Chapter 3

Takara satin the Stella and looked up and down the line as she pulled out of the hangar and into black space. Normally their missions were one conflict, one Stinger. Now the entire Night Stalkers Charlie Company was forming up. All three Stingers, four small Tagger gun ships, and the five big Guts that could hold a hundred suited troops or two hundred civilians.

“Stella? What the hell?”

“Mission profile,” the Stella read off to her. “Landing Canmerica West capital at oh-two-hundred hours local time. Retrieve all remaining troops.”

“I didn’t know there was anyone still left in Tucson.”

Stella ran a list up one of the screens and it made sense.

The politicians had been the first aloft to the big Canmerican O’Neill habitats out at the Lagrange 5 point—Lunar orbit, but sixty degrees behind the Moon. Of course. Critical skills had flown next and then lottery winners who passed the IQ and genetic thresholds. The last to arrive had deep-spaced all of the politicians who didn’t pass their own tests—about seventy percent. It had been a major pain to clean up before the area’s space lanes were safe for travel again. Lesson learned: next time they wouldn’t just feed them out the airlock.

There hadn’t been anyone left to retrieve from Canmerica East. Everything east of the MSRZ—Mississippi Sea and Radiation Zone, had been abandoned while she was still a cadet.

Canmerica West had held it together.

United California, not so much. Still heavily militarized despite the final destruction of Japan, UC had somehow been held off at the Mojave while CanWesterners scrambled to get aloft.

Now she knew how the UC military had been kept at bay. With Special Operations assets still on the ground, conventional forces didn’t stand a chance. Their mission was to bring them home.

* * *

Plan = Retrieve military personnel: Delta, 24th STS, ST6, ISA.

Also 75th Space Delta 3rd Battalion.

Stella Personnel Hold conditions = atmosphere stable.

Maintenance note = perform full hold inspection and service post-transport of SpecOps troops. Deltas were always breaking things.