One of the pilots entered the nerve center and sat beside the radar display. He typed a code on a keyboard. The screen that lit up was nearly a yard in diameter. On that display, the U.A. ships appeared as triangles with names emblazoned beside them. One of the ships circled the area above the spaceport and the base. The radar system identified her as the UAN Abner.

As a crowd formed around the screen, one of the Air Force pilots said, "It looks like the Churchill is going to make a run at that ship."

"The Abner?" asked a fighter pilot. "Cutter wouldn't do that, man. That's a Nike."

"Both of those ships are Nikes," said the first pilot.

On the screen, the icon marked Churchill dashed straight at the icon marked Abner.

"Doesn't look like Churchill is firing anything," said a fighter pilot.

"They aren't," said the Air Force pilot who had powered up the display.

"Have they launched their fighters?" asked Liston.

One of the pilots sneered, shook his head, and asked, "Do you see any fighters on the screen?"

Liston said, "I don't know what I see on the screen."

The pilot laughed. He said, "See that ship there?" He pointed to the only fast-moving shape on the screen. It was about five inches from a circling triangle labeled Abner. "That's the Churchill."

"The triangle?" asked Liston.

"Shhhh!" a pilot hissed.

In a quieter whisper, the pilot said, "Those other two are U.A. ships. That one way over there is the de Gaulle."

"A clone ship?" asked Liston.

"General Harris says the Unifieds got ahold of her. That's why we came in the Explorer fleet. We had to get here before the de Gaulle. She's got a full load of U.A. Marines."

"Damn," said Liston.

"Got that right," said the pilot.

Watson listened to all of this in silence. His body hurt, and he knew he needed to sleep, but he did not feel tired. Whether it was the patches or the danger, he did not care.

The icon representing the Churchill practically merged with the icon representing the Abner. It passed so close that the two triangles seemed to merge, then the Churchill continued past and the Abner continued to circle.

"What the speck was that?" asked one of the pilots.

"Damn if I know."

"What happened?" asked Liston.

"Neither of them fired," said the pilot who had explained the icons on the monitor.

"Why didn't they fire?" asked Liston.

"Shhhhh!" hissed the pilot closest to the display.

"Churchill doesn't have anything that can get through those shields, that's why she didn't fire," the pilot whispered to Liston. "I don't know why Abner didn't fire."

"That one over there...the Carmack, is that a U.A. ship, too?" asked Liston. "Why is it moving so slow?"

"I don't know."

Sharkey returned with Freeman and Emily. Freeman was still and silent. Sharkey and the others asked questions. Liston explained the icons on the screen as if he'd known how to read the display his entire life.

As he pointed to the icon representing the Churchill, it made a sudden movement. Liston said, "There it goes again."

This time the Churchill flew away from Mars. Dynamic tables along the base of the screen charted her speed, the numbers changing so quickly that no one could read them.

"Shit, she's really hauling," said one of the pilots.

"Is it running away?" asked Liston.

The question went unanswered.

On the screen, the Abner continued circling her territory above the atmosphere. The de Gaulle approached.

"Are they leaving us here?" Emily asked.

A second later, the Churchill changed her course. She turned and headed straight back to Mars, still building speed as she went.

"What the hell are they doing?" asked the pilot who had tutored Liston. He stood with his hand across his jaw, his fingers stroking his cheek.

Watson quietly stepped back from the screen and moved beside Emily. Freeman stood a few feet away, towering above everyone else, able to see the screen over the other people's shoulders. No emotion showed on Freeman's face. He stood silent, his eyes hard and focused, his expression a mystery.

The icon representing the Churchill continued building speed as it headed directly toward Mars and the slow-moving icon that represented the Carmack. If the display was accurate, the Carmack was barely moving, lying like a carcass on the side of the road while the Churchill swooped in like a hawk.

"Is it firing?" asked Liston.

"Oh hell yes," said one of the pilots. "There go the cannons." A moment later, he said, "There go the torpedoes." Another moment and, "There go the missiles."

Having fired particle beams, torpedoes, and missiles, the Churchill changed course, flying back out to space and still gaining speed. As the icon representing the Churchill flew away, the icon representing the Carmack dipped into the backlit area of the screen that represented the atmosphere.

"What happened?" asked Liston.

"Carmack entered the atmosphere."

"What does that mean?"

"She's a battleship," said the pilot. "She's made for space."

On the screen, the icon representing the Carmack continued to lose altitude. One of them hooted and yelled, "Hell yeah!"

"She's going down! She's going down!" screamed another.

"Oh, thank God," whispered a third.

A moment later they felt the shock wave. The ground shook, and the building trembled, and the revelry came to an end as people rode the rolling floor in silence. The tremor lasted an eternity of twenty-three seconds.

That was when Dempsey, a bodyguard who had been a SEAL as a young man, watched the de Gaulle on the screen. He said, "If your ships can fly, you better get us out of here."

The lead pilot said, "That carrier will pick us off with her particle beams the moment we launch."

"Yeah?" asked Dempsey. "If they got Marines on that ship, then Mars is about to become a hostile environment."

"Maybe you've never ridden in an explorer," the pilot said, his irritation obvious. "It's not a flying brick like your military transports. Those bitches stand up to anything. These explorers, I figure a nasty thought could bring one of them down."

Another pilot said, "Speck, here come the transports."

That was when Watson finally spoke up. He said, "We need to fly in two groups."

CHAPTER.

SEVENTY-ONE.

Location: Mars Spaceport

Date: May 2, 2519

The snowball effect. Ten thousand panicking survivors had run out of one relatively minor hall and scared fifty thousand people in a larger hall, who then caused a riot in one of the spaceport's major trunks, a riot that then spilled into the grand arcade. Once the panic reached the grand arcade, it spread throughout the complex.

The trunk that led to the grand arcade was nearly empty, but screams and thumping echoed from the intersection up ahead. When I looked in that direction, I saw no people.

The first of my snipers entered the grand arcade on the third floor, and somebody shot him. My second sniper spotted the assassin. He was up on a catwalk, about ten feet below the atrium's glass cathedral ceiling. My sniper aligned his shot and fired, hitting his target.

If he'd asked permission, I would not have allowed the shot, not with an M27.

The man dropped his rifle and fell over the edge of the catwalk and into the roiling mass of people below. This had about as much effect as throwing a lit match into a blazing furnace. The already hysterical mob remained hysterical.

My sniper was three floors up, standing near a corner, hiding behind a rail. I could see him standing by himself, and I could see a flood of people fighting and shoving to enter the trunks leading to the other wings of the spaceport. They were as crowded together as the sand in the upper funnel of an hourglass.

Using my visor, I marked the entrance to the service tunnels that led to barracks and the power plant. It was several hundred yards ahead of me...several hundred very exposed yards.

The men who blew up that first corridor would not repeat that act of sabotage. If they detonated a bomb anywhere near the reactor, they would die along with me and the New Olympians. If the power plant below the arcade exploded, it would take half the hemisphere with it.

"You see anything?" I asked.

"Looks clear, sir," he said.

Before stepping out of my hiding place, I asked myself how much I trusted this Marine. I trusted his marksmanship. He'd proved himself several times. I trusted his reflexes, too. He was quick.

I wouldn't need his protection once I reached the tunnel. I would be in a winding, tight environment, with low ceilings and no room to maneuver. Any fighting I did down there would be close-range.

I said, "Just get me to the tunnels alive."

"Not a problem, sir," he said.

I scanned the area. Far ahead of me, the vanishing mob continued to scream and fight and push. The upper decks of the grand arcade had emptied. Thousands of bodies lay motionless on the hard ground. I'd been in battles with smaller body counts, and there were hundreds of living casualties as well.

A lone voice resonated through the cavernous space. It was the keening of a child.

I scanned the area ahead of me and spotted a little girl crawling between two dead bodies. I did not know enough about children to guess their ages accurately, but she was no bigger than a backpack. There was blood on her face and her clothing.

I searched the upper decks of the atrium and saw no traces of people hiding behind walls or rails. Not that heat vision always spots them. There are limits to heat vision. Thick walls and stealth armor can mask heat signatures.

I ran half the length of the grand arcade, passing defunct stores that had been converted into cave dwellings, passing the abandoned bric-a-brac of an abandoned people, and passing the lifeless remains of the dead. My armored boots clacked across the floor. I held my M27 out and ready, my finger across the trigger instead of along it. Anyone or anything that stepped in my way now was forfeit.

Ahead of me, I saw the doorway that led down into the spaceport underground. I scanned the area around it, then used a sonar locator to ping the entrance.

There were people in the tunnel, hiding in the darkness. They might have been refugees trying to escape from the panic, but I doubted it. They hid along the sides of the tunnel, lurking in the shadows. As I approached, I switched to night-for-day lenses and spotted one of them, a man in civilian clothing holding an automatic rifle. As I started down the ramp, I fired a burst and killed the man. His partner swung out from the other side of the tunnel. I shot him before he could aim his gun.

"I have it from here," I called to my sniper. He didn't answer. I didn't think about that. I didn't think about checking in with Ritz to see how the battle outside was going.

I was a fool.

CHAPTER.