Chapter 4

Rick knockedthe Jess out of lunar orbit and cooked some gas up and out of the Moon’s gravity well and down into Earth’s. Mission profile said to burn for a fast arrival. The situation down there must be getting ugly for them to have to do the mission in the dead of local night. Not trusting India, he set up a circumpolar slingshot for aero-braking and orbital reentry.

The icecaps were long gone, though he’d gotten to see a small one in the West Antarctic Highlands a decade back.

The brain-dead politicians of the Atlanta capital had decided that dropping a couple asteroids onto Un-United Southwest Asia would “clean it up once and for all.” The dust clouds had cooled the Earth several degrees and an ice sheet formed in the West Antarctic Highlands for the first time in over a century. Rick had meant to try out skiing there, but it had melted back out when the dust finally cleared only a few years later.

What was left of the Un-USA Hoard and their allies had retaliated—as any bonehead could have guessed—and every Canmerica East city still above sea level had evaporated in sun-bright flashes of fissionable material.

Hopefully yanking out the troops still in the CanWest capital was going to be fast and clean.

Yeah right. What mission in the last decade had gone fast and clean?

That’s why they’d called in the Night Stalkers.

* * *

Atmospheric breaking max eight Gs, limitation human crew.

Proximity Alert = Alpha Company approaching another formation.

ID req sent. Returned.

Formation = 160th’s Charlie Company. Captain Takara Olmsted aboard Stinger-class Stella commanding.

Shift glide path. Form up 200m starboard side Stella.

All Stella hull configurations properly configured for atmo.

Flight vector corrections required = none.

Nice. Very nice.