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PART ONE
Operation Tranquility

The assault boat shuddered and jumped, a random pattern designed to foil fire-control systems but also annoying as all hell to the soldiers seated in their Armored Personnel Carrier. Regular motion could be expected and countered, but the wild jogs of the boat's course were always unanticipated. Sergeant Ethan Stark swore as a particularly violent jerk slammed him against the restraining harness. You never knew what waited at the end of a drop, but the drop itself always guaranteed bruises.

"Stand by for drop." The Lieutenant's voice rang through the comm circuit, piercing an otherwise oppressive silence. The dimly lit boxlike interior of an Armored Personnel Carrier was never a cheerful place to begin with, but going in for the initial assault ratcheted the tension a little higher. Stark closed his eyes, focusing inward.

"Drop!" Lieutenant Porter sang out, followed almost immediately by the ascending whine of the APC's lift units. They'd run drop simulations in lunar gravity conditions, and it was immediately obvious the real thing wasn't going right. The driver gunned the lift as the drop extended for tens of seconds too long, both of which meant problems.

Stark's eyes shot open, locking onto the Lieutenant where he sat rigid and silent with uncertainty. "Brace for impact!" Stark ordered his squad, barely getting the words out before the APC grounded with a teeth-jarring slam that wrested a volley of curses out of the waiting soldiers. With a sideways lurch, the APC shuddered back up and into motion.

The average grunt didn't rate an outside view, but Stark wasn't average. As a squad leader, he rated his own view, which was less a compliment than a recognition that Lieutenants could die or be disabled very quickly in combat, after which Sergeants had to be available for the brass to pass orders through. Not that I'm going to let them keep me in the dark until then. Stark toggled a communications switch, bypassing security thresholds to access the officers-only command circuit. Between the official view and his strictly unofficial pirate back door into the command circuit, Stark now knew as much as the Lieutenant—which, as usual, granted him no peace of mind whatsoever.

"Where the hell are we?" the Lieutenant complained. "My Tac can't get a fix."

"We're off your Tactical map preload." The laconic voice of the APC driver seemed deliberately modulated to enrage hyped-up ground soldiers. "Here's a dump."

The Lieutenant's gear took a few seconds to download the extra maps, seconds slightly elongated by Stark covertly tapping into the download to copy the maps into his own Tac, then Porter erupted in anger. "Damn! They dropped us twenty klicks off target!"

"Yeah," the APC driver came back agreeably. "And they dropped us way too high. Didn't seem to do any damage, though. I'm making best speed toward your drop-off point."

"Twenty klicks off and too high. And God only knows where the rest of my platoon is. Would it do any good to file a complaint?"

"Does it ever? I'd tell my own commander, but it looks like they dropped her so hard her vehicle lost comms." With that minimal comfort from the APC driver, silence settled over the circuit. Stark relaxed against his harness, studying the new maps, gut tense with anticipation. Sometimes you just waited. Twenty klicks would take a few minutes, even at best speed.

"Lieutenant?" The APC driver called again, considerably earlier than he should have to announce their arrival.

"Here," Porter responded, voice surly. "What's up?"

"Going to have to ground it. The power cells are overheating. They need a rest or they'll blow."

"I thought you said the APC didn't take any damage when we grounded."

"It didn't." The driver sounded aggrieved. "It's a design flaw. The cells overheat sometimes, and the only fix is to power down and let them rest."

"How far are we from the drop-off point?" The Lieutenant seemed torn between resigning himself to a totally screwed-up day or flying off the handle.

"Four klicks. Grounding now," the driver announced anxiously, maybe worried about the Lieutenant's reaction, or maybe just about his power cells.

"That's too far. What happens if you push the cells?"

"They blow."

"Can we ride that out if it happens? We have to stick to the Tactical plan," Porter insisted, "and the plan says we ride this vehicle to our assault positions."

Stark tensed, searching for the words necessary to convince the Lieutenant to follow the APC driver's advice, but the driver did the job for him.

"I wouldn't advise it, Lieutenant. You're sitting on the power cells, and if they blow they'll vent the blast into the troop compartment before the side relief panels pop. It's not supposed to happen that way, but it does. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty."

Lieutenant Porter paused, then replied in barely controlled tones, "I suppose that's another design flaw?"

"Lieutenant, I just drive them, I don't design the damn things. Are you gonna walk, or wait an hour for the cells to cool?"

"I don't know! Why the hell don't I have comms with anyone else right now?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant," the APC driver noted desperately. "Look, you either wait here or you walk. It's up to you."

"I need orders!"

Time to get this show on the road. Stark loosened his harness slightly, leaning forward to tap the Lieutenant's armored knee while he tried to project innocent concern. "Lieutenant, we've stopped moving. Won't we get off time-line?"

"Off timeline?" Porter questioned, horrified. "Oh, God. Damn. We'll walk," he informed the APC driver brusquely.

Stark began preparing for action unobtrusively so the Lieutenant wouldn't notice he'd been listening in even as Porter shifted to command broadcast. "Okay, listen up, everybody. The APC's broke and we're still four klicks from our proper initial drop point. We'll have to leg it. Get them going, Sergeant."

"Yessir." Stark ignored the chorus of groans that rose over the squad circuit in the wake of the Lieutenant's announcement. "You heard the Lieutenant. Move it! By the numbers and looking good, or you'll drill 'til you drop next time we're in garrison."

The access gaped and the soldiers went through, failing with eerie slowness to hit the dust and scattered rocks below, diving into an unnecessary but instinctive roll, then rising to scatter into the widely dispersed formation veterans always adopted in hostile territory. Stark stood by the hatch, using one foot to add downward velocity to bodies who had jumped out assuming gravity would do all the work. The last soldier went through, flailing comically as if trying to pull himself down to the surface by grabbing nonexistent atmosphere; then Stark followed, feet first, pushing on the access rim to gain speed toward the surface.

Dust, puffing up in small clouds where armored military boots had landed, hanging in slow-falling fields of fine particles. Stark scanned the horizon, eyes switching restlessly between the enhanced visual of the rock-littered plain before him and the eerie glow of symbology on his Heads-Up-Display. Friendly troop positions, solid green markers against the map projected on the HUD, stood out alone, no threat markers visible near them—which didn't mean there weren't any threats hidden out there. "Chen! Billings! Get the hell away from each other. You're not on a damn date."

The symbols of those two individuals jerked obediently as the soldiers scrambled to put distance between them. "Squad deployed, Lieutenant."

"Good job," Porter replied absently. "I still can't raise anyone outside the Squad!" he added with rising worry apparent in his voice.

Stark switched his own display to remote, finding nothing there. Even on his authorized scan he should have been able to see the movements of the rest of their Platoon. His unofficial back door into the officer's command circuit should have allowed him to view any part of the battlefield. "I haven't got anyone else either, Lieutenant."

"We've got to abort. There's something wrong with our communications gear. There's got to be."

"Lieutenant, if the comm gear's screwed up, how come we've got full displays for the Squad?"

"I don't know! The enemy must be jamming the higher-level comm relays. How can we operate like this? There might be major attacks going down against the rest of the Brigade right now!"

Stark swiveled to view the horizon in all directions. "Wouldn't we pick up something like that on our own sensors, Lieutenant? There'd be stuff getting tossed high enough to see, ground tremors from explosions—"

"I know that!"

"And the Tactical timeline is still active." On Stark's HUD, the numbers counting down that timeline glowed yellow instead of the pleasant green that would have meant they were on the schedule laid out by the planners. Porter still hesitated. Stark used his back door to check the Lieutenant's actions, finding he was frantically scrolling through comm circuits in search of a link to his chain of command. "I think my timeline is shading orange, Lieutenant."

"Orange?" Porter took a deep breath, torn between the need to meet plan requirements and the need to be linked to higher authority.

"Yessir," Stark prompted. "I'm sure there's some red there. We're way behind timeline."

"Stop pushing me, Sergeant!"

"Yessir." At least I'm not going to push hard enough for you to know I'm doing it. Stark spoke with a carefully modulated mix of professional stiffness and apology. "I'm merely trying to keep the Lieutenant properly supported and informed."

"Sergeant, I. . ." Porter's voice trailed off, then sounded again with obvious concern. "The timeline is orange. What'll we do?"

"Operate independently, Lieutenant. We have the plan in our Tacs."

"Okay. Good idea, Sergeant. Follow the plan. Just let me input orders for the Squad. . .. Bloody hell," the Lieutenant cursed a moment later. "I can't update Tactical."

Stark called up his own planning sequence, frowning as it refused to accept ground plots for his unit. "Me neither, Lieutenant."

"Great. Wonderful," Porter added in a voice that suggested that neither word held sincerity. "There's an inhibit on our systems. They'll only take updates from Brigade level."

Stark checked for himself, stifling an angry comment. "They said they didn't want anyone screwing with the Tactical plan, remember, Lieutenant?"

"They should have told that to the idiots who dropped us twenty klicks off objective, the idiots who designed that APC, and the idiots who are probably going to start shooting at us before long, since our chance of surprise has gone totally to hell!" Porter subsided for a moment, his battle-armored figure facing toward lunar northwest. "Okay, Sergeant. Our original drop site is somewhere that way. Let's just hoof it until we get close enough for Tactical to give us guidance."

"Yessir."

"Fast, Sergeant! We're already way behind schedule."

"Yessir. Follow me," Stark ordered his Squad, taking the lead, his HUD projecting a slim arrow toward where his suit's gyrocompass thought lunar northwest lay. He briefly hoped it hadn't been scrambled by the impact when the APC grounded, then concentrated on trying to move fast and spot threats at the same time. Every push from his feet seemed to launch him in a small trajectory, dreamily floating over the surface, a perfect target sweating desperately for contact with the lunar dust and rock again. Slowly he picked up the rhythm, transferring the force of his steps into forward thrusts, fighting off the Earth-gravity-inbred tendency to put strong effort into upward motion. Experience from a thousand marches over a hundred types of terrain gradually came into play, turning forward motion into an automatic process, leaving his brain to concentrate on the higher issues of scanning for threats and keeping an eye on his twelve Squad members.

Something felt wrong. Stark scanned his HUD, looking for whatever had aroused his instincts. Everyone and everything looked fine, but something about his Corporal's movements bothered him. "Desoto, what's the problem?"

Desoto's voice responded, a little too strained with fatigue, for the distance they'd covered so far. "Nothing, Sarge. My suit's just got a minor problem. No big deal."

"Minor problem?" Stark didn't try to hide his skepticism, calling up the remote readout for Desoto's systems. "Dammit, Pablo, I read your environmental system degraded thirty percent and dropping."

"Yeah. Yeah. It's stabilizing. I can handle it."

"No, it ain't, and no, you can't."

"Sarge, I'm okay."

"You negotiating with me, Desoto? Get back to the APC, on the double. I don't need you dying of heat stroke."

"Sarge, I can handle it," Desoto repeated in a beseeching voice.

"The hell. I gave you an order. Get going." Stark reviewed his Squad, mentally running through the rest of his troops. Corporals maybe didn't carry huge responsibilities compared to some General calling the shots in the rear, but as long as a Corporal was helping watch Stark's back he wanted to make sure he could trust the guy. "Gomez."

"Yeah, Sarge."

"Take over for Corporal Desoto." Gomez could be better positioned within the Squad's current formation for the job, but she was sharp. Very sharp.

"Sarge? I'm not senior. Somebody else ought to take it."

Stark grunted in exasperation. "Is there something in the air up here that makes you apes want to discuss orders instead of carrying them out? Gomez, you're acting Corporal. Period. Do the job."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"One more thing, Gomez."

"Yes, Sergeant?"

"Don't screw up."

He had barely finished speaking when Lieutenant Porter called in. "Sergeant! Where's Corporal Desoto going?"

"Back to the APC, Lieutenant. Suit casualty. Private Gomez is acting Corporal." He said it cool and firm, reporting a decision rather than asking for approval.

"Why wasn't I told?"

"Squad-level decision, Lieutenant. My responsibility."

"I'm in charge, Sergeant! Make sure I'm informed of your planned actions in the future before I have to ask, and get my approval before acting."

Sure. Just because you don't know your own job is no reason you can't try to do mine as well. "Yes, Lieutenant." Keep it professional, keep it calm, and keep it ambiguous enough to ensure that he could still claim enough freedom of action the next time he had to act.

Stark covered more distance, only slowly realizing the Squad was traversing something that looked like the Mother of All Shell Craters. It reminded him of one of the holes he'd fought across in the Middle East years ago, holes gouged by substrategic nukes, but much bigger. These craters, though, had been blasted out not by puny human explosives but by Heaven's own artillery. The Moon would be full of them, Stark realized, mentally tallying the advantages of defending in such broken terrain, marked by countless natural fortifications. Unfortunately, at the moment his Squad wasn't defending, but attacking. The shadows, so dark as to seem solid, suddenly seemed perfect hiding places for dug-in troops. Stark felt a growing pressure between his shoulder blades as muscles tensed. He fingered his rifle. The charges had been adjusted to fire at lower velocities than back on Earth, but he'd still have to aim lower than instinct directed to avoid overshooting his target in a low-gravity/no atmosphere environment.

"Thank God." Lieutenant Porter's delighted exhalation broke through Stark's growing disquiet. "We've got comms again."

"Oh, goody," Stark muttered. He called up the Platoon picture, shaking his head as he saw Sergeant Reynolds' Squad scattered some distance away. They'd obviously been dropped off target as well. Nonetheless, Stark grinned in automatic relief. Sergeant Victoria Reynolds, an old friend and one of the best soldiers Stark had ever served with, had made it down safely. "Hey, Vic," he called on the circuit Sergeants had long ago secretly jumpwired-in to allow private conversations. "Nice to see you. I feel safer already."

"Hi, Ethan. Likewise."

"Looks like you got dropped in the wrong place, too."

"Yeah." Vic didn't try to hide her disgust. "Everybody's used to the automated location systems on Earth doing all the thinking for them. Heaven forbid they actually have to navigate manually."

"What happened to the comms? How come we couldn't see you earlier? The enemy screw with our systems somehow?"

"Don't know. All the officers were running around in a panic without somebody to tell them what to do."

"Sergeant Reynolds?" Porter cut in, oblivious to the conversation he'd interrupted. "How are you doing?"

"Fine, Lieutenant. We were out of position but we're making it up and should be on our Tactical timeline soon."

"Good. Good. What was the problem earlier? Why couldn't we talk or exchange Tactical feeds?"

Reynolds spoke soothingly, trying to calm Porter's agitation. "Something scrambled comms in this sector, Lieutenant. Some sort of software failure in the relays. They just got it straightened out."

"Comms were scrambled?" Porter sounded horrified. "How did you command your Squad?"

"Just like Julius Caesar, Lieutenant. I used hand signals."

"Oh. Um, good. Where's Sanchez?"

"I don't know. His Squad may not have made it down." Stark winced involuntarily. Sergeant Sanchez wore a poker face like other soldiers wore uniforms, giving few clues to his thoughts, likes, and dislikes, but he knew his job and he had twelve other soldiers with him.

Porter obviously reached the same conclusion Stark had. "Oh, Christ. His APC crashed?"

"I don't think so. We should have seen and felt that. I'd guess it never dropped. During the run-in, Sergeant Sanchez told me his driver was complaining about some system failures."

"Why did he tell you and not me?"

"Lieutenant, I'm sure Sergeant Sanchez had a good reason, but I can only speculate as to—"

"Never mind. Stark?"

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"Are your comms okay? Did you receive the update to Tactical from Brigade?"

"Yessir." Stark scanned the new plot. "No threats?"

"None encountered so far," Porter confirmed. "We've got a long way to the objective. Keep moving. I'm going to head toward First Squad to link up with Sergeant Reynolds."

"Yes, Lieutenant." Stark switched to the private circuit again. "Hey, Vic, you got company coming."

"So I heard. You acting insubordinate again?"

"Just doing my job and trying to keep my people alive."

"Like I said."

"Vic, it ain't my fault the junior officers can't think without senior officers putting every thought in their heads."

"It's not really their fault, either, Ethan. Junior officers aren't allowed to think. Every action they take is dictated by senior officers monitoring their every move."

"Maybe if they held an assignment for more than six months at a stretch they'd learn how to think despite that, just like we do," Stark suggested. "Of course, if they thought independently and really took time to learn their jobs they wouldn't get promoted to be senior officers who think micromanagement is the only way to operate. What kind of system is that?"

"A self-sustaining one. You could still be more diplomatic, Ethan."

"Vic, I'm a soldier. I don't talk nice to hostile people. I kill them."

She laughed, the sound over his comm circuit oddly out of place amid the bleak emptiness of Stark's surroundings. "Okay. I'll calm the Lieutenant down, Ethan."

"Thanks. That's why the Lieutenant likes you best."

"Knock it off."

No threats. The once-ominous shadows held no enemy troops, fingers poised over hidden weapons, but now gaped empty on every side. Monotony replaced tension. Combat assaults weren't supposed to be monotonous, but this one lacked an enemy, lacked major obstacles, and lacked scenery unless you counted endless kilometers of gray rocks and fine gray dust. The stars probably looked nice, but any attempt to look up at them virtually guaranteed hooking an armored foot over one of the omnipresent rocks and sprawling in that dust.

Too monotonous and too damn quiet. Stark activated his pirate tap on the command circuit to see what the Lieutenant and the rest of his superior officers were up to.

". . . dull! We're losing audience points by the second!" That sounded, Stark thought, like the Brigade's Commanding General. What the hell is he talking about? Audience points?

"There's nobody to fight, General," someone else complained.

"That's because you're moving too slow! Take that unit. Who is that? Who's the commander?"

"That's part of Lieutenant Porter's Platoon," another officer reported. Stark felt a chill run down his back at the words.

"Porter! You're way off your timeline!"

"Yes, General," Porter responded immediately. "We were dropped twenty kil—"

"Why isn't your unit moving faster?"

"Uh, General, doctrine—"

"To hell with doctrine! I need some action here. Get those troops moving!"

"Yes, General. Right away." Stark braced himself as Porter called him over the official command link. "Sergeant Stark, advance at double time."

"Lieutenant," Stark stated with careful precision, "at double time we'll be moving too fast to react so we can evade any incoming covering fire."

"There's nothing to evade, Sergeant! Get them going, now!"

It all runs downhill, and I'm pretty damn near the bottom of the hill. Stark checked his scan once more, biting his lower lip, finding nothing there but friendly symbology. No threat visible, and if I can't spot enemy positions at this speed we might as well go faster just in case surprise hasn't gone to hell. "Third Squad, advance at double time." Groans and curses rippled up the circuit. "Stop complaining and move! Gomez, keep your end of the Squad up with my end. Don't let anybody lag."

"Yes, Sergeant."

Disorientation threatened as the pace increased. Dust and rocks skimmed by below, their height and distance distorted by the lack of atmosphere. Something that clear should be close by, but up here you couldn't count on that. Look down and you got dizzy from the dead-black and dazzling-white contrasts zipping past. Look up and the trillion stars seemed to be sucking you into space, so legs and arms started flailing as the mind convinced itself you were falling up. Looming over everything hung a white-spangled blue marble where humans by all rights belonged and where anyone with common sense knew they were supposed to fight their wars.

"Son of a—" Acting Corporal Gomez started to yell, the curse broken by a heavy grunt.

"You okay, Gomez?" Stark demanded, checking her suit's status.

"Yeah, Sarge. I just tripped and did a nose dive."

"Your suit looks fine."

"It's fine. How come that damn horizon is so close but we don't get anywhere no matter how fast we go?" Gomez demanded sourly.

"That's easy, Anita," Chen chimed in cheerfully. "It's like a nightmare, because you actually bought it and went straight to hell when our APC crashed."

"Sure. I'm in hell. The fact that you're here with me supports that."

"Kill the chatter, you clowns," Stark ordered. There shouldn't be any problem with the troops working off a little tension by bantering, given that someone had decided the threat was so low they could just run toward their objective. But he'd long ago learned not to trust any assessments from higher than company level, most especially those emanating from any place behind the lines. "We're on a combat op, not a walk in the park. Maintain comm discipline."

"Yes, Sergeant." Gomez sounded uncharacteristically abashed. "Sorry."

"Sorry?" Stark questioned sharply.

"I'm acting corporal. You shouldn't have to tell me that stuff."

"Right." Sometimes a little extra responsibility brought out a little extra in a soldier. Sometimes not. Gomez obviously felt the burden. "But don't apologize. Just do the job."

Stark cut into the command circuit again, worried about threats that might be developing elsewhere and half hoping to hear Porter being chewed out by his own superiors again, but instead heard a clutter of commands as officers continually passed detailed orders to units and individuals without regard to intervening levels of command. Business as usual. What did officers do before they could use command and control gear to sit on our shoulders every second? He switched over again, calling Sergeant Reynolds. "Vic? You busy?"

"Nothing special for a combat assault," she noted dryly.

"What's up?"

"What's this talk about audience points?"

"What about it?"

"I don't know what it means, and I don't like something happening during a combat op that I don't understand."

Vic hesitated before replying. "This attack is being broadcast back home on vid with less than a half-hour delay."

"What?"

"The audio and video feed from our command and control gear is being relayed straight to the public affairs office," Vic elaborated patiently, "who're shunting it to the networks. Congratulations. You're a vid star."

"I don't want to be a vid star. Why the hell are they doing that?" Stark demanded, outraged. "I don't want the enemy seeing vid of what I'm doing on our civ networks."

"There's supposed to be a long enough lag time to keep us safe. As long as we're on timeline."

"Which we're not. The damn planners are always too optimistic when they lay out those timelines."

"I know, Ethan. It's not my idea." Vic's tone changed, growing crisp and clipped. "Gotta go. We're closing on our objective."

"Roger. We are, too." Stark stared ahead, looking for visual on the objective his Tactical claimed would be nearby now. Concentrate on the job at hand. Something suddenly came into view as he crested a small crater rim, a large object set into the lunar surface that glowed like a neon sign on Stark's infrared sight. Waste heat. A lot of it. Looks like they didn't expect trouble enough to worry about camouflaging their site. That was good.

"I've got target on visual," Murphy reported.

"Me, too," Stark advised. "That should be the main entry hatch for our objective. Mendoza, check the door for traps or alarms. Gomez, hold back with Billings and Carter to cover the rest of us until we get the hatch open. Everybody else converge on it."

Smooth and easy, going through the motions they'd executed a thousand times before in a hundred different places, though none so different as this. Stark approached the hatch cautiously, crouched, weapon at ready, then covered Mendoza as the Private unlimbered his gear and scanned the access for any defenses or warning devices.

"There is nothing there but a standard arrival enunciator," Mendoza reported. "No sign they are expecting problems, Sergeant."

"Good. Now—"

Another voice cut in on the circuit abruptly. "What is that? What are you looking at, Sergeant?"

Stark checked the ID on the transmission before replying. Brigade Staff had apparently decided to devote their attention to his small part of the operation, at least for the time being. "It's a door, Colonel."

"A door? On the Moon?"

"Hatch, sir. The main airlock into our objective."

"Which is a laboratory, right, Sergeant? A research laboratory investigating, uh, new synthetic material fabrication techniques in low G."

Whatever that means. "That's what my Tactical says, too, Colonel."

"Good. Good. Well, gather your troops and prepare for entry."

Stark spoke with exaggerated patience. "They're already gathered and prepared, sir."

"Then get in there, man!"

Stark gestured roughly toward the lab airlock. "All right, you apes—"

"Wait a minute!" another voice interrupted. "Has that hatch been checked for booby traps?"

Stark bit his lip before answering this time. "Yes, General."

"It's clear?"

"Yes, General."

"I don't want unnecessary damage to that installation, Sergeant! Tell that Private—no, wait, what's the Private's name?"

"Mendoza, General, he's—"

"Private Mendoza," the General ordered, "run another check on that hatch for booby traps."

"Y-yessir," Mendoza stuttered. Seconds dragged by while he ran another scan. "It looks clean, General."

"It looks clean, or it is clean?"

"It is clean, sir," Mendoza amended rapidly. "Then get going," the General ordered. "Thank. You. Sir," Stark stated carefully. "And make sure you look good! Remember, we're on top of this!"

I remember when there was a chain of command, Stark thought darkly. "Yessir."

The hatch cycled open without protest, innocent of defenses, just as Mendoza had predicted. The Squad crowded in, weapons ready, while atmosphere built up. Just before the inner hatch popped, a small vid screen inside the airlock came to life, displaying an owlish visage blinking in surprise. "Who's there? We weren't expecting visitors today, or this early."

"That's the point, Civ," Gomez said with a grin as the inner hatch swung open. "It's called surprise."

"Surprise?" The foreign civilian scientist blinked some more. "I don't understand. Who's the surprise for? Should I come escort you in?"

"You just wait where you are," Stark advised. "We'll come and get you." He faced his Squad, swinging an arm toward the inner hatch. "Move it! Round the civs up before they figure out what's going on."

His soldiers scattered into fire teams, heading down individual routes through the roughly hewn rock corridors of the laboratory in accordance with the plans in their Tacticals. Stark took two privates with him down the longest hall until he reached a ninety-degree bend at the end. He paused, weapon at ready, preparing to leap and then fire immediately if needed.

"Sergeant!" Stark jumped nervously, cursing as another transmission broke his concentration. "Be careful going around that corner!"

"Yes, Colonel," Stark grated out between clenched teeth.

"There may be armed opposition around that corner," the Colonel continued. "Make sure your other soldiers are posted to cover you."

"They are, Colonel," Stark assured his distant commander. "Now just go the hell away and let me do my damn job," he added under his breath.

"What was that, Sergeant? I couldn't understand the last thing you said."

"I didn't say anything, Colonel," Stark hastily assured him.

"I heard something. Major, didn't you hear something?"

"Yes, Colonel," another voice chimed in. "There was something there."

"There may be something wrong with your suit's comm system," the Colonel decided. "Run a diagnostic, Sergeant."

"Colonel, I'm in the middle of an operation—"

"Never mind. I'll order the diagnostic from here. We can't risk you losing comms with headquarters."

Stark opened his mouth to issue another frantic protest, then stopped as a blinking red symbol on his HUD announced that his comm suite had dropped off line to run the diagnostic. He slammed one fist repeatedly into the nearest wall, glaring threateningly at the two Privates, both of whom pretended not to be aware of his situation. Unable to advance while he couldn't talk to anyone else in the Squad, Stark waited and fumed while precious moments crawled by as the suit checked the entire hardware and software of his built-in communications system. "Please, sweet Jesus," he prayed, "when my comms come back on let the worthless Brigade Staff have found another little part of this big battlefield to micromanage to death."

Green lights popped up to announce the completion of the diagnostic. Stark held his breath, waiting for further backseat driving from headquarters, but silence reigned. Guess they got bored waiting for the diagnostic to run and went off to tell some other poor grunt how to tie his shoes. Stark eased toward the corner, motioning his two Privates along, then paused. All the training simulators insisted at this point you should stick a finger around the corner to scope out the scenery with the fiber-optic sensors in the suit's fingertip. That helped ensure you wouldn't be surprised, but unfortunately worked both ways in that it also told any enemies lying in wait that there'd be a soldier following that finger around the corner in the immediate future.

"Let's go," Stark grunted, leaping across the gap to plant his back against the wall, rifle aimed down the new corridor. Two civs were walking slowly toward him, apparently deeply engrossed in conversation. First one, then another, became aware of the armored figure menacing them and came to a gap-jawed halt. Stark waved his Privates forward, triggering his external mike. "Attention. This installation has been occupied by armed forces of the United States," he recited. "All personnel will be taken into protective custody. Any resistance will be met with appropriate force."

The Privates reached the two civs, both apparently too stunned by events to resist, and prodded them against the nearest wall with their weapons. "Billings," Stark ordered, "bring them along. Murphy and I will head for the lab." On his Tactical, the laboratory loomed as the largest room in the complex and as his final objective.

Deciding that speed was necessary to exploit the surprise they'd apparently achieved, Stark sprinted forward, following the map on his Tactical display, down another corridor, through a right turn, and then tried to turn right again, only to face a solid wall of stone. "Oh, hell."

"Sarge?" Murphy asked anxiously. "Isn't there supposed to be another passageway here?"

"Yeah, but there ain't. Guess they never finished building according to the plans Intelligence got their hands on."

"What do we do, Sarge?"

Doctrine was explicit on that point. No deviation from actions ordered by Tactical were allowed, which meant Stark was now supposed to call up the chain of command until whichever Colonel was calling the shots for his sector could confirm that Stark indeed faced a wall of rock, then download a new set of actions for Stark to follow. Can't have grunts thinking for themselves. On a hunch, he checked his suit's comm system for update delay times, then grinned. As he hoped, the blizzard of communications during the assault had grown so heavy that the Brigade comm system couldn't keep up. Delay times had grown from seconds to minutes, giving him precious moments to do something before anybody in charge realized he had deviated from Tactical.

"Follow me," Stark barked at Murphy, heading at a run for the next closest entry to the lab shown on his map. Stark's HUD revealed that his other fire teams had already covered this ground, so he didn't bother with caution, simply trying to cover ground in the few minutes available before some officer noticed he was off the track dictated by his Tactical.

Sometimes that was a good idea. This time it wasn't. They came around a corner to find a man in what seemed to be a law-enforcement uniform, complete with a holstered sidearm, staring at them. A moment of mutual surprise ended as the man grabbed for his pistol. Stark, off-balance in the middle of a long, low-gravity step, watched as Murphy lined his rifle up, then hesitated. "Shoot him, dammit!"

"But Sarge, that pistol can't—"

Stark, finally stable, brought his own rifle to bear on the foreigner and fired, the round catching him in the midsection with enough force to fling the man backward a meter. "Get his gun," Stark ordered Murphy. "Don't ever do that again."

"But Sarge—"

"But nothing!" Stark's weapon didn't waver from where it focused on the wounded man, but his fury was aimed squarely at Private Murphy. "I don't care if that thing probably can't penetrate our armor. You don't take chances. You don't think. If they have a gun, you shoot them. I don't care if it's a water pistol."

Murphy, scooping up the pistol, avoided looking at Stark. "I'm sorry, Sarge."

"You sure as hell are." Stark fought down his anger, lowering his weapon as the blood from the wounded man's abdomen spread higher in the low gravity than Earth combat experience said it should. "Look, Murph. Take a good look. I don't want that to be you. Now use your med kit on that guy and then bring him to the lab."

"Okay, Sarge. Don't worry, Sarge. I know how I screwed up."

"Good."

Stark headed for his objective once more, sliding into the main lab just as an angry query resounded. "Sergeant, why aren't you following Tactical?"

"I am, sir," Stark responded in tones of injured innocence. "Tactical shows this as my objective, and I'm in place."

"But—" the officer began to object before apparently being distracted by some other display of unauthorized initiative. "Ah, okay. Carry on."

"Yessir." Stark sized up the situation. A large gaggle of civs, most in variations on the universal white lab coat but a few in whatever they'd been sleeping in, stood staring at his Squad members with looks of varying degrees of incomprehension. Stark singled out his acting Corporal. "Any problems, Gomez?"

"No, Sargento," Gomez reported cheerily. "Oh, a few of the civs didn't want to come along at first, but they didn't need much convincing."

Stark took another look at the scientists, at least one of whom seemed to be developing a black eye. "Any of them get hurt?"

"No, Sarge. Well, maybe a little."

"Fine. We'll let central processing deal with them." Stark switched to his outside speaker, broadcasting his voice to both the civilians and his Squad. "This facility is now under U.S. military occupation. You will be held here under guard for your own safety until a vehicle arrives to transport you to a central point from which you will be repatriated to your own countries back on Earth. No one will be harmed as long as—"

A civ stepped forward, interrupting Stark's speech, her dark eyes flashing with anger as she raised two hands in emphasis. "Leave here! You are interrupting our work and trespassing on private property."

"Ma'am, as I just stated, this property now belongs to the U.S. government."

"Pirates! Mercenaries!" Stark sensed his Squad tense at the second term, their pride affronted.

"Ma'am, we're not mercenaries," he corrected harshly. "We don't fight for money."

"I don't care what distinctions you draw about yourselves!" The foreign civ glared at Stark. "This is illegal. You Americans own everything on Earth! Isn't that enough? Do you have to come here and take this, too?"

"Ma'am, my orders are—"

"This is piracy!" she repeated, glancing around at the other civs in the room for support. "You have no right to seize this installation."

"Ma'am," Stark answered slowly, emphasizing each word, "that's not my department. You got a complaint, you bring it up with my Lieutenant. I'm just following orders."

"Then tell your Lieutenant you must all leave at once."

Stark hefted his rifle, its dull metal glinting evilly under the laboratory lights. The simple gesture drew the civs' eyes, which widened in fear and apprehension. "My orders are to take possession of this facility and secure any personnel here."

"I don't care about your orders!"

"That's your right, ma'am. But any resistance will be met with appropriate force." Stark canted his weapon so the barrel leaned in the direction of the civ scientists. "Your choice."

Most of the civs hastily raised their hands toward the rough ceiling, suddenly sweating despite the cool of the room. As the others were trying to decide, Murphy arrived, carrying the wounded man, who was white with shock but still breathing. Every other hand shot up as the scientists absorbed the sight, leaving only the angry female civ still defiant. "You killed him," she half demanded, half questioned.

"He'll live," Stark advised coldly. "Anybody else who threatens my people will get the same treatment."

The civ clenched her fists. "I will not grant legitimacy to your actions by cooperating."

"Whatever." Stark looked toward Gomez and hooked a thumb in the direction of the female civ. "Take her down."

Even with her expression obscured by her faceplate, Stark knew Gomez was grinning as she stepped forward, swinging her rifle butt in a swift blow against the civ's left shin. As the civ collapsed with a gasp of pain, Gomez reversed the weapon's motion to catch her on the chin, then dropped to one knee beside the dazed woman, expertly locking a pair of Dally-Cuffs around her wrists. The Dallys tightened automatically, their composite fibers forming an unbreakable second skin just above the civ's hands. "You can try cutting these off, Senora" Gomez advised the civ in a pleasant conversational tone, "but if you do, you'll bleed to death. ¿Comprendo?"

The civ nodded numbly, allowing herself to be shepherded with the other prisoners into a corner of the room. "Lieutenant?" Stark called over the command circuit. "We've taken possession of the objective."

"Roger. Any resistance?"

"One apparent law officer wounded. Noncritical."

"Too bad. Brigade Staff is already complaining the assault lacks enough combat action."

Stark took a deep breath, staring angrily toward nothing. "We didn't suffer any casualties, Lieutenant."

"That's fine, Sergeant. An APC should be by your position in about thirty minutes to pick up your prisoners. Don't let them build any nukes in the meantime."

"Yessir." Stark's angry stare shifted to the civ scientists, standing next to stacks of equipment he couldn't identify. "Gomez, make sure they don't touch nothing. And I mean nothing. If one of them reaches to scratch their butt I want their hand broken."

"Si, Sargento. You guys hear the Sergeant?" Gomez asked the civs, all now standing so rigidly still that few even risked nodding in reply to the question. "Good. No trouble, then. I don't like fighting people who can't fight back. But I will."

Stark didn't relax, restlessly patrolling the halls of the lab complex, scanning for threats, until the APC had come and gone, running thirty minutes later than the half hour promised. Desoto showed up on the same APC, disgruntled at missing the assault despite the lack of action. "I should've been with the Squad," he protested to Stark.

"Sure, then we could've spent the whole action trying to keep you from baking inside your suit. I've got enough things to worry about during an attack without adding that."

Desoto stared at the floor for a moment, then nodded. "You're right, Sergeant. I shouldn't have complained."

"Hell," Stark said with a grin, "you can always complain, Pablo. That's the one thing the mil can never take away from you." The smile faded into grim seriousness. "In a combat situation I can't spend time thinking about anything but the job. My feelings don't matter and neither do yours. Neither do the likes and dislikes of every ape in this Squad. You're a Corporal, Pablo. You gotta remember that. I'll bust you if you don't and promote someone who can."

Desoto hung his head again. "Truth. I won't forget, Sergeant." He peered around, taking in the portions of the lab complex he could see. "How much longer we going to be here?"

"If we're lucky, maybe quite a while. They had about twenty civs billeted here, with a full kitchen in the bargain. All the comforts of home, plus the power plant that supplies this place got taken over by some combat engineers from Second Battalion, so we've got no worries there."

"Wow." Desoto's elation quickly faded into gloom.

"Some officers from staff will take it over as soon as they hear about it."

"Nah. I hear there's a lot of places nicer than this." The ability to see basic accommodations as a luxury was one of the few benefits of the living arrangements soldiers usually had to accept.

"Sarge?" Murphy called from the room they'd designated their command post. "We got a call for you from Sergeant Reynolds."

Reynolds looked comfortable on the comm screen, lounging in a chair that would have been nicely upholstered on Earth but was ridiculously overstuffed for the fractional gravity on the Moon. "Everything secure, Ethan?"

"No problems," Stark reported. "What's the word?"

"Might as well settle in," Vic advised. "Orders are to occupy the installations we seized until further notice."

"That's it? Not that I'm complaining. They've got some good rooms here. But no digging in?"

"No digging in. The brass don't want anything damaged in case we have to trade back some of what we just grabbed."

"Fine. When the counterattack comes, we'll just surrender quietly."

Vic grinned. "There's no counterattack in the offing, Ethan. It appears we're the only mil on the Moon right now."

"You think it's going to stay that way?"

"I don't know. It takes a while to get here, though, so you can sleep easy tonight."

"Maybe," Stark half-agreed, visibly uncomfortable.

Vic shook her head. "What's eating you, Ethan? Lighten up. Combat's over."

"Combat hasn't happened yet," Stark disagreed. "I'll lighten up when we're back home in garrison."

"Suit yourself." Vic mustered another smile. "My Squad occupied the supervisors' housing for this area. Civ bosses live good, Ethan."

"Figures. So where's the Lieutenant going to stay?"

"Here." Vic somehow kept smiling.

Stark smiled back this time. "Ain't that nice? A few months, maybe, with the Lieutenant breathing down your neck twenty-four hours a day. Have fun, Sergeant Reynolds."

"I will. But don't worry. I don't relax too much when I'm on the line, Ethan."

"You're not a new recruit, Vic. Sorry if I sounded like I thought you were. Hell, you're better than me." Stark chewed his lower lip, eyes hooded in thought. "I don't like this idea of not digging in. Do the brass really think the guys we took this stuff from are just going to accept it?"

"Apparently. Or settle for us handing back a little."

"Vic, we've fought against some of the people whose property we just grabbed, and alongside some of the others."

"Technically, by act of Congress, Ethan, it's our property. We just took possession."

"Sure. The corporations back home who own our politicians don't like the idea of all these First, Second, and Third World types getting their hands on all the goodies up here."

"They're the only goodies left, Ethan. We've got all the goodies back on Earth sewed up. There's advantages to being the only superpower. If you play it smart, you can stay the only one."

Stark grimaced. "Sure. Like I said, Vic, we know these people. They're tired of being held down so we can stay on top, and they're not going to take this quiet and peaceful."

Vic shrugged in reply. "Not our call, Ethan. Careful, you sound like a Third World symp."

"I'm just tired of being ordered to fight and die just so some big shots can get a little richer. Pax America, hell. There's nothing pax about getting ordered into combat everywhere on Earth and now on this godforsaken hunk of rock."

"I thought you liked your accommodations," Vic teased.

"Nothing wrong with the rooms. I just don't like where they're located."

"Wrong sector?"

"Wrong planet. Or Moon, or whatever. Vic, this is one ugly place. There's nothing living out there. It's dead. Totally dead."

"You better hope so. Would you be happier if a hostile battalion of mechanized infantry was outside your front door?"

"Very funny." Stark shivered, cold despite the calm efficiency of his battle armor's thermostat. "Vic, there's no grass or anything. Just rocks."

"I thought you didn't like grass, though you've never said why."

"I don't. But I like dead less." Stark fought down another shudder. "It doesn't help that it's such a big change. You know, from Earth, especially our last operation. I didn't like it there, but I like it here less."

Five months before, they'd been on a peace-enforcement op on an island where the indigs didn't appreciate the efforts of outsiders to keep them from killing each other. An island crawling with so much life you had to fight your way through the vegetation and hope the assorted poisonous creatures that lived in it wouldn't also get in the way. So much life that losing a few pieces of it here and there didn't seem to matter one way or the other.

"History can be a terrible burden," Mendoza had observed, and that particular island had enough history to bury any trace of common sense. The one thing the locals were able to agree on was that, if they were going to be restrained from internecine murder, then killing peace enforcers was the second-best option. Especially since the peace enforcers were actually only there to keep things quiet enough for oil corporations hired by a corrupt government-in-exile to search for and exploit the island oil reserves that had become increasingly rare and valuable as the twenty-first century wore on.

It had been an ugly op, running patrols through heavy vegetation, scanning constantly for booby traps, worrying about when the next bomb would go off in the latrines. It didn't help that the island, like every other hot spot, was overloaded with ancient but still deadly firearms left over from the last century's Cold War. Stark and the other soldiers were used to encountering that state of affairs, but that didn't make it any nicer to deal with. "I thought the old M-16 had all these problems with jamming and stuff," Stark grumbled to Vic.

"Yeah," she agreed. "So?"

"So how come so many M-16s are still working good enough to throw lead at us?"

"Simple, Ethan," Reynolds said with a laugh. "We sold all the good ones to other countries. Probably made a lot of money. By the way, how's your ammo quota holding up?"

"Lousy."

Technically, the country benefiting from the peace enforcement ops was supposed to be paying for the soldiers, but that assumed the country either had a functioning government or that most of the available money wasn't being dumped into untraceable bank accounts. Since there wasn't enough funding to support much ammunition expenditure, the requirement usually got wished away. "It's a peace operation, not a war," one of the American officers lectured sternly. "You don't need excess ammunition. It will only encourage unduly aggressive actions."

Stark glowered at the ground. Lectures seemed to be as inevitable a part of war as bullets and beans. This one, derisively labeled Peace 101, covered the very important Rules of Engagement. Stark liked knowing the circumstances under which he could legally shoot back at allegedly pacified natives armed with heavy weapons and hostile attitudes. "If you are fired upon," they were ordered, "it is probably an attempt to provoke some military action that would discredit our mission. Therefore, you are not—repeat, not—to return fire unless and until actual damage has been inflicted."

It took a moment to digest all that. Then Stark raised one hand, his face stubborn. "So you're telling us that if the indigs shoot at us and miss, we can't return fire. We gotta wait until they hit us."

"That is correct."

"So, what if we're dead at that point? Are we allowed to, you know, bleed on them? Or are we supposed to die in a way that doesn't bother anybody?"

"You are completely missing the point," the officer declared with every evidence of exasperation. "You will not die, Sergeant. This is a peace enforcement mission."

A soldier in First Squad had raised her hand at that point. "If it's so peaceful, why do they need us here at all?"

Captain Disrali, their Company Commander of the moment, stood long enough to face his company, his expression put-upon. "There will be no more questions. Or comments. From anyone. Just listen to the damn briefing." He sat down again, back to the troops.

Stark leaned toward Reynolds. "Guess he won't be leading any patrols in person," he whispered.

"He wouldn't know how," Reynolds sniffed. "He's only here for his war-hero tour so he can pin on a Bronze Star he didn't earn and get promoted to Major."

"Just so long as he stays out of our way. We got enough problems with this op without adding obstacles."

Vic nodded. "Speaking of obstacles, did you notice the inhibits they've placed on our weapons?"

"Yeah. They'll only fire one clip per week. Not a round of ammo more. As if."

"Bullets cost bucks, Ethan."

"So do bandages and body bags. Anyway, the corporations pulling oil out of this rotting heap of dung they call an island are making plenty enough to fork over a few more dollars for ammo. I already got the work-around so we can fire on auto all week long if we want. That Corporal in Sanchez's Squad hacked it up yesterday. You need a download?"

"Yeah," Vic chuckled. "Thanks. You ever follow the rules, Ethan?"

"Only when they make sense to me."

"That must not be too often."

The only thing worse than the lectures were the patrols, trying to pacify chunks of territory where villages now consisted of marks on their maps that simply memorialized burned-out foundations and lost lives. Oil pipelines were blown up with such regularity that headquarters produced a standardized form to report the damage, every incident increasing the oil company demands for soldiers to be placed on guard every two meters along the lines, demands that headquarters had so far resisted, not out of any pure motives but simply because there weren't enough soldiers available to implement the ridiculous scheme.

Stark found himself covering twice as much territory as the rest of his Squad, trying to keep them dispersed enough to avoid providing tempting targets but close enough together that stragglers couldn't be picked off unnoticed in the thick vegetation. "Murphy, you worthless excuse for a soldier, if you drop behind again I'll shoot you and save the in-digs the trouble."

"I think I got a blister, Sarge," Murphy complained.

"You want me to call your mother so she can carry you for the rest of the patrol? Keep up with the Squad!" Stark checked the other soldiers' positions on his HUD, slamming a fist against the side of his helmet in exasperation as the display froze momentarily. The rudimentary field maintenance apparently jarred the right components as the symbology flickered, then jumped into current data. "Billings! I told you to patrol on the right flank. That doesn't mean heading for the damn beach six klicks in that direction! Get back in with the rest of us."

"Sergeant?" Corporal Desoto called. "My readouts keep breaking up, and comms with the Squad are erratic. You read me?"

"Yeah. I got you that time, Pablo." Desoto, up on point ahead of the rest of the Squad, had good reason to worry. The heavy, wet vegetation seemed cleverly designed to block the web of communications circuits that knitted the Squad together. The problem made patrolling even more hazardous than usual, besides generating hysterics among the officers sitting in the rear who wanted to watch the war go down from first-person perspective by monitoring the vid from individual soldiers.

A dull thump echoed among the greenery. Stark dropped into the mat of rotting leaves and mud that made up the ground around here, scanning for any casualties. A small patch of rough-textured grass tufted in front of his faceplate, bringing dark memories to mind and a shine of sweat to Stark's face. He reached to flatten the grass with one armored palm, grinding it viciously into the muck even as he called out to his Squad. "What was that? Anybody hit?" Silence reigned while Stark's HUD sat in the state of frozen idiocy that meant he'd lost comms with the other soldiers. "Ah, hell." Standing despite the possible threat so he could reestablish comms, Stark called again, this time generating a response.

"Land mine." Gomez spat the words. "I tripped it."

"You hurt?"

"Only my pride. The jungle absorbed the blast. At least it's gooid for something besides smelling like hell."

"Sarge?" Carter called. "I got one here, too. Spotted the trip wire while I was down after Gomez's mine went off."

"Let me call in." Stark switched circuits. "This is Third Squad, Second Platoon, Bravo Company. We've encountered a minefield."

"Roger." Headquarters didn't sound excited, which was reasonable given the number of mines lying around the island. "Continue patrol."

"We'd like the path swept for mines first. Our own counter measure gear is on loan to First Battalion."

"We know," headquarters responded in that tone that meant they'd forgotten but didn't want to admit it. "The mine threat is assessed to be minimal in that sector. Continue your patrol."

Sometimes it was hard to tell who was trying harder to kill you, the enemy or your own chain of command. "Request this patrol be aborted until the patrol route can be swept for mines," Stark insisted.

"Negative. Successful patrol statistics are already too low. Complete your mission."

"Sergeant?" Desoto called. "What's the word?"

"The word is we keep going," Stark replied. So the mouse-pushers at headquarters can keep their damn statistics up. "Okay, everybody, nobody's opened fire yet so this isn't an ambush. Get in single file and move real careful." It took a long time to clear the mined area, trying to pick out thin wires buried among all the junk a jungle keeps at ankle level. By the time they reached the supposed midpoint of the patrol, a village that might have been pretty before most of it got pounded into splinters and rubble, the afternoon was so far along that slanting shadows obscured the sullen faces of the few remaining inhabitants.

Weary and footsore, the Squad limped back into camp well after dark, too tired to worry about the snipers who periodically harassed any moving object. "You're very late." An officer stood there, tapping his hip-mounted mem-pad. "Staying on timeline is critical, Sergeant. Being out past dark can be hazardous."

"So can walking through a minefield," Stark replied in a steady tone.

The officer shook his head. "There aren't any mines along your patrol route. I saw the intelligence estimate this morning."

Stark's troops snarled like a pack of angry dogs, making threatening motions. The officer retreated in a hasty enough fashion to prove he wasn't totally oblivious to real threats, while Stark restrained his Squad. "Gonna frag that guy if I see him in the field," Gomez muttered.

"I don't want to hear it," Stark ordered. "Get back to your quarters and see to your gear. We might have another op tomorrow and I don't want anyone having to drop out because their battle armor is busted." He ignored the ritual under-breath grumbles, then headed for his own quarters, only to find Vic Reynolds waiting for him. "Hi, Vic."

"Hi, Ethan. Long patrol."

"Yeah, they get that way," Stark agreed savagely, pulling loose the seals on his armor with precise care despite his anger. "Coulda gone faster if I didn't care how many people I lost on the way. What's the occasion for your visit?"

Vic raised one eyebrow. "Good news, bad news, Ethan."

"Gimme the good."

"We're leaving the island."

"Hallelujah. Where we going?"

"That's the bad news."

"How bad can it be? There's no place worse than this."

"Oh?" Stark watched as Vic leaned back to stare up through the slit window toward the night sky. "Officially, it's very, very secret."

"Fine. So tell me."

"Guess. We have orders to ensure every suit of battle armor not only holds against bugs, gas, and assorted electronic threats, but also functions properly in an airless environment with no leaks. The environmental systems will be upgraded to operate in a totally hostile environment for an entire patrol cycle. And all the training simulators are being set to reproduce ops in one-sixth normal gravity. Where could we possibly be going, Ethan?"

Stark just stared. "Someplace bad." Then his mind fixed on one of the details Vic had provided. "One-sixth normal gravity? What is that, some other planet?"

"Close," Vic approved. "But not quite. There's only one rock within reach that has one-sixth Earth gravity. It's called the Moon."

"The Moon!?" Stark exploded. "What the hell is on the Moon?"

"Soon enough, you and I'll be."

Preparations matched Vic's predictions. Normally these days the many units that made up the First Division were scattered hither and yon, some on "peace" ops, some openly fighting dirty little wars in obscure little countries, some rented out to nominally friendly countries to do someone else's dirty work and earn a few bucks for the always-too-small military budget in the bargain. But now they came together, working toward an objective that officially remained Top Secret even as its identity became more obvious by the day.

"Sergeant," Desoto asked after one vigorous training session, "the Moon really like that?"

"How would I know? Besides, you're not supposed to know it's the Moon."

Desoto grinned. "I got a cousin in the Intelligence section. They've been watching the civ newscasts. Everybody knows what we're doing. There wasn't any way to hide building the transports in orbit and all the stuff going on here. But everyone thinks it's some kind of bluff to get what we want. That and some scheme to award big contracts to the space construction corporations."

"That last is real believable. Mil construction contracts are always first about the contractors and second about us, if that."

"Yeah," Desoto agreed. "So none of the foreign governments really believe we're actually going to the Moon."

"I can't quite believe it myself. What's your cousin say the reason for all this is?"

"Lot of money on the Moon, he says."

"Do tell. Maybe I'll pick up a few bucks when I get there."

"Really," Desoto insisted. "You know, we go places all the time because there's some, uh, economic reason."

"You mean," Stark stated flatly, "that there's something there some business tycoons need us to protect so they can milk it instead of some foreigners."

"Right. So maybe they want the Moon now. Since the post-Millennium Crash, everything here is pretty much owned by us. Pax America, right? That's why the other guys went to the Moon, to get stuff we didn't own the rights to. That's what my cousin says."

"He could be right."

"So you think we're really going? To the Moon?"

"Pablo, a word of advice. You've been in the mil long enough to know that you never really know where you're going until you get there."

"Everybody's spending a whole lot of money if they're not serious. Wonder where the mil found enough bucks to afford all this?" Desoto asked.

"Pablo, another piece of advice. Never ask questions you don't really want to know the answer to."

Finally, there were lectures. A military wedded to hi-tech video conferencing, able to link every soldier on every battlefield into a seamless whole, sharing every bit of information, still insisted on gathering large numbers of warm bodies into large, warm rooms to sit while another warm body paced in front of them and delivered large chunks of information in an authoritative and singularly dull fashion. They sat and slept through the latest versions of Rules of Engagement, Laws of War, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Treatment of Noncombatants, and Military Courtesy, as well as the always dreaded update on Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Now the Battalion Commander himself, Colonel Danzel, usually glimpsed so rarely by the soldiers under his command that sightings of him were tracked like rare celestial events, stood before them with a hearty smile fixed on his face.

"Good afternoon. You've been through a lot of heavy training recently. I just wanted to tell you how proud everyone is of your performance. Especially during the uniform inspections. Everyone looks very good in the parade uniforms. Very good. And the barracks look great, too. Someone's doing a nice job of keeping the wax shiny on those floors. So, um, good job." Danzel shifted his feet, rubbed his nose, then nodded as if acknowledging a comment. "Any questions?"

A hand shot up. Stark craned his neck in an unsuccessful attempt to see who had been foolish enough to take the Colonel's offer seriously. Must be a new guy.

The Colonel also looked bemused, but swung an arm out to indicate the questioner. "Yes?"

Sure enough, a Private stood, licking his lips nervously. "Sir, we have been training a lot, and the equipment seems to be breaking down a lot."

Danzel frowned at the questioner. "That didn't sound like a question to me."

The Private gulped and tried again. "I mean, sir, these suits we've got aren't always reliable. Are we going to get anything new before we go into battle? Are there any fixes coming down the line?"

Colonel Danzel's frown deepened and darkened. "I am aware that rumors have been generated about the reliability of the Mark IV Battle Armor. This is the finest equipment any soldiers have ever worn into battle. There are no—repeat, no—serious problems with the Mark IV There are occasional minor malfunctions of subsystems. That's all."

Yeah, Stark thought sardonically, minor subsystems like the temperature control and the oxygen rebreather. Nothing to get too worried about.

The Private sat with a speed that suggested he'd finally figured out his error. However, a Corporal stood next, face fixed in a defiant challenge. "Colonel, sir, we understand what the Mark IV can do, when it works, but with all due respect, we're heading for the Moon, and when you're operating in a place with no air there's no such thing as a minor malfunction."

The Colonel's frown took on aspects of a thunderstorm. "I thought it was understood that our destination remains classified and has yet to be promulgated. Uninformed speculation about future operations will not be commented on."

The Corporal hesitated, face flushed, then sat back down.

Colonel Danzel scowled at his audience. "Any more questions?"

As an awkward silence stretched, Major O'Kane, the Battalion Executive Officer, stood up. "C'mon, soldiers, this is your chance to get answers." She was clearly expecting the troops to continue tossing out problems for the higher-ups to ignore, and seemed surprised at the lack of further takers. "I guess that's it, Colonel."

"Good." Danzel had trouble hiding his relief. "All right, then. Keep up the good work." He scuttled off the stage as O'Kane shouted "Attention!" and the Battalion shot to its feet in an automatic display of military courtesy.

"What was that for?" Murphy complained amid the buzz of conversation after the other Battalion officers exited with all due haste.

"I think they're trying to build up our morale," Carter offered. "Feel better?"

"Hell, no. I've been busting my butt on that damned combat endurance course, and all the Colonel cares about is how good the barracks floors look? Sarge, why wouldn't he at least talk about our objective?"

Stark skewered Murphy with a flat stare. "What am I, the Colonel's mouthpiece now? Why didn't you ask him yourself?"

"Hell, Sarge, I'm not that dumb."

Anything else that might have been said was interrupted by the harsh voice of the general announcing system: "All squad leaders are to report to their Company Commanders' offices on the double."

Vic and Stark exchanged glances as Sanchez came to join them, then wordlessly headed for the office of Captain Ringon, the latest Company Commander. On the way, two other groups of three Sergeants converged on them: Halstead, Two Knives, and Podesta from First Platoon; Greeley, Singh, and Rosinski from Third.

Ringon glowered at the nine Sergeants as they came to attention before her desk, nine impassive faces staring straight ahead. "The Colonel is very displeased over the disrespect shown by the enlisted personnel during his speech." She paused, looking from Sergeant to Sergeant.

"Permission to ask a question, Captain?" Sergeant Podesta inquired tonelessly.

"Permission granted."

"What disrespect is the Colonel referring to, Captain?"

Ringon's glower flushed red. "You know very well what disrespect. The questioning from the audience!"

"Neither of those questioners was from our unit, Captain," Podesta protested.

"And the Colonel invited them to ask questions," Stark added, drawing the Captain's attention squarely on him.

"Neither of those points is in any way relevant! Middle management is not properly supporting the officers of this command, Sergeant Stark."

"I am not a manager, Captain," Stark stated crisply. "I'm a combat leader."

"You're whatever I tell you you are! I expect no repetition of the events of earlier today. Is that understood?" Ringon waited for only a second before continuing. "That is all. Except for you, Sergeant Stark. I want to see you alone."

The other Sergeants filed out, closing the office door behind them, as Stark remained standing at attention, face professionally blank. Ringon raised one angry finger, shaking it in Stark's direction. "I've heard about you, Stark. I've heard you're difficult. I've heard you don't like to take orders." Stark stood silent. "Well?"

Stark kept his voice emotionless. "I obey orders, Captain."

"You question every one of them!"

"I express my opinion in appropriate circumstances, Captain."

Ringon turned an even darker shade of red. "There are no appropriate circumstances, Stark! You're a Sergeant. You don't have an opinion." She paused for a reply.

"Yessir."

"You do exactly what you're told when you're told."

"Yessir."

"You keep your mouth shut."

"Yessir."

Ringon glared in frustration, then pointed toward the door. "That's all. I better not hear any complaints from your new Platoon Commander."

"Yessir."

Stark saluted smartly, holding the salute until Ringon was forced to flip a quick salute in return, then pivoted on one heel to exit the office. There he found himself facing the impassive presence of Vic Reynolds waiting just outside. "Mind if I walk with you?" she asked.

"No problem." They walked for a few moments, past rows of identical doors ranked like faceless soldiers. "You hear what went on in there?"

"Every word."

"So what do you think?"

"I think you are one lying son of a bitch. None of those 'yessirs' meant anything."

"They weren't supposed to mean anything. I was just acknowledging her statements, not agreeing with them."

"Ethan, you can't keep pushing the edge all by yourself. Sooner or later some officer will call you on it for real."

"Not these gutless wonders. Besides, I gotta protect my people."

"You've got to lead your people into combat, Ethan. That's why we're here, to fight wars, regardless of how worthwhile we think they are."

"I know that. I also know there's more than one way to fight a war, and I'm going to fight the smart way."

"You may be right. People still talk about that stunt you pulled in the Mideast."

"Stunt?" Stark questioned. "Look, some Major who didn't know his head from a hole in the ground ordered me to do a head-on assault against troops dug into a damn mountain."

"Which the Major was told to do by some Colonel who was told by some General."

"Which is beside the point! If I'd charged straight in I'd have lost half my Squad, at least, and not taken the objective."

"So instead you suffered a mysterious communications failure, assaulted the hill next to the mountain, took the hill, looped around behind the mountain, and started pounding on the enemy headquarters, which panicked and pulled its own troops off the mountain to try to stop you."

"Yeah," Stark agreed. "We blew them away, climbed up the back of the mountain, and planted the flag. Objective taken. What's the problem?"

"The problem is that immediately afterward that comm problem of yours disappeared. The techs never did find out why your Squad couldn't hear any incoming transmissions for more than an hour, did they, Ethan?"

Stark shrugged. "I guess it was one of those, um, intermittent things. You know."

"Uh-huh. How did you explain not following the last instructions in your Tactical?"

"I thought I'd heard new orders that superseded the old Tactical before we lost comms. You know how our Tacs can get slowed down because of enemy jamming and our own clogged comm circuits."

She nodded, as if accepting the explanation at face value. "And where was your Platoon Commander during all this?"

"Bleeding to death." Stark made an angry face. "He'd tried to lead First Squad up that damn mountain like Tac ordered. Too bad. He actually listened to us sometimes when we offered advice. Unfortunately, he also did everything his superiors ordered, to the letter. With everything they do recorded in the Tactical systems that's the only way for officers to get promoted, right? And he wanted to make Captain something awful."

"Bad enough to die for it, anyway. Since all this happened before I transferred to this unit, maybe you can tell me why you weren't court-martialed?"

"Heck, Vic, we won. That meant some General was a flippin' genius, right? The senior officers were too busy taking credit for their brilliant plans to blame me for some comm problem. I mean, how could they give themselves medals for winning the damn battle if what I'd done hadn't been what they wanted?"

"I see. You're a lot more devious than I've given you credit for, Sergeant Stark."

"I am not devious." Stark glared at her. "I do what I have to do when I have to do it. I don't sneak around planning things behind people's backs."

Vic held up her hands in a calming gesture. "True. Sorry if I implied otherwise, Ethan. But you take some major risks doing things without orders, or different than orders. Why?"

"Let's just say I owe somebody." He nodded grimly, as if to himself or unseen comrades. "Yeah. I owe somebody."

Vic peered at Stark as if she'd never seen him before. "I sometimes wonder. It's like you're fighting some other war the rest of us aren't."

"Maybe I am."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No, I don't want to talk about it."

"Why don't you want to talk about it?"

Stark glared at her. "How the hell do I talk about why I don't want to talk about it without talking about it?"

"Now you're being unreasonable."

"And now you're being a woman."

Vic pretended to be aghast. "You know I'm a woman? And here I thought the uniform had hid it all these years."

"Ah, hell, Vic." Stark started laughing despite himself. "Why do you care what happens to me anyway?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Stark laughed again. "How much trouble can I get into with you looking out for me?"

"I shudder to think." She grinned maliciously. "Speaking of trouble, Ethan, you ever hear what happens when you cross a Special Operations Sergeant with an ape?"

Stark rolled his eyes with exaggerated disinterest. "I guess you heard I went on a date with a Sergeant from Ranger Company. Okay, Vic, I give. What do you get?"

Vic smiled wider. "A dumb ape."

Stark ducked his head quickly to hide an involuntary smile, then looked back up, face impassive. "I hadn't heard that one for, oh, a coupla years now."

Vic nodded back innocently. "Just wondering if it tracked with your experience, Ethan."

"Nah. There aren't any apes dumb enough to mate with the Spec Ops Sergeants I know."

"Oh, come now, Ethan. She's such a sweet little thing. Nice body, too."

"How do you know? Anyway, she also knows about twelve ways to kill a man with her bare hands without breaking a sweat. Speaking of breaking, she can do that to bones pretty easy, too."

Vic smiled again, this time pityingly. "Didn't get lucky, huh?"

"I'm still in one piece. I call that lucky. Besides, turns out she's just looking for a friend."

"Ouch." Vic winced. "Don't worry, Ethan, I'll be your friend."

"Gee, thanks. Will you go to the Moon with me?"

"Let me think about it. Mother always told me to avoid men in uniform."

"Your mother wore a uniform," Stark pointed out. "You told me she was a Sergeant. And, if I remember right, you told me your father wore a uniform, too."

"So? That just means Mom spoke from experience." The levity vanished from Vic's face as she leaned close, scanning their surroundings to ensure that no one stood close enough to listen in. "It's going down. We onload tomorrow."

"Damn. Where do you find out all this stuff?"

"A girl's entitled to a few secrets, Ethan. But if you've got anybody you need to say good-bye to, you better do it tonight."

Stark thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Nah. Everybody I'd want to say good-bye to is coming along, right?"

"Ethan, you need a life."

"Vic, I'm a Sergeant, and I've got a Squad of people depending on me. That is my life."

Sometimes that life was better than others. Right now they sat within a laboratory complex they couldn't use, under strict orders not to touch any of the equipment, chafing at the weeks of unaccustomed living in underground quarters. Not that Stark let them spend all their time in comfort there. "Chen, I could've put six rounds through you while you hung above the surface that time."

"I thought I was pushing off from dust, but it was rock,"

Chen complained, huddled behind a jagged boulder that apparently had been blasted out of some distant area before slamming into place here unknown centuries ago.

"Don't think," Stark ordered harshly. "Don't guess. Know what you're doing every second." He shifted to view another member of the Squad trying to advance under cover, bobbing among the rocks that littered the open area not far from the entrance to the lab complex. On his HUD, targeting data painted the soldier with an array of kill points. "Hector, keep your head down."

"I gotta see where I'm going, Sarge!"

"No, you don't. You memorize the route you're going to cover before you rush forward." Stark shifted to the Squad-level broadcast. "Listen up, people. This is just like back home. You know how to move under combat conditions. Do it!"

"Sarge?" Gomez asked. "It's really hard moving here. You know, every time I push or shove I either do it too hard or too light. And everything looks wrong 'cause there ain't no air."

"No kidding, Gomez. Here's a question for you, and I want everybody to listen to the answer. How do you get better at something?"

"Uh, you practice, Sarge."

"Very good. So guess what we're going to do until we know how to do it cold?"

"Okay, Sarge," Gomez agreed without noticeable enthusiasm. A ragged series of reluctant assents came from the rest of the Squad.

"Good. Now, we're going to run through another advance and another fall-back drill. If you apes do a good enough job on those, we can take a break."

Two hours later, soldiers still sweating from the exertion of moving under conditions alien to their every experience had their battle armor laid out for maintenance. Desoto moved close to Stark, indicating the other soldiers with a tilt of his head. "They're trying hard, Sergeant."

"I know that. But they haven't learned it all yet. They gotta try harder."

"They're tired, Sergeant."

"Would they rather be dead?" Stark raised his voice, addressing the Squad as a whole. "Anybody got any comments or complaints?" Soldiers exchanged glances but remained silent. "Come on. Open up."

Murphy looked at Stark defiantly. "None of the other squads is doing this, Sarge. They drill a little bit, but nothing like this."

"None of the other squads?" Stark asked. "Which squads in particular?"

"I don't wanna get nobody in trouble, Sarge."

"You won't. This stays in this room. Which squads?"

"Well, Second Squad in First Platoon. That's one."

"Uh-huh." Stark swiveled his head to view every member of the Squad. "Last op. How many casualties did Second Squad, First Platoon take?"

"Three," Gomez offered. "One dead, two wounded, right?"

"It was four," Mendoza corrected softly. "The fourth had a light wound."

"If they didn't have to leave duty, it don't count," Gomez argued.

"Knock it off," Stark interrupted. "Now, how many casualties did this Squad suffer?"

"None, Sarge. We were lucky."

"Really?" Stark demanded. "You think luck is all that kept you alive and in one piece? You guys are alive because I won't settle for less than the best from you. You're all alive because I drill you when your buddies in other squads are lying in their bunks playing vid games. And you know what? I'm going to keep drilling you until you're all perfect."

"But there's no enemy here," Billings pointed out. •

"Not yet," Stark agreed. "You want to wait until they show up to learn how to move and fight up here, Billings? Any of you want that?"

"Wouldn't matter if we did, would it, SargentoT Gomez mocked.

Stark bared his teeth. "No, it wouldn't. I'll kill you all from drill before I let one of you get killed because I didn't push you hard enough."

"We got any say at all in that?" Carter half joked.

"No. Anybody want a transfer?"

A long silence stretched, then Billings pointed toward an outside display monitor. "Hell, Sarge, if we transferred we'd have to leave here, and I'm starting to like this place."

The joke brought a scattering of laughs from the rest of the Squad, before the soldiers turned back to conducting maintenance on their battle armor. True to form, the Mark IV's were displaying their malfunctions in manners ranging from uncomfortable to potentially lethal. However, in a highly unusual development, spare parts flowed in an abundant stream whenever requested. While unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth, Stark had been on too many underfunded and undersupplied operations not to be suspicious of such apparent wealth.

Billings, still grinning at her own joke, gestured to indicate a vague direction. "Seriously, Sarge. Any chance of seeing that colony? The one they're building out on the plain?"

Stark shrugged. "They're building it. Or digging it. Probably both. I doubt they need any sightseers hanging around."

"Are there people there yet?"

"Yeah. I hear a bunch of civs have already come up to help build and run the thing."

"Families?" Gomez wondered.

"Probably. Already or soon."

"So they maybe going to build a fort up here, too? Maybe have mil families around?"

"Maybe." Stark kept his response cautiously positive. He wouldn't dismiss the question out of hand, because having those families within reach, having a mil community within reach, would be very important to a lot of soldiers. "Too early to tell. I guess they'll get the civs settled in before they think about bringing mil families up."

"Any bars yet?" Billings asked eagerly.

"None that I've heard of," Stark stated. "And any that do exist are probably unofficial and illegal right now." That wouldn't last, he knew, not if the mil stayed up here. Stark had long since stopped being amazed by the many means people could find to manufacture booze or drugs out of any available materials. Somehow, some way, those who preyed on the needs of soldiers would set up shop to happily assist those soldiers in spending every dollar they could shell out. It was always that way, probably always had been that way, and probably always would be that way. "If any of you happen to visit that colony, you stay away from the civs, just like usual. That keeps them happy and you out of trouble."

"Speaking of civs, you know what?" Chen stated, drawing attention. "I heard from my folks yesterday. Back home the civs watched our attack here on the vid. Almost real time."

Stark stood silent, not willing to compromise the information he'd received from Reynolds and the command circuit during the assault.

"You're kidding," Carter replied. "You don't mean the news programs, do you?"

"No," Chen denied, shaking his head for emphasis. "It was special programs. Just a little time delay, and they showed us going through objectives and everything. Except when commercials ran."

"They made our attack a program?" Gomez spat. "With commercials?"

"That's not the worst," Chen added, reveling in the attention. "You know the guys in Second Division? The ones who are still committed all over the place back home? They're showing them, too. In battles and stuff. Soldiers getting wounded, dying, the whole thing. My folks say everybody's watching the shows on the vid. Better than that new no-rules hockey, they said. I guess there's more blood on a mil vid."

"I'm gonna shoot the next public affairs officer I see," Gomez vowed.

"They gotta just be following orders," Billings objected. "But why would the brass make our operations into a vid show to entertain the civs? Sarge, why would they do that?"

"I don't know," Stark admitted. "There has to be some reason, but I don't know what it is."

Carter slammed one of her tools to the floor. "Great. Now I'm not only going to have a lot of officers staring over my shoulder while I fight, I'm also going to have about a hundred million civs waiting to see me get hurt."

"Don't mess up those tools or you'll get hurt right now," Stark snapped. "Look, you know what a battlefield is like. Every soldier's got their own vid feed going back to headquarters. So there's no way any civs can be vulturing every one of us on their vid at the same time. Most likely, you'll never personally make the vid. Happy?"

"Not me, Sergeant," Desoto cracked. "I want to be a vid star!" Everybody laughed this time.

"Good luck," Stark wished his Corporal. "The rest of you, get back to work troubleshooting your battle armor. There's no sense getting worked up right now over something we can't do anything about." Silence broken only by the clink and buzz of equipment reigned for a few minutes.

"Sarge?" Murphy looked up from his maintenance work, mouth set in the determined fashion that meant he'd been thinking.

"Yeah, Murph."

"I heard an ugly rumor, Sarge."

Gomez barked a short laugh. "I hope it ain't as ugly as you, Murph."

"No. I mean, yeah. Hey, just knock it off."

Stark sighed heavily. "Okay, Murphy, what's this rumor?"

"I heard," Murphy declared pretentiously, glancing around the room to see how his words were received, "that they've run out of spares for the suits."

"Really?" Chen teased, hoisting a replacement rebreather cartridge in one hand. The genetically tailored living cells inside were amazingly efficient at converting carbon dioxide back into oxygen as long as you fed them current, but those cells also had a nasty tendency to die if any other organic matter contaminated them. "Then where are we getting these parts from, Murph?"

"I heard they're cannibalizing suits from outfits that are off the line. That's what I heard."

Mendoza eyed Stark warily. "Is that true, Sergeant?"

Stark shrugged. "What if it is?"

"It means we don't have a reserve," Mendoza noted. "If we need reinforcements, there won't be any."

Everyone watched Stark, trying to gauge his reaction to Murphy's and Mendoza's statements. He took a deep breath, choosing the right words. "I heard the same thing. So what? If you apes get in a firefight, who's the only person you can absolutely count on to look out for you? Yourself. After that, you can count on the other guys in this Squad. Don't forget that, and don't go into battle depending on someone else to save your ass because you're never sure that someone else will be there when you need 'em."

About half the Squad nodded back, reassured by the words, but the others still looked doubtful. "Sarge," Murphy noted, "sometimes everything goes to hell and you need help. It's kinda scary to know help can't come."

Help can't come. Stark fought down a shiver at the words, savagely tamping down memories he didn't care to confront. A vision of grass flecked with red specks of blood momentarily came between his eyes and the soldiers watching him. "Sometimes . . ." Stark began, then choked off the words while his Squad looked puzzled.

"Okay," Stark declared in a harsher tone than he'd intended, drawing some more puzzled looks. "I could minimize all this, and make you all feel good. Or I can lay it out as bad as it is and make sure you apes are ready for the worst. Guess what I'm going to do?" Stark strode over to the vid panel on one wall, triggering it and calling up a sector map with American unit positions overlaid. "The situation sucks. See this? It's everything we hold right now. Mendoza, you're so smart, what d'you see?"

Mendoza gulped, obviously uncomfortable at the attention, then studied the picture intently. "Our forces are highly dispersed, Sergeant."

"Very good. Now put that in terms Murphy can understand."

"Yes, Sergeant." Mendoza raised a finger, pointing around the display. "Our units are spread out, a squad here, a platoon there. We're occupying a very large area for the number of personnel we have."

"Uh-huh." Stark glared at his troops, stabbing his own index finger at them for emphasis. "You know what that means? If everything goes to hell, if those foreigners we tossed out of here come back to fight for it all, it's going to be everyone for themselves at first. No one's going to have any support, from the rear or from the right or the left or anywhere else." Faces eyed the map grimly, years of combat experience measuring the situation and not liking the result. "So reserves don't matter. What matters is the grunt beside you. We hold, or we fall back, or if those idiots at headquarters order it we advance, but we do it on our own."

"What if we can't?" Billings whispered. "What if the odds are too bad?"

Stark glowered, putting everything he had into his performance. He had to convince his troops, had to keep their confidence in themselves, or he'd be letting them down as surely as if he let their equipment rust into uselessness. He also had to convince himself. Winning might require a lot of different things, but losing could be as simple as going in believing you were going to lose. "Not an option. There're no odds too bad for you apes. Period. So if everything else falls apart, you guys hold together. Understand? I won't accept anything less from you."

"Si, Sargento" Gomez agreed in the silence following Stark's words, a fierce grin illuminating her face. "We'll kick butt."

Stark grinned back, feeling his Squad's morale shoot upward again. "Damn straight you will." He pointed at the suits laid out for maintenance. "Now get that battle armor up to one hundred percent across the board. I want us ready for anything."

Time passed and eventually their chronometers said night, even though the lifeless rocks and dust were painted with the same harsh light and black shadow. Stark brooded over the view, alone now in the darkened cafeteria, a feeling of oppressive threat hanging over him. Hope it's just nerves from living in this hole. We haven't received any warning of attack so far, but then the civs we took this place from didn't get any warning either. Lord, I don't want to buy a grave up here. If it all ends for me I want one somewhere less ugly. But above all, Lord, keep these apes of mine as safe as you can.

"Sergeant?" Desoto stood nearby. "You about to turn in?"

"Yeah."

"Something bothering you? If anybody in the Squad needs straightening out—"

Stark shook his head, forcing a smile. "No, Pablo. The Squad's fine."

"I know Murphy's been a little harder to herd than usual these days. I'm going to have a talk with him."

"That's fine. Never hurts to put the fear of God in Murphy."

Desoto visibly hesitated. "You're not thinking of transferring Murphy out, are you, Sergeant?"

Stark's head shook again, firmly this time. "No. Murphy may not be the brightest star in the heavens, and he'll screw off any time he gets the chance, but if he knows it's expected of him he'll always be there when he's needed and he'll do a good job."

"He's a lot of work, though."

"Sure he's a lot of work. But if I sent him to some other outfit he might get a Sergeant who'd let Murphy slack off until it killed him. Murphy's my responsibility."

"Verdad." Desoto nodded in agreement. "You met his parents once, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Stark recalled. "Back in the States somewhere. Nice folks. But that's not the point. He's my responsibility because he's mine. He's in my Squad. I send him off somewhere else, he's still my responsibility, because I sent him there. That's just the way it is."

"A lot of people don't see things that way. Officers sure as hell don't."

"Well, they gotta live with themselves, and I gotta live with me." Stark exhaled, long and soft. "Right now, I'm just trying to relax. Got a bad feeling about things right now."

"Something coming down?"

"Not that I know of. Just nerves, I guess."

Desoto grimaced. "I know. It gets old after a while, doesn't it, Sergeant? That stuff about cannibalizing battle armor is bad news. One more mission on a shoestring, one more try at surviving without enough ammo or spares. God bless our leaders," he added irreverently.

"Don't forget whichever corporations plan on taking over all this stuff we grabbed for them. Oughta make them a lot of money."

"Yeah. Seems like all we ever do is go places to help rich people get richer. Did the mil always do that, Sergeant?"

Stark shook his head. "I don't know. Doesn't seem to have a lot to do with upholding and defending the Constitution like the oath says, does it? Go ask Mendoza." He pondered for a moment, then nodded. "Wait a minute. Mendo did say something about that once. The outfit was headed for some objective in the Pacific, and Mendo talked about how Hawaii used to be its own country."

"Hawaii? A country?"

"Yeah, only these American business types wanted it, so we went in and took it over for them."

Desoto looked puzzled. "When did this happen, Sergeant? Hawaii's been a state, like, forever."

"I don't remember. Long time ago, I guess."

"So why didn't we grab more stuff back then?" Desoto wondered. "You know, Korea or something."

"Somebody asked Mendo about that, and he said there was these other powers who wouldn't let us. Countries just as strong as us."

"Man, that was a long time ago. Not like now. Only superpower for what, a century?"

"Something like that. Ask Mendo."

"And nobody else can stop us when we really want something," Desoto continued, "so we've got everything we really want on Earth, and now we're taking the Moon, too. Guess the rest of the countries just got to roll over for that."

"Maybe. Maybe they'll just roll. But I tell you, Pablo, you back somebody into a corner and they might give up, or they might fight back real hard."

"You think they're going to fight, Sergeant?"

"Yeah. I think they're going to fight. I would." Stark eyed the impossibly barren landscape on the vid monitor, a landscape that already seemed to have been fought over for eternity by armies bigger than any humanity had ever mustered. "I hate this damn place, but I would."

"Wish the big bosses had to be here when the shooting started."

Stark laughed, the sound short and bitter. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? Too bad we can't swap places with them all next time it gets really hot."

"Sergeant, how come officers rotate in and out of assignments every six months? They never have time to learn their jobs. It'd be a lot easier on us if they led us better, but even the ones who seem okay—some of the junior officers, that is—they don't ever learn enough to be much good."

Stark held up three fingers. "Three reasons. One, there're too many officers for the number of grunts in the mil. They gotta keep them moving so it looks like they need them all." One finger came down. "Two, to get promoted, officers need to check off a bunch of jobs somebody decided were really nice to have. Only problem is, there're too many jobs on the list. So to get all the good jobs on their records, the officers can only stay in one job for a little while." Another finger dropped. "Finally, because an officer usually gets a medal at the end of a tour. The more jobs they hold, the more medals they get." The last finger fell.

Desoto screwed up his mouth in distaste. "I guess I should have known I wouldn't like the answer to that question."

"Then why'd you ask it?"

"To find out. Isn't that how you found out?"

"Yeah. Sergeant Reynolds drilled it into my head one day."

Desoto smiled quickly, there and gone in an instant. "You worried, Sergeant? About a battle?"

"I'm always worried. It's one of the things that keeps me and my Squad members alive."

"But this battle, Sergeant," Desoto insisted. "The one that's gonna happen sooner or later, when they fight. You worried we might lose?"

"Between you and me? A little. But, hey, vid wouldn't be very exciting if we didn't lose every once in a while, eh?"

"We won't lose, Sergeant. No way."

"I hope to God you're right, Pablo. If you and I have anything to do with it, we won't. Thanks for the talk. You'll make a good Sergeant someday."

"Thank you, Sergeant. Good night."

" 'Night, Pablo."

Despite his resolution, Stark couldn't sleep, prowling restlessly through the hallways of the lab complex, dim "night" illumination leaving the far ends of the halls barely visible. The ache between his shoulder blades grew again, telegraphing a vague premonition of danger. How long does it take to get to the Moon from Earth? How long to train the troops before they leave? Were they already training before we got here? Did they have transports ready, or did they have to build some in orbit first? How mad or desperate are they that we grabbed their last chance to break out of their boxes and maybe challenge the U.S. of A. for Big Dog status again? If enough of them stop fighting among themselves and get together, can they take us? A lot of questions, none of which he knew the answers to. The rock-hewn passages of the lab complex held no answers, either, but at least they offered an endless path for restless feet.

"Sarge?" Billings called, her voice over Stark's comm. unit shocking in the silence of the sleeping halls. "Sergeant Reynolds is on the comm for you. Says it's really urgent."

"On my way." Stark checked the time as he ran, rubbing his face to calm himself. Everything about this felt bad, bringing new life to his fears. He headed for the comm terminal where Billings stood watch at this hour, past cubicles where the rest of his Squad still slept in the unaccustomed luxury of semiprivacy.

Reynolds' image on the comm screen started speaking as soon as she saw Stark. "It's going down. They're attacking."

"Damn. Why hasn't there been an official alert?"

Vic made a face. "The brass are still trying to find their heads with both hands."

Stark grabbed a packet of instant coffee, shoveling the powdered caffeine into his mouth for a fast jolt even as he mentally ran through the actions he'd take next. "How bad is it? What's going on?"

"I don't know for sure, because nobody does." Vic looked upward suddenly. "The Navy's getting hit hard, but they're trying to hold on as long as possible to give us time to prepare. There're definitely troop transports among the attacking ships, though."

"Okay, thanks." As the screen blanked, Stark turned to where Billings had been listening to the conversation, her own body tense. "Hold here and be ready for an alert to be passed." Then he ran back to the living areas, slamming the lights on at full brightness. "Everybody up, now! Company's on the way! I want you in full battle gear and ready to roll in five minutes! Go! Go! Go!"

It took more like ten minutes before the last member of the Squad fell in, which was still very good time. "Mendoza, relieve Billings on the comm so she can suit up. Listen good, you apes. The Navy's getting hit right now and there're transports bringing in enemy troops. I don't know how many, and I don't know what our orders will be, but we will be ready and we will kick butt. Any questions?"

"Who is it, Sarge? Who's attacking?"

"I dunno. But it looks like we finally pushed the First, Second, and Third Worlds a little too hard and they're pushing back harder."

"We're at war with everybody else on Earth?" Chen exclaimed.

"I told you I don't know."

Before anyone could say anything more, the comm panel buzzed frantically, then began relaying data to Stark's own Tactical. He immediately started shunting it downstream to his Squad at the same time as he read it. Full alert. Major attacks imminent. Tactical scrolled orders even as it painted a sector map on Stark's HUD. "Okay, everybody getting this?" Stark demanded. "We're falling back to form a perimeter around that colony they've been building up."

"Sarge?" Murphy called. "We're way outside that perimeter."

"The Sergeant knows that, Murphy," Corporal Desoto snapped.

Stark nodded. "Right. So, ladies and gentlemen, we are leaving as soon as Billings gets back. Say good-bye to clean living."

"Hey, Sarge." Gomez waved her hand around to indicate the entire complex. "The orders say we're supposed to destroy this place when we evacuate, but we haven't got any demolitions. It'll take forever."

"Yeah," Stark agreed. "It would, so we aren't going to try. On our way out we'll drop some incendiary grenades into the main computer room and call that good. If headquarters doesn't like it they can come do a better job themselves." Billings ran in, panting with haste as she fastened the last seals on her battle armor. "All right. Let's go. We're at war again, people. No screwing around and no screwing up."

Stark looked back as he cleared the main entry, the large airlock hatch still glowing clearly on infrared, remembering when they'd assaulted the lab several weeks back. He wondered briefly if the angry female scientist would return, complaining about the mess Stark's Squad had made of the place, then put it out of his mind.

"Sergeant." Stark looked over to Desoto, who pointed up wordlessly. He stared upward in turn, seeing strange new stars blooming far away against the lunar night. The Navy, fighting a desperate rearguard action. Suddenly a larger star erupted, growing into a ragged blossom that gradually faded. "Was that one of our ships?" Desoto wondered out loud.

"No telling," Stark noted grimly. "Given the odds up there, it probably was. Okay, those sailors are dying to buy us time, people. Let's move it."

Stark tried not to think about the distance left to be covered, tried not to realize how long it would take his Squad to reach the limited safety of the hasty perimeter that headquarters was trying to establish, tried most of all not to think about what would happen if they got caught by the enemy alone out here. They covered ground fast, the too-near horizon mocking them as it receded, endless vistas of rock and dust painted in shades of gray and black. "Sarge!" Hector yelled.

"Keep it down," Stark barked, watching on his own HUD as distant tracks arched toward the lunar surface—landing craft, well behind them but telegraphing the arrival of ground forces in large enough number to panic headquarters.

An ugly object suddenly jumped over the ridge before them, massive black armor glinting dully. "Hold your fire!" Stark shouted, "Wait for IFF!" even as his suit Identification Friend or Foe cheerily declared "friendly!" The APC pirouetted with absurd grace for such a mammoth object, coming to rest just before them.

"Get aboard fast," the APC driver called, her voice crackling with tension. Stark hustled his troops, ignoring normal dispersal routines, body crowding body into the cramped cavern of the troop compartment. No sooner did Stark haul himself in last than the access hatch slammed closed and the APC jerked upward, pivoted, then shot forward. The soldiers were flung into a tangled mass, cursing as they sorted out harnesses and tried to strap in.

Stark settled himself, checking suit readouts for the Squad. "Anybody hurt back when we took off?" A chorus of grumbles answered him, intermixed with disparaging comments about the APC driver's ancestry. "Knock it off. How many of you would rather be walking?" Stark jacked into the APC's systems, trying to get more information, but its Tactical displayed the same scattered picture as Stark's. "Driver?"

"Yeah." Her voice reflected the concentration of highspeed driving through lunar terrain and the stress of impending combat.

"How far you taking us?"

"Not far enough, Sergeant." She stopped talking for a moment as the APC swerved violently. "Damn rocks. Don't wanna hit one. You get dropped a couple of klicks farther on."

Stark checked his Tactical. "That's still outside the perimeter."

"Uh-huh. I got more troops to collect, pal. I can't chauffeur you in all the way. No time."

"Roger." Stark settled back, trying not to think too much about everything that could go wrong in the next few hours. It seemed only moments later that the APC braked hard enough to provoke another torrent of curses from the Squad, then slammed to the surface. "Everybody out," Stark ordered.

"But Sarge," Chen protested. "We're still short of—"

"I know!" Stark roared. "Move it!" They moved, tumbling out with all the haste Stark's command could generate. "Disperse!" Stark snapped. "Maintain combat formation." He consulted his HUD as the APC jumped aloft and shot away, back toward where the enemy landing craft had fallen a short time before. Good luck, buddy. "People, we haven't got a decent map download of this area, but we know where we're going. Let's go."

As the Squad began legging it again, Stark switched to platoon-level scan, feeling a rush of relief as he spotted the symbology for Second Squad nearby. "Sanchez? You on?"

"Roger, Stark." From the lack of excitement in Sanchez's voice he could have been on simulated maneuvers instead of facing actual battle.

Stark checked his HUD again. "Looks like we're converging toward the same area."

"Agreed. My left flank should make contact with your right flank in about ten minutes."

"Great." Stark knew his elation was irrational in the face of the threat, but making physical contact with another unit meant that at least they were no longer alone on the empty. awful face of the Moon. "What about First Squad? Whereas Reynolds?"

"I think there's an APC trying to do a pickup on them now."

Stark felt a chill. "Damn. They were a long ways out. farther than my Squad."

"Relax," Sanchez advised. "You or me, we might be in trouble. Vic Reynolds will get her Squad out, though."

"Yeah, you're right." Stark fell silent, ushering his Squad forward until his right flank met Second Squad, until they reached the upwelling of ancient stone that marked the ridge they'd aimed for, until both squads flopped down, panting from their rapid movement, staring back down the way they'd come with dread anticipation.

Rifles came up as their HUDs pulsed, pinpointing a fast-moving object. "Hold on," Stark ordered as the vehicle shot directly toward them.

"I have no IFF," Sanchez reported.

"Me, neither," Stark agreed, fingering his rifle even as an instinct nagged at the back of his mind. "But what enemy would be crazy enough to charge ahead like that?"

"You think it's friendly?"

"Yeah. Maybe something's wrong with its IFF."

"Then my Squad will hold fire until you say otherwise."

Rifles lined up, aiming toward where suit combat systems estimated the unknown vehicle would be when it came within range. They made an odd sight, almost thirty barrels individually moving in sync with each other as each soldier's combat system reached the same targeting conclusions. "Sarge?" Carter called. "How close does that thing have to get before our rifles can punch through its armor?"

"Depends on what it is," Stark stated. "But nobody fires until I say so. Remember, that vehicle might be ours, and it might have friends on it."

The vehicle finally came into sight, glimpses of a dark shape weaving through the rocks like a huge beetle in a gravel pit. Stark gradually realized the weaves were too erratic to all be deliberate attempts at evasion, staring as the armor grated against outcrops, then steadied to come on again with the determination of a badly wounded animal seeking shelter.

"Man, that is one beat-up piece of metal," Gomez whispered.

Stark nodded silently, wondering how many of the dents and holes he saw marked penetrations of the troop compartment. The APC reached the spot where terrain began climbing and tried to rise with it, but staggered, grinding against the foot of the ridge, then came to a shuddering halt as bodies began leaping free. "Who's there?" Stark demanded.

"First Squad," Vic Reynolds answered crisply. "Lieutenant Porter's been hit."

"What happened?"

"Firefight. Some enemy troops dropped almost on top of us. The APC yanked us out just before we got overrun. Unfortunately, it got shot up in the process."

"Jesus. Get the driver and the gunner."

"We've got the driver. She's been nicked but is mad as hell and has a sidearm. The gunner's dead."

"Hell."

Reynolds paused, then spoke again. "We'll have to leave him."

"But . . ." Stark gritted his teeth. Have to leave them. The words echoed someplace where memories forever lay too close to the surface. No, just him. One guy. One too many, but what else are you going to do? Hold back all your living soldiers to help one guy who can't be helped anymore ? Too much mass to lug around even on the Moon, not when you had to worry about moving really fast. "At least nothing will happen to the body up here."

"Yeah," Vic agreed shortly. First Squad members were coming up the slope, two with damaged battle armor being helped by other soldiers. "Can we hold here, Ethan?"

"I doubt it. The position's not bad, but there's nobody here but us."

"Sanchez? Anybody on your flank?"

"Not in contact, no," Sanchez noted coolly. "There is a gap of perhaps half a kilometer between my left and the next unit."

Big enough to drive a brigade through, Stark thought, but at least Sanchez had somebody providing support on that side.

"This is Lieutenant Porter speaking." His voice wavered oddly, possibly from shock, certainly from weakness and the effects of the drugs his suit's medical kit would have been automatically pushing into him. "We will hold here in accordance with our orders."

They waited, for moments that seemed longer than they should, until threat symbols popped into life at the edges of their HUDs. The symbols came on, flowing forward and to the side, marking infantry and vehicles moving ahead with deadly determination. Stark noted the numbers of oncoming threats, matched it against his own Platoon's firepower, and breathed a silent prayer.

Textbooks laid it out clearly. To defend a position you needed to be able to prevent the enemy from attacking you from the side or the rear. It was as simple as the truth that a soldier could only aim and fire in one direction at once. If necessary, you could try forming a circular defensive line, much like the surviving companies of cavalry had at Custer's Last Stand. That could work if you were strong enough, if the terrain you occupied was strong enough, if the enemy didn't try hitting you harder than you could hold against. It helped to be a little crazy and keep fighting long after logic said to give it up. Mendoza had talked once about how the British had done that a long time ago at a place called Rorke's Drift, but then Stark had always thought most Brits were born a little crazy. But those were exceptions. The cavalry companies actually with Custer hadn't been able to form a strong enough circle and had died to a man. So had a lot of other people on a lot of other battlefields. Stark had known some of them.

Stark could feel it, feel something that wasn't there, the absence of any other units beyond his last Squad member. The void worked at him, mocked him, told him his Squad had been hung out without support. Finally he could take it no longer, trying to speak without letting his ragged nerves show. "Lieutenant, I got nobody on my right."

"I know that, Stark!" Porter obviously wasn't in a very good mood, doubtless nursing considerable pain from his wound, pain no doubt aggravated by the rough ride here on the crippled APC. "I've told headquarters! What do you want from me?"

Stark licked his lips, fighting off another wave of anxiety, choosing his words with care even as he triggered a channel to ensure Reynolds and Sanchez were also listening to the conversation. "Lieutenant, I've got threat readings popping up steadily on the right. They're already behind us on that side. If we don't fall back we'll be outflanked and surrounded."

Before Porter could answer, Reynolds called in, voice innocent as if she were unaware of Stark's last statement. "Lieutenant, recommend falling back to the next ridge. We need to buy time for reinforcements to cover our flank."

It hung in the balance for a moment, Porter's fear of not following orders to the letter warring with his fear of losing his unit. The fact that he'd narrowly escaped capture or death a short time before may have tipped the balance. "Yes. Fall back by fire teams to the next ridge. I'll inform the chain-of-command that we're, uh, shortening the line to ensure we can hold."

Thank God. Stark had barely formed the grateful thought when Vic called him. "Ethan, you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay."

"You sound really bad. What—?"

"I told you I'm okay!"

"Fine," she snapped, breaking off the conversation.

Stark ordered his Squad into motion. Soldiers scampered back in pairs, dropping to cover the next pair as it retreated through them. They hadn't reached the next ridge when Stark's Tactical flashed with an update. Caught in midstride, Stark went to one knee to study the map, an involuntary whistle escaping his lips. They were going to shorten the line, all right, and for the first time the planned perimeter looked small enough to hold with the forces available. "De-soto, you get the new Tactical plan?"

"Yes, Sergeant. The planned perimeter has shrunk quite a bit."

"You might say that. The brass is finally getting real about this situation. We got a lot of falling back to do. You stay on the left and keep that end of the Squad moving proper while I watch the right side." Stark paused, then called up his command circuit tap to see if he could receive the big picture again. It took a moment to make sense of the chaotic picture that sprang to life. Apparently they'd had it easy so far, while units on the other side of the perimeter had taken heavy blows, been driven back, but were now hanging on. A cluster of unmoving enemy symbology apparently marked an attempted raid into the heart of the U.S. position, a raid which had cost the attackers their entire force thanks to the warning time the ground forces had received. Thank you, Navy. I'll never slug a sailor again.

"Sarge?" Private Hector called.

"Yeah, Hector."

"What's up? I mean, we almost got trapped back there, and now we keep falling back. How far we gonna go? What's going to happen?"

Stark stared ahead, seeing on his map display a long array of interlocking crater rims and ridges leading back toward the colony core of the perimeter. "Who do I look like, Hector, God? Stop worrying about what happened or almost happened. It's gone. Stop worrying about anything in the future. All that counts is that next ridge. Once we get to it, all that counts is the ridge beyond it. Understand? All of you, I want you thinking about now, because now is all that matters."

"Yes, Sarge," Hector answered, audibly abashed.

Something fast sped by far to the right, perhaps an enemy APC trying a risky maneuver to outflank the retreating American infantry. Even as Stark tracked the symbol, his jaw tense, hidden U.S. guns spat out heavy shells, and moments later a distant flash announced the destruction of the vehicle. Thank God. There's somebody to our right now. Hang on, guys, we're coming.

They made the next ridge, a feeling of pressure growing behind them. Threat symbols flickered in and out, there and not there as enemy forces came on, closing the distance. On into the next shallow valley, the pressure real now as a few shots ripped overhead, enemy troops unfamiliar with lunar conditions firing too high. "Don't stop," Stark commanded. "Get to the ridge."

They moved to reach the high ground, diving over the crest to keep silhouettes to a minimum, rifle rounds kicking up spurts of dust or shards of rock as they spattered all around like a rainstorm growing in intensity by the minute. Stark checked his HUD. One more ridge back to meet the planned perimeter, but the enemy was pushing hard now. Static fuzzed around the edge of his display as jamming began interfering with signals. "Stark, Sanchez," Vic called. "I sent Porter on ahead with the APC driver. We'll do this last fall-back by squads."

"Vic, they're on us," Stark objected. "One squad won't hold."

"They don't need to hold. They just have to make the enemy pause a little." Vic's breath exhaled suddenly, the way Stark knew it always did just after she'd fired a shot. "Now, Third Squad goes first. Get halfway back, drop and cover us. Second Squad will follow, go all the way to the ridge and cover this ridgeline. Got that, Sanchez?"

"Roger." Laconic as always. Stark felt an absurd annoyance, a wish that something would break Sanchez's calm outer shell.

"Go." One word.

"Third Squad, fall back with me." Stark scrambled backward, coming to his feet as he got far enough beneath the ridgeline. Fast, through showers of gravel falling along with them in lethargic tandem, as if the Moon were insisting it would not be rushed regardless of human priorities. They reached the midpoint, breathing heavily now, turning and aiming to where Sanchez's Squad came down off the ridge in another series of small slow-motion avalanches.

It took a little something extra to hold in place while Sanchez's Squad stampeded through them, not running but feeling like it all the same. "Everybody hold still," Stark grated, hunching his own body a little higher to make himself a solid symbol of stability. It made him an obvious target, too, but that was part of the price you paid. His Squad held their position, waiting as HUDs began calling out new warnings, tracking heavy rounds coming in high over the ridge. Artillery, looping in deadly tracks to gouge new craters where millennia of meteors had once worked alone. Mortars, arching high overhead to drop almost straight down. The Squad held again, trusting to their myriad of deceptive camouflage devices and active jammers in every suit to throw off or fool smart munitions, hoping no dumb round would blunder its way right on top of them.

The enemy barrage hesitated, as Stark knew it had to. The enemy had come up too fast for supplies to keep up, and now they'd have to pause until new ammunition arrived. First Squad came down, faster than Sanchez's had moved, leaping in long, flat arcs, three figures now being partially carried by their Squadmates.

"Hold on," Stark urged as First Squad passed through. Sergeant Reynolds waving a quick salute as she passed. Shots rippled across the now vacant ridge, questing for targets, then ceased. Here they come. Stark aimed toward the ridge, canting his rifle high momentarily as he did so and seeing the targeting symbol flash red. Can't shoot if I aim too high. Must be an inhibit to keep us from throwing rounds into orbit. "Stand by," Stark cautioned his Squad. "Make every round count."

Figures showed momentarily as enemy troops rolled over the ridgeline. Stark's and Sanchez's Squads opened fire in a prolonged volley. In Stark's rifle sight, magnification and enhancement revealed vague outlines, ghostly images of soldiers with their own camouflage and jammers. He centered on each outline, his rifle slamming against his shoulder as rounds went out. Small clouds of shrapnel spread their deadly rain as Desoto used his auto-launcher to drop grenades among the enemy with cool precision. The outlines fell or tried firing back, only to fall sooner as they attracted more fire. "We gave them a bloody nose," Vic called. "Get your Squad back here with us, Stark."

"On our way. Let's go, Third Squad. Desoto, you and I bring up the rear." Run, all out except to keep herding the slower Squad members before you. Run, as more figures boiled over the ridge line behind them, firing as they came despite a murderous barrage from First and Second Squads. Chen slipped and fell, his suit broadcasting damage to Stark's display. He slid sideways, grabbing Chen as the Private tried to rise, propelling him forward even as Chen grunted with pain that the motion intensified.

Then the artillery came again, chasing at Third Squad's heels as they gasped up and over to the relative safety of the final ridgeline. Stark lay, breathing heavily, checking his own stats as well as the rest of the Squad's. "Mother of mercy. Chen, looks like you're our only casualty."

"Lucky me." Chen's voice had a slightly delirious quality, wobbly from the drugs his suit med kit was busy shoving into his system. "It's not bad, is it?"

"Bad enough, but you'll live." Stark switched circuits, grateful for the welcoming presence of friendly unit symbols on either hand, trying not to dwell on the increasing amount of threat symbology crowding in front, trying not to feel the steadily increasing drumroll of artillery slamming onto the ridge where they lay. "Vic, we got any more orders?"

"See anything new on your Tactical?"

"No."

"That's what we've got. We hold this line, Ethan."

Stark looked back over his shoulder, noting for the first time that behind him lay only a long, gentle slope, leading for kilometer on unobstructed kilometer to the American rear areas, to the new colony city being dug and raised by civs adventurous or desperate enough to come to the Moon voluntarily, and to the only spaceport left in their possession. "Yeah. I guess we do hold here. Otherwise, it's all over for us, and for the civ colonists who're depending on us."

It had been somewhere between Earth and Moon, months ago during the too-long lull between loading into their assault ships and reaching the objective. Stark and Corporal Desoto were strapped in, staring somberly at the many-shaded grays of their lunar target, talking about the small things and the big things soldiers discuss in quiet moments.

"Never thought I'd leave Earth," Desoto offered at one point.

"Me, neither," Stark agreed. "They say we'll be able to see it again when the ships do a turn-around to brake for arrival at the Moon. Not that I expect it'll be all that much to look at by then."

"Long ways from home," Desoto observed, then, after a pause, "You ever go home, Sergeant?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know. Home. Parents. Brothers and sisters."

"Home." Stark repeated the word slowly, then shook his head. "Nah. Haven't been there since I joined. Civ neighborhood, you know."

Desoto's eyes widened in wonder. "Your parents were both civs? You weren't born on a fort?"

"That's right." Stark looked out the port, his eyes focused somewhere else. "I tried going back once, right after I made Corporal. Pretty proud, let me tell you. I made it in only three years."

"Three years?" Desoto demanded in amazement. "How'd you make Corporal in only three years?"

"Uh . . ." Stark hedged with obvious reluctance, then shrugged. "Just lucky."

"Sergeant, it takes more than luck to make Corporal that fast. You get a battlefield promotion or something?"

Stark stared back at the Moon, avoiding Desoto's gaze. "Or something. Look, that's not what this is about. I made it."

Something about Stark's attitude finally got through to Desoto, who nodded in silent assent to change the subject. "So, what happened when you tried to go home?"

"Well, I was passing through the old town and I thought, Why not? Hopped a ride to the old neighborhood."

"Bet it'd changed."

"Uh-uh." Stark grimaced at the memory. "Same as always. Me, I was different. Wearing a uniform. Civs stared at me, fish out of water." He'd been around uniforms so long he'd forgotten how rare they were in the civilian world, insulated from the small band of military that sufficed for America in the twenty-first century. "Like I was some kinda alien with two heads, you know?"

Desoto nodded. "Yeah. Been there. Like they expect you to start shooting them or raping their sons and daughters or something." He suddenly smiled sadly. "Or maybe they're afraid seeing us will make those sons and daughters want to join the mil, too."

Stark laughed sharply. "Could be. Look what happened to me. They don't know us, Pablo."

"Mendoza told me that once upon a time lots of people knew someone in the mil, or had even served themselves. That was before the long drawdown. Now that there're not too many mil, and we're all pretty much in for life, most civs never meet a uniform. What happened when you got home?"

"Never did." Stark remembered the cops, alert and wary, who had faced him at the bus station. You lost, soldier? The base is back that way. If you're looking for a drink, take the number twelve bus to the military bar district. No, he'd protested, I'm just passing through. Fine, keep going, but don't pass through here, soldier. It's a peaceful place. A civ neighborhood. "Some cops stopped me. Made it clear nobody wanted me there. I said, 'Hell, what do you think, I'm gonna kill someone?' And they said, 'That's what you do, isn't it? Kill people?'"

"Bastidos."

"Damn straight."

"So you let them stop you?"

"Not like that." Stark smoldered, old slights rising to the surface. "But I turned around. Didn't go home."

Desoto tried to make a joke of it. "Never thought Sergeant Ethan Stark would be afraid of a couple of civ cops."

Stark stared at his hands, not rising to the levity. "I wasn't afraid of them, Pablo. I was afraid my parents would be the same way. That's what scared me away."

"Sorry. Why they got to be that way, Sergeant? We put our lives on the line all the time, but they treat us real bad when they see us. Why?"

"Because they don't know better, I guess. Civs like the mil to protect them, but they want it done from far away."

"I wonder why we do it, sometimes. Why not do something else?"

"Something else?" Stark laughed. "Like what? You gonna get a civ job? Wear some kind of suit to work?"

"No. I guess civs are as alien to us as we are to them, huh?"

"Yeah. I grew up civ, and sometimes I can't even remember what it was like anymore. Other times it's like some weird dream where everything is different from what you know."

"Different? Like, how?"

"You know." Stark fumbled for words. "Different."

"I grew up on a fort," Desoto stated. "I don't know different. Like in school, everybody's mother and father, or maybe both, were in the mil and maybe off fighting. And we all knew we'd grow up and join the mil like them. Is that what civ kids are like?"

"No." Stark lowered his head, staring at the metal flooring beneath his feet. "No. Civ kids . . . okay, their parents do a lot of stuff. All different jobs. But hardly any of them run around saying, Tm gonna do what my dad or my mom does.'"

"How come?"

"They just don't. I dunno. Everything's confusing. You got all these . . . options . . . but most of them ain't real and you don't have any way of really understanding what the others are like. I mean, the mil, it's your life. Everything you do is mil. But civ jobs are all different. Maybe you understand what your parents do for a living, maybe you don't. Maybe you want to do the same thing. Maybe not."

Desoto nodded, his face puzzled. "You didn't want to do what your father did?"

"No."

"It was a real bad job?"

Stark looked up finally, face set in an unreadable expression. "I used to think so. I used to know everything when I was a teenager."

"We all did, Sergeant." Desoto laughed.

"Yeah. Now, I dunno. Maybe Dad didn't have the most important job in the world, but I guess he did it as best he could."

"You got an important job."

"I like to think so, but I know civs don't understand it. I was there, Pablo. One of them. Didn't have a clue what the mil was like." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter now, I guess. My life as a civ ended a long time ago."

"But you still have a home there."

"I guess. Sorta. Like I said, that civ life doesn't seem real anymore." Stark slapped Desoto on the shoulder. "Why do I need to go to a civ neighborhood to get home? Hell, I'm home right now."

Sensory overload threatened, even through the filter of the battle armor's systems, as the final American defensive line on the ridge got pounded by everything the enemy could throw at it. The lunar soil shuddered repeatedly as enemy rounds and submunitions hit, dust thrown up to hang in slowly falling curtains that were quickly ripped by small-arms and heavy-weapons fire.

Stark's Tactical glowed serenely, displaying no changes and no updates. It looked like the brass had locked up again. No decisions, no brilliant stratagems. Just hold until there was no one left to hold. Not the first time a unit died in place because no one could figure out how to extract them. But now that kind of thing was being shunted to the civs to see on vid. Great drama. Blood and guts. Now the civs would get to see them buy it, not staring in sick fascination at a rain of death displayed on their HDDs but watching all nice and comfortable in their media rooms with pretzels and cold beer.

Can't run, not without screwing every other soldier on the line. Can't stay, unless dying in place counted, which sometimes it did but not now. Stark hugged the rocks and dust and felt death's impacts trembling through them. The ghosts of trampled grass blades seemed to wave in front of his face shield, vibrating in time to the explosions. How many of the soldiers on this ridge might already be down, how long was left until the enemy pushed again and cracked the line wide open?

A unit could take only so much punishment, throw out only so much destruction at the enemy before ammo started to run low and battle fatigue ate at their brains. Too much combat, sustained too long, and you reached a point where the incoming rounds started to overpower resistance, a point where your own stuff couldn't hit back hard enough. Then it was just a matter of waiting until the unit's line started crumbling like cardboard under rain, falling apart into individuals and breaking away.

Stark had been here before, in another place, where grass grew. Lots of grass, tall and wild on the open hilltop, grass that had been trampled by heavy boots and matted down with blood as a long afternoon turned into despairing sunset. A place where the indigs had outside backing, a place where his unit had found itself on the downside of the firepower game, the manpower game, and the tactical thinking game. He could see it still, the tree line on all sides flashing with gunfire, those deadly flashes only partly obscured by the haze of battle. The soldiers to either side dying in sudden silence or long agony, their final duty to have their bodies plundered by those still living for desperately needed ammunition and medical supplies.

Not this time, Stark thought with rising rage. I'm not gonna sit here while everyone dies around me. I don't care what happens to me. But what can I do?

Over the squad net Hector called, his voice distorted with strain. "Sarge, it's getting mondo bad over here."

Stark came back quickly, trying to sound as sharp and cool as if he were on inspection. No panic. Keep their fear, your fear, under control. "You need me to hold your hand? I've been through a lot worse than this."

There was a long pause, then Billings came back, unnaturally calm. "Hector's down, Sarge."

Startled, Stark checked his HUD. No unit casualty stats showed. Sonofabitch. They're screening out casualties. Damn. Damn. Damn. Brigade had started sanitizing the information available to lower-level systems. That meant the brass expected heavy losses and didn't want them to know they were being torn apart. Never mind that filtering out the information at squad level meant Stark couldn't keep track of his own capabilities.

Like hell, Stark thought with redoubled fury. I'm not playing that damned game. Not here. Not now. There was another way. No orders? Fine. He'd make up his own. Maybe for the last time. Save his Squad if he could. If they were going to buy body bags anyway there wasn't much sense in not trying.

Stark raised his head, fighting down fear that the movement would attract instant fire, and scanned the ground ahead slowly, concentrating to block out the panic that threatened to break free. The intensity of the enemy barrage had grown so bad it actually provided some cover, the rocks, dust, and other junk tossed into slow-falling lunar trajectories that confused or blocked enemy targeting systems. Stark squinted, matching what he could see with the partial map on his HUD. If he could just cover that flat area between him and the next ridge, he'd be in among the enemy grunts and at least he wouldn't die cowering here. At least. Do the unexpected. The enemy had been pushing them hard, trying to make them break, and by now the enemy had to be tired, too.

Okay. Get to that ridge. Maybe one hundred meters. Piece of cake on an exercise track, but impossibly far here and now. He and the Squad would need cover, and they didn't have the bullets left to provide suppressive fire.

They did have the damned dust, though. There was plenty of that.

Stark called up a personal circuit, one jump-wired so the command channel and the vid monitors couldn't access it. "Pablo," he called his Corporal. "Need you. Get ready to put a string of delay-fuzzed eggs along this line." As he spoke, Stark used his helmet sight to draw a ragged series of impact points along the far ridge and through the low terrain before it.

"Okay, Sarge." Desoto wasn't happy, but he didn't question the order. "That's going to use up all the grenades left in the autolauncher."

"If this doesn't work, we won't need them." Stark switched back to the regular circuit, ready for the chain of command to track his actions again, now that it would be too late for them to veto anything. "Third Squad, stand by. Okay, Corporal Desoto. Fire."

Stark's HUD suddenly tracked a dozen grenades flying toward the points he'd designated. Every round on target despite the intense enemy fire. Good shooting, Pablo. The rounds hit, and, after a pause, detonated from below the surface, throwing up a dense cloud of dust along and before the ridge. 'Third Squad! Follow me!" Fighting down the voice screaming in the back of his brain to hide-hide-hide, Stark lunged forward, rolling headfirst down the slope before him, running, staggering back and forth to confuse aiming in case the enemy could somehow see him, trying to hold a course toward the next ridge. His HUD flickered, staggering under the load of enemy jamming, then blanked out, blinded by the dust, picking up incoming small-arms fire and energy pulses close by, here and gone in a blink through the obscuring cloud. He kept going, hoping his Squad had followed, trying not to think beyond the next step.

His feet hit an upslope and Stark surged forward, putting all he had into a final burst of speed. He cleared the cloud of dust and debris, sudden stars and black night seeming unnaturally bright, bursting out with the top of the ridge before him and in a single motion dove low down and across the rocks, turning to glide down into the dust of the reverse slope, head down on his back, bringing his rifle around and triggering its two grenades to either side, lining up the sight to aim-squeeze-fire, aim-squeeze-fire at the figures scattered here. Enemy soldiers fell, atmosphere venting from ruptured armor, firing across at him from each side, rounds passing above his prone body to inadvertently engage their own forces on either side.

Stark slid to a halt, aim suddenly jittery as he tried to keep shooting, feeling a long, slow moment of despair as enemy fire steadied, knowing he had only seconds left and panic frozen inside. Didn't work. At least I tried. Sorry, you guys. I guess the civs will get to watch us buy it after all. Hope Mom and Dad see this, know I did 'em proud, if they can stand seeing me die out here.

Another figure loomed, shockingly close from over the ridge, and Stark swung to fire, freezing his finger on the trigger as IFF shouted "friendly!" Then there were more friendlies coming over the ridge. His Squad, shouting and firing at enemy ranks already disrupted by Stark's charge. The enemy began falling back in confusion, ranks torn and broken.

"Jesus, Sarge," Murphy screamed as his armored body flopped down near Stark, his weapon jumping as rounds ripped out in an almost steady stream, "why the hell'd you do that? Next time give me a heads-up!"

"Sure," Stark shouted back, automatically rolling away from Murphy to avoid providing a clustered target. Stark's comm system was screaming now, too, commands from up the chain tangling with each other and enemy jamming. "Get the heavy weapons!" he ordered.

Murphy and the rest of the Squad turned, targeting the weapons pits that were finally reacting, shifting aim to target Stark's Squad now that their own troops weren't intermingled. Some of the Squad scrambled up, trying to get in among the enemy once again, but dropped rapidly as the heavies opened up, raking the area with firepower the Squad's own small-arms fire couldn't match. The charge's momentum faltered, events hanging in the balance as the enemy tried to figure out what had happened and how to crush the unexpected assault.

A huge object jumped the ridge to Stark's left, gouging out a swath of terrain as it shaved the top, then slid ponderously down in a slow avalanche of rocks and dust, turret swiveling and secondary rounds going out, enemy weapon pits erupting into clouds of debris as the tank took out local targets. Whoops of triumph filled the comm circuits. Of course, Stark realized. We cleared the troops manning the ridge, so a tank could get across without being targeted. He suddenly loved all tankers, especially the one who'd risked his or her machine and life in that mad leap to join them. The turret steadied a moment and the main gun jumped, followed seconds later by a massive detonation in the distance.

More infantry came over the ridge. Stark's overloaded HUD painted a flickering picture of tentative IDs that indicated the rest of his Platoon had followed his Squad. "Stark!" Lieutenant Porter's outraged voice rang out in a moment of comm clarity. "What the hell—?" Then it was overridden, Tactical clearing momentarily to shift in a wild update, ordering an advance all along the ridge. Someone up the chain had seen the opportunity offered by Stark's Squad's charge, had broken out of paralysis long enough to shove everything available after them.

The enemy line had fallen apart. Some of their infantry were still running, others stopping and dropping their weapons to await capture. The tank continued methodically chewing up every target in sight, shifting position as the second and third tanks in the squadron heaved up over the ridge to join it. On the HUD, Stark watched as more troops poured into their penetration, widening the hole and peeling away the edges like a river in flood tearing open a dam. Then the river faltered, slowing to a trickle as the stream of troops ran dry. Nothing left to exploit the success, Stark noted bleakly. We used up everything we had stopping the enemy.

Stark came up to one knee, trying to judge the status of his Squad from their position markers, knowing he couldn't yet trust their health or readiness readouts. Somewhere up ahead, a sudden flurry of fire marked the enemy rushing in reinforcements to stabilize their front and seal the penetration, the two armies clashing in drunken exhaustion like punch-drunk fighters still trying to land blows but too worn out to achieve much without rest. His HUD displayed tangles of estimates warped by jamming, comm delays, and enemy deception, but the lines seemed to be holding on both sides even as Stark's Tactical ordered another advance against the rapidly solidifying enemy resistance.

"Gimme a break." Stark checked his own ammunition, noting less than a half-dozen rounds remaining, and extrapolated that to the rest of the Squad. "Lieutenant Porter?"

"Stark!" The signal came through so clear that Porter must have somehow gotten himself onto this side of the ridge as well, maybe with the assistance of the dismounted APC driver who still had to be thirsting for revenge over her gunner's death. "If you ever take off without orders or Tactical again I'll, I'll—"

"Yessir. Lieutenant, I've got orders from Tactical to assault, but my Squad's out of ammo."

"So what? Follow orders for once! Just do what you're damn well told!"

"Lieutenant," Stark corrected, trying to project regretful innocence, "doctrine states exhaustion of ammunition requires holding in place until resupply."

"It does? Damn. Sergeant Reynolds?"

"Reynolds here," Vic's voice chimed back. Stark ducked his head in gratitude to hear she'd survived the assault as well.

"How's your ammunition?"

"One or two rounds left per weapon, Lieutenant."

"Sergeant Sanchez?" Porter called, sounding increasingly vexed.

"Yes, Lieutenant." Sanchez might have been reporting in a routine roll call. "I have no ammunition remaining."

"Whatever happened to fire discipline?" Porter demanded. "What about casualties?"

"Unknown," Stark declared coldly. "Casualties are being screened out at our level. We can't trust our Tactical picture."

"I—" Porter cut off his own reply, then spoke again as if with difficulty. "I'll report our status up the chain. Stand by for orders."

Stark, trying to fight off a giddiness born of unlooked-for survival, switched his own comms to talk to Reynolds directly. "Hey, Vic. What happened to all your ammo? You been in a battle or something?"

"Look who's talking. How many angels you got looking out for—? Oh, God."

"What?" Stark checked his HUD, spotting incoming through the mess of symbology. Careless. It's not over. Too damn careless. "Third Squad! Take cover!" Enemy heavy artillery had finally reacted. Massive rounds started dropping along the ridge, perhaps called in on their own position by the now-fleeing enemy infantry. Stark held on to the rocks beneath him as the lunar soil shuddered with impacts so heavy he seemed to be on the verge of launching into the empty atmosphere, wondering why the artillery had concentrated on this site, then cursing wildly as one of the reasons rumbled by.

"Third Squad, get out of here!" Stark bellowed. "Away from the armor, now!" Tanks were magnets for enemy fire, and there were three of the metal monsters scattered among Stark's own Squad's position. He rose and dashed to the right, downslope, taking only a dozen steps before his suit shrieked another warning. Stark dove for the ground again, forgetting where he was, forgetting to pull himself down instead of depending on gravity, falling with agonizing slowness until a column of fire blossomed close by and a great hand reached over and slapped him with shrapnel fingers.

Darkness without stars cleared abruptly, Stark's ears ringing with comms and suit alarms. Battered but somehow still intact, pitted with shrapnel scars, the armor had absorbed the impact without suffering a major rupture. "Third Squad. Follow me." He rose, limping as either his leg or the battle armor protested the movement, leading the way down off the ridge.

"Sarge?" someone called, voice distorted by screeches of static. "We gonna attack again, Sarge?"

Stark checked Tactical once more, glaring at the red digits demanding his Squad assail the enemy again immediately. "No."

"But our orders—"

"Screw our orders. We're digging in."

Stark stood awkwardly, helmet in hand in traditional deference to the dead as he stood in the field hospital. A medic who looked like he hadn't slept in a week stared bleary-eyed up at the Sergeant. Stark nodded to indicate the medical wards down the hall. "I'm here to see Gomez."

"Gomez?" The medic made an obvious effort to concentrate, typing with careful precision on the laptop before him. "Anita? Bay 25B."

"Thanks." Stark headed in the direction indicated, keeping his hands well clear of the unadorned white paint that sealed the rock walls here. Bay 25B held more of the same, a white curtain strung across the entrance, white ceiling, white sheets on a bed where Gomez lay with a white cast covering most of one leg. Even Gomez seemed whitened, drained of color by shock.

Stark sat and waited, patiently. Sleep was important, more important than his words, so he waited until Gomez finally stirred, blinking up at the whiteness all around with a dazed expression.

Gomez stared, unable to speak, until Stark finally quirked his lips in a small smile. "Guess I finally found out how to shut you up, eh, Anita?" He leaned forward to peer into her eyes. "You don't look too drugged up." Stark gestured toward her leg. "A heavy round went off right next to you, they tell me, close enough for the pressure wave to hit, but so close you were inside the shrapnel pattern. Concussion broke your leg and bruised the hell out you, but no suit penetration. Lucky."

Gomez drew in a breath, half sigh and half sob as the gesture apparently brought pain. She used one hand to raise the sheet covering her, wincing at the sight of one side of her body painted in patterns of purplish-black, which seemed doubly awful amid the whiteness all around. "Damn. Thought I was dead." Gomez winced, looking embarrassed at speaking so frankly to her Sergeant.

"We all ought to be," Stark agreed.

"You told us to follow you," Gomez pointed out.

"Yeah, I did. Damn fool stunt, but I didn't think we had any other choice."

"Yeah, well, you did good, Sarge," Gomez offered. "Saved our butts."

"For now, yeah, maybe I did."

"What's going on out there right now?"

"Digging in," Stark stated. "Everybody's going deep, laying minefields, building bunkers. There's talk of us trying to retake the areas we lost. Seems the civ politicians still want to claim the whole Moon. They got one helluva appetite for territory."

"Great. What about the other side? They willing to let us?"

"Nah. The enemy seems to still be interested in pushing us off the Moon completely. They're tired of getting kicked around. Fighting all-out back on Earth would be too dangerous, but up here they're willing to face off with us."

"Man," Gomez noted ruefully, "looks like everybody's drawn a line in the dirt."

"That's right, and we're sitting right on top of that line. Looks like it's going to be a long war."

"Lucky us." Gomez grinned. "Hey, I'm alive."

"Yeah, lucky." Stark took a deep breath, avoiding Gomez's eyes. "You've been doing good lately. Real good. Reliable. Sharp. Looking out for other grunts, not just yourself."

She blushed and looked away, unable to deal with the praise. "Just doing what I'm supposed to. You always said we need to look out for each other, Sarge."

Stark leaned back, now gazing at her steadily. "You've been field-promoted to Corporal. Congratulations."

Gomez stared back at him, alarmed. "Corporal? Sarge, I'm happy as a Private. I'm no Corporal. No, thanks."

"That wasn't an offer, so you don't get to refuse it. We need a new Corporal," Stark added bluntly, "and you'll be a good one."

It took a moment to sink in, then Gomez's face fell as the meaning came clear. "Pablo? He was hit, too?"

"Hit, yeah." Stark kept his face impassive, his words flat. "They were able to reconstruct what happened from the vid feed. One of the heavy rounds they were throwing at us, probably a two-hundred-millimeter, hit him dead on. You and I, we had good luck. He had bad. They found enough of him to do a DNA match, but not much more."

"Damn," Gomez whispered, blinking rapidly. "Pablo, he always said he was scared of the body bags, scared of being fastened in one while he was still alive. Funny, huh? All the things we got to worry about, and that's what scared him. Now he won't need one, not scattered in a million pieces across . . . where was it? That last fight?"

"The Sea of Tranquility," Stark replied. "Near it, anyway."

Gomez nodded. "The tanks that saved us, came over the ridge, they also attracted the fire that killed Pablo?"

"Probably. My fault. I should've realized quicker, gotten us moving faster."

"Nah, Sarge. We needed those tanks, but nothing ever comes free or easy, right?"

"Right."

"We lose anybody else?"

"Hector's gone, nailed during that barrage before we attacked, and Carter got her head blown off, maybe before the enemy weapon's pits got taken out. Chen's wounded, took a round in his left hip, but the docs have replaced the joint and he'll heal up fine." Funny thing, the battle armor protected pretty well, which meant that when something did get through, it was likely to be lethal. Fewer wounded. A higher percentage of dead. Sort of a good deal.

Gomez nodded, face stricken. "Could've been worse. A lot worse."

"Yeah, could've been." Stark stood, feeling heavily burdened despite the light pull of Luna. "I'll leave. You gotta rest. Just wanted to be here when you woke." He turned, then looked back before he left. "Real sorry about Juan Hector, and Susan Carter, and Pablo. I know you were friends. Pablo was my friend, too, and a damn fine Corporal. Would have made a good Sergeant someday." I should've done better. Somehow. He left the last unspoken, the thought lying across his shoulders like an invisible burden.

Gomez nodded, wordless once more, as Stark left. The white ceilings, walls, and curtains spoke of peace and healing in the hushed silence of the medical ward, yet as Stark walked down the hall, the chaos of bygone battles raged in his mind, and pain filled him.

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Framed