"He usually manages to roll in by nine," the lieutenant said with a chuckle. "Officially he does `solo PT.' The one remaining staff sergeant handles the formations. Sergeant Ryerson is probably all right, he's just learned to keep his head down and his eyes shut. I don't know about the CQ, though, he might have tried to contact Morales."

  "Well, sir," Pappas said glancing at his own watch, "in that case maybe you could come on over to the barracks with me. I need you to verify the fact that I am now in the chain of responsibility. After that you can just sit back and watch. Sir."

  "Oh, with pleasure, Gunny," said the acting company commander with a tight smile. "And I think we will make a stop by the Arms vault," he continued, the smile going quite feral. "It only responds to properly coded individuals. Morales was never coded for it and he has been asking me for my codes for the last week."

  "Weapons, sir?!"

  "We don't have suits yet, but we've already received our full supply of weapons. M-200 grav rifles, M-300 grav guns, terawatt lasers, mortars, grenade launchers and a basic load-out came in one package including the vault." The lieutenant smiled tightly again. "If I had to brace him this week, I was preparing a coup de main with certain elements of the company. As it is I'm glad to have you aboard; it would have gotten messy. We need to hurry. I doubt he knows you are here yet, so do you think we can do this without a full Operations Order?" he finished with a wry grin. His eyes were somber as he slipped his silks top on over the holstered .45.

  "Aye aye, sir," said the gunnery sergeant grimly, standing up and heading for the door. "Semper fuckin' Fi. Adams! Front and center!"

  34

  Andata Province, Diess IV

  0821 GMT May 19th, 2002 AD

  I think I should have waited to motivate them until now, Mike thought. Diess' rising primary cast a fierce green fluorescence over the tableau on the roof. Fifty-eight sets of combat armor were planted at various distances from the edge of the roof, some of them slightly crouched as if trying not to face something. One was parked right on the edge. The roofs could be seen stretching in a continuous checkerboard from the inland mesas to the far green sea. In the extreme distance to the west Mike noticed some breaks and of course there was the missing set against the mesa, the fallen Qualtren and Qualtrev. Almost the length of a football field away was another megascraper roof at the same level.

  "How far away is that megascraper, Sergeant Wiznowski?"

  The NCO focused his range-finder crosshairs on the far wall and confirmed his rough guess. "Seventy-two and a hair meters, sir," he answered, reading off his Heads-Up-Display.

  "And do you happen to know the maximum jump range of a Warrior Combat Suit?"

  "No, sir, sorry, sir."

  "Right, well it just so happens that the maximum jump range in the specifications we called for was one hundred meters for warriors, one twenty for scouts and one fifty for command." Mike crouched and whispered an order. His suit rolled backward over the mile high drop and sprang outward. In apparent defiance of gravity it shot out and over in a back flip and landed neatly on the far roof. He then sprang back, landing with a thump in their midst.

  "Sergeant Wiznowski, I want you to take a running jump to the other roof . . ."

  "Uh, Mike, sir . . ."

  "You can do it, Wiz. If I can, you can. Back up a couple of hops, take a running jump at it and as you jump, tell your suit to jump. Do it." His visor faced that of the NCO, two blank surfaces, armor unreadable. He wondered what was going through the mind of the scout at that moment. Wiznowski had always been the consummate airborne NCO, brave to the point of suicide. Now he apparently was facing a challenge he was not fully prepared for. "Do you want me to jump again?"

  "No sir, I'll do it." The tall suit backed up from the group and ran at the edge. There was total silence on the net as he reached the edge and whispered, "Jump." Again, the suit soared upward in defiance of gravity and common sense. This time with his additional speed, far greater than an unarmored man, he soared far onto the roof, almost a hundred meters from the edge.

  "That was a little excessive, Wiz. I said we spec'ed them for one hundred and twenty meters; it turned out to be a bit better than that." Mike bounded farther into the roof to get a running start. He said, "Michelle, command run and maximum jump, execute."

  The legs of the suit began to blur. In the hundred meters from his position to the roof's edge it accelerated to over one hundred kilometers per hour in a series of ground-devouring bounds. As the boots of the suit came in contact with the roof, a grappling field would engage to prevent slippage, therefore maximum energy was applied to each thrust. When he reached the roof's edge the suit's AID automatically launched him into the air. Under the combination of forward momentum, his inertial compensators' contragravity function, and thrust from the inertialess thrusters built into the suit, he was carried over two hundred meters onto the far roof. With a return series of bounds he reached the edge of the roof and bounced effortlessly back to the platoon.

  "Of course, this is a prototype command suit, not an issue one. Quite the thing, actually. But a suit can take a gap like this without breaking a sweat as you should all know. Powered suit drills is what your jobs are all about now; if you goons had ever been given proper training we wouldn't be having this conversation.

  "We will move out in an extended watch formation, twenty meters between personnel, thirty meters between squads, scouts forward leaning left. If somebody misses the jump, the team falls out and recovers them using their winch system. If you miss the jump, don't worry, your suit will automatically hit the anti-grav and your momentum will carry you to the face of the building. Use the universal clamp in your palm pad, clamp to the wall and wait for your buddies to recover you, or climb up hand over hand for that matter. The first rally point is the resupply rendezvous and we don't need everybody there at first so if somebody misses, that troop's team drops and only that team drops, everybody else drives the fuck on, is that clear?"

  "Clear, sir."

  "If we take any fire from Posleen, those with weapons take them under fire. Kick their ass, don't pee on 'em. Lay down all the fire you can and blow the fuckers away. We do not want to get held up on these rooftops without weapons.

  "Now, just to get the feel for things, we'll drop back and start moving forward across the roof as a platoon, not a cluster fuck, right?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Sergeant Green!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I want to take this at a long slow lope."

  "Yes, sir."

  "All-righty then, move out." The platoon moved back, slowly, and the NCOs got it sorted out. With the men in position, Mike got his headquarters' squad, effectively Sergeant Green and the engineers, in place, right rear, and hollered, "Move 'em out!"

  The scout team started forward in long bounding strides and the platoon, spread over nearly a half kilometer, perforce bounded out behind them. As they neared the edge Mike consulted with Michelle.

  All of the scouts took the jump without a hitch and when several of the regular troops, naturally, balked, the suits overrode them and jumped anyway. As they crossed the next building, still without opposition or even harassing fire, the troops began to get into the rhythm of the run. Runners all, as any soldier had to be in the modern airborne, the comforting rhythm of a light run was an anodyne to their nerves and the speed and distance involved a boost to their ego. Mike gave it a few more minutes then cranked on the tunes. Suddenly, from each troop's AID, the Pat Benatar song "Legend of Billy Jean" started to play. "Benefits of not having to be tactical," he commented to Sergeant Green.

  * * *

  "We can't afford to be innocent,

  Stand up and face the enemy

  It's a do or die situation

  We will be Invincible.

  And with the power of conviction

  There is no sacrifice

  It's a do or die situation

  We will be Invincible."

  As the kilometers passed with no Posleen in sight, the songs continued. Seventies rock, alternative, raker rock, turn fusion, heavy metal. Many of the songs emphasized the ephemeral nature of life and the importance of honor and courage, or at least resignation, in the face of inevitability. If the troops objected to the playlist there was no evidence, just a susurrant hush of breathing, each troop lost in his own thoughts. As they neared the rendezvous, a megascraper about three "blocks" or six kilometers from the encirclement, Mike cut onto the platoon push, breaking into a live version of "Don't Fear the Reaper."

  "Okay, hold it up in the middle of this next building, cigar perimeter, personnel with weapons on the outside," he said, looking around the empty rooftop. "We're supposed to be meeting our resupply here."

  "Mike," said a puzzled Wiznowski on a side frequency, "what's that?"

  In the east, towards the distant line of human resistance, a fireworks display had suddenly erupted. "Michelle, enhance."

  Lines of fire were blasting upward from the break between two buildings. Hypervelocity missiles and other kinetic energy weapons along with lasers and lines of plasma reached up to the heavens. Suddenly the broken body of a combat shuttle, gloriously aflame, burst into sight above the intervening buildings. It was followed by six more, one twisting off, crippled, just as the shuttles reached the dubious safety of the air over the megascrapers. One crested too high and a plasma bolt that would do credit to a space cruiser slapped it out of the air. The fire penetrated its antimatter containment field and it exploded with the sun-bright flash of nuclear detonation, destroying the upper portions of the buildings to either side and forcing one of the other shuttles off course into a roof.

  The platoon's visual sensors automatically screened the optical overload. "Damn! There goes half our ammunition," cursed Sergeant Green as the debris of the buildings crashed down all around.

  "More likely a third," contradicted Mike just as a half dozen Posleen God Kings in their saucer-shaped craft swooped upwards in pursuit of the shuttles. His mind slipped into razor sharp fugue, every detail diamond clear. "Platoon, down! Activate deception systems!"

  As the suit careted the Posleen, Mike's pistol locked onto them automatically. The God Kings were concentrating on the undefended shuttles and Mike's first silvery burst swept two of them out of the sky from three kilometers away, one of the vehicles disappearing in actinic fire as the relativistic teardrops searched out its power supply. He hopped sideways and dropped as the remaining vehicles' targeting systems slewed the God Kings' weapons onto his location. A hurricane of fire swept his former position, but he took out another from his kneeling position. Two of the remaining Posleen went back to attacking the shuttles as one swept towards the platoon's position.

  The suits were doing a good job of mimicking the top of a building in every frequency so the Posleen thought there was a sole human to deal with. Mike missed the rapidly dodging craft with his next two shots and, in a series of wild jumps and somersaults, dodged three bursts of plasma, one of which cooked the external sensors on his right side. The Posleen was moving in at over three hundred kilometers per hour swerving crazily from side to side. Michelle tossed the suit to the side under thrusters as another burst of plasma passed through the space he had just occupied. Mike tumbled over onto his back and was trying to fire upward, an awkward position in a suit, when he was suddenly covered with the flaming wreckage of a God King's saucer.

  "Sucker figured he had you bagged, sir," said Duncan, holstering the pistol borrowed for the sweep, "so he finally stopped flying all over the sky."

  "Thanks, Duncan," said Mike, rolling to his feet. "Little too close, that one."

  "Just a little walk in the mornin', sir."

  "Airborne. Anybody see where the other God Kings or our shuttles went?"

  "Negatory, sir," said Sergeant Green. "Nothin' in sight."

  Two remaining shuttles suddenly popped up to the west, still relentlessly pursued by the God Kings. The personnel with pistols or captured Posleen weapons, having recovered from the shock of the attack, opened up on them. One more shuttle crashed after taking plasma fire but the God Kings were both dead moments later. The last shuttle banked towards the platoon's location and nosed up to a landing in the center of their perimeter. Its back door dropped immediately.

  "Okay, first squad, inside, grab what you need and then back out! Move it! Sergeant Green, handle the distribution, the shuttle should have an inventory."

  "Roger, sir," the NCO headed for the drop-door as the first squad lined up for weapons.

  "Posleen!" called one of the troopers on the perimeter. Sun bright nicks of ricochets began skipping off the shuttle's armored skin. Mike looked seaward towards the source of the fire. A group of Posleen normals had gotten up onto the roof of the far building and were firing toward the shuttle and the platoon grouped around it.

  "Spread it out!" He noted that first squad had hardly ducked getting to the shuttle. "Fire dammit!" He slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol and demonstrated, tumbling several of the distant horse-figures. The personnel with captured Posleen weapons began firing.

  "I'm hit!" screamed one of the troops, followed by a bemused, "I thought I was hit." He sat on the roof looking at his thigh. "Am I hit?"

  "You're hit," said Mike, belatedly falling to a prone position. "Everybody get down, dammit. Don't sweat it, your suit will take care of it."

  "Second squad!" bellowed Sergeant Green.

  "Fire from the west!"

  "God Kings from inland!"

  "Expedite this, Sergeant Green! First squad, concentrate on the God Kings!" Suddenly one of the second squad suits headed towards the shuttle began doing its death dance. As the suit tumbled it knocked aside others in the squad. They started to try to catch the suit, but it suddenly stopped and was still.

  As they began to open the suit, Mike snapped, "Do not pop his suit! In case some of you have never seen that, Private Laski is not recoverable. Sergeant Green?!" Mike opened fire on the approaching God Kings.

  "Third squad!" Sergeant Green bellowed, by way of answer.

  Wiznowski suddenly bounded out of the shuttle and off to the west; Mike had hardly noticed him fall back to it. The lighter and faster scout began firing at the approaching God Kings with an HVM launcher. He moved around the rooftop like a hyperactive flea. The fire of the four new God Kings angled in on him as he ran, stopped, jumped and dodged to avoid it. From time to time he would stop just long enough to fire off a hypervelocity missile.

  "Wiz! Dammit, quit trying to be a hero!" Mike shouted, triggering another burst while bounding forward in support. "Get your ass back here!"

  "If you wanna dance, sir . . ." the scout panted and was washed away by a God King HVM.

  "Wizzz!" Mike screamed and leaped to his feet.

  "Fuckers!" He reloaded and started running towards the God Kings. "Michelle, evade pattern Gamma, maximum run, broken field automatic, execute!" Now all he had to do was reload and fire and he slammed in magazine after magazine as he closed on first four and then three and then two saucers. The God Kings' fire flailed around him uselessly as they closed the distance.

  The suit dodged in a random zigzag pattern as he maintained constant positive traction through the suit boots, the occasional hit by a railgun round shedding like water. A hundred meters out a laser briefly washed his suit, but with the exception of frying a set of sensors, it was not in contact long enough to do more than raise his temperature.

  He closed the final distance to the last God Kings at an oblique as their saucers slewed, trying to track the frenetically dodging combat suit. Like a weasel Mike leapt on the offside saucer and, taking the God King's head in his gauntlet while planting his boot on its shoulder, ripped the sauroid head off clean. At that the other God King swung his saucer around to run but Mike flipped the palmate blade off his back and hurled it entirely through its thorax with all the rage in the world.

  Then he bounced over and whacked the other God King's head off. He stepped down off the faltering saucer and collected both heads. Tossing them a distance away, he drew his pistol.

  A burst of fire into the energy pack of the nearest saucer devoured the vehicle in a shattering explosion. He rode out the explosion as if it were an epiphany, staring into the fire like a soul in hell. There was no danger; the suits could shrug off any explosion short of the sort of cataclysm that struck Qualtren. And even then they could give it a run for its money.

  He next turned his scorched pistol on the far God King's vehicle, devouring it as well. Then he kicked the vehicles over one by one, pulling all the pieces of the God Kings he could find out of the wreckage. He made a pile, hopped up and down on it until it was flat, piled it back up and put an antimatter grenade in the resulting mass.

  He set the timer, stepped back and watched the last remnants of the two God Kings blown sky high. Then he picked up the nearest saucer and hammered it into the roof until the roof was massively holed and the saucer was junk. His rage sated, he picked up the two heads by their crests and flew his suit back to the platoon.

  By the time he returned the other fire had slackened. Those had been the only God Kings so far in contact and the normals were ineffective except in overwhelming numbers. He thrust the fresh heads at the first trooper he encountered.

  "Go put these on Sergeant Wiznowski's smear," Mike snarled. The paratrooper hurried to obey.

  "I swear before all the gods," he said to himself, but Michelle faithfully broadcast it, "that samadh will grow beyond all measure."

  He stared off toward the ocean, without thoughts, avoiding recent memories. Immured in his armor, he had killed soldiers under his command in numbers beyond count, but every one of those was a mere electronic chimera. For the first time he had lost actual human beings, living breathing entities with whom he had established a bond.

  The sudden intrusion of reality into his highly developed notional world of bloodless combat was momentarily stupefying. He shuddered in his armor, conscious for perhaps the first time that these were not shadows on the wall of some electronic cave, but people who had hopes and dreams. These were people whose mothers carried them for nine long months, the trail of their lives leading to a barren rooftop under a sun not their own.