"They're making sure Riley's men don't flank us," said Ritz. "It's a big spaceport, sir. There are other ways in."

Mars Spaceport had seventeen linear miles of exterior walls and passenger gates. We barely had enough men to guard the outermost wall of the Perseus Wing, the wall that faced the Air Force base. What would we do when the de Gaulle arrived with twenty thousand Marines?

Riley was a glorified MP, a man with no experience in troop deployment and strategy. It might not have occurred to him to flank our position. But when Curtis Jackson arrived, he would not make the same mistake. Jackson would land his transports all around the building.

CHAPTER.

SIXTY-EIGHT.

I entered the main "trunk" of the Perseus Wing, a deserted pedestrian superhighway once traversed by as many as one million people per day. During the era when the Unified Authority owned the galaxy, every passenger traveling between Earth and any planet in the Perseus Arm had passed through this corridor. This was the hall that connected the Perseus Wing to the grand arcade, the central hub of the spaceport.

The area had gone pitch-black. It was possible that the bomb had damaged the wiring, though I doubted it. It seemed more likely that somebody had cut the electricity to this part of the spaceport.

The hall was wider than a football field. Its ceiling was twenty feet up. Had I stopped and stared straight up, the ceiling would have looked relatively high; but taken in proportion with the size of the hall, I felt like I was walking through the center of a sandwich.

A balcony ran the length of the hall. One of my snipers stood on the balcony a couple of hundred yards ahead of me. Not expected to play sniper on this mission, he only had an M27; but a skilled marksman with an M27 was still dangerous.

"Are we secure?" I asked.

"The area is clear, sir," said the first sniper.

"Secure," said the second.

I crossed the floor quickly.

There were no bodies here though the floor was littered with clothing, blankets, suitcases, and other small possessions. No one had been trampled, and no children had been left behind, but a few people too old or too sick to run with the herd remained.

As I reached the halfway point across the long hall, a light flashed on, then off. From this distance, it looked no bigger or brighter than the flame on the head of a match.

One of my snipers fired off five shots, not a burst, but five individual shots. Bang...bang...bang...bang...bang.

I stopped running, and asked, "Am I clear."

"Clear, sir," said the sniper.

"Are you sure?" I asked, not happy about the uncertainty in my voice.

"Yes, sir," he said.

As I began jogging again, he fired off two more shots.

I asked, "What was that?"

He said, "The area is clear, sir."

An old woman screamed when she heard the shots-a tiny and frail woman, sitting on the blanket that had become her home, with her legs tucked up under her chin. She quieted down for a moment as she struggled to breathe.

Dressed in my dark green armor, I was next to invisible; but she heard me, then she picked me out of the shadows and started shrieking again.

As I ran past the old banshee, I spotted the second of my guardian angels. He was on the balcony. He had leapfrogged the first sniper's position and stood at the corner, looking down into the grand arcade, with its masses and desperation.

I slowed to a jog as I reached the corner and used my commandLink to take a report. "Ritz, give me an update," I said.

"They're spreading us pretty thin," he said. Then he added, "We've hit them hard. I think they're going to back off until their reinforcements arrive."

The de Gaulle would not be far away.

CHAPTER.

SIXTY-NINE.

Location: The Churchill

Date: May 2, 2519

Since he did not know the names of the two U.A. battleships, Don Cutter thought up derisive names instead. The ship circling Mars had no weapons. Cutter called her the Toothless. The second ship had working weapons systems, but her engines sputtered. Cutter called her the Cripple.

The Toothless continued to circle Mars from just outside the atmosphere, her weapons silent, as the Cripple limped in from the dark side of Mars. The de Gaulle flew in from the side facing the sun.

One's out of ammo, and the other is practically landlocked, Cutter thought. Practically landlocked. He could play with them all day, maybe try to trick the Cripple into firing a few shield-busters into the Toothless once the two ships came into each other's range; but with the de Gaulle less than a minute away, he had no time for games.

The holographic display showed all four ships: the Cripple rolling in across the planet, the Toothless making another meaningless circuit, the de Gaulle coming from yet another angle, and the Churchill trapped in the locus. The three ships looked like the corners of a triangle, with Mars Spaceport and the Churchill in the center. In the background, Phobos and Deimos, Mars's potato-shaped moons, loomed on the outskirts of the display.

"We should go after the de Gaulle first," said Captain Hauser. "She's the healthy one. They won't expect it."

Hauser's strategy made sense. If they could stop the de Gaulle from landing Marines, they could accomplish their mission. He asked, "Do you have a plan of attack?"

"No, sir," Hauser admitted in a soft voice.

"They have everything we have. It's going to be a slugfest unless the Cripple creeps up behind us during the fight. If that happens, it will be a massacre."

Lieutenant Nolan said, "If we wait until they launch their transports, maybe we can stop their Marines in the air."

"We won't have time, not with that ship on our tail," said Nolan.

There was a silence between the officers, which Lieutenant Nolan ended. He said, "She's too low and too slow." He pointed at the Cripple on the display, and said, "Captain, we might just be able to take her out if we move quickly."

"How? We can't get through her shields," said Hauser.

"It would even the fight," said Cutter. He did the calculations in his head. Eliminate the Cripple, and they might be able to chase the de Gaulle or at least destroy her transports as they launched. "What do you have, Lieutenant?"

Nolan swallowed, and said, "We know her engines are bad, and her thrusters are worthless...That's why she can't turn. She slid like she was on ice when we hit her with missiles. What if we hit her from out here and try to knock her into the atmosphere." He pointed to the spine of the ship.

"We won't get through her shields," said Hauser.

"I don't think we need to get through her shields, sir," said Nolan. "If we can knock her into the atmosphere, gravity will bring her down."

Cutter looked at the display. He watched the way the Cripple seemed to dog-paddle outside the Martian atmosphere. Eliminate the Cripple and they would have an even fight with the de Gaulle, because that other U.A. ship was just for show. He said, "Captain Hauser, commence that attack."

Hauser said, "Aye, aye, sir," but he did not sound confident. He shouted the orders and rejoined Cutter at the display.

The Churchill veered out, into open space, building such rapid acceleration that without internal generators manipulating the gravity inside the ship, the crew might have been crushed by their own weight.

She flew ten thousand miles traveling along a rigid trajectory that brought her straight out from Mars, then looped back. Had it not been for the artificial gravity, the crew would have been thrown against one wall of the ship, then another, only to be tossed back again as the ship settled into a collision course with the Cripple and the planet.

Intellectually removing himself from the equation as if he were watching an exercise instead of his own life-and-death struggle, Cutter followed his ship on the display. In his mind, the de Gaulle no longer existed, would not exist until this fight ended one way or another.

On the display, the Churchill and the Cripple were already touching. The Cripple moved so slowly, she appeared to float on the outer edge of the atmosphere. Still building momentum, the Churchill skipped quickly across the display.

"Captain, she's firing at us," Nolan warned.

Hauser ignored him. He stood sentinel still, his eyes locked on the tactical display, his skin and lips so pale they looked bloodless.

He shouted, "Fire particle beams!" Two seconds later, he shouted, "Torpedoes, all forward tubes."

"Captain, they fired..." Nolan repeated.

The green beams from the particle beams fired and vanished so quickly, they never showed on the holographic display. They destroyed any torpedoes that had fired from the U.A. battleship and battered her shields. Showing as fast-moving motes of glitter on the tactical display, the Churchill's torpedoes crossed the no-man's-land between the ships.

"Lock on missiles! Fire missiles!" Hauser shouted. "Pull out! Get us out of here!"

The torpedoes hit the Cripple like a strong wind. They did not break through her shields, but they knocked her off her course, battering her toward the planet below. The missiles followed, knocking her even farther into the atmosphere.

"Sir, incoming torpedoes!" yelled a weapons officer.

"Active defenses!" yelled Hauser. The defenses had already been activated. The ship's computers tracked and destroyed incoming torpedoes automatically.

On the display, the Cripple's nose lowered as her trajectory took her down toward the planet. She was ensnared by Mars's gravity as securely as any fly had ever been tied in a spiderweb, and her weak engines lacked the power to take her out of the gravitational pull, and her damaged thrusters offered next to no resistance. She lowered toward the craggy surface like a plane coming in for a landing, but she had no wheels because she was built to remain in space. For the U.A. battleship, entering Mars's gravitational field was a death sentence.

On the tactical display, the U.A. ship came to a smooth stop.

Lieutenant Nolan said, "There's a spike in radiation...She's gone nuclear."

The bridge crew screamed in triumph.

Cutter slumped back against the rail, a tired smile on his face. Hauser had reached to shake the Admiral's hand, when Nolan said, "Captain, sir, the de Gaulle has launched her transports."

CHAPTER.

SEVENTY.

Location: Mars Air Force Base

Date: May 2, 2519

All of the explorer pilots were Air Force officers, and several had served on Mars. They knew how to power up the lights and the computer systems. Freeman and the bodyguards had managed to get some of the radar system working. With Air Force personnel behind the controls, the base lit bright, and the communications console began working.