Prologue

The Magnum drops out of the jumpgate and into the Evindium system. At the flight controls, Jane scans the instrument panel.

"Jump complete," she announces. "No obstructions on the scope. Starting our approach. One hour until we breach the atmosphere and two more until we reach the hangar."

"Good," you reply from the co-pilots chair beside her. "Get us refueled as soon as we're down, just in case. I'll be heading straight out on recon. We have a tight window to work with this time." Looking over your shoulder you shout, "Hugo, you awake back there?"

"Yeah, I'm awake," comes a deep, masculine voice from behind you. "Just about to strap in for re-entry. Throw in a suit of armor and this’ll be just like riding on a Spec Ops dropship."

"No, it isn't," you scoff while shooting Jane a smile. "The Magnum handles far smoother than those dropships. You'll hardly feel the re-entry at all."

An hour passes in friendly silence between Jane and you while Hugo sits in the main compartment. The Magnum enters the planet's atmosphere as smoothly as was promised.

"Re-entry complete," pipes up Jane, her eyes flicking from the instruments to the outside world and back. "Atmospheric wings extended. Turbines firing up." She pauses, watching the instruments intently. "Both are running green. Shutting down the pulse engines. We’ll make our approach following one klick behind that airliner at Mach II," she says as her finger briefly points at a blip on one of the scanners.

"Ah, the sweet sound of me saving money," you add with a sigh as the steady thumping of the fuel-hungry pulse engines dies down with two short sequences of electronic chimes from the console.

"To be followed by the sound of them burning happily through your money when we get back into orbit," Jane reminds you wryly.

"You take all the fun out of this, you know," you groan.

"I'm sure that fat pay check will put it all back in for you," she responds with an amused look.

"Yeah. Quite the payment for this one due to the short notice. Our customer must be panicking," you respond.

"I Guess we’re lucky we were in the right place at the right time, then," says Jane before turning her attention back to the controls.