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  It only remained to be seen if it was invisible enough.

  * * *

  "So are you going to save that castle as effectively as you saved your queen?" Willis inquired interestedly.

  "You're not doing your next efficiency report any favors, Sergeant," Chin told her ominously, regarding the rapidly spreading disaster in the middle of the chessboard.

  "Hah! Captain Trevor knows what a sore loser you are, sir. She'll recognize petty vengefulness when she sees it."

  "Unfortunately, you're probably right about that." Chin reached for his surviving knight, then drew his

  "Anytime you're ready, sir," she told him with deadly, affable patience.

  "Which will be—"

  "Alert!" The bulkhead speaker rattled as the baritone voice barked a flat-toned warning. "Alert!

  Sensors detect incoming—"

  Guthrie Chin was still turning his head towards the speaker, eyebrows rising in surprise, when the multimegaton demolition charge exploded less than fifty meters from Stalingrad's hull.

  * * *

  Maneka bounced twice on the end of the diving board, then arced cleanly through the air. The grav-lift dive platform floated a meter and a half above the gentle swell, and the ocean surface was a translucent, deliciously cool sheet of jade. She sliced through it cleanly, driving deep into the even cooler depths, before she swept back up towards the sun-mirror of the surface.

  Ocean swimming wasn't something which had been very practical back on Everest, she admitted to herself. And she supposed that, under the circumstances, she would have to concede that its practicality here was, indeed, a point in favor of Indrani over New Hope. Not that she was prepared to admit that to anyone else.

  Her head broke surface, and she used both hands to slick back her short, wet, dark hair. Half a dozen other heads bobbed near her, and the two air cars designated for lifeguard duty floated watchfully overhead. Sonar transducers adjusted to a frequency which had been demonstrated to repel the local sea life protected the swimmers from the possibility of being munched upon, and Maneka rolled in the water and began backstroking back towards the platform.

  Another three or four dives, she thought, then back to work and—

  "Alert!" Lazarus' voice blared so loudly in her mastoid-mounted speaker that it felt for an instant as if someone had slapped her. "Alert! Mickey reports—"

  The nuclear detonation overhead was bright enough to bleach the sapphire sky pale amethyst.

  * * *

  "Mother of God!" someone gasped. It took Lieutenant Hanover over two seconds to realize that the words had come out in her voice.

  She stared in horror at the visual display, which had just polarized as the sun-bright flash licked away Stalingrad as if the transport had never existed. But it had, and she swallowed hard as the instant of paralyzing shock faded into something resembling coherent thought.

  Fusion plant? she wondered automatically, only to reject it instantly. She was at standby, just like the Forest. And Bolos don't have that sort of accident—ever. But then what—?

  She never knew exactly what caused it to click so quickly. Maybe it was the memory of what had happened to Kuan Yin, causing her to jump instantly to a conclusion which was preposterous on the face of things. Maybe it was some sort of subconscious logic flow which would have made impeccable sense if she'd been able to analyze it. But how it came to her was supremely unimportant beside her total confidence that she was right.

  She punched the key on her console while the other four members of her duty watch were still gawking at the beautifully hideous blossom of brilliance on their visual displays. A musical tone sounded in her earbug almost instantly as the communications computers routed her priority message to its destination.

  "Captain Berthier," she heard her own voice say calmly, "this is Hanover, on India Mike Three. Sir, the Dog Boys have just blown Stalingrad—and Mickey—to hell."

  She was still talking when the same finger which had hit the com key punched another button and alert sirens began to wail all across Industrial Module Three.

  * * *

  Maneka was still dripping when the lifeguard air car came screaming in to deposit her atop Lazarus'

  war hull. She didn't waste time thinking about uniforms or towels. She just dashed towards the heavily armored topside personnel hatch, bare feet threading their way between the slablike missile hatch covers on pure autopilot while she barked into her hand com.

  "—to the Armory now!" she snapped. "Full equipment and ammunition for First, Second, and Fourth Battalions. Deploy First and Second to the Alpha One positions, and alert Major Atwater for probable immediate embarkation."

  "Understood," Brigadier Jeffords said sharply. She could hear the reverberations of shocked disbelief echoing in his voice, but he was alert and tracking well, and that was about all she could have asked of him under the circumstances.

  "Good, Peter," she said a bit more gently, then ducked and twisted in a familiar contortion that deposited her onto the upper access ladder to Lazarus' command deck. She braced her bare insoles against the outside of the ladder uprights and slid down it, com dangling from her wrist by its lanyard, and the vibrations of ponderous, delicate movement shivered in her hands and feet as Lazarus maneuvered himself back up the loading ramp of the assault pod.

  She left that up to him and the pod's onboard computers while she concentrated on getting down the ladder in one piece as quickly as possible. Adrian Agnelli's face already showed on one of the multiquadrant communications screens, and other members of the colony's command structure were blinking onto other quadrants even as her bare feet hit Command One's decksole with a stinging impact.

  Agnelli's expression was a combination of horror, shock, disbelief, and confusion, but if there was any panic in it, Maneka couldn't see it. Fear, yes—but not, she was certain, for himself. And despite all the myriad questions which must be hammering at his brain, he didn't waste time battering her by demanding answers to them.

  She took an instant to give him a sincerely and deeply grateful smile, then slithered into her command couch in her dripping wet, skimpy swimsuit.

  She took an instant to give him a sincerely and deeply grateful smile, then slithered into her command couch in her dripping wet, skimpy swimsuit.

  "As you're all aware, the colony is under attack," she continued in a crisp, clipped tone. "I deeply regret that I have to confirm that Stalingrad and Mickey have been destroyed."

  Someone—she didn't know who, and she didn't worry about finding out—cursed in falsetto shock.

  Maneka ignored the outburst and continued flatly.

  "Lazarus' analysis agrees in all its essentials with Lieutenant Hanover's conclusion. The emission signature of the explosion is, in fact, a perfect match for a Puppy Bravo-Eighteen demolition charge. How they got it into position without Mickey's spotting them is impossible to say, but Lazarus has gone back over Mickey's last transmissions over the TSDS. The most likely possibility is that they managed to insert a covert special ops team into the inner system to launch it at short range. The next most likely is that they used some sort of long-range, stealthed launch vehicle to attack directly from the outer-system. In either case, it's obvious that they did, somehow, manage to follow us all the way here. And they wouldn't have announced their presence by taking out Stalingrad and Mickey this way if they didn't have some sort of plan to hit the rest of the colony.

  "At the moment, we don't know what that plan might be. But it's virtually certain that whatever they've got, it isn't a regular warship. A cruiser wouldn't have needed that much stealth to get through to Stalingrad, given her alert status, and it wouldn't have had the endurance to follow us this far in the first place. So we're looking at some sort of logistics ship or transport. Under the circumstances, I see no option but to assume that we're up against an Atilla-class heavy transport."

  Jeffords inhaled sharply, and she smiled thinly at the other faces on her display.

  "For th
ose of you unfamiliar with the reporting names assigned to Puppy warships, that's an atmosphere-configured assault transport, the second biggest one they have. And," her grim smile vanished, "it's capable of landing an entire heavy assault brigade."

  "Dear God," Agnelli said quietly, and Maneka nodded.

  "I may be wrong, and I pray I am, but I may not be, too," she said. "And whatever they've got, they're obviously very, very good to have followed us this far without being detected in the first place, and then to get through our defenses so neatly with their first strike. On the basis of my analysis of the threat, I'm officially notifying all of you that I am assuming full authority as this system's military commander, and that I've already activated Defense Plan Alpha. Brigadier Jeffords' First, Second, and Fourth Battalions are drawing weapons and ammunition now. Lieutenant Governor Berthier."

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "I've already informed Brigadier Jeffords that we'll be diverting all construction equipment to military uses. Most of the construction personnel have already been activated in their militia role, and the brigadier's issued preliminary orders to them. He knows what I want dug in and where, but since he's going to be busy overseeing the deployment of all of his personnel, I'd like you to take over on the construction side. You'll find the details in the construction plans queue under Delta Papa Alpha One."

  "Of course, Captain!"

  "In that case," she continued, turning to Agnelli's daughter, "I need you to take over organization for probable wounded, Dr. Agnelli-Watson," she said formally. "I hope there won't be many of them, but—"

  She broke off suddenly, and her face tightened.

  "Governor Agnelli," she said harshly.

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "We may have lost Stalingrad and Mickey's sensors, but the backup recon satellites we deployed are still on-line and feeding information to Lazarus' BattleComp. I have confirmation of a Melconian vessel headed for Indrani. And it is an Atilla."

  "That's the bad news," she continued with a tight, teeth-baring smile. "The good news is that so far we haven't picked up anything else. She must have been accompanying the raiding squadron Commodore Lakshmaniah destroyed, and she must have used her emergency cryo facilities to stretch her endurance. It's the only way they could have followed us this long without starving to death—or eating each other. But according to Lieutenant Hawthorne, those cryo facilities aren't very good, so they've probably taken some significant personnel losses.

  "What matters right now, though, is that apparently she's the only opposition we face." One or two of the faces looking back at her showed their owners' incredulous response to her use of the word "only," but she went on in that same level voice. "Assuming that they really have somehow managed to follow us here with their personnel essentially intact, we're going to be facing heavy odds—" not as heavy as Chartres, a stray thought flickered, but heavy enough ... and you don't have the rest of the Battalion for backup this time "—but without any warships to side her, at least no one's going to be bombarding us from space in the middle of the fight.

  "With Brigadier Jeffords' people to watch the back door, Lazarus and I will be able to operate much more freely against any ground opposition. My biggest concern at this moment is that although we've picked up one transport, we have no positive assurance that it's the only ship out there. Personally, I think it probably is, for the reasons I've already given, but I can't be certain of that. If I had only a little more time, I'd take Lazarus' assault pod back up into orbit to engage them short of the planet.

  Unfortunately, it will take a minimum of thirty-five more minutes to re-mate him with the pod. I'm proceeding with that—we can disengage a lot more quickly if we have to, and the pod will give us much more flexible deployment options—but the Melconian ship is only twenty-eight minutes out. We can't get orbital in time to intercept it, and from its present profile, it looks as if it intends to land far enough around the curve of the planet to protect it from direct fire from Landing, as well.

  "All of which suggests that they have a very good notion of what we have. I've transmitted a warning to all our shipping and deep-space work parties, because if they did use some of their special operations troops to carry out the attack on Stalingrad, they may have tasked those troops with secondary missions, as well. Their special ops troopers have very, very good individual stealth capability, and that may well mean we have an unknown number of Melconian special operations troopers already in or about to penetrate the orbits of our infrastructure.

  "I'm afraid we're going to take some additional losses there." She made the admission unflinchingly.

  "Brigadier Jeffords has already scrambled his company of vacuum-trained militia and both of our armed cutters to repel attacks on our industrial platforms or the transports, but if the Puppies timed this properly, they may already be working on breaching the hulls of their targets. If all they want to do is destroy them, I'm afraid there may not be a lot we can do to stop them. We'll just have to hope they'd prefer to capture the capacity instead of destroying it. Or that they're shorthanded enough they didn't spare a lot of personnel to go after orbital installations that can't run away anyhow. After all," she gave them another tight smile, "they apparently know they have a Bolo to face down here."

  She paused to draw a deep breath.

  "Until they actually hit planet, I can't do much more than we're already doing. Lazarus and I need a better feel for the forces they actually have to deploy and what their axes of approach are likely to be.

  For now, I suggest we all do everything we can to reduce the possibility of panic and to get as many as possible of our noncombatants under cover. I want to leave Brigadier Jeffords' other two battalions of infantry available to assist in digging in for as long as possible, but I want both air cavalry platoons ready to lift immediately. And if any of us have a free moment here or there, spending it asking God to give us a hand probably wouldn't be a bad idea.

  * * *

  Ran the margin too fine this time, his mind told him distantly. He blinked, trying to focus on the range-to-target reading on his HUD, but the numbers remained obstinately blurred. Of his thirty-seven troopers, at least a dozen green lights had turned crimson. He couldn't see them well enough to be certain which ones they were, but he thought Corporal Na-Sath's was still green.

  Good. That's good, he thought blearily. At least his people could be sure of taking out at least one more of the Humans' ships, whether they could capture their secondary objectives or not. He wished he could be with them when they did, but the insistent computer voice warning him of oxygen exhaustion was growing less and less distinct in his ear.

  His right hand groped for the suicide button. There was no point going by centimeters when his chance of survival had become nonexistent anyway. His fingers found it, and started to press. But a new, strident audio tone made him pause.

  His wavering vision sought out the HUD once more. It was impossible to read, but despite the anoxia, a remote corner of his superbly trained brain recognized the sound.

  Proximity alarm, he thought, and turned his head just in time to see one of the colony's two armed cutters in the instant before its two-centimeter Hellbores fired.

  * * *

  "Go down there and help her get that locker open now, Jackson," Lieutenant Edmund Hawthorne said flatly.

  "Aye, aye, sir!" his executive officer snapped, and left Thermopylae's command deck at a dead run.

  Hawthorne looked after him for a couple of heartbeats, then wheeled back to his own command station, his brain racing as he tried to cope with the stunning broadcast from Lazarus.

  Melconians here. It didn't seem possible, but he knew that was only his own deep-seated need to believe it wasn't. And that need sprang from at least one all too personal source. Fear for the entire colony—and for his own life—was a cold, hard iron lump in the pit of his belly, but it was another fear that made every muscle in his body quiver with flight-or-flight instincts.

  Maneka, he
thought. Maneka and Lazarus ... and an entire heavy assault brigade of Dog Boys.

  He closed his eyes with a brief, wordless appeal to whatever God there might be, then opened them resolutely as the exec hurried back onto the bridge with an armload of power rifles and sidearms.

  Another of Hawthorne's crewwomen followed, carrying more sidearms and with a satchel of boarding grenades slung over her shoulder.

  "All right, people," Hawthorne said over the all-hands channel, distantly surprised by how calm his own voice sounded, "we have a situation. We're going to Condition Zulu as of right now. Sensors haven't picked anything up yet, but if there's a Dog Boy special ops unit out there, that doesn't mean Jack."

  He glanced at the console where Chief Halberstadt was driving the external sensors for all they were worth ... and monitoring Thermopylae's internal sensor net even more intently. The transport had already come about on a heading to return to Indrani. Hawthorne had deliberately turned away from the least-time course, taking a wide dog leg which he hoped would have been impossible for anyone to predict ahead of time. The odds were overwhelming that the combination of her sudden course change and speed would carry her clear of any ambush the Melconians might have arranged for her, but he wasn't prepared to stake the security of his ship and the lives of his crew on that, and his hands strapped a pistol belt around his hips even as he was speaking.