ROGUE BATTLESHIP

Chapter 1

“It should be just on the other side of this storm, Commodore.”

Tom Thrush, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of the armed freighter Rime Frost, nodded to the young man in the seat beside him. Jason Stormcrow was the captain of the freighter, charged with delivering Tom and a dozen spacers to a crippled Dawn Alliance battleship – if they could find it.

The rest of the fleet trailed behind them, eight small freighters and a battered supply ship. The supply ship carried no supplies; her hull was filled with troops.

All around the little fleet, the energies of hyperspace seethed. A storm that could have engulfed Jupiter raged to starboard, a vast ball of yellow energy darkening to orange near the center. Other storms glowed in the distance.

Directly ahead, a rapidly dissipating storm showed as nothing more than a red mist. The supply ship, sturdily built, could have sailed through it safely. At least, she could have before she was captured. The ship had taken some damage during its “liberation” from a Dawn Alliance supply convoy. It might be a bit fragile now.

As for the armed freighters, they could handle a moderate amount of storm energy. A prudent captain would steer around the mess directly ahead.

But a battleship lay on the other side of the wall of storm energy. Her engines were crippled, many of her guns were destroyed, and she’d taken a lot of damage, but a battleship – even a crippled one – was not an opponent to be approached lightly. Looping around this wall of storm energy would make them visible to the battleship from quite a distance.

Tom gestured straight ahead. “We’ll punch right through.”

If the prospect worried Stormcrow he hid it well. He nodded, moving his hands across the console in front of him. Gentle acceleration pressed the seat against Tom’s back. He held his breath in spite of himself as the wall of storm energy rushed toward the ship.

The frustrating thing about space travel, of course, was the lack of anything to give a sense of scale. The freighter flew on and on, tendrils of storm energy becoming more distinct as the range closed. Tom exhaled, then rolled his shoulders, releasing tension. The wall was farther away than he’d realized. They probably had several more-The bridge windows turned red as the ship penetrated the storm. The screens on both consoles filled with static. Tom gripped the arms of his chair, then made himself relax. It wouldn’t do for a commodore to look nervous in front of a seasoned captain.

He glanced at Stormcrow, who had a death grip on both arms of his chair. The man’s lips moved silently. He might have been praying.

The red storm energy filling the windows abruptly vanished as the ship broke through. Tom’s console beeped as it reset itself. He craned his neck, trying to look in every direction at once for the battleship.

Storms of half a dozen colors glowed in the distance. Aside from that, they were alone. The battleship was gone.

More beeps sounded from Tom’s console. The ship’s scanners were picking up contacts. He checked the display as, one by one, the other ships of the colony fleet emerged from the wall of the storm. He did a quick count. “Looks like everyone made it through.”

“Well, how about that?” said a cheerful voice over the bridge speakers. “The good news is, they were kind enough to fix their own engines for us. That’s one less thing we have to do.”

Tom grinned in spite of himself and tapped his console, opening a channel to the Afternoon Thunderstorm. “This mission just keeps getting easier and easier.”

“I don’t see them,” said O’Reilly. Normally the captain of a corvette, today he was a passenger on the Afternoon Thunderstorm. “Let’s see what the snooper has to say.” The bridge speakers beeped, and then O’Reilly said, “Alice, do you copy?”

A third voice joined the conversation. Alice Rose, who usually commanded the Winter Morning, was also a passenger for this mission. “Querying the snooper now.”

The snooper was Free Worlds technology. Tech created and perfected by colonist pirate fleets, in other words. Alice, as a former pirate, would know how to use it. Tom and O’Reilly were from the United Worlds Navy. They had only a general idea of how snoopers worked, or a hundred other pirate tools.

“I’ve got a direction,” Alice said. “They’re a good six hours ahead of us, but they’re not moving very fast.”

“I’ve got the heading,” Stormcrow said.

“Let’s go.”

The battleship burned.

Tom winced as he saw the damage. Flames glowed from a jagged hole on her port side. That meant air was escaping, had been escaping since the battle a day and a half before. How much air could the ship carry? She would be a pain to resupply.

Six massive engines jutted from the stern of the ship. Only two engines glowed, one on the top left, one on the bottom right. Neither engine ran at anything close to full power.

“Are they out of fuel?” Stormcrow looked at Tom. “No, that doesn’t make sense. They’d be better off running at high speed, building up some velocity.”

“The engines are linked,” Tom told him. He thought back to his time in Battleship School, during what now seemed like a different life. “They’re not using the main fuel exchanger. It’s right in the middle, and we destroyed it. They must be pumping fuel directly into the engines.” He shook his head, picturing it. “The engines are not designed to work that way.” The engines on a battleship were complex, far more powerful yet far more delicate in a way than the engines on a little freighter like the Rime Frost. “It’s amazing they’ve got any thrust at all.”

Stormcrow shrugged. “What now?”

“They’re trying to escape,” Tom said. “That’s good. It means they’re not smashing things, not spiking guns or blowing up ammunition. But we need to get aboard fast. Get control before they change tactics.”

Stormcrow nodded, fingertips tapping and sliding on his console. The Rime Frost drifted sideways until she was dead aft of the battleship. It was the angle of attack that would make her hardest to see, hardest to hit.

Tom checked his own display. The other crews had been thoroughly briefed. They were lining up behind the Rime Frost, almost close enough for collision danger.

Tom reached for the communication controls, then made himself lower his hand. His captains were seasoned professionals. Most of them had been raiding United Worlds shipping since before Tom started shaving. They didn’t need any more instructions from him.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said to Stormcrow. “I’m going to go suit up.”

When the outer hatch of the airlock slid open a rush of excitement washed over Tom. He’d made a number of jumps between ships, mostly in training, a few times during the war. It raised goosebumps every time, and he hoped the thrill would never go away.

He wanted to take the lead, but the spacers around him pressed in close. Without ever quite seeming rude, they pushed him back with elbows and shoulders until he was against the inside hatch. It made perfect sense, of course. He was the ranking officer on this mission, and the only one with battleship training. He had no business risking himself in the first wave. Still, he glared at the backs of the helmets of the commandos in front of him.

Three beeps sounded in his ear, his stomach lurched as the artificial gravity cut out, and the first couple of spacers launched themselves out of the lock. For thirty seconds Tom could only float there, his heart thumping madly, as the others leaped into the void in ones and twos. A woman with black leopard spots painted over her bright gold vac suit pulled herself through the hatch, crouched for an instant with her feet against the hull, then kicked herself away. That left Tom alone in the airlock. He grabbed a handle, swung himself out, and suppressed the urge to whistle as he caught his first unimpeded glimpse of his target.

At close range the battleship was enormous, like a city moving through space. It was huge, so vast the Rime Frost was an inconsequential toy beside it. How did we ever cripple this thing? And what made me think we could ever capture it? We need a thousand troops – two thousand! We don’t have a chance.

It was, of course, much too late to turn back. Tom took a deep breath, forced his fears into a corner of his mind, and kicked off.

For a bad moment he couldn’t see the rest of his team. Then a spacer passed between Tom and the glow from the battleship’s starboard engine. The sharp black silhouette gave Tom something to focus on, and he oriented his body, pointing himself at that distant figure. His hands went to the thruster pods at his waist, old habits taking over. He adjusted his trajectory, nudging himself sideways with puffs of compressed air.

The battleship grew as he raced toward it. Cold prickles danced across Tom’s back and shoulders, but a tightness in his cheeks told him he was grinning. No matter how desperate the mission, it was impossible not to enjoy the sheer thrill of flinging himself through hard vacuum toward an enemy ship.

One by one the rest of the team crossed the glowing backdrop of the starboard engine, then vanished against the blackness of deep space. Tom caught white smudges, though, as each commando fired a jet of air, making a course adjustment as they passed the tail of the ship.

Now the engine loomed directly in front of him. His chest and face grew warm. He was almost certain the warmth was his imagination; he was not close enough to catch heat from the engine. Still, he had to blink perspiration out of his eyes.

Then the engine was beneath him, the top hull of the battleship looming like a cliff. Tom twisted sideways, pointing his right hip away from the battleship, and gave a squirt of air from the thruster mounted there. He wanted to fly parallel to the hull. He held the thrust for a moment too long, though, and the armor-plated wall beside him tilted as his trajectory changed.

“Damn it.” He cringed as soon as the muttered words were out of his mouth, knowing he’d broadcasted them to the rest of the squad. Oh, well, no one would notice him. He turned his body until his chest was toward the battleship and stretched out his arms, ready to catch himself on his palms. Closer and closer he came, until he could reach out and slap his palms against a hull plate. His body tilted, his toes bounced once from the hull, and then he was sailing along just out of arm’s reach of the armor plates.

“I found a hatch,” said a voice in his ear. A blue glow appeared ahead and to the right as one of the commandos set off a flare to mark his position.

Tom was reaching for his belt thrusters when he realized he was drifting toward the hull. The battleship’s artificial gravity was bleeding through and pulling him down. Closer and closer he drifted, scanning the hull for a handhold.

A handle appeared, a loop of metal that he snagged with his left hand. There was a quick jerk as he lost the last of his momentum, and then he hung motionless beside the hull.

From there it was easy. More handles sprouted from the hull, one every meter or so, leading directly toward the dazzling flare.

By the time Tom reached his squad, a second flare glowed twenty or so meters forward and to port where another squad prepared to make a breach. He watched spacers converge on the flare, then turned his attention back to his own squad.

A spacer in a vermillion vac suit stood beside the closed hatch of a wide airlock, holding a console the size of a thick dinner plate. A thin wire connected the console to a port on the hull. Other squad members stood around the perimeter of the airlock, pointing mismatched weapons toward the hatch. Tom got his boots against the hull plates and walked over to join them, drawing a blast pistol from a holster on his thigh.

The rest of the squad from the Rime Frost joined them, followed soon after by spacers from the Trickling Brook. Other spacers streamed across the hull, heading toward one flare or the other.

In all, a hundred and twenty people were about to board the battleship. Standing on the hull with the armored hull plates stretching away like an endless plain, Tom found himself doubting that such a small attack force could possibly be enough. A United Worlds battleship carried a standard crew of two hundred and ten, with an additional eighty marines in time of war. He shivered at the thought of this colonist militia going up against trained marines. The former pirates of the Free Planets were tough and versatile, but marines were highly trained killers who specialized in exactly this sort of combat.

It’s the Dawn Alliance, he reminded himself. They don’t have a Marine Corps. They’re demoralized and disorganized. Their ship’s been defeated. We’ve already won the psychological battle. They won’t put up much resistance.

It sounded good, and he almost believed it. Almost. The defenders had superior numbers, and they knew the terrain. This might get ugly.

“Got it,” said a voice. The vermillion vac suit turned the spacer with the console into an anonymous silhouette, but the voice belonged to a man who sounded young and nervous. He unplugged the wire, slung the console across his back, and drew a laser pistol as the hatch to the airlock slid open.

No hordes of enemy soldiers came pouring out. No grenades exploded. The inside of the airlock was an empty rectangular box with room for a dozen or more people.

“Looks clear,” Tom said, and popped his left boot free. He started to advance.

A moment before, he could have sworn he had plenty of room. Suddenly, though, there was a spacer on either side, elbows and shoulders blocking him without quite seeming to do it deliberately. Tom watched in frustration as a trio of spacers dropped into the lock.

“Feels like about half a G,” said a woman’s voice. One of the spacers in the lock, a slim figure in a pale blue suit, tapped a panel set in one bulkhead. “The controls are live. We’ll secure the other side.” She swiped with a fingertip and the outer hatch began to close.

Tom said, “But-”

No one paid the slightest attention as the outer hatch sealed. He waited in an agony of suspense.

“Holy jumping-” It was the same woman, her voice high with alarm. She didn’t speak again for ten endless seconds. Tom wanted to shout, to demand to know if she was okay, but the last thing anyone needed was him filling the channel with panicky noise. So he waited. All of them waited, a couple of dozen tense figures clustered around the airlock with more arriving every moment.

“Oh, God.” Pain and fear thickened the woman’s voice. “They were a little slow off the mark. There were four of them coming down the corridor when the hatch opened. They’ve got us pinned in the lock.”

Which meant the lock couldn’t cycle, and no reinforcements could reach them.

“Wow. They don’t like grenades much. Okay, we’re in the corridor. Get down here fast. We don’t have much cover.”

Once again Tom tried to get into the lock. This time the spacers on either side were more blatant, turning to plant hands on his chest and shoulders. It was a man and a woman, both of them strong and solidly built. Tom glared at them, their helmets almost touching his own, as the lock filled with eager spacers and the outer hatch closed again. There was no point in ordering them to let him pass. The colonies had a long, rich history of independence and self-reliance. The colonists could follow orders, but they were fundamentally incapable of the sort of blind obedience you got in a traditional military.

“Corridor’s secure,” said a man’s voice over the suit radio. The spacers holding Tom back immediately relaxed. The woman raised her eyebrows and gave him an apologetic smile. The man gave him a hard look that said Tom should have known better.

Knowing he was right only made it worse. Tom scowled at him, then squeezed between the two of them. When the hatch slid open in a rush of vapor he was the first one into the lock.

The boarding party controlled a section of corridor forty paces long. At one end, they’d taken manual control of an emergency hatch. Thick doors designed to stop airflow in the event of a hull breach blocked most of the corridor. A pair of spacers stood at the shoulder-width gap, watching the corridor beyond.

In the other direction, spacers clustered near an L-intersection, occasionally leaning around the corner to snap a quick shot. The walls were scorched and pitted by the detonation of a grenade, and a couple of bodies in Dawn Alliance vac suits lay twisted on the deck plates.

Just outside the airlock, the woman in pale blue lay on her back with a couple of spacers kneeling over her. The faceplate on her helmet was up, and Tom could see her lips moving, though he couldn’t hear her words. They had cut open the side of her suit from hip to armpit and peeled it back. The fabric of the suit was charred, and the bright yellow foam of trauma gel covered her wound.

The corridor clearly had atmosphere, so Tom retracted his faceplate. The first thing he heard was the woman’s voice. She was swearing, a steady stream of curses in a low voice. Then she sighed, and her voice trailed off. Tom looked down, horrified, sure she had just died.

She grinned up at him, her expression blissful, and he grinned back as his shoulders sagged in relief. The pain medication was doing its work.

He thought about evacuating her, which would be difficult now that her suit was pretty much destroyed. But the medical equipment on the armed freighters was nothing great, and New Panama was many hours away. The closest high-quality medical equipment was in the battleship’s surgery. The best thing he could do for her was hurry up and capture the ship.

A grenade exploded, and he turned, half expecting to see carnage. But someone in the boarding party must have thrown the grenade, because the colonists at the L intersection whooped and poured around the corner.

It looked chaotic at first glance, but there was order in the chaos. Squads stayed together, spacers who’d served on the same armed freighters. The airlock hatch opened and more spacers came in, making a defensive half-circle around the injured woman.

“Channel 7 C,” said a woman’s voice. Half a dozen spacers near the almost-closed emergency hatch tapped at controls on the sleeves of their vac suits or touched the sides of their helmets, changing the frequency of their suit radios. A heavyset woman with a pistol in each hand said, “Let’s go raise some hell.” She closed her faceplate and turned sideways to slide through the opening in the hatch. The rest of her squad followed, and some of the newly arriving spacers moved to the opening to keep watch.

Tom took a single step in that direction. He desperately wanted to follow, to be at the front of the fighting. But he would be no help at all, not tagging along with a close-knit team that had been working together for years. They had experience boarding ships. They knew what they were doing. If he went with them, he would be an unwelcome distraction.

Sighing, he holstered his pistol. His job was to coordinate. That meant staying here, briefing troops as they came out of the airlock, and waiting for information to trickle in.

The airlock hatch slid open and a fresh crowd of spacers came into the corridor. A man in a black vac suits with skulls painted on his shoulders stepped up to Tom and retracted his faceplate. A bristling gray beard pretty much filled the bottom half of his helmet, fat hairs poking up to touch his nose. “Captain Ramirez reporting.”

Tom gestured toward the emergency hatch. “Take your people through there. There’s one squad ahead of you, so watch your targets. They’re using Channel 7 C. I’m on 5 A. Try to keep me updated.”

Ramirez nodded. “Any further instructions?”

With only a general idea of the battleship’s layout, and no idea at all where resistance was to be found, there wasn’t much Tom could say. “Raise hell.”

The nest of whiskers in the helmet moved as Ramirez grinned. He gave Tom a jaunty salute and led his team toward the emergency hatch.

Chapter 2

Alice Rose sat down on a staircase and thought about all the ways she might die in the next few minutes.

A blast rifle rested across her knees. The staircase led down to the battleship’s cafeteria, where almost a hundred Dawn Alliance prisoners were gathered. Alice’s job was to shoot anyone who tried to come up the stairs.

She wasn’t sure how many guards in total were assigned to the cafeteria, but she was sure it was less than a dozen. They were outnumbered at least eight to one. The prisoners had been stripped of vac suits and disarmed, but the cafeteria was large, and it had to contain something that could be used as a weapon. She imagined a mob charging her stairwell, killing her in passing, taking her blast rifle, and rejoining the fight.

From her seat on the stairs only a handful of prisoners were in sight. They sat – or rather slumped – at a table, heads down. They looked dispirited, dejected.

Defeated.

It was, she realized, exactly as Tom had said in the mission briefing back on New Panama. The battleship was defeated when the raider fleet crippled its engines. It didn’t matter that the defenders had the boarding party outnumbered. It didn’t matter that they could still overwhelm the invaders and escape. In their minds and their hearts they had already lost.

The rustle of footsteps below her chased such optimistic thoughts from her mind. She tucked her feet under her, ready for quick movement, and lifted the rifle.

The figure that came into sight, however, was a blocky man in a black vac suit with vivid green stripes painted across his chest and down his arms and legs. He wore his helmet with the faceplate up. “You set, Alice?”

“Why me, Rory?” She laid the rifle across her thighs. “I should be helping with the fighting. I’ve got combat experience.”

“That’s why you’re here.” The look he gave her made her suddenly chilly. “First off, the others haven’t been blooded. They need the experience.”

Alice opened her mouth to argue.

“But the main reason is, I need someone here who’s got what it takes to pull the trigger.”

Alice said, “What?”

“We need this ship to liberate Novograd,” he said. “Your home. This mission matters to you.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, taking in the rest of the ship. “Most people can pull the trigger when their blood is up. During combat, with someone who’s shooting back. But unarmed prisoners? Even when you know they’ll kill you if they can reach you, pulling that trigger is not an easy thing.”

Alice stared at him, flabbergasted. At last she said, “What makes you think I can do it?”

“You’ve been around,” he said. “And you understand the stakes. Maybe you couldn’t kill someone to save your own life. Not when they’re unarmed. Not when you’re not sure if you really have to. But you would do it for Novograd. You would do it to make sure these prisoners don’t get past you and help retake the ship. This mission is the only chance Novograd has. You would lift that gun and kill people – armed or not – to make sure this mission succeeds.”

For several uncomfortable heartbeats Alice just stared at him. “I don’t want to shoot anyone.”

“And I don’t want you to,” Rory said patiently. “That’s why you’re on guard duty.” When he saw she didn’t understand he said, “I can tell just by looking at you that you can kill when you have to. If I was a desperate prisoner I wouldn’t test you. I’d know it wouldn’t work. If I put one of the rookies on the stairs, they’ll be scared. They’ll looked scared. And a prisoner might just think, hey, this could work. This is worth a shot.”

He shook his head, the cold light in his eyes turning to weariness. “If I put someone else here, they might end up actually having to shoot someone. If I put you here, nothing will happen. You could kill. And that’s why you won’t have to.”

He climbed the stairs, circled around her, and walked away, the echo of his footsteps slowly fading. Alice listened to him go. She was by no means convinced by his logic. She might still have to kill.

She might still have to die.

“Well, if this isn’t a shit deal, I don’t know what is.”

“It’s a deadlock, boss.”

Tom looked up from the smart table in his temporary office, a meeting room in the back of the battleship’s machine room. The tabletop displayed a deck plan of the ship. He gestured at the table. “Show me.”

Nigel Wilson, captain of the Drifting Pollen until his ship was captured and confiscated by the Dawn Alliance, cross to Tom’s side and leaned over the table. He tapped a section along the port side of the ship. “We’ve got this bit now.”

Tom fiddled with the display controls until that section of the ship changed from red to green. The green sections, those controlled by the boarding party, included the engineering section and everything aft of the middle of the ship. Colonist forces also held the nose of the ship. They’d taken the bridge, the surgery, most of the crew quarters, and a long section along the starboard side. Now, apparently, they held most of the port side as well. A fat block in the center of the battleship still glowed red, though.

“I’m not sure how many people are in the bunk rooms.” Wilson worked the table controls, going from deck to deck. “We’ve got people in the corridors keeping them bottled up. If anyone needs to use the bathrooms, they stick a hand out and wait for permission. They can’t talk to each other, so they can’t organize a mass breakout. But we haven’t gone room to room yet, so we haven’t checked for weapons, and we don’t know how many people we’ve got bottled up.”

“That’s good enough for now,” Tom said. “Keeping them contained is enough, until we deal with this.” He tapped the red block that marked active resistance.

“The good news is, they can’t get out,” Wilson said. “But they’re dug right in. Emergency doors, barricades in the corridors, you name it. We can’t get at them.” He gave Tom a bleak look. “Digging them out is going to be a hell of a job.”

Tom stared at the deck plan, letting his eyes drift out of focus. This ship was not the same as the Dauntless, the decommissioned battleship he’d trained on as a student officer. Still, function to a large degree dictated form. He knew that from his civilian days, when he’d studied architecture. Although there were countless differences between the two ships, he’d noticed some striking similarities.

He circled the table, gesturing for Wilson to follow. “Did I ever tell you how I got kicked out of Battleship School?”

Wilson’s eyebrows rose.

Tom smiled, remembering. The real trigger had been an unfortunate incident when he’d lost his temper and dangled an obnoxious training officer over a railing. He wouldn’t tell Wilson that story. Long before that day, though, it had been painfully clear that Tom didn’t belong on battleships.

“They wanted us to learn our way around,” he said. “So they kept giving as drills in different parts of the ship. It seemed like I spent all day just running from one station to another. So I started taking shortcuts.” He grinned, remembering the outrage that had greeted his unconventional routing. “For instance, it took almost ten minutes to get from the bridge to the secondary targeting station. I had to go forward to the nearest ladder, down two decks, aft and to starboard, down another deck, and then forward again. But just aft of the bridge there was a cargo elevator. I used to pop open a maintenance hatch, scramble down four decks, and come out another maintenance hatch no more than ten meters from Targeting.”

Wilson said, “There’s a freight elevator, but it’s aft.” He gestured with his thumb. “We already control it on every deck.”

At the entrance to the machine room a sentry stood with a laser rifle in his hands. Tom walked up beside him. “Kenny. I’m going for a walk. That means you’re in charge here.”

Kenny’s eyes got big.

“Don’t try to give any orders,” Tom said. “Just take messages. You can tell people I’ll be back soon, but I don’t know exactly when.” Tom left the machine room, Wilson at his elbow. “The elevator won’t help,” he said. “But did you know that modern battleships are absolutely lousy with ammo delivery shafts?”

Gun G-17 was a formidable thing, with twin barrels as big around as a man’s waist. The actual bore of the weapon was much smaller, not much bigger than a gloved fist, but the barrel was huge to allow it to soak up damage. Gun turrets were almost the only vulnerable target on a battleship, and the guns were engineered accordingly.

Under Tom’s direction a couple of spacers unbolted the gunner’s seat and hauled it out of the cramped compartment inside the turret. They had to remove some floor plating before the dark mouth of a tunnel was exposed.

Tom turned to a crowd of watching spacers, Wilson’s squad mixed with people from the Rime Frost. “It’ll be a tight fit,” he said. “But it’s navigable. They’re designed that way, because every once in a while you have to send an engineer inside.” That was true on United Worlds ships, at least. On a Dawn Alliance vessel, who knew? But he wouldn’t fill the minds of the assault team with doubts.

“We can’t really coordinate the attacks,” Tom went on. Three teams would go in through three different ammunition tunnels. “There’s no way to move quietly, so they’ll know you’re coming. As soon as you find a hatch, get out and start shooting.” He turned to Wilson. “Your job will be to keep them busy at the barricades while we make the assault.”

Wilson gave him a look that spoke volumes. “I think what you mean, Commodore,” – he emphasized the title – “is that your job will be to keep pressure on the barricades while I lead the assault.”

Tom sighed. “Look, I know more about battleship layout-”

His voice trailed off as Wilson’s squad sealed their helmets and began clambering head-first into the tunnel. It was a tight fit; those with rifles quickly abandoned them and took handguns instead.

“You know I’m right, boss,” Wilson said, not without sympathy. He turned away. “Slow down! I’m supposed to go first.”

His squad paid no more attention to him than he’d paid to Tom.

A hand closed on Tom’s forearm, tugging gently. “Come on, Commodore,” said a woman with Death To The DA stenciled across the front of her helmet. “The closest barricade is this way.”

She led him to a place where the corridor made a T-intersection. They stood at the base of the T, peeking around the corner. About twenty meters away, an emergency pressure hatch stood almost shut. The doors looked depressingly solid, and they showed a gap no more than a hand span wide. As Tom watched, the muzzle of a blast rifle appeared in the gap. He pulled his head back an instant before the shot splattered against the wall behind him. The smell of burnt paint filled the air, and he wrinkled his nose.

“We can’t get close.” The woman with the stenciled helmet was named O’Doul, and she had the patient, weary demeanour of a seasoned veteran. “They’re nicely bottled up, but I don’t see a way to put pressure on them without getting a lot of people killed.”

Tom glanced up and down the corridor. A dozen spacers loitered, more than enough people to handle things if the trapped soldiers decided to try a sortie. “Come with me,” he said to O’Doul. “I have an idea.”

When he was using the machine shop for an improvised command center, he hadn’t given the stamper a moment’s thought. He remembered it now, though, a thick, blocky machine nearly as tall as he was. It was almost a perfect cube, sculpted from steel and titanium, built sturdily enough to bend sheets of metal as thick as his finger.

Which meant it had to be sturdy enough to stop gunfire.

He had a vague idea of attaching repulsors to the thing so he could move it. It turned out the machine had repulsor units built into its base, one on either side. Tom and O’Doul activated the repulsors and watched as the machine rose to hover just above the floor.

“Let’s get it moving,” Tom said. He circled around until the stamper was between him and the door, then braced a shoulder against the machine and heaved.

O’Doul grinned as she saw where this was going. She took a position on the other corner of the machine and started pushing.

There was an awkward moment when they reached the T-intersection. The stamper filled almost the entire corridor, and though the repulsors took away the weight, the mass of the machine gave it plenty of momentum. It wasn’t moving quickly, but it proved almost impossible to stop.

One young woman was almost driven past the corner and into range of the trapped soldiers. She planted both hands on the stamper and heaved, grunting with effort, while Tom and O’Doul scrabbled for handholds on the other side, pulling frantically to slow the machine down.

When the stamper was almost stationary the young woman pressed himself flat against the wall, sucking in her stomach and muttering a curse as a metal bracket on the side pressed against her abdomen.

“This way,” said Tom, leading O’Doul to the side of the machine farthest from the enemy. The stamper floated past the corner with Tom and O’Doul behind it.

The trapped soldiers opened fire, blast shots slamming into the machine and making Tom flinch and duck. The stamper, though, was as sturdy as he’d hoped. When the stamper was past the corner he and O’Doul pushed, changing the direction of the drifting machine, driving it toward the emergency doors. A barrage of shots smacked into the stamper, making the metal vibrate under Tom’s palms through the gloves of his suit. He hunched down, making sure his head was below the top of the machine.

The stamper thumped into the side wall of the corridor, leaving a long scrape as it used up the last of its sideways momentum. It moved down the corridor at the pace of a crawling baby, and Tom stopped pushing. The enemy soldiers, apparently realizing the pointlessness of their barrage, ceased firing. Silence fell, the air heavy with the smell of burned ozone.

“So,” said O’Doul. She shuffled along beside Tom, hunched over to keep her head below the top of the stamper. “What exactly do we do when we reach the doors?”

Tom shrugged. “Improvise?”

“Terrific.” She drew a pistol. Tom drew his own pistol and peeked around his side of the drifting machine. Some soldier must have lined up a shot, waiting for Tom to stick his head out. The shot came immediately, the energy blast hitting the side of his helmet with an impact like a baseball bat. He still had his faceplate open – a stupid oversight – and heat seared across his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He swore and dropped to his knees.

“Commodore!” O’Doul’s hand gripped his shoulder. He kept his eyes squeezed shut while he waited for the ringing in his ears to subside.

“Commodore, open your eyes. Can you see?”

The question terrified him, and he kept his eyes shut for an extra moment, afraid to find out. Then he forced them open.

A white glow filled his vision. He blinked, shook his head, then squeezed his left eye shut and opened his right eye. A bit of glow persisted in the center of his vision, but he could see his own knee. He lifted his head and looked into O’Doul’s worried face. “I can see.”

“How’s the other eye?”

“It stings, so I’m leaving it shut.” He blinked and felt tears on his cheek. “O’Doul?”

“Yeah?”

“Close your faceplate.”

Her faceplate clicked shut, her lips moved, and her faceplate opened again. “I’m on channel 9 Delta.”

Tom nodded, then rose and shuffled forward, catching up to the stamper. He tapped at the sleeve of his vac suit, turning on his suit radio and changing the frequency. “You copy?”

“Loud and clear.”

Her voice only sounded in one ear. Tom touched the side of his helmet and grimaced. A chunk of helmet was missing. He was lucky he still had a face.

Light flashed in the corner of his eye, and he flinched away, then glanced over his shoulder. A couple of spacers were leaning around the corners of the T-intersection behind him, blasting away at the deck plates near his feet. His radio crackled, and a man said, “Creeper grenades.”

Oh, hell. The little walking grenades wouldn’t have far to go to get past the stamper and ruin his day pretty thoroughly.

O’Doul dropped to one knee, leaned over, and fired several shots under the stamper. A grenade exploded under the machine, and she swore, dropping her pistol. A chunk was gone from the muzzle, and blood dripped from her knuckles where shrapnel had torn her glove. A scratch marred the faceplate of her helmet as well.

The stamper emitted a low mechanical groan, almost human-sounding. Then the repulsor on the left-hand side gave out, and that side of the machine settled to the floor.

“Here,” said a man’s voice over the suit radio. “They want to play with grenades? Give them some of these.”

Tom turned, and one of the spacers behind him sent four golf-ball-sized objects bouncing down the corridor toward him. He had a moment of panic as he realized they were grenades. They weren’t live, though, and Tom and O’Doul dropped to their knees, scrabbling to collect the little bombs.

One grenade bounced under the stamper on the side that was still elevated. Tom and O’Doul managed to snag the other three. Tom kept one in his left hand as he and O’Doul stood, each with a grenade in their right hand.

“Ready?” she said.

“Ready,” he confirmed. They activated the grenades together, then stood up straight and threw.

The stamper had almost reached the emergency doors before it stopped. The doors were barely three meters away, not an easy target exactly, but not an impossible one. O’Doul’s grenade flew true, sailing in a lazy arc and passing perfectly through the middle of the gap at head-height.

Tom’s throw was a bit off. His grenade hit the edge of one door, bounced sideways, hit the edge of the opposite door, and then fell from sight.

They both ducked. O’Doul said, “Did yours go in?”

“I don’t-”

Twin explosions drowned him out, two blasts so close together they blended into a continuous roar. Tom used his free hand to draw his pistol and looked at O’Doul.

“What do you think?” she said.

Gunfire erupted on the other side of the emergency doors, and Tom flinched. None of it was coming through the gap, though. He said, “Sounds like the incursion teams are out of the tunnels.”

They went around opposite sides of the stamper, and more spacers came down the corridor from the T-intersection behind them. Tom and O’Doul pressed their backs against the emergency doors, the gap between them. Tom began to turn so he could peek inside.

An explosion boomed, deeper than the blast of the grenades, and he jerked his head back. Thick smoke erupted through the gap, making his eyes water. The smoke reeked of burning plastic, and he doubled over, coughing. He fumbled at the smart panel on his sleeve, turning off his suit radio so his cough wouldn’t broadcast.

“Do we open the doors and go in?” It was a man’s voice, which meant the other spacers had caught up. Tom blinked furiously until he was able to open both eyes. There was definitely something wrong with his left eye, but that was a problem for later.

He straightened up. “We’ll wait a moment,” he said. “Thick smoke and unfamiliar surroundings are the stuff that friendly fire incidents are made of.”

Something thumped against the emergency doors. Half a dozen guns swung to cover the gap. A hand appeared, enclosed in a thick glove, the fingers gripping the edge of the opening. O’Doul brought her pistol up, lining up on the knuckles.

“Wait,” Tom said, then had to wait for another fit of coughing. At length he managed to wheeze a single word. “Green.”

Green, the unofficial color of the Free Planets and by extension the colonial forces, was also the color of the paint that decorated the glove in front of them in a pattern of delicate swirls.

Tom’s helmet radio crackled, and a woman’s voice said, “This is Goldberg. We’re at the barricade on Deck Five. Does anyone on Deck Five copy?”

Tom said, “Is that you in the smoke?” He remembered he’d turned off his helmet mic, turned it back on, and repeated the question. Then he coughed.

“That’s us,” Goldberg replied. “The laundry bay is ours. Now help me get these doors open so we can clear out the smoke.”

Chapter 3

“I see you finally got away from babysitting duty.”

Alice looked up from a diagnostic tablet. “Hey, Raleigh. Yeah, they found a gymnasium with only two doors, and they blocked one door shut. The prisoners are all in there.”

“And now you have to do real work.” Raleigh grinned to show he was kidding. He was a nice kid, almost ridiculously good-looking, with dark hair that made a cowlick over his right eye. Like her he’d finally removed his vac suit and helmet. There was still some chance an undiscovered pocket of resistance would crop up and either take a shot at them or open an airlock and dump out all the atmosphere in this section of the ship. She figured the risk was small, especially when balanced against the fact that she was thoroughly sick of the constricting suit and the clumsy gloves.

“The ship’s a bit of a mess,” she told him. “Could be a lot worse, though. They never got around to serious sabotage.”

The tablet in her hands beeped, and she looked down. “Okay, we’ve got the air system mostly restored.” She tapped at the tablet. “There’s one air pump still not working, though.” She glanced around the secondary engineering bay, orienting herself. “There,” she said. “See that orange hatch? Grab a tool belt and head in there. Keep going until you hit a great big air pump.”

“Sure,” said Raleigh. “Then what do I do?”

“Figure out what’s wrong with it and fix it, of course.”

He chuckled. “That’s what I like. Nice specific instructions with lots of detail.”

He spent a couple of minutes rummaging for tools, then crossed to the orange hatch. “Hey, Alice, can you hear me?”

His voice was a low murmur, and it emerged from a Dawn Alliance toolbox on the table beside her. She leaned over the toolbox. “Say again.”

“This is Radio Free Neorome, broadcasting from the depths of-”

“Found it,” she said, pulling out an earbud and cheek microphone. She pushed the bud into her ear and stuck the microphone onto her cheek. “Do you copy this?”

“Clean and green,” Raleigh said, and clambered through the open hatchway. “Hey, it’s not too bad in here. I can almost stand up straight.”

She turned back to her tablet, wondering if the air circulation might actually be better with the fans shut off. The airflow machinery was designed as a complete system, and if one piece in the middle stopped—

A blast rifle fired behind her, three quick shots like distant thunderclaps. She dropped into a squat, letting go of the tablet and scrabbling for her rifle. It was nowhere in sight. What the hell did I do with it? I leaned it against the wall when I came in here. Stupid, stupid.

She craned her neck, trying to look in every direction at once. Where did the shots come from?

Raleigh screamed, and Alice’s guts twisted. Two more shots sounded, and the screaming stopped.

The silence was much worse.

Alice sprang up, ran to the door, and grabbed her rifle. With shaking hands she pointed it at the hatch where Raleigh had disappeared.

Nothing moved in the dark passageway beyond.

“Raleigh?” She wanted to shout the word, but her voice came out as a whisper. Her subconscious had figured out a couple of things her conscious mind was only just realizing.

Raleigh wasn’t going to answer. Raleigh was dead.

And Alice really didn’t want his killers to know she was there.

She knelt behind a workbench and took careful aim at the open hatch. She thought back to the first moments after the boy had disappeared. He’d made quite a racket. It was a narrow passage with a floor that squeaked with every step.

She strained her ears and heard only silence.

I almost wish they would come after me. I want a shot at those murdering bastards.

Well, there is a war on, and we boarded their ship.

She shoved the voice of reason aside, laid her rifle along the top of the bench, and activated her smart glove. “This is Alice Rose in Secondary Maintenance. I found some enemy combatants. They’re armed. I’m going to need some help.”

It took thirty endless minutes for squads from three different armed freighters to put together a plan. They pored over deck maps and technical drawings until they had a pretty good idea where the holdouts were hiding. “Secondary Maintenance,” Duncan McDougall said, tapping a wall display. “That’s the only name it seems to have. There’s three ways in, not counting Raleigh’s route.”

According to their readouts, the passageway where Raleigh had died actually ran along the ceiling of Secondary Maintenance. It would look like an exposed ceiling duct to the holdouts. They would have heard the boy’s footsteps, seen the duct tremble as he walked along. He must have made a beautiful target.

“We’ll leave someone here, just in case.” McDougall gestured at the open hatch. “I don’t think they’ll be coming out here, though.” He pointed at the deck plan. “This entrance here goes into a narrow corridor with a couple of bends. We’ll start there. We won’t take fire from more than one person at a time. We’ll take a peek into the room and see what’s what.”

“I want to lead the incursion,” Alice said. When McDougall’s eyebrows drew together she said, “I know this part of the ship. I was working right here when Raleigh got shot, after all.”

“Fine,” said McDougall. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

He had no particular authority to give or deny permission, but this wasn’t the United Worlds Navy. Colonists didn’t rely on rules and procedures. He held the rank of Captain, same as her. Whoever had the most relevant experience naturally took charge, and everyone else went along because they weren’t damned fools.

Four of McDougall’s shipmates went with her to the hatch that gave access to Secondary Maintenance. All of them were men, which Alice found vaguely annoying. Some men thought a man should be in charge in a combat situation. She hoped they wouldn’t give her any trouble.

No one tried to push in front of her, though, when the hatch slid open. Alice was back in her vac suit by now, and she closed her faceplate before taking a quick peek around the corner. When no one shot at her she took another, longer look.

The corridor before her was narrow, barely wide enough for her shoulders. It extended no more than four or five paces before turning sharply to the right. The walls and ceiling were a jumble of pipes and conduits and bundles of wire.

It meant there were thousands of places you could hide a sophisticated booby-trap. These were probably regular crew, though. Not commandos or Special Forces. If there wasn’t something obvious, like a tripwire, she figured she was probably safe.

One way to find out.

“Everyone copy?”

A chorus of replies came from her four-man squad.

“Don’t crowd me,” she said. “But don’t dawdle either.” Then she took a deep breath and stepped into the corridor.

She advanced one careful step at a time, leaning first one way and then another to avoid brushing a pipe and making a sound. With her helmet on and visor closed it was impossible to tell if she was making any noise. She cringed as she thought of how the floor had squeaked under Raleigh’s boots in the access tunnel. The floor here felt sturdy, and she assumed it was silent. Still, she had to fight the urge to curl her index finger around the trigger of her blast rifle.

When she reached the corner she drew the rifle close to her body, muzzle pointed at the ceiling so it wouldn’t show around the corner. This is a terrible weapon for close-range work. I should have traded with someone for a pistol.

Slowly, cautiously, she stuck her head around the corner.

Ahead of her was another stretch of corridor just as narrow as the one she stood in. After three or four paces, though, the corridor opened into a cluttered room. She couldn’t see the side walls. Well, technically she couldn’t see the opposite wall either. It was completely hidden by cabinets, pipes, fixtures, terminals, screens, and racks of tools. Much of the floor space in between was buried in machines and consoles and miscellaneous technical junk.

She could see two people, a man and a woman, both in burgundy Dawn Alliance uniforms. Neither was looking straight at her. The man held a blast rifle, and she scowled, wondering if he was the one who had shot Raleigh. He leaned against a workbench, with the mix of wire-tight tension and utter boredom that you only saw in combat situations.

The woman had her back to Alice. Hands shoved in her pockets, head hanging, she looked miserable and defeated.

Alice thought back to the deck plans she had examined with McDougall. Secondary Maintenance could have held thirty people, if they stood practically shoulder to shoulder. Judging by the clutter of equipment in the room, fifteen was a more realistic maximum. But the room wasn’t crowded. She could only see that one slice from the middle, but unless there were soldiers folded together like socks just out of sight to the left and right, the room likely didn’t hold more than six or eight.

I can only see two people. The woman has her back to me. I’m in the man’s peripheral vision, but if he glances away, I wonder if I could get any closer. She looked down, planning where to put her feet.

And a shadow moved on the deck plates at the end of the corridor. Alice froze, not even breathing. She spent a moment analysing patterns of light and shadow in the room, trying to figure out where the lights were. By the look of it, there was a ceiling light just past the doorway on the right.

And there, on the deck plates in front of her, was the shadow of a soldier standing right beside the doorway.

Well, it makes sense. They must be watching every entrance. I’m glad I didn’t decide to sneak any closer.

She returned her gaze to the man with the blast rifle. She waited so long that one of the men in her squad said, “Alice? Are you all right?”

She ignored him.

Finally, after a small eternity, the man with the blast rifle turned his head. He seemed to look directly at her, but there was no alarm, no recognition on his face.

His head turned farther. He glanced in the opposite direction, and in that instant she drew her head back.

“Well? What did you see?”

It took her a moment to realize the voice belonged to McDougall. She peered down the narrow corridor behind her, past the four members of her squad to where McDougall stood, hands on his hips. Quickly she described what she’d seen.

“We’ll get you a couple of grenades,” McDougall said. “This will be over in a hurry.”

“No!” The word was out of Alice’s mouth before she knew why she was objecting. “We can’t just kill them.”

“Of course we can,” McDougall snapped. “It’s what they did to Raleigh. He was a good kid. I hired him myself.”

Alice winced. Raleigh and McDougall had been shipmates. That meant close bonds. And when you had someone young and inexperienced on your crew, you tended to look out for them. To get invested in the idea of keeping them safe.

“They’re not all combatants,” she said. “That woman I saw. She’s unarmed. She would surrender in a heartbeat if she had the chance.”

“She’s Dawn Alliance,” McDougall said. “She’s the enemy. That’s all I need to know.”

Alice shook her head. This wasn’t the time or place for a discussion of ethics, and McDougall clearly wasn’t going to budge. She turned away, wondering if she could simply refuse to throw a grenade. McDougall would just send one of the others to do it, though, or throw the grenade himself.

She retracted her faceplate, turned, and stepped around the corner. She held the blast rifle in her hands, but when the man sitting on the workbench spotted her, she pointed the rifle carefully at the air above his head. “You’re completely surrounded,” she said. “We have all the exits covered. You’re outnumbered, and we have grenades. You need to surrender.”

McDougall swore over the suit radio. Alice ignored him, all her attention focused on the maintenance room. The woman had spun around. She was older than Alice had imagined, well into her forties. She reminds me of Mom. The woman stood frozen, her hands still in her pockets, her mouth open and her eyes wide.

The man still sat on the bench. He clutched his rifle, the barrel pointed at the ceiling. He looked like he was trying to find the courage to try something.

“Shooting me won’t help,” she told him. “There’s dozens of us.” She jerked her head, indicating the squad behind her. “Most of them don’t really want to negotiate. They want to chuck a couple of grenades in here and be done with it. But they’ve agreed to let me try diplomacy.”

McDougall snorted in her ear. She ignored him.

The man glanced to the side, then flinched. Alice jerked back as a woman stepped into view with a blast pistol in her hand. Half a dozen shots slammed into the pipes at the bend in the corridor, and a spray of sparks burst from a ruptured cable.

“That’s it,” said McDougall. “You had your chance. Now we blow them up.”

Something in his voice, though, told Alice his heart wasn’t in it. She’d spoiled his vengeful mindset by taking the high road.

Alice poked her head around the corner, worried that the prisoners might be rushing the corridor. She found herself looking almost down the barrel of a blast rifle held by a thick-shouldered man at the end of the corridor. He fired, missing her by a rather small margin, and she pulled her head back.

“Bloody hell. If you’re not careful you’re going to set off the FSS.”

She didn’t know who had spoken, but whoever it was, she wanted to give him a kiss. “That’s a good idea.” She edged down the corridor, away from the corner and toward McDougall. The closest man backed away to give her room. She said, “Cheng, right?” He was a pilot and technician on the Solstice.

He nodded.

“Let me get by.” He pressed his back against the wall, and she squeezed past him. “Watch the corner. Shoot anyone you see.”

He nodded and took aim. Alice turned her attention to the wall of the corridor. She’d seen everything she needed, though she hadn’t noticed it at the time.

The panel she wanted was painted bright red, but still she almost missed it in the jumble of pipes and fixtures. Fire Suppression Gas Control. Emergency Use Only.

There would be detectors somewhere in Secondary Maintenance that would trigger the fire suppression system if they sensed enough heat and smoke. Given enough time, she could also persuade the ship’s computer to turn the system on. But there was no need, with the manual controls right there in front of her.

A smart panel on the top of the hatch came to life when she grabbed it, flashing dire warnings about the danger of suffocation. She ignored them all, examining the controls inside. They were both simple and mechanical, designed for use by a terrified crewmember during a catastrophic accident that might fry the electronic systems. None of it matched any fire suppression system she had encountered on other ships, but she had no trouble figuring things out. A big red switch rested behind a transparent plastic cover. She had to pull the cover up and then turn it sideways to get it out of the way. She pushed on the switch, couldn’t move it, and gave it a clockwise twist instead. It unlocked with a loud click, and a red light flashed just above the switch.

“The hatch is about to close,” Alice said. “If you’re inside, close your faceplates.”

She sealed her helmet and flipped the switch. The corridor darkened as the hatch behind her slid shut. An alarm blared, muted by her helmet.

“What did you do?”

She looked at her four squad mates, wondering who had spoken. “I triggered the fire suppression system.” She grinned. “We’ve all got vac suits.” She gestured toward the corner of the corridor. “They don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve seen four of them,” Alice said. She closed her eyes, replaying the brief glimpses she’d seen of the woman with the pistol and the thick-shouldered man in the doorway. “None of them had suits.”

A long moment passed in silence. A different voice spoke, a man who sounded young and nervous. That would be Roberts, junior navigator on the Drifting Pollen. “Is it working?”

Alice shrugged, though no one would see it through her suit. “I assume so. It’ll be an inert gas. Probably argon. Maybe halon. We won’t be able to see it.”

Roberts lifted his hands in a plaintive gesture. “How will we know if it’s there?”

“Well, the gas is heavier than air. You could open your faceplate, get down and your hands and knees, and see if you can breathe.”

He gave her a dirty look. “Ha ha.”

Alice fiddled with the controls on the sleeve of her suit, turning on the microphone and speakers on the outside of her helmet. The wailing of the alarm became much louder. She imagined the Dawn Alliance crew listening to the alarm, knowing the room was slowly filling with a suffocating gas. How long until panic drove them into a suicidal charge? She realized she’d set her rifle down in order to activate the fire suppression system. I have to pay more attention to where I leave that damned thing. I really need a pistol. Then I can just shove it in the holster and always know where it is.

She found the rifle and picked it up. Cheng still waited near the corner. She put a hand on the back of his shoulder and edged past him until she could peek around the corner.

The broad-shouldered man still stood at the corner a few paces away, but he didn’t fire.

“You need to surrender.”

The rifle in his hands, trained more or less on her face, didn’t so much as waver as he raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

He can’t hear me over the alarm. The helmet speakers don’t amount to much. Well, if he’s still on his feet, the gas can’t be very high yet.

She opened her faceplate. The blare of the fire alarm, annoying enough through the speakers in her helmet, was almost painful. She shouted, “You need to surrender!”

“We’ll die first.” The words were defiant, but his body language and tone of voice were anything but. He sounded weary and defeated, like he was making a simple statement of fact.

“You sound like you’d rather quit.”

He managed to shrug without moving the rifle. “It’s not my decision.”

Behind him, a woman stepped into view. She wore the same dark uniform as the other soldiers, but she carried herself with a bristling arrogance that announced she was the one in charge. She was young, but the hard, uncompromising expression on her face made her seem older. She held a blast pistol in her right hand. “Shoot her!” she cried, then raised the pistol and snapped a shot at Alice.

Alice flinched back, and a shot punched a hole in a pipe on the corridor wall. Water dribbled out and pooled on the floor. A moment later another shot came, scorching the paint on a steel fixture. Judging by the angle, the second shot was from the broad-shouldered man with the rifle.

“Bloody hell.”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until McDougall said, “What’s happening?”

“It looks like most of them see reality,” Alice said. “But there’s one fanatic.” For the benefit of her squad mates she said, “We better be ready for a suicide rush.”

“You should get out of there,” said McDougall. “We’ll close the door behind you and wait for them to suffocate.”

“We can’t do that!” It was Roberts. “Some of them want to surrender.”

“Fine,” said McDougall, sounding thoroughly tired of the whole mess. “If they come after you, open the hatch and hit the floor. We’ll blast them from here.”

“Roger that,” said Alice. She was breathing quickly, and she tried to decide if that was stress or oxygen deprivation. I’m afraid for my life. I should be breathing quickly, right?

How long does it take for a room like this to fill with gas, anyway? She brought a hand up to the faceplate controls on the side of her helmet, then hesitated. I need to be able to hear them if they surrender. Or if they charge.

“We need a mirror,” said a voice over the helmet radio. “Then we could peek around the corner without getting shot.”

“Wait a minute,” said someone else. There was silence for a minute. Then a man said, “Here. Pass this through to them.”

“But the gas-”

“Just open the door, pass it through, and close it quick. Not much will get out.”

The corridor brightened as the hatch behind Alice slid open, then darkened again as the hatch closed. The men in the corridor passed something from one to the next, until finally the last man handed Alice a small bundle.

“What’s this?” She examined a palm-sized screen with a meter-long wire connecting it to a lump of metal the size of her pinky finger.

“Tool screen,” said a voice on her helmet radio. “Basically a camera on a wire.”

She found a power switch on the side of the screen, and it came to life, showing her a distorted view of her own leg. She moved the little camera around and watched the image on the screen change.

Quick experimentation showed her that the camera and screen had magnetic contact points. She snaked her hand around the corner as discreetly as she could, fastening the camera to the underside of a steel pipe. The screen showed a tilted view of the room beyond. She stuck the edge of the screen to a flat section of corridor wall and stepped back.

The tool screen showed seven men and women in a huddle around a workbench in the middle of the room. Only four of them were armed. Their voices came to her as an unintelligible murmur, low and urgent.

“No!” It was a man’s voice, too upset to speak softly. “We can’t just run at them. The corridor’s too narrow. It’s suicide.”

Alice stuck her head around the corner. “He’s right,” she called. “We can see you coming. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

The hard-faced woman swung her pistol in Alice’s direction. Alice pulled her head back.

“The gas must be getting pretty deep,” said a voice on the radio. “The shortest ones should start dropping pretty soon.”

“Hey out there!” It was a man’s voice, hoarse and frightened. “New Panama troops! We surrender.”

Alice looked at the tool screen. The hard-faced woman had a pistol pointed directly at the camera. The broad-shouldered man had a rifle to his shoulder, taking aim down the corridor.

“Put down the rifle and the pistol,” Alice said. “Or you can stand there until you suffocate.”

The woman holstered her pistol. The man leaned his rifle against the bench.

“Take the pistol out of your holster,” Alice called. “Drop it on the floor. Lay the rifle on the floor too.”

The woman drew her pistol, tapped the side of it to turn on the safety, then dropped it at her feet. The man bent over, laying his rifle on the floor. When he straightened up he was panting. The fire suppression gas was at least waist-deep, then.

Alice stepped around the corner, pointing her rifle at the group. She could think of a dozen things they might try, from hidden guns to another prisoner waiting just out of sight. “Everybody on the floor,” she said. “Hands behind your heads.”

The older woman, the one who reminded her Alice of her mother, promptly knelt. Her mouth opened and her chest heaved as she fought for air.

“Damn it. Stand up. Somebody turn off the gas!”

The broad-shouldered man had to help the woman to her feet. She clutched him as she gasped for breath.

The alarm went silent. “Got it,” said a voice over the radio. “You want me to open the door?”

“No.” The gas gave the colonists a major tactical advantage, and she didn’t want to give it up. The prisoners looked docile enough, but her instincts screamed at her that she was still in danger. The hard-faced woman was staring at Alice with murder in her eyes.

This fight wasn’t over.

Alice stuck her head out of the corridor and into the maintenance room, glancing quickly left and right. No one waited to ambush her. There were no booby-traps that she could see.

“Hurry up,” said Cheng over the radio. He nudged her shoulder from behind for emphasis. “The sooner you get out of the way, the sooner we’ve got two guns on them instead of one.”

That sounded sensible to Alice. She stepped into the maintenance room and moved to her right. Cheng stepped through and moved left, and a third colonist came forward.

The hard-faced woman continued to glare.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” said Alice, “It won’t work. Don’t die for nothing.”

“I brought tie straps,” said Cheng, and holstered his pistol. He pulled a bundle of long plastic strips from a cargo pocket on his thigh. “Cover me.”

He walked toward the group of prisoners, and Alice moved forward with him. Behind her, the other members of her squad moved left and right so Alice and Cheng wouldn’t block their line of fire.

Alice brought her rifle to her shoulder, taking aim at the hard-faced woman. If she was truly a fanatic, this would be her best opportunity to do some damage. If I was nuts, if I knew a frontal attack wouldn’t work, if I was absolutely determined to kill someone before I died, I might do it like this. Pretend to surrender, to lure them in close.

She was the only real threat, Alice was sure. The others didn’t look defiant. They looked scared.

In fact, the older woman looked downright terrified. Her head was up out of the gas, but she was still panting, her eyes wide and her hands opening and closing, opening and closing. Does she think we’re about to kill her? That doesn’t make any sense. If we wanted her dead we could just asphyxiate her.

She knows something. She knows that something is about to happen, and it terrifies her.

Alice said, “Cheng-”

Cheng stretched out his hand, taking the hard-faced woman by the left forearm. He set the bundle of plastic ties on the bench, selected one, and brought it up to her wrist.

Her hand was clenched in a fist. As the tie circled her wrist she smiled and opened her hand.

A grenade tumbled from her palm and clattered onto the floor.

Chapter 4

Alice didn’t see Cheng move. She just felt the impact when his shoulder slammed into her, driving her back and behind some standing pipes. She landed hard on her right shoulder, her helmet slamming into the deck plates as the grenade exploded. She wasn’t sure if the flash of light she saw was from the grenade or the impact.

Cheng landed on top of her, his weight driving the air from her lungs. She couldn’t inhale, which was just as well, because there would be no oxygen at floor level. His face appeared directly above her, just a handspan away. She could see his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in her ears. His hand fumbled at the side of her helmet, and her faceplate slid shut.

He rolled off her and rose to one knee, a laser pistol in his hand. She heard his voice, sounding distant and tinny. “Get the door open. We’ve got people down. And there’s holes in my suit, so I’m not airtight.” He looked at Alice. “Rose has a hole in her boot, too.”

Alice looked down the length of her body and was startled to see a red circle on the top of her right foot. She felt no pain, but as she watched, blood welled from the red circle and dribbled onto the floor.

She shifted her gaze to Cheng, and her stomach muscles tightened. The left side of his vac suit was a mess from hip to ankle, tatters of fabric mixed with blood and exposed muscle. He tried to stand, then sank back onto his knee.

Alice sat up, finally managing to take a painful breath. She did a quick inventory and decided she was probably unhurt, aside from her foot. Her rifle was nowhere in sight. I must have dropped it when Cheng tackled me.

Groaning, she grabbed a standing pipe and pulled herself to her feet. The pipes, scored and gouged by shrapnel, seemed to have protected her and Cheng from the worst of the blast.

The rest of the room seemed far away, shrouded in a gray haze. She recognized the effects of adrenaline overload, and spent a moment breathing deeply and wiggling her fingers and toes. It was a trick Fagan, her old captain, had taught her. Concentrate on something trivial, something you could control. Shift your focus to something other than terror.

It worked, more or less. Her vision cleared and she scanned the room.

The rest of the squad stood in a semi-circle around the bench where the grenade had detonated. They still held weapons at the ready, but the tension had gone out of them.

More troops came in from a hatch on the far side of the room, faceplates closed and weapons up. They took in the carnage, standing frozen for a moment, then lowering or holstering their weapons. A man hurried toward Cheng. The others stared at the mess around the bench.

Bodies littered the floor. The deck plates were wet with blood. At first Alice thought all the soldiers were dead. Then a man sat up, one hand clutching the side of his face, blood leaking between his fingers. It took Alice a moment to recognize the first man she’d seen, the one who’d been sitting on the bench. His eyes were closed, and he panted for breath. A couple of colonists grabbed him by the upper arms and hauled him to his feet, then sat him once more on the bench. One sleeve was torn and bloody, and the side of his uniform was shredded at the waist and hip.

Another soldier got up on his own, a fat man on the far side of the bench. He was wide-eyed, and his chest heaved, but he seemed to be uninjured.

The older woman was dead. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her face was untouched, but her chest and stomach were a bloody mess. The broad-shouldered man lay still, but he must have been alive, because a couple of spacers picked him up and laid him on a counter along the side wall.

The hard-faced woman who’d caused so much carnage was dead. The grenade had gone off pretty much at her feet, destroying her lower legs. It was the blast shot to her upper chest that had killed her, though.

I did that. Alice shivered. She had no memory of pulling the trigger, but the wound was exactly where she’d been aiming when the grenade appeared.

“This is stupid.” The voice came over Alice’s helmet radio. “We should have just used grenades. Now Cheng’s got shrapnel wounds and we have a bunch more prisoners to take care of.”

“I told her that,” said McDougall. “These DA soldiers are all crazy. Bunch of damn lunatics willing to blow themselves up for-”

His voice cut out as Alice unsealed her helmet. She pulled the helmet off, set it on a console, and sighed. She didn’t know if McDougall and the anonymous woman were right, but she damn sure didn’t want to listen to them.

A man and a woman without vac suits pushed their way into the room carrying bulky medical kits. As they did triage Alice found her rifle on the floor. For a moment the sight of it repelled her. I just killed someone with that thing. But it needed doing. If people like me won’t fight back, people like her get control over everything.

She picked up the rifle and slung it across her back.

There was a circle of blood the size of her palm on the deck plates beside the rifle. She followed a line of red blotches across the deck to the standing pipes. Oh, God. That’s my blood. There’s a lot of it, too.

“You’re leaking,” said a voice behind her.

She turned to see a woman in a green jumpsuit with a med kit in one hand. The woman dropped the kit and grabbed Alice by the upper arms, which seemed odd until the whole room tilted and Alice fell. She landed on her side, her head lolling.

“There’s still some gas.” The woman’s voice echoed strangely, like she was speaking into a barrel. “Let’s get you sitting up.” She heaved Alice into a sitting position, then dragged her sideways until her back was against a standing pipe. “There we go. Can you breathe?”

Sure. I’m fine. You should help someone who’s actually hurt. Alice formed the words in her mind, but for some reason her voice wouldn’t work.

“Wow. That’s nasty. Looks like the boot took most of the damage, though.”

The woman held Alice’s boot in her hands. When did she take my boot off? The sole was wet with blood, and a chunk was missing where the ball of her foot would be. The boot tilted, and Alice caught a glimpse of light. There was a hole in the top of the boot as well.

A chunk of shrapnel went right through. That means there’s a hole in my foot. She looked down, then swallowed hard as her stomach tried to empty itself. Her foot was a gory mess.

“Hold still. I’m going to seal the wound. Then we’ll get you to the surgery.”

Alice looked away as the woman went to work. She saw a couple of men carry Cheng out on a stretcher. He looked awful, his skin blanched, his leg crusted in trauma gel. But he gave her a grin as he went past at eye level.

Warm tingles spread through her injured foot. She felt her first twinge of pain, but it faded quickly. She looked down and saw her toes sticking out from a nest of pink gel. “That’ll hold you for now,” the woman said. “You’ll have to wait for a stretcher, though.”

“Sharla? Can you give me a hand?”

The woman glanced over her shoulder, then looked at Alice.

“Go,” said Alice. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t get up,” Sharla said. “The painkillers in the gel might make you feel pretty good, but you need to stay on your ass.” She stood and hurried away.

“What a shit show,” Alice said to no one in particular.

“I guess.”

She looked around. McDougall stood beside her. He dropped to one knee, looked at her foot, and grimaced. Then he looked her in the eye. “I suppose we should have just gassed them. But I’m glad we tried to do the right thing.”

Alice shrugged, suddenly weary. She’d saved a couple of people who would now be prisoners. Either they’d die when the ship reached Novograd, or they’d eventually get free to rejoin the war effort. She’d gotten Cheng hurt, and herself. It was pure luck none of the other spacers were hurt or killed. “I don’t know if I’m a damn fool or not.”

“Maybe we’re done,” said McDougall. “Maybe this was the last pocket of resistance on the ship.”

“We’re not done,” said Alice. “Not by a long damn shot.” She looked at the corpse of the woman she’d killed. Novograd was infested with soldiers just like her. Liberating the planet was going to be a bloody nightmare.

Chapter 5

Tom and O’Reilly stood in a room designated, in the usual imaginative style of the Dawn Alliance, as Five–One. That meant it was on Deck Five, right at the front of the ship. The room also encompassed Deck Four, because it had a very high ceiling. Leather benches lined the walls. A long table lined with comfortable-looking padded chairs dominated the room, with several smaller tables scattered around.

“I think this is the Officers’ Mess,” O’Reilly said. “It’s … almost nice.”

Tom nodded his agreement. This was luxury for military men as imagined by a totalitarian government. There were some nice touches, like living vines and flowers covering the starboard bulkhead, but it still felt like a soulless steel box.

The table was polished to a high shine, and he leaned over it, squinting at his reflection. Without a proper mirror he couldn’t make out the red burn across his forehead. He closed first one eye, then the other. His right eye was fine. His left eye was a little blurry, but he thought it was getting better.

“Hang on, what’s this?” O’Reilly walked over to a console near the entrance doors. He tapped the screen awake, then did some poking and swiping. The lights dimmed, then brightened. Music blared from hidden speakers, an ugly synthesized beat. O’Reilly quickly silenced it.

Then a rumble came from the forward bulkhead. Tom looked in that direction. The wall was blank and dark. He’d taken it for painted steel panels, though he hadn’t looked closely. Now he noticed a gleam of reflected light. Is that glass?

Three horizontal bars appeared, stretching the full width of the forward wall. Stripes of green light appeared, then grew. Tom grunted in surprise. “It’s a window.”

“It’s a window,” O’Reilly agreed. He left the panel and rejoined Tom. They stood side by side, watching as thick plates of armor on the far side of the glass rose and turned sideways until they were perfectly horizontal. The front wall of the room was a single transparent panel from floor to ceiling. Three sheets of armor plating, edge-on from his point of view, made black lines across the window. Aside from that, there was an unimpeded view of hyperspace.

A vast storm raged in front of the ship. A thousand shades of green churned and swirled, darkening and brightening as energy shifted and flowed within the maelstrom.

O’Reilly said, “Looks like we’ll skirt it pretty close.”

With proper repairs the battleship could ignore any storm in the seventh dimension. She was badly damaged, though, and she was accompanied by a couple of raiders. The Rime Frost and the Trickling Brook still shadowed the battleship. The rest of the fleet had returned to join the defense of New Panama.

“We’re making good time,” said O’Reilly. “We’ve got decent navigation, too. This tub lost a lot of nav thrusters during the battle, but the extra boosters help with steering.”

Tom nodded absently. Booster rockets were an innovation of the New Panama fleet. Designed originally for salvage work, they could be quickly mounted to the side of a disabled ship to move it. The fleet used them to bring back captured ships with locked computers or crippled engines.

The boosters were never designed for anything the size of a battleship. But with four boosters attached to the hull and a bit of output from two of the battleship’s own engines, they were moving at a reasonable clip.

“I estimate eight days to Novograd,” O’Reilly said. “Nine if we hit a lot of weather.”

“That will do,” Tom said. It was enough time for the ship to be reported missing, but not so long that she would be assumed lost or captured.

He hoped.

Well, the ship is a juggernaut. Even if they realize we’re a Trojan horse the moment they see us, they’ll have a hell of a time stopping us.

“Do we have a plan?” O’Reilly asked. “For Novograd, I mean. Assuming we survive the assault on the station.”

“Not a really detailed plan,” Tom admitted. They’d be winging it to a large degree once they arrived. Any attempt to scout the system risked alerting the enemy and spoiling the element of surprise. His plan was to drop into normal space as close to Novograd as he could manage, and then see what happened.

“Pity we can’t nuke the station,” O’Reilly said. “Bastards deserve it.”

Tom shuddered, remembering the Kestrel with most of her crew dying slowly of radiation poisoning. “We’ve got the Dawn Alliance honoring the new treaties,” he said. “Let’s leave the genie in the bottle.”

O’Reilly nodded. He’d been on the Kestrel with Tom. He knew the horrors of nuclear combat.

“We could die attacking the station,” Tom said. “If that happens, well, we have all the plans we need. If we survive, we’ll stay in orbit and wait for reinforcements.” The Free Neorome Navy wouldn’t be able to do much to support the battleship, but the United Worlds had considerable naval forces in the Green Zone. They were unwilling to launch an attack on Novograd, but if the station was gone, surely they’d send a few ships to help keep the system.

“What about the planet?”

Tom shrugged. “We can only do so much. Smashing the station is our job. Someone else will have to liberate the planet.”

“There’s local resistance,” said O’Reilly. “We should try to find out how to contact them.”

“I’ll talk to Alice.”

O’Reilly smirked. “Of course you will.”

“Oh, put a cork in it.” Tom turned in a circle, examining the room. “If this is the Officers’ Mess, where’s the booze?”

“Looted in the first ten minutes after we boarded, of course.”

“Of course,” Tom said. “Close the shutters, and let’s continue our tour.” He sighed and turned away from the windows with their glorious view of the storm.

“You look tired, Sir. We could do this later.”

Tom chuckled. He was exhausted, but it wasn’t as if he could rest. “We may as well do it now. The truth is, I’m too wound up to sit still.”

They resumed their expedition, climbing up and down ladders and staircases, moving from port to starboard and back again. Tom had forgotten just how big battleships were. This inspection tour was going to take a very long time.

Thirty minutes later they were back on Deck Five, not far aft of the Officers’ Mess, when the sound of a blast pistol came echoing down the corridor. They looked at one another, then drew their own sidearms and headed aft at a run.

The corridor ahead was clear, but raised voices came from a stairwell. Tom led the way, despite a heroic effort by O’Reilly to get in front of him. He dropped into a crouch and crept downward, one step at a time.

A woman in a green New Panama uniform stepped into view, leveling a rifle at them. She tilted the barrel up and said, “Jesus. You scared me.” She took another look. “Captain,” she added, and straightened. “Captains.”

Tom straightened up and trotted down the stairs. “What’s going on?”

An interesting expression flitted across the woman’s face. For a moment she looked almost furtive, like she’d been caught pilfering cookies. She smoothed her features, making Tom wonder if he’d imagined it. “There was an incident with some prisoners. One of them got shot.”

Tom frowned. He’d assumed all the prisoners were in the gymnasium. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, though, he saw more than a dozen figures in burgundy uniforms lined up in the corridor ahead. They were all on their knees with fingers laced behind their necks.

All but one. A man lay sprawled in the middle of the corridor, facedown, his arms and legs splayed out at awkward angles. A man stood over him with a laser rifle. Half a dozen more spacers watched the rest of the prisoners.

Tom walked forward, simultaneously revolted and baffled. “What the hell is going on here?”

The closest spacers glanced at him, and he saw the same expression he’d glimpsed on the woman’s face. Whatever they were doing, they weren’t exactly proud of it.

The exception was the man who stood over the dead prisoner. He was older than Tom by at least ten years, with the single bar of a lieutenant on his sleeve. The look he gave Tom was all defiance. “We had to shoot a prisoner.”

The brand-new military of New Panama had very few hard and fast rules regarding etiquette. Some informal rules were evolving, though. Tom had grown accustomed to being addressed as “Captain”, “Commodore”, or “Sir”. He couldn’t reprimand this man for skipping the formalities, but it was hardly an encouraging sign.

“What’s your name, Lieutenant?”

“Hamilton. I was on the Aurora.”

The whole navy was organized into teams based on who had served together on a ship before the war. If Hamilton was from the Aurora, so were all the spacers in the corridor.

Tom said, “I thought all the prisoners were in the gymnasium.”

Hamilton shrugged. “There’s pockets all over the ship. We’ve been collecting them.” He nodded at O’Reilly. “His orders, I believe.”

“All right,” said Tom, and looked at the corpse. “What happened?”

“We ordered them all to kneel,” Hamilton said. He pointed with his foot, not quite nudging the dead man in the ribs. “This one stood up.”

“So you shot him?”

“They have us outnumbered,” said Hamilton. “We let them ignore orders, we’ll end up with a real problem.”

That sounded cold-blooded to Tom, but he decided not to object. He was here. I wasn’t. I won’t second-guess him. Still ….

Tom walked to the closest living prisoner and knelt. It was a woman, her head slumped. When his knees appeared in her circle of vision she lifted her head. Her eyes were wide in a bloodless face, and she leaned away like she thought he would strike her.

“What happened here?” said Tom.

She glanced at Hamilton, and then looked down without speaking.

“You won’t be harmed,” said Tom. “You have my word.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she lifted her head and met his gaze.

“I need you to tell me what happened.” He was insulting Hamilton pretty badly by not accepting his word, but a man was dead and Tom figured he had a duty to be sure he knew the facts.

“We were in the chart room,” she said. “Your soldiers herded us all in there, and then they left a man outside the door. He said he’d shoot anyone who came outside.” Her voice trailed off.

“Go on.”

“Well, then these guys came along.” Her head turned left and right, indicating Hamilton and his squad. “They told the other man he could leave. They brought us out here, one at a time.” Her tongue touched her lips, and she swallowed nervously. “Bud was scared. He thought they were going to kill us all. He kept hanging back until it was just him and me.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she hung her head. “I had to pull his fingers loose from my arm before he let me come out here. I got down on my knees like they said. And then I heard them ordering him out into the hallway.”

Hamilton said, “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tom silenced him with a look. To the woman he said, “Go on.”

“He came out. He was shaking. He kept pleading with them not to kill him. They made him kneel, but then he got up again. He was backing away with his hands up, saying don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me…” Her voice trailed off.

“And then they shot him?”

She nodded.

“We told him to get down,” Hamilton said. He sounded smug, almost bored. “We told him again and again.”

Tom straightened up, frustrated and angry. He realized his fists were clenched, and made himself straighten his fingers. “Get them on their feet,” he said. “Take them to the gymnasium.”

“Actually,” said O’Reilly, “we’ve been moving the prisoners to Four Twenty-two. It’s the crew bunkrooms. There’s only a couple exits, and there’s beds and bathrooms. There’s even a little kitchen.”

“Fine,” said Tom. “Take them there.” He looked at O’Reilly. “We’ll come along to make sure there’s no more unfortunate incidents.”

Hamilton said, “We should get them to move that.” He indicated the corpse. “And clean up the blood.”

“You can do that yourself,” Tom snapped. “You made it happen.” He glared at Hamilton. “You’ll treat the body with respect, too.”

Hamilton glared back at him, then turned and followed the straggling, subdued line of prisoners.

Tom walked behind him, staring at the back of Hamilton’s head. What the man had done wasn’t criminal, exactly. Not that the New Panama Navy had procedures or rules of engagement for situations like this. If this had happened on a United Worlds ship, there would be an investigation. Hamilton would likely get a reprimand, but no prison time.

He was guilty of poor judgement and brutal indifference, not murder.

Hamilton looked over his shoulder. “You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, Commodore.” He slowed until he was walking beside Tom. “We’re at war. And so far, we’re on the losing side.” He gestured around at the battleship. “You’re used to serving on ships like this, with lots of power and lots of personnel and all the infrastructure that goes with it. But these are the colonies. The only time we get ships like this is when we steal them.”

Tom didn’t answer, didn’t look at him.

“We learn pragmatism in the colonies,” Hamilton said. “High principles are lovely and all, but when the pressure’s on, you have to be practical.” He gestured at the prisoners. “What do you think is going to happen to them?” He sneered. “One of two things, that’s what. They’ll die when we get to Novograd. This ship will be destroyed. They’ll die, we’ll die, and it won’t matter in the slightest if we took good care of them for a week in the meantime.”

Tom ground his teeth together, not speaking.

“Or,” said Hamilton, “they’ll be liberated. Even if they don’t want to fight anymore, they won’t have a choice. They’re trained naval personnel. They’ll be back on other Dawn Alliance ships in no time. They will make our enemy stronger. We’ll have to fight them again.”

“We don’t kill prisoners,” Tom said.

“They kill us!” A red flush spread across Hamilton’s face. “They invade our colonies. They destroy our ships. They kill people. They hold almost the entire Green Zone, and so far we’re doing a shit job of driving them out!”

“We won’t sink to their level.”

“Bullshit!” Hamilton looked every bit as furious as Tom felt. “We’ve already sunk! We sit back and watch while they invade our homes and kill our families. How much lower than that can you get?”

Tom stared at him, certain the man was wrong but not knowing how to articulate it. He couldn’t just order the man to change his attitude. Independence ran too deep in the colonists’ psyche.

“Everything that reduces our effectiveness has a cost.” Hamilton was calm now. “Everything that helps the enemy has a cost. Right now, the civilians on Novograd are paying that cost. When they finish retooling the factories in the colony and start producing guns and ammunition, the rest of the civilians in the Green Zone will pay the cost as well.”

The look Hamilton gave Tom was cold and bleak and tired. “If shoving all these prisoners out an airlock will help our mission even the tiniest bit, then that’s what we need to do. Because if we don’t take out that space station, we’re not retaking Novograd. And if we don’t get Novograd soon, we’ll never get the Green Zone back.”

Tom made a thorough inspection of the detention wing, as it was becoming known. It was crowded; there were more prisoners than bunks. They would have to sleep in shifts. It was not unendurable, and each prisoner could wander freely through the wing. In addition to bathrooms and showers and the kitchen there were several small recreational rooms and a little arboretum with live plants. All in all it was far more humane than anything Tom had encountered as a prisoner of the Dawn Alliance.

Satisfied that the prisoners were not being abused, he had the guards take him through their security procedures. These were being put together on the fly, but they seemed adequate. The detention wing had only two exits, and the colonists had installed magnetic locks on the outside. Each exit opened onto a section of corridor with emergency pressure doors thirty or forty paces away. Technicians were busy installing magnetic locks on those doors as well. A jail break wouldn’t get far.

Tom and O’Reilly were wrapping up the inspection tour when Tom saw a couple of spacers exiting the detention wing with a pair of prisoners between them. The prisoners were a man and a woman with the crisp posture and haughty demeanour of Dawn Alliance officers. Tom gestured to O’Reilly and they waited as the prisoners and their guards approached.

“What’s this?” said Tom.

A young woman gave him a quick salute. “Prisoner transfer. We’re putting the high-ranking officers in the proper brig.” She gestured at the man beside her. “Hendrix says that way they can’t organize a revolt.”

Tom looked the prisoners up and down. Their uniforms were rumpled and they had bags under their eyes, but there was no air of defeat to them. By their rank markings the woman was a Division Leader, probably the captain of the ship. The man’s rank was Secondary Division Leader. Both of them stared at him like he was a roach that had scuttled into their path.

Tom glanced at O’Reilly. “We haven’t seen the brig yet. We’ll go with you.”

The six of them climbed a ladder to the deck above, then walked starboard and aft. A couple of spacers came through the hatch ahead of them, followed by three men and a woman in baggy gray uniforms. The woman started to raise a hand in greeting, then froze, her expression turning sick.

“Well, well,” said the Division Leader, curling her lip. “What do we have here? Some traitors?”

Tom swore under his breath. O’Reilly gave him a puzzled look.

Tom turned to the guards accompanying the officers. “Carry on.” He stepped aside, and O’Reilly joined him. The guards continued down the corridor with their prisoners. The two groups passed each other, the four figures in gray staring, stony-faced, at the Dawn Alliance officers.

The officers and their escorts passed through a hatch and out of sight. Tom held up a hand, stopping the others as they reached him.

O’Reilly said, “What’s going on? You look like you just found a dead rat in the water supply.”

“Captain O’Reilly,” Tom said. “I’d like you to meet Gabrielle, Franz, Jonas, and David. They served on Tanker T495, which we captured on one of our first raids. Since then, they’ve done everything in their power to help us.”

He didn’t add that, in return, the Free Neorome Navy had locked them up, interrogated them, and treated them like enemies.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” said Gabrielle. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m a lot less happy to run into them.” She had a lilting accent, quite different from the usual Dawn Alliance soldiers. She and her shipmates were from Enkidu. Her world was part of the Alliance, but she considered it an enemy occupation rather than a true partnership.

“I think she recognized you,” said Tom.

Gabrielle made a face. “We took political indoctrination classes when the war broke out. She was an instructor.” She shook her head. “I can’t go back to Enkidu now. They’ll hang me for a traitor.”

“You won’t have to go back,” said Tom.

Gabrielle lifted a skeptical eyebrow. She knew as well as he did that he didn’t have the power to keep a promise like that. Most of Free Neorome saw her as an enemy. There was an excellent chance she would be deported when the war ended.

And then she would die for helping them.

“I don’t suppose you could shoot her?” Gabrielle said. “Before she has a chance to talk to anyone else?”

Tom said, “I genuinely wish I could.”

Chapter 6

The captain’s cabin wouldn’t have seemed like much groundside, but by shipboard standards it was palatial. There was a bedroom, a private bathroom, and a meeting room complete with half a dozen chairs and a smart table. It all seemed wildly extravagant, and Tom felt embarrassed to move in.

But the ship was huge, and the Free Neorome crew was tiny. The meeting room was undeniably useful, and he was the captain, after all. And it would be absurd to leave the cabin vacant.

So he emptied one drawer of the bureau beside the bed and put away his toiletries and spare uniform. Then he stretched out on the bed.

Sleep eluded him, which was no surprise. He didn’t want to think about how many hours he’d been awake, but his mind continued to race.

He rose, went to the drawer he’d appropriated, and took out a small metal case. The case contained an igniter, a small pouch of dried sage leaves, and a single feather just longer than his index finger. He’d found the feather just outside of Panama City. He figured it came from a crow or a raven. He wished for an eagle feather, but he wasn’t sure there was an eagle closer than Earth.

As he arranged the leaves in a tidy pile in the bottom of the tin, he murmured an apology to no one in particular. He should have had sage sticks rather than leaves, and some cedar as well. A ship of war was hardly an appropriate place for smudging, for that matter. But his parents had always told him that it was the intent that was important, not the details. A handful of sage leaves and a crow’s feather was the best he could do, so it would suffice.

For a time he sat with the igniter in his hand, breathing deeply, settling his mind. There were a thousand administrative tasks waiting for his attention, and a yammering voice in the back of his head said that he needed to attend to every single one. This mission, after all, was crucially important. Lives were at stake, not just everyone on the ship but people across the Green Zone as well.

He thought of Gabrielle. He’d ordered that she and her shipmates be given the run of the battleship, with no restrictions and no surveillance. After all, the tanker crew was stuck with the Free Neorome Navy now. Their lives depended on a victory by the colonists and the United Worlds.

Unless she ingratiated herself with the Dawn Alliance by sabotaging the ship.

Tom pushed away the insidious thought. We’ve done enough harm to Gabrielle and her people. I won’t be the cause of more damage, more injustice.

I will do no harm that I can avoid.

That, he realized, was the question at the heart of his unease. There was no course of action open to him where he did no harm. Disaster waited on every side. Every victory, every success, was a disaster for someone. To do nothing would be a hideous betrayal of everyone who depended on him. He had to act. It was just that simple.

But where to draw the line? When did mercy become foolishness? Where did pragmatism end and savagery begin?

This is not a question with a straightforward answer. It’s a tightrope I have to walk and to keep walking. All I can do is approach it with as much balance as I can muster.

Balance. I need to set aside anger and frustration and fear so that I can find balance.

He opened his eyes. He’d never done a smudge by himself before. Always there had been others. His parents, the elders of the reservation. A circle of lined and solemn faces to lend gravity to the ceremony.

The details don’t matter. My intentions matter.

He pressed the top of the igniter and lit the sage leaves. A fat tendril of smoke rose, sweet and acrid, and he picked up the feather. He leaned over the tin, using the feather to waft smoke into his face.

The smell was not the same as he remembered. This wasn’t Earth-grown sage. Still, it was essentially the same. It triggered a wave of memory so vivid that he looked around, half expecting to see his parents and aunts and uncles around him.

He set the feather down and placed his hands in the smoke. He made a washing motion, and imagined himself scrubbing away the fear, the doubt, everything that clouded his judgement and impeded his wisdom.

I have to get this right. So much is depending on me. Fear twisted his stomach, so he took up the feather again. He wafted smoke toward his belly and imagined the fear dissolving and drifting away.

His pulse slowed, and the anxious knot in his stomach loosened.

My people have dealt with much worse than this. They gathered together and burned sage and cedar and sought the wisdom to deal with calamities far greater than this. And when they couldn’t gather together, they did smudging on their own. I’m not truly alone. I’m at the end of the chain that stretches back to before humanity left the Earth. All those Cree are with me in spirit. They can’t save me from this tightrope I must walk, but they can help me find my balance.

She called it the mystery room.

The little room was almost in the exact center of the ship. Important-looking consoles lined one wall, but no one had yet figured out what they did. Several fat pipes rose from the floor, ran past the consoles, and vanished through the forward bulkhead. The consoles seems to have something to do with the pipes, but the contents of the pipes were just as much of a secret.

Alice liked the mystery room because it was centrally located and it had a small table with comfortable chairs. She sat on one of those chairs, with her injured foot propped up on another. She was supposed to keep her weight off it as much as possible, and to keep it elevated.

The woman filling the role of ship’s surgeon, knowing that raider crews tended to be stubborn, had encouraged her to keep off the foot by reducing her pain medication and refusing to put a protective hard shell on the foot. Walking was painful enough that Alice had grudgingly accepted reduced duties.

The rush of feet in the corridor outside caught her attention and she turned to look over her shoulder. A group of spacers ran past, nine or ten men and women carrying bulky toolboxes. The tallest Chinese man she’d ever seen brought up the rear, a bunch of fusion bars over one shoulder. That meant it was the crew of the Snow Melt, a passenger ship that had never taken up arms against the United Worlds. They hadn’t done anything to annoy the Dawn Alliance, either, but the DA had confiscated their ship anyway.

Well, they’d volunteered for the assault on Novograd, which stood an excellent chance of being suicidal. She figured that made up for any lack of enthusiasm from before.

She checked her glove, just in case this was a real emergency. It was just the latest in an endless series of drills, however. A hundred and some people, most of whom had never even seen a battleship from the outside, had to fight a desperate battle in a few days’ time. The training would be non-stop.

Feeling simultaneously guilty and smug that she was idle, Alice leaned back in her chair, wiggled the toes of her injured foot, and tapped the tabletop. The surface came awake, and she browsed for news feeds mentioning Novograd. She was pleasantly surprised to find a Press Alliance feed with uncensored data less than two weeks old.

A surprising amount of information was finding its way off the planet, but most of the news was bad. Factories all over the northern continent were being retooled to make munitions for the Dawn Alliance. Some of the conversions were simple. A vehicle manufacturer was already producing armored personnel carriers. A shipyard in Sibirsk, on the other hand, wasn’t expected to turn out its first corvette for at least six months.

There was resistance, of course, and the news on that front was either inspiring or grim, depending on your point of view. Guerillas were raiding factories and ambushing convoys, spreading chaos and destruction across the continent. The invaders were responding with savage crackdowns. Still, if they squeezed too hard they would only drive more people into the ranks of the resistance. There were reprisals against civilians, but on a comparatively small scale.

She found a propaganda clip, an announcement from the DA Security Bureau of a huge reward for the capture or killing of a terrorist named Karen Sharpe. She was, apparently, a holy terror, spreading carnage and destruction through the lake country.

Alice closed the propaganda vid and searched for Karen Sharpe in the rest of the feed. According to the Press Alliance she was the most prominent resistance leader on Novograd. She was becoming a folk hero.

There was a photo of her, taken before the war. She looked utterly ordinary, a woman in her thirties with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, grinning at the camera. She didn’t look like a legend, but that was exactly what she was becoming.

Alice looked at the picture, returning the grin, proud of her fellow colonist. I’m going to have to look you up when we get to Novograd. Keep fighting. Keep enduring. Help is on the way.

After a while she blanked the screen and dug a deck of cards out of her pocket. She shuffled, letting her fingers do the work as her mind wandered.

The deck plates rumbled beneath her, setting off a vibration that she felt in her breastbone. She made a mental note to find out what machinery lay beneath her feet. It didn’t actually matter to her, but she was a spacer and an engineer. She could no more help being curious about the hardware around her than she could help breathing.

“Ho, Alice.” A heavyset black man came through the doorway. “Don’t get up.”

“Oh, Jacques,” she said. Jacques’s family had come out to Tazenda when he was a small child, and he retained an Earth accent. French, she thought, but she wasn’t sure. Languages other than English barely existed in the colonies, outside of Sigma and New Rhineland, where people spoke Ndebele.

Jacques dropped to a squat behind her, pressing thick thumbs against the deck plates. Alice watched, wondering what he was doing.

A narrow strip of metal popped up, and Jacques grunted as he lifted a section of deck plate. A metal chain clattered past underneath, the noise surprisingly loud. The volume faded as the chain slowed and then stopped.

In a channel no bigger around than her forearm, fat cartridges lay end-to-end. Each bullet was the size of a large cigar.

Is this room for ammunition inspection? Alice dismissed the idea. The hatch let Jacques see the ammo delivery chain, but he couldn’t have removed a round to inspect it. Not easily, anyway.

“I’m at Delta,” Jacques said into a bracer on his wrist. “Everything looks good here.”

A muffled acknowledgement came from his bracer, and he closed the deck plate. “It’s too loud,” he said to Alice as he straightened up. “Something’s misaligned. It’ll cause a problem sooner or later.”

That made her chuckle. It was a captured ship on a doomed mission. “Sooner or later” was irrelevant.

“How’s the foot?”

“Just a scratch,” said Alice. “Don’t tell anyone.” In fact she had a strip of polymer replacing a section of one metatarsal, and some muscle damage she would never fully recover from, but Jacques didn’t need to know that.

Jacques grinned, laid a finger alongside his nose, and hurried out.

She remembered Tom ordering people into the ammo supply tunnels during the takeover of the ship, and shuddered. The delivery system for large shells had to be a good deal bigger than the narrow channel under the deck beneath her, but still, it must have been appallingly claustrophobic.

There were stories circulating about the commodore, claims that he had been kicked out of Battleship School for using ammunition tunnels and cargo elevators and other such unconventional routes during training. She smiled, amused by the thought of the always-serious leader breaking rules and being reprimanded. It was difficult to picture him as a nonconformist, as an unconventional rebel unable to fit in.

Still, he was different from every other United Worlds officer she had met.

“Working hard, I see.”

Alice looked over her shoulder. Two people stood in the doorway, a familiar stocky young man and a young woman with a shaved head. They kissed, and the woman turned to leave. The man caught her with an arm around the waist, pulled her back, and kissed her once more. She nestled her head against his chest for a moment, then broke away.

“You’ve been busy, Bridger.” Alice smiled. “And not with drills, either.”

Bridger swaggered around the table and dropped into a chair across from her. “The old me,” he said, his face shining with virtue, “would have made an inappropriate joke about drilling. I’ve matured, though. I’m above that sort of thing.”

Alice laughed. “Is that Elizabeth, what’s her name? Larson? From New Panama?”

“That’s exactly who she is.” Bridger beamed. She’d never seen him looking so pleased with himself.

“Congratulations, I guess. But hasn’t anyone told her about you?”

“Lies,” he said, waving a hand. “She can see right through the slander that’s being spread by my jealous inferiors.”

“Well, I admire her courage, if not her good taste.”

Bridger laughed, did his best to look hurt, then gave up. “Deal the cards. I don’t know how long I’ve got before they hit me with another drill.”

She dealt, then brought up a tally program on her glove. Bridger set a data pad on the table. “Looks like I’m up almost a hundred points.”

“But now you’re in love,” Alice said. “You’re distracted. I’ll be all caught up in no time.”

He drew a card, spent a moment considering, then discarded a five of hearts. Alice took the five, did a quick calculation of probabilities, and discarded the queen of diamonds.

Bridger’s eyebrows rose. “You’re throwing away a queen? This day keeps getting better and better.” He drummed his fingers on the table, started to reach for the discarded queen, then drew from the top of the deck instead. “Oh, hell.” He laid the new card on top of the discarded queen.

“Come to mama,” Alice said, taking his discard and replacing it with a card from her hand. “It’s good to see you happy.” She smirked. “It helps me feel better about the way I’m going to crush you.”

“In your dreams.” He drew and discarded. “It’s nice, though.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Being with Liz,” he said. “Thinking about good things for a change. The future. Or just ways to make her happy.” He was smiling so hard it looked like he was going to dislocate his cheekbone. “I highly recommend it. Being in love, that is. Being in a relationship.” His gaze sharpened a bit as he looked at her. “You should try it.”

Alice made a rude noise.

“You know, I always thought you and the commodore would make a good match.”

That startled Alice so badly she almost dropped her cards. “Me and Tom?”

He chuckled at her reaction. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of it about it.” His eyebrows rose. “Wow. You really have never thought of it.”

“He’s a blueshirt.”

“Not anymore, he isn’t.”

“He’s also my commanding officer.”

“Barely,” said Bridger. “Technically he’s a captain, same as you.” The courtesy rank of commodore made him effectively the first among equals.

“He’s ….”

Bridger smirked, and she scowled at him. “He’s too young for me.”

“He’s, what? Two years younger than you? Three at the most?”

“He’s not even from the Green Zone.”

“No,” said Bridger, his smile fading. “But he’s putting his life on the line to liberate the colonies.”

They both fell silent, and Alice looked at her cards. “Whose turn is it?”

“Well, you’re holding six cards.”

“Whoops.” She tried to focus on her cards, then gave up and discarded one at random.

Bridger snatched it up. “Full set!” He laid his cards out on the table. “All hearts. That’s six points.” He tapped his data pad, and Alice’s glove beeped as the points changed.

“You know,” he said as he shuffled, “if you’re this distracted, there must be something to it.”

She was spared having to reply by a chime from his data pad. He set the cards down and spent a minute tapping and swiping. When he put the pad down he stared into space, his forehead wrinkling.

“Trouble?” said Alice.

“Probably not,” he said, and shrugged. “It’s one of those things we would have to fix if we were keeping the ship. As it is, it’s probably something we can live with until we get to Novograd.” He looked down at the pad. “We’re getting bursts of EM radiation in the scanner logs. But there’s nothing out here but us. I checked with the Rime Frost and the Trickling Brook, and they’re not broadcasting anything. So it has to be a scanner glitch.”

“Can I see?”

“Be my guest.” Bridger poked at the screen, then turned the pad around and pushed it toward her. “We should show it to Ham. He’s good at picking up patterns.”

Alice nodded absently, peering at the little screen. It showed a chart with the usual background noise of hyperspace as a jumble at the bottom. Spikes appeared at irregular intervals where the scanners picked up a sharp increase in electromagnetic noise.

Visually, it was incomprehensible. But the shape of it seemed familiar. It looked almost like a visual representation of a sound file.

“I’m converting it to audio,” she said.

““I don’t think it’s audio data.”

She ignored him and tapped an icon. Static burst from the speaker on the pad, making her wince. “You’re right. It’s just noise.”

Bridger shook his head. “No, wait. I think you might actually be onto something.” He took back the pad and fiddled with it. “It’s running way too fast. After all, we thought it was just a bunch of numbers. I’m going to link it to the time markers on the scanner log.” He poked the screen. “There.”

The sound that emerged was scratchy and garbled, but it was recognizably a voice. “I repeat. Mayday. This is the battleship B19. The ship has been captured by hostile forces and is currently in the control of Free Neorome personnel. I repeat-”

Alice and Bridger locked gazes. “Well, hell,” said Bridger. “I guess we’ve still got enemy crew on the loose.”

Alice nodded. “Either that, or a saboteur.”

Once they knew what to look for, it didn’t take long to find the source of the mystery transmission. Alice hobbled along on a cane, the pain in her foot forgotten, as they searched through a maze of maintenance passages and machinery two decks down from the mystery room. They carried hand scanners and called out to one another as they zeroed in on the clandestine broadcast.

“Here,” called Bridger at last. “I think I found it.”

Alice lowered her own scanner and looked around, getting her bearings. She was in a dust-filled passage with fat aluminum ducts pressing in on either side. Her uniform was filthy from brushing against one dirty surface or another. Bridger was no more than a dozen paces away, but she couldn’t see him.

We’re completely hidden. No one comes here. If the saboteur is down here and he murders us, they won’t find our bodies for weeks.

It was a disturbing thought, and it sent anxious prickles across her back and shoulders. They hadn’t even thought about personal security. Neither of them was armed. We knew there was an enemy soldier on the loose, and what did we do? We walked blindly into an excellent hiding place. In fact, we came to the one spot on the ship where we knew the soldier has been.

Stupid, Alice. Very stupid.

She headed toward Bridger, thinking about all the noise they had made as they called back and forth. They’d given the enemy soldier every chance to ambush them.

Of course, they’d given the guy a chance to get out of the way, as well. He knew there were at least two of them, and he had no way to know they were unarmed. She shivered, wondering if all the noise they’d made had saved their lives.

She rounded a corner and found Bridger crouching, examining a blocky shape on the underside of a staircase. He glanced up, grinning, then raised his eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”

“Let’s not come back here without weapons.”

He frowned, then shrugged. “Good point, now that you mention it.” He tapped the blocky shape beside his knee. “Here’s our transmitter. I’ve already shut it off.”

Removing the transmitter was easy. Only magnets held in place. They found a panel that gave access to a corridor, pushed it open, and ducked through, badly startling a spacer on the other side. Bridger said, “I don’t think we checked there when we swept the ship.”

“I’m sure we didn’t,” said Alice. She leaned against a bulkhead, sighing as she took the weight off her injured foot.

Bridger put the wall panel back in place and straightened up. He patted the transmitter. “What do we do with this?”

“Let’s show it to Tom.”

“Let me see.” Tom scratched his jaw, looking at the tabletop in his quarters. The display, divided into thirds, showed the maintenance and machinery area where Alice and Bridger had discovered the transmitter. Each third of the screen showed a different deck. A labyrinth of ladders and stairs connected the three decks, with no need to step into a corridor. “I count … what? Nine exits?”

“Ten,” said Alice. “Eleven if you count the space between bulkheads here.” She tapped the wall of the mystery room. “An agile person could clamber up to Deck Four.”

Tom sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. His sitting room was crowded. In addition to Alice and Bridger there were two more captains in the room, Vasquez and McDougall. Their squads were assigned to security duty.

“So we need at least ten people just to watch the exits,” said Vasquez. She scowled. “Twenty, if we want them to have any backup.”

“And quite a few people for the search,” said Bridger. “They’ll need to spread out, or they’ll just chase the enemy soldier in circles.”

“Soldier or soldiers,” said Vasquez. “We don’t know how many there are.”

It never bloody ends. Tom suppressed the thought, keeping his face neutral. He looked at the chair beside him, which currently supported Alice’s injured foot. What’s the search team going to stumble into? Will they find someone desperate and terrified who’s ready to give up? Or a crowd of fanatics willing to die in a blaze of glory if they can take some of us with them? “Do we have any other options? Anyone have a clever idea?”

Alice grimaced. “Maybe.”

Tom looked at her, noting the reluctance on her face. “What is it?”

She hesitated, then spoke. “They’re in Section Nine, and they have no access to the sections on either side.” She tapped at the tabletop, changing the middle section of the display. An outline of the ship appeared, divided into seventeen sections from nose to tail. “That’s not accidental. The ship’s designed to take catastrophic damage and survive.” She tapped the middle section. “All the emergency hatches and vacuum doors line up along the divisions between sections. Even the ammo tubes have force fields where they cross between sections.” She looked around at the others, her expression grim. “We could evacuate Section Nine, seal it off, and let out all the air. Wait ten minutes, repressurize it, and go look for bodies.”

McDougall grimaced, but he didn’t object. Tom realized he wore the same expression of distaste. Alice’s solution was cold-blooded and brutal.

It was also the best way to keep the crew safe.

“Are there any vac suits stored in Section Nine?”

“There’s some firefighting equipment on Deck Two,” said Bridger. The fire suits would have an air supply.

“We’ll have to move them temporarily,” Tom said. “We’ll seal all the hatches, and then we’ll broadcast a warning. Give him, say, sixty seconds to get to an intercom and surrender. Any longer than that and he might think of a way out.”

He looked at the others, meeting their gazes one at a time. Vasquez smiled. The others looked the way Tom felt – as if they were about to do something ugly but necessary.

Not necessary, he thought. Just pragmatic. One more cold-blooded action taken to keep his people safe.

And what line will you cross next?

He looked at Alice’s injured foot on the chair beside him and pushed his doubts away. There are no options where no one risks getting hurt. This is not a great choice, but it’s the best choice I’ve got.

“Let’s do this,” he said. “The longer we delay, the greater the chance our ghost decides to sneak into another section.”

Chapter 7

Noreen crouched in the darkness, panting, unable to get enough breath. The only sound she could hear was a hiss, faint but maddening, as the air in her closet escaped.

In her hands she clutched a small fire extinguisher, now empty. She’d used the foam as a sealant, spraying it around the outline of the closet door. It had almost worked, too. But her ears kept popping, and she was starting to feel light-headed.

She shivered. Frantic effort and terror had covered her skin in a film of perspiration. Now, with nothing to do but wait, she was growing cold. She thought of the chilly vacuum of space and imagined her corpse, rimed with frost, freezing solid in this dark closet.

Stop it. Don’t feed your fears. Either you’ll asphyxiate or you won’t. If you think about how scared you are, you’ll just die faster.

This was a mistake. I should have given myself up. I wonder if I still can. How long can a person survive in vacuum? I could kick the door open, run for the nearest hatch, pound on the hatch until someone hears me or I pass out ….

She even put a hand on the doorknob before stopping herself. Don’t be a fool. If you’re going to die anyway, don’t make it easy for them. At least make them look for your body.

How long has it been? What if they’re already repressurizing this section, and I’ve sealed myself in here with not quite enough air?

The air that remained in her closet was pretty foul. The chemical stink of the foam was almost overpowering, and her breath had to be filling the little room with carbon dioxide. How much longer can I keep breathing this muck before I pass out? Or before anoxia impairs my judgement and I do something stupid?

My only hope is to wait. Sooner or later they have to repressurize this section. They can’t just finish the journey with an empty slice through the middle of the ship. They have to bring back the air.

And when they do, how will I know?

She had abandoned her data pad soon after the ship was taken, afraid that it could be traced. She had no tools, nothing she could use as a source of light. She had fled into the closet with just the fire extinguisher. Only as the foam filled the gap beneath the door had she realized how dark it was going to get.

Now, in utter blackness, every sensation was magnified. The smell seemed to get worse with every breath. The burning in her lungs wasn’t enough to distract her from a growing cramp in her right leg, or the stirring of tiny hairs on the back of her neck.

She stuck a finger in her mouth, tasting sweat and grease and dirt and reminding herself she hadn’t washed in days. Well, if I’m still alive to get sick from this I’ll be ahead of the game.

She took the finger out and stretched her hand toward the line of foam around the closet door. She sought the source of that faint hiss, moving her hand up and down until she felt the faintest hint of cold against her moist fingertip.

She held her breath to help her focus, playing her fingertip back and forth until she was sure.

Yes. There was a tiny stream of air against her fingertip.

Blowing inward.

For a moment she considered trying to pry the foam loose. Then she twisted the door handle, brought her feet up, and booted the door open.

Her ears popped as air, fresh and sweet, flooded in. Half a dozen deep inhalations were enough to get her breathing back under control.

The air still smelled of lubricants and dust and the grime that accumulates in the obscure corners of even the most meticulously maintained ship. To Noreen right then, though, it could have been a summer breeze in her parents’ garden. She squandered thirty precious seconds just sitting there with her legs stretched out, smiling.

She was not, however, out of danger. She got to her feet, squinting. She was in a low-ceilinged room with pipes and cables running across almost every surface. She remembered the room being quite dingy, but it seemed painfully bright after her time in the lightless closet.

She wanted to scrape away the fire extinguisher foam and hide it. It was proof that she lived, proof that a fugitive remained at large. But the simple absence of her corpse would tell the hunters just as much. She closed the closet door, paused a moment to get her bearings, grabbed the rungs of a narrow ladder set against the wall between a couple of pipes, and started to climb.

Her first destination was a gap between bulkheads that let her peek into a brightly lit corridor. The gap was too narrow for a person to pass through, but there was room to snake her arm into the opening. She had to turn her head sideways to reach, her cheek mashed against the metal housing of a junction box. Her fingers slid against a smooth aluminum duct, the pitted surface of a steel cylinder protecting data cables, and a narrow pipe, hot to the touch, that must have held water.

And then she touched cloth.

Suppressing a grunt, she curled her fingers around a wide fabric strap and tugged. It took some wiggling and twisting, but at last the strap came free. Noreen drew back, dragging a grimy satchel behind her.

The satchel was a gift from a benefactor she had never met. She had stashed it as soon as she found it, afraid it was a trap. It contained a gun, a data pad, and a handful of meal replacement bars. Her imagination had conjured a host of grim scenarios. The gun wouldn’t fire. The food was drugged, and the pad had a locator beacon. She would pass out, lulled into a false sense of security by the weapon, and Free Neorome troops would take her into custody.

But no one had gone near the satchel in the two days since she’d hidden it. Now, hungry and frightened, she was ready to take a chance.

The gun was a compact laser pistol, good for maybe a dozen shots before it would need to be recharged. It was a design she’d never seen before, and that scared her. It meant the gun belonged to a colonist. And why would a colonist help her?

There’d been a note with the satchel. I know you’re here. I want to help you retake the ship. I’m a friend. It was a ridiculous claim, and Noreen had dismissed it out of hand.

But what if …?

I should leave it here. I need to move, get out of this section. They’ll be coming through, looking for my body.

If it’s a trick, the gun won’t work. They would never give a lethal weapon to a soldier of the Dawn Alliance. She turned the pistol over in her hands. Maybe it will explode in my hands if I pull the trigger.

That didn’t seem likely, though. No, get the gun was probably just a dud.

She found the safety and turned it off, then turned the power setting all the way up. As she hurried through passageways and corridors she picked her target, a fat yellow pipe that emerged from the deck plates and vanished into the ceiling. She took aim at the middle of the pipe and squeezed the trigger.

Metal glowed red, and a spray of water jetted toward her. She stepped around the spray, put the safety back on, and dropped the pistol into the satchel.

Good God. There’s a traitor on the ship. I’ve got a working gun.

The hatch she chose for her escape opened onto a corridor. There was no way to check for traffic before she opened the hatch. She stood in darkness, staring at a square aluminum panel, planning her moves. She would have to be quick and quiet. There would be no time to think about her choices once the panel was open.

Well, either I’ll make it or my troubles will be over. She took a couple of deep breaths, then twisted a dog at each corner of the panel.

The panel dropped away, landing in the corridor beyond, and bright light flooded in. Noreen stuck her head out, glancing quickly left and right.

The corridor stretched for five paces in one direction and ten paces in the other before turning at ninety degrees. There was no one in sight, and no sound of footsteps.

She slid out head-first, got her hands on the deck plates, and wriggled free. She put the panel back in place, her fingers sweat-slick and trembling. She fumbled with the dogs, got two of them in place, and decided that was enough.

One quick stride took her to the far side of the corridor. The panel there was no bigger, but it was at floor height, and it was hinged. It had a latch with the slot requiring some tool she didn’t have. Muttering a curse, she gripped the edge of the hatch with her fingertips, planted a boot against the wall, and gave it a good hard yank. The hatch popped open and she slid through, feet first.

Gloom enveloped her, becoming darkness as soon as she pulled the hatch shut. The sound of footsteps froze her in place, and she lay there, not moving, not breathing.

A murmur of voices reached her as a couple of invaders walked past. She strained her ears, listening as the volume of the voices rose, then faded.

After ten seconds of silence she began wriggling backwards. The surface beneath her changed from greasy aluminum plates to a steel mesh. She could see another room below, with fat tanks containing hydraulic fluid and the pumping system for distribution. She recognized that room, one of the stops she’d made on her maintenance cycles. Central Hydraulics was in Section Ten, which meant she was out of the trap and safe for the moment.

She found a place just aft of Central Hydraulics where three thick pipes ran horizontally, just below the ceiling. She laid sheets of soft insulation across the pipes, then clambered up and stretched out on this improvised bed. The ceiling was close enough that she could touch it with a fingertip when her elbow was against the pipe beneath her. She was, however, completely hidden from below. Searchers might walk by directly beneath her and never suspect her presence.

She opened the satchel and devoured a meal replacement bar. There were plenty of places to get water in the hidden corners of the ship, but she hadn’t eaten in days. She wasn’t sure if Free Neorome bars actually tasted better than their Dawn Alliance equivalent, but she savored every morsel and licked the inside of the wrapper, searching for crumbs.

Then she took out the data pad. Personal data devices in the Dawn Alliance were invariably monitored. Every recruit knew their messages could be read and their movements tracked by their superiors. Turning on the pad felt like a mad risk. They gave me a gun. And I can’t do anything on my own. Rejecting the only help I’ve been given is probably the bigger risk.

Noreen shrugged to herself and turned on the pad.

A list of messages appeared. There were warnings from the second day of the occupation, telling her that there would be a security sweep. There were directions to a stash of food. The thought of it made her stomach rumble, but the food stash, left for her more than a day earlier, was back in Section Nine.

The last message was stark and straightforward. Are you still alive? I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you. They didn’t tell anyone what they were doing until they were already sealing off Section Nine.

Did you set up that transmitter? You turned it on too early, and they detected it. If you can set up another one, don’t turn it on until we reach Novograd.

Noreen shook her head. She’d ripped the transmitter out of a lifeboat. They would be watching the lifeboats now.

Don’t try to sabotage the engines. It won’t work. They’ve got booster pods outside the hull. Just lie low for a day or two. Let them get careless. Then we have to do something. We can’t let this mission succeed.

Prickles of excitement danced across Noreen’s skin, mixed with dread. Her nest on the pipes felt less like a hiding place for a fugitive to cower and more like a blind, a place from which a hunter might strike. She brought up a couple of typing circles and swirled her thumbs, composing a quick message.

I’m safe. I’m hidden.

I’m ready.

The battleship had a name now. The colonists, unsatisfied with B19, had started calling her the Icicle. Tom had wanted a proper christening ceremony, seeing it as a way to bring the crew together and boost morale. With the crew running themselves ragged in endless drills, though, he couldn’t justify taking the time for a ceremony. So he’d let word spread on its own until the name took hold. When someone painted a gleaming white icicle on a green background on the wall of the cafeteria he figured that was ceremony enough.

Now, the ship was an hour away from Novograd, and Tom’s nerves were stretched as tight as guitar strings. Unable to stop himself from pacing and fidgeting, he’d left the bridge and begun a tour of the ship’s gun turrets. He wasn’t sure if he was helping boost morale or just making everyone nervous, but he carried on nevertheless.

The gun turrets came in a bewildering variety of sizes. It seemed like a poor design to Tom. It meant the ship had to stock more than a dozen sizes of ammunition, with limited ability to share among turrets. Still, it meant the battleship had the right gun for almost any situation.

“Hello, Commodore.” The gunner at Turret Nineteen was a tiny young woman, delicate as a bird, her head barely coming to Tom’s shoulder. He found her standing just outside the turret, waiting for him. The first few gun crews had been flustered by his arrival. Now, someone was clearly calling ahead to give warning.

“As you were,” he said.

She didn’t relax one iota from her rigid posture. Maybe that was a height thing, he decided. When you were shorter than pretty much every single person on the ship, you were hardly likely to slouch. “What’s your name, Miss?”

“Teagan Law.” She didn’t volunteer a ship name, so he figured she was a groundsider before the war. “Would you like to inspect the turret?”

Tom shook his head. “Just tell me about it.”

“It’s a four-barrel gun, and it fires five-millimeter ammunition at a rate of fourteen hundred rounds a minute.” She smiled proudly.

“Are you alone on the gun?” Most of the turrets had at least two operators. The extra person could act as a spotter or clear jams and deal with other mechanical issues.

“I share a mechanic with Turret Twenty,” she said, and gestured at the bulkhead beside her. “It’s right over there.”

Tom took a closer look at the bulkhead. It was solid steel, with a small hatch set into it. Gun turrets were among the few vulnerable points on a battleship. The two turrets could share personnel and ammunition, but they could be isolated from one another if one turret took a lot of damage.

“Five millimeters,” Tom said. “You’re on anti-missile duty, then.”

Law nodded. “Don’t aim, just throw a cloud of steel so thick that nothing can get through.”

Tom was about to reply when the sound of gunfire made him drop into a crouch. He heard dozens – no, hundreds of shots. By the sound of it, it had to be several automatic weapons firing at the same time. The sound seemed to come from every direction at once. He swiveled his head, baffled, until he noticed the deck plates vibrating against the soles of his boots. “It’s one deck down.”

Law nodded. She’d drawn her sidearm, a small laser pistol that nevertheless looked huge in her fist. Tom started to reach for his own sidearm, then realized he’d already drawn it. The whole crew went armed now, in case of an encounter with the mystery soldier.

“Wait here,” said Tom. He started down the corridor, then hesitated. “On second thought, come with me. There’s nothing for you to do here.”

Not for another hour, anyway, he thought as he headed down the corridor at a run. Whatever was going on, the enemy had timed it well, throwing the ship into chaos just before they went into battle.

He found a ladder, gestured to Law to hang back, and stuck his head down to take a peek. He smelled smoke, and blinked as it irritated his eyes.

Half a dozen spacers milled around in the corridor below. A woman took charge, sending people for firefighting gear and telling a man to make sure the air ducts leading out of this section were sealed. Those who held weapons were holstering them, although the sound of gunfire continued.

“It’s not an attack,” Tom said to Law. “There’s a fire in the ammo tubes.” He holstered his pistol and hurried down the ladder.

The fire, it turned out, was in an ammunition storage bay. A couple of spacers stopped Tom a good twenty meters back. “Sorry, Commodore. No one gets close without proper equipment.”

“Coming through!” came a muffled voice from behind Tom. “Out of the way!”

He turned to see a couple of figures in emergency fire gear barreling down the corridor. He moved to the side, pressing his back to a bulkhead, as two people in bulky suits and helmets hustled past. They stopped at the closed hatch to the ammunition bay, where one figure pressed a sensor against the metal.

“That’s hot!” He looked down the corridor toward Tom and the others. “Everybody back.” He waved an arm in a shooing gesture. “Back past the next emergency hatch.” He indicated the hatch to the ammo storage bay. “I’m going to open this, and it’s going to get hot and smoky in here.”

Tom reluctantly retreated, moving aside to make room for three more people in fire gear before stepping through a hatch that slid shut on his heels.

“It’s those DA moles.” The speaker was a pudgy young man with a sparse mustache. He glared around, as if daring someone to contradict him. “The ones pretending to be on our side.”

He means the tanker crew, Tom realized.

“They need to be locked up,” the man went on. “Either that, or spaced.”

“That’s enough,” said Tom.

The man turned. “Who are you to tell me what I – oof!”

He went silent as the woman beside him sank an elbow into his ribs. “Shut up, you idiot! That’s the commodore.”

“Hey, you lot! Don’t stand there gawking. Give us a hand.”

Everyone turned, the argument forgotten. A man and a woman came down the same staircase Tom had descended with Law. Between them they carried a vast spool of glittering silver hose, as big around as Tom’s wrist. Judging by the way they were moving, the spool had to be brutally heavy. A couple of spacers hurried up the steps to give them a hand while everyone else got out of the way.

“I need someone on the hatch controls,” said the woman as she reached the bottom of the steps. “Open it up fast, and then close it behind us.”

“The hose will be in the way,” someone objected.

“Oh. Right. Just open it and keep it open, then.”

Tom moved to the hatch controls. The hatch had locked itself, detecting smoke on the other side. He overrode the lock, dismissed a couple of safety warnings, and hit the “open” button. He took a deep breath and held it as the hatch slid open.

A wave of hot smoke rolled out, less than he had feared. Tom exhaled and sniffed the air. There was an acrid stink, a blend of hot metal, gunpowder, and plastic, but it wasn’t too bad.

A couple of people in firefighting gear, made blurry by the smoke, took the spindle and waved the others back. Tom peered through the hatch, watching as the fire team unrolled the rest of the hose from the spool. A couple of them took the end of the hose and headed into the ammo storage bay.

Someone tapped Tom on the shoulder. He turned, and had to look up to meet the gaze of one of the tallest women he’d ever seen. She said, “A word?”

He nodded and followed her as she threaded her way through the crowd of watching spacers. When they were out of earshot she said, “I’m Captain Vaillancourt of the Solstice.” She touched her ear, which contained a fat communication bud. “I’m doing information coordinating for damage control. Rick says they’ve got the fire under control. They want to empty the loading racks in the bay, though. There’s no telling how much of the ammo is damaged, and there’s no time to inspect it.”

“All right.”

“That’s not what I wanted to tell you, though.” She gave him a grim look. “There’s some pretty serious automatic fire systems in the ammo bays. The bays aren’t airtight, so they use foam instead of inert gas. The foam system could fill an entire bay in about fifteen seconds. But it failed.” She jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “Someone cut the line that carries foam to the suppressors on this deck. The actual cut in the line is buried under a thousand liters of foam, so we can’t inspect it. But it’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

A fire breaks out in a room that contains nothing flammable, at one of the only places on the ship where it could lead to a catastrophic explosion. The automatic fire suppression system fails, and it all happens right before we go into battle. “Sabotage,” he said.

“Sabotage,” she agreed.

“We know there’s an enemy soldier at a large,” he said. “We’re already taking all the precautions we can.”

She nodded.

“If this gets out, someone is going to go after the tanker crew.” He thought about the plump young man with his angry accusations. “That’s a fire that doesn’t need fanning.”

Vaillancourt raised an eyebrow.

“I want you to keep this quiet,” Tom said. “Just for another hour. After that, it won’t matter.”

She nodded. “I figured you might say something like that. That’s why I brought you over here to tell you.”

“I need to find out how many guns are affected by this fiasco,” Tom said. “Thank you, Captain.”

Her eyes went out of focus and she lifted a hand, touching her earbud. Tom stepped around her and headed back toward the fire. The tension was gone from his nerves now. All he felt was tired.

Chapter 8

The malevolent bulk of an energy storm ahead of the ship, vast and red and menacing, vanished abruptly, replaced by a rectangle of blazing white. It was not the live view that Tom was accustomed to. The Icicle’s bridge had no windows. It was located deep within the ship, with displays showing feeds from cameras embedded in the armor plating.

Tom would have preferred a window with its corresponding sense of scale and perspective. Still, he had to trust that the portal to normal space was big enough, and was properly positioned directly ahead of the ship.

“Take us through,” he said

“Taking us through,” said Tim Ishida at the primary helm controls. He looked calm enough, but his voice was pitched a little higher than usual. He had to be feeling the tension that filled the bridge like something tangible, like a viscous fluid that pressed down on Tom’s shoulders and robbed him of breath. This was it, after all. The assault on Novograd was about to begin.

Gabrielle, sitting at the secondary communication station along the starboard bulkhead, cleared her throat, then hummed. She stood, paced back and forth, then dropped back into her seat. Franz, her second-in-command when she commanded a fuel tanker, grinned at her from the adjacent seat.

“You shut up,” said Gabrielle, and fluttered her fingers in a nervous gesture. “Remind me to never join the military. My nerves can’t handle it.” Like everyone else on the bridge she wore a vac suit with the gloves and helmet removed. She plucked at the reinforced panels on her knees, unable to keep still.

The flat white expanse of the portal vanished, replaced by the blackness of normal space. Stars gleamed bright on every side, but they seemed pale and dull after the spectacular storms of seventh-dimensional space.

“I’ve got a bearing on Novograd,” said Dietrich at Secondary Operations.

“Adjusting course,” said Ishida.

The stars slid up and to one side as the ship made a ponderous turn. The system’s twin stars appeared, one fat and yellow, the other small and dark orange. And then Tom saw the planet.

It was the size of his thumbnail at arm’s length. Novograd had more land than ocean. The ship was above the plane of the planet’s orbit, so polar ice dominated the view. The rest was brown, except for a glittering blue teardrop that marked an ocean.

“I can see the station,” said Dietrich, peering into his display.

Tom leaned forward, despite knowing it wouldn’t help. They were too far out for the station to show up to the naked eye.

It’s not your naked eye. He grinned at his own foolishness. The display on the forward bulkhead was very good, good enough that he kept forgetting it wasn’t a window.

“I count nine ships,” said Dietrich. “All of them are gathered near the station.”

“I thought there’d be more,” said Jennifer Smith at Tactical One.

Tom nodded his agreement. Novograd had tremendous strategic importance. Still, the Dawn Alliance fleet was stretched thin, and the station itself was a formidable fortress.

It should be, he thought sourly. The United Worlds had designed and built it. It had plenty of armor and a ridiculous number of guns.

It would be a very tough nut to crack.

Well, the key to cracking a tough nut is to bring a big enough hammer. And that’s what we’ve done.

“Incoming message,” said Howard Short at Communications One. He tapped his console and the bridge speakers came to life.

“B19.” It was a man’s voice with a thick Dawn Alliance accent and a strong note of suspicion. “You’re considerably overdue.”

Short, Tom, and much of the rest of the bridge crew turned to look at Gabrielle.

“Oh my God.” Her voice sounded high-pitched and frightened, and Tom’s stomach sank.

But she closed her eyes for a moment, smoothed her features, and lifted a microphone on a coiling wire. When she spoke she sounded bored and weary, as if the inconvenience of a long conversation was the worst thing she could imagine happening to her. “This is Unit Leader Third Class Jana Carson, primary bridge communications.”

“Your ship was reported lost on-”

“Very sorry to interrupt,” she said, managing not to sound sorry at all. “I will need you to identify yourself.”

There was a long moment of silence. Tom glanced at O’Reilly, who sat next to him at what they were calling the Operations station, basically a duplicate of Tom’s screens. O’Reilly lifted an eyebrow. Either the Dawn Alliance was as rule-bound and peculiar as Gabrielle claimed, or else she was deliberately messing this up.

“You are correct.” The man sounded more than a little frustrated, but he kept his voice perfectly civil. “This is Division Leader Second Class Gundegmaa, aboard the station S1. Now-”

“Thank you, Division Leader,” Gabrielle said cheerfully. “I’m happy to report that the ship has not been destroyed.”

Meanwhile, the Icicle was racing toward the planet – and the station – at a very good clip. Tom expected negotiations to break down at any moment. He wanted to be as close as he possibly could when that happened.

“Report, Unit Leader,” said Gundegmaa. “Where have you been, and why has your ship been out of communication for so long?”

Gabrielle launched into a long story about attempting a raid on New Panama, but facing a colonist fleet. She stuck close to the facts, right up until the very end, when she claimed the remains of the Free Neorome fleet had fled in disarray. Tom, listening, shivered as he remembered the battle. It had nearly ended as she described. Very, very nearly.

“Let me speak to your captain,” Gundegmaa said when she paused for breath.

“Captain’s busy, Division Leader.”

“I’m afraid I have to insist.”

Gabrielle stuck her tongue out at the microphone, then held it at arm’s length and turned her head. “Captain!” she said loudly. “A Division Leader at the station wants to talk to you.”

Franz, raising his voice so the microphone would pick it up, hollered, “You’re my communications officer. You talk to him. That’s what you’re here for.”

“He’s quite insistent.”

Franz, giving a perfect imitation of a Dawn Alliance accent, managed to load his voice with a pitch-perfect blend of exasperation and disgust. “You tell that jumped-up twit that some of us don’t live in a comfortable space station day and night. I’ve lost eighty percent of my thrust, this ship has no fewer than ninety-four separate serious damage report incidents, and fifteen that are critical. Tell him I’m pretty damned busy just keeping my ship flying. But if he really wants to distract me, then in about five minutes maybe we’ll be crashing into his precious station instead of docking with it.”

Gabrielle brought the microphone back to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Division Commander. The captain says-”

“Heave to,” said Gundegmaa. “You are not cleared to dock with the station.”

Ishida at Helm One looked up, gesturing at his screen. Tom checked his own navigational display. The ship was nearing its turn-around point where they would have to decelerate to match velocities with the station.

“Bring us around,” Tom said softly. There was little danger the microphone would pick up his voice at anything lower than a bellow, but he wasn’t about to take a chance. “Tell him we’re heaving to.”

“Heaving to, Sir,” Gabrielle said into her microphone.

“Maintain a range of ten kilometers,” said Gundegmaa. “We’re sending inspection teams aboard.”

Damn. Tom shrugged inwardly. The enemy was not as trusting as he’d hoped, but still, this gambit could have gone a lot worse.

“The ship is full of smoke,” Gabrielle said into the microphone. “We’re going to need extra firefighting equipment. We’ve also got thirty-five injured crew in urgent need of medical attention.”

“You’ve been missing for nine days,” Gundegmaa said. “You can wait another thirty minutes.” Grudgingly he added, “I’ll have the inspection teams bring medical staff.”

Gabrielle set down her microphone and turned to Tom. He winked, and she beamed at him, looking relieved and delighted by his approval.

“The fleet is moving to intercept,” said Dietrich.

Tom checked his display. Five ships were in motion, heading for a point between the Icicle and the station. “Two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and a carrier?”

“Might be three heavy cruisers,” Dietrich said. “I’m not sure about Charlie. The carrier’s pretty big, too.”

Tom nodded. If the carrier had a full complement it would launch at least a dozen birds. But this was a battleship, a behemoth so sturdy it could ignore small fighters.

The disc of the planet, already much larger, drifted sideways as the Icicle began a ponderous turn. The ship was absurdly difficult to maneuver, especially now with many of her navigational thrusters destroyed. A flashing light on Tom’s console told him the main engines had powered down while the ship came around. He was used to much smaller, much faster ships that could spin around with all engines blazing, realigning so quickly that the brief moment of sideways thrust was inconsequential.

He wanted to ask if his gun crews were ready, if the missile bays had birds loaded. That was just nerves, though. Everyone knew their jobs. He could only undermine the confidence of the crew by double-checking.

Vaughn at Tactical Two spoke into a microphone, telling gun crews all over the ship to stand by, reminding them not to fire until he gave the order. “This will be a target-rich environment, kids. Let’s not leave any ammunition behind for the enemy.”

“Oh my God,” said Gabrielle, and Tom stiffened. What now?

“I thought the waiting was bad before,” she said. “This is unbearable!”

Some of Tom’s stress left him in a surprised chuckle. “You were brilliant,” he told her. “No, you were magnificent. You had me half convinced this was still a Dawn Alliance ship. Don’t go to pieces now.”

“I’m not going to pieces,” she said, miffed. Then she laughed at her own reaction. “I’m just … extraordinarily wide-awake.”

“Do you mind if I change the display, Sir?”

Tom looked around, not sure who had spoken. The main display showed nothing but the stars behind the ship. The Rime Frost was back there somewhere, engines cold, almost certainly undetected. She wouldn’t participate in the coming battle. Her job was to watch, then slip away and report back to New Panama. The Trickling Brook was already gone.

“Yes, change it.”

The stars flickered, the constellations changing. Twin suns blazed from one edge of the screen for a moment before vanishing as the ship continued to turn. Novograd almost filled the screen. Tom could even see the station, a glittering point of light against the dark side of the planet. He made an automatic attempt to figure out the range before reminding himself that this was the view from an aft-facing camera. With no idea how far the camera was zoomed in, there was no way to calculate range.

His navigation screen could have given him a range accurate to within ten meters, of course. It hardly mattered. They would plunge toward the station tail-first, engines blazing.

And then all hell would break loose.

“Incoming message,” said Howard Short. Tom gestured, and he tapped his screen.

A woman’s voice came over the bridge speakers, cold and condescending, the voice of someone accustomed to command. “This is Captain Artag of the H154.”

One of the heavy cruisers, then.

“You are decelerating too slowly. You need to match velocities at a range in excess of ten kilometers.”

Tom turned to give instructions to Gabrielle, but she grabbed the mic before he could speak. “We’re decelerating just as fast as we can, Captain. Perhaps you missed the earlier part of the conversation where we talked about taking excessive damage.”

Artag said, “Why do you have auxiliary rockets attached to your hull?”

“The rebel colony fleet was kind enough to provide those.” Gabrielle still looked frazzled, like her nerves were on the verge of snapping, but her voice dripped with amusement. “We scavenged them and hooked them to our hull. If it wasn’t for the boosters, it would have taken us another month to get here.”

“You need to increase your rate of deceleration.”

“We’ll get right on that, Captain, just as soon as the laws of physics change.”

“You are addressing an officer with the rank of Divisional Unit Leader,” Artag said sharply.

“And you’re addressing a communication officer who thought she was going to die in deep space. The air is barely breathable, and I’ve got friends dying in the surgical bay. I didn’t really think we were going to make it back. Frankly, we’ve been through hell, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not perfectly respectful in the face of ridiculous, impossible demands.”

“Let me speak to your captain.”

“Absolutely,” snapped Gabrielle. “You can talk to him as soon as we’re safely docked at the station, the last of the fires is under control, and the injured have been moved to a proper medical facility. Until then, he’s kind of busy.”

“Adjust the angle of your approach,” Artag said. “If you come within ten kilometers of the station, you will be fired upon.”

Gabrielle gave Tom a helpless glance. He shrugged.

“Understood, Captain,” Gabrielle said, and set the microphone down.

“Fire a couple of port-side thrusters,” Tom said. “Make it look like we’re trying to comply.” Anything to buy them just a little more time.

Sixty seconds crawled past in a taut silence.

“B19. You need to adjust your course.”

Gabrielle, her voice hoarse and strained, said, “Captain, we’re doing our best.”

“We’re coming alongside,” said Artag. “Don’t make any sudden maneuvers.”

It’s a battleship, Tom thought. Sudden maneuvers?

He watched on his tactical display as one heavy cruiser broke away from the rest of the fleet. The cruiser, far more nimble than the battleship, raced toward the Icicle, then spun around to reduce velocity. Once the two ships were side-by-side the cruiser swapped ends one more time. Both ships plunged toward the station tail-first, decelerating.

“They want to dock with us,” O’Reilly said. “Range is fifty meters and dropping.”

Tom said, “How long until we reach the station?”

“Eight minutes to the station. Just under four minutes until we reach the rest of the fleet.”

It’ll have to be good enough. “Clobber them,” said Tom.

Jennifer Smith grabbed a microphone. “Missile Bay Four. How’s your targeting?”

“They’re just aft of us,” said a faint, tinny voice from her console. “They’re overtaking us, though.”

“Blast them as soon as you’ve got a straight shot.”

Tom’s console turned to static, then reset. Instead of detailed graphics he had nothing but text menus.

Gabrielle said, “H154. Why have you turned on your Benson field?”

There was no reply.

O’Reilly glanced at Tom. “Should I turn on our field?”

Tom shook his head. “Not until the moment we fire.”

“Give us a five-second warning,” O’Reilly said.

“Firing in five,” said a voice from Smith’s console. O’Reilly mashed a thumb against his screen, and the Icicle’s Benson field generator came on, scrambling every electronic system on the cruiser.

“Missiles are away,” Smith said. She leaned over her console, then straightened up and grinned. “We got four good hits, and the guns are making short work of what’s left.”

“Incoming missiles,” said O’Reilly. The rest of the fleet had opened fire.

Tom looked down at his tactical display, which had reset to show crude, chunky graphics. A cloud of missiles rushed toward the Icicle, and his fingers tightened on the arms of his chair, bracing for impact. Gunners like Law would be firing aft, opening up with everything they had. But missiles were tiny, fast-moving targets, almost impossible to hit without computer assistance.

He had forgotten the sheer volume of fire that a battleship could generate. One missile after another winked out on his display. But, with only seconds remaining before impact, it would never be enough.

His display screen went dead. It was back a moment later, the blocky squares that indicated missiles replaced by crisp, precise outlines. The heavy cruiser’s Benson field was down, which meant—

Missiles vanished from the screen, one after another, as the battleship’s AI took over targeting. The guns, fired with a precision no human could ever attain, tore their way through the cloud of incoming missiles.

It was almost enough.

Tom planted his feet against the deck plates and pressed his back against the chair, ready for a violent impact as one last missile slipped through the Icicle’s defences and detonated against her engines.

The tiniest hint of a vibration shook Tom’s chair. He blinked, startled, then relaxed. Wow. This tub can really take a punch.

“Direct hit to Engine Three,” O’Reilly said cheerfully. The Free Neorome fleet had crippled Engine Three when they first disabled the battleship.

Tom brought up a menu of hull cameras, scrolling through the list until he found a view of the heavy cruiser. The H154 was a devastated ruin. It turned slowly as it drifted away from the Icicle, chunks of hull plate in a cloud around it. Tom could see exposed girders and deck plates, and a figure in a vac suit, arms splayed wide, floating free. A chunk of the cruiser’s nose had been blown away completely and floated in its own cloud of debris nearby.

“One down, five to go, someone said. “Plus the station, of course.”

“Cut engines,” said Tom. “Bring us around.”

The battleship began a ponderous rotation. “We’re coming in pretty fast,” said O’Reilly.

“That’s fine.” A fast approach meant less time soaking up incoming fire. And the way the Icicle had shrugged off a missile strike had him thinking that his original plan – to cripple the station with missiles and shells – wasn’t going to work.

He had a backup plan, and it called for plenty of velocity.

The ship straightened out at last. The station was the largest thing on the forward display, with just the blackness of the night side of Novograd behind it. The station was saucer-shaped, the upper surface mostly smooth steel plates with gun turrets showing here and there and a forest of antennas at the very top. The hull plates were a dull gray in color, with shuttered windows showing white.

The underside of the station was similar, except for the stabilizing vane, half a kilometer long, that descended like a stalactite. There would be docking ports and repulsor pods around the base of the vane, but those were invisible from where the Icicle thundered in from above.

“They’re pulling back,” O’Reilly said. “Smart of them.”

Tom checked his tactical display. The five remaining ships that had come forward to intercept them were retreating toward the station. Four more ships joined them, the remainder of the Novograd fleet.

“Looks like a couple of destroyers,” Smith said. “A heavy cruiser, I think. And the little one must be a corvette.”

Nothing we can’t handle. But the station, though ….

“Missiles, Captain?”

Tom glanced at Smith, considering, then shook his head. “No. We’ll save them for point-blank range.”

Moment by moment the range closed, and then the fleet and the station opened up together. Beeps and warbles sounded as damage reports came in, and the ship vibrated with a particularly heavy impact.

“Wow,” said O’Reilly. “That one punched straight through the armor in the nose.” He tapped his console, and shook his head. “Looks like we won’t be using the wardroom anymore.”

That had to be a shot from the destroyer. Well, the Icicle couldn’t very well dodge. There was nothing to do but forge ahead. “Target the destroyer,” he said. “Let’s see if they can take it as well as they can dish it out.”

“We lost Turret Three,” O’Reilly said, and Tom winced. One turret didn’t have much tactical significance, but there was a pretty good chance a gun crew had just died. He thought of Law and hoped she was all right.

Blows from the destroyer were striking the nose of the battleship now, regular as a metronome. Most of the shots deflected from the ship’s armor plating, but several more punched through, and the nose of the battleship began to disintegrate.

“Turn us broadside,” Tom said. It would spread the damage around, and allow more of the Icicle’s guns to bear.

“I think the destroyer is dead,” said Vaughn.

“Target the station,” Tom said. Then, “The destroyer doesn’t look badly hurt.”

“Her nose is tilted up by almost five degrees,” said Vaughn. “It means she can’t hit us. Not with her magnetic guns.”

“We’re taking laser fire from the station!”

Tom didn’t see who spoke, but the voice was shrill with fear. When he checked his tactical display he saw why. A dozen lasers were targeting the forward port quarter of the ship, and one beam had already cut through.

Those are some powerful lasers. “Give us some waggle,” Tom said. It would play hell with the targeting of the Icicle’s guns, but it would spread the laser fire around and make it more difficult to burn a deep hole.

Navigational thrusters fired, rocking the ship ever so slightly, spoiling the aim of the lasers.

“Why didn’t they hit us earlier?” O’Reilly complained.

Inferior laser technology, Tom realized. The United Worlds ships, and some of the better Dawn Alliance ships, had lasers with practically unlimited range. It took incredible precision, however, to make a laser with a beam that wouldn’t diffuse over distance.

And that’s why we’re still alive.

“We’re almost at their Benson Field range.”

Tom nodded his acknowledgement. “Give me a full missile barrage as soon as we hit the field.”

His tactical display turned to static, which meant that electronic systems aboard the station were being similarly scrambled. The main bridge screen, using simpler technology, only flickered for a moment. Tom watched the bright glow from a dozen missiles as they streaked away from the battleship toward the station.

Half the missiles got through. They exploded against the hull of the station, looking downright inconsequential against such a broad expanse of steel. A couple of missiles blasted away hull plates. One missile punched straight through and exploded inside, blowing away the shutters on several windows from inside. Flame glowed briefly through the ruptured windows before vacuum sniffed it out.

But a couple of missiles exploded without any visible effect other than scorch marks on the station’s hull. Tom scowled and made his decision.

“Course change. Ram the station.”

The view tilted as the ship changed course. Tom couldn’t hear the engines, but glowing icons on his console told him the engines were firing.

“All guns, target the fleet,” Tom said.

O’Reilly and Smith leaned over their consoles, giving orders to the gun crews. The guns on the port side didn’t have an angle on the fleet, and continued to fire at the station. Tom saw a laser turret break apart under a withering barrage.

The rest of the guns focused their fire on a heavy cruiser, which blew apart with gratifying speed.

“Fighters,” said Vaughn. Then he said into his microphone, “Ignore the birds. Focus on Bravo.”

The fighters looked dashing and dangerous, sleek triangular shapes that swept in close to the Icicle’s hull, guns belching fire. But there was little they could do. One fighter loomed on the main bridge display as it raced close in front of the camera. Then it jerked sideways and broke apart. Tom grunted in surprise. “That was friendly fire.”

“Somebody’s not getting his next promotion,” said O’Reilly.

The remains of the fighter tumbled away and the space station filled the screen. Instinct made Tom lean back in his seat. He wanted to check his navigational display and see what the range was, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“All hands, brace for impact!” It was O’Reilly’s voice, and he sounded frightened, but when Tom looked at his friend O’Reilly was grinning. He cried, “Docking with the station in three, two, one-”

The impact knocked Tom out of his seat. He sprawled on the deck, wanting to clap his hands over his ears as metal screamed all around him. Alarms buzzed and howled, and someone let out a whoop.

The main screen went blank, the forward cameras destroyed. Then a starscape appeared, bizarrely serene. That must be an aft camera. There’s nothing behind us. The stars tilted and drifted sideways as the battleship moved.

I can breathe. That means the bridge still has pressure. Tom shoved himself to his feet and returned to his chair. “What’s our status?”

Someone said, “We’re smashed up real good.”

“Here comes the rest of the fleet. The jackals think it’s safe to pick over our bones. Let’s show them the error of their ways.”

It was O’Reilly speaking, Tom realized. He was snarling into a microphone, making sure the gun crews kept firing.

“We’ve got basic navigation,” said Ishida, his voice strangely nasal. There was blood on his console, and he tapped icons with one hand while curling the other hand protectively around his nose. “Looks like all the rocket boosters are gone.”

“We’ve got maybe half our guns,” said Smith.

“Turn us!” O’Reilly barked. “Put us nose down.” He looked at Tom. “We lost most of the armor on the nose. The lasers on the station are shooting the hell out of us.”

“Give me main engines,” said Tom. He’d hoped to cripple the station with one blow. If those super-powered laser turrets were still firing, the Icicle was in terrible danger. “Get us into the atmosphere.”

O’Reilly glanced at him, but didn’t object. “What do you think, Captain? One last missile volley?”

Tom nodded. “Let’s unload everything we’ve got.”

“We got the carrier,” someone said. A couple of people cheered. Tom just scowled. The station was our goal. As long as the station is operational, they’re going to keep Novograd.

“Let me see if I can improve the view,” said O’Reilly. He scrolled through a long text menu, then pressed his thumb against the screen. “That’s a little more interesting.”

The starfield vanished, replaced by the burning hulk of the enemy carrier. Beyond it the destroyer floated, dead in space.

“Look,” said Ishida, pointing at the screen. “The rest of them are pulling back.” It made sense, with the battleship heading for the planet. There was no point in facing the still formidable guns of a ship that was about to crash.

A new alarm bleated, Tom’s ears popped, and he twisted in his seat, scrambling for his helmet. The bridge hatch slammed shut and the alarm went silent.

“Pressure is holding,” said O’Reilly. “Jesus, those lasers are powerful.”

We’re four decks in, Tom thought. But once they burn through the armor plates, the rest of the ship might as well be so much tissue paper.

“Get us into the atmosphere,” he said.

As if in answer, the ship bucked beneath him. He grunted.

“Entering atmosphere,” Ishida said.

“Take us deep,” said Tom. Laser energy dissipated quickly in atmosphere. That, combined with increasing range, would make them a lot safer in a couple of minutes.

Of course, they didn’t have much hope of getting back out of the atmosphere ….

O’Reilly worked his controls, finding a camera that showed a view of the station. The image shook madly, reflecting the vibration of the battleship as it forced its way through an ever-thickening atmosphere. Then the image stabilized and sharpened.

“I guess we’re out of Benson Field range,” Tom said.

“Not quite,” said Smith. She leaned over her console. “We’re still in range of the station, but the fleet just crossed the threshold.” Which meant the station had lost its Benson field generators. They couldn’t do automatic targeting.

“Missiles!” said Tom, and looked at O’Reilly. “No dead reckoning. Give me aimed shots.” He looked at the main screen with its view of the underside of the station. “Target those repulsor pods. Hit them with everything we’ve got left.”

With the ship’s electronics functioning again, he saw the blazing thrusters of each missile as it launched, plus a hovering icon with statistics for velocity and payload. The missiles raced forward, jigging and dodging to avoid defensive fire. Several missiles vanished, but not as many as he would have expected. We hurt them. There’s chaos on the station. There gun crews aren’t doing their job.

Fourteen missiles raced out from the Icicle, and ten made it through. There were four repulsor pods visible on this side of the stabilizer vane, and each pod took at least two missile hits. One pod exploded in a spectacular eruption of energy, doing further damage to the pods on either side.

“We’re crashing,” said Ishida. “There’s no way I can get us back into orbit.”

“Aim for land, if you please,” said Tom. He ran through what he knew of Novograd. “Northern continent, if you can manage it. The lake country has the most active local resistance.”

“I’ll do my best,” Ishida said.

Someone adjusted the zoom on the display, so the ring of pods on the underside of the station filled the screen. They were a shattered mess. The station was already tilting and losing altitude. It wasn’t in a stable orbit, instead using the repulsor pods to hold itself in a fixed point over the planet’s surface. Without the repulsor pods it was doomed.

“I think we just accomplished our mission,” said O’Reilly. He grabbed the arms of his chair as the vibration of the ship increased. “Now all we have to do is live long enough to collect our medals.”

Chapter 9

Alice spent the crash in her bunk. The bunk rooms were designed for it, each with its own airtight hatch, bulkheads and decks reinforced so the room wouldn’t crush during a collision. She stretched out in her vac suit and tightened safety straps across her chest and hips. Then she lay there, staring at the bunk above her, fighting down claustrophobia.

The ship bounced and rocked as it descended through atmosphere. Someone in a nearby bunk laughed, her voice a staccato hiccup as her bunk thumped against her back. The laugh had an edge of hysteria, and Alice grinned sympathetically.

The lights went out, returned, then went out again. Alice’s helmet light came on. Other helmet lights glowed around her like fireflies, and she heard someone praying.

Then the impact came. The bunk slammed into Alice from below, driving the air from her lungs. Her arms and legs flew up, hitting the underside of the bunk above. Metal groaned, glass shattered, an alarm blared, and several people screamed. Alice wanted to scream as well, but she didn’t have the breath.

Silence.

Alice groaned and fumbled at her straps. Her bunk was tilted, so she took a good grip on the chest strap before she unlatched it. When she undid the waist strap her body slid sideways. She hung onto the strap until her boots found the deck.

All around her, women climbed out of bunks. Someone was crying softly. Someone else said, “Oh my God.” She repeated it over and over in a low, dull voice. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

One woman didn’t rise. She lay in a bottom bunk. The bulkhead beside her was gone, burned away by a laser strike. The woman’s head was still intact, and her right shoulder and arm. The rest of her body was a burned ruin, almost completely obliterated.

Alice didn’t know her name. She was an older woman with gray eyebrows and deep crow’s feet around her eyes. Those eyes were open, staring upward toward the sky that had been her home.

Alice turned her head, redirecting her helmet light, returning the woman to darkness.

The others filed out of the bunk room, murmuring quietly. The faceplates on their helmets were up, which meant this section of the ship still had pressure.

Alice shook her head. We’re on the ground. The ambient pressure is one atmosphere.

She drew in a deep breath through her nose. If the fresh air of Novograd was seeping into the ship, damned little of it had reached her bunk room so far. Mostly she smelled sweat and burning plastic. There was no smell of burned flesh from the corpse, for which she was profoundly grateful.

The last of her roommates paused in the hatchway, looking back. “Alice? You okay?”

“I’m right behind you,” Alice lied. The woman nodded and hurried away.

Once Alice was alone she took off her helmet and gloves. The room was quite dark, so she turned on her helmet light and set the helmet on a bunk, then began the long clumsy process of peeling off her vac suit. She dug out a jacket and boots, wincing as she forced her injured foot into the boot. She picked through her meager supply of possessions, put a toothbrush in her pocket, and abandoned the rest.

Light dazzled in the corner of her eye, and a voice said, “Are you all right, Ma’am?”

A man stood in the hatchway with a data pad in his hand. “We’re abandoning ship,” he said. “You need to get moving.”

“I’m going.”

He nodded and glanced through the room. “Anyone else here?” He squatted to peer into the destroyed bunk. “Sweet Jesus.”

“There’s just me and her.”

“Don’t dawdle,” the man said, and moved on. She listened to his steps as he went from room to room. More footsteps echoed above her as people hurried down the corridor. Other sounds reached her, metallic clatters and thumps. Before long, though, the sounds faded and the ship grew quiet.

Time to get to work.

She stepped to the hatchway, letting out an involuntary squeak when she almost crashed into a tall figure who had approached silently.

“There you are! Are you hurt?”

“Bridger! Jesus, don’t do that.”

Bridger snickered. “Come on. We’re abandoning ship.”

Another figure appeared behind Bridger, a slender man in his thirties who poked his head into the bunk room. “It looks just like the men’s bunk rooms. I thought yours would be nicer.”

“Hello, Garth.”

Garth Ham smiled at her. “Hi, Alice.” He jerked his head. “The closest exit is this way.”

He Alice felt a brief rush of gratitude for her old shipmates who had come looking for her. She didn’t say anything, of course. “You two go ahead. I’ll be along in a bit.”

Bridger planted his feet and folded his arms. “What are we doing?”

“We aren’t doing anything. I’m doing something.”

Ham looked from Bridger to Alice, then shrugged and copied Bridger’s posture.

Alice sighed. “Fine. We’re staying behind to see if the saboteur does something.”

Bridger’s eyebrows rose. “Like what? Trying to destroy the ship?” He waved a hand at the shambles around them. “The ship crashed, Alice.”

“See, this is why I don’t tell you when I do things like this.” She scowled at him. “No, I’m not worried that he’s going to destroy the ship. I’m worried that he’s going to do something else.”

“Like what?” Bridger’s hands rose in a frustrated shrug.

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. But maybe he has.” She looked up at the ceiling, as if she could see through the deck plates above her and spot the saboteur. “I’ve been busy. He hasn’t. He’s had nothing to do but skulk and scheme and figure out what to do next to cause some real grief.”

“Well,” said Bridger, “how are we going to find him?”

“My plan was to keep quiet and listen. I didn’t know I was going to have my own private peanut gallery chattering away at me.”

Bridger gave her a hurt look, but he didn’t speak. He and Ham retreated, and she followed, all three of them moving softly down the corridor outside. Her foot ached, but not too badly. She no longer needed the cane.

Safety lights glowed along the edge of the corridor, providing enough light to navigate. They worked their way aft, crept up a staircase, and reached the main cafeteria. The long, wide room felt downright spooky in the gloom. Bridger walked to the far side of the cafeteria, threading his way among the tables until he reached wide entrance doors and a stairwell just beyond. Then he stood there without moving.

Ham went to the starboard wall where he found a service elevator. The shaft would carry sound from the other decks. Alice stood in another doorway, one that opened onto a long corridor. And they waited, and listened.

Ships were noisy. She hadn’t properly realized it until now, when the countless sources of racket went quiet one by one. The absence of human activity was strange enough. There were no voices, no footsteps, no distant music and no clatter from a dropped fork. The air circulation machinery was silent, a background hum she had long since lost the ability to hear. It was weirdly prominent now by its absence.

She thought the ship was truly silent until a faint hiss at the edge of hearing went silent. Metal creaked somewhere as the ship settled. Something popped, so loud that Alice jumped. The sound didn’t repeat, and she finally had to shrug to herself and admit she would never know what it was.

Long minutes stretched out. Alice began to fidget in spite of herself. The survivors would be moving away from the ship. How long before they became impossible to track, impossible to catch up to? She had a bad foot, after all. She didn’t much want to run.

An entire crashed battleship wouldn’t be hard to find. The Dawn Alliance had to be on its way. We can’t stay here. This ship is a trap. We need to—

Somewhere directly above her, machinery rumbled into life.

She looked at Bridger and Ham. They’d both heard it too. She pointed straight up, and Ham pointed up and at an angle. Bridger started across the cafeteria at a jog.

Alice shifted, and a muscle in her hip twinged. How long was I standing there without moving? She put a hand on her pistol, reassuring herself that it was there. Then, as the men reached her, she led them down the corridor toward the nearest ladder.

Jogging down the corridor hurt her foot. It was also a strangely surreal experience. The eerie silence and dim lighting combined with the tilt of the deck plates gave her the strangest sensation that she was dreaming. She tried to dismiss the thought. You’re awake, and the danger you’re in is real.

They climbed the ladder, pausing on every landing to listen. The noise was always above them. They kept climbing until they reached the top deck, then turned in a slow circle. Bridger pointed aft, and Alice nodded. They drew their guns and set out.

Alice’s instincts told her to advance at a slow creep. Bridger moved out ahead of her, walking briskly. She hissed, “Bridger!”

“That sounds like a gun turret,” he said softly. “I think we should hurry.”

She cocked her head, thinking about the sound. There was a metallic rattle that could have been an ammo chain, and the low hum of an electric motor. Maybe it is a turret.

She looked at Ham, and the two of them broke into a jog.

They caught up with Bridger, who slowed as they came to a corner. “Shouldn’t be long now,” said Bridger, and stepped around the corridor.

A gunshot rang out, and Bridger fell to the deck.

The survivors straggled out of the battleship in a long, ragged column. Scouts ranged ahead, choosing a route that wouldn’t be too rough on the wounded.

There were six stretcher cases, a mercifully small number under the circumstances. Or a brutally small number, Tom thought, thinking of all the crew who hadn’t made it out of the ship. There were another dozen or so walking wounded. He wasn’t sure yet what the full butcher’s bill came to, but they’d left more than a few bodies on the ship.

No one carried much. The key to survival was to stay ahead of the Dawn Alliance troops who were no doubt already on their way. They had to stay light and move quickly, and put as much distance as possible between themselves and the wrecked ship.

“I still say we should have shot them.”

Tom gave Captain McDougall a sour look. “Noted,” he said, wishing he was sure the man was wrong.

The former crew of the battleship made a long burgundy line as they headed toward the rising suns. There was no way to keep them contained, and the thought of having them all executed turned Tom’s stomach. So he’d ordered them out of the ship, told them to head east, and sent them on their way.

He had a best guess about where the ship had crashed and what lay around them. Just a guess; no one was certain. But there was forest and open plains to the south and east. To the west, at a distance of twenty or thirty kilometers, his spotters were almost certain they’d seen a settlement. That was where the prisoners were headed.

Directly to the north was a road, at a range of somewhere between two and five kilometers. Tom figured a road was their best bet for covering a lot of territory quickly, if they could steal some vehicles. There was a scouting party on the way there now. The rest of them would follow, at as fast a pace as the stretcher parties could maintain.

It was mid-morning, and the sunlight felt warm on his head and shoulders. That was good, because most of the crew had fled wearing their vac suits over their uniforms. A great pile of abandoned suits lay by the main cargo hatch, which they’d used to escape the ship. Most of them were in their shirtsleeves.

Tom turned to look back at the ship, half a kilometer distant. It had the look of a dilapidated building, something assembled in a hurry and then abandoned to the elements. The deadly grace of the Icicle when she was in space was stripped away now that she lay on the ground.

The tail of the ship had obliterated a stand of spruce trees. The surviving trees pressed close against the battered and melted remains of the ship’s engines. The rest of the ship lay on open grassland.

The terrain was a mix of grassy plains and small clumps of trees, with knobs of selenite crystals jutting up from the grass. The line of spacers meandered, going around clumps of brush and patches of crystal. Tom scanned the line, looking from face to face.

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

Tom glanced at O’Reilly, who stood beside him, and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, come on,” said O’Reilly. “You can’t tell me you’re not looking for Alice.”

Tom’s face got warm. “Well, she’s a native. She might be able to guide us.”

“There’s at least a dozen natives in the crew. That’s not why you’re looking for Alice.”

“Well, at any rate,” said Tom, “I don’t see her.” What if she was still on the ship, trapped or injured?

What if she was dead?

“She’s fine,” said O’Reilly. “You know how resourceful she is. We all came running outside with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We abandoned about a thousand different things that we’re going to need desperately by the time this is over. Alice is going to come out of the ship in a couple of minutes with a bag over her shoulder full of all the stuff you and I didn’t think of.”

“Maybe,” said Tom. He lifted his gaze from the last straggling spacers to the battleship itself. The open cargo hatch was a shadowy rectangle at ground level. He squinted, trying to penetrate the gloom, hoping for a hint of motion.

When motion came, though, it was from the top of the ship. A fat gun barrel tilted, and the turret beneath it began to turn.”

“Look,” said Tom, pointing. “That turret.”

He glanced up, half expecting to see enemy aircraft in the sky. Maybe that was Alice, taking one last shot at the enemy.

But the gun barrel was tilting down. It was pointing at the ground, and the rotation of the turret brought the muzzle closer and closer to the retreating spacers.

Tom glanced over his shoulder, wondering if there might be Dawn Alliance forces beyond them. But the cold fist tightening in his stomach told him the enemy wasn’t on the ground.

The enemy was still aboard the ship.

O’Reilly said, “Oh, shit.”

The gun fired. Flame belched from the barrel, the sound of the shot drowned out by the explosion, practically simultaneous, as the shell hit. The ground erupted near the middle of the column, a dozen paces to one side. People ducked and stumbled away. A woman screamed, clapping a hand to her shoulder.

“Scatter!” Tom bellowed. He lifted his arms high, then waved them to either side. “Spread out!” By the look of it, that was a thirty millimeter gun firing. It could throw out slightly more than one shell per second, enough to do terrible damage before the fleeing spacers could reach cover. The only hope was to deny the enemy a clustered target.

“Come on.” O’Reilly planted a hand on Tom’s shoulder and shoved. “Take your own advice.”

Tom looked at him. “We should separate.”

So at least one of us will survive. O’Reilly didn’t acknowledge the grim, unspoken thought. He just nodded and headed in the opposite direction at a run.

Tom ran, shouting at the others to spread out. It wasn’t doing much good; he was drowned out by shouts and screams.

But not by further gunfire. A prickle of hope teased him. Maybe the ammo belts aren’t working, or the gunners, whoever they are, don’t know how to work them. Maybe they only had the one shell.

As if in answer, the gun fired again. The shell hit open ground close to where the first shell had hit. Clods of dirt spun through the air, but by the look of it, no one was hurt.

Then, less than a second later, another shot, and another. The gun tracked sideways, every shot coming closer to the fleeing spacers who’d been in the middle of the line.

Alice flinched back from the corner, then tightened her grip on her pistol and took a deep breath. I need to get at whoever that is. Before she could advance, though, Bridger moved. He rolled like a log, straight toward her, and she edged back to give him room. A shot hit the deck plates by his knees, and then his frantic roll took him past the corner to safety. He rose to his feet.

Ham, standing with his back to the far wall of the corridor, said, “Are you all right?”

“I may have wet my pants,” said Bridger. He gestured at the corner. “There’s a woman in the hatchway to the turret. She’s got pretty good cover.” He gave Alice a grim look. “She’s wearing a Free Neorome uniform.”

“Great,” she muttered. “A traitor.” She stepped around Bridger, lifted her pistol, and leaned around the corner.

The shot came almost immediately, hitting the wall panel, plowing through, and bursting through the panel on Alice’s side of the corner. Shrapnel from the panel peppered her cheek and mouth, and she swore as she pulled back. “Okay, a frontal attack isn’t going to work.”

She looked around, searching for inspiration, her fingers absently exploring her face. She found a bit of fiber embedded in her upper lip and pulled it loose, wincing.

Bridger said, “Hey. Where’s Garth?”

Garth Ham was gone. She frowned, then shrugged inwardly. Ham had been captured and tortured by the Dawn Alliance, and his nerve just wasn’t what it used to be. She couldn’t blame him, not after what he’d been through. This would be up to her and Bridger.

“The gun is firing,” Ham said. “What do we do?”

Another shot came through the wall panel at the corner, and Alice yelped as she took another step back. That step became two, and then three. Fear clawed at her, and she turned. Then she made herself stop. There was nothing else for it. The two of them would have to barrel around the corner, guns blazing, and hope one of them got a lucky shot. It would be ugly. A frontal assault on a defensible position was suicide, but it was the only way.

She tightened her grip on her pistol and looked at Bridger. He took a deep breath, nodded, and said, “On three?”

“One,” said Alice, then whirled as boots thumped in the corridor behind her. She came within a hair’s breadth of firing as Ham came around the corner, panting.

Bridger said, “Jesus, buddy, I almost shot you.” He lowered his pistol. “What’s in the bag?”

Ham had a haversack over his shoulder. He opened the flap, hauled out a crater gun and a couple of magazines, then took out a small grenade.

Bridger’s eyes lit up. “Come to papa!” He holstered his pistol, snatched up the grenade, armed it, and lobbed it around the corner. Then he grabbed the crater gun, checked that it was live, and levelled it. The grenade exploded, and Bridger leaned around the corner, firing madly. He flinched back, swearing, as return fire peppered the wall behind him. “You got any more grenades?”

Ham nodded. “Not for you, though.” He knelt, pressing his palms to the deck plates.

Bridger shook his head. “What are you doing?” He stuck the crater gun around the corner, fired blindly, and pulled back.

“I’m looking for the ammo chain supplying that gun.” Ham closed his eyes and moved one hand. “The vibration is stronger this way.”

Alice followed as he moved to one side of the corridor, where he opened a door. The rattle of the ammo chain became louder. They stepped into a little room full of gauges and screens, their purpose impossible to determine. It also had a hatch in the floor. Bridger pried the hatch open and they looked down at a rectangular channel just big enough for the fat shells that went past, nose to tail.

Ham shoved a hand into the haversack and drew out a pair of grenades. He handed one to Alice. For a moment they looked at one another, not speaking. Then, as close to simultaneously as they could manage, they armed the grenades and dropped them into the moving chain.

Tom stood frozen half a dozen steps from a stand of spruce trees. He desperately wanted to take cover. His mind screamed at him to take the last few steps and throw himself down. The tree trunks were thickest at the base, so he’d hug the ground. But the gun was firing, people were dying, and he couldn’t just cower. So he waved his arms, thinking that if the gun tracked toward him he still had time to dive for cover.

A line of explosions traced its way across the prairie, chasing a knot of six or seven spacers. The group began to scatter, and a shell hit right at one woman’s feet. The explosion sent her shattered body spinning through the air.

I’m too far away, Tom thought. If I want to draw fire I have to get closer to the point of impact. I have to make myself a better target. The logic was sound, but he couldn’t make himself move. We have to get everyone under cover, and then we have to send a team back to the ship to track down the gunner. He lifted his gaze to the battleship. How are we going to reach it?

The distant gun barrel rose a couple of degrees. And then, like the answer to a prayer, the turret exploded. The gun barrel shot outward like a javelin and slammed into the ground muzzle first, a good twenty meters from the ship. Smoke billowed from the shattered remains of the turret, a black column that stretched toward the sky.

For a long minute Tom stood there, not quite ready to believe it was over. His eyes flitted across the hull, going from turret to turret, waiting for another gun to come to life. But nothing moved.

“What are you doing standing here like an idiot?”

Tom looked to his right as O’Reilly hobbled over to join him. “You’re limping.”

“I bashed my knee diving behind some rocks.” O’Reilly gestured over his shoulder, grimacing. “That’s the thing about rocks. The ground around them tends to be pretty rocky.”

“Well, that’s why I’m standing here like an idiot. My knees are fine.”

O’Reilly pointed toward the battleship. “I guess we better go see what’s left.”

Alice lay on the deck beside the open trapdoor, arms curled around her head, knees drawn to her chest. Her ears rang, drowning out all other sounds. She could smell, though. She smelled fire and burning plastic and hot metal, and underneath it a scent that made her think of summer barbecues. It was the smell of cooking meat, and to her horror her stomach grumbled. That’s a human being burning, for God’s sake. But no amount of appalled shame would keep her stomach from grumbling again.

She opened her eyes. At first all she saw was the yellow after-image of the blast of flame that had flashed through the ammunition tunnel. I’m still alive, so I guess the rest of the shells didn’t cook off.

She relaxed her arms and light flooded in. She could see her own knees, and the textured steel of the deck plate beneath her.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she straightened her body, rolled onto her back, and looked up.

Ham stood over her, his lips moving. She caught his voice as a faint murmur, drowned out by a ringing echo. The side of his face was pink, and quite a bit of his hair had singed away. Half of one eyebrow was gone, but he looked basically unhurt.

“I can’t hear you,” she said, then reached up a hand. He hauled her to her feet.

A black circle decorated the ceiling of the little room, with a matching dark stripe along one wall. That must have been one hell of an explosion. She looked at Ham, and he stared back at her, his eyes wide with shock.

She grinned and shrugged. “Let’s go.” She didn’t couldn’t hear her own voice, but Ham followed her as she stepped through the hatch.

There was no sign of Bridger in the corridor. Well, I don’t see his corpse, so that’s good, right?

She found herself unable to remember what direction they had come from. Only when she spotted the bullet hole at the corner did she manage to orient herself. She peeked through the hole, saw no movement, and poked her head around the corner.

Smoke seeped through the hatch to the gun turret. A woman lay in the hatchway, draped over the sill in a way that would have been quite uncomfortable if she hadn’t been obviously dead. She was on her back, arms flung wide, her face pointed at the ceiling.

She was badly burned. Her body below the rib cage was a blackened mess. “I wish she wasn’t dead.” Ham’s voice sounded small and distant, but Alice was greatly reassured by the fact that she could hear him at all. “I wanted to ask her why she did it.”

Alice stared down at the woman’s face. The skin on her neck and under her chin was black, and there was a red burn along one cheek, but the rest of her face was untouched. She looked almost peaceful, staring into oblivion.

The collar of her uniform was burgundy.

“It’s not the traitor,” Alice said. “It’s a Dawn Alliance soldier.”

Ham stepped to the turret’s hatch, gun in hand, and looked inside. He flinched back, grimacing. “The gun’s completely demolished. I think a shell blew up in the breech.”

The clatter of running feet made Alice drop a hand to the butt of her pistol as she turned. Bridger came charging around the corner, then skidded to a halt. He had a first-aid kit in one hand and a bundle of firefighting gear under his other arm. He looked from Ham to Alice, then exhaled and dropped his burdens. He looked at the body, then glanced into the turret and grimaced. “What the hell happened?”

“The gunner’s dead,” Alice said. “The other one’s still alive, though. The collaborator.”

Bridger gestured back the way he’d come. “She didn’t go this way.”

That just left one direction. Alice edged her way past the turret, coughing as she inhaled smoke. She drew her pistol, moved to the next corner, took a deep breath, and stuck her head around the corner.

A woman in a green uniform was lurching down the corridor, maybe twenty paces away. Alice didn’t recognize her. She had long dark hair and a slim build, and blood soaked her right hip. She held a laser pistol in her left hand. Her right hand was against the wall of the corridor, holding her up as she limped frantically away.

“Stop,” said Alice, stepping around the corner. She took careful aim at the middle of the woman’s back. “I’ve got you dead to rights.”

The fleeing woman glanced over her shoulder, giving Alice a glimpse of her face. What struck Alice the most was how ordinary that face was. This was no monster, no twisted murderer. Just a woman, afraid and in pain and determined to escape.

The woman turned away and resumed her lurching flight.

“I’ll shoot you,” said Alice. “I can’t miss at this range.”

The woman didn’t react. She just kept hobbling away. In another half-dozen steps she would reach a cross-corridor. She might escape, or find cover and put up a fight.

What motivates you? You’re a colonist. Why did you turn on us? What were you thinking? What are you thinking now, knowing I’m about to shoot you in the back?

“We can’t let her go,” said Bridger. “There’s other gun turrets.”

Alice started to speak, started to voice one last warning. But Bridger was right. Alice’s shipmates were just outside, exposed and vulnerable, and the Icicle had plenty more guns.

The woman reached the corner, and Alice shot her between the shoulder blades. The woman pitched forward, landing facedown on the deck plates. She didn’t move.

“You know what?” said Alice. “I’ve had enough of this bloody ship. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 10

The road wasn’t impressive by Earth standards, but Tom figured it was fairly typical for a colony world. It seemed to have been formed by dumping a lot of water-rounded rocks on the ground, pouring asphalt over them, and more or less smoothing it all out. The end result was bumpy but navigable, a strip of asphalt with smooth curved rocks poking up like cobblestones.

Tom was accustomed to the laser-straight roads that cut through the Canadian prairies. This road meandered and wandered, curving to follow the contours of the ground, bending to avoid outcroppings of crystal. He figured it would be frustrating to drive on, between the bumps and the curves. Walking on it was downright irritating. He had to constantly watch his step, all the while glancing up and down the road and scanning the horizon in every direction for threats.

Tom walked at the head of the column, while O’Reilly brought up the rear. The day was getting warmer, the heat exacerbated by exercise. Tom undid the top button of his uniform shirt and sighed, wondering how much warmer it was going to get.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

He glanced at the woman walking beside him. He didn’t know her name. She was tiny, with dark skin and straight hair and an exasperated expression. She said, “What kind of colony imports mosquitoes?”

Tom looked around, checking for flying bloodsuckers, but didn’t see any. He looked at the woman and raised an eyebrow.

She lifted a hand, ready to swat, then lowered it. “I can hear a mosquito. It’s getting louder, too.”

Tom cocked his head. All he could hear was the scuff of feet and the grumble of conversation from the spacers behind him. Well, what’s the good of being Commodore if you can’t tell people what to do? “Everybody be quiet!”

The spacers fell into a startled silence. Tom kept walking, trying to move his feet quietly. He could hear the steady slide and slap of feet against the roadway, and birdsong from the closest clump of trees. Was that there all along? It’s nice. Sounds like chickadees ….

There. Under the sound of birdsong and the rustle of grass and a light breeze. A wining drone, faint but growing louder.

“That’s no mosquito.” Adrenaline lashed through his system, but he made himself stand frozen for a moment. He turned in a circle, scanning the terrain in every direction. The closest trees were on the left, but they formed an isolated clump. On the right, at a distance of fifty meters or so, there was a wall of pines that seemed to be connected to straggling fingers of scruffy forest that stretched for at least a kilometer.

“Aircraft coming!” Tom bellowed. The whole column fell silent, heads turning, eyes focusing on him. He pointed to the distant line of trees and took a deep breath. “We’ll take cover in those trees. Double time. Let’s move, people!”

They were halfway to the trees when someone gasped and pointed at the sky. Tom said, “Keep moving,” then turned to look.

The aircraft was a dark shape the size of a housefly just above the horizon. The sound grew louder moment by moment and the housefly grew to a bumblebee as the distance closed.

“Get into the trees,” Tom cried, and ran.

He was a dozen steps from the trees when twin machine guns opened up. Bullets shredded the ground in an angry line that started far to his left, tore across the ground directly in front of him, and moved on to his right. The aircraft passed directly overhead, the engine sound changing with the Doppler effect. He caught a glimpse of the aircraft’s shadow, made soft and blurry by the twin suns. The engine howled as the aircraft turned sharply, preparing for another run.

Tom glanced left and right, checking for casualties. He couldn’t see any, although with more than a hundred spacers milling around it was impossible to be sure. Some of them had stopped when the bullets struck, while others were moving even faster.

“Into the trees!” Tom cried, his voice drowned out by shouts and screams on every side. Tom angled sideways, drawing a curse from a burly spacer who almost collided with him. A young man stood frozen, mouth open, gaping at the sky. Tom grabbed him and shoved him toward the trees. “Run!”

They were still in the open when the machine guns opened up again. Someone screamed, and Tom flinched, expecting bullets to tear into his back at any instant.

Wood crackled and broke as bullets ripped into the trees. There was another scream, this one more frightened than pained. Then Tom reached the trees. He dropped to his knees behind a pine and peered around the trunk.

A last couple of spacers charged past, one man almost stepping on Tom. Branches rustled and crackled as the man ran deeper into the trees. Someone swore, a long string of curses that faded gradually into silence.

A woman lay on the ground in front of Tom. She was no more than seven or eight paces away. She lay facedown, her arms stretched toward him as if she were reaching for the safety of the trees. She had a pair of terrible wounds in her back. He could see the curve of a rib and a lump that had to be part of her spine.

The sound of the aircraft engine deepened, and someone directly behind Tom whimpered. He got his first good look at the craft as it swept along the edge of the trees. It was a design he’d never seen before, a fixed-wing plane with actual propellers. It seemed almost comically quaint, although he supposed it had its uses for antipersonnel work. A jet or rocket-propelled craft would move too quickly. This old-fashioned machine with its propellers could putter along and give the gunners plenty of time to line up their shots.

The plane swung around, then opened up again with both machine guns, strafing the heart of the clump of trees. Someone fired a blast rifle, and a ragged hole appeared in the underside of the fuselage. The plane jerked sideways, breaking off its strafing run. It climbed rapidly and circled the trees at a height of a thousand meters or so.

“Sir? Commodore?” A hand tugged at Tom’s pant leg.

I’m not a commodore now that the fleet is broken up. He didn’t speak the thought aloud. He glanced backward to see a pale young man reaching around the base of a tree. “Sir? They’ve found a path. Looks like a deer trail. It stays pretty deep in the trees.” He pointed south and west. “Seems to go off that way.”

“Show me,” said Tom. “Then spread the word. We don’t want anyone left behind.”

The path was narrow but navigable. The survivors formed a long, straggling line as they moved farther from the road. It made communication difficult. Tom worked his way eventually to the front of the line, and passed back orders when he thought of them. “Stay spread out. If that plane makes another strafing run, we don’t want it taking out a whole crowd.”

The aircraft was still up there, mostly hidden by the trees but always audible. The steady drone of the engine put Tom’s nerves on edge. The volume rose and fell as the plane wandered back and forth, but there was never the sharp increase in volume that would come with another low strafing run. The pilot is scared. He’s keeping a safe distance. I need to find out who put that shot through the fuselage and make sure they get a medal.

The plane wasn’t attacking directly, but he had no illusions that they were safe. As long as the plane was up there, the enemy knew exactly where they were. It also meant the fugitives had to stay off the road. How long before ground forces get here? How long before we’re cut off and surrounded?

There was nothing he could do about it, so he shifted his focus to the trees around him and the narrow brown stripe of the path.

“Sir? Commodore, you shouldn’t be in the lead. We should send scouts ahead.”

Tom glanced over his shoulder. A spacer named Hendrix walked behind him, his expression earnest and determined. He hadn’t been there the last time Tom looked over his shoulder.

“Did O’Reilly send you?”

Hendrix nodded. “But it’s true. You shouldn’t be in the lead.”

“I’m fine where I am.” Tom turned away.

“I grew up on Novograd. I hunted deer and antelope in forest just like this.” Hendrix hustled forward, slipped past Tom in a crackle of branches, and took the lead.

“I’m Cree,” Tom said. “Forests are in my blood.”

Hendrix nodded as if he was agreeing, but he picked up the pace, quickly leaving Tom behind.

Tom sighed. “So much for military discipline.”

Two more scouts squeezed past him in the next few minutes. One of them returned a few minutes later, a skinny older man rubbing one cheek where a branch had scratched him. “The trail peters out up ahead, Tom. Sorry, I mean Commodore. Or is it Captain?”

“Commodore is fine,” Tom said. “We’ve got too many captains.”

The scout nodded. “Anyway, the trees end and the trail goes off across the grass. But there’s a long strip of trees in a straight line. We’ll still have some cover, although it will be pretty obvious where we are.”

Tom pretended to consider the matter. The truth was, they had no choice but to keep on going for as long as there was any cover at all. When they reached the last tree they would just keep on walking, out into the open, and hope the aircraft continued to keep its distance. Stopping was no option at all.

“We’ll carry on,” he said.

The scout nodded and hurried on ahead.

The last pines ended when the ground turned stony underfoot. Tom stopped at the edge of the trees. He could see the deer path continuing across the open grassland for a few paces, then fading. The animals, no longer constrained by the trees, would have quickly dispersed.

Off to the left was a line of trees quite different from the conifers he’d been walking through. A row of broadleaf trees stretched across the open prairie in an almost straight line. The trees were evenly spaced, and all about the same size, tall and majestic with the leaves lightly touched by gold. Apparently it’s autumn.

He squinted at the sky. For the moment the aircraft was out of sight. He glanced over his shoulder, where spacers were beginning to bunch up on the trail behind him. “Let’s go. Don’t dawdle.”

He stepped into the open, turning so he skirted the edge of the trees. If the plane came after them, a quick step would take everyone back into cover.

The aircraft remained mercifully out of sight, though, as he hurried along the edge of the trees. He quickly reached the line of broadleaf trees. Thick brush choked the gaps between the trees, but he pushed his way through.

The brush ended abruptly, and Tom found himself on an overgrown road. Another line of broadleaf trees – he figured they were elms – grew on the far side of the road. The branches met overhead, forming an almost perfect ceiling of leaves. The road made a gloomy tunnel leading off across the prairie.

In the opposite direction the road curved to follow the perimeter of the pine trees. It was barely recognizable as a road, the surface obscured by brush and young trees. This was not the stone and asphalt road they’d been on when the aircraft first arrived. This was little more than two ruts of packed dirt with a smattering of gravel. It was obviously long-neglected, with young trees as tall as his waist growing between the ruts. Even within the ruts there were saplings as tall as his knee.

I don’t like it. We’ll be all strung out in a line. If that plane makes a strafing run we’ll be perfect targets. He won’t be able to see us through the leaves, but he’ll know where we are.

Well, turning back and staying still both made lousy options. Tom shrugged to himself, turned his back on the little pine forest, and started walking.

The pilot above must have spotted someone leaving the pines, because the plane continued to circle directly above. The engine noise rose and faded and rose again as they walked. They spread out as best they could, but the muscles in Tom’s shoulders still tightened every time the plane came closer.

Hendrix came walking down the roadway, turning as Tom reached him. The two men walked side-by-side. “It goes about another kilometer,” Hendrix said. “There’s a bit of a turn, and then the trees end. There’s a line of spruce, but only on one side. And then there’s a farm.”

“Really?” Tom looked around. “This whole area looks abandoned.”

“It is.” Hendrix nodded. “The farm’s abandoned too. At least I think so. Jeff is checking it out. It’s the end of the road, though. There’s nothing but open fields all gone to seed. There’s no more trees.”

Tom turned aside and pushed through the thick brush between the elms. At its shortest the greenery was chest high. In other places it rose well above his head. He realized he hadn’t had a good look at the surrounding countryside in quite a while.

He broke through the brush, flinching in spite of himself when he saw the plane circling high above. The closest trees were several kilometers away, a dark blot near the horizon. Closer in was farmland, abandoned for years, quickly being reclaimed by nature. He saw waist-high grass, mixed brush, and a few clusters of spruce no more than a meter tall. Some elm saplings poked up close to the tree line, and he saw a patch of barley liberally mixed with weeds, all that remained of the crops that had once grown here.

“It’s about the same on the other side,” said Hendrix.

“Maybe there’s something we can use at the farm,” Tom said. “Maybe a vehicle.” But what vehicle could carry this many people? And the machine guns on that aircraft would make short work of a ground vehicle.

“The buildings have stone walls,” Hendrix said. “They look pretty sturdy.”

The end of the road, you said. I guess it is, in more ways than one. “Lead the way,” Tom said. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.”

An hour later, the refugees crouched in the meager cover of a line of giant spruce trees that formed the eastern border of a farmyard. A matching line of trees marked the northern perimeter. That had to indicate the direction of the prevailing winds.

At first glance the farm didn’t look abandoned. The yard had been planted with some variety of grass that didn’t grow more than ankle high, and it had largely kept other plants from taking root. There was a house and barn, each two stories high, each with intact windows and no obvious damage. A small outbuilding had collapsed, and there was a tree growing at the base of the house, close enough that it would be a real problem when it got bigger. He had to look closely to see the dirt on the windows and the weeds beginning to make inroads in the grass.

Wide doors on the front of the barn swung open, pushed by Hendrix and another scout. Hendrix ran toward the house while the other scout retreated into the barn. Hendrix opened the front door of the house, then stood to one side, shading his eyes as he watched the sky.

The aircraft traced a lazy circle over the farmyard. When it moved beyond the tree line Tom rose to his feet. “Let’s go. Into the barn or the house, whichever is closer.”

The crew headed across the overgrown lawn at a jog. This sudden rush of exposed targets must have been more than the pilot above them could resist, because the pitch of the aircraft engine changed. The drone deepened to a roar that rose in volume, and half a dozen people with shoulder guns stopped running and turned to face the threat.

Tom ran for the barn, but stopped short of the doors, stepping to one side so he was out of the way. The plane came in low, but banked to one side and climbed without opening fire.

“Coward,” a woman jeered, lowering a laser rifle. She made a rude gesture at the aircraft, then ran to the house and vanished inside.

Tom’s briefly held hope that the barn might contain a vehicle was quickly dashed. The inside of the building was cool and dim and mostly empty. A large machine occupied the center of the barn, some sort of feed and water distribution system with hoses and pipes running to troughs in stalls all around it. The floor held a thick layer of dust that rose as the spacers milled around.

“Let’s get the wounded away from the entrance,” Tom said. “Put them on the far side of that machine. See if you can disassemble one of those stalls and make tables.” He looked around, scanning faces, seeing who had ended up in this building with him. “Alice. Check the perimeter. From the inside,” he added as she headed for the big doors. “See if there are any exits.” He gestured at the ceiling, which was much lower than the barn’s high roof. “Figure out how we get upstairs, and see what’s up there.”

A man said, “Should we close the big doors, Commodore?”

“Close them most of the way.”

The barn grew darker as the doors swung closed. A window on the south wall let in a diffuse beam of sunlight which shone on the dust in the air to become a glittering silver column.

“Move to the sides, people,” Tom said. “When the shooting starts, there’s going to be bullets coming through those doors.”

The spacers dispersed, dividing into two groups and heading for opposite walls. Tom, ignoring his own order, moved to the meter-wide gap where the doors met.

The yard looked sunny and peaceful. Bucolic, even. He could almost believe the drone of the circling aircraft was nothing more than bumblebees looting nearby flowers.

It was hard to believe that death was coming.

Alice appeared at his elbow. “There’s a door at the back,” she said, “and the loft has windows on all four sides. I’ve got people at each window.”

The ground-floor windows were too high to give a view of anything but sky. Tom nodded his thanks. “Good work.”

“There’s nothing really up there but empty space,” she said. “Anyone who has hay fever should stay down here. I think they used it to store alfalfa.”

“Would it be a good place for the wounded?”

She bit her lip, considering. “There isn’t really a proper staircase. There’s steps, but they’re like this.” She held her arm up at a steep angle, well past forty-five degrees. “I wouldn’t want to be on a stretcher getting hauled up there.”

“All right. We’ll leave them where they’re at for now.” He wanted to draw her away from the doors. He wanted to keep her safe, but that would be an insult. He looked around the barn, thinking.

“We’re in a tight spot,” Alice murmured.

Tom’s instincts told him to put on a show of confidence and reassure her. But this was Alice. She could read the situation as well as he could. He nodded. “But we’re not dead yet.”

She surprised him by smiling.

There was no sign of O’Reilly, so Tom said to Alice, “You’re in charge here. I’m going to the house.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “What do I do?” she said, her voice low and urgent.

“Get ready,” he said, just as softly. When she opened her mouth he interrupted. “I don’t know what to do exactly. But you can figure it out as easily as I can.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her forehead puckered. Then her features smoothed and she nodded.

Tom leaned outside, scanned the sky, and didn’t see the aircraft. He stepped out and ran for the house. It scared him, but he made it to the front door without incident.

The farmhouse had a lot more light than the barn. There were plenty of windows, which made for good visibility but lousy cover. Well, there’s a couple of dozen guns in here. We’ll be able to make the most of our firepower.

He found O’Reilly striding from room to room, giving out orders and quiet words of encouragement. He had all sorts of good ideas that hadn’t occurred to Tom, like grouping people with similar weapons so they could share ammunition. He’d set up a medical station with the wounded stretched out sofas or mattresses, and space set aside for fresh casualties. A medical team stood ready, sleeves rolled up to their elbows, hands freshly scrubbed.

Tom decided not to interrupt him, waving at the man to carry on when O’Reilly glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. Tom leaned against a wall and watched, letting his subconscious work.

The inside of the farmhouse was simultaneously cheery and depressing. Where the inside walls of the barn were mortared stone, the walls of the house had been coated in plaster decorated with delicate whirls. There were marks on a support beam where parents had recorded the heights of the children, and he could see a bedroom with teddy bears painted on the walls.

Endless change was the nature of terraforming. Tinkering with the climate of an entire planet was a massive undertaking, a process that was difficult to start and difficult to stop. Novograd would probably have another hundred years of temperature fluctuations before it stabilized. In the meantime, farmers lived with the knowledge that from time to time they would simply have to pack up and move.

Still, there was something sad about this abandoned home that had obviously known much happiness and love. It deserved better than to become a battleground.

The front door opened and Hendrix came in. He scanned the room, spotted Tom, and hurried over, giving a clumsy salute.

“Don’t salute me, Hendrix.”

“Sorry, Commodore.” He gestured behind him. “Everything’s quiet outside, but I want to put a man on the other side of the tree line. Right now the trees block the view.”

Tom nodded, thinking about it. “How would you like a field promotion, Hendrix?”

The man’s eyes widened.

“You’re a lieutenant until further notice. Requisition as many people as you need. Ground forces will be coming, and I want to know about it well in advance.”

Hendrix nodded, started to lift his hand in a salute, then hastily lowered it. “You can count on me!” He turned away, scanning the room for recruits into his scouting squad.

Can’t he see what a dangerous job it is? And now he’s responsible for all the people who have to leave the shelter of the stone walls. But Hendrix looked energized and cheerful as he bustled through the farmhouse. I’ve done him a real favor, Tom realized. He’s got something to do. The rest of us just have to wait.

Something mechanical hummed close by, and Tom flinched, envisioning aircraft and armored vehicles. But a panel in the ceiling began to glow, and a man’s voice called, “We’ve got power!”

“Good job, Fred,” said O’Reilly from another room.

A mechanical clatter from the kitchen was followed by a sigh like air escaping from a pipe. A woman said, “There’s still no water.”

“You have to turn the pump on at the well,” said a stocky woman beside Tom. She stood at the living room window, clearly on sentry duty, staring out across the yard.

Tom said, “The well?”

She spoke without turning her head. “It’s there in the yard, about halfway to the trees.” She nodded to indicate the direction. “That metal box, not quite knee-high, with all the yellow weeds around it.”

Tom leaned past her and looked outside. He realized he’d seen the box without properly noticing it. “I’ll go,” he said.

She glanced at him, just long enough to raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you have wells like that on Earth?”

“I assume so. Somewhere.” Tom flushed. “All right, maybe I’m not the best person to go.”

“Fire team!” O’Reilly said. “Get ready to provide cover while Fred turns on the pump at the well.”

Five people lined up just inside the front door, three men and two women. Two of them carried blast rifles; two carried laser rifles. A tiny woman held a slug thrower almost as long as she was tall. She carried it with a casual familiarity that said she was more than competent with the weapon.

Fred appeared, a chunky young man with a strap around his forearm holding a selection of fine tools. He looked frightened, but he didn’t complain, just took deep breaths as he prepared for his run.

A voice called from the far side of the house. “The plane’s over here!”

Fred threw the door open and dashed outside. The fire team hustled out behind him, leaving the door open. Tom stepped to the window, looking past the sentry.

The fire team spread out in the yard, forming a loose cluster with no one closer than three meters to anyone else. All five rifles swung up to train on the same spot in the sky. The barrels moved slowly, tracking the aircraft as it circled.

Fred, running like an Olympian, reached the metal box and skidded to a halt on his knees. He fiddled with the case, then flipped open a panel on the side. For ten endless seconds he didn’t move, just stared. Then he poked something inside the case.

A pipe rattled below Tom’s feet, and the sound of gushing water came from the kitchen. By that time Fred was halfway to the house. He staggered inside, circled around Tom, and sank down to sit with his back against the wall under the window. He panted and gasped as if he’d just run all the way from the crashed battleship.

The girl at the window said, “Are you going to be all right, Fred?”

Fred, breathing too hard to speak, flapped a hand at her. The fire team filed in, safeing their weapons, and someone pulled the door shut.

“That pilot is good and spooked,” said the woman with the slug thrower. “He’s not taking any chances.”

O’Reilly came into the room. “Well, he might be waiting for just the right target. So we’re all going to be careful, and stay away from the windows.” He looked pointedly at Tom.

Tom took a step to one side. “Sounds like a sensible precaution.”

There were five wounded in the house, and four more in the barn. That didn’t include minor injuries among people who continued to serve as scouts or sentries, or waited, ready to fight.

A couple of stretcher cases had died in the first strafing runs from the aircraft. Some stretcher bearers had died with them. One stretcher case, a woman in her sixties, died during the long afternoon of laser burns taken during the space battle. They laid her down in a corner of the barn, and Tom knelt beside her, thinking sadly of the price people were paying for his clever idea of stealing a battleship.

He knelt among the wounded in the middle of the barn, making awkward conversation and doing his best to offer comfort. There was a gray-haired man who reminded Tom strongly of his father. Bloodstained bandages covered his chest, and he grimaced and whimpered as he drifted in and out of consciousness. There was a woman who looked so much like Alice that it hurt to look at her. She had a bad leg injury, but a pain patch just above the bandages kept her downright cheerful.

Dominguez was the only one Tom knew by name. He’d served aboard the Kingfisher, the light cruiser Tom had commanded before the battleship came. He looked almost healthy at first glance, but he had a head injury that made him too dizzy to stand.

The last casualty was a middle-aged woman named Nancy. Her left foot was gone at the ankle. Each time she looked at her legs her face would go slack with horrified dismay.

Guilt twisted Tom’s stomach, but he saw no accusation or resentment in their faces. He saw pain and fear and resignation and regret, fierceness and quiet determination, tears and stoic despair. They were volunteers, though it was all but impossible to stay behind when everyone around you joined up. They’d come on this mission with eyes wide open.

Still, all the noble ideas that had set Tom on this path seemed hollow now, abstract to the point of foolishness when compared to the stark reality of good people dying in pain. We’re liberating Novograd. What does that even mean? We’re trying to change the course of the war so one group of politicians instead of another will claim ownership of these worlds. Is that truly worth killing for? He looked from Dominguez to Nancy to the gray-haired man and back again. Is it truly worth this?

A memory came to him, a different group of people slowly dying in a prison camp on Gamor with the medicine that would save them locked up a short distance away on the other side of a barbed wire fence. He remembered the bleak despair of watching friends die, knowing that if they recovered from their fever they would just die a bit more slowly, starved by their captors.

Once, that memory would have triggered a flash of hot fury. What he felt now was a faint echo, like a memory of heat. Is that the real reason I brought these people here? Because I’m still angry? Because I want revenge?

He looked inside himself, but the anger he expected to find simply wasn’t there. There was regret, and guilt, but less than he might have thought.

We had to come here. We have to do this. The freedom of the Green Zone worlds isn’t a political abstraction. It’s not about what the colonies are worth, or who invested the money to terraform these worlds. It’s about the utter savagery of the Dawn Alliance.

If no one stands against them, they will rule these worlds. And I’ve seen how they rule. They have to be driven out. It’s worth fighting for.

He looked down at the row of stretchers and swallowed. It’s even worth this.

“Commodore.” The voice sounded urgent and frightened, and Tom’s stomach tightened. The hammer is finally going to fall. He squeezed Nancy’s hand, turned, and stood. A traitorous corner of his mind was relieved that the attack was finally coming. I can leave the wounded.

He pushed away the thought and the shame that came with it. Hendrix stood in the doorway to the barn, silhouetted by the afternoon sunlight in the yard behind him.

“They’re coming, Sir.” Hendrix pointed east. “Personnel carriers, and a heavy transport. I think it’s mechs.”

Chapter 11

Tom hurried to the doors, and the two of them stepped outside. Tom scanned the sky. “The plane is gone.”

“Left about twenty minutes ago.” Hendrix cupped a hand behind his ear. “Might be coming back, though.”

“What else is coming?”

“Francine spotted them. They’re coming cross-country, in big all-terrain transports. She’s pretty sure it’s three personnel carriers and a carrier for armor.”

“No artillery?”

“Not unless it’s in the heavy transport.”

Tom sighed. “Well, that’s something, at least.” Except that artillery might be easier to deal with than mechs. “Let’s get some people into the tree line. Maybe we can slow them down.”

“Plane’s getting closer,” Hendrix said. He shaded his eyes and squinted at the sky. “I think there’s two of them.”

It took Tom a moment to spot the incoming aircraft. He was accustomed to the earlier plane, which had maintained a prudent altitude. The new arrivals came in low and fast, just above treetop level. Tom said, “I think we better-”

Two planes flashed above the line of trees, so close that he could see flames when their machine guns opened up.

Hendrix swore, and both men turned, lunging for the gap in the barn doors. They collided, shoulder to shoulder, and fell in a tangle of limbs as the ground on either side of them erupted under a hail of bullets. Tom curled his arms around his head in a hopeless attempt to protect himself, and then the guns went silent and the sound of the engines changed as the planes swept over the barn.

He rose to his feet, and Hendrix stood beside him. The barn doors were a splintered mess, a sizable chunk falling away as Tom pushed one door open. He said to Hendrix, “Are you all right?”

“I think so.” Hendrix took a step, then stopped. He held up his hand. “On second thought, not quite.”

The pinky finger on his left hand was gone. Tom and Hendrix both stared at the stump. Hendrix said, “Doesn’t even hurt.”

“Come on.” Tom grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt and towed him into the barn. “Medic!”

“We need a janitor, too,” said Hendrix. “I’m bleeding all over the place.”

“Everybody back from the doors,” Tom said, then took his own advice, towing Hendrix with him. The order was completely unnecessary, of course. The stream of bullets had everyone cowering against the side walls. Hendrix skirted the edge of the crowd until he could circle around and join the medics behind the machine in the middle of the barn.

Tom pressed his eye to a gap above the hinge where the closest barn door met the wall. He watched as a couple of scouts left the line of trees and dashed for the buildings, one heading for the barn, one heading for the house. One of the aircraft looped around and came in low over the yard, just moments too late. One scout slipped into the house while the other, panting loudly, charged into the barn.

Her momentum carried her almost to the machinery in the middle. She stopped, hands on her knees, drew a couple of deep breaths, and straightened up. She looked around until she spotted Tom.

“Soldiers are coming.” She pointed toward the trees. “They stopped the vehicles about half a kilometer back. They’re coming forward in a skirmish line.”

“How many?” said Tom.

She shook her head, her expression bleak. “Lots.”

“I want firing teams upstairs,” Tom said. “Two people at every window. Two more standing by to take over if there’s casualties or someone runs out of ammunition.” He looked around. Tense, expectant faces stared at him from the gloom. “I want six people on either side of the big doors. Four more at the back door. Everyone else, stand by to move casualties or carry ammunition.”

Someone shouted, an inarticulate cry of warning, and Tom ducked reflexively, hunching his shoulders. There was a blast of noise that he only later figured out was an explosion. The whole barn shook, and mortar-covered stones rained down from the front wall. Sunlight flooded in, making the dust-filled air glow, and the big doors shattered as the wall above collapsed.

Tom stumbled back, coughing, his eyes watering. Bodies jostled him on either side as spacers retreated with him.

If the walls are going to come down, maybe the safest place is by the wall that’s already collapsed. It’s certainly the best place to shoot back. He planted his feet, leaning into the press of the crowd. The last few people squeezed past him, and he wiped his eyes, squinting at the front of the barn.

The highest part of the front wall still stood, forming a ragged arch below the peak of the roof. Beneath was a pile of rubble, a mix of stone and the wood from the doors. Everyone had pulled back from the doors before the explosion, so he figured there were no casualties.

Yet.

“Commodore.”

Tom looked around.

“Up here.”

The last few meters were gone from the floor of the loft, beams ending in splintered ruin. A man stood at the edge of the break, hands on hips. The dust made him nothing more than a blurry outline.

“It was a rocket. One of the spotters saw it.”

Tom waved an acknowledgement. If we stay in here, they’ll knock the walls down around us. But if we run outside, they’ll shred us from the air. “I need a fire team! We have to take down those planes.”

Light flashed in the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. A rocket streaked through the air, white smoke billowing out behind it, and Tom cringed.

But the rocket rose, climbing too high to hit the buildings. The explosion when it came was muted, no louder than the popping of a paper bag.

An aircraft tumbled from the sky. It slammed into the yard between the barn and the trees, tearing a great furrow in the earth. It bounced, flipped over, hit the ground once more, and skidded until it came to rest against the spruce trees. Tom didn’t see the next rocket, but when he glanced up he saw a trail of smoke. He heard an explosion when it struck, and felt a vibration through his knees when the other plane crashed.

Wood crackled and crashed, and a spruce tree along the windbreak toppled forward and flopped down in the grass. A massive shape appeared, almost humanlike but twice the height of a tall man. Gleaming armor formed metal legs with backward knees, a lean waist and a deep chest, and metal shoulders mounted with rocket launchers. In place of the head was a low sensor dome with an antenna sticking up from the top. A mech. Tom shivered. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

More branches crackled and broke and another mech stomped into view, pushing its way between two spruces. Soldiers in burgundy appeared between the trees, staying well back from the machines. The men took cover behind trunks as the mechs lumbered into the yard.

Three tiny rockets shot from the shoulder of the nearest mech. They flew parallel to the ground, flashing between the buildings, aimed at a target Tom couldn’t see. Return fire came immediately, a rocket that exploded in a flash of red flame and a noise like a thunderclap against the chest of the mech. There was an instant when Tom thought the machine would recover, but a second rocket struck and the mech toppled backward.

The second mech had both arms up and extended. Machine guns blazed from one wrist, blast shots from the other. A rocket struck the point where the mech’s right shoulder connected to its arm, and the arm spun free, bouncing on the grass.

Tom held his breath, waiting for a second rocket, but it never came. The mech turned slowly in a circle, like a drunkard trying to get his bearings. Smoke billowed from the destroyed shoulder, and the mech’s remaining arm sank until the blast guns pointed at the ground.

The knees bent several degrees, and the mech went still.

A roar rose behind Tom, beginning with a few voices and rising until almost everyone in the barn was screaming. Men and women, their nerves stretched to the breaking point, certain they were about to die, responded to this reprieve with a startling ferocity. Tom twisted around, then hunched down as the crew of the Icicle charged toward him. People went past close on either side, scrambling over the rubble.

They charged out of the barn in a mob, shouting, howling. They ran at the tree line, and the troops there broke and fled.

Tom picked his way over the rubble and hurried out onto the grass. A growling sound filled the air, like a saw cutting through metal. He turned, looking for the source.

Two aircraft loomed behind the buildings, hovering just above rooftop level. They were as different from the Dawn Alliance warplanes as an armed freighter was from a corvette. This was colonist tech, old-school machinery that you could maintain with a wrench and a welder and repair in the field.

The two aircraft, quite mismatched, had superficial similarities. They were huge, one half the size of the barn and the other nearly as big. Each had four rotors in protective cowlings. They hovered, the wash from the rotors whipping the grass below.

They had the look of machines designed for agricultural use, then repurposed for war. The larger machine, with bright green paint streaked with rust, had mismatched strips of armor plating covering it here and there. She was essentially a flying bucket with a hopper descending from bottom, likely designed to scatter seed or fertilizer. Now she had gun turrets at the front and back, and a tripod atop the hull with a long-barrelled rocket launcher surrounded by vertical sheets of armor plating. Tom could see the operator, a burly man with a helmet and goggles, peering over the top of the armored nest.

The smaller craft had no fixed guns. Instead, men and women with rifles leaned out from half a dozen hatches and ports. Both ships swept low over the tree line, blowing cones from the highest branches. Then the guns opened up as they fired on fleeing soldiers.

By the time Tom reached the trees the battle was over. A dozen or so soldiers knelt in a cluster thirty or forty meters past the tree line with armed spacers in a circle around them. Bodies littered the ground, all of them in Dawn Alliance uniforms.

In the distance, three bus-sized armored vehicles fled for the horizon. The aircraft followed them for a short ways, until turrets on the roofs of the personnel carriers began to spit fire. The ground vehicles continued to flee as the aircraft broke off their pursuit and turned back.

Tom reached the cluster of prisoners, where he found a jubilant Alice with a pistol in her hand standing guard over a pile of confiscated weapons. She jerked a thumb at the sky. “Who are our new friends?”

“No idea,” said Tom. “I guess we found the local resistance.”

“And what a resistance!” Her eyes shone. “You don’t just land troops on Novograd and expect to have an easy time of it.”

Tom nodded. Any student of military history knew that homegrown militias were rarely a match for professional soldiers. But decades of resistance to the United Worlds seemed to have given the local rebels some impressive skills. He shivered. Things had never quite come to open warfare between the United Worlds and its colonies in the Green Zone. He’d always figured that, if it came down to it, the UW would have little trouble suppressing an armed revolt.

Thank God it never happened. We’ll have to make damn sure things change when the war is over. There’s no way the Green Zone worlds will go back to being colonies of the UW. Not after they’ve killed and died for their liberation.

For the thousandth time he felt the tug of divided loyalties. For his entire life, until the last few months, he’d thought of himself as a loyal citizen of the United Worlds. He’d trained in the UW Navy, served on a UW ship. But now he fought alongside the colonists.

What will happen when the war ends? Will I go back to Earth? If I stay in the colonies, will I ever really belong?

He looked at Alice. One thing’s certain. She’ll never leave the Green Zone.

I guess that means I’m staying.

For a moment both aircraft hovered almost directly above Tom’s position. He pressed his face into the inside of his elbow as dust rose around him. The smaller craft moved away, rising a couple of meters to clear the tree line before descending into the yard. The larger craft moved aside just far enough to avoid the cluster of spacers and prisoners, then sank down until its landing struts touched the ground. The rotors slowed but continued to spin as a hatch on the nose of the ship dropped open to form a ramp.

Four men descended. They looked like typical Green Zone irregulars, without uniforms and with mismatched weapons. One man wore burgundy body armor splashed with green paint. They spread out, taking positions several meters from the bottom of the ramp, faces expressionless and eyes alert. They held laser rifles or blast rifles, not quite pointed at Tom and his spacers.

Bridger, standing beside Alice, said, “Who’s that?” Tom looked at him, then followed the direction of his gaze.

A woman was walking down the ramp. Like the men who had preceded her she wore no uniform, but he found himself fighting an impulse to stand at attention. She had the indefinable air of command that most officers only acquired after many years of experience, if ever. She might have been forty years old, with chiseled features and the eyes of an eagle. She had the lean, rangy build a long distance runner and the bearing of an empress. Her hands were empty, but she wore a pistol on each hip. She walked past her four guards, and they advanced with her, their eyes on the prisoners and the spacers who watched them.

“You.” The woman’s voice crackled like frost breaking on a tree branch in winter. “You look like one of them.” Her eyes drilled into Tom, and her right hand dropped to the butt of a pistol. The man to her left tilted up the barrel of his blast rifle until the muzzle pointed at Tom’s stomach.

Tom blinked. “I’m not Mongolian,” he said. “I’m Cree. Or do you shoot people for having straight hair and brown eyes?”

He figured it was his accent that persuaded her, not his words, but she took her hand off the butt of the pistol. The man beside her lowered his aim so that a misfire would only blow Tom’s knee apart instead of killing him outright.

“Thanks for the intervention,” Tom said. “I’m Captain Tom Thrush of the Free Neorome Navy.”

Cool blue eyes appraised him. By the look on her face, nothing she saw impressed her much. “I’m Karen Sharpe. I lead the Prairie Dog Militia.” She glanced at the sky. “Are there more of you? Is it an invasion?”

“Not so far,” he said. “Soon, maybe. We brought down Sunrise Station, so with any luck the United Worlds will come in and finish what we started.”

“Bluebottles,” she said. “Great.”

A dozen more militia came out of the aircraft, cold-eyed men and women who moved like professional soldiers, never bunching up, never losing their vigilance.

“Is the station destroyed,” Sharpe said, “or just damaged?”

Tom told her about the captured battleship and the attack on the station. He was describing his last view of the crippled station when a blast rifle fired behind him and a spacer said, “What the hell!”

Tom turned to see the Prairie Dog Militia open fire on the kneeling prisoners. He swore, his voice drowned out by gunfire. The massacre was over in moments, leaving him standing there with his fists clenched and his mouth open. He turned back to Sharpe.

“I’m not fighting them again,” she said. “There’s too many of them, and not enough of us.” She jerked a thumb at the aircraft behind her. “We’re getting out of here. I strongly recommend you come with us.”

The ship fled west, into the setting sun. Tom stood in the cargo hold, swaying as the ship rocked and tilted. There was nothing comfortable about the interior of the aircraft. As he’d suspected, it was originally designed for spreading fertilizer. A few white pellets were still embedded in cracks and crevices.

Seats lined the sides of the cargo box, but they’d been folded up to make space. There was enough room for everyone to stand, but not if they all wanted to inhale at the same time.

Tom had one of the better spots. He was up against the wall of the box, and he even had a view. Someone had used a cutting torch to hack a narrow loophole in the metal. If he pressed his face to the opening he could get some fresh air, along with almost two hundred degrees of view.

They were passing over lake country, or perhaps one giant lake with an awful lot of islands in it. The terrain below was about fifty percent water. It should be enough to discourage ground pursuit.

Directly ahead of the ship, the sky turned opaque. It was a storm, vast and dark enough that Tom was just as glad he didn’t have a clear view. He’d read about the famous storm belts of Novograd. During late summer one storm after another would scour the prairies and low hills of the northern continent. He thought of the lines of trees they’d navigated, planted as windbreaks to protect the road and the farmyard. The local farmers must have hated storm season, but it certainly made for excellent cover.

The world grew darker, and fat raindrops smacked the side of the cargo box. Tom pulled his head back, then flinched as lightning arced down, uncomfortably close. “Hey, shut the window,” someone behind him joked.

The ride, never stable to begin with, became worse as the ship moved deeper into the storm. The floor dropped away beneath Tom’s feet, rose, then dropped again. A sudden tilt bounced his head against the side of the box, and he swore. Then the ship tilted the other way and he fell helplessly against the people behind him. Hands shoved him back upright, and he grabbed the rim of the loophole to hold himself in place.

By the time the aircraft touched down it was dark as night outside, the rain coming down in lashing torrents more intense than any thunderstorm Tom had ever seen. The ramp dropped and the passengers poured out, running for the beckoning shelter of a nearby building.

Tom hung back, waiting for the stretcher parties with the wounded. The ship didn’t have a cockpit as such. Instead there was a raised platform where an operator could use the controls. Designed as a space with plenty of elbow room, where the operator could walk back and forth to look out in different directions, the platform was packed as tight as the cargo box. Sharpe and most of her militia came down the ladder into the cargo box as it emptied out.

“We’ll take care of your people,” Sharpe said, gesturing at the wounded as the stretcher bearers lifted them. “This is one of the best medical clinics on the planet.”

Twenty meters of open space separated the ship from the entrance to the building. Most of the spacers had crossed that ground at a dead run, pelted by rain every step of the way. The stretcher bearers took it slower, and Tom walked behind them, keeping pace. Sharpe surprised him by walking beside him, ignoring the rain that plastered her blonde hair to her skull and poured in rivulets down the hard angles of her face.

“It’s not safe to keep you all in one place.” Her voice was almost a shout, to be heard over the storm. “We’ve sent word out across the lake country. We’ll distribute your people among farms and fishing camps and small communities.”

A flash of lightning lit up the area for an instant. Tom caught a glimpse of other buildings, just blocky shapes on either side. The building straight ahead, the one Sharpe had described as a medical clinic, was a two-story structure made of concrete with a wooden roof. It was typical colony architecture, simple and unpretentious, made with low-tech materials. Like everything in the colonies it was pragmatic.

At last he made it inside, wiping water from his eyes as the door swung shut behind him. Medical staff in red smocks bustled forward with wheeled gurneys and took charge of the wounded. Tom watched them go, a knot deep inside him loosening.

“The satellites can’t track us through this mess,” Sharpe said, pointing at the ceiling to indicate the storm outside. “We need to get your people moving while the cloud is still thick.”

The sound of the storm grew louder as the doors behind Tom swung open. Cold air blew across his wet back, making him shiver. He turned as two people bustled in. They wore modern rain gear, water beading on the surface. It was a man and a woman, something in their bearing announcing that they were an old married couple. The woman spotted Sharpe and said, “We’ve got room for four.”

“Four!” called one of the guerrillas. He made a herding gesture and four bedraggled spacers pushed their way through the crowd in the entry hall. The militia must have briefed them already, because they followed the married couple back out into the storm. Each of them nodded at Tom in passing, and he watched them go with a strange hollow feeling in his stomach. Will they be all right? Will I see them again?

Over the next hour his command disintegrated before his eyes. The crew of the Icicle trickled out, singly and in small groups, to board boats and aircraft and ground vehicles. Locals came from a hundred kilometers in every direction to take and hide a handful of refugees.

When it became too much to watch, Tom wandered deeper into the clinic. Someone handed him a towel, and he dried his hair, then wrapped the towel around his shoulders. He shivered as he walked. He had no goal or destination. He just couldn’t keep still.

“Tom? There you are.”

Tom turned, and his heart beat a little faster when he saw Alice walking toward him. Bridger was on her left, a local woman on her right. The stranger didn’t look like a militia member. Her face was too open, too kind, and she was unarmed.

“This is him,” Alice said. “Commodore Thrush, our fearless leader.” She smirked as she said it. “He’s the man most responsible for us being here.”

“A fact for which I may have to apologize,” Tom said.

“Nonsense!” The woman stepped forward, seizing his right hand in both of hers. She squeezed like she was trying to crack open a coconut. “I’m supposed to pick up some of your crew and take them back to my island. I didn’t want to go without saying thank you, though.”

Tom squirmed. “We were just doing our job, Ma’am.”

“You’re risking your life to free my entire world,” she said, giving his hand a final squeeze before letting go. “My name’s Emily Webster. I wanted to make sure you met some of the people you’re liberating. I wanted to make sure somebody said a proper thank you.”

“Um, you’re welcome.”

Emily beamed as if he’d said something brilliant and touching. Then she frowned as a voice came through the wall beside them.

“You can’t treat us like bloody prisoners. We’ve had enough of that sort of thing.”

It was Gabrielle’s voice, and he moved toward it.

“Karen’s orders,” said an unsympathetic voice. “You’re with the uglies. We’re not just letting you go.”

Tom found a corridor that led to a door with a sentry in front. The man stepped in front of Tom and raised his chin. Tom, who’d learned from the best CTs in the United Worlds Navy, didn’t speak. He just gave the man his most withering glare. The sentry wilted, and Tom stepped around him.

Gabrielle and the rest of the tanker crew stood in the middle of a small meeting room with three militia members between them and the door. A square-jawed man seemed to be in charge. He turned, annoyed, to face Tom.

Gabrielle turned as well. The expression on her face was pure relief, and it chilled Tom worse than the storm outside. Gabrielle, fierce and fearless, was scared.

“These are members of my crew,” Tom said. “Why do you have them segregated?” He looked at the three militia. “Why are you holding weapons? Put those away. These people are on your side.”

The leader had a blast rifle in his hands. The other two held pistols. No one holstered or lowered a weapon. “We have our orders,” Lantern Jaw said.

“Did your orders involve sneaking these people away from the rest of us? What are you planning to do with them?”

“For the moment we’re planning to detain them.”

But the militia, Tom knew all too well, didn’t take prisoners. He remembered the short, terrible massacre near the farmyard. A wave of fury washed over him, and he clenched his fists. It took all his willpower, but he didn’t speak, didn’t move, for the time it took to breathe in and out three times. The worst of his anger subsided.

“These people volunteered for what looked like a suicide mission,” he said. “They helped us get close enough to Sunrise Station to destroy it, and they risked their lives doing it. They are your allies, and they are members of my crew. They are coming with me.”

Lantern Jaw’s eyes narrowed. “I have my orders,” he repeated. His eyes flicked to his two companions. “Joe. Go get Karen.”

A red-haired man holstered his blast pistol and edged between Tom and Alice. For a moment Tom considered stopping him. But Lantern Jaw might find it easier to back down with one fewer witness, and if he wouldn’t see reason, Karen Sharpe might. Tom let the man pass.

“We’re all on the same side,” Tom said. He turned to the freighter crew. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The rifle in Lantern Jaw’s hands turned until the muzzle pointed directly at Tom’s chest.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Emily Webster. She jabbed an accusing finger at Lantern Jaw. “You’re as bad as those DA goons.” She pointed at the tanker crew. “You can’t shoot people for helping us!”

“This is militia business,” Lantern Jaw said. “Keep out of it.”

“Let me take them. My place is isolated. They won’t get a chance to cause any trouble.”

The blast rifle shifted until it pointed at Emily. “I told you to keep out of it.”

There was a moment of tense silence. Tom shifted his weight, thinking about grabbing for the gun barrel. The gun swung back to point at him.

“This is your fault,” said Bridger.

Tom looked at him, startled. Bridger, fists clenched, was glaring at Alice. “You had to come back to Novograd,” he said. “But everyone on your stupid planet is as crazy as you are!”

“Shut your mouth, you witless jerk!” She planted a hand on his shoulder and shoved, knocking him back half a step.

“Bitch!” He brought up both hands and shoved her. She stumbled back, rebounded from the wall behind her, and stared at him, eyes wide with shock. Then her face turned red and contracted into a snarl. She lunged at him, leaning forward and driving her head and one shoulder into his stomach. Bridger let out a grunt and fell backward, colliding with Lantern Jaw.

Alice leaped on Bridger. They grappled on the floor for a moment, and then he shoved her aside. He sprang to his feet and grabbed her by her hair and the scruff of her neck as she rose. He jerked her toward him, then flung her away. The other militia man scrambled out of the way as she crashed head-first into the back wall. She landed on her hands and knees.

Bridger came toward her, and she kicked a chair into his path. He stumbled, giving her time to rise to her feet. She raised her fists like a boxer, and he did the same.

For a moment they stood there, bouncing on the balls of their feet, wearing matching expressions of fury. Tom watched, completely flabbergasted.

Alice glanced around the room. “What are we doing?” She lowered her hands, and Bridger did the same. “I’m sorry. I got carried away.”

Bridger waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry I called you a bitch.”

“Friends?” she said, and stuck out a hand.

“Friends,” said Bridger, and shook it.”

“What the hell is going on?”

Tom turned. Sharpe stood in the doorway, flanked by a couple more militia.

“They wanted us to release the prisoners,” Lantern Jaw said.

“What prisoners?”

Lantern Jaw looked around. “Where the hell are the prisoners?”

Gabrielle and her people were gone. So was Emily Webster.

Chapter 12

“This war is all about psychology,” Karen Sharpe said, shifting her backpack into a more comfortable position. “We blow stuff up, and we kill some of them, but the main thing we do is manage their mental state.”

Tom nodded, not because he understood what she meant, but because he didn’t have the breath to speak. The days of Basic Officer Training when he’d been in peak physical condition were far behind him. He wore a leather backpack with the same weight of explosives that Sharpe carried, and it felt like he was carrying a bus.

There were nine of them, four militia and five spacers. O’Reilly, Alice, Bridger, and Ham rounded out the contingent from Free Neorome. All five of them were red-faced and out of breath.

“Colonists outnumber Dawn Alliance soldiers on this planet by a factor of more than two hundred to one,” Sharpe said, scrambling onto a glittering crystal as tall as she was. She jumped from one chunk of crystal to another, then paused to let Tom catch up. The rest of the team followed in a ragged line. The crystal was smooth as glass and treacherous to walk on. He gave his full attention to his footing until he stood once again beside Sharpe.

“But there aren’t many active resistance fighters. We lost a lot of people in the first days of the occupation. We tried to hold territory. We tried to fight them head-on.” She glanced at Tom, her eyes bleak. “It was a fatal mistake.”

He nodded again. The sky was overcast, which was a mercy. It might have been downright cool if he wasn’t working so hard. Sweat plastered his shirt to his body and dripped from his fingers when he lowered his hands.

“Look around you,” Sharpe said, and made an expansive gesture. They were in a wasteland of crystal and stone, where a few hardy plants survived in pockets of soil or cracks in the rock. No ground vehicle could ever navigate terrain like this, and there was plenty of cover if there was an attack by aircraft.

“It’s a big planet,” she said. “It’s huge, and the population is tiny.” She pointed straight up. “They might have already spotted us by satellite. Now, it’s possible they’ve got no eyes in the sky. All the satellites were coordinated from Sunrise Station. But even if they see us, they won’t send a ship out to investigate. I guarantee it. Because we’ve trained them not to.”

Tom, lacking the breath to ask a question, just looked at her.

“This is a massive game of poker that we’re playing,” said Sharpe. “Lives are the chips. And the only way we win is to keep on bluffing while they fold. If they ever figure it out, they’ll slaughter us. Our only hope is to make sure they burn their fingers over and over again.”

She hopped from a crystal to a spur of rock, then to the ground, landing on soil covered in thin grass. Tom reached the rock, turned around, took a handhold, and lowered himself as far as he could. He dropped the last few centimeters.

“We’re almost there,” Sharpe said. Six quick steps took her across the grass to a broad shelf of stone that rose like a granite ramp. She climbed the ramp, then stopped at the top.

Tom stopped beside her, and they looked down at a bowl-like depression about a hundred meters across. A metal shack stood in the middle of the depression, with a silver tower above it. The tower rose a dozen meters or so, ending in a delicate antenna.

“We burn their fingers by ambushing them,” Sharpe said. “We choose a weak target. There’s always something. After all, they can’t be strong everywhere. We attack with a larger force, and we kill everyone who doesn’t flee. That’s already paying dividends. They run when we attack. Pretty soon we’ll be able to send out a token force and they’ll scatter in terror.”

One by one the others staggered up the ramp and joined them at the edge. Bridger took off his backpack, planted hands on his hips, and arched his back until it cracked.

“Durand, you blow the tower. Then meet us on the north side.” Sharpe pointed to a jumble of boulders halfway around the perimeter of the depression. An older woman hustled toward the metal shack while Sharpe led the way toward the boulders.

“Here’s how it works,” Sharpe said. “We pick a weak target. We attack in enough force to be sure we’ll win. Most of the time, we haul ass and get out of there.

“Sometimes, though, either we hold the objective or we retreat slowly enough that they can catch us. We do our best to look weak and disorganized. They swoop in with a much larger force. We pretend to run, but we retreat toward a prepared ambush site. They think they’re finally about to get some payback, and they come rushing in.” She flashed her teeth in a nasty grin. “Then we spring the trap, and bash the hell out of them.”

“They must be catching on,” said Tom.

Sharpe nodded. “Sometimes they try to do an ambush of their own. They pick a likely target and they beef up the defences. They even try to spread rumors to draw us in.” She chuckled. “But the uglies have no sense of subtlety. They give it away, every time. We never take the bait.”

She paused to clamber over an upthrust ridge of stone. “Our last three ambushes failed. They were too scared to come after us.” She lifted her hands in a shrug. “That’s okay. It means our initial attack succeeds and we have an easy exfiltration. So long as they stay scared, it means we’re winning the war up here.” She tapped the side of her head.

“It also means we can get away with shit when something unexpected happens.” She looked at Tom. “Like when you guys showed up. They had enough troops to give us a hard time. We used up every rocket we had bringing down the planes and the mechs. They could have put up a good fight, but they broke and ran. After we picked you up, there was no serious pursuit, either.” She laughed coldly. “They’re scared to chase us.”

She clambered onto a large boulder, shaded her eyes, then pointed. “There’s our destination. About five hundred meters that way.”

Tom and the others circled around the boulders and headed in the indicated direction. The ground smoothed out somewhat. It would still make a lousy front lawn, but the large chunks of rock and crystal mostly disappeared. In fact, there were only two more outcroppings in sight, a line of long, thin crystals thrusting almost straight up like granite fingers, and a clump of boulders some fifty or sixty meters beyond.

An explosion boomed behind them. Tom glanced over his shoulder. He could just see the top of the tower and the antenna jutting up above the depression. The antenna wobbled from side to side, then vanished as the tower toppled.

“I figure we have a 50-50 chance of drawing a rapid response,” Sharpe said. “They need that tower. The communication net is stretched really thin.” She glanced up at the sky. “They’ll be taking a look at the satellite feeds, or using a ship in orbit. Or else they’ll do a fly-by. They’ll see there’s only nine of us. They might not be able to resist.” She headed for the crystal fingers. “Let’s make sure we’re ready for our guests when they arrive.”

Tom and his people found themselves with nothing to do as the militia bustled around, burying small containers of explosives around the base of the fingers. “I like this rock back here,” a man said, indicating a low, flat stone a few meters away. “It’s a logical place to take cover when things start blowing up.”

“Do it,” said Sharpe. “Give it an extra thirty seconds. Time enough for someone to hit the dirt, but not enough time for them to think things through.”

The man nodded, then dropped and stretched himself full-length, mimicking a terrified soldier. He marked the spot where his neck was, then rose to his knees and started to dig.

The explosives were crude-looking things packed into tin cans or plastic boxes. The payloads were high explosives taken from rockets the two mechs hadn’t had a chance to fire. The detonators had a hand-made look, and were as big as the explosive charges.

Durand came jogging up as they were finishing. As the other militia rose and stepped back, she walked around the site, smoothing out the ground here and there to hide the evidence of digging.

“I don’t like that spot,” she said, pointing to an area of disturbed soil.

The woman beside her looked around, then walked over to a clump of weeds with vivid red flowers. She dug up a thick plant, carried it over, then used her fingers to make a shallow indentation above one of the hidden bombs. She replanted the weeds, brushed the dirt from her hands, and stood.

“That’ll do,” Durand declared.

“Okay, let’s go.” Sharpe led them at a brisk walk across the open ground to the nearby clump of boulders.

Tom found a spot with shade and good cover and settled in. Then he changed his mind and climbed onto the nearest boulder. There was a bit of a breeze up there, and he flapped his shirttail to help it dry.

Sharpe had chosen an excellent location. The field of boulders was an obvious defensible position, where fugitives might retreat to make their last stand. There was only one place with direct line of sight that offered any cover at all for an attacking force.

The crystal fingers.

“We’ll give them fifteen minutes,” said Sharpe. “If they haven’t bitten by then, it means either they’re not coming, or they’re coming in real force.”

“It won’t take fifteen minutes.” Durand had binoculars pressed to her eyes. She lowered them, looked at Sharpe, and grinned. “They’re coming. Just one aircraft.”

It wasn’t a war plane this time. It was a personnel carrier that appeared as a speck in the distance, growing quickly as it approached. Blocky and armor plated, it had swivelling jets instead of rotors, and armor plating that was designed for it rather than scavenged and added on. Aside from that, though, it strongly resembled the ship Tom had ridden in during his escape from the farmyard.

The aircraft made a lazy circle around the field of boulders, maintaining a prudent distance of almost half a kilometer. It descended, touching down to the north, hidden by a low hill.

“That’s not ideal,” said Sharpe. She glanced at the crystal fingers, which were in the opposite direction. “Still, it means we’ve got cover and they don’t.”

The aircraft rose into view. It drifted sideways, continuing its wide circle around the boulders. They watched as it traversed a full hundred and eighty degrees and then landed behind a ridge to the south.

“Pincher movement,” said Sharpe. “Either they’re going to attack us from two sides at once, or else the main attack will come from the south, and the others are there to shoot us when we flee in terror.” She raised her voice. “That first batch – the ones to the north – that’s Alpha Group. The other ones, heading for the booby-trap, are Beta. Everybody got it?”

No one replied.

“It should be a nice target-rich environment,” she continued. “Hold your fire until the bombs go off or I give an order. Then, give them hell.”

A tense silence descended. Tom slid down off his boulder and checked his blast rifle. His mouth was dry. Hurry up, you cockroaches. I don’t think I can stand to wait much longer.

“What now?” said Ham. “What if they brought in armor?”

“Then we bring up the bird and hit it with the big guns,” said Sharpe. “But they don’t have many mechs on Novograd. They just lost two more when you guys landed, so they won’t be in any hurry to risk what they’ve got left.”

Ham’s voice, high-pitched and unhappy, rose from the far side of the boulder that shaded Tom. “What if they have ant bombs, or hoppers? They could kill us all without coming near your little booby-trap.”

“They always start by advancing with troops,” said Sharpe. “Every time. Trust me, we’ll blow them up with their toys still in their-”

A high-pitched whine filled the air, setting Tom’s teeth on edge. It grew in volume, and he dropped flat, curling his hands around his head. Someone swore, and an explosion slammed against his eardrums. The ground heaved underneath him, and he grunted as the air left his lungs.

He could still hear the whining sound, and he clapped his hands to his ears. There was another explosion, then another, and something thumped against his chest. Several seconds passed without more explosions, and he uncovered his ears. Not hearing the whine of incoming shells, he at last opened his eyes.

Metal glittered on the sand in front of him. A jagged piece of steel as long as his little finger lay on the sand by his chest. He touched it with a fingertip, then jerked back. It was hot.

“Look lively,” Sharpe yelled. “Here they come.”

That’s bomb shrapnel. Tom shook his head, trying to shake off the unreality of the moment. I must have caught a ricochet. It bounced off the rock in front of me and hit me in the chest. He looked at his shirt, which was undamaged. How far away did that shell hit? Is anyone dead?

There were, he realized, more immediate issues. Look lively. Here they come. He grabbed his rifle, rose to his knees, couldn’t see anything, and finally stood.

Dawn Alliance troops poured over the ridge to the south, running for the crystal fingers. He counted a dozen, then gave up counting as at least a dozen more crossed the ridge.

What about Alpha group? He spun, leaning sideways to see past the boulder that blocked his view. Sunlight glittered on the hilltop to the north. Troops were there, watching. But they weren’t participating in the attack.

He turned back to the crystal fingers, just in time to see the last few soldiers scrambling into cover. Countless figures appeared around the edges of the upthrust crystals, pointing rifle barrels toward the field of boulders.

“Now,” said Sharpe.

The explosion was spectacular. Every bomb went off at once, sending dirt and chunks of crystal and bodies and pieces of bodies spinning into the air. One finger broke and toppled. A severed arm landed on top of it. It was magnificent and sickening, and Tom didn’t know whether to cheer or empty his stomach.

“Mother Hen is inbound,” said Sharpe. Mother Hen was the nickname the militia gave to their converted fertilizer spreader. She started to say something else, but the last explosion drowned her out. Thirty seconds. Enough time for someone to take cover, but not enough time to think it through.

Tom circled the boulder behind him, careful not to expose himself to fire from north or south. He expected to find carnage. The boulders were pitted and scratched in several places, the stone showing pale marks where shrapnel had torn gouges. He found Durand, white-faced, thumb pressed into a pressure point on her upper arm while Alice bandaged a nasty gash in her forearm.

Aside from that, there were no casualties. We were lucky. Very, very lucky.

“Take that chunk of sleeve when you leave,” Sharpe said. She glanced at Tom. “We don’t leave them bodies or bandages or bloodstains when we can help it. We want to look indestructible. Can’t have them thinking they hurt us. It raises their morale.”

If she was disturbed by her comrade’s injury or the near-disaster, she didn’t show it. She had Durand’s binoculars, and she trained them on the fingers. “They hear the Hen,” she said, sounding pleased. “They’re in full retreat.”

Mother Hen wasn’t much threat, Tom knew. It wouldn’t chase the fleeing troops back to their own ship. The troop transport had guns and armor of its own, after all. But the soldiers would assume the worst. After all, every ambush ended in disaster for them.

Sharpe put a hand to her ear, listening. “Jerry says Alpha Group is pulling back.” She grinned. “He’s coming in to pick us up.”

Alice finished bandaging Durand’s arm. Durand picked up a chunk of bloody sleeve from the ground, shoved it in her pocket, and stood.

Alice looked at Tom with a bemused expression, like she didn’t know whether to admire the militia or not. Like she was simultaneously impressed and horrified. Tom met her gaze and shrugged. He felt exactly the same way.

Chapter 13

The militia hideout was a lodge, originally built as a tourist destination. The walls were made of giant logs, with huge windows rising toward a high peaked ceiling. Beams bigger around than Alice’s waist supported a roof of cedar planks, and a vast stone fireplace dominated the back wall.

The view, she was told, had been truly outstanding fifty years earlier. The windows would have looked down on a jagged wilderness of ravines and canyons interspersed with majestic hills. Now the hills were islands, and the ravines were all underwater. The view was still nice, but no better than any other part of the lake country.

The furniture, large and heavy and carved from the same logs as the walls, was left behind when the lodge was abandoned. Alice sat on a bench that must have weighed a tonne, tools scattered on the seat beside her, a massive blast rifle in her lap. The weapon was a beast, easily twice the weight of a normal rifle. She could have stuck her thumb down the barrel with room to spare. It would pack an incredible wallop, if she could ever get it to fire again.

She’d never seen a gun quite like it, but she was confident she’d be able to repair it. She’d worked on similar weapons, after all. Specialization was a disease that infected clumsy dinosaurs like the United Worlds Navy. Colonists didn’t go in for that sort of foolishness. Colonists were generalists. They adapted.

The gun was electronically locked. It had a simple brain, designed to stop people like her from using it if it was captured in battle, which of course it had been. There was no hope of outsmarting that brain, so she planned to remove it completely. The gun contained every component that was needed to make it fire. She just had to make those components work without the mini computer.

She removed a cover at the point where the stock met the breech, and set it aside. The challenge of circumventing the gun’s security system absorbed her completely. She was delighted by the idea of turning Dawn Alliance technology against the invaders. The Prairie Dog Militia would put the gun to good use, she was sure. Sharpe would see to that.

To be honest, the woman disturbed Alice. Sharpe took ruthlessness to an extreme degree. Still, all of Novograd was at stake, and Novograd and its factories were the key to retaking the Green Zone. Playing nice and following rules wasn’t going to liberate the planet. Say what you would about Sharpe’s methods, the woman was effective.

A static-filled voice came from another room, the muffled words impossible to understand. Alice spent a moment trying to listen, then pushed it from her mind. She peered into the depths of the gun, tracing a series of electronic components. There were plenty of ways to lobotomize the computer. The key was making it fire once the brain was fried.

“Hey, look at this!”

Alice looked up. A militia man named Luke stood in a doorway beside the fireplace, a communication projector in his hand. He had an air of excitement, like a kid on Founding Day. He walked to a table in the middle of the room, and several men rose from seats in the corner and wandered over to join him.

Alice set the rifle carefully on the floor and rose. She didn’t really mind the interruption. Sometimes her subconscious did its best work when she allowed herself to be distracted. And by the look of it, Luke had some interesting news.

“This just came in,” he said. “I think the uglies are trying to scramble it.” He grinned, his eyes dancing with excitement. He tapped a button on the side of the projector, then stepped back with a flourish.

Static boiled in a cloud above the projector. For an instant it cleared, showing a flash of the starburst symbol of the United Worlds Navy, rotating as a 3D image. A woman’s voice spoke, the words unintelligible, fractured by static.

Then, abruptly, the transmission was clear. The woman’s head and shoulders appeared. Her face was toward Luke, which put her in profile to Alice. She had a sharp beak of a nose and short hair tucked behind her ears. There were rank marks on her epaulets, something fancier than Tom had ever worn. She must be … What? A general? An admiral? What do they have in the UW Navy? Colonels?

“-Orbit above Novograd.” The face vanished, and the voice descended into static. The voice came back, a bit scratchy, but there were no more clear views of her face. It appeared in brief, distorted flickers only.

“-To retake the planet if we can. We have a … In the system but the planet … Strong defences. It is our intention to support you … Need you to weaken the planetary defence system. Their ground-based guns …”

Alice and the guerillas looked at one another. A man said, “What-”

Luke held up his hand. “It gets clearer in a-”

“… Guns are too strong for us to make a landing,” the projector said. “It’s a race now to see who can reinforce the system first. We’ll stay as long as we. We have … To help you, but not until … Destroy those guns.”

She continued speaking for another thirty seconds, with only the occasional fragment of a word breaking through the static. Finally the transmission ended.

“That’s it,” said Luke, and turned projector off.

Alice said, “What did she mean about planetary defences?”

Luke took out a data pad and fiddled with it. He turned the projector back on, and a model of the northern continent appeared. A dozen red lights showed, some in clusters, some scattered across the continent. “They installed guns,” Luke said. “Big ones. Big enough to do serious damage to a ship in orbit. There’s more on the far side of the planet, but we don’t know the details about those.”

He manipulated the tablet, and the display changed. A photograph appeared, rotating so everyone could get a view. At first Alice took thought the image was an ordinary gun turret like you might see mounted on any armed ship. Then she looked near the base of the turret, where she saw a building and a couple of trees. Her sense of scale shifted, and she gasped.

The gun was huge. It was monstrous. She couldn’t have wrapped both arms around the barrel. Hell, she could have joined hands with Bridger and Ham and they still wouldn’t have been able to encircle that massive barrel. She said, “What does it fire?”

“Pulsed energy shots,” Luke said. It was like a blast rifle, then, but built on a gargantuan scale. It was the kind of gun you only saw in ground installations. The energy and cooling requirements made pulsed energy weapons hopelessly impractical on spaceships.

But if you could feed the gun enough power, and find a way to cool it off, it would dish out incredible damage at close or medium range.

A man said, “I wish we could hear the rest of the message.”

“We heard enough,” Luke said. “The bluecoats are ready to invade, but they can’t get close enough. They need the groundside militias to soften up the planetary defences.”

“They didn’t say they were invading. All they said was they wanted to help.”

Luke shrugged. “Then they’ll drop guns and ammo and decent equipment. Maybe some support people to train us.” He spread his hands expressively. “God knows we could use the matériel.” He gestured to the bench where Alice had been sitting. “We’re trying to unlock captured guns. We’ve barely got ammunition for the guns we do have. A supply drop from the bluecoats would be fantastic.”

“All we have to do is take out some planetary defence guns.” The red-haired man leaned back, folded his arms, and sneered. “Nothing to it, right?”

Luke matched him sneer for sneer. “You joined the Prairie Dogs because you thought it would be easy?”

“We can’t take out that many guns!”

Luke waved a dismissive hand. “We’re not the only militia on the planet. And we don’t need to destroy them all. Just thin them out.”

“We can’t-”

“One gun,” Luke said. “That’s our fair share. We’ll take out the gun at Sunshine Crossing.”

Another man spoke up. “You mean, we’ll get killed trying. You know what the defences are like!”

Luke picked up his data pad. “We can do it,” he said stubbornly. “Every time we fight the uglies, we kick their ass.”

“Because we pick our targets carefully,” said the red-haired man. “We hit them where they’re weak. Not where they’re strong.”

The display above the projector changed to a 3D simulation of a walled compound with a massive planetary defence gun in the center. The compound held a strategic location where a narrow strip of land separated a pair of lakes. The walls in the projection were transparent wireframes. Inside the compound, Alice could see anti-aircraft batteries, barracks, and a handful of small buildings. More guns bristled from turrets mounted on towers at the corners of the walls.

She gulped. It was a lot of firepower.

“It won’t be easy,” Luke said. “But it’s not impossible, either.”

“We’ve never tried to hit a target like that,” someone said.

“That’s why it’ll work. They won’t expect it.” The words were bold enough, but Luke no longer sounded certain. He had the air of a man trying to convince himself as much as the others.

“Face it, Luke,” said the red-haired man. “It’s a beautiful big nut, but we can’t crack it.”

“Nonsense.”

Alice turned. The front door was open, and Sharpe stood there, hands on her hips. “It’s absolutely crackable,” she said. “And we’ll do it, when the time is right.” She looked at their faces. “Is the time right? What’s happened?”

Luke played her the recording.

When it was over, Sharpe spent a minute staring into space. Then she nodded to herself and grinned. “We finally got a big pot.” She leaned forward, planting both hands on the table. “It’s time to bet all our chips, boys.” She glanced at Alice. “And girl.”

Alice nodded. Not one thing had changed, but Alice knew, in a way she couldn’t explain, that the attack would go ahead.

And it would succeed.

The same irrational confidence was reflected in the eyes of the men around the table. How does she do it? Alice wondered. How does she inspire people so completely? The walls are just as high as they were a moment ago. There’s just as many guns in that compound. Why do I suddenly feel like it’s going to be easy?

“We’ve been preparing for this day for months,” Sharpe declared. “Oh, not this situation exactly. But something like this. We’ve laid a very thorough groundwork.” She lifted her right hand from the table and tapped the side of her head. “Up here.”

She straightened up. “We’ve trained the uglies. They know we only attack when we’re sure we can win. We’ve never varied from that pattern. We’ve earned ourselves a massive bluff, and now it’s time to cash in.” She looked at the red-haired man. “I want all the trucks brought to Fordtown. How many have we got? I’m talking about big trucks. The four-tonne grain haulers.”

“We’ve got two on hand,” he said. “I can get three more on short notice.”

“Do it,” she told him.

“But why?” Luke said. “We can fit every fighter we’ve got into one truck.”

“You know that, and I know that.” Sharpe’s smile was smug. “The uglies don’t know that. When they see a five-truck convoy coming at them, they’re going to shit their britches.”

“We’ll have to leave the Mother Hen at home,” someone said, indicating the anti-aircraft guns.

“Nonsense.” Sharpe stuck a hand into the projection. “The barrels are below the walls, to keep us from hitting the guns from the ground. So long as the Hen stays low, the guns won’t be able to bear on her. We’ll bring the Hen in, if for no other reason than to make them wonder what we’re up to.” Her smile showed every tooth in her head. “The walls went up four weeks ago. Those poor slobs have spent twenty-eight days wondering when the hammer is going to fall. When they see us coming, they’re going to think it’s the apocalypse. They’re going to run like kittens in a rainstorm. We might not even have to fire a shot.”

That was optimistic, but Sharpe made it clear she wasn’t counting on a best-case scenario. In the next thirty minutes she hashed out the basics of an assault plan and got everyone busy on preparations. Luke took extensive notes on things that needed to be researched and things that needed further discussion. Over the next eighteen hours or so, the plan would be dissected and analysed by a couple of dozen people.

A few minor changes might be made, but Alice had no doubt the basic plan would remain the same.

A couple of hours after that, the attack would begin.

The meeting broke up and Sharpe swept out. The men went their separate ways, preparing to work on the various tasks she’d given them. Alice watched them leave, full of a fierce pride. Novograd would be liberated, so long as there were freedom fighters like Karen Sharpe to lead the way.

She reminds me of Tom. They both have that knack of facing an impossible challenge and turning it around. They can both take a disorganized group of frightened people and somehow turn them into a capable, determined force that’s ready to charge Hell with a bucket of water.

And they both keep succeeding.

It felt odd to draw comparisons between two such different people. Sharpe, she was now convinced, was absolutely essential to the eventual liberation of Novograd. She was as effective a leader as Alice had ever encountered. But I don’t think we’ll be friends after the war. Sharpe frightened her more than a little. She remembered the danger she’d felt when the militia had segregated and detained Gabrielle and the rest of the tanker crew.

If Tom hadn’t been there …

Tom inspired his followers in a fundamentally different way, she realized. Karen Sharpe was dedicated to driving the Dawn Alliance from Novograd, no matter what the cost. That was a cause Alice heartily endorsed.

Tom, though, was dedicated to doing the right thing. In this case, the end result was the same. He was less effective than Sharpe, she realized. He would never have killed prisoners. However, nor would he ever devour the innocent in passing. Good people would always be safe when Tom was around.

I’ll follow Sharpe, she decided, for as long as the Dawn Alliance occupies Novograd. I’ll do everything in my power to keep her alive, because Novograd needs her badly.

But when the war’s over, Tom is the person I would actually want to be with.

Chapter 14

The gunner’s seat on top of the grain truck wasn’t much for comfort.

It wasn’t a proper gun turret. Like so many things in the colonies, it was improvised and repurposed. There was no integrated seat, for example. Tom sat in a wooden chair bolted to the aluminum cover over the top of the grain box.

The gun had once been part of an armored vehicle. They’d captured the vehicle largely undamaged, but there wasn’t time to override the security settings that disabled the machine’s engine. The militia had settled for stealing the gun and tires and destroying the rest.

Tom was protected now by a mix of the gun’s original armor and some steel plates welded on to cover the worst of the gaps.

The gun could swivel, but not far. Since he no longer had a rotating turret, Tom’s field of fire was reduced to thirty degrees on either side of dead ahead. He could shoot at anything he wanted, so long as it was pretty much directly in front of the truck.

It was a slug thrower, with an impressively high rate of fire. He could have fired thousands of rounds per minute, if he’d had thousands of rounds. He had fewer than two hundred rounds, which meant the gun was good for one quick squirt and that was it.

He glanced over his shoulder at the convoy of trucks trailing behind him, reflecting that the other gunners had it worse. The ancient and rusty truck behind him, instead of a turret, had an entire armored scout vehicle sitting on the box behind the cab. The wheels were long gone, the hubs welded to braces across the top of the truck box.

The last three trucks were even worse. One had a gun similar to Tom’s, but with no ammunition at all. The last two trucks had contraptions made of pipe and plate metal. From a distance they looked like guns, but they were nothing but decoys.

A hundred troops could have fit in the back of each truck. Instead, there were twenty people in each of the first two trucks, plus two more in the cab. The last three trucks had only a driver in the cab and a spotter pretending to man the gun turret.

Dear God, what am I doing? It was much too late to back out, so he shook his head and tried to focus on the coming battle.

“Hang on, Commodore, it’s about to get bumpy.”

“Copy,” said Tom, and pushed against the box cover beneath him, lifting his rear end off the chair. He wore a helmet, scrounged from God knew where, with an integrated radio link to a spacer named Kress in the cab of the truck. A handful of the Icicle crew had been brought back to participate in this assault. Kress was one of them.

He could see the compound dead ahead. There was a pretty good road under the truck’s wheels; the gap between the lakes was a pinch point that drew a lot of traffic. The Dawn Alliance had built a squat concrete guardhouse to block the road a hundred meters before the looming walls of the gun compound.

The truck slowed fifty or so meters from the guard hut, then turned and rolled into the ditch. Tom clutched the armor plate in front of him as the truck rocked and swayed. Soon it reached level ground again, and the speed picked up.

He kept most of his weight on his legs, muttering a curse when the truck hit a rock and the seat slammed into him.

“What was that, Commodore?”

“I said, it’s bumpy, but don’t slow down.”

He looked behind him, rising out of his seat so he could peer over the sheet of steel that protected his back. The rest of the convoy was lurching through the ditch and forming up in a line. He didn’t know whether the huge, dilapidated, rusting farm vehicles made a terrifying sight or a ridiculous one.

Assume the enemy is terrified. And try to look fierce, in case they’re looking at you through a telescope.

Or a sniper scope.

That was a disconcerting thought, and he relaxed his legs, lowering himself fully onto the chair and slouching so his head was below the steel plate in front. A couple of good bumps jarred his entire body, and he gave up and once again rose half out of the seat. I’m probably bouncing around too much for a sniper to hit me.

The gun had a display screen, and he tapped it to life. There were no complex electronics for automatic targeting. There was, however, an electronic scope. Tom used it to scan the compound.

From a distance their target didn’t look like much. The walls were just a dull brown rectangle on the horizon, the planetary defence gun an innocuous tower rising from the center.

When he zoomed in with the scope, however, an unsettling wealth of detail appeared. The scope had a limited ability to compensate for movement, and the image on the screen only bounced and wobbled a bit as he focused on the nearest corner tower. Four gun barrels pointed directly toward him, poking through holes in a sheet of armor plating. He scanned downward, and a soldier’s head poked briefly above the top of the wall before ducking down.

They aren’t fleeing. That could be bad. It means they’re ready for an attack by hundreds of troops.

We don’t have hundreds of troops.

He started to mutter another curse, remembered the helmet microphone, and stopped himself. We’re committed now. There’s nothing to do but keep going.

The near wall of the compound loomed dead ahead, growing closer with maddening slowness. These farm trucks simply weren’t built for speed. Tom could see two of the corner towers, and he braced himself, knowing that soon they must open fire.

When the defence of the compound began, however, it was not the tower turrets that fired. Tom caught a flash of motion high above the walls, heard a faint high-pitched whine, then cried out as an explosion sent clods of dirt flying half a dozen meters ahead of the truck and a couple of meters to the left.

The truck swerved right for an instant, the driver reacting on instinct. Training kicked in a moment later, and Tom bounced against the armor plating around him as the truck swerved back to the left.

Sure enough, the mortar overcorrected. The next shell hit behind the truck and well to the right.

Kress let out a whoop, then muttered, “Sorry, Sir.”

Tom grinned, not bothering to answer. He ignored the gun he was supposed to be operating, instead gripping the top of an armor plate with one hand and a support strut with the other as the truck shook him like a bean in a maraca.

A soft-edged shadow engulfed the truck, and Tom glanced up as the Mother Hen flashed overhead so close he felt the wash of the rotors against his face. The Hen raced toward the walls, hugging the ground and weaving from side to side to make a poorer target.

It wasn’t enough. The turrets on both towers at last came to life, pouring rounds at the aircraft. Tracers made jagged red lines that stretched toward the Hen, missing by the tiniest of margins. The ship jerked left and right, rose long enough to let a barrage of rounds pass underneath, then dropped so quickly her undercarriage bounced on the ground and tore up a clod of dirt. Rounds from the nearest tower hit an armored plate and bounced away. The turret atop the aircraft fired a long burst that ricocheted from the side of one tower.

Then the fire from both towers converged, and the Hen’s front left rotor tore apart in a cloud of jagged metal. The aircraft dropped, the demolished rotor slamming into the ground an instant before the rest of the Hen hit. The cowling around the left rear rotor dented inward, then tore apart as the spinning blades ripped into it.

The rotors on the right-hand side continued to spin, throwing great clouds of dust into the air. The Mother Hen, however, would never fly again.

Tom swore, his voice blending with a stream of curses from Kress. Tom slid sideways out of his chair as the truck began a sharp turn. The driver was breaking off the attack.

A hundred thoughts flashed through Tom’s mind. He wanted to retreat, wanted it desperately. The attack, already hopeless, was now suicidal. Running for the hills was the only sane option.

But.

Karen Sharpe, one of the most capable military commanders he’d ever seen, was in a crashed vehicle less than thirty meters away. He didn’t like her. He didn’t think she was an especially good person. But if Novograd was ever to be liberated, Sharpe had to survive. She was worth a thousand regular militia.

She was worth the lives it would cost to extract her.

“Turn around!” he bellowed. Then, remembering the helmet radio, he lowered his voice. “We’re going for Sharpe.” There was plenty of room in the mostly empty truck to extract everyone.

He expected to waste precious time arguing. The truck, though, immediately straightened out. Kress could read the situation as well as Tom could. He was from Novograd. He wouldn’t want to leave Sharpe behind.

A quick glance backward showed the other trucks bouncing along behind, and Tom nodded, impressed. These Prairie Dogs had nerve.

The turret on the tower to the left swung away, pointing toward the lake a couple of hundred meters away. The mortar fired, and Tom flinched reflexively, but the explosion was far off. The trucks weren’t the target. The distraction has begun.

O’Reilly and a handful of troops would be coming out of the water in amphibious submersible vehicles designed for fish farms. The vehicles were clumsy things with no space for a real attack force. Their role was simply to sow confusion and draw fire.

For the moment, it was working.

The guns on the right tower couldn’t bear on the diversionary attack. Those guns tilted down as far as they would go and fired a quick burst at the Mother Hen. A figure in the ship’s turret ducked, but the rounds passed close overhead, hitting nothing but rocks and dirt. The aircraft was just inside the dead zone close to the walls. The tower gun couldn’t depress far enough to hit it.

It’s going to make fleeing difficult. Tom shrugged to himself. One problem at a time. He watched with grim fatalism as the turret’s four gun barrels tilted up and swiveled sideways until he was staring right down the barrels.

The gun on the Hen opened up, energy blasts slamming into the armored front of the turret. One of the four barrels twisted sideways and up, deformed by a lucky shot. The rest of the barrage raised sparks and laid down a pattern of scorch marks, but did no real damage that Tom could see.

But it must have made the gunner flinch, because the remaining three barrels didn’t fire for a few precious seconds. The truck covered several more meters, and the gun had to move, trying to track it.

In that moment of almost calm, Tom arrived at a couple of grim conclusions. The convoy could pick up Sharpe and her people in the Hen, but they couldn’t retreat. They’d take devastating fire from two turrets and the mortar. Even now the other tower turret was swinging around. O’Reilly must have broken off his mock attack.

We have to take the compound. It’s the only way. Retreat is suicide. It’s victory or death.

“Kress,” he said. “We need to go straight at the wall.”

The truck rolled past the crashed aircraft without stopping. Tom glanced back and saw militia troops pouring out of the Hen, running across the grass beside the line of trucks. Dead ahead, troops appeared along the top of the wall. Helmeted heads and armored shoulders popped up, and Dawn Alliance soldiers leaned out, taking aim with blast rifles.

The truck slid to a halt with the front grill almost touching the wall of the compound. Tom grabbed the handles of his machine gun and shoved down, tilting the gun up as far as it would go. The screen showed a targeting reticle, and he lined it up on the edge of the wall. Then he squeezed the triggers and hosed the gun from left to right.

For a moment it was glorious. The gun thundered, the vibration coming through the handles and making his whole body tremble. Metal sprayed from the barrel in a lethal storm, and a score of soldiers flinched back. The gun clicked empty and he let go of the triggers with a sigh. He had no idea if he’d hit anyone, but they wouldn’t be leaning out again any time soon.

The rest of the trucks rushed in, a couple of drivers showing a little foresight and coming in at a curve so they’d be able to flee without making an awkward three-point turn.

Tom scrambled up out of his makeshift turret and leaped down onto the hood of the truck, then to the ground. “Bombs!” he shouted. “Bombs, now!” They were going to take lethal fire from the top of the wall at any moment. Either that, or a convoy of armored vehicles would pour through the gate in the side wall, round the corner, and slaughter the whole lot of them.

A pair of Prairie Dogs rushed up with an improvised breaching charge, a barrel with reinforced sides and bottom, the top cut away. They pressed the top of the barrel against the base of the wall, hammered a couple of stakes into the ground to hold it in place, then backed away.

A horn sounded right behind Tom, and he jumped. He was in front of the truck he’d arrived in. He stepped out of the way, and the truck rolled forward until the bumper hit the bottom of the barrel. The bumper bent, the truck stopped, and a hand closed on Tom’s shoulder. “You need to get your ass out of the way, buddy. It’s going to go boom.”

Tom let the militia man drag him around to the side of the truck. A courageous soldier peeked over the top of the wall, then flinched back as a couple of Prairie Dogs snapped quick shots at him.

And then the bomb went off. The truck bucked, dust flying from the sides, and the engine growled in an unhealthy way. Then the truck rolled backward.

The breach in the wall was a good meter and a half across, a ragged hole that showed a mix of concrete and rebar in a barrier almost half a meter thick. A man stepped forward with a thermal lance and burned away a section of rebar that still crossed the breach. “Mind the ends,” he said, “they’re hot.” He stepped back, and a Prairie Dog named Luke squatted in front of the hole.

“No visible threats,” he said. He passed his rifle to the man beside him, took a deep breath, and then launched himself through the breach in a flat dive.

The next man tossed two rifles through the hole, his own and Luke’s, then scrambled through. A slim woman popped through with a blast rifle in her hands. A man went through on all fours behind her, swearing as his shoulder brushed one of the hot pieces of rebar. Burned fabric mixed with the smell of dust and explosives and gunpowder, a heady blend that made Tom’s heart race like a jackhammer. He kept expecting gunfire, screams. Explosions, if someone on the walls had a grenade and thought to drop it on the invaders.

For that matter, there should be grenades dropping on this side of the wall. He squinted upward. Where was the defensive fire?

Two more militia went through the hole. Then Luke appeared on the far side. He stuck his head and shoulders through the wall, looked at Sharpe, and said, “Karen? There’s nobody here.”

Tom never did go through the breach in the wall. He walked around the compound and went in through the main gate, which stood open. There was still dust in the air from the vehicles that had poured out of the compound and raced west, somewhere in the scant few minutes between when the last soldier had peeked over the wall and when Luke had gone through the hole.

They panicked, he realized. They held it together as long as they could. But when we charged right up to the wall they broke. They ran for their vehicles and they headed for the hills. They had us completely outnumbered. All they had to do was stand their ground. But they saw four huge trucks coming at them, and they knew it had to be an overwhelming attack.

“Explosion in five!” someone shouted. A few people repeated the cry, and then everyone in sight put their hands over their ears. Tom followed suit. The blast, when it came, wasn’t too loud, muffled as it was by the sheet metal walls that surrounded the planetary defence gun. But he felt it through the soles of his boots as the ground bucked, felt it in his breastbone and in the air that puffed against his face. A door flew off its hinges, bouncing across the dirt until it hit the compound wall. Smoke billowed from the doorway, and from the muzzle of the massive gun barrel that pointed toward the sky.

Tom lowered his hands in time to hear a ragged cheer. A moment later the compound was a scene of organized chaos with militia fighters hurrying back and forth, each focused on a different mission. There was no celebration of their unexpected victory, beyond the single cheer. The compound was a treasure trove of supplies and equipment, and the clock was ticking. They didn’t have long to pick it clean.

A couple of trucks rolled in through the main gate. As militia members converged on the trucks, loading them with boxes and crates and heaps of random stuff, O’Reilly came sauntering through the gates with a couple of spacers behind him. Tom expected his friend to be smiling, but O’Reilly looked grim. He stopped beside Tom and said, “We lost Fenwick and Dodds. Also a couple of the militia. Jameson and Truong.”

“You saved us,” said Tom. “It was a near thing.”

Slowly the spacers gathered, forming a knot of green uniforms in the middle of the compound. Alice, he was relieved to see, was unhurt. Bridger had a black streak down the side of his face that turned out to be soot.

Alice looked at Tom. “Did you run out of ammo and decide to use your fists?”

He gave her a blank look.

“You’ve got a hell of a shiner forming.” She pointed at his left eye.

He touched the eye and winced. “I think I got it bouncing around in the turret. It’s not a bad spot to shoot from, when the truck is parked. It’s a lousy place to ride.”

“The box was no picnic,” Bridger said. “One of those mortar shells bounced off the side of the box and exploded on the ground.” He held up a thumb and forefinger, not too far apart. “That much to the left and it would have gone off on top of the box cover. We’d all be hamburger.”

“It was bad enough as a near miss,” Ham said. “It blew all six tires on that side of the truck. You think it’s a rough ride with tires? Try it without.” He grinned. He’d been tortured by the Dawn Alliance. A bumpy ride wasn’t really going to trouble him much.

“At least it’s over,” said Bridger. “We can hole up somewhere safe and wait for the blue-” He glanced at Tom. “Sorry. Wait for the UW marines to land.”

The engine of the nearest truck revved loud. The truck backed out of the compound, and Tom waited for it to turn east, back the way they’d come.

The truck turned west.

The remaining truck backed and filled until it faced the gate. Sharpe walked over to stand beside the tailgate. She’d injured her left arm in the crash. It was in a sling now, the sling strapped tight across her abdomen. She held a pistol in her right hand, and showed no sign that the injury pained her. “Everyone who doesn’t want to join the Dawn Alliance military had better get aboard. It’s time for Phase Two.”

Tom said, “Phase Two?”

“We have a policy in the Prairie Dogs,” she said. “We strike while the iron is hot. This is too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“What is?” he said.

She gestured at the abandoned compound. “The panic. The fleeing. Panic is contagious.” She stretched a hand up, and a man in the back of the truck grabbed her wrist and hauled her aboard. “If we give them time to regroup, they’ll make a stand. Probably even a counterattack. But if we hit them while they’re still running, they’ll just keep on going.”

Tom said, “Do you know where they went?”

“Greenport is just up the road. There’s a garrison there, and a factory. They’ve been retooling it to make shells.” Her smile made Tom think of a piranha. “We’re going to run them out of town, and smash the factory.”

Tom looked at his crew. Alice wore a fierce expression that told him everything he needed to know about her opinion. O’Reilly shrugged and said, “Well, there’s nothing interesting happening here.”

They jogged over to the truck and clambered aboard.

Chapter 15

The outpost burned.

The concrete building stood on the crest of a ridge, smoke billowing from the windows and pouring out through a ragged breach in one wall. Two stories high, it was no more than ten meters wide, an ugly square shape dominating the skyline. Tom leaned against the fender of a truck and watched the smoke dissipate as it rose into the sky.

“Looks clear. Let’s move.” Karen Sharpe led the way up the ridge with half a dozen Prairie Dogs spread out around her. Tom shrugged and followed.

A body lay in a doorway near the breach where the militia rocket had struck. Burned beyond recognition, the corpse could have been a man or a woman. No doubt there were more bodies inside. Tom grimaced and shifted his attention to the crest of the ridge and the view beyond. He mimicked Sharpe and her guerillas, keeping low with his head below the highest part of the ridge until he could look down on the town of Greenport.

At first glance the scene was idyllic. Greenport lay in the midst of rolling plains, a cluster of about two hundred buildings in an endless ocean of grass. The factory was the largest structure he could see, a three-story rectangle on the far side of the town. He was too far back to make out any details.

O’Reilly settled onto his stomach beside Tom, took in the view, and said, “Nice town. I bet it’s a boring place to live.”

“It’s about to get more interesting.”

O’Reilly chuckled. “That’s for sure.” He looked around. “That’s a strange place for a mortar.”

Tom followed the direction of his gaze. There was a gun emplacement a dozen meters down the ridge, an ugly contraption with support legs splaying out like a metal octopus and a single fat barrel pointing at the sky above the town.

“If they put it right on the crest of the ridge,” said O’Reilly, “they’d be able to fire on the road.” He jerked a thumb in the direction they’d come from.

“Well, they can cover more of the ground around the town.” Tom frowned, considering trajectories as he looked at Greenport. “Unless …”

“Dear God,” said O’Reilly.

The mortar wasn’t there to protect the town. It was there to threaten the town. That’s why it’s up here on the ridge. Not for better fields of fire, not for longer views. It’s up here so the entire town can see it, and be afraid.

Staying in one position was never a good idea when the enemy could have line of sight on you. Tom rose and retreated over the ridge. He looked up at the ruined outpost building.

There was a ladder on the back wall. The bottom section was gone, destroyed when the rocket struck, but the rest remained, metal rungs rising all the way to the roof. Tom looked up at the ladder, considering. Then he walked over to the base of the building, grabbed the lowest rung, braced a foot against the rubble created by the missile strike, and started to climb.

There was another body on the roof, a woman in a Dawn Alliance uniform. She looked unhurt, but she was undeniably dead, her body splayed in an awkward tangle of limbs, her eyes open and staring into infinity. Tom stepped over her and walked to the edge of the roof.

The view wasn’t much different with such a small increase in elevation. He followed streets with his eyes, planning how the trucks might roll through the town toward the factory. If I was the Dawn Alliance commander, where what I set up ambushes? What are the choke points?

There was a gun on the roof, and he walked over to examine it. It was a sniper’s weapon, a massive laser rifle mounted on a pedestal. There was a fat bundle of electronic equipment on the side of the pedestal, and a screen the size of a dinner plate. Tom pressed a fingertip against the screen.

The word unauthorized appeared.

He examined the gun and discovered that it had an old-fashioned optical scope mounted on one side. He pressed an eye to the eyepiece.

He saw a house. It filled the eyepiece, a wooden structure painted a soft green. He could make out curtains in the window and vines climbing the wall.

The gun was designed to be controlled electronically. The electric motors whined in protest as Tom pushed against the stock. He was able to move it, though, and the view through the eyepiece changed, rising until he could see the grassland behind the town. He pushed sideways on the stock and the gun moved to the left until the wall of the factory came into view.

He saw faces pressed against upstairs windows. They would be staring toward the smoke rising from the outpost, wondering what was going to happen. Staring straight at him, in fact. He grinned to himself, fighting the urge to wave.

They must know the factory will be a target. Why don’t they evacuate?

He pushed on the stock, tracking the gun sideways until he reached the corner of the factory. He tilted the gun down, then back, until he found a broad set of double doors.

Half a dozen soldiers in burgundy uniforms stood in front of the doors. They had their backs to Tom, all their attention focused inward. One door swung open, and a soldier hurried forward. The soldier blocked the door as a man in a gray smock tried to push his way outside. There was a brief argument with a lot of arm-waving. Another soldier stepped in, raising her rifle and pushing the barrel against the chest of the man in gray.

The man retreated into the factory, and the door closed. Tom watched for a moment, then tracked down until houses went past in a blur. He stopped when he passed the last house. A green smear filled the eyepiece, and he fiddled with the scope until a swathe of grass came into sharp focus. Then he tracked up.

Light glittered on metal just below the first row of houses. Tom stopped, lifting his head for a moment to rest his eye. He returned to the scope and tweaked the focus until he was sure.

A fence surrounded the town, sunlight gleaming on parallel strands of silver wire. The people of Greenport were prisoners.

He found Karen Sharpe just below the crest of the ridge. The Prairie Dogs were setting up a temporary command post, with first aid equipment and weapons laid out on the hoods of the trucks. Sharpe looked over as he approached. “We’re holding our position for now,” she told him. “We need time to unlock that gun.”

“You mean the mortar?” said Tom.

She nodded. “We don’t even have to take the town. We can shell the factory from here. I’ll need your people on hand in case they try a counterattack.”

“There’s people in the factory,” said Tom. He described what he’d seen, from the fences to the frightened people staring out the windows.

“Bastards,” said Sharpe. “They’re forcing civilians to work in the factory.”

“If we go in from the far side of town, it’s the shortest route to the factory.”

Sharpe shook her head. “I’m not risking my people. Not when we’ve got this lovely big gun.”

“But the people in the factory-”

Sharpe’s face hardened. “It’s better this this way. We’ll smash the factory and kill a bunch of skilled workers.”

Tom stared at her. “But they might be colonists!”

“Then they’re traitors.” She stared at him, eyes brittle and uncompromising. “They deserve what they’re about to get.”

She turned away, talking to one of her lieutenants. Tom stared at the back of her head, his thoughts churning. Then he turned and climbed to the crest of the ridge. He leaned against the wall of the outpost and stared down at the town without seeing it.

War is messy. People get hurt. You can’t do nothing because you don’t want to do any harm. Leaving the Dawn Alliance in charge comes with terrible consequences. They have to be driven out. It has to be done.

We didn’t put that mortar on a ridge above a town full of civilians. The Dawn Alliance did that. People who would do something like that have to be stopped. It’s just that simple.

And yet ….

“Poor son of a bitch.”

Tom glanced backwards. Garth Ham stood behind him, looking down at the corpse in the doorway. Ham had suffered more than anyone at the hands of the Dawn Alliance, but there was no bitterness in his expression as he looked at the remains of his enemy. There was only compassion. He met Tom’s gaze and said, “Do you think we should bury him?”

It was the compassion that decided Tom. He couldn’t condemn it, couldn’t reject it. “We don’t have time,” he told Ham. “Gather the others. But do it quietly.” He gestured toward the town. “We’ve got work to do.”

The ground raced past in an exhilarating blur, and Alice, unable to resist, let out a low whoop of delight. She straddled a hover bike, a bulky, low-slung motorcycle with repulsors that kept it just above the ground and a propeller at the back for propulsion. It was a fast machine, not particularly safe to ride, and she loved it.

To her left and right she could see other vehicles, three more bikes and a pair of ground cars holding spacers from the Icicle. Each vehicle would target a different part of the fence around the town, roughly simultaneously. The first part of the plan was to evacuate as many civilians as possible.

She leaned to one side and the bike turned. A rooftop stuck up from a low hollow to her right. She headed toward the building, reducing her speed as she drew close. Hover bikes were great at many things, but they were terrible for quick stops.

In a depression surrounded by three low hills she found a farmhouse and a couple of outbuildings. She parked the bike, keeping the engine running as she stepped off. It was a United Worlds machine confiscated by the Dawn Alliance from a colonist. She and Bridger had managed to get the engine started, but she was afraid to turn it off.

She drew her pistol as she approached the house, but she kept it pointing at the ground, and she waved her free hand at the windows. “Hello? Anybody home?”

For all she knew the house contained a squad of trigger-happy DA soldiers patiently waiting for her to reach point-blank range. In spite of the danger, though, she felt unreasonably happy. The soft shadows of the twin suns felt right to her in a way that was difficult to explain. The temperature of the light was different here on Novograd. Being on a ship wasn’t the same, nor was New Panama. Things looked different on Novograd. There was a smell to the air, a feel that she hadn’t experienced since she’d left.

Mortal danger or no, it was good to be home.

The house was empty, the windows thickly filmed with dust. “Free Novograd” was scrawled on the front door in green paint. Alice looked at the graffiti, touched her temple in salute, and hurried back to her bike. It was nearly time for the fence breach.

From even a short distance it was impossible to tell the town was under military occupation. The fence was invisible, and the buildings beyond looked entirely peaceful. A little too peaceful, in fact. She couldn’t see a single person, and that was the most convincing indicator that war had come.

She didn’t see the fence until she was almost on top of it. The posts were tiny, taller than her head but as narrow as one of her fingers. A glint of sunlight on wire was all the warning she got. She cut the power to the fan and coasted forward, stopping the bike by running the nose into the wires. She hopped off, took a laser cutter from her tool belt, and stepped up to the fence.

The wires were almost as fine as human hair, and spaced so far apart a skinny person might have wriggled between them. She wondered if that was a symptom of the material shortages she kept hearing about. She shrugged inwardly, dismissing the thought, and checked the time.

Damn it. I’m almost a minute late. With quick strokes she cut every strand between two posts, watching the wire ends curl away. She knelt, making sure she’d cut the bottom strands. She didn’t want frightened civilians tripping as they hurried out of Greenport. She wondered if she was setting off alarms by cutting the wires. Well, there were several other teams making simultaneous cuts, plus the looming threat of an attack. She figured the garrison probably wouldn’t react.

Still, she put a hand on the butt of her pistol as she hurried into the town.

The first house she came to made her smile. It was a bungalow, small and cozy, with concrete walls rising to waist height and timber above that. It was painted a pastel blue, with bright green trim around the windows. The yard was full of vegetables, but there were flowers mixed in, and vines climbed the walls of the house and drooped from the eaves. It was everything she loved about the colonies, simple and homely, practicality mixed with a quiet, unobtrusive beauty.

No one answered when she knocked on the door. She twisted the doorknob, found it locked, and shouted, “I’m coming in! You can open the door or I can kick it in.”

In truth she wasn’t sure the house was occupied. She was about to turn away and move to the next house when the lock rattled. The door opened a crack and a man peered out.

“There’s an attack coming,” Alice said. “You need to get out of town.” She pointed toward the breach she’d made. “There’s a hole in the fence. You need to go now.”

The door opened a bit wider, and the man stuck his head out. He looked left and right, then let the door swing open. Several children came forward, a little boy who wrapped his arms around the man’s leg and an older boy and girl, perhaps nine or ten, who stared at Alice with wide, solemn eyes. The girl said, “Are you a Prairie Dog?”

“I’m with the Free Neorome Navy.”

The girl’s forehead scrunched up. “What’s that?”

“I don’t have time for a lesson in politics. You need to go.”

The older boy said, “They shoot people who leave.”

“Bombs are going to start falling,” Alice said. “And they can’t shoot everyone. They’re going to be much too busy to come after you. My friends and I will see to that.”

The girl said, “But what if-”

“Enough,” said the man. “She’s right. We need to go.”

The little boy said, “But what about mommy?”

“We’re evacuating the whole town,” said Alice. “Your mom will leave too.”

“She’s in the factory,” the boy said. “They won’t let her leave.”

A cold, slithering hand made an ugly fist in Alice’s stomach. “The factory is my next stop.” She dropped into a squat and looked the boy in the eye. “I’ll find your mommy. I’ll get her out.”

He stared at her, as grim and serious as a surgeon. “Do you promise?”

Oh, God. How do I get myself into these positions? “I promise,” said Alice, knowing she could never guarantee it. “I’ll get your mommy out. I’ll keep her safe.”

“That’s enough,” said the man. “Get your coats. Hurry!”

The family retreated into the house, and Alice hurried to the next building. I don’t have time to argue with every person in Greenport.

The door to the next bungalow swung open as she approached. Five people came out, all of them teenagers. Three were black and two were white, but they were strangely similar, with haircuts so short they were nearly bald and sparkling contact lenses that made every eye a different vivid colour.

“Are you from the United Worlds?” demanded a girl with one green eye and one blue.

“No, stupid,” said the boy beside her. He had a sparse mustache and eyes that were two different shades of red. “She’s from the resistance.”

“I’m from Free Neorome,” Alice said.

Before she could say another word a third teen spoke up. “Is it an invasion?”

“Yes,” said Alice, because it was easier than giving a full explanation. “The town needs to be evacuated. The Navy is going to fire on the factory. Some of the shells might miss.”

“We’re on it!” said the first girl. And just like that, all five teens took off in different directions. They had the look of slackers who couldn’t have organized an afternoon nap, but they reacted like they’d been rehearsing for this exact situation. Within thirty seconds they were banging on five different doors and shouting their message. “The bluecoats are here! They’re going to blow up the town! Everyone’s evacuating!”

A gray-haired couple emerged from a nearby house, looking around for the source of the racket. The boy who had knocked on their door was already two houses away. They listened to his shouted warning, then looked at Alice. “Is it true?” the woman said.

No, but I’ll be damned if I’ll waste your time and mine explaining it. “Yes. There’s a cut in the fence over there.” Alice pointed, and the man and woman went back inside. They were out again in less than a minute, the man slinging a bag over one shoulder. “Thank you,” the woman said to Alice as they went past.

“Hey, Mister, they’re evacuating the town. Soldiers are coming.”

Tom nodded to the girl who had spoken, a breathless child about ten years old. “Thank you.”

“People are cutting through the fence.” She held up a pair of pliers almost as long as her arm. “If you follow me I’ll make a hole for you.”

“That’s all right,” Tom told her, then shook his head as she dashed past him. He turned to his two companions, Bridger and Elizabeth Larson. “Looks like word is getting around.”

Bridger nodded. “At this rate the town will be empty in no time.”

Larson, sweat glistening on her shaved head, gave Bridger’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. She released him to take her laser rifle in a two-handed grip, swinging to cover the corner behind them, then lowered the gun as a familiar figure came into view. “Ho, Katie.”

“Ho, Liz.” A black woman in a Free Neorome uniform with a shotgun in her hands flashed her a grin, nodded to Bridger and Tom, then turned her attention to the rooftops and windows around them.

O’Reilly came around the corner behind her with a couple of spacers on his heels. “How’s it going for you?” said O’Reilly, then raised his eyebrows as a crowd of fleeing civilians passed between him and Tom. He crossed the street to join Tom and his companions. “Pretty good, by the look of it.”

“So far, so good,” Tom agreed. “Everyone’s clearing out without panicking.”

“We had a bunch of idiots who refused to leave,” O’Reilly said. He held up the pistol in his hand. “I had to put three bullets in their ceiling before they took me seriously.”

“Civilians,” said Tom.

O’Reilly nodded. “Civilians,” he agreed. He gestured at the end of the factory building looming less than a block away. “Shall we move on to the factory?”

Tom glanced around, gauging the flow of pedestrian traffic. A man and woman were shoving a heavily laden cart down the middle of the street. The cart, loaded with boxes and bags and piles of clothing, had repulsors, so he figured they might even manage to get it out of town. He thought about firing a shot into the repulsor machinery to encourage the two of them to hurry, then decided against it. They were actually making fairly decent time, although other refugees kept passing them.

There were dozens of people in sight, with more appearing all the time, all of them hurrying toward the fence line. We’ve done enough. The evacuation has its own momentum now. He nodded to O’Reilly. “Let’s head for the factory.”

“About time,” said the woman with the shotgun. She marched along a storefront, reached the corner, and stuck her head around. “Looks clear.”

She stepped around the corner – then jerked backward and sprawled on her back. The sound of the shot came an instant later, bouncing and echoing from the walls around them.

O’Reilly reacted instantly, shoving his pistol into its holster and springing forward. He caught her wrist in both hands and heaved, dragging her around the corner. A second shot came, and O’Reilly flinched, but he wasn’t hurt.

Too late. Tom stared down at the woman. What was her name? Katie? A high-caliber bullet had taken her just above the heart. It was a devastating wound. There was no question that she was dead.

“No!” One of the spacers behind O’Reilly lifted a blast rifle and took a step toward the corner.

Tom stuck an arm out, grabbing the man around the chest. For a terrible moment they struggled, half a step from the corner, half a step from the sniper’s line of fire. Then Bridger grabbed a fistful of uniform shirt with each hand and hauled the man backward. “Enough! Don’t make his day by giving him another easy kill.”

The man slumped, and they let go of him. O’Reilly stared down at the body, then turned away and faced Tom. He looked as if he’d aged a decade in a minute or two. “What’s the plan, Commodore?”

Tom stared at him, his mind blank. We need the Prairie Dogs for this. They’re good at this sort of thing. “The plan is, we shoot that asshole.” He dropped to hands and knees at the corner of the store, then stuck his head out just above ground level. He took in the scene in one quick glance, then pulled his head back. A bullet tore a chip from the corner of the building an instant after Tom’s head moved out of the way.

“I think I saw him,” said Tom. “He’s in a window on the third floor of the factory.” He closed his eyes, picturing what he’d seen. “I could see his head and shoulders. That means he hasn’t got much cover.”

“He’s pretty fast with that gun,” said Bridger. “Whoever tries for a shot will get his head blown off.”

“He can’t look everywhere at once,” said O’Reilly. “Let’s see how many firing positions we can find.”

“I’m taking this roof,” said Bridger. He holstered a pistol and slapped Larson’s arm. “Give me a boost.”

She snorted. “Maybe after you lose a few kilos.” She slung her laser rifle across her back. “You boost. I shoot.”

Bridger made a stirrup with laced fingers. Tom watched, his mind racing. The moment her head clears the edge of the roof she’ll be vulnerable. But it’s also the moment the sniper will be distracted.

Katie’s discarded shotgun still lay in the street, next to a dark smear of blood. Across the street was a pharmacy, the front door ajar. Either the storekeeper had fled without bothering to lock up, or he’d left the door open in case people needed emergency medical supplies. How many steps would it take me to cross that street? Six? Five, if I’m really hopping? How long will that take?

Adrenaline washed through his bloodstream as he made his decision. His arms and legs shook, and he took slow, deep breaths, oxygenating himself. Larson hooked her fingers over the edge of the roof, and Tom rose into a squat.

Larson’s head rose over the top of the roof, and Tom sprang around the corner.

He ran.

The pharmacy, which had looked so close, seemed as distant as the twin suns as he imagined the sniper spotting him, swinging the gun barrel over ….

Tom threw himself into a forward roll as the rifle cracked again. His palms hit the asphalt street, he tucked his chin in, and he rolled. He came up onto his feet and hurled himself against the pharmacy door. The door banged open as he tumbled through.

For a moment he lay panting in the middle of a plank floor. It was a nice floor, thick slabs of hardwood, polished to a high shine. He pushed himself up, leaving a bloody handprint on the wood. He rose to one knee and looked at his palms, which were torn and bleeding. That was a bit scary, but I’m safe now.

It was as if the gods heard him and decided to put him in his place. A bullet came through the wall beside him, peppering his face with splinters of wood. He let out a yelp and pressed himself flat against the floor. The hole in the wall let in a shaft of sunlight that passed frighteningly close to where his head had been.

The next shot punched through the wall at knee height, exploding a can of protein powder and plowing a divot in the floor a finger’s breadth from Tom’s right hand. He felt the floorboards jump, and he swore, rolling away as more bullets smashed through the wall.

He was about to rise to his feet when the sniper shifted his aim, three fast shots coming through at waist height. Then came a momentary lull.

He’ll expect me to duck. He’ll aim low. Tom stood, turning sideways to create the smallest profile possible. Sure enough, two more shots came, one just in front of his ankles, one just behind. A chunk of shelving bounced from his calf. He stood frozen, heart hammering in his chest, wondering where the next bullet would strike.

A medicinal stink assaulted his nostrils as smashed jars and bottles leaked their contents onto the floor. A haze filled the air, a yellowish powder that smelled of talc and cinnamon. Sunlight shining through the holes in the wall made golden columns in the air. Tom held his breath, waiting for the next shot.

It didn’t come. He cocked his head, replaying the last moments in his mind. Did I hear return fire coming from nearby? Did somebody get the sniper?

Only when he heard voices in the street did he move. He went to the front door of the pharmacy, carefully keeping his head back from the doorframe, and looked outside.

“Get out of there, you damned fool. Those walls won’t stop a bullet. They wouldn’t even stop an angry housecat.” The voice belonged to a woman on the far side of the street. She wore a brown jumpsuit and Dawn Alliance body armor with a hole in it, the original burgundy color covered in a camouflage pattern of brown and green. More guerillas were pressed to the storefront behind her. The Prairie Dogs were in Greenport.

Leaving through the front door would be suicidal. I wonder if there’s a back exit. He turned and walked through the store, coughing as the dust in the air tickled his nostrils. He stepped over spreading pools of liquid, wrinkling his nose. As he stepped past a set of shelves a shape in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was a window set high in the wall, and he stared at it. I better get out of the-The window frame exploded and something slammed into his head with impossible force. He didn’t feel the impact when he hit the floor.

Chapter 16

Alice stood with her back against the wall of a sturdy-looking building, Garth Ham on one side and a spacer named Darlene Sanchez on the other. Alice had no idea what the building was, but she dubbed it “the bank” in her mind. It gave her a solid sense of security. Nothing could come at her from behind, and with her crewmates on either side of her she could focus safely on what was dead ahead.

Across the street from the bank was a narrow lane between buildings. Alice could see some sort of plaza beyond. The factory was no more than a block away, off to her right. So far she hadn’t seen a single Dawn Alliance soldier, but she’d heard gunfire. Lots of gunfire. Somewhere, the Dawn Alliance was fighting back.

Beside her, Sanchez stiffened. Garth Ham said, “What’s that sound?”

Alice glanced at Ham. He held a pistol in a two-handed grip, his knuckles white. His nerves were stretched to the breaking point, and she wished there was a way to get him away from the front lines. He was looking from side to side, moving his head in quick, jerky movements as he tried to find the source of a mechanical rumble echoing from the walls around them and rising in volume.

Sanchez said, “It’s coming from that way.” She pointed across the street.

Alice concentrated her attention on the narrow lane. A man appeared at the far end, a short, burly figure with an oversized blast rifle in a shoulder sling. She started to take aim, then lowered her laser rifle. That’s … Horace? Jorge? A Prairie dog, anyway. I guess they decided to get their hands dirty and join us in the streets.

Jorge passed the mouth of the lane, backing up, his eyes fixed on something off to the right.

Something in the direction of the factory.

He didn’t so much as glance in Alice’s direction. Sloppy, she thought. For all he knows there could be a Dawn Alliance soldier taking aim at him, instead of me.

But the Prairie Dogs weren’t sloppy. The sloppy ones were long dead. Whatever Jorge was retreating from, it had his undivided attention.

More Prairie Dogs went past the end of the lane. A few of them shot quick glances her way, but their attention was focused in the direction of the factory.

On whatever they were retreating from.

She counted seven or eight militia. Then, for ten long seconds, no one went past. The rumbling sound, however, grew in volume. She caught a hint of a vibration through the soles of her boots, and a mechanical smell, like exhaust smoke and oil. It made her nostalgic for the Free Bird, the ship that had been her home for years.

Whatever was coming, though, was no ship.

She lifted her rifle to her shoulder and curled her finger around the trigger. Ham and Sanchez crowded close enough that they could take quick peeks down the lane.

“Spread out,” said Alice irritably. “If-”

“Holy shit,” said Ham as a massive vehicle rolled into view. It was painted a dull gray with burgundy markings, a steel behemoth with treads that broke up the street beneath it as it lumbered forward.

In addition to being armor plated, the machine was formidably well armed. A turret dominated the top, with a thick gun barrel bigger around than Alice’s thigh and longer than she was tall. A smaller turret sprouted from the side of the machine, and it moved as it came into view, a meter-long barrel lining up on her. She dove to the side, swearing, crashing into Sanchez and falling in a tangle of limbs.

A small shell exploded against the wall of the bank where she’d been standing. The wall was as sturdy as she thought; it took no real damage.

Alice got shakily to her feet, retrieved her dropped rifle, and leaned to the side until she could peek down the lane.

The machine was gone from sight. She could hear it rumbling, the volume dropping with increasing distance.

Soldiers appeared, men and women in burgundy uniforms trailing after the armored vehicle. They looked eager and excited as they hurried after the unstoppable machine. A few of them glanced down the lane, but if they saw her peeking around the corner they didn’t react.

“Come on,” said Ham.

Alice looked at him, expecting him to suggest a prudent retreat. He gestured up the street, though, in the direction the armor had gone.

“We can’t do anything against that monster,” she said. She held up her rifle. “I don’t think we can even scratch the paint.”

“We’ll keep our distance.” Ham set off at a brisk walk. “We’ll go parallel, one block over. Maybe there will be something we can do.”

Alice looked at Sanchez. The other woman was clearly scared, but she shrugged and gave Alice a death’s-head grin.

Well, I didn’t come back to Novograd because I thought it would be safe. Alice returned the shrug with a shrug of her own, and they started after Ham.

The Prairie Dogs made their stand a block away in a small park. They took cover behind a statue of David Finch, one of the colony’s founders, or behind the base of a fountain. One woman stepped behind an ancient elm tree. Alice and her companions, a block over, stood frozen. Every instinct told Alice to rush over and help, but the Prairie Dogs were doomed. Dead heroes are no use to anyone.

She didn’t see the shell that hit the statue. She saw the explosion, though. It was spectacular, a flash of light and a blast of sound that made her close her eyes reflexively and lift a protective hand in front of her face. When she lowered her hand the statue was on the ground, broken off at ankle height. The Prairie Dogs behind the statue’s stone base fired madly, presumably at the armored vehicle, which was out of sight.

The next shell hit the elm tree. The woman behind the tree flew back, tumbling and bouncing. The tree exploded, and the top half dropped. For a moment it stood balanced on the splintered end of the trunk. Then it toppled, the sound of breaking branches drowned out by the rumble of the tank.

The roar of the engine deepened, telling Alice it was accelerating. It came into view, racing across the park, chunks of grass and soil flying up from the treads. It sped toward the statue, and the Prairie Dogs broke and ran. They fled, and a smaller turret on the front of the vehicle opened up, spraying bullets at the fleeing guerillas.

A cry went up from the soldiers following the machine, and they ran, whooping, trying to catch up.

Alice ran toward them. It was foolish. A voice in the back of her head told her she couldn’t achieve anything. She would get herself killed, and Ham and Sanchez as well. They were with her, of course, one on either side, moved by the same impulse that drove Alice.

The armored vehicle and the soldiers left the park and vanished into a gap between buildings, oblivious to Alice and her companions. She reached the park, panting and out of breath, and came to a stop in the middle of the torn-up track left by the machine.

She turned, looking down the street where the armored vehicle had disappeared.

She was just in time to see the counterattack.

She couldn’t tell if the fleeing Prairie Dogs had deliberately led the machine into a trap. She suspected not. Another group of guerrillas had noticed their trajectory and seen the opportunity it was about to create.

The street was narrow, with concrete buildings pressing so close on either side that the small side turrets had to swivel back to keep the gun barrels from being damaged. The squad of soldiers following the machine were pressed in close, and they had nowhere to go when a grenade dropped from a rooftop and landed among them.

The explosion was spectacular, a burst of flame and smoke, the noise amplified by the buildings on either side. For a moment Alice thought the entire squad had been wiped out. But several had survived, leaping into doorways or diving behind a utility box. They rose now, four of them, dazed but not injured. They kept close to whatever shelter they’d found, wary of another grenade, as they looked around, trying to spot the threat.

Instead of a grenade, it was a person who next dropped from above. Karen Sharpe, her arm no longer in a sling, sprang from a rooftop and landed in a crouch on top of the tank. She had a gun in each hand. She kept her injured arm close to her side, firing without aiming. Her good arm extended full-length as she shot a man on her left twice in the chest. A lucky shot from her other pistol hit the woman beside him in the shoulder. She cried out and ducked into a doorway.

Sharpe dropped onto her stomach on top of the armored vehicle just before a couple of blast shots sizzled through the air above her head. Chips of concrete erupted from the wall behind her.

“Let’s go!” Alice cried. The exhortation was completely unneeded. Ham and Sanchez were already running, and she had to hurry to catch up. Don’t die, Alice pleaded silently. Now more than ever she was convinced that Novograd needed Karen Sharpe.

She needn’t have worried. The injured soldier, huddling in her doorway, jerked away as the door beside her flew open. Then she tumbled backward, landing in a sprawl in the street. Smoke curled up from a wound in her chest.

A Prairie Dog appeared in her doorway, a stocky woman holding a blast carbine tucked against her hip. She fired three quick shots into a doorway across the street, and a man sprawled on the sidewalk. The Prairie Dog ducked back inside as the remaining soldier returned fire.

Two more Prairie Dogs appeared on rooftops, one on each side of the street. The remaining soldier stepped out of his doorway, firing frantically at the rooftop across the street.

He didn’t last long.

The big gun on top of the armored vehicle could do nothing. There was a smaller turret with twin barrels on the back of the machine, however. That turret swiveled upward, and the Prairie Dogs on the roofs drew back before it could fire.

With no other targets to concentrate on, the turret swiveled back down and took aim at Alice.

Oh, crap. She didn’t have the breath to curse out loud. There was a doorway on her right, five interminable steps away, and she headed for it. The gun opened up, both barrels vomiting fire, and Alice threw herself into the doorway. She put her hands up to soak up her momentum as she crashed into a door, grunting with the impact. Then she turned and pressed her back against the door and watched blasts of energy flash past her doorway.

She could see Ham and Sanchez in a much deeper doorway just across the street. Smoke rose from the baggy sleeve of Sanchez’s coat. Sanchez patted at the sleeve, shaking her head in disbelief, apparently unhurt.

The barrage ended. Alice waited a moment, then took a careful peek around the edge of the doorway. The rear turret was elevated once again, jerking back and forth as it tried to cover rooftops on both sides of the street at once. For the moment there was a stalemate. If the driver has any sense, he’ll head back to the factory. He can’t catch the Prairie Dogs, and if he waits here, someone will bring a thermal lance or a good big bomb.

A metallic tapping sound echoed down the street. Alice frowned, puzzled. She looked at Sharpe, still pressed flat on top of the machine. The woman’s arm was moving.

She was rapping on the top of the vehicle.

She’s trying to get a response. Any response. She’s making them worry about what she’s doing. But surely they won’t be stupid enough to—

Sharpe rose suddenly to a crouch. She shoved a hand into a thigh pocket as a hatch on the top of the machine rose just a few centimeters and the barrel of a pistol appeared. Sharpe was behind the hatch, invisible to the soldier inside. She put her hands together, twisting something that Alice couldn’t see. Then she reached around and dropped something through the gap and into the armored vehicle.

The hatch flew open, knocking Sharpe backward. A man rose up, head and shoulders coming into view, a fat pistol swinging around to point at Sharpe.

Then the grenade she had dropped exploded. Flames erupted through the hatch, and the man screamed, a ragged sound that twisted Alice’s stomach. He fell back inside the machine.

Sharpe took out another grenade, dropped it into the vehicle, then slammed the hatch. The grenade exploded, the sound a muted thump. Sharpe looked around, then called, “It seems to be clear.”

Three Prairie Dogs came into view, one from a doorway and two on the edges of roofs. Alice shook her head as she stepped out of her doorway. It had seemed like an ambush in overwhelming force while it was happening.

Sharpe turned, looking past the front of the armored machine and bringing a pistol up. She lowered the gun as sheepish Prairie Dogs edged past the vehicle. Alice recognized the squad that had fled the park.

Alice and her companions walked up the middle of the street, keeping their weapons pointed in neutral directions. The danger of the jumpy Prairie Dog snapping a shot at them was small, but not zero.

Alice couldn’t hear the dressing-down that Sharpe gave to the guerrillas who had been so thoroughly routed, but she saw shoulders slumping and heads hanging as they took in her words. Men and women moved aside, not making eye contact, as Alice and her companions approached.

“Alice. Garth. Maria.” Sharpe knew all their names, another hallmark of her leadership skills. “I was wondering when we would catch up to you.”

“This was a slick piece of work,” Alice said, nodding at the armored vehicle.”

Sharpe waved a dismissive hand, holstered her pistol, and began awkwardly climbing down. Her injured shoulder, which she had so blithely ignored during the battle, was clearly paining her. “A tank like this is not designed for urban warfare.” Her voice was muffled by the fact that her back was to Alice, and interrupted by grunts as she tried to climb down one-handed. “Narrow streets and stone walls are a nightmare for a behemoth like this. We’d have to be a dismal excuse for a militia if we couldn’t crack an egg in a trap like this.”

She reached the ground at last, and used her good arm to cradle her injured arm. “You did a good job.” The compliment sounded grudging, but sincere. “Evacuating the town. It was well done.”

“I’m glad you joined the party,” Alice said, “instead of using the mortar.”

Sharpe grimaced. “We couldn’t hack it. It’s tied to the network. It’s not going to fire again without a call from the server.”

Alice raised an eyebrow.

“The really big stuff is networked. They link it to a server, and if there’s trouble, they can lock the hardware so it needs a signal from the server to unlock it.” She jerked a thumb at the armored vehicle. “It’s the reason we don’t try to steal these things. They can’t be unlocked.”

“Pity,” said Alice. She figured she could probably get an armored vehicle working if she stripped out every electronic component and replaced it with something homemade. The problem was, it would take days of work with access to a decent workshop. The guerrillas wouldn’t get that kind of opportunity with a colossus like this. “So what’s the plan?”

Sharp leaned against the back of the armored vehicle. “I’m waiting for a squad with a thermal lance. We’ll cut the axle on this thing. By that time we should have the town pretty much scouted. We’ll mop up the last of the resistance, and then we’ll take the factory.” Her expression went hard and cold. “And then we’ll kill them all.” She looked from Ham to Sanchez and back to Alice. “Don’t go far. We can use you.”

Alice nodded.

“Karen? Can you take a look at this?” The voice came from the far side of the machine.

Sharpe straightened up and walked around the armored vehicle. As soon as her back was turned, Alice spun on her heel. “Let’s go.”

Ham and Sanchez didn’t hesitate. They turned with her, one at each elbow as she hurried down the street. Ham said, “Where are we going?”

I’ll get your mommy out. I’ll keep her safe. “We’re going to the factory. We need to clear it out before the Prairie Dogs get there.”

Chapter 17

Tom regained consciousness by degrees, an awareness that he was being moved and jostled growing until at last he groaned and opened his eyes.

“Hold still, Buddy. You’ve got a head injury.”

Tom squeezed his eyes shut, then opened again them again, trying to orient himself. A man loomed above him, then bent at the waist. Tom descended, his shoulders and the back of his head bumping the ground. He grunted.

“Sorry about that,” the man said, then stepped away, vanishing from Tom’s field of view. Tom lifted his head. Pain burst through his skull, washing from one temple to the other and then sloshing into the back of his neck. The world spun around him. It was like being drunk and hung over at the same time, but he gritted his teeth and made himself look around.

He lay on a stretcher on scraggly grass marred by lumps of stone and crystal. Other casualties lay around him, three Prairie Dogs and a couple of civilians, all of them decorated with bandages or blotches of medical gel.

He was back on the ridge near the mortar. The ruined concrete outpost building stood a dozen meters away, blackened and cracked, the flames out now. The trucks they’d arrived in still stood in a ragged row, partially obscured by a tent set up on a more-or-less flat bit of ground near the crest of the ridge. The tent, something scrounged by the guerillas, might have been made for a circus. It had bright red and yellow stripes, and bells along the top that jangled in the breeze. It was so surreal that he lay back, wondering if he was hallucinating.

No, this is real. There’s a war on, and I’m missing it.

Sitting up wasn’t easy, but he managed it. He desperately wanted to lie back down, but he braced his palms against the ground and made himself remain sitting up until the dizziness and pain subsided.

After a time he bent one leg, bracing himself to try standing.

A hand landed on his shoulder. “Hang on, Champ. You don’t want to get up.”

Champ? I’ll never complain about the informality of the Free Neorome Navy again. “What’s wrong with me?”

The hand rose from his shoulder and a man circled around to stand in front of Tom. He was young, hardly older than Tom himself, in a plaid shirt with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The gun on his hip marked him as a Prairie Dog. Was he a doctor before the invasion? Or is he some schmuck who read a first aid manual?

“You took a blow to the head. Probably debris of some sort. Were you close to a missile strike?”

Tom almost shook his head, stopping himself just in time. “No.” He thought back. “There was a high-powered rifle round.”

“Whatever hit you was bigger than a bullet. Maybe a chunk of masonry?”

“Maybe,” said Tom.

“Anyway, it gave you a concussion. You’ll most likely live, but you’re not going to feel real good. Not without some time in a medical pod, or, barring that, three or four weeks of taking it easy.”

Tom considered that. “Help me up,” he said at last.

“That’s not a good-”

Tom reached up and grabbed a handful of the plaid shirt. He got his legs under him, tightened his grip, and started to pull.

“All right, all right!” The man reached down, seized Tom’s arms, and hauled him to his feet.

The yard tilted and Tom’s vision went gray around the edges. He clutched at the Prairie Dog’s shoulders.

“I told you. Want me to help you lie back down?”

“I’m fine,” Tom lied.

“It’s your funeral. But I’ve got other patients. I’m going to need you to let go of me pretty soon.”

Tom released his grip. The Prairie Dog, despite his words, didn’t move. He stood with his hands poised by Tom’s shoulders, ready to catch him.

“It’s … getting better,” Tom said.

“It’ll get better faster if you lie down, you damned fool.” The man stepped back, watching Tom warily. When Tom didn’t wobble or collapse, the man shook his head in disgust and walked away.

Beside the tent Tom found a silver-haired woman sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair. He recognized her from the Prairie Dog hideout, though he hadn’t realized she was along on this mission. A battered carbine leaned against the back of the chair. Another chair sat in front of her, supporting her right foot, which was swathed in bandages.

She held a data pad in her lap, and took notes as she talked with a local man. Several more civilians stood in a queue behind him, waiting their turn to speak to her. The man was describing Dawn Alliance troop movements and the aircraft he’d seen. He glanced at Tom, and his voice trailed off. “Are you all right, son?”

“It’s a field hospital,” said the woman in the chair. “He’s being cared for. Focus.”

There were no other Prairie Dogs in sight. Tom walked to the crest of the ridge and leaned against the wall of the outpost building. A rattle above him made him tilt his head back.

A young woman lowered herself over the edge of the roof, got her feet on the rungs of the same ladder Tom had climbed earlier, and descended quickly. She landed beside Tom, gave him a curt nod, and headed into the tent.

Tom tried straightening up. There was no dizziness. There was pain, but it wasn’t excessive, so long as he didn’t move his head much. He didn’t feel healthy, exactly, but he no longer worried that he might collapse.

What do I do now? Return to the front lines? I don’t know if I can make it all the way back to town. I don’t want everyone else distracted, trying to take care of me.

He looked around, frustrated. If I could at least see what was going on …. The ladder drew his attention. If I was up there, I could see the whole town.

I have a concussion. Climbing a ladder would be really stupid.

Still, it’s only two stories. I can rest as soon as I get to the top.

He started climbing before common sense could get in the way. His head swam before he was three rungs from the ground, so he squeezed his eyes shut and climbed by touch. On and on he went, the ladder seeming to tilt back and forth under his hands. Finally his reaching fingers failed to find a rung. He opened his eyes, breathed a sigh of relief, and clambered over a low parapet onto the roof.

For a minute or two he sat and stared up at the sky, waiting to recover. Getting up here was bad enough. I’m not sure I can get back down.

Well, that was a problem for later. He stretched a hand up, clutched the top of the parapet, and pulled himself to his feet.

The rooftop was a flat rectangle maybe fifty paces on a side, covered in black tiles with a crosshatched texture. A cooling tower rose in the centre, a blocky rectangle maybe a meter high. The body that had lain there before was gone, he was relieved to see.

Tom turned to take in the view. He could see the town, the streets mostly empty, stretching away in a meandering grid. The bulky shape of the factory loomed in the background, gray and ugly compared to the cheerful-looking houses around it.

The laser rifle was still there on its pedestal. A water bottle lay discarded next to a rubber pad that a sniper might kneel on. Scattered food wrappers showed that this was a post that had been in use for quite some time. He remembered the body, wondered if that had been the sniper.

The screen for the electronic scope flashed. Processing, said the display. A padlock symbol in one corner told him the rifle was still locked. Tom cursed the Dawn Alliance sniper for having the presence of mind to secure the weapon. She must have realized the Prairie Dogs were coming from her blind side, locked the gun, and headed for the ladder an instant before the rocket struck.

He leaned down, put an eye to the optical scope, then frowned and straightened up. Processing? Processing what?

It took a moment to spot the wire. It ran from a port in the rifle stock to a small hand-held computer on the roof beside the power pack. The little computer was obviously Prairie Dog technology. Tom could tell by the logo on the side, which said Speak and Learn More Than One Hundred Languages. Repurposed technology was the hallmark of the colonies.

Sometimes, locked guns could be unlocked with a moderate amount of computing power and plenty of time. There was no telling how long this rifle would remain locked, and Tom shrugged, disappointed. No sniping for me.

He leaned down, snugged the stock against his shoulder, and peered through the eyepiece of the optical scope. For an instant a pigeon filled his view, replaced a moment later by empty sky. Tom tilted the barrel down until he was looking into the streets of Greenport.

He played the gun back and forth, scanning. A rising plume of smoke caught his attention, but the source was hidden behind a row of houses. He tracked to the right, working his way toward the factory.

A pair of soldiers flashed past, a man and a woman in burgundy uniforms clutching blast rifles. They vanished behind a building before he could fire. Tom watched the corner where they’d just disappeared, his finger snug on the trigger. Wait a minute. The gun’s locked. I can’t shoot.

Four Prairie dogs appeared, two two-person teams leapfrogging as they moved from building to building. By the look of it there was no actual enemy near them. They were just being cautious.

He scanned a long boulevard, pausing when he saw faces in a window. It was a trio of children peeking over a windowsill. Tom ignored them and moved on. A flash of movement caught his eye and he tracked back, trying to spot the source.

There. A woman stood in a doorway, mostly hidden, just her face appearing from time to time as she peeked out. Then, apparently deciding the coast was clear, she stepped into view. She wore the dark green uniform shirt of the Free Neorome Navy, with a brown vest over top. A bandolier ran from her left shoulder to her right hip, fat with cartridges. He remembered her from the Icicle. Her name was Sanchez, and she’d been one of the guards watching the prisoners.

Two more figures joined her, and the three of them hurried up the street, heads swiveling as they looked for threats. Tom smiled as he recognized Garth Ham and Alice. She’s all right. He hadn’t realized he’d been worrying about her, but a weight rose from his shoulders and the laser rifle suddenly felt as light as air in his hands.

He watched them make their way up the street, then scanned the rooftops above and ahead of them. If I spot a threat, what will I do? I’ve got no way to warn them.

A chime sounded from the rooftop beside his knee, and Tom glanced down. The screen of the mini computer was full of flickering text. He flipped open the electronic scope and smiled.

The gun was unlocked.

He zoomed out, found the street he’d been watching, and zoomed in until he spotted Alice once again. Then he shifted his aim to the street ahead of her.

Do what you need to do, Alice. Free the town. Take the factory. I’ll watch over you from here and do my best to keep you safe.

Chapter 18

“There it is,” said Sanchez.

Alice stuck her head out the door of a small warehouse, glanced quickly at the bulk of the factory across the street, and pulled her head back. “There it is,” she agreed.

“What do you think?” said Sanchez.

“I’m sure I saw movement on the third floor,” said Ham. “We’ll take fire crossing the street.”

Alice knelt, putting her head at a different level in case a sniper was lining up a shot. She took another quick glance and pulled back. “You to cover me while I go for the door.”

“Not a great idea,” said Ham.

I’ll get your mommy out. I’ll keep her safe. I promise. “You’re probably right,” she told him. “But we have to do something.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she didn’t give him the chance. Instead, she flung herself out the door, running in quick zig-zags toward the far side of the street.

Behind her Ham swore. Sanchez opened up with her carbine, the shots almost drowning out the quieter sounds of Ham’s blast rifle.

Hurry up, Alice. They make excellent targets, leaning out of the doorway to cover you. The asphalt in front of her foot erupted as a high-powered bullet struck the street. Her instincts told her to dodge, but her momentum made it impossible. Bits of glass rained down around her as her companions shot at the third-story window above.

She reached the wall of the factory, still running full-tilt. She twisted sideways, thumping hard against the wall with her shoulder. She rebounded, almost fell, then pressed herself against the wall.

The door was to her left, five or six paces away. Alice put a hand on the butt of her pistol – then froze as the door swung open. A soldier stepped out, a heavyset woman with a blast rifle leaning around the open door to take aim at Alice. Alice drew her pistol, knowing she was hopelessly too late.

Three quick shots rang out from the warehouse doorway across the street. The woman jerked, turning. She wasn’t quite as stocky as Alice had thought. She wore body armor and a helmet that gave her bulk. Unhurt by the fire she’d taken, she brought her rifle to her shoulder, lining up a shot at Sanchez.

A bullet hit the soldier in the foot. She screamed, falling, and the next bullet tore up the asphalt in front of her face. There was a moment of silence as Sanchez took careful aim. The soldier moaned, one hand stretching toward her injured foot.

Sanchez fired, blood erupted from the woman’s face, and the moaning stopped. The soldier jerked once and went still.

Alice, the pistol finally in her hand, looked across the street at Sanchez and nodded her thanks.

Sanchez and Ham left the doorway at almost the same instant, charging into the street, arms pumping. Running one at a time would only make it easier for the gunman up above to shoot both of them. But no further shots came. They reached the wall of the factory together, panting.

“I guess you got him,” said Alice, gesturing at the window above.

“Somebody did,” said Ham. “I think there’s someone else out there. A sniper on our side.”

“Whatever.” Alice pulled on the open door until it was flat against the outside wall, then peered around the doorjamb into the factory. The interior was hopelessly dark after the brightness of the street. She glanced at Ham and Sanchez, who stood poised on the far side of the doorway. Ham raised an eyebrow, and Alice shrugged.

If I wanted guarantees, I wouldn’t have joined the military. She took a deep breath, then sprang through the doorway.

Open floor stretched in front of her, so she dove, going into an awkward roll and coming back up to her feet. The bulk of a large machine loomed on her right, and she threw herself down beside it.

No incoming gunfire. No voices. Maybe the corpse in the doorway was the only one watching this door.

“Looks clear,” said Sanchez from somewhere behind her.

“I don’t see anything either,” Ham said.

That reassured Alice. Ham had a real knack for spotting things other people missed.

Still, you never knew. She slid to one side, moving as quietly as she could. When in doubt, change your position. Don’t be where the enemy thinks you are. She crouched, brought her breathing under control, and looked around.

Her eyes adjusted until the room seemed gloomy rather than dark. Small windows high on the wall let in shafts of sunlight that glowed in the ambient dust. She was in a large open room, the floor crowded with machines the size of ground cars. She couldn’t tell what any of the machinery did. Some part of the manufacturing process. Maybe we should take the opportunity to smash something.

People, though, had to be her first concern. The people she was here to extract, and the people here who would kill her if they could.

Waist-high conveyor belts linked many of the machines, making navigation in the room difficult. She crouched and crab-walked under a belt, then straightened up. “Spread out. Make sure the room is empty. And find out where the entry points are.”

“Right,” said Sanchez. Scuffling and rustling sounds rose as she and Ham started moving.

By the time she’d worked her way past two more machines Alice had a sense of the dimensions of the room. It was close to a hundred meters wide, almost the full width of the building, and maybe half as deep. The ceiling was far above, obscured by more conveyor belts and the jutting, articulated arms of robotic material handlers. Alice edged past a machine that looked like a standard fabricator, but with a giant hopper in the top. She looked it over curiously, wondering what it did, then ducked to pass under a fat pneumatic tube.

Metal crashed against metal, and a set of double doors on the far wall flew open. Alice hadn’t even seen the doors, obscured by shadows and the equipment in between. Now she saw a glowing rectangle with the silhouettes of three people. Flashes of red light appeared as they opened up with blast rifles, and the pneumatic tube just above Alice’s head exploded. She dropped flat, cursing, feeling hot lines of pain in her scalp. She put a hand to the top of her head and found bits of plastic in her hair, shrapnel created by the shattering tube.

Sanchez’s carbine fired, and the middle figure in the doorway spun around and fell. The other two leapt to either side, vanishing now that they were no longer backlit.

“There’s at least two of them,” said a man’s excited voice. He had a strong Dawn Alliance accent.

“Did we get the woman?”

“I think so. Circle around. We’ll get the other one in a crossfire.”

Alice rose to her knees and one hand, the other hand holding her pistol. She started to crawl. Don’t be where the enemy thinks you are.

“I spotted the other one,” said the woman. “She’s behind the strapping machine.” A couple of blast shots rang out, and the woman said, “I’ve got her pinned.”

“I’ll flank her,” said the man. His feet rustled against the floor. “Wait a minute. Did you hear that?”

The sound seemed to come from every direction at once. Alice edged back from the nearest conveyor belt, wondering if it was about to start moving.

When movement came, though, it was from above. A steel arm big enough to lift an elephant twitched, then rose and turned. The arm ended in a metal-fingered claw. Like a clumsy steel giant the claw smashed down, and metal screamed as a section of conveyor belt buckled and tore. A man’s voice cried out, and for an awful moment Alice thought it was Ham.

Then she caught a flash of burgundy as a soldiers scrambled frantically out of the path of the grasping robotic arm. Gunfire erupted, glass shattered, and Alice twisted her head around to see blast shot smashing into a control booth set high on one wall.

A shape inside the booth moved, and the steel arm moved with it, slashing sideways until it slammed against another machine. The robotic arm went still, and Alice imagined the operator cowering back as shot after shot slammed into the booth.

Maybe there’s something I can do about that. She started to rise, then hesitated. What the hell. There’s only two of them, and they’re both busy. She rose to her full height, and spotted a flash of burgundy off to her right. It was the woman, trying to cover her friend, squatting behind a machine with a blast rifle at her shoulder, blazing away at the control booth up above.

Alice rested her arm on a conveyor belt, taking careful aim. The man behind me better be cowering right now, because I’m awfully exposed. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and, ever so gently, squeezed the trigger.

The woman in burgundy dropped from view. The machine beside her was splashed with blood.

Their unknown ally in the control booth reacted immediately. Two steel arms moved at once, metal hands moving toward each other like a man clapping his hands to trap a fly. The man swore, and a badly-aimed shot hit the wall a meter from the booth.

An instant before the metal hands came together, Sanchez let out a whoop. “Got him!”

Alice lowered herself to one knee, just in case. She was pretty sure that was the last of them, though. Poor sap was so busy dodging the robots, he forgot to keep his head down.

“There’s just us. I can see the whole room.” The voice came from above, and Alice looked up. An elbow appeared as someone broke away several jagged pieces of glass in the front of the control booth. Then a woman leaned out. She wore shapeless gray clothes and a bright yellow scarf that contained her hair. She waved cheerfully. “I’m coming down. Don’t shoot me. I’m on your side.”

Alice moved to the open double doors. Beyond she could see a short section of hallway and several more sets of doors, all of them closed. She leaned against the door frame, glancing into the corridor, then around the room full of machinery, then back again.

Metal creaked and complained as the woman in gray descended a ladder mounted to the wall. By the time she reached Alice, Ham and Sanchez were there too. “That was good work,” said Ham. “You saved our pinfeathers.”

“You’re from Tazenda,” she said. “I can tell. No one else says that.”

Ham nodded.

“I’m sorry we didn’t do anything when Tazenda and Neorome got invaded. I thought we should have gone to war immediately.” She scowled and plucked at the ill-fitting gray smock she wore. “Look what cooperation got us.”

Alice said, “Do you work in the factory?”

“Yes.” She looked ashamed. “I don’t want to, but my family ….”

“I understand” said Alice.

“I’m Janine. Are you Prairie Dogs?”

Alice shook her head. “Free Neorome Navy. The Prairie Dogs are with us.”

“Are you taking over the factory?”

“Smashing it, probably,” said Alice. “We’re not ready to hold the town quite yet. Soon, maybe. Sunshine Station is down. With a little luck, the UW is coming.”

Janine wrinkled her nose. “Well, I guess they’re better than the Dawn Alliance.”

“A damn sight better,” said Alice. Still, she remembered the passion with which she’d fought against the United Worlds. What would happen when the war ended? Would there be another war to drive out their allies? She thought of Tom, and felt a strong sense of relief that he no longer wore the blue uniform of the United Worlds. What would he do, when the war ended? She was surprised by how much the question troubled her, and she pushed it out of her mind.

“How many people are in the factory, Janine? How many innocent workers, and how many soldiers?”

Janine frowned. “On a normal shift, there’s ninety people working, and maybe fifteen uglies. Most of them aren’t soldiers. Mostly they’re technicians. Some of them have guns, but they don’t have military training. Now, though?” She shrugged.

“There’s supposed to be eight people on shift in here.” She gestured around the room. “Alarms started ringing a little while ago, and they started sealing up the doors. I think most of the floor crew snuck out. But more people came in. More soldiers, I mean.” She shook her head. “I figured the booth was the safest place to be if they decided to shoot everyone. I climbed up there and I haven’t budged since.”

Alice sighed. “I guess we’ll find out the hard way.” She checked her pistol. “The exit’s clear,” she told Janine, pointing at the door at the back where the three of them had entered. “You should be able to make it out of town without too much trouble.”

“To hell with that.” Janine marched over to the doorway leading onto the short corridor. A fallen soldier lay there, limbs in a tangle. Janine stepped over a spreading puddle of blood and picked up a fallen blast rifle. “I’m going with you. I can guide you.”

Sanchez said, “Have you used one of those before?”

Janine looked down at the rifle held awkwardly in her hands. “How hard can it be? You point it at anyone wearing burgundy and you pull the trigger.”

Sanchez shook her head. Alice, though, smiled in spite of herself. Janine might not be the most impressive recruit ever, but she had spirit. She’d risked her life once to help them, and she seemed determined not to shirk danger now.

“First lesson. Take your finger off the trigger. Keep it outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot.”

Janine reluctantly uncurled her finger from the trigger.

“Good. Now, what’s a piece of equipment in here that’s fairly fragile and fairly important?”

Janine thought for a moment, then pointed up and to one side. “There’s a junction box there. Electronics and electrical power.”

The box, about the size of a human torso, was about thirty meters away and five meters up. Cables and pipes ran from it in every direction. Alice said, “See if you can hit it from here.”

Janine grinned, lifted the rifle to her shoulder, and took careful aim. She squeezed the trigger, missing by a handspan.

“Great,” said Alice. “The gun’s unlocked.” There were many ways to lock a weapon so it couldn’t be used by an enemy. There were sensors built into gun stocks to detect fingerprints or hand shapes, or even to scan DNA. You could run a tiny cable from the weapon to a port on the user’s clothing. Other weapons had password protection. There was always a danger with locking a gun, though. If something malfunctioned, you could find yourself holding an over-engineered billy club when a gunfight broke out around you. This rifle, apparently, didn’t have a lock – not one that was engaged, anyway.

Janine fired three more shots, scoring two hits and a miss. She cackled. “I’m getting the hang of it.”

Alice put a hand on the barrel, pushing it down. “Let’s save some ammo for our uninvited guests.”

“Right.” Janine bobbed her head. “This way.”

She started to walk, then paused when Alice said, “Janine?”

“Yes?”

“Finger off the trigger, please.”

They opened doors on either side of the short corridor, verifying that a small meeting room and a superintendent’s office were both empty. After that, Janine led them to a larger set of doors at the end of the corridor. “The cafeteria is through here,” she murmured. “There’s a counter on that side.” She gestured with her left hand. “It’s the only real cover.”

Alice nodded, stepped around her, and pushed open the door.

A flash of motion caught her eye, and she ducked reflexively. A metal pot crashed against the doorframe beside her and went bouncing across the floor. Someone inside the cafeteria swore.

Her hand was still on the doorknob. Four thick fingers appeared on the edge of the door, and someone yanked the door open, tearing the knob out of her hand. A swarm of men and women faced her, at least a dozen of them, armed with everything from kitchen knives to chairs. The ferocity on their faces turned to confusion as they looked at Alice and her companions.

“Settle down,” said Janine, sounding amused. “They’re on our side.”

In all, the cafeteria held thirty-five people. They were all locals, all of them dressed in baggy gray smocks. They were, as far as they knew, the only workers remaining in the factory.

“The Prairie Dogs are planning to bomb the building,” Alice said. “It’s high time we all get out of here.” She wanted to ask if any of them was the mother she had promised to find and keep safe. It didn’t matter, though. Every one of them had loved ones on the outside, people who were worried about them, people they were desperate to keep safe. And all of them, as she had seen, were loyal patriots ready to rise up against the Dawn Alliance the moment they had a chance of success.

“Follow me,” she said. “Sanchez, you bring up the rear. Ham and Janine, watch the sides. Finger off the trigger, Janine.” Alice walked to the door to the corridor and pushed it open.

A couple of Prairie Dogs stood in the corridor with blast rifles at their shoulder. They recognized her, but didn’t lower their guns. Karen Sharpe stood behind them, hands on her hips. “Alice,” she said. “What’s your hurry?”

“Face. The third floor, Seven.”

Tom, who’d been watching one corner of the factory at street level, shifted his aim up and to the right. He found the seventh window on the third floor just in time to see the pale blur of a face fade into the gloom. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for a moment of dizziness to pass, then said, “No shot.”

The woman beside him was named Lucy. She was small and bloodthirsty. She was the one who had left the minicomputer unlocking the rifle, and she’d been disappointed to find that Tom had claimed the weapon when she returned. Now she knelt beside him with a pair of binoculars, acting as a spotter.

Tom watched the window for a while, catching occasional glimpses of movement inside. He couldn’t tell if it was civilians or soldiers, and he wasn’t sure it was worth a shot. A dirty window would play havoc with a laser beam.

“There’s something at the front door.”

Tom tilted the rifle down as Lucy said, “Hold your fire. I think she’s coming back out.”

To the Prairie Dogs, “she” always meant Karen Sharpe. Sure enough, Sharpe was the first one to emerge from the factory. She’d gone in almost half an hour earlier with nine Prairie Dogs in tow. Now they all re-emerged, along with a crowd of shuffling prisoners, men and women in dingy smocks.

Tom smiled with relief when he spotted Alice at the back of the crowd. The look on her face troubled him, though. She was tight-lipped, looking like she was ready to hit someone. Ham was beside her, his forehead creased in a worried pucker. Sanchez was on the other side. She wore a scowl that could have scoured paint from a bulkhead.

Tom watched them, feeling a growing unease. Prairie Dogs lead the prisoners along the front of the building. He got his first unimpeded view of Alice and her companions, and the cold feeling in his stomach intensified and spread.

All three of them were unarmed.

The Prairie Dogs used gestures and the occasional shove to maneuver the prisoners into a line along the front wall of the factory. Prisoners began to kneel. Some refused, and Prairie Dogs came forward, shoving them down. A woman in gray planted her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out defiantly. A man stepped up in front of her and brought his rifle back as if he was about to drive the butt into her stomach. She gave in at the last moment, dropping to her knees beside the other prisoners.

Sharpe, meanwhile, walked back and forth on the open grass in front of the factory. She had her back to the prisoners, her face toward Tom, and her lips moved. He couldn’t hear what she said, but by the look of it she was grandstanding, haranguing an audience. Tom tilted the rifle, looking at the ground ahead of her. A rooftop blocked most of his view, but he could see the tops of a few heads. There were civilians gathering, and Karen Sharpe was giving them a lecture.

The chill in Tom’s stomach grew worse. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but whatever it was, Sharpe clearly intended it as an object lesson for the people of Greenport.

“What the hell is she going to do?”

He was talking to himself, but Amy answered. “Executing the prisoners, probably.”

He glanced at her, shocked. She looked uncomfortable, but her eyebrows drew together like she was daring him to challenge her.

He returned his attention to the scope. Alice, her face a mask of outrage, was marching toward Sharpe. Sharpe turned, and the two nose to nose. Alice’s arms chopped at the air as she gesticulated. Tom could imagine her tirade. These aren’t your enemies. These are prisoners of the Dawn Alliance. You can’t kill them. It won’t be execution; it’ll be murder.

Tom shifted the scope, scanning the faces of the kneeling prisoners. None of them had the distinctive features of Dawn Alliance soldiers. None of them wore soldiers’ uniforms. “They’re civilians,” he muttered. “Not even Dawn Alliance civilians. They’re citizens of Novograd.”

“They helped the enemy.”

“That,” said Tom, not looking up from the scope, “is a load of crap, and you know it.”

Maybe Lucy did know. At any rate, she didn’t reply.

Tom tracked back to Alice and Sharpe. He was just in time to see Alice’s fist move, looping around in a savage arc. Sharpe’s head snapped back and she fell, sprawling on her rear end.

Lucy said, “Oh, damn it.”

By the time Sharpe made it to her feet, a Prairie Dog held each of Alice’s arms. Tom took careful aim at the one on the left, fighting the urge to squeeze the trigger. Take your hands off her, you ape. If you hurt her—

Sharpe brought a hand up, touching her mouth where Alice’s blow had landed. She made a gesture, and the two Prairie Dogs dragged Alice backward.

There was a commotion in the background, and Tom zoomed out the electronic scope. Garth Ham lunged toward the men holding Alice. Another Prairie Dog tripped him, then kicked him as he started to rise. Sanchez was grappling with two more Prairie Dogs. A dark-haired woman had blood streaming from her nose by the time she and the man beside her managed to wrestle Sanchez to the ground.

Tom’s mouth went dry as the men holding Alice dragged her to the line of prisoners and shoved her onto her knees.

“Thrush,” said Lucy. “Take your finger off the trigger.”

Tom blinked, startled to find that he’d curled his finger around the trigger and taken up most of the slack.

The side of Karen Sharpe’s head was in the crosshairs.

Ham surged to his feet, then fell as a Prairie Dog swept his feet out from under him. A man planted a knee in Ham’s back.

Sharpe drew a pistol from the holster at her belt.

Something hard touched the side of Tom’s head. “Take your damn finger off the trigger.” The pressure increased, pushing Tom’s head sideways. He could see Lucy in the corner of his eye, her arm extended, the muzzle of a pistol against the side of his head. “I won’t tell you again.”

In the scope, Sharpe stood in front of Alice, the pistol still pointing at the ground. There’s still time for sanity to prevail. She doesn’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this, Sharpe. Alice is not your enemy.

An absurd thought flashed through his mind. This will divide the Prairie Dogs. They have to know this is wrong. The resistance will start to fall apart after this.

I could prevent it. I should shoot Alice right now. It’s the best way to keep the Prairie Dogs United.

It was a repulsive thought, and he dismissed it immediately. Yet the voice of his conscience clamored at him, telling him Sharpe was essential to the resistance, and the resistance was essential to liberating Novograd. Novograd was critical to the war, which made Karen Sharpe a very important person indeed. And I’m thinking about shooting her, because I’m in love.

Sharpe lifted her pistol, and in that instant Tom knew that the dilemma facing him was no dilemma at all. The liberation of Novograd was not the only thing at stake. The soul of Novograd was also at risk. There were two women before him, and one of them would control how the war of resistance was fought. That would carry over, after the war, into the very destiny of the colony.

Who would choose Novograd’s path? Sharpe, who would do anything to drive the invaders out? Or Alice, who would do anything to save her people? Until now, those goals had been effectively the same thing. Now they were about to diverge.

Sharpe straightened her arm. She pointed the pistol at Alice’s head.

And Tom squeezed the trigger.

“Oh, shit!” The pressure of the gun barrel on the side of Tom’s head increased, and he squeezed his eyes shut involuntarily, waiting for the shot that would end his life.

The pressure vanished. He turned his head, saw a blur of motion, and the sole of Lucy’s boot slammed into his shoulder.

He fell, and she ripped the rifle out of the bracket holding it to the pedestal. She pointed the rifle at his head, the long barrel wavering. She made a frustrated noise, stepped forward, swung the gun up, and rammed the stock into his face. White light exploded through his skull and the world disappeared.

Chapter 19

The medical chair give a quiet hum as it drifted across the lawn. Tom sat with his hands gripping the controls on the chair’s arms, gritting his teeth in quiet frustration. A brace on the chair’s back held his head perfectly still. If he wanted to look beside him, he had to rotate the entire chair. He was sure that was overkill, but the doctors had been adamant. Two head injuries in a short time was all he could expect to endure without serious and permanent side effects. They weren’t letting him take any more chances.

It was a warm day, the twin suns shining down from a dark blue sky decorated with faint wisps of high cloud. Tom, however, unable to move pretty much anything but his arms, was cold. He had a blanket in his lap, and he reached down from time to time to keep it from sliding. If it was to fall to the ground he would have to call a nurse to pick it up for him.

Coldest of all was the half-circle shape of a med monitor attached to the shaved skin just above his right ear. Invisible wires extended from the device and reached deep into Tom’s brain. He couldn’t feel a thing, but he knew the wires were there, and he had to fight an impulse to grab the monitor and rip it free. It was actually less invasive than the data implants that most people back on Earth had. Still, Tom had never had implants, and he hated the thought of them.

The Catfish Lake Clinic stood on a hilltop surrounded by a patchwork of forest and farmland. He’d seen it once before, on the day the Icicle crashed, though he wouldn’t have recognized it. Now, with the storm long past and the sun shining, he could finally take a good look around.

The grounds of the hospital were lovely, with flowerbeds alternating with stretches of lawn. There were trees, elms and oaks that would become majestic shade trees one day. At the moment they were barely two meters tall, but they had been planted with care. In a few decades they would accentuate the grounds and the building in the center, softening the stark lines of the structure and providing a contrast to the tall stone walls.

At the edge of the hospital grounds was a hedge with gaps in it to allow for a view across the surrounding countryside. Most of the gaps had benches, and the bench directly ahead of Tom contained a couple of people. He knew Bridger and Alice well enough to recognize them by the backs of their heads, and he smiled, his bad mood fading as he steered toward them. He was a few paces away when they caught the hum of the chair and turned around.

Alice smiled, and Tom smiled back. Bridger was saying something about the chair and how they should get one installed on their next battleship. Tom barely heard him, and after a moment Bridger excused himself. Tom glanced at him long enough to see Bridger smirking as he walked away.

He couldn’t quite get the chair around the end of the bench, so Alice shifted position and turned sideways until she could face him. She leaned over and laid her hand on top of his. “Tom. How are you feeling?”

He shrugged. “You wouldn’t believe how annoying this chair is. Still, it’s nice to finally get outside.” He looked her over. “How are you?”

She let go of his hand, reaching up to touch her cheek. She had a spectacular shiner. “I know I look bad.” She grinned. “But I’m okay.”

He tried to nod, but the brackets on his head prevented him. “What’s the word with the Prairie Dogs?”

That wiped the smile from her face. “What a mess. Half of them are relieved that Sharpe is dead. The other half are devastated. All of them are rudderless.” She shook her head, frowning. “She was a strong leader. She’ll be hard to replace.”

“I’ve heard rumors,” said Tom.

She tried to keep frowning, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. Even sitting still she became animated, a sparkle appearing in her eyes. “It doesn’t seem right.” The expression on her face made a lie of the words.

“That you should be the new leader?” Tom said. “It seems right to me.”

“It seems like it should be one of them.” She shrugged. “But none of them are stepping up. It’s like she was the only natural leader they had left.”

“I think you’ll be a brilliant resistance leader,” said Tom.

Her brow furrowed. “I’m supposed to be part of the Free Neorome Navy, remember?” She pointed at the sky. “I’m supposed to be up there. I should be trying to find a ship.”

“You were a valuable spacer,” Tom said. “But there’s a lot of good spacers in the Navy. You’ll be a lot more valuable down here.”

She didn’t argue, and he could see the truth in her face. She was back on Novograd. Where she was needed. Where she belonged.

A minute or two passed in a companionable silence. Voices spoke in the distance, and Alice turned quickly, looking at something behind Tom. Whatever she saw must have reassured her, because she relaxed. Then she laid her hand once again on Tom’s. “You can’t stay here,” she said. “I hate to say it, but you’re not safe.” She scowled, looking suddenly fierce. “You should be safe. You’ve done more than anyone to break the Dawn Alliance’s stranglehold. We’re well on our way to liberating the planet because of you.”

Tom shrugged.

“They don’t blame me for what happened,” she said. “It was my fault, but you get all the blame.”

“It was Sharpe’s fault, not yours.”

“At any rate, you’re the scapegoat, and it isn’t fair.”

He didn’t want to move the hand that she was holding, so he lifted his other hand and gave a dismissive wave. “So I have to get back into space. I needed to do that anyway.”

“I thought …” Her hand tightened on his. “I imagined you staying here with me for a while. While he recovered, you know? And maybe for a while after. You could help me coordinate the resistance with the Free Neorome Navy and the United Worlds. You could teach me about leadership. You could help me get the Prairie Dogs organized, maybe link up with other resistance groups.” She turned away, staring into the distance so he couldn’t see her expression. “But you can’t. Someone will try to kill you. You’ll be a symbol of division and distrust.”

They lapsed into silence.

“Besides, you’re right.” She turned and looked at him, and there were tears on her cheeks. She jerked her head upward, indicating the sky. “You belong up there.”

There didn’t seem to be much to say about that. He lapsed into silence, and they sat there, gazing into the distance. He pointed at a rounded shape poking up like a blister on the horizon. “Is that a volcano?”

“Kind of looks like one, doesn’t it?” She smiled. “That’s actually the Echo Machine.”

Tom blinked. “It echoes?”

Alice giggled. “No. There’s ten of them, and they’re named Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and so on. They’re terraforming machines. We went on a field trip to Echo when I was in school. You can’t imagine the size of it, not really. Not until you’re standing right beside it.” She shook her head, remembering. “It seems amazing that humanity could ever build something so huge. But there were ten of them, and that’s just on Novograd.”

“What did it do?”

“It baked the planetary crust,” she said. “Not near the surface. There’s a layer about ten kilometers deep with ilmen … What do you call it?” Her forehead scrunched up as she searched her memory. “Iron-titanium oxide, anyway. I forget the name. Lamenite or something. Anyway, you heat it up and it releases oxygen. Do it on a large enough scale, and after a hundred years or so you’ve got a breathable atmosphere.” She grinned. “You should visit. It’s really something.”

Tom squinted at the distant shape, trying to imagine the scale of it.

“Echo makes me feel like I’m home,” said Alice. Her voice turned wistful. “I didn’t live here. I grew up in Stratus. That’s on the other side of the crater. But you could see Echo from the edge of town.”

“Crater?”

“We’re on the rim of a crater,” she said. “It’s so big you can’t see it from the ground. Look at photos from orbit, though, and you can see the circle shape. They put Echo right in the middle.”

A distant rumble caught Tom’s attention, and he tensed, scanning the sky. If it’s an attack, it’ll take me ten minutes to reach cover. I might as well stay here and enjoy a front-row seat. If I can persuade Alice to leave me behind.

“There,” she said, and pointed. He followed the direction of her finger and spotted three dark specks low in the sky. The distant aircraft raced across the crater, banked, and screamed past almost directly overhead. Sleek and fast, the planes were painted dark blue.

“United Worlds,” said Tom. The UW had half a dozen ships in orbit, not enough to repel a determined counterattack, but enough to control the system for now. They hadn’t landed a full-scale invasion force. They’d sent down equipment and Special Forces teams, and apparently some aircraft as well. The liberation of Novograd, however, was in the hands of its citizens.

“If they can keep the DA grounded,” said Alice, “it’ll give us a huge edge.” She mused for a moment. “Or at least, it’ll take away a huge edge the Dawn Alliance had until now.”

“I wish I could stay,” said Tom. “I wish I could help you liberate the planet.”

“You’ll help,” she said. “You’ll tie them in knots, out there between the stars. You’ll keep them so busy, they’ll never be able to put a fleet together to retake the system. So long as the United Worlds holds the sky, we can win the war on the ground.”

Tom said, “The war won’t last forever. I’ll come back to Novograd.”

Her hand tightened on his. “You belong up there, Tom. But that’s okay. So do I. When you come back, when Novograd is free, I’ll be ready to leave.

“With you.”

Author Notes

Tom and Alice will return.

Jake Elwood is a Canadian writer of science fiction, especially adventurous space opera with a dash of humor. When he’s not at a keyboard he likes hiking and biking and sometimes kayaking on the Bow River. He is also the author of the Hive Invasion trilogy, beginning with Starship Alexander.

For more titles and releases by Jake Elwood check out his website. Sign up for his mailing list and get a free book: http://jakeelwoodwriter.com/