The master chief's door slid open.

Warshaw had just come back from the gym. He wore baggy sweatpants and a loose Navy tank top. His clothes bulged over his chest, shoulders, arms, and legs and hung loose over his gut and hips. Quarter-inch veins formed patterns on his shoulders and biceps. Veins showed along his bald head as well.

"You better not be specking with me," he said. He stood in the doorway, blocking me from entering his quarters.

"Did Admiral Brocius show you the orders he sent me?" I asked, as I held up the envelope.

"He told me what was in them," Warshaw said.

"I don't think so." I handed him the envelope.

Warshaw pulled the letter out, his eyes focused on mine. He made no effort to hide his mistrust. Leaning against the doorjamb, he unfolded the paper and read. When he got to the end, he froze. " 'Deal with . . . as you see fit'? What the speck is that supposed to mean?"

"Here's what he told Thorne," I said as I handed him the second envelope.

"I don't get it," he said. " 'Grayson, Moffat, Ravenwood.' What is that supposed to mean?"

"Grayson and Moffat were officers I killed," I said. "Ravenwood was a frontier outpost where they used Marines as live targets for training Navy SEALs. It doesn't sound like your buddy Brocius has your best interests in mind."

Warshaw shook his head, and hissed, "That son of a b.i.t.c.h." Then he rethought it, and said, "No way. No way, Harris, I don't specking buy it." Then he carefully refolded the letters and placed them back in the envelopes.

"Yes you do," I said. He had to know that I hadn't forged the letters, they were printed on Office of the Navy letterhead.

He sighed. "Brocius gave me everything I wanted. He told me I was right about everything and thanked me for helping him avoid a 'colossal mistake.' That was what he called it, a 'colossal mistake.' "

Watching reality hit Warshaw, I almost felt sorry for the boot-licking son of a b.i.t.c.h. Almost.

"So this letter gives you permission to what . . . shoot me? Throw me in the brig?"

"Or both," I said, hoping to drive home the differences between Marines and sailors.

"But what does Ravenwood have to do with this?" Warshaw asked.

"That's Brocius tipping his hand. It's his way of telling me why he handed over the fleet in the first place."

"And you think he gave us the fleet to use us for training exercises? Is that right?"

"That is exactly what I think."

"Even if it is true, I don't see how this changes anything. We're stuck here, Harris. They can't hit us, and we can't hit them."

"They can hit us."

"How are they going to hit us? With the specking Earth Fleet? They have thirty self-broadcasting ships. We'd rip them a new a.s.shole if they came out here."

"We'd rip them a new a.s.shole if they came out here in the fleet we know about," I said.

"You think they have a new fleet?"

"They have something we don't know about," I said. "You served with Brocius."

"d.a.m.n right I did, twelve years' worth," Warshaw said.

"Did you ever hear about his casino?" I asked.

"I heard about it," Warshaw said.

"The man does not gamble, but he has an entire casino in his house," I said.

"He gambles," Warshaw said. "He puts his money up."

"He plays as the house, which buys him slightly better odds. That's how Brocius likes to play, with the odds stacked in his direction."

"Yeah . . . yeah, that's his MO. He stacks the deck."

"Before he sends a fleet into harm's way . . ."

Warshaw nodded, and said, "You think it's new ships."

"That's my guess," I said. "And you can bet they're bigger, faster, and more powerful than what we have out here."

"So what do you have in mind, Harris?"

"We don't want to play his game if he's giving himself house odds," I said.

Warshaw laughed. "Good luck attacking Earth without a self-broadcasting fleet."

"Three self-broadcasting battleships are about to arrive on our doorstep," I pointed out.

"Touching those ships would be an act of war," Warshaw said.

I tapped the envelopes. "They've already declared the war, I'm angling to get off the first shot."

Warshaw walked over to his desk and sat down to think things over. He pumped his left fist so he could watch the muscles in his forearm bulge and relax, bulge and relax. "Three battleships aren't going to do us much good. The first time we tried to take them into Earth s.p.a.ce, Brocius would nail us."

"So we don't enter Earth s.p.a.ce. We take them someplace else, someplace they're not expecting us to appear. We start up a salvage operation in the Galactic Eye."

Warshaw stared at me, a quizzical look in his eyes. "The Mogat world? I thought it was destroyed."

"Not the planet, the s.p.a.ce around it. The Mogats had four hundred self-broadcasting ships in their fleet," I said.

"The way I heard it, there's not much left of those ships," Warshaw said.

I did not need a history lesson on the destruction of the Mogat Fleet, I was there. I took a step toward Warshaw, and said, "That doesn't mean we destroyed the equipment inside those ships. There are four hundred ships with broadcast engines and broadcast generators circling that planet. What do you want to bet that some of those generators and engines are still in working condition?"

Warshaw smiled. "You know, General Harris, I always wanted to command my own self-broadcasting fleet."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

The next week pa.s.sed slowly as I orchestrated one set of missions and submitted fabricated reports for another. Officially, my Marines had begun the reclamation of Norristown. The Corps of Engineers sent thousand-man teams to clear debris, fix roads, restore power, build farms, and bury the dead. They also refurbished Fort Sebastian. The project went quickly.

Behind the scenes, my Marines scouted Terraneau for a new base, food stores, and a place to build a prison. We found most of the cities in the same condition as Norristown-destroyed and populated by scared civilians. The Avatari had laid most cities bare and left others entirely untouched.

We found no rhyme or reason to the destruction. The aliens never even entered Carlton, the tenth largest city on Terraneau. The people had power, sewage, even running water. The only part of the city hurt during the invasion was the s.p.a.ceport, and the residents destroyed it themselves, thinking that having a working s.p.a.ceport might attract the Avatari.

We found several small towns untouched but empty. The aliens might or might not have killed all of the people, but we found no corpses. The houses and stores simply sat empty, as if the people had just packed up and left. One of those abandoned burgs was Zebulon, a town with a population of five thousand that had mysteriously whittled down to zero without leaving a suicide note.

Not an organization to let things go to waste, the Corps of Engineers converted Zebulon into a relocation camp and renamed the place, "Outer Bliss," in honor of the Texas relocation camp outside Fort Bliss. The Corps surrounded the town with electrified razor-wire fences and guard towers, then invited me to inspect its work. Thomer and I flew down for a look.

The landing field and barracks were on the outside of the fence-a st.u.r.dy flattop with a Quonset-hut hangar. Outer Bliss sat on a plateau in the high desert. My men would be hot during the day and cold at night until the Corps could add heating and ventilation.

The prison area was a lot nicer than the Texas facility from which it took its name. Instead of living in sheds, the inmates would occupy houses and a small hotel. They would have pools, two movie theaters, school facilities for meetings, and a gymnasium for sports. Thomer and I walked the empty streets, the dry desert wind whistling as it whipped around houses and lampposts.

"This beats the h.e.l.l out of Clonetown," I said. "Maybe they made it too nice." Yes, I was bitter. The inmates in this camp would spend their incarceration in relative comfort. In all fairness, we were moving fifteen thousand men into a town with living facilities for five thousand people, but they would not be forced to take communal showers or sleep in sheds made out of corrugated metal.

We had reached a somewhat shady lane lined with dead trees and brick homes. Sitting on a small rise a few blocks ahead of us, an empty elementary school presided over a neighborhood that had not seen children in several years.

Thomer looked around, and said, "I used to dream about growing up in a town like this. I bet kids used to ride bicycles down this street."

Suburban as a shopping mall, Outer Bliss did not compare to the horror of Clonetown. Then I reminded myself that the men who would soon populate this prison were, themselves, innocent victims. Natural-born or not, they were not politicians. But they would all be natural-borns . . .

"It's too specking nice," I said. "It's like we're sending the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on a specking vacation."

Thomer continued walking. He did not even look over at me. He simply said, "It's a prison, Harris. They aren't going to like it."

The gra.s.s in the yards had died and withered. There were no dogs or cats in the town. The Corps had hunted down anything larger than a squirrel, then fumigated the houses to kill the rats and mice. It also hauled out the cars, the trucks, the tractors, anything that could be used to crash the gates.

We entered a grocery store and discovered that the people had left food behind. We explored a bank and found the safe-deposit boxes intact. We toured a two-story motel. The beds were made but the blankets were dusty. I wondered if the Corps had dressed the beds or if this was the last job of maids who had vanished four years ago. We saw no signs of death or violence, nothing to suggest that the inhabitants had been forced to move.

Back on the Kamehameha, I tapped the intercom b.u.t.ton outside Admiral Thorne's quarters and asked him if he had a moment.

"What is it, Harris?" He did not sound unfriendly, just a busy man with a lot on his mind.

"It's about transfers," I said.

"Very well," he said, and the door opened. Thorne was no fool. When he saw the two MPs I brought with me, he knew the score. He stood and stared past me, into the hall, watching the MPs.

"You're making your move," he said. The old man stood motionless beside his desk, a pen in his hands. His wispy, white hair a mess, his blue eyes slightly red from days with very little sleep, his skin pale from years spent away from the sun, he did not put up a fight. "Am I under arrest?" he asked as the door closed behind me.

His words felt like a splash of cold water. "We're not arresting anybody."

He braced and asked, "You're not going to kill . . ."

"I had the Corps of Engineers convert a small town into a relocation camp. It's a d.a.m.n sight better than what they put us in back on Earth," I said.

"Is that what this is about? Is this revenge or revolution?" Thorne asked, the calm never leaving his voice.

I thought about the question for a moment. We were not sticking Thorne and his crew in our camp for revenge. We were doing it because we had no other choice. If we didn't relocate them, they would try to stop us, and lives would be lost. We were putting them in our prison to protect them, I was sure of that much.

"Both," I said.

"I see," Thorne said. He stood still, staring into my eyes, clearly trying to decide whether he should say what he wanted to say next. He might have a pistol someplace in his room. He certainly had a panic b.u.t.ton that would sound Klaxons on every ship in the fleet. I hoped he would not do anything foolish.

When he spoke, the words gushed like water breaking through a dam. "I can help you, you know. There's nothing for me back on Earth. I have more ties here than I do on Earth."

"Help me what?" I asked.

"I can help you run the fleet. I can help you fight your war. You found some way to get back to Earth, didn't you? You wouldn't do this if you didn't know what you were doing. I can help."

"Why would you do that?" I asked. Thorne struck me as an honest man, a fair man, the least aristocratic officer I had ever known; not the type of man who trades sides to stay in power.

He placed the papers on the desk. "Harris, they transferred me to the Scutum-Crux Fleet thirty-seven years ago. I've spent more of my life on these ships than on Earth. The fleet is my home.

"My parents died while I was still at the Naval Academy. I can't think of anyone I care about on Earth."

If the rumors were true, Thorne had more ties to this corner of s.p.a.ce than he wanted to admit. Scuttleb.u.t.t had it that he had a common-law wife on Terraneau. I had never asked him about it, but the rumor went a long way toward explaining why he had never put in for a transfer.

"You are an officer of the Unified Authority Navy," I pointed out. "I'd be crazy to trust you." But I did trust him.

"I can help you. I have command experience." He tapped his knuckle on the top of his desk, and asked, "Can we speak, man-to-man? Can we at least discuss my offer before you arrest me, General?"

Suddenly he was calling me "General." He was right. Once we made our move, our field ranks would come into play.

I nodded. As I sat, I said, "I'm not arresting you."

"But you are placing twenty thousand men in a prison camp."

"I prefer the term, 'relocation camp.' And as of the last transfer, you're down to about fifteen thousand natural-borns."

"Let's be honest with each other, General," Thorne said. "Who is going to run your fleet? Gary Warshaw, the man Brocius appointed? He's a good sailor, but he's an engineer. There's a reason why the Navy never promotes engineers to the rank of Admiral. They don't have the background to command a ship. They fix things, they don't run them. How do you think Warshaw is going to do in battle?"

"There's always Franks," I said.

"Lilburn Franks," Thorne said. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "He'd be better than Warshaw; at least he's spent time on a bridge. He's smart, too; but he's loyal to Warshaw through and through. He'll never be loyal to you. Give him a chance, and Franks will stick a knife in your back."

I was pretty sure I believed the other things Thorne had said, but that last bit about Franks stabbing me in the back I accepted without question.

"Admiral, you have a transport waiting on you, sir," I said, as I rose to my feet. I hated sticking Thorne in the relocation camp. The truth was, I hated the idea of placing anyone in that town-turned-prison-camp. By the end of the day, every natural-born sailor with the bad luck to have remained in the Scutum-Crux Fleet would find himself a guest of Outer Bliss.

"At least think about what I said?" Thorne asked, both looking and sounding a bit desperate.

"I'll take it under advis.e.m.e.nt," I said. I wanted to take him up on his offer, but I had other concerns at the moment. My next act would be a declaration of war on the Unified Authority. With Warshaw fighting me for control of the fleet, Admiral Thorne's offer did not figure very prominently on my list of priorities.