“Sir, the Archangels are always ready.”

“I remember that, Lieutenant, but you’re badly weakened, and despite the downtime, you’re going to be tired, too.”

“Sir…Captain, we won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure you won’t, Lieutenant,” Weston told him. “But I was thinking about giving you at least one more pilot.”

“Sir?” Amherst frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t see how that’s possible. We’re missing four planes, and we don’t have any replacements—even if we did have another pilot.”

“We have at least one more pilot on the Odyssey, Lieutenant,” Weston replied, his voice brittle.

Amherst paled. “Captain, with all due respect, you can’t mean yourself!”

Weston let the moment stretch out while the pilot paled even more. “No, Lieutenant. I wasn’t referring to myself.”

Amherst let out a breath.

“You don’t need to sound quite so relieved, Lieutenant.”

“Sir, you know it’s not that. But you’re needed here,” Amherst said.

“Well, be that as it may, what’s your opinion on Jennifer Samuels?”

“Jenny, sir? She’s good people,” Amherst replied. “Tried out for the Angels, didn’t make the cut.”

“She made the cut, Lieutenant,” Weston corrected him.

“Pardon?” Amherst blinked.

“Samuels’s flight scores were well above minimum standards,” Weston said.

“Begging the captain’s pardon, sir, but why the hell isn’t she in the flight?”

Weston heard the incredulity in the man’s voice and didn’t blame him. Finding qualified pilots for the limited neural interface system on the Archangel fighter craft wasn’t easy. During the war, the main limitation wasn’t in how many of them they could build, but rather, how many of them they could man.

“The war was over before she could be accepted, Lieutenant,” Weston replied. “We Archangels aren’t that much of an asset in peacetime, you see.”

Amherst winced.

“However,” Weston said, with a thin smile, “I don’t believe that I see any peacetime in our immediate area. Do you, Lieutenant?”

“Um…no, sir,” Amherst returned, still frowning. “But we’re still down by a plane.”

“Are we, Lieutenant?” Weston asked, gazing across the deck.

Amherst followed his captain’s gaze as his eyes settled on Archangel One, the captain’s own.

“Inform the lieutenant of her promotion,” Weston replied.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

CHAPTER 30

SAVOY WATCHED THE display trail off and then blinked away the information. The tunnels under the city were still small enough to be taken out, but they didn’t have a lot of time left if he were to judge by the changes he saw in the ground-penetrating radar map.

“Burke!”

“Sir!”

“We’re cleared for a four-point detonation,” he told the explosives expert. “You have the blast map for me?”

“Yes, sir, I’m dropping it in your slot now.”

Savoy accessed his memory slot on the network. Sure enough, the map file was waiting for him, so he tabbed it and watched as it opened in 50 percent transparency over his HUD.