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PART ONE
A Storm of Battle

The organized violence humans call warfare takes many forms. An attack can be as sudden and brief as an earthquake, a surprise spasm of fury in which soldiers dash against defenses then fall away. Or an assault can be slower, gradually building in strength as soldiers cautiously push forward, seeking weak points in defenses, their efforts as continuous and unrelenting as a sea straining against barriers holding it from dry land.

So the attack began, slowly building in intensity. Like a flood of water, the pressure rose, in a place where the only real water rested eternally frozen beneath the lifeless rock of the surface. Gradually it increased. Testing here, pressing there, searching for any signs of weakness, any give in the defenses holding it back. Every probe met a firm barrier, each push repulsed with varying ease. But the pressure continued, shoving harder, the strength of barriers at some points herding it toward those areas where the defenses held with less strength. Not much less, but enough, as the flood pressure gathered at those points where resistance seemed softer, where trickles of advancing elements could push through. Slowly, so slowly as not to be apparent at first, but with increasing speed, the apparently firm wall of defenses began to crumble.

"Ethan, we got problems."

Sergeant Ethan Stark, acting commander of the rebellious soldiers still defending the American Colony on the Moon hastily donned his battle armor. "I'm still suiting up, Vic.

What's happening?"

"You don't need battle armor inside the headquarters complex," Sergeant Vic Reynolds, Stark's acting Chief of Staff, scolded. "I need you in the Command Center. Now."

"Okay. Okay. But I'm gonna be in armor." Stark sealed the last fastenings on his suit, grabbed his rifle, and darted out the door. The corridors around him still felt unreal, wood paneling where bare rock should be. I'll never get used to the luxury here at headquarters. Maybe we can sell this stuff to pay the troops.

Most of the personnel in the Command Center were unknown to Stark, experienced enlisted troops manning their consoles to maintain a constant stream of symbology, communications, and video feed between individual soldiers. All of it centered here, where until recently officers of every rank had tried to dictate their subordinates' every action. Now that those officers sat within the stockade under arrest, that role, if he wanted it, was Stark's.

"Wow." Stark paused to admire the massive main display screen on which a sector of the front glowed in enhanced 3-D. Green American symbols hung in a slightly ragged arc marking the perimeter, each group of friendly soldiers clustered around the heavy weapons fortifications symbology that indicated the presence of strong defensive positions. In front of those green markers, clusters of red symbols ebbed and flowed, shifting in a constant dance as sensors reported the presence of enemy soldiers trying to break through the American defenses. "They're pushing harder than before, aren't they?" In the three days since the horrible failure of General Meecham's grand offensive, forces of the enemy coalition had tested for weaknesses in the American line a dozen times as rumor of riot and rebellion came dimly across to them.

"Yes," Vic agreed, one clipped word which spoke volumes. "We should be able to hold it, though."

Should be able to. Stark studied the display again, scowling. "Why are those enemy units getting so close? Why aren't they being shoved back farther?"

"I don't know." Vic tried to keep her frustration hidden, but it swelled to the surface as the Sergeant tried to handle far more soldiers than her training and experience had ever prepared her for.

"I don't like 'I don't knows' in combat, Vic."

She fought down another sharp answer before speaking more calmly. "Neither do I, but I'm not sure what's happening on the line. Everything looks right, but our defenses don't seem to be as strong as they ought to be." Vic glared at him briefly. "We shouldn't have gone ahead with the unit rotations this early."

"Vic, we didn't have any choice. The units on the line had been extended there because of Meecham's offensive, and they were getting really ragged."

"They could have stayed on line a few more days. Another week. We started rotating units the day after we took over, for Christ's sake!"

"Everybody insisted on it," Stark reminded her. "What could we do?"

Vic set her jaw stubbornly. "Tell them no."

"I haven't got that authority, Vic."

"The hell you don't. They elected you commander, remember?"

Stark jabbed a finger at her. "Yeah, I remember. You helped that happen. And you know as well as I do that saying I've got full authority and actually being able to order people around at the drop of a hat are two damn different things. I can't buck every other Sergeant. Not yet. They're still gonna think about it before they do as I say."

She bent her head, then nodded wearily. "You're probably right. No, you are right, but I still don't like it. Everything is still too soft and rotating units made it softer. I've activated the on-call reserves for that sector," Vic added.

"Good move. How many soldiers is that?"

"Two companies."

"Where are you putting them?"

"I don't know!" The frustration surged into the open again as Vic waved at the display. "Where do we need them?"

"If you can't tell, I sure as hell can't." Vic's the best tactical thinker I ever met, so if she can't read this mess, nobody can. Stark watched the display, hundreds of symbols clashing together and moving apart, a constant stream of data scrolling along the sides of the display where it framed simulated terrain so real Stark felt he could fall into it.

She stared first at him, then back at the display. "I think that's because there's too much on here to think through, Ethan. They packed every bit of data they could onto these displays so it's just about impossible to see the forest for the trees. We've got to prune this junk back to essential data."

"Sounds like a real good idea. But we can't do that now."

Vic lowered her voice, barely whispering so only Stark could hear. "I wish the hell I knew what we could do."

The other enlisted were glancing back at them, expressions guarded. Stark smiled tightly, eyes on the display as if unaware of the attention. Just like leading my Squad, only a lot bigger. People have to think you're confident. Even if you're scared as hell and don't have a clue what to do. The distraction triggered an instinct as something nagged at Stark's mind. He stared at the display, green and red markers swimming amid the rapidly swelling and just as rapidly disappearing threat symbology that marked the flight of heavy shells. It felt like that odd itching between the shoulder blades when a sniper had you in their sights, as if the display were saying something his conscious mind couldn't grasp, but that caused a sub-consciousness honed in uncounted battles to shout alarms. "What else have we got for backup? What's the next reserve?"

"The next?" Vic frowned at the question. "Two battalions. But they're not on-call. We'd need to activate them, get them suited up."

The words felt wrong. Advice from Vic was always good, but right now it felt wrong. "Do it. Get them ready to hit the line."

"Ethan, there's no reason at this point to jerk around a lot of soldiers we'll probably need sharp later on."

Reasonable words. Reasonable advice. Vic playing her old role of guiding his decisions down the right paths. Stark kept his eyes on the display, almost unfocused, seeing the rhythm of movement rather than the details, and not liking the feel of it. "We don't have a handle on this, Vic. We need those troops ready."

"If we keep them suited up too long—"

"I know. I know. Let's get them activated."

"Ethan, I don't—"

The itching intensified, urging action. "I said do it!"

Vic halted in midsentence, face rigid. "Yessir."

The word hit Stark like a fist in the stomach. We've always worked as equals, or I've deferred to Vic. Now I'm supposed to call all the shots, and I don't like it and neither does she. He wavered, trying not to be seen noticing the angry lines etched on his friend's face as she transmitted the order to the on-call battalions. Am I wrong? Am I just being a jerk? No. No. I've got to be in command and every instinct I've got says I'm gonna need those troops. "Thank you," Stark stated softly, leaving anything else unsaid.

Vic glanced his way, startled by the reply, but still mad. "You're welcome. This isn't easy."

"It ain't for me, either. We'll talk later, figure out how to work this better. I still want you telling me what you think."

"You won't get it if you cut me off like I'm a stupid recruit," Vic noted, her tone still hard, but somewhat milder.

"You're right."

To Stark's surprise, the last words brought a smile to Vic's face. "Now, that's never happened. I never worked for a commander who told me I was right." She glanced at Stark, one eyebrow raised in question. "I've got two battalion commanders asking me why their people need to suit up and deploy."

"Because . . ." I said so? Real bad answer. "Because we've got some real strong probes hitting us. They're stressing the line. The guys holding the front might need backup." Too soft. "No. Leave out the 'might need.' Say we need backup for the front."

"Okay." Vic rapidly repeated Stark's words into her comm unit, then nodded. "They rogered-up. Ethan, that's a real vague reason for activating that many soldiers. What's got you so I worried?"

Even as she spoke the question, an answer appeared before them. "That." Stark pointed a rigid finger toward the display, where a small patch of their own soldiers had suddenly begun moving. "They're falling back. That squad. Retreating. Why the hell are they falling back?"

"Bunker status is okay," Vic muttered. "What's going on?" she called over the headquarters communications circuit. "Corporal Hamilton. Why did your squad abandon your bunker?"

Stark linked in to hear the reply. Hamilton's words came quickly, rushed with fear and the stress of rapid movement. "Too many of them. Too much pressure. Couldn't hold."

"Hamilton," Vic barked, "there's nothing out in front of you an entrenched squad can't handle. Return to your position."

"Negative. Too hot. Falling back."

Stark forestalled Vic's next transmission with one hand on her shoulder, using the other to point again. "Look how fast that symbology's moving. They ain't falling back. They're running."

"Running." Vic repeated the word as if she'd never heard it before and couldn't grasp the meaning. "Oh, God," she added in a whisper as the squads to either side of the abandoned bunker also left their positions.

"Over there, too," Stark observed through a tight jaw. "In another company's area. The line's crumbling." More symbology moved as soldiers broke from their defensive positions, heading toward the rear in ragged groups as the red markers of enemy soldiers began following, the enemy advance almost tentative, as if they feared ambush.

"What's going on?" Vic wondered, whispering the question, then glaring at Stark. "Why are they running?" She slammed her fist against the console before her. "Why the hell are they running?"

"I dunno. Let's ask again." Stark pulled up the ID on one of the Sergeants involved in the growing rout. "Srijata. What's going on? Why did you abandon your bunker?"

The wild disorder of combat only dimly echoed in Srijata's reply. "I don't know! Everybody just jumped up and started running!"

"Why'd you run?"

"I can't hold a bunker by myself! I could see the bunkers on either side going, too!"

Stark shifted comms. "Private Shanahan. Hold your position."

"Negative. Negative. Too hot. Can't hold."

"You're not under pressure right now. Take a stand."

"Why? I'm not gonna die for nothing!"

Vic stared directly into Stark's eyes for a moment, then called a soldier herself. "Corporal Delgado. Report in." Silence. "I know you've got comms, Delgado."

"Go to hell!" Delgado panted back.

"Hold your position, Delgado. There's soldiers depending on you."

"Nobody's risking their ass to save me, are they? They're all running, too."

Stark focused back on the Command Center, suddenly aware of every eye on him. Yeah. Like being a squad leader, but with one helluva big squad. He keyed the general circuit, linking it to every soldier in the threatened sector. "Everybody listen up. This is Stark. Hold your positions. There's nothing coming at you we can't handle. I've got reserves moving up. Hold your positions," he repeated. Some of the symbology seemed to hesitate, but the breach in the front kept widening as more positions were abandoned and more units began running. The dam had broken, its individual pieces falling away under pressure, the enemy flood shoving at the ragged edges of the break to sheer away more defenses in an ever-widening rout.

Stark became aware of Sergeant Jill Tanaka, in charge of the headquarters staff, standing near. "How far will this spread?" she wondered, voice despairing. "Is the whole front going to go?"

"I'll tell you as soon as I know." Odd. To have so much power at his fingertips, yet to have so little ability to influence events.

"Dammit," Vic swore, punching another circuit to life.

"Where the hell's my brain. Artillery. Grace? We got problems. We need you to stop a penetration."

Far from the main headquarters complex, ensconced in a room where rested control of the big cannons, which infantry had feared for centuries, Sergeant Grace spoke carefully, spacing his words. "I see it. I can lay down barrages to slow the enemy a bit, but I can't stop them without ground troops forming a line."

"We'll form a line. We got reserves moving up. Start dropping shells on those enemy troops."

"Okay. I'll slow some of them down, like I said, but I can't hit the ones farthest forward without risking our own people. They're too intermingled."

Vic stared at the display, then at Stark. He nodded slowly. "Do your best, Grace. You're the expert."

"You don't wanna see my firing plan and sign off on it first?"

"Hell, no. What're you talking about?"

"Standard procedure," Grace explained, speaking rapidly now. "I develop a plan, then send it up the chain of command so every officer along the line can sign off on it and fiddle with exactly what target which cannon shoots at when. Then I get it back."

"After the damn battle's over?"

"Hey, I didn't make the system. You want to see my plan?"

"No," Stark declared forcefully. "Grace, you'll forget more about employment of heavy artillery than I'll never know. You do your job and if I see a problem from here, I'll talk to you about it."

"Command by negation?" Grace questioned. "Stark, you're my kind of wild-eyed radical. There'll be shells going out in a few minutes."

"Thanks." Stark glanced at Vic. "What the hell is 'command by negation'?"

Reynolds grinned, the expression rendered slightly unnerving by her tension. "That means you tell somebody to do a job, then just watch them do it. You don't interfere unless you see something you think needs done differently."

"Common sense," Stark muttered. "How the hell else can you—?" He stiffened, staring at the left flank of the collapse. "It's stopped on that side. There. Look, they're holding. Tanaka, get on with that bunker and hold their hands personal. Make sure they stay."

"Why there?" Vic wondered as Tanaka rushed to a terminal to link in. "Oh, hell, look at the terrain. They're on an elevation with a steep depression in front and rocks in front of that."

"Yeah." Stark smiled crookedly in recognition. "The Castle. We never got stationed there. Best bunker assignment on the perimeter. The enemy's being channeled away from them by the terrain so they're under no pressure at all." He shifted to gaze to the other side of the penetration, where a cluster of friendly symbols stood fixed on a piece of terrain shaped like a lopsided oval. "Vic, somebody's holding on this side, too. Thank God."

"Yes," she confirmed. "Mango Hill's holding."

"But that's just a low elevation. The enemy's gotta be pushing them."

"Ethan, look at the unit ID." Vic snapped the suggestion as if she knew he wouldn't like the information it provided.

He didn't. "Oh, Christ." Third Squad. First Platoon. Bravo Company. Second Battalion. First Brigade. His old Squad. The twelve soldiers he'd personally trained and led for years. His Squad until decades of poor leadership by their officers, culminating in the unthinking slaughter ordered during General Meecham's ill-considered offensive, had led the senior enlisted to finally mutiny; until those senior enlisted had elected Sergeant Ethan Stark to command them, so that he had to leave the Squad where his heart still lay. That same Squad, those same soldiers, had rotated back onto the line in the last few days and were now holding a position that had become the linchpin of the American line. Holding where the enemy was certain to hurl full force in an attempt to continue the unraveling of the American front. "Anita," he called.

"Sí, Sargento." Corporal Gomez sounded absurdly cheerful.

Scanning her display, Stark could see the bunker combat systems shifting in a rapid blur to slam rounds at enemy targets as fast as they winked into existence on the local sensor net. A lot of targets probing, pushing, trying to work their way close enough to the bunker to pinpoint its sensors and weapon hard points. In one corner of the view from Gomez's command seat, Stark could see Private Mendoza hunched forward at his control station, an occasional quick gesture changing the bunker system priorities to concentrate on different targets or sectors. "You've gotta hold," Stark stated. "Right there. I can't trust anybody else to stand and fight right now."

"We gonna fight, Sargento. No problema."

"They're gonna hit you, hit you bad, but you gotta hold," Stark repeated.

"'. Nobody's leaving this hill. They're pushing us now, but we're pushing back plenty hard. You see? We ain't gonna run like those Earthworms." Stark called up a different direct vid feed, seeing through the eyes of another one of his old Squad members as Private Chen fired from a pit outside the bunker. Shadowy shapes moved among the scattered rocks, flickers of motion amid the solid black shadows and glaring white light overlying the dead gray of the lunar landscape. Chen fired coolly, steadily, as his Tac pinpointed target kill-points. His Heads-Up Display jittered as enemy jamming tried to confuse aiming and detection of targets, the symbology altering in a constant wild jig as combat systems tried to sort out real targets from false. Minor vibrations jarred the Tac display as a nearby chain-gun mount pumped out staccato streams of shells. So easy to be there, focusing on the moment, on one target at a time in the familiar routine of a leader responsible for one small group of soldiers. So hard to be back here, instead, worrying about thousands.

"Let me know if it gets too hot," Stark ordered, breaking the link to resurface in the Command Center.

Vic was watching him, eyes hard. "Ethan, they're going to catch hell."

"I know that. They're gonna catch hell because I can count on them to stand there and take it. That's the way it works, right? The ones who can take it and do the job, no matter how rough, always end up getting handed that job." He ran one hand through his hair, staring at the sector display once again where enemy forces were pushing deeper inside the American lines. "That's a big flippin' hole." New symbols appeared, heavy shells arcing in from the American rear to burst within the area where enemy forces were thrusting forward. "Grace is right. The artillery's not gonna stop them."

"That's not Grace's fault. He has to guess where the enemy will be and where our own troops will be. He's always going to be behind the curve unless you tell him to drop his stuff on our own people."

"Which we ain't gonna do. So how we gonna plug that damn hole, Vic?"

"I've got the two on-call companies." She waved at the display. "At least I don't have to wonder where to deploy them anymore. Delta's off to the left a long ways. I'm sending them in behind the Castle to hit the enemy flank," Vic advised, her fingers flying over the command console to transmit orders straight to Delta Company's Tactical systems. "The other company is almost dead behind the hole in the line. Maybe they can stop the enemy advance." She paused. "Okay?"

"What?" Stark questioned irritably. Oh, right. I'm the boss. "Yeah. Good moves. Do it."

"They won't be good enough, Ethan. Damn fine thing you ordered those extra battalions activated." Vic bit her lower lip so hard that a bright bead of ruby blood appeared. "Charlie Company. I need you in place fast." Even as she spoke, Vic rapidly updated positions to feed Charlie Company's Tacs. "Establish a defensive line."

"You want us to hold that alone?" Charlie Company's acting commander questioned incredulously. Another Sergeant with a lot more soldiers and a lot more responsibility than a few days before. "There's a lot of crap coming down that way." The enemy, caution evaporating, had begun chasing the retreating American forces, hurling more and more troops into the hole in the American line despite the artillery falling in their path.

"Negative," Vic soothed. "Delaying action. Don't try to hold firm until we get more people there. We've got two battalions on the way. Understand? You're not alone."

"Okay." The doubt behind the acknowledgment rang clear even through the distance of the comm circuit.

Stark fidgeted, unable to act for the moment, his available forces committed. The line of symbols representing Charlie Company seemed far too small compared with the mass of friendly and enemy soldiers rushing down at it.

The thin line of Charlie Company had barely taken up position when the first scattered symbols representing fleeing Americans began to stream past and through them. More symbols came, moving rapidly toward the rear in singles and small clusters, like debris in a river rushing against the small dam that was Charlie Company. "Ethan . . ." Vic began.

"I see it." Some of the Charlie Company soldiers had begun falling back as well, swept up in the retreat as another wave of panic-stricken troops hit their line. First the edges of the company line began peeling away, then segments of the center eroded, then the rest simply collapsed, joining in the rout. "We got big problems, Vic. Holding the flanks won't help if the center ain't there." There's too much going on all at once. How do you decide anything with all this data in front of you and stuff happening faster than you can think? Indecision ate at him, allied with a growing fear. What do we do? Tell people what to shoot at like the officers did? That won't accomplish anything. Maybe there's nothing I can do. Nothing but watch and hope something happens to salvage this mess.

A vision of bloodied grass suddenly mocked him, jeering at his inaction. Just like Stark's commanders had once waited indecisively at Patterson's Knoll as their troops died around them; until their options were all foreclosed. Good Lord. Am I becoming my own worst enemy?

Memories tumbled out, as if thinking of the hopeless battle on the Knoll had been a key to a locked door. One steadied, forming a vision of soldiers sitting around a glowing heat lamp somewhere near a nameless battlefield, the veterans swapping war stories while newer personnel watched and listened in something approaching awe. One of those inexperienced soldiers, then-Private Ethan Stark, venting his frustration. It can't be done. There ain't no damned way to accomplish this mission.

Corporal Kate Stein, his self-appointed "big sister," had grinned back. Lemme tell you something kid. When you've tried everything you can think of, and nothing's worked, try something else.

What? Stark complained. You just said I'd already tried everything.

No, I didn't. I said you'd tried everything you could think of. Think of something else.

Stark rapped his faceshield with an armored fist, drawing a surprised look from Vic. "What was that for?" she wondered.

"Me. Trying to shake a few brain cells loose."

"I hope it helps." Vic hung her head for a moment, both hands supporting her above the command console, then raised again to look at Stark. "Ethan, I don't know how to stop this. I don't even know why it's happening."

"I think I do." He knew it, now, somewhere down deep. Some people fight for God, some for glory, some for country. Which of those are left for these guys right now, right here? But that's a long-range problem. Gotta save everybody's asses first. Too much happening, too big a disaster in the making, and too many responsibilities on his shoulders, yet Stark felt oddly calm. Think of something else. He stood directly before the map display, pointing toward it. "We've been trying to deal with this penetration by throwing stuff straight at the enemy."

"That's how you stop them."

"Depends. Forget where the enemy troops are this second. Forget about trying to hold on to as much ground as possible. If you had your choice, where would you try to stop the enemy advance? Stop it cold."

"My choice? You mean the best terrain?"

"Yeah. Anywhere short of the Colony."

"Right here." She illuminated the spot, an isolated ridge of rock rearing up slightly off center from the enemy advance. A remnant of a very old crater, perhaps, the rest of its walls long since pulverized by subsequent minor impacts. "Great ground. But it's too far back. If that spot didn't hold we wouldn't have anyplace else to make a stand before the Colony."

Stark narrowed his eyes, studying the position. "That's its strength, Vic. It gives us time to establish a line before the enemy gets there."

"Ethan, if you don't hold the line there, we've lost."

"Yeah, but if we can't hold there, we won't be able to hold anywhere." He nodded, once. "Okay. Get those battalions on the way there."

"Both of them?" Reynolds questioned sharply.

"We gotta stop them and then roll them back."

"Not that way," she insisted. "Main force against main force? And what if all those running soldiers break a battalion the way they broke Charlie Company? Think, Ethan. You don't want every egg in one basket."

Every nerve demanded action, but Stark forced himself to stand before the display. "Okay, one battalion goes to hold the ridge. Where should the second go?"

Vic swung one arm along an arc, a planner in her element, the despair of a moment before lost in the rush of action. "Deploy them along this side of the penetration. Hit the enemy in the flank after you've stopped them. Or, if worse comes to worse, hit the flank and try to stop them that way."

"Good. Great." He turned to go. "I'm on my way."

"What!"

"I'm on my way," Stark repeated. He pointed again, this time to the retreating symbology. "Those running soldiers won't stop just because there's a battalion waiting at that ridge, anymore than they did when they hit Charlie Company. I've gotta be there to hold them."

"Ethan, you're all that's holding this entire army together! If you die, everything will come apart!"

"Vic, everything is coming apart." He turned away, leaving her groping for an answer. "Sergeant Tanaka, I need a ride out to the front. How soon can I get an APC here?"

She nodded and gestured simultaneously. "An Armored Personnel Carrier? You got one. Two, actually. The Commanding General's Mobile Operations Centers."

Stark scowled. "I said I wanted an APC."

"They are APCs. Just a little modified with extra command and control gear." Tanaka's fingers danced over several screens.

"I've downloaded the directions to the APC loading dock into your Tac and alerted the drivers. Have a nice trip."

"Thanks Sarge." Stark ran, following the path Sergeant Tanaka had entered into his armor's Tactical Combat System, but deliberately slowing his pace from a mad dash to a quick jog. No way I want people to see me running like crazy— The APC loading access gapped ahead, much larger than Stark was used to and set into the side of the vehicle so he could board just by walking. Why the hell did they compromise the armor and the camouflage by putting a door in the damn thing? Guess Generals don't like having to climb into their personal vehicles.

Stark dove into the seat directly facing the command displays, fumbling with his restraining harness until he realized it had been much more heavily padded than usual. With a muttered curse he slammed the buckles home, then sat for a long moment. Alright, already. Let's go! He jacked in, cursing again at the delay. "Driver? What's the holdup?"

"Awaiting orders, sir."

"Orders?" Ah, hell. All my career I've gotten on these things and they've gone where someone else told them to go. Guess I've got to break a few habits. Stark pinpointed the ridge on his display and bounced it to the APC systems. "Here's a position. Get me there as fast as you can."

"Yessir." The APC rose with a smooth glide, unlike the wicked lurches Stark was used to experiencing when riding as a simple grunt. Accelerating rapidly, the vehicle shot down the wide lane leading through the lunar surface over the headquarters complex, only to slow significantly as it entered the broken terrain outside the developed areas.

"What's the problem?" Stark snapped. "How come you slowed down so much?"

"There's a lot of rocks out here, sir. I've got to be careful maneuvering around them."

"A lot of rocks?" Stark switched to an exterior view, watching the terrain scroll past. Tortured rock, interspersed with puddles of dust. Dead as only something that had never known life could be dead. The terrain didn't look too bad for a lifeless expanse of rock on the Moon. "How long you been driving up here?"

"Four years."

"Four—? Why don't you have more experience with driving around this junk?"

"I'm the General's driver, sir," the driver noted with a trace of annoyance. "I'm always on call if the General needs a vehicle."

And all those Generals probably only rode this thing around the Colony, if that. What a waste of a good soldier and a decent vehicle. One more thing to fix if and when I get the chance. "Well, mister, you're driving me, now. Get this thing moving. I don't care if the paint gets scratched or the fenders dented."

"Uh, standing orders—"

"Just got changed. Move it!"

"Yes, sir." The APC accelerated again, not to the pace an experienced driver could have maintained, but noticeably faster than it had been poking along at before.

Stark worked the controls before him, bringing up the sector display. He paused, one finger poised to call up direct vid from a frontline soldier, then lowered the hand. Too easy to watch this battle through the eyes of the people fighting it instead of doing my own job of trying to watch the big picture. Blasted command and control gear is too good. Without his willing it, Stark's memory flashed to the initial assault on the Moon. Years ago, the first time the command and control vid had been fed straight to the networks with minimal time-delay as another form of mass entertainment, the first time the brass in the Pentagon figured out that a public hungry for blood-and-guts entertainment would pay to watch the real thing going down. A clever way to boost the military budget and fund some more hyperexpensive weapons without inflicting pain on civilian taxpayers, never mind how the average soldier felt about it, and never mind another big wedge driven between civilian and military society. Why'd we put up with it as long as we did? And how do I get my people to fight now? He stared grimly at the sector display. Still running. Lots of them. But the flanks are holding. Nobody's even bothering the Castle. He flinched at the sight of the forces massing against his old Squad's position on the other flank. "Anita," he called. "How's it goin'?"

"Been better, Sargento." Only someone who knew her well could have detected the worry behind her grim words. "They lost a lot of people trying to push us out fast, and now they're trying to do it smart. Nothin' we can't handle so far, though. Kinda busy to talk."

"Understand." He broke the link, fighting off an overwhelming sense of dread. What was that story my friend Rash had told me about? Spartans. Yeah. Hold 'til you die. Why did it have to be my old Squad?

"Stark?" The voice could have come from beside him, but the command display highlighted a location on the other side of the perimeter. "What's going on?"

Stark took a deep, calming breath before replying in an even, confident voice. "We got problems in one sector. I'm heading there now."

"Problems?" another Sergeant queried. "Looks like the front collapsed there."

"Yeah. That's how it looks 'cause that's what happened. But the edges of the penetration are holding, and we got a coupla battalions headed to knock the enemy back on their butts."

"How come they're running, Stark?" a third voice wondered.

Count to five, slowly, before answering. "I'll ask them when I get there."

"We're getting some pressure, too," a fourth Sergeant added. "They're pushing us in front and the guys guarding our rears are running away. We can't hold our positions with that happening."

Stark stared bleakly at the display, feeling uncertainty rising on all sides, the small hesitations multiplying, every one inconsequential in and of itself, but together building into a force that could turn the defenders into a panicked mob. "I told you we're gonna seal this penetration."

"Maybe we oughta fall back a little."

"No!" Stark almost shouted it. Start falling back now, and they'll never stop. "Hold on! Everybody hold their positions."

"Why?"

Why. Simple question. One word. Very hard answer. Why get yourself killed for something and someone else? Just having that question asked meant trouble, because "why" was one of the things you were supposed to be able to take for granted that everybody knew. "Why" had been easier to answer before Meecham's offensive had slaughtered the Third Division in repeated attacks against strong defenses, before the long habit of obedience had been shattered as unit after unit in Stark's own First Division had revolted against their own officers in order to try to save the remnants of the Third. Now, every possible reply seemed to have too many words, explanations too lengthy to have meaning to someone staring at incoming fire. Stark spoke with forced calm even as his mind churned in futile search for the answer that would likely do the job. "If anybody falls back, they'll screw everybody on their flanks and everybody in the rear."

"We're getting screwed now, Stark."

"You're in fortified positions," Vic broke in. "If you run, you'll be out in the open and much easier targets."

"Sure, Reynolds. But you'd still be at headquarters, and we'd be just as dead either way. Why should we do that?"

Stark felt pain, looking down to see his fist clenched so hard the armored fist of his suit was forming a vise. What reason could he give these Sergeants, what cause, when so much they'd always believed in and depended upon had been swept away along with the authority of their imprisoned officers? But maybe "what" was the wrong question right now, right this moment. Maybe right now he could only give them a "who." Sometimes people who couldn't find strong enough reasons to fight for themselves could find the reasons to fight for somebody else.

Stark let his anger and frustration boil over, spitting out each word with accusing force. "Okay, Goddammit. You apes elected me to this rotten job. I didn't want it, but I said I'd do my best because you guys gave it to me."

"We trusted you—"

"And I trusted you! So now you're gonna leave me hanging while I try to do this damn job? Is that right?"

"Stark, we've got our butts on the line here."

"What the hell do you think I'm doin'? Looking at the damn scenery? I'm goin' out there. I'm goin' on the line. And I'm gonna hold that line. Because you gave me a job to do, and I'm gonna do it. So who the hell's gonna screw me? Who's gonna leave my backside hangin' out? You, Carmen? How about you, Jones? Or maybe Truen?"

A moment's silence as the APC swerved around obstacles, rocking Stark in his harness though his eyes stayed fixed on the command display. "We ain't gonna screw you, Stark," an answer finally came. "We just, you know . . ."

"No, I don't know. This is a battle. The enemy's in front of you. Kill 'em if they come at you, and they'll stop coming. That idea too complicated for anybody?" Silence, maybe embarrassed, maybe defiant. "So, you gonna fight? You gonna hold? You gonna back me up?" Stark demanded.

"Yeah. We put you out there. We'll watch your flanks. Give 'em hell, Stark."

"Thanks." He'd meant it to come out at least half-sarcastic, but relief made it sincere. A moment later, the APC braked gently, coming to a carefully controlled stop. Stark waited, fuming at the delay until the vehicle finally halted, then popped his harness and the access hatch in one motion. With the ease of long practice in low gravity, he shoved off surfaces with hands and feet to drive himself out and down instead of depending on the Moon's gentle pull for impetus. "Get the APC back about ten meters," he ordered the driver. "Have the gunner cover the ridge, but don't fire without my say-so."

"Uh, sir, mobile command center-configured armored personnel carriers don't have any armament."

"You don't have a gun? Nothing?"

"No, sir. All the command and control gear takes up too much space."

"Oh, for . . . never mind. Get that damned thing back ten meters and try to look threatening." Stark stood on the surface, the unnamed ridge rising before him, blasted black rock merging into endless black sky lit with a trillion trillion tiny lights that offered neither heat nor comfort. On the other side of the ridge, panic-stricken soldiers were streaming his way. Behind him, a battalion of soldiers was rushing toward this spot. But here, now, everything around sat quiet, still, and empty. Shut out the frantic messages filling comm circuits, look past the HUD crawling with enemy and friendly unit symbols, ignore the APC resting a short distance back, and Stark might be alone on the surface, the only human on the otherwise dead lunar landscape. Just like that first human here, the guy who made the speech about everybody cooperating to share the Moon. Too bad all the other countries thought we meant it and came up here to get their share. Too bad our greedy corporations couldn't be happy with owning everything on Earth and had to tell their bought-and-paid-for politicians to order us up here to take it all back, so we end up fighting an endless war that we can't win and refuse to lose no matter how much we bleed. Yeah, too bad that for every human who wants to cooperate in building something there's usually two willing to cooperate to destroy it. Far above, the blue-white marble of Earth beckoned, gazing down serenely at the organized violence its children had brought from their home. You ever feel a little guilty, Mother Earth? Inflicting your offspring on other planets? Hell, you ought to. Maybe if you'd treated the human race nicer when we were growing up we'd have turned out better.

Stark's original intention had been to take a position on top of the ridge, giving him maximum visibility to help rally his panicked soldiers. But some instinct held him here, on the reverse slope, while he watched the symbols crawl his way from both directions. Off to his right, where the widest open gap lay, a field of jagged rocks littered the terrain. On his left, a smaller gap beckoned, but off the direct line-of-retreat of Stark's fleeing troops. On Earth they'd run right or left, but here they'll go up the ridge. Easier in the low gravity. So we've got to hold the top of that ridge. Right? Wrong. That won't work. Not enough time to dig in and anyone on that ridge will be exposed to fire by every enemy soldier coming this way. Besides, I've got to stop all the apes running away, and my reserve battalion won't get here before some of them do. Just me and a lot of scared-witless soldiers. A whole lot of scared soldiers. Back here, I can handle them as they start coming over that ridge, one or two at a time. Yeah, much better odds. But how to stop them? A rousing speech? Stark snorted in self-derision. I wouldn't know how. So what do I know?

I know how to tell people what to do.

A figure came panting over the crest of the ridge, movements jerky with fatigue and panic. Stark tagged the soldier's symbol, coming up with an instant ID. "Corporal Watkins!" The figure spasmed in surprise, staring toward where Stark stood. "Take up position on the right." Stark pointed, armored finger designating the spot.

"What? But—"

"Watkins, get your butt in position! Now!" The figure finally moved, instinctively obedient though still uncertain. Two more soldiers came scrambling into Stark's view. "Jurgen! Rodriguez! On the left! By that rock."

"There's an enemy army right behind us! We can't stop them!"

"You haven't tried! Get into position."

"Who the hell are—? Stark? You're Stark?"

"Yeah, I'm Stark. You gonna stand here with me or leave me to fight alone?"

The two privates began moving, descending the reverse slope to where Stark had pointed them. Another soldier came right behind them. "Steinberg! Get over there with Corporal Watkins!"

"I don't—"

"Shut up and get over there!" The words had barely cleared Stark's throat when two more soldiers came into sight, but both of these paused on the top of the ridge, facing back toward the enemy. "Sergeant Ulithi, Sergeant Van Buskirk! Get down here!"

"We're going to stop them," Van Buskirk insisted, standing steady even though his voice shook with anger and frustration.

"Damn straight," Stark approved. "But do it down here. One soldier at a time." He felt something to his left, where Jurgen and Rodriguez waited by their rock, an unsteadiness, as if the soldiers were reeds wavering in a strong wind. "Sergeant Ulithi, get down on my left and hold those soldiers and any others I send you. Van Buskirk, same on the right with Corporal Watkins."

"Roger. They won't go nowhere, Stark." The Sergeants moved, and Stark's small line steadied a little more. More American soldiers now, coming in larger numbers. Too many to hail individually. Stark grabbed the ones he could, building up concentrations of troops who had stopped running. Gradually, they stiffened, out of sight of the enemy, surrounded by friends, with increasing numbers of Sergeants giving them alternate doses of encouragement and browbeating. Gradually, they became an armed force again instead of a beaten mob.

"Commander Stark?" Another voice, breathing heavily, from a symbol approaching from the rear. "Fourth Battalion. Sergeant Milheim commanding."

Stark broke his concentration on the situation to his front, switching scans and juggling responsibilities frantically. "Nice to see you. You got the positions in your Tacs?"

"Yeah, but I don't like them."

"What—?" Stark bit off the word, remembering Vic's anger at being ordered around like a new recruit. He's not some brainless, green private. He's a smart, senior enlisted. I'm not perfect, and I don't have time to think everything through the way a guy with less responsibilities can. I damn well better remember all that. "What's the problem?" he continued, his tone clipped but respectful.

Milheim pointed along the ridge. "You want my battalion deployed in thirds. One third here in the center, and the others to the left and right. I want to put most of my people right here in the middle and only a company on each flank."

Stark considered the idea, frowning at the ridge before him. "Why?"

"Because the enemy ain't gonna come through that rough terrain on the left," Milheim argued. "It'd slow them too much, even in low-G. And the opening on the right is too far off their line of advance. No, they're gonna come charging right up the middle here, and I want enough force on hand to knock them back on their butts."

"Kinda risky if you're wrong," Stark observed. "But it makes sense." And it felt right on that level where his instincts operated. "Okay. Do it, Milheim. Update your battalion's Tacs and get them deployed like you want. Do it fast. We ain't got much time."

"You got it." Milheim's fierce smile somehow came through the comm circuit, then he switched circuits to start ordering his soldiers into position.

"Ethan?"

"Yeah, Vic."

"What the hell is Milheim doing?"

"Sorry. You weren't in on that conversation." Small wonder, with the entire rest of the battle to worry about. "We decided to deploy his battalion different than you'd told them."

"I see. You've gotten rid of the officers so now you have to disobey my orders."

"You think your original plan was better?"

"I don't know. But I do know I can't run a battle if you keep improvising and don't keep me informed!"

Stark winced. She's right. "I'll keep you cut in from now on."

"Thanks." Vic sounded only slightly mollified. He'd have a lot of fences to mend when this battle was over, assuming they both survived the experience. "Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not used to handling this many troops. I want input."

"Understood. Me, too."

"You sure you want that battalion deployed along the back of the ridge? The best place to hit the enemy is when they're trying to climb up at you."

"Yeah, and the best place for them to hit us is on top of that ridge. These guys are still shaky, Vic. I need them under cover."

"You're on-scene. It's your call."

The simple statement startled Stark, used to officers in the rear using the sophisticated command and control gear to literally try to call every shot he fired. If we get through this, I bet I can make these apes ten times as dangerous as they were when they were micromanaged. Just give me a chance.

A moment's respite, the line around him solidifying, Milheim's Battalion giving a spine to those soldiers who had fled the enemy. Stark switched circuits again. "Anita. How's it going?"

Her breathing came heavy, health indicators displaying stress markers across the board. "They're all over us, Sargento. This bunker ain't gonna last much longer. They've got its position, and there's a lot a heavy stuff being thrown at us."

Scan simply confirmed Corporal Gomez's report. The enemy had figured out that Mango Hill formed the hinge for the American line now. Break it, and the rest of line would probably fall apart. Stark bared his teeth as he viewed the forces assaulting the hill held by his old Squad. Too much going on at once, but I'm not gonna forget them. Okay. Think it through. Try to find an option, maybe not a by-the-book option, but one that fits the problem. "Anita. Put the bunker's chain guns and grenade launchers on continuous full auto, minimum target criteria."

"Sarge, that'll burn all their ammo in a coupla minutes, at the most."

"The bunker won't last much longer than that, anyway, and that heavy fire will roll back the troops closest to you. Hang in there a little longer. We've almost got this mess fixed up."

"Sí, Sargento. Got 'em on full auto. Uraaahhh!"

"Bail out of there, Gomez, before they take the bunker down. You and the weapon station sentries."

"Comprendo. See you on the surface, Sarge."

Back to where he stood, focusing on the situation around him, adrenaline making Stark shiver with reaction even as Vic Reynolds called in. "Got a problem with Fifth Batt, Ethan."

"What?" Stark scanned Fifth Battalion's symbology hastily, scowling as he did so. "Nobody's hitting them. Why aren't they moving?"

"Because Kalnick doesn't like his orders."

Kalnick. Sergeant Harry Kalnick. Not someone Stark had ever had much contact with. A vague impression of someone who didn't quite rub right, though. "Kalnick, this is Stark."

"Yeah." The response was surly, with a dash of annoyance thrown in for good measure.

Stark counted to three before speaking again, fighting off the pressure-driven urge to scream Kalnick into a primal state. Give him a chance to explain. "Why isn't your battalion moving into position on the flank of the penetration?"

"I'm not going to let my battalion get beat up because you and Reynolds lost the bubble. I think it's a lousy idea and lousy tactics."

"Okay, what's your idea? How do you think we should deploy Fifth Batt to stop and roll back this attack?" Silence. "Kalnick. Tell me what's wrong with the positions you've been ordered into."

"They're lousy orders! They won't help anybody!"

"What's your alternative?" Stark repeated with forced patience. "Kalnick? We haven't got all damn day. The tactical situation is critical, and every other soldier is counting on you."

"This situation isn't my fault, Stark."

"I'm not debating with you, Kalnick. Get your Battalion moving."

Another voice, one Stark recognized, broke in as other Fifth Battalion Sergeants joined the debate. "Hey, Kalnick. What's wrong with these orders?" Sergeant Stacey Yurivan questioned.

"Stark's trying to use us to bail himself out," Kalnick argued.

"The hell he is. Stark's planted right in front of the enemy advance along with Fourth Batt."

More Sergeants chimed in. "I got friends in Fourth Batt. I ain't leaving them hanging."

"Why are we just sitting here?"

"Kalnick, what's your plan?"

Another brief stretch of silence, finally broken by Stacey Yurivan's voice again. "Hey, Kalnick. Either lead, follow, or get out of the way."

On Stark's scan, units in Fifth Battalion began moving, breaking out of their neat alignment to head for the positions Reynolds had designated on the flank of the penetration. "Kalnick," he called, "I'm giving you one more chance. Get your Battalion in position. If you've got a problem, we'll settle it after this is over. Understand?"

Kalnick didn't reply directly, but as Stark watched, the rest of Fifth Battalion surged into motion. Okay. Got that fire put out. Now look at the big picture. Got a battalion taking up position to hit the flank of the penetration. Stark pulled up the command scan, chewing his lip as he watched the so-far victorious enemy swarm toward his improvised defensive line. Got another battalion here behind the ridge. Switch views again. The Castle's still holding. Mango Hill's still holding. God, look at all the crap getting thrown at them. "Corporal Gomez." Static answered, fuzzed with the staccato beat of enemy jamming. Stark swore in frustration.

"Use your command overpower setting to punch through the jamming," Vic suggested.

"I can do that? Sure I can. I got official access to it now. But what are you doing sitting on my shoulder?"

"Just lucky timing," Vic assured him. "Gotta go and make sure our reserve company is ready to punch out from the Castle. See ya."

"Likewise." Stark checked the options available on his commander's scan, calling up the overpower and linking it to Corporal Gomez's call sign.

Chaos sprang to life around him. Stark twitched as another dose of adrenaline surged into his system, urging action against violence being played out far away. "Gomez. What the hell's happening there?"

"Damn all, Sargento." The view from Gomez's remote swung dizzyingly as she pivoted to pump a round into an enemy soldier who reared up not a meter away. "Hand-to-hand," she added unnecessarily.

"Can you hold 'em?"

"I dunno. Real target-rich environment out here." Lunar terrain jumped wildly again as Stark watched a ripple of red warning lights spring to life on Gomez's remote. Grenade, maybe, exploding not far from her. The view jerked several times as she fired rapidly. "Damn. Too close, Sargento, and too many, I think. Bunker's been breached."

"Hang on," Stark repeated helplessly.

"Sí, Sargento. Hell. Murphy's down."

Murphy. How long's he been in my Squad? Forever. Stark stared at the situation projected before him on the command scan, trying to block out emotion.

"Ethan, Murphy's just one soldier," Vic advised quietly. She'd been listening in again, of course.

"Every grunt out there is just one soldier. How many one's add up to too many?"

"I don't know."

"Me, neither." Stark gazed up at the endless black sky overhead, the symbology on his HUD superimposed on the heavens as if a complicated and intricate new zodiac had sprung to life. "I can't let that position fall, Vic. That's not sentiment. It's got nothing to do with them being my Squad. The whole line will unravel on that flank if that hill goes."

"You can't weaken any other point. They've got to be watching for that."

"Maybe they are, but maybe they're already throwing everything they've got at Mango Hill and into the hole that's in our line right now. If they win at either place, they take us down. It must look like a sure thing." He toggled a circuit. "Sanch." Sergeant Sanchez, formerly one of the three squad leaders in their platoon along with Stark and Reynolds, now commanding that platoon.

"Yes, Stark." Very calm, as if he were discussing the nonexistent lunar weather.

"You see what's happening to Gomez's position?"

"Of course. They are taking a great deal of punishment. We are providing as much supporting fire as we can."

"Thanks, but you're gonna do more. I want you to strip every soldier you can possibly spare from your other two squad bunkers and get over there as fast as possible. That hill has to hold."

"You are aware the positions we leave will not be strongly enough held to withstand a determined assault." Sanchez made it a statement, not a question.

"I know. But everything else I've got available is committed. I can only get reinforcements to throw at that hill by robbing Peter to pay Paul."

"Understood. I am certain I can clear the hill of enemy soldiers," Sanchez stated, imperturbable, as if he were describing a minor difficulty, "but I cannot keep it clear. There will be too much pressure."

"I'll take care of that."

"Then we are on our way. I will contact you when I link up with Corporal Gomez." Left unsaid was the distinct possibility that Corporal Gomez might not be alive to link up with when Sanchez got there.

It added up to considerable risk, leaving only skeleton crews manning the other two bunkers in that sector. Even a small but resolute push from the enemy targeted at that weak point could widen the hole in the front considerably and sweep away the only troops Stark could really rely on in the bargain. But it's either that or lose anyway.

"Grace," he called Divisional Artillery.

"I know I'm not stopping the enemy advance, Stark. Didn't say I could."

"I know that, and you're doing the best anybody can. No, this is about saving one position. How long to set up a barrage onto this spot?" He keyed in the coordinates of Gomez's bunker.

"We got a unit there, Stark. Looks like more on the way, too."

"I know. They'll be in a bunker. How long?"

"How big a barrage?"

"Enough to sterilize the top of that hill and the immediate area. No penetrators, though."

"Just surface and near-surface? To protect the troops in the bunker? Stark, I can't guarantee that none of those won't have a fuse malfunction and go subsurface before it detonates. It happens."

It happens. Stark wavered mentally again, pondering bad choices and worse choices. You'd think commanders would have enough to worry about during a battle without wondering if their weapons will work as advertised. But it's probably always been that way. I'll bet weapons designers in the Stone Age managed to screw up some of the rocks they handed out to the other cave dwellers. "We'll have to chance it, Grace. It's the only way to stop the assault there."

"Okay, Stark. You're the boss. It's on."

"Thanks. Stand by for my word."

Another scan of the oncoming enemy. Some were charging ahead of the rest, heedless of the risk as the fruits of victory danced before their eyes. A couple of those enemy soldiers crested the ridge as Stark watched, their shapes suddenly silhouetted against the stars, the symbology on Stark's HUD momentarily superimposed on the actual objects it represented. Perhaps the overeager enemy soldiers had a brief moment to realize the enormity of their mistake. Perhaps not. A hundred rifles fired almost simultaneously, the impacts of the bullets launching their targets backward into space to fall again in long, slow arcs down the reverse slope.

"Sanchez. How're you coming?"

"In among them. Wait one."

A small force of enemy soldiers, not more than a single squad, came around the ridge to the left, trying to avoid the broken terrain by clinging to the slope above it. The Fourth Batt company positioned there waited until the enemy cleared the slope, then opened up a withering barrage that cut down every soldier in seconds. A low snarl came across the comm circuit as the American soldiers reveled in the small victory. "Good job," Stark called. "There's more coming, and they're gonna get the same treatment."

"Stark." Sanchez, breathing heavily now, but otherwise nothing in his tone revealing he'd been in heavy combat. "We have cleared the hill of enemy soldiers. They are positioning for another assault."

"That's fine. They're gonna regret it."

"Then we hold."

"No. Not yet. Get everybody down into the bunker."

"The bunker has been breached."

"You won't be fighting from it. Get under cover! Fast!"

"Ah. I see."

On the scale Stark was using for his command scan, the enemy units hurtling to regain their foothold on the hill seemed to merge with the American symbology as he switched circuits. "Grace. Now. Lay it on."

"Okay, Stark. Those troops up there have got, uh, thirty-five seconds before they get turned into hamburger."

"Roger." Stark swapped circuits frantically. "Is everybody down in the bunker, Sanch? You've got thirty seconds!"

"Thirty seconds. Acknowledged. Our rear guard is entering now."

Stark watched the rounds arcing in from the rear, trying to imagine almost a platoon of soldiers crammed into a single bunker battered by enemy fire. They'd be lying on top of one another, almost immobile except for those closest to any openings, huddled in the dark, feeling that hopeless fear foot soldiers experienced when they know heavy artillery was coming down on them. At such a moment, only chance and the grace of God mattered as training and experience came to nothing. Counting down the last few seconds to impact. Very easy to do with their HUDs helpfully displaying the digits in bright red numbers. Ten seconds as sensors on the surface revealed enemy forces charging onto the crest of the hill, expecting desperate resistance from ground level, then pausing as their own sensors told them of the threat coming from above. Five seconds as the enemy began frantically scrambling into retreat, too late and too slow. Only a few of the incoming American shells blossomed into early death as a result of counterfire from too-distant enemy defenses.

Zero. Silence. Somewhere hell had come to rest on the Moon's surface, massive shells hurling their fury onto a single, small area. On Stark's HUD, streams of symbology converged on the elevation nicknamed Mango Hill, vanishing on impact. Clean, with no vegetation to block or divert the path of shells. Quiet, with no atmosphere to transmit the unbearable thunder of explosions. Precise, without variables like wind to mess up finely calculated trajectories. Someone who had never experienced a shelling would have no concept from the HUD display, from the serenity of the Moon even a small distance away, of the reality where those shells were falling. Blizzards of metal fragments cutting down everything in their path, explosions rearranging the rocks and dust in wild patterns, hurling high-velocity gasses against anything too close to strike with deadly force before those gasses dissipated into the emptiness around them.

No comm signal could punch through that interference. Stark could only wait while the fury ran its course, wait with the silence that marked so much of the violence of war on an airless world.

It'd only take one shell, one shell penetrating into that bunker. Collapse the whole thing, expose the troops inside to the rest of the barrage, kill 'em all. And I'm the one who ordered it. Please, God, let it be the right thing. From somewhere, a memory of Vic's voice came. Sometimes even doing the right thing doesn't do a damn thing for your conscience.

A larger force of the enemy, perhaps twenty, came over the ridge crest, firing as they came, and died in another concentrated fusillade.

"Stark?" He jerked at the transmission, realizing as he did so that it had not come from Sanchez. "This is Lamont. I've got three squadrons of tanks in position on the right flank of the penetration."

"You do?" He'd missed that, with everything else going on.

"Yeah. Reynolds sent us up. That's okay by you, right?"

"Sure as hell right." Stark opened his scan, viewing a larger area. Lamont's armor sat in a half-dozen clusters, ready to rip the guts out of the enemy flank. "You hold fire 'til I give the word."

"Sure thing," Lamont acknowledged. "Perfect targets out there. This is gonna be like shooting on a firing range."

"Ethan," Vic chimed in, "you've also got APCs moving up. I'm setting them behind the ridge to help cover it."

"Thanks." He'd completely forgotten about armored support in the rush of activity, a ground soldier instinctively depending upon his own weapons. "Good job. Damn good job."

"Sargento?"

Stark let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Anita? Corporal Gomez?"

"Sí. Sergeant Sanchez, he got a little banged up during that barrage. Partial bunker collapse. Lost some suit systems, but he's okay otherwise. What do we do now, Sarge? Any more of that artillery coming?"

"Not ours," Stark vowed.

"Gracias Dios. I don't wanna ever sit through somethin' like that again."

"God willing, you won't. Now get out on the surface again. That last assault must have been wiped out, but the enemy's gonna try to put some fresh troops together and hit you one more time. Don't worry. I'm about to give them something else to worry about, so just hold on a little longer."

"', Sargento. We'll hold 'til hell freezes over. This hill is ours. We paid for it, and I ain't letting no one else take it."

"Stark?" Milheim again, Fourth Battalion commander. "We just going to hold this line?" he asked doubtfully.

"No. Listen up, everybody." He could see them, in his mind's eye, armored figures still rushing into final position or poised on the line, waiting for his next words under the black sky and the endless stars. "They've come as far as they're gonna come. We're gonna hit them so hard they won't be back for a long time. We're gonna get even for some of what they did to Third Division."

"Does that mean no prisoners?" a voice inquired.

Stark had an image of Sergeant Grace, wishing to take personal revenge on General Meecham for the death of his brother. Now he could do the same, in spades, inflicting the same slaughter on the enemy that Third Division had suffered. He clenched his teeth in sudden anger. "Negative, negative, negative. We take prisoners. We are soldiers, ladies and gentlemen. American soldiers. Despite everything. Don't forget that. We do not kill people trying to surrender."

"Understood," Milheim rogered-up for the entire force.

Stark paused, wondering how to issue a single command to Fourth Battalion and also to the polyglot collection of soldiers who had been rallied here. "Listen up. Everybody behind this ridge. You are all part of Task Force Milheim. Understand? Vic, can you link them all?"

"Roger. Wait one. Okay. Got 'em linked. They're all part of one command circuit, now."

"Good." Stark called up another circuit, speaking to every unit bordering the penetration. "Everybody hold fire until I give the word." Stark switched scans rapidly, seeing the battle from the perspective of other soldiers on other parts of the field. From one of the tanks hidden to the right, threat symbology highlighted shadowy figures gathering below the opposite crest of the ridge from where Stark stood with his line of troops. Better than company strength this time, he estimated, and getting stronger by the moment, preparing for another shove, which the enemy doubtlessly believed certain to shatter the remaining resistance to their advance. "Hold it." Over on the left, an anti-armor team tracked enemy APCs rushing forward to catch up with their infantry, the anti-armor team's HUDs painting a bright aim point along the flank of one APC. "Hold it." Up on the hill, Gomez held the remnants of her Squad and Sanchez's reinforcements among the newly rearranged landscape, firing steadily at enemy soldiers trying to regroup below for another push at Mango Hill, but ignoring enemy forces scrambling through the gap. "Hold it." The right side of the penetration again, where Delta Company had gathered in the lee of the Castle, chafing like racehorses awaiting the starting gun. "Hold it." Back to the tank, watching as the enemy soldiers swarmed up the slope toward him. Easy, far too easy, to imagine himself among those troops, charging to the attack, doped on adrenaline, elated and scared at the same time. They're not monsters. They're grunts like me, and soon they're gonna get cut to ribbons in a crossfire. Hell. But I didn't start this war, and I didn't launch this battle, and I'm damned if I'm gonna lose either one. Or one more soldier than I have to.

Stark waited, waited until the charge had almost reached the crest. "Now. Open fire. General engagement."

The enemy attackers hit the top of the ridge and ran head-on into a concentrated barrage from Fourth Battalion and the rallied soldiers from other units. The charge halted as abruptly as if it had hit a brick wall, the leading elements hurled backward by the impact of the American fire, their fall back down the slope dreamlike in the low gravity, bodies slowly spinning from the impact of bullets and the venting of atmosphere, limp arms and legs occasionally striking the slope to generate small falls of dust and gravel to drift gently down in tandem. The scene had all the weird beauty and horror of a mad painter's vision of hell, set against a landscape of dead black shadows and blinding white sunlight.

The enemy rallied just beneath the crest, but before the assault could resume, fire swept in from the flanks, raking the exposed troops once more. The enemy ranks seemed to dissolve, vanishing from the ridge, a few survivors frantically racing downward. Stark switched vid feeds rapidly, viewing other areas, seeing enemy armored vehicles erupting into flowers of metal fragments and gasses, soldiers hesitating in their charge, falling under fire, then beginning to drop back. "Alright, you apes. We've taken enough punishment. Let's hand out some. Task Force Milheim, let's go! Everybody forward. Keep going until we reoccupy every position we lost. Vic, get Fifth Battalion and Delta Company moving to seal the penetration."

Stark was charging up the slope, aware of the soldiers following even without checking the symbology on his HUD. To the top and over with one smooth motion, one free hand shoving him down the reverse slope. A figure rose nearby, IFF painting it red for enemy. Stark's rifle swung and fired without his conscious thought, hurling the soldier back against the dead rocks. Maybe the soldier had been trying to surrender. Maybe trying to fight on and buy time for friends running for their lives. Stark would never know.

"Ethan! You don't have to lead the damn charge!" Vic shouted at him, her faraway presence sounding next to his ear.

"Yes, I do. They're following me, Vic. How's Delta Company coming?"

"If you weren't in the middle of combat you could check for yourself! Geary's pushing her company out, but she's scared of mines and enemy forces that might have occupied our bunkers."

"She's got a right to be scared."

"Ethan, I can't give her company detailed orders for their Tacs when we know so little about the threat there."

"Then don't. Let Geary handle it bunker by bunker."

A pause. "Right. I'll tell her to run her company from where she is."

"Fine, but make sure she knows we're depending on her to retake those positions so these people we're chasing don't get away."

"Roger. I'll keep a fire going under her."

Down the slope, his feet pushed off outcrops with the skill born of experience, driving him downward in rapid surges that altered direction at each push to confuse anyone trying to target him. Other soldiers raced alongside, literally running over a few of the enemy caught in the motions of throwing aside their weapons. Ahead, the bulk of the enemy forces had reversed direction, falling back as fast as they'd advanced, trying to escape the trap they could now see closing in from all sides.

A section of broken terrain ahead suddenly began spitting bullets at the advancing Americans, and Stark's HUD screamed threat warnings as it highlighted the threat symbology heading his way. The soldier closest to Stark came to an abrupt halt, his forward motion stopped by the impact of bullets, then was punched backward by several more hits. Stark fell behind a small mound of lunar dust, piled up by who-knew-what forces over uncounted years, and wished those forces had managed to build a higher pile in all that time. Shouts rang out over the circuit, orders and warnings intermingling. An attempted rush of Americans to the right was met by a flurry of fire, driving the attackers to ground. The charge faltered, hesitating as the retreating enemy pulled away behind the cover of their rear guard.

Stark scanned the surrounding terrain, cursing. Perfect defensive position. I either lose a lot of people charging straight in or lose a lot of time working around the flanks. I wish—

A boulder detached itself from the moonscape, sliding forward as the tank's main gun swiveled to bear on the enemy strongpoint. The cannon twitched, lobbing a shell into the center of the enemy firing. Dust and rock flew in a swelling geyser as the tank's round created a new crater, then a second shell dug another hole not far from the first. A few figures rose, scrambling for cover or trying to target the tank, only to be cut down by bullets from Stark's soldiers.

The tank slid to a halt, its secondary cannon spraying the enemy position with fire as the main gun continued to leisurely hurl heavy rounds onto any point that might hide a concentration of enemy soldiers. A moment later the terrain seemed to erupt armored figures as the enemy broke, leaping up to flee. Rifle fire claimed several before they could travel a meter, then most of the others halted, raising their arms in the universal gesture of surrender.

"Milheim," Stark called out, "detail somebody to guard those prisoners."

Before Milheim could reply, Vic Reynolds came on line, speaking in cool, clear tones. "All prisoners are to be instructed to drop safeguards on their suit systems so we can take them over.

"What if they don't do it?" someone demanded.

"Tell them that anyone who doesn't has not surrendered. Give them five seconds to comply and then open fire again." She altered subjects smoothly. "All APCs forward. Even sections proceed just behind the infantry line to provide fire support. Odd sections break off to assist guarding prisoners."

A flurry of questions sparked by the order flew over the comm circuits. "How many prisoners should each APC guard?"

"What if an odd section is closer to the front line right now?"

"Should we break the sections down if we have to?"

"Dammit!" Stark bellowed. "Think for yourselves!" Silence followed his order. "Vic, did that go out?"

Her chuckle answered him, incongruous against the battle flaring on all sides. "Yeah, Ethan, it went out."

"Why didn't anybody acknowledge it?"

"They're probably in shock. God only knows the last time that particular order was given by anyone in the U.S. military."

Forward again, Stark no longer literally leading the charge as younger, less cautious soldiers moved faster, running down groups of the enemy before they could establish new defensive positions. Other groups, in familiar armor, appeared as well—Americans captured in the rout now shocked to find themselves free and pressed into guarding their own former captors.

"Vic! Has Geary reoccupied the entire front?"

"Negative. Too much resistance. I'm angling a couple companies from Fifth Batt up toward the front to reinforce her and close the gap from the other side."

"Can we push some tanks in from the right, too?"

"I'll ask Lamont."

Down and through a small crater, a group of soldiers appeared with shocking suddenness off to the left. Stark's rifle was already steadying as his IFF chirped a reassuring "friendly," then the new arrivals opened fire on the nearest retreating enemy forces. Fifth Battalion, he realized, scanning his HUD. We've linked up. "Keep moving, everybody. Don't stop. Keep pushing them hard so they don't have time to dig in."

Pull out the scan, viewing the entire area, symbology swimming in dizzy patterns as friendly positions shifted around the entire penetration and enemy positions popped up, vanished, then reappeared in fleeting sensor detections. A gaudy sensor display to Stark's left, throwing out wild bursts of infrared, resolved into an enemy APC as he reached visual range, its fuel and ammunition burning in an erratic bonfire. Figures lay scattered among the rocks, some in suits still broadcasting feeble signals, some silent and unmoving. He tried not to look, beyond ensuring none were enemy soldiers playing possum, and tried not to personally tally the losses suffered so far this day.

Victory or defeat. Each had a momentum, becoming self-sustaining as confidence or despair skyrocketed. Stark wasn't leading the charge anymore; he was caught up in it, swept along as the counterattack surged forward.

Not far now. The front beckoned, crowds of enemy soldiers milling about in confusion, raising their arms toward the dark heavens or making desperate attempts to break out through the reoccupied bunkers. American armor, rushing forward in a highly risky dash, had reached the bunker line and formed a moving cordon, tracking back and forth to overawe or fire into small pockets of resistance. Stark's troops swept forward, filling the circuits with cries of triumph as they turned defeat into unlooked-for victory.

Some of the troops kept moving, reaching the bunker line and going beyond to chase the retreating foe. Stark felt it, then, a force born of exhilaration and heedlessness, pulling at him and the others, urging them forward. The enemy line must be thin. They must have weakened it to push troops into the attack. Their own panicked troops are running into and through it. We can take them. We can break their line.

And then what? Stark checked himself with a muffled curse. What the hell would we do if we did break that line? We can't exploit it, and we couldn't hold an isolated section way out in front of our own line. And what if it isn't weakened? What can I win here that would be worth what's it's likely to cost? "Everyone, do not pursue past our own front. I repeat, do not pursue."

"But we got 'em! They're running!"

"So were we not so long ago, and what'd we just do to them? Nobody's touched the enemy line yet, and you apes are running right at their bunkers! Anybody forgotten what happened to Third Division?" The question, invoking the deaths of thousands of soldiers who'd tried to break that same enemy line, seemed to have more force than Stark's earlier command. His units suddenly braked, but those forward of the American bunkers held their ground instead of falling back.

"Stark," someone beseeched, "we can do this. End this damn war."

Tempting, but only if your thoughts remained focused on the here-and-now. Stark mentally braced himself, then triggered a change in the unit scans. New symbology sprang to life on everyone's HUDs, phantom units arrayed for battle, the better part of a brigade of soldiers frozen in midcharge against that same portion of the enemy front. "Everybody see that?" Stark demanded. "Those are dead soldiers from Third Division, still out here because we haven't been able to recover them yet. Look at them. They thought they could take those defenses, too. Remember?" How could they ever forget? Alarms screaming threat warnings, that brigade dying out in front of us and nothing we could do but watch. Dear God, never again. "Now get back inside our lines!"

His troops moved at last, pulling back slowly and cautiously, keeping to cover as best they could. The so-far silent enemy line began spitting angry shells in their wake, hastening the withdrawal to the safety of the American defensive umbrella.

Enemy artillery reacted, throwing shells into the area, the barrages losing much of their force to American defenses, but some rounds making it through. God, I hate artillery. Enemy artillery, anyway. I'm sure I've lost too many people today already, and I've got too many soldiers out in the open rounding up enemy prisoners . . . . "Vic, is there any way to talk to the enemy from headquarters?"

"I don't—yes. Tanaka says there's a red line direct from here to their headquarters. Why?"

"I want someone to get on that red line and tell them we've taken a lot of prisoners and right now their own artillery is dropping shells on those prisoners. They better lay off hitting that area unless they want to kill a bunch of their own people."

"Roger."

It took a few minutes, but the enemy fire lifted, avoiding attempts to hit deep targets and contenting itself with pounding the American front. Stark stepped carefully downward, working down the slope, making his way to a position screened from direct enemy observation. I'm forgetting something. Something important. Ah, hell. "Anita."

"Yes, Sarge." Her voice shook slightly, reflecting overwhelming fatigue of mind and body.

"The enemy's gonna start hitting your hill with artillery, just as soon's they think of it. The bunkers to your left have been reoccupied, and we've got this situation stabilized enough so you can come down. Get everyone off Mango Hill and into those other two bunkers to your right. We'll be able to cover the gap."

"No."

"No? What the hell do you mean, 'no'?"

"I ain't leaving here." Her voice shook more, beginning to quiver as Stark knew her body must be at that moment. "We paid for this hill."

"Corporal Gomez, we are not giving up the hill. We will retain possession. But leaving infantry up there exposed to enemy bombardment would mean throwing their lives away."

"I can send most of the other troops to the bunkers—"

"Corporal Gomez, you and every other soldier on that hill will reenter the bunkers to your right, and you will do it now, or I will personally come up there and kick your stubborn damn butt into the nearest bunker! Is that understood?"

A long moment later, she answered, voice ragged with apology. "Sí. Sorry, Sargento. Will comply. Been a long day. I—"

"Got nothing to apologize for. You did great. Now, get your people under cover." Stark watched the symbology on Mango Hill begin to move, sliding back and sideways in sections as the defenders finally relinquished their hold. Have I forgotten anything else really important? God, I don't know. So close. They almost had us. Just figured they'd keep charging deep, and we'd keep throwing in small groups of reinforcements to try to stop them as soon as possible. But we thought of something else. Thanks, Kate. That's another one I owe you.

The debt never seemed to lessen, Stark reflected grimly. So many years ago, his fellow soldiers dying all around, trapped by superior forces on the hellhole forever to be known as Patterson's Knoll. Corporal Kate Stein, also surviving until night fell, but critically wounded, ordered Stark to leave and try to escape in the dark. He'd promised her then, promised to save other soldiers someday even though he couldn't save her that night. And he'd kept that promise, despite the risks, despite the anger of officers who cared more about sticking to a plan than fighting smart and keeping their people alive. Kept it until it had led him here, with no idea of where it might lead next.

That man-created line on the lunar surface, which had been the front, then fallen, and now become the front again, seemed curiously peaceful. Stark stood below the top of a low rise, protected from the enemy artillery that sought belated vengeance by targeting anything moving among the American positions. A tank, its multiton bulk gliding with incongruous delicacy among the rocky terrain, took up position about half a kilometer away. With its massive curved carapace, it resembled a giant, mutant beetle hiding in the lee of the ridge, although fortunately for humanity no beetle had ever been armed with such an impressive array of heavy weaponry.

"Yeee-hah," Sergeant Lamont remarked in a conversational tone. "That there was the best fun I've had in all my years up here. We gonna do it again?"

"Dear Jesus, I hope not," Stark responded fervently.

"Ethan?"

"Yeah, Vic." He had to keep reminding himself that she wasn't somewhere nearby, guarding his flank. No, Reynolds sat far away at headquarters, guarding both flanks and his rear as she helped oversee the battle.

"Could you do me a small favor?"

"Sure, Vic, what?"

"Get the hell away from the front line!"

"Okay, okay." He tagged the tank's comm circuit again. "Hey, Lamont, I gotta go. My mom's calling. Can you use your armor to stiffen the front until we get all the bunkers back on-line?"

"Sure. No prob. You ain't gonna get that bunker on Mango Hill working anytime soon, though."

He shied away from the implications. "I know. We'll have to figure out how to fill the gap."

"Heck, I can use my tanks as mobile bunkers. Rotate a half-squadron at a time up right behind the front, keep 'em moving behind screening terrain so the enemy can't pinpoint 'em. Good practice for us, and it'll make anybody think twice about trying to annoy us around here again. That is," Lamont added, "if that's what you tell me to do with the armor."

"Lamont, you tell me how to use armor. How come I haven't seen you armor apes do that kind of thing before?"

"Because anytime you take one of these tanks out of the storage hangar there's a chance it'll get hurt, and they're so blasted expensive no general ever wanted to let them out of the hangar. Let me tell you, I'm pretty tired of only driving these things in simulators."

Stark nodded, unseen by Lamont. "Those tin cans'll see plenty of action, now. Work out your plan and just shoot a copy to Reynolds and me."

"You're the boss. See you in the Out-City."

"Yeah." Stark shook his head, eyes suddenly blurring so the symbology on his HUD fuzzed into unreadable blobs. "Vic?"

"Here."

"What's happening out there? Is everything else okay?"

"Check your command scan."

"I . . . can't. Look, just tell me. We got things fixed here, right? Any problems anywhere else on the perimeter?"

"No, Ethan. No problems. When the other enemy sectors saw how hard we hit back, they pulled their own forces out of contact. Relax."

"Thanks." Stark started trembling, first his arms, then his legs, shaking so badly he couldn't stand and had to kneel, then lie on the rough lunar rock, eyes looking past the symbology on his HUD to the empty black sky beyond. After awhile, the cold began to seep through his suit's insulation, but he lay still except for the tremors running through his body. The stars swung slowly overhead, scattered points of light blessedly free of meaning, indifferent to the woes humans inflicted on one another.

"Commander?" The voice had some vague familiarity. Stark shifted his head slightly, seeing for the first time the bulk of an APC looming nearby, its curved armored shell black-on-black against the rocks rising behind it. "Sergeant Reynolds sent me to bring you back to headquarters. Commander?"

That command-configured APC. Forgot about it. "Yeah." He struggled to rise, submitting finally to aid from the driver as his stiff joints refused to cooperate. Inside the APC, he strapped in, looking past the status displays as the vehicle rose and swung around on to a course back to headquarters. This time, its speed didn't really matter.

 

Stark walked slowly through the headquarters complex, unaware of those around him, until he reached the room he'd chosen for his own living quarters. It had belonged to a Colonel once, which made it large enough to cause Stark some embarrassment, but it had quickly become apparent that he needed that room to handle the work his new responsibilities had brought. Now, though, he ignored the work reminders blinking on the desk, palmed off the lights, and sat silently in the dim illumination of the room's nightlight.

Sometime later, Vic pulled the door open, letting a shaft of light from the hall lance into the room. "Hey, Ethan."

"Hey."

She leaned against the door frame, arms crossed. "What're you doing?"

"Trying not to think."

"Jeez. One battle in command, and you're already trying to act like a General." When Stark didn't rise to the joke, she shook her head, then extended a hand. "Come on. We're going for a walk."

"Why? What good will a walk do?"

"A helluva lot more good than sitting in a dark room. Let's go, soldier."

Stark stood reluctantly, yielding to the pressure as Vic steered him out of the headquarters complex, along corridors whose rock walls grew less finished and whose width shrank as they approached the Out-City. The bars and corridors were filled with soldiers celebrating with the curious joy of those who have stared death in the face, yet somehow come away living once again. Amid the larger groups, small clusters of more sober men and women marked those discussing the loss of friends and relatives. How, when, and where. Knowing those things didn't help the dead in the least, but they meant a great deal to those left behind.

"Who are these apes?" Stark wondered.

"Fifth Battalion," Vic replied, "and the units that broke on the front. I pulled them off the line and left Fourth Battalion to cover the area for a little while."

"Good idea." These soldiers might look happy, but he could feel their brittleness, the fragile equilibrium under their surface gaiety. "Milheim did a good job."

"Sure did. Got a real solid outfit, there, and a real solid commander."

"Glad they're holding the line right now." A deep breath. "Any casualty count, yet?"

Reynolds twisted her mouth. "Things are pretty confused, but we ran a system inventory and came up with about a hundred dead. Wounded? God only knows. It'll take us days to sort that out."

"A hundred dead."

"About. Hundred and fifty, max. Ethan, most of those died running. We could tell by where their bodies are lying."

"That's the way it usually works." They'd kept moving as they talked, and as he walked past some of the soldiers recognized Stark, grinning as they brought right hands up in sharp salutes. "We kicked butt!" one called, to a chorus of agreement from nearby listeners.

Good morale, Stark realized with surprise. They survived, we won, and the butcher's bill wasn't too bad. Pretty damn small, truth be told. One will always be too many, but at least I kept the casualties down. "Maybe I didn't do too bad, after all," he muttered under his breath.

"You did real good, Ethan," Vic stated.

"How the hell did you hear that?"

"I didn't. I read your mind."

"I always figured you could do that." Stark shook his head, slowly smiling. "Okay. I did okay. Could have been better. There's a whole lot of stuff we gotta work out before another battle like this happens. Coordination. Getting a lot of the detail off those damned headquarters displays. Setting up people to support you and me when too much is happening at once." His smile faded into a frown as he caught sight of one soldier slumped against a corridor wall, face reflecting some internal wound. Stark veered to come face-to-face with the man. "What's up, soldier?"

"Huh?" The question had obviously shocked the soldier out of an internal reverie, and now his expression screwed up in total misery. "Stark. Sir. Damn it all. I let you down."

"You let me down? Just how did that happen?"

"I ran." The two words seem to choke in the soldier's throat. "I ran away. My unit broke, maybe because I ran."

Vic moved forward, face concerned, but Stark waved her back. "How far? How far did you run?"

"I . . . I dunno. As far as that ridge."

"The ridge. The one where I was? The one we held, and then hit back on?"

A flash of pride broke through the pain. "Yessir. That one."

"Let me tell you something, soldier." The man braced himself in obvious expectation of a severe tongue lashing at best and arrest at worst. "If I'd seen you running on the field I might have shot you to stop you, because I have to worry about a lot of people and sometimes that's the only way to get their attention. Yeah, it's bad you ran. Real bad. But you stopped. That counts, too. You stopped, you fought. That means you've still got the makings of a good soldier."

"It's okay?" The man obviously didn't believe it.

"No, it's not okay," Stark snapped. "You let me down, you let down all the other soldiers in this unit, and most importantly you let down the soldiers on either side of you who depended on you to guard their flanks. Don't do it again. Ever. Or I'll make you regret the day you put on a uniform."

"I won't. I swear."

"Good, because the enemy gives me enough to worry about. You apes are too damn good to let me down. You're too damn good to let your friends down."

"Yessir. You don't have to worry about me." Still unhappy, but determined as well, now.

"Good. I won't forget you. Carry on." The soldier saluted stiffly, standing rigid as Stark and Reynolds walked on.

"You're mellowing," Vic remarked.

"Am not." Stark glared at her. "Didn't I sound mad enough? 'Cause I sure as hell was mad."

"Right now, that soldier's a lot more afraid of you than he'll ever be of the enemy," Vic assured him. "But he confessed to running, Ethan. That's a court-martial offense."

"I know that." He scowled down the corridor. "A lot of people ran. I can't court-martial them all. Don't want to. That'd do more damage than their running did. Rip outfits apart. No. The shame, knowing they let everybody down, that'll make 'em fight better next time. They'll want to prove themselves."

She nodded judiciously. "The Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't leave a lot of room for discretion, but you were never big on the letter of the law, were you?"

"Vic, the letter of the law is for people who don't have enough sense to know what's right unless it's spelled out for them. I am not going to lead these people at the point of a bayonet. They'll follow me because they want to, or I'm doing something wrong."

"Not a bad philosophy." She chewed her lower lip, gazing upward at the rough steel-and-rock ceiling over the corridor. "So, you told me during the battle you had some idea why they started running in the first place."

"I think so, yeah."

"Care to enlighten poor ignorant me?"

"Let's get a beer, first." Stark veered again, heading into one of the literally hole-in-the-wall establishments to grab two beers. Waving off a small group of soldiers who tried to surrender their seats at the only table in the tiny bar, he led Vic outside again, leaning against the rough rock wall, oblivious to the cold, which somehow managed to seep into the stone no matter how well insulated or how warm humans made their living areas.

Stark took a long, slow drink, pausing to order his thoughts. "You want to know why they ran? Because they didn't have a good reason to fight. They haven't figured out their cause, yet, Vic. They don't know what they're fighting for."

"Hmmm." Vic pondered the statement, taking a drink of her own beer. "You'd think they'd fight to save themselves."

"Sure. But saving your skin is a lousy combat motivator. That's why mercs make rotten soldiers, right? They're fighting to stay alive and draw their pay checks."

"Yeah." It was Vic's turn to scowl, though she aimed the gesture at her beer. "This stuff really sucks. Ethan, you and I and any veteran knows the best way to get yourself killed in combat is to start running."

"But that's just it! It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. The way to stay alive is to stay in combat? No, every instinct we've got says to stay alive you run away from danger. You've gotta have a reason to override those instincts."

"Good point." She looked down at her beer again. "I'm empty. You should've gotten more than two."

"I thought you said it sucked."

"It does. But it's still beer."

"Anyway," Stark continued, "we've spent our lives fighting for . . . what? The U.S. of A.? Protecting our families? The Constitution? Or just plain trying to do the right thing in a world full of wrong things. So which of those still apply? Right here, right now?"

Vic rubbed the tip of her nose with one forefinger as she thought. "Doing right," she finally concluded.

"I sure hope so. But you had to think, didn't you?"

"Sure did." Vic stared outward, eyes fixed somewhere and somewhen else. "The only way to handle combat is to not think about things, like how maybe you're going to die at any moment, but if you don't have much of a clue why you're fighting in the first place I guess people can't stop from thinking."

"Maybe." Stark snorted in sudden derision. "That'd fit. The only people who can't handle the mil are the ones who can't stop thinking."

"So, what are you thinking right now?"

He looked around, taking in the troops filling the corridor and the cramped bars that lined it. "I'm thinking we got off lucky. That battle was too damn close to lost. How can we know the same won't happen again next time somebody pushes us hard?"

She laughed. "Ethan, you gave them a reason to fight that'll be good enough until we come up with some others. Okay, two reasons."

"And those are?"

"You. And one another."

"Me?" Stark stared in disbelief. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"People need heroes and leaders, Ethan. You're both. Think about it. Think how you held things together when the other sections of the line started getting real nervous. You told them they were letting you down."

"That's not what I said. Was it?"

"Maybe not exactly, but it was the general idea. And they didn't want to let you down because you've never let them down. Whenever things start to fall apart, Stark is there, holding the line, looking out for everybody. You can't ask for much more in a commander."

"Yeah. Right." Stark looked away, but every direction held soldiers offering smiles and salutes. "How about a commander who knows what the hell he's doing?"

Vic grinned. "Hell's belles, Ethan, we've never had one of those."

"I've let a lot of people down, Vic. They're dead, and I was responsible for them."

"You can't take the blame for those guys running—"

"I didn't mean them. I meant the people in my Squad. God, how many have died? I can still see them all."

Her smile vanished as she stared down at her empty beer. "We've all got those kinds of ghosts, Ethan. Some more than others. If you never wanted anyone who worked for you to die, you're in the wrong line of work."

"I guess. Damn strange way to make a living." He crumpled his beer, tossing the empty container into a nearby recycling bin. "Which reminds me. There's something I gotta do."

"Okay," she agreed as he began to go. "Ethan?"

"Yeah."

"You did a good job. Don't torture yourself because it wasn't perfect." One corner of Vic's mouth twisted upward. "Who am I kidding? I'm telling Ethan Stark not to sweat the fact he's not perfect? Why don't I just tell the Moon to grow an atmosphere?"

"Why don't you? You seem attracted to hopeless causes." He left her laughing again, heading back to headquarters, not stopping until he reached his room again. Stark sat carefully before the terminal, bracing himself, knowing he'd put off one last task for too long already, then activated his comm unit. "Corporal Gomez."

The reply came after a few moments, thin but steady. "Sí, Sargento." She looked like hell, face pale and drawn, but tried to draw herself as erect as possible.

"Relax, Anita. How you doin'?"

Her body drooped very slightly. "Okay. Pretty tough battle, huh, Sarge?"

"I've been in a lot easier ones. You did one helluva job. Damn good."

Color flooded back into her face as Corporal Gomez flushed. "Gracias, Sargento."

Stark hesitated before speaking again. "How many did we lose, Anita?"

It took a moment for her reply. "Kidd. She fought real good, but there was just too many targeting her. Hit six, seven times. Hoxely. Got a big hole blown in his chest. And Maseru. Too green, that kid, he made one mistake too many. Not his fault, I guess. Didn't have time to learn the ropes."

Three dead. Surprisingly few. "That's it?"

"Dead, yeah. Then there's wounded. Just about everybody got beat up some. The worst ones, well, Billings took a hit in the shoulder that broke everything all to hell. The docs are building her a new shoulder joint and stuff. Chen got another round in his hip. He must have a target painted on there."

"What about Murphy? He was down . . ."

"Oh, yeah." Her eyes widened. "Man, I'm really wasted, I guess, to forget him. Murphy, he lost an arm."

"An arm?" Not dead after all. But—"He lost a whole arm?"

Gomez nodded. "Yeah. Don't know for sure what hit him, maybe he got in the way of a bunker-buster. Blew away everything up to the shoulder, and some of that, too, I guess, and filled his side with shrapnel."

"How the hell did he survive that?"

Gomez's tight grin spoke more of remembered tension than of humor. "Real lucky guy. Somebody was close enough to him to slap one of them economy-size battle bandages on the wound. You know, the ones that clot the blood automatic. That sorta sealed the big hole in the suit, too, long enough to get Murphy into a survival bag. Still don't know how he lived long enough to be stabilized, but he's tough, eh, Sargento?"

"Yeah, he's tough," Stark agreed, knowing that he was probably talking to the "somebody" who'd saved Murphy.

"They can grow him a new one, right? A new arm? We got that up here?"

"Yeah. Either the mil docs or the civs can handle it. I'll make sure they do."

"Good. Murphy was worried about that." She grinned again. "While he was being medevac'd I told him, 'Murphy, you're damn lucky that Sarge ain't here, 'cause if he was, he'd tell you too bad you lost that arm instead of your head, since sometimes you use that arm.' "

Stark laughed, too, unable to hold it back. "Anita, you are one hard-ass bitch."

Her grin widened. "Gracias, Sargento."

"Take it easy, all of you. Get all the rest you need."

"Don't got no choice. The docs, they wanted to stick us all in medical, but they're still full up with more serious wounded so they had to confine us to our bunks. Pretty good, huh? Getting ordered to stay in bed all day."

"Enjoy it. I doubt it'll ever happen again." The connection ended, Stark palmed the lights off again, but this time he lay on the bunk, closing his eyes to sleep, trying not to see the faces of Kidd, Hoxely, and Maseru.

 

He was still nursing a cup of coffee the next morning in the nearest rec room when Vic came in and plopped down at the same table. "Good morning, sunshine."

"Likewise."

"What you been up to this morning?"

"Working out." Stark rolled stiff shoulders, wincing. "Haven't done a resistance workout in way too long."

Vic drew herself a cup of coffee, smiling archly. "We've been busy."

"I know. I also know what'll happen to my muscles if I drop off the daily workout routine for any length of time. Speaking of which, when was your last workout?"

"You got me. Right before we enjoyed front-row seats for the death of Third Division." She nodded several times at Stark's expression. "I'll get back in the routine. Cross my heart. You don't have to look so disgusted."

"I'm not disgusted by you. It's this coffee. With all the luxuries here at headquarters, I always figured the officers also had good coffee. Boy, was I wrong. How come I've never found a decent cup of coffee in the mil?"

"I think there's a regulation against it." Vic sipped her own cup. "Ugh. This is worse than the stuff we get. Okay, Ethan, we got some issues to talk about."

"We've got about a million issues to talk about. Which ones in particular do you mean?"

"Officers."

Stark winced again. "Vic, we haven't had time to work out how to get them back to Earth. As soon as—"

"That's not what I meant. We need new ones. Some of the acting commanders are okay, some aren't. We need to appoint officers, and the only place we're going to find them is from the enlisted ranks." She glanced around until her eyes focused on the terminal imbedded in the wall nearby. "I knew there had to be one of these in here. Look. This is the table of organization for our division. How are we ever going to locate enough enlisted good enough to fill all these officer positions?"

"We won't, and we don't need to. You told me, remember? There's too many officers. So we only need to fill the positions we, uh, need to fill."

"Elegantly expressed, Ethan," Reynolds noted with a smile. "Good point. Still, that leaves a lot of job openings."

"What's wrong with the people holding those jobs now?"

"You're kidding, right? There's nothing wrong with some of them. But some of the others are way out of their depth. Others can handle the job but don't want it."

"Tough." Stark leaned back, pitching his empty cup expertly into the recycling chute. "My heart bleeds for them. Nobody better complain to me about having to do a job they don't want. I know all about it."

"Then," Vic continued, "there's the ones who just don't belong in their positions."

"Like who?"

"Like Kalnick."

"Oh, yeah." Stark scowled. Unfinished business. Gotta deal with that, and soon. "Okay, you've made your point. But how do we turn Sergeants, Corporals, and Privates into Colonels, Majors, and Captains?"

"There's on-the-job experience," Vic pointed out, "like we had yesterday."

"I'm not sure I could take many more experiences like that. And since I don't intend launching any offensive actions, there ain't gonna be a lot of opportunity for people to learn that side of the job in the field."

"Agreed. So we need to set up a training program."

"A training program? What kind of training?"

She shrugged. "Large unit command and control, I guess. We'll have to depend on the simulators up here to teach maneuvering large units. Once we get the sims fixed, that is."

"Fixed? What's wrong with 'em?"

"Nothing if you prefer fairy tales to reality."

Stark frowned. "I thought they were supposed to have the latest and greatest combat sims up here."

"Nah. These are pretty damn good, but the latest and greatest never goes to the front lines. It always ends up in the Pentagon or somewhere else in the rear. You want to know what's wrong with the sims?" Vic leaned to trigger the display again. "You can access them from here." The display sprang to multicolored life, cluttered symbology marking American and enemy positions. "This look familiar?"

"Yeah." Stark fought down a shudder. "That's what things looked like just before Meecham sent Third Division forward."

"Very good. This is the sim they ran to, if you'll pardon the term, 'test' Meecham's plan. Watch." She activated the sim, letting Stark watch as the initial brigade assault began.

Stark shut his eyes, trying to block out memories of futile slaughter. "Vic, I don't think I can watch this."

"This is the sim, Ethan. Look."

It took a lot of effort, but Stark forced his eyes open again, then almost immediately furrowed his brow. "This shows the enemy, too?"

"Uh-huh."

"How come those units in their rear are jittering back and forth instead of heading to counter our attack?"

"Because," Vic explained patiently, "Meecham's theories said they'd be confused by our little diversionary actions. Remember those? So the enemy, in the sim, can't decide where to commit its troops."

Stark snorted in derision. "Hey, there's a lot of enemy positions missing. Meecham's plan needed that to work, too, right?" As Vic nodded, Stark pointed at the symbols marking the advancing American brigade. "Look at that! They're maintaining perfect formation! That's ridiculous. Those soldiers were incapable of that up here."

"They had to be able to maintain perfect formation for Meecham's plan," Vic reminded him. "Ethan, I talked to the ape geeks who run the sims. Their orders are always to make the plan work, so they program the sim so the plan works. Get it?"

On the display, only scattered enemy fire met the American charge, then enemy units began falling away, retreating in ironic mimicry of the recent disaster Stark had narrowly avoided. "No. I don't get it. These sims are supposed to be so good they show exactly what would happen in the real world."

"Uh-uh," Vic chided, wagging one finger at him. "Not the 'real world,' Ethan. Whatever world needs to exist to make the plan work. See? To make Meecham's plan work, the enemy needs to react just the way his theory says they have to. Our forces have to perform just the way he needs them to, regardless of things like terrain and training. And when push comes to shove, the enemy has to be overwhelmed by the force of our . . . what'd they call it, our clustered paradigms?"

"Somethin' like that." Stark shook his head, jaw slack. "I don't believe it. Those damn Generals really did think they were gods. If the world don't match the plans, you change the world to fit."

"Right. Then you declare the plans good because, hell, you ran them on a state-of-the-art simulator, right?"

Stark rubbed his palms into his eyes. "Then the sims have always been run like that? That's why so many real-world ops went to hell even after they'd supposedly been sim'd to death?"

"I expect. Most people figured the sims were being run to get real answers. Instead, they've been designed to produce whatever answers the guys in charge wanted to get."

"Why didn't we hear anything about this?" Stark ground out. "Those ape geeks are enlisted. How come they never passed word around?"

"Security, Ethan. Everything about the sim designs has been slapped with high-level, compartmented security protection. The ape geeks were subject to the highest levels of security screening so they couldn't breathe a word to anyone for fear of flunking the screens. That was supposedly so the enemy wouldn't learn anything about us from the sims. I guess it was also to keep us from learning about the sims."

"Nothing like security rules to cover up mistakes, arrogance, and just plain stupidity," Stark agreed sourly. "Okay, but the sim guys can fix this junk? Program sims so that they reflect the real world?"

Vic hesitated. "They say so."

"But you don't think so. Why not?"

"Because I've been thinking about it, and I'm not sure we can ever make a sim do what's advertised." Vic leaned back, apparently watching the sim unroll as the virtually unscathed simulated American troops continued to simulate triumph in every direction. "Take terrain. You ever walk someplace where the map exactly matched the ground?"

"Hell, no. There's always differences. Even up here where nothing's supposed to change and the whole surface is supposed to be digitized to hell and gone. There's always a rock where one ain't supposed to be, or no rock where the map says there is one."

"Right. The Rock Gremlins." Stark laughed at her reference to the mythical creatures that altered terrain every time an allegedly definitive map had been produced. Since senior officers always insisted the maps had to be right, the enlisted joked that there had to be something moving rocks, hills, trees, buildings, and bodies of water around after the maps had been created. "So even terrain in a sim can't be exactly right," Vic continued. "What about fuzzier stuff, stuff you can't just scan from orbit and digitize? You know, how well a weapon works, how fast a soldier will move, how much ammo they'll need, how often they'll hit what they aim at. And that's fuzzy enough for our side. Now think about trying to input that data for the enemy. What the hell's so precise about any of it?"

Stark thought about it. "Not much. You're saying a sim's just a bunch of guesstimates being run against other guesstimates, right?"

"Exactly. Guesstimates precise to the tenth decimal point, but they're still guesstimates. Even when you're trying your damnedest to make it reflect some impartial reality, which apparently doesn't happen all that much."

"Huh. I guess that's why the fantasy games some of the troops play seem just as real as the sims."

"Yeah. As far as the computers are concerned, they're the same thing."

"Great. So the sims aren't a magic bullet, even if we do our best to make them realistic. How else can we teach our people to be officers?"

Vic canted her head to indicate her terminal. "I've been browsing around a little. There's a whole mess of Staff Education Courses in the files. I guess officers were supposed to do them in their free time."

"Staff Education Courses? SECs?" Stark pronounced the acronym as one word in standard military fashion. "Who thought up that name for the courses?"

"I wouldn't care to guess, but I'd bet somebody suggested it as a joke, and when some Generals liked it, everybody was afraid to tell them."

"So what kind of SECs did our officers enjoy?"

"Ethan, behave. Look. Here's one on Effective Battle Management."

"You're kidding." Stark leaned to look closer, twisting his face skeptically as he did so. "How the hell do you 'manage' a battle? I always thought they were too big a mess for managing."

"No idea, Ethan. But they apparently not only figured out how to 'manage' a battle, they figured out how to do it 'effectively,' too."

"Uh-huh. If our officers were so good at managing battles, how come our battle plans were usually screwed up, and we had to fight like hell to win?"

"You can't have everything, Ethan. Do you want your battles well-managed or do you want them well-planned?"

"You're right. What was I thinking? What other kind of courses have they got in there?"

"Let's see." Vic paged rapidly through menus. "Here's a whole bunch of courses on leadership."

"Leadership? Officers were supposed to learn leadership from education courses?"

"Guess so. We got Leadership Fundamentals, Leadership for Commanders—"

"Who else leads? They got a 'Leadership for Followers' course?"

"Haven't seen one yet, but it might be there. Then there's Advanced Leadership, Basic Leadership, which must differ somehow from fundamental leadership, Leadership for Field Grade Officers, Crisis Leadership, Effective Leadership—"

"All the other kinds of leadership aren't effective?"

"Based on our experience with officers, I'd say no. Hmmm. Here's Total Quality Leadership."

"Which is also different from effective leadership, I guess. Do they have to call it 'total quality' so nobody will think it's half-ass quality?"

"Midcareer Leadership!" Vic continued, ignoring Stark's latest jibe, "for those officers who haven't learned any leadership during the first half of their career, I suppose. Leadership Case Studies—"

"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Stark complained. "These guys were supposed to be leading us. Who the hell thought they'd learn more from 'case studies' on their computers than they would from actually spending time with their troops?"

Vic made another face. "I guess it was one of those 'sounded good when it started' things that got out of hand, like they usually do. Oh, I don't believe it."

"Now what? More how-to-be-a-leader-on-your-computer junk?"

"No." Vic leaned back so Stark could see the screen. "New course series, I guess. Combat Management"

Stark found himself laughing. "Sure. When it comes to actual combat, all that leadership garbage just doesn't apply. For combat, you gotta be a manager. Or if you want to run an effective battle. Why in God's name would anyone waste time on this stuff?"

"I don't know. Maybe one of these codes along the top . . . ah, here you go. 'Course completion mandatory for promotion eligibility to O4.' "

O4 was the rank code for an Army Major or Navy Lieutenant Commander. "So an officer couldn't make Major unless they took all these courses?"

"A lot of them, anyway. Now we know some of what our officers were doing when they were supposed to be leading us."

Stark pressed his fingers against his temples, trying to push away an incipient headache. "Okay, then. These courses are mostly crap. The sims are self-justifying junk. And we already know that officers were taught that command and control somehow meant the same thing as micromanagement. So, basically, we gotta throw out just about everything that's already there and build our own training system."

"Ummm, yeah," Vic agreed reluctantly.

"I guess we do all that in our copious free time?"

"Ethan, it's not like we have a choice."

"Yeah, we do. I could just shoot myself. Or surrender and let our former officers shoot me. But I ain't gonna do either one."

"You're not alone in this," Vic pointed out.

"Which is probably the only thing keeping me sane." Stark reached out to grab her wrist, giving it that brief squeeze that signified friendship. "Okay. We'll get it done. Somehow. Right now, you need a workout, and I need a shower."

"I wasn't going to call attention to either fact." She stood, smiling wryly. "Guess we're both going to be doing a lot of things that are unpleasant, but good for us."

"Guess so. See ya later." Stark slumped in his chair after Vic left, wondering why lunar gravity sometimes seemed so heavy. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out memories of battle, but seeing them replayed in the dancing lights behind his eyelids, explosions and swarming symbology mingling in a never-ending dance. Opening his eyes revealed the unfamiliar surroundings of the headquarters rec room, an unmistakable reminder of endless current problems. The buzz of his comm unit came as a welcome distraction and relief. "Stark?"

"Yeah. What's up, Bev?"

Sergeant Manley sounded apologetic. "I know you're real busy, Ethan, but the civs are calling again."

"The civs." Civilians. Inhabitants of the Colony. The people Stark and his soldiers fought to protect, but met only rarely.

"Yeah. They want to talk to somebody in charge. That's you."

"That's me," Stark agreed wearily. Guess I can't put the civs off any longer. One more thing I gotta deal with. "Any administrative issues need addressing right now?"

"Sorry. My office is humming with its customary awesome efficiency, so I can't give you any excuses for not calling the civs."

"Okay, okay. Give me their number, and I'll call them." The vid screens here in headquarters were bigger and fancier than Stark was accustomed to, so that he needed a few frustrating seconds to figure out the extra controls. Eventually, the screen cleared, showing two civs seated at a metal conference table. One of the civs, a man, had a harried but determined look that somehow matched his graying hair. The other civ Stark recognized immediately. He'd met her once, an eternity of a few days before. "Ms. Sarafina. Long time no see."

Sarafina stared back in obvious surprise, then whispered quickly into the man's ear. He nodded, then looked straight at Stark. "My name is Campbell. James Campbell. I'm the Colony Manager."

"Pleased to meet you. Ms. Sarafina told me a little about you."

"Are you an authorized speaker for the lunar military forces?"

Stark mustered a half-smile. "I suppose you could say that. Sorry I've been too busy to talk before this. We've had a few problems."

"So we've guessed." Campbell visibly hesitated. "There's been a very large amount of military activity in the last few days. Our sensors have picked up a tremendous level of surface explosive activity."

"We've been fighting like hell, if that's what you're trying to say."

"Is the Colony . . . that is, how secure—"

"We're holding, Mr. Campbell. The Colony's safe."

"Thank you. Now . . . your proper title is Sergeant?"

"It is if you want to get on my good side."

Campbell looked briefly puzzled. "Sergeant Stark, exactly what has happened to your leaders?"

"You mean our officers?" Stark found himself reluctant to speak or even look directly at the civilians. First time I'm talking to somebody who wasn't in on it all and shares the guilt. God, what have we done? "They're safe."

"I don't understand. We haven't seen or been able to communicate with any officers for days. Our only contacts have been with enlisted personnel such as yourself, and they've refused any information. Normal communications with Earth have been cut off without explanation. Shuttles have been blocked from departing and no new shuttles are arriving. What is going on, Sergeant Stark?"

Stark lowered his gaze, concentrating on the lower frame of the comm terminal. "Mr. Campbell, I regret to inform you that our officers have been disarmed and imprisoned. We are no longer following their orders."

The statement seemed to confuse both Campbell and Sarafina, who looked at each other for possible enlightenment before focusing back on Stark. "Whose orders are you following?" Sarafina finally asked.

"Our own."

"Your own." Comprehension suddenly entered Campbell's eyes as he held up a hand to forestall any further questions from his aide. "Sergeant Stark, are you telling us you are no longer acting under lawful authority? That your forces are in a state of mutiny?"

Stark closed his eyes momentarily, then nodded. "Yeah. Yes, sir. It's a long story," he added as Campbell's and Sarafina's faces paled with shock. "Let's just say things got too bad. Way too bad. It came down to taking over in order to survive."

"I don't . . . but all those new soldiers we've seen arrive recently—"

"Are mostly dead," Stark stated bluntly.

Campbell looked down at his hands for a moment, plainly gathering both his thoughts and his composure. "But if you are no longer obeying your officers, who is in charge?"

"Me." This time Sarafina looked ready to pass out. "It wasn't my idea," Stark added rapidly. "Well, maybe a lot of it's my fault. I don't know. But afterward, everybody wanted me in charge. So I'm the commander."

Another pause, then Campbell fixed Stark with a demanding but anxious stare. "Then I must ask you what your intentions are regarding this Colony."

"Our job is to keep the Colony safe. We're going to keep doing that."

"But if you're no longer American soldiers—"

"We're still American soldiers!" Both civilians jerked away involuntarily, hitting the backs of their chairs as they tried to distance themselves from Stark's outburst. "Sorry," he apologized gruffly. "There's a lot of things we haven't worked out. But that hasn't changed. We'll defend the Colony. We already have. We just won't die senselessly anymore just because some idiots with stars on their shoulders want to make names for themselves and won't listen to common sense."

"I apologize. I didn't mean to imply . . ." Campbell took a deep breath. "This is totally unexpected news. We weren't prepared for it."

"Neither was anyone else."

"You will not surrender the Colony to any foreign powers?"

"No."

"You will continue to defend us as vigorously as ever?"

"Yes."

"You still consider yourselves Americans?"

"Absolutely."

"But you are not accepting orders from the authorities on Earth or their representatives on the Moon?"

"No."

"And your long-term objectives are . . . ?"

"Undetermined."

"Sergeant Stark, I understand if you are unwilling to share that information with me, but it is of critical importance." Campbell shook his head, lips a thin line. "Let me explain. We're under martial law, Sergeant. It's been that way as long as the Colony has been here. We've been allowed a very small degree of local independence as long as it didn't affect whatever got labeled a 'security issue,' but we don't rule ourselves. We also have no means of effectively resisting your forces no matter what actions you decide to take. To put it bluntly, it appears you are our new master, and I need to know what you intend to do."

"I've told you all I can tell you right now."

Campbell glanced despairingly at Sarafina, then back at Stark. "I have responsibility for every civilian on this Colony. I cannot protect them if you will not provide me with basic information."

Stark kept his face impassive. Responsibility talk. From a civ. And a politician. Does he mean it? Everything I've learned in life says no, don't trust him.

As he sat silent, Sarafina leaned forward, her own expression pleading. "Sergeant Stark, please. Our people are depending on us."

Two civs, both of whom seem a whole lot more concerned about "their people" than they do about themselves. And Sarafina, near as I can tell, kept her promise to me not to tell any of our officers what I'd said to her. If I can't respect that, what can I respect? Stark rubbed his chin, pondering his response. "You want to know our long-term objectives? I don't know," he finally admitted. "That's the truth. Nobody's had time to think about that yet, or about what we'll do regarding you civs. Civilians. We don't want you stabbing us in the back. But I don't think any of us want to tell you what to do, otherwise."

"Sergeant Stark, there are any number of things I cannot do without approval of the designated military authorities."

"I can patch you through to the stockade if you want to talk to any of them, but it doesn't much matter right now whether they approve what you want or not."

Campbell maintained a poker face now, sitting silently, then glanced over as Cheryl Sarafina began speaking again. "Sergeant Stark, are we to understand you have no interest in exercising control over the civilian portion of the Colony?"

"I told you, I can't have you people doing stuff that would cause problems for my people. But I've got a full plate just trying to run the mil side of things. And the military isn't supposed to give orders to civilians. Things are supposed to be the other way around, right? So, I've got no interest in telling you what to do, and to be perfectly frank, I don't think any of the other mil want anything to do with you."

Sarafina railed at the words, her expression angry. "We've done nothing to the military personnel up here. We've provided a tremendous amount of support to you. We appreciate your sacrifices. Just because we haven't been allowed—"

"Sorry. Didn't mean it to sound like your fault." Stark forced another smile. "Not you specifically. My people, the military, don't know civilians. They grew up separate, they work separate, and they die separate. Mostly, they get treated real bad when they meet civilians. Back on Earth. So they don't like you. I think, maybe, you guys are different. But it'll take time to convince my people of that."

Campbell nodded. "I believe I understand. You're a separate subculture. Perhaps we'd appreciate this better if we'd been allowed to view the military vid shows—"

"No. We hate the mil vid. It's a vid show put together from our command and control systems during combat. We're dying, the civs are watching and having a good time, and the government rakes in revenue from the ads it sells. Understand?"

Sarafina looked horrified now. "Gladiators. You've been treated like gladiators."

"Hey, it made money for the government and kept the civs entertained. Who cared how we felt about it?"

"I begin to understand," Campbell stated slowly. "You've been used."

"That's one way of putting it."

"But what are your goals, Sergeant Stark? What exactly are you trying to accomplish?"

Stark found himself laughing, bitter and angry all at once, "Damned if I know." He sobered, looking downward for a moment. "All those new soldiers you asked me about, Ms. Sarafina?" The brief meeting seemed ages ago. "Most of them are dead, like I said. That idiot General Meecham threw them against strong defensive positions, and when that didn't work, went ahead and did it again a few more times. We stopped that. That's why we took over. But stopping the slaughter meant we had to handle a lot more, and we're still working all that out."

Campbell's eyes narrowed. "Then you really haven't thought this out. It happened, spur-of-the-moment, and now you're trying to deal with the results."

"I guess that's a good way to sum things up."

"Sergeant Stark, you've done a very foolish thing." Campbell paused as Stark felt his face flush with anger. "I'm not referring to your decision to seize control of the military forces up here. Only you can judge the wisdom of that action. No, I'm talking about your discussing this with me. By combining your words with what I can see between the lines, I know far more about your situation than you should want to disclose to someone whose loyalty to you is an unknown."

He's right. Me and my big mouth. I shouldn't have made this call without Vic here to tell me when to shut up. I don't know this guy and don't really know Sarafina. They're civs. And they're political types. Or corporation types. I'm not sure which, but I've never found reason to think either type cares a damn about the best interests of me or any other mil ape. "So why are you telling me this? Why not milk me for more information before telling me I oughta shut up?"

"Because I believe the military and civilian communities up here need each other. I'll be as honest with you for a moment as you've been with me."

"You're a politician," Stark pointed out coldly.

Instead of triggering animosity, Stark's words brought a laugh from Campbell. "Yes, I am. But that doesn't mean what you think it does in this case. Why do you dislike and distrust politicians? No, don't bother, I'll answer for you. They manipulate the laws they write to benefit themselves and their friends. They take large contributions from corporations and then do pretty much what those corporations want. They steer government money to pet projects. Is that a good summary?"

"It's a start."

Another laugh, tinged with bitterness. "Yes, I suppose it is. Sergeant Stark, I have no voting power, anywhere. Every penny of the Colony budget is set in stone by Congress. The corporations direct every aspect of the Colony that the military hasn't wanted to control. I can't make laws, and I can't spend money. All I can do is go hat-in-hand to the people who do control those things and ask for a decent shake for the people of the Colony, whose only vote is to choose the person occupying my position."

"Then why do you do it? Why get elected?"

"Because it's important. Because if I don't, some hack who cares nothing for the Colony except as a stepping-stone for ambition might be elected instead. Not that actually gaining any political points are likely, given the powerlessness of the position, but it's possible if you were willing to sell the Colony's inhabitants even further down the river."

"Huh." Stark thought about that, then nodded. "Thankless job. I'm familiar with the concept. Okay, so let's assume you're being honest with me. What is it you want to say?"

"That this event is totally unexpected. I have no idea how the rest of the Colony will react to the news. However, I believe your actions offer my people an opportunity to finally alter their own status vis-a-vis the authorities back on Earth." Campbell glanced at Sarafina, who nodded. "My aide here told me she explained to you our situation."

"She said something about you being, uh, wage slaves?"

"That's essentially correct. Nearly every civilian up here signed agreements to repay the costs of our transportation to the Moon and subsequent upkeep. Everyone thought this offered a great opportunity, that the money to be made working in the Colony would allow eventual repayment of those debts followed by a life filled with more promise than the employment opportunities back home."

"I guess things haven't gotten any better for civs since I joined the mil," Stark observed.

"They've gotten worse. Vertically and horizontally integrated corporations have locked up so many jobs they can exercise almost total control of working conditions and wages. Back home, the government long ago 'got off the backs' of the corporations, which has meant the corporations have been on our backs ever since. Up here, where we thought things would be better, it turned out to be a lot worse. There's nowhere else to go for work, and no place to shop except company stores charging prices exorbitant even by lunar standards. And, of course, the transportation and upkeep contracts turned out to contain hidden interest on outstanding debt."

Stark remembered, long ago, overhearing his mother and father during anguished conversations. "So every day you wake up poorer, right?"

"Exactly."

"Sounds like the corporations have been killing you slow while our leaders killed us fast."

"That is an excellent summation, Sergeant Stark."

"So what does what we've done have to do with your problem?"

Campbell stared. "You really don't know, do you? Sergeant Stark, we've had no choice but to endure these conditions. No lawyer we could hire could prevail against corporate legal teams, we are denied our own political representation in Washington, no politician from back home would act on our behalf because they are in pay of the corporations, and if we had ever tried to act unilaterally the military forces up here would have simply enforced the will of the authorities back on Earth. But, now, you are no longer following the orders of those authorities."

"Not at the moment, though I don't know how much they've realized that so far."

"Sergeant Stark, I know very little about the military, but I assume you require the same things most people do in the way of food and shelter, and somewhat the same things a corporation would, supplies to meet your specialized needs. You'll need this Colony to help provide all that for you."

"I expect that's true."

Sarafina leaned forward again. "We need each other. Whatever you decide your long-term goals are, Sergeant Stark, you'll need the Colony's cooperation. And we can provide that cooperation in exchange for your protection and support when we demand political and economic redress."

Stark twisted his mouth, trying to think the offer through. I don't know enough. Bottom line, I just don't know enough to know if this is a good offer or a good idea. Besides, I'm already scared of what I started. Do I want to have a colony in revolt on my conscience, too? He sat silent, thoughts going nowhere.

"Sergeant Stark?" Colony Manager Campbell finally asked. "I understand you may need awhile to consider what we've said, and you'll no doubt want to consult with your own advisers. Can we arrange another conversation tomorrow, or perhaps a face-to-face meeting?"

My advisers? I haven't—Yeah, I do. People like Vic, and Manley, and other grunts with experience in things I don't know. "That sounds like a good idea. Let's talk again. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon. There's a lot going on." He moved to break the connection.

"Wait." Campbell raised a hand to forestall Stark. "There's something else. You told us you've had many soldiers killed."

Stark froze for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. A lot. What of it?"

"I assume that means many others are injured?"

"That's right."

"We know the military medical facilities are limited. There is a state-of-the-art hospital for treating civilians up here." Campbell mustered a derisive smile. "The corporate VIPs and politicians who visited the Colony wanted to be sure we could handle any problems they might have. If you need more space, or specialized care, for your soldiers, we can take them."

"You can? That's great, but I don't know how we'd pay for it."

"Pay?" Campbell shook his head firmly. "It's us who are repaying you for your defense of the Colony all these years.

If you need medical assistance for your soldiers, we'll provide anything we can free of charge."

But still put us in your debt. I sure wish I knew if I could trust these civs. I know we could use their help, though. My wounded soldiers can use their help. And Campbell did volunteer it without me even hinting at it. Stark smiled with what he hoped looked like genuine gratitude. "Thanks. That's very nice of you. Tell me how to contact your medical people, and I'll have our docs call them right away."

The screen dark again, Stark hesitated, then punched in Sergeant Reynolds's address, frowning as the image stayed blank. "You there, Vic?"

"Yeah."

"What's wrong with your vid?"

"Nothing. I just got out of the shower, and I'm not offering a free vid show to anybody who calls."

"How 'bout if I input a credit access code?" Stark teased.

"Soldier, you'll never have enough money to buy a look at this show. What's up?"

"We need another staff meeting."

"Can't we just go on a suicide mission instead?"

"Sorry. Let's combine it with lunch so at least we'll get one useful thing accomplished."

A late lunch, as it turned out. Stark shoveled down a last soggy french fry, then looked around the table. "I got a big issue, but let's save that for last. Anybody else got anything really hot?"

"Everything's hot." Sergeant Gordasa tapped his terminal with one rigid finger. "We've got a lot to worry about in Supply. Let's talk basics. Food. Water. Environmental systems."

"We know we're not self-sufficient," Vic stated. "Why does this need to be handled now?"

Gordasa shook his head. "We're probably closer to self-sufficiency than you think, and we got a lot of rations stockpiled on the surface. Stuff Third Division apes were supposed to consume and won't be needing." He ignored the anger his words triggered, knowing it was aimed elsewhere. "But it's still limited, and we've no idea how long this situation is going to last. And we've got lots of officers we've got to feed until we can off-load them. So what happens yesterday? You heroes snag a whole bunch of prisoners. Prisoners we've got to feed. What the hell are we going to do with them?"

"You got a suggestion?" Stark asked.

"You're damn right I've got a suggestion. Give 'em back. They're not worth the supplies they'll consume."

"Prisoners are extremely valuable," Vic objected.

"Not to us," Gordasa disagreed. "Sure, our officers wanted them for intelligence so they could plan the next offensive, but we're not planning any offensives, right? So aside from asking for any of our own prisoners back, what else can these guys do for us?"

Sergeant Manley looked up suddenly, frowning thoughtfully. "Hey. That's it. Swap."

"Swap prisoners? That's already a given, but we've got a helluva lot more of theirs than they do of ours."

"No, no. Trade 'em. The enemy wants their people back. We want food and environmental supplies and stuff. Fine. We do a swap."

Something about the suggestion disturbed Stark. "Trade people for food? A human isn't a sack of potatoes."

"Some might as well be, but that's not the point. We need the potatoes. We don't need the people."

Vic smiled. "Ethan, I like this idea. We get rid of the prisoners, we get more of what we need, and we probably get humanitarian points for letting the prisoners go pretty quick."

Stark tried to think of problems with the proposal, glaring down at the table surface, then nodded. "Okay. We'll do it. Tanaka, use that red line to enemy headquarters to set up the swap. Make sure we've got a smooth operator running our end of things so we get a good bargain."

"Sure. Gordasa? You a good scam artist?"

"Me?" Sergeant Gordasa questioned indignantly. "I work by the rules. Which you apes usually complain about."

"If we want a scam artist," Manley suggested, "we ought to get Yurivan involved."

"Stacey Yurivan?" Vic cocked one eye toward Stark. "You want to give her access to headquarters?"

"What's the worst that could happen? Never mind. Forget I asked that." Stark glanced around at his improvised staff. "Can we trust her with something this big?"

"Pair her with a straight arrow," Gordasa suggested. "Somebody to watch whatever deal she's working up."

"Make that two arrows," Vic amended. "Gordasa, you keep an eye on the technical side of the deal. Tanaka, you keep an eye on Yurivan. Every contact with the enemy includes all three of you."

"Stacey wouldn't betray us," Jill Tanaka protested.

Stark nodded again. "You're right, but she would try to work a deal that'd turn her a fat, juicy profit. We can't afford that. At the very least, it'd make us all look bad if she got caught."

"I'm not going to lie to her about why I'm involved," Tanaka insisted.

"Not asking you to. Besides, Yurivan will know why as soon as she sees the setup."

"And," Vic added dryly, "she'll be proud we posted two sentries to watch her. Alright, Ethan. Enough stalling. Let's handle this big issue of yours."

He fidgeted a moment, aware of the eyes on him. "It's the Colony. The civs. They wanna know what we're doing."

"Screw 'em," someone murmured.

"No," Stark objected. "We're all in the same boat up here. We can't hold out if the civs go against us. Anybody ready to shoot American civs who don't do what we say?"

Silence.

"I didn't think so. And like I told Vic awhile back, these civs seem a little different. They've been right behind the front lines long enough to realize we're not playing some fancy vid game for their entertainment."

"Even if you're right," Gordasa noted, "and my own experience sort of confirms it, so what?"

"The head civ, a guy named Campbell, wants to know if we'll back the civs against the government."

Everyone stared, half-startled, half-scornful. "I think," Vic finally suggested carefully, "that starting one rebellion is enough for us for now. Why get involved with a bunch of civs?" Most of the others around the table nodded in agreement.

Stark clenched his hands on the table, looking down at them for a moment. "Not too long ago I asked Vic what we were fighting for. She said if nothing else, at least we were doing the right thing. Well, near as I can tell, so are the civs. They're being used. They want to be treated right."

"What they probably want," Tanaka stated icily, "is to use us, and treat us the way they always do." More nods. "You can't trust civs."

"I grew up civ." Stark's words shocked some of those around the table, while others simply stared back, unresponsive. "I know. You all grew up in Forts with mil parents and mil friends. But I didn't."

"You're mil now," Vic objected.

"I grew up civ," Stark repeated. "They're not necessarily bad. I've been through the same treatment you guys have in uniform. Stay out of the civ neighborhoods 'cause they don't want any violent lowlifes around. Get cheated by civ merchants. Get sent to lousy places to get shot at because the corporations think they can wrangle a few more bucks that way. And I was in on the action the first time we got an op sent to vid for entertainment. So I know. But I know the other side, too. They're people. They're our people."

"What do you want from us?" Vic asked. "Don't expect us to trust these people, these civs, at the drop of a hat. It's not going to happen. We've been screwed too many times."

"Like I said, I know. All I want is to talk to them. Find out if they're for real. See if we have stuff in common. We should, by God. What's wrong with talking to them?"

"That's probably what Eve said to Adam about the snake," Vic observed.

Stark took in the expressions around the table, unconvinced, and not willing to be convinced. "Fine. Then let's put it in terms of self-interest. Anybody around this table think we can survive up here without the cooperation of the civs? Anybody care to think what'll happen if the civs are actively working against us? Anybody want to take over running the civ Colony?

How about you, Bev? That'd be a great administrative challenge."

"Uh-uh," Manley demurred. "It'd also be a nightmare for me. I don't know their systems." She looked around sourly. "Stark's right. We might wish they'd go away, but they won't. We've gotta deal with 'em."

"I'll set up a meeting," Stark continued. "Like this one, but with the civ reps here, too. And we'll talk. No promises. No deals beforehand. That okay with everybody? Vic?"

"I'll talk," she glowered back, "but don't expect hugs and kisses."

Gordasa raised one hand slightly and waved it. "This looks decided, and I've got too much to do and too little time to do it in. Is there anything else for now?"

"No," Stark informed the group. "I'll let you know when we'll meet the civs."

"Oh, goody," Vic whispered not-quite-under-her-breath, evoking laughter as the others filed out. "Sorry, Ethan," she added when the last of them had left. "It just kind of slipped out."

"Yeah. Right. Just give me a chance on this."

"Sure. You, I trust. Civs, on the other hand . . ." Vic let the sentence trail off meaningfully. "Speaking of trust, are you sure you're happy with having Stacey as our lead on the prisoner negotiations?"

Stark snorted a brief laugh. "I haven't been happy with anything for a long time, now. But if anybody can get us the best deal, it's her." He checked the time, exhaling heavily. Over half a day gone. Unreal. I spent most of yesterday fighting for my life and most of today in meetings wishing I was handling something as simple as yesterday. He paused, face suddenly tight. "And, speaking of Stacey, now I've got to do something real hard."

Vic raised a questioning eyebrow. "What's that?"

"Kalnick. She's in his battalion."

"Uh-huh. What're you going to do?"

"Only one thing I can do. He didn't follow orders, and he won't in the future. I've got to get another commander for that battalion."

Vic nodded decisively, taking a step toward the door. "Okay, let's go."

"No." Stark stopped her with an outstretched hand. "I've got to do this alone. Do me a favor, though. Set up a meeting over at Fifth Battalion for me. All their senior enlisted."

"Not just you and Kalnick?"

"No. He wants this to be personal, and a one-on-one would make it personal. If he's gotta defend his actions in front of a lot of other people, he won't be able to claim they railroaded him."

She nodded. "Truth. Good luck."

"Thanks." The wood-paneled walls of headquarters were getting entirely too familiar; so that increasingly Stark was surprised when they gave way to the lunar rock of the corridors in the rest of the city. Gotta get rid of that junk. Embarrassing. Worth ten times its weight in titanium back on Earth, I bet. Just have to get it down there. Still, he found a sense of liberation in leaving headquarters, as if walking awhile alone among his peers somehow kept him a part of them.

A standard briefing room, once used primarily for officers to explain the latest version of universal and everlasting truth from headquarters, the versions changing roughly every time a new General replaced the old one. Now, the Sergeants from Fifth Battalion sat stonefaced before him, except for a crooked smile on the face of Stacey Yurivan several rows back.

"First of all," Stark began, "I want to thank all of you and all your people for how good they did in that last engagement. We really hurt those bastards. They won't try anything again for a long time." Some of the hard expressions eased slightly. "But I gotta talk about something else." The faces hardened again perceptibly. "We had a real delay getting your battalion into position. It almost didn't get there in time. Not because you couldn't, but because your commander wouldn't move you. That coulda cost us a lot of lives. It coulda cost us the whole battle."

Kalnick sat silent, scowling, as another Sergeant spoke. "So? What's your point here? What do you want, Stark?"

Keep it respectful Treat these apes like you'd have wanted to be treated. Stark chose his words carefully, avoiding loaded terms like "order" and "command."

"I want a commander for this battalion that I can count on. I want a commander that every other soldier here can count on. They, and you, deserve a commander who'll look out for them when the chips are down."

Kalnick flushed, then stood. "What you really want is the same thing the damn officers wanted, enlisted troops who only do what they're told. Isn't that right, Stark? Or should I say General Stark?" Stark stared back, keeping his face impassive with great effort, remaining silent to keep his anger from showing. Kalnick's defiance seemed to waver under Stark's steady gaze. "Well?" he finally demanded. "Should I?"

"No."

"You just want me gone because I thought for myself!"

"No."

Another Sergeant stood, mouth and eyes tight. "Denials are fine, but how about more detail, Stark? How do we know Kalnick isn't right, that this isn't about making us follow every order exactly again?"

"Ask Milheim." A ripple of reaction ran through the crowd. "Acting Fourth Batt commander, right? He didn't like the way his troops were supposed to deploy, told me and Reynolds that, and suggested another way. We let him do it. Or Geary. We let her pick her own routes for her company when we sealed the penetration. She was on the scene, we let her make the call." Stark raised his right arm, leveling an accusing forefinger at Kalnick. "Your commander didn't make any suggestions. He didn't offer alternatives. You heard me ask, right? Anybody hear Kalnick say what he wanted to do instead? That's 'cause he didn't. No, he just wanted to sit on his fat ass while Fourth Battalion and the rest of the soldiers up here got blown away. That's what this is about. We're a team, but Kalnick doesn't want to play with a team. If he doesn't like the moves, he just wants to go home and let the rest of us get beat."

"That's a lie!" Kalnick went white with rage, raising his own trembling arm. "Who died and made you God?"

"Third Division died," Stark shot back coldly. "Most of them anyway, and the Sergeants made me Commander. I didn't want the job, but by God I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. That means I can't have a battalion commander who ignores orders." The word slipped out at last. Stark tensed, waiting for the inevitable reaction, but it didn't come. The debate had passed that point.

"Stark's right." Yurivan was standing now, her smile gone. "Kalnick, I never played by the rules, but I never screwed my buddies in other units, either."

"I didn't do anything!"

"Yeah, well, that's the problem, ain't it? I just realized, someday I might be out on the line, getting hit, and depending on you to come to help. And that scared the hell out of me." She scanned the crowd. "We need another commander, people. Not just because Stark can't trust him. We need one we can trust."

"I second that."

"Me, too."

"Anybody still want Kalnick in command?" A small scattering of hands responded to Yurivan's question. "Who else can do the job? You got any suggestions, Stark?"

Stark shook his head, trying to keep his relief from showing. Give 'em a chance, they'll do the right thing. Just lead 'em instead of shoving 'em. "That's not my place. I guess someday it'll have to be if we're to stay an army, but for now, you guys choose a commander you trust."

"I nominate Demetrios, then."

"What?" Demetrios protested. "What the hell did I ever do to you?"

"What about Falco?"

"Hey!" Kalnick faced his own peers now, staring at them in unconcealed outrage. "You all elected me to this job! I'm the battalion commander, and you can't just toss me out because Stark and his stooges say so."

"I ain't nobody's stooge."

"Me, neither."

"You mad 'cause we ain't following your orders, Kalnick?"

"Kalnick, why don't you get your butt out of here before we kick it out?"

"You can all go to hell. Which is exactly where Stark is going to lead you." Kalnick pivoted on one heel, exiting the room in a low-gravity stalk.

Stark nodded to the now-silent ranks of Sergeants. "Thanks for backing me up. During the battle, and now. This is a good outfit. I don't have to hang around for the rest of this. You guys let me know who you want to lead this unit."

A thin Sergeant stood, his face familiar from the meeting that had elected Stark to command. "Are you going to accept the name we give you or approve it?"

A very loaded question. Stark felt the room tense again, then swept his eyes across his audience. "Approve it." A murmur of comment arose. "Look. You made me commander. If I don't command, I'm not doing my job. And 'command' means I gotta call the shots on big issues. Important issues. You don't like it, you can all toss me out and find someone else dumb enough to take the job. So you tell me what you want. You tell me why. I better listen, because you apes know what the hell you're talking about. But I may not do what you want for a lot of reasons. I won't apologize for that."

A long silence stretched, then the thin Sergeant nodded, a tight smile on his lips. "Spoken like a Sergeant. Okay. But if you reject our choice, we'll want to know why."

"Deal. Now, if you guys will excuse me, I got about twelve more alligators to wrestle today." Stark left, his stomach slowly releasing the knot he hadn't realized had been there. Almost dizzy with reaction, half-happy, half-nauseous, he passed through the doorway, turned right, and saw Sergeant Kalnick standing in the hall, his arms crossed defiantly.

Kalnick glared at Stark, eyes radiating hate. "Congratulations, 'General.' I guess I'll go back to my squad now."

"Wrong." Stark moved closer, eye-to-eye with the other man. "I don't need a snake like you within striking distance. You've just been assigned to administrative duties under Sergeant Manley." If Kalnick felt tempted to cause more trouble, he wouldn't have much scope within the Admin offices. "Once we get the procedures worked out, you'll get on one of the shuttles and head home with the officers."

"You can't do that. I'll be shot!"

"No, you won't. Just tell the truth, that you never accepted my authority and didn't follow my orders. You'll pass any security screen they care to run. I would like to know one thing, though. What the hell did I ever do to you?"

"Besides thinking you're better than the rest of us? Besides being a glory hound? Besides starting something you have no idea how to finish?"

Stark shook his head slowly. "I guess I gotta admit the truth of that third thing. None of us knows how this is gonna come out, and, yeah, I started it. But the rest? I'm not better than anyone, not as a person. Maybe I'm better at being a Sergeant than some people, and a lot of Sergeants seem to think I'm the right guy to lead them, but the day I start thinking I'm better is the day I prove myself worse."

"Nice words. I don't believe any of them. I'll be back, Stark, to try to save the others from this unholy mess you got them into."

Stark smiled the way a wolf does when challenged. "You do that, Kalnick. But you try to hurt a single soldier up here, and I'll have your head on a platter. Got me?" Without waiting for a reply, Stark walked away.

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