"Where are you, sir?" Hollingsworth asked.

"Was he friendly?" asked Herrington.

I answered Herrington first. "He wasn't armed."

"That's good news," said Hollingsworth.

"Where are you, sir?" It was the automatic rifleman from the fire team I had abandoned.

"Third floor."

"We're on our way, sir."

I was not foolish enough to follow that kid into a blind situation without backup. As I waited, I tried identifying myself again. "This is Captain Wayson Harris of the Unified Authority Marines," I repeated, with my voice so amplified that anyone on that floor of the building could hear me.

Scanning the wall using the heat-vision lens in my visor, I located several people hidden beyond the wall. Judging by the way they crouched along the floor, they seemed to be frightened of me.

I toyed with the idea of yelling, "Come out with your hands up," or possibly, "I know you're in there." They might have mistaken me for an alien. h.e.l.l, by the standards of whatever society had formed on this planet since the invasion, these guys could be criminals on the lam.

My fire team joined me. "Where are the survivors, sir?" the automatic rifleman asked.

"Hiding behind the door," I said. As I pulled out a grenade and set it for the lowest yield possible, my backup instinctively backed off. I called to the people hidden on the other side of the wall: "Stand away from the wall."

"Sir, I found the mines." It was Herrington.

I wanted to hear his report, but I had other priorities at the moment. "Not now, Herrington," I said as I tossed my grenade toward the wall and took cover.

"Aye, aye, sir, but do you want me to reconnoiter the spheres on my way back?"

"Herrington, I'm a bit busy at the moment," I snapped.

"Yes, sir," he said.

The first explosion, the one from my grenade, had enough force to blow a ten-foot section out of the wall. The second explosion, the one caused by whatever explosives the friendly natives had rigged, sent a rush of flames across the hall.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" my rifleman asked.

"That, Corporal, is why you stay under cover when there is fire in the hole."

"I don't think they were happy to see you, sir," the grenadier said.

"That's just 'cause they don't know him," said the rifleman.

We searched the first five floors of the building. The place had been occupied recently, but now stood abandoned. Reviewing the confrontation, I decided that throwing a grenade might not have made a good first impression, and time was running out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"Captain Harris, we've located survivors. Do you want us to make contact?" The call came from the fire team I had sent into the metal-skinned skysc.r.a.per. The Marine on the line, Corporal Hunter Ritz, sounded too helpful.

"Negative, Corporal. The natives are not friendly," I said.

"The natives in this building may be hostile, but they don't look dangerous, sir," Ritz said. "It's like a cathouse in here."

"A cathouse?" I repeated.

"Yes, sir. A brothel, sir."

"As in hookers and wh.o.r.es?" I asked, suddenly understanding his motivation to volunteer.

"Maybe not hookers and wh.o.r.es, but they are all of the female variety, sir," Ritz said. "It's pretty much paradise as far as I can tell. We've checked several floors; there are no men."

"Keep your armor on," I said.

"We're going to need to make contact sooner or later, sir, and they don't appear to be hostile. Maybe we could just ask them for directions."

"Keep away from them, Ritz. That is an order. Do not start up a conversation. Do not deliver your best pickup line. You and your men will observe the targets, but do not engage."

"Yes, sir."

"And try to stay alert, a.s.shole. There's no point keeping the hens in a henhouse unless you have a watchdog to guard it."

"Yes, sir."

I had left the Kamehameha with 250 men, 100 of whom I lost entering the atmosphere. We did not have enough men to take this city by force, not from the survivors and certainly not from the aliens. If I lost anyone else, I would not even have enough bodies to deliver the big bomb to the mines, and I did not want to be stuck on this planet for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, Ritz had contacted me on an open frequency to report his discovery.

As I scanned through other frequencies, I heard Marines offering to help guard the place they had already dubbed "the Norristown brothel and home for wayward girls." I had to admit, I was just as curious as everyone else. Was the building a harem? A brothel? Maybe a boot camp for Amazons? In a broken society, there was no telling what a building filled with women could mean.

"Sir, we have a problem?" one of my men reported. "The locals have arrived."

Using the commandLink, I looked at the situation through the other man's visor. He must have been standing at a window staring down at the street. Below him, the residents of Norristown had arrived en ma.s.se.

There were hundreds of men in the street, standing silently, prepared to fight but not yet rioting. In the center of this mob, my three jeeps looked like tiny islands. No one had overturned our vehicles, but the tide closed around them.

I sent my next message out on a company-wide frequency that even Hollingsworth and Herrington would hear. "Boys, we have a street full of survivors."

"How did you find them?" Thomer asked.

"They found us," I said.

"Do you want me to bring my men?" Thomer asked.

"Stay put, they're behaving themselves so far," I said as I headed down the stairs toward the lobby. As I stepped on to the floor, I could see men just outside the lobby staring in. Without taking my eyes off the street, I backed into the stairwell and trotted back up the stairs to the mezzanine, where I could have a closer look at the street below.

I loped over the debris left behind by looters and stole up to the window, my nerves tense. A large mob of men had formed on the street, but they showed no interest in entering the building. They milled around like an army of vagrants. Many carried M27s or handguns. A few of them had rocket launchers. Every weapon I saw was standard military issue, probably gleaned from the streets.

As I surveyed the scene, I noticed Corporal Ritz peering around the shattered gla.s.s of a fifth-floor window. My visor read his virtual tags. He looked in my direction, probably spotting me through the window with his telescopic lens.

"Do you think they know we're up here?" Ritz asked.

"Can you think of any other reason for them to be here?" I asked.

"Look at those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. There must be a thousand of them."

I estimated them at five hundred or six hundred, but kept it to myself.

"Are they armed?" Thomer asked.

"Every last mother-specking one of them," I said. "I think we know where all the guns disappeared to."

The mob filled the streets and sidewalks in a single, unorganized ma.s.s. At any moment, I expected some leader to climb onto one of our jeeps and rally his troops with a speech, but it did not happen.

"Ritz, what's happening in the brothel?"

"Not much, sir," Ritz said. "I don't think the ladies know we're in here."

"So we have a standoff," I said. "They don't want to come in, and we don't want to step out."

"Maybe they don't know who we are, sir," Ritz said. "Maybe they don't know we're Marines."

"Maybe they don't care," I said. Who knew what kind of anarchy had taken hold in Norristown. These people probably knew no authority higher than a gun.

I decided it was time to introduce myself. Pulling both a grenade and a rocket launcher from my belt, I took twelve paces back from the window. I set the grenade for a relatively low-yield explosion, and tossed it toward the window, then hid in a doorway. The explosion sprayed shattered gla.s.s onto the street. Bright light poured in through the shattered gla.s.s wall.

"What are you doing?" Ritz asked.

"I'm introducing myself," I said.

The men in the street scattered as gla.s.s showered down on them. Not giving them a moment to regroup, I bolted for the window and fired my rocket at one of the jeeps. I hated sacrificing a perfectly good ride, but explosions and burning metal made a strong impression.

The rocket hit the rear of the jeep just above the fuel tank, touching off a second explosion. The jeep did an anemic flip through the air, crashing onto its front b.u.mper, then landing upside down. Greasy black smoke rose from the cha.s.sis along with a bloom of orange-and-red flames.

Down below, all of the men on the street turned their guns in my direction, but n.o.body fired. Finally, a man stepped out of the crowd and climbed onto the nearest jeep. He wore Army fatigues and a Marine Corps combat helmet. He spoke to me over an open channel on the interLink, his voice sounding so d.a.m.n familiar we might have been old friends.

He said, "I understand your need to intrude upon our privacy, Captain, but why in G.o.d's name are you shooting at us?"

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Hoping that the mob would overestimate our numbers, I had my Marines trail me as I left the building.

The locals made way for me as I entered the street, allowing me and my Marines to pa.s.s through unchallenged. I worked my way toward the flaming wreckage of the jeep and the man in the combat helmet who stood beside it. As I came closer, he removed his helmet, revealing shoulder-length hair and a flowing beard. I hardly recognized him.

I came within a few feet of the man and removed my helmet as well.

"What are you doing here, Captain Harris?" asked the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow in a voice that held both hostility and restraint. This was the man who had told the fleet to go away. He sounded like he was about to do it again. Gone was the slightest trace that this man had ever been an Army chaplain.

"We came to liberate Terraneau," I said.

Doctorow laughed. "You hear that? He came to rescue us," he called out to his men. Those close enough to hear him laughed. Then turning to me, he said, "The aliens left here long ago, Captain."

Somehow, Doctorow seemed to have gone from highest-ranking shaman in the U.A. Army to some sort of acting governor of Norristown. h.e.l.l, for all I knew, he might have set himself up as the lord high emperor of all Terraneau. Whatever his domain, these men clearly followed him.

Doctorow was not as tall as he looked in his picture. He stood over six feet tall, but I still had an inch or two on him. He had aged over the last four years and had become less military in his bearing. The photo that came with my orders showed Doctorow still in his fifties; now he looked more like a well-preserved sixty-five-year-old. He stood erect, but he was too thin. He had let his coal-colored flattop grow into a s.h.a.ggy mane that reached down to his shoulders, and his thick salt-and-pepper beard had strayed over to the salt side of the equation.

I did not know whether to call the man by his military rank or religious t.i.tle. Since he was out of uniform, I decided to go the religious route. "Reverend Doctorow," I began.

"I prefer 'Colonel,' " he corrected.

"Colonel, you see that bright stuff up there in the sky?" I asked.

"Hard to miss," Doctorow said.

"They call that the 'ion curtain,' " I said.

"I'm familiar with the term. The scientist who coined it was stationed at Fort Sebastian."

"Was he a dwarf?" I asked.

Doctorow smiled. "It sounds as if we have a common acquaintance."

"Dr. William Sweet.w.a.ter," I said.

Undoubtedly remembering dark days past, Doctorow said, "They tried to lift him off the planet as the invasion began. Sounds like he made it."

"I met him on New Copenhagen," I said.

"New Copenhagen? The aliens made it all the way to New Copenhagen?"

"Yes, sir," I said. There was nothing more to say.

We stood in the road, in the junction between the three skysc.r.a.pers. Doctorow's horde surrounded us, but they also gave us a lot of s.p.a.ce. The seven men who had come down with me had worked their way to one of the jeeps. The tone of our meeting was neither friendly nor hostile. "They would have finished us off on New Copenhagen if it were not for Sweet.w.a.ter," I said. "The little b.a.s.t.a.r.d saved us."

"Saved you from what?" Doctorow asked. "The aliens don't do much once they capture your planet. They leave their ion curtain in the sky; they knock down buildings. But they're not all that bad.

"They killed off our army, but they left us alone once we stopped trying to fight them." He wore a rea.s.suring expression, the smile of a parent explaining the difference between right and wrong to an ignorant kid.