Those held the rigid wing to his back. It was a broad V, wider than he was tall. It came up to the back of his head, and down to his calves. It was surprisingly light, nearly invisible on radar, and would activate its own chameleonware when they deployed.

When they dropped out of the bottom of this aircraft ten miles up over the Pacific, fifty miles from shore, and started their unpowered, suicide-speed flight to their target, ten miles inland.

“OK,” Aarthi sent. “Everything’s green.”

Kade nodded, and pressed the mental command to open up. The visor of the external suit cracked its seal, and Kade lifted it.

“Thanks,” he said.

Aarthi nodded. “Just remember: stay still, and the wing will do all the steering. It knows the program.”

Kade nodded. Then he changed the subject.

“Hey, Aarthi,” he said, pointing at the heavy case in a corner of the bay. The case with the warning sign on it. “What’s in the box?”

Aarthi didn’t turn her head. She just looked at him. “Weapons, Dr Kade. Just weapons.”

“I’m not a doctor,” he said reflexively.

Aarthi smiled.

Two planes, Kade thought. So if one gets shot down, the other can do the job. With what’s in those cases.

Kade looked at the box again.

Their plan doesn’t depend on my way working, he thought. It doesn’t depend on me living at all.

I have to live, he told himself. My way has to work.

“Launch!”

The voice buzzed in Kade’s ear. Displays in his mind, proxied from the wing itself, went green.

And then he was falling, out into the utter black through the bomb bay in the stomach of the great stealth flying wing.

His stomach dropped. He was weightless for an instant. Then the wing he was fastened to bit into thin air and suddenly the straps were gripping him, holding him up, prone, staring down into the abyss. The cold hit him. Even in the body heat-retaining chameleonware suit, the air was frigid. The wind pressed against his helmet, against his thighs, his hands down at his sides, against every surface that faced them.

The wing painted graphics in his mind’s eye. Trajectories, a box ahead of him, leading to distant light. And numbers.

15,840 meters above the ground. No, not above the ground: above the dark East China Sea. Down there, he could see black water everywhere, spotted with flecks of cloud, white in his light-amplified artificial vision.

One hundred and eighty-six kilometers per hour. Fast enough that any collision would kill him.

Minus fifty-six degrees Celsius. Cold enough to freeze skin right off.

He strained to look ahead. The entire visor of his helmet was light sensitive, a massive compound photoreceptor, thousands of times larger than his own retinas, it picked up the world, amplified it for him, fed it directly into his mind via military interfaces the Indians had built atop Nexus.