“


    “fuck out of that, Sil.”


    “


    “


    —


    “Cygnus. What actually ended up happening was the self-preservation instinct kicked in and somehow wound up being transmitted to her Swarm razor. It crossed two F35s over in front of her and had them set up an ECM defense. Her Ghost was now hidden in their radio shadow. This had evidently been her decision.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    —


    all of his planes. That was the price of his hundred percent weighting. It all came down to guns. If they could get in sight of her they would tear a brick like the Ghost to shreds. As his forces descended on NoCro’s last known location, which was surely right behind her defending F35s, they found…


    “cunt?” he wailed. Not even optical tracking was resolving her. She just wasn''t there, nor above or below or anywhere else.


    already decided. Far too late now to matter, one of the optical tracking systems on Krieg’s left flank picked up the Ghost, flicking over from the smaller icon of an F35 to the much larger one of a Ghost. Curious as to how this deception was accomplished he picked one of the nearby cameras and saw her completing her roll around the left flank and leveling her guns on Krieg’s drones.


    “


    “


    “twenty seconds. She has to have practically zero fuel.”


    “


    “human.”


    “


    “


    “


    Wolf part of the operation, getting a bunch of basically silent Taigei AIP boats under Prism’s nose. The other part, Vulcan, was named for the Avro Vulcan bomber and its history of stunt refuelings. Like many complex operations it had gone quite awry, but the fundamentals were all solid and allowed for a great deal of chaos.


    —


    “


    Yes, come to think of it, she had felt a stab of pain around there, in the chest region. But she also had developed the mother of all headaches, and it had felt like nothing in comparison. She immediately reached up and ripped off her link that tethered her to the tower PC, which was its own special kind of pain, and stumbled sideways out of her swivel chair. The chair toppled over and clattered into the nearest wall, while she herself fell to the ground face first, only weakly managing to pull herself to her hands and knees.


    heart attack. How could she be having a heart attack? Those were supposed to be for old people! Even though she was feeling less lucid by the second, even though she lived alone, all she had to do was reach her phone.