“Next time I’ll just leave you out here, Major.”

“Okay, okay,” he said and then remembered what was going on. Before he could ask about the status of the situation he looked up and saw three bright dots taking form just over the eastern horizon at about a hundred miles in altitude. He struggled to stand.

“Take it easy. Do you want to pass out? I can’t carry you all-”

“Look-our ships,” Gideon said. He pointed skyward and at the same time lowered a middle visor in his helmet that magnified the image of the three ships far above them.

Lydia turned in her overlarge suit and saw the bright specks of Vortex, Guidon, and the much larger Ranger as they hurtled on.

“Damn, they’re still running in formation. Didn’t the base contact them?” He turned an accusing eye on the young scientist.

“Everything is down, radar, sonar, communications, everything. I told you things were getting weird!”

“I should have known,” Gideon said. “They’re not down, they’re being jammed, and I should have realized that.” His eyes never left the three ships flying in a wedge formation toward the base. Their altitude wasn’t even staggered. They were still about a hundred miles high and sailing wing abreast, the two smaller pocket battleships slightly behind their flagship, Ranger.

“Maybe-”

That was as far as she got as Gideon grabbed her and pushed her to the lunar dust. As he did so, the pocket battleship on the left side of the formation erupted silently into flame and floating debris. The eeriness of the enemy strike was so sudden and quiet it was surreal. Gideon saw another salvo strike what remained of the smaller pocket battleship Vortex, and her sizzling hulk vanished in a white hot explosion that sent chunks of lightweight metal flying in a torrent of faster-than-sound missiles of aluminum and plastic.