A human waitress arrived to take our drink orders. That's one reason the place is so expensive, of course-human waitstaff instead of robots. In keeping with the jungle theme of the place, they wore either skin nano or animated tattoos-I couldn't tell which-that gave their skin constantly shifting dapplings of sunlight and shadow.

"So . . . what do you think of the latest from Earthside?" Joy asked after she'd left.

"I haven't been paying attention," I told her, truthfully enough. I'd told my AI secretary to put a block on all of my auto news alerts and downloads. "At this point I'm afraid to download anything. What is the latest?"

"Oh, come on, e-Car!" She laughed. "Get with the program!"

"I've had other stuff on my mind," I said. "Like maybe getting court-martialed and ending up in Atlantica for ten years?" Atlantica was a seafloor colony off the coast of Florida, mostly a civilian facility with a scientific research community, but which included a Commonwealth submarine base and a high-security naval prison.

"Well, there is that. Don't worry, though. If you go to Atlantica, I'll bake you a cake with nano-D in the flour."

"Thanks so much. I'll have to remember to practice holding my breath before I use it, though."

"Seriously, Elliot. If they were going to lock you away, or even send you for deep neurophysiological rehab, you would not be walking around free now. They might decide to kick you out of the Navy just to be rid of you, but nothing more. Okay?"

I shrugged. "I'm sure you're right." What I didn't add was that getting booted out of the Navy would be as bad as having my brain rewired. I'd found a home here, a place of my own, a meaningful career.

Not to mention Joy. We were still deep in the initial rampant lust phase of our relationship, but I could see it moving beyond sex and pleasant companionship to something more permanent. Maybe.

If I could just shake off Paula's ghost, and put her to rest at last.

The waitress returned with our drinks-a Cosmic Dehibitor for Joy, a Metafuel Thruster for me. I paid her by linking through to the restaurant's e-pay AI, and included a generous tip for her. She thanked me, then took our orders for dinner. Meat from Earthside has to be shipped up-El and is expensive, but there are some locally nanufactured proteins indistinguishable from nature. Real cow meat from the Amazon prairies is just for status; the stuff built up molecule by molecule really can't be distinguished from the real thing. We both ordered local cultures, mine in the form of lobster tail, hers looking and tasting like steak.

"So what's the news?" I asked when we were alone again.

"War, of course. At least there's serious talk of war. The Commonwealth is blaming the CAC for hijacking that mining station . . . and for trying to drop an asteroid into the ocean. That's an act of war in anyone's manual."

I shook my head. "I have trouble believing that the CAC government would be openly behind something like that. Some extremist Islamic sect, maybe . . . or a rogue paramilitary group operating in the shadows. But the people, the ruling council in Dushanbe, they aren't crazy."

"They are neo-Ludd," Joy pointed out. "Or strongly supportive of the movement. And a tidal wave in the Pacific wouldn't touch them."

"No, but the outraged survivors of the rest of the world would."

"True. But maybe they didn't count on you figuring out where those tangos hailed from."

A shrill squeal sounded from overhead and we both looked up. A couple had managed to propel themselves clear of the hydrosphere and had landed in the nearly invisible netting surrounding the water in case of just such an eventuality. Laughing, naked and glistening wet, they half-scrambled and half-flew across the netting toward the sphere's zero-gravity poles to re-enter the water. I half expected some of the flying spray to reach us . . . but subtly directed air jets were in place to whisk away any stray flying droplets and keep the diners below from getting rained on. The illusion of dining in a rain forest did have reasonable limits, after all.

"I don't buy it," I told her, as the squeals died away again. "Those men had to know that someone would pull a DNA analysis on them if they were killed or captured."

"Maybe they just didn't count on the U.S. Marines coming in and spoiling their party," she said. "Either they would have their demands met . . . or they would all be incinerated on impact. Either way, no DNA left to sample."

"I suppose."

But I wasn't convinced.

The terrorists who'd seized Capricorn Zeta had clearly had a neo-Ludd agenda. Their demands had been that all asteroid mining be stopped-not only in Earth orbit, which was a song they'd been singing for a long time, but out in trans-lunar space as well.

They needed high-tech help. The Chinese were out, because if something had gone wrong and the asteroid had come down anywhere in the Pacific, the tidal waves would have washed them away. The CACs had the ideology, yeah, and they were far inland, but why use their own people in the attack, inviting military retaliation? It seemed likelier to me that those Central Asians we'd captured had been mercenaries, hirelings being used by someone else, possibly with an eye to calling attention to Dushanbe and away from the real masterminds.

Who would profit, I wondered, from having asteroid mining stopped? Or from having a one-kilometer asteroid fall out of the sky, killing a few hundred million people or more?

And with their plan for extortion blocked, what would they do next?

An inner ping alerted me to an incoming call request. I glanced at it, saw that it was another GNN e-comm request, and dismissed it. I'd become a pretty popular guy, it seemed. "A highly newsworthy commodity," like Joy had said. Reporters, both on Earth and embedded at HQ, wanted to talk to me.

Well, I didn't want to talk to them. I felt used and ambushed, and I wouldn't have opened the channel even if Gunny Hancock hadn't told me he would skin me alive and hang me out an airlock to dry if I did.

"Let's change the subject," I told Joy. "I don't really want to discuss work when the most gorgeous U.S. Marine in the Galaxy is sitting here right across from me."

"Flatterer."

"I like the utilities."

She dimpled. "Thank you. I put so much work into it."

In fact, she was wearing ordinary ship utilities, a black skinsuit that clung to her like paint. She'd stroked the top away, though, to give her the currently fashionable Minoan Princess look, proudly bare breasted. She'd programmed the remaining nanofabric to give it an illusion of depth, scattered through and through with gleaming stars.

She was radiantly beautiful.

"Elliot, someone is pinging our ID."

The voice wasn't Joy's. It was my AI secretary, a smart bit of AI software that normally resided silently within my in-head hardware without making its presence known. That it was speaking now, interrupting my conversation with Joy, meant that it had detected a close-in attempt to physically locate me by homing in on my personal electronics. Normally that stuff is pretty heavily firewalled, with name and rank only out there for public access, but I'd opened it wider in order to pay for the drinks and the meal.

Or maybe the name and rank had been enough. Damn it!

"Where is he?" I asked my secretary.

"Highlighting. To your left."

I looked, and saw a conservatively dressed man coming through the restaurant entrance, about forty meters away, painted with a green nimbus by my in-head. He stopped, looked around . . . and our eyes met. He smiled and started walking toward us. His pace was slow, shuffling, and a bit awkward; I pegged him as a groundpounder, someone who hadn't been in space much and wasn't used to walking in low-G.

"What's the matter?" Joy asked. She must have seen the blank look on my face while I talked with my secretary.

"We've got company," I told her. "Wait here."

I got up and walked over to meet the guy. I pinged his ID as I approached, and got a readout: Christpher Ivarson, Global Net News. By the time I reached him, three-quarters of the way up the curve of the sphere, I was at a slow simmer but well on my way to coming to a boil.

"Petty Officer Carlyle-"

"What the fuck are you doing, following me around?" I demanded. "Can't a guy have any privacy?"

"You've been blocking our newsbots, sir, and we really would like to have you answer a few questions."

"Maybe there's a reason I've been blocking you," I told him. "Such as . . . I don't want to answer your questions."

"This will only take a moment, really."

"No. This ends now. I'm having dinner with a friend and I will not have it spoiled by the likes of you!"

"Now, don't be like that, Elliot! If the Central Asian Caliphate was behind the hijacking of that asteroid, the public has a right to know! And after all, the Hero of Bloodworld will have a unique perspective on the attack! You might not know it, but Elliot Carlyle is big news right now! First Bloodworld and the Qesh, and now you're charging a terrorist stronghold with the U.S. Marines! Great stuff!"

"Oh . . . you want a . . . what did you say? A unique perspective?"

"Absolutely! If you could just-"

"Here you go," I told him, reaching out with both hands and grabbing the lapels of his stylish maroon tunic. Bending my knees, I shoved upward . . . hard.

As noted, the spin gravity at the Free Fall's equator was around four-tenths of a G. Three-quarters of the way to the sphere's pole, which was at zero-G, the gravity was a lot lower . . . maybe a tenth of a G, or even a bit less. The GNN reporter probably massed eighty kilos, but he only weighed about eight here . . . about as much as a large cat, so once I got him moving he kept moving, moving hard. My shove sent him sailing up into the air, arms and legs thrashing . . . and he yelled bloody murder when he realized he wasn't coming down again.

Gravity inside rotating systems like the Free Fall is tricky. Ignoring things like air resistance, he technically was in zero-gravity as soon as he left the deck, but the Coriolis effect caused his straight-line path to curve alarmingly against the hab module's spin. For a moment I thought I'd misjudged, that he was going to miss.

Then one thrashing arm snagged the safety net surrounding the central sphere of water thirty meters above the restaurant's deck. He screamed again and grabbed hold with both arms and both legs, dangling far overhead.

Of course, the net was turning with the rest of the module, so hanging on up there he probably felt a spin gravity of something like fifteen hundredths of a gravity . . . maybe twelve kilos. If he let go, he'd drift back to the sphere's inner surface with a tangential velocity of, oh, a few meters per second, and if he didn't fall into some diner's salad, he'd be just fine.

But for someone born and raised on Earth, the possibility of that thirty-meter drop between the outside of the safety net and the restaurant floor was terrifying. The net enclosed the water sphere from pole to pole; it was designed to catch people falling out of the water and keep them from dropping onto the restaurant clientele. Ivarson only needed to clamber along the outside of the net until he reached one of the access tubes at the sphere's axis.

But panic had set in, and all he could do was cling to the outside of the net and howl.

I returned to Joy, who was watching the spectacle overhead. "What in the world . . . ?"

"Out of the world, I'm afraid."

"Why did you-"

"Reporter," I told her. "The bastards have been dogging me electronically ever since Zeta Capricorn, and now it looks like they're siccing humans on me."

"Excuse me, Petty Officer Carlyle?"

I turned and found myself facing a polite but stern Free Fall employee. I didn't know they had bouncers in places like that.

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

I looked up at Ivarson, whose shouts and screams by now had become the focus of attention for every patron in the Free Fall. A couple of men in work utilities were making their way across the net to reach him.

"He's a reporter," I said. "Gross invasion of privacy."

"I quite understand, sir. Still, our guests have a right to enjoy their meals without . . . spectacles of this nature. I can ask you to leave, or I can summon the shore patrol."

"No need," I said. "Joy? You can stay and enjoy your meal, if you like. . . ."

"What, and miss a date with a man who can throw an asshole thirty meters? You've got to be kidding!"

So we left. We never did get our homegrown steak and lobster.

But it turned out to be a spectacular evening nonetheless.

Chapter Five.

I got the call next morning to report to Second Lieutenant Singer's office on board the Clymer, up-El at Starport.

The Commonwealth's Starport One Naval Base occupies the five-kilometer asteroid suspended at the high end of the space elevator, the stone spun at the end of a whirling string that keeps the string nice and taut. The docking facility is on the asteroid's far side; centrifugal force at that distance, 70,000 kilometers from Earth, amounts to just about one six-hundredth of a gravity. Ships departing the docks get a small but measurable nudge of delta-V when they release.

As her designation "APA" declared, the George Clymer was an attack transport, and she carried on board a battalion-strength MEU, a Marine Expeditionary Unit, consisting of 1,200 Marines, an aerospace strike force, heavy weapons, and vehicles, plus logistics and command elements. The Clymer's habitation module was a fifty-meter rotating ring amidships, spinning two and a half times per minute to provide four-tenths of a gravity, roughly the same as on Mars. Singer's office was in the ring's outer level, right under the skin.

"HM2 Carlyle, reporting as ordered, sir."

Singer glanced up from his holographic computer display. "Stand at ease, Doc. Hang on a sec."

I waited as he completed whatever holowork he was doing-reports, probably, that were easier to read on an external screen than in-head. Fred Singer had come aboard just four months ago, after our last CO, Earnest Baumgartner, had gotten himself bumped up the pole to full lieutenant and transferred to Mars. I hadn't formed any real opinions of the new CO yet, beyond his essential assholitude. He was meticulous, a bit on the prissy side, and, like all second lieutenants fresh out of the Academy, he was inexperienced. Capricorn Zeta, I'd heard, had been his first time in combat.

That by itself is no crime, of course. The fact that he'd been tasked with taking his platoon in on a direct assault against Capricorn Zeta suggested that his superiors thought he could do the job. But for the enlisted pukes under him, both Marine and Navy, there was going to be a trial period when we were all keeping a wary eye on the guy. Would he be a prima donna? A perfectionist? A martinet? Or a decent Marine who listened to his NCOs and looked after his people?

"Okay, Doc," Singer said after a moment, switching off the holographic screen. "Thanks for coming."

"You wanted to see me, sir." Any maybe ream me a brand-new asshole.

"Thought you'd like to hear," he said. "You are officially off the hook."

I blinked. "Sir?"

"Headquarters has chosen to see your actions at Capricorn Zeta-in particular your unauthorized sampling of the prisoners' DNA-as 'an appropriate display of initiative in a combat situation.' "

"That's . . . uh . . . good news, sir." Singer seemed a little too cheerful, and I was waiting for the other combat boot to land.

"We will ignore the fact that you went over my head and failed to ask my permission to take those samples . . . and your failure to observe established protocol in the handling of prisoners . . . and your use of a comm channel compromised by newsbots. This time!"

The sheer threat wrapped into those last two words was like a blow. "Yes, sir."

"There's also the small matter of your assaulting a civilian at the Free Fall last night. I can not overlook that."

"It was a reporter, sir. He tracked me to the Free Fall! All I did was . . . push him a little. Sir."

"You pushed him. Witnesses say you threw him thirty meters! What were you on, G-Boost?"

"No, sir!" G-Boost is an artificial protein that bonds with the respirocytes all FMF personnel carry in their bloodstreams. It temporarily makes us stronger, faster, more alert, with better endurance. It's also tightly controlled, and you do not use it casually. The Freitas respirocytes in my blood had boosted my strength a little, of course, by improving the efficiency of my oxygen metabolism. But no, I'd not been Boosting.

"You're sure?"