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  "Good point," he said, lifting his head. "Seventy petawatts? That's as much as the total output of an AV. Not the main gun, all the guns. Two hundred and fifty thousand missiles? I'm stupid but not that stupid."

  "Then perhaps we should first look at how to prevent them from completing their tasks," Beor suggested.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "You are, amazingly enough, the picture of health," Dr. Pfau said. "And if you can avoid crazy shuttle pilots in the future, you might continue to be."

  Lieutenant Dixie Ellen Pfau, MD, was one of many doctors being directly commissioned by the Navy. It was a long way from the Mayo Free Clinic but it had some similarities. And she'd learned to read body language a bit better along the way.

  "What did I say?" Dixie asked, gesturing at Dana's suit.

  "I was the crazy shuttle pilot, ma'am," Dana said, starting to put the suit on. With all the bumps and bruises it was a bit harder than normal.

  The shuttle had made it almost all the way to Bay One before giving up the ghost. Thermal had shut down the reactor just short of a critical overload. So they had to drift the rest of the way in. And come in for a hard drop landing from about six feet when the guys running the bay turned on the grav. It was that or impact the back bulkhead.

  She knew she'd messed up the cargo but she had been reliably informed they were all alive. The mail made it even if it was a little tattered.

  "Well, we've got four broken limbs, a cracked cranium and three women in premature labor, Engineer," Dixie said tightly. "You can expect a rather pointed letter being sent to your commander through channels. What was an engineer doing flying a shuttle?"

  "Filling in a slot, ma'am," Dana said, picking up her helmet. "Am I cleared to return to duty?"

  "I should have you go over to Ward Four," Dixie said, making a notation on the chart. "But, yes, you're cleared to return to duty."

  "Thank you, ma'am," Dana said. "Good afternoon."

  "It will be good when we get some qualified pilots!"

  —|—

  "...and then there's this fricking SAPL where there's not supposed to be a SAPL and she..." Hartwell was saying when Dr. Pfau walked in. He still hadn't taken off his suit.

  "Corpsman?" Dixie said, walking in the exam room.

  "Engineer's Mate from Shuttle Thirty-Three, ma'am," the female corpsman said. "Turns out that wasn't an accident but some really hot piloting, ma'am."

  "Hot dog piloting, EM," Dixie said. "Good piloting doesn't normally entail fractures. As I just informed your so-called pilot."

  "Say again, ma'am?" Thermal said, blinking.

  "Your pilot has been returned to duty," Dixie said. "She was uninjured. But your commander is going to be getting... what's the term? A reply by endorsement asking why he allowed that maniac behind the controls."

  "With all due respect, ma'am," Hartwell said, tightly. "Are you aware of the full nature of the entry EN Parker performed, ma'am?"

  "I rather doubt that any..."

  "With all due respect, ma'am," Hartwell said. "I repeat my question, ma'am. Are you aware of the conditions under which EN Parker made her entry to the main bay? Ma'am."

  Dixie took a deep breath. She had had to deal with nurses that had information she wasn't aware of and recognized the tone.

  "No, EM. Please increase my knowledge base."

  —|—

  "Oh."

  "And for general informational transfer, ma'am, the Columbia ate a missile, ma'am. So your injuries would now be trying to breathe vacuum, ma'am. Or, more likely, be plasma. Ma'am."

  "I can recognize when I have made an error in judgment, EM," Dixie said. "Please convey my apologies to EN Parker when you see her. And I'll try to circulate that information to the remaining injured. They were... a bit unhappy. Especially the Columbia pilot."

  "They were in a steel box and couldn't see what was happening, ma'am," Hartwell said. "Do you know where EN Parker is at present, ma'am?"

  "She was released for duty," Dixie said. "She's already checked out."

  "I need to get going," Hartwell said. "She's so green I don't think she even knows her way back to base."

  —|—

  "Parker?"

  "Therm... EM Hartwell?" Dana said. She was sitting in a hard plastic chair, holding her head in her hands.

  "Location?"

  "Main waiting room," Dana commed. "I figured I'd wait 'til you got released. I don't know how to find the squadron."

  "Be right there."

  —|—

  "EM," Dana said, standing up and wiping her eyes as the engineer entered the waiting room. She was the only person in it so it wasn't like he could miss her.

  "Now that was something I never thought I'd see," Hartwell said, sighing.

  "How much trouble am I in?" Dana asked, taking a deep breath.

  "You did hear Paris, right?" Hartwell said, shaking his head. "Oh, we'll be doing reports and reviews for a year, but if anybody so much as hints you're in trouble, I'll jack them right up. Just like I jacked up that prissy ass doctor. She, by the way, asked me to convey her apologies."

  "It really was a bad entry..."

  "Stand by," Hartwell said. He closed his eyes and nodded for a second. "Three way."

  "That you, Parker?" Chief Barnett commed.

  "Here, Chief," Dana said, standing up a bit straighter.

  "First, don't you ever do that again," Barnett said. "Unless you gotta. And that was a 'gotta' if I've ever seen one. Second, if anybody gives you crap about that entry, other than in fun, and they are going to be funning you about it, then you send them to me and I'll give them a piece of my mind. Now get your butt back to the squadron. We're swamped with requests and we need Thirty-Six out here ASAP."

  "Say again, Chief?"

  "We've got orders to board Thirty-Six and join the SAR," Hartwell said. "So if you're over your cry, we've got a mission, Comet."

  "Comet?" Dana said, frowning. She was incredibly tired and not processing particularly well. She'd actually still been pumped up until the run in with the lieutenant. That had first taken the wind out of her sails, then a massive reaction to the crash had set in. She felt like a limp noodle.

  "Told you Danno was a holding handle. You just had to do something crazy or stupid enough to earn one. Congratulations. Got it on both scores."

  —|—

  "Rammer, get your team down to the One-Forty-Second bays," Staff Sergeant Dunn said. "SAR mission."

  "I didn't think we lost anybody." Lance Corporal Andrew Ramage nonetheless rolled out of his rack, picked up his weapon and headed to the hatch. With nothing to do during a battle between a massive station and the incoming Horvath the Marines were just standing by in their suits and jerking off.

  "Horvath SAR," SSGT Dunn said. "Or, in other words, prisoners."

  "We're picking up Horvath?" PFC Patrick Lasswell asked.

  "Yes, Lassie," SSGT Dunn said. "Go get Timmy out of the well." He headed down the corridor to roust out the next team.

  "Ours not to question why," Rammer said, trotting down the corridor.

  "This is one order I sort of question," Lassie said.

  "No," Rammer said. "You say 'Gung-ho, Staff Sergeant!' And go pick up prisoners."

  "Should just let 'em drift 'til their air runs out," Lasswell said.

  "But we have the strength of ten because our heart is pure," Rammer said, grinning and flipping down his helmet.

  "Pure bullcrap, that's what this is..."

  —|—

  "Rammer," Sergeant Ryan Pridgeon commed. "Thirty-Six."

  "Gung-ho, Sergeant," Rammer commed back. He and Lassie were pulling themselves hand-over-hand down the bay as part of a milling mass of Marines trying to get to their assigned landing craft.

  They drilled loading all the time and normally it was a bit more orderly. But in this case the teams were being broken up into prisoner details. They hadn't drilled loading in two-man teams.

  "Engineer's Thermal," Pridgeon added. "Cock is Parker. The
rmal's EM1 Hartwell, so be polite."

  "Roger, Sergeant," Rammer commed. EM1 translated as a staff sergeant so he was going to be polite. He flipped through the hatch and was pleased to find it was under gravity. "EM Hartwell, Lance Corporal Ramage with party of one on-board."

  "Roger, Lance," the EM commed. "Close the door and we can be on our merry way."

  —|—

  "Shuttle is buttoned up, Coxswain," Hartwell said. "You good?"

  "I am a butterfly, Engineer," Dana replied. "I float upon the wind, neither fighting nor losing." She didn't feel like a butterfly. She felt like a brick.

  "The last time you said that we were headed into a crash," Hartwell said, chuckling.

  "I'm going to try to get that on my record as a hard landing," Dana said, pulling away from the dock. Other shuttles were popping off and she took a holding position until she got her vector.

  "Comet, that was a crash," Hartwell said.

  "Any landing you walk away from is a landing," Dana said.

  "We were carried out on stretchers."

  "Which were, as I protested, unnecessary," Dana replied. "Witness the fact that we are already back on duty."

  —|—

  Lasswell leaned over and put his helmet up against Rammer's.

  "Does he know we're listening?"

  "He left us in the circuit," LCP Ramage said. "I think on purpose."

  "I don't want to hear this conversation," Lasswell said. "They just walked away from a crash and they're back on duty? Isn't there usually an AAR for that sort of thing?"

  —|—

  "Oh, gosh," Thermal said, as Dana got in formation to head out of the main bay. "I think I left the Marines in the circuit."

  "What?" Dana said. "You... If you were not an EM1, I would tell you exactly what I think of you, EM1 Hartwell!"

  "My bad," Hartwell said.

  "Fine," Dana said. "Marines?"

  "Roger, Coxswain?"

  "There were mitigating circumstances to my last mission's ending," Dana said. "You can look it up later."

  "Yeah," Thermal said, chuckling. "I figure that entry to the main bay is going to be all over YouTube."

  "Okay, EM Hartwell," Dana said, finally getting angry. "You call the choices. Go get the people out of the shuttle. Direct order. RTB max rather than run. Direct order. Door closing. Impact the surface or try to make the hole?"

  "Comet, I already said it was an awesome display of flying," Hartwell said. "Marines, for your general edification, I don't know three cocks in the squadron who could have survived. That we, yeah, walked away instead of being paste was awesome flying, not a screw-up. So you can adjust your catheters."

  "Roger, EM. All oorah here."

  —|—

  "Frack," Lassie said, laughing. "It's already on YouTube. You gotta check this out."

  "You're using hypercom bandwidth for..." Rammer said until he got the feed. "Back that up!"

  "Son of a—" Lasswell said, replaying the clip. "EM Hartwell? Permission to ask a question, EM?"

  "Go," Hartwell commed.

  "Why did Parker go screaming across the main bay at max thrust?"

  —|—

  "EM," Dana said. She was feeling better for some reason. Maybe it was focusing on the mission. But the cobwebs that had been filling her brain were starting to clear. Or maybe it was getting pissed at a certain EM1. "How are our systems looking? I never completed the thirty day on this."

  "Good," Hartwell said in a distracted tone. "And, Comet, seriously. I'm sorry for pulling your leg. The video is already up on YouTube. From about six different angles. And I'm looking at it and wondering how any of us survived. Thank you. That was some very hot piloting, EN. Very hot. And I value my skin."

  "Without analysis it's going to look like an idiot was driving," Dana said.

  "There's..." Hartwell said. "The analysis is going on as we speak. You just made the news."

  "Oh... damn."

  "And so did AJ, Spade and Boomer's shuttle," Hartwell said.

  "Did they...?"

  "It got taken out by a Horvath laser," Hartwell said.

  "Thermal... I'm sorry. We should have gone for them."

  "We'd all be dead if we had," Hartwell said, cutting off the news feed. "How you doing?"

  "I am a butterfly, Thermal."

  —|—

  Video has recently been popping up on YouTube of an apparent crash of a Myrmidon shuttle during the Battle of Troy. Here with a more in-depth explanation is our Fox military analyst, Carter Russell. Carter, that certainly looks like some crazy piloting.

  It does. But you don't know the circumstances, Jamie...

  —|—

  "Damn," Lassie said, watching the feed from Fox. "Damn and... damn. These two ought to be dead."

  "And fifty-three passengers," Rammer said then paused. "Whoa."

  The news had finally gotten a shot of the pilot of the "Comet" delivery into the main bay. And instead of her "official" bio shot, it was from Dana's high-school yearbook.

  "Whoa is right," PFC Lasswell said. "And oooo-rah! Uh... I wonder how we get access to the flight deck."

  "We don't even ask," Rammer said. "Don't even think about hitting on our cox, Lassie. Down!"

  "Lance Corporal... uh..."

  "Call me Rammer, EM," LCP Ramage commed.

  "We're approaching our search grid and there are about a thousand distress beacons. Be prepared to get to work."

  "Roger, EM," Rammer commed, cycling a charge into his laser. "We're about to have company."

  There was a clang on the hull of the boat and Lasswell jumped.

  "What was that?"

  "Debris," Rammer said. "When you hear that, you know we're about to get to work."

  —|—

  "Commodore, we have an issue," Colonel Raymond Helberg said.

  The Troy's Chief of Operations was part of the "multinational" group, a British Army colonel whose experience prior to Troy was mostly logistics and base operations. He'd gotten the job due in part to just being damned good but more because he'd spent a year "cross-training" on logistics in the off-shore drilling industry. Since taking the assignment on the Troy he'd found the differences outweighed the similarities. Such as the current issue.

  "Go," Commodore Kurt Pounders said. "Or, rather, which issue."

  Pounders was the chief of staff of the Troy. He had once considered being the Karl Vinson's commander a complicated job.

  "We don't have the ET brig installed, yet," Colonel Helberg said. "Based on the distress beacons, we're about to have six or seven thousand prisoners. Which we cannot even feed since they don't eat Earth food."

  "And we solve that how?" the commodore asked.

  "Put them on one of their ships," Colonel Helberg said. "There's a battlecruiser that the survey team says is habitable. What's left. It broke in half in the battle so there's no drive. They're going to have to strip off the guns and missiles but the crew quarters can be sealed off from that area while they are working. Environmental for that area is working."

  "Approved," the commodore said. "Make sure there's a good sized Marine detachment as guards until they get the weapons off. Strip it of everything but environmental."

  "Will do."

  —|—

  "There's a lot of debris, Thermal," Dana said.

  Their search area was around one of the Horvath-made battlecruisers. It didn't seem to have suffered much damage but there was still so much chaff in the area, it was like flying through a minefield. Bits and pieces of the ship had been blasted off and there were chunks of armor, support beams and less identifiable objects everywhere.

  The whole space around the gate was filled with drifting objects. The largest were the ships that seemed whole, like the one that was their target. There were, for that matter, two Rangora battleships in view that seemed more or less intact. Being that close to an apparently functioning battleship in a cockleshell like the Myrmidon... was probably a lot like what the battleships felt up against Tr
oy.

  There were far more that were in pieces. And bits. And fluff. It was insane. Flying into the main bay had been a piece of cake compared to this. There was no way to miss hitting debris and some of it had vectors high enough that they could puncture the shuttle's armored hull.

  "Just take it slow, Comet," Hartwell said. "Distress beacon at three-three-five mark minus six."

  "Got it," Dana said, closing with the Horvath evacuation pod. "No chance I can just blast it out of space?"

  "Didn't figure you for the bloodlust type, Comet," Hartwell said.

  "I'm from Anaheim, EM," Dana said. "Remember?"

  "Oh. Then, no, we don't get to blast them out of space, EN. Just close to dock."

  "Roger, Thermal," Dana said, flexing her jaw. It had been a long day.

  —|—

  "Je-jay!" Rammer said, gesturing for the three Horvath to climb out of the escape pod. "Je-jay!"

  The docking clamps of all the local ships that were used by more or less Terran sized sophonts were identical. The original design dated from before the Glatun and just keeping the standard design made things easier.

  It certainly made securing prisoners easier.

  The Horvath came clambering out of the pod, their hand-tentacles on their helmets.

  "They really do look like squids, don't they?" Lasswell said, gesturing with his rifle for the threesome to move to the back of the cargo bay. There weren't any seats installed so the Horvath huddled against the back bulkhead.

  The extraterrestrials had six tentacles instead of eight with four used for locomotion and two as "hands." But other than that, they looked very much like terrestrial squids.

  "Yeah," Rammer said, securing the hatch. "EM, we are clear. Next customer."

  "Roger, Rammer."

  CHAPTER TEN

  "EM, unless you want us to start stacking, we'd better head to the barn," Rammer commed two hours later. The cargo bay was solid with Horvath. A couple had been carrying laser pistols when the shuttle docked. They'd also carefully handed them over to the Marines.

  The Horvath were didactic and dictatory when they were in positions of power. But Rammer had been a prisoner collector for the last encounter with Earth's former overlords and he'd found them to be incredibly docile when a laser rifle was in their face. Even the officers. He'd been told they weren't really officers, but that was their position basically. They just bunched up in a group and sort of stroked each other. It was pathetic, really.