Chapter I

TO: JUSTIN WOOD BELL

FROM: UNITED SPACE MILITARY COMMAND

SUBJECT: REACTIVATION TO ACTIVE DUTY STATUS

YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED BY ADMIRAL WILLIAM MAHAN, COMMANDER USMC, TO PRESENT YOURSELF WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF RECEIPT OF THIS NOTIFICATION AT USMC UNITED STATES REGIONAL COMMAND HEADQUARTERS WASHINGTON DC FOR REACTIVATION INTO ACTIVE SERVICE WITH THE RANK OF CAPTAIN.

Justin Bell reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it to life, then held it to the bottom edge of the printout and watched, expressionless, as the paper flared. He dropped it to the ground when the flames finally licked up around his fingertips.

Sitting down, he pulled a pipe out of his pocket, lit it and then picked up the triple scotch he had been nursing ever since the message had arrived more than an hour ago. With a single gulp Justin downed the drink and then sat in silence, watching as the order from the old service to which he had given so much of his life flickered and collapsed into charred dust.

"Screw ’em."

He reached down to the ground by his chair, lifted the bottle and poured another triple, resolving to nurse this one through the sunset.

Funny, sunsets never really bothered him. Sunrises, however, were something different—memories of Matt and himself trapped in the ruined station on the asteroid Lucifer, waiting for the sun to come up and fry them. Strange, they both look the same though.

Matt Everett.

He tried not to think of his old friend, if he could still be called a friend.

"It may be for years and it may be forever . . ."

The song, "Katherine Mauvareen," still haunted him. He and so many of the old cadets from the Academy had suddenly made it popular when the Civil War between Earth and the United Colonies started. It harkened back to the old traditions of West Point on the eve of their Civil War and the legend of brother officers North and South who had sung the same song together before departing to their destinies—where more than one helped to kill the other.

Where was Matt now? Last report was Mars, at least the last time he checked three years ago. Justin knew he could find out easy enough, but what the hell for? That friendship ended at Bradbury Station. It was best to forget, forget all of it.

He sighed and looked back through the open door of his cabin to the small cramped study. An antique of a computer that looked like it belonged to the early 21st century rather than the ’80s was half-buried beneath a mound of papers on a desk made out of a heavy oak door. Piles of books and holo memory cubes were scattered on the floor around it, along with half a dozen empty bottles. The illusion of writing a book about the history of Star Voyager Academy and its founder Thor Thorsson was just that, an illusion. But it gave him a purpose, a fantasy to hide in, to make believe that he was still doing something.

The illusion had kept him going for three years now, ever since he had resigned his commission after Bradbury. He sipped his drink.

The old argument of "only following orders" no longer provided a way to cover over the guilt. Article Twenty-three of the service code clearly stated there was a moral obligation to resist illegal or immoral orders. Should have invoked that, knew I should have, and made a stand but I didn’t. I accepted their arguments that Bradbury would end the war and thus save lives rather than losing them.

He stared at the pattern of lights flickering from his heavy crystal glass, which caught the setting sun. So I balm my soul afterwards, resigning as if that would ease my conscience. Yet he knew there was more—it was simply that after the death of all too many comrades from the old days, on both sides of the fighting in that campaign, resignation of his commission was a blessing and an escape.

He looked at the ashes at his feet. What could they do—arrest me? That would be a joke. Medal of Honor winner arrested for refusing a recall to service. They got twenty-one years out of me, take someone else.

The phone on his desk beeped, and he blearily looked over at his only connection to the outside world. He let it ring until the computer finally clicked into the line and took the message. Gulping the rest of the drink down, Justin went into his office and hit the message delete button, not even bothering to read what it was, and then shut the system down so no more notes or officious demands could come through.

He spared a quick glance around the room. The walls were covered with too many memories, many of them class photos from the Academy. Ghosts, I’ve wallpapered my world with ghosts.

His gaze lingered for a moment on the holo image of his first command USS Francis Marion, flanked by USS Ethell—she that was a beauty of a ship, now bits and fragments orbiting Mars. And then there was the last ship, USS Gagarin, lost at Bradbury. Letters of commendation were clustered in dusty frames around his Medal of Honor citation; the more dead you harvested the more medals they hung on you.

He had never signed into the service for that task. Back then, before the Civil War, it was maintaining the peace, protecting civilians and saving lives that they were trained for. There was always the threat of the alien Tracs, but it had been over twenty-five years since they had last been seen.

The Civil War between Earth and the Colonies had changed everything. Granted, in the overall scheme of things the war had been relatively bloodless; far more had died in the settling of the Colonies than in their fight to free themselves from United Nations rule. Both sides respected the rules of engagement against attacking nonmilitary targets—at least most of the time—until Bradbury.

No, not much of a bloodbath for a system populated by ten billion souls. Except, of course, if you were in the USMC or the CFF, the Colonial Free Forces. All right for us to die while the civilians of both sides cheered. How many out of my graduating class? A third, half maybe. And how many by my own hands? He pushed that thought away as he took another sip.

Admiral Mahan managed to cover the real reason for Justin’s resignation, trumping up a press release that Medal of Honor winner Captain Justin Bell had resigned due to injuries sustained in service. Justin had been willing to keep the myth alive and retreat to this hiding place in the North Carolina mountains. It would not have been popular at all to make a public announcement that the great war hero had told the commander and his government to go to hell.

He looked back at the ashes still scattered out on the front deck.

What the hell do they want now? Could it be that the new government is looking for an excuse to arrest me, when I refuse to return?

He pondered that thought for a moment. The coupist government had seized control of the United Nations in the wake of the war’s end. The seizure had been a popular move, since they took power with the claim that the war could have been won if only the USMC had fought with a will for victory no matter what the cost. They were backed by the EDF, the Earth Defense Forces, which had been created during the war as nothing more than a rear-guard unit in case Colonial forces ever attempted a landing.

Justin snorted with disdain at the thought of the EDF. The possibility of a Colonial offensive to ground sites was in itself inane. They were fighting a protective action in their own systems and the defensive lines the USMC maintained out beyond lunar orbit were simply too strong. The real reason for the creation of the EDF by Lin Zhu, who had been head of ground defense in the old administration, was now obvious. He had created a military force loyal to him as a counter to the USMC. It was also a nationalistic move since the USMC was increasingly American, European, Japanese and Russian of late, while the EDF was more Asian and Southern Hemisphere in makeup.

That national separation bothered Justin. The dream of the USMC’s creator, Thor Thorsson, was to make it a truly international force, but Zhu had managed to subvert that ideal by playing on old nationalistic lines. The USMC still existed, it still was responsible for transatmospheric defense of what was still Earth’s out to lunar orbit, but it no longer had authority over controlling the peace back on Earth.

What the hell is going on? Why are they bothering me now? Justin wondered, fighting back the haze of alcohol for a moment.

Justin turned and went back to the doorway. The sun was drifting behind the Smokey Mountains and he went back out onto his front porch to watch. Shadows from a spur of the Black Mountains stretched out across the valley and blanketed the village below. On the faint breath of the westerly breeze a church bell chimed. Overhead the last birds of evening were winging in, coming to rest, weaving through the flaring orange, red and yellow leaves of autumn.

He sniffed the breeze. The sky to the west was crystal clear; the distant ridge of the Smokies fifty miles away stood out sharp, silhouetted by the shifting indigo and scarlet.

The air was cold, crisp, carrying with it the faint aroma of woodsmoke.

Better put a fire on tonight, he thought. Frost by morning. Good, maybe hike up the old toll road to Graybeard Mountain. Need it to clear the hangover I’m prepping up for now.

A breeze stirred through the trees, a scattering of leaves drifting down, rustling, like a curtain of fiery rain, the pile of ashes on the front deck swirling away with the wind. He poured another drink, starting it out as a single but deciding to make it a triple again.

Justin fought with a momentary temptation to turn his computer on, tap into the news service and see what might be up. The last time he had bothered to check in, the Titan Colony was rebelling against the United Colonies government over its decision to honor all pre-war debts to various corporate investors in Colonial development. It was a sound move on their part to insure the reestablishment of credit, but he could well imagine that more than one Colonial thought the whole thing was a denial of what they had fought for. Perhaps that was leading into some sort of crisis.

The hell with them! If they want someone to fly in another war, go find them, but I’ll be damned if I’ll serve again, Justin thought coldly.

He looked up. The sky was dark enough that the first beads of light appeared—the orbital solar power stations, catching the energy-rich light of space. He studied them for a moment. Funny, Alpha Three wasn’t showing, nor was Alpha Four. Curious, were their panels turned edgewise?

Ah, the hell with that too, he thought glumly. If there’s a problem it’s not my worry . . . the world could do with a little less juice, make people think twice about wasting so much of it.

Justin slipped back into his cabin for a moment, stepping over the piles of books. He went into his bedroom and pulled a blanket off his unmade bed. Stopping in the kitchen he discovered a ready-to-eat meal in a cluttered cabinet, ignored the dirty dishes piled high in the sink, and went back out onto the front porch.

The stars still called . . . he knew he’d never really get that out of his blood and it was comforting on a cool autumn night like this to simply sleep outside.

He sat down in his lounge chair; the dinner of shrimp and noodles heated up once the lid was snapped open. Most everyone aboard a service ship had come to despise the ready-to-eats but they were so damn convenient, and besides food was nothing more at this point than a means of keeping himself going. Finishing the meal and still holding what was left of his drink he cranked the lounge chair back, turning it into a cot.

A chill wind slipped down from the mountains and he pulled the blanket up around his chest. Through the haze of drink he noticed that his arm and right leg throbbed slightly. Ever since Gagarin the wounds were a daily reminder. He closed his eyes for a moment. The piercing alarm still haunted him, the signal to abandon ship.

If only I had stayed, he thought almost wistfully. None of this would be here to bother me now. Or was it the other way around?

Sighing, he opened his eyes and watched as the stars slowly traced their graceful arcs across the heavens.

Damn, I still miss it, he thought, still miss the silent watches, the sea of stars to guide my ship.

Give me a ship . . .

It may be for years and it may be forever . . .

The drink slipped from his hand.

* * *

He awoke, the old dreams becoming, as they so often did, too painful to bear. Sirens . . .

Siren down in the valley, reminded him of battle alerts. The tone wavered, sounding as if it was coming from the old highway. Some damn fool most likely wrecked.

Dawn. Damn, how I hate dawn, always have.

Groaning, he sat up and rubbed his temples. Single malt will still give you a hangover if you drink enough of it, he thought ruefully.

It was cold, frost coating the leaves on the ground, the half-empty bottle of scotch by his recliner rimmed with an opaque sheet of silvery crystals.

They always said space was cold, unless your suit cooling winked off and you were out in the sun. Suspended between fire and ice and all so silent, deliciously silent.

The morning birds were astir, calling, fluttering through the trees overhead. I always did miss that, he thought, looking up at them. They reminded him of waking in the early light to do the farm chores when he was a boy in Indiana. Somebody on Gagarin had tried to pipe birdcalls in through the PA when the morning watch started; it had lasted only a couple of days before he had put a stop to the absurdity.

He watched the birds for a couple of minutes and finally, with a groaning sigh, Justin stood up and went back into his cabin. He hit the electric heater while going into the kitchen. Putting a cup of water into the microwave he pulled down the instant coffee and then threw several spoonfuls into the steamy cup of boiling water.

Damn dream, Mars on fire below, half a dozen nuclear warheads bursting above Bradbury, his ship on fire, the eject alarm screaming. Outside the siren still trilled.

"Stereo, Wagner, Gotterdammerung, final scene," he said quietly, and the sound system in his living room turned on.

It was Tanya Leonov who had cultivated his interest in classical music and introduced him to the one piece that, more than anything he had ever heard, epitomized the tragedy of a world being destroyed.

Wagner echoed through the cabin, the nightmare still lingering . . . the first an airburst, EMP nailing down the comm links, the second a penetrator groundburst right on the target, the third, fourth and fifth in a triangle pattern around it, slamming down any interceptors coming up. Mushroom clouds soaring up through the thin atmosphere . . . Wagner.

Should listen to Pachibel, Vivaldi, or even Copeland for dawn, not this stuff. It’s an exercise in self-pity that will leave me depressed for the rest of the day, but what the hell!

Justin stepped out onto the porch. To the west the Smokies were catching the first light of dawn about to break behind him.

He sipped the coffee as the music thundered, reaching its climax as Valhalla was consumed in flames.

A snap of light flashed across the mountaintops.

Strange.

Justin stepped to the side of the porch to look back to the east. The sun was breaking over the eastern spur of the Black Mountains behind him. And yet to the northeast, far away, another sun was rising, a brilliant fiery yellow-white ball of light. Another flash ignited near the first, and instinctively he covered his eyes and turned his head away.

The stereo shut off. The computer chirped, signaling a power interrupt, and then died.

EMP burst, Justin realized.

He spared a quick glance up, covering one eye just in case. Flashes of light winked overhead and to the south. Geosynch orbital defense and solar power grid, they were all going. He lowered his head, glad that he did a second later when there was another brilliant flash that etched the mountain tops with a crystalline white light so sharp that their image burned into him even while he closed his eyes and looked away.

Still no sound of course, not above the atmosphere.

Justin retreated under the eaves and sat down.

He picked up the bottle of scotch, poured a shot into his coffee and put it back down, his fingerprints burned into the frost that coated the bottle.

The Colonies?

No. Nothing to be gained. They’d won the war, they needed Earth now for trade and for immigrants. No, not the Colonies.

Terrorists then. He mused over that for a moment, averting his eyes when a ground strike missile erupted far off to the southeast, flaring for an instant as bright as the sun. Must be the base at Jacksonville. Another sparkle of lights raced overhead and he looked up at the tracer of fire coming down.

A ship burning up, cutting through the atmosphere at high speed. It flashed overhead and then disappeared beyond the Smokies. Two more flashes followed, more ships out of control, diving in, one exploding silently above, the other streaking off to the north to disappear over the horizon, breaking up as it entered the upper atmosphere.

Couldn’t be terrorists, far too coordinated. At least a dozen hits so far; besides those were fighters going down. Terrorists wouldn’t have the hardware to take them down.

There were two more flashes, and then a white streak of light slashing down from the fiery heavens . . . air-to-ground strike missile on booster.

To the south pulsing arcs of light shot up, point-defense Shrike missiles . . . they detonated short of an intercept as pulses of light snapped from the incoming laser countermissile suppression attached to the missile, he realized as he watched the incoming drop down. Damn, that’s cutting edge equipment, who’s doing this? He saw the booster flare again, streaking in to its target.

He instinctively dived out of his chair and hit the ground as the airburst ignited over Atlanta two hundred miles away. He waited for the dazzling light to subside before coming back to his feet.

"The Tracs," he whispered.

Justin Bell sipped down the rest of his coffee, the ground beneath his feet trembling, the birds in the trees silent, as humanity finally confronted what was waiting for them among the stars.

* * *

He was not surprised when the helicopter started into a deeply spiraling turn, coming to hover over his cabin like a vulture examining its prey; the USMC insignia emblazoned on its side. The copter turned slowly and then edged in between the towering hickory and oaks to land nearly at his front door.

He had been waiting. His uniform barely fit anymore, hanging loose. Drinking too much usually affected people one of two ways; in his case it had peeled off the tight conditioning, leaving him thin and haggard. Hoisting a small flight bag he ducked low, ran up to the copter and pulled the door open. The pilot looked out at him, then down at a photo, then back up, a curious look in her eyes.

"Captain Justin Wood Bell?"

He climbed in, nodded an acknowledgment, and slammed the door shut, blocking out the noise.

"You’ve got him."

"I need to ID-check you, sir."

She held an ID unit up to his right eye and flashed the laser beam on. An affirmative on cornea match beeped on her unit.

"Captain Bell, you are under arrest for failure to report for duty as ordered."

"Cut the bullshit, young lady, and let’s get out of here."

He watched her features deflate. She’d most likely been gearing up for this on the flight out. The backseat was empty. If Mahan couldn’t even spare a couple of MPs to help her things must be really bad.

"I’ll note, sir, that you came of your own volition."

"Thank you, Lieutenant, now could we kindly get a move on?"

She pulled back on the collective and the copter started to rise. Justin spared a quick glance back out the window. He had not even bothered to close the door to the cabin. What the hell, I’ll never see it again anyhow, he thought dryly. Chances were some refugees would move in; as the copter turned and circled up over the Black Mountains he could see the old interstate highway below, jammed with vehicles, panic-stricken civilians pouring out of the cities in anything that would still move after the EMP bursts. They were heading to what they hoped would be the safety of the mountains. Within a matter of days they’ll be starving, and then they’ll turn on each other. Hell, it might be safer in the war after all.

"How bad is it," he asked, looking at her nametag, "Lieutenant Graham."

She spared him a glance.

"I guess you wouldn’t know."

"Hell, I’m not even sure who did it yet."

"It was the Tracs, sir. Twenty-seven incoming ships appeared out beyond Saturn twenty hours ago. They were closing at close to .4 of light, dropping down to .1 by the time they crossed into Mars’ orbit. There was a hell of a fight over Mars late yesterday, Colonial forces taking out all but five of them. They then did a drop down towards the sun, slingshot around it, and then came straight in on us. The damn Colonials broke off the pursuit once it was obvious the Tracs were closing in on Earth."

"Can you blame them?" Justin asked quietly, "Hell, defending us isn’t their job anymore."

Graham looked over at him angrily.

"And what the hell did we do?" Justin asked.

"Not much, sir. Remember, the Colonials have antimatter drive; we’re just starting to come online with that and we’ve got nothing flying yet that’s combat-worthy. We tried an intercept but they were just too damn fast. Beyond that, sir, it was weird! They can maneuver like hell, almost like they have aerodynamic reactive wings in the vacuum of space. They ripped the hell out of us and three made it into near-Earth space.

"We finally dropped the three of them, but you saw what they did."

"What’d they get?"

"Nearly half the orbital power grid, the Kenya Skyhook, thirty ground hits. I guess you saw Atlanta go."

He nodded, looking off to the south. The dark cloud was still hovering. Firestorm.

"Near miss to the northeast of DC, another one bracketing to the west."

"What about regional command?" Justin asked, surprised at his own anxiety.

"Top personnel evacuated out to Wallops ground-to-space launch station, outside the fallout path where the new headquarters is being set up. I heard Washington’s in chaos. You can kiss most of Maryland and Baltimore good-bye, though. The Cape, Star City in Russia," she hesitated for a moment, "and the northern part of New York City are all gone. The EMP bursts knocked out most of the communications grid around the world, it’ll be months before we’re back up. A number of orbital units are gone as well. Fortunately the yield on the weapons was low, half-a-meg range, but still we’ve got at least several million dead."

"The Academy ship?"

He was almost afraid to hear.

"That’s where we got one of the bastards. A cadet squadron took it down as it closed in on the Moon after dropping its load here," Graham said fiercely.

"Mars got hit too," and he could detect a cold sense of satisfaction in her voice. Old hatreds die hard, he realized, even when there is something new to hate.

"It’s a mad panic downwind from the hit sites. This area is gonna get a good dusting from Atlanta by tomorrow when the wind shifts to the southeast."

He noticed they had turned north, already clearing Mount Mitchell. The Blue Ridge Parkway was jammed with traffic, both lanes heading northeast, away from the fallout.

He looked back at Graham. Her jaw was set tight, her eyes red-rimmed, dark and sunken, her jaw quivering.

"You want me to take over flying for a couple of minutes?" he asked.

She looked over at him fiercely, her eyes filling up.

"Where the hell were you?" she snapped. "All of you space defense bastards. Where the hell were you?"

"Who’d you lose?" he asked softly.

"My parents, my kid sister were in New York, what was New York."

"What’s our course, Graham?"

"Tactical Lift Station at Wallops Island."

Justin checked the nav system. The course was already locked in, the copter’s retractable wings deployed for standard flight mode.

"Stand down for a couple minutes, Graham. It’s all right."

She buried her face in her hands and started to sob, and Justin sat beside her in silence. He felt as if he should somehow cry with her as well. To pray Kaddish for a world that was once more at war. But he had long ago forgotten how to pray for his dead, for there were far too many to mourn.

* * *

As he swung out over the Chesapeake Bay he nudged Graham awake. Like a child she had cried herself to sleep, curled up in her seat. It wouldn’t be very good for her career, however, if the prisoner she was responsible for called into the tower for final clearance.

"We’re here," he said softly.

She rubbed her face, embarrassed, trying to put on a tough professional demeanor and failing miserably.

"Any news on the radio?"

"Usual confusion."

There was no sense in upsetting her. There was a firestorm fifty miles square blazing in New York. Even from here he could see the smudge of smoke on the northern horizon.

She called in for final approach and expertly brought the copter in low and fast, weaving through the traffic. At the north end of the island’s runway an old heavy-lift military transport roared down the runway, banked up sharply, swung out over the ocean, then pointed its nose up. It punched through the clouds and disappeared.

He felt a tightening in his gut at the sight of it. Nearly everything went into space by way of the Skyhooks, but emergency and high-priority payloads still used the old chemical rockets.

Lost in thought, he barely noticed as Graham touched down. Two MPs came up to the side of the copter and looked in. Justin ignored them.

"Take care of yourself, Graham," he said quietly, extending his hand.

She tried to say something but couldn’t. She quickly shook his hand and then looked away. He could understand; she allowed herself to be vulnerable and now just simply wanted him out of her life.

He popped the door open and the MPs saluted.

"Captain Justin Wood Bell?"

"You’ve got him, sergeant."

"Come with me, sir."

The second marine took Justin’s flight bag and the three set off at a brisk pace towards one of the bunkers that lined the edge of the flight line. Behind them another Aldrin-class surface-to-space transport turned onto the runway, its boosters roaring to life, the ship leaping forward in spite of its thousand tons of mass, the air crackling with the roar of engines.

The noise was blocked by the double doors that opened into a long flight of stairs leading down into the underground bunker. At the bottom of the stairs was another set of doors; these were made of polymer-weave steel. The entry was guarded by two heavily armed marines, who checked IDs then let them pass. A marine officer was waiting on the other side and Justin was passed off to him.

"Glad you could join us, Captain Bell," the officer said coldly. "Admiral Mahan is waiting."

Justin wanted to ask what the situation was but knew better than to try. There was nothing more sanctimonious than a staff officer, especially when the person he was escorting was obviously due for one hell of a chewing out from the big boss.

They wove their way down a crowded corridor that seemed choked with a palpable sense of panic, Justin was led into a small, paneled office and the door was closed behind him.

Even from the back Justin could tell that Mahan had aged in the three years since they had last met. His shoulders were stooped, his graying hair gone white. Mahan was hunched over a holo display, examining it intently, dictating an order in a soft voice. Finished, he came erect and turned around.

Mahan looked at him coldly, his eyes dark, filled with exhaustion, his full lips compressed in what Justin knew was a look of barely suppressed rage.

"You son of a bitch, I wanted you here yesterday!" Mahan snarled.

"I’m sorry, sir."

"Sorry isn’t good enough, mister. You got my order . . . I needed you yesterday. God damn it, Bell, you knew the Tracs were coming!"

"No, sir, I didn’t. I haven’t heard a news report in weeks."

"Don’t bullshit me, mister."

"Honest, sir." He paused for a moment. "Let’s just say I was having an extended conversation with Mr. Glenfiddich."

"You got my order to report in, didn’t you?"

"Yes, sir, but like I said, I didn’t know why."

"So what did you do?"

"I burned it and got drunk, sir."

Mahan paused and walked towards him. He was a good six inches shorter than Justin, and as he approached he looked up into Justin’s eyes.

"Son, you look like one godawful mess. What the hell you been trying to do, kill yourself?"

Justin didn’t reply. There was no sense in explaining. And beside, Mahan had seen just as much combat in the Civil War. If he couldn’t understand, then the hell with him.

Mahan shook his head and turned away, walking back to the holo display.

"Come over here, Bell."

Justin came up to his side and Mahan pointed at the display, a projection of Earth defense systems. Justin knew them all by heart, as he had helped to build more than one of them. A scattering of flashing green dots still circled the globe in geosynch, high-polar, and lunar orbits. But flashing yellow dots now outnumbered them, meaning damaged, and flashing red, meaning that they simply no longer existed. On a side panel was a tote board listing the various commands and wings deployed in space; again, a number of them had yellow or red dots beside them.

"Did Graham brief you on what happened?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bell, we’ve had three encounters with what we’ve called the Tracs over the last forty years, but this is different. This wasn’t one ship—it was a small fleet, and the design of these ships was different as well." As he spoke he brought up a grainy image on the holo screen.

"We’re getting more gun-camera footage downloaded right now, but I tell you these ships are different than what we dealt with before. They’re warships."

Justin leaned forward to look at the screen. Though the image was blurry he could see weapons pylons studding the bottom side of the vessel and what looked like gun mounts bristling down the main axis of the ship, topside and underneath.

"Their tactics sucked, though. They came in loosely, no mutual support. The Colonial forces ripped the shit out of them."

Justin could detect a note of admiration in Mahan’s voice.

"Damn lucky they did," Justin said, "I think they would have kicked our asses if all of them had gotten through."

Mahan nodded in agreement as he ran a playback, tracing the trajectories of the Trac ships from where they were first detected all the way in to the attack on Earth.

‘"The tactical deployment seemed off, though, as if they expected to simply wander in and cut us apart."

"Maybe that’s exactly what they expected," Mahan replied, "and they got more than they bargained for. Those Colonials, you’ve got to hand it to them. They were ready, we weren’t."

"They always were, sir." Justin said, knowing he was rubbing salt in the old wound.

Mahan looked up at him coldly but said nothing.

"So why do you want me?" Justin finally ventured to break the silence.

"Listen, Bell. I think you cut and ran when I needed you the most. You didn’t like what happened at Bradbury. Neither did I, and remember I was the one responsible, not you. But I stayed on and took the heat."

Again there was the flash of memory, the spread of warheads impacting across the Martian plains, a hundred thousand dying in one incandescent holocaust of fire.

"And I still maintain it was a legitimate military target. The Colonials will never admit it, but you saw the Intel report. Then you go and have a fit of conscience and run away. Bell, you’ve sure done a hell of a lot with yourself since."

"Did you call me here to tell me to straighten up and get my life back in gear, sir?"

"No. I frankly don’t give a damn what the hell you do with yourself, but the service needs you."

"There was something called the Code that we learned at the Academy . . . do you remember it, sir?"

"Of course I remember it, Bell, so what?"

"You taught it to me, sir, or have you forgotten that you once taught that course on Ethics and War?"

Mahan shifted uncomfortably and averted his eyes.

"Cut the shit, Bell, and get to the point," Mahan snarled.

"You broke that code, sir, and so did I. You used that old classic line, ‘the end justified the means.’ You thought taking down their suspected antimatter facility at Bradbury would destroy their ace in the hole and bring them to the negotiating table. You and the Joint Chiefs couldn’t wait for better Intel, you said we had to strike now and it would win the war."

Justin paused for a moment and waited for Mahan to finally look at him again. He felt cold, as if he were out there again, the chilled, dry, antiseptic air in the room reminding him of the feel of a ship’s bridge. At length Mahan stirred and looked up at him with dark hollow eyes.

"Well, sir, it didn’t," Justin sighed. "To this day we don’t even know if that facility was there to start with. They sure as hell came up with an antimatter bomb and propulsion system a year afterwards anyhow and beat us to production, thereby winning the war. We still don’t have it. I think someone made the wrong call, and a hundred thousand innocent people died and we lost the war. Those people and a lot of close friends dead, sir. Something went wrong there at Bradbury and I’ve got to live with it the rest of my life. How are you living with it, sir?"

Even as he said the last words he regretted them. There was a flash of pain in Mahan’s eyes and he could see that Mahan had handled it just about as well as he had. Sighing, Mahan returned to his desk. He pulled open a drawer, reached inside, and pulled out a bottle and two glasses.

"I think there’s something unethical about giving you a shot, but we need it."

He poured out two drinks and handed one to Justin.

"To comrades gone," Justin whispered, offering the traditional toast when Academy grads got together.

They both hesitated as if wanting to say more, then downed their drinks. Justin sighed, glad for the bracing effect as the whiskey burned into his stomach.

"Why did you call me back?" Justin finally asked.

"Because, Justin, they’ll be back. The other times these bastards have shown up they had just one ship. For that matter, I half-suspect this might be another group entirely. These were war vessels, heavily armed. We lost over twenty percent of our entire fighter forces taking down just five of theirs."

Justin looked down at his empty glass, stunned. Mahan poured him another shot, which he swallowed in a single gulp. Twenty percent, well over a hundred and fifty fighters. He didn’t even want to ask who, afraid to hear yet more names.

"And remember, that was after the Colonials had torn them apart. We could wake up tomorrow and see a hundred of them closing in. If so, it is over. Then again, we might have a little time, but I don’t think we’re going to have years the way we did in the past."

Precious time, Justin wanted to add, that had been wasted away.

"Intel believes that whoever these bastards are, they were engaged in fighting somebody else and that war seems to be winding down."

"How do we know that?"

Mahan hesitated for a moment.

"Have you ever heard of ‘Dark Eye’?"

"Rumors . . . supposedly deep-space surveillance."

"It grew out of the SETI program after the first Trac contact forty years ago. We geared the operation back up more than ten years ago."

"Ten years ago! Why?"

"We got worried. First the Tracs show up, we finally bag a ship, then nothing. We have some mirror systems located on the Moon with arrays of nearly a kilometer in diameter. Dark Eye actually got some visuals of what looked like nuclear strikes on a system seventy light-years out. We also got some radio fragments."

Mahan punched a button on his computer. A warbling tone startled Justin, sounding almost like a ship’s alarm, and then there were voices, otherworldly, which sent a shiver down Justin’s spine. He looked over at Mahan, astounded; he was hearing voices that held all the mysteries and dreams of humanity’s reach to the stars.

Mahan let the recording play for several minutes; there were interruptions of static, the voice fading, then reemerging, and then finally drifting away.

"I’m no philologist, but the specialists tell me those guys are in the middle of a fight. Don’t ask me how they know, but I kind of believe them. We’ve got several dozen hours of such recordings."

"Any visuals?"

"None."

"And this last attack?"

"Recorded ship to ship, more than twenty hours’ worth. Not the same language, not even the same races; the experts tell me that the physiology of the vocal cords is different between the two. Again no visuals but I’ll tell you this . . . by the end of the recordings on the last attack even an idiot can tell they’re scared shitless. All of this tells us that someone’s fighting out there. Not just here, but out there as well."

"Well, that’s certainly comforting to know," Justin said coldly. "And since I never heard anything confirmed about this, even when I had a double-A security clearance, it must mean that the government decided to keep this information classified. There’s more to this. Why?"

"We had our own war to fight," Mahan replied, and Justin could detect the exasperation in his old commander’s voice, "and the Colonials had in their possession the parts of the one Trac ship that was destroyed in our system. The government decided we shouldn’t let them know what it might be capable of."

"There’s no logic to that. We’re facing a common threat."

"You don’t have to tell me," Mahan replied coldly.

"Whoever they are, we figure they’re expansionist and it looks like we might be next on the list. Why they didn’t throw everything at us at once, I don’t know. Maybe they thought, based upon their recon raids of forty years back, that what they were sending was enough. Hell, it might even be that two different powers have given us a call and the one didn’t know about the other. We’ve made a lot of advances since then, learned in the Civil War, that gave us at least a bit of an edge."

"A great way to learn it," Justin said dryly.

"Look, Bell, I’m sick of your attitude. Your country needed you after Bradbury and you walked. As far as I’m concerned you could rot after that. This recall order didn’t come from me, it was a request to us from the Joint Chiefs of the United States, not the USMC."

"Thank you for the confidence, sir."

"Just shut the hell up, Bell."

Justin stood silent. He knew he should almost feel sorry for the man in front of him. Mahan had carried the blame and guilt for Bradbury. Not that there was any blame passed around at the time. After all, it was war, and thought to be a legitimate military target. It was like Dresden from the Second World War, a targeting decision that Mahan had cited in his classroom lectures. Only afterwards did some start to doubt the rightness of what had been done. He knew Mahan well enough to know that beneath the exterior the inner man was tormented by the holo images that the Colonials had broadcast across the solar system showing the thousands of dead, the women and children burned beyond hope, lying in rows inside a bunker, waiting to be euthanized. They looked almost grateful as weeping medics knelt by their sides and administered the doses.

"I’m sorry, sir."

"For what?"

Justin hesitated.

"Just sorry."

"All pilots demobilized since the war were recalled yesterday and that included you. You were not, however, recalled under the General Order, and we don’t want you to fight . . . at least not yet."

Caught off guard, Justin looked quizzically at Mahan.

"That’s right, Bell. You’re being sent on a little diplomatic mission."

"To where?"

"Mars."

Justin sat down, stunned, not even bothering to ask permission as he poured another drink. The last place he ever wanted to see in the universe was Mars, not after everything that had happened.

"Working for who—the United States, the USMC, or the United Nations government?"

"We’re still the space-based defense forces of the United Nations," Mahan said evenly.

Justin could not control the sarcastic smile that crossed his features.

"Those bastards, after what they’ve been saying about the service. You’d think that the United States government, or at least the Russian government, would have the guts to tell them to go to hell."

"And back it with what?" Mahan replied sadly. "The Earth Defense Forces of the United Nations received control of all orbital-based nuclear weapons this morning."

"What?" Justin looked at Mahan in dazed disbelief.

Mahan nodded sadly. Without offering a refill to Justin, he poured himself another drink and downed it.

"The UN declared a State of Emergency and Council General Zhu had his people aboard our orbital stations within an hour, claiming the weapons were needed for point defense and it was no longer USMC-controlled property."

Justin was silent, trying to figure it all out. The EDF had been a creation of the United Nations in the last year of the war, supposedly to unite ground forces of all the Earth’s military for defensive purposes if the Colonials should ever try a direct strike. At first many in the Corps saw it as a simple boondoggle by an increasingly erratic UN to try to extend its control. The militaries of the United States, Russia, and the European Council had not gone along with it, but there were plenty of other countries willing to join in on the deal. Ever since the coup in the UN government at the end of the war the real game plan was becoming obvious.

"What the hell did the U.S. and Russian governments do about it?"

"You know what our own president is like . . . a throwback to a couple of our former great leaders who caused the Second Revolution. The war’s over, so let’s cut the military to the bone, let the UN handle things. The same with the Russians and the Brits. In the confusion of the onset of the Trac attack they made their move."

"You should have resisted," Justin said quietly.

"With what? We weren’t mobilized for a defense against the Tracs and it was pulled off before we even knew clearly what was happening. Now that they’ve got the hardware the governments of the United States and Russia are rolling over and playing possum, hoping the threat will simply go away. As it is, the UN is blaming us for the breakthrough, and smoke-screening the seizure as an act of strategic necessity in order to have a unified command."

"Then they have everyone in the barrel now except defenses beyond geosynch orbit," Justin said coldly. "So who am I working for?"

"Us. This is a USMC mission even though your participation was requested by the United States."

"And what if I refuse?" he blurted out. "This whole thing is looking more screwed by the minute."

"That shit won’t float a second time, Bell," Mahan snapped. "I’ll have you up on court-martial charges and by heavens you’ll sit in the darkest hole I can find for the rest of your damn life."

Mahan walked around from behind his desk and sat down in the chair opposite Justin.

"Not that I think such a threat really matters to you anymore," Mahan finally continued softening his tone. "Look, son, it’s a tricky job, and though it might sound off-the-wall I think the Joint Chiefs were right to suggest you for it. This war is different, Bell. It’s not old comrades fighting old comrades like the last time. What happened this morning was unprovoked murder by an enemy we don’t even know, that we’ve never even seen. There was no chance to talk, to try and reason. Either they simply want to cripple us, to keep us out of space, or it might be expansion to annihilate or enslave us as a colony. They definitely got more than they bargained for, thanks mostly to the Colonials, but I think it’s a foregone conclusion they’ll be back, and this time will come armed to the teeth. Now it is kill or be killed, and I don’t think you are the type of man who can turn his back on such a fight.

"Or," he added quietly, "that any graduate of the Academy could turn from such a fight. Justin, it’s a call to a duty we once pledged our lives to."

Justin finally nodded in agreement and then reached towards the bottle that still rested on Mahan’s desk. Mahan moved quickly and pulled the bottle away.

"You’re cut off from now on, Justin."

"Don’t give me that father-act shit," Justin replied angrily.

"I need you straight and sober. First off, you’re flying within the hour."

"To where?"

"Like I said, Mars."

Justin felt a cold rush of emotions. Mars . . . it was back to space then. It was also back to Mars, to Bradbury.

"This is strictly USMC business for right now. I want someone I can trust going there."

Justin laughed softly.

"So you picked me?"

"I know I can trust you to keep your word."

A bit surprised, Justin looked up at Mahan.

"You just reminded me that I once taught Ethics at the Academy, Justin. I remembered all too often these last three years that you were my best student. On one level I hated you for walking out on me after Bradbury. But there was another part that admired your guts for taking the stand. We’re getting caught in a game within a game . . . the Tracs, relations with the Colonials we now desperately need, and the UN with God knows what they’re planning next. I need a contact person with the Colonials and you’re it."

"They’ll tear me apart the moment I land," Justin said quietly.

"I doubt it. They were once comrades at the Academy, nothing can break that bond. The Colonials have the one means of blocking the Tracs or whoever it is that’s attacking us if they show up again. They have the remains of the Trac ship. I’m giving you the job of trying to persuade the head of the project to share the technology with us before it’s too late."

"Who is it?"

"Your old roommate," Mahan said quietly, "Matt Everett."

Justin realized that his hands had just started to tremble. Was it the need for the drink, or was it the memories?"

"No," he whispered, "not again, not again."