Sixty seconds to launch.
The Captain's warning repeats in my head as if it was still echoing around inside my helmet. I mute my mic to curse and try to steady my hands and warm my quickly icing blood, knowing just how futile the effort is. It's the same every time, those last few seconds, watching the hangar doors creep open as the surrounding shields flicker and finally clear the path into empty space. This is when the carrier is most exposed and vulnerable, when a single well-placed shot could take out the entire wing, all of us strapped in and securely clamped to the deck rails. In these last few seconds, there are so many things that could go wrong, with the final result always the same. I die in my seat, with no way to stop it. That's what gives me the shakes.…
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