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Killing the connection, Emily ignored the battle being fought <strong>by</strong> the pilots of each drop ship.<br />
That was out of her hands, and she didn't have time or energy to waste worrying about what<br />
could happen. If something went wrong at the moment, she most likely would never know what<br />
happened.<br />
There were more important things than her own death to keep her mind focused on at the<br />
moment anyway. Like what she was going to do to whoever had kidnapped Julie.<br />
"Ma'am?"<br />
Some of what Emily was thinking about must have shown on her face, because the<br />
communications officer inched backwards in her chair, eyes wide in sudden worry.<br />
"Yes?"<br />
It wasn't quite a snarl, but it came quite close, and Emily forced herself to take a deep breath<br />
before trying again.<br />
"What is it?"<br />
"Umm… well, the Americans are warning us off, saying that we are entering their airspace. I<br />
told them our destination was an Imperial installation; they don't seem to care, Ma'am. I've got an<br />
AWACS radar plane lighting us up from forty miles out, and four F-16s coming up fast from the<br />
south."<br />
Emily's eyes narrowed and she scowled at the poor Com officer, who was doing her level best to<br />
try and become part of the bank of equipment behind her.<br />
"Transfer them to my screen."<br />
"Yes, Ma'am."<br />
The com officer sounded quite happy doing something, anything, that got the First Guardian<br />
looking somewhere else. Emily's glare was transferred towards her com panel, and the Air Force<br />
Captain who was looking back up at her out of it; a part of her was slightly impressed that the<br />
Air Force had managed to upgrade their communications equipment to Tiri standards already.<br />
Before the man had a chance to open his mouth and speak, Emily snapped at him. She had long<br />
ago learned that a preemptive attack worked wonders sometimes.<br />
"You are threatening military action against an Imperial ship on an emergency mission. If you do<br />
not cease such threats, we will take your actions as an act of war, and deal with your base, and<br />
airplanes, accordingly."<br />
It was not an empty threat. If they tried to stop her from getting down to start her search for Julie,<br />
she'd gladly have one of the Orbital forts wipe them from the face of the Earth with an orbital<br />
kinetic strike. The drop ships themselves had been altered in the last few months to be able to
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