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PART ONE
The Use of the Battle

"Why should I care what a mutinous mob has to say? Why should I care what you have to say?"

Sergeant Ethan Stark, acting commander of the rebellious American military forces on the Moon, held his temper with an effort. "General, you command the enemy forces occupying part of the lunar surface outside our perimeter. I command the units defending the American Colony. We're not a mob. I am attempting to—"

"If you wish to surrender, I would entertain the possibility."

"We won't surrender. Not to you. Not to anybody. You've agreed to let the part of the Moon's surface under your direct control be used as a staging area for supplies and ammunition to be used against us. We can't permit that."

"You threaten me? You actually dare to threaten me?"

"I'm just telling you we won't allow preparations for an attack against us to proceed without taking action."

Stark's latest words seemed to amuse the enemy general. "I see. So you are just offering friendly advice? Why should I pay more attention to you than to the representatives of the U.S. government? They are paying us handsomely for the use of our facilities. What can you offer in exchange for my turning down such an opportunity?"

"I'm not offering you anything."

"Nothing? You bargain poorly. Perhaps you are, what is the American expression, 'out of your league?' "

"My soldiers are the best combatants on the lunar surface. We're a helluva lot better at playing the game up here than your forces are, General, and we've proved that more than once." The smile vanished from his opponent's face. "Stirring up a hornet's nest isn't in your best interests. You'd be wise to listen to what I'm telling you."

"Listen to you? Or you will do . . . what? You think I am interested in your 'advice'? Advice from a mob with no offensive capability?"

"I repeat; we're not a mob. Maybe we're not taking orders from authorities on Earth right now, but we're still a fully functioning military organization, we're still dedicated to defending the American citizens in the Colony here, and I assure you that we have the ability to launch attacks anywhere, at any time, in support of that mission."

"Of course you can. Attack our defenses, your fighting spirit against our entrenched weapons and soldiers. Just as your friends did. What was it called? The Third Division? Before we ground them into the dust? Have you managed to recover all of their bodies yet?"

Stark's vision hazed red with anger as the enemy commander mocked the deaths of thousands. Third Division had been effectively destroyed during the ill-planned and poorly led offensive that had triggered the mutiny by Stark and the other noncommissioned officers on the Moon. The disaster had been the final straw after decades of poor leadership on Earth and years of seemingly endless war on the lunar surface, the final straw for soldiers who believed they could no longer trust in anyone but themselves. I risked everything to try to save some of the apes in Third Division, and I'm not gonna listen to some smug, pompous ass make fun of their sacrifice.

Stark raised one hand, as if pointing a weapon, then plunged it down to break the communications circuit. The enemy General's image vanished, leaving Stark's command center momentarily silent.

Sergeant Vic Reynolds, Stark's friend and chief of staff, kept her eyes on the screen for a moment after it went dark, then glanced over at Stark. "Let's kick his teeth in."

"Yeah. Let's do that."

Shapes moved against the endless night of space. Blunt objects carrying people and cargo, the convoy of shuttles hung in a ragged formation while a pair of escorting warships herded them toward the lunar landing field awaiting their arrival. There were wolves among the stars, hiding in the dark in wait for fat, easy targets like the supply shuttles.

Alarms sounded as sensor arrays on the warships tracked objects rising from the Moon's surface toward the convoy. The armed shuttles of Stark's tiny Navy lunged at the convoy, even as the warship escorts moved to intercept the threat. New stars winked into life against the blackness, as fire and counterfire blazed between the combatants.

Around Stark, the watchstanders in the command center in the American headquarters complex on the lunar surface worked quietly and efficiently, organizing and feeding information to the huge displays dominating the room. Colored symbols crawled across those displays like geometric insects; red for enemy, blue for friendly. Threat symbology, representing weapons, darted around the larger shapes, which marked warships and shuttles, the spacecraft seeming slow and cumbersome compared with the flight of their weapons. Stark had to remind himself that those spacecraft could move at speeds measured in miles per second, a concept almost too alien for a ground soldier to grasp.

"Commander Stark?" One of the watchstanders highlighted text scrolling in one corner of the big headquarters display. "We're picking up communications from the warships on the common merchant frequency."

Stark squinted to read the words. "Charlie Foxtrot Bravo Two? What's that mean?"

"It's from the Convoy Tactical Signals Code, sir. I guess they haven't changed it. The signal means 'All convoy units remain in formation.' The warships have repeated the message several times."

Stark looked back at the display, where vectors for the supply shuttles continued to shoot off in various directions. "It doesn't look like the convoy is paying much attention."

"No, sir. The warships sound kinda upset."

"According to Chief Wiseman, they shouldn't have expected anything else. It's exactly what she told us would happen."

Weapons burst, creating expanding clusters of heat and debris, while the dueling warships tossed out countermeasures designed to fool radar, infrared, and any other means of targeting them. Stark's search systems lost contact with the fleeing supply shuttles, their vectors fading into estimated tracks as a sector of the forever-night over the Moon grew temporarily opaque to ground-based sensors.

Despite their overwhelming advantage in firepower, the escorting warships hung back, forming a defensive shield for the now-scattered convoy, content to hurl volleys whenever one of Stark's armed shuttles swung toward them.

"Chief Wiseman," Stark called his fleet commander. In response to his communication, a window automatically opened in one corner of Stark's display, showing the face of Chief Petty Officer Wiseman on the command deck of her armed shuttle. "What're those warships doing?"

"Exactly what I expected them to do. They're protecting those supply shuttles. The warships don't know exactly where all the convoy shuttles are anymore, but they're trying to stay between me and them."

"Couldn't the warships defend the convoy better by coming at your shuttles and hitting them hard? You couldn't hold your ground against that. They'd drive you away for sure."

"Hey, Commander, leave the Navy stuff to experts. That's why I'm in charge of your fleet, right? Listen close, mud crawler. Those warships aren't charging after me because of something called physics. You ever study naval tactics?"

"I saw a lot of old vids when I was a kid. You know, slave galleys and sailing ships and stuff. I wouldn't expect that to have anything to do with what you're doing."

"Wrong. We're playing by the same rules up here as those oar-powered galleys did. It's all about limited propulsion resources and momentum. These ships, even my shuttles; are big. Lots of mass. We accelerate slow, relative to things like our weapons, and once we get going in one direction we can't shift to a new course by turning on a dime. Mass don't like changing direction, and unlike ships back on the World, we don't even have water to turn against."

Wiseman tapped some controls, bringing up a small 3-D panel in one corner of the comm screen. "See? Here's the convoy, coming out of one of the Earth's orbital facilities, making a standard approach to the Moon. Standard because it requires the best combination of least fuel and least time." A broad arrow extended outward from the World, curving as it intercepted the Moon's own orbit. "Physics tells those shuttles they need to follow this path to get to their objective on the Moon. We know physics, too, so we know the path they're gonna take."

A short red arrow arced up from the Moon, aiming to intercept the shuttles. "We've got what you'd call a window up here, an area above the Moon guarded by our anti-orbital defenses. We pop out that window and make a move at the convoy. The warships try to keep us from getting close enough to nail any of the convoy shuttles, but the shuttles are scattering anyway because they're a bunch of civs hired to haul loads and none of them want to get shot at. Meanwhile, everybody and their friend throws out various junk designed to keep enemies from tracking a target, like the little doppelganger decoys that pick up emissions from other ships in the area and mimic them. It'll all disperse or deactivate eventually, but for now we've confused the traffic control situation up here something awful. Anybody monitoring this location will be seeing some stuff that ain't there, and not be able to see some stuff that is there."

Stark confirmed Wiseman's statement by checking the confused tangle of symbols on the headquarters display, then studied the 3-D panel again. "Great. But that still doesn't explain why those warships don't just charge at you. You'd have to run, then."

Wiseman grinned. "There's more than one direction to run. We could accelerate straight past them. Risky, but getting hits on us during a high-speed pass would be real hard. So, sure, those warships could come after us, but if even one of my shuttles gets past them, those warships will have the devil's own time turning and accelerating back in the other direction to try to catch it. We'd be in among the convoy's supply shuttles for sure before the warships got back."

Vic Reynolds, standing near Stark, nodded. "So you're saying the warships have some probability of winning, but prefer the certainty of not losing."

"Well, that's their job, ain't it? Killing my shuttles would be fun, but those warships ain't on a hunter-killer sweep. So they're just gonna hold me off and make sure I don't get to the supply shuttles they're charged with protecting. In the process of doing that, though, they've lost track of those supply shuttles in the mess of combat and countermeasures we're generating up here."

"Just like you said they would." During the planning for the operation, Wiseman had been confident. You want to raid the enemy? Fine. You can't shoot your way in. The only way through their defenses is by confusing 'em and foolin' 'em. Give me an incoming convoy, and I'll screw the situation around so bad the enemy won't know which end is up. "So you think this diversion is working?"

"We're gonna find out for sure any time now. One thing's for certain, we've generated so much 'noise' up here that anything being quiet is gonna be a lot harder to spot until it clears this area. Keep your fingers crossed."

Out of the confused tangle of dueling countermeasures and battle debris, four supply shuttles fell toward the lunar surface, broadcasting urgent pleas for sanctuary on the enemy landing field nearest their trajectories. One of Wiseman's armed shuttles made an abortive lunge in their direction, quickly shying off as enemy surface defenses locked on and prepared to engage once the armed shuttle came within range. The supply shuttles dropped swiftly, tracked by surface defenses that remained silent as the unarmed supply craft braked hard to make emergency landings on the field.

Lunar dust drifted in fine, slowly falling clouds across the spaceport. Landing fields were regularly swept for dust, but the fine particles always reappeared, drifting down from space or dislodged by the actions of humans nearby. Against the solid black shadows and glaring white of sunlight on the lunar surface, the gray shades of dust hung like a thin, pallid fog.

Now, as always, it hindered the vision of the multispectrum sensors trying to identify the supply shuttles. "Unidentified shuttles," someone called. "Provide your ship identification codes and landing field authorization."

"What?" The supply shuttle pilot responding had a ragged, frightened edge to his voice, speaking too rapidly as he continued. "Didn't copy. Say again. Who is this?"

"This is the landing field controller. I need your ship identification codes. Provide them immediately. Where was your scheduled landing destination?"

"Uh, uh . . . I think, uh, right here. Yeah. This field. We were supposed to land here."

"Negative, shuttle. We have no deliveries scheduled today. Identify yourself and your authorized destination immediately."

"Right here, I tell you! Hey, we almost got blown to pieces and just barely made it down, and you're giving us a hard time! Give us a break! Just let us off-load our cargo so we can get the hell out of this war zone and back to near-Earth orbit where it's safe!"

"Shuttle, do not off-load cargo onto this field without authorization. We have no heavy transport available to receive your loads."

"Don't need it, pal. Our cargo can move on its own. Beginning off-load now." Moments later, cargo bays gaped open on the shuttles and began disgorging armored figures.

"What's going on? Who are those people?"

"Our cargo, buddy! Like I told you."

"We have no . . . are those soldiers? Are you off-loading soldiers?"

"Yeah. That's our cargo. Deliver here. That's what my flight plan says." As the pilot and landing field controller debated, the soldiers swiftly formed into parade ranks and started marching across the field, their formations appearing almost tiny against the dead, gray expanse of the landing field. Almost unnoticed behind them, the shuttles began disgorging four huge black shapes.

"I don't have any delivery notification for soldiers! Get them back on those shuttles!"

"Uh-uh. No way. I almost got killed delivering them, and you want me to take them back? Look, my orders say to drop these military goons off for, uh, security duties here. You got something special worth guarding?"

"We have a considerable quantity of supplies the Americans are staging here for their offensive against their rebellious colony. But no one notified us they were sending . . . what is that?" The first of the black shapes swung majestically out from beneath the shuttle that had delivered it. Nonreflective surfaces only hinted at the massive armored shape as it surged forward across the field in the wake of the soldiers. "Is that a tank?"

"Uh, yeah, that's what the delivery order says."

Send some of my armor along, Sergeant Lamont had urged.

That's crazy, Sergeant Reynolds had rebutted him. You don't send heavy armor on raids.

Yeah. Everybody knows that. So nobody'll expect it, right? How much anti-armor weaponry is on ready-alert in a rear area? Most likely none. And if you're dropping big cargo shuttles on the field, they can each carry one of my hogs in their heavy lift slings. Total surprise. Bet ya I can raise a lot of hell before anybody can react.

It might work, Stark had admitted. But you're still crazy.

Nah. I'm a tanker.

"Stop them! Stop the tanks and the soldiers. Everybody cease movement. I need to clear this."

"Hey." Sergeant Lamont, in the lead tank, joined the conversation. "I can't leave my gear just sitting out in the open." Stark, tracking the vehicle's progress through the command and control link, shifted his perspective to view the world through the tank commander's display, watching as the armored vehicle's sensors automatically located and tagged defenses and communications points around the landing field. Though Stark had never been inside a tank, he'd viewed the outside world many times from the inside of an Armored Personnel Carrier, and the smooth scrolling past of the barren landscape was just like that from an outside viewer on an APC. "My orders say to deploy my tanks around this field," Lamont continued.

"I've never seen such orders!"

"Well, then, you oughta check with the landing field controller."

"This is the landing field controller!"

"Then you must have a copy of our orders."

"There are no such orders on file. Who issued them?"

"They came from your boss."

"My—?" The controller hesitated as Lamont's tanks and the infantry moved closer to the edges of the landing field. "What's the Landing Authority Authorization Order Code?"

"The Landing Authority Authorization Order Code?"

"Yes. The LAAOC."

"Uh, lemme see. Where is that?"

"In the order header! If you military people don't stop moving immediately I'll. . . I'll tell our security forces to stop you!"

"Hey, hey, calm down."

Stark looked over at Reynolds, who was smiling in admiration despite the tension in her eyes. "Lamont can stall like nobody's business," Stark noted. "But he's pushing it, Vic. We need to shoot first or that infantry might get chewed up by the landing field defenses."

"You're right, especially with our troops marching in close order so nobody'll think they're attacking until it's too late. Do we tell Lamont to open fire?"

"I don't want to do that, Vic. The guy on the scene should have the discretion to decide. That's what we always said should happen, right?"

"It's hard to argue with that. We all got micromanaged too many times by people sitting a hundred klicks from the front. It's awfully tempting to try to run everything from here." She waved one hand around the headquarters command center, filled with displays and communications terminals from which officers had once tried to do just that. "This gear makes it real easy to think you're right there on the scene."

"Yeah. Only you're not, so you don't really know what's going down like the people who are there. We don't want to give dumb orders which kill people and lose battles. Which is what the officers we replaced used to do. But Lamont's too cocky. He's having too much fun playing with that enemy controller."

"I agree. He's too caught up in the deception game. Someone watching the bigger picture has to reign him in, Ethan."

"Okay. I get it. That someone would be me, right? I guess that's the right job for someone back here. Lamont, this is Stark."

"Hey, boss. We're doing great."

"Lamont, stop trying to string this guy. Open fire as soon as you're ready."

"You mean like now?"

"I mean like real soon. It's still your call. But don't let him get off the first shot, or I'll rip your head off when you get back here."

"Uh, roger that. Stand by for fireworks."

After several more verbal exchanges with Lamont, the increasingly frustrated and angry controller had apparently reached the end of his rope. "Stop all movement or I will activate our security forces!"

"Hold on. Did you say you needed our LAAOC?"

"Yes, you idiot!"

"Well, I got your LAAOC right here, pal." On Stark's display, he watched threat symbology detach itself from the tank as its main cannon swung and fired in one motion. An instant of shocked silence reigned, then the shell impacted on the main surface communications relay, hurling fragments of rock and metal in all directions. Lamont's other tanks opened fire, raking the landing field defenses even as those defenders frantically tried to bring to bear weapons designed to engage overhead targets, not forces deployed on the field itself.

The neat infantry formations dissolved, armored soldiers scattering into combat dispersal and engaging targets with deliberate skill. Stark switched displays to the camera mounted in an individual soldier's helmet, watching through the eyes of a squad leader as she led her troops into a defensive fortification. Symbology on the battle armor Heads-Up Displays painted lightning-quick detections of armored foes, HUD targeting systems highlighting kill-points as the squad swept forward, pausing only to fire their rifles as they picked off each target. Wish I was doing that, instead of sitting here. Wish the other noncoms had chosen someone else to lead them so I could still be a squad leader. But I got another job to do now.

The squad Stark was observing overran the fortification, the remnants of the enemy weapon's crew hastily surrendering. On the squad leader's HUD, points for attaching demolition charges were now illuminated on the heavy surface defenses. The squad broke into fire teams, some guarding the prisoners while others placed the demolitions to ensure the weapons' destruction. All happening perfect without me calling the shots. This is the way it ought to be. I know from lots of experience that the best thing leaders can usually do is keep their mouths shut and let their people do their jobs. As long as they ain't screwing up, anyway. But man, it's frustrating.

Something was missing, something that nagged at Stark, so that he automatically glanced toward one corner of the squad leader's HUD, looking for something that wasn't there. The timeline. It had become so routine, a readout linked to the operational plan that informed every individual soldier the second they began to fall behind the rigid schedules devised by planners who likely had never seen the battlefield. A happy green when the soldier was on timeline, most soldiers were used to seeing it in increasingly accusing shades of yellow, orange, and red. Being off timeline was a major distraction for a combat soldier, so Stark and his improvised staff had decided to see what would happen without one. So far, the world hadn't come to an end.

"I read all primary defenses eliminated," Lamont reported. "Whadayya think, Milheim?"

Sergeant Milheim, commanding the ground soldiers from Fourth Battalion on the landing field, took a moment to respond. "Yeah. We're not taking any fire, anyway."

"Well, then, let's start blowing things up!"

"Concur. Fourth Battalion, plant your charges on the targets specified in your Tacs. Keep an eye out for hostile visitors while you're at it." The soldiers of Fourth Battalion scattered even more, heading for locations where their Tactical Computer Systems indicated communications, weapons, and supply equipment should be.

Stark pulled his view back again, scanning the display for indications of an enemy response. Every soldier's suit, every tank, every shuttle contained sensors, and the inputs from those sources were all fed to places like this to be fused together into a single picture. Blue symbols marking Stark's troops swarmed over the field like ants at a picnic. Several small clusters of red enemy symbology sat motionless, tagged with extra symbols, indicating their status as prisoners. At a few sites along the edge of the field, green symbols indicated probable civilian employees of the landing field fleeing for their lives. Stark shook his head. "I don't see nothing."

Reynolds studied the display. "And that bothers you." It was a statement rather than a question.

"Damn right. There oughta be something else in place defending that field. Lamont! Milheim!"

"Yo."

"Roger."

"Listen up. There's something else out there. Keep your guard up."

"I don't see anything," Milheim offered.

"Neither do I. So where would a quick reaction defensive force be that we wouldn't see it?"

"Cargo warehouses," Lamont announced. "Nice, warm, and hidden until they're needed. You think?"

Vic Reynolds nodded and keyed her own response. "I think so. You're right. They'd be under cover and protected from immediate detection and attack."

"Sure they would. I'll swing a couple of my hogs that way. Milheim, I'd appreciate some of your boys and girls coming along."

"Roger," Milheim acknowledged. "I'm sending the two nearest platoons to link up with your armor."

Stark leaned back, nodding in approval as he watched the commands fly across the tactical display and units on the landing field begin the move in response. He hesitated, then glanced at Reynolds. "So did I just do something stupid? Get all nervous and jerk around the troops on the field for nothing?"

"No. Ethan, you may or may not be right about a reaction force being hidden there, but it makes sense. And thinking about that is exactly what you should be doing from back here. You know what it's like in combat. Too much going on too fast. I think the troops out there appreciate your thinking about things they don't have time to focus on."

"Maybe—" Stark began, whatever else he might have said choked off as alarms pulsed on the display.

Two armored cars shot onto the landing field, erupting from a depression near the known warehouse locations, spitting light-caliber shells as they came. Behind the armored cars, a couple of platoons of infantry came dashing out, firing rapidly. Instead of surprising a widely dispersed force, though, they ran head-on into the scratch force Lamont and Milheim had just assembled.

The light rounds from one of the armored cars glanced uselessly off the carapace of one of Lamont's tanks, which swung its turret and spat a single round at the attacking vehicle. The heavy shell decapitated the armored car, striking just beneath its weapon mount and blowing the entire top of the vehicle into a long, high parabola extended by the low lunar gravity.

The first armored car's gun mount was still tumbling in languid flight against the bright stars above when the nearest squad of Milheim's infantry targeted its companion. At close range, the infantry weapons punched through the light armor of the enemy vehicle, riddling it with penetrations. The armored car staggered under the barrage, then ceased firing, its gun mount locked in place, before grounding and sliding to a prolonged halt, atmosphere venting from a dozen holes. A single surviving crew member spilled out, arms upraised in surrender.

The surprised enemy ground troops targeted Lamont's tanks. Not a great choice, Stark thought, but the only chance they've got is to take out that armor fast. Not that they'll be able to do that with Milheim's infantry hitting them. A single enemy anti-armor round detonated just short of its target as the tank's point defenses scored a just-in-time hit. Then the enemy anti-armor teams started dropping as Milheim's soldiers hit them with a blizzard of fire. Belatedly, the enemy infantry tried to shift targets to hit the other ground fighters, but then the tanks began flaying them with their own secondary armament. A brief scattering of fire from the enemy forces tapered off into nothing, then the enemy began broadcasting surrender messages as individual soldiers stood, dropping their weapons and raising their hands.

"Commander Stark, we got a problem," Milheim reported.

"What's that?"

"I got a coupla platoons of enemy soldiers surrendering here."

"So what's the problem?"

"Do we want 'em?"

"Hell, no." The cargo shuttles had been fully loaded and wouldn't need any extra bodies weighing them down on the way back.

"I didn't think so. What do I do with 'em?"

Stark glanced at Vic, who triggered her own circuit. "Milheim, this is Reynolds. Tell the enemy to leave their weapons and run. Anybody who's slow in doing either gets shot."

"Roger. Oh, man."

"Now what?"

"Got word from one of my squads. There's some American techs here. Private contractors, I think. Do we bring 'em back?"

"Link me to that squad." Stark switched controls swiftly, bringing up vid of the view from another soldier's battle armor. Visible before him were two figures in surface suits, armored only enough to protect them from the lunar environment. Some sort of corporate logo made bright splashes on the left breasts of their suits, looking weirdly out of place against the black, white, and gray of the lunar surface. "They look like civs," he remarked to Reynolds. "What do you think? They might know some stuff we could use."

"They might. But, Ethan, there's a chance we'll lose a shuttle on the way back. We don't want these guys to be on that shuttle, because if they are, we get blamed for causing the deaths of other Americans. American civs, no less. So far, our hands are clean. Let's keep it that way."

"Yeah. Good call, Vic. Milheim? Let 'em go. And tell 'em to run like hell. I don't want them around when we blow away everything on that field."

"You're the boss."

"Hey!" another soldier called over the command circuit. 'This is Corporal Yuin. I'm at that big pile of junk to lunar southeast of the landing field. Everybody stop throwing bullets this way!"

Stark tagged Yuin's symbol. "What's the problem, Corporal?"

"The problem is this junk ain't beans and blankets! Sir. It's ordnance. Live ammo. Tons of it. And it ain't covered by anything but some sort of metallic tarp."

"It's on the surface? Almost unprotected? Geez. Thanks, Corporal." Stark pulled back, glaring around the command center. "Have I got a combat engineer in here anywhere?"

Sergeant Tran, responsible for running the command center since the death of his predecessor, Sergeant Tanaka, pivoted and pointed to where one watchstander was raising her hand. Solid and squarish in her build, she almost resembled a bulldozer herself. "Right here, sir."

"We got a big pile of munitions on the surface. You heard that?"

"Yessir."

"Is that as stupid as I think it is? Won't the stuff blow if one of those micrometeorites hits the pile?"

"Not likely, sir. The explosives they use these days are really stable. They'll only blow if the detonator goes off. So maybe if the little rock hit a detonator dead on, maybe then something would blow. That reinforced tarp they're using would stop the small stuff, or at least slow it enough to reduce the chance of an explosion. I wouldn't do it, but you could get away with storing stuff on the surface for a while like that if you didn't have enough covered storage on hand."

Vic leaned forward. "How do we blow it if the explosives are stable?"

"Oh, that's easy. Just plant the explosive charges. They'll make the right kind of bang to set off the detonators and then everything else." The combat engineer paused. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that spot when the charges go off. That's gonna be a helluva blast."

"I bet," Stark acknowledged."Thanks, Corporal. Milheim, tell your people to plant their charges anywhere on that pile and get me hell out of there. Lamont!"

"Yo." The tanker sounded like he was having the time of his life.

"We got munitions lying around in the area I'm highlighting. Got it? Anything big might set them off, so make sure your people don't throw any heavy stuff in there. We don't need anybody blowing the place halfway back to Earth before we leave."

"That stuff's all ammo? Roger. I got an interdict for that area on all my tanks' fire control systems now. If anybody tries to override it, I'll fire them out of my main cannon."

Stark looked over at Reynolds. "They left tons of ammo just lying on the surface? Are they nuts?"

"More likely they filled the local magazines with other munitions and haven't found a place for this stuff, yet, like the corporal said."

"So what if a big rock fell on it?"

"I assume they were planning on hitting any big rocks with the landing field defenses. That would deflect them, anyway."

"Yeah, right. Probably onto the heads of some poor foot soldiers. Where the hell have our former bosses been keeping all this ordnance? We always ran into shortages before." Before, when they'd been obeying their officers' orders through the apparently endless lunar war. Before they'd mutinied and cut themselves off from a system that never seemed to have enough money for bullets or spare parts, but could always afford to send them somewhere where they needed every bullet and part they could get and then some.

Vic shrugged. "Some of it's probably from the strategic reserve stockpiles. It's been long enough since we mutinied for the powers that be to have ramped up ammunition production, though."

"I guess. But they always claimed they couldn't afford lots of ammo. So how're those powers that be paying for the stuff?"

"Ethan? What's the rule about questions?"

Stark smiled despite his tension. " 'Never ask a question you don't wanna know the answer to,' " he quoted. "You'd think I was a new recruit." He focused back on the battle scene. "Okay. See anything else to worry about?"

She shook her head. "You've been doing a good job of spotting problems so far."

"Uh-huh. But you're still a better tactical thinker than me." Stark nodded at the display and the scattered symbology on it. "What do you think?"

"I think that if we get hit right now we'd be toast. Our forces are too spread out."

"They gotta be spread out to reach all the targets we want to destroy."

"I know, but—Ethan." Vic pointed a single finger toward her display, the digit jumping across several threat readings. "We're starting to take more fire from the warehouse area. Aimed fire."

"Aimed." Somebody who wasn't panicking, somebody who was keeping under cover. "Some more of that reaction force?"

"No. Reinforcements."

"How can you be sure of that? If we bug out early we might not destroy every target we want to nail."

Reynolds eyed him narrowly, her finger stabbing at the display once more. "The way that reaction force came out, you could tell they were risking everything on a quick hit. And nobody provided covering fire for them when we hit back. These are new. And there could be a company, or a battalion, right behind these guys. Those ridges over that way screen the approach from our sensors so we can't view this area to be sure."

"We knew that. But—"

"But nothing, Ethan. If you were going to hit our forces on that field, how would plan your approach?"

Stark stared at the display, his face growing grim. "Yeah. Behind the screening terrain. Lamont's tanks and that company of infantry are still there. Could they handle anything that comes for a few minutes?"

"Hell, Ethan, you know as well as I do that it'd depend on what comes! If a bunch of armor and mech infantry comes over that ridge behind an artillery barrage . . ."

"Okay. You're right." Stark blinked, then took another look at his display, deliberately pulling back the scale so he could see beyond the landing field. I'm getting too caught up in this. Lots of fun, breaking stuff and watching the enemy run. "Thanks, Vic. Milheim, Lamont, it's getting hot out there."

"Roger," Milheim agreed. " I don't like what's going down by those warehouses. We've achieved most of our objectives. I suggest we get the hell out of Dodge."

"There's still time to hit the remaining objectives," Lamont argued. "We can handle things for a few more minutes."

Stark hesitated, weighing what he saw, what he felt, with what his commanders on the scene were saying. My guts tell me what the right answer is. Maybe I'm just over-cautious, but. . . "No. The remaining objectives aren't worth the risk. Get your people back to the shuttles. It's time to leave."

"My tanks can finish the job then bring up the rear. . ." Lamont began.

"Negative. Begin withdrawal now. Expedite." Stark started to call out more detailed instructions, then caught himself. I told 'em what to do. Now, just watch. Tell 'em if there's a problem.

"Yessir, yessir, three bags full."

The scattered blue symbols paused in their motion as commands flew to every soldier and vehicle, then began rapidly falling back toward the shuttles. They left behind myriad symbols blinking with threat warnings, explosive charges planted on almost every piece of equipment around the landing field. As the Americans retreated, the fire from the warehouse area grew in intensity, lashing at soldiers trying to hasten back to their shuttles. Heavy shells began falling around them as well, as the enemy finally shifted batteries normally aimed beyond the front to target the field to their rear. "Milheim," Vic commanded. "Put some fire down on those warehouses. Make those shooters keep their heads down. Lamont, can your tanks take out any of that incoming artillery?"

"If the firing angle's right," Lamont responded. "But I'm starting to run low on ammo."

Stark brought up the ammunition status of the tanks, grimacing as he noted how much the armor had already fired off. He briefly wondered about the chances of scrounging more ammo from the massive stockpile to one side of the landing field, and just as quickly discarded the idea. The way it always works is the stuff we wanted would be on the bottom of the pile. And I don't want my people messing around that mountain of explosives while the enemy drops shells on them. "Understand. But if you apes don't leave now, all the ammo in the world won't do you any good."

"Okay, we'll keep shooting until we're jacked back into the shuttles. Hope that doesn't make them sailors nervous."

Stark grinned. Those sailors are probably already plenty nervous because of the artillery dropping around them. "Who's monitoring the shuttles?" he called to the watchstanders. "How are they?"

"Ready to boost," a private reported. "No damage except some surface scratches from shrapnel."

Stark switched scans again restlessly. The fire from the warehouse area kept growing heavier. So far, no direct cannon fire had advertised the presence of enemy armor, but that had to be close. Blue symbology clustered around the shuttles as the ground troops returned to their transports. Stark fought down an instinctive impulse to order the soldiers to disperse, knowing a concentration of targets was impossible to avoid if Milheim's infantry wanted to board the ships rapidly. The clusters of symbology shrank quickly as the soldiers raced aboard, replaced by tick marks alongside the shuttle symbols indicating numbers onboard. Go! Go! Go! Get the hell out of there!

"Got something going on over here," Vic noted. "Shuttle Bravo, what's the holdup?"

"Got a jam in the cargo loading hoist," the shuttle pilot reported. "Trying to clear."

"How long? How long to clear the jam?"

"Dunno. Could be five seconds, could be five minutes. Or longer. This gear is a real bitch sometimes."

Vic looked over at Stark, who shook his head wordlessly. "Shuttle Bravo, forget the armor. Get the tank crew on board with the infantry."

"Roger. Understand I leave the tank and get all personnel on board." It was hard to tell whether the pilot felt relieved or frustrated at having to dump the armored vehicle.

Sergeant Lamont's voice didn't leave any doubt, however. "Stark! You can't leave one of my hogs behind!"

"We don't have any choice," Stark answered. "We can't afford the delay." As if to emphasize his words, enemy soldiers finally began spilling onto the field, evading forward in a last-ditch attempt to disable one or more of the shuttles. "Can't you put that tank on auto or somethin' to help hold those guys off?"

"Yeah." Lamont sounded as if he'd lost a friend. "Okay, I'm putting it on an auto-defend/destruct sequence. It'll raise hell until we take off and then self-detonate its fuel, air, and ammo supplies. Sorry, man." The last words seemed addressed to the forlorn tank as it shot away from the shuttle and began throwing rounds into the advancing enemy ranks.

The last of Stark's infantry tumbled into their shuttles, firing until their weapons were blocked by closing hatches. "All tanks secured!" Moments later, the shuttles blasted upward in a ragged volley, chased by futile shots from the ground. Lamont's abandoned tank ripped off a blistering barrage, staggering as a couple of antitank rounds impacted in the empty crew compartment, then blew apart in a series of blasts that sent shrapnel flying across the landing field and high overhead. Stark, trying not to think about how important every piece of armor was to his forces, watched the projected paths of some of the debris as it flew upward, then snorted a brief, tense laugh. "Looks like Lamont put one of his tanks into low lunar orbit."

"A few pieces of it, anyway." Vic checked the time on her display. "They set the charges for minimum delay to make sure those enemy troops wouldn't be able to deactivate them. Any second now and we should see a lot more stuff heading for orbit."

"Those shuttles are still too damn close. Wish we coulda command-detonated the charges."

"That kind of signal is too easy to jam," Reynolds reminded him. "And fiber-optic cable doesn't unreel well from a shuttle heading off at max acceleration. Hold on."

She'd barely finished speaking when the charges left by Milheim's troops began detonating. Watching the view from a backward-looking camera on one of the fleeing shuttles, Stark saw a section of lunar terrain lift skyward as the huge ammunition stockpile went off in a rapid series of blasts that quickly merged into one massive explosion. Luminosity and infrared scales backed down in swift shifts to avoid being overwhelmed by the glare. "Holy cow," Vic breathed. "How much ammo did they have in that pile?"

"I dunno, but I'm sure glad I'm not on that landing field. I guess we could've saved the other charges. There ain't gonna be nothing left of that field but one mother of a crater."

"Maybe they ought to name that crater after you."

"Thanks. Are the shuttles clear of the blast effects and debris?"

"It's going to be close," Sergeant Tran reported. "There's too much junk flying to track every piece."

"The shuttles are still boosting out at max acceleration," the private who had reported earlier announced. "But they're heading into threat envelopes from enemy anti-orbital systems."

"I've got enemy and American warships converging toward the shuttles' projected orbital track," another watchstander reported.

Stark took a second to rub his forehead, trying to fight down the sick feeling in his gut. Now comes the hard part. Getting away. "Where's Wiseman and her armed shuttles?"

"Moving to intercept the warships."

"Is she nuts?"

"No," Vic advised. "She's pushing the other deception, Ethan. Making the warships and the enemy think those shuttles are going to follow a suborbital path back here."

"Sure. Right. So when do our shuttles change—." Stark bit off the sentence as acceleration vectors on the cargo shuttles swung around. Attitude jets pushed the spacecraft tails toward the black heavens and pointed their noses back toward the dead Moon below. "Okay. Standby on the artillery." He checked the armed shuttles, watching as they canted wildly as well, arcing their courses around so they were also pointed at the Moon's surface. The displays updated the spacecrafts' courses continuously, the projected paths of the two groups of shuttles now pointing toward each other. Wiseman's armed shuttles were curving in from over the American enclave toward the enemy front lines as the fleeing cargo shuttles headed toward the same location from the opposite direction.

"I sure as hell hope this works," Vic whispered.

"You and me both. Artillery. Sergeant Grace? Execute preplanned fire mission Bravo Foxtrot."

"Roger. Understand execute fire mission Bravo Foxtrot." Behind the lines the heavy artillery pieces sat within their own bunkers, monsters designed to hurl shells long distances. On the Moon, with only one-sixth the gravity, those shells carried a lot less propellant and a lot more warhead. As Stark watched, threat symbology sprang from the artillery sites, heading for the same area as the shuttles were converging upon.

"You know," Sergeant Tran remarked. "If I were one of those enemy soldiers at that spot, I'd wonder what the hell was coming at me."

"That's the idea," Stark noted. "Wiseman, how's it look?"

"Just keep those warships off my tail." Her face seemed oddly flattened under the force of her shuttle's acceleration. On display, the enemy warships were pushing the edge of the Colony's anti-orbital defenses. A few threat symbols detached from the warships, marking desperate attempts to achieve an improbable hit against fleeing targets at maximum range. "Just for the record," Wiseman added, "I really hate accelerating toward the surface of planets and moons. Understood?"

"I assume you're planning on pulling out before you hit."

"Assuming everything works right, yeah. If it doesn't, I'm gonna be real pissed."

And real dead. Stark checked the converging tracks of cargo shuttles, armed shuttles, and artillery. Okay. Artillery hits first. Saturates the defenses around that location while Wiseman's shuttles sweep in from the front and the cargo shuttles come in from the rear. Any functioning defenses should automatically engage Wiseman's shuttles because they're an incoming target. Defenses should give the cargo shuttles low targeting priority because they're fleeing targets. Hopefully none of the defenders will realize we're planning on that and switch to manual targeting in time. Those cargo shuttles don't have half the survivability of Wiseman's armed shuttles. "Cross your fingers, Vic."

"And my toes," she assured him.

Enemy defenses began throwing out rounds to intercept the incoming artillery, but Stark's barrage was too big to be stopped. He'd sat under enough artillery barrages himself to know exactly what would happen while those big shells were hitting the enemy line. Exposed sensors and weapons would be shielded and troops would keep their heads as low as possible. In the case of soldiers in bunkers, it was an almost irrational reflex, since any shell penetrating their underground lairs would be certain to kill everyone whether prone or standing fully upright. But sometimes even irrational reflexes made you feel a little better, made it a little easier to handle the thought of tons of explosives falling all around you.

Wiseman's armed shuttles were maneuvering again, putting everything into pulling out of their death dive toward the surface and converting it into a dash straight over the enemy line. The cargo shuttles were also altering course, jinking as madly under the push of their attitude jets as their forward velocity would allow.

Symbology converged. Stark avoided calling up visual of the artillery hitting the enemy positions. He'd seen it happen a thousand times, and derived no joy from thinking of the soldiers cowering under the bombardment. Wiseman's armed shuttles tossed out weapons of their own, and a flurry of countermeasures, as a scattering of enemy defenses tried to engage the fast-moving targets. At the last instant, a few of the enemy shots sought out the cargo shuttles as they and Wiseman's armed shuttles rocketed past each other. Almost instantly, the armed shuttles fired their attitude jets again, then kicked in their main drives, arcing up once more in a high-g maneuver to curve back inside the American defenses as quickly as possible.

Stark realized he hadn't been breathing and took in a long, shuddering breath as the cargo shuttle symbology lunged toward the American defensive line. Damn. Did we pull this off? Actually get our people out intact?

"Got a hit," a watchstander announced as alarms sounded. "Shuttle Alpha."

"How bad?"

"Hull rupture, stabilization systems out, got an uncontrolled tumble. The shuttle's close to the deck. She's got no room to recover."

"Oh, man." Nerving himself, Stark called up vid from the shuttle, jerking involuntarily as his vision suddenly filled with wildly tossing images. The impact of the hit and secondary explosions on the shuttle had thrown it off its smooth trajectory.

Lunar terrain littered with rocks zipped past in flashes of gray and white, alternating with the star-sown blackness of space.

"Gutierrez!" Chief Petty Officer Wiseman shouted over the circuit at the shuttle pilot. "You're too low for autorepair to stabilize that pig. Do it manual!"

"R-roger," Gutierrez came back, his voice shaking, as his body was tossed constantly against its restraining harness.

Stark blinked as Vic deliberately broke his vid connection, then toggled another circuit. Now he could see the shuttle from the outside, captured by ground sensors as it cartwheeled over the Moon's surface inside the American perimeter. Apparently random spurts of heat marked firings of the shuttle's stabilizer jets as Gutierrez tried to halt the tumble by feel. "Is it working?" Vic asked.

"Can't tell. Wait." A heavy burst from two stabilizers and the shuttle seemed to shudder in place, the uncontrolled tumble replaced by a ragged corkscrew with the shuttle's nose yawing in a wide circle. "That's one damned good pilot."

"Yeah. But he can't save it. Too low. And too much forward velocity. When it hits—"

Before Reynolds could finish, the forward stabilizers fired again, shoving the shuttle's nose up and on past the vertical so that the shuttle's main drive pointed forward. The main drive roared, its exhaust throwing up swirls of dust from the nearby surface as the shuttle yawed wildly overhead. The shuttle slowed, shaking under the force of deceleration even as it sank closer to the rocky landscape. A moment later, some portion of the shuttle impacted the surface, shedding pieces of hull as the spacecraft bounced back upward, tumbling out of control once again. "Gutierrez!" Wiseman commanded. "You've done everything you can! Eject! Get your crew out of that thing!"

"No! I've got passengers! I can still—"

The pilot's voice cut off as the shuttle hit hard, hurling rocks and fragments of the ship off to either side, rose slightly, then slammed to the Moon's surface again with brutal finality. The shuttle slid across the rough surface, its progress erratic as the crippled craft rebounded off the larger rocks and bounced over the smaller ones. "Medical!" Sergeant Tran was calling into the comm circuit. "Get a full response team to that site as fast as possible."

"On our way," Medical responded instantly. Tran pointed to the display. "Four ambulances. I'll have more headed there in a minute."

"Good," Stark approved, angered as his voice shook slightly. "Good," he repeated in firmer tones. "And good job having that medical team on alert. Vic, is everybody else okay?"

She scanned the display, chewing her lower lip, then nodded. "Looks like it. The other cargo shuttles are braking for landing, and Wiseman's got her armed shuttles headed back this way. You going to the scene?"

"Yeah." Once again she'd read his mind. Or maybe she just knew him better than anyone else. "Alert my command APC, okay?"

"They'll be waiting."

Stark ran this time, not worried about decorum. Word of the downed shuttle had spread with the impossible speed of any bad news, so no one questioned his dash to the APC dock. Inside the APC, he pulled himself into the command chair and strapped in with one motion. "You've got the crash site?" he asked the driver. "Yessir."

"Then get me there fast!"

"Yessir." The driver fell silent, concentrating on his driving as the APC surged into motion. Stark sat silent, his eyes not really seeing the display before him where the cargo shuttles were coming to rest on the American Colony's landing field and Wiseman's armed shuttles were braking to shed velocity after safely regaining the protection of the Colony's surface defenses. He tried not to think, not to worry, knowing nothing he thought or imagined could help the soldiers and crew of the crashed shuttle. But, finally, he prayed, briefly and fervently.

The APC came to a halt near the ambulances clustered around the crash site. Stark checked the seals on his own battle armor before cracking the APC's hatch, then pulled himself through onto the lunar surface.

As always, time seemed to suddenly slow down. Stark dropped slowly, his feet landing gently yet still puffing up small clouds of fine gray dust. Small rocks littered the landscape here, interspersed with a few larger boulders, all as jagged as the day they were birthed, without the smoothing effects of an Earth-like environment to round them off. Figures moved around the wreck and the ambulances, bounding with odd grace from point to point. Stark's HUD automatically tagged the figures, some with medical symbols, some as regular infantry, and some as wounded. The medics weren't hard to spot. Unlike the battle armor of the infantry, the medical personnel wore lighter weight outfits that allowed them to better treat wounded while still in their suits. Medics weren't supposed to need armor anyway, since they weren't supposed to be shot at. Sometimes the enemy actually abided by that rule. Most of the time, the medics practiced trying not to get hit while they tended casualties.

Off to one side, a small pile of armored bodies was marked with the ugly symbol that signified the dead.

Stark moved forward, trying to get involved in the rescue and recovery while simultaneously staying out of the way of people who were doing their jobs just fine without his interference. "Doctor Asad. You in charge?"

The figure tagged by his HUD as Asad turned slightly to nod toward Stark. "That's right."

"How bad is it?"

It was impossible to shrug in a suit, but somehow Asad managed to mimic the motion. "Could be worse. You see the dead over there. Not too many. Very few, considering how torn up this shuttle is. Most of the rest just have the usual abrasions, bruises, broken bones, and such. No big deal fixing them up."

Stark took another look at the grouping of the dead, counting them this time, then looking toward the shredded, crumpled wreck of the shuttle. Only five. Very few is right. Damn miracle is more like it. "That's amazing."

"Uh huh. Credit the pilot and his crew, I guess. They must have gotten the velocity on that sucker down quite a bit before it hit."

"Where are they?" Stark looked around, vainly searching his HUD for anyone tagged as flight personnel. "The shuttle crew?"

"Where?" Asad nodded again, this time toward the wreck. "In there. The shuttle came to rest on the crew compartment. We haven't been able to pry the bodies out, yet. Too busy taking care of the living. Might need engineers to open it up, anyway." He paused. "I guess they didn't have time to eject the crew compartment. Too bad."

"They had a chance, Doc. They could've ejected."

"Why didn't they?"

"They were trying to save their passengers."

Dr. Asad stood silent for a moment. "They did that. I'll get them out, Sergeant Stark. I'll take real good care of them. Promise."

"Thanks. Do you need anything else? More people, more equipment, more transport?"

"Have you got anything coming to pick up the soldiers who can walk?"

Stark checked his command display before answering. "Sure do. There's some more APCs on the way. Should be here in a few minutes."

"Then we're fine. Everybody who needs help has got it."

"Guess there's nothing else I can do here, then. Good job handling the wounded. You and your people. Tell 'em thanks for me and all the other grunts."

Another impossible suited shrug from Asad. "That's our job. But I'll tell my people. It never hurts to know you're appreciated."

Stark moved slowly back to his APC, turning to look once more at the wrecked shuttle as he reached his transport. Gutierrez. And your whole damn crew. Thanks for saving those soldiers. I'll make sure you're not forgotten. He pulled himself into the APC, sealing the hatch then strapping in, moving with the weariness of great age or great responsibility.

A briefing room big enough to accommodate the official planning hierarchy had no trouble holding Stark's small group for their postmortem of the operation. Sergeant Tanaka had explained the old routine to Stark before she'd died in the failed raid on Stark's headquarters. Generals would be holding down the best seats, flanked by senior planners, backed up by assistant planners, supported by junior planners. Standing against the wall would be the action officers who would do any actual work if such was required. Before each officer at the main table a display would offer instant access to any portion of the massive operation plan being developed; annexes, appendices, annexes to appendices, subsections, sub-subsections, and the ever-popular attachments to any and everything. "They tried to print out one of the oplans once," Tanaka had offered. "Some general insisted on it. But headquarters ran out of paper before the print job finished."

"Were you short on paper?" Stark had asked.

"Heck, no. We had a lot of paper. Reams and reams. Just not enough to print out an oplan. I hear oplans used to be a little shorter, back before they went paperless. Now everybody just copies the last one onto their hard drive and adds on to it. There's probably stuff in there about fighting the Brits during the Revolution. Who'd know? Nobody can read the things anymore, and I don't think anybody tries."

Stark shook off the memory of Tanaka, one more face and name gone from this world, and focused back on the present, gesturing toward the image of Lexington Sector floating slightly above the surface of the table. "Okay, you apes. What went right and what'd we do wrong?"

Vic swung one finger slowly along the arc of low elevations studded with defensive symbology that marked the enemy front. "We got our forces in past there and out again. That's a big plus."

"Yeah, but it still cost us a shuttle. We haven't got a lot of those. Gordo." Stark focused on his supply officer, Sergeant Gordasa. "Have we had any luck trying to get more on the black market?"

Gordasa shook his head. "Too expensive, but more to the point, too tightly monitored. Nobody can figure out how to get one to us without being caught." He offered a small smile. "Now, if you'd brought back all that ammunition you blew up, I might've been able to trade that for one."

"Sorry, Gordo. We were too busy to form a work detail." He turned to Sergeant Tran. "Speaking of that ammo, any problems with all the junk it blasted into space? Any of it gonna fall on us once its orbit decays?"

"No," Tran stated. "It was a surface blast, so most of the debris flung upward came from the ammo itself, and that debris was fairly small stuff. A lot of it, but small. Nothing any of our surface installations can't handle. They were built to deal with small impacts."

"Okay. Stacey." Security officer Sergeant Yurivan, leaning backward in her chair as if half-asleep, opened one eye slightly and cocked it toward Stark. "Any reaction from back home?"

Yurivan yawned. "Nope. Of course, the powers that be ain't telling anyone about this back home. There's a lot of buzz about the explosion, because you couldn't hide the blasted thing from anyone on Earth who was looking this way, but officially its cause remains undetermined."

Reynolds snorted. "How long does the Pentagon and the government think they can stonewall something like that?"

"If they're being stupid, maybe they think a long time. Or long enough to deal with us first and then keep everything classified until the sun burns out, anyway." Stacey Yurivan smiled. "Oh, yeah. Got an unofficial thanks from a couple of civ contractors who you let run away from that landing field. They say they owe us. Could be nice friends to have."

"Could be," Stark agreed. I guess that's doing well by doing right, or something like that. "Chief Wiseman, how're you doing?"

His naval commander made a small face, then waved away the question. "I'm okay. You lose people. It happens."

"You lost real good people," Reynolds corrected.

"That's right," Stark agreed. "You sailors all did great, and that shuttle crew . . . well, they did above and beyond. For real. I made a promise, Chief. They'll be remembered."

Wiseman managed a small smile. "Thanks. And if it's any consolation, I bet people'll be studying how we used those shuttles for quite a while. We wrote a new chapter on raiding."

"Good." Stark glanced over at Sergeant Lamont, who was sitting uncharacteristically subdued. "I guess you're still unhappy about losing that tank."

Lamont spread his hands. "They're my babies, Stark. We can salvage the tank from the wrecked shuttle, by the way, but losing even one piece of heavy armor hurts. We can't replace 'em, you know."

"I know. Not unless Gordo manages a black-market buy of a shuttle. Maybe he can smuggle a tank onto it."

"Why not?" Gordasa muttered. "Just ask Supply to do the impossible. No problem. We deal with CDATs all the time."

Lamont chuckled. Back in the twentieth century soldiers had joked about DATs, dumb-ass tankers. As their tanks grew more sophisticated the DATs had become CDATs, computerized dumb-ass tankers. "Gordo, after word gets out on that raid, my boys and girls will be in the CD AT Hall of Fame. You'll feel honored every time you reject a spare parts requisition from us."

Stark smiled briefly. "Mendo." Private Mendoza, his chin resting on both hands as he watched the others speak, jerked slightly in surprise. "What do you think? We blew up a lot of stuff and ruined that enemy general's day, week, month, and year. Big picture, though, was it worth it?"

"I think, Commander Stark . . ." Mendo visibly hesitated for a moment, then spread his hands over the display. "It depends. On the objective. What do we seek?"

"To avoid getting beat," Yurivan drawled.

Stark wondered if Mendoza would be intimidated by Stacey Yurivan's mockery, but the small private shook his head stubbornly. "That is a very limited objective, though a valid one. But is that our objective, Commander Stark? And is it a wise objective?"

"Why wouldn't it be wise?" Stark asked.

Mendoza paused again, gathering his thoughts. "A defensive strategy can work, but it requires time. Time to wear out the enemy. Too, it requires an enemy who cannot corner you, cannot force a decisive battle."

"We're surrounded here," Lamont noted.

"Exactly. The essence of a delaying strategy is to avoid a decisive battle. It is often called a Fabian Strategy after the Roman commander who used it successfully against Hannibal. Since the Romans had lost every time they fought a major engagement with Hannibal, Fabius simply refused to fight such an engagement, always retreating when confronted."

"What kept this Hannibal from just capturing Rome while Fabius ran away?" Reynolds questioned.

"Rome had fixed defenses. Walls. Hannibal lacked the engines of war necessary to breach those walls. Nor could he settle down to attempt to build them while worried about the Roman army operating in his rear. So Hannibal could not win as long as Fabius refused to fight. Operating in hostile territory far from home, Hannibal's army was eventually worn down and forced to retreat."

"Interesting idea," Stark noted. "But it sounds like this Fabius had time on his side. Which we may not. And he could run away when he didn't want to fight. We've got nowhere to run."

"Just so," Mendoza agreed. "We must wait in one location while our opponents muster their forces against us. Aside from tactical adjustments to the perimeter, we must defend the Colony. We have Rome's walls, but we lack an army on the outside able to threaten anyone besieging us."

"We aren't stuck here," Lamont argued. "We left the perimeter to hit that enemy landing field. Why not keep doing that?"

Mendoza shook his head. "Carrying out that raid required use of deception to bypass enemy defenses. Can another raid such as we conducted succeed again?"

"No chance in hell," Reynolds stated. "I'd hate to be the shuttle crew that accidentally lands on the wrong field from now on. They'll get blown away before they can say 'bad mistake.' There may be another way to get past the enemy defenses surrounding us, but I sure can't think of any right now." Some of the others at the table looked uncomfortable at her words, but no one contradicted Reynolds.

"Then we must be prepared to defend against heavy attacks," Mendoza concluded, "and to somehow hold out until our attackers are exhausted."

Stark glanced around at his staff, all of whom were digesting Mendoza's advice with expressions of varied discontent. "What you're not saying, Mendo, is that our attackers basically have the entire resources of Earth to hit us with, and all we've got is what's on this particular patch of the Moon. Right?"

Mendoza nodded. "We can inflict immense losses on our foes, time and again, and still lose eventually." He stopped speaking, obviously pondering his last statement. "Much like the Carthaginians. Hannibal's people. They defeated the Romans over and over again, destroying armies and fleets. The Romans always came back, though."

"Very cheerful," Stacey Yurivan remarked. "But you're leaving out the political aspect of this, aren't you? Just how willing is everyone on Earth to spend their lives and treasure trying to beat us?"

Vic Reynolds nodded. "That's a good point. Our former bosses, the government and Pentagon, want us beat something fierce. But does everyone else? Especially if the cost rises too high."

"Don't forget the corporations who just about own the government," Sergeant Bev Manley advised. She'd been sitting quietly, one eye on the debate, while she tried to catch up on her administrative duties with the other. "On the one hand, they want us beat, too. On the other, pure revenge won't help their profits any. We make the cost of beating us too expensive, and the corporations should want to make a deal with us. Any word on that yet?"

Yurivan shook her head, then glanced sidelong at Stark. "Maybe our boss's civ buddies can clue him in on that. They worked for corporations before we let them kick their bosses off this rock, right?"

"They did," Stark agreed. "And I'll be meeting with the Colony manager and his assistant later today, to brief them on the raid's results. I'll ask what they know about things back on Earth."

His staff exchanged glances, then Manley put into words what the others were obviously thinking. "Are you sure we can trust them, Ethan? I know they've hung with us so far, and that surprised the hell out of me I can tell you, but they've gotta be feeling trapped right now. If the civs get scared they might try to cut a deal that leaves us hanging."

Stark stared back with a confidence he wasn't sure he really felt. "I trust them. Remember, the civs gave us warning about that raid that hit this headquarters. Warning that probably made the difference in keeping us alive. They've also been giving us materiel assistance. They volunteered their medical facilities to help handle our casualties. And some of them are even enlisting. Right, Vic?"

"Right. Damnedest thing I've ever heard of. You should've seen the expression on the face of the corporal the civs asked how to enlist." The military had grown too separate from society as a whole, too isolated from the civilians it had been formed to protect. A closed club, where military families raised children who joined, while civilians looked on with worry at the people who carried weapons and were willing to kill if ordered. Almost as incomprehensible to the Free Lunch Culture, the military were willing to die, if ordered. "I agree with Ethan. I think we can trust these civs. They've been right behind the front lines for years. They know we're here to protect them."

Stacey Yurivan smiled insincerely. "You'd be expected to agree with Stark, wouldn't you, Reynolds? You being old pals and all."

"I tell it like I see it, Stace."

Sergeant Gordasa cleared his throat. "I have to agree with Stark and Reynolds. I'm working with the civs a lot to get spares and food and stuff since our normal supply routes are closed off. They're trying to get decent deals, sure, but they're not trying to cheat us. They treat me okay, one-on-one. And the stuff coming in is good quality. Hell, the food's better than we're used to. Verdad?"

Everyone around the table nodded. The soldiers had recently actually been able to identify the source of some of the meat in their meals. "Still and all," Manley persisted, "I've got to ask; what do the civs want? For us to keep protecting them, sure. But why? What are they expecting to be able to do while we do all this fighting?"

Everyone looked at Stark, who scowled back. "Last I heard, there was a lot of sentiment in the civ colony for declaring independence from home. They'd become a new country, and I guess that'd make us that new country's military."

"What kinda country?"

"Like the U.S., I guess. Or how it's supposed to be, anyway. All these civs up here got trapped into real bad contracts with their corporations. They were being shafted something fierce, while the corporate bosses were getting richer, as usual. So they don't want that kind of stuff up here."

"There's nothing wrong with capitalism," Stacey observed.

"No, there ain't, except the same thing that's wrong with any system allowed to run without any checks on it. That's what the government's supposed to do, not be in bed with the bosses, right?"

"The Constitution is sort of silent on that."

" 'Provide for the general welfare,' " Vic recited. "I think that covers it. Fine. Let's assume these civs declare independence and form their own country and even adopt the exact same Constitution we're sworn to protect. How comfortable is everybody with that?"

There was a long silence, finally broken by grumbling from Manley. "We're Americans, damnit. I don't want to be anything else."

"Me, neither," Stark agreed. "But the people running our country don't like us much. We may not have any choice about becoming something else."

Yurivan looked up, grinning suddenly. "That's an angle. The government's been putting out word that we're all criminals and troublemakers, out for anything we can get."

"Good thing none of us fit that description, huh, Stace?"

"If I may finish without further heckling, we haven't had much propaganda of our own to counter that. But we can get word around back home that we're loyal and true-blue and one hundred percent and all, and the only reason we're in trouble is because the bosses don't want us because we kicked out other bosses who were idiots. It could stir up some trouble at home. Maybe get some pressure off us."

Reynolds smiled. "That's a good idea. The civs running the Colony tell us the two major political parties are really running scared that they'll be kicked out of power. If we get word out on what we really feel, that might help that thing happen."

"It might. But these other guys, these political parties that want to clean things up, might not like us any better than the current crop of crooks. Who knows?"

"Campbell might," Stark noted. "The Colony manager. Like I said, Vic and I have a meeting with him later. I'll sound him out on that. Are there any other issues we should deal with here?"

Lamont grinned. "Let's see, we've talked about what our main strategy should be, whether we want to belong to another country, and how good the food is lately. What's left?"

"Locating a replacement shuttle," Gordasa noted, then shook his head in mock despair. "I'll take care of that, and you guys can handle the easy stuff."

Stark laughed along with the others, motioning for everyone to leave, but paused himself as Vic placed a restraining hand on his arm. "Sergeant Milheim. He just made it in. You want him to hang around and provide you with individual feedback or just put it in a report?"

"If he puts it in a report, I'd never find time to read it. Besides, if I call somebody to see me, the least I can do is actually take some time for them once they get here. You can head out, though."

"No problem." Vic left, motioning Milheim in through the door.

"Sorry I didn't make the meeting," Milheim began.

"Don't worry about it," Stark waved away any further apology. "Your people did real good out there. Did you notice any problems with the operation?"

Milheim hesitated, frowning in thought. "No. Nothing comes to mind. I will tell you it was nice not having that damned time-line blinking at us."

"Yeah. I don't think we're gonna use them much anymore. Not to govern individual movements, anyway. You gotta have a coordinated timeline when you're working together, but having one just so people will jump through hoops when the planners wanted them to never did make all that much sense."

"That reminds me, speaking of the old days, it was also nice knowing our action wasn't being broadcast as a vid entertainment. We were all sick of that."

"Damn right," Stark agreed. When the Pentagon had needed to raise large sums of money to fund the lunar operation, some unsung SOB had realized they could use the audio and video feeds from soldiers' command and control equipment to fashion almost-real-time programs for commercial broadcast. Programs that quickly became popular enough to earn a good chunk of advertising revenue. For a time, the need for high vid ratings had played at least as large a role in military operations as the desire for victory. "That'll never happen again. Not if we have any say in it. What about us, though, back here? Were we on your shoulder too much? Was there something we shoulda been doin' that we didn't?"

Milheim shrugged. "You seemed pretty transparent, truth to tell. I kept looking over my own shoulder wondering what was missing, and realizing I didn't have some bozo back at headquarters telling me to take one step left instead of one step right. I liked you keeping an eye on the big picture. That was a good call focusing on the warehouses, and I appreciated being asked my opinion based on my feeling of the scene. No complaints, I guess."

Stark gazed at Milheim, chewing his lip while he chose the right words. "Look, no offense, but I don't know you very well. Good reputation and all that, and you handle your unit real well.

But I don't know if you're the kind of guy who'd tell me to my face if I'd screwed something up. Would you?"

Milheim didn't have to feign indignation. "I look out for my people. If you were doing something that'd mess them over, I'd let you know."

"Good. I knew you took care of your troops. That's why they put you in charge of your battalion, right? Because they trusted you."

"Yeah. Lucky me. At least I didn't get put in charge of the whole shebang like you did."

"Hey, it's not so bad." Stark grinned with obvious self-mockery. "Maybe someday you'll take it over from me."

"No, thanks."

"I'll buy you a beer."

Milheim laughed. "You couldn't get me drunk enough to say yes to that proposition."

"Now, that sounds familiar. I think I've heard it on every date I've ever been on."

Another laugh. "I didn't think you had to worry about dating. Everybody knows about you and Vic Reynolds."

Stark blew out his breath in exasperation. "Everybody but me and Reynolds, you mean. I wouldn't have made her my second in command if we were involved like that. That'd just have been asking for trouble. And it wouldn't have been right. We're tight, Milheim, but not that way."

"Really? How come?"

"I dunno. Just the way it works, I guess. You got a steady girl?"

Milheim smiled. "Nope. My wife would frown on that. Wives get touchy about that sorta thing."

"I'd heard that. Kids?"

"Yeah. They're all up here, thanks to that swap we worked out, trading our old officers for our family members. Come by the quarters sometime and I'll introduce you."

"How are those quarters, anyway?" With the arrival of military families, the Colony had voluntarily begun excavating a large bloc of new residential construction for the creation of an ad hoc 'fort.' "I haven't had much time to check on 'em, and I know they're being built without much in the way of frills."

"They're okay," Milheim temporized. "It doesn't take much to equal the sort of base housing we're used to, does it? But the kids love the low gravity. They're bouncing off the walls. Literally. Like I said, come by and see it sometime."

"Thanks. When I get the time, I'll be sure to take you up on that."

"When you get the time? I guess it'll be a while, then, won't it?" Milheim sobered abruptly, his mouth tight. "Damn."

"What's wrong?"

"Talking about family. It reminded me, I got to write some letters. You know. To the families of the soldiers we lost on the raid." Milheim closed his eyes for a moment. "One of them had her family up here. Guess I got to tell them personally."

"We got chaplains for that."

"I've still gotta go."

"I know, but you go along with a chaplain." Stark lowered his voice pitch slightly to emphasize his words. "That's an order. You don't need to take that kind of burden all on yourself."

"Umm, okay. Thanks."

"Don't thank me. I gave the orders that sent those soldiers on the raid. I oughta talk to a chaplain, too." But I won't, because there's nobody to order me to do it, and I'm too damn stubborn. "How about your wounded? Where're they located in medical?" Stark didn't bother asking if Milheim knew the locations of his casualties, or whether he'd already visited them. He already knew enough about the man to be certain of both items.

"They're in a couple of different bays. Eight Charlie and Ten Delta. Most of them got patched up and sent to their quarters already."

"Good. I'll drop by, too. You need any time off?"

"No. No. I'll do better if I'm working. Besides, I oughta be used to this by now, huh?"

"Milheim, I hope to God neither one of us ever gets used to it."

Colony Manager James Campbell and his executive director, Cheryl Sarafina, were already waiting when Stark and Reynolds arrived at the manager's office. Burrowed out of the lunar surface, like so much else of the Colony, it offered the comforting presence of solid rock walls on all sides and a very thick covering of metal, rock, and dust for a roof. On one wall, a vid screen displayed the view Campbell's office might have had were it located on the surface—black shadow, gray rock, and white light running off to a too-close horizon that gave way to the unending lunar night sky. Campbell had been frugal enough or politically astute enough to equip his office with standard lunar fixtures, lightweight metal desks, tables, and chairs. The office offered no luxury and, at the moment, little comfort for its occupants. "Thank you for coming here for this meeting," Campbell began. "I needed to stay close to the office today."

"That's okay," Stark replied. "Besides, it wouldn't be right for the civ bosses to come to the mil leaders all the time, would it? I work for you."

"Yes." Campbell shook his head, then laughed. "You hold the power to control this Colony, Sergeant. Tell me again why you work for me."

Stark looked offended. "Sir. You're the elected representative of the people here. I work for the people. So I work for you. That's how it's supposed to work."

"So it is. Speaking of which . . ." Campbell nodded in the general direction of the enemy landing field Stark's troops had raided. "I assume the seismic event the Colony recently felt was related to the attack you had previously forewarned me of?"

"That's right."

"I'm afraid that seismic event caught us by surprise. We weren't expecting anything of that magnitude."

"Neither were we. They had more ammunition stockpiled there than we thought. A lot more."

Sarafina frowned. "Are you certain, Sergeant Stark, given the size of the explosive event, that it only involved conventional weaponry? Could any other weapons have been stored there?"

Stark frowned in turn, glancing at Vic, who shrugged as she answered. "I'd seriously doubt it. Mainly because the American authorities wouldn't be eager to leave weapons of mass destruction under the control of a foreign power. But it doesn't hurt to check." She hauled out her comm pad. "Command Center, this is Sergeant Reynolds. Have we done any analysis of the debris from the explosion we triggered?"

"The big one?" a watchstander replied. "Yes, Sergeant. That's standard procedure."

"Are there any indications anything other than conventional explosives were involved?"

"No. There's no fallout registering. We'd have been able to spot the presence of extraneous nuclear material if it'd been blown up with everything else. No null-particle transients detected, either. Everything's consistent with standard explosive and weapons composition, mixed in with a lot of pulverized lunar material, of course."

"Thanks." Reynolds pocketed the device. "Just standard explosives. Bad enough if you're close, but nothing worse than that."

"Good." Sarafina pointed upward. "Our spaceport tracked a great deal of activity during your . . . your . . . action. Warships and shuttles. We weren't expecting that."

Stark shifted in discomfort. "Yeah, well, that was part of our plan, but we didn't want to brief that part because if anything had gotten out, well. . ."

Campbell shook his head, his face stern. "I'm sorry, Sergeant, but in the future you must let us know that kind of detail. My civilians run the spaceport. I won't share anything with them that you tell me to hold in confidence, but I need to know what's happening when they report unusual activity so I can keep them from doing the wrong thing. Do you see that?"

"Yes. Yessir, I do. That makes sense."

"I understand why you didn't trust us with that information, Sergeant, but we need to overcome that legacy of distrust."

Even as Stark was nodding, Vic spoke up. "Speaking of distrust, our soldiers are wondering what the civilians in the Colony intend to do. We know sentiment is very much against the authorities back on Earth, but what are you planning on doing about it?"

Campbell sighed. "It increasingly appears we may have no alternative but to declare our independence. Make a clean break of it and establish our own country."

"As one of our soldiers asked, what kind of country?"

Campbell and Sarafina looked at each other, obviously startled by the question. "Why . . . I suppose the kind of country the United States is meant to be. A democracy. Freedom for individuals. And enough limits on sources of power, public and private, to ensure we retain freedom."

"So you're planning on adopting the U.S. Constitution as your governing document?"

"Ah . . ." Campbell glanced helplessly toward Sarafina, who spread her hands in an equally distressed gesture. "I suppose that would be the model. We might want to tinker with it, but, uh, to be perfectly honest, I don't think anyone's given much thought to that question as of yet."

"We have," Stark advised. "You're talking about the reason for us fighting. I'll tell you honestly, my people won't support a dictatorship, no matter how it's dressed up. They might accept a government built around the Constitution, but they're still not thrilled about it."

Campbell stared back as if now perplexed. "Then what do they want?"

Stark exhaled a brief, humorless laugh. "They want things the way they're supposed to be, with us taking orders from the Pentagon, which takes orders from the government, which takes orders from the people. But they know with the way things are, that's probably not going to happen."

"I see." Campbell held up a hand as Stark began to continue. "I do. Quite honestly. It was easy to think about and talk about independence when the concept was far off in time and practicality. But the closer we've come to being able to form our own country, the less happy I am. We ought to have an alternative, for heaven's sake. We ought to have a means to have our problems addressed by our government instead of being on the receiving end of constant threats and orders to do what we're told, or else."

"I take it negotiations aren't going well?" Vic asked.

Campbell made a face, using one hand to indicate Sarafina, as she shook her head. "No progress at all. We've been in almost constant touch, sent out a lot of feelers for different ways to resolve the issues in dispute, and host regular parties of official negotiators, but we're getting no meaningful replies."

Stark shook his head in turn, not trying to hide his disgust. "The government still won't talk to us?"

"Oh, they'll talk. They'll talk until the sun goes nova. But, as I said, they offer nothing except the standard orders to submit to lawful authority this instant if not sooner."

Sarafina gestured toward the ceiling. "There's no question our parent corporations on Earth are very much behind this. They're insisting that the politicians they paid for make every effort to recover their property up here, and they're backing up those demands with what they call 'patriotic contributions' to help pay for the military options being employed against the Colony."

"You're kidding. The same corporations that avoided paying taxes to support us when we were protecting them are willing to pony up extra bucks to attack us? Am I the only one who thinks that's dumber than dirt?"

"It makes sense up to point. The point at which projected losses begin to exceed projected gains. The corporations would not fund this sort of activity forever given that profit-loss equation, but they also must factor in some noneconomic issues in their decisions."

"Such as?" Vic asked.

"Such as the fact that the corporations have invested heavily in the current occupants of the Congress and the White House. As we have discussed before, loss of the Moon Colony prior to the upcoming election might well result in loss of control of the government by those politicians in the pay of the corporations. Obviously, this would create any number of negative consequences for the corporations."

Campbell pointed vaguely upward, toward Earth, as well. "Don't forget the politicians have their own motivations. At the very least, they have to spin whatever happens as a victory to the electorate. The economy back home continues to sink deeper into recession, apparently due to a combination of the shock of losing the corporate assets up here and the results of all the money being diverted to the effort to defeat this Colony. Or rather to defeat your forces, to give credit where it's due. The government is making a mighty effort to limit information about us to whatever the government wants people to know, but it isn't working."

He stopped speaking for a moment, pondering his next words. "People will put up with a great deal as long as they think the people running things know what they're doing. If they lose that confidence, they start asking awkward questions about many things. There have been demonstrations. Large ones. Officially, those demonstrations involve some sort of un-American radical fringe. Our own information indicates they have consisted primarily of middle-class and blue-collar workers who are, to put it bluntly, fed up."

Vic sketched a small smile. "I'm afraid Ethan Stark appears to have a nasty habit of triggering revolutions."

"It doesn't appear to be heading toward revolution. Certainly not armed revolution. It may all fizzle out, especially if the economy improves a little. But the government has to produce a significant victory up here to have any hopes of justifying its policies toward us to date. If anything, the corporations are more likely to cry uncle when the bottom line suffers enough. Changes of policy are no big deal to them. But the government is another story."

Stark nodded, this time wearily. "They won't quit trying to win, no matter how much it costs everybody else. Will the election back home come in time to make a difference?"

"It's hard to say," Sarafina admitted. "More to the point, there's increasing pressure within the Colony to hold a referendum on independence as soon as possible, and if the sentiment for independence prevails, to announce the result immediately, without waiting any longer in the hope that the national election will make a difference. People are tired of waiting."

"And we're tired of fighting. So what's the time frame here? When would this referendum be held?"

Campbell and Sarafina exchanged looks again. "Potentially within a few weeks," the Colony manager stated. "Any longer than that would require me to actively stall the measure, and quite frankly I've had it up to here with our government."

"You're not alone in that. My old man was fed up with 'em years ago."

"One additional thing concerns us," Sarafina added. "So far the military attacks on us have been . . . what is the right word?"

"Conventional?"

"Yes. That's it. No weapons of mass destruction. There have been software intrusion attempts to destroy our automated infrastructure, but they have all been frustrated. We worry, however, what the response will be if we declare independence? What weapons might the authorities use against us then?"

"They're not going to use nukes or null bombs," Vic advised. "Too much fallout, in every sense of the word. Besides, destroying what's here would defeat us, but wouldn't be a victory for the authorities. They'd have lost the Colony and everything associated with it. That said . . ." She looked over at Stark. "We're a bit worried about what might be coming, too."

"That's right," Stark agreed. "The basic situation when this started hasn't changed. Thanks to a long period of downsizing, and generals and admirals who constantly cut force levels to pay for their latest pet weapons, the military doesn't have enough war-fighters. We were stretched to the max prior to all this, but since then the Pentagon has lost Third Division to sheer stupidity and our First Division up here. That only leaves Second Division to keep our enemies in line, as well as our 'friends' and 'allies', and protect the U.S. from any kind of ground incursion. That doesn't leave any soldiers to try to pry us out of here."

"So, they've been hiring mercenaries and cutting deals with foreign forces," Vic continued. "That hasn't worked. Sooner or later, they'll try something else, and we don't know what that might be."

Campbell frowned. "Surely you can guess what sort of method might be employed."

"Mr. Campbell, if the powers that be were going to do something smart, then yes, I could hazard a pretty good guess. But the powers that be don't have a very good track record when it comes to the concept of 'smart.' If they go the stupid option, every possible card is on the table. Except the nukes and nulls, of course. That'd be above and beyond stupid."

"I've learned not to underestimate the stupidity of some people, but I'll accept your assessment because I simply don't have anything else to go with." Now Campbell looked pained, sharing another look with Sarafina. "My executive assistant and I aren't at all sure about the wisdom of the course we're following, but events don't always allow time for careful evaluation, and circumstances often don't allow every possible option."

It was Stark's turn to frown. He stared toward the floor for a moment as he once again experienced that falling-off-a-cliff feeling, the sense that he was being carried along with events instead of making his own decisions. And I like making my own decisions. They're not always the right ones, God knows, but at least they're mine. He looked back at the two civilians and at Vic Reynolds, all of them displaying curiously similar attitudes, as if whatever happened in the future would be something to be endured rather than something to be controlled. None of them seemed any happier with that idea that Stark felt. There's got to be another way of looking at this. I tried to promise myself, don't get trapped in a sea of bad options. Plan ahead, look ahead. But I'm damned if I can see anything else to do.

Outside the office, Stark waved Reynolds onward. "You go on back to headquarters if you want."

"What if I don't want?" She raised one eyebrow. "Where are you going?"

"Medical. I oughta visit the wounded from our raid."

"Just them? No one else?"

Stark closed his eyes. "You know damned well there's someone else."

She gripped his shoulder for a moment "I'm not trying to needle you, Ethan. Just snap out of the denial. I'm glad you're going to check on Murphy, but you and I have both seen the reports. He's still out, and he shouldn't be. But we'll do everything we can. Just don't tear yourself apart over it."

"He's mine, Vic." Stark had come to the Moon commanding his own squad, twelve soldiers who were his personal responsibility. Some of those soldiers had died pretty early. Some had died recently. Murphy had been with the squad a long time. Not a great soldier. More of an easygoing, I'll-get-the-job-done-if-I-have-to sort of guy. Stark had been forced to leave that squad when his fellow noncommissioned officers voted him into command of the entire rebellious military force, but his heart had stayed with those few soldiers. "Maybe if I'd done something different—."

"Ethan, knock it off. You kept that boy alive through a dozen operations. If he pulls through now, that'll be thanks in great part to you as well. Save your guilt for something you couldn't have helped."

Stark glared back at her. "Thanks for the kind words."

"You don't need kind words. You need someone to tell you when you're being an idiot." Vic grinned. "That's me."

Stark managed somehow to smile slightly in return. "And you do it well, soldier. Thanks."

" 'Thanks,' he says. Say hi to Murphy for me."

"I will."

* * *

Medical always felt hushed, always quiet, even after an attack when doctors and nurses were rushing frantically to save casualties, even when a variety of equipment hummed and roared as part of that effort. Stark braced himself, then walked down the hall past the reception desk, his gliding, low-gravity steps even quieter than usual.

The wounded from Fourth Battalion were still where Milheim had reported. Even the medical science of the twenty-first century couldn't repair damaged organs, muscles, and bone in a day. But they were closing in on that goal. The main limit seemed to be the inability of the human body to absorb accelerated healing at the same time as it was weakened by the damage that required the healing.

Everyone perked up at Stark's arrival, managing to broadcast cheer despite haggard, pale faces. And why not? If you make it to medical nowadays, you're gonna live. You're going to be put back together. Why not be happy about that? Stark shook hands, clapped backs (gently), asked about families, praised their unit and their performance in battle, and in general did all the things soldiers needed when they were still in giddy shock from a brush with death.

But when he came to the last wounded soldier, he sat silently by his bed. The soldier remained sedated, hooked up to machines that kept him alive, while other machines and his own system worked to repair damage that would have surely killed the man a few decades earlier. A few patches of pale skin showed among the surgical coverings, the plates where machine joined human, and a few articles of clothing artfully arranged to provide the soldier some modesty. Stark squinted at the chart displayed near the bed, filled with medical terms he couldn't understand, watching the tracks of pulse and respiration flow by uninterrupted. If he did wake up, right now, what would I say? What would be enough and not too much? Finally he whispered "good luck, soldier," and headed for another area of medical, where another casualty awaited him.

Private Murphy had a small room to himself, sectioned off with lightweight panels. The machines around him hummed and blinked, reassuring in their steady rhythm. He lay flat on his back, eyes closed, looking absurdly healthy. Only someone who knew him as well as Stark could have spotted the thinness of the skin over Murphy's cheeks, a small sign of the stress his body had recently endured.

At the foot of the bed, holding the status display in one hand, stood a familiar figure. Stark cleared his throat, drawing her attention. "Hi, Doc."

The tired-eyed medic turned, quirking a small smile of welcome. "Welcome back, Sergeant. I can't seem to get rid of you."

"Sorry. But I gotta . . . you know."

She nodded. "Visit the wounded. Of course. When the generals came through here they used to have vid photographers recording the event. I guess that's not your speed, though."

"Hell, no. I already dropped in on the new ones, and now I wanted to see how Murphy was doing." Stark let his anguish show for just a moment. "What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing." The medic rubbed her cheeks with her palms, gazing at Murphy bleakly. "We call it half-life. That's just a nickname. The real term is some big medical phrase, but it adds up to a person who's been fixed up so everything should work, but the body doesn't seem to believe it. It's like we've got something inside that knows how much hurt our body has taken, and after a certain point it decides the game's over."

"I don't get it. He's healthy?"

"Sort of. Like I said, all his organs are functional. But if we shut off the life-support gear they'll fail anyway. Not because they're broken but because they apparently think they're broken."

"Is he—? I mean, you talk like you've seen this before. Any chance Murph will come out of it?"

The medic smiled sadly. Even as she spoke, Stark wondered briefly if she'd ever looked anything but tired and sad. "Any chance? Yeah. Some do. Maybe after a few days. Maybe after a few years. But maybe never. At some point, the relatives have to decide whether to pull the plug. Has the kid got relatives up here?"

Stark shook his head. "Nah. Just me, I guess."

"He could do worse." She paused, staring at Murphy with hooded eyes. "You know, even if he does come out of it, he may not be the same guy. He's been as close to being dead permanent as a human can get. It's not easy on someone."

"I guess not." Stark motioned cautiously toward Murphy, as if afraid to disturb him. "Is it okay if I talk to him?"

"You're the boss. You can do anything you want. It can't hurt."

"Can he hear me?"

"I don't know. Assume he can. I saw a case like this once where the girl's boyfriend showed up and she smiled. Dead to the world, but she smiled." The medic motioned toward Murphy's still form. "He got a girl?"

"Had one. She died during the action that put Murphy in here."

"Tough break. She in the same outfit?"

"Nah. She wasn't mil. She was civ. A colonist."

"Civilian?" The medic's eyes widened in amazement, then focused back on Murphy. "Well, that's a new one on me. Your boy looks mil all the way. That always scares off civs."

"These civs are different. They care about us. We ain't just an exciting vid show for them."

"Yeah. I've seen some of that. Like the way the civ doctors have helped out with our casualties. But, still. . ." The medic's voice trailed off. "Tough break. Real tough." She stepped backward. "I'll leave you alone for a few minutes."

"Thanks." Stark hesitated, then looked directly at the medic. "That girl you just mentioned. The one who knew her boyfriend had stopped by. She ever wake up?"

"No. But she knew she hadn't been forgotten."

Stark walked gingerly toward the hospital bed, then sat carefully, staring for a moment at Murphy's face, the slack expression and closed eyes so similar to those of an exhausted soldier enjoying a deep sleep. "Hey, Murph." He reached into a pocket, extracting a small figurine with a goofy smile. "I dunno if you ever saw this, but it was Robin's. It's called a paca. Just some dumb mascot thing that all the civ women bought years ago. She got it from her mother. My mom has one, too. Small world, huh? Anyway, it meant somethin' to Robin, so I figure it'll mean somethin' to you." He balanced the paca carefully on the nearest table, the figurine's idiot grin focused on Murphy's face.

Stark licked his lips, composing his thoughts before speaking again. "Look, I know I've always told you what to do and usually how to do it, right, Murph? But I can't do that now. I've got no right to. You gotta decide this, if you still can. You're a good kid, led a good life, stuck up for your friends. If you figure you've served a full tour here and it's time to head for a new assignment, well, that's your right. I know you got a lot of friends waiting. Hope so, anyway."

"But if you want to fight a little longer, if you wanta come back, I'll be here. I'll help any way I can. I wish I could do more. I wish I knew for sure what you wanted." Murphy's face didn't alter, except for the slow, even movements caused by his breathing. "Just like everything else in life, I guess. Just gotta do whatever we think is best and hope it's right." He touched one arm gently, as if afraid the limb would break under a firmer pressure. "Get your rest, soldier."

Stark stood as quietly as he could, as if Murphy were merely sleeping and shouldn't be disturbed, then walked carefully to where the medic had waited at a respectful distance.

"Any luck?" she asked, her voice hushed.

"No. You didn't expect me to have any, did you?"

"No. But miracles happen sometimes. If I didn't believe in the occasional miracle, there's a lot of times I'd just throw up my hands and give up. Instead, I keep trying, even when common sense says there's no hope."

Stark fashioned a crooked half-smile. "That's people, ain't it? We just keep trying. Maybe we're just stubborn. Doc?"

"Yes?"

"You think there's someplace else? You know, Heaven or whatever? A better place?"

"I sure hope so. The only ones who know for sure can't talk about it to us."

"Yeah." Stark brooded, his eyes still fixed on Murphy. "I wonder, though. If we think there's a great place waiting for us, and all those people who're gone now are waiting there, too, how come we fight so hard to stay alive? How come we don't give up? How come we fix up sick and injured people instead of lettin' 'em die and go there?"

"Maybe because we don't know, and can't know, for sure. Maybe because people always hate change, even good change. Maybe just because we don't want to leave behind the people and places in this world. Or maybe whoever's running things designed humans to want to stay here as long as possible."

"That'd fit, wouldn't it? But why would anyone make humans want to stay here where it's so easy to make bad choices, where people can get hurt and can hurt other people? That seems kinda cruel. Why do that? What's the point in making us stay here as long as we can?"

"Maybe we're supposed to be learning something while we're here."

Stark stood silent for a moment, then nodded. "Huh. Makes sense. It sounds like you've thought about it."

"You watch enough people die and it sort of comes naturally."

"Let me know if anything changes, okay?"

"Sure. I'll keep an eye on him."

Stark walked slowly away, glancing back just before the curtain fell to block his view. The medic stood beside Murphy's bed, hands resting on the grab rail, her shoulders bent as if under a burden, her head lowered. Somehow Stark knew her eyes would be even wearier than usual.

Artillery dropped shells all around as small arms fire raked the exposed position occupied by the dwindling force of American troops. Private Ethan Stark, clinging to the dirt as if he could somehow will himself beneath it for protection, shuddered in time to the almost constant vibrations of explosions. Before his eyes, battered stalks of grass trembled, their torn stems spotted with blood.

The soldier to Stark's right turned her head, looking straight at him. Corporal Stein, Stark's mentor and the closest he'd ever had to a big sister. But she was glaring in anger now, not at the enemy, but at him. "You really screwed up this time, didn't you, Stark?" Somehow the words came to him clearly despite the thunder of battle.

"Kate? Whadayya mean? How'd I screw up?"

"You led us here, didn't you? Trapped us here." Stark, already severely stressed by combat, wanted to scream in frustration at the unfairness of the accusation. "I'm not in charge, damnit! This isn't my fault!" Something was wrong. Stark gazed outward, where the tree line from which the enemy had been firing had somehow vanished, been replaced by barren ridges. The grass before him was gone, too, replaced by jagged rocks bearing the same blood. "Kate? What the hell. . . ?" He looked back at her, unable to finish his question.

"We trusted you, Stark. And you led us here. And now we can't even try to run." Stein gestured, indicating her lower body.

Stark stared, sickened, as he suddenly saw her legs were gone, blasted away by one of the incoming shells. He jerked his head, looking away, and found himself facing another soldier to his left. This one lay facedown, within easy reach, but unmoving. As if of its own will, Stark's hand moved to shake the soldier. The body lolled, limp, but the soldier's head flopped to the side. Private Murphy. Still alive. Stark could feel his breath against his hand. But his eyes, his face, were vacant and empty. "You're not dead!" Stark shouted. "You're not—."

He came awake, pulse pounding, his body still shaking from the memory of battle. Patterson's Knoll. I've refought that damned battle damn near every night since it ended. It was bad enough all those times, but now it's getting worse. He sat up, rubbing his face, calming his breathing. Major Patterson had led two companies of soldiers too far ahead of everyone else and learned too late that the enemy had more troops and more equipment than expected. Instead of retreating, he led his soldiers to an exposed hill and dithered there, until they were surrounded and slowly pounded to pieces. Stark had been one of three soldiers to survive, by escaping through the enemy lines that night. He'd left behind a lot of dead friends, including Kate Stein.

So now I get to dream of it being my fault. Of being responsible for it all. It's all getting jumbled up. Patterson's Knoll and here. The dead there. The people counting on me here. What the hell am I gonna do?

He thought about Kate Stein briefly, about the lessons in survival she'd taught new soldier Ethan Stark, about what she might advise now. But that led to thoughts of her brother, Grant. The soldier who'd come up here pretending to idolize Stark and had ended up betraying Stark and his troops in a misguided act of revenge. The soldier who'd been court-martialed for that at Stark's orders and executed by a firing squad after Stark had confirmed the court-martial's sentence. Wherever you are, Kate, I can understand if you hate me now. But I didn't have any real choice. Maybe if you'd still been around when that idiot Grant was growing up, he'd have learned something good from you like I did.

Stark stood, trying to shove all memory of the old battle and the Steins from his mind. He knew sleep wouldn't come again this night and didn't like the idea of sitting alone in his quarters staring into the darkness. After a long moment, Stark opened the door and headed for the nearest recreation room.

At this hour the small room was empty, of course, the utilitarian metal chairs all vacant. It always took awhile for someone new to the Moon to accept the apparently spindly construction of those chairs. In a typical, but in this case justified, act of economy, the chairs had been built with just enough metal to support a human's weight in gravity one-sixth that of Earth.

Stark grabbed a cup of coffee and sat at one of the small tables. Before him, the built-in display showed a screen saver that painted blackness with splotches of color, like the lights that showed behind closed eyes. Stark gazed morosely at the light display, imagining shapes in the glowing blotches.

Trapped. Yeah, we're trapped. I mean, pity the fools who try to take us, but we can't run. Sooner or later, if they keep hitting us, we'll lose. I've never been that good at math, but I know how battles add up. It doesn't matter how many you've won. As soon as you add in the battle you just lost, it all comes to zero. The victories don't count, then. Just like killing enemies. Kill the first hundred, great. But if the next one kills you, what was the point?

Stark's meandering thoughts settled on that last question, Reminds me of something. Some guys who stood and died. Who? Where? A face came to mind. Rash Paratnam? He's still alive, thank God. But he told me once about some guys. What was the name? Something like Sports. Spartans. Yeah. Some battle where they stood and fought to the last. Why the hell'd they do that, anyway?

The answer might not matter at all, but at least finding it would be a diversion from bad dreams and other questions whose answers couldn't be looked up. Rousing himself, Stark activated the display, searching for the battle his friend had once described. This must be it. Thermopylae. He read the description, grew intrigued enough to call up the background, then the longer-term results. An hour passed.

Stark had been given the Colony manager's private number, and he used it now. After several rings, Campbell answered, gazing bleary-eyed and disheveled into the screen. "Sergeant Stark? Is there an emergency?"

"No. Not an emergency. There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

Campbell squinted toward the corner of his own screen where the time would be displayed. "Sergeant, you're not much for following normal sleep patterns, are you?"

"Uh, I guess not, sir. Too many nights on duty, I guess. Listen, you ever hear of some guys named Spartans?"

"Spartans? Of course. Ancient Greece, correct?"

"That's right. Well, they fought a battle once at some place I can't pronounce. Thermo something. There were only a hundred of them, sent to stop an invading army."

Campbell shook his head as if trying to shake his thoughts into order. "That would have been the Persians, if I recall right."

"Yeah. Anyway, these Spartans held for a while. Those were their orders. Hold the position. But the Persians had a huge army. So eventually they surrounded the Spartans and killed them all." Stark moved his finger as if pointing to text no longer displayed. "They could've run, but they didn't. They'd been ordered to hold. They stayed and died."

"It was certainly a noble sacrifice, Sergeant Stark, but what—?"

Stark looked upward, seeking the right words. "But it was more than that. All the different Greeks fought a lot with each other. Cities, I guess. So even though this big Persian army was coming, the Greeks weren't cooperating well. But those hundred Spartans changed that. They didn't just buy a little time. What they did was give all the Greeks a symbol. See, they didn't die for themselves. They knew even if the Persians got beat that they'd still be dead. And they could've hung back in their part of Greece and just tried to protect their own territory. But they died protecting everybody. They became a symbol. Something for all the Greeks to rally around."

Campbell nodded, clearly puzzled. "Yes, that would have been important. But why is this old battle important now?"

"Because it tells us something, Mr. Campbell." Stark leaned toward the screen to emphasize his next words. "Something about making good things happen. I'm going to ask you a favor, sir."

"What's that?"

"This vote on declaring independence. I want you to postpone it."

"What?" Campbell shook his head again, as if testing his hearing this time. "Postpone the referendum on independence? Why?"

Stark hesitated, once again searching for the words he needed. "Because we can leave the U.S. and get away with it for at least a while. I mean, the Colony is pretty well off, now that it's not being sucked dry by the corporations back home and by the extra taxes you civs had to pay because you weren't allowed to elect your own representatives to help protect you from that kind of nonsense. Hell, you're rich in resources and specialized manufacturing plants, right? And my troops can protect this Colony for a while. Maybe forever. But we'd be cutting and running, wouldn't we? Taking what we could get and leaving all the ordinary civs back home stuck with the same corrupt politicians and corrupted system."

"You're saying we should stick with a country which is doing everything it can to intimidate, coerce, and oppress us? Why?" Campbell repeated, this time more forcefully.

"There's two things you can do when something's broke, sir. You can throw it away, or you can try to fix it. I know, it seems like the attitude has always been to throw it away. But it couldn't have always been like that." Stark paused, remembering another point. "I've got parents back home still. Civs, like you. I still remember being a know-it-all teenager, being embarrassed by them. But, you know, they were, they are, decent people who want to do the right thing. Most civs are, I guess. Like most mil, too. They've just been convinced that nothing they do can change things. Maybe if they have an example of people who keep trying to change things for the better even when those people could just cut and run and be pretty well set, maybe they'd try, too. And if enough of them decide to try, what happens to the system?"

"You're saying we should stick with the U.S. as an example to everyone else, that by committing ourselves to fix the system we'll inspire others to try? That's a noble sentiment, Sergeant, but I'm not sure it would be responsible of me to make it policy. I have to think of the people of this Colony. You're asking a lot of them."

"Sir, with all due respect, my people are dying every day to defend the Colony. I'm not asking your people to face that kind of thing. I'm just asking them to stand up and say 'we're not running even though we could.' "

Campbell's expression had closed down at Stark's last words, giving no clue to his inner thoughts. "I appreciate your sacrifices, Sergeant. We all do. But you do realize a declaration of independence would benefit your soldiers as well. As our own country, we can make peace with some or all of the enemy alliance which has been at war with us since this Colony was founded. That would take a lot of pressure off of you and your soldiers. And it would mean my people wouldn't have to live in state of siege any longer."

"I already figured that, Mr. Campbell. But I heard something earlier today that really bothered me. One of my smart advisers told us about how a guy named Hannibal got beat because he couldn't defeat a Roman army that wouldn't fight him the way he wanted, and because he couldn't take Rome while that army was still out there. That made me pretty unhappy, because I figured we haven't got any army out there to make life difficult for the people trying to take this Colony."

Campbell nodded. "There simply isn't any prospect for forming an alliance with other Earth nations. They won't risk the wrath of the United States—"

"No, sir," Stark interrupted. "I didn't mean any foreign army. But everybody back home, the civs who are supposed to be supporting these attacks against us, ain't they an army? If they all refused to back the people who are trying to defeat us, the same people who've been using guys like you and me and every other poor slob up here and back home for who knows how many years, what would happen?"

"I don't know." Campbell stared, so intent that Stark imagined he could see the wheels turning in the Colony manager's brain. "That's a thought, Sergeant. A very interesting thought. And you're right that inspiring such action by the civilian populace back home would require a powerful example."

"So you're gonna do what I ask?"

"I'm going to think about it. No promises yet. I can stall the independence referendum for a short time without creating too much trouble. Outright canceling it is a step I'm not prepared to take at this time."

"I can't ask for more than that."

"Would you, personally, be willing to tell the citizens of this Colony what you've told me?"

"Me? I'm no public speaker. I'm just a grunt. You're the politician."

"Sometimes, when sincerity and believability are at issue, a politician isn't the best speaker to use," Campbell noted dryly. "Do you believe in what you just said enough to go on vid and tell everyone else?"

Stark felt a major headache coming on, but nodded. Ah, hell. Why do I keep trapping myself into this kind of thing? "Okay. If I have to, I'll do it."

"Thank you, Sergeant." Campbell glanced ostentatiously toward his clock once again. "I'll call you about this later on. During normal hours. When people are usually awake."

"Sure," Stark grinned at the gibe. "Any time."

"Goodnight, Sergeant."

The screen blanked and Stark leaned back, letting out a long breath. Now what have I done? Vic is gonna give me hell.

A slight sound near the door to the rec room caught his attention. Looking that way, Stark saw Vic Reynolds leaning against the doorway, her arms crossed and an enigmatic expression on her face. "Oh, hi, Vic."

" 'Hi,' he says. Going off half-cocked again, Ethan?"

"It's the way I work best."

"You occasionally might try thinking and planning things through first. Just for the hell of it." She came in, sitting across from him. "So, you're going to ask the civs not to declare independence. Are you planning to tell the troops that?"

He hadn't thought about that yet, but the answer came instantly anyway. "Yeah. As soon as I talk to Campbell again. Within a few days, I guess."

"Good." The answer surprised him, as did Vic's smile of grudging admiration. "You always surprise me, Ethan. We've been looking for a cause, something to fight for, and most people figured that would turn out to be independence."

"There isn't a lot of enthusiasm for independence, Vic. It's more like something people figured they'd have to do."

"Exactly. Instead, you offer as a cause our own country again. Hang in there because the country needs you to find its way, so the civs will do the right thing once they see you willing to die for it. Not as a vid show, not to prop up corporate profits in some stinking part of the world that happens to be rich in natural resources, but as defenders of what's right." She raised her hands and applauded softly. "Good work, Sergeant."

"Knock it off. I didn't think it through like that. I wasn't trying to figure all the angles."

"You never do, Ethan. That's why people believe in you." She bent her head slightly to one side, regarding him closely. "But to make this one work, you'll have to convince the civs to follow your ideas, too. Can you do that?"

"I dunno." He scowled down at the blank display, where the screen saver was once again painting random patterns. "I'm just a grunt, Vic. When did my job get so complicated?"

"Probably about the time you took it seriously. There aren't any easy jobs, Ethan. Not if they're being done right."

"What was that dumb motto they tried to foist on us once? 'If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right.' Remember that? Well, I haven't been having much fun lately, so I guess that speaks for itself. What are you doing up at this hour, anyway?"

"Ever since that raid hit us here at headquarters I've been waking up at odd hours with an urge to inspect the security posts."

"Nothing wrong with that." The raiders, using access codes provided by Grant Stein, had almost achieved the total surprise they needed. Almost. Neither Reynolds nor Stark had been happy with the amount of luck that had played a major role in saving them that night. "Everything okay?" Vic nodded as Stark yawned. "Then I suggest we go to bed."

"You sly devil, you."

Stark felt his face warming. "That's not what I meant."

"I know. Life's complicated enough without adding something like that." Vic stood, heading for the door. "See you in the morning, soldier. Whatever the future holds, we'll handle it better if we get some sleep between now and then."

"Commander Stark? The civs are seeing ghosts again."

Stark was into his battle armor and fastening the seals so quickly that he was still blinking sleep out of his eyes as he headed for the command center. The last time the civilian technicians responsible for scanning space above the Colony's landing field had reported seeing a ghost on their scans it had been the only warning that a raid was about to hit Stark's headquarters. Inside the command center, Sergeant Tran and Sergeant Reynolds waited, both armored as well. "Good morning." Outside, the black sky never changed, but by the artificial human clock it was about 0300 now. "How many ghosts? Where?"

Tran pointed at the display, where unknown contact symbology overlay trajectories curving down from space toward the Colony. "Either three or four. The civs notified us as soon as they spotted the ghosts on their scans, and by working directly with them we've been able to tweak our own sensors to get occasional detections."

"Why are they trying this again? The last time the fact that the civ sensors work on slightly different parameters let them see a shuttle that was hiding from our own sensors and warn us. Don't they realize the same thing will happen this time?"

Vic shook her head. "No, Ethan. They don't realize that because they probably never found out the civs tipped us off. As far as they know, we were oblivious until the raid hit our headquarters, after which we did a manual scan looking for the raiders' shuttle and spotted it."

"So they figure they could get away with inserting raiders that way again, huh? Those ghosts don't look like they're heading for the headquarters complex, though."

"They're not, but we can't be sure where they are heading. Our systems are still trying to refine their objective, but the hits we're getting on the ghosts are so weak they're having trouble."

"So give me a guess, damnit. Those shuttles will be grounding before long, and I want a reception committee on hand for them."

Vic looked at Tran, who focused on one of his watchstanders. That corporal squinted at the display, tapping in a few commands, which brightened or faded different portions of the ghosts' projected tracks. "Sir, if I had to call it now, I'd say they're headed for the primary power plant."

"The power plant." A high-power fusion reactor, off to one side of the Colony proper, buried and surrounded by berms. "That's it, Vic. They want to grab that power plant. What happens if they do?"

Another watchstander answered. "Slow death, sir. They'll have us and the civs in the Colony by the throat. We can't run things up here off the backup plant and whatever solar cells we can spread."

"Great. And I guess the alternative would be trying to retake it with a firefight around a fusion reactor. Vic, get the on-call units moving to the plant, as fast as they can go. What kind of security does that power plant have, anyway?"

Sergeant Tran indicated a scattering of symbology as he zoomed the display onto the power plant's location. "Military Police, backing up civ security personnel."

Stark checked the symbology quickly. "A squad of MPs? That's it?"

"That's it."

"And there's three or four raider shuttles, you said? They're smaller than the cargo shuttles, so that'd be about a company of attackers?"

"That's our estimate, Commander. The raiders are likely to be elite troops, if the attack on our headquarters was any indication."

"Vic, I want those on-call units at the power plant five minutes ago. Tran, alert all units on the perimeter that we've got something going down and there might be some probes or all-out attacks coming to take advantage of it. Oh, yeah, and get me the commander of those MPs." A moment later, Stark's display popped up a window showing a tense-looking Sergeant. "You in charge of the MPs at the plant?"

"Affirmative. They tell me we've got company coming."

"Looks like it, yeah. What kind of armament have you apes got?"

"We're real light infantry. Rifles and sidearms. That's it."

"What about the civ security people there?"

"Strictly nonlethal stuff. Unless we want to use them for human shields, I'm planning on telling them to stay under cover."

Stark took a moment to check the progress of his reaction forces. APCs loaded with infantry were converging on the power plant from three locations, while a fourth column consisting of a couple of Lamont's tanks headed that way as well. "Okay. I've got three companies heading to reinforce you, as well as some heavy armor. But the stuff we're tracking is going to get to you before those reinforcements can. I need you to hold that power plant."

The MP sergeant nodded. "I guess after this I won't have to listen to you guys tell us we're not combat troops. But it sounds like we're going to be seriously overmatched in numbers and weaponry."

"I know. There's nothing else there you can use in the way of weapons?"

"Just the particle cannons."

"Particle cannons?" Stark checked his display, punching controls with increasing anger. "I don't show any super-heavy weaponry like that at the power plant."

"That's 'cause they ain't weapons. Technically. There's a couple cannon here to fragment or divert any rocks falling on the plant. But they're only designed to engage rocks. I don't even know if I can train one at a surface target."

"Give it a try." Stark checked the progress of his units again, measuring it against the increasingly firm tracks of the ghosts. "You only have to hold for maybe fifteen minutes, Sergeant."

"Is that all?" The MP tried to smile. "If we make it, I'd sure appreciate having some heavier firepower added to our TO&E."

"You hold that plant, and I'll add a damn tank to your table of organization and equipment if you want one." He looked over at Vic. "Okay. Tell me why such a critical location only has a squad of MPs guarding it."

"I don't know, Ethan. That's how it was when we took over, and it was one of a million things we've never had time to review. According to the system, those MPs and the civ cops are only supposed to provide security against individual nut cases, not a full-scale raid. Oh, hell. Tran, can those particle cannon knock down the ghosts before they land?"

Tran gritted his teeth. "I should've thought of that. Does anybody on the watch team have the answer?"

A corporal nodded. "I know. If those cannon are designed to take out rocks, then they won't be able to engage the ghosts.

They're designed to use active targeting systems to track and hit nonmaneuvering contacts."

"What, you mean, just radar?"

"That's right. They don't need anything else. But if they illuminate the ghosts, the ghosts will alter trajectories, and the cannon fire control won't be able to handle that."

Tran turned back to Vic and spread his hands. "Good idea. Won't work."

"Thanks anyway," Vic replied. "But on second thought we might not have wanted to use them even if we could."

Stark gave her a quizzical look. "Why not?"

"What if they're U.S. troops this time?" Vic asked. "Do we want to knock down shuttles full of American soldiers?"

"Not if we can help it. Could they be Americans?" Stark grimaced at the display as if doing so would give him a better view of the ghosts. "We heard the Rangers had been folded into regular units to try and make up manning shortfalls. Would they send regular troops on a raid like this?"

"We did."

"That's because we're not doing things by the book, Vic. You know the Pentagon. The book says you use special troops for special ops. But there's not a full company of spec ops troops left. That would mean they've hired another batch of mercs from some other country's special forces."

"We hope."

"Yeah."

His comm unit beeped. "Stark? This is Yurivan."

"Hey, Stace. What's up?"

"Just thought you'd like to know somebody's trying to activate some of those worms we found hidden in the system after the last raid."

Stark breathed a sigh of relief. Those were nasty worms, if I remember right. They would have messed up our combat systems and a lot of other stuff. "Is there any chance you can locate this 'somebody'?"

"I'm trying, but my hackers say that somebody is covering their tracks real well."

"Is there any chance we missed some worms when we scrubbed the system? Or that any new ones have been inserted?"

"There's always a chance, Stark. If all the lights go out and you start choking to death, you'll know we missed a couple."

"Thanks, Stace." Stark looked over at Vic. "Why'd I make her security officer, again?"

"Don't ask me. It was your idea," Vic reminded him. "But she's awfully good at it."

"I could do without the 'awful' part. Tran, how close are the ghosts to landing?"

Tran checked his display, rubbing the back of his neck. "We'll probably lose the ghosts any minute now when they get too low for multisensor scan analysis. Say two minutes to touchdown, max."

"Two minutes." Stark eyed the symbology on the big display, switching from unit to unit to track the progress of the reinforcements. "And the closest reaction force is at least ten minutes out. Vic, I'm going to bring up vid from the MPs and see if I can help coordinate their defense. They haven't had the combat time I've had. You hustle those reinforcements in and keep me advised of their progress."

"Roger. Everything else around the perimeter still looks quiet."

"Good. I'll. . . wait a minute. Tran, can I transmit to those raiders?"

"Well, there's common frequencies the raiders will surely be monitoring, but you wouldn't be able to transmit any worms—"

"That's not what I have in mind. Get some circuits ready." Stark called up vid for the MPs, seeing through their armor combat systems. Their sergeant had deployed them along the low berm in fire teams, the soldiers lying just beneath the edge to take advantage of what little cover existed. Not bad. He checked for the name of the MP sergeant before speaking. "Sergeant Sullivan. Good job on setting up your troops. Have you got everybody on the berm?"

"All but a couple I've got working on something special."

He'll need everyone on the firing line. But he knows that, and he doesn't have time to explain what those two soldiers are doing. So I'll trust him. "Have you given your soldiers guidance on targeting?"

"Uh, no, sir. I figured we'd use highest probability hit criteria, like in the sims."

"The enemy knows that. Once you start shooting, they'll probably send a few people out to draw fire so they can target all your shooters. So designate one or two guys to engage anybody with the highest hit probabilities and have everyone else keep shooting at other targets."

"Yes, sir. Good idea. I guess you learned that one the hard way, huh?"

"You bet." He's nervous, jawing with me a little to try to hide it. "I'd like to talk to your troops for a second."

"Sure. I mean, you're the boss."

Stark triggered the circuit to cover the entire squad. "This is Stark. You've got a rough battle coming on. These raiders are likely to be tough, but you've only got to hold 'em a few minutes. They're gonna come at you fast, because they know they've got to take that power plant before any reinforcements can arrive to help you. But they think we haven't seen 'em, don't know they're coming. You guys show 'em different." On Sergeant Sullivan's HUD, Stark watched visual systems tagging anomalies. "Sergeant, that's probably them." The anomalies multiplied as the ghosts closed on their objective, until they reached a point where the shuttles couldn't be hidden anymore.

Four shuttle symbols seemed to flare into existence as the raiders dropped in to a hard landing. Stark winced in automatic sympathy, remembering the physical stress of those high-g's when assault craft braked at the last minute. The craft had barely touched the surface when hatches popped and armored figures came dashing out, heading straight for the berm.

"They're in our armor," Vic murmured. "Mark V model, like the last raiders."

"Got it." Stark keyed the broadcast frequencies he'd had prepared. "All personnel in the raiding force and on your shuttles. We're ready for you. This installation is heavily defended." At least it will be once the reinforcements get here. "You're outnumbered and outgunned. Surrender immediately."

The attackers may have hesitated for a fraction of a second, but instead of surrendering, many opened fire while the others came on. The MPs opened up as well, dropping several attackers in the first volley thanks to the lack of cover on the open area around the power plant. But the raiders came on, laying down accurate, heavy fire, which had the MPs ducking for cover.

"Sergeant Sullivan! Tell your soldiers to shift to full auto. They need to put out enough fire to slow those raiders down."

"Yes, sir." The volume of the defending barrage ramped up as the MPs began emptying their magazines.

Stark watched, trying to remain emotionally detached as the MPs took casualties. Within five minutes of the first shot, half the MP squad was either wounded or dead, the survivors beginning to waver under the pressure. "Vic, where's those reinforcements?"

"They're moving as fast as they can, Ethan. We need to buy a few more minutes."

More MPs dropped, rolling back down the berm under the impact of hits. The vid from Sergeant Sullivan's armor hazed suddenly as bullets tore through the suit's systems. On Sullivan's HUD, Stark saw damage markers glowing red as the suit tried to repair the damage. On another portion of the HUD, other markers displayed the damage bullets had done to the man inside the suit. Sullivan himself was still fighting, despite a shattered shoulder, which must have been causing agony every time he fired despite the drugs his med kit was pumping into his body. Stark checked the status of all the remaining MPs, grimly noting their dwindling numbers and depleted ammunition.

"Ethan, the nearest reinforcements are two minutes from the far side of the power plant."

"That's too far, Vic. There's maybe six MPs left still able to fight, and they're low on ammo." On vid, Stark watched the raiders surge forward in a mass dash for the berm. Once they reached it, it would be almost impossible to avoid a battle among the fusion reactor's components. Now would be a good time for a miracle.

Stark jerked backward in surprise as a section of lunar soil erupted as if it had been punched by a giant. The eruption traveled in a wavering line, cutting a trench a meter deep as it meandered across the rock then back and forth through the ranks of the raiders, before walking up one side of a raider shuttle. The shuttle split along that line, the two pieces sliding apart in slow motion as the weak lunar gravity tugged their mass into movement. The raiders milled about in shock, their ranks ripped asunder, their charge momentarily halted. "What the hell was that?"

"One of the particle cannon, I'm guessing," Vic replied. "Not much on accuracy, but it sure did a number on things. It almost looked like they were training the thing by hand."

"Can you do that?"

"I wouldn't if I could help it. I just hope none of those MPs got fried getting off that shot."

Those must've been the two guys Sullivan sent on the special errand. On vid, the raiders were reforming under the urging of their officers and began moving toward the berm again despite a scattering of fire from the remaining MPs. "Vic."

"Pull back your scan, Ethan. The cavalry's here."

Stark adjusted his scan, grinning in relief as APCs lurched to a halt at the base of the berm and fresh platoons of his soldiers spilled out. "Make sure they know there's a charge coming their way."

"They know, Ethan."

The first raiders over the top were moving so fast that they were inside the ranks of Stark's soldiers before realizing it. One or two tried to fight, dying in a confused fusillade of fire that had Stark agonizing over the chances that his soldiers would hit each other. Then the reinforcements continued up the slope as more units arrived below them and provided covering fire.

The raiders' charge fragmented and broke as it ran into the fresh troops. They fell back again, this time obviously retreating toward their shuttles, firing as they went, despite increasingly heavy losses as the number of defenders kept growing.

"Ethan, I'm sending the armor and one of the companies of infantry around the side of the power plant. Maybe they can nail those shuttles before they lift off."

"Good idea, Vic. I'll see if I can stop this mess before they get there." Stark triggered the broadcast frequencies again. "All personnel in the raiding force. You are trapped and heavily outnumbered. Surrender now to avoid further bloodshed. You on the raider shuttles, we have you targeted. If you attempt to lift off, you will be destroyed. I repeat, surrender immediately."

Once again there was no visible response to Stark's demand. Most of the raiders continued firing even though they were pinned down now by the intensity of the barrage from the power plant's defenders. Some continued evading backward, trying to reach the relative safety of the shuttles.

Two tanks came around the edge of the berm, pausing momentarily while their main cannons sought targets. Both vehicles fired, their shells streaking straight into the side of the nearest shuttle. The resulting explosions ripped holes through the shuttle's skin, holes that widened as gusts of fuel and gasses blew out from shattered storage tanks. "Vic, tell the armor to lay off those shuttles. I want to try to take the other two intact."

"Roger. Armor, shift to ground unit targets unless the shuttles try to lift." APCs jerked to a halt near the tanks, depositing the third company of infantry to add their fire to that already lashing the raiders.

Stark cursed as he watched increasing numbers of enemy symbology flash with assessed casualty markers. I wanted 'em dead when they had a chance of winning, but now it's turning into a slaughter. He broadcast again. "Raider commander. You are wasting the lives of your soldiers. You can't win and you can't run. Surrender now."

This time his words got a response. The remaining fire from the raiders rapidly dwindled to nothing, followed by a reply on the same frequency Stark had broadcast over. "This is the commander of the assault force. My soldiers have been ordered to cease fire. I request you cease fire as well."

"I didn't hear the word 'surrender,' yet."

"Yes. We surrender, damn you."

"Vic."

"Got it, Ethan. All units, cease fire. Alpha and Delta Companies, maintain covering positions. Charlie Company, advance and disarm the raiders. Send one squad to each remaining shuttle to take possession. Chief Wiseman, we need some of your people to bring those shuttles into the spaceport."

Stark checked on the status of Sergeant Sullivan and his MPs again, shaking his head as he read off the casualty count. "Sullivan? Can you respond?"

"Uh, yeah." The combined impact of Sullivan's wounds and the drugs his med kit had pumped into him had left the sergeant only partly coherent. "We held, didn't we?"

"You held. There's medics on the way."

"Good. I'm kinda messed up. Oh, Christ. My people. Look at 'em."

Stark had to swallow before speaking again. "You lost a lot of soldiers, Sergeant Sullivan." Assuming the medics saved every one left alive, the squad had still lost half its number in dead. All of those still alive were wounded. "They did their job. You're the best damn combat troops I ever saw in action." It was a small exaggeration, Stark admitted to himself, but only a small one.

"Thanks. I. . . hell. Good thing we got that particle cannon goin', huh?"

"Yeah. How come I didn't scan the people you sent to do that?"

"We figured we'd have to train the thing manually if we could make it work at all." Sullivan's voice wavered from the effects of shock. "They had to put on special suits for protection from the energy fields around the cannon. Nothing goes in or out of those suits except for a real limited visual display, so they could see what they were doing but couldn't transmit."

"They did great, Sergeant. You all did." Stark saw a medical team kneeling next to Sullivan. "Take a break, soldier."

"Yes, sir."

Stark pulled back from his view of Sullivan, taking in the entire area once again. A swift check of the raider casualty markers showed they had suffered worse than the defenders thanks to the particle cannon and the timely arrival of the reinforcements. Perhaps two-thirds of the raiders were down. Stark felt a sudden coldness inside as a belated thought came to life. "Somebody check and find out if we've just fought Americans." In the rush of battle, no one had stopped to think. Now he waited, sick at heart and afraid for the answer.

"Commander Stark? This is Charlie Company commander. They're not ours."

"You sure?"

"Positive. They got dogtags implanted, but in the wrong place, and our gear can't read them. Maybe I'll get a positive ID once we get a chance to pull their armor off, but they're not American."

"Good," Stark sagged back, fighting down an impulse to tremble with relief. "Good God."

Reynolds eyed him. "What?"

"Vic, I didn't even think about it when we were fighting. I could've been watching other American soldiers die fighting us. and I didn't even think about it."

"You were busy." Stark glared at her as Vic continued. "They fired first. They didn't hesitate to shoot to kill. What were you supposed to do different?"

"Think about what I was doing, damnit. You don't kill people on automatic pilot."

"You do if they're trying to kill you."

He almost snapped back at Vic again, appalled by her apparently cold attitude, then took a deep breath instead. She's right, on one level They didn't give us a chance to do anything but fight. But I bet she's stressed out by the chance we might've been trading shots with other Americans, just like I am. She'll never admit it if I'm letting that chance get to me, though. "You've got a point." Vic looked surprised, then grimaced. "What's the matter?"

"I just had to swallow some words," she replied. "They didn't taste too good."

"I know the feeling. Okay, the past is past. Let's look ahead. First priority after we get the prisoners secured is to do a full review of every critical installation, military and civilian, inside this perimeter and make sure they're all adequately defended."

"I agree. I'll put Bev Manley on it."

"Bev? She's admin, not combat."

"Yes, but she's extremely thorough and will look at everything with fresh eyes. Bev will identify any weak spots."

Stark rubbed his eyes. "Yeah. You're right. We also need to tell Sergeant Gordasa we've had a couple of new shuttles with state-of-the-art concealment gear delivered to us courtesy of the government. Maybe they'll help us smuggle stuff through the blockade."

"I doubt it. The government will know how to defeat its own gear."

"I guess so. Well, maybe they'll come in handy against some of the other people we're fighting up here." Stark shook his head, abruptly aware of the shortness of his interrupted night's sleep. "I need coffee something fierce."

A nearby watchstander jumped to his feet. "I'll get it, sir."

"No, you won't. You'll sit at that watchstation and do the job you're being paid for." He looked out across the entire command center. "You all did good. Good handling the detection, the alert, and everything else. Thanks." Stark stood, glancing over at Vic. "You want some coffee, too?"

"Please. If there's none ready, just bring me back a handful of coffee grounds to chew on."

"I might do that for myself, too." He paused, his eyes drawn by a monitor that displayed an outside view, the Earth hanging in brilliant color against the blackness that surrounded it. "Maybe this latest failed attack will make the government change its mind about defeating us, maybe get them negotiating seriously. You think?"

"Stranger things have happened," Vic sighed. "Are you sure you don't want to try to grab another hour's sleep before the day officially begins?"

"Nah. I got work to do."

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Framed