CHAPTER.

FIFTY-FOUR.

Location: Washington, D.C.

Date: May 2, 2519

Naval Intelligence had no information about Sunny Ferris. The clone military services did not maintain records about private citizens unless they posed a threat. Ferris, apparently, did not pose a threat.

Alexander Cross Associates, the law firm that employed her, was another story. The founder, Norman Alexander, had been a successful lobbyist during the days of the Unified Authority. He'd represented a consortium of military contractors. His clients manufactured the latest-generation tanks, guns, and armor. Those were the weapons the Unifieds kept hidden until after they evicted their clones.

Cross himself had served as a captain in the Navy. He'd served under Admiral Che Huang, an antisynthetic prick of an officer. Huang was long dead, may his natural-born soul rest in natural-born Hell. I had nothing to do with his death, not that I would have hesitated, given an opportunity to kill the bastard.

Intelligence found Sunny Ferris's birth and school records, some tax files, all useless. She was twenty-eight years old. She lived outside of Washington, D.C., in a ritzy suburb. She was not married. I found myself pondering that factoid time and again.

I wanted to call her. I had no reason and every reason to call.

Something was wrong with me. The phobia of swimming and the ability to pull the pin on that grenade proved it. Somebody had screwed with my programming. Somehow, somewhere, someone had gone into my head and rearranged the furniture. I had a pretty good idea about where it happened-Mars. Who and how were coming into focus as well.

I thought about downing a case of beers and visiting a Pentagon psychiatrist, but why bother? Cutter had people shadowing my car and listening to my calls, he probably had mikes and cameras in my billet and my office. And what would he do with the data he gathered-he'd send it to a shrink. Why bother visiting a psychiatrist when my commanding officer was already having me psychoanalyzed?

Anything that can be programmed can be reprogrammed. Freeman's words repeated in my head again and again, though it never seemed to be his voice that said them. I had been reprogrammed. Never in my life had I wanted anything more than I now wanted to get my hands on the people who performed that little piece of magic.

I wanted to talk to somebody...anybody. Okay, I wanted to talk to Sunny, but that wasn't going to happen. I wanted to speak to someone who knew me well, somebody who could tell me if and how I had changed. The list of candidates was short-Don Cutter and Travis Watson were the only names that came to mind.

I hadn't known Cutter all that long, but I respected him. Calling him was out of the question. He was a four-star and I was technically retired. He'd take my call and let me talk, but he wouldn't be interested unless I could give him something of strategic value.

Then there was Watson. The boy had jumped ship on me. He'd joined Cutter's staff while I was on Mars. I felt jilted, which meant I really liked the kid. He was smart; but he was wise, too. Wise was better than smart.

I punched up Watson's line on my communications console and let it ring as I glanced over Sunny's data once more. She had grown up on the West Coast of North America and never traveled off Earth. She went to school at Harvard, the Unified Authority's oldest college. Twenty-eight years old. Not married.

I dialed up the Navy office.

Not married.

"Office of the Navy," the man said. He was probably a petty officer.

"I'm looking for Travis Watson," I said.

"I can put you through to his office, General," said the receptionist.

"Do you know if he's in?" I asked.

"He isn't. It's been a few days."

A few days. Watson was out. He was traveling. He liked visiting cities, seeing the nightlife, trying new brands of scrub. "Is he on vacation?" I asked.

"No, sir. Admiral Cutter called him up to the Churchill."

"The Churchill," I said.

"Yes, sir."

I found this news funny because Watson did not like space travel, and now, as a Navy man, he was off to space. Then a thought finally struck me. Cutter was on the Churchill, and the Churchill was orbiting Mars. Something must be happening on Mars.

I thought about Arthur Hooper, the bastard I shot up in Hawaii. I thought about the scientists who had tried to analyze the chemicals in his flask. The civilians could breathe it but the clone passed out. No, he didn't just pass out. He winked out and he didn't know that he had winked out when he woke up. It was like restarting a computer.

"He passed out, but he didn't know he'd passed out," I said to myself. Woke up in a haze but it never occurred to him he'd been out, I thought; only this time I wasn't thinking about the scientist. Programmed...reprogrammed.

Hooper wasn't a New Olympian, I reminded myself. He was a former officer of the Unified Authority with no connection to Mars or Olympus Kri. Which begged an interesting question: Why had Sunny come to defend him?

Mars and the Unifieds. My thoughts channeled to Mars. Everything seemed to point back to Mars. I remembered the shoot-out. I remembered the riot. I knew what else had happened, but I did not remember it. I knew the time and date that Jackson and the rest of my regiment flew from the spaceport to the base, but I had no mental image of meeting them in the landing bay. I had no image of them marching off their transports.

Hoping to find out if the other members of the regiment remembered Mars the way I did, I turned to my communications console and dialed Curtis Jackson's office. Nobody answered. I called the regimental headquarters in Camp Lejeune; no one answered the telephone. I called Second Division headquarters. Nothing.

I tried calling Jackson directly on his personal communications device. He did not answer. My next telephone call was to the Swansboro police.

When I reached Cutter, he began by saying, "Harris, I'm very busy..."

I interrupted him. I said, "What is the Churchill's location."

"We're orbiting Mars."

I asked, "Where is Travis Watson."

"That is classified information, General," he said, suddenly sounding bureaucratic.

"Is he on Mars?" I asked.

"That is none of your business."

I doubted that. Any mission that would take Watson to Mars would have had a lot to do with me. I asked, "How many ships do you have with you?"

"What are you getting at?" Cutter started to sound concerned. We had worked together during the invasion of Earth, and he knew my triggers. He asked, "What do you have?"

I said, "Tarawa is missing." I did not worry about using the nickname with Don Cutter. He may have been a Navy man, but he knew his Marine Corps lore.

"Second Division? What do you mean Second Division is missing?"

"They are supposed to be in Lejeune," I said.

In a placating voice, he said, "Harris, they don't report to you anymore. You might want to remember that you've been relieved of command."

I said, "Did you close Camp Lejeune?"

"Why would I close Lejeune?" he asked. Lejeune was the second largest Marine base in the empire.

"You tell me, Admiral," I said. "Lejeune is empty. There aren't even any sentries guarding the gates."

"No one?" he asked.

"Not a living soul on base," I said. "I had the Swansboro police send a car. They said the base was empty and the gates were open."

Cutter went silent for a moment, then he said, "Harris, that's not just Tarawa, that's the entire Second Division. You're talking about twenty thousand men."

"They left in a hurry," I said. "Would you like to know where I think they are going? I think Second Division is headed to Mars."

Cutter said, "General, you are back on active duty. Get your ass out here. Bring whatever you need."

If I was right, and Second Division had been compromised, twenty thousand Marines were headed to Mars. They'd need a ship, of course. I called the Office of the Navy and discovered that the EMN de Gaulle, a fighter carrier, had left for Mars two hours earlier.

If a fighter carrier with twenty thousand combat-hardened Marines was headed to Mars, Cutter would need a lot more asses than mine.

There were two questions I always asked myself at the start of operations. The first question was obvious, every officer asked it: "What men and material will I need to succeed?" The second question sounded similar, but there was a world of difference. That question was: "What men and material do I have available?"

The first was a question of tactics. The second, logistics.

I had dozens of ships and millions of fighting men to send to Mars, but they would arrive too late to save Cutter and Watson. If I was right, they would arrive too late to save the New Olympians as well.

I called Navy headquarters and ordered the Lancet and the Christy to Mars, knowing that they would not arrive until long after their mission had already failed. They faced a four-hour flight to Mars, and the de Gaulle had a two-hour head start on them.

Then I had a grand idea. The only problem was, it would only work if a junior officer had ignored my orders.

CHAPTER.

FIFTY-FIVE.

"This is Major Dunkirk." Good thing he announced his name and rank, I hadn't bothered committing either to memory. The only thing I remembered about him was that he was the officer over Smithsonian Field, and that he had argued with me when I ordered him to dismantle the self-broadcasting fleet.

I said, "Dunkirk, this is General Wayson Harris."

"Yes, sir," he said.

"I came out to inspect the airfield a few weeks ago."

"Yes, sir. I remember, sir."

"And I gave you orders to destroy the explorer fleet. Have you carried out my orders?"

Bracing himself for the explosion that would surely follow, he took a deep breath, and said, "No, sir."

"No?" I asked.

He must have misinterpreted my excitement as anger. He said, "No, sir. It is my understanding, sir, that you have been relieved of command. I cannot carry out those orders until they are confirmed by an officer on active duty."

I said, "Major, I have been reinstated."

Silence.

I said, "Listen to me, and listen to me carefully. I want those birds gassed up and ready to fly. I want their broadcast generators charged and their broadcast engines humming. They're going wheels up as soon as I get my men together."

At first he did not respond. Then he said, "Sir, I will need authorization from Admiral..."

"Believe me, Dunkirk, Naval HQ will be on the horn with you rapid, quick, and pronto. In the meantime, I want those birds juiced."

"Sir, even if I receive the authorization...Sir, those ships are over one hundred years old. They might not fly."

"They better fly," I said. "The future of the Enlisted Man's Empire will be riding on those wings."

CHAPTER.