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"Just hang in there," she replied.

How did they develop all this? Allison thought to her, referring to the teleport facility.

Worry about it later. Let's get the fuck out of here and get lost somewhere a long damned way from Elle Ahmi. Nancy's first thoughts were survival. She couldn't believe she'd let herself get wrapped up helping the wounded. But it might work out for the best.

Agreed.

"Ma'am, are you all right?" the medic asked her.

"Sure. I'm fine. Superficial stuff—nothing to worry about." Nancy had already taken mental steps to put out of her mind the torture that she had endured just minutes before. While she realized that it must be still apparent on her face and body that she had recently been through physical torture, the simple fact of the multiple wounded around her was cover enough for it. She could feel the immunoboost working, the one she had been given by the man—Scotty, she recalled—who had helped her escape. It had removed some of the swelling and had started to close the various abrasions. She was wearing what was left of the commandeered clothing, which was way too big for her, and she had no shoes. Her battered look fit in with the surviving battered Seppy troops, but her clothes, well, didn't. She stood out. But hopefully, the other sixty soldiers scurrying about with their own frantic agendas wouldn't notice. Her bloody nose and mouth and Alan's blood covering most of her upper torso and arms actually worked to her advantage as a disguise. The first chance she got, she planned on commandeering herself a better one.

I'm picking up a hangar bay around the corner. I'm trying to handshake with some of the transport-manifest AICs. Maybe we can stow away to Ares, Allison said.

Right. Good plan.

Chapter 1

July 1, 2394 AD

Earthspace, Sea of Waves, the Moon

Friday, 7:40 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Watch the Gomer on your three-nine line, Dee! He's gonna lock you up!" Deanna Moore heard blasting in her ears on the tac-net. Her wingman, Jay Stavros, held as close on her ass as he could and continued to nag her about the crossfire, but it didn't faze her. She had to be cool in order to close the energy gap on the enemy mecha Stinger in front of her.

"You just cover my ass, Jay! I'm staying with this Gomer in front of us." Deanna stomped on her left pedal and pulled back on the stick with her right hand, all the while trimming the throttle with her left hand to maintain a steady energy relationship between herself and the enemy fighter. "Come on, goddamnit, make a mistake!"

She pulled into as tight a turn as the Marine mecha could withstand, and when she did the g-suit constricted on her legs and abdomen like a giant anaconda squishing its prey. Deanna grunted and cursed against the extreme gravity loading but held her course on the tail of the enemy Stinger.

Bree, give me some alternatives here! she screamed in her mind at her AIC.

Roger that, Dee, the AIC responded and placed several red lines and blue lines in her DTM mindview. The lines were alternative aircraft trajectories of her and the enemy's fighters spiraling around each other in a corkscrewing sinewy ballet of angular momentum and propellantless propulsion energy application. Too close for missiles—gotta go to guns!

The yellow targeting X blinked and jumped around in Deanna's mindview but couldn't quite lock on to the Stinger. The X blinked red then yellow and then hopped off the enemy fighter again. No matter what type of juke or jink she tried, the damned enemy mecha managed to squirm, bob, or roll its way out of her targeting solution.

"Shit! Come on you bastard. Hold . . . fucking . . . still." She grunted against the overwhelming and crushing load on her chest. The g-suit squished her breasts flat as pancakes and her abdominal muscles were squeezed so tight that she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to unsqueeze them.

Then the enemy mecha did something. Dee wasn't sure if it was brilliant or stupid. The mecha, in fighter mode, flipped over forward and began to transfigure to bot mode. The transfiguration took only a fraction of a second and left the mecha standing upside down on its head and facing Dee and her wingman with both arms pointing forty-millimeter cannons in their general direction.

"Warning—enemy targeting lock established. Warning—enemy targeting lock established," the Bitchin' Betty of Dee's mecha chimed. Times like this the mecha's automatic warning system was more distracting than helpful.

Tracers tracked out of the right-arm cannon of the enemy fighter across her nose and into the empennage of her wingman's plane. Dee could see Jay jinking and juking his fighter around inside the firing solution of the enemy weapons, but there was little he could do at the time. The rounds continued to rip through his mecha, throwing bits of armor plating off into space with an orange and white spray of plasma.

"Pull out, Jay! Pull out!" Deanna, with her hands-on-throttle-and-stick (HOTAS), slammed the throttle full forward and the stick all the way forward against the stop, rocketing her fighter-mode mecha into a horrendous dive toward the deck.

"Shit, Dee, I'm hit! Eject, eject, eject!" Jay shouted.

Just as her mecha nosed down, her wingman's mecha exploded behind and to the right of her, and brilliant orange tracer rounds zipped by her canopy, only centimeters away. She didn't have time to see if an ejection couch cleared the fireball or not. The Gomer off her three-nine line to the right was closing in and firing. Then several rounds from the bot-mode mecha that she had been tailing zipped through her tail section but only caused minor damage. While Jay had been with her it was two against two and she had an enemy in her sights. Things had been looking up. Suddenly, in less time than it takes to blink an eye, the situation had switched in favor of the enemy. It was now two against one, and both of them were targeting her. Dee continued down at alarmingly increasing acceleration until it was clear that the mecha behind her and to her right were going to follow.

They're on you now, Dee! Bree warned her.

Roger that!

Dee toggled the transfigure button on the HOTAS and stomped the right, lower foot pedal all the way down to give her more slip as the Marine FM-12 transfigurable strike mecha rolled and flipped over and then transformed from a fighter plane into a giant armed and armored robot.

Let's see if what is good for the goose is good for the gander! she thought.

Dee, watch your altitude! Bree warned her. The landscape of the small moon they were fighting over filled her entire field of view and was rapidly approaching. It looked a lot like Pluto's moon, Charon.

She gripped the throttle and pulled it full-force backward with her left hand while controlling the flight path with the stick in her right. The standard HOTAS controls mimicked most fighter-control systems that had been developed for centuries with the innovation, of course, of the DTM-control links between the plane and the pilot and the AIC. There had been experiments where mecha had been piloted by AICs alone, and those mecha could make maneuvers that human bodies couldn't withstand. But there was a certain art to combat flying that only humans in the cockpit could bring. The experiments always showed the same results. Human and AICs together in the cockpit always came out on top when flying against a plane with just one or the other in it. The DTM connections between pilot, AIC, and mecha enabled modern fighter mecha to do things that no others in history could have done, and Dee was pushing the combination to the limit.