"What do you want me to say?" asked Hughes.

"Would you have stopped those men if you could have?" I asked.

"I could not have stopped them, General. I would not have tried.

"There are people in this spaceport who wish they had died on Olympus Kri. After a year of waiting, people who would rather have been incinerated than live in this squalor," said Hughes, his politician's veneer wearing thin, the touch of anger in his voice.

Transporting the New Olympians was going to be a long, slow process. Back when we evacuated Olympus Kri, we had a fleet of barges that could carry a quarter of a million passengers at a time. We no longer had those barges. Now we would need to ferry the New Olympians to Earth in warships and freighters, a few thousand at a time. The process could take over a year.

When I mentioned that to Hughes, he said, "That's no excuse." His eyes turned cold and his voice more hostile. "You should have started the evacuation eleven months ago."

CHAPTER.

EIGHT.

The regiment bivouacked in a food court, a tight fit for fifteen hundred Marines but probably worse for the twenty-five hundred people we evicted.

I chose the food court because it was in a secluded cul-de-sac. A narrow service hall looped behind the ring of empty restaurants, but that made the area all the more attractive-it might lure the enemy into an attack.

"Do you want me to post guards in the service hall?" asked Colonel Jackson.

"Not a chance," I said. "I don't want to scare visitors away, I want to invite them."

"Yes, sir," said Jackson. "My men can rig a warning system. That shouldn't scare them away."

"Good thinking, Colonel," I said.

"Aye, sir."

"And, Colonel, why don't you place some equipment in the air ducts while you're at it. Set up a wide perimeter. I want to be ready for visitors."

"Yes, sir."

Jackson was hardheaded, but a good Marine with all the commendations and decorations of a vet with ten years of combat experience. I'd never met the man before this mission, but I'd seen his record. The Second Regiment of the Second Division was a newly formed first-response unit. When Jackson requested to join the unit, I placed him in command.

I watched my men set up their bivouac. They set up a manned, chest-high, bulletproof barrier by the entrance into the food court. One hundred men tended that checkpoint.

Technicians filtered out the back doors of the various restaurants. Once they placed their filament-sized cameras and sensors in the hall, not even a Martian louse would be able to slip through unobserved.

Self-guiding robotic sentries now roved the air ducts, patrolling for movement, heat, sound, electrical current, and chemicals. They were our electronic canaries. The size of house cats, the sentries were far from discreet. They were loud and large, but that was their charm. They saw and heard everything; and if the enemy destroyed them, that provided us with an early warning as well.

The mood around the regiment relaxed. Most of us removed our helmets. Some men even stripped off their armor and walked around in their bodysuits. I removed my helmet but kept my armor on.

I'd grown numb to the heavy, sweaty scent of the air and mostly forgotten about the head lice. After a while, I started scratching my scalp and noticed other Marines doing the same. Only then did I realize we might bring some of Mars's only indigenous population home with us.

This particular food court was far from the hub of Mars Spaceport. It was a place for spaceport employees to eat, not travelers. There were no windows overlooking a vast Martian vista, and the unfinished ceiling was crisscrossed with ducts, pipes, and wires.

If it came to a shoot-out, there was no chance we would breach the spaceport's outer walls. Not in here.

Using the commandLink, I contacted Cutter on the Churchill. When he answered, I said, "What I wouldn't give for a private room with a rack and head right about now."

"I can send a shuttle," he offered.

"I'm just bitching," I said. "By the way, you might want to set up some sterilizing lamps for my men."

"Head lice?" he asked.

"Mars's only indigenous life-form," I said. "A lot of my men are scratching their heads."

"But not you," said Cutter.

I said, "No comment."

I told Cutter about my visit with Gordon Hughes, and that led to a brief discussion about the ancient Roman practice of decimation. Cutter asked, "You know what the Romans used to do when their soldiers were attacked in conquered territories?"

I did know. Roman history had always fascinated me. In fact, I had sparked Cutter's interest in Rome when I told him about the Praetorian Guard.

He did not wait for me to answer before saying, "They used to line up the town and kill every tenth person."

I knew Cutter wasn't seriously suggesting I kill New Olympians, he just liked to demonstrate his knowledge.

"There are seventeen million people in this facility; I'd end up killing 1.7 million people plus change."

"Plus change?"

"Plus change. You may not have heard this, but the New Olympians have not stopped copulating since moving to Mars. Does a mother and a newborn count as a single unit?"

"I don't think the Romans killed mothers or newborns, just men," said Cutter.

"Oh. In that case..." I said.

We were down for the night, and we had a secure perimeter at that point, and I had no idea how much trouble I was in.

CHAPTER.

NINE.

The sons of bitches tried to gas us. They must have known we would take off our helmets once we set up camp, and they tried to get us by pumping poisonous gas through the air vents.

The killer mist rolled along the bottom of the air ducts like fog on a lake. One of our robot sentries sniffed it from forty feet away, analyzed the chemicals, and reported that the lethal cloud was on its way. The robot then switched into stealth mode and drove straight into the gas, cameras rolling, using telemetry to send back everything it saw as it tried to trace the source of the attack.

The men monitoring the robot called for Colonel Jackson, and he invited me to watch.

"What kind of gas is it?" I asked.

"Poisonous gas," said Jackson, the bastard.

"Chlorine gas, sir," one of the techs answered.

Chlorine gas was an ancient weapon, primitive and reliable. It would not penetrate the breathing gear in our armor. Wearing our helmets, we could nap, exercise, and write poetry in a room filled with chlorine gas.

"After they run out of chlorine, maybe they'll come after us with bows and arrows," Jackson quipped.

"It's easy to make," said a tech. "You can find the chemicals anywhere."

"Improvised munitions," I muttered, knowing that chlorine was one of the few chemicals in good supply on Mars. Any cleaning done on Mars probably involved chlorine-based disinfectants.

The little robot pushed through layers and coils of greenish yellow gas relying on magnetic and sonar signals to navigate through the vents. It detected every turn, every rise, and every weld; and it transmitted its findings back to us in the form of a three-dimensional map.

The robot traveled through sixty-three feet of chlorine gas before it located the open vent and the glass hose that were the source of the trouble.

"Can you transmit the source location to my commandLink?" I asked.

The tech tapped a couple of keys, and said, "Aye, sir. Try frequency 99998."

I came prepared. I brought a small handheld communicator that I patched into the commandLink. The little remote included a four-inch screen and a camera and a microphone. When I powered the screen, I saw the glass hose and the map that the robot had transmitted. The opening of the hose looked to be about four inches in diameter, with gas spewing out of it as thick as sludge.

"Do we know where the gas is coming from?" I asked.

"They must have a geny, sir," said the tech.

"I suspect so," I said, a little irritated by his telling me the obvious. Of course they were using a generator to mix and blow the gas; they weren't mixing it in paint cans. "Can you tell if there are people around it?"

The robot cruised right up to the mouth of the hose, peered inside it, then the world began spinning out of control.

"What happened?" I asked.

"It pitched an eye," said the tech, tech-speak for dropping a remote camera.

On my display, I saw yellow gas and glimpses of glass. The camera must have been tiny, no bigger than the point of a pin, but dense enough that the gas did not flush it out of the hose. It rolled down the hose, all the while transmitting back images of a small space, maybe a closet, in which three men stood.

I handed Jackson my M27, and said, "Keep it warm for me, Colonel."

"What are you doing, sir?" asked Jackson.

"I'm going to introduce myself to our new friends," I said.

He laughed, and said, "Admiral Cutter said you would go rogue at the first sign of action."

"Did he? I bet he told you to send a team with me if I did."

"No, sir. He said not to bother asking."

"He knows me," I said.

"He also said that I should warn you that you will be relieved of command if you continue playing commando," said Jackson.

"Another good insight," I said.

"Do you want me to send some men with you, sir?" asked Jackson.

If I had a team of men with me, we might end up with another grand arcade situation, surrounded by screaming hostiles while the enemy ran away. Alone, I stood a chance of slipping through unnoticed.

I stripped off my armor and the bodysuit underneath. Hoping for a chance to get out on my own, I had come with civilian clothing under my bodysuit. That was also my reason for bringing the handheld remote. The brick-sized device felt clumsy in my hand; but I thought I could use it in the spaceport without drawing too much attention.

I asked Jackson, "Are any of your troops packing civilian gear under their armor?"

"Negative, sir."

I said, "Then I guess I am forced to go alone." Turning to leave, I heard the colonel whisper, "Bullshit." I could have busted the bastard for insubordination. Instead, I quietly laughed.

As I walked to the barrier, a soft voice came from the remote. Jackson said, "General, there's movement in one of the service halls."

"I want prisoners, not corpses," I said. "If someone knocks on the door, you let them in, and you take them alive. Am I clear, Colonel?"

"Aye, sir."

"And speaking of being taken alive, I will signal you if I run into trouble."

"Yes, sir."

"And I will signal you before I return. I don't want your boys shooting me when I come back."

"No, sir."