One of the six figures got its rifle up in time to fire back once. Summers had no idea where the beam struck; a pair of red dots on the figure's scalesuit converged and punched through the armor.

Most of the firing ceased.

Six corpses floated in s.p.a.ce.

"On the ship,now," Summers barked. He had his own rifle up, aimed at one of the places he remembered seeing a maneuvering rocket, pulled the trigger and held it down. If they could damage the ship badly enough, a rebel ship might finish it off before it made it back to safety; though he had no idea exactly where, Summers knew there were Reb craft in the vicinity, resupplying the j.a.panese cyborgs who had taken over the laser cannon.

Red dots wandered over the surface of the ship, seeking targets; one smart Reb, Summers briefly wondered who, set his laser for its widest beam and played it over the hull like a ruby searchlight.

Summers found he had been shooting a spot half a meter away from the maneuvering rocket, adjusted his own aim as a result.

The Unification warship began turning, rotating slowly. None of the rockets had lit; the s.p.a.ce Forcers had realized what was happening to their maneuvering rockets, were using gyroscopes to avoid giving away the locations of the other rockets. Summers followed his target around until the ship's roll had taken it from him, looked for another-That'll do,he thought, as the missile battery came around on them.

His companions had the same thought; sixteen different dots of red light converged on the missiles in very nearly the same instant. Another beam widened out to something the width of a basketball, and the Reb waved it over the missiles. A brief flash of pride touched the old cyborg; the Reb was going after their optics, and was probably taking them out. If they'd been just a few hundred meters farther away, the lack of optics on the missiles might have made a difference.

But they were too close. The missile did not need to correct course for a target so close to it. It detonated not far from the center of their group.

The world tumbled around Chris Summers.

He was spinning fast enough that he could actually feel some weight at his head and feet.

Chris Summers watched Earth pa.s.s by his faceplate, about once every second. He closed his eyes after a while because the sight was making him dizzy.

He floated in the darkness, remembering the people he had loved in his life. It did not take long; they were few enough. The two he had felt closest to as an adult, Jacqueline de Nostri and Carl Castanaveras, had been dead for fourteen years now, and though he had adjusted to their loss, he had never quite taken the same pleasure in life again.

When he opened his eyes,, Earth seemed to have grown slightly larger. Was it possible he might survive long enough to hit the atmosphere?

He closed his eyes again. What a vast irony that would be. He had deserted from the Elite by faking his death in a semiballistic accident; on a cold day in 2056, he had boarded a semiballistic in India. A j.a.panese bioelectronics team from Mitsubishi had met him in orbit, and together they had sent the SB back down to Earth in flaming pieces.

When he opened his eyes for the last time, Earth was definitely larger.

Death by friction. There was a dirty joke he'd heard about that, as a young man; something about dying during reentry.

Not the way,thought Chris Summers calmly,I want to go.

There is only one really simple way to kill an Elite, and it requires help from the Elite. Chris Summers used it. His rifle was gone; unfortunate, it was far more powerful than the laser in his fist. It would have made it easier. He unsnapped the glove at his right wrist, pulled it free, held his hand out as far from his face as he could, and smashed out the faceplate on his helmet. He misjudged slightly; he slammed his hand into the reinforced bridge of his nose as the air rushed free of his suit.

The middle knuckle of his right hand dented slightly.

Vacuum did not bother him much; a slight tingling sensation, distantly perceptible, on the false skin. His eyes were a mechanism; they barely noticed the drop in pressure. Only the abrupt pain in his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es reminded him that there was one part of his body that the Elite treatment hadnot touched. He grimaced with the pain, but it would not last long, and he had suffered far worse in his life.

Chris Summers hoped that he had not damaged the laser in his fist, buried just beneath the knuckle he had dented.

He opened his mouth as wide as it would go, jammed his fist into his mouth, and instructed the battle computer buried in the base of his skull to fire the laser in his fist until it ran out of power.

The day wore on.

In San Francisco the Governor General for the State of California was pulled by a mob from his offices in the Capitol Building, and in the plaza outside the Capitol was beaten half to death, doused with gasoline, and set afire.

Reporters from theElectronic Times holoed PKF troops firing into the crowds as they stormed the Capitol; holoed the Peaceforcers withdrawing as the crowd lynched the Governor General.

In Alabama, a Peaceforcer barracks was bombed, killing over two hundred PKF, including an Elite.

What began as a riot in Cincinnati turned into a pitched battle between half a dozen groups of impromptu rebels, and two complete battalions of PKF.

By noon, Capitol City time, the PKF were monitoring over two hundred ongoing clashes, some of them describable only as battles, between PKF troops and American citizens.

At 9:12 a.m., Pacific Time, Callia Sierran said, "It wasalways a stupid idea."

Her brother, crouched down for cover next to their transport, did not look up from his handheld. "Yeah yeah yeah."

Callia Sierran lay on her stomach, at the edge of a bluff up in the Hollywood Hills, and looked down into the Los Angeles basin; scanned, with a pair of imaging binoculars, the PKF as they prepared to evacuate the L.A. barracks.

"Training people on asensable set." Perhaps five hundred rebel troops lay dead in the gra.s.s surrounding the barracks; what was left of their early morning attack. "Whata f.u.c.king idiotic idea." Occasional laser and machine-gun fire still struck out from the barracks complex, to little effect; the rebels were well dug into the surrounding hills. The Peaceforcers had made one sortie out through the gates; the rebels had contained it, and forty or fifty dead PKF, one of them an Elite, lay stretched in the road just outside the gate. The PKF still controlled the barracks itself, though they were clearly preparing to abandon it.

"When do we get reinforcements?"

Lan shook his head. "We're still securing City Hall; apparently the LAPD fought against us."

"Incredible."

"Itried to tell you. Those guys are bad news on the hoof."

"You were speeding. I'd have given you the same ticket."

Lan paused, said sullenly, "Anyway, it's half an hour at least for reinforcements."

"They're going to be out of here by then. We can try calling 'Selle Lovely to expedite-"

"She won't take your call, Callia. Or mine."

"Yeah. Can we get a cannon strike?"

"Six of forty-two orbital cannon have been destroyed; we still hold seventeen, most of them pounding Unification s.p.a.ceport and O'Hare. Requests for strikes are backed up two and a half hours."

Callia nodded. She clicked on the command channel on her radio headset. "Squad leaders, this is Callia Sierran. I'm going to kamikaze a couple of jeeps loaded with explosives down into the fence surrounding the barracks. We'll move forward when the jeeps lift, on my call." She dropped down a channel, paused before clicking on. "Lan, how many shots do we have left on chopped lasers?"

Lan checked his handheld summary. "Sixty-two Elite killers, conservative estimate of twenty-five shots per; diags say we used up four hundred and twelve shots in the first attack. Conservative estimate of eleven hundred thirty-eight remaining shots."

Callia clicked on. "Elite killers, I trust you've kept track of your remaining shots; en ma.s.se, we have eleven hundred shots remaining. Intelligence says there're four Elite left inside. Let's use our shots wisely; leave cover fire to your comrades, never waste a shot on anything except a person showingacquired.

Hopefully an Elite." She paused. "If they get anything in the air, shoot that too. Otherwise, just people."

She clicked off. "Ready, Lan?"

"Yeah." Lan snapped shut his handheld, clipped it to his belt, and brought the laser rifle slung over his back around for business. "We have six hundred troops left alive, Callia. We're going to lose at least half of them doing this."

Callia Sierran came to her feet. "No kidding. Let's go."

They came down off the hills on foot, in a silent wave, running, firing as they advanced. A pair of jeeps came plunging down out of the sky when they were halfway across the field separating them from the barracks building, and when the jeeps struck the gate thirty meters of fence went down on either side.

Troops dropped around Callia as she advanced, some screaming, some in the loose tumble of the already dead. A slug smashed into her shoulder and the impact armor beneath her fatigues went totally rigid, the impact knocking her from her feet; Lan was there in an instant, pulling her back to her feet; the scarlet beam of a laser waved across them as he did so, scorching them even through their laser-resistant fatigues. Callia let go of Lan's helping hand, rolled to the left, and looked through the scope for the source of the laser;acquired. Three shots, X-laser, toward the laser source; the laser ceased and she was up again, noticed briefly that Lan limped badly but it was not slowing him much in their advance.

Then they werethere, at the shattered ruin of the gate. About a dozen PKF had made a stand behind the burning wrecks of the jeeps, using the jeeps for cover, and were firing upon the advancing rebel troops from close range. Callia barely had time to notice the horrible toll, the scores of her comrades dropping all around her. She bounded up into the flames of the burning jeeps, stood for a moment atop the wreck of a jeep and fired, calmly and without anger, down into the ranks of the PKF on the other side.

Her boots and fatigues were heat and laser resistant; she barely noticed the flames in which she stood, the dull red metal beneath her feet. She fired into the tightly bunched groups of Peaceforcers, watched men and women alike die at the touch of her X-laser. Something blurred in her peripheral vision, and she turned slightly, aware now of the rebel troops pushing their way through the gap, into the open area just inside the fences, and the blur slowed, became a man,Elite, he had to be simply from the huge size of the weapon he carried, some kind of autoshot.

Callia knew she did not have time to bring her laser around on the man; she got her arms up in time to cover her face.

The autoshot struck her like a sledgehammer. She was briefly aware of being lifted up into the air, of flying backward.

And then nothing.

She awoke in a hospital bed.

Lan sat in a chair next to her, watching her. "How you doing?"

"I'm-I don't know," she said weakly. "Howam I doing?"

"Okay, considering. Broken left shoulder, one solid bruise from crotch to throat. You burned your feet up pretty bad, I'm not sure how."

"I was-" She coughed, felt an amazing flash of pain spread through her. "I got up on a burning jeep."

Lan nodded. "I missed that; I went around them, myself."

"Where am I?"

"Sickroom at the L.A. PKF barracks. We took it."

"Good. How many?"

"All the PKF A couple tried to surrender, but-" Lan shook his head. "The first one was an Elite. I fried him myself. Everybody else seemed to take it as a cue."

Speaking was an immense effort."How many?"

"We have two hundred and sixty alive. Mostly wounded to one degree or another."

They'd started out that morning with 1,140 troops.

Callia closed her eyes and let go of consciousness.

There are 210,000 PKF stationed in Capitol City. Primarily they are there to protect Capitol City; if Mohammed Vance had given the Secretary General's office time, doubtless they would have stopped him from using them.

He did not give them time.

For two solid hours, Armored AeroSmith VTLs ferried Peaceforcer troops from the PKF s.p.a.cesc.r.a.per in Capitol City, to Unification s.p.a.ceport at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Semiballistics landed hour after hour, rerouted from across the globe to Unification s.p.a.ceport. The rebels, sitting upstairs with their seventeen laser cannon, shot down some of them; the vast majority got through.

It took longer than Vance had told them they had; he had expected that, had made allowances for it. If he had told them the truth, that he wanted to boost before 6:00 em., they would not have made it out of Unification s.p.a.ceport before nightfall.

Lan took over the offices of the Elite Captain who had commanded the PKF in Los Angeles.

He got through to Domino, at the downtown Erisian Temple, on the first try. He reported briefly, succinctly, gave casualty figures for both rebels and PKF.

When he was done, Domino said, "How's Callia?"

Lan stared at her. "Alive. Likely to stay that way."

The woman who had, more or less, raised them both said softly, "I'm pleased to hear it."

Lan struggled with it, then snapped, "Do me a favor."

"Yes, Lan?"

"I don't know what Callia and I did that got us on Lovely's s.h.i.t list. But because we couldn't get through to her this morning, we didn't get reinforcements we needed. At least half our casualties are due to that.

So do me a favor, and tell Lovely she's a f.u.c.king idiot." He cut the connection before Domino could reply. One of his few surviving troops was standing at the doorway when he turned around, staring at him.

"Lieutenant Sierran?"

He snapped at the girl. "Yes?"

"We're being asked to move out. Bag our casualties for later, stack the PKF corpses, and go back up the a.s.sault on Parker Center."

"Which is what?"

"The Los Angeles Police Department. Apparently they haven't surrendered yet."

Lan stood still for a long moment. "All right. Make four squads; we'll use the PKF AeroSmiths."

"Yes, sir."

He turned back to where his rifle was propped in the corner, muttering, "Exhibition of Speed? I don't think so."

They boosted wearing full combat gear, seventy-five thousand PKF nearly two thousand Elite, over a thousand semiballistics packed to the walls with officers of the Peace Keeping Force.

They lost fifty-eight semiballistics en route to enemy laser cannon.

Mohammed Vance went up in the first wave of semiballistics. The semiballistic that launched immediately before his was one of the fifty-eight lost. His own SB was quite nearly the fifty-ninth; the SB before his came down in flames as his was boosting. They pa.s.sed within twenty meters, going up and down.

At 3:56 em., Pacific Standard Time, PKF started landing in Santa Monica, at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

- 20 -.

Her hair fell out.

It was very nearly the worst of what she'd suffered, from the radiation poisoning while drifting in s.p.a.ce.

The nanoviruses injected into her back in Iowa, while still with the Rebs, had done their work well; most of the small cancers she would otherwise have developed from the solar radiation had been scavenged early on.