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“Colonel Riggs, I formally request a change or at least an exception to our rules
of engagement. Allow me to fire upon those damned treacherous Lobsters.”

“I’ll grant that request in exactly three minutes, Commander.”

We waited a few seconds, hearing only dead air. Then Welter was back on the line.
“Sir, that’ll be too late. They’ll be inside the range of ninety-percent of my weaponry
by then. Hell, most of them will be crawling on the outside of my armored hull by
then.”

“I know that, Welter. But if we fire too early, we’ll break our deal with the Macro
fleet. They’ll reverse course and wipe out every human in this system. We’re going
to have to deal with the Lobster troops after they reach your battle station. I’m
coming, but you’ll have to hold until the cavalry arrives. Riggs out.”

I turned to my staff. Everyone looked worried or stunned—or both.

“Do you think the Macros ordered them to do this, Colonel?” Jasmine asked me. “They’ve
done this kind of thing before. They like to have their slaves do their dirty work
for them.”

“Possibly,” I said, “however, it doesn’t really matter right now. We’re in a fight
people. What assets can we bring into orbit around Hel within the next hour?”

Sarin worked the console. No one even tried to beat her, we all just waited as she
did the calculus and threw up displays with the answers.

“Just this task force, sir,” she said. “We had most of the gunships following the
Macros around in case there was trouble. Most of the transports were doing the same.
The rest of the fleet is scattered in defensive positions at each inhabited world.”

“Where’s Major Sloan?” I asked. “He should be leading the assault troops.”

“He’s not here, sir. He’s with the majority of the troop ships and the core of the
gunships—out at the Helios ring.”

I nodded, unsurprised. Sloan was a master at being elsewhere when a fight erupted.
“All right, give me a breakdown of the forces we have within reach, and tell me what
Welter has aboard for a garrison.”

The complement of troops on the battle station had been greatly increased since the
initial battle we’d fought aboard her. There were over four hundred marines, crewmen
and even some civilian craftsmen who’d gone out there to repair the weapons systems.
I frowned as I thought about those poor bastards. They’d run from Earth to escape
tyranny, and now they were going to find themselves cut off in space with thousands
of alien troops crawling over the hull of the station. I’d let them all down—these
Lobsters were tricky. They had something going for them the Macros didn’t seem to
have: the ability to learn from their mistakes and quickly adapt. I told myself not
to underestimate them again.

In this region of space, I had my destroyer, a squadron of gunships and two Nano ships.
That was a pretty small force, but more than enough to destroy the transports. The
real problem would be destroying the assault troops. If the Lobsters got into the
station and took it with their initial assault, then we would have a real problem—we’d
have to take the station back.

“The most important assets we have in the area now are the transports. How many troops
do I have?”

“I’ll contact the ships for confirmation on that, sir,” Sarin said.

A moment later, a familiar voice came on the line. “First Sergeant Kwon reporting,
Colonel.”

“Kwon?” I asked, frowning. “You’re out here with those transports? I thought I ordered
you to accompany Sloan and the majority of the assault troops.”

“I must have gotten that wrong sir. Very sorry.”

I frowned at the screen. I felt like yelling at him for slipping his orders, but it
wouldn’t do any good right now…and I had to admit, I needed him.

“Kwon,” I asked, “just tell me one thing: Why do you always seem to follow me around?”

“Well sir…” he began, then hesitated.

“What? Out with it, man. I won’t reprimand you this time.”

“Sir…the truth is you always get into the best fights. I love a good fight, Colonel.”

I had to work not to laugh. I scowled at the boards and made a growling sound instead.
After all, everyone was watching. It wouldn’t do to give insubordination a pass—especially
not when there were witnesses. “I think you’re going to get your wish this time, First
Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir!”

The battle started about five seconds after the last Macro glided peacefully through
the ring and vanished. On cue, everyone began firing at once.

We were jamming both the rings by this time, to make sure the Lobsters couldn’t call
foul and transmit claims about us attacking them and breaking the treaty. I could
imagine they’d wanted nothing more than to provoke us into an early attack. Maybe
that had been the big point of the assault. In the end, it didn’t matter what their
plans had been. Like two school boys waiting for the principal to step out of sight,
we lunged at each other the first moment we could.

Welter ordered every railgun and laser to fire at point-blank range. The assaulting
transports blew up in rapid succession. They flared into plasma, vapor and wreckage
on our screens, then vanished entirely. But that was a small victory, because there
were already about five thousand Crustacean troops crawling over the rocky armored
exterior of the battle station. They’d taken the wise option of exiting their ships
and flying to land on the surface of the battle station at the last possible moment.

“Get ready to repel those crawlers, Welter,” I shouted over the command channel. “You
have to hold out for about thirty minutes.”

I left the command deck then and headed for the destroyer’s small sally port. We kept
the invasion equipment there, and the onboard marine complement was already there,
suiting up. They nodded and saluted me, then went back to the intensely focused work
of getting ready to leap out of a ship moving at screaming speeds.

Over time, our kits had evolved. It seemed like every battle I had a few new gizmos
to experiment with. In the past, I’d designed most of the battlesuits personally.
We’d moved on past those days now. I had a design team in charge of improving equipment
on a continuous basis.

The latest battlesuits were still built along my design parameters. They had a heavy
suit of armor that was layered with overlapping plates. It was similar to the equipment
a knight might have worn into battle a thousand years ago. Our materials, naturally,
were greatly improved when compared to the simple steel plating of old fashioned knights.
Underneath the entire suit we wore a skintight suit of nanocloth. This was airtight,
and self-repairing. In the case of a suit breach, this final inner layer of protection
had the job of sealing the leak even if it meant coating a damaged limb with nanites.

A lot of improvements had gone into training the nanites on emergency procedures.
For too long, we’d relied on their innate understanding of human anatomy and pretty
much let them “do their thing.” Now, we’d stepped in and given them priorities. If
a limb or a portion of the suit was too damaged to salvage, the nanites were to cut
that part off and save the rest of the victim.

This knowledge was met with some grim fatalism by my troops. They didn’t trust the
tiny little machines to know when it was time to amputate by digging through the flesh
and covering the stump with a fresh layer of smart metal. I didn’t look forward to
the experience, either. But in theory, it would save lives.

Unfortunately, the nanites still weren’t too good at pain-control. When they went
to work on a man, he was liable to do a lot of frenzied screaming. But, when it was
all over and the marine returned to his or her ship, we could regrow those limbs with
Marvin’s biotic soups. That was, if there was a ship to return to.

These thoughts went through my head as I went through the self-check routine. Each
marine automatically checked the other men around him as well, pointing out dangling
cords and equipment that hadn’t been cinched tight enough. Luckily, due to nanite
technology, most of our connections took care of themselves.

When I finally switched on the generator on my back and felt that familiar revving
hum tingling its way up my spine, I experienced a matching thrill of adrenaline. My
body knew I was about to go into battle, and it was working to sharpen me up, just
as I was working to organize my kit. The huge ruck-like unit on my back almost felt
good. The weight of it, crouching on my shoulders and hugging my ribs, brought back
a flood of memories.

I pulled out the single projector these suits came with. Rifle-like, with a forward
grip and a precision sight, this weapon had a longer effective range than previous
models. When everyone had their autoshades active, I test-fired it into the blast
doors. Just a tiny blip of laser light was enough to burn a hole you could fit an
armored finger into.

“You like these new suits, boys?” I asked aloud.

There was a chorus of “hell yeahs” which gave me a grim smile. A moment later, I felt
the ship veer sharply. We’d arrived. The ship was making its final approach course
changes—either that, or we were dodging incoming fire.

 “Colonel?” Captain Sarin’s voice crackled inside my helmet.

“Go ahead, Captain.”

“We are taking some incoming fire. Tell your men we might have to let them fly at
long range.”

That was bad. When doing a hot-drop or a ship-to-ship boarding attack, my marines
needed to spend as little time as possible buzzing around in open space before they
reached the target. While we were out there, exposed to every kind of attack, we were
like a swarm of flies and about as easy to swat.

“How far out are we doing this jump?”

“Excuse me, Colonel? Did you say ‘we’?”

“How far out, dammit?”

“Around ten thousand miles. Let me say for the record, sir that—”

“Unacceptable, Captain. Take me in closer. Give us no more than a thousand miles,
tops, to decelerate. I’d prefer a hundred, or even ten.”

“We’ll be under heavy fire by then, sir,” she said. “And I don’t understand why you
insist on leading attacks personally.”

“When I’m dead, you can run things as you see fit, Commander. You can hide under your
desk if you want to. While I’m in command, I’ll fly with my marines. These men fight
harder when their leaders are on the lines with them. Every soldier does. Check your
military history.”

She stopped scolding me, and I had a chance to think about something. I frowned inside
the glowing confines of my helmet. “Sarin?” I called out. “Why are we under heavy
fire? Where’s it coming from?”

“The battle station, Colonel. Several of the weapons batteries appear to have been
captured. They are in enemy hands, and they are taking pot shots at us as we approach.”

“What the hell happened to Welter?”

“We’ve lost contact with him.”

I knew what that meant. Quite possibly, the crew had been eliminated.

“Is there any evidence that the battle station crew is still fighting?”

“Yes sir,” she said, “we’re registering a steady series of emissions. People are still
in the upper portion of the station, in the farthest sector from the surface of Hel.
They’re definitely still in the game, sir.”

I took a look then at the battle rosters. We had three transports, plus the platoon
I would be flying with on
Actium
. Each of the transports had about five hundred marines aboard, mostly Centaurs. I’d
never fought with these new and improved native troops. I found myself wishing they
were all human marines. I hoped my allies could perform on a mission like this one.
They would be green, at the very least.

I had a sudden thought, and contacted Kwon. “Kwon? Are you in contact with the Centaur
force-leaders?”

“Yes sir.”

“Tell them I want them to leave their nuclear grenades behind on the ship. I repeat:
leave the nukes behind. There are friendlies on this battle station. I’m not interested
in seeing any suicidal Centaurs crashing themselves into the station and killing everybody.”

“Ah, good thinking, Colonel. I’ll relay that.”

I felt the ship rock and sway as the pilot dodged incoming railgun fire. Fortunately,
the enemy gunners weren’t connected to the central fire control system on the battle
station and weren’t able to target us easily. They were also new to the equipment,
or we’d never have survived the flak.

I closed my eyes to think. When I opened them, I contacted Miklos: “Captain? Remember,
if I’m out of action, you are my second in command. Is that clear?”

“As always, sir. Come back in one piece—or at least with enough pieces to allow us
to reassemble you.”

I grinned in my helmet, something that always caused my cheeks to press against the
hinges on the visor. They felt cool there against my skin.

“That is my intention, Captain,” I said. “Tell me how things look up there. How close
are we to the drop zone?”

“We are close now, sir. I recommend you open the sally port and mount your flyers.”

I signaled the team around me. Everyone moved with purpose. A few slammed their open
palms down onto the helmets of their friends. A few others took a moment to pray or
roar a battle cry.