“Good luck and Godspeed!” Master Chief Boldt said as I felt the jolt of pallet separation and on my heads-up watched six expended pallets drop away to burn up in the atmosphere.
Figure 16—Tiger Baily’s SWIC team in formation in
LEO preparing to drop.
“Forward velocity six-eight-hundred meters-per-second,” Mother told me. I knew she was also talking to the rest of my squad, and I trusted that she was doing whatever was necessary to keep us in formation. On my heads-up, I saw the individual Gryphons increasing their separation until we each were a hundred meters distant from the closest Gryphon.
We were accelerating toward the ocean at 9.8 m/sec2 while heading toward the horizon at 6,800 m/sec. Mother had set a timer when she separated my pallet. Drop timer digits flashed at the right si
