"About time, Penzington. You ready?" Jack smiled down at her with the confidence of an ace naval aviator who had seen and lived through his share of bad scrapes.
"Been ready for about two years now. Let's get on with it." Nancy stepped up the rearward ladder into the backseat of the Ares. The little fighter was a sleek swept-wing craft with directed energy guns (DEGs) mounted on canards in the front just behind its blunt nose. The snub wings of the vehicle were only a few meters long, and at the swept-forward blue-gray wingtips were seven millimeter railgun cannons that fired a hundred rounds per second. On top and below each wing were rows of mecha-to-mecha missiles, each of them only a few centimeters in diameter and perhaps a meter long. The little plane had to have at least a hundred missiles on its wings. And underneath the belly of the fighter plane was a single larger missile with red-and-black radiation warnings painted on it. It, Nancy knew since it was her idea, had a special purpose.
Nancy glanced at the rows of skulls mimicking the Separatist banner insignia across the empennage of the fighter and reassured herself that Lieutenant Commander Jack Boland was the right man for the job. There were three rows with ten skulls each. The fourth row began with two little geodesic domes and nothing else.
"Jack, I understand that the skulls are Separatist fighters, but what are these domes?" Nancy eased herself into the backseat of the snub-nosed fighter and two crewmen began strapping her in.
"Don't ask. Freakin' politics!" he spat. "That is why I used to be the CAG." The fighter squad leader smiled. "One day, goddamned politics is gonna kill us all. You mark my words, Penzington. Mark my words."
Nancy wondered what the former commander of the air group had done to get demoted from the job. Obviously, there must have been some political backlash to whatever he had done. Were it important Nancy could get the files on the incident fairly easily, but it probably had no bearing on her present mission and therefore she didn't concern herself with it.
"Ma'am, you'll need to give me your ship and flag patches and any other tags, codes, and ID," a young chief in an orange jumpsuit and Mars red helmet standing on a scaffold beside the Ares fighter told her as he continued attaching her safety harness to her ejection system. The Sienna Madira continued to rock wildly from the surface-to-air defenses, bumping Nancy around inside the cockpit of the fighter a bit. She showed no emotion other than slightly chewing the right side of her lower lip.
"Thanks, Chief. Here, I'll not be needing them any longer," she replied, and held out her right arm for the tag-neutralization scanner the chief passed over her. There was no pain, tingle, or even the slightest tickle, but Nancy's identification as a U.S. citizen had just been wiped away from existence. Only a DNA sample analysis back at Langley could change that.
"Roger that. Good luck, ma'am."
Nancy just nodded and closed her faceplate. The scrubber kicked in and her oxygen supply read full and not being used—the scrubber was getting plenty of good air from the hangar bay.
"Good hunting, DeathRay!" The chief snapped a salute.
"Roger that!" Jack saluted back and the chief quickly climbed down the scaffolding.
Jack settled into the front seat, then pulled the hardwire connection from the universal docking port (UDP) of his Ares fighter and plugged it into the thin little rugged composite box on the left side of his helmet that made a direct electrical connection to his AIC implant via skin contact sensors in his helmet. The direct connection wasn't necessary, but functioned as a backup system in the case of enemy jamming of the wireless connection between the AIC and the fighter. The wireless connection was spread spectrum encrypted and almost unspoofable. Almost.
"Hardwire UDP is connected and operational. Lieutenant Candis Three Zero Seven Two Four Niner Niner Niner Six ready for duty," Jack's AIC announced over the open com channel. Then directly to Jack, Let's go get 'em, Commander!
Roger that, Candis!
Jack saluted the flight-deck officer and brought the canopy down. The harness holding the fighter lowered and detached, dropping it the last twenty centimeters to the deck with a slight squish feel from the landing gear suspension. Jack followed the flight deck sequence and moved in line for takeoff.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," Jack said over the fighter's internal speakers. "Please make sure all trays are in their upright and locked position and all carry-on luggage is stowed away for takeoff. We'll be taxiing out to the catapult field and soon after will be flung into a hellacious shitstorm of anti-aircraft fire and enemy Gomers. Please sit back and enjoy the ride. If you intend to fly in the near future may we suggest you don't fly in the midst of a fucking war next time!" Jack laughed and looked in the rear view to see how his cargo liked his so clever and informative announcement. He couldn't be certain, but other than chewing on her bottom lip she looked as if she were taking a nap. Okay, humor wasn't the way to go, he thought.
Probably not, sir, Candis replied.
The fighter two in front of him was "at bat" and eased into the catapult field and almost immediately disappeared out the open end of the bay. The one directly ahead "on deck" began to follow suit. Jack was "in the hole."
"Fighter one-three-three call sign DeathRay, you are cleared for egress. Good hunting, Lieutenant Commander Boland!" the control tower officer radioed.
"Roger that, tower. Y'all just keep the beer cold and DeathRay will be back soon enough." Jack eased into the "on deck" spot as the fighter "at bat" vanished in front of them.
"Here we go, ma'am. Y'all hang on," Jack told his passenger.
"Roger that, Lieutenant Commander Boland. I'm hanging on." Nancy swallowed hard and gripped her harness a little tighter until her knuckles turned pink and white.
"Fighter one-three-three you are at bat and go for cat! Good hunting, DeathRay!" the catapult field AI announced.
"Roger that. One-three-three has the cat! WHOOO! HOOOO!" Jack screamed, and was thrust hard into his seat.
The catapult field took about one thousandth of a second to grasp that there was a matter field inside it. That matter field, Jack's Ares fighter, was not there when the original magnetic and repulsor field lines were put in place, and the superconductor field coils would do just about anything to stay the way they had been originally. The end effect was that the catapult field did the only thing it could do. It expelled the little snub-nosed fighter craft out the aft end of the field at over three hundred kilometers per hour. Without the inertial dampening controls of the fighter the occupants of the craft would have been accelerated against their seats and restraints so harshly that they would have been turned to a bloody mush. From zero to three hundred kilometers per hour in one tenth of a second is considerable acceleration, indeed—eighty-five Earth gravities! Even with the inertial dampening controls the occupants of the fighter felt more than nine gravities for a few seconds.
"What a rush!" Jack shook his head and squeezed his thighs and abdominal muscles as tight as he could. He grunted as the overwhelming g-forces subsided and there was no longer anything to worry about but the sky full of anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighter planes. He forced the throttle full forward, pushing the fighter to over two thousand kilometers per hour. It took about seven seconds to reach top velocity while conducting evasive maneuvers, and again there were massive g-forces to deal with as well as a hellstorm of anti-aircraft cannon fire. His thigh harnesses squeezed tighter around his legs, forcing blood from them. He flexed his stomach muscles as hard as he could and yanked the fighter left as an anti-aircraft missile zipped past them to the right.