A dozen armed guards stood inside the fence. When they saw O'Doul approach, they unlocked the gate. I followed, entering the organized madness of an armory made by the kind of men who submit to an alien occupation.

The armory had stacks of combat armor, more likely salvage than surplus. A fleet of tanks sat in one corner of the garage. They had both gas-spewing Rumsfelds and powerful LGs. These vehicles would be worse than useless against the aliens, their slow speeds would make them easy targets, and their armor would offer no protection against Avatari light rifles.

Taking a cursory look around, I saw rocket launchers, grenade launchers, rifles, pistols, cannons, landmines, and robot defense units called trackers. "We're going to need particle-beam cannons and handheld rocket launchers," I said.

"We have enough rockets to send your men out with a thousand launchers each," O'Doul said.

"And all of yours, too?" I asked. "I'm going to need men and vehicles."

"I'm not sending my men out there," O'Doul said. Sending men to rig tunnels was one thing; sending men into battle was another.

"Doctorow told you to give me whatever support I need," I said. "I need vehicles, I need drivers, and I need men to fight on the line."

O'Doul did not like it, and I got the feeling he did not like me, but he knew I was right. He ordered his men to load trucks with particle-beam cannons and handheld rocket launchers, and the men went to work.

Hollingsworth arrived a few minutes later. Looking at the stacks of weapons, he gave a low whistle, and said, "Man, you have enough s.h.i.t here to overthrow an empire."

I hoped he was right.

The underground garage/armory had seven levels, but at this point in the mission, the back of the third level was what interested me.

The rear wall of the third level opened to an underground train station. There were no lights in the station, just a platform that disappeared into utter darkness.

"Welcome to the blackest spot on Terraneau," O'Doul said.

"I've seen a.s.sholes more brightly lit than this place." I noticed that as he relaxed around me and my Marines, he became more and more profane.

"Where's it go?" I asked.

"It's the Norristown subway system. Where do you think it goes?" He stepped onto the platform and shined a torch out toward the tracks. The light was not especially bright. It dissolved into the blackness a few feet in. The area in the beam was a gleaming, polished, magnetic railway system hidden under a blanket of darkness so dense I felt like I could breathe it.

"Hit the lights," O'Doul yelled to the guards.

A string of bulbs lit up along the ceiling. Instead of illuminating the tunnel, they produced a series of dim bubbles that vanished in the distance.

I put on my helmet and stepped through the opening. Even with night-for-day lenses, I could not see very far. I saw the plasticized world around me clearly enough-twenty-foot-wide platforms on either side of the tunnel; six magnetic tracks laid out like stripes that rolled out as far as the eye could see; and dead monitors, which had not displayed train schedules for years. Without juice running through them, the magnetic tracks were simply four-foot-deep grooves.

"You're going to use these tunnels to rig your charges?" I asked.

"Unless you have a better idea," O'Doul said.

"How solid are the tunnels?" I asked. "Are you going to be able to get to the zone?"

"We've mapped every inch of these sp.e.c.k.e.rs, Harris. I know my way around these b.i.t.c.hes better than the guys who ran the trains. You just deliver the aliens to the right place at the right time, and I'll cream their a.s.ses."

"How are we planning to get the bombs in place?" Hollingsworth asked. Like me, he had his helmet on. "There is no way in the world that these guys are going to power a big system like this with a couple of emergency generators."

"You let me worry about that," O'Doul said. "The bombs are my problem; the aliens are yours."

"Begging your pardon, sir, the bombs are my problem, too," Hollingsworth said. "My orders are to coordinate efforts between your militia and our Marines. I'm staying with you."

"Speck. What the speck!" said O'Doul. Judging by his language arts, he had become totally at ease around us.

O'Doul, Hollingsworth, and a small army of drivers would shuttle the charges to the target area on the west side of town. They could probably have loaded all of the explosives into a single commuter train had the trains been running. Instead, they loaded the explosives onto the gas-powered sleds that the transit authority had used for tunnel maintenance.

Their job was to set the trap; my job was to kick the hornet's nest. I was taking 73 of my 148 remaining Marines along with 200 men from the local militia to meet the Avatari. All we had to do was lead the specking aliens into O'Doul's blast zone, then get the h.e.l.l out of there before the bombs went off. We would definitely take casualties on this one. We were dealing with the Avatari, and the one thing you could count on with those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds was death and destruction. But if we ran a hit-and-run offense, I thought we might limit the breakage.

I had my men stock up on rocket launchers and grenades. If we were forced into a close-range fight, we would use particle-beam weapons. That would be the last resort. When O'Doul asked me what weapons I thought his drivers should take, I gave it to him straight, "All they will need are body bags and Jackals."

Then we loaded up and left the armory.

As we drove west through town, I looked back at my convoy. We had thirty-five jeeps and thirty-six Jackals, all borrowed from the armory and piloted by militiamen. Those Jackals were our best bet. They had rocket arrays set up on their front fenders, machine guns with armor-piercing bullets in their rear turrets, and hundreds of horses under their hoods.

We headed south, then west across Norristown, entering areas as desolate as the Martian desert, in which I did not see so much as a living plant. The streets were buried under slag and debris. The parks were nothing more than burned-over lots with the occasional stream running through them. Using the Geiger counter in my visor, I took radiation readings and found more than a few hot spots. The first Norristown defenders must have resorted to nuclear-tipped ordinance as the war wound down.

After leaving the downtown area, we entered a storm-torn suburb in which the occasional tree, or house, or chapel stood as a reminder of how life should have been. As the invasion began, the troops defending Norristown would have sacrificed this area the way doctors amputate a cancerous limb. They would have let the aliens in, then bombarded the place with everything they had. The pockmarked remains of expended minefields covered much of the area.

My men traveled in jeeps; the militia rode in Jackals. Jeeps were smaller and a lot more vulnerable, but you could hop in and out of them as fast as you liked. With their armored walls, Jackals were not so easy to enter. I rode in a Jackal, but it was only as a show of confidence. The guy doing the driving was a high-ranking member of the Norristown militia. O'Doul had designated him Jackal squad leader. I could see why-the son of a b.i.t.c.h showed no fear at all.

The Jackal leader flipped some switches on his dash, and said, "I have the aliens on radar." He swung the screen over so I could have a look. The Avatari were still a couple of miles ahead of us. Their ranks showed up as a solid white block against the glowing green background of the screen.

"Do you know that part of town?" I asked.

He laughed, "I used to live there . . . had a nice house with a swing set in the back. They had good schools in this part of town."

"I bet the schools aren't much of a selling point anymore," I said.

"But the house prices have dropped," he said. The guy had a sense of humor. We were driving through the wreckage of his old neighborhood, but he could still tell jokes. I liked that.

"Know anyplace between us and them that might give us a high-ground advantage?" I asked.

He slowed the Jackal and pulled the radar screen over for a closer look. "There's Hyde Park," he said. "It's not exactly mountainous, but the bluffs might work out."

"Let's go," I said.

He used his radio to relay my orders to the other Jackals, and I sent my Marines the info over the interLink: "We're headed to a park where we should have a slight elevation advantage."

It took about three minutes to find Hyde Park, a long, terraced pasture with slopes overlooking the western edge of Norristown. The charred remains of a two-story community center stood in the middle of the park like a large chapel overlooking a cemetery.

The jeeps led the way, skidding to a stop at the edge of a ridge so my Marines could climb out. The Jackal leader pulled up near my men and stopped. I asked him if I could use his radio to speak to his men. He nodded.

Taking the microphone, I said, "You boys driving the Jackals, you remember your job is to hara.s.s, not to fight." Then I thanked the Jackal leader for the ride and wished him luck. From here on out, I would ride in a jeep.

I took my spot on the hill, pulled out my first rocket launcher, and prepared for the battle.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Every last one of us on those hills was a Marine. We were the ones with the combat armor, the training, and the frontline experience. I listened in on my men when they spoke. I heard them breathe when they were silent. The only thing I could not hear was their thoughts.

You see them out there? Where the specking h.e.l.l are those sp.e.c.k.e.rs?

They'll be here soon enough. You in a rush to see them?

The iron-gray-colored horde appeared in the ruins below us. They were far away, small and indistinct. I did not think they had spotted us yet when I gave my final instructions.

"The objective at this stop is not-I repeat, not-to kill aliens," I said over an open frequency. "I'm not handing out medals for kills. Got it? Fire off a rocket, and back away. The name of the game here is catching their attention, not holding on to real estate. Anybody who falls behind gets left behind, so do us all a favor and save the heroics."

As I finished my piece, a trio of Jackals rushed in. They sped across the gra.s.sy shelf like a formation of fighter jets, speeding over the battered landscape firing shots, then rushing away. One of the Jackals bounced over a crater left by an explosion, lurched over the lip, and flew through the air. It landed as smoothly as a cat jumping from a ledge.

The militia made its first strafing run while the aliens were still three-quarters of a mile away. Their light-armor Jackals looked like toys from that distance, and the Avatari looked no bigger or more distinct than the bristles on a toothbrush. Zooming in for a closer look with the telescopic lenses in my visor, I watched as the lead vehicle fired three rockets into the horde, then made a skidding swipe, the gunner in its turret swinging around so that he could fire large-caliber bullets into the aliens' ranks the entire time. Those bullets could drill a brick wall to dust. They would cut a man in half, but it took three shots to bring one of the aliens down.

The Jackals made their run, then sped to safety. The aliens might have fired after them, but two more formations rocketed onto the ridge from different directions, fired, retreated.

Looking over the battlefield, I decided that the Avatari had not come with their standard fifty thousand troops, maybe not even with a quarter of that number. Not that it mattered. They had more than enough soldiers to win a fair fight. If our Jackals stumbled, they would swat them like bugs.

One of the Jackals in the third formation rolled as it skidded around to escape. It might have hit loose gravel, or one of its bulletproof tires might have popped, or the turn might have simply been too tight. The Jackal canted onto two wheels, then rolled onto its side, spinning out of control. Jackals were made to roll and right themselves; but as soon as this one landed on its wheels, a hailstorm of light bolts seared through it. The Jackal exploded in flames.

Doctorow's militia had done its job. I contacted the Jackal leader and told him to pull his men back. I did not have to tell him twice.

The Avatari continued toward us. "Two shots. Two shots, then make for the jeeps," I called over an open frequency. I wanted the drivers and grenadiers to hear me.

Down below us, the Avatari continued their march, slow-moving, unflinching, unafraid. Using telescopic lenses, I could see them clearly now-bodies the color of stone; eyes, lips, and ears all made of the same rocklike material as their skin. Their eyes stared straight ahead, like the eyes of a crudely sculpted statue. Their faces never twitched.

The Avatari stood eight feet tall. Their rifles were four-foot tubes made of gleaming chrome. They fired yard-long bolts of light that traveled as fast as the eye could see and burned through shields, armor, buildings, and men-and then kept going.

They marched toward us. "Steady . . . steady," I called to my men. I remembered Nietzsche as I looked down at the alien army: When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.

Using the equipment in my helmet, I measured the distance between us and the enemy. Six hundred feet. In another kind of fight, this would have been the moment to fire or to retreat. We could not hit them with HURL rockets at that range. They could hit us, though. A few of them fired in our direction, the bolts flying wild into the sky.

I yelled for my men to drop, but a couple of morons remained on their feet. "Get down!" I repeated, as the Avatari picked them off. Natural selection works among military clones nearly the same way it does in nature. Sadly, the rest of us were every bit as sterile as the idiots whom the Avatari had just shot dead.

Perched on my knees, I measured the range again. The aliens were 575 feet away. An Avatari bolt struck a Marine a few feet to my right. A lucky shot. It bored through the ground at the front of the slope, then through ten feet of earth and into the Marine before sailing off through the air. Tiny flames burned around the three-inch hole in his helmet. I knew without looking that the armor around the hole would melt and dribble into the wound.

The man was lucky that the bolt hit him in the head, he died instantly. It did not matter if these bolts. .h.i.t you in the head or the foot; they killed you either way. A shot through the head was more merciful because it killed you instantly. Anyone shot in the leg, hand, or arm went into shock and died in a fit of convulsions.

To this point, not a one of my Marines had fired a shot. They waited for the order to shoot. With the Avatari 480 feet away, I gave the order to return fire.

"Two shots and retreat. Two shots and withdraw!" I bellowed. Over the interLink, I could hear my squad leaders repeating the command. You hear things without thinking about them during battle. Once the shooting begins, all the loose talk becomes chatter, something no more distinct than static.

I pulled a handheld rocket, aimed, and fired at the first phalanx of aliens as it reached the bottom of the slope. Handheld rocket launchers were a foot long and about the same diameter as the handle of a mop. You pointed the launcher like a flashlight to fire it, then threw away the empty tube. The Avatari spotted me and returned fire. I fell back as dozens of bolts came soaring toward me.

"Head for the jeeps," I yelled, my voice so loud in my helmet that it caused a ringing in my ears. Three stray bolts shot up through the dirt near my feet. More flew through the air above me.

I had made a mistake telling my men to fire two shots, even a single shot was dicey. A living enemy would have run for cover or charged our position, these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds kept marching forward, returning fire as they went. They were avatars, not living beings. They had nothing to fear.

I turned to run and stumbled. In the brief moment I was down on my a.s.s, I saw three of my men die. Looking up and down the slope, I saw that I had lost eleven men in all. I repeated the order to fall back, then pulled out a second rocket launcher, sprang to my feet, and fired.

Dropping low as light bolts flew through the air and ground around me, I turned and sprinted to the jeeps, no more than twenty feet behind the last of my men. It was early in the fight, but we'd already lost eleven men and one Jackal, a bad omen.

"Want me to risk a drive-by?" the Jackal leader asked.

"Hit them when they reach the top of the hill," I said. "One pa.s.s and get the h.e.l.l out. Don't push your luck, you saw what happens."

"Pushing your luck-you mean, like staying to fire a second rocket after telling your men to retreat?"

"Get specked," I said. He was right, though. I shouldn't have piped off that second rocket. This was combat, the first action I had seen in two years, and I was having a combat reflex.

It was part of my Liberator architecture. When the battle got hot, the glands that made me a Liberator pumped testosterone and adrenaline into my veins.

"You coming, Captain?" the Marine driving the last jeep asked.

"Yeah, on my way," I said. I took one last look back in time to see a lone Jackal slice its way across the hill. The gunner swayed back and forth, and the muzzle of his machine gun flashed nonstop.

I sprinted to the jeep and jumped in. We bounced and jostled over the deeply scarred ground, easily outpacing the aliens. Once we were far enough away, I ordered the drivers to slow down. We needed the Avatari to follow us.

"How are you doing with the explosives?" I asked Hollingsworth on a direct Link.

"O'Doul is a p.r.i.c.k," he said.

"Is that opinion professional or personal?"

"Personal," Hollingsworth said. "My professional opinion is that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d knows his way around a charge."

"How long before the area is ready for visitors?" I asked.

"He's got several teams working. The team I'm with is just putting on the finishing touches. We're about to evacuate the area.

"I'd hate to be around when this place goes up, not with all the s.h.i.t they have wired. These boys aren't taking any chances.

"How's it going on the front?"

"Peachy, Sergeant, just peachy."

The Avatari behaved more like security men than soldiers, but they were not stupid. If they saw us driving at fifteen miles an hour, they would know we were baiting them. We had to make them believe that we thought we could win this thing. We'd take casualties, but everyone who signed up for this show knew the score.

I had my driver step on the gas so we could get to the head of our all-jeep convoy. The target zone was ten miles south-east of us. We could stick to a fairly clean road if we veered north, but that would have taken us in the wrong direction.

The area around us was little more than dunes of rubble and the burned-out skeletons of small buildings. It looked like a fire had swept through. I saw nothing that would give us a strategic advantage, so I called in a Jackal strike. "Make it look like you mean it," I told the Jackal leader.

"Like I mean it?" he asked.

"Make it look like you came to fight, not to lead them into a trap."