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X-Boat’s armor was just about eaten away already, and the internal systems were failing one after another.
    Hardits! Frakk them!
    He had to look away from Janna so she wouldn’t see the terror reaching up from his gut to draw his lips into a tight white line. When pressed to talk about the time his Stork shuttle was eaten away around him in the escape from Tranquility, he’d brush it off like it was a joke, but every night since then he could only sleep if Janna was beside him. Without the protective aura of her love, he couldn’t hold at bay the terror that had never fully released him since that day.
    He stole a glance at the main status screen. A warning light flashed, telling him that a fatal pressure breach was imminent.
    In the last instant, he flicked a final glance at his lover. He and Janna both turned to touch the other, but too late… the automatic ejector system hurled them into space.
    They were clad only in an emergency pressure suit. With five hours of air, a distress beacon and only the most rudimentary of comms, the odds of getting out of a combat zone alive were not good.
    Janna, please forgive me!
    Without the enhancements of the Mustang’s sensors and AI, the battle for Khallini was eerily quiet and surprisingly far off, almost as if the deadly fight had left him behind. It was someone else’s fight now.
    He concentrated on finding Janna. He had no means to change his vector but just the sight of her would give him strength. Although she had a distress beacon same as him, he didn’t have any means of detecting it. His viewpoint span as he tumbled, making finding her even more difficult.
    Then the battle came to him in the shape of another Hardit command boat passing only a few klicks away.
    It came about in that peculiar manner the Hardit craft had.
    And then set off on a new bearing.
    Directly for him.

— Chapter 06 —
    The Stork shook as it screamed up through the atmosphere. Unlike the three X-Boats it carried, the shuttle had only energy-emitting hull coatings and an old-fashioned heat sink to absorb the massive heat buildup from punching through into space at such speeds.
    Within one of the Stork’s carrier pods, the atmosphere in Remus’s Swordfish fighter-bomber was pleasantly cool, but his link to the Stork’s systems told him the shuttle’s hull had heated well into dangerous territory.
    “Ease off on the gas, Pilot,” Remus ordered. “We’re no use to anyone if we burn up in transit.”
    “Slowing ascent,” acknowledged the shuttle’s pilot who was well used to Remus’s strange Wolfish sayings.
    “Deploy in twenty,” warned the pilot.
    “Remember your briefing,” Remus told the two Flight-Marines of his scratch flight. “We’re fitted with some kind of experimental EMP bomb. Hit each planet killer and move to the next target. Don’t worry about finishing them off and keep your eyes on the targets. Wing Commander Dock promises to keep the enemy fighters off our backs.”
    “Five seconds…”
    Remus shook his head. Talk about making things up on the run. The three X-Boat pilots had been briefed while sprinting nearly half a mile from the mess hall to the Stork waiting for them at the shuttle port.
    It was only by chance that it was down here to be fitted with the latest prototype churned out by the fertile collaboration between human and mudsucker engineers.
    “Good hunting,” said the shuttle’s pilot, and hit the launch control.
    The Stork was carrying a total of four modified quick-deployment modules, each one originally designed to throw two squads of armored Marines out into space. Within a second of the pilot hitting the control, the outer door had retracted and all three Swordfish launched into space.
    “Let’s bag us some planet killers,” said Remus.
    “You got it,” agreed Cragger, flying the Swordfish on his starboard-rear position.
    “What’s keeping you?” laughed Avanti, the third member of the scratch flight as he raced ahead, pushing his