"They haven't left," I said.

"We haven't seen them for years."

"You do know that there's a line of glowing spheres no more than twenty miles from here?" I asked. "The aliens use those to sp.a.w.n. You know that, right?"

Doctorow placed a hand on my shoulder. It was a condescending gesture, and it made me angry. He leaned toward me and spoke in a whisper so that no one would hear what he said. "That, Captain Harris, is why we asked your fleet to go away."

I did not go into detail, but I told Doctorow about New Copenhagen. I described how the Avatari had hollowed mountains and filled them with gas so toxic the fumes slowly melted your skin. I told him how the aliens would expand the nearest sun and use it to bake Terraneau until it was cinder and gas.

"Is that a fact?" Doctorow asked, already acting a lot less sure of himself. "That changes things. How long do we have?"

"It will be a few thousand years before the sun goes on broil, but we've already located the gas," I said. "It's nasty s.h.i.t."

"There's no need for vulgarity," Doctorow said; but I had the feeling that he said it out of reflex instead of conviction, the same way he might say "G.o.d bless you" to a man who sneezed. As a former Army man, he knew the score. Among military men, swearing isn't a vice, it's a specking art form. Once he finished considering what I said, he added, "I don't suppose you have any proof?"

"Excuse me," I told Doctorow. I replaced my helmet and tried to reach Herrington. He did not answer, so I called Thomer instead.

I wanted to send Doctorow to the mines with Herrington, but I could not raise his transport. Somehow, he had flown out of range.

I contacted Hollingsworth and told him to get a transport ready, then I told Thomer to return to the airfield. With Herrington gone, Thomer would need to take his place. He would take Doctorow to see the Avatari mines, and he would lead a team into the mines to detonate the bomb.

As one of the only three men in the Unified Authority to enter an alien dig site and survive, Thomer had the right re sume for offering guided tours around Avatari mines; but I still worried. The Right Reverend would undoubtedly notice Thomer's Fallzoud-induced lethargy. Thomer was more alert than he had been back on the ship, but he still reacted to questions a fraction of a second too slow.

Thomer arrived at the airfield first. He loaded seventy-five Marines onto the transport, then waited for Doctorow to show. Once the Right Reverend rolled onto the field, Thomer led him onto the transport, and they took off for the mines. They did not leave empty-handed. I hoped Doctorow would not notice the large crate in the cargo hold or ask why seventy-five Marines had come along for the ride.

So far, nothing on this mission had gone according to plan.

"Captain Harris, sir?" Hollingsworth called from the airfield just moments after Thomer and Doctorow took to the air.

"What do you have?"

"I'm still not getting through to Sergeant Herrington."

"Maybe something is wrong with his equipment," I said.

"I understand, sir, but I haven't had any luck locating his transport with our radar." Hollingsworth was using the equipment on our third transport. Powerful equipment.

I wondered how long it had been since I spoke with Herrington. A couple of hours had pa.s.sed. He said he had located the mines. He had said something else, but I was distracted. I'd missed what he said.

Then I remembered what he had said. "Oh s.h.i.t," I groaned. "Speck."

"What is it, sir?" Hollingsworth asked.

"Herrington said he was going to fly by the Avatari spheres," I said. "He said he was going to swing by the spheres on the way back to the airfield."

"I don't understand." Hollingsworth sounded confused. Not having served on New Copenhagen, he could not fit the pieces together.

"Sergeant, you'd better have your pilot patch me through to Thomer's transport," I said. "We have a h.e.l.l of a problem."

I looked around the street. Mixing what was left of my men and the local militia, there might have been a thousand of us. We mostly had M27s and machine guns. My men would have some rocket launchers and grenades. We were cooked.

"Captain Harris, I have them," Hollingsworth said.

"Thomer."

"Yes, sir."

"Doctorow, you there, too?"

"I'm here," Doctorow said.

"Herrington is dead," I said. "The Avatari are on their way."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Herrington's transport simply vanished. That meant it went down quickly, so quickly that the pilot never even had time to send a distress signal. They could have had an equipment failure, but I knew d.a.m.n well that they hadn't. They were shot down. They reached the spheres and ran into the Avatari with their specking light rifles.

I remembered that the last thing I told Herrington was that I was too busy to talk; then I snuffed out that guilty memory. There would be time for recriminations later.

The beacon Herrington left by the mines was just over eight thousand miles away. Flying at 2,250 miles per hour, it would have taken him nearly four hours to get from the mines to the spheres. That meant he went down about an hour ago.

The spheres were approximately twenty miles from town. An army with light armor could close that gap in under an hour, but the Avatari moved slowly. Once they emerged from the spheres, it would take them hours to make the long march into Norristown.

Using interLink communications, I went over my calculations with Doctorow and Thomer and Hollingsworth. "Are you sure about this?" Doctorow asked. "For all you know, Herrington's radio might be on the blink."

I reminded him that the radar no longer showed Herrington's transport.

"So what do we do?" Doctorow asked.

"We're going to have to fight," I said.

"Then you're on your own, Captain. This is your fight; they came here looking for you." Doctorow sounded angry, like a man who suspects his friends are trying to con him.

I wanted to tell Doctorow to go speck himself. I wanted to tell him we could all die together if he preferred it that way. I kept my mouth shut, partially because I needed his help and partially because I knew he was right.

"What if we lit up the nuke?" Thomer asked. "We're closing in on the mines."

"It's too late for that," I said. "We're going to have to fight them. One way or another, we're going to need to fight them."

The Avatari emerged from their spheres as energy, then created their bodies by attracting tachyons out of the ion curtain. Exploding a nuclear device in the mines would draw loose tachyons out of the atmosphere, eradicating the ion curtain. It would not pull in tachyons that had already attached themselves to an avatar.

"Do you want me to scout the area?" Hollingsworth volunteered. "I could take a transport and be back in no time."

It sounded like an unnecessary risk, but I allowed him to persuade me. "I wouldn't mind having an ETA on the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," I agreed. "Just don't get shot down."

Hollingsworth said he would be careful and signed off.

Perhaps hearing Hollingsworth throw himself into the fire reminded Doctorow of his days in the Army. Maybe he'd just rethought things. Something made him change his mind, and he said, "If the mines are as bad as you say they are, we're all facing a death sentence. If it will help, Captain Harris, my militia will join you."

"A thousand men with M27s; I'm not sure what good that will do."

"My militia is five thousand men strong, and we have a lot more than machine guns. We have an exit strategy we've been saving in case of an emergency."

"We have an army of indestructible aliens marching into town. I think that qualifies as an emergency," I said.

"It sounds like an emergency to me," Doctorow agreed. As it turned out, the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow had a very good exit strategy indeed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Norristown did not have enough electricity for everyday life, but the city's emergency generators produced more than enough juice to power the sirens. All around town, sirens blared, calling the militia to arms and warning everyone else to abandon the town. When it came to evacuation, I had little doubt that the general population of Norristown took their warning sirens seriously.

The sound of the sirens tore through the air as we crossed town, their moaning wail carried across the ruined landscape un.o.bstructed by walls or towers.

I rode with the locals in a truck to go see the place that Ellery Doctorow described as "the darkest spot on Terraneau." On the way, we would stop by the Norristown Armory. According to Doctorow, the locals had collected enough guns and bombs to put up a fight.

"Captain Harris, I found Herrington's transport," Hollingsworth radioed in over the interLink.

"Any survivors?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"I can't tell from here. Do you want me to go in for a closer look?"

"No," I said, seeing no reason for him to risk his life to confirm something we both already knew. With the ion curtain forcing us to fly low, our transports made easy targets for the aliens. "Do you see any sign of the aliens?"

"There's some kind of glow coming off some hills," Hollingsworth said. "Should I go have a look?"

"No!" My voice lurched as I yelled this, but I could not help myself. Hollingsworth had not been on New Copenhagen. He had no idea what he was dealing with. "That glow is the aliens. Mark the area on the map and get back to the airfield."

A moment later, the positions came in on the virtual map in my visor. Hollingsworth marked the spot where Herrington went down. It was twenty-three miles west of town. He also marked the aliens' position, approximately eighteen miles west of town. One thing about the Avatari, they moved at a glacial pace. I took off my helmet so I could speak with Kareem O'Doul, Doctorow's right-hand man.

"The aliens are eighteen miles west of us." I had to shout so that he could hear me over the blare of the sirens. "That gives us four or five hours." Now that I had my helmet off, cool wind blew hard against my face. It felt good.

O'Doul was a small, dark man with nearly black eyes and skin the color of walnut sh.e.l.ls. His hair was brown but very close to black. "What about your missing transport?"

"They found that, too."

"Shot down?"

"Yes, they got it." I surveyed the landscape and listened to the sound of the sirens. "Do your people know what to do when they hear sirens?"

"They know," he answered. "We have a fleet of buses for evacuating town. When people see the buses, they climb on without asking questions.

"I'm more worried about giving them someplace to come home to."

"You and me both." I mumbled this far too quietly for him to hear me. We could not fight the Avatari. Even with the militia on our side, we could not engage them head-on. Instead of fighting like Marines, we would employ guerilla tactics, the old hit-and-run offense.

"How fast can your men rig the tunnels?" I asked.

"I've seen them do miracles. You're talking about blowing a big area. If they had more time, they'd give you a real work of art."

He sounded like a veteran. "Sounds like you have some demolitions experience," I said.

"Army Special Forces," O'Doul said. "I'm not your demolitions man. We have a couple of ex-Navy SEALs rigging the bombs."

"SEALs?" I asked. About eight years back, the Navy phased out its natural-born SEALs, replacing them with a line of specially equipped clones. "Survivors from the alien invasion?"

"Retired," O'Doul said.

"Old guys?"

"And they aren't getting any younger. Good thing setting up charges is like riding a bike," O'Doul said. "These boys will be hobbled and senile before they forget how to set a charge."

"Good thing," I agreed. If his demolitions men were former SEALs, we were in good hands. The Army and Marines had talented demolitions experts, but the SEALs were in a cla.s.s of their own.

O'Doul drove through the broken city desert and into a ghost town where two- and three-story buildings stood untouched and abandoned. The doors of all of these structures hung open, and a few had broken windows; but for the most part, the war had pa.s.sed them by.

"Welcome to the new capital city of Terraneau," O'Doul said.

A network of squat five-story buildings spread out around the area like a maze. Sky bridges ran between the buildings, connecting them like a strand of spider's web. There was no mistaking these for anything but government buildings, they were too ugly to be anything else.

"You stashed your a.r.s.enal in a government complex?" I asked.

"Under the complex," O'Doul said. "We saw the aliens knocking buildings down and thought it might be safer underground."

We made the same mistake on New Copenhagen. We placed our a.r.s.enal in a parking lot under a large hotel. The strategy backfired when the Avatari destroyed the hotel.

As we drove down the ramp leading underground, I checked back with Thomer and Hollingsworth. Thomer had found Herrington's beacon and the mountain in which the aliens had dug their mines.

Having seen the enormous entrance carved into the granite face of the cliffs and read the meters showing the toxicity level of the air, Doctorow became as cooperative as a newly minted cadet. When I put him on the line with O'Doul, he gave the order to mobilize the militia.

When Hollingsworth's transport touched down, the militia sent trucks out to the airfield to bring him and the rest of my men into town.

Holding on to the unreasonable hope that he might respond, I tried to reach Herrington as well. I could not adjust to the idea that I no longer had Sergeant Lewis Herrington watching my back.

Four men with M27s stood at the entrance to the parking lot. They opened the iron gate, allowing us to enter the first level of the garage. The sound of industrial generators echoed through the structure.

We drove down one level and parked outside a fenced enclosure. Looking through the chain link, I saw that Doctorow had indeed stockpiled enough weapons to start a galactic war. From outside the fence, I saw shelves covered with M27s and rocket launchers. Pallets with crates of ammunition lined a wall. Behind the shelves and pallets stood three rows of Jackals-fast-moving jeeps with overpowered engines, rear turrets, and light armor.