ever could manage to get under her skin. She seldom let that happen. Dee had learned from growing up watching her father that being calm and collected when people were trying to get at you was one of the best defenses in deflating their attacks. When people saw that you didn't really care about their verbal abuse, they tended to quit wasting the effort.
'Yeah, Clay, you should have seen it.' Dee turned back toward them with a sly grin. 'Jay lasted at least forty seconds or so. He was so awesome right up until that marine blasted him out of the sky.' She smiled at her wingman. Had she been six or twelve she might have stuck out her tongue, but the smirk she gave him was quite sufficient.
'Knock that chatter off, you two dead-ass nuggets,' Fink grunted at them. 'I'm trying to fly to another star system here.'
'Passenger Shuttle
'Roger that, tower. We're ready when you are.'
The four of them sat silently for the countdown and watched as the quantum membrane of the universe was tugged together between stars that were nearly fifteen light-years apart. The large light sphere appeared and then rippled into a two-dimensional illusion. The view of the Oort Cloud below blended and then swapped with a different view of an almost exact duplicate QMT facility, but this one was orbiting a plush blue-green world just below it rather than out in the cold depths of deep space.
'Welcome to the Ross 128 Colony of Arcadia, U.S. Passenger Shuttle
'Thank you, tower,' Fink replied and then turned to Dee. 'Cadet Moore, why don't you take it from here. I'm gonna stretch my legs a second.'
'Roger that, Colonel.' Dee took the controls and had her AIC tap her into the DTM link to the traffic-control AIC. She paid little attention to the colonel as he made his way between Stavros and Clay to the back.
Dee followed the flight corridor she was given by the tower AIC, with little concentration required. After all, it wasn't like dogfighting with ace mecha pilots. The tower told her to pull into a parking orbit momentarily and hold for further instructions. Then she heard a muffled
Dee twisted past the two men and barely managed to avoid a clawing grasp from Fink's right hand. She lunged her body backward to avoid his grab just as Clay brought his forehead into Fink's face twice. Fink leaned back and shook his head as if to clear his vision just in time for Clay to follow up with another head-butt to the bridge of his nose, cracking it and sending blood streaming down his face.
Dee lost her balance and landed in her wingman's lap. As she recovered and pulled herself up, she said, 'Sorry, Jay.' But then realized that Jay felt not only quite limp, but wet. She looked over her shoulder at her friend. He had a blank stare in his eyes, and the right side of his head was blown completely out with gray matter and red blood streaming down his face and neck onto his shirt. Jay was dead. Dee screamed in horror and jumped up from his lap only to slam back into the two men fighting over a railpistol. The impact flung her back between the two rear seats, down on all fours.
The scuffle continued in a flurry of hand-to-hand jabs, knees, head-butts, and elbows between Fink and Dee's bodyguard.
'No, Dee!' Clay yelled at her. 'Stay out of this.'
'No way,' she yelled back at him as she leaped forward in a bicycle roundhouse kick, bringing the top of her right foot hard against Fink's back. The kick stunned him only slightly, but it was enough for Clay to twist inside his grip, backward head-butt him in the face, and then pull Fink's elbow down against his shoulder. There was a loud
Dee jumped up at him again and slammed her left knee into his ribs, brought her left elbow down on his collarbone but missed it, and then she gave him a right knee into his
