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PART TWO
Where No Larks Fly

The news swept through the front line, leaping from bunker to bunker like a swift, dark messenger heralding pain and loss. "Popularity ratings on the war are down, big time."

Stark cursed softly, his face lit in sharp patterns of light and shadow by the glow of the comm screen in the darkened bunker. Predawn calls were never pleasant, but some were worse than others. "Five points down is one hell of a big drop."

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings." Vic Reynolds didn't look any happier than Stark felt.

Stark shook his head tiredly, shaking off the last traces of sleep. Each of the past few years had seemed to add a double ration of age, as if the gravity up here were twice that of Earth instead of a small fraction. Earth. A place so physically and psychologically distant they simply called it "The World" now. "Real bad, Vic. Why hasn't word of this spread around official? Vid ratings aren't classified."

"Because official ratings aren't out, but the brass got advance intelligence."

"Good to know those apes in Intelligence do something with their time, even if it is just watching the vid." Stark closed his eyes briefly, thinking through the implications. "Thanks for spreading the word fast, Vic. There's only one way headquarters will think of for getting the ratings back up."

Vic nodded, her expression now matching that of someone who had bitten into a very foul-tasting object. "Something dramatic." Her image glanced to the side as someone passed her cube over in the command bunker, a momentary shadow tending an unknown midnight errand, then focused back on Stark. "Brass likes to plan things to death, usually."

"Uh-huh. And when the enemy sees the overnights they'll know we'll have to do something to try to boost the ratings, so they'll go to full alert." Stark shook his head again, this time wearily. After years of military and diplomatic stalemate in the lunar war, the patterns of action were so well set that they almost matched the predictability of Earthrise. "Yeah, Vic, headquarters will grind out a plan just after the enemy goes to full alert, so anything we try will be real dramatic and real dangerous. Appreciate the heads-up, though. Maybe for once headquarters will give us a pleasant surprise."

"Want to bet any money on that?"

"No. You tell the Lieutenant yet?" The way it was supposed to work was Lieutenants got the word from up their chain of command and passed it on down to their Sergeants. In practice, the Sergeants heard about anything important first through their own grapevine, given that they trusted neither their Lieutenants nor their chain of command.

Reynolds quirked a humorless smile. "No, nothing there. Kilroy's still too new to have a feel for things up the chain of command, or good contacts. She'll be fat, dumb, and happy until official orders come down." Their last Lieutenant had headed back to the World—Earth—only a couple of weeks before, after sliding through the usual six-month officer tour without committing any particularly horrible mistakes. Stark already had trouble remembering that last Lieutenant's name. The new Lieutenant's real name was Conroy, but the Sergeants only called her that to her face and before the troops. Kilroy had been an inevitable and irresistible nickname for an Earthworm new to the front. Maybe, if the Lieutenant did a good enough job, the Sergeants would call her Conroy in private before her six months were up. Maybe. Nothing came to you up here without earning it. "Sweet dreams, Ethan," Vic added.

"Thanks a lot. You, too." The screen blanked, leaving Stark with the darkness and a large stack of misgivings. There had been plenty of similar events during the past few years, but something about this one felt especially ominous. By no means a superstitious man, Stark still had come to trust his own premonitions for better or for worse.

The rest of the night passed slowly. Sleep wasn't possible anymore, not after Reynolds' warning. Stark thought, running through the sector of the front his Squad faced, visualizing enemy strongpoints that any attack might have to bypass or, Heaven forbid, assault. Now, there's a way to boost ratings. Watch our brave soldiers prove once again that, even inside battle armor, flesh and blood lose big time against entrenched heavy weapons.

The stars moved and Stark waited, but no orders came. Eventually, humanity's time declared morning's arrival, in a place where the concept had no meaning otherwise. The event was trumpeted by a brief enemy artillery barrage, whose shells sailed overhead to die in sudden glory against the ebony lunar sky as American defenses sought them out, or fell to detonate in soundless fury, the tremors of their detonations coming as brief vibrations against the rock into which Stark's bunker had been dug.

Stark had dressed and shaved long before, moving quietly in the predawn silence of the darkened bunker. Now he sat, listening to his Squad stir. Soldiers moved, exchanged greetings, went for" breakfast, or checked the plan of the day for work and sentry duty assignments. He heard Corporal Gomez chewing out a Private for sloppy appearance. Gomez had an intensely precise way of spelling out the many personal and professional shortcomings of anyone who didn't meet the standards she thought Stark expected. It was unlikely that Private would risk her wrath again.

Finally, Stark rose and entered the corridor, actually a narrow shaft through the bunker granted dignity by the term. A quick breakfast first, he decided, despite his lack of appetite, then roll call. Have to make sure I don't look nervous. That'd make everybody else nervous, too. So, do I tell the troops action might be around the corner? It seemed absurd, after the night's quiet, that the silence from above had made that possibility more hazardous. The brass never panics into action when inaction can cause us more trouble. Now we get to wonder a little longer just how bad it'll be and who'll get hammered. The Squad deserves to know about the ratings, though, even if the sentry hasn't already gotten a dump on them from another bunker and spread the word.

Even after all this time, his first step was too strong, so Stark had to catch himself on his desk to keep from rising off the floor. The body never quite accepted it wasn't home, habitually acting as if it were the Earth beneath it. The first misstep was almost a daily routine here on the lunar perimeter, defending America on its current and only front lines.

0730, Lunar Adjusted Time. Morning roll call, like every morning on the line, his Squad falling in for work assignments, updates, and whatever else Stark felt like tossing in. Not like back on the World, the cloud-bannered Earth that floated overhead in distant reminder of home. There, roll call caught the occasional soldier off-base and Absent Without Official Leave with a new "friend" or maybe in a ditch with a major headache and empty pockets. That couldn't happen here, where the only things within walking distance were more bunkers and enemy defenses itching to conduct target practice on any American soldier who wandered close enough. But you called the roll here anyway, to keep things structured, to keep a routine.

Corporal Gomez snapped a salute as Stark approached. "All present, Sargento. Work and sentry details assigned."

"Fine." Gomez had developed into such a good Corporal it was tempting to let her run things on auto sometimes, except he'd seen that trap before. Good noncoms ran things well as long as you respected them and pulled your share. "Got some word."

A ripple of disquiet ran through the ranks. That meant something nonroutine, and nonroutine usually meant more work or more risk, if not both.

"I guess it's been quiet lately." Awkward beginning, but Stark had never claimed to be a great speaker. "Got word last night that mil vid ratings are down. Five points." A staggered reaction ran through the Squad as each soldier processed the information. "That big a drop is going to hurt revenue, and that means things are likely to get exciting soon. Maybe not for us, but maybe so." Worry, excitement, tension showed on individuals, sometimes chasing each other across a single face. "Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Make sure your gear is at one hundred percent, because it might be real short notice. Questions?"

The veterans knew enough not to ask for details Stark didn't have, while the two newer soldiers hesitated to speak and show ignorance. Private Kidd, one of the recent replacements, finally half raised her hand. "Sergeant, when will we know if we're on tap for something?"

"When we know." The vets smiled derisively as Kidd looked abashed. Stark unbent enough to elaborate; he'd been a new recruit once and asked his own share of dumb questions. "I'll pass on any word I get, soon's I get it. If we're lucky, somebody else will get handed this one. Anything else?" he asked the room. "Then carry on." He turned to Gomez. "They're looking pretty good."

Gomez nodded back. "For a bunch of slack Earthworms, they're not bad." A chorus of mock groans arose from the ranks as Gomez grinned. "You heard the Sergeant. Carry on. And don't let any good words from him go to your heads."

The Squad broke ranks, heading for their individual assignments. The give-and-take felt good, Stark thought, a sign morale was doing okay. Manning the front line wore soldiers out, sitting in a cramped bunker through weeks of inactivity punctuated by occasional spasms of fear and violence. He spoke quietly to Gomez. "We need to keep them busy, next couple of days, keep them from thinking too much about what might happen."

"Yeah, Sarge," Gomez agreed soberly. "You sure you should have told 'em?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. You don't keep your people in the dark, Anita. Treat them like you'd want to be treated in their place. This way they'll be ready, mentally and physically. That's important."

"Sure. Makes sense." Corporal Gomez rubbed her palms together, frowning into the distance. "I got a bad feeling about this one, Sarge. It's been a long time since headquarters screwed us. Might be our turn again."

"Might be. Worrying won't make it any better if it is."

"Si, Sargento. I'll make sure the Squad doesn't have time to get worked up. I'll keep them running so hard they won't even have time to think about Bunk Maneuvers."

"You figure out a way to get a grunt's mind off sex and I'll put you in for a medal." Stark gazed after his dispersing Squad. What the hell? Isn't that . . . ? Nah. Of course not. Sometimes he got startled, thinking he'd seen some soldier walking away who was no longer there, someone now dead or wounded too badly to ever fight again. Funny how he only got that feeling when he saw them going away from him. "See you later. I'm taking my walk."

"Enjoy." Gomez paused as she turned away. "Hopefully it won't be our turn in the barrel."

"Yeah. Hopefully."

Stark did a walk-through of the whole bunker, small as it was, every morning. Simple routine, to keep in touch and keep aware. He'd served under a Sergeant once who'd spent all day in his office. The Lost Sergeant, they'd called him, and gotten away with damn near anything out of sight of his doorway.

Troop living cubicles. Tight, four troops to a cube. Luxurious, some civ had called them, touring the excavation to stare sourly at raw lunar rock. He'd obviously been looking for another way to shave a few more bucks off of fighting a war, which was probably why headquarters had sent him to Stark's Squad. "Why three separate cubes instead of a single Squad cube for everyone?" the civ demanded.

Stark had extended one fist, slowly, while the civ's eyes widened appreciably. "People are trying to hurt us," Stark stated with exaggerated patience. "If they blow a hole through that rock, right there, I lose four soldiers. I'd hate that. But if this one room held my entire Squad, I'd lose twelve soldiers. I'd hate that a helluva lot worse."

The civ had squirmed under Stark's intense gaze, then rallied enough to speak again. "It's not very economical to build these extra sleeping cubes."

Stark nodded back, face unyielding. "It's cheaper than replacing twelve soldiers and a hole in the defensive line. Isn't it?" The civ had left hurriedly. Stark had never been told what the civ's report had said, but the bunkers had continued to be built with three sleeping bays, so headquarters had probably accomplished its dual goals of discouraging the intrusive civ and aggravating the notoriously difficult Sergeant Stark.

Chen occupied one of the cubes, bending under a bottom bunk to wield a hand-held vacuum against the fine dust that seemed to spontaneously generate out of the air in lunar living spaces. Since that fine dust could seriously screw up the fine electronic gear that kept humans alive up here, policing it regularly remained a tedious but necessary task.

"Hey, Sarge." Ghen looked up from his work with a tight grin.

"Hey, Chen. How's it going?"

Chen visibly hesitated before replying. "Fine, Sarge."

"The hell. What's bugging you?"

"Um . . ." Chen swung one hand to indicate the doorway to the cube. "We heard the doors got modified last time we were off-line, Sarge."

Stark stared dispassionately at the door edge where it poked out of the wall, a thick slab of metal necking down to a gleaming steel knife edge barely visible within its pocket. "Yeah," he acknowledged. "They boosted the explosive rams and modified the door edge to make sure the door can slam shut through any obstacle if there's decompression in the cube."

"What about the inhibit, Sarge?" Chen asked. "There's supposed to be an inhibit that'll keep the door from slamming shut if there's a grunt standing in the doorway."

"Yeah," Stark agreed again.

"But we were talking," Chen continued, "and it doesn't seem like the brass would risk-losing a whole squad to decompression just because one grunt is in the wrong place at the wrong time. We figure there's not really an inhibit at all, and that door's going to cut in half anybody who's in the way. Is that true?"

Never lie to the troops. "I don't know that it's true and I don't know that it's not."

"So what should we do, Sarge? What should we do if at any moment there's a chance that door will slice in two any grunt who's standing in that doorway?"

"Don't stand in the damn doorway."

"Oh." Chen nodded vigorously. "Yeah. Okay, Sarge."

The stuff that passes for wisdom. If something's gonna hurt and you don't have to do it, don't do it. Stark nodded back to Chen before moving on.

On through the small rec cube, lined with resistance gear every soldier had to work at for a few hours every day to keep their muscles from going on lunar vacation. Then the adjacent kitchen, a tiny cell with access to the rations and minimal food prep facilities. End up in the main command room, biggest space in the bunker, not that it qualified as big under any other criteria. Walls lined with monitors and readouts, the sentry posted to one side. When they got attacked, which happened occasionally when the enemy felt like probing for weak spots, most of the Squad would head outside and fight from firing pits deployed around the bunker. The bunker's own firepower, chain guns and grenade auto-launchers in a handful of mounts scattered along the outside terrain, was controlled from seats here.

Similar bunkers, the products of years of carefully concealed construction, were strung at irregular intervals all along the American perimeter guarding the lunar colony city of New Plymouth. Facing the American line, a matching string of unseen enemy fortifications dotted the face of the Moon. The Great Wall of China on Earth, rumor claimed, could be seen from space, like a dragon sprawled across the land. Stark had never seen it, as even continents were sometimes hard to make out on the blue-white ball that dominated the sky, but he had watched a vid of the Great Wall once, and laughed. Too big to defend, all those kilometers of wall, and too easy to destroy, sitting out in the open. Mankind had learned a lot about killing since those ancient stones were laid. The lines of defensive works on the lunar surface lay hidden, deadly snakes ready to strike at anyone who stumbled too close to their lairs.

Several soldiers were sweating their way through training drills on the weapons stations under the alert and unforgiving eye of Corporal Gomez. Off to one side, Private Mendoza had the morning sentry detail, watching the outside through the eyes of the local sensor net. Mendoza, bored as every sentry since Adam fell asleep guarding the apple tree, jerked to an attentive posture in his seat as Stark entered. Stark nodded to him, wandering over to peer past Mendoza's shoulder at the situation readouts.

Screens displayed a wild array of pictures, depending on the sensors they accessed. Infrared painted an unreal scene of glowing blobs, fuzzy with radiated heat. Vibration sensors displayed sudden swelling pings on a sector map where rock contracted or expanded under sun's heat or shadow's cold, the events all assessed natural due to randomness by the sophisticated artificial intelligence monitoring everything that happened on this part of the line.

As always, the view from the visual monitor drew Stark's gaze. Black-on-white, harsh shadows scissored across the dead landscape. Incredibly old rocks and equally old dust. From this angle, no Earth lit the sky with its small reminder of color and life. He remembered clouds, white patches in unnumbered shapes, parading across blue skies, and water in great, unconfined bodies, thundering ashore as surf on the beaches not far from his boyhood home. Huge trees blocking the sky, like the choking vegetation in the handful of jungle countries where he'd fought before coming here. And grass, of course, its trampled green blades always splashed with red in his mind's eye. All far away now, and almost unimaginable in this world of rock and dust, black shadows and white light.

"Above, the stars still bravely shine."

Mendoza's words broke across his reverie. Stark gazed down at him, slightly angry at the interruption and slightly curious at the words. Curiosity won out. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Mendoza looked a little abashed, as if he'd inadvertently shared his own inward thoughts. "It's something from an old poem. From the early twentieth century, about a battlefield."

"That doesn't tell me much." Anything to distract me from this dead world around us and the potential for extra-hazardous combat. Besides, Mendo doesn't open up much, but he's damn well educated. Oughta be an officer, from what I've seen in his files. Not for the first time, Stark wondered why Mendoza had enlisted instead of becoming an officer. Maybe I'll find out someday, though I can't imagine quiet, modest Mendo succeeding in the career-obsessed, political world our officers live in. "So, tell me more. How'd the poem go original?"

Mendoza glanced around the bunker, where he'd become the center of attention from Gomez's group as well as Stark, then grimaced apologetically. "I don't remember all of it, Sergeant. It was about a place called Flanders. Flanders fields. The first verse said something about rows of crosses there, marking the graves of dead soldiers, and then something about larks still singing in the sky above them despite all the fighting. I thought, while looking out at the Moonscape just now, there aren't any larks here, so maybe the stars would do."

Murphy looked puzzled. "What's a lark?"

"It's a bird, stupid," Gomez snorted derisively. "What kind of Earthworm doesn't know what a bird is?"

"Hey, I know what a bird is. I just never heard of any lark." Murphy looked doubly insulted. "And I'm no Earthworm. I've been up here as long as you—"

Stark cut him off. "Fine, Murph, you're a rock-eater. Now shut up." He turned back to Mendoza. "Flanders, huh? A battlefield? What was that, some big show?"

Mendoza nodded. "Oh, yes, Sergeant, real big. Millions of soldiers, in the Belgium part of Euro. Brits, mostly, fighting Germans. They took hundreds of thousands of casualties in a few days crawling through mud to seize a few hundred yards of territory."

Gomez frowned. "Millions of soldiers? Hundreds of thousands killed and wounded? Where'd they get those kinds of numbers? And how'd they lose so many without their generals getting canned? The folks back home don't like too many body bags coming downrange."

"It was a different world back then, Corporal." Mendoza looked doubly uncomfortable at having to elaborate. "Most of the armies weren't volunteer, they were conscripted, made to serve, though the Brits I think all volunteered. They thought the survival of their state and their way of life and, well, everything depended on winning. So they joined their militaries, and back home people were willing to accept many casualties because they thought it was important, too."

The Squad members looked back at him with puzzled expressions. "Wars sure were different back then," Billings remarked. "They actually forced civs to join the mil and fight their wars themselves? How'd the civs ever vote for that?"

"I don't know," Mendoza admitted.

"Yeah, but didn't they get any vid of the fighting?" Gomez wondered. "Sure, they wouldn't have the almost real-time stuff like we got, but I know vid's been around a long time."

"Vid? Well, there wasn't any. Not like we know it. There's some old film, but it wasn't anything like today. You couldn't use the cameras on a battlefield, so hardly anyone knew how bad the slaughter was."

"But how'd they pay for it?" Murphy demanded, with a guilty glance toward Stark as he realized he'd spoken again. "I mean, with no vid? Where'd they get enough money for a big war?"

"Taxes." Mendoza left the single word hanging.

"Taxes?" Gomez bore the expression of a woman who thought she'd been made a fool. "Enough taxes to support a big war? Bull. Corporations cut deals and make sure the laws say they don't pay nothing. The civs don't pay, either. The politicians been telling them for so long that they can have everything they want without paying for it that they all believe it now. You know that. Back home they won't even pay for enough cops to keep the lowers from stealing their Social Security checks. Why the hell would they pay for a war that they were forced to fight in?"

Mendoza glared back, momentarily and uncharacteristically defiant. "Don't ask me. Civs were different back then. Maybe civs had a sense of duty in those days, like we do now. Maybe civs didn't know any better then, didn't know they could vote for someone else to do the dirty work and vote not to pay for it besides. Or maybe they really thought it was important, so they were willing to fight themselves and pay the taxes."

Stark shook his head in wonder. "What the hell war in what the hell world was this?" Probably something they'd covered in history back in Stark's high school, but maybe not. High school had been a long time ago, feeling as ancient as the old wars Mendoza spoke of. Stark had slept his way through most of the classes, but vaguely recalled wondering why the United States always seemed to be fighting somewhere right now even though their history classes never mentioned any wars in the past.

"Our world, Sergeant," Mendoza stated, "not that long ago. Early twentieth century, like I said. It was called World War One. Well, not at the time, because there hadn't been a Second World War yet. At the time, they called it the Great War."

"Doesn't sound so great to me," Gomez noted sourly.

"They meant 'great' as in 'big,' Corporal," Mendoza explained.

"No vid?" That was Hoxely, angrily gesturing toward the nearest monitor. "So it was the corporations, right? They made money off it, somehow, right?"

"I don't think so. Not like now. After the war, there was a lot of complaints about war profiteers, but I don't think that was the real reason."

"War profiteers?" Stark questioned. "That's some corporation that makes money out of selling weapons and stuff?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"And the civs thought that was bad back then?"

"Yes, Sergeant. They thought their political leaders had sold out to the profiteers."

Around of bitter laughter erupted. "Good thing those civs ain't around now!" Billings hooted. "They'd be real unhappy."

"You serious, Mendo?" Hoxely wondered. "Civs paid major bucks for a war they had to fight in, they didn't want corporations making money off the mil contracts, and they worried about politicians selling out to the corporations like it wasn't routine? That's just too weird. The world never could've worked that way."

"Pyotr, I'm not putting you on." Mendoza looked unaccountably tired and spoke slowly. "That's the way they thought. A lot of them died because they believed in that. It didn't make sense then, just like it doesn't make sense now. Like here, but different. That's history, it's always like here, but different." A dark pause fell over the bunker at the sudden shift in the conversation, from the follies of ancient fighting to their own situation.

"Yeah, different." Gomez looked sharply toward Mendoza. "No birds here, right? Who cares? A bunch of civs died back on the World so long ago they didn't even have vid, and so what if they all got major screwed 'cause they were stupid? We're here now, protecting 'corporate assets' for the tycoons and their bought-and-paid-for politicians, our commanders would let us all get blown away if they could get promotions out of it, and the civs don't care how much we get screwed as long as we fight their battles and show them some entertainment on vid. Big surprise, Mendo. Nobody ever looks out for grunts but other grunts. Right, Sarge?"

"Right." Gomez had jumped in while Stark had still been thinking through his own answer. Normally that might irritate him for throwing his own thoughts off, but Gomez had nailed the issue to the wall better than he could have. Not a good idea to think too much, not when every day held the chance for sudden death, and every memory recalled friends they'd never see again this side of Heaven or Hell. Fate sucked, and the odds against every grunt sucked, and you had to know that to protect yourself, but you couldn't think about it too often. Otherwise you'd get sloppy and make mistakes, maybe fatal mistakes, or sometimes grunts would just put a round through their own heads to try to stop the fear.

"Right," Stark repeated aloud, giving extra force to the word. "That's all that counts out here. You know the score, and you know the only people you can count on are the people in this bunker and the other bunkers along the line. You rock apes look out for each other, or Gomez and I'll personally break heads. Nobody, nobody, is going to take you down while I'm in charge."

He hadn't meant to say the last, but it came out of somewhere deep and hung there, and it was right because he felt it was true, and the faces that had sagged a moment before tightened up to familiar patterns. Poor bastards trust me. Hope to Christ I don't ever let them down.

He turned back to Mendoza. "Don't think so much, Mendo. You'll never make Lieutenant if you keep it up."

Laughter from the bunker broke the remaining tension as Mendoza half smiled, nodded shyly, and turned back to his sentry watch, where all the screens looked at the world through different eyes, each displaying a different reality based on their vision of what mattered.

 

Stark had long ago learned there was usually a trade-off for knowledge. Ignorance makes it easy to be confident you know the truth about everything. Stark had watched the firm certainties of the world he'd once been sure of fall apart by bits and pieces over the years under the pressure of experience. Sometimes the pieces he lost were awfully large. A sizable chunk still lay on a grass-covered hill in a small country back on Earth, but other pieces had fallen away in less terrible moments.

A long time ago, maybe three weeks in the past, the unit had been on rest and recreation. That was the drill. One month on line, a week off for R&R, then refresher training and start over. But the first day of R&R was always the best. First beer, first semiopen spaces, first chance to relax tense muscles accustomed to always subconsciously expecting the worst. You could walk through corridors wider than a single arm span, drink a beer, or just be alone for a little while. Civs would never, Stark often thought, really appreciate how great those things could be.

For soldiers who wanted to seriously unwind, there was the Outer City, a rough circle of cheap bars, cheap hotels, and cheap hookers that spread out past the official borders of New Plymouth. Soldiers on leave who headed for off-base entertainment never made it as far as the clean, neat, and expensive city America's corporations had planted up here in expectation of huge profits down the line. Stark had been in the Out-City before, and would be there again, but this night he and Vic Reynolds had been unwinding together at a mil facility, without the high-pressure relaxation offered in the Out-City's rough pleasure spots.

Stark drank his first beer in one long gulp, shuddering as the cold liquid hit his gut. "Damn it."

Vic raised one eyebrow over the rim of her own beer. "Anything in particular?"

"Yeah." Stark ripped the top off a second beer and took another drink. "You know something? The only thing worse than being shot at is watching your friends get shot at and not being able to help."

"You got a point there." Vic's ironic chuckle came out as a humorless hiss. "Operation Offside probably looked brilliant on a big map at the Pentagon."

"Huh. Well, it was a disaster in practice."

"True. But then big disasters tend to attract big crowds.

I'm sure the ratings were great. Some general probably got a medal."

"Don't get me started." High-ranking officers cycled through Lunar Command so fast nobody bothered to learn their names, then headed home with shiny new medals pinned to their chests. Stark focused on the ribbons above Vic's left breast. "Speaking of medals, you ever gonna tell me how you earned that Silver Star?"

"Same way I earned the Purple Heart."

"I know it was before I met you."

"Duh, Ethan. If it had happened while we were serving together you'd know all about it, wouldn't you?" Vic shrugged, dropping her empty to grab another beer. "It's ancient history."

"Maybe it is, but I'm still curious."

"Fine. I'll make you a deal. You tell me about your past and I'll tell you about mine."

Stark glowered back. "No deal."

"Why not?" Vic questioned archly. "You brought up the subject."

"I don't wear my past on my chest for people to wonder about."

"No, you keep yours locked in your head except when it makes your mouth say the wrong things to officers." Vic took a long drink. "Or do something slightly crazy."

"I didn't ask for a psych eval. I just asked about your damn medal."

"What's the matter? You want one of your own? You can have this one." Vic picked at her left breast as if pulling the ribbon free.

"If I wanted medals I'd be an officer."

"That's it," Vic said with a laugh. "I got my medal when I was an officer, but they had to bust me to Sergeant when they found out I had a heart and a brain." She hoisted her beer. "And then they gave me booze so I'd have courage."

"Very funny," Stark observed. "Fine. Be that way." Reynolds chuckled again, this time with a trace of humor, as Stark stared around the Enlisted Club, an outlandishly large space that might have measured fifteen meters across. 3-D vids mounted on the rough rock walls created the impression of picture windows looking out on World scenes. That night they showed some sort of forest, maybe even in the Northwest, where he'd grown up. The natural-living-green wooded scenes clashed incongruously with the peeling and faded green-shades-painted rock walls around them. Supposed to be restful, the psychs said, but Stark always thought it just looked like green rock. Overhead, raw metal strung with glaring lights provided the usual ceiling for a lunar dwelling. Over that metal, Stark knew, a few meters of Moon gravel and dust lay as insulation and protection. Humans had spent thousands of years climbing out of caves and building technology so they could reach the Moon and live in caves again.

"So, why'd you join, Ethan?" Vic Reynolds's question caught him by surprise.

Stark frowned, trying to focus in on a past blurred by fourteen years' time and three recent beers. "That's another history question."

"So it is," Vic agreed, unabashed. "Why'd you join the mil?"

"Hell, I dunno. Why's anyone join? Temporary insanity."

Reynolds laughed obligingly. "Seriously. You just do the family tradition thing, or did you have some deeper reason? You never talk about growing up. Your old man was mil, right? What units?"

Stark laughed back at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Mil? My old man? Not even. Fish farmer in Washington State. He hated the mil. Thought I was some kind of idiot for joining."

"Really?" Reynolds peered closely at him. "So your mother was civ, too?"

"Absolutely. A clerk at one of those chain department stores." They were always at work, it seemed, something self-absorbed teenager Ethan Stark had actually resented even as he casually accepted the things their work paid for. "So what?"

"So what?" Vic repeated. "Ethan, nearly every grunt and every officer in the mil comes from a mil family living on a mil fort or base. You know that. I didn't even meet civs until I was a teenager. You're pretty damn unusual."

"Yeah. A lot of people tell me that."

"You know what I mean." Reynolds stared at Stark, shaking her head. "So why'd a dyed-in-the-wool civ join the mil?"

It was a very personal and complicated question, he realized, one he hadn't fully understood at the time and didn't even now. "I just did. Maybe it was the ultimate way to dis my old man. Didn't want to be a fish farmer, for damned sure."

"That the only reason?" Reynolds pressed, finishing her beer and looking for another. "If it was, you've changed a helluva lot."

"Well. . ." It had been a long time ago, but he remembered being alone. Community college had just been a large group of aimless teenagers looking for job skills and trying to postpone growing up for another two years. Grad night came, and he realized there wasn't a soul he felt really close to, a group he thought he belonged with. The mil seemed to offer that, though he couldn't remember now where he'd picked up the idea. Maybe in the real old war movies on the vid history channels, fighting on black-and-white battlefields where everyone seemed pretty sure of what they were doing and why.

Stark looked around as he thought, seeing the shabby club with a dozen other soldiers scattered at their own tables, outside its walls the dead Moon where every battle was still fought on black-and-white terrain, but out there was also his Squad and his Platoon and Company filled with people he knew who all followed the same rules and talked the same language. And who, if it came to that, would die alongside him. "Guess you could say I wanted to be part of something." He shrugged. "I found it, I guess."

"The mil?"

"Yeah. One big, happy family." He'd meant the words to come out tinged with sarcasm, but instead they fell out with flat sincerity.

Vic grinned. "A big family, anyway. Makes sense, Ethan. Most of us just come by that feeling naturally, because we're surrounded by it growing up in the mil, but I guess you had to look for it. I'm glad you found it."

"Thanks."

"But that's not the whole reason, is it?"

"Jeez, Vic, why you playing psych on me?" Stark grumbled.

"Because you do things that make me sure there's something else driving you."

Stark bit his lip, staring down at the battered tabletop. "I want to make a difference, Vic. I want it all to mean something."

"All what?" Vic demanded.

"Everything. Life. The universe. Getting up in the morning to get shot at. What the hell do you want?"

Vic shrugged. "At least you're ambitious. Gonna change the world all by yourself, huh?" Her beer came up in a mock toast. "Here's to heroes."

"I ain't no hero." Stark took another drink himself. "Don't aim to be one, don't intend getting myself killed being one, don't intend killing any of my people being one."

She nodded, grinning. "Good boy."

"Which part?"

"Not getting yourself killed, of course."

"Gee," Stark noted sarcastically, "I didn't know you cared."

Vic's grin widened. "Nah, I'm just selfish. Who would I get drunk with if you bought it?"

"You'd find some other stupid Sergeant."

"Probably," Vic agreed. She eyed her beer with a distasteful expression. "I guess the low bidder got the beer concession again."

Stark nodded. "Cheap beer that we pay primo prices for. Wouldn't be much sense in fighting if the corporations couldn't make enough money off the war. Of course, if the damn foreigners hadn't come up here in the first place we'd be fighting someplace where at least there's air."

"The foreigners had every right to come up here, Ethan."

"I know why they came," Stark protested. "All the stuff back on the World that's easy to get at is gone, and the U.S. of A. has got an effective monopoly on the tech that lets people get the hard-to-reach stuff, and we end up enforcing that damn monopoly in every country that tries to make a buck that our own corporations want in their own pockets."

"Good summation," Vic agreed.

"You remember what I said after we first landed. I'd probably have done the same thing they did. But we had these resources tied up, too. Not that I like the place, but what made the foreigners think they could just waltz up here and grab stuff?"

Vic shook her head. "You really don't know? It's because we didn't have the Moon's resources tied up."

"The hell," Stark objected. "We got here first. Back in, what was it, the 1940s or something?"

"Nineteen sixties," Vic corrected. "Whatever. We claimed it."

"No, we didn't." Vic smiled bitterly. "You're right, we got here first. But we didn't claim it, Ethan. I've been to the monument that's been built, out on the Trank Sea. It says we came 'for all mankind.' Something like that. Nothing about 'no trespassing.' "

"We planted a flag," Stark insisted stubbornly. "I've seen a picture. In my barracks, once, somewhere back on the World." A flag suspended stiffly, a figure in clumsy white space gear rendering a salute. The black and the white light, the barren rockscape, had been unfamiliar then.

Vic nodded wearily. "Yeah, we planted a flag. But not to claim it, at least not then, not for a long time." Her eyes grew distant, pulling up memories. "We stopped coming, Ethan. I don't know why. Maybe it was just too hard back then. Hell, when you own Earth, why bother with this hunk of dead rock? But eventually, other people came up here serious. Like you said, they needed the resources. So they planted colonies, built some bases, started low-g manufacturing and pulling out ore. Big bucks."

"So I hear." Stark brooded over his beer for a moment. "And it didn't belong to our own corporations already?"

"Nope. Told you, we'd never claimed it. It was supposed to be international or something, belong to everyone."

Stark snorted with derision. "Right. Belonged to everyone. Sounds like one of those brainless peace ops we got sent to enforce back on the World."

"I'm not saying it was a smart arrangement, but I guess it surprised our corporations when other countries took it serious." Vic used a finger to doodle idly in the wet rings left by the beers on their table. "So our business tycoons ran to their hip-pocket Congress and told them to pass a law that said the Moon was ours, back to when we landed."

"So we got ordered here. Nice."

"Not right away. The President said, 'Great idea, give me some money to enforce it.' Congress said—"

"Let me guess," Stark interrupted. "They said they wouldn't raise taxes to cover it."

"Bingo. The President was kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. He didn't have the money to support a mil op to grab the Moon, but there was big public support for doing just that. After all, the law said Luna was ours, so we should kick off the foreigners, right? Made the civs feel real patriotic, not that they volunteered to come up here and do the job themselves."

"So what happened? Oh, hell," Stark added in disgust, "I know what happened."

"Sure, the mil got ordered up here and were told to do it without using any more money. Of course, the mil couldn't do it, couldn't find the money anywhere. Budgets had been too tight for too long, and all the surplus had gone to pay for more generals and for big, fancy weapons like those damned McClellan tanks."

"They're great tanks."

"Yeah, and each one costs so much they can't actually be risked in battle. Just like the F-38 Strato-Fighter. On second thought, at least the McClellans work, and from what I hear, the F-38 doesn't. Anyway, we can't afford to lose them, so we can't use them."

"You're preaching to the choir, Vic."

"I know." Vic glared at Stark, but her anger was focused elsewhere. "It looked like the brass would have to say 'Can't do it.' You know the brass hates to say 'Can't do it' to anyone who outranks them. So some unsung genius thought of another way to get money, maybe enough to cover starting the operation up here."

Stark nodded. "I thought that was where this was heading. You mean the vid programs, don't you? That's why they started showing us in combat for civ entertainment."

"Yeah." Vic spat it out. "The vid programs. We had all this great gear built in for command and control. Full-time comms and all-round vid so the officers could tell exactly what we were doing every minute and micromanage each and every grunt. It also provided great publicity footage after battles. Then somebody figured out they didn't have to give it away for free, that they could use it to make their own programs and sell the commercial time. Maybe even while the battles were still going on. Maybe even so close to real time that the civs would pay to watch."

Stark's face settled into grim lines of memory. Years ago, hitting the lunar surface for the first time and wondering why headquarters had been so worried about dramatic action. "Yeah. From all I hear, they were a real hit. Blood and guts live on vid. Somebody—Chen, I think—claims civ kids are tracking units and their wins and losses just like sports teams."

"I heard that, too. And you know what all the pro sports did, upping the violence in their own products to try to win back viewers. It must be a great time to be an adolescent back on the World, Ethan."

Stark laughed harshly. "Damn right. Old enough to get a kick out of blood but too damn young to think about how much it hurts the guy who's bleeding. But, hell, it worked, right? They made a lot of money, didn't they?"

"Worked great." Vic's bitter smile was back. "But it backfired."

"Let me guess."

"Yeah. You know this one, too, Ethan. Congress and the Pres figured out the mil had made a bundle from the ad revenue, so they cut the mil's budget. That made the mil dependent on the vid not just for start-up for this op, but also for day-to-day ops. It's been like that ever since." Vic shook her head in obvious disgust. "The bright kids at headquarters trapped themselves. Now they have to run ops to keep the ratings up, or the whole mil budget goes red. The bastards were just a little too clever, and they, or rather we, have been paying for it ever since."

Stark sat there, wondering what, if anything, to say. They talk about ignorance being bliss, and I can see why. I don't know anyone who's any happier for knowing the answers to all this crap. "You ever wonder, Vic, what would happen if we dropped it, if the mil finally said 'Can't do it'?"

That brought another sad smile from Vic. "You think our officers would ever do that?"

"No." Stark's teeth showed. "Congress won't take responsibility if things went to hell. They never do. Neither will the Pres. They tell us to guard their butts, and to go out to every bar fight in the world that threatens the profits of our all-American free-flippin'-enterprise corporations, and our officers say 'Yessir, yessir, three bags full,' because keeping the politicians happy is the path to four-star promotions and that seems to be all our officers care about anymore. Then we get told we don't need all the people and gear we've asked for, except the stuff that goes to buy mega-expensive weapons built by those same corporations and their civ workers who vote. And if the mil ever did cry that it's broke, the politicians and civs will just blame us for wasting money and having bad management, which has plenty enough truth to stick thanks to our officers who are too obsessed with sucking up to their bosses to ever try to fix problems themselves. Perfect world." Stark's teeth tightened, so that muscles stood out along his jaw. "As long as you happen to be in the White House, or Congress, or the Pentagon, and not up here."

"Congratulations." Vic hoisted another mock toast. "You are now educated."

"And ain't I the happy little bastard? If it wasn't for the damn oath . . ." Stark let his voice trail off.

"The oath?" Vic grimaced. "Yeah. The oath. 'I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,' etc., etc., etc. I guess we're all suckers, Ethan. We break our backs for that oath, I bleed into vacuum for that oath, all to defend corporate profits and a bunch of civs who think personal sacrifice means having to fetch your own beer instead of having it brought to you."

"That's not the only reason, Vic." Stark reached out to grip her hand hard for a moment. "That oath is also to each other, isn't it? Personally, I sometimes can't figure out who the real enemy is. But I know who my friends are. They're the grunts standing beside me."

Vic smiled ruefully. "Most of them, anyway. I talk too much, Ethan."

"Nah. You know too much." Stark slid another beer across the table, watching as it slid much farther under the Moon's minuscule gravity than the slight push should have managed, so that Vic had to grab it just short of the table edge.

"You trying to get me drunk, soldier?" Vic demanded.

"I thought that was a decent objective for both of us tonight."

"Sounds good to me." Another six-pack disappeared, while silence stretched out, broken only by the digitally recorded chirps of phantom birds in the branches of the vid-projected trees on the ugly rock walls. Finally Vic raised her right hand, then slowly ran her fingers across the Silver Star ribbon, her eyes somewhere far away. "Ethan, I got something to tell you."

Stark focused on her, frowning as his eyes followed the movements of her hand. "What?"

"I got this medal because I shot a Lieutenant."

"You're kidding."

"No. We were being hit pretty hard. Real heavy jamming, too, so we lost comms with our higher-ups, and our Lieutenant panicked. Tried to order us to retreat through an enemy kill zone. We would have lost most of the unit."

"Jesus, Vic."

"So I shot him." Her eyes came back, oddly emotionless, gazing into Stark's. "We held in place until relief arrived. I got a medal for leading the defense and saving the position."

"Which you had to do after you shot the Lieutenant."

"Yeah." One side of Vic's mouth quirked in a humorless half smile. "Funny, huh?"

"Yeah. Funny."

"You'd have done the same thing, right, Ethan?" It seemed less a question than a plea.

"Yeah." Guess I'm not the only one carrying around baggage. "I'd have done the same thing. What happened to the Lieutenant?"

Vic looked away. "Dead."

"I guess that's how it had to happen. Who else knows about it?"

"I think some of the people in my old unit suspected. That's why I transferred and ended up in the same unit with you. As to who knows for sure, that's me, you, now, and the Big Guy upstairs. I'll have to answer to Him someday."

"You did the right thing. You saved a lot of lives."

"Sure." One fingertip traced its way across the medal ribbon. "Ethan, sometimes doing the right thing doesn't do a damn thing for your conscience."

"So why do you wear that damn ribbon?"

Her gaze speared him. "To remind myself that hard decisions carry a price, and knowing what's right isn't always easy, and that people pay with their lives when we do the wrong thing and sometimes even when we do the right thing." Vic's index finger leveled at Stark's chest like a pistol barrel. "And from now on I want it to remind you of the same damn things, Ethan Stark."

"Why do you think I need that?" Stark asked quietly.

"Because you've got a major demon inside and you're too damn devoted to duty and to your fellow soldiers and someday that's all going to come to a head and when that happens, Ethan Stark, you damn well better be sure you're ready to live with whatever you do or don't do."

"I will be," Stark vowed. "Why now? Why tell me all this? You think something big's coming?"

"I don't know," Vic whispered. "There're rumors, and rumors of rumors. Nothing definite, just that the corporations are tired of the stalemate because they want to grab more real estate up here, and the politicians are playing the 'Why can't you win?' game against each other in the elections, and our senior officers are worried sombody's finally going to ask why they can't do the jobs they claim to be best at. Does it mean anything? I don't know. If it does, there'll be major hell to pay."

Stark shook his head, confused and angry now. "I don't want to think about it anymore."

"You don't? What, is your demon drunk, too?"

"Not yet, but it will be." They split another six, the green-painted walls beginning to take on a nauseous tint as their vision blurred. "I think I've had enough," Stark finally announced, speaking with great care. He tried to stand, then let the Moon's gravity slowly haul him back into his seat. "Now I know I've had enough."

"Need a hand?" Vic offered, weaving upright, her own expression suddenly alarmed. "Oh, hell. I'll let you lean on me if I can lean on you."

"Deal." They headed for their cubes, temporary lodging fortunately not too far away, hanging on to each other for support as they moved down the faded green corridors in a cautious stagger made ridiculous by low gravity. Finally arriving at the entry to Stark's cube, he reached to hit the access pad, the panel whisking open in swift obedience. "Thanks for the comp'ny, Vic." He turned, looked straight into her eyes, and stopped moving, suddenly aware of her body, of her breast pressed close to his side and his hand resting firmly just above her hip. Vic gazed somberly back, the same awareness there. Stark took a quick breath, startled by the unexpected excitement, then hesitated unaccountably, just looking at her, his hands unmoving.

Vic spoke first. "You're a good friend, Ethan."

A moment's thought, good sense somehow surfacing through the alcohol haze in his mind. "Yeah, Vic, you, too. Too good a friend . . ."

"To risk ruining it?" she finished for him.

"Yeah," he agreed again. "Don't know what'd happen, but I know what we've got. Need you as my pal, Vic, that's what counts most." He paused, thoughts running sluggishly over their earlier conversation. "Government don't care, corporations sure as hell don't care, civs don't care, officers don't care, but grunts . . . we look out for each other. That's what keeps us going, isn't it?"

"Smart kid." Vic smiled fondly at him. "Yeah, we've got that, no matter what else they take."

They released each other, staggering at the attempt to balance independently. She had just started to turn away when Stark's hormones roused enough to kick his brain partially into action as caution took a momentary backseat. "But I bet you'd have been one hell of a partner in the sack."

She turned back, smiling languorously. "Damn right, Ethan. Best you'd have ever had. Dream about it." Her arm abruptly shoved him inside as she headed down the hall toward her own cube.

"Bitch!" he yelled, not meaning it, hearing her laughter float back down the hall. Damn, I'm lucky she's in my unit. Kept me alive more than once. Maybe I'll return the favor. Someday. Stark made a half motion to undress before saying to hell with it and falling in a slow-motion lunar sprawl onto his bunk to let sleep carry away the night's confusions.

 

Lieutenant Conroy cleared her throat, inadvertently emphasizing her youth to her three Sergeants linked in for the mission brief. "Second Platoon, Bravo Company has been selected to carry out a raid tonight on enemy forces occupying Sector Cowpens."

She sounds as if she thinks this is an honor. It hadn't been that long a wait for word, early afternoon of the artificial day humanity imposed on lunar life, just long enough for the enemy to find out about the ratings and get primed for action. Typical, Stark thought sourly. Hope Kilroy survives enough of these 'honors' to get a clue. Conroy began stepping through the brief point by point, as if she were reading off the briefing appendix from the Platoon Leader's Handbook. Probably got a copy scrolling on her vid. From her segment of the screen, Reynolds passed a meaningful look his way: She's new, Ethan, and at least she's trying, so give her a break. Damn, sometimes seems Vic can read my mind. Stark focused on the map vid as Conroy got to the meat of the mission. "Objective is the metals refinery centered at grid 44.10 151.72. We're to take it out with timed charges." The Sergeants all reacted involuntarily, Reynolds with a hiss of breath, Stark with a grunt, and Sanchez with a minor but uncharacteristic frown. The refinery was a mojo target, all right, but it was comfortably under the umbrella of the foreign troops defending that area. Worse, the 3-D contours of the map projection merely emphasized that the only feasible approach was across a dust plain where the platoon would stand out like silhouettes on a firing range.

"That's a very difficult approach, Lieutenant." Stark spoke mildly and with incredible understatement, but in a tone that conveyed volumes.

Conroy nodded slowly, then looked up with some irritation. "I know that, Sergeant." She glanced at Reynolds and Sanchez, reading the same concern in them that Stark had voiced. "It's not difficult, it's impossible, unless the enemy sensor net is blind to us."

Intriguing. Stark's estimation of the Lieutenant jumped slightly higher. She'd picked up enough tactics to see the obvious (which was far from a given with new officers), and she hadn't minded admitting the mission was tough instead of playing mindless cheerleader for the Brigade brass.

"Blind, sir?" Reynolds was clearly curious. Sensor nets were notoriously redundant in both scan gear and search capabilities. If they didn't see you on infrared, they'd look for image matches, or motion, or ground tremors, or what-all else. The countermeasure gear on the battle armor was incredibly good at hiding or confusing signatures, but moving to attack through a dust plain was like shining a spotlight on your head and singing the latest neoanarchist anthem on an all-frequency comm broadcast.

"Sort of." Conroy looked uncomfortable, then shook her head. "I can't tell you any more. Just accept that for mission planning purposes the enemy sensor net in that area will be blind."

Stark bit back an angry rebuttal, fighting to keep his expression composed. Sanchez, though, face now calm to the point of apparent boredom, cleared his throat, then began speaking in dispassionate tones that suggested that some other Platoon had been receiving the brief. "Lieutenant, a vital precept of mission planning is to ensure essential knowledge is shared among those most likely to need it. If something should happen to incapacitate the Lieutenant or even to disrupt her communications with the rest of the Platoon, the Squad leaders will need to be aware of tactical information that seriously impacts on their ability to successfully accomplish the mission."

Stark fought down a smile, wondering if Sanchez had long ago memorized a mission planning text just so he could use the words like this someday, or had simply kept a copy of the relevant verbiage scrolling across his own screen, ready to verbally download it if necessary. I may never know what that guy is thinking, but he is one sharp grunt.

Lieutenant Conroy started to reply, chewed her lip for a few moments, then nodded slowly. "I. . . guess that's right. You guys need to know this background if you're going to carry this op out." A more experienced officer, one with more self-confidence in her job, would have told Sanchez to shut up and do his job anyway, but Conroy was new enough to be manipulated a bit. "About three months back," Conroy continued, "we managed to insert a new worm in the opposition sensor net in that sector. Since then, it's been laying low and monitoring activity to build up a bank of events. When it's activated, it'll block the real sensor readings for the area we're in and draw on the event bank to project a believable picture of what's going on there to the alert circuits."

"Clever," Sanchez noted approvingly, echoing Stark's thoughts on the matter. Worms had been around for years. Problem was, so had watchdogs, and the watchdogs had gotten very good indeed. A worm that simply blanked sensor readouts would be spotted and overridden in milliseconds. More sophisticated worms had mimicked the proper sensor picture to create the impression that all was well, but in a net monitoring every fall of gravel, the watchdogs had quickly learned to spot the faked inputs. Months of real readings, drawn on to build the bogus picture, would keep the watchdogs fooled for quite a while. One hoped.

"How did they find something good enough to do that?" Vic wondered out loud. "The only thing tougher than the enemy bunkers is the defenses they've got against information attacks."

"Urn . . ." Conroy looked even more uncomfortable, belatedly realizing that after disclosing the worm's existence she'd have to discuss other details. "I've been told it's a variation on the Mitchell Virus."

"Oh, hell!" Stark exclaimed. "Isn't that the junk that's been screwing up our own systems for the past several decades?"

"Right," Vic confirmed. "Developed by the Air Force as an information weapon, but it escaped during testing, contaminated friendly systems, and we've never been able to completely wipe it out because it was designed to mutate."

"It didn't escape, Sergeant Reynolds," Conroy corrected sternly. "It exceeded mission testing parameters."

Whatever you want to call it, Stark thought, but it still adds up to the worst case of information fratricide anybody has ever heard of. Which didn't mean there hadn't been worse cases, just that anything worse might have been kept quiet. "Well," he noted out loud, "anything that's given us so much trouble ought to screw up the enemy a bit, too."

"So it's supposed to blind the enemy sensors. How long will the worm hold and how much will it hide?" Reynolds demanded, focusing on the key issues while the rest of them were still absorbing the surface data.

Conroy looked even more uncomfortable. "They wouldn't say how long."

"Which means they don't know." Stark's statement earned a glare from the Lieutenant and a wry smile from Reynolds.

"Probably not," Conroy eventually admitted. "As to how much, there're limits. Too strong a signal will burn through. At that point the enemy information defenses will identify the false reporting problem and either kill the worm or bypass it." She indicated a point on the map on their side of the dust plain. "That's why we can't ride all the way in. Transport would put out too strong a signal to hide. The APCs will take us to here and then we have to walk in and back out."

Reynolds nodded. "That's why timed charges? To keep events down until we're clear?"

"Right, Sergeant." Conroy indicated a fortification symbol about a kilometer forward from the refinery. "With the dust plains around the site, the enemy hasn't worried much about surprise attacks. The only fixed defense is this bunker. Intelligence says it probably only holds three sentries, but it's got decent flrepower and also controls two remote firing pits here and here." Heavy weapons symbols glowed brightly to the left and right of the fortification.

"Who's inside, Lieutenant?" Stark asked. "Pros or wannabes?" The position seemed both too small and too isolated to be part of the regular enemy defensive line, but there still could be well-trained defenders there. Despite the employment guaranteed by the apparently endless lunar war, several militaries were still hiring out units, often damned good units, but professional grunts were expensive as well as skilled. Hiring civilian mercenaries cost a lot less, which looked like a good deal to those who didn't realize that people don't put their lives on the line for paychecks. There had to be something more driving them, some higher sense of duty, something the mercs with their fancy uniforms and military playacting lacked.

"Mercenaries, Sergeant, hired by the foreign corporation that owns the refinery." Conroy suddenly smiled. "Intelligence reports they're from some outfit calling itself the Black Death Battalion."

The Sergeants laughed quietly. Professional soldiers had learned the more grandiose a merc unit's title, the less actual threat it presented.

The Lieutenant singled out Reynolds with a gesture. "First Squad goes in to take out that guardpost. It'll be blinded by the worm, but you'll have to move very carefully that close to enemy personnel."

Reynolds eyed the map, absorbing every detail even though it would be available in her Tactical throughout the mission. "And very quietly that close to implanted sensors."

The Lieutenant nodded back. "Yes, Sergeant. Very quietly. Second Squad, Sergeant Sanchez, will enter the refinery and place the charges in accordance with the orders in your Tactical. Sergeant Stark, your Third Squad will take up covering positions along this corridor." Symbols flashed on the map, detailing planned soldier positions and movements. "Just like in your Tactical," Conroy added with extra emphasis as she stared straight at Stark. "No deviations."

I guess Conroy got warned about me by the last Lieutenant. Or maybe the one before that. "Of course, Lieutenant," Stark agreed. "Subject to new tactical developments, of course, right?"

Lieutenant Conroy hesitated, obviously thinking through Stark's statement for implications and unable to come up with reasons not to agree with it. "Well, yes," she finally agreed reluctantly, as Vic Reynolds stifled a smile and shook her head at Stark in mock exasperation.

Stark studied the map carefully. "How big is the threat we're worried about covering against, Lieutenant?"

"Unfortunately," Conroy continued, picking up the thread of her brief again, "there's a professional military base a dozen kilometers north of the refinery. Normal manning is at least," she emphasized the last two words, "a reinforced mechanized company. It's the quick reaction force for their whole sector. They can get to the refinery area fast."

"So if they get alerted too early," Reynolds noted, "we're going to have a hot time trying to get away. Once the worm's been neutralized, they won't have much trouble tracking us."

Stark traced the Platoon's path across the plain. "Any support on the way back, Lieutenant? Any heavies going to move up?" APCs or tanks would be really nice to have on hand if a mech company happened to be snapping at their heels.

The Lieutenant frowned. "The raid is supposed to be carried out swiftly enough that we can exit the area before the enemy responds."

"Yes, sir," Sanchez interjected smoothly. "But if something should go amiss, heavy support could be crucial to successful egress."

Conroy spoke slowly, choosing her words with care. "We'll get additional support once we're under the perimeter defense umbrella. Brigade headquarters has indicated it doesn't want to risk heavy armor under . .. unfavorable circumstances."

Sanchez somehow kept his expression bland, but Reynolds was frowning now, too. Stark fought down a wave of anger. She means the brass knows grunts are a lot cheaper than hardware. They aren't going to risk getting their expensive weapons systems trashed. The viewing public didn't like watching their taxes go up in fireballs in almost real time on their vids, especially after having been told how invincible those expensive weapons would be in combat. More than one commander had been sacked following a few spectacular equipment losses, even if the result had been technically a victory.

"So," Reynolds spoke with equal care, "almost all of the way back we'll be on our own. If the enemy gets active fast, we're in for a long walk home."

Conroy bit her lip, then nodded once more. Stark studied the Platoon's withdrawal route again, the lunar dust plain sprawled across the path like a sheet of ice back on the World, apparently an easy route but actually a possible death trap. It could be a really long walk.

Most of the mission details were downloaded to the squad bunkers after the face-to-face. Stark made a habit of screening the files sent to Corporal Gomez and the rest of his soldiers to make sure they got everything they needed. The brass often assumed the less the grunts knew, the better, but Stark figured they had the right and the need to know most details. If he got waxed or they got cut off, they'd require that information, and a tactical crisis was no time for headquarters to be downloading new mission data to a soldier. He abided by security on the worm, though. If that information got compromised, he didn't want to be on the receiving end of either enemy fire or "friendly" officers.

Technically, of course, you didn't need to brief the troops at all. They just had to follow the plan presented on their Tactical Displays: Go here now, do this now. Headquarters staff and their civ bosses back at the Pentagon were almost always complaining that mission preparation times were too long. Just download plans to the battle armor Tacs and go. Grunts in the field would have none of that. No one Stark knew depended solely on the Tac timeline, if for no other reason than the troops should know what the hell they were doing on the mission. Bad enough being on ops, without wondering what the next order from your Tac would be. Difficult enough being surprised by the enemy, without being surprised by your own plan.

Then came After. After you've got the mission brief and memorized your parts. After you've briefed your people in turn, and made sure the dense ones wouldn't screw up and the too-smart ones wouldn't try anything they thought might be brilliant. After you've checked your gear and preinspected their gear. After all that, then there's not much left to do but wait. Stark hated After, the time when there was temporarily too much time.

Some grunts wrote letters during the lull, ticking carefully away on their palmtops, frowning over the unfamiliar effort of putting words into writing, or peering with feigned confidence into a cam port to record a vid message. Dear Mom and Dad, or Dear Sweetheart, or Dear Darling and Kids. What do you say when this might be the last letter, the last words they'd ever hear from you? Nothing could be good enough, so no one ever tried, instead talking of everyday matters or idle dreams of a future that might or might not be canceled this night.

Others played games, gambled, or read, whatever they'd learned would keep nerves in check. None of that worked for Stark. He'd long ago learned he wasn't any good at hiding his nerves while actually doing something. It didn't do to let the troops see their Sergeant getting jumpy. No, part of his job required showing confidence even when he lacked that inside. So the Squad liked to see him waiting along with them, looking cool and casual in that way that projects calm certainty of success no matter what uncertainties were churning away inside.

Stark had long ago worked out a routine to meet that need. He'd just sit back in the rec cell of the bunker, where everyone could see him, pretending to watch whatever vid entertainment had been officially approved for that day's viewing, while actually zoning out the world. Gomez had told him the Squad was impressed as all hell by the way he'd calmly watch anything on the vid prior to a mission. Morale bonus for his coping mechanism. Go figure.

Private Hoxely pulled Stark out of his nonthinking reverie by jumping up and cursing to a couple of different deities. Frowning, Stark focused on Hoxe's group, three soldiers playing keno as if there were no tomorrow. Which, of course, there might not be for any of them. Craps was impossibly slow up here, dice taking leisurely tumbles for minutes at a time. Even poker played too slow for grunts keyed up for a mission, but you could lose big and fast bucking the tiger. Gomez stood up as well, quietly but fiercely read Hoxe the riot act, then left the chastened Private to watch his buddies split their winnings.

"Nerves." Gomez came up to Stark, speaking quietly. "With the vid ratings down, they know this op has to be high-risk to get the public tuned in again. There's a rumor the action will be seen on vid so close to real time the enemy will be able to target us from it."

"I doubt even our officers are that stupid." Stark raised his voice for the next statement, making sure the others in the room could hear. "If the action ain't a success, our commanders would get canned for losing too many grunts, so they'll keep the time lag long enough to make sure we can do the job." I hope. Just because I know too short a time lag would be stupid doesn't mean our leaders will realize the same thing.

"Makes sense," Gomez agreed. "That'll make the troops feel better."

Stark nodded. "They'll do okay if you and I stay frosty. Got to maintain the image. You handled Hoxe real well. Get him back in line, then leave him without shaking up anybody else. Good job."

Gomez looked away. "Thanks, Sarge."

Embarrassed, Stark realized with some surprise. He'd never gotten used to the fact that his opinion meant a lot to his soldiers. "Yeah. Just how I would've handled it. You'll make a good Sergeant someday."

A smile broke on Gomez's face. "Means a lot from you."

Stark fought down a sudden foreboding, recalling a similar conversation with another good Corporal years before. With some effort he smiled back, attempting an awkward joke. "Of course, that'll probably be ten or twenty years from now. Unless I buy it earlier."

Gomez's smile broadened at the banter. "That's not gonna happen, Sargento. You're, like, invincible. Like you're made out of rock."

"Sure," Stark snorted in derision, "me and the damn Moon. Two big ugly rocks."

"I mean it," Gomez insisted with a wink that denied the words. "Gracias, though. I try. I got a lot to live up to, and these guys, well, they ain't the best soldiers in the world, I guess, but they're pretty damn good."

"They're pretty damn good," Stark agreed, once again pitching his voice just high enough for the words to carry to the others in the cube.

Gomez grinned, noting the gesture. "Like that. Good trick." She looked around for an excuse to change the subject, focusing finally on the music playing over the vid. "You like these guys?" She squinted at the screen. " 'Jackson's Foot Cavalry?' Who the hell are they?"

Stark shrugged. He hadn't been paying much attention, but he'd heard the group several times recently. "Retro-Hill Rock, I think they call it, whatever that means. I heard these guys are really popular on the World these days. I guess the groups that were popular when we left are all gone now."

Gomez stared at the vid. "Yeah. It's different being out here, even with near-real-time comms. The World goes on and we stay where we were when we left."

"Always been that way." Stark found himself reminiscing about earlier deployments and campaigns, something he rarely did. "Even if you were deployed on the World. Home changed and we didn't. Funny." He waved Gomez to the chair next to his. She smiled in sudden delight at the invitation before sitting at a carefully gauged distance, Corporal to Sergeant. They talked for a while after that, about places they'd been and places they'd heard of in a thousand bull sessions in a score of barracks. Funny thing, each barracks was different, but also the same. You knew people, who also knew people, and everybody knew the places. Maybe his home had always been a bit bigger than he thought, scattered through bases around the World and up here. Or maybe not, maybe it all represented nothing beyond shared familiarity with a very widespread but very limited part of the World. Still, he felt at home in those places, with those people, and that was enough.

The group in the rec cell gradually thinned as individuals went to worry over their gear and start final preps. Gomez excused herself to don her own battle armor, one of her hands worrying finger-over-thumb that way she always did whenever action seemed imminent, as if she were manipulating invisible prayer beads. Stark stayed, having learned he hated standing around in armor even worse than sitting and waiting. Finally the clock worked its way to where it needed to be. Relieved to have purposeful action required once more, Stark rose, instantly becoming the center of attention. He swept the room with his eyes, announced, "All right, people, let's suit up," to the few remaining and headed for his own locker.

He put on his battle armor deliberately, double-checking each step. He'd found that process kept his mind from worrying itself throughout a mission over whether some minor detail had been overlooked. The readouts were supposed to tell you if anything had gone wrong or been missed, but vets learned not to trust 'trons any further than they had to. If something else could go bad, why couldn't the readouts also fail? Murphy's Law seemed particularly at home on the battlefield. Mendoza, in one of his talkative moods, had said once that some German claimed everything in war was easy, but all the easy stuff was really hard. Made sense out here, anyway.

The suit's diagnostics said everything go, matching the results of Stark's own painstaking inspection. Just another mission, that's all. Keep the new Lieutenant from doing anything stupid. Meet the objective and get my people out safe. Stark looked carefully around his cube, making sure everything sat neat and organized. Every grunt had their own fetish, a little ritual to give them luck on an op. For Stark, that ritual involved making sure nothing was out of place. Sort of a reverse fetish. He figured if you left something sloppy and undone, something you wouldn't want anyone else to see, you'd get nailed and everybody'd see when they came to pack your stuff up. Leave it all ready for inspection, and you'd come back. So far it'd worked every time.

"Sarge, the APC's coming in." Murphy, manning the watch station, pointed to the armored personnel carrier image onscreen, enhanced to be visible. Bunker and APC systems exchanged cyber greetings, each deciding the other was friendly. Without IFF readings, the sizable armored vehicle would have been almost impossible to identify until it was right on top of them. Up close, the APC's rounded carapace made it resemble a huge insect, gliding with multiton delicacy over the jagged terrain.

"Thanks, Murph." He jerked his head toward the rest of the Squad. "Fall in."

Murphy jumped up, quickly sliding into his place where the Squad stood formed and waiting, Gomez at the head. Stark walked slowly down the lines, Gomez following close behind, visually checking each trooper while he flipped through their battle armor status scans on his HUD. As he passed Chen, a gaggle of red telltales suddenly popped up on scan.

"What the . . . ?" Gomez was startled into an exclamation. "Sarge, he was green when we suited up."

"Don't doubt it." Stark knew Gomez would never have let the armor through otherwise. He raised his own armored right fist and rapped sharply on the side of Chen's arm, just below the shoulder. The red telltales flickered, then went green all at once. Damned Mark IV armor. He gestured toward the suit. "This model gets false cascading failure indies once in every blue moon. Totally unpredictable. I've only seen it once or twice, but it's always like this."

Gomez's head nodded, her gaze riveted on the spot Stark had hit. She'd have it memorized before her eyes moved. "Nice to know. Any fix coming?"

Stark shook his head. "Not on this baby. The Mark V will fix everything, they promise."

A ripple of sardonic laughter ran through the Squad. New gear was always supposed to solve every problem. You soon learned it always brought a new set of faults to worry about along with its new capabilities and higher price tag. Besides, the Mark Vs had been "on the way" for the past couple of years. G-4 was probably trying to wear out the inventory of IVs before they issued any new suits, which made sense if you were in Supply and not getting shot at while wearing old gear.

"All right." Stark stood before them, a dozen opaque faceplates looking his way. Twelve outwardly identical suits of combat armor, but he knew each personality inside each one. That's my job, and if I don't take it seriously, somebody else might pay the price. "This is a tough one. No lie. Long way in, long way out. We've got some aces the brass are playing to make it easier, but I want nothing but the best from you. Anything goes critical, everyone will have to be sharp. Questions?"

There weren't any this time, even from the new recruits. A muffled clunk sounded as the APC grounded and mated to the bunker's main hatch. After a brief wait, the clatter of steps announced the arrival of the fire team that would man the bunker while Stark's Squad was out on the op. The fire team was from Alpha Company, faces known only in passing these days and names usually heard only on turnover briefs. The Corporal in charge singled out Stark. "We've got it, Sergeant. Good luck."

"Thanks." No sense in envying those who got to stay behind. Everybody went out on op eventually. "Take care of the place, and don't drink all the beer." Old joke. There never was any beer on the line, but rumor always claimed the other outfits had it stashed somewhere.

"We'll leave you a six." The Corporal waved one of his troops to the watch chair, then headed toward the command console to check in.

Stark pointed up the access way. "Go. By the numbers." The Squad headed out in predetermined order, Gomez first and Stark entering last. Last in, first out.

Even after years on Luna, living in spaces grudgingly hacked cubic meter by cubic meter out of the dead rock, the access to the APC still seemed tight. The other soldiers were seated and settling in as Stark came through and swung into the last vacant seat. He strapped down and then jacked in to the APC via the command relay. Secondary readings from the APC's auxiliary command circuit popped up on his HUD, and the internal comm net activated. "Third Squad ready."

"Roger." The APC commander sounded relaxed. One more transport run for him. "Good evening. Should be an easy ride."

For you, maybe. "Thanks. Get us there on time and there's a big tip in it for you." APC apes hated being compared to taxi drivers, which was why the grunts rarely lost an opportunity to do it.

"Yeah, right. Save your jokes for the enemy sentries, wise guy. Cycling up."

Stark rotated his thumb upward in a spiral to his watching Squad as a warning. A second later, the APC went off surface with a lurch and surged into forward. He called up the vid link to the APC's eyes, watching rock scroll rapidly past. Luxury to a grunt, to see where you were going and had been. The rest of the Squad had only the troop compartment and the armored figures of their Squadmates for scenery.

Inside the APC, two rows of armored figures rocked in their harnesses in time to the vehicle's turns, accelerations, and brakings. New soldiers tried to hold themselves still. Vets soon learned not to waste the energy, resting against their harnesses and rolling with each movement. In the small, darkened compartment they occupied, the soldiers resembled weirdly costumed worshipers, nodding in time to a ritual only they could hear.

Time dragged, as always on the run into a drop zone, but it seemed sudden when they arrived. The big rocks dropped away, revealing a long, flat sea of dust ahead. The two other APCs, holding First and Second Squads, were waiting, twin beetles perched on the edge of the dust plain.

Third Squad's APC braked hard, swinging in to nestle close to the other two. Parade ground routine, out of place here, where you didn't cluster targets close together. The APCs, great vehicles but like most of the heavy equipment too damned expensive, were so rarely employed in combat it wasn't surprising their drivers didn't think tactical. "Okay.

Sergeant. All out." No parting courtesies from the driver, probably still smarting from the taxi driver comparison.

Stark keyed his Squad circuit, running an eye over the now-rigid figures of his troops. "Let's go. Follow me, by the numbers." The APC hatch gapped wide, and Stark pulled himself through, lunging forward as soon as his feet hit to clear the space for the next soldier. There were still plenty of rocks here, but broken and interspersed with threads of dust. He did a quick Tac scan, noting the other APCs dropping their troops, the other Squads fanning rapidly out to form ragged lines facing toward the empty plain.

"Clear," Gomez advised laconically. She was last out, hurrying into position to Stark's left. With sudden, silent leaps the APCs sprang into life again, spinning around and gliding back toward their lines. They'd be back when the rendezvous time rolled around, but wouldn't sit out here vulnerable and relatively obvious waiting for the Platoon before then.

Stark checked the Tac scan again. All three Squads looked to be ready, each soldier's symbol lying on the position mandated by the op plan. The time readout in the upper left corner of Stark's scan glowed a happy green, meaning they were on the timeline. Go here, do this. He looked out across the open dust field to the ragged crater walls marking the far side, their broken peaks standing jagged against the eternal night sky. Those crater walls looked a long ways off. His gaze wandered higher, to where stars blazed against the black of endless space. Hidden among them rested the warships, American and enemy, orbiting far enough from the Moon to avoid lunar-based defenses, but close enough to menace those ships trying to run cargo and passengers to and from the lunar colonies. The enemy tried to blockade the Americans, the Americans tried to blockade the enemy, and sailors died in brief flashes of light against the dark. Sometimes the remnants of the battles fell where the soldiers could see them, pieces of wreckage that had once made up ships curving in to add their own impact craters to those formed by countless meteors.

Vic's voice on the Platoon command circuit brought him back to this side of the plain. "First Squad ready." Stark quickly ran through his own Squad again, double-checking their status while Sergeant Sanchez reported in. "Second Squad ready."

Everybody looked good. "Third Squad ready."

The Lieutenant came on line, audibly nervous as her first combat op began. "Second Platoon, move out. Keep it quiet."

A very long time ago, a very big rock had wandered through the wrong patch of space, coming head-to-head with Earth's Moon. Where it hit, out somewhere far to the left of where the Platoon now moved, a huge crater had been gouged into the Moon's surface by the rock's death spasm. At the same time, probably breaking free from that big rock, a much smaller rock had hit up here, at the edge of the main event. Much smaller, but still plenty big enough to rearrange the landscape. That second rock had created an elongated smaller crater, with its own walls, forming a fingerlike extension off the big hole. Over time, dust filled the crater and its finger, forming lunar "seas" mockingly devoid of life. Multitudes of smaller craters formed cliffs and ridges radiating out from the seas, remnants of other times when rock flowed like water. Humans came, drawing up defensive lines, and saw the crater walls and dust plains here as fine natural defenses. So the unbelievably ancient legacy of natural violence became the stage for the most modern forms of violence humanity had devised.

Now the Platoon moved across the finger plain, thirty-nine men and women in three broken lines, plodding through the dust, heading toward a barely visible notch in the crater wall. Sometime, somehow, a pass had formed on that spot, a route through the worst of the ridges on that side of the plain. It was obvious as all hell as an attack corridor—so obvious no one in their right mind would assault toward it through the open plain. So the enemy had strung sensors out to watch the approaches and not worried about manning the site.

It felt strange, being out here. Stark knew the worm had to be working, or else they'd have been shelled by now. Normally you'd stay among the rocks, keep under cover. They called your suits battle armor, but they wouldn't stop most modern weapons. Only the really heavy stuff, junk an APC or tank could carry, would really protect you, and armored vehicles had their own threats to worry about. Smart soldiers, soldiers who wanted to live, stayed around things they could hide behind. Nobody in their right mind walked out onto a flat expanse of nothing. But sometimes doing something stupid worked, because nobody expected it. That was their only ace, that and the worm.

If for some reason soldiers found themselves advancing through an area without cover, they'd evade forward, half the Squad covering while the other half plunged ahead, dodging and weaving. But that'd be "noisy," lots of disparate movement, and no telling if it'd be too much for the worm to block. Instead the three Squads moved in route march, steadily eating the distance. Behind them, a strange fog hung low over the plain, fine dust stirred by their movement hanging just above the surface as Luna's weak gravity fought a feeble but unending struggle to tug the dust particles slowly back down to rest.

After a while Stark's mind shifted into neutral, automatically moving his feet, "waking up" only if something unusual happened. You could march that way almost forever, a lesson learned in boot camp and never really forgotten. Years of experience allowed him to monitor his Squad the same way, reacting only if something stood out as unusual. But the Squad and all their equipment gave no signs of trouble. Even Murphy, apparently unwilling to straggle behind on the open vista of the dust plain, kept pace without any threats or urgings.

It came as a surprise when Stark realized they'd reached the pass, cliff wall looming up black-on-black against the sky. First Squad went through slowly, carefully identifying sensor sites and placing command-detonation charges.

When they came back, the worm might very well be dead and they wouldn't want those enemy eyes active.

Second Squad followed, moving faster, almost treading on First Squad's heels as they cleared the pass. "Sanchez," Reynolds called over the Sergeant's private circuit, "keep your people back until we've located and mined all the sensors."

"Understood. I am holding them as far back as I can," Sergeant Sanchez replied. "The timeline is very tight here."

Too damn tight, Stark mentally agreed. Officers sit back at headquarters and dream up timelines to match their plans instead of making the plans match reality on the ground. Good thing Vic won't be rushed on this job. Something else bothered him for a moment, something that wasn't there. Then he grinned in relief. Normally there'd be multiple officers from up the chain of command jumping in to issue orders directly to the Platoon or the individual Squads or soldiers, but on this op the need to keep transmissions to a minimum had apparently kept that from happening. Thank the Lord for not-so-small blessings.

"Sergeant Reynolds, what's the holdup?" Lieutenant Conroy questioned.

"My Squad needs to do this task right, Lieutenant." Reynolds kept her tone even but unyielding.

"We're pushing timeline," Conroy complained.

"Lieutenant?" Stark hailed. "Do you want my Squad to deploy now and cover First Squad?"

"Deploy? Uh, wait one."

While Conroy was still considering the question, Reynolds called in again. "All sensors mined, Lieutenant. Continuing advance." Vic immediately switched to the Sergeant's circuit. "Thanks for keeping the Lieutenant off my back, Ethan."

"No problem. Making an officer think always buys you a few minutes."

Second Squad swung into motion as First Squad finally advanced, moving rapidly to catch up with the timeline. Minutes later, Third Squad cleared the pass in turn, their line bunching briefly through the notch and then spreading again on the other side. After that it was a forest of interwoven lesser crater walls, one after another, the Squad members weaving through rocks to find the easiest route. Stark felt himself relaxing, happy to be in broken terrain again, an absurd feeling for a grunt rapidly closing in on the objective.

An alarm beeped insistently, warning of a problem in the Squad, even as Private Kidd called in. "Sergeant, I'm losing one of my rebreather cartridges."

Stark checked his readout of Kidd's systems, scanning the whole display. "Got it. Looks like contamination die-off. Your other cartridges look good from here."

"Yes, Sergeant." She sounded a bit nervous, pretty new to lunar operations and one step closer to losing her oxygen supply on the surface of the Moon with friendly help a long ways off.

"You got two backup cartridges, Kidd. If one of those goes, too, I'll make sure Corporal Gomez is positioned next to you to do a rebreather link if you need it." Not good tactics, sitting two soldiers right next to each other, but the only practical thing to do. "You copy, Gomez?"

"Si, Sargento. Keep it cool, Beth," Gomez added. "You're plenty small, like me. Not a big clod like some of the guys out here. You'll do fine on two cartridges. I've done okay on one, sometimes, for a while."

"Okay, Corporal. Thanks."

Stark's Squad was still in the last crater rim, so ancient as to be little more than a mild rise, when First Squad advanced into the relatively open area around the metals refinery, cautious once again, to take care of the merc bunker and its two weapons pits. Without the worm they'd probably just blow the bunker with a shoulder-fired antiarmor round. That'd be real noisy, though, certain death for the worm, so instead Vic's troops moved with precise care, emplacing charges on the bunker's exterior and on the remote weapons sites.

Stark momentarily shifted his scan to a remote view from Vic's suit, curious for a closer look at the fortification. From the First Squad leader's perspective, he saw that the bunker had been poorly maintained. Outside cover had been allowed to deteriorate, exposing patches of artificial material. Light, heat, and/or gases leaked from a half-dozen tiny ruptures. Really sloppy. They might as well have hung a sign on the damn thing. Inside the bunker, Stark knew, the mercs would be paying little attention to the outside, counting on their sensors to give them plenty of heads-up to anything unusual. Odds were, nothing unusual had ever happened here. Given that, and normal merc level of performance, the bunker's crew would probably be dead before they ever realized their sensors were lying to them.

First Squad took up covering positions around the bunker, ready to deal with it when the time came or if the mercs somehow figured out what was going down around them. The timeline showed green, everything hitting on schedule again, as Second Squad moved on, toward the metals refinery. After the deadness of the normal lunar environment, and the survivability-driven low signatures of military gear, the refinery stood out as a carnival of light and vibration. Heat blared from the complex, pulsing in time to the automated production sequence. Stark's gear adjusted frantically, dropping intensity scales to avoid burning out circuits. He stared, briefly, at an alien world, where life wasn't measured in the same ways he knew.

Don't know how the enemy sensor net could notice anything with that noise show going on, Stark thought, then reconsidered. Yeah, but they're probably calibrated to recognize it and spot anything outside parameters. That merc bunker's probably there mainly to check out any alarms and make sure the mining company doesn't get nailed for false alerts.

Second Squad came up to the refinery perimeter as Third Squad headed out to the left, individual members of Stark's unit moving to place mines on the access road leading in and then fall back to take up covering positions. This process, at least, had been immeasurably simplified by the soldiers' Tacs. Put this mine here. Put that mine there. Piece of cake. Just follow the dots on the map on your HUD.

Stark moved directly to a position where he could overview the process, covering his troops as they placed and activated the mines. Watching state-of-the-art mines be activated had always fascinated Stark, focusing intently as each device scanned its immediate surroundings, then altered surface texture and color to blend in until he lost track of it visually. The mines could even extrude smooth or jagged edges to match nearby rocks. Fascinating, and really scary, because enemy mines could do the same things. If it weren't for the automatic disarming mechanisms that after a few days turned the mines into objects almost as inert as the rocks they resembled, Stark would have been afraid to take a step on the surface outside the American perimeter.

Mine emplacement had almost been completed, his soldiers scuttling back to drop into their own covering positions, when Stark noticed Sanchez's Squad sitting stalled on the perimeter of the refinery. "Vic, what's with Sanchez?"

"They found a secondary alarm net. Looks independent of the main security system." Vic sounded clipped and professional, keeping transmissions short.

"Why in hell would a metals refinery have a secondary independent alarm system?"

"Lieutenant Conroy guessed it's some insurance requirement."

"Insurance?"

"Yeah. Property insurance or something. Civ stuff." Vic let worry show through her voice, talking only to Stark. "Since it's independent of the sector sensor grid, our worm doesn't affect it. Sanchez thinks they can work a bypass on it fast, though."

Hope so. The time display numbers were changing shade, gradually lightening from bright green toward yellow. They were already behind schedule, working a timeline that, like every timeline developed by officers back at headquarters, required everything to work perfectly for it to be met. In this case that timeline had also been driven by concern the worm would fail and someone would come down the road Stark's Squad was guarding to find and trap them out here. Minutes dragged by, each seeming to stretch forever, and the yellow numbers on the timeline began to take on an orange tinge that threatened to shade to red. Move it, Sanch.

Abruptly, Second Squad's symbols did move, converging on a single point in the refinery perimeter and then fanning out rapidly through the complex. The ugly orange of the time display, deepening to red, held steady as Second Squad moved furiously to catch up with the timeline. Each soldier had charges and exact places to put them, some on equipment, some on structural members, some on the terminal for the mag-lev rail line running to the enemy industrial complex. More minutes crawled as the other two squad leaders waited, one eye on the areas they were covering and the other on the progress of Second Squad.

After a seeming eternity, Sanchez's people started moving back toward and through the rupture in the perimeter. Stark permitted himself a sigh of relief. We may get away with this after all.

Battle armor motion alert sensors suddenly pulsed, focusing on the point where the access road cut through a minor crater rim. "Vehicle inbound," Stark's suit calmly announced, "ID uncertain." Stark cursed briefly, then called the Lieutenant. "Sir—"

"Got it, Sergeant," Lieutenant Conroy cut him off, speaking rapidly with a sharp edge of tension she couldn't hide. "What is it?"

Why ask me? The Lieutenant had access to everything Stark did, but it was natural for a new officer to lean on her Sergeants at a time like this. Within moments, visual and broad-spectrum observations from all the soldiers in Third Squad were correlated by Stark's Tac system, which checked the information against its database and came up with a guess. "Tentative ID," Stark's suit spoke again, "light armored car, probable Manta export variant."

More bad news. A civ car they might have been able to take down without too much fuss, but even a light armored vehicle would require some firepower to stop. Damn. "My Tac says it's probably a Manta armored car, Lieutenant. That model is merc equipment."

"What the hell are they doing here, Sergeant?" Conroy demanded.

You want me to ask them? "Sir, they're coming straight in, like they're not worried at all, so it's probably a routine patrol, maybe a relief crew for the bunker."

Seconds ticked by while the new Lieutenant dealt with her first real combat decision, the armored car closed the distance, and Second Squad's last member cleared the perimeter. On Stark's HUD, the timeline readout began to glow an angry red. If this had been a normal operation, half a dozen officers from headquarters would already have been issuing a barrage of orders to the Lieutenant as well as howling directly at the individual soldiers to get back on the damned timeline, target/don't target the Manta, and dig in/run away. This time, thanks to fears of uncloaking the worm with comm transmissions, headquarters was forced to remain silent. As he waited for the Lieutenant's reply, Stark had to fight down a sudden absurd impulse to laugh at a mental image of senior officers hopping around their headquarters communications terminals in wild frustration.

"Sergeant Stark"—Conroy paused, as if taking a breath—"destroy the armored car if it makes it through the mines you planted."

"Yes, sir." It was a lousy choice, guaranteed to announce their presence here in a way the worm couldn't hide, but it was also the only choice they really had. Stark passed the word to his Squad. "Fire on my command." Thirteen weapons lined up to track the oncoming vehicle as it neared the Squad's positions and the mines scattered across and around the road. Stark waited, double-checking the statistics on the armored car's defenses with grim satisfaction. Against the light armor the Manta carried, even the rifle rounds would punch through at this range, if it came to that.

It didn't. A third of the way through the minefield, the Manta suddenly hesitated, then lurched upward, propelled by a jet of high-velocity gas from the shaped charge in an antivehicle mine. The top of the armored car blew out, edges peeling upward, as a column of metal, gas, and other fragments vented overhead. The car sagged back down, slid sideways, then wedged itself into the surface halfway off the road. Its fountain of debris dwindled, gases rapidly dissipating while solids fell with dreamlike slowness back to the lunar soil.

Stark was jerked from watching the death of the armored car and its occupants by other detonation alerts on his scan. Behind, First Squad had triggered its charges, blowing in the merc bunker, disabling its weapons pits, and knocking out the enemy sensors covering their route back. The mercs in the bunker had probably still been open-mouthed with shock from the fate of the armored car when their own end came. Stark felt a momentary pity for them, playing soldier against professionals and probably never realizing how poorly prepared they were for the role. Too bad, but it was you or us. Live stupid, die stupid.

The universe seemed to pause to catch its breath, then shot back into motion. Stark's long-range scan showed enemy emergency sensor sats being lofted toward their location, trying to fill a sudden gap. Guess that confirms the worm's dead. Before they made their positions, the sats flared and went out, victims of waiting American antilunar orbital systems. That'd keep the enemy from targeting them right away, but the enemy already knew where they were, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out where the Platoon had come from and which way it would be falling back. All of which meant it wouldn't be long before unwelcome company started coming down that road in armored vehicles that made the dead Manta look like a toy.

Lieutenant Conroy came on line, voice cracking with tension. "All Squads, Egress Plan Charlie. I say again, Egress Plan Charlie."

Egress Plan Charlie. Conroy's voice triggered the Tacs of each soldier in her Platoon to display that operation option, which was just a fancy name for Run Like Hell. Falling back by the numbers, with overwatch and careful movements, would be counterproductive now. If the Platoon got caught anywhere this side of the dust plain they were as dead as the mercs, with no cover or support of their own, doomed to be overwhelmed by superior firepower. Stark called his own troops, even though they'd heard the order at the same time he had and were already moving. "You heard the Lieutenant. Go! If anybody falls behind, I'll kick their asses up between their ears."

Even as he swung into motion, Stark watched on scan as First Squad moved quickly away from the ruined bunker site, a straight line toward the pass. Second Squad came right behind, all of its personnel clear of the refinery and converging on First Squad's route. Last, farthest out, were the soldiers of Third Squad, falling back swiftly to join the path of retreat somewhere beyond the bunker area. "Gomez," Stark commanded, "get up front and set the pace." With Gomez to keep up with and Stark dealing with laggards, Third Squad should continue moving rapidly.

As Stark passed the bunker area, its imploded shell off to his right now, Sergeant Sanchez broadcast a warning. "Heads up! Refinery's going." Stark braced himself, then felt tremors rolling through the rock beneath as Sanchez detonated his charges. Pebbles in place for uncounted centuries broke free to roll silently down as the shock waves from the charges rippled by. Stark stole a glance back, scan highlighting junk flying every which way, energy discharges flaring from shattered power lines and buildings slowly collapsing inward. Helluva view, almost worth the ticket out here.

"Keep moving!" he yelled into the Squad net, causing several halted figures to leap back into motion. No time to spare playing tourist, not with the mech infantry just down the road. They'd be limited to foot travel following the Platoon through rocks, but they'd get to the edge of the rough terrain fast in their APCs, especially with that damned Manta advertising the presence and location of the minefield. Once among the rocks, they'd move faster than the Platoon could, not worried about conserving strength for the run across the dust plain. You just had to hope they weren't too quick in responding to the alarm.

As Stark cleared the first rise, entering the rocks, his battle armor alarm sounded again. Far back on the road, a probable enemy vehicle symbol appeared, closing fast on the site of the ruined refinery.

This is gonna be one hell of a bad day. Stark dropped beneath the level of the rise, hiding from detection by the enemy but also cutting off his view of the oncoming vehicles. "Lieutenant, I spotted enemy armor coming up the road just before I made cover."

"Did they see you?" Conroy shot back, her voice still pitched too fast and too tense.

Stark fought down a sarcastic reply, recognizing the tension gnawing at his own judgment. "I don't know, Lieutenant. Probably not. They only had a moment, and one soldier in battle armor is a lot harder to spot than a moving tank."

"That's right." Conroy's relief was palpable. "Maybe that'll buy us some time."

"Maybe, Lieutenant," Stark temporized as he launched himself on a long arc down the slope. Or maybe if they'd seen me the enemy would have thought we'd left a covering force behind and would advance a lot slower to avoid an ambush. Hell. No way of knowing, and too late to do anything different anyway. He felt the force of events driving him hopelessly onward, just as his own movement dislodged rocks that could fall only as gravity and terrain dictated.

The rocks, slopes, and ridges that concealed the Platoon from the enemy hunting them also slowed down their own progress. Stark kept pushing his soldiers, snapping at their heels like a guard dog whenever one seemed to lag slightly, even as he studied the map on his HUD. How far could they go at this pace before tired soldiers began slowing? The battle armor could help, providing support and partial assistance to a walking soldier, but power supplies were limited. Push the soldiers too hard or push the suits too hard and the results would be the same, giving out short of safety. And I only get one chance to get it right.

Behind them, the symbology of their pursuers clustered, pulsing and shifting as updates and estimates jumped probable positions in a weird dance. The jerky motion of the enemy symbols always tended their way, though, closing with certainty on the one route through the crater wall ahead.

"Incoming supporting barrage," Stark's suit warned. Best news I've had in a while. Stark glanced up, instinctively and unnecessarily, since there was nothing to see and his Tac display was tracking the rounds. The incoming warheads burst and faded from display, too early and too far out. Hell. We're too damned far inside enemy territory. With the Platoon still under the enemy's defensive umbrella, their own artillery couldn't reach their pursuers. It was unlikely there'd be any more barrages. Shells cost, and the chances of one making it through were too small.

"Hey, Vic," he called.

"Here."

"Did the Lieutenant call in that artillery?"

"Yeah." Reynolds' reply held a mix of anger and resignation. "She's screaming for support, but that's all we're getting."

Stark checked his own back door into the command circuit, hearing Lieutenant Conroy's desperate calls for cover for the retreating Platoon being met by only occasional noncommittal acknowledgments. "How come headquarters is so quiet, Vic?" Stark wondered. "Why aren't they telling us what to do, like they usually do? The worm's dead, so they can micromanage everybody again."

Vic's laughter held no humor. "Ethan, we're in a lot of trouble right now, and unless a more senior officer tells her what to do, Conroy's the only person directly responsible if we get blown away before we reach safety."

Stark grimaced. "Sure. I forgot nobody high-ranking is ever at fault when something goes wrong. At least if it comes to that, we'll be able to die without some idiots back at headquarters ordering us to choose different targets or run in a different direction."

"That's looking at the bright side."

Stark checked his map again, measuring distances and movement rates, knowing what had to be done but delaying all the same. Can't put if off much longer.

"Sarge." Gomez called in on the Squad circuit, sounding calm but slightly breathless from the hurried pace.

"Yeah." Answer the same way. Nice and calm. Don't let the others know how bad this is, how worried you are. Just another drill out here, people, keep your heads and you'll be okay. He frowned, noticing Gomez's symbol beginning to drop back from its position at the head of the Squad. "You got a problem?"

"We got a problem." Like she was discussing a glitch in the sentry schedule. "Ain't gonna make it across that plain, Sarge. They're too close. They'll get to that big crater rim while we're still out there, and pick us off like roaches caught on the mess hall floor."

Tell me something I don't know. He'd reached the same conclusion several minutes ago. The Platoon was tired, worn from the long march out here and taking out the objective. They were feeling the effects of those long hours, while the enemy troops were fresh, rested, and mad as hell. Fear, training, and conditioning kept the Platoon ahead but couldn't open the distance. "So?"

"Is there gonna be anybody meeting us this side of the dust plain? Any support?"

"None that I know of."

"So we need a rear guard. I'm it."

"The hell." He should've guessed Gomez would make that move, and shouldn't have waited as long as he had to make his own. "You stay forward, got me? The Squad needs you out front."

"They need me watching their backs."

"No. Makes no damn sense for you to fall back this far. The troops will start to lose it if they see you dropping back. ¿Comprendo?" Gomez's symbol had steadied, keeping up with the others while she argued with Stark. The other symbols were dragging slightly, trying to maintain their position relative to Gomez. "You're already slowing them down. Get back out front, now!"

A long pause, then Gomez's symbol surged ahead. "Okay, Sarge, but that don't solve the problem." From her tone, she was mad as hell and putting that emotion into her movement.

You had the right answer, Anita. Just the wrong person. Stark shifted to the command circuit. "Lieutenant? Stark here."

"Yes, Sergeant." Tired and worried. Scared, not that she didn't have every right to be. This wasn't the sort of tactical situation a new Lieutenant wanted to be trapped in.

"Lieutenant, we can't make it across the plain before they occupy the crater edge and blow us away. We'll be sitting ducks as soon as they get in position."

Several seconds ticked off as the pursuing symbology danced madly behind, continuing its slow closure on the Platoon. Finally the Lieutenant replied. "That's very likely, Sergeant. Do you have an idea?" Keeping it short, probably mad and frustrated, not seeing any way out, desperate enough to ask her senior enlisted personnel for advice even though everything officers were taught these days warned against that kind of display of fallibility. As if any enlisted ever believed their officers were infallible to begin with.

"We need a rear guard," Stark stated calmly. "Someone has to hold them long enough for the rest to get under our perimeter."

"No." The Lieutenant's answer came back immediately this time. "I'm not leaving your Squad behind. They'd be wiped out."

Good for you, Lieutenant, Stark thought with some surprise. You care enough to reject that option, even though it'd guarantee you getting out safe. "I agree, sir. But we don't need a whole Squad. One good soldier can hold them long enough." Say it professional, like it was a tactical problem during a simulation. "It's the only answer, Lieutenant. One casualty, maybe, and the rest of the Platoon gains time to get across the open area." Stark figured Vic Reynolds was still listening in to Conroy's command circuit. It wasn't too hard to imagine how she had to be feeling right now, because she'd surely already figured out who that one soldier had to be.

Lieutenant Conroy spoke slowly and reluctantly. "I can't order anyone to stay back alone."

"You don't have to, Lieutenant. I'm volunteering. Only logical choice. I'm farthest back, and I'm one of your most experienced soldiers." Sell the Lieutenant on it, and sell myself. Make it make sense to both of us. "I've got the combat experience to hold them long enough, and to get away clear after." Hopefully, pray to God. "I have no intention of buying any territory out here, Lieutenant, but the only way to save the rest of the Platoon is for me to hold off the pursuit for a little while."

Several more seconds. Odds were the Lieutenant was talking to Reynolds on the private conference switch, but for once Stark refrained from eavesdropping, even though he could easily imagine the conversation. Is there any other way? the Lieutenant would ask her, and Can he get out? The answers were easy enough, no and maybe. They wouldn't be easy for Vic to give, but she'd give them.

"Okay, Sergeant," Conroy finally agreed, relief warring with the shame of abandonment in her voice. "You . . . are to hold as long as . . . you feel necessary. Use your discretion on when to withdraw."

"Yes, sir."

"Sergeant Stark, once you move, the rest of the Platoon should be in position to cover your retreat. We'll cover you the minute you start to move. Don't try to hold too long. Okay?"

"Yes, sir." By the time I start to move, you'll be too far out to cover me. You're too inexperienced and probably don't realize that yet, but I knew it when I volunteered. No other choice. "I'm not bucking for a medal, Lieutenant. I'll be right behind you as soon as you're clear." Maybe if I keep repeating that, I'll believe it.

"Roger, Sergeant. We'll cover you, Stark. We'll cover you."

"Yes, sir." You could tell the Lieutenant was feeling guilty as sin. Good for her, again. It wasn't her fault, though, not her fault the war's vid ratings went low and her Platoon got picked to jack them back up. Not her fault the enemy had been faster and better than the officers in the rear had assumed. Not her fault the plan headquarters had dreamed up hadn't been quite as perfect as they'd hoped. "You did a pretty good job out here, Lieutenant." Maybe Conroy can turn into a good officer, someday, if such things still exist.

That brought another pause. "Thanks, Sergeant Stark. We'll see you on the other side."

"Yes, sir." Stark switched over to answer an incoming on the Sergeants' personal comm net. He knew it'd be Vic even before she spoke.

"Ethan, you be careful." No hysterics and no anger, not from her. She knew as well as he that he hadn't any real choice.

"Don't worry. I'm no hero, remember? See you back at R&R."

" 'Don't worry,' he says. Don't be a hero, Ethan. Don't let the demon win this one. Don't hold too long. We'll be back." Reynolds' voice finally betrayed some of the concern she had been trying to hide.

"Never doubted it. But I won't let you or my Squad down, Vic. Whatever it takes. You make sure the Platoon gets back safe."

"I'll get them back safe. Don't you dare die for me, Ethan Stark."

"I've no intention of doing so. Take it easy, Vic."

"Yeah. You, too."

"Stark." That was Sanchez, calm even when breathing pretty heavily from the long retreat. "Good luck."

"Thanks. Look out for my Squad, okay?"

"Of course."

One more call, to Corporal Gomez. "Anita, I'm the rear guard." She tried to break into his call, but he overrode her signal. "Lieutenant's orders," he added, avoiding mention of his volunteering for those orders. "I'm farthest back and most experienced." He released the override.

"Dirty trick, Sarge. It was my idea."

"Nah, I'd already realized the same. Only option. You've got the Squad. Get them back safe."

"How long you staying?"

"As long as it takes and not one second longer. Don't worry about me. Worry about the Squad. I took care of them this far. Now it's your job."

After a long wait, her reply finally came. "Roger, Sargento. Comprendo. Vaya con Dios"

"Same." Nothing else seemed right at the moment. "Stark out."

He started carefully checking out the terrain ahead. First, good sites for the two mini-claymore mines he carried. They needed to be emplaced near where the pursuit would pass, ready to hurl their loads of shot horizontally into moving targets. Then, a good location for himself. That location had to have a decent field of fire that would allow Stark to see and shoot at enemy soldiers coming at him from almost any angle. It also needed some protection out front, and solid rock behind. He didn't want to be silhouetted against the horizon every time he moved. Overhead cover would be nice, too, but probably impossible. Usually, natural overhead meant a cave of some sort in a rock face, which meant you might be covered for a while, but you had no way out once the enemy zeroed in on the entrance. Not that he expected to find a cave here anyway, not on this airless, waterless wreck of a world.

Stark spotted a place that looked promising, up ahead just before the pass leading out onto the dust plain. The last of his Squad members were entering the pass as he placed his first claymore, covering the path along the direct route to the pass, then the second mine a hundred meters farther along. The way up to the position he'd chosen was a little steep, but that was good: He'd want to go back down fast when the time came.

The firing point proved to be a good one, with a fine field of fire out to where the enemy would come, a few meters of rock rearing up behind and a rock rim forming a low natural entrenchment out front. Stark settled, making sure he liked just where he was. On his display, the riotous movement of the pursuers' symbology was rapidly necking down toward the pass and toward Stark's position. Out on the plain, the Platoon's symbols headed outward, steadily opening the distance, still way too far from safety. Stark placed his grenades in front, ready to fire, rested his rifle beside himself, and waited, amid the rocks and stars, solid shadows and brilliant light. He couldn't recall ever having felt quite so lonely.

 

"You idiot." His father had been mad as hell. "You want to be a hero? Join the police, f'God's sake! At least then you could die in your hometown!"

Dad was still in his coveralls, wet and smelling of fish feed. Stark had stood before him, two months out of community college with a degree in inventory maintenance that qualified him to be a stock clerk in some big discount store owned and run by people who didn't really care about people like him. Twenty years old, unemployed-looking-for-a-job-that-didn't-doom-every-dream-once-dreamed, still dressing like the high-school kid he felt like inside. Nowhere to go, after wasting what educational chances he'd once had, until he ran across the recruiting spiel on vid during a break between old war movies. It had been a pretty forlorn recruiting spiel, as if even the actors used in it couldn't quite believe anyone would actually join the military. To Stark's own surprise, it hadn't taken much to convince him to join; no matter how bad it would be, it was somewhere else, one last chance to break away.

Stark, facing his father, fought to speak calmly, but his words had come out sounding like a kid caught coming in after curfew. "I thought you'd be proud." The hell he had. Like most of the people he knew, Dad had never hidden his contempt for the military, but it had sounded like a good potential reply when Stark had rehearsed the conversation beforehand.

"How could you have believed that?" Dad took a deep breath, looked around as if lost, then back directly at Stark. "Look, there're laws. You get to change your mind. You've got, what, seventy-two hours? Tell them you're not joining."

"Enlisting." Just knowing the term had somehow set him apart already. "And I'm not changing my mind." He had gotten mad, too, playing out another in the long series of fights for control, for independence. "I'm an adult. I can enlist if I want."

"You don't know what you're doing." His father looked half frantically toward the living room, hoping to see Stark's mother there, hoping for an ally, but she wasn't due off her shift at the store for another four hours. Stark had planned that, knowing he couldn't have faced both parents' pleas. "For once, just this once, listen to me. I don't know what they tell you, I don't know if they wave a slick uniform in your face, all I know is nobody cares about the military. Do you know anyone in the military? Of course not. They're not like us. They get sent to places no one wants to go, to kill people, and usually end up getting killed themselves. Is that what you want, for your mother and me to get a letter saying you died doing something worthless, fighting a war someplace no one cares about?"

Stark felt himself wavering. His father couldn't usually speak so well about important things, usually tongue-tied with anger or emotion, but this once at least he was managing to call up all the doubts Stark had earlier suppressed.

Then his father had gone one step too far and blown it. "Don't be a fool, like you always are! Don't waste your life!" Old words, words that provoked an old reaction in Stark.

"Waste my life? You know all about wasting a life, don't you? I may be a fool, but there's no way I'm spending my life feeding fish. I'm going somewhere, anywhere, just so's I don't end up here!" Stark had waved around the room, including his father's entire life in that last declaration.

His father had flushed red, then paled, then turned and walked away. They hadn't spoken since. Stark had left before his mother came home, unable to bear the thought of facing her. It would've been better to have said good-bye to her, he'd often thought since. His leaving like that must have hurt her something fierce. There'd been letters to and from home since then, not very often and always through his mother. Always regretting the last words he'd spoken to his father, Stark had increasingly thought about a way to apologize, to start over. Let his dad know he respected him, now, for the hard work and the hard choices. Let his dad know he'd accomplished some good things in the mil after all. Made a man of him, in ways that really counted.

Funny thing, as your third and fourth decades of life rolled by and over you, all the mistakes your father had made suddenly didn't look so dumb. Somewhere along the way, you realized how hard he'd tried, and how tough a job being a dad was. Being in charge of a Squad wasn't all that different, except you had twelve kids and both the enemy and your own officers kept trying their level best to kill them. He had a letter for his dad, back at the bunker, he'd been kind of working on for a year or so, but he'd never gotten the words right or the nerve to send it. Right now, he wished he had.

 

"Heavy jamming," Stark's suit announced in the same calm tones it would use to provide a routine status report. "Tactical picture lost." The symbology representing his own Platoon as well as that of the rapidly closing enemy froze and was overlaid with last-contact time ticks. The battle armor was compensating for the enemy jamming by boosting all its power to the command link, keeping audio and vid going to Stark's chain of command. So they could track him, know what was happening to him, and tell him exactly what to do. But not this time. Don't give the Sergeant any orders, and when he gets wasted it won't be your fault.

Stark had no doubt, though, that the brass was still feeding the command-and-control vid to the citizens clustered around their vid sets. Your heroes on the Moon, featuring Stark's Last Stand in almost real time, brought to you by the makers of . . . Funny to think, so many people probably watching what he could see right now. Hopefully, headquarters was putting a long enough time delay on it that the enemy couldn't use it tactically against him. Usually the brass did, but sometimes they fed it out too fast. Sometimes, when the story was too good, or the action too hot. At least it may be the last time they screw me.

A new symbol glowed brightly, outlining an object on the nearest crater wall. He sighted in, carefully, magnification swelling the object to an armored body scrambling over the crest, IFF on his HUD screaming red for enemy. Stark fired, a three-round burst. The figure froze, no doubt warned of incoming but with no time to react. It suddenly bounced back against the rock, once and twice under multiple impacts, then lay still, tiny streams of atmosphere venting from the new holes in its armor. The enemy would be more careful now, advance slowly, try to feel out how many soldiers were in the rear guard and where they were positioned. With any luck Stark could keep them guessing on both counts for a few more minutes.

A rush to the left. Several figures darted among the cover, evading forward. They were good, not leaving him any decent shots. Stark waited, until he was rewarded with another rush, slightly to his right. This group wasn't as good; one slipped in haste, hauled itself up to get under cover, then fell again as one of Stark's rounds hit it in the upper abdomen. Two down, but they were probably getting a good idea where he was by now. Stay, and they'd target you eventually. Move, and they'd see you right away. Stark stayed.

The figures on the chrono in his HUD cycled slowly. Stark no longer paid attention to the crimson digits of his timeline display, angrily proclaiming his failure to meet Tac objectives. Once again he marveled, briefly, at the lack of comms or interference from headquarters, realizing again that Vic had been right and no officer wanted to leave any fingerprints on what surely seemed a hopeless battle.

Stark's Tac had continued estimating the progress of the Platoon, three clusters of symbols tracking steadily across the dust plain but still too close to the ridge. Still too early for Stark to leave. Maybe the APCs came out, picked them up. They could be safe now. No, I can't be sure that happened. Have to assume the worst. Have to hold the enemy a little longer, give the Platoon time to make it across the field. Not too long now. A figure moved suddenly forward amid the rocks before him as a barrage of covering fire laid down around his position. The sight augmented brightly on the enhanced figure as Stark sighted and squeezed in one motion. His HUD tracked the round directly into the other suit's faceplate. A blossom of gas and metal erupted as the enemy trooper stiffened, then slowly dropped like a burned-out toy.

The enemy barrage hesitated as the attacking force picked up the loss, then redoubled in fury. Damn. Mad as hell now, and they pretty much know where I am. Okay. Keep down. Let them shoot. Save your rounds. Stark occupied his mind by carefully inventorying his remaining ammo as the storm of fire raged around and above him. Can't get rattled. Can't get hit. Have to be ready to roll soon. He rehearsed an escape plan in his mind, fretting over details. Roll right, down the ridge. Got to go fast before they lock on. Then over the back, drop to the dust plain and run to the first rock cluster that offers any cover. Fire and fall back. Or just run and dodge. That'll throw up a lot of dust. Confuse their aim. Easy. I'll manage until the relief gets close enough to help me.

Something suddenly erupted through the surface on his near left, the concussion blasting rocks into fragments that slammed into his side. They fired an antiarmor round. Damn it! His left arm wasn't working right, now. The battle armor med kit hummed as it automatically shoved and shock drugs into his system. The armor hadn't suffered a large rupture, thank God. A plume of gas would have pinpointed him in a heartbeat.

Okay. Going to be harder with one arm but still doable. Drugs will compensate, keep me hot. He hoped, anyway. Not a lot of experience with getting hit. He'd usually been lucky before. Maybe not anymore. Stark had been avoiding looking at the Tac's estimated position for the Platoon, but he glanced now. Not quite there yet, but the Platoon should be almost close enough to home now to get help. Then some relief could come out a ways, help cover him. Should be on the way real quick. Nice heroic rescue. Make real nice footage on the vid. Boost ratings and everybody happy. Not long now.

Except, a small voice wondered, what if somebody figures a lone rear guard holding out to the end makes better footage? What if somebody figures a rescue column might take too many losses? Dead heroes are good, noble examples who don't do any of the not-so-noble things living humans are prone to. Live heroes can be a pain in the ass, especially when they happen to be a Sergeant with a reputation for being just that already. So maybe the rescue group heads out just a little too late. Lots of suspense, but then damn shame. A hero, a safely dead hero who can be sanctimoniously elevated to near-sainthood, a hero who gave his all for his country and his buddies. Yeah, wonderful ratings. And everybody would get to see what a great thing the Sergeant did. No, Stark thought fiercely, Vic won't let them. She, Gomez, even this Lieutenant, they'll come back. Unless they couldn't make it back in time. Unless someone stalled, didn't tell them what was really going down.

The motion alert pulsed as more figures scrambled into motion, covered by the unrelenting fire. Got a heavy-weapons unit here now, must be. Too damn much firepower for a bunch of foot troops. He carefully gauged the angle, waited, then detonated one of the claymores as two figures neared its blast cone. One enemy was hurled back against nearby rocks to lie broken across them while the second spun suddenly to the side and fell, a slow-motion sprawl into the dust.

Okay. That'll slow them. Now they've got to screen for my mines. Another glance at the Tac. The Platoon had to be close to safety now. Anytime. My Tac will estimate the Platoon's clear and I can pull out. Just roll right and down. Drop to the plain and run while they're still trying to decide if I'm really gone.

System alarms pointed skyward as Stark watched the tracks of high-trajectory rounds arcing in from the enemy rear. Damn it all! Freeze and pray the suit camo works long enough and maybe they're short on shells. No top cover here. Not if he didn't want to be trapped. And he had to be ready to fall back. Anytime now.

Multiple rounds burst overhead, casting clustered warheads across the area. The suit's camo held, or Stark would have died instantly under the impacts of a dozen homing warheads. Failing to locate a target, the warheads dropped in random patterns, detonating in hopes of causing damage to hidden foes. A searing pain hit Stark's right leg as a warhead went off not far away. Bad. Real bad. He scanned the damage display. The suit had sealed the penetrations, but his leg had been badly messed up. The med kit hummed harder and the pain and dizziness dropped away, replaced with a false sense of well-being.

Not over yet. Tac check. Almost time. Relief column should be heading out. I don't need both legs to roll. I can still get clear. He carefully checked his ammo again. Two grenades, one mine left out front. Can't move yet. They'd lock in on me too fast. Pump out both grenades to distract, set the mine on autodetonate. Then I roll. Piece of cake.

Down below and in front more figures moved, partially obscured in his sight by a ragged red rim around his vision. Can't use grenades yet. Gotta save them for when I pull out. He brought his weapon up one-handed, balancing it on the rocks before him, to aim and fire automatically, figures downrange dropping as they came under fire. No telling if there were any hits. Incoming fire around Stark was too intense, hazing his scan with concussions and energy bursts. He blinked furiously, wondering why he couldn't get the dancing red flecks obscuring his sight to go away. Torn grass blades seemed to wave among the red flecks, incongruous against the bare, dead rock all around.

A Devil's Foot slammed into the rock face above him and spat a flurry of arrowlike flechets downward. Two hit, piercing completely through Stark and his armor and on into the rock below. The suit instantly sealed the holes as the med kit hummed frantically, trying to overcome nature with a tidal wave of chemicals. Oh, God. Not gonna make it, am I? Too late. Too late. Not going anywhere now. Just like all the grunts I left back on the knoll. Finally my turn. For a moment, Stark felt an unnatural clarity, free of pain and loss. But all the others got out this time, didn't they? Safe. Platoon's clear. My Squad's clear. Did my job. Didn't let them down.

Pain hit hard through the thick haze of drugs. A roaring filled his ears. Somewhere in front the enemy must still be advancing, but Stark could no longer see, and something kept his fingers from clenching to fire his weapon. Against the fury of the enemy barrage, his battle armor continued calmly reciting its own damaged systems status, one more sound that merged into the chaos around him. Stark thought he heard his name being spoken or called, but the last traces of concentration dissolved into a jumble of broken sounds and images. The red haze grew to fill his vision, blotting out all traces of the phantom grass, and a black curtain fell across his mind, one with the rocks and the dust, the white light and the black shadows.

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