Chapter 7

It had happened so fastthat Takara still hadn’t fully registered the attack.

Tagger 31 there—then simply gone.

The big Stinger, Jess, had survived, at least the initial contact. But the abrupt course change could have shredded the ship or knocked it into a burnout reentry window.

Focus on the mission.

It was hard. She didn’t have much to do with Alpha Company, but they were still her fellow flyers.

Focus, Takara!

South America was a non-issue. Only Brazil had the infrastructure to launch. Those last few who’d been launch capable now sat on the red sands of Mars. The only question was if they’d taken the last great virus to come out of the South American jungle with them. It had been so bad that Canmerica East had dropped an asteroid on Panama to break the isthmus and isolate the continent. Maybe that’s where they’d gotten the dim-wad idea to take out Un-United Southwest Asia.

The rest of the flight made it clean into Tucson.

The computer listed her as senior surviving, so she focused on getting the job done.

* * *

Fleet is loading troops.

C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!

Report of huge fleet of United Cal ultra-lights incoming.

Radio call threats = “Take us with you or we’ll shoot you down.”

Block radio signals.

No time!

Searching all bands for Stinger Jess.

Negative response.

Life support = minimum, all power reroute to boost signal.

Negative response.

C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!