we can fly this, Lily?
<
“Yes, Mom.”
<>
I pulled my helmet over my head and snapped it into the firm collar of my flight suit. Across the hangar, Bussot climbed aboard her Devastator. From the top of her ladder, she glanced over her shoulder at me. And she winked.
<
Instead of the four multifunction displays of an Osprey, there were two. A central instrument cluster below the canopy-mounted heads-up display collected the information I needed to see in one convenient location. To my left was the throttle quadrant and controls for the engine and avionics. The centrally mounted stick was weird compared to the Osprey and Falcon, which both had right-side-mounted control sticks, but it was manageable. On the right were the controls for communications, navigations, and weapons bays. The little aircraft felt as though it was made for me.
Ready for the checklist, Lily. Let’s get up in the air.
Level at fifteen thousand meters, I looked to my left at the Devastator just forward of me in the flight leader’s position. Bussot glanced in my general direction.
“Two, Lead. How do you like that little thing?” Her voice dripped sarcasm.
“So far, so good. Flying straight and level is easy.” I studied the terrain ahead. Hecates Tholus, one of the large volcanoes in the region, slid past off my right wing. The terrain around its base was streaked with small rivulets and canyon-like formations—nothing like Valles Marineris, but it would be fun to explore. Bussot had given me thirty minutes to get acquainted with the aircraft before we started our engagement.
“Lead, Two,” I said. “I’d like to get down low and get a feel for her near the rocks. Follow my lead.”
I knew Bussot wouldn’t back down from a little challenge. “Two, roger. You have the lead on the right.”
<
A green line arced to the right. I could assume it snaked tight to the cone of Hecates Tholus—the kind of flight path I loved. Since my first solo flight, being down among the rocks and canyons was where I excelled. I pushed the throttle forward to full military power, a setting below activating the afterburner-like components, and snapped the Skyhawk into a tight turn. As the Gs piled on, I grinned and tightened the turn a little further and rolled out with my nose right on the path Lily selected.
<
Lily, let’s fly down that ravine ahead on the left. I wanted to see how badly Bussot would either misjudge the turn or cut it short. Either way, she’d be out of position. Knowing how much would give me a lot of information, the kind that might turn the fight my way.
Pushing through five hundred knots, I nosed the Skyhawk toward the ground and shot down the highpoint of the ravine with Bussot a kilometer behind me and closing fast. She’d anticipated the turn and was not as out of position as I’d hoped. Wings level, I banked high to the right and pulled back on the stick sharply. Even with the inertial dampener, I felt the Gs on the aircraft through the middle of the turn. Easing off the stick, I threw the throttle forward and accelerated deeper into the ravine.
<
Keep her horizontal. I remembered what Ma
ster Sergeant Veer had said. I kept the Skyhawk low for a few more minutes, shaving dust off the slopes of Hecates Tholus for fun, before climbing gently up to fifteen thousand meters and catching my breath.
“That was fun,” I said to myself. I hadn’t felt that good flying since basic flight school. All of it had become tedious.
“Two, Lead. On my mark, break right ninety degrees and circle back for a neutral pass. Five hundred knots at the merge, fight’s on. First confirmed kill solution above fifty percent wins. Acknowledge.”
I clicked my microphone twice, a standard acknowledgement when there really was nothing to say. Bussot hated hearing it, and imagining her anger rising made me smile.
“Break, Two.”
The Skyhawk snapped a ninety-degree turn as if it was nothing. Elysium Planitia was wide and devoid of dangerous terrain around me. It was a perfect place for a dogfight. With any luck, though, I wouldn’t stay in the flatlands for long. With my left hand, I pushed the throttle forward to a steady five hundred knots and circled lazily back to the left.
<
Off my left side, I could see her. At ten kilometers, the Devastator still seemed huge against the pink sky. Comparatively, I knew my aircraft was a speck in the high, wispy clouds of Mars. Given the Skyhawk’s size and tan-and-black camouflage paint scheme, I realized that Bussot wanted a challenge as well.
Then, let’s give her one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Amy swam up through darkness and winced at the pain in her forehead and behind her eyes. In the haze, she felt a distant connection to her extremities and tried, unsuccessfully, to flex her toes and fingers. For a moment, it was the same as waking up in Sydney. The disorientation and sudden clarity shocked her into silence and made the rest of waking difficult. The doctors at the Integration Center had said her fight-or-flight response had taken over, and because her body would not—really, could not—respond, her mind disassociated from what happened around her. The doctors hadn’t been concerned, especially as they rushed her onto walkabout within three days. After a week, she’d not ventured more than a few kilometers from the Integration Center, instead finding a small room to rent just across the Botanical Gardens. The worried doctors called for her, but she did not answer. They didn’t want to help her. They wanted her to kill again. Fearing they would come and take the freedom she’d found, she used the null profile privilege and left the continent to wander Africa and Europe. She would never go home. There was nothing for her in Tennessee, nor had there ever been. Her effort to find a place where no one knew her had been perfect. Japan should have been her resting place. Now, she was on the run.
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