Junebug dived towards the water following the navigation line in her HUD. Her attention was too focused on the task to worry overmuch about Neil and Saxon’s bickering. Most of her experience had been with skimmers and flying did not come naturally to her, she had to fight her instincts to get close to the ground and prevent the smallest possible target. The three gliders dropped to nearly sea level for the final approach, racing over the water low enough that Sayeeda could see the turbulence from Neil’s wings whipping a white line across the green gray waters. They were actually on a slight upward trajectory now, using drag to slow them down as they raced toward the island while staying low enough to stay out of line of sight. The white gold sand raced toward them as they zipped over reefs and shoals at breakneck speed. Junebug had initially been in favor of inserting undercover of darkness, but Neil had reasonably argued that neither she nor Saxon had any experience with this kind of jump and complicating it by doing it in the dark only increased the risk without significantly improving their chances of avoiding detection.

By the time she crossed over the sand the airspeed was down to about thirty meters a second, still fast enough to kill her instantly if she made a mistake but almost languid compared to the near supersonic speed they had started out with, she lifted her control surface slightly and zoomed up over treeline and let the air break her until, at the last minute, she pulled up into a climb which killed the last of her speed and she fell the five meters to the ground. Her wings hit the jungle canopy and inevitably tangled, suspending her three or four meters above the jungle floor. It wasn’t exactly quiet, exotic birds cawed and other creatures yowled as the morning sunlight warmed the jungle, but compared to the almost deafening windrush of the past few minutes it seemed oddly serene. There was a crash somewhere off to her right as Saxon landed less gracefully than she had managed, crashing through the canopy to the ground. Junebug reached out and toggled the release catch on her chest harness, dropping the equipment bag to the ground below with a heavy thud. That accomplished she wrapped her legs around a nearby tree branch and unbuckled her wings before dropping gracefully to the leaf covered canopy below. There was no practical way to recover the wings and little likelihood anyone would stumble across them in any case so she abandoned them in place. Reaching the ground she removed the jump helmet and harness, stripping down to the cotton undershirt before opening her equipment bag to retrieve her own breastplate and weapons.

“Neil are you down ok?” she asked over her low powered mastoid radio. The weight of the ceramic breastplate was comforting as she slipped into it and closed the seals with deft snaps. She slung her rifle and checked the load before pulling on a web harness with a dozen pouches hung from its belt and H-straps, ammunition, explosives, and other equipment they were likely to need for the job.