The transports weren't much to look at, but then the military had its own school of landscaping-FOCPIG. Military men love their acronyms. In this case, FOCPIG stood for Fire, Observed, Concealed, Protected, Integrated, non-Geometric; in short, it is the process of preparing a field for battle. In the FOCPIG school of landscaping, aesthetics mattered less than utility. Placed strategically, those transports would create nearly impenetrable obstacles that the Unifieds would need to run around.

Judging by the first wave of transports the Unifieds had sent, they'd come light. Until they sent a second wave, they would not have tanks or gunships, just men, guns, and a handful of light-armor vehicles. That would play into our preparations. According to the feng shui of FOCPIG, our job was to route them so that we could have every advantage. Using transports as barriers, we would steer the enemy between the outstretched arms of the government center-a natural gauntlet. Once they entered, we would have the high-ground advantage.

Thomer and Hollingsworth remained with me as I surveyed the grounds. Their underlings swapped in and out as they gave orders. After a few minutes, Hollingsworth went down to the garage for an inspection.

By now, I had armor of my own, brand-new equipment that Hollingsworth's men snagged out of the armory. The armor was stiff, and none of my preferences had been programmed into it, but it was better than isolation. When I got the chance, a.s.suming I lived to get the chance, I would calibrate the ocular controls in the visor to read my particular eye movements. I could live with the glitches, the armor came with a commandLink, and that meant I could communicate with the men una.s.sisted.

We walked along the roof of one of the wings of the building-"snipers' row." Hollingsworth and Thomer knew the drill. You placed snipers where they would have a good view of anyone pa.s.sing by, then you waited. Often, you had to sit patiently letting viable targets march past in exchange for a clean shot at the men at the top of the food chain. Shoot the peons in the front, and you warn the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the back that they're walking into a trap. Sniping is a game of patience.

Not that we were going to take anybody by surprise. There was only one way into the armory, and we marked that path by placing our transports along it. If they wanted us, the U.A. invaders would need to walk our gauntlet. I wondered what they would do once they entered it.

In the predawn hours of an otherwise calm summer night, we moved along the top of the building. Locked up in my combat armor, I did not worry about the breeze or rain. My bodysuit kept me cool and dry.

The grounds around the government center must have been beautiful at one time. I saw shattered concrete beds that must once have been a network of ponds. A border of waist-high gra.s.s grew around the complex. A soft breeze combed through the gra.s.s.

"They're coming, General," Hollingsworth called up from the garage. He must have had some kind of mobile radar set up.

"Do you have a count?" I looked out toward the horizon and saw only the wide, open expanse over the broken city. Off in the distance, the three remaining skysc.r.a.pers that Doctorow used for dormitories, glittered.

"Thirty ships coming in from the south," Hollingsworth said.

I had been looking east, but I now turned south, the direction from which we had just come. There were hills to the south. Even as I watched, dots appeared in the horizon. They looked no more significant than the sparks in the darkness.

"We've got company, boys. Get to your stations. Dig in. Get comfortable," I called over the interLink.

"Think they'll attack soon?" Hollingsworth asked.

"Not a chance. Not with only thirty transports in place. They'll want more than three thousand troops before they attack," I said. I a.s.sumed that, like our transports, their transports carried one hundred men.

I told Hollingsworth about the fleet, but we were not about to educate the rank and file until this conflict was over. He knew the Earth Fleet now controlled the skies, and he knew about the last message we'd heard from Warshaw. I did not tell him about the size of the enemy fleet. He did not need to know that the Unified Authority had defeated our 450-ship armada with a mere eighty ships.

"They'll probably land on the other side of town and build up their forces," I said. I knew how these operations worked. They would set up a camp and make us wait while their transports ferried in soldiers and equipment.

But I was wrong.

The transports did not stop at the southern edge of town. They flew over the suburbs. By the time they reached the ruins of downtown, the glow from their shields filled the sky. They were not the same antiquated design as the birds we flew in on, they had graceful wings and tapered shields. At about a half mile from our lines, the transports slowed and landed, lighting down like flies.

"Looks like they know we're here," Thomer said. He'd been so silent, I'd forgotten he was there.

Of course they know we're here, they use the same specking interLink frequencies we do. They're listening in on us, I thought to myself.

And they might not have even needed their d.a.m.n technological advantage to find us because Sarah Doctorow and her pals would not think twice about ratting us out. And then there were the leaks-Perry Fahey and his friends in Outer Bliss would happily tell them everything they knew.

"Switch off your safeties, boys, we're going live," I said over an open frequency. The invaders probably heard me, as well. From here on out, I would keep my conversations short and switch frequencies between calls. I could not stop them from listening, but I didn't want to make things too easy for them.

I remained on the roof with the snipers, Hollingsworth joined the grenadiers in the wings, and Thomer went down to the underground garage. Between the troops we had manning the buildings and the Marines we positioned in the garage, we had nearly five thousand men. Based on the number of their transports, I estimated their strength at three thousand.

Time ticked away slowly, seconds seemed to stretch themselves into minutes. I wondered what they were doing. Were they off-loading equipment? Were they playing with us, making us wait, to consider our situation? I kept expecting more transports to arrive, but the skies remained clear.

"How's it hanging, Harris?" The message came over the commandLink, on a frequency reserved for officers. The equipment in my visor identified the caller: General Theodore Mooreland.

"You're in charge of this one, Ted? They must think I'm real dangerous to send in a veteran like you." I called him Ted. Why not? We were both generals.

"Nice of you to drill my men," he said.

"War games are one of my specialties," I said.

"So, is she here?" Mooreland asked. That meant he was keeping the locals out of the fight. He would not have needed to ask me about Ava if he had talked to Doctorow.

"Please, tell me you did not come all this way just to impress Ava."

Mooreland laughed. "No, Harris, I came for you."

"I'm flattered, Ted, really I am. But, um, I'm spoken for."

"Speck you, clone."

"Ted, I just told you, I'm not interested."

"We were going to give you twelve months to prepare, did you know that? We were going to give you a year to get your men ready, but you blew it. You shouldn't have attacked our battleships. Did you really think we'd look the other way?"

I did not say anything.

The sun started to rise in the east. Pockets of yellow, gold, and white appeared over a horizon of rolling desolation. The ruins of the city looked like a desert in the first light of the morning. If Mooreland was in command, the intruders had to be Marines. They would be wearing combat armor. They would use tactics like ours.

"You're an interesting man, Harris. I'd love to continue this chat, but my men came to fight," Mooreland said. "Are you ready?"

"Sporting of you to ask," I said. "We're as ready as we're going to get." I tried to sound confident, but I knew Mooreland meant business. He was showing me the cat-bird courtesy of a commander who knows he owns the field. But how could he be so confident with only three thousand men? I wondered what I did not know.

"Well, good luck, Harris," Mooreland said. He signed off.

I stood there on the roof of that enormous government complex, as insecure as an ancient ruler waiting for the Huns to pillage his city.

"Why haven't they attacked yet?" Thomer's question brought me out of my thoughts.

"Courtesy," I said. "They were giving us a moment to say our prayers."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR.

Somebody else noticed the lights before me. Watching the world through my night-for-day lenses, I stared right at and through the scene without noticing the subtle change in luminescence. One of Thomer's snipers noticed, however.

The sniper alerted Thomer, and Thomer told me.

"There's light coming from the enemy camp, sir."

"Light?" I asked.

I switched to tactical view. At first, I thought they had fired up the shields on their transports. Patches of golden glow lit up the air. "What is that?" I asked, in a whisper directed at myself, but Thomer picked it up over the interLink and answered.

"It looks like they have the shields up on their transports," he said.

"The light isn't coming from the transports." I could see that much. Using my telescopic lenses, I zoomed in on the glow. I could not see what the light was coming from, but it wasn't the transports. I had a clear view of the tops of several U.A. transports, and their shields were down.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," I said.

"Sir?" Thomer asked.

Thank G.o.d for the commandLink, it enabled me to bring Hollingsworth in on the conversation. He was in the garage, blind to the world above him. Using my Link, I showed Hollingsworth and Thomer what I saw.

"What is that?" Hollingsworth asked.

"Shields," I said.

Thomer started to say something, but I interrupted him.

"The shields aren't on the transports," I said. I shifted my focus to show the sleeping birds.

"Then what are they shielding?" Hollingsworth asked.

"Shielded armor," I said.

The patch of glowing light moved as the first of Mooreland's Marines began their march into battle.

"Hang on," I said. I ripped off my helmet and picked up a sniper rifle. The other snipers had had enough time to program their scopes to their armor so that they could look through their visors and aim their rifles. Since the visor in this suit was not yet calibrated, I had to aim the old-fashioned way. I pressed the scope against my eye and homed in on the front echelon.

We had built our strategy around waiting for Mooreland to meander into our trap, but tactics be d.a.m.ned. If we were about to fight men in shielded armor, the rules had just changed.

Looking through the scope, I picked out a man and studied him. His armor looked a lot like mine-the same helmet, the same chest plates and shoulder pads. It appeared to be a rich, dark brown in color, but that might have been an optical effect. Viewed through the golden glow of the shields that shone from the plating, the dark green of my armor would probably appear brown.

I steadied my rifle against my shoulder, aimed at the Marine's head, and pulled the trigger. The crack of my rifle was no louder than the sound of a man giving a single, hard clap of his hands, but it echoed. My armor absorbed the recoil of the rifle so that I felt only the slightest nudge against my shoulder. Eight hundred yards away, my bullet had about as much impact on the new Marine as a sparrow might have flying into a skysc.r.a.per.

The Marine saw or felt the bullet, or perhaps his equipment reported the shot. The man pointed to the spot where the bullet hit. I imagined him laughing as he reported the wasted attack to his platoon sergeant.

I put down my rifle and slung my helmet over my head. "Rifles are no good," I told Thomer and Hollingsworth.

Hollingsworth answered first. "Speck!" Thomer gave a similar response.

"Let me try one more shot," I said.

Aiming with the telescopic lenses in my visor, I chose another target, aimed at his helmet, and fired. My first shot went wide. The next three shots. .h.i.t. The bullets showed only as momentary white flashes against the golden glow of the man's shields. I fired four more shots, hitting the son of a b.i.t.c.h in the chest, the stomach, the crotch, and the knee.

I had a sinking feeling of defeat as I replaced my helmet. We had signed up for a fight we would not win. Even as I thought this, my combat reflex started, filling me with confidence, clearing self-doubt from my thoughts, and turning fear into comfort. I smiled a ghoulish smile as I realized just how little the terms "impregnable" and "invincible" had in common.

"Hard on the outside, soft on the inside," I said to myself. Then, I opened a channel to Thomer, and said, "General, withdraw your snipers and reposition them in the top two floors of the garage."

"Aye, aye, sir," Thomer said.

"And Thomer, tell them to leave their sniper rifles here. We're sticking with particle beams and rocket launchers from here on out."

"But . . . Sir, the garage could cave in on us," Thomer said.

"I certainly hope so," I said, knowing that what I had in mind was the military equivalent of threading a needle.

Thomer figured out what I had in mind immediately. He said, "You evil son of a b.i.t.c.h," sounding more like the old Thomer than he had since New Copenhagen.

"But we'll be buried," Hollingsworth said.

"Not if we slip out the back door," I said.

"The train station," Hollingsworth said. He should have remembered it; he was the one who helped Doctorow's men drag explosives through the tunnel. "If you can't beat them, bury them. I specking love it."

"You just make sure your men do a good job rigging the garage," I said. "I don't want Mooreland digging himself out."

"Aye, aye, sir," Hollingsworth said. "It's going to take a few minutes."

"We'll buy you whatever time we can," I said. "You got that, Thomer?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thomer, have your men rig the buildings to blow on their way down. That goes double for any stairs and elevators that lead into the garage."

"Yes, sir," said Thomer.

"And remember, keep your Link chatter short. You never know who might be listening," I said.

I doubted there were any demolitions experts stationed at Fort Sebastian. Trained demolitions men could make buildings blow so precisely that they imploded in on themselves, folding in on themselves like origami figures. Our guys did not have that kind of skill, but that would not stop us from achieving our objectives. We were Marines-when we lacked the skill, we compensated for with sheer will and a large supply of explosives. The garage wouldn't exactly implode, but it would sure as h.e.l.l come down. We just needed to make sure that it caved in from the top down and that we made it to the train tunnels before the world came down around us. This was war-n.o.body would give us extra points for neatness.

Thomer ordered his snipers to abandon their rifles and report to the first floor of the garage. By the time Mooreland's men entered sniper range, Thomer no longer had anyone on the roof to shoot them. I remained on the roof a moment longer to observe the enemy.

The shine of their shields gave Mooreland's men a G.o.d-like appearance in the frail dawn light. Had their aura shone brighter, the light from the various suits would have meshed; instead, each man had his own, personal, tea-colored glow.

As they approached, they broke into smaller formations. A couple of companies tried to fan out and flank the brigade, but that failed. Hollingsworth's FOCPIG preparations funneled them back. If they meant to chase us down into the armory, they would need to pa.s.s through two bottlenecks-the first created by our transports and the second by the entrance to the underground garage.

The last man on the roof, I took a final look at the high-velocity sniper rifles we'd abandoned in our wake. They lay spread across the concrete like sticks dropped from a bundle. In a fair fight, we might have been able to eliminate Mooreland's entire regiment with those rifles. Letting the door close behind me as I started down the stairs, I tried to remember the last time I saw a fair fight and came up dry.

"Thomer, make sure your men know this is the foreplay, not the s.e.x," I said over a new frequency, as I left the stairwell and joined my grenadiers.

The third floor of the building looked like a breezeway. In preparation for the fight, we had knocked out the windows. The wind howled as it blew through broken casings. Hundreds of men in combat armor knelt along the wall, rocket tubes in hand. We had the high-ground advantage, nearly bulletproof cover, numerical superiority, and possibly even the element of surprise; and still, we could not afford to wage the war from this spot, not against an enemy dressed in shielded armor. Unless we found a way through their shields, Mooreland's men would make our cover cave in around us.

For this mission, my grenadiers had orders to fire a few shots and retreat to the garage. If everything went according to plan, these men would lead the way into the train station. That was, if everything went according to plan. In the heat of battle, entropy dissolves plans into chaos, and Marines sometimes forget their orders. Some become heroes, lingering to fire one final round, when they have been told to pull back. Others lose their nerve and abandon their posts.

Looking over my troops, it occurred to me that I might be going to the well one time too many. By the time we finished this battle, I would have pushed the same d.a.m.n tactic three times: fighting the Avatari; destroying the battleships that followed us into the Mogat Fleet; and now, I was using it against the Unified Authority Marines. Coaxing a dangerous enemy into an ambush is a fine tactic, and there was no way these guys could know that we had used it on the Avatari and the battleships, but overused tactics have a way of coming apart on their own.