The Terran Gambit (Episode #1: The Pax Humana Saga) by Endi Webb Page B

some stray blood from her pilot, and thin-rimmed elegant glasses hung on the bridge of her nose. She looked like a grandma, he thought, but twenty years younger.
    He made a mental note to never, ever tell her that.
    “You asleep?” she asked.
    He turned back to the viewscreen. “No. Just planning out our next moves.”
    “We’ve got one bogey left. The other fighters have nearly secured their hangars and the other squadrons are starting to take off. We should move on to our assignment. I’ve been trying to raise HQ on the comm, but we’re being jammed.”
    He shook his head. Sure, the Asian Republic tended to be slippery in foreign and military affairs, especially the Russian bloc, but he would have never guessed they’d launch an outright attack. “What about fleet HQ in Miami? Are they being hit? And Dallas? Resistance headquarters?”
    She scanned her console, and nodded. “Both Miami and Dallas report they’re under attack. No requests for assistance, yet.” She looked up. “But there might be jamming there too.”
    According to Admiral Gutierrez’s briefing, they still had perhaps twenty minutes before they could count on the arrival of the imperial fleet. He ran a quick calculation on the console. “There is a battlegroup stationed at Miami spaceport that needs to get off the ground if we’re going to have any chance at this thing, and another based in Dallas. We’re about ten minutes from both. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
    She bit her lip, then nodded.
    Jake thumbed open the comm to a wide spectrum bandwidth, hoping something would make it past the jamming. “Viper group. We’re making a quick pit stop in Dallas before we patrol lower Earth orbit. Make a hard ascent to the upper atmosphere, then gun to Texas and take out the Charlie there. Hornet squad, do the same for Miami. Everyone else, head to your previous assignments and whoop some ass.” He wondered about whether the Hornet squad leader was hearing him and wondering why a lieutenant was ordering him around, but he didn’t stop to find out.
    “Ready?” He looked over at Po.
    “When you are.” She inclined her head once, maintaining the same steely, grim expression that graced her face since they climbed into the fighter. He gunned the gravitic drive, and they accelerated upward as fast as wind resistance would let them. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could see the edges of the fighter start to glow a dull red from the compression of the wavefront in front of the leading edges, and so he accelerated until they glowed bright red.
    Soon, the glow disappeared, signaling to Jake that the atmosphere was rarified enough to hightail it to Dallas. Reorienting the nose towards the west, the fighter shot away like a bullet, followed by thirteen other Viper squad birds.
    Jake glanced at the ETA readout. Five minutes to Dallas. Plenty of time to get to know his gunner. He knew he would feel more comfortable with her if they talked to each other a little, and he wanted to help take her mind off the harrowing experience in the hangar bay.
    “So,” he began, looking at the ring on her hand, “married?”
    “Was,” she replied, without elaboration.
    “Was? So you’re divorced?”
    “I’d rather not talk about that now, if it’s all the same to you.” She studied her sensor readout and punched a few buttons. “We’re past the jamming. Orbital listening posts are reporting the arrival of the fleet in Sol orbit as of half an hour ago. The Helios science observatory is reporting the direct visual contact of sixteen capital-sized ships and a swarm of smaller ships, but resolution is limited at this range. The sun is eight light-minutes away, and the Sol to Earth gravitic shift requires the average capital ship to charge its cap banks for around thirty to forty minutes, so they could be here any second.” She paused to think. “They could already be here, for that matter.”
    “Understood. We’re four minutes away from Dallas.