"Not yet."

"Can I get a maser to them?"

Captain Saunders nodded. "Go ahead; we"re beaming."

Trent said, "This is the Collective ShipLew Alton, commanding officer Captain Hera Saunders. To the s.p.a.ce Force craft chasing us, h.e.l.lo."

Three seconds pause, the lightspeed delay from L-4 to near-Earth. "Captain Saunders, this is Colonel Jurgen Hanhela of the United Nations s.p.a.ce Force. Cease your acceleration and stand by to be boarded, or we will destroy you."

"You"re not speaking to Captain Saunders, Colonel."

He took the bait: "To whomam I speaking?"

"Trent," said Trent. "Trent the Uncatchable."

Dead silence from the other end.

"Give it your best shot, sucker." Trent made a cutting gesture, and after a moment said, "Well? If they stop and think about it, they won"t do it."

Saunders nodded. "I know. If-" The old woman abruptly laughed. "Idiots!They"re going into turnover!"

"A chance to catch the Uncatchable," Trent whispered. "Theyknow they"re faster than us; how could they possibly resist?"

In the holofield, the sparks showing the fusion rockets of the five craft had abruptly relit.

"All right," said Captain Saunders. "Outspeakers. IMPACT FIELDS COMING UP; SIX THOUSAND CEPSSA IN TEN SECONDS.".

They pa.s.sed the task force, which was still decelerating, doing four hundred thousand klicks an hour. By the" time the task force had killed its forward velocity, they were three-quarters of the way to s.p.a.cebase One at L-5, and moving at a good speed.

Jimmy Ramirez, struggling for breath against slightly better than six gees acceleration, found it difficult to follow Trent"s voice."We"ll be out of their line of sight for all of about a second. We"re going to buzz s.p.a.cebase One at about fifty klicks distance; as soon as we"re past it, during that second they can"t see us because of s.p.a.cebase One"s bulk, we"re going to go dead. The hull paint goes black, the ma.s.s drivers shut down, the radar antenna with the ugly signature gets shipped away on a beacon, giving away the odd boopor two to betray its position. When they do send the missies - and they will-they send them after the beacon. We hope."

Jimmy Ramirez, fighting for air, did not make the mistake of trying to nod.

s.p.a.ce Force sent their missiles while theLew Alton was still three minutes away from L-5. The missiles chased the Collective craft at 150 gees.

The ship pa.s.sed s.p.a.cebase One, with the missiles gaining on it. It happened nearly instantaneously; free fall, blackness, all at once; the immense weight lifted itself off Jimmy Ramirez"s chest, and he found himself floating gently in his acceleration chair.

He heard the distant clang of the beacon disengaging from the ship.

Trent"s voice: "Captain, how long until impact?"

In the absolute darkness, the woman"s voice seemed to echo in Jimmy"s ears. "Not less than one minute, no more than one and a half."

"Jimmy, you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Okay. So these three lawyers are zooming along a country road and they get into an accident with a gravedigger. So the gravedigger pulls himself out of his car and he"s okay, but the lawyers are kind of messed up, so he buries them, right there, and walks into town and calls the Sheriff. "Sheriff," he says, "terrible accident I just had. Three lawyers in it, they was all dead, so I buried them." Sheriff says, "What?

You went ahead and buried them already? Are yousure they was dead?" Gravedigger says reluctantly, "Well, they said they wasn"t, but you know how those fellas lie.""

Jimmy stared into the darkness. "I forgot you told these sorts of jokes. Now I remember why-"

Weightlessness.

Quiet.

Jimmy Ramirez returned to consciousness slowly, the tang of blood in his mouth.

His head throbbed.

Dim, gentle illumination, of glowpaint set low, lit the bridge around them.

Trent, at his side, said, "Now you remember why what?"

"Huh?"

Trent held up a hand. "How many fingers?"

"Eight. What happened?"

"Something banged you in the head, I"m not sure what: Some things came loose in the blast."

"Did we get away?"

"Yeah. I thought we would. s.p.a.ce Force nosed around for a bit, but they couldn"t find us, cold black hulk that we are. And somewhat off course from their own missiles, that didn"t hurt. They turned back and went home about half an hour ago; right about now they"re boasting to half the System that they blew up Trent the Uncatchable. They"re going to be real embarra.s.sed tomorrow. How many fingers?"

"Uh-five?"

"Better. We"ll give it a bit, and then, when we"re sure it"s safe, we"ll fire up the ma.s.s drivers and correct course for Venus."

"Did we lose anybody?"

"Almost."

"Who?"

"You. If whatever hit you had hit a little lower, it probably would have snapped your neck instead of just giving you a concussion."

"Oh."

"Aside from you, not too bad. Some broken bones, sprains, like that. What usually happens when a tin can gets shaken up. When the medbot is done setting bones it"ll be up here for you."

"Hanging around with you genies," said Jimmy slowly, "is not safe."

"The concussion"s not bad; and we"ll stop off at Mars to get you a new foot. Nice hospitals at Mars, maybe you"ll like it there."

"Do you?"

Trent was silent a moment. "Well, no. It can be real hard to find good places to go dancing."

"How about the Belt?"

"Better. There"s some nice stuff in the Belt. Nothing like New York, but-" Trent shrugged. "Nice.

Mahliya Kutura lives out there. She"s seriously nice. And only a little crazy."

"You miss Earth?"

Trent said, "Yes. And so will you."

Jimmy spoke around the throbbing in his head. "I suppose I"ll get used to it."

Trent said simply, "We"ll be back."

- 19 -.

At 8:15 on the morning of July the Fourth, Mohammed Vance sat alone, in the darkness of his office half a klick below the surface of Capitol City, and studied holos.

They had lost all of j.a.pan; most of Greater Los Angeles was in rebel hands. Insurrections were scattered across the length of Occupied America, from Miami up through Maine on the East Coast, throughout the Midwest, and from Portland to Ensenada on the West Coast; but the clear focus of the rebel efforts was California. Sensible; it was what Vance had expected, the way Vance would have structured it himself. The lack of mandatory Automated Traffic Control in Los Angeles gave the rebels a clear advantage; it was no surprise that they"d overrun L.A. County so quickly. The rebels clearly knew where their advantages were; PKF targets first, and then TransCon.

They"d been losing ATC cells all morning. Most of Ventura County was lost to TransCon, and cells up and down the coast were dropping off the grid.

The PKF armories in Los Angeles and Sacramento were in Reb hands; fighting in San Francisco, the home of the State Governor General, was going badly. The spysats showed thatsomething was going on at Navajo s.p.a.ceport. Vance did not know what, as it was impossible to get ahold of anybody out there.

He must a.s.sume that Navajo s.p.a.ceport, as well as LAX, was in enemy hands.

And upstairs, rebels still had almost half the laser cannon; since being resupplied by the Johnny Rebs, shipping up out of LAX, the j.a.panese holding the remaining cannon had dug in, and s.p.a.ce Force had been reclaiming the cannon ever more slowly. In the last eight hours, only one.

It was almost true, as the rebels claimed, that they had taken over the chain of InfoNet Relay Stations.

Apparently the Halfway Relay Station alone was controlled by s.p.a.ce Force; Vance did not know who in s.p.a.ce Force had had the foresight to take that step, but when this was over he would find out, and thank the man personally. His job, difficult now, would have been made more so if the InfoNet had gone down.

DataWatch might not have minded; Vance had seen their contingency plans. But DataWatch was only a small part of the PKF, and Vance could not find it in him to much regret DataWatch"s missed opportunity.

Messy, Vance concluded, but it could have been far worse. Even when the rebels started directing laser cannon against civilian targets-and they would, for Vance would have in their place-the damage would be within acceptable limits.

At 8:30 a.m. his systerm announced a call. It was the officer from Internal Affairs. Vance listened without interrupting the man, said finally, "Well done," and rose from behind his desk."Command, mirror on." He checked his appearance in the mirror a tall man with black Elite eyes, wearing the gray of PKF combat fatigues, the uniform of the Unification War. He would be the only one in Strategic Planning who would be dressed so, and it should send a message.

He walked without hurry down the bustling corridors toward Strategic Planning, entered Planning, and moved down toward the podium at the far end of the room. The gentle murmur of voices quieted slightly at his appearance, quieted a bit more when he ascended to the podium.

Most of those present were gathered around the tactical table in the center of the room, which showed a three-dimensional map of Earth and near-Earth s.p.a.ce. Four Commissionaires present, Vance noted, three of them senior to him, all of them older; he was still quite young for a Commissionaire, only forty-seven.

At forty he had been, by four years, the youngest Commissionaire in PKF history.

"Officers," said Vance quietly, not waiting for the babble to die down. "This afternoon, at three o"clock, we will boost from Unification s.p.a.ceport. Before four o"clock we will be dropping, via semiballistic, into the city of Santa Monica. We will proceed eastward down Wilshire Boulevard, securing the city as we go, until we have pa.s.sed completely through Los Angeles. We will commit our entire forces to this operation; all troops, all support personnel, all carriers, all semiballistics, all laser cannon that s.p.a.ce Force has recovered. We have twenty-three hundred Elite who can be rea.s.signed on such short notice; allwill be rea.s.signed. Plans for the attack will be distributed before nine a.m. By noon I want your written responses delivered to my office, expressing any reservations you may have concerning the course of action."

By the time he was done speaking complete silence had fallen throughout Strategic Planning.

Commissionaire Rouen, senior of the Commissionaires present, broke the silence. "That"s not according to the plans, Mohammed. We are going to do a slow roll down from the north-"

"Indeed it is not according to the plans," said Vance. "I am changing them."

The woman shook her head, seemed almost amused. "Christine won"t allow it, Mohammed. These plans have been laid for most of a month."

Vance did not raise his voice. "Elite Commander Christine Mirabeau," said Mohammed Vance, "was arrested for treason against the Unification at eight twenty-two this morning." To their stunned silence, he said, "I want written responses by noon. You"d best get to work." He left abruptly.

Christian J. Summers floated in black s.p.a.ce, laser cradled in his arms, a tether attaching him to the bulk of the InfoNet Relay Station at his back.

Awaiting the arrival of the s.p.a.ce Force troops.

He was about to die, and he knew it.

Earth glowed blue and white beneath his feet. Arrayed around him were fifteen other Johnny Rebs, tucked into the shadow (such as it was with full Earth beneath them) on the side of the Relay Station facing away from the sun. A tight fit; the Relay Station was only a talk-to-me, one of the smaller and older stations.

They were all Rebs; he had taken no Claw with him on this mission, only men and women he had known and trusted for many years. Now he regretted it. It would have hurt less if he had dragged a group of strangers to their deaths. According to the plan, they should have been picked up a good two hours ago.

Clearly something had gone wrong with the plan. He did not even know what; only that the Halfway Relay Station had not gone down along with the rest. The ship that was supposed to come get them was the same ship that had been slotted to deliver the Halfway Relay Station task force.

They could have tried to head back on the HuskySleds they"d come in, but the sleds were not fast, and would only take them back to their staging point at Halfway"s Edge.

Summers knew they would never make it back to the Edge. s.p.a.ce Force would destroy their sleds on the way back. Their only hope for survival lay in returning to Earth before s.p.a.ce Force arrived; and to do that, they needed pickup.

But pickup was two hours late, and he was certain now that it would not come.

Half an hour ago he"d lit the rockets on the sleds, and sent them down toward Earth below them; one fewer sign of their presence.

"Chris?"

The voice in his ears was that of Janna Anderson, the daughter of two of his oldest friends. He was glad he would die with her, and not have to face her parents with her death on his hands. "Yes?"

She pointed. "Look."

Summers followed her gesture. Nothing but stars- Half a dozen stars winked out. Summers followed the patch of blackness moving across the emptiness.

"Okay. This is it, my friends. They"re coming in black, with their drive dead. If we"re lucky the lack of the sleds will fool them into believing we"ve packed up and moved on." It was a mistake he would not have made himself, and despite his contempt for s.p.a.ce Force, did not expect from them. The talk-to-me"s heat-exchange radiators got rid of heat acquired from sunlight; the radiators were, of course, on the satellite"s shady side, away from the sun, along with the Rebs. The radiators might prevent s.p.a.ce Force from acquiring an IR image; deep radar would be useless against the backdrop of the Relay Station"s metal. Visible light would be s.p.a.ce Force"s best bet.

The blackness loomed larger, blocked out more and more stars as the ship approached. Now it was close enough Chris Summers could see the bright sharp bursts of its small maneuvering rockets. "Rifles ready-"

The ship came closer yet, slowing as it approached.1 will be d.a.m.ned, Chris Summers thought,they don"tknow we"re here. We might get to take some of them with us.

The airlock door, barely visible at the distance, cycled open, a bright yellow light in the side of the dark black s.p.a.ceship. Two figures cycled through, the airlock"s maximum capacity; then another two; another two. After a brief pause, the six oriented themselves on the Relay Station; the backpacks on their pressure suits lit.

Chris Summers said quietly into his helmet radio, "First these six; then the ship itself. Fire at the airlock, the antennae, maneuvering rockets, any sort of protrusion on the surface of the craft. Maybe we can inconvenience them a bit. On Four. Three. Two. One."

In vacuum lasers give no light.

Bright red spots appeared on the surface of the six approaching p-suits. Armored scalesuits;: Summers had expected it. The dots wavered, crawled over the surface of the suits. One dot touched a faceplate, and the faceplate burst outward in a shower of gla.s.site and flesh.