Time enough, Jared. Time enough for that later. For now, get your head in the damned game.

  They’d be waiting. That meant he was about to lose people. Probably a lot of them.

  He knew that. He’d accepted it. But he was determined to lose as few of them as possible, and that meant getting in as quickly as he could.

  Now his assault teams raced down the passage, staying close to the sides, moving as fast as they could behind a rolling, bouncing barrage of smoke and flash-bangs.

  * * *

  “Fire in the hole!” Hendren announced as the thunder of Arsenault’s covering grenades vibrated the bulkheads.

  His fingertip came down, and four of the dozen directional mines Ezra Fitzhugh and Beth Chornovil had planted detonated. They’d been mag-locked to facing bulkheads in pairs, positioned to interlock their fire to maximum effect.

  Their lethal cyclones of antipersonnel fléchettes sizzled across the passage in a dispersal pattern six meters wide, and the sensor remotes thoughtfully placed to cover the passage—coupled with Citizen Lieutenant Arsenault’s meticulous coordination and planning—allowed Clint Hendren to time the detonations perfectly.

  Twenty-three members of Fourth Platoon, Able Company, 43rd Battalion, Office of State Security, survived the explosions. Citizen Lieutenant Jared Arsenault and Citizen Sergeant Frederica Brunel were not among them.

  * * *

  Citizen Corporal Harrelson snarled as the plasma bolt hit Citizen Private Jacobs and the incandescent fury amputated the citizen private’s left arm. No one could hear someone scream through his battle armor’s helmet . . . unless they happened to be on the com at the instant they were hit.

  Like Jacobs.

  Harrelson heard the citizen private’s shriek of agony, and the bubbling wails that followed only too well. In fact, he couldn’t hear anything else, and he wanted to scream at Jacobs to shut the hell up, or at least get off the tac frequencies.

  He tried to see where the shot had come from without poking his own helmet up too high. They’d already lost three troopers—Jacobs made four—to the single Manty crouched behind the cargo sled. In fact, the single Manty left from any of the cargo docks guard posts.

  There wasn’t much left of that sled now, not after all the plasma fire and grenades Harrelson’s section had poured into it, but there was obviously still enough, and he’d taken down both of Harrelson’s drones before they got a fix on him. Damn it, where was the sorry-assed son of a bitch? He had to be up there somewhere!

  Jacobs’ wailing sobs faded into silence, and Harrelson tried not to feel grateful as the com net cleared.

  “Tobias,” he said into the silence, “flank left. Try to get around behind—”

  HMS Prince Adrian’s Marine One pinnace rose silently over Sigismund Alpha’s curved flank.

  Harrelson had a sliver of time to see it before its nose-mounted pulsers ripped him apart.

  * * *

  “They’re what?” Citizen Commodore Androcles looked at Andre Simpson.

  “They’re attacking now,” Simpson repeated. “Something gave them away. They had to go immediately—now!”

  “No, Citizen Commissioner,” Androcles said. “They aren’t attacking now; they attacked eight and a half minutes ago.”

  Simpson’s jaw tightened, and Androcles managed to not roll her eyes. Even a people’s commissioner should know enough to allow for transmission lag.

  “Anything else from them yet?” the citizen commodore asked, turning to Citizen Lieutenant Hatcher.

  “No, Citizen Commodore,” the com officer replied, watching Simpson from the corner of one eye. “Not yet.”

  “Thank you.”

  Androcles looked at the plot. Her battleships were just under eighteen minutes short of her planned launch point. Closing velocity was up to 14,008 KPS and the range to the Manty wallers was down to 28,292,800 KM, but her powered missile range from that geometry was only 9,360,000.

  The idiot people’s commissioner—the idiot commissioner aboard Sigismund Alpha, that was, not the one aboard Splendor—had been supposed to hold her attack until Androcles was in position, because both idiot commissioners had expected the “simultaneous” attacks to break the Manties’ morale when Barthet made her demands. The fact that the ships-of-the-wall wouldn’t know anything was happening aboard Sigismund Alpha until eight minutes after it did had obviously escaped their attention.

  But it doesn’t really matter, she told herself. Whatever Simpson and Barthet may have thought, nothing you do out here is going to affect what happens in Sigismund orbit. And you’re not planning on hanging around long enough for anything that happens there to affect you, either.

  * * *

  “Shit!”

  Désiré Fresnel pressed closer to the lift shaft wall as the grenades bounced off the yawning void’s rear bulkhead. They caromed back toward the front of the shaft, hit the wall less than a meter above the outthrust flange under which she sheltered, rebounded, and detonated. Lethal fragments erupted from the explosions, ricocheting from the bulkheads like deadly, sizzling rain, and someone screamed over the com.

  “Citizen Lieutenant—Skipper, we have to move!” Citizen Sergeant Demaret said, but she shook her head.

  Inside, she knew Demaret was right. Her frontal attack, exactly the sort of frontal attack taught by the instructors responsible for training StateSec just as they had InSec, had been a disaster. She’d lost damned near half her platoon when she obligingly turned the passage into a kill zone.

  And that’s the difference between busting terrorists or “subversives” and going up against the fucking Manty Marines, she thought bitterly. They weren’t worried about what we were going to do to them; they were too focused on what they were going to do to us. Do to my people!

  The suppressive fire should have kept their heads down. The smoke and flash-bangs should have blinded and disoriented them. Even allowing for the protection of their skinsuits, they should have at least flinched! That was what her terrorist-hunting instructors had told her, anyway. But they hadn’t, and they’d cut her first two squads to pieces. And now that frigging grenadier was dropping his grenades right into the lift shaft, and she couldn’t even get to the doors to close them.

  The bastard was firing blind. Fresnel had personally caught—and destroyed—two of the remotes the Manties had tried to roll into the shaft with Fourth Platoon, and Citizen Private Garrett had batted a third back down the passage with the butt of his pulse rifle. But they couldn’t keep that up forever, and when the bastards finally got one of the damned things past them—

  “Not yet,” she grated back, staring at the moving icons on her head visor’s HUD. “Ten more seconds, Jean-Luc!”

  Another three-round burst of grenades scorched into the lift shaft, and she pressed her helmet against the bulkhead as they plummeted past her people and exploded somewhere below.

  * * *

  “I need a remote in that shaft, Meadors,” Sergeant Major Babcock said pointedly, never looking away from her handheld.

  “I’m working on it, Gunny,” Liam Meadors replied. “I don’t know how the bastards are spotting them. Should’ve brought some Mark Sevens!”

  “I’ll make a note of that.” Babcock’s tone was sour, and despite the moment’s tension, Horace Harkness grinned at Lieutenant Tremaine and rolled his eyes.

  Tremaine shook his head reprovingly, but not without a smile of his own. The Mark Seven was designed for battlefield deployment in both airfoil and counter-grav modes. It also had a deployed wingspan of over two meters, which made it . . . contraindicated for deployment in close quarters. What they really needed was something between that and the vastly smaller Mark Three remotes Private Meadors was trying to lob into the lift shaft. The Mark Three was actually designed for static deployment. It came without airfoils or counter-grav, and while it was very stealthy once it was deployed, it wasn’t very hard to see if someone tried to toss one past you.

  “We’ve only got five more, Gunny,” Sergeant Quan pointed out. “At the rate Liam’s using ’em up—”

  “Hey!” Meadors protested.

  “Just saying, Liam. Just saying.”

  Quan chuckled and moved closer to Babcock to look over her shoulder at the display.

  “Point,” Babcock agreed.

  * * *

  “Position!”

  Citizen Corporal Dumont’s voice sounded sharply in Citizen Lieutenant Fresnel’s earbug.

  “Go—Go!” Fresnel barked back.

  * * *

  “Okay, Meadors,” Babcock said. “You can try two more. Then we keep the rest in reserve. Hell”—she scowled—“we’ve got the passage covered, and Drinkman may already have nailed ’em all and we just don’t know it yet. But until I’m sure—”

  * * *

  Simon Dumont pressed the button, the breaching charge blew, and he rolled through the sudden opening with his pulse rifle already in position.

  He’d been nervous about drilling the tiny hole in the service crawlway’s bulkhead, but the Manties hadn’t noticed, and he’d gotten the even tinier camera through it without being spotted. Despite his need for frantic haste, he’d spent several seconds studying the Manties, nailing down their positions in his mind and patching the same feed to the other five troopers of his section. They could make entry only one at a time, and they damned well needed to know where the bad guys were before they did it.

  The odds for the first man in the stick sucked. Dumont knew that, but he also knew he was the best man for the job. And the time he’d spent studying Manty rank insignia had paid off.

  He knew exactly where the senior Marine was. If he could take the bastard out before they realized what was happening . . .

  * * *

  “Iris!”

  Iris Babcock’s head jerked up.

  She was never certain later if it was the “CRACK!” of the breaching charge, the fist of overpressure, or the sound of her own name that did it. They all came so close together, in one shattering instant.

  The handheld seemed to fall in slow motion, like an accident in microgravity, as she dropped it. Her right hand found the pistol grip of her M32 with the clean precision of almost thirty T-years’ experience, and she spun toward the explosion from behind her, knees flexing into a firing crouch. But she was moving slowly—so slowly.

  Too slow, something said in her brain. Too slow this time, Iris!

  And then the shoulder slammed into her, smashing her to the deck, and she realized whose voice had shouted her name.

  * * *

  What the fu—?

  It was a damned Navy puke. That was the last person Dumont had worried about!

  The sheer surprise of it distracted him. Only for an instant, less than an eyeblink in the heart of eternity, but in that tiny sliver of time, the petty officer launched himself, slammed into Dumont’s target, and knocked the Marine out of the line of fire even as Dumont squeezed the trigger.

  The three-round burst missed its intended mark. Dumont started to snarl as he brought the muzzle around, and that was when he discovered the other thing the Navy puke had accomplished.

  * * *

  “No!”

  Babcock heard herself scream as the darts meant for her ripped through Horace Harkness in a spray of blood.

  The pulser in his right hand whined with lethal precision in the same heartbeat, and then he hit the deck with a horrible, limp looseness.

  “No!” she cried again as she came up on one knee and her M32 rose. She had the opening now, and her fire ripped into it as the second StateSec trooper started through.

  It was strange, a corner of her brain noticed as she tracked onto the third Peep in the stick. There was something wrong with her eyes.

  * * *

  “No good, Citizen Lieutenant.”

  The voice in Fresnel’s earbug was faint and fading. She couldn’t even identify it.

  “Tried,” it said. “Sorry . . . tried. But we’re all . . . dea—”

  It stopped, and she blinked burning eyes.

  “Time to go, Jean-Luc,” she heard herself say. “Pull ’em back. We’re leaving.”

  “But, Citizen Lieutenant—”

  “No more,” she said harshly. “No fucking more of my people. Not today.”

  * * *

  “Horace!” Sergeant Major Babcock ripped at Horace Harkness’ skinsuit. “Don’t you die! Don’t you die on me, you miserable goddammed vacuumsucker! Don’t you dare, goddamn you!”

  She could hardly see through her tears, but she recognized the second set of hands as Scotty Tremaine went to his knees on the other side of Harkness’ motionless body.

  Navy skinsuits were designed to remove in panels in the case of catastrophic wounds, and Tremaine peeled away the chest section while Babcock ripped open the torn and shredded upper arm. It wasn’t a Marine skinny, with armor appliqués, but it was a combat skinsuit, and it had slowed the pulser darts.

  Slowed, but not stopped, and Babcock’s jaw tightened as she saw the wreckage in their wake.

  The left arm was . . . gone. Just gone. Two of the darts had hit it, and the upper of the two, ten centimeters below the shoulder, had simply destroyed the humerus. Nothing remained but bloody rags of flesh, and only the automatic tourniquet the skinsuit had applied just below the armpit had kept him from bleeding out already.

  But the other wound, the one in his chest—

  “Missed the heart,” she heard Tremaine say. “Hit the lung, though.”

  His hands moved quickly, competently, spraying coagulant into the sucking wound, spraying a bandage to protect it, and his voice was calm. Impossibly calm. Hatefully calm, like an echo of her voice too many times before, kneeling over too many wounded, broken bodies. Keeping her head together. Doing her job. So why—

  “I’ve got this, Gunny,” the lieutenant said softly. She looked up, saw his eyes through his visor, realized she wasn’t the only one crying.

  “I’ve got this,” he repeated. “See to your people.”

  * * *

  “Breaching . . . now!” the voice in Clint Hendren’s earbug said, and fresh icons blinked on his display as Bethany Clark’s First Squad blew its way through the platform’s skin and dropped in behind the StateSec troopers besieging Boat Bay One.

  Third Platoon had been armed up and Marine One had been spotted for launch, just in case, when all hell broke loose aboard Sigismund Alpha. Unfortunately, Prince Adrian had also been over a quarter million kilometers from the platform. Even at 4.4 KPS², the flight had eaten up eight minutes. But she was here now. Her second and third squads had already made entry through the cargo docks, and Hendren smiled thinly.

  “Marine Three-One, Marine One,” he said now. “Secure the boat bay, then take out the bastards on Deck Two. We’re heading for the central lift shafts now. Meet us there.”

  “Marine One, Three-One copies. Secure the Bay, meet you at the lifts.”

  “And now,” Captain Clint Hendren said coldly, “we have some StateSec ass to kick.”

  * * *

  “It’s over, Citizen Commissioner,” Citizen Captain Radeckis said quietly.

  He stood behind Danielle Barthet, watching the displays.

  Fresnel’s brutally truncated platoon had fallen back to its original hide with less than a third of its starting personnel, but at least she was still alive. Fourth Platoon was still at almost half strength, but it had lost both its CO and its platoon sergeant. Its remnants had tried to hold the passage outside Command Central, but they’d been badly shaken and only too aware of how outclassed they were. When the Manties counterattacked out of the control room, a single squad had gone through Fourth like shit through a goose.

  Second Platoon was down by a third and falling back from its abortive attempt to break through to Power One through the service access ways. Only Third Platoon, which had been tasked as Omega’s reserve, remained intact, and it couldn’t take the vengeful Manties long to track it down now that they knew it was here.

  “No,” Barthet said flatly.

  “Citizen Commissioner, they tried,” Radeckis said as gently as he could. “But—”

  “It’s not over!” Barthet shouted. She punched her com officer in the shoulder. “Tell Citizen Commodore Androcles we’ve failed to secure complete control of the platform, but that I remain confident of the final outcome.”

  The com officer hesitated for just a moment, and she punched him again—harder.

  “Send it!” she snapped.

  “Yes, Citizen Commissioner!” he said, and she turned back to Radeckis.

  “The bastards haven’t won yet,” she said flatly. “We’ve still got the whip hand, as long as Androcles is out there!”

  “Citizen Commissioner, she’s got battleships, against dreadnoughts,” Radeckis replied, trying to get through to her. “And for all we know, the Manties have deployed more of those damned pods of theirs. I’m afraid we can’t count on her driving them off.”

  “No?”

  Barthet’s eyes glittered, and she smiled. It was an odd, frightening, cold-eyed sort of smile, and something tightened inside Porthos Radeckis. She looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the com officer.

  “Contact the Manties,” she told him. “Tell them I demand the standdown of all their personnel aboard Sigismund Alpha. And arm the destruct circuit for Tank Farm Two. If they’re not willing to see reason, we’ll just blow one of their tankers to hell and see how they—”

  Her head exploded, spraying blood, bone, and tissue across the control panel. The com officer lurched to his feet, retching, as the corpse hit the deck and the blood pooled.

  “I don’t think so, Citizen Commissioner,” Radeckis said, and synthetics whispered as he holstered his pulser. He looked down at the sudden corpse for a moment, then back up at the gagging com officer.

  “Stop puking, wipe that crap off the com, and contact the Manties. I’ll be damned if I get any more of our people killed for that bitch.”

  * * *

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s pretty much that, Citizen Commissioner,” Ingunn Androcles said.

  Her battle squadron was not quite seven minutes from her planned launch point as she looked across her flag bridge at Andre Simpson.