The acceleration died away, Rick called for the usual orbital system checks, and he was well into his own before he realised that the set of lights corresponding to his pilot hadn't started to change. He glanced sideways. Dylan's eyes were closed, his face pale.

"G-8, talk to me," he said.

The eyes opened. "I'm okay, Commander. Just..."

"It's been a long day. Get some glucose in you and rest for five minutes. I'll handle this."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologise. Just tell me earlier next time. I'm perfectly capable of piloting an orbital boost." He didn't need to say that he wasn't capable of making a jump. They all knew that - knew, too, that ISO were desperately trying to find a way to give them an emergency option for jump-pilot, and had so far come up with nothing.

He raised his voice. "I need honesty here. How are the rest of you coping? I'll start. I'm shattered but functioning."

"I think I have had less to do than you, so far," Dimitri said. "If I can help more..."

"Same," said Paula.

A long pause from their jump-calculator, and Rick's chest contracted in sympathy. He'd been there, been the newbie on the team, the one without the same degree of physical fitness, the one working at a less instinctive level, the one with the new, less well integrated implant. The jumps had been miserable and the anticipation almost worse. And he'd been at a far higher level of fitness and training than she was.

"Jen, you've got to be in hell right now. I know that. Now, honesty. Can you calculate us one more jump? We can cover you for everything else."

"Yes. Yes, I can." She sounded beyond rough, but as if she believed it. That would have to do.

"Same for you. Glucose and five minutes rest. Dimitri...?"

"I will do your system checks, Jen," his second said, "but maybe not the glucose, this close to jump."

Something he knows and I don't. Not discussing it now.

He had two sets of checks to do, Dimitri had two, and if five minutes was going to be critical he'd blown it the moment he'd made the decision to go for re-entry instead of staying in orbit after they'd jumped back. Rick took his checks at a careful pace, not breakneck emergency. All green, and the other lights on the board were turning green steadily too. They were good to go, and he was suddenly aware that there was a strong urge to prevaricate, to find something else to do here in the safety of low orbit rather than go mecha-hunting on the other side of their third jump of the day.

"Moving out," he said, and did it. Steady acceleration, no more than two g, just a few minutes to the jump-point on his screen. He glanced to his left again. Dylan was a bit less pale, he thought. That would have to be good enough.

A minute to the jump-point, and the indicators for Jenny's board came to life even before he'd opened his mouth. Rick forced himself to focus on the numbers she was producing. Not that he was much of a mathematician, but he knew how to spot the horrors, extreme values, sudden changes in sign. All things which the computer could catch anyway, but a second check was never a bad thing. They looked fine to him.

"Thirty seconds to jump," he said. "Going inertial." Hands off the controls and pass responsibility to the young man to his left, now sitting forward with a calm focus, eyes intent on the numbers on the screen, doing whatever it was jump-pilots did to interface with the drive.

"We need to drop out of jump after three seconds," said Dylan. "I'll do it, but you should know, in case..."

In case you're not fit to do it. Rick did his best to look reassuring. Force Two's current emergency option for a jump-pilot was 'call home, we'll send G-Force to get you'. If Dylan did pass out going into jump, then Rick had the emergency kill switch. He'd count to three and pull it. And then he'd take over as Garuda's main combat pilot, and they'd go blow the mecha to bits.

He hoped Dylan didn't pass out. He hoped he didn't pass out.

"Ready to jump?" he asked.

"Ready."

In a couple of minutes he'd be back having to make all the decisions, to act instead of react, to be responsible for everyone's actions as well as his own. But for now, just briefly, all he had to do was line Garuda up with the coordinates on his screen and let his jump-team do the difficult work.

"Three," said Dylan. "Two. One."

Perfect timing, perfect course, coming in inert just as they were supposed to. Rick reached for the kill switch.

"Jump!"

And there were flames, and pain, and nausea, a lot worse than the last time, and Rick was starkly aware that there was no way he'd be able to do this again. Don't pass out - don't you dare!

"They're planting explosives in the building," Keyop said simply. "Lots and lots of them. Electronic fuses. When the forcefield comes down, they'll all go off at once."

"What sort of damage are we looking at?" Ivanov asked.

"Catastrophic."

Simple understatement, from the Swallow, said more than any overblown hysterics would have. Mark looked round the table, wondering which of the senior staff would have a suggestion. He saw shock, and confusion, and uncertainty, and no answers at all.

You're the field commander. This is what you do.

He stood up. "One good thing - this means they expect the forcefield to come down. Electronic, Keyop? Are you sure?"

His engineer looked at the floor. "Couldn't hear much. Probably electronic. They've been seeding the building with them."

"Two questions," Jason said. "What do they look like and how do we disarm them? And how much time do we have?"

Keyop almost cracked a smile. "That's three questions."

"At a time like -" Grant began, and Mark swung round and glared.

"Let my team work, Major. Keyop, can you draw it?"

Keyop wasn't the best artist the world had ever seen, but even he couldn't mess up a drawing of a stubby cylinder, striped black and white, with a basic digital readout panel in the middle of the top surface which couldn't be anything but an electronic timer. They'd all seen these before. The only saving grace was that they were modern explosives. No chain reactions. They wouldn't need to worry about removing them.

"Disarm?" Keyop said. "No electricity, no failsafe. Just pull the detonator off."

"Any parameters on the time?" Mark asked him.

He shook his head.

"It can't be long," Jason said. "Unless they're planning to lay charges by the light of flaming torches, at which point we take a bagful of shuriken each and go take out fish in a barrel. Even Spectran goons aren't that stupid. And we can't clear charges in the dark, either."

Mark went cold. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"If you're thinking we need to hurry, then yes."

"Then we've got less than an hour. Keyop, how many?"

"Hundreds."

"Commander," said an unfamiliar voice from behind him, "can I make a suggestion?"

One of Grant's security officers, who shouldn't even have been listening. Which meant he thought what he had to say was important. Mark tried to look reassuring.

"Go on, Captain."

"There's a lot more Spectrans leaving the building than going in. Not many going in at all, I'd say. Not compared to half an hour ago."

"Not many is rather different from none." Grant's tone dripped sarcasm.

"Sorry, sir. It wasn't something I was watching for. We were covering the Swallow."

Mark nodded in acknowledgement. That was what the man had been assigned to do - he and three of his fellow officers, stationed at suitable windows overlooking the lawns between the buildings and the trees, with orders to open the window and start shooting if and only if absolutely necessary. Five rounds of ammunition apiece for their captured Spectran rifles. When this was over, he was personally going to make sure that ISO Headquarters was properly equipped to deal with a situation like this. Low tech weapons available in an armoury which had a manual backup locking system.

"They're afraid of being left behind," Jason said. "Or of the forcefield coming down early and blowing them up along with us. Mark - they're not in the building any more, or hardly any of them. We need to scour the place, rip the detonators off."

"And when the power comes back on?" said Anderson.

"We'll worry about that later," said Mark. He pointed at the security guards, all uniformed. "You and you, upper floors. Anyone you can find, set them to check room by room and use my authority if you need it. Use best judgement as to whether the Spectrans have been in there or not and move on if not - we don't have time to search everywhere. Go. Jase -"

"Nobody bar Team Seven is going to listen to me out of birdstyle."

"You go there and use them to clear the west wing. Keyop, you're with me. Let's hope there's someone else in the east wing to help. Who have I forgotten? We need teams clearing explosives in the north wing and the central area."

"The duty teams are Seven and Four," Grant said. "Academy's on recess - there might be a few students. There's the comms team on the top floor."

And they're almost all noncombatants. He pointed at the remaining uniformed guard. "Team Four gets the north wing, you're acting on my authority. Chief, you need to mobilise anyone else available to deal with the central area. If there are still Spectrans in the building, they'll be near the exits. We'll drive them out of the main entrance and away from you."

"What about the prisoner?" asked Keyop.

For a moment, the words made no sense at all. Mark blinked, trying to focus.

"What prisoner?" said Anderson.

"Keyop nabbed a goon as he came back in," Jason said. From the astonished expression on the Swallow's face, that wasn't exactly what had happened, but there seemed little point in querying it.

"Have you interrogated him?" Grant asked.

"Didn't know what you wanted to ask him. Plus I prefer to do my interrogating in birdstyle. Teen race drivers aren't so intimidating."

"Medical," said Grant. "Black section and standard. They will have people who can't be moved."

Mark froze - of course, this was why Chris Johnson wasn't in this meeting; he was doing his best for Tiny, who probably qualified as someone who couldn't be moved. G-Force didn't do rescue the civilians. They never had the time, or the personnel. How the heck did you evacuate a complete medical facility with no power while under siege? He wanted a working radio, and birdstyle, and the Phoenix, and he had none of them.

"You deploy now," said Anderson. "We'll handle the rest and get any additional information to you. Is there a contingency plan?"

You're starting to guess just how often I don't have a plan B, aren't you? "Keyop, estimated range on those explosives?"

The kid shook his head.

"Clear the buildings when there's still just about enough light to see, then. Go out of the east doors, head for the cliffs, get over the ridge."

(thanks guest, typo fixed :) )