The Tau Ceti Agenda

October 31, 2388 AD

Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha (aka Ares)

Madira Valley Beach Spaceport

Saturday, 5:40 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

Saturday, 1:40 AM, Madira Valley Standard Time

Any luck, Allison? Kira thought to her AIC. After the altercation in the stockroom, she had been having a hard time avoiding interaction with the Seppy battle cruiser's security detachments. The entire ship knew that she was there now, and she had been lying low for the better part of half an hour, trying to come up with a new escape plan. She had heard several announcements over the ship's 1MC intercom for all hands to watch for the intruder. And that wasn't good.

No. The structural integrity fields of the ship's outer hull have all been activated, and I haven't been able to find a way through them yet. Kira knew that Allison was a smart AIC and had trained all her life—ever since her AI family had activated her—to hack codes. It was fun to her, which was part of why she had followed the path to becoming an AIC for an intelligence operative. It was just a matter of time before she would figure a way out of the ship's structural integrity fields (SIFs).

Well, the longer we stay, the less chance we have for getting the hell out of here, Kira urged her. Can we blow a SIF generator somewhere?

I've looked at that, Allison responded. The generators are really deep in the ship. And I'd suspect that is the one direction we should avoid since I'm certain the Seppies have thought of that approach too.

Shit. We can't just wait around. Sooner or later, somebody is gonna find us.

I understand, Allison replied. The two of them had been together a long time, and there was no real need for Kira to tell her such obvious things—of course they couldn't just keep waiting around, and Allison understood that. The AIC had always found it interesting how humans had a habit of trying to add stress to a situation with hopes of making it better. It neither helped nor hindered the AI. It was more data, however. And Kira liked to nudge her AI partner-in-crime a little every now and then just to keep her motivated.

What if I steal a ship and blast out? Kira squirmed a bit against the coolant pipe that she had been becoming one with for about the past thirty-five minutes. She had gotten used to the periodic yellow flash of the warning lights flickering off the dull gray interior walls of the battle cruiser.

She had almost grown comfortable on her perch. There had been several close calls when troops had hurriedly marched underneath her down the hallway to the hatch at the aft end of the hangar. The hangar had been her original plan, but now she wasn't sure that it was really much of a plan more than just a general idea or a natural instinct to run for the door. All would have worked fine had she not slipped up and let that damned stock clerk sneak up behind her the way she did. After more than four years of working undercover as a second wife in a rich household, Kira was afraid that she was getting soft and sloppy. The immunobooster she had given herself as soon as she had the opportunity to hide and recover was doing its job. The injection had almost completely healed the railgun wound in her arm. The adrenaline and pain meds in it had also reduced the throbbing to a point that she didn't remember the wound being there—well, at least she no longer paid attention to it.

Maybe. Let me run some numbers real quick, Allison replied.

Well, do it quick. I'm getting tired of just sitting around. Kira was skeptical that just a shuttle ramming the SIF-protected hull from the inside would be enough to get out. On the other hand, the SIFs were designed to protect ships from external threats, not internal ones.

Do you still remember how to fly mecha? Allison asked.

Man, I was hoping you weren't gonna say that. It had been years since the skirmish in New Africa, where Kira had been undercover in the resistance as a mecha pilot. Years. And that mecha was way different than modern-day mecha. If push came to shove, Allison could always walk her through it, provided there would be time enough to do so.

I think I have a plan, Kira. First you have to get aboard one of those shuttles at the starboard side of the bay. Then we can hack it to fly the profile we need.

Okay. Sounds easy enough. Then what?

Then you have to steal an Orcus drop tank or a Stinger and follow in behind it at the precise moment the shuttle crashes into the SIF, Allison instructed. The field will weaken enough for a few tens of milliseconds so that the mecha can pass through it and survive. At that point, I would recommend ejecting from the mecha, as it will likely be in rough shape.

Oh, is that all? I just have to steal a troop shuttle, which I might add is waaay the fuck over there. Then we hack it. Then I steal a mecha. Then I fly the mecha through a fireball, where the troop shuttle smashes into the hull with millisecond timing before the SIF snaps back into place crushing me. Oh yes, and then ejecting from the now blown-to- hell-and-gone mecha. All without getting caught, shot, or killed. Does that sound about right? Kira replied. The sarcastic overtone in her mindlink voice resounded like a heavy-metal bass guitar.

Yes, that about covers it. Allison was unphased by Kira's wit.

Piece of cake! Well, at least it was a plan, and it would be a damned sight better than staying hugged up against the cold metal coolant pipe she was on. Condensation was gathering on the pipe where her body was touching it, causing droplets of moisture to collect and run down her skin. It didn't help her grip on the thing at all.

Just one thing more, Allison.

What's that?

Let's try to steal me a Stinger, Kira said. They are waay cooler than those damned drop tanks.

Allison ignored the comment, saying, From what I can tell, the mecha are stored on drop hooks above the shuttles in the high-bay part of the hangar. If we get close enough to them, I might be able to hack in on the QM wireless channels.

Kira searched the corridor forward and aft for any hint of motion and could see nothing. She strained her hearing to its limit to listen for bootsteps against the deck plating. Nothing. After assuring herself that the coast was indeed clear, she dropped herself down from the overhanging conduit. Her boots clanked to the floor and made a faint echo down the hallway.

Goddamnit, that was clumsy, Kira thought.

Perhaps if you'll bang the stunner against the bulkhead, you'll get better results? Allison had been counterpart to Kira for so long that her sour wit had rubbed off on the AIC.

Nobody likes a smartass, Allison.

I like you. Allison played a comedic drum roll to follow her zinger.

Touché, Kira grinned. She made a quick scan in both directions and then quickly began to slink toward the open hatchway into the hangar bay.

Across the bay on the starboard side were several troop shuttles similar to the U.S. Starhawk SH-102s. Most of the Seppy vehicles tended to resemble the U.S. countersystems but in cheaper, more rugged, and less tech-savvy versions. The Seppy troop shuttles were no exception.

Kira had flown the troop shuttles before and with Allison's help could fairly easily hotwire one. It was getting across the bay that was going to be the hard part. The ship was locked down, but it was a big ship—nearly a half kilometer long and a quarter of that wide—and just waltzing across the hangar would be risky, but probably the least suspicious approach. Even though there were guards scattered about, there were also crew chiefs and enlisted men and women going about their daily grind of keeping the battle cruiser operational. The daily grind was her best shot. Fit in and look like you belong, she thought to herself.

Kira noticed a tool rack about ten meters to her right. She casually entered the hatch and pulled a pair of welding goggles and a handheld directed energy cutter from the rack. She flipped the safety and toggled the welder beam a few times, flashing the bright white-pink plasma on and off, and then smiled approvingly.

To complete her disguise, she also strapped on a set of knee and elbow pads and a reflective vest that was hanging from a hook near the tools. She pushed the cutting visor up on her forehead and started in a straight line across the bay to the nearest unattended shuttle. The forty meters or more to the troop carrier seemed more like an astronomical unit, but after a little less than a minute, she had closed the gap to it.

So far so good, Kira thought.

Nobody seems to have noticed us. Allison began handshaking with the vehicle as soon as she was in wireless QM range. The ship asked for a password. Allison ignored it and set about hacking other wireless weak points in its security system. The exterior sensors on the vehicle had both active and passive capabilities and were perfect entrances to the ship's control systems. Of course, there were firewalls, but the sensors were harder to protect from subtle electronic attack.

Kira, on the other hand, was less subtle. The troop hatch was wide open, and the ramp sat against the deck. Kira sauntered up the ramp, still unnoticed, and applied the directed energy cutter to the hardwire cables between the command console and the low-level controller AI. The AI was instantly cut off from the rest of the ship other than through wireless, but Allison was jamming that by raising the QM wireless carrier-to-noise level within the shuttle with her own broadband transmissions. Kira pulled the small black AI chassis from the computer rack and tossed it into the copilot's seat. She then set about cutting the box itself open and kept digging into it with the cutter until she found the small sunflower-seed-shaped, plastic-coated casing of the AI. Kira held the beam of the cutter to the small device, vaporizing the artificial life with a quick foul smell of burned plastic followed with a short white flash of light. Kira kept her mind focused on the job and kept only a cold background awareness of the life she'd just extinguished.

Can you program the shuttle controller?

Already on it, Allison informed her.

Can you do it from a distance? Kira asked.

Why?

Because, here comes somebody! Shit, too late. We'll have to sit tight. Kira ducked down behind the pilot's chair as best she could manage, trying to stay out of sight. The chair swiveled with a faint squeak as she twisted her body around the flight control panel and into a decent hiding place.

A man in orange overalls entered the vehicle from the ramp and sat what could only be described as a "big fucking wrench" or "BFW" against the bulkhead with a kachunk beside the heavy-caliber HVAR mounted at the gunner's seat. He pulled a cordless ratchet from a tool apron and went about removing several bolts at the base of the gun. Kira sat quietly and watched cautiously as the tech continued about his work. He grunted a few times as he dug his fingers underneath the panel and pulled. The panel screeched metal against metal and came free. The tech almost lost his balance and he cursed briefly. Once he had taken the front panel off of the gun's ammo housing, he slipped the ratchet back into the proper slot on his toolbelt and reached over for the BFW. All the while between grunts and curses, the man whistled to himself off-key versions of current pop songs. Kira almost recognized one of them.

Got it. The ship is under my control now, Allison told her.

What about a mecha?

I'm handshaking with one in the drop-down rack above us. There are access codes for some of the Stingers in the shuttle's database. Long story short, I hack, therefore I am.

Good job! How do I get there?

We'll fly up to it. But we should wait until I've finished hacking it and got it warmed up and ready to go.

You think we should wait on our friend in there? Kira added, pointing to the tech fiddling with the gunner's station. He dropped something that rattled across the floor of the shuttle. A large bolt bounced on the dull gray metal and continued to roll down the walkway into the cockpit and up underneath the pilot's chair. Shit, Kira thought.

"Shit," the tech mumbled to himself, only absentmindedly interrupting his whistling. He sat the BFW down and turned to chase after the bolt. Dropping to his hands and knees, the tech tracked the bolt to the pilot's chair. The bolt wasn't there, but a black boot was. To his surprise, and quite unfortunately, he found the bolt in the worst way. Kira twisted upright in front of him holding it up at face level.

"Lose something?" she asked, and startled the tech by jamming the bolt through his right eye. Quick, quiet, and very deadly, Kira raked the directed energy beam cutter across the man's throat, toggling the white-pink, hot plasma beam on and severing his head completely from his body. Both of which fell to the deck plate with a thud. The beam cauterized the cuts and there was very little blood. A low gurgling sound came from the man's esophagus, and some red murky fluids oozed slowly from it with each failing heartbeat. Kira looked away. "Sorry, dude. Wrong place, wrong time."

You know, you could have used the stunner, Allision thought.

No witnesses and too noisy. Dead men can't testify or be probed.

Understood.

Are you jamming his AIC? Kira asked.

He didn't have one, Allison assured her. It was not uncommon for Seppies not to carry AIs because of the aftermath of the "mind police." A few decades before, Elle Ahmi had used AIC implants to reprogram Separatist cell leaders and to interrogate her people to expunge any who had sympathetic views toward the United States. The effectiveness of Ahmi's brainwashing and cleansing efforts was widely debated by the intelligence community, but it had created enough fear within the Seppies that many of them wouldn't even consider carrying AIs. Many others (the intel community had also learned) thought it was just a silly myth and depended on AICs as much as people in the U.S. did. But the latter were the younger crowd that hadn't lived through the cleansing. But for troops, tankheads, and mecha pilots, AICs were a necessity, and they typically had the implants. Some of them did wear external AICs so that they could discard them if they felt the need. Elle had managed to keep most of them out of command positions. If a Separatist commander wasn't willing to have an AIC implant, he wasn't worthy and loyal enough to serve Ahmi from a leading position of any relevance. And Elle couldn't keep tabs on them as well, otherwise.

Okay then, he was a nobody. You got me a mecha ready yet?

Patience, Allison replied. Just as she did, the engines of the shuttle spun up and lifted the vehicle off of the staging platform. The deck plating of the little spaceship rumbled and reverberated from the engine's hum. I'm quite certain that we are attracting attention at this point.

What makes you say that? Kira felt the ship list sideways and then heard the sound of HVAR rounds pinging against the exterior armor. Shit! Those idiots are firing railguns in the hangar. No telling what they'll hit.

Yeah, like us. I'd suggest you keep your head down.

Good advice! Kira ducked reflexively as a hypervelocity round spalled against the forward screen of the cockpit with a brilliant flash of purple and blue ionization. Several rounds followed it, spalling with a thumping sound and leaving a long growing crack in the transparent armor. The rounds ionizing against the armor continued to flash. The armor wouldn't last much longer. Apparently, it wasn't as well made as the U.S. ship's.

One Seppy Stinger mecha, just as you ordered. Allison yawed the shuttle about and an eagle-mode Stinger pulled up beside the open troop hatch of the shuttle. The mecha's right hand reached out toward the side door of the shuttle and kept formation perfectly. The fighter looked like a hybrid between a bird of prey, with clawed feet and wings swept back ready to pounce, and a large metal beast, with humanlike hands.

Railgun fire continued to ping and slap against the ship. Several rounds came through the open door just past Kira's head. The rounds sizzled through equipment on the other side of the vehicle, throwing sparks and metal splinters about. Kira flinched and covered her face to avoid being blinded.

The cockpit of the Stinger cycled open and tilted slightly toward them, giving Kira her cue. Kira took two running steps from the shuttle and leaped across the gap between the door and the mecha's outstretched hand. Her right boot touched the mecha just long enough for her to make another jump like a track and field star doing the triple jump. She dove headfirst, tumbling clumsily into the pilot's couch of the mecha and slamming her healing arm against the control console.

"Ouch, shit!" she cried out. As she impacted the seat, the cockpit cycled shut, and the mecha pulled upward in evasive maneuvers, bouncing her around violently.

Squirming into the controls of the mecha while trying to ignore new bumps and bruises, she pulled the fighter away and above the shuttle to use it as cover. The high bay was only about twenty-five meters to the ceiling, and there were mecha and other equipment hanging down that made flying too far off the deck like flying through a maze. Dodging and maneuvering around the maze while being shot at and trying to strap in just added a more exciting level of difficulty to her task. Hell, it was almost fun—except for the small fact that people all around her were trying to kill her.

Kira pulled the six-point harness straps around her and fumbled to close the buckles. The mag-seal buckles pulled together and sealed her in place in the pilot's seat. The helmet that had been sitting on the dashboard was jostled free and flew into her nose as the plane pitched and rolled upward to keep its cover position behind the shuttle. Kira tried to ignore the wet trickle of blood running down her left nostril onto her upper lip and squinted away the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

I suggest you put that on, Allison warned her.

Right, Kira replied, and rubbed at her nose and eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Okay! Let's go.

Kira's hands uncomfortably fit over the hands-on throttle and stick (HOTAS) and searched for fire controls. It had been a long time since she had flown mecha. Allison guided her as best she could and in some cases took control for milliseconds. But each time she had to take control of the mecha, she had to put the shuttle on autopilot, which Kira had torn out and torched to death so that the shuttle would fly uncontrolled with a locked-in vector for those instances. After a few seconds of bumping and crashing and thrashing around, Kira finally got the hang of the mecha. Sort of.

"Like riding a bicycle!"

Yeah, one that has a shitload of bells and whistles, buttons, levers, controls, and foot pedals on it, Allison said. We're taking some serious fire.

"Warning, incoming hypervelocity fire. Warning, evasive maneuvers required," the Bitchin' Betty—the mecha's automated warning system—alerted her.

No shit!

"Guns, guns, guns," Kira said, spraying the directed energy gun's blue-green bolt across the hangar. The large directed energy gun in the left hand of the eagle-mode mecha swept left to right, firing bolt after bolt at the Seppy troops and techs below. Impact and secondary explosions erupted with each new energy bolt. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

This way. Allison illuminated a flight trajectory in the DTM virtual display. The spherical map around her head showed a path for her to follow. The trajectory led them downward and across the hangar toward the aft end of the compartment. See if you can soften the wall right there! A red X appeared in her virtual view on the aft hangar wall.

Got it. Kira toggled the fighter left and scrolled the weapons list to missiles with her pinky finger on the HOTAS. "Fox three! Fox three!" she shouted, loosening two mecha-to-mecha missiles careening and spiraling wildly through the hangar. The two missiles tracked a purple ion trail across the room and vanished with an orange and white fireball on the hangar blast doors. The percussion wave tossed equipment, vehicles, and Seppies in all different directions, resulting in a reduction of incoming railgun fire.

More!

"Guns, guns, guns! Fox three!" She poured more energy into the same spot. "Railgun auto, fire!" The big forty-millimeter railgun cannon on the belly of the mecha began chunking armored rounds at large fractions of the speed of light into the bulkhead SIF marked in the DTM with a big red X. Cannon rounds, directed energy bolts, and missiles exploded against the force field with ripples of blue evanescence across the surface and with the orange and white flames of vaporizing bulkhead.

Full throttle, now!

The shuttle zoomed out from underneath the Stinger at max thrust and slammed into the already weakened blast wall. The craft's velocity generated whirlwinds in the growing fireball as it slammed through. The impact of the armored troop carrier against the molten metal flung red-hot composite and alloy materials in a violent, deadly splash backward, washing the hangar and setting most of the room ablaze. Large chunks of armor plating ejected like magma from an exploding volcano, pinging against the mecha.

Kira was right behind the shuttle and could see, and feel, the shrapnel and secondary blasts pounding against the forward armor plating of the fighter mecha, leaving smoldering flames on the nose and wingtips. She rolled and pitched the mecha wildly to avoid the larger pieces of flying debris as best she could manage. The last bit of the shuttle poked through the structural integrity field and vaporized into a violent fiery finale. The SIF separated in a cascade of rippling circles radially across the hull of the ship, putting undesirable torques and squeezes in the alloy surface of the battle cruiser. Armor plates buckled, and weld joints popped free from the stresses and strains of the extremely high electromagnetic fields generated by the oscillating SIF. Smaller explosions erupted, and smoke and gases poured from damage across the exterior hull of the Separatist ship. The SIFs were designed to protect the ship from exterior threats, not interior ones. Fortunate for Kira and Allison, the ship's force field designers had never considered an attack from within.

The breach in the SIF continued to ripple like waves on a pond, expanding outward from a pebble that had been dropped into it, phosphorescing at each crest and valley. Kira held the HOTAS full forward and plowed through at maximum velocity. If the field collapsed back together, she wanted it to be over with as quickly as possible. The fireball consumed the fighter for a brief instant, and Kira ground her teeth and prayed that the SIF didn't regain strength at the wrong microsecond. She was lucky. Allison was good.

The mecha burst through the other side of the fireball in a tornado of shear forces, and the battle cruiser's exterior-mounted automated- defense systems started firing anti-aircraft weapons at her immediately.

Out of the frying pan!

Indeed.

Kira yanked and banked the HOTAS with her right hand and continued to push full-throttle forward on the stick. The g-forces pressed her body into the seat with the weight of a small hovercar on her chest, nearly knocking her unconscious since she was not wearing a g-suit. Kira realized all too quickly that she couldn't take the forces of combat without the proper gear and would have to get out of this vehicle as soon as possible.

Bursting out of the side of a battle cruiser in dock was hard enough, but Kira quickly realized that she was flying directly inland toward the spaceport city's skyline, where further high-g maneuvers might be required. On the other hand, flying toward the city actually worked to her advantage. She altered her vector slightly away from the beachfront and more inland, directly at the city skyline.

In order to avoid unwanted civilian casualties, the battle cruiser's automated defense system ceased fire. The AI controller would no longer continue to fire when civilian casualties became part of the firing solution. Unfortunately for Kira, the battle cruiser hadn't stopped firing until after it had managed to pepper the engine section of the fighter pretty well with the anti-aircraft guns. Smoke and flames consumed the rear of the fighter.

"Warning, power module rupture in starboard engine. Warning, engine failure eminent." The Bitchin' Betty of the mecha repeated her message of doom several times before Kira yelled at Allison to shut it off.

"Well, we couldn't fly this thing out of here anyway, and the gees are killing me," Kira commented. Already soaked from head to toe with sweat, her body ached from the extreme g-force pressuring against her. She just couldn't take much more maneuvering. Kira pulled the visor of the helmet down and banked the fighter onto a collision course with one of the fast-approaching skyscrapers. The visor sealed against the chinbar with a sticking sound, but the hiss was vacant as there was no g-suit sealed to the helmet.

"God, I hate doing this. Eject, eject, eject," she shouted out of trained habit and jerked down on the red-and-white-striped, do-not-ever-fucking-touch-this-under-any-circumstances-unless- all-has-gone-to-hell handle.

The cockpit blasted away, and then the pilot's seat launched with more than four gravities upward. Kira struggled to maintain consciousness and not to throw up. The fighter mecha continued forward with black smoke pouring from its tail. The ejection seat thrusters shut off, leaving Kira tumbling head over heels in the night sky. The spinning weightlessness was almost a welcome change from the harsh g-forces.

For a brief moment, her mind could only focus on the wondrous spectacle of the large purple, red, and violet Jovian planet spinning overhead, coming into view and going out of view, then the beach, then the Jovian, there were some stars, then the city skyline and a flaming mecha, then the Jovian, and so on. Then her spinning was abruptly disrupted with a mind-jarring snap.

A primary gliderchute had popped free from the rear of the seat's harness, stopping the roll with a good solid yank, throwing Kira hard against the restraints. As the motion slowed to within the design limits of the safety system—a second later—the larger secondary chute popped open too.

Finally in an upright position, Kira shook her head to clear it just in time to see the flaming mecha explode against a high-rise building just ahead of her about a kilometer or so from the beach. Kira could barely make out the breakers crashing from the violet lighting reflected across the night from the gas giant. The early-morning winds were very cold and blowing between the skyline buildings and out to sea. Chillbumps raced down Kira's arms and back from the sudden temperature change.

The spaces between the buildings acted like rocket nozzles funneling and accelerating the night winds, and they formed wild, eddy currents in the airflow that whipped her gliderchute around violently. Kira fought against the shrouds of the chute, struggling to keep the glider wings in a stable flight mode. She knew that if she drifted too close to the wrong building, there could be even worse turbulence and probably even severe downdrafts, which would mean serious problems. Serious problems.

So, Kira tried to guide the chute to the surface as fast as she possibly could by pulling the guide handles to bleed off her altitude. A ripstop section of the chute opened up, flapping against the wind and reducing the drag. Doing so doubled her drop speed, but it couldn't be helped. Besides that, she was a sitting duck in the air. There was no doubt in her mind that she was currently lighting up multiple radars, lidars, and QM sensors at the spaceport. Her presence was being tracked. Sooner or later, somebody might start shooting at her or at the least chase her down and apprehend her.

She had to get down and lose herself in the populace quickly. She circled rapidly in a downward spiral over the smaller buildings at the outside of the city. There were several major highways leading into the city and away form the beach with stores, shops, and apartment complexes lining them. Kira turned the chute beachward as best she could, hoping not to get caught in a swift air current that either slammed her into a condo or dragged her out into the ocean. The high-speed gusts blowing through the tall buildings persisted and several times turned the chute almost parallel to the ground. The main streets below her ran north and south, parallel with the shoreline a kilometer or so from what was the major part of the city. That street was the main strip along the beach and would be the easiest place to get lost in a crowd of late-night partiers. But there were plenty of obstacles to avoid on the way, like buildings, light poles, communications towers, holoboards, and the occasional local version of a palm tree.

I sure would like to know my vertical speed, she thought. I'm gonna go for that condo's parking lot over there. Kira focused on what appeared to be a fairly lush condo that had a large parking lot and was farthest from other tall buildings. There was a lighted patch of Sol System grass—probably Bermuda, as that stuff would grow just about anywhere in the known universe—large enough for a putting green and surrounded by several local trees just in the center of the parking lot. The lot was filled with cars and had two lanes for traffic between each row. If Kira was lucky, or good, or a little bit of both, she just might be able to land between the putting green and the condo front- to-back and within the traffic lane between rows of cars in the parking lot side-to-side. It was a damned tight squeeze all around, but she had done as tough before. Hell, once she'd even bailed out of a fighter plane at high speeds, under fire, while a nuclear bomb was exploding a few tens of kilometers away and then landed on a jumperball field between giant Martian fir trees in extremely high, nuclear-blast high, winds. This would be a piece of cake. Of course, that was years ago.

I've got an idea about your speed, Allison said, and paused for a brief instant that seemed like forever as the ground continued to loom ever closer and faster. Way too fast, Kira! Flare now! Flare now!

Kira let up on the control handles, flaring the chute to its full size. The wind filled it almost instantly and threw her back against the seat restraints. Seconds later, the seat collided with the surface at nearly fifty kilometers per hour and rolled forward, tossing Kira helmet-first into pavement. The chute caught another gust of wind and pulled the seat back upright after dragging her upside down for a few meters. Dazed from her head being pounded into the asphalt, Kira saw stars briefly.

Release the chute, Kira!

"Uhn . . . right." She struggled to regain her wits about her and then pulled the yellow-and-black-striped release pin. The camouflage gliderchute pulled free of the ejection chair and was whisked away by the seaward breeze. The last glimpse Kira caught of it was it dragging across the top of the several-story condominium looming above her and then flapping out toward the ocean.

Move, Kira! Allison shouted in her mind. As if someone had slapped her across the face, Kira regained her focus and began unstrapping herself from the ejection seat as rapidly as she could. She was several kilometers from the battle cruiser at the spaceport now, but it wouldn't be long before the beach would be crawling with troops.

The ejection seat? Kira kicked at the monstrosity sitting in the middle of the parking lot traffic lane.

Leave it; you were probably tracked all the way to the ground anyway, Allison suggested.

Right. Spysats overhead? Kira looked up for any bright spots in the sky moving against the star field or in front of the gas giant. She saw none.

It would have been damned lucky for the Seppies if the orbit just happened to match when you landed. Now forget about it and get the fuck out of here.

When you're right, you're right. Kira scanned around her to get a full three-hundred-sixty-degree view of her surroundings. The bird's- eye view she'd just been privy to had been filled with far too many rapid decisions at once for her to conduct proper recon. Hell, she was lucky she'd survived that far. Kira tossed the helmet and other gear off. The helmet skittered across the pavement and then rolled up underneath a multi-passenger hovervan.

Fortunately, it was the middle of the night, and there was nobody on the beach as far as she could see. Kira got her bearing about her and then started moving. She ran underneath the condo parking garage and onto the beach. She followed the footpath from the condo to the beach. She walked until the breakers crashed around the soles of her boots and then looked up the mostly deserted beach. There were a few couples lying on loungers here and there and the occasional drunken partygoer wandering his or her way back to one of the many condos lining the ocean. None of them were concerned with her, so she wasn't concerned with them.

About three kilometers northward up the beach was the hottest nightclub in town. She'd been there once a year or so before with Elise Tangier, her first wife. That is where she needed to be. Kira rolled her head stretching her neck and then flapped her arms to loosen them.

I guess I could use the exercise, she thought, and then began to run along the beach, letting the crashing waves wash her footprints away.

You said it; I didn't, Allison added with a laugh. Kira ignored the comment and focused her mind on her footsteps. The crashing breakers made running all the more difficult.

Okay, Allison, we've got a few minutes while I run. Tell me how you knew my drop speed. A moment of just running had allowed her mind to focus, and she realized that Allison had pulled off something short of a miracle a few minutes earlier. It had been a miracle that had saved them both. Now she wanted to know the trick. She wiped at the sweat beading on her forehead and continued splashing one foot after the other. Occasionally, the sea spray would mist her and chill her slightly. It was a welcome, refreshing stimulus each time.

It occurred to me that we were near a whole bunch of condos. I did a quick check, and all of them had wireless network hot spots. Allison paused briefly.

And? Kira kept focus on one foot after the other.

And, I connected to several of them and watched how the data rates changed as we fell. It only took a few clock cycles to estimate our velocity to within a ten-percent error margin.

Why'd you need to access more than one hub? Kira asked.

Triangulation.

Duh.

The run had taken less than ten minutes, but the evening was beginning to take its toll on her. Kira was tired and looked a mess. Sweat and seawater poured off her forehead and down her back. If her pants hadn't been baggy battle dress, she was certain there'd be sweat-soaked spots running down her legs. She rinsed her face off with a handful of seawater and ran her wet fingers through her red hair. That reminded her.

Kira reached into her back pocket and pulled out a small tube, then squirted all the contents of it into her hand. She rubbed her hands together and then massaged the gel quickly into her hair and scalp. The gel reacted with the red hair chemicals and returned it to a more natural Martian black. Once she was certain the gel had been worked in thoroughly, she tossed the tube into the ocean.

"Let's see, this won't do." She pulled at her sweat-soaked top and flapped it to cool her off. The black T-shirt had to go. She removed it and used the only dry corner of it left to wipe off her face. Then she tossed it out into the water, leaving her in nothing but her synthskin black jogbra. The material was microfiber and thinner than paper but did wonders for support and wicking sweat from the body. It left very little to the imagination, however. She was on the beach, so it would do. Kira looked at the camouflage pants she was wearing and the black combat boots and thought they would have to do too. Even though she had been dragged across a parking lot by a runaway gliderchute, the pants had only minor frays and merely looked worn.

The wonders of modern materials, she thought. After all, the club was only a few kilometers from the spaceport, and there were soldiers in and out all the time in worn BDUs. Besides, from the sound of the heavy thrashing music coming from the deck of the place, her attire was likely to fit right in.

Kira walked casually up the steps leading from the beach to the club's deck. There was a hybrid hardcore rock and thrashfunk band playing on stage that was all the rage with the Seppy youth. There were literally hundreds of people there partying and paying no attention to the fact that a flaming fighter mecha had just whizzed overhead and crashed into the city. Kira doubted that they'd have cared if they knew. And that was exactly the crowd that she needed to be within.

Kira paid a bouncer at the top of the stairs the cover charge and paid little attention to the way he ogled at her nipples protruding through the thin material of her jogbra. She managed her way into the lake of people jumping and thrusting their fingers in the air to the music. Once she stopped to dance with a purple-haired thrashfunker, who was wearing nothing but pink and green cotton boxer shorts and flip-flops. Kira let her buy her a drink and finally managed to tear away from her with the excuse that she needed to go to the restroom.

She managed to force her way through the crowd to the restroom, where she freshened up a little more. Then she returned to the bar on the other side of the deck opposite the band and ordered another drink. And then she ordered another one. Allison used a fake account to pay the tab. After a couple drinks more, she stumbled to the front door and bought a bright green T-shirt that read "Beat it. Grab it. Suck it. Swallow it." The shirt had something to do with a new cocktail specialty of the club that was mixed and drunk from within the peeling of a local citrus fruit. Kira hoped to come back and see what that was about someday.

She took a cab to the Madira Beach Spaceport. At the spaceport, she changed her hair color again, this time to blond, and then took another cab farther out of town to a local rural airfield and tipped the cabbie an extra fifty bucks to forget he ever saw her, saying something about her husband not needing to know where she had been.

When she had slipped out of the mansion at New Tharsis to "go for a drink" several hours earlier, she had rented a single-engine plane under an alias and flown it to the rural airport several kilometers outside of Madira Beach City. The plane was still there, and nobody seemed concerned one way or the other that she was getting in her plane and heading out at that time of night. Small airports had been that way for centuries. Pilots could come and go any time of day or night with no need to get clearance from any tower or airport authority.

Allison, I'm tired. You take the stick, okay?

I've got it. The little single-engine craft lifted off the pad and vanished silently into the evening sky.

DTM me some of that download we just stole. And you might want to scan the news boards to see if there is anything about the crash of a stolen mecha fighter into downtown Madira Beach.

Roger that.