However, a fountain of light appeared before it and gathered into the shape of Merlin, the holographic interface generated by Blair's Portable Personal Computer. As was the bantam's wont, Merlin brushed off his tan tunic and breeches, slid up the rubber band that bound his long, gray hair into a ponytail, then fixed Blair with a severe frown. "It may seem ridiculous to you, but forcing me into standby mode for long periods is like stuffing me into a little box. Never mind what it does to my appearance, it's my attitude that's really suffering. I'm depressed again, Christopher. I'm feeling unneeded. I thought you should know that. I think you should do something about it."
"Merlin, don't lay this crap on me now. How would you feel if you thought your holographic assistant needed a shrink? The guy's supposed to be helping you, and you wind up counseling him. Sometimes I feel like ripping your processor out of my wrist. My Dad programmed you because he thought he was doing me a favor. If only he could see you now."
"That's not fair. I shouldn't be feeling guilty about how I feel." His gaze turned up to probe the overhead. "Oh, dear. We're jumping again." He vanished.
"Fusion engines engaged," Gerald said over the intercom.
Despite his own idling thrusters, Blair felt the characteristic rumble pulse through the entire carrier as the ship's powerful ion engines came online. Then a jolt tore through his Rapier as the Tiger Claw paused to get a precise bearing on the jump point that accounted for the gravity well's drift rate.
"This is the part my stomach hates," Bishop said.
"Don't think about it, Mate," Hunter instructed. "Put it all in your breath and let it out."
Another jolt told Blair that the jump-drive had been engaged. Now the Tiger Claw's high thrust propelled it toward the exact coordinates along the rift in space. An antigraviton field surrounded the ship, and Blair felt his senses shut down.
He knew she would come. He had tried to bury the thought of her, to bury his fear of jumping, but at the very last second, he panicked, and during the perfect moment that joined him to the space-time continuum, he saw her once more, haloed by the void-
His mother. Dark hair spilling like wine over her shoulders, eyes sometimes soft with understanding, sometimes narrowed in disappointment. "Christopher. I wish I could help you. At least you don't bear the pain of knowing."
"Knowing what?"
"Your path."
"Another warning? You said I shouldn't come here, that this isn't my continuum. Why? Tell me."
"You believe you have power over this, but you have nothing. You can't do what you feel."
"What am I? A Pilgrim? What does that really mean? Am I just a freak? A human with a sixth sense for direction? Or is there more? I want there to be more. I want to know who I am."
"If you learn who you are, you will fall. Like the others. You're too young, and the pain of knowing is too great."
"I can take the pain!"
"Who is that? That you, Blair?"
A blurry view of the flight deck snapped out of the darkness, along with the steady hiss of his oxygen flow, the reverberation of his thrusters, and the nagging ache of his shoulder harness that he had fastened too tightly.
"Hey, Blair? You with the living?" Maniac asked.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm just… that one hit hard."
"Attention all personnel. Battle Stations! Battle Stations! This is not an exercise," Gerald said. "Standard orbit of Mylon Three in ninety seconds. Deploy ground force."
Blair watched as Deck Boss Peterson waved on the wedge-shaped CF-337d Marine Corps troopship, armed to the teeth with ten missile hardpoints each packing a trio of rockets. Two turreted rotary-barrel neutron guns, not unlike his Rapier's primary weapon, jutted out on port and starboard sides. The troopship's nose bore the vivid likeness of a snarling Doberman pinscher, drool dripping from gleaming incisors. Once lined up on the runway, the vessel ignited thrusters and swept toward the environmental maintenance field's fluctuating curtain of energy. It shot through the barrier and climbed away, out of sight.
"Show time, ladies," Angel said.
Hunter floated into position first, followed by Bishop and Cheddarboy. One by one, first patrol received launch confirmation from the flight boss, got the green light, then thundered across the runway. Second patrol hovered into position. Gangsta took off first, her launch a perfect demonstration of textbook maneuvering. Sinatra followed, jumped the throttle before the deck boss gave him the final signal, then got out there, the deck boss's scolding ringing in his ears. Sinatra was a damned good pilot with more experience than even Angel. His problems with authority had gotten him busted down from captain to lieutenant. Based on his years in and his age (twenty-nine), he should be a major or colonel. From what Blair could gather from his limited experience with the man, he didn't hotdog like Maniac; he simply told people exactly what he thought of them and their skills. Many of the younger pilots marveled over his political incorrectness, but Blair chose to avoid the guy, taking the same advice he had offered Zarya about Maniac.
Angel rammed her throttle forward and streaked away, gone through the energy curtain in a pair of blinks.
"Reserve patrol? You're up," Flight Boss Raznick said from Blair's VDU. The boss's shaven head glimmered like an egg under a spotlight. "Zarya, Maniac, and-you figure out a call sign yet, Blair?"
"Pilgrim."
"You're kidding."
"No, sir."
Raznick snorted. "Can't say I like it better than Maverick, but it's your choice, young man."
For the past couple of days, Blair had been contemplating a new call sign. "Maverick" had suited him well during academy training, an ironic moniker since Blair had established a reputation of flying by the book. But he felt he had outgrown the name, and since he had lost his Pilgrim cross-an obvious means of identifying himself as a Pilgrim-he figured the call sign would serve as the next best thing. He didn't want to ram his heritage down his comrades' throats, but he felt strongly about people knowing who he was. And if they had a problem with that, so be it.
Zarya took her cue from the deck boss and launched. Maniac's Rapier glided in ahead of Blair's, pivoted ninety degrees, and aimed for the energy field. Surprisingly, he took off sans his usual over-thrusting flourish and verbal high jinks.
Blair slid over the Heads Up Display viewer attached to his helmet. The viewer covered his right eye and supplied a series of data bar readouts of each of the Rapier's major systems. During combat, the targeting system would seize control of the viewer, and smart targeting reticles would replace the clutter of data. At the moment, all systems were nominal. Pressure gauges stood in the green. The nav system had already been preprogrammed with coordinates uploaded directly from flight control.
Wearing his patented sinister stare, Deck Boss Peterson flashed Blair the signal for launch. Blair hesitated just enough to widen the boss's eyes, then slapped the throttle and burst forward.
Acceleration struck like a wrestler's beefy forearm. The tall columns on either side of the deck flashed by, along with the dozens of Rapiers and Broadswords moored beneath a latticework of connecting beams. The energy draped over his canopy and suddenly sloughed off to expose the exterior runway walled in by the two great halves of the cylinder that made up the Claw's fuselage. Blair waited a few seconds more for his velocity to increase before pulling up toward a sheet of darkness. Chatter clogged the squadron's general frequency as the point and second patrols gave assessments of the planet.
Mylon Three finally scrolled into view, its sun partially eclipsed and burning with a significant glare in the distance. The polarization unit kicked in, tinting the canopy so that Blair now had a clear view of the bluish green world and the black clouds blanketing nearly all of its northern hemisphere. Specks of reflected light flashed like unwelcome fireworks, some in the upper atmosphere, some in low and high orbit.