Greenies

Chapter 10

During this period of time, while a huge armada of ships and marines were heading towards their planet, intent upon taking it back from them, the Martians went through several varieties of turmoil as the fact that they had really broken ties with WestHem and made themselves independent gradually sank into the collective consciousness. That they had disconnected themselves from their economic system was a major worry. WestHem owned all of the banks, all of the financial institutions, and controlled all of the money. Did that mean that the money circulating on Mars was now worthless? If WestHem didn't approve of the transactions now occurring independent of them — and it seemed that they most certainly did not — didn't that mean that no one on the planet no longer had any money?

This fear led to a brief work slowdown in the vital factories and agricultural fields as the rumor that everyone was, in effect, working for nothing spread like wildfire across the planet. This occurred just as the various workplaces were just starting to get themselves into something approaching optimum production, just as the issues of who was going to run things began to hash out. In this instance the workers had, in almost every instance, done exactly as Laura Whiting had suggested they do. They had gotten together and had appointed supervisors and managers from among their own ranks, for the most part electing people to the position that it was mutually agreed would do a good job of it. But the thought that no one would get paid for his or her labors was almost too much. Work suddenly became shoddy and even non-existent in a few places. Newly hired workers, and even some of the veteran workers, started not showing up for their jobs, leaving holes in the various production lines.

Laura Whiting, with her gift for putting things into perspective, was able to ease the situation with one of her speeches.

"People," she told her citizens during a live broadcast on MarsGroup, "I'm afraid that you are all caught up in WestHem economic thinking here and you are missing the big picture. What is money? Think about that for a moment. Money is nothing more than a notation in a computer somewhere. It does not exist anywhere else. This is not the old pre-colonization days after all. We do not have pieces of paper or metal coins to represent dollars and cents. We have notations in computers telling you that you have this much money, that you owe this much money, that you are paid this much money. This money has value because WestHem says it has value.

"Well I'm here to tell you that the money still has value because we of the interim Martian government now say it has value. Each one of you will be paid for the work you do at the rate that has always been paid for that work. You will have these computer notations deposited in your accounts, just like always, and you may use that money to pay your rent, buy food for your tables, buy intoxicants at the shops, or do whatever else you wish with it. All prices on everything have been fixed in place at the level they were at the day before we took this planet from the WestHems. Your money is still good and will continue to be good until such time as we come up with a new economic system under our new constitution.

"In fact, there are some distinct advantages to you now that we have taken WestHem out of the equation. Most of you were horribly in debt, the result of credit lines with outrageous interest rates that were given to you by various WestHem financial systems. My understanding was that the average Martian citizen, like the average WestHem citizen, was more than sixty thousand dollars in debt to these thieving schemers. The payments on these amounts were set up so that the interest was the only thing that ever got paid. The principal never seemed to get any smaller. Well I for one see no reason to continue to pay on these particular bills. When we are triumphant in this upcoming war, such debts will become uncollectable anyway since we will be setting ourselves up on a different system of currency than WestHem. So my suggestion is that you keep your money for yourselves and pay nothing to any WestHem corporation of any kind."

This speech did just the trick for the sagging faith in the currency. The Martians were made to believe that the money still had value and, as such, it did. Workers returned to their jobs and production reached an all time high days later.

As that particular crisis was going on however, another, more serious one was taking place as well. It was a crisis of confidence. Since the very first day of the revolution, Laura and the legislature that was loyal to her had allowed WestHem Internet broadcasts to continue to be seen on Mars uncensored.

"It is not our intention or our wish to block out information from the other side of this debate," Whiting had been quoted as saying on more than one occasion. "Let the people hear presentations from all concerned parties, evaluate them for what they are worth, and make their decisions based upon that."

And so the big three Internet and media providers information was widely seen throughout the planet during the preparations for Operation Red Hammer. Every day the Martian citizens, many of whom were enlisted in the MPG and preparing to fight, watched dissertations on the composition of the forces that were being assembled to take them on. They listened to General Wrath and Admiral Jules give their briefings each day, explaining how they would outnumber the Martians four to one and how they would destroy the MPG if they did not peacefully surrender the moment that the landings were made. They watched the news briefings of the huge numbers of marines being loaded onto the Panamas for the trip. They watched the thousands of pieces of WestHem armor being loaded up as well. They listened to WestHem military experts in the employ of the various media corporations explaining how a force the size of the MPG could not possibly stand up against the might and sheer numbers that were being deployed against it.

Many of them could not help but lose their nerve in the face of this information. None of the Martians knew about the existence of Operation Interdiction and even if they had, it probably would have made very little difference. A reverse exodus of volunteers from the MPG took place as thousands of people resigned their positions in order to escape the fate that was being promised. It was a mass resignation that threatened to undermine the entire revolution if something was not done to stop it or at least staunch the flow a bit.

It was General Jackson, making a rare appearance before the MarsGroup cameras, who managed to bring things back under control in this instance.

"The MPG is a volunteer fighting force," he told the planet. "It always has been, and always will be. If you don't think you can take the fight, if you don't think the independence of the planet and the ability to carve out our own destiny is worth fighting for, than get the hell out. I don't want you. But know this, citizens of Mars. The only way that we'll get to be free is to fight. I wouldn't have started this fight if I didn't think we had a damn good chance of winning it. We'll be fighting on our home ground, using equipment that has been specifically designed to fight here, and I have more than a few tricks up my sleeve. I'm not sending people to the slaughter here. I have more than thirty years of experience as a commanding soldier and I think I know what I'm doing and I have always made sure that my officers in charge know what they are doing as well. If we stick together, I'm confident we will beat these Earthlings. And if it looks to me at any point like we will not be able to beat them, then I will order hostilities to cease immediately. But if I keep losing people at the rate I'm losing them now, if my soldiers keep resigning on me, we're going to reach that point before the Earthlings even make their landings and everything that we've done so far will be for nothing. So do me the favor of thinking about that for a minute before you resign and hope that others will do your fighting for you."

Over the next week the resignations trickled down to nearly a halt and a sharp spike in the number of enlistments was registered as well. The pace of training, particularly of infantry crews and special forces soldiers, continued.

Triad Naval Base

July 1, 2146

Admiral Belting and General Jackson sat side by side in the control room of the naval base, their eyes watching the live pictures on the Internet screen, their ears tuned into the radio transmissions that were being beamed back and forth. The camera view was a long pan of the WHSS Tripoli Harbor, one of the four pre-positioned Panama class transports. The shot was being taken from an A-12 that was hovering thirty kilometers above it. This was the day that they were to try to bring down the landing craft within it and unload the combat equipment on the surface. In all more than a hundred people were involved in the operation, not a single one of whom had ever performed such an act before.

"Test fire of thrusters is within parameters," said the voice of Lieutenant Kipling, who had been placed in command of Tripoli Harbor herself. In his former life he had been the second officer on board a civilian cargo ship that had done the Triad to Earth route. He had spent the past three weeks studying up on the systems of the Panama and training a crew to help fly it.

"I copy the thrusters are within parameters," Belting told him in reply. "Proceed when ready."

The ship was undocked from its clamps five minutes later, the first time it had free from its moorings in more than six years. Only one of the four fusion reactors had been lit and that was only to provide power and environmental controls to the ship. The fusion engines themselves would not be needed for the operation.

"Thrusting away," Kipling's voice said once they were free. The flare of white appeared from the fore and aft sides and the massive ship slowly began to move away from the dock. It took nearly thirty minutes for it to move out into the departure corridor and stabilize its orbit once again.

"Good job," Belting congratulated once they reported that they were in position. "My compliments to your crew."

"My crew thanks you, Admiral," Kipling responded. "Now lets see if those pilots you hired can do their stuff. Opening the cargo door now."

On the top of the ship a massive door began to swing upward, powered by a set of thirty hydraulic arms. This was the main cargo off-load door. Immediately beneath it were the sixteen landing craft in which one quarter of a fighting division's gear was stored. The landing craft were connected to a system of airtight access tunnels and airlocks.

"Which ones are you bringing out first?" Jackson asked Belting as the door reached the top of its climb. They could only launch four landing craft at a time because they only had four pilots that could fly them. Or at least it was hoped that they could fly them. All of those recruited had come from the civilian spaceports at Eden and New Pittsburgh, where their jobs had been flying the cargo lifters that delivered food products and steel to Triad. None of the four had ever flown a Panama lifter before except in the simulation programs that they had activated at the TNB training center.

"The A through D will come out first," Belting said. "They have the tanks and the APCs on them. Once the pilots land we'll have a C-12 bring them back up again and we'll start working on the next four."

"So a couple of days to get everything down?"

"Assuming that nothing goes wrong, yes."

Jackson nodded thoughtfully, sipping out of his coffee.

"LS-A is reporting a good engine start," Kipling reported over the radio link. "He's beginning the pre-flight checks now."

Within a minute the other three ships reported successful engine starts as well. The pre-flight checks on the landing craft took the better part of forty minutes to complete. Belting and Jackson passed the time by discussing Operation Interdiction. So far the secrecy of the operation appeared to have been maintained despite the fact that Marlin had managed to get out a brief radio message before being destroyed. Both men concluded, based upon the arrogant attitudes of the Marlin's commanding officers, who had been pulled from the wreckage by the rescue crews, interrogated at length by Belting himself, and then shipped down to the POW camp in Libby, that even if the Earthlings received the message they would have a hard time putting stock in it.

"They're arrogance is what is going to lose the war for them," Jackson said with a sad shake of the head. "Just the way it happened in the Jupiter War."

"Thank God for their arrogance then," said Belting.

The pre-flight checks were completed a few minutes later with no problems or reasons to delay being found. Lieutenant Carrie Sing, the pilot of ship A was the first on the radio to announce she was ready to separate from the Panama.

"Go with separation sequence LS-A," Kipling's voice told her. "Releasing docking clamps on your order."

"Release the clamps," she said, her voice not showing so much as a trace of the nervousness she had to have been feeling.

The clamps were released and a moment later the first craft began to rise from the hull of the massive Panama, drifting slowly upward, meter by meter, until it was well above the arc of the loading door.

"I'm one hundred meters above the door," Sing said. "Beginning to maneuver."

"Beginning to maneuver," Kipling acknowledged.

The thrusters on the front of the ship came to life, slowing it just a bit and allowing it to drift backwards in the corridor. The top thrusters fired a few times as well, stabilizing the ship and keeping it from drifting any higher. Once the ship was well away from the Panama the front thrusters went quiet and the opposing corner thrusters lit up, slowly turning the ship around, so that the main engines on the rear were facing towards the direction of orbit. Just as it got turned around and positioned for the de-orbit burn, the second of the landing craft began to rise out of the Panama.

It took another twenty minutes for all four landing craft to exit the ship, get turned around in their orbits, and get stabilized for their burns. Everything went as smoothly as could be expected, with all four of them ending up in a line about two kilometers apart.

"Okay LS-A," Belting said into the radio. "Looks like you're first. Initiate your de-orbit burn whenever you're ready."

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be, Admiral," Sing responded. "Main engines are ready for ignition, navigation data is programmed. Initiating burn sequence now." She paused for a moment. "Burn sequence initiated. Ignition in ten seconds."

The seconds ticked off agonizingly slowly and then a bright white light flared from the rear of the landing craft. It seemed to accelerate rapidly out of the camera's view though it was actually slowing down at a tremendous rate. The A-12 that was recording the event lit its own engines up and began to chase after it. Soon the ship was back on their screens, it's engines burning brightly.

"Burn is initiated," came Sing's voice. "All systems operating within parameters. Course is on the line. Termination of de-orbit burn in four minutes."

"Copy that, Sing," Belting responded. "You're looking mighty pretty from here. LS-B, you're next. As soon as her burn is completed, go ahead and initiate yours."

One by one the landing ships burned their main engines for a specific amount of time, slowing the ships down so that the Martian gravity could pull them downward to a controlled entry into the atmosphere. The speed of their descent was carefully timed so that they would drop neatly into a window that would terminate their final re-entry right over the city of Eden on the other side of the planet. Different computations and different angles of entry would have allowed them to land at any other Martian spaceports.

Ninety-three minutes went by before Landing Ship A started the final re-entry sequence. Lieutenant Sing used the maneuvering thrusters to turn the ship around once more, so that its nose was angled upward and its belly, where the heat shield was located, was poised to take the brunt of reentry. Five minutes later the ship made its first contact with the thin atmosphere. The underside began to glow as the heat of friction was generated, softly at first but then with increasing fury until nothing more than a fiery streak was visible. The ship gradually decelerated from orbital speed to a relatively lackadaisical 1100 kilometers per hour. It continued to fall out of the Martian sky like a rock, it's forward velocity carrying it over the equatorial plains and mountain ranges.

"All systems still on the line," reported Sing. "Course is still steady. I'll begin landing maneuvers shortly."

As she approached the city from the west she was still at an altitude of more than 20,000 meters. She employed the powerful forward thrusters to slow her speed while the ship continued to fall. When her forward speed was only 150 kilometers per hour, the greenhouse complexes were below her and her altitude had dropped to 6000 meters. The landing ship was far too large for wings to have any effect on its flight path. To slow the descent to a speed that was not lethal, more thrusters were used, these ones on the bottom of the ship. They lit at Sing's command and the fall became more controlled, gentler.

"Spaceport in sight," she reported when she was ten kilometers out. "Lined up on the landing path. All systems operating normally."

She began to manipulate the bottom and the front thrusters more, adjusting her speed and descent as the landing strip grew nearer.

"Deploying landing gear," she said, and a moment later eight sets of wheeled gear slid out of slots on the bottom, their locations well clear of the landing thrusters, which would have melted the synthetic rubber and the steel alike.

The ship drifted down on jets of fire, coming to a soft touchdown less than ten meters from the middle of the runway. The bottom thrusters were turned off, allowing the ship to settle, but the rear one remained lit, pushing the ship along the concrete surface towards a huge loading area on the far side of the spaceport.

"We copy good touchdown," Admiral Belting said with relief as he watched the MarsGroup camera image of the lumbering ship rolling out. "Excellent job, Lieutenant Sing."

"Thank you, Admiral," she replied, her voice registering that she was quite pleased with herself.

One by one the other three ships came in as well, all of them touching down gently, all of them rolling out to parking slots. Their engines were shut down and their cargo bays were opened, allowing the MPG troops that were standing by in their biosuits to start the job of unloading.

Jeff Waters was one of the troops standing by. With basic training over he was now a full-fledged private first class in the newly formed 17^th Armored Calvary Regiment of the Martian Planetary Guard. The 17^th had been put together with about one quarter newly trained combat troops, one quarter existing MPG members who had been assigned to non-combat branches before the revolt, and the remainder seasoned combat troops who had been broken up from other units. Matt was assigned to third squad of second platoon of Alpha Company and his unit's armored vehicles were located in Landing Ship B from Tripoli Harbor. Their job today, one of the first that they had been assigned, was to unload those APCs and transport them to staging areas outside of the main MPG base. They were of course dressed in their model 459 biosuits — brand new ones that had been shipped from Environmental Supplies less than a week before — since they were outside the safety of the pressurized building.

"That's a big motherfuckin ship," Jeff said, looking at the huge behemoth of steel that rose more than sixty meters above him and stretched for more than two hundred down the loading area. Hell, even the tires on the landing gear were huge, each one more than three times as tall as he. The two massive front doors had been opened and a loading ramp extended from the inside, down to the ground.

"Shit, Waters, why don't you go lay under one of the tires when it moves and see how heavy it is too?" a voice said in his radio set.

That was Hicks of course, his nemesis from basic training. The two of them had managed to make it through the remainder of their training together, while assigned as squad mates, without entering another physical confrontation. They had been side by side as they'd learned to shoot their M-24s, to load and fire anti-tank lasers, mortars, heavy and light machine guns, and, of course, as they'd run for hundreds of kilometers, both in and out of the biosuits. Verbal confrontations, however, were quite another matter. It had become almost routine for them to badmouth each other at every opportunity. And when they found themselves assigned to the same squad after training, it only became worse.

"And miss out on seeing you get your stupid ass killed when you walk in front of a cannon or shoot yourself with your own fucking gun?" Jeff returned. "Naw. I can't die before that. My life wouldn't be complete."

"In your dreams motherfucker," Hicks told him. "If you think that I'm gonna..."

"Hicks, Waters," cut in Sergeant Walker, their squad leader. "Will you two shut the fuck up for once? Christ, all I ever hear on this tactical channel are you two flapping your goddamn lips at each other. Give it a rest."

"Right, sarge," Jeff said. "Sorry. I keep forgetting everyone else can hear us talking."

"Sorry, sarge," Hicks echoed.

"Why don't you two meet after training some night, go out to a fuckin intox club, and insult each other all fuckin night. Get it out of your system."

"Shit," said Hicks. "I'd rather smoke out with a fuckin Earthling."

"Amen to that," Jeff put in.

Walker shook his head in disgust, wondering what the hell kind of squad he'd been given to work with. He, like all of the NCOs and all of the officers of the 17^th ACR, was one of the ones with combat unit experience (although no actual combat experience, since the MPG had never fought anyone before). He had been given a squad that consisted of three former gang members, three females (two of whom had never been in uniform before, one of whom had been a procurement clerk in supply), two men reassigned from non-combat branches, and only two others, the two corporals of the bunch, who had actually been combat assigned before. He was doing his best to get some sort of camaraderie and fighting spirit going but it was an uphill battle.

"Lets start lining up to unload these things," he told his group now. "Remember, they are to be driven slowly down the ramp and directly over to the staging area. This is not the time to play with them and see what all the neat little buttons do. You go in, you climb in, you start it up, and you bring it down. That is it. Is everyone clear on that?"

Everyone was clear.

"Let's start lining up then."

The unloading began a few minutes later. An entire battalion had been tasked with this particular project and one by one they marched up the steep ramp on one side and entered the bowels of the massive ship. Jeff was one of the first to go up. He stepped awkwardly on the steel grating, almost falling more than once. He was still not quite used to walking and moving in reduced gravity, particularly not on a sloped surface.

The inside of the ship was well lit in the cargo area, the power supplied by the auxiliary power unit, which was still running. The APCs were secured nose outward, up against the walls, two meters separating each vehicle from the sides, ten meters separating them from the next row, which left just enough of a corridor to maneuver and drive down. The corridor led to a series of ramps that dropped from one level in the ship to another. Steel locking straps held each of the APCs down.

"Waters," Walker told him, pointing to one, "that one is yours." It was a standard Alexander Industries APC, the WestHem flag painted just above the WestHem Marine Corps symbol.

"Can I scratch out that fuckin flag and that fuckin marine shit?" he asked, kicking at it with his feet.

"There'll be time for that later," Walker told him. "For now, just get in the thing and drive it."

"Right," he said.

"Be gentle with the controls," Hicks put in. "Pretend you're playing with your dick. I'm sure you know how to do that."

"At least I have a sex drive, dickweed," Jeff shot back. "I don't spend all day thinking about..."

"Enough of that shit!" Walker barked. "Waters, get your vehicle ready for transport. Hicks, you climb in the one next to him and keep your damn mouth shut about it."

Grumbling and groaning, but not saying much of anything, they went to work releasing the vehicles. It was a simple matter of pulling a lever where the strap met the floor and it was free. They folded them up and stowed them against the wall. They then climbed up onto the front of the vehicles, to the hatch that led to the inside.

"Don't run your fuckin armor into mine, Waters," Hicks told him as he put his feet through the hatch and began to drop inside.

"Wouldn't touch it with a five meter pole," Jeff responded, pulling open his own hatch.

The inside of the vehicle was spotlessly clean despite the fact that it had been sitting in storage aboard the landing craft for at least the last ten years with no maintenance of any kind being done. This was because the armor ships had been kept in vacuum, with no moisture or oxygen to cause the sorts of problems that they caused. It was, however, very dark in there, especially when the hatch was closed behind him. He turned on his combat goggles in order to see the controls before him. Just as he had been briefed in the training class on basic armor operation, he turned on the batteries and powered up the computer systems first and foremost.

The lights came on, allowing him to turn the goggles back off, and the two computer screens came to life with system status reports and command buttons. He opened up the view screens before him first, allowing him to see outside, and then took a look at the state of the vehicle on the screens. The fuel tank was completely full of liquid hydrogen to run the turbine engine, the oxygen tank was completely full of liquid oxygen to allow the hydrogen to burn, the batteries were at seventy percent charge, the computer systems were all operational, and the overall status was listed as within operational parameters. He then sat, breathing the air in his suit and listening to the mutterings of the other squad members while he waited for the command to start the engine and pull out.

That command came thirty minutes later, after a few insults between he and Hicks had been traded and they had been told once again to shut the fuck up by Walker. Jeff made sure that the transmission for the vehicle was in neutral and then pushed the tab on the screen for engine start. The powerful turbine engine ground several times and then lit up with a whine. The entire vehicle began to softly vibrate.

"Squad," Walker said a few minutes later. "Let's move out. Head downward, the way we came in, at a very slow pace. If one of these things gets jammed in the corridor it'll be a bitch and a half to work free. Waters, you're in front. You get the honor of going first."

"Right, sarge," he said, licking his lips a little and putting his hands on the controls. For once, Hicks didn't have a remark to throw back at him.

He pushed the tab on the screen that put the transmission into forward and the smooth whine of the engine lugged down the slightest bit. He went over the controls in his mind one last time — the T-bar on the front controlled direction, the right pedal controlled acceleration, the left provided braking — and then eased forward. The treads of the heavy machine clanked on the steel deck and he moved out into the corridor. With a push of the T-bar the left tread slowed up and the vehicle turned in that direction. After only a few fits and starts he was soon facing down the corridor that led out.

"Not bad, Waters," Walker told him. "Now head on down. Remember where our staging location is and head directly there."

"Right, sarge," he responded.

Level by level he clanked along, descending out of the ship. The ramps between levels were a bit frightening for someone who had never driven a vehicle of any kind before, let alone a sixty metric ton APC. Gravity, as weak as it was on the surface of Mars, pulled the entire machine downward at a frightening rate, making it seem like it was on the verge of rolling out of control. On the first such descent Jeff instinctively braked hard, bringing the vehicle to a jarring halt and throwing himself forward into the T-bar. It was then he discovered that he'd forgotten to fasten the restraining strap.

The final ramp was the most terrifying of all. Though it was nearly as wide as the ship itself, it was a forty-degree descent to the loading area nearly thirty meters below. To Jeff it looked like two or three kilometers. He hesitated for the briefest of seconds on the edge, gathering his nerve, long enough for Hicks, who was directly behind him, to notice.

"What's the matter, Waters?" he asked over the tactical radio. "Afraid you might fall over and bump your little nose? Get that fuckin thing down there! You're holding me up."

"If I was holding you up I'd drop your ass, you can count on that," Jeff replied sourly. But his antagonist's words had done the trick. He goosed the accelerator and eased over the threshold. The APC began to pick up speed and he stepped on the brake, slowing it. Soon he was down on the ground. He maneuvered the APC onward, steering through and around other groupings of vehicles until he arrived at the assigned staging area for his squad.

One by one the rest of the APCs arrived, parking in a semi-neat formation around him. Walker took a quick roll call from his own APC and then told them to form up on him. He began to clank along, heading for the edge of the spaceport and the open ground beyond it. Soon all ten APCs were on the gritty Martian sand, traversing around the edge of the city towards the MPG base.

The 17^th ACR now had its vehicles. All they needed now was someone to fight.

Deep Space near the orbit of Mercury

July 18, 2146

The Mammoth was one of the Panama class transports that were transporting the marines and their equipment to Mars. It was near the middle of the armada, drifting along at maximum speed, it's engines idle except to control the ship's systems and environmental controls.

Deep within its hull was Landing Ship F, which was a troop housing and transport vessel. On the fourth deck of that particular landing ship were the birthing quarters for Lieutenant Eric Callahan and his forty-man platoon of the 314^th Marine ACR. Their quarters were far from luxurious. On the contrary, they were living in an area that had been designed to house two squads. The room was less than twenty meters long and less than five wide. Bunk style hammocks had been strung up from ceiling to floor lining both walls, with only the area where the doors were left uncovered. The smell in the berthing area was not particularly pleasant either. Showers onboard the ship were a strictly rationed luxury, as were laundry facilities. Most of the men had gone for more than a week without bathing and nearly twice that without having clean clothing.

Everyone was bored and out of sorts from spending the last three weeks in these cramped and smelly conditions. Fights broke out on a regular basis, usually over trivial things such as imagined insults or card games. About the only solace was the Internet screen on the far wall, just above the doorway. And this was a solace that had quickly grown old. All it ever showed was news channels that were being beamed to the ship from a communications satellite in Earth orbit.

One such channel was being played now, as the majority of the platoon lay on their racks. It was yet another briefing by General Wrath, their commanding officer. He was explaining to the solar system how the fighting morale of his men was as high as ever although they sincerely hoped that the rogue Martians that were holding the planet hostage would come to their senses and give up peacefully before their arrival.

"So our morale is as high as ever, is it?" spat Sergeant Mallory. "Shit, big of that prick to say while he's sitting over there on the flag ship living in a goddamn suite with servants and chicks to suck his dick for him."

"Right," said Sergeant Hamilton, the greenest of the squad leaders. "I'd like to see Wrath spend three weeks crammed in this little room smelling all of the sweat and farts."

"I heard that," said Callahan, who had just entered the room from the aft door. "No talking shit about our commander now. With rank comes blowjobs. When you get to be a general you can sit in the command ship and have a flock of bitches to wax your helmet for you too."

There was some laughter from the men at his words but it was mostly forced. Callahan didn't mind. He'd rather have forced than nothing. In truth he was just as bored and frustrated as everyone else at being crammed into a landing ship with twice as many men as it had been designed for.

"Now then," Callahan said, "I believe that it's about time for our daily workout, is it not?"

The laughter turned to moans and groans. The daily workout requirement was a constant sore spot among the marines.

"Don't give me that whining shit," Callahan told them. "Let's just get our asses up and do it. You all know as well as I do that if we don't keep up our workouts in transit we're not gonna be in shape when we land and start fighting those green fucks."

"They'll surrender before we get there," said Corporal Brad Jones, one of the more cynical members of the platoon. "Everyone knows those greenies are really yellow. They ain't gonna take us on."

"That may be the truth," Callahan conceded. "Probably is in fact. But as of this moment, those greenies still haven't sent us surrender terms or opened negotiations for them. So we assume that we'll have to kick some ass and proceed as if that's the way it's gonna be. So let's move out, marines, shall we?"

With more grumbles and some barely concealed curses, the men began to climb out of their racks and work their way towards the door.

They were not allowed to leave the landing ship, were in fact locked solidly inside of it, so this made their exercise routine a little difficult to manage. Callahan led them to the enlisted mess area, the largest room in the ship, and had them spread out as much as they could to perform their stretches. They then ran around the perimeter of the ship, twisting and turning through hallways, going up and down flights of stairs, in a roughly oval path that covered perhaps a half a kilometer per circuit. They passed other berthing areas, the kitchen, the weapons storage room, the engine room, and the main bridge of the ship time and time again, their feet thumping down in unison on the steel deck, their formation grouping and regrouping depending upon the amount of room available to them.

"Why the fuck didn't they design this goddamn ship with a running track in it?" asked Jones on about the fifth circuit. "I mean, they knew that we was gonna be in these fucking things for weeks at a time and they knew that we was gonna have to do PT. So why the fuck ain't there a regular track for us to run on?"

"Because it's too expensive, you idiot," replied Sergeant Mallory. "You think they're gonna spend money on your dumb ass so you can run in peace?"

"Yeah," put in someone else, "that money is better spent as kickbacks and shit like that."

"Quit whining and keep running," Callahan told them. "I want to get five kilometers in today."

They didn't quite make five kilometers. By the time they reached six circuits of the ship the men were constantly grumbling and seemed damn near rebellion so Callahan, ever the sympathetic one, called a halt to that day's routine.

"Okay, grunts," he told them after a half circuit cool down period. "I've got some good news for you now that we've got PT out of the way."

"What's that?" Private Stinson piped up. "We getting showers today?"

"Oh hell yeah," said Jones. "I ain't felt no running water in almost a week now."

"No," Callahan said, "it ain't showers. We're not up for those for another two days."

"Laundry then?" Mallory said hopefully. "They finally getting some clean clothes down here."

"It ain't laundry either," replied Callahan. "Something even better. Something you've all been waiting most eagerly for."

"Oh man," Stinson said sadly. "I hate it when he talks like that. It means something fucked up is coming."

"My we're cynical, aren't we, Stinson?" Callahan said.

"What is it, LT?" Jones asked. "Just give it to us straight."

"Okay, since you asked nicely. Before PT I was in a briefing with Captain Ayers and Major Wild. I now have in my possession, for you pleasure and perusal, our combat assignments and schedule for the landings. We'll have a full briefing as soon as we get back to our room."

"Oh man," whined Jones. "We gotta do a briefing? I was gonna go to the head and jack off."

"Yeah," put in Stinson. "Can't we do that shit later, LT? Maybe the greenies will surrender today and we won't have to bother."

"Nope," Callahan said. "Briefing immediately upon return. Even if the greenies do surrender, this'll be a good training exercise for us. We haven't been getting enough of that lately as it is."

There were some more mumbles and comments — including a few along the line of telling the lieutenant that they had his training for him right fucking here — but no open dissent. The men walked slowly back to their cramped, smelly quarters and began to mill about, changing out of their sweaty T-shirts and putting on the dry T-shirts that had been sweaty the day before. Callahan, after changing into his own fresh stinking shirt, told them all to gather near the front of the room, under the big Internet screen above the door.

"All right, people," he said, sliding a briefing disk into the computer slot near the wall, "you'll be pleased to know that if we do have to fight the greenies, we'll at least get one of the fun jobs." He pushed a few buttons to get rid of the Internet broadcast and to call up the instructional program. "Load training brief from disc," he told the voice-activated circuit.

"What are we gonna do?" asked Mallory. "Do we get to rape the women and children? I always wanted to be in that part of the service."

Callahan ignored his remark as the screen above him changed to a satellite shot of the equatorial region of Mars. "We," he said, "are going to be part of the force responsible for securing the largest Martian city: Eden. The timetable for this operation is going to be one week from the time of landing to the occupation of the city itself. As you see on the map here, Eden is an agricultural city and is bracketed on the north and the south by vast stretches of greenhouses that stretch out for hundreds of kilometers. On the west side of the city are the Sierra Madres mountain range. On the east is a vast, hilly plain that stretches for more than two thousand kilometers. These are relatively gentle hills with lots of valleys and gullies between them. It is through this system of flatland that we will make our approach."

He changed the screen, showing a closer view of the hilly terrain and a broad valley. "This will be our primary landing site," he said. "It is approximately 350 kilometers east of the outer edge of Eden. We will establish our beachhead and the security forces will set up perimeter security on the first day of the landing. On day two we will begin unloading our equipment and assembling it in the staging area. On day three, we will begin to move in as a group, the entire division. Now the march forward will take us another two days before we start to encounter any greenie defensive positions."

"What about those little planes they have?" asked Mallory. "Assuming they want to take us on, will they try to hit us with those things?"

"They may try," Callahan said. "Intelligence estimates that they have around fifty of them assigned to the Eden branch of their little army. They are equipped with dual laser cannons that are capable of destroying a tank or an APC if they manage to get a hit. The threat from these little aircraft however, is calculated as minimal. They are very fragile aircraft and not terribly maneuverable from what I understand. Our unit's anti-air crews will be flanking our positions during the march and will engage any such toys the moment they show themselves. My guess is we'll pot those fucking things out of the sky like clay pigeons on a skeet range."

Everybody nodded at this statement, no one doubting it. After all, the WestHem mobile anti-air vehicles were designed to take on heavily armored EastHem hovers and atmospheric attack craft. Surely a little flimsy flying wing would not be able to stand up against it.

"Now going back to those greenie defensive positions," Callahan said, changing the view on the screen yet again, this time to an overhead shot of some bunkers embedded in a hilltop. "These are the hills that our company will be primarily concerned with. They lie sixty kilometers southeast of the approaches to Eden. As you can see, they are classic layered defensive emplacements, designed after our own models. There are fixed anti-tank trenches on these hills over here. They are surrounded by other entrenchments on these hills which can be occupied by infantry troops to defend the anti-tank positions and also by mobile troops packing shoulder-fired anti-tank lasers. Behind these hills are other entrenchments that the greenies can install eighty millimeter mortar nests in to help protect their infantry and anti-tank positions. And in addition, the entire network of hills and trenches is protected by heavy artillery guns, both the fixed guns installed outside of Eden, and the mobile guns that the greenies have as part of their force inventory."

The platoon was paying a little more attention now as they actually saw digital images of the Martian defenses. A few even managed to look uneasy as they contemplated their targets. After all, those were professional, well-constructed defenses and it was their job, as marines, to put those positions out of commission. Callahan quickly picked up on this unease and went to work putting it to rest.

"Now let's not get our panties in a bunch now," he told his men. "Granted, these are some pretty good defensive emplacements, but the greenies are not really smart in how they use them. Let me explain a little further." He took a deep breath and paced around for a moment, cracked his knuckles. "There are a few essentials of defense that our green friends our sorely lacking in for this battle. One such thing is tanks, which are the cornerstone of any military operation, be it offensive or defensive. The other is airpower, which you could call the other cornerstone. According to statistics compiled before the takeover of the planet, the greenies are extremely shorthanded on these particular commodities. The amount of tanks from our landing force alone will outnumber the amount the greenies have deployed by nearly seven to one, six to one if they manage to bring down the ones from our landing ships. So the first thing you have to remember is that those positions that we'll be taking are not protected by very much armor.

"The second thing that the greenies are lacking in are hovers. They have invested so much of their budget on those little aircraft that they've built that they have less than fifty hovers for their entire planet's defenses. Less than fifty. And they have no air-to-air combat hovers at all. This means that our hover force, which numbers more than a hundred just in this landing alone, will enjoy complete air superiority over any battlefield.

"So, with those two facts in mind, let me tell you what is going to happen on our march. The hover force is going to bomb and strafe these defensive positions starting from day three, when they get into range. It is going to be a non-stop, around the clock campaign with 150-millimeter cannon shells ripping those trenches from one end to the other before our forces are even close. And then, once our artillery forces are in range — which should take place early on day five — we will begin shelling those positions relentlessly as well. And after that, as we finally start to move in, the tanks will go in ahead of us and blast them some more and kill everything that is seen moving. Then, and only then, will we advance to the base of those hills in our APCs and then climb up to occupy them. By that point I'm sure that every greenie that isn't already dead — if there are any — will gladly surrender himself to us. If they do not, we will shoot them down like dogs."

"And always remember this, if nothing else," he concluded. "There will be more than one hundred thousand of us advancing on this greenie city. One hundred thousand! Standing in our way will be less than sixteen thousand greenies at best, and that is before we bomb and shell them into oblivion. There is no way that those greenies can do significant damage to us. No way in God's universe."

July 20, 2146

Deep space, near the sun

Mermaid had finished her deceleration burn several days before and was now drifting along in a solar orbit, just over sixteen million kilometers away from the bright yellow orb that gave life to the solar system, well inside the orbit of Mercury. Her orbit was east to west, timed to correspond with an intercept course with the approaching armada when it came around from the other side. By this point, nearly four weeks after leaving Triad and encountering their first contact, the crew was as well drilled as they were going to be for their mission. They had run through every procedure so many times that they could do them in their sleep, and often did.

On the bridge everyone was strapped into the chairs since the engines were no longer burning and there was no acceleration to provide even the most meager of artificial gravity. Brett drifted into the room from the direction of his quarters. He was well rested after a five-hour sleep period and had just finished with his traditional post-awakening bowel movement in his private bathroom, although the vacuum device that needed to be employed in the absence of gravity took much of the pleasure out of such an action.

"Good morning, Brett," greeted Sugiyoto, who had been in charge of the bridge during his absence. Sugi wasn't quite up to taking complete command if something should happen to Brett, but he was getting there.

"Is it morning?" Brett asked with a yawn. "I didn't notice. I guess I must've missed the sunrise."

"Well, a figure of speech really," Sugi told him, unbuckling and floating up from the command chair. "It's actually about 1600 New Pittsburgh time, and the sun is most definitely up. We've done six heat dumps while you were out. It's rankin hot out there."

"Nothing like the sun," Brett said, ignoring the chair for the moment and propelling himself over to the corner of the room, where a coffee maker designed to work in zero or minimal G was always percolating. He grabbed one of the pressure cups and fastened it to the tap, allowing the cup to fill. "About three of these things and I should approaching wakefulness," he said. He kicked off the wall and pushed himself over to the captain's chair.

"All systems working just like they're supposed to," Sugi told him. "Waste heat is currently at 64 percent with another dump due in about ninety minutes or so. Our position is on the screen, right on course. And we're do for a communication link-up in ten minutes."

"Static," Brett said, pulling himself into the chair with a practiced flip of the hands on its back. His backside settled neatly down in place and he quickly pulled the strap around his waist, securing himself. He set his coffee cup down on the magnetic holder that was specifically designed for such a purpose. "I've got the con," he said automatically.

"Brett's got the con," said Mandall, who was operating the helm at the moment although there was really nothing to con since they were in a stable orbit and weren't maneuvering.

Sugi drifted over to his own chair at the detection console, relieving the junior crewmember who had been training on it. The junior crewmember was then allowed to return to below decks to get a little sleep.

"Nothing out there yet?" asked Brett once Sugi was strapped in and tuned in to his equipment.

"Nothing but the sun," Sugi said after checking the board.

"About what we expected then. It's awfully nice of those WestHem folks to continually broadcast their present position to us. They surely making our job a lot easier."

What he was referring to were the media reports being beamed out live from the armada in each and every briefing given by General Wrath and Admiral Jules. These reports were seen not only on Earth and on the Jupiter colonies, but on Mars as well since Internet transmissions were still being sent there. In each briefing, for the enjoyment of the viewing audience, a graphic would be presented of the armada's exact position in space at that particular moment in time. This graphic was always accompanied by a countdown clock showing how many hours, minutes, and even seconds until the first ships entered orbit around Mars. The Martian intelligence network, which would have otherwise been blind to the armada's exact course, speed, and location, was beaming this information via communication laser to the Owls that had been deployed, therefore keeping them constantly updated on their targets' position. While it was possible that the information might actually be deliberate misinformation, designed to mislead the Martians, nobody really believed that. It was so very Earthling to transmit such information out for the entertainment of the masses.

"Like General Jackson said," said Sugi, "it's their arrogance that's gonna defeat them."

"Here's to their arrogance," Brett toasted, picking up his coffee cup and grabbing a sip. "Now how about giving me some status reports on crew fitness? Are they keeping up with their exercise routines?"

They talked of crew fitness and other shipboard physical and sociological factors for a few minutes, Sugi hesitantly bringing up the fact that at least two sets of couples had formed among the coed crew members and that there had been some experimentation with zero gravity sexuality in the storage rooms.

"Did you actually catch them doing this?" Brett asked. "Or are you merely telling me rumors?"

"One is a rumor," Sugi said. "But Wentworth and Loggerman I actually caught in the act. I'm sorry, I hate to rat people out but..."

"I understand," Brett said. "And I'm sure that no one blames you for ratting them. After all, you are the executive officer. But tell me something, were they on duty when you caught them?"

"No," he said. "They were both on sleep period."

Brett simply shrugged. "Well then, I guess that's their right as Martian citizens, isn't it? As long as they weren't pilfering the food, damaging anything, or otherwise endangering the ship, I say let them screw their brains out. Maybe they'll find some new positions."

After a flabbergasted silence by the bridge crew — who had really been expecting Brett to simply explode when he heard this — laughter broke out.

"In fact," Brett added, "let's make that a general order for the crew. Anyone who can score themselves a companion, of either sex or creed, is free to use any storage room for sexual activity as long as they are both off duty and as long as no one needs the storage room for anything else at the moment."

"Are you serious, Brett?" asked Sugi. "Do you really want to put that out for the crew?"

"Fuckin aye I do," he replied. "It'll help boost morale. After all, a happy crew is a productive crew. We may not be the best-trained or the most experienced crew in space at the moment, but goddammit, we're gonna be the happiest."

"I'll put it out right away," Sugi assured him, already thinking of a certain torpedo technician that had been casting eyes at him lately.

"Of course, if there are any fights, physical altercations, or any other problems as a result of this policy, it will be rescinded immediately," Brett qualified. "Be sure to put that bit in as well."

By the time Brett was finished with his first cup of coffee of the waking period, it was time for the communications link-up. The standard status report was prepared and digitized. It was roughly one third the size the standard report had always been back when Mermaid had belonged to WestHem and had been run by Commander Hoffman. Admiral Belting just didn't want to hear about all of the non-essential things that the WestHem bureaucracy had insisted upon. Belting wanted the basics: current speed, course, fuel and consumable status, and whether or not contact had been made with the enemy.

"Establishing link," said Frank, the young communications technician. He pushed a few buttons on his computer screen and the communications laser on the top of the ship popped out of its housing and rose slowly upward on a narrow, retracting pole. The laser itself was only three millimeters in diameter. It spun on it's axis, guided by the ship's computer which was utilizing the exact positioning and attitude of the vessel so that it could hit the receiver — a two hundred meter dish — on a communications array on Phobos. Once it was in position, a window popped up on Frank's display letting him know that the laser was locked.

"Go ahead and send it," Brett ordered.

"On the way," Frank responded, pushing the transmit button. The laser pulsed for two and a half seconds, sending a modulated beam of light out across the emptiness of space. Nineteen minutes later, the beam struck the receiver just five meters off center and the information was encoded and sent via encrypted radio link to Admiral Belting's office. Twenty-six minutes after that, a message was returned to them, sent through space as an encrypted radio signal.

"Ok, let's see what they got for us," said Brett, who was now on his third cup of coffee. "Open the report and let's see where our friends are today."

"Right," said Frank, punching the encryption code so the message could be de-scrambled.

The computer took less than five seconds to break the code and display the information on Brett's view screen. It was another position report of the WestHem armada, updated less than three hours before. The front elements of the fleet were just on the other side of the sun, almost exactly where Sugi and Brett had plotted them out to be on their chart.

"How's it look?" Sugi asked as Brett perused the data.

"If these reports are accurate, we should be able to detect the lead elements in twelve to sixteen hours."

There was a moment of silence on the bridge of the ship as everyone contemplated that fact. They had been out in space for weeks now, all of them knowing what their mission was, training hard for it, but at the same time, trying not to think too much about the danger of it. Well now that danger was just around the corner from them. Now it was very hard to put off thinking about it.

"Sugi, let's make sure that everyone is well fed and well rested before then, okay? Once we start tracking them, things are gonna get rankin busy around here."

"Right Brett," he said. "I'll make sure."

July 21, 2146

Deep space, near the sun

It was 0532 hours when the first detection was made. Mermaid was drifting along in her orbit, her passive sensors peering into space, paying particular attention to the area between ten and twelve million kilometers due west of the sun, along the planetary elliptic. Sugi, who had just come off of a rest period of his own, was looking at the display, waiting for it to show him something different. Finally, at long last, it did.

"Con, detection," he said aloud, moving into formal naval procedure now that something was happening. "I'm getting some strong flickers from bearing 296 mark 05."

"Copy, Sugi," said Brett, who had not had any more sleep since the last radio update. "What do you have?"

"It's in the medium range, spread out over about two hundredths of a degree. Moving rapidly from right to left but holding on the elliptic."

Brett nodded, already knowing what he was seeing, but he wanted to hear Sugi identify it as well. "What's it look like to you?"

Sugi took a deep breath, hesitated for the briefest instant, and then said slowly, "Absorption heat on the side of a spacecraft maybe?"

"Exactly," Brett told him. "The sun is heating that ship up mighty hot. Good call. Get it up on the display and give it a target designation. That's probably the lead ship of the armada."

Sugi continued to track on it, fine tuning his instruments a little. Within five minutes he was able to detect other information from it as well, namely internal heat from an inertial damper and some faint radar waves, probably from the anti-meteor defense.

"Do we have an ID on it?" Brett asked.

"Computer has it as a Seattle class anti-stealth frigate. Not enough of a signature yet to identify the particular ship. And we're still bearing only at this point."

"Okay, let's do a little maneuvering and see if we can get a range. Helm, stealth procedures in place."

"Copy that, Brett," Mandall replied. "Thrusters on minimum, cooling systems on main plasma jets active."

"Very good. I'm sounding the acceleration alarm." He pushed a button, activating it. When it was done running through its cycle he turned on the intercom. "All personnel," he said, his voice broadcast throughout the ship. "We have detected a Seattle class frigate coming around the sun. It is probably the lead element of the nice folks that we came out here to meet. We will be maneuvering at low acceleration to attempt to pin down a range on the ship. We will not, I repeat, not, be going to general quarters just yet." He turned the intercom off. "Helm, turn us to 270 mark 300. Once aligned begin a burn at point one G."

The ship turned on its axis and then began to slowly accelerate, changing their orbit. The plasma ejecting from the rear was still white hot, but was cooled enough and was coming out at such a rate that the ship would remain invisible to infrared detection, especially from the distance they were at. As she moved along, and as the target of their inquiry moved along as well, Mermaid's sensors continued to collect data, everything from heat levels to Doppler shift. Within an hour an exact range and speed was pinned down.

"612,345 kilometers," Sugi announced when the calculations were complete. "It's on a course of 186 mark 1, moving at seventy kilometers per second. Fusion engines are idle."

"Beautiful," Brett said. "And the other targets?" While they had been tracking the first target, four others had come into view and were now being tracked as well.

"I've got a tentative ID on target two as another Seattle class frigate. Target three, four, and five are still unknown."

"Let's keep working them," Brett said.

They kept working them and one by one the front escorts of the armada were all identified and their courses and speeds calculated. They were all moving on the same course, towards Mars, at the same seventy kilometers per second. Ship number five was a California class, lagging behind the main escorts but unmistakable due to its size and the amount of heat it generated, even with engines off.

"They're running dumb," Brett said in amazement as he stared at the data coming in. "They're probing forward with nothing more than radar beams for anti-meteor defense and a few active systems. They don't seem to have any attack craft up at all."

"Then that means we've achieved surprise?" Sugi asked.

"Either through blind luck or their own stupidity, it would seem so. Let's start setting up an intercept course here. Helm, bring us to 340 mark 0 and decrease the burn to point zero six G."

"Copy, Brett," she said, making the adjustments. This course and speed put them facing directly towards where he hoped their targets — the large Panamas — would begin to emerge in another thirty minutes or so. Mermaid was off to the side of the formation and moving relatively slowly at an angle of about forty degrees towards it. Brett's plan was to slip in behind the front escorts and in front of the middle escorts to take advantage of the gap in coverage.

A few more escorts became visible and were identified over the next twenty minutes, Sugi's skills with the computer becoming such that he was able to get signatures from them and assign actual ship names. And then, the moment that they had been waiting for, the first of the Panamas appeared. It, like the California, was unmistakable on their screen once enough data was collected. The Panamas were huge and they absorbed a lot of heat from the sun on their hulls.

"Here come the targets," Brett said happily, though with a little trepidation as well.

Two more came into view over the next fifteen minutes and Sugiyoto calculated their courses and speeds out. Brett then made his decision. "Let's go after number three to start with," he said. "The angle of attack is about right and the front escorts will be well beyond our firing position by the time we get there."

"Sounds good, Brett," Sugi said, staring at that particular ship on his holographic display.

"Helm," Brett ordered next, "calculate a course to target twelve please, the third Panama in the line. Let's go for a 400,000 kilometer release."

Mandall hesitated. "Uh, Brett," she said nervously, "don't you think that maybe you should do that. I mean..."

"It's your job Mandall," he told her. "You've done it on the simulation many times. Just do the same thing here."

"But..."

"You'll be fine, Mandall," he said. "Now get it done while our window is still open please."

She nodded and bent to her computer screen, inputting several pieces of data and letting it know which target she wanted to prosecute. The idea was to put the ship on a direct intercept course, a collision course in fact, and then, when 400,000 kilometers out, to release a torpedo and set it drifting on that course. The ship could then turn away and move to another position while the torpedo drifted on. By the time the torpedo was detected Mermaid would be long gone.

"I've got the course," she said after a minute had gone by and after she'd double-checked her data. "It's on your screen right now."

Brett took a glance down at it but didn't bother to check it himself. "Very good, Mandall," he told her. "Get us on that course please. And I think it's about time that we go to GQ." He pushed the red button on his panel that sounded the general quarters alarm. He then turned the intercom back on. "All personnel, we are now prosecuting a Panama class transport ship that is presumably filled with WestHem marines and their equipment. Let's get to general quarters now and button this ship up. The fun has begun."

While the ship turned and began to head towards its target, the crew went into the general quarters drill. By now they were well practiced at this all-important aspect of combat operations and they had their emergency pressure suits on and their stations manned in just under two minutes. Brett, hearing the reports of manned and ready from each station, beamed with pride at this accomplishment. He had taken a bunch of civilians, undermanned a warship with them, and despite the madness of it they were behaving like a veteran crew.

Things became very tense as Mermaid closed in. The first group of escorts moved beyond her position, their holographs drifting rapidly across the display and off the far edge of it. Though they could still send attack craft after Mermaid, there was no longer much danger of being detected by the Seattle's. Then the Panamas began to get closer and closer. The minutes ticked by and the range closed to half a million kilometers.

"Twenty minutes to firing point," Mandall reported. "Still on target."

"Thanks, Mandall," Brett told her. He then raised Chad Hamilton in the torpedo room on the intercom system.

"I'm here, Brett," Hamilton answered up within two seconds of the hail.

"We're less than a hundred thousand kilometers out," he told him. "Coming up on the firing point. Load torpedo tubes one and two and set the weapons for semi-controlled flight."

"Copy," Hamilton replied. "What's the burst range?"

"Set it for fifty kilometers. I won't those things to burst as close as possible. I don't just want those Panamas wounded, I want them dead."

"You've got it, Brett," he answered.

The next thirty minutes went by slowly, with everyone on the bridge watching the display in front of Sugi's terminal, staring fascinated as the symbol that represented their target came closer and closer to the center.

"Twelve thousand kilometers to release point," Mandall reported at last. "That's just over two minutes, Brett."

"Two minutes," he repeated, chewing his lip a little. He called Hamilton again. "Torpedo room, open tube number one and prepare for launch."

"Opening tube one," was the reply.

On the front of the ship a circular hatch irised slowly open, revealing the blunt nose of the torpedo. On the bridge, Mandall began to count down every ten seconds as the launch point approached. When she reached zero Brett gave a simple order.

"Launch tube one," he said.

In the torpedo room, Hamilton took a deep breath, tried not to think about what he was doing, and flipped up the protective cover on a large red switch. Across the room from him, at the same time, one of his enlisted men flipped up a cover of his own. With a nod towards each other they pushed down on their switches, thus fulfilling the requirements of the launch system. Nothing terribly dramatic happened at that point. There was no sound, no gout of flame, no shuddering of the ship. A simple hydraulic arm connected to a plate of steel extended, pushing the five-meter long weapon out of the tube. When the arm reached the end of its stroke the mounting bracket released from the rear of the torpedo and it slowly drifted out in front of the ship, its powerful rocket engine idle.

"We have good separation," Hamilton reported to Brett. "The weapon is drifting free."

"I copy good separation," Brett said. "Let me know as soon as you have a laser lock on it."

The torpedo, which was nothing more than a two hundred megaton thermonuclear missile, was encased in radar and heat resistant material to keep it from being detected as it moved in on its target. On the top of it a three-meter laser receiver dish unfolded from its case and stuck up into space. When the weapon, which was moving at about a half a kilometer per hour faster than Mermaid — was six hundred meters from the ship, a tracking laser shot out from a mast located atop Mermaid's sensor array. Similar to the communications laser system, this beam would keep a lock on the torpedo as long as a line of sight was maintained. With this link established, Mermaid's computers, acting under orders from Brett, could control the torpedo. It's course could be corrected by the tiny maneuvering thrusters and a short burn from the main rocket engine, or the engine could be throttled up to full power for the terminal dive to target, or the weapon could be detonated in the event it was detected and the target began to fire on it. In case the line of sight was lost or some other problem caused the disconnection of the beam with the ship, the torpedo had an active seeker head as well and was programmed to continue seeking its target and correcting it's own course. The optimum detonation range — the range that was considered universally lethal to a ship — was inside seventy kilometers, although heavy damage would be inflicted anywhere up to one hundred and fifty kilometers away.

"I have a laser lock," Hamilton reported. "The weapon is continuing normally on course."

"I copy you have a lock," Brett responded. He turned to Mandall. "Sugi, how many Panamas do we have identified now?"

"Six," he said, "and two more ships are just becoming visible on the display that are more than likely Panamas as well, but I don't have quite enough data for a positive ID yet."

"Good. Put them on my screen. I want to get that second weapon out there too."

"On the way," he said.

"And keep your eye peeled for Owls. We know the WestHems have some out there but we don't know where they are. The last thing we need right now is detection."

"I'm looking," he assured him.

Brett looked over the display for a moment and ran some basic angles in his head as he compared his ship's position and speed with that of the oncoming vessels. It looked like he could turn Mermaid and launch on the sixth Panama back with a minimum amount of maneuvering and within the time frame allowed him by the first weapon's trip to target.

"Helm," he said to Mandall, "lock onto target fifteen and plot a launch course. Once again, let's shoot for 400,000 kilometer separation."

"Plotting," she said, turning back to her computer screen.

Soon the course was plotted and the order was given to initiate it. Mermaid's maneuvering thrusters and engines came to life once more, turning the ship and accelerating it at .02 G. The first torpedo continued on, linked to the ship by the laser, and the distance between them increased rapidly, until Sugi could no longer detect the minute amount of heat.

The second release came twenty minutes later. Torpedo number two slid neatly out of the tube and began to drift away. Soon it too was locked by a guidance laser.

"Okay," Brett said, wiping a slight sheen of sweat from his brow. "The shots are away. Let's maneuver clear of this place. Helm, turn us to new course of 010 mark 70 and accelerate at point zero eight G."

"I copy zero one zero mark seven zero and burn engine at point zero eight G," she repeated, her hands already making the adjustments. She, like everyone else on the bridge, was very anxious to get the hell out of the release zone now that the weapons were on their way.

Mermaid spun well away from the formation and turned her nose downward, seventy degrees from the plain of the elliptic, in effect diving far beneath the formation of ships she was tracking.

The tactic Brett had used in making his attack was a classic one in stealth ship warfare. The idea was to lie in wait in the path of the oncoming enemy, moving at relatively slow speed while the enemy was at maximum velocity. This made the closure speed of the weapon with the target equal to that of the enemy's forward motion plus the velocity added by the launching ship. In effect, the torpedoes that Mermaid had launched were closing with their targets at a speed of nearly three hundred thousand kilometers per hour without so much of a drop of the weapons' own rocket fuel or oxidizer being burned.

Aboard the ships of the armada, it was just after 0700 hours, the time for the daily routine to begin. On the flagship, Admiral Jules was still sound asleep, naked beneath the silk covers in his private suite, one of the attractive servants he had brought along curled up naked with him. On the bridge of the ship, crew change was taking place as the night shift gave report to the oncoming day shift. A full combat information center staff was at hand at their terminals, all of them receiving data from the escorts near the front of the armada and even from the sensors of the Panama ships themselves. No sensors detected the presence of the two nuclear torpedoes closing in on the Camel or the Mule. No one was really looking for any such thing. On both of these ships the marines were climbing out of the bunks in their crowded landing ships and getting ready for the unappetizing meal that was known as breakfast. None of them had the slightest idea that death was rushing at them at eighty-three kilometers per second.

Camel was the first of the targets, the third Panama from the front of the armada. It was a young spacer second class on the bridge that first noticed something unusual on his screen. He was getting slight flickers in the medium range on infrared, just a few at first, nothing to be terribly concerned with, but then they started to get stronger, more frequent. At almost the same moment his anti-meteor radar display began to register something that looked like ghost returns, not a good solid hit on anything, and again, nothing to be terribly concerned with by itself, but they were coming from exactly the same place as the infrared flickers. He hesitated for longer than he really should have, but finally he called it to the attention of the second officer, who was in charge of the ship at that particular moment since the captain and the executive officer were both still asleep.

The second officer stared at it for nearly thirty seconds, running things through in his mind, thirty seconds in which the object in question closed another 2500 kilometers with them. Since the flickers were getting a little stronger and since the radar returns were becoming a little more frequent, he finally advanced a nervous observation. "That's almost the same signature that one of our torpedoes gives off."

"One of our torpedoes?" the spacer asked. "What would one of our torpedoes be doing out there?"

"I don't know," he said, shaking his head, starting to get a really bad feeling. "But it kind of looks like it's heading right towards us, doesn't it? I wonder if one of the Seattle's or one of our stealth ships accidentally jettisoned one."

The spacer then had a particularly unpleasant thought. "Sir," he said, "those torpedoes are pretty stealthy. If that thing is close enough for us to be getting radar returns and infrared detection from it... well... I think that it's probably very close to detonation range then."

The second officer swallowed nervously, staring at the display before him, watching the bearing change on the target. In his heart he couldn't honestly believe that an actual live torpedo was heading towards his ship — after all, who possibly could have fired it? — but on the other hand, there was a remote possibility, wasn't there? After another six seconds and another 480 kilometers of closure, he finally came to a decision. "Sound general quarters," he barked to the bridge. "Get the anti-missile defenses active. Let's go active with a fire control radar and see if we can enough of a return to pin down the range."

Ten seconds later the general quarters alarm began to sound. All over the ship, men began to head listlessly to their stations, every last one of them figuring that this was some sort of ill-timed drill. On the outside of the massive ship, panels flipped open and anti-missile lasers popped out. They began to charge up.

"Fire control radar active," the spacer reported. "Sweeping the area right now."

"What in the fuck is going on in here?" a voice boomed from behind them. It was the captain of the vessel. He had just emerged from his quarters after being jarred awake by the sounding of the alarm. He was dressed only in a pair of navy blue underwear, his hair mussed, his eyes furious, looking for blood.

"Sir," the second officer told him, "we've detected what appears to be a WestHem torpedo at close range. It seems to be closing with us. I thought that under the circumstances..."

"A WestHem torpedo?" the captain interrupted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Sir," the spacer said, his face going pale. "I have a good return on it. It's just over two thousand kilometers out, it's course directly towards us, closing at a speed of eighty-three kilometers per second."

"Jesus," the second officer said, his mind performing a quick piece of arithmetic. The missile would be in lethal detonation range in less than thirty seconds. Without bothering to wait for the captain to digest the information and give an order, he gave it himself. "Lock onto it and fire all anti-missile lasers!"

"Locking on," the spacer said.

"A torpedo?" the captain repeated, still trying to come to grips with the situation. "Moving in on us? How in the hell is that..."

"Sir!" the spacer barked. "A jammer just went active on the weapon! I've lost the range data!"

That piece of information brought it home to everyone just how real the situation was. The jammer was an electronic device installed in the seeker head of torpedoes. Designed to activate when a fire control radar started probing, they sent out a confusing array of infrared and radar noise that would foul a defensive system's ability to lock onto it exactly, which would make it very difficult to guide an anti-missile laser beam to a lethal hit. The fact that one had just come on told them that this was not a weapon accidentally dropped by one of their own ships. This was a weapon that had been deliberately fired at them and that was undoubtedly armed and ready to blow them to pieces. And it was less than twenty seconds out!

The captain finally realized that they were in mortal danger. He took over and gave the only order he would have time for. "Increase the power of the fire control radar," he shouted. "Try to burn through it!"

The burn through never came. The weapon closed to fifty kilometers from the port corner of the ship and then detonated in a flash of light.

When a nuclear weapon is detonated within the atmosphere of Earth its destructive force comes from the explosion itself pushing the air away from the flash point and slamming it into structures, people, or anything else in its path. In space, there is no atmosphere to be pushed out and no pressure wave forms. Instead, the destruction comes from a huge pulse of electromagnetic energy that expands outward at the speed of light. At a range of only fifty kilometers, this energy burned through the hull of Camel, igniting the air within, melting the steel of the bulkheads, and incinerating nearly everything within. The entire ship was ripped open by the pressure of superheated air expanding under the onslaught. Then the propellant tanks ruptured, the hydrogen within them mixing with the oxygen in the ship's environment and the storage tanks. Another bright flash of light occurred as a cataclysmic explosion took place, blowing the ship and everything in it into literally billions of pieces that went flying off into space.

In the blink of an eye, 20,000 marines, 1200 naval personnel, and more than a million tons of equipment, ammunition, fuel, and other supplies were gone forever.

"Good detonation," Sugi reported excitedly as he saw the double flash of the thermonuclear weapon on his screen. "I repeat, that was a good detonation. Jesus fucking Christ was it ever!" His display went momentarily blank as the electromagnetic pulse cluttered the ship's sensors.

"Damn," Brett whispered. Though he had spent his entire naval career aboard Owls he had never actually seen one of the weapons detonated before. He only admired their work for a moment however before turning back to business. "What's the time to torpedo number two detonation?" he asked.

"I've lost guidance on it," Sugi reported. "The EMP from the first weapon broke the laser link. Last position had it at twenty-four minutes to detonation though."

"See if you can reestablish the link," Brett ordered. "We have the last known position and the estimated position now. Tell the computer to sweep the area with the beam."

"Right," Sugi said, banging furiously away on the panel. After a moment he gave a thumbs-up signal. "I got it back," he said. "The torpedo is still tracking normally, still on course."

"Good. And the status of target twelve? Have the sensors come back up yet?"

"Coming on line now," he said, peering at his display. "And I'm picking up nothing in the last known position of target twelve. Nothing at all, not even debris."

"Jesus," said Mandall, "we vaporized it."

"That's 20,000 less marines for our troops to worry about," Brett said. "And hopefully that second torpedo will get rid of another 20,000 for them. Remember, this is what we came out here to do. It's our job."

"Right," Mandall said, looking at the track of target number 15, which was slated to be next. "Our job."

"Now all hell is going to break loose in that formation in a minute. As soon as they get over the shock of what just happened, they're going to start launching attack vessels to sweep the area, looking for us. We've had our free shot. From now on, they're not going to be underestimating us. So let's look alive out here. Mandall, keep us at point zero eight for now. As soon as the attack ships start circling, we shut the engine down and drift."

The blaring of the general quarters alarm is what woke Admiral Jules from his contented slumber. He jerked up, the silk sheet falling away from his chest, his heart hammering alarmingly from the adrenaline. "Holy God," he barked.

"Tanner?" said Mandy, his mistress for the night. She was even more frightened, although seemed to be recovering quicker. "Why are they having a GQ drill at this time of the morning?"

"A better question is why in the hell is that alarm going off in my quarters? I programmed that computer so it would never do that unless it was actual situation." He jerked the covers off and stood up, not bothering to grab a robe off of the hook by the bed. He was ready to chew some ass and it was best to chew it while the outrage was still fresh. He walked angrily over to the Internet terminal at the desk.

Before he could activate it, however, it came to life itself in the intercom mode. The face of Rear Admiral Brannigan, the direct commander of the naval task force, was on the screen. It was a face that was pale and scared.

"Brannigan!" Jules yelled. "What the hell is going on here? Why is that GQ alarm screaming in my quarters?"

"Sir," Brannigan said, "I've put all of the ships in the fleet at general quarters. There's been an attack!"

"An attack? What kind of attack? Start making some sense, man, right this second!"

"A nuclear weapon just went off near the Camel — that's one of the lead Panamas in the line. It was a torpedo."

"A torpedo?" he said. "You'd better be shitting me!"

"No sir. Camel's active systems went on line four minutes ago and were tracking an incoming object. We received their telemetry here and the object has been positively identified as a torpedo. It was detonated just two minutes ago now."

"Damage?" he asked.

"She's gone, sir," Brannigan replied.

"Gone? What do you mean gone?"

"I mean destroyed completely. The weapon detonated inside of fifty kilometers. A direct hit. There's nothing left of the ship, sir. She's gone. She never even had a chance to radio in a report."

"Are you telling me," Jules asked carefully, "that we have just lost a transport ship and that the 20,000 marines and all of the naval personnel inside of it are dead?"

"Yes sir," he said, his face stunned. "That is how it looks at the moment."

"Holy Christ," he whispered, slumping into the chair. He had lost a ship? He had lost 20,000 marines that he was responsible for transporting safely to their destination?

"Sir?" Brannigan said, "I've ordered a..."

"Twenty thousand!" Jules broke in, shaking his head in denial. That was more than two hundred times the worst-case casualty estimate formulated before departure. It was a disaster of unprecedented proportions.

"Sir? Are you with me?" Brannigan said.

"We need to find the ship that did this immediately!" Jules said, his fists clenching in his lap. "This is an outright act of war! Those EastHem fucks need to be tracked down and eliminated at once. And once we've done that, we need to..."

"It wasn't EastHem sir," Brannigan cut in.

Jules looked at his image as if he thought the man mad. "Wasn't EastHem? What are you talking about? Of course it was EastHem. There's no one else with nuclear torpedo capability."

"Sir, by all evidence that we've seen so far, that was a WestHem weapon that went off."

"A WestHem weapon?"

"No mistaking, sir. Camel was able to paint the delivery device with her fire control radar for a few seconds before the jammer went active. The signature was of a Mark-38. And then there were the detonation flashes. As you know, we can identify the weapon type by the EMP it releases. Again, all data points to a WestHem device. We can collect some of the radioactive debris for analysis as well if you'd like, but that will only confirm what we already know. Somebody fired a Mark-38 torpedo at Camel and killed her."

"Is there any chance that it was an accident?" he asked next. "Could one of the escort ships have inadvertently jettisoned a torpedo and it drifted into Camel's path?"

"I would rate that possibility as extremely unlikely. That weapon was on an exact collision course and it detonated in optimum destruction range. I'm forced to conclude that there is a hostile ship out there, probably a stealth attack ship, and that it deliberately attacked the convoy."

Jules thought of the report he'd received that Marlin was tracking an Owl being operated by the greenies before her signal was abruptly lost. Could it be possible? Could the greenies have somehow gotten one of those ships operational and used it to attack his ship. And could they have possibly managed to get on or more of those nuclear torpedoes operational as well. As impossible and as mad as that idea sounded on the surface, there really was no other explanation that made sense.

"We need to sweep the area and see if there's an Owl out there," Jules said. "It's possible the greenies may have somehow managed to get one of the captured ships operational."

"I've already ordered the attack craft launched," Brannigan told him. "They'll be going along the path of the weapon, probing with their active sensors to try and locate the vessel, if there is one. I've also had all ships activate their active search systems. If there's an Owl out there, we'll find it."

"Very good, Brannigan," he said, nodding in satisfaction. "Let's find that ship and capture or destroy it. I want this done within the hour. Within the hour, do you hear me?"

"I understand, sir."

"And in the meantime, we need to start figuring out what we're going to tell the media about this. Let's start thinking of a cover story right away."

From the launch bays of the Californias, A-22 attack craft emerged, their powerful rocket engines lighting up and sending them streaking off into the surrounding space to search for the ship that had attacked Camel. The saucer shaped craft joined up into teams of two and began a grid search along the bearing that the torpedo had come from. They moved back and forth over their grids, their radars and other active systems probing in all directions, their passive sensors sniffing for the slightest sign of heat.

At the same time, the destroyers and the anti-stealth ships of the armada joined in the search as well, their unmanned probes shooting off in multiple directions along the torpedo bearing and off to the sides of it. Radar and search lasers filled the empty vacuum while technicians kept their eyes glued to their screens, reading the telemetry that was coming back in.

The WestHem forces however, held a distinct disadvantage in the search. Though they had the bearing that the weapon had launched from, they had no idea from what range its flight had begun. It could have been launched anywhere from 600,000 kilometers out to inside of 60,000 kilometers. And the further out that it had been launched from, the more time that the ship would have had to alter course and clear the area. They were in effect stuck with an area to search that the Earth itself would have fit inside of with room to spare for its moon to orbit. And in addition to the huge search area they had to work with, they only had a limited amount of time in which to do it in. The entire armada was still traveling at maximum speed away from the area while the ship they were searching for was undoubtedly standing relatively still. The attack craft were not capable of decelerating to this speed and lingering behind. And even if they could, they would never be able to catch back up to their mother ships when they were done.

Meanwhile, while all of the searching was going on and while Mermaid herself drifted silently and invisibly, her bridge crew nervously following the courses of the various ships on the lookout, the second torpedo that she had launched continued to close with Mule. None of the sensors on the search ships got a sniff of it since they were probing outward of the formation, not along its inner flank. It closed to within 12,000 kilometers before the search radar on Mule itself was able to get a hint of a return.

By that point, all of the commanding officers on all of the Panama ships had been alerted to what had happened to Camel. Every last one of the remaining transports were at general quarters now, their active systems all on line, their defensive weapons systems charged and on standby. Even still, it took a horridly long time for the bridge crew to react to the threat closing in on them. The commanding officer of Mule initially dismissed the intermittent returns as an anomaly, thinking that the fear and hysteria of the detection crew was causing an imaginary sighting. Precious seconds ticked by before he even thought to report this finding. It was only when the returns began to get steadier and when the infrared flickers began to accompany them that he started to wonder if maybe there really was a second weapon out there and maybe it really was heading for his ship.

He ordered the targeting radars lit up and directed down the bearing from which the sightings were coming. As with Camel, this gave a momentary solid return that was able to identify range, course, speed, and a weapon signature. He paled as he saw that he was dealing with a Mark 38 thermonuclear torpedo and that it was less than five thousand kilometers out. Before he could open fire on it with the anti-missile lasers, the jammer on the weapon went active, cluttering the display.

"This is Mule," he reported to the commander of the armada on the emergency frequency. "We have a torpedo closing in on us from five thousand kilometers! Jamming systems are active. Attempting to engage now!"

The entire command staff followed the brief drama on their screens as the telemetry from Mule was downlinked to them. They watched as her array of lasers began to fire into space one by one, trying to hit the now hidden object that was closing with them.

On Mermaid, Brett and his bridge crew watched the same thing. Since they were still linked via laser to the weapon, and since the weapon had clearly been detected, Brett ordered that the rocket engine be fired to help close the range a little faster. A command was given and a second later the powerful chemical rocket lit up, accelerating the torpedo towards Mule at nearly 12Gs.

When the torpedo was eighty kilometers out, less than a second away, one of the laser beams nicked it, just barely burning through the outer casing. Had the shot been just five centimeters more to the center, it would have destroyed the weapon, rendering it incapable of detonation and turning it into nothing more than a projectile. Instead a sensor in the weapon, detecting the damage, immediately set the detonation sequence into action. It took less than three hundredths of a second for the nuclear material to be compressed and explode in the distinctive double-flash.

Since the range of the detonation was considerably further out than had been the case with Camel, the ship was not completely obliterated from existence. The energy burned into the hull, causing huge rips along the entire port side, basically tearing the ship in half lengthwise. All of the landing ships on the port side were ripped open as well, instantly killing all within as they were opened to space in explosive decompressions. The worst damage occurred when two of the fuel tanks of the landing ships exploded, sending shrapnel ripping through the rest of the ship. The delicate fusion engines were put out of commission by the opening of the rear of the ship and then destroyed completely by the secondary explosion. The propellant tanks were ruptured, their contents blasting out into space as a tremendous cloud of vapor, but they did not explode this time due to the lack of sufficient oxidation. Nevertheless, more than three quarters of the men aboard Mule were killed outright by the impact or the secondary explosion. Of the remainder, most of whom were located on the bridge or the starboard side of the vessel, well over half were trapped forever in compartments that had been fused shut by the heat and the buckling. Their fate would be to drift forever into space, entombed in a dead, twisted hulk. Of those that were able to abandon ship, they had only fifty minutes of air in their emergency pressure suits and would have to hope for rescue from the other ships of the armada. And if they did manage to be rescued in time, all would have to be treated for severe radiation sickness.

Mermaid's engines had long since been shut down and she drifted silently through space, her passive sensors keeping an eye on the frantic search that was being undertaken on their behalf. The crew had been at general quarters for nearly five hours now, all of them anxious, scared, but also proud that they had just helped take forty thousand marines out of commission.

Brett and the rest of the bridge crew watched their screens as the Panamas continued to pass far above them and as the anti-stealth frigates and the attack ships that came from the middle portion of the security screen circled back and forth and probed into space. They picked up many radar signals and infrared sweeps bathing their ship in energy but so far they had not been detected. And as the minutes ticked by the ships in pursuit of them moved further and further away, carried along by their own momentum.

"They're well outside of potential detection range now," Sugi said as he watched the circling of a pair of A-22s about 40,000 kilometers away. They had been as close as 12,000 kilometers at one point, close enough that any sort of heat dump or engine usage would have meant instant discovery.

"Good," Brett said, puffing nervously on a cigarette, "but they won't be the only ones. We still have the rear screen to worry about. They'll be out in force as well. And all it takes is for one to get a little sniff of us."

Sugi said nothing, didn't even nod. He simply went back to studying the display, remembering how he had once begged for something to appear on it. Now there were more symbols on it than he thought he could handle. And more would be gracing his view at any time.

"Have you found them yet?" General Wrath demanded of Jules. They were sitting in Jules' quarters, both sipping from cocktails as they sat in leather bound chairs before the huge picture window that looked out on the empty space before them.

"Not yet," Jules sighed. "The first group of search ships have passed beyond where the torpedo could have conceivably been fired from and the attack ships have run out of maneuvering fuel. They're being recovered right now."

"So we lost them then? Almost forty thousand of my men dead and you can't find the people responsible for it? That's unacceptable, Jules! I want that ship dead!"

"The anti-stealth ships from our part of the screen will be coming into range in about twenty minutes," he told him. "And the entire wing of A-22's will be launching in five to fan out ahead of us. We'll find them."

"Christ," Wrath said, shaking his head angrily. "How in the hell could something like this have happened? How in the hell could you let the greenies attack this armada with nuclear weapons? That's outrageous."

"There will be a full investigation, I can assure you of that," Jules said. "Those responsible for the lapse in security will be punished harshly." He was in fact already formulating just who would be blamed for the attacks. The on duty combat information center crew made handy scapegoats. They were, after all, the ones responsible for detecting enemy craft or weapons, weren't they?

"I want some heads to roll over this, Tanner," Wrath said. "And I want them to roll soon. Nothing like this has happened to the corps since the Jupiter War. And then we were at least fighting a real enemy!"

"They'll roll," he promised. "And we'll find that ship. You have my word."

Wrath sighed and took another sip from his scotch and soda. He looked out at the stars for a moment and then turned back to his colleague. "What did the executive committee have to say about this?" he asked.

"I just got their reply about ten minutes ago. We're still able to relay messages directly instead of sending them to Jupiter first. They were a bit upset by the news of course."

"I take it that that is an understatement?"

He gave a cynical smile. "Yes, perhaps the biggest of the trip so far. They were infuriated. They're very worried about what effect this is going to have on public opinion."

"Understandable. What did they have to say? Do we have orders for what to brief the media on? They've already started picking up the rumors."

"It was a collision," Jules said. "That's what the official story is going to be."

"A collision?" Wrath said in disgust. "You've got to be kidding me."

He shook his head. "One of our captains was trying to adjust his station in the formation. He let his engine burn a little too long and ran his ship into another Panama, therefore causing the rupture of the propellant tanks aboard Camel. The explosion completely destroyed Camel and caused severe damage to Mule."

"Holy Jesus," said Wrath. "And just how are we to explain why we had to treat the survivors of Mule for radiation sickness? Did that occur to them? Or how about what's going to happen when one of the surviving bridge crew starts blabbing his mouth? Or one of our own CIC crew that was tracking this thing. Do they really think that something like this can be kept under wraps?"

"They didn't explain things any further than what they ordered," Jules told him. "They left that up to us. We could say that the surviving crewmen were exposed to intense solar radiation before being rescued. After all, we are near the sun."

"Their suits have protection from that," Wrath pointed out. "That'll never fly."

"They'll make it fly," Jules insisted. "Remember what we're talking about here. They can control the media if they really want to, if they really need to. They did it during the Jupiter War. Remember, the big three are nothing more than huge corporations themselves. And whose behalf are we really fighting this fucking war on?"

Wrath looked at him levelly. Both men of course knew the real reason for the war, but neither had ever mentioned it, not even in private. "I suppose you're right," he said. "And I suppose we can let those men from the bridge know exactly what they're facing if they go around telling lies about how they were attacked by a nuclear weapon."

"Such things have been done before," Jules said. "Many times. We'll place the blame for the collision on the captain of the Camel, since all hands were lost there. We'll portray the bridge crew of the Mule as heroic in the attempts to avoid the collision and in their diligence for saving the surviving men. As for our CIC crew, I'll speak to each one of them personally and make sure they understand what the stakes are. They stick to the story, they'll move up the ladder. If they go telling lies about nuclear weapons, they'll be destroyed, both in their career and their reputation."

"Sounds good," Wrath said. "But in the meantime, you have to find that ship. And you have to make sure that there aren't any others out there."

"I can't possibly imagine that the greenies could have manned more than one ship," Jules said. "I'm frankly quite amazed that they were even able to do that."

"And I'm sure you're right about that, but we underestimated them once. Let's make sure we don't do it again."

Sugi and Brett were watching the display of enemy vessels carefully, both of them very tense. For the past forty minutes more than sixty A-22's had been circling around them. They were teamed up in pairs and performing careful grid searches as they moved through the area. As their colleagues had been before them, they were somewhat hampered by the fact that they were moving roughly seventy kilometers per second through the search area, but they had also been given much more time to perform their search and were able to be a little more thorough.

So far, none had come within 10,000 kilometers of Mermaid, although they had passed on both sides and though their active systems were slashing all over her. Brett was certain that they had not gotten so much as a sniff from him yet, but that was only because all heat emitting systems had been shut down.

"Brett," said Mandall from the helm, "our waste heat is becoming critical. We need to make a dump soon."

Brett nodded, stifling a yawn as he looked at the display. The excess heat should have been released into space more than twenty minutes ago, but to do so now was to risk giving the A-22s a source to lock in on. If those ships found their position, they would be on them in minutes, blasting them with heavy lasers.

"We'll have to hold a little longer," he said. "I don't want to risk it until those ships are at least 40,000 kilometers out. They're coming to the end of their search arc now it looks like."

"Okay," she said worriedly.

As if that wasn't bad enough news, Sugi soon had worse. "Brett," he said, "I've just plotted out a course for target 46. It's a Seattle class and it's heading pretty much right towards us. If both of us keep on current courses, they'll pass within 12,000 kilometers. All of her systems are active too."

"Are you sure on that plot?" Brett asked.

"I've run it three times now," Sugi answered. "It looks like the closure will occur in forty-three minutes."

"That's well inside detection range for one of those vessels," Brett said. "Well inside. Especially if we don't get rid of some of this heat before then."

Worried looks passed among the crew at these words. What were they to do? Just sit there and hope that the Seattle didn't see them? Try to fight it out and get destroyed by the A-22s? The fact that Brett, their commanding officer, the man who was supposed to know what to do in these situations, looked just as helpless as they felt, didn't make them feel much better.

"Brett?" Sugi said.

He took a few deep breaths, running the problem through his head. Until now he'd never really appreciated just what kind of pressure the captain of a ship was put under. What he decided now would make the difference between them living and dying.

"We can't just hope that it'll change course," Brett said, mostly thinking aloud but wanting his crew to hear his thoughts. "They seem to be on a search course. It's unlikely that they'll deviate from it."

"It would seem so," Sugi said.

"Helm, start calculating the minimum amount that we'd have to burn the engines in order to clear them by more than 20,000 kilometers."

"Right," she said, bending to her screen. She worked the numbers for more than three minutes before coming up with an answer. "We'll have to burn at point zero eight G on a course of 139 mark 180 in order to clear that range," she announced.

He shook his head. "That's too damn much," he said. "If we light up the engines that much they'll detect us for sure." He took a few deep breaths, looking around, trying to find some inspiration. Finally, the glimmer of an idea came. It would be risky, but he didn't really see any other option. "Helm, put us on an intercept course towards them. Get us aligned to firing range as quickly as possible using as little engine power as possible."

"An intercept course?" she said doubtfully.

"You heard me," he told her. "If we can't run away from them and we can't hide from them, we'll have to fight them." He pushed a button on his panel. "Torpedo room, get a weapon ready for launch."

Since the ship was already heading almost directly towards them, it didn't take much maneuvering to put them on a collision course. A short burst of the thrusters and a five minute burn at .02G did the trick. The A-22s, which were still circling about, were on the far end of their latest circle as the burn took place and therefore didn't see it.

"Timing is the key here," Brett said, watching as the Seattle grew closer and closer to them. "We have to wait until those 22s have moved far enough past us so that they won't be able to engage us when we start our separation burn. Because once we start that, the whole fleet is going to know we're out here."

"Will we be able to clear the area?" Sugi asked.

Brett gave a worried smile. "We'll have to hope so I guess, won't we?"

The minutes ticked by, the atmosphere on the bridge thick with tension. The A-22s, which were identifiable by the heat of their thrusters and the frequent burns of their main engines, continued to circle about, their distance getting further and further away with each arc that they made. Finally they went beyond 40,000 kilometers, still blind to the enemy ship they had just encircled. There was no way that they could circle back at the speed they were moving without burning up all of their maneuvering fuel.

"Okay," Brett said, "let's get it on here. Sugi, what's the distance to that Seattle?"

"86,000 kilometers and closing rapidly," he replied.

"Got it," Brett said. "Helm, go ahead and dump the waste heat now. We should be safe from detection."

"Dumping," she said, flipping the switch that controlled that.

"Torpedo room," Brett then said into the intercom, "launch tube one immediately. Set detonation for sixty kilometers and get a lock on that thing as quick as you can."

"Launching now," was the response.

Once more the torpedo tube irised open and the hydraulic arm pushed out a weapon into space. It drifted forward, moving slightly faster than the ship, and the laser system achieved a lock on it.

"Sugi," Brett said, "get ready to employ every piece of jamming equipment at your disposal. The moment we light those engines up they're going to see us. It won't be more than a few seconds after that before they try to engage us. Your job will be to make sure that they don't get a laser locked onto us before that torpedo gets on target."

"Right," Sugi said softly, his hands trembling a little as his fingers hovered over the panel.

Brett thought about saying a few last words to the crew, telling them that he had been proud to serve with them in case his plan didn't work out the way he wanted. Instead he kept his words to himself, figuring that it was bad luck to make such a speech.

"Helm," he said, "initiate breakaway maneuver. Turn to new course 180 mark 90."

Mandall swallowed audibly and then punched in the new course. The maneuvering thrusters fired, turning the ship in space. There was no sign that they had been detected from this.

"On course," Mandall told him when the thrusters were finished doing their work.

"Okay," Brett said. "Sounding acceleration alarm." He pushed the button and let the alarm go through its course. When it was finished he looked at Mandall once again. "Full power to the engines," he told her. "Point two-five G."

"Point two-five," she repeated, sliding the computerized dial all the way to the end.

The fusion engines lit a second later, expelling a stream of plasma out the back of the ship and pushing her away from the drifting torpedo. Everyone on board was pushed forcibly downward in his or her seats as gravity returned and the ship began to pick up momentum.

"Active fire control systems coming on line from the Seattle," Sugi reported.

"All jamming systems active, right now!" Brett ordered. "Don't let them get a lock on us or we're dead!"

"Coming on line," Sugi said, his voice breaking just a bit. Nevertheless, he did his job, instructing the powerful transmitters to send a haze of conflicting radar and infrared data out towards the Seattle.

"Torpedo room," Brett said into the intercom. "How's that torp looking?"

"We're still locked on it," was the report. "All systems on line."

"Copy that. Let's pray to God that thing closes and puts that ship out of action. Keep a close eye on it."

"I'm getting laser fire from the Seattle," Sugi reported, watching as the tell-tale flashes came from the target's weapons. "They're firing at us, all weapons. Unknown how close they're coming."

"You'll know when they get too close," Brett said. "Trust me, there will be no mistaking it."

The minutes passed with agonizing slowness. Mermaid picked up speed second by second, moving further and further away from the torpedo she had launched, although the Seattle continued to close on them. Every ten to fifteen seconds the four main lasers of the Seattle would fire one by one, trying desperately to make a hit on the fleeing Owl but unable to make the beam and the ship intersect because of the confusing jamming. Some of the beams passed within a half a kilometer of the ship. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before an impact occurred, either because the Seattle had burned through the jamming or because of blind luck.

"Torpedo range?" Brett asked Hamilton via the intercom.

"22,000 kilometers and closing," was the report. "Just over four and a half minutes to detonation."

"Sugi, any signs that they know the weapon is out there?"

"Nothing yet, Brett," he answered. "All of the fire control systems seemed to be focused on us."

More weapons flashed, sending more laser energy shooting through space. Mermaid's distance from the torpedo continued to grow as her momentum picked up. But the Seattle just kept getting closer and closer and the powerful active systems kept getting more intense. And on the bridge of the ship there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and see if the lasers would find them, wait and see if the Seattle would detect the torpedo and destroy it.

Brett turned on the intercom once again. "All laser teams, get ready to engage. If that torpedo doesn't work we're going to have to slug it out with them."

This thought did not do much to encourage anyone. The weapons lasers on the hull of the Mermaid were enough to take out a crippled ship or to maybe knock out an attack craft, but it would be next to impossible to destroy a huge anti-stealth destroyer with them. Nevertheless, the gun crews manned their terminals and began to sight in on the rapidly approaching target. The lasers themselves were charged up and readied for action.

"Ten thousand kilometers and closing," Hamilton reported. "Two minutes to detonation."

"It looks like they're picking up the torp," Sugi said suddenly. "Two of the fire control radars are shifting target."

"Jamming systems just went active on the torpedo," came Hamilton's voice a second later. "They've got it."

"Hopefully that'll detract their attention from us," Brett said. "Hammy, light up the engine on the torpedo. They know its there now, might as well push it a little faster."

"Lighting it up," he responded.

On the view screen they watched as the huge thermal plume of the torpedo's rocket engine made itself known. It began to close the range even faster. All over the Seattle itself, anti-missile lasers began to fire, sending more flashes of energy onto the display.

"Eight thousand kilometers and closing," Hamilton said. "Detonation in 94 seconds."

"Come on, baby," Brett mumbled, his hands clenched nervously. "Just slip in a little closer."

Suddenly there was a violent jolt, making the entire ship shudder. On the master panel alarms began to blare.

"We've been hit!" Mandall yelled. "We have a hull breach in engineering!"

"Shit," Brett said, flipping on the intercom. "Engineering, report immediately!"

There was no answer at first and Brett had to hail two more times. Finally the voice of Mike Bellingraph, sounding frantic and scared, came on. "We've got a hull rupture in engine room number two," he said. "The engine has been hit as well. Performing an emergency shutdown now. The doors are shut and some of my people are trapped in there!"

"I copy," Brett responded. "Get the engine shut down. Hopefully the crew was able to activate their suits. They'll be okay for now."

"Understood," he said.

"Is engine number one still online?"

"So far, but that blast came awfully close to the main propellant tanks. You'd better check them."

"Checking now," Brett said, looking at Mandall. "How we looking there, helm?"

"I'm showing no loss of pressure," she reported.

"Propellant tanks seem fine," Brett told him. "Get that engine shut down and see if we can salvage it. Report back as soon as you know something."

"Right," Bellingraph said. "I'm on it."

Brett took a deep breath, feeling like things were moving just a little too fast for him to keep up. "Sugi," he said, "how are our jammers doing? Are they still active?"

"Still active," he confirmed. "They're still firing at us. That must've been a lucky hit instead of a burn through."

"Good," he said. "Hammy? You still there?"

"Still here," came his voice. "Torp is now 3200 kilometers out. Engine is still burning. Impact in 36 seconds."

The seconds ticked off one by one. On the display, the symbol representing the torpedo and the larger symbol representing the Seattle continued to close. Frantic flashes of light flared every second or so from the Seattle's position as the laser weapons pulsed out more energy, trying desperately to destroy both the onrushing weapon and the ship that had fired it. Just six seconds before the impact time, another one of the anti-ship lasers got through, striking the aft section of the ship a glancing blow. There was no shudder of impact this time, just another blaring of alarms from the panel.

"Another hit," Bellingraph reported. "Starboard exhaust port has been damaged. Unknown how severe just yet."

Brett simply nodded, his eyes still glued to the display. If the torpedo didn't detonate in the next four or five seconds, it wouldn't really matter how bad the damage to the ship was. The two symbols closed to within a half a centimeter and then there was a sudden flash before they could merge.

"Detonation," Sugi reported, obvious relief in his voice. "Right on target. Sixty kilometers out."

The displays went momentarily dark again as the electromagnetic pulse bombarded the ship and overwhelmed the sensors.

"Sugi," Brett said, "get the systems back on line as quickly as possible. We need to know if that Seattle was destroyed or just crippled or what."

"Going through the restart now," he said.

"Mandall, give me report on the laser damage."

"There's been no hull breach this time," she said. "It doesn't look like it was a direct hit. There's some damage to the rear of the exhaust port but that's the engine that's been shut down from the first strike. I'm showing no venting of gas."

Brett breathed a little easier. "Thank God for small favors."

It took nearly a minute before Sugi was able to get the display back up. It took another minute for him to process the signals that he was receiving and formulate a diagnosis of what was there.

"The ship is still there," he said, "but it's no longer firing, no longer under power. It's drifting on its last course. There are spot heat sources coming from all over it and some other strange readings in the low end."

Brett unbuckled from his seat and walked over, moving carefully in the reduced gravity. He looked at the images for a moment, trying to make some sense out of them. "They're venting," he finally said. "The hot spots are residual heat from the blast. The low end stuff is oxygen and hydrogen streaming out of a hull rupture." He pointed at some of the other spectrums, which should have been active but were not. "And look at this, no electromagnetic energy or engine heat from the aft section. Her engines are dead. She's just drifting, dead in space. It looks like she's slowly spinning around as well, probably because of thrust from the initial rupture."

"So that's a kill then?" Sugi asked carefully.

"It's a kill," he agreed. "Obvious hull rupture in at least one place, a large volume of venting gas, no power or gravity generation. That ship is dead. There might be some of the crew still alive if they managed to get their suits active, but I don't think she's going to be much of a danger to us when she passes."

"So we're safe then?" Hamilton asked hesitantly from her helm panel.

"Assuming that that was really the last ship in the armada, yes, we should be relatively safe. But just to be sure, let's not make ourselves so visible. Cut engine power on the remaining engine immediately. Bring us down to a tenth of a G."

"Right," she said, "reducing the burn to point one zero."

"And then start checking the thrusters one by one to make sure they weren't damaged by the hits. If they all check out, let's get a course change going."

"What course?"

"I'll let you know when I find out how bad the damage is," he told her. "Sugi, get the jammers shut down and let's start looking at the ships again just to make sure that none of them can get into range of us."

"Doing it now," he said, watching as his targeting information began to pop back up on the display one by one.

Things settled down a little over the next few minutes as the crew began to realize that they really were safe. Sugi was able to track that two of the rear screen ships — a destroyer and another Seattle — had turned around and were decelerating at full power to allow the crippled Seattle to catch up to them. But there was no way that they could possibly slow down enough to become a danger to Mermaid in any way. And a check of the area to sunward also showed that no other ships were currently coming towards them. That didn't preclude the possibility that there might be a WestHem controlled Owl drifting out there of course — in fact Brett figured that there probably was one in the vicinity since trailing one was standard WestHem doctrine — but at least they were safe from direct attack.

In the engineering compartment it was revealed that the bulk of the damage to engine number two had been in the exhaust portion. The fusion reactor itself had been undamaged and was still capable of providing power for the electrical and environmental systems. Granted, it would take about a week of repairs at TNB before it could ever provide thrust again, but at least the fueling systems and the propellant tanks themselves were still functional.

It was discovered that four crewmembers had been killed in the engagement, all of them as a result of the first laser blast. Two had been killed by the blast itself, their bodies burned to ashes and bone fragments from the energy. The other two had been blown out of the ship by the hull rupture, hurled through the two-meter hole in the ship and into space by the escaping air and then vaporized by the exhaust plasma coming from the engines. Six other crewmembers were rescued from the decompressed room about twenty minutes later, two of them injured by flying debris, but all alive thanks to their emergency suits. The room itself was sealed shut after the rescue and would be unused for the rest of the trip.

On the display the bridge crew watched silently as the Seattle they had destroyed drifted over the top of them, still moving at 70 kilometers per second, it's front and rear turning end over end, gas still streaming out of it. No laser fire emitted from her weapons. No signs of life were noted at all. Mermaid's laser crews kept their weapons trained on it as it passed, knowing that a single shot would ignite the pocket of hydrogen and oxygen that enveloped the ship, but not firing.

The maneuvering thrusters on Mermaid were all undamaged by the blasts and they were engaged to turn the ship back towards Mars and to raise it a little more towards the planetary elliptic. They accelerated on their good engine at .05 G in order to clear the area where the engagement had taken place. Brett wanted them to get lost in space again in case a WestHem Owl was moving in.

It was two hours after the detonation of the torpedo when the dead Seattle was finally in range of the rescue ships. They watched on the display as the rescue ships moved in and burned their engines to match velocities and dock.

"Well, that's that," Brett said, smoking another cigarette and sipping from his sixth cup of coffee. "If there are any survivors, they'll get them out." He looked over at Sugi. "How are we looking out there otherwise?"

"Nothing showing," he said. "If there's an Owl after us it must be way back in the rear not to have caught up with us yet."

He nodded. "I agree," he said. "My thought is that the entire armada has now passed us by. Good job, folks. Now let's secure from general quarters and start setting up a sleep schedule to get everyone rested up. Our job is done out here. Now we can start heading home. Hopefully the other ships in the operation and the MPG on the surface will make sure that we still have a home to go to."

"Sir," said Rear Admiral Brannigan, "I have word from the rescue crews."

"What is it?" Jules said. It had been nearly three hours since the torpedo had hit the anti-stealth ship Billings. The rescue crews launched from the Topeka had been aboard her for nearly an hour.

"No survivors found," Brannigan told him solemnly. "There are five serious hull ruptures and more than thirty smaller ones. Well over half of the crew is just plain missing, probably blown out into space or vaporized by the pulse. About half of the bodies that were found onboard appeared to have died instantly. They have severe burns to their skin and clothing. The other half... well... they were in the rear of the ship, the part that was shielded from the worst of the blast. They appear to have died from suffocation when their emergency suits ran out of air."

"There were no air pockets, no sealed areas where survivors might be?"

"None, sir," he told him. "That ship was fractured in hundreds, maybe thousands of places. The airtight integrity of all of the compartments was compromised. The rescue crews are trying to collect the bodies and get them aboard their own vessels now."

"I see," Jules said, his hands clenched in rage. "Have them get as many as they can and then place some scuttling charges on that ship to fragment it. It shouldn't be that hard to do with that cloud of unburned propellant and oxygen floating around it." He didn't mention that that same cloud also made rescue operations extremely dangerous.

"Yes sir," Brannigan said. "It should be done within the next few hours."

"What about that Owl the greenies are using?" he asked next. "Any further sign of it?"

"No sir. Once they cut their engine power after the engagement, we lost them. I imagine they've altered course by now and are well clear of the last known position. In any case, we're well beyond them now."

Jules shook his head in anger and frustration. "They'll pay for this," he vowed. "When we retake that planet we'll open an investigation into this incident. We'll get the names of every person that was aboard that ship and they'll all be tried for terrorist acts and murder."

"Yes sir," Brannigan said, with real emotion this time. He couldn't wait for that day, the day he could stare at the greenies who had destroyed three of his ships and killed more than fifty thousand men and had somehow — against all odds — managed to elude capture or destruction.

"I've sent a report off to Earth on this latest incident," Jules said with a grimace. "I can assure you that the executive council is not going to be happy about it. But they will at least be thrilled to hear that the immediate danger has passed. They blindsided us somehow but there's no way that they can catch up to us now."

"What are we going to say happened to the Billings?" Brannigan asked. "To the public that is?"

"I suggested that we tell the public a crew error with one of the torpedoes caused an accidental detonation. Since the relay of signals to Jupiter is now in effect it'll be another hour or two before I get approval of that. But my guess is that is what we'll go with. It's neutral. Blames it on a human error instead of saying that something malfunctioned in the engine or the fueling system. The shipbuilders are sponsors of two of the executive council after all. We can't go saying their products are defective."

"I see," Brannigan said. "And... well..."

"What is it?"

"Well sir, are you sure that we can keep the real reason for the losses under wraps? There were a lot of men involved in hunting down that Owl. The pilots and the gunners on the A-22s, the CIC crews on all of the rear guard ships. They all know that we were tracking a WestHem Owl and that torpedoes were launched."

"It'll leak to a certain extent," Jules said. "I'll agree that there's no way to prevent that. And I'm sure that the reporters on board have already gotten wind of what really happened. You know how those people are. But the people who control what actually gets reported won't allow any of those rumors to be broadcast on the Internet in any form. They'll keep their reporters under control. That's how the system works."

"And what happens if there are more losses?"

"More losses?" Jules scoffed. "How would that happen? We're well beyond that ship now. We've already been over this."

"What if there are more of them out there?"

Jules actually laughed at this notion. "Don't be ridiculous," he told his underling. "It was a stretch beyond imagination for those greenies to get even one ship operational and deployed. There's no way in hell that they could possibly have another one out there."

"You're probably right, sir," Brannigan said. "But all the same, I'd like to initiate a full combat space patrol and have all active sensors on all ships constantly on for the rest of the voyage. With your permission of course."

Jules thought this over for a second, his instinct telling him to deny the request as alarmist and as a certain waste of precious fuel. But it really didn't hurt to be prudent, did it? "Why not?" he finally said. "Go ahead and initiate that. Just be sure that those crews are briefed to keep their damn mouths shut about what they're doing."

"Yes sir," Brannigan said. "I'll make sure."

Onboard the Mammoth that night, Lieutenant Callahan and his platoon were all in their bunks, most dressed in nothing but their underwear. It was fifteen minutes before the official lights out period and all of the men were staring intently at the Internet screen, watching as Admiral Jules, the commander of the naval portion of Red Hammer, delivered a briefing on the events that had occurred that day. Although the news reports of the deaths and the explosions of the ships had been going on almost non-stop for the past three hours, this was the first official word on just what had happened.

"Our preliminary findings," Jules was telling the solar system, "based on interviews with the combat information center staff and review of the computer records of the events, seem to indicate that the collision between the Camel and the Mule, the two Panama class transports, was caused by a maneuvering error aboard Camel. It appears that the helm operator on that ship, for whatever reason, burned the engines for far too long during a routine position shift and then was unable to correct his course before the impact happened."

"That is a bunch of fucking bullshit!" yelled Sergeant Mallory. "Can you fuckin believe that they're feeding us that shit?"

"Easy, Mallory," Callahan said soothingly. "All we've been hearing are rumors. Just because someone told you that the greenies torpedoed those ships doesn't mean its true. That's why Jules is giving the briefing now, to clear up those rumors."

"You don't actually believe that shit do you, LT?" Mallory asked. "Jesus Christ, you know as well as I do that Mule and Camel weren't anywhere near each other in the formation!"

Callahan sighed. Yes, he did know that. Until about three hours before, the exact configuration of the ships in the armada had been available on the open Internet by doing an active search. It was part of the briefing material that the public relations department of the Navy had uploaded to their official site. But now — now that two transports and an anti-stealth ship were mysteriously erased from existence — those configurations were gone. And as hard as Callahan wanted to believe that a simple accident had killed nearly 40,000 of his comrades in deep space, it just wouldn't fly.

"So that," Jules continued, "is what we have found so far regarding this unbelievable catastrophe. Of course our investigation is far from complete in this manner, and we will of course look at every possible circumstance surrounding this event, but at this time it appears that those are the facts of the matter." He paused, as if overwhelmed with the emotion of the moment. "And at the same time, I also have preliminary findings on the explosion aboard the Billings, which I'm sure that most of you have heard reports of us well. It appears, based on findings by the brave rescue personnel that went aboard her after the explosion, that one of the torpedoes was being worked on in the maintenance section of the ship and that somehow the conventional explosive that sets off the nuclear warhead of the torpedo was detonated. This did not — I repeat, did not — cause a nuclear detonation of any kind. What it did was cause a rupture of the propellant tanks, which in turn caused gross damage to the hull and the structural integrity of the vessel. I am shocked and saddened to report that all hands were lost here as well."

"More fuckin bullshit," Mallory said in disgust. "The goddamn torpedoes aren't stored anywhere near the propellant tanks. No ship does that. So how the hell did the explosion make them rupture?"

Callahan didn't even bother telling him to pipe down this time. Any marine who had ever served aboard a ship before knew that what he was saying was true. There was some more grumbling and cries of disbelief as the briefing went on and Jules continued to explain about the collision of the two vessels that had been separated by nearly ten thousand kilometers of space, and about the explosion aboard Billings that had somehow managed to avoid detonating the nuclear package but had somehow ripped open the fuel tanks while still leaving enough evidence behind for the investigators to determine this. It was when Jules opened the floor to questions however that things really started to get out of control.

Not a single reporter asked about the rumor of an attack by greenies in control of a stealth attack ship. There was no way that the reporters could have not heard that rumor. The marines were in the middle of a landing ship, cut completely off from the naval command, and they had heard the rumors. How could the reporters not ask anything about them? The closest they came was when one of them — a pretty young thing from InfoServe — asked if there was any sort of connection between the collision of Mule and Camel and the explosion aboard Billings.

"At this time," Jules answered with a perfectly straight face, "there does not appear to be any sort of connection at all. These are just two tragic events — the most tragic since the Jupiter War itself — that coincidentally happened to strike the navy and the marines on the same day. This day will go down as one of the darkest in our proud history of course, all the more darker because the thousands of brave men that gave their lives on this day did not give them in battle but because of a series of accidents."

"Christ," even Callahan muttered at this speech. "This is getting pretty thick here."

"Why can't they just tell the truth, LT?" a young private asked. "Why don't they just say that the fuckin greenies managed to get one in?"

Callahan didn't answer.

On the screen, another reporter asked, "Will the events of this day effect the mission on Mars?"

"Well obviously," Jules said, "there will be a few less troops and equipment that are able to participate in the mission. And though this is more General Wrath's department than mine, I can say with assurance that our mission will go on despite the tragedy and loss of life. We will still land the marines on schedule and they will still retake that planet from the control of the terrorist factions that have taken over it. I can give you my solemn word on that."

"You hear that, guys?" Mallory said. "He gives us his solemn word! Doesn't that make you all feel better?"