“How are the ground forces reporting?” she asked intently.

“All hands in position. We’re ready to launch shuttles as soon as we hit NEO,” Susan responded.

“Good, Commander. I believe that makes it your game.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” Steph said steadily as he linked into the squadron comm network. “You with me, Heroes?”

The other pilots of the Heroics, former Archangels all, responded quickly and in the affirmative. They’d been waiting for a chance to get some of their own back, ever since the last fight over Earth ended in such an unsatisfying manner.

“Stand by all hands. This could get a little rough,” Steph warned, adding to the warnings already sounding through the ship. “Initiating gravity-assisted braking.”

The Heroics were plummeting through the Sun’s gravity well at significant relativistic speeds, the force of the solar mass boosting their fall in conjunction with their warp drives. As they swept into cislunar space, however, Steph initiated a full reverse even as he ducked the ship into the Moon’s sphere of influence.

With the other Heroics following, the Odysseus skimmed the lunar surface, sometimes so close that her warp drive kicked up a dust plume in her wake, whipping around the celestial object and breaking free on a new course for Earth itself.

The squadron crossed the intervening space in minutes, decelerating on full power the whole way, and was caught by Earth’s gravity field rapidly and surely. Steph dove into the field, blowing through debris and wreckage floating in orbit with the Odysseus’ shields shouldering it all aside like it was nothing. He tried not to think of what, and who, he might be slamming through, and focused on the job at hand.

“Entering NEO!”

NEO, or Near Earth Orbit, was where the trickiest part of the maneuver had to play out.

“Launch ground assault!” Gracen ordered quickly.

The big ship didn’t even shiver as the Priminae-designed landers were blown away, but she began to shudder almost violently as they skimmed the atmosphere.

“Watch out, Commander. You’ll bounce!” Gracen, a former shuttle pilot herself, warned.

Steph didn’t respond, instead only snorting softly enough not to be noticed by his commanding officer. “I have it, Admiral. Initiating air-braking!”

The shuddering intensified at the same time as they smoothed out, becoming a deep and powerful vibration that could be felt at all corners of the big ship. They whipped past North America, for the third time Gracen thought, heading west over the Pacific, and quickly Asia came into sight.

“Status on ground deployment?”

“Thirty percent away, Admiral!”

“Continue launching,” she ordered. “I want every priority zone covered.”

“Aye aye. Launch in progress!”

“Susan, stay on top of this. You’re the coordinator. It’s going to be hell but we’re all counting on you,” Gracen said, turning to look at her communications specialist.

Susan Lamont swallowed hard, but nodded. “Aye aye, ma’am. I won’t let you down.”