In this case, the authorization did not come in the form of a signature. The paper contained "notary dots," microscopic computer chips sealed in the paper, which had been activated by Don Cutter's staff. I could write my own orders, and I could forge Cutter's signature, but only the admiral could activate the dots.

The dots were invisible to the naked eye. Dunkirk scanned them using the equipment in the visor of his Marine combat armor. The spots were filled with codes, notes, and an activation date. Hell, each dot held enough data storage for the complete works of Shakespeare.

Once I was fully reinstated, my office would be able to use notary dots as well. That was one of the useful technologies we inherited from the Unifieds when we took Washington, D.C., away from them.

So were the antiques I had come to commandeer.

Apparently Major Dunkirk liked what he saw when he scanned my orders. The gate opened. He saluted and stepped out of the way.

The explorers were already out of their hangar-207 spacecraft, each unarmed and unshielded. These birds had been built for scientific research and serenity. They were slow, they were delicate, they were ancient; but they had working broadcast engines. That made them indispensable.

"No disrespect, General, but are you sure this is a good idea?" Colonel Hunter Ritz asked me over the interLink. Ritz, my new second in command, was a "loose cannon" in whom I had complete confidence. Had I not returned to active duty, he stood to inherit the entire Corps, but commanding the Marines was not one of his ambitions.

"I'm sure that it is a bad idea," I said. "I don't see any other options."

Ritz said, "Let the speckers have Mars, then blow their asses off their legs when they try to come home...sir. That gives us a home-field advantage."

The afternoon had ended, and the first signs of evening showed on the horizon. I said, "Stow it, Colonel. You have your orders."

"Yes, sir. Aye, sir," he said.

Ritz was the devil I knew. He liked to argue. He liked goading men who outranked him, even generals. He pushed "asking for instruction" to the brink of insubordination, and he was so lazy between missions that he'd been written up for dereliction of duty; but he was energetic, inventive, and fearless in battle. His commanding officers loathed him, and his men swore he was the fourth member of the Trinity.

"Permission to ask one final question, sir?" Ritz asked.

"What is it, Colonel?"

"Are we doing this for one man, General?"

Am I placing three thousand fighting Marines in harm's way just to rescue one man? I asked myself. The answer was probably, "Yes." Ritz had asked the wrong question. He should have asked me if we were doing this for Howard Tasman, the father of neural programming, or Ray Freeman, the mercenary who had pulled my ass out of the fire on more than one occasion, or Travis Watson. Even I would not have known the answer to that question.

I said, "No, Colonel, this isn't about saving one man. This is about saving the Enlisted Man's Empire."

He answered by saying, "Aye, sir. Yes, sir. Once more into the breach. Hoorah."

Orange light shone on some of the clouds in the distance, but the true harvest night was still several hours away.

The scientific explorers were too small to be practical from a military standpoint. Designed to ferry scientists and soil samples, the hatches on these birds weren't wide enough for jeeps, let alone tanks, not that it mattered. Their jump-jets were not powerful enough to lift heavy artillery in Earth's gravity.

We could fit one hundred men and a modicum of artillery in a transport. These little birds had room for fifteen men so long as they did not carry anything larger than M27s or grenades. With 207 explorers, we could shuttle approximately thirty-one hundred men.

We were in for a fight.

We loaded up quickly and launched, a measly fifteen men per ship, and my sergeants had to wedge them in like a foot in a boot.

Explorers had very delicate-looking retractable wings-the thrusters were in the base of the ship. The thrusters fired, and we lifted into the air smoothly enough. Apparently, the weight of the men did not impact our liftoff.

One nice thing about explorers, they had portals and viewports along the walls and the ceiling. I caught a brief glimpse of trees and clouds as we flew.

It took a few minutes for the old birds to leave the atmosphere. Broadcasting, a process involving ridiculous amounts of electrical energy, was restricted to the vacuum of space.

When a ship broadcasted, it was coated with enough joules of electricity to disintegrate everyone on board. The electrical field was so intense that seeing its glare through closed eyes could leave a man blind. Metal shutters closed over the insides of the windows to protect our eyes.

"General, do you have any idea how old these ships might be?" Ritz asked me, as the windows vanished.

"No idea," I admitted. "They're old."

"Are they sixty years old?" Ritz asked.

"Older," I said. "You sound nervous."

"Nervous?" Ritz asked. "Me, nervous? I had a look at Corps regulations. Did you know we swap out toasters after seven years of service. Doesn't matter if they've shorted out or not; after seven years, we melt them into scrap metal."

"I did not know that, Colonel," I said. That was the difference between me and Ritz, he wanted to live. Me, I'd seen enough. Death did not bother me, phobias did.

"Corps regulations say we retire portable latrines after twelve years. It doesn't matter how well scrubbed they are, after twelve years, the Corps no longer considers them sanitary."

"Fascinating," I said.

"We retire fighter jets after five years of service," he said. "Tanks after twenty."

It was all bullshit. Those regulations were written by Unified Authority hacks who didn't give a flying speck about cloned Marines squatting in unsanitary shitters.

As Ritz continued to complain, the ships broadcasted. Colonel Hunter Ritz, who could indeed be a genially insubordinate asshole, took his coffee straight and entered battles head-on. I let him rant until he took his first breath; and then I told him, "We've already broadcasted, Colonel. Congratulations, you survived the safest part of this mission."

CHAPTER.

SIXTY-ONE.

Location: Mars Air Force Base

Date: May 2, 2519

"There are incoming ships," one of the bodyguards called from the nerve center. A moment later, he added, "Holy hell! There's a shitload of them."

Freeman stood behind him and watched the screen. Watson, his body still stiff, stumbled and came for a look.

Modeled after the manner of a spaceport control tower, the nerve center was entirely dark except for the glow from the screens and displays. Liston and Dempsey stood beside a flat table over which shimmered a holographic map.

"They just broadcasted outside the atmosphere." Watson wasn't sure, but he thought the bodyguard who'd spoken might have been Liston. It was Dempsey. He added, "There are 207 of 'em."

Watson looked from the whited-out area above the virtual atmosphere on the holographic display to a two-dimensional readout that showed data instead of images.

Self-broadcasting ships? He thought, There cannot possibly be that many self-broadcasting ships in the entire galaxy. Two hundred seven ships. Then he remembered. Those had to be the explorers from Smithsonian Field, and only Wayson Harris would have thought to send them.

"It's Harris," Watson said. His jaws had been set with a device that kept the bones aligned, but he was able to growl the words. "We have to warn him."

"Communications are still down," said Liston.

"If it's Harris, he'll figure it out," said Freeman.

Watson did not answer.

CHAPTER.

SIXTY-TWO.

Location: The Churchill

Date: May 2, 2519

"One of the battleships is changing course," said Lieutenant Nolan. "It looks like she's headed toward the spaceport."

"Is she shooting the explorers?" asked Hauser.

"Not yet, sir."

Cutter smiled. They had just made the tactical error he had hoped they would make. He told Captain Hauser, "Good news, Captain. We take this play one-on-one." In his mind, he added, until the de Gaulle arrives.

Hauser asked. "Should we attack her now or wait for de Gaulle?"

Cutter gave him the bad news. He said, "The de Gaulle is on their side."

Cutter turned to his communications console. He dialed in a code, and said, "Harris, do you read me? Did those antiques come with working radios?"

Harris said, "Fully equipped...everything but shields and guns."

Cutter said, "We don't have much time, General. Riley is sludging the airwaves down there. We're going to lose contact when you enter the atmosphere."

"Understood."

"It's getting crowded around here; there are two U.A. ships patrolling the area, and the de Gaulle is closing in."

"I see the Nikes," said Harris. "Do you have any idea where they came from?"

Harris recognized them by their shields. Nike-class ships had glowing orange shields that wrapped around their hulls like skin. They were the only ships that had those advanced shields.

"They're Nike class; they broadcasted in. How the hell would I know where they came from...? Probably Terraneau. You better get to safe harbor before they arrive," said Cutter.

Harris did not respond.

Cutter watched the holographic display. He studied the U.A. battleships. Rookie mistake, he thought to himself.

He said, "I'm pretty sure Watson is in the air base. Now listen up. Their reinforcements are going to arrive before ours do. We'll do what we can to help, but you're on your own until the cavalry arrives."

Cutter tried to imagine what course the battle might follow. Several seconds passed in silence. Harris signed off, but Cutter didn't notice.

Drawing with his finger on a touch tablet, he sketched a plan, which he sent to navigation along with a single-word notation, "Possible?"

A moment later, a two-word response appeared on his tablet. The words were, "Aye, sir."

Cutter showed Captain Hauser his plan. The Churchill was Hauser's ship. He gave the orders.

Hauser looked at the tablet and smiled. He told his navigators, "Come around hard. Let's poke that bitch in the ass and see how she squeals."

Both of the Unified Authority ships appeared to be damaged, with inadequate repairs, especially the second ship. As the ships chased the Churchill out of Mars orbit, Cutter analyzed their energy signatures.

Just as Captain Hauser had said, "They'd been through the blender." They might have survived the battle at Terraneau, but they'd limped away.