Macross Fan Fiction ❯ Firewall ❯ About Damned Time ( Chapter 1 )

Over interstellar distances, [intelligence] collection is intensely problematic. The institutional assumptions held by the United Earth space intelligence community maintained that information would always be readily available for analysis. In a sense this is true. The sheer volume of imagery from hyperstate telescopes and system reconaissance permitted the Expeditionary Forces to detail the arrangement of the Invid Regent's surviving force deployments in the Fourth Quadrant. However, as a practical matter, analysis overwhelmingly consumed time and resources. Additionally, the product emphasis on assessment naturally left the dissemination cycle much to be desired. The sheer vastness of information compelled many analysts -- military and civilian -- to take it on themselves to decide the ultimate value and relevance of collected data without guidance from the customer. So, while intelligence occasionally at the strategic level actually improved the the UEF's strategic performance overall, the poor final quality of a lot of operational and nearly all tactical intelligence products often left human military planners stumbling on nests of unwanted, dangerous surprises. Antiquated and impoverished collection systems, an unjustifiably large bureacracy oriented for analysis, and run-away policy decisionmaking at the analytical level would haunt the Expeditionary Force's efforts to liberate Earth in 2034. Exmination the take provided to Rear Admiral Guineve in order to plan Operation Sparta reveals optomistic, yet unjustified conclusions regarding Invid strength planet-side and their ASAT capacity. Even more central to this discussion, historians have recently disocvered intelligence directly contradicting analyses disseminated to UEF decisionmakers. These assessments were suppressed by the Expedition's intelligence leadership for the duration of the Third Robotech War, raising suspicions that analysts purposely dressed up their conclusions to appealed to the offensive optimism of policymakers. Consequently, the credibility of the United Earth Forces' after-engagement lesson inquiries were thrown into serious doubt.

-introduction to "Intelligence and the Fourth Battle for Earth," Annotated Military History of Earth and Interstellar Warfare, Vol. 12., 2105 C.E.

* * *

Portland, Oregon

12 March 2034, One Day Before Operation Sparta

"Holy mother of -- paint!" the excited Portland native leaped violently from his seat. Half a dozen "what the hell!" exclamations bore down on him at once. The gawky young upstart shut up quickly as the senior man present, an officer of the UE's now defunct wet navy, stomped angrily over to the unbridled technician's station.

"Jeezus, MacDonald!" the Commander growled in irritation. "What's your fucking problem anyway?!"

The officer's gruff bark clashed with the pleasantry eminating from his Polynesion features. If it wasn't for the UE Navy cap, he'd look more at home bumming around on a Samoan beach. Instead, he had been selected for this duty precisely for his old seadog bearing. Truthfully, the ex-UE Navy lieutenant commander had seen only two sea tours in his entire life. His expertise in electronic and information warfare made him more valuable doing other things.

"Sir, I gotta whole lotta shit on my scope. Fuckin' bigger than anything I've ever seen -- that's for damn sure."

"Shit. Slugs?"

"Not likely," replied another boyish-looking runt, the Skipper could only tell them apart by the newcomer's mane of flaming red hair and wrap-around goggles. "They'd have to get through AluCE and the minefield."

"Maybe it's the Masters again coming back for another round," the kid technician proposed. The others cast him a look that said try again.

The man with the goggles turned back to the screen. Magnifying the image, he suddenly noticed an interesting pattern. Tracing his finger in between the five blips along the outside. "Look at that formation. Commander?"

"Now that you mention it, Doc, it does look like a five-quarter escort arrangement," The lieutenant commander smiled. "MacDonald?"

"Er, yeah. That's right I've got four small signatures forming a circle around the leader," the tech picked up quick. "Group velocity is ten kay-pee-ess on standard orbital approach; looks like they're slowing to attain high orbit."

"Do you think we can contact them, Doc?" the commander asked.

"And draw the Slugs' attention? I'd like to, but until we get the hyperstate communicator up again, I don't think it's gonna happen. Can we get a TV camera on them for a visual?"

"I've got one long-range infrared range-finder with some TV equipment in position," the commander pointed towards another set of monitors across the room. "But she's been up there for a long, long time. Almost as long as Betsy Grey here."

The commander tapped on console that MacDonald used to monitor the old orbital sensor platform -- they'd given to calling her Betsy Grey long before Nichols showed up -- currently tracking the inbounds.

"Well, Mister Ha," Nichols smiled. "I think you're about to get your chance. In the meantime, I'd get on the horn to the Old Man. Somebody's gotta get Point K in on this."

What he didn't -- and maybe didn't have to -- say was that if they could track the bogies' approach, so could the Invid.

* * *

Cislunar Orbit, Earth-Lunar System

The McCain completed her last burn as she approached the outer limits of the Terran planetary system, pacing her predetermined route at a cautious two meters per second. Her two companions, Burke and Ernst King, took position to the aft -- one to the port and the other to the starboard -- in order to cover the group's slow, arduous approach through lunar orbit.

On the bridge of group leader, Commander Kathey reclined in the conn chair. He had kept the watch for the past twelve hours, neglecting both rest and hygeine. The unpkempt muss of red hair and a grainy shadow of scruff across his jaw betrayed the long hours and grueling anxiety. Kathey had relaxed his posture somewhat as he attempted to muster up some nefariously hard-to-find comfort in the poorly padded seat. Unfortunately, the comfortable command chair belonged to Captain Junior Grade Hans Galen -- CO of the McCain and also the Group Commodore. Both officers were very young for their ranks and junior for their responsibilities, but the United Earth's extra-solar space-borne shipyards churned out more ships than it could find experienced officers and crews to maintain them.

All around him, a variety technicians, flight ratings and ship defense controllers coordinated activity between the McCain and the rest of the Scout Group. Right now, the main viewscreen displayed only the darkness of space, marked conveniently with astrogation data and tiny blue triangles representing the Mars Division. It wouldn't be long before the planet itself dominated the forward perspective.

"Sir," The duty defense controller turned to the executive officer. "We're at…hold on. Got it. Plot it at eight zero two three kilometers into cislunar orbit. Bull and Boomer recon flights just trapped."

"News from the Flag, Hesh?"

"Yes, Sir. They're relaying recon data to our computers." The defense controller passed out the briefs dispatched with the signature of Admiral Guineve, flying her flag the mission from flagship Lee -- still crossing the asteroid belt and awaiting the McCain's all-clear signal. "They estimate passage into the Earth-lunar system in eighteen hours."

"Excellent," the XO sighed. His eyes turned to his left armrest, where he had called up navigational data on their approach vector. "Let's get a look at her. Put Earth on screen."

"Aye, aye, Sir," the officer of the deck responded. A view of Earth over her moon's horizon came on screen, the latter celestial body moving within the McCain's line of sight. "Full magnification."

Commander Kathey craned forward, stretching the knots in his back as his weight shifted onto his elbows and knees. The blue-white crystal marble his parents had called home glistened in the darkness. He straightened his United Earth Forces' vest, a sleaveless affair colored a dulled-silver studded with an Expeditionary Force pin on the lapel, in near reverence at the sight of his homeworld. It looks…so different, he said to himself, noting he hadn't seen his own sun rise since he was only twelve years old.

"All right, then. Go to alert status. The last time we met these bastards, they did have a battle-line. We're not going to give 'em a chance to pull that one again. Deca. Get on the horn to the Group, radio communication only. Tell them they're clear to arrive anytime they want."

The communications technician acknowledge again as his eyes and fingers focused back on his console. "Radio, high encryption…waiting. Sent! Call Division signal intercept time zero-nine-three-two -- eighteen minutes, Sir."

"Very good. We'll hang back at this point. Max antigravs. Signal Group. All stop."

The McCain engines sputtered and kicked as the antigravs came online. Defying the centripedal forces of gravity, the computers calculated the canceling vectors and sent the appropiate formulas to the gravity generators. The antigravs warped space around it, constructing a steady state nullspace about it with respect to the normal space about it. From there, the math was basic. Any vector in the surrounding gravity field, when "dotted" with any corresponding vector in normal space, would yield zero. Within minutes, the McCain surrendered the last of its translational momentum and came to a halt.

"Very good, people," Kathey remarked . "Comm, call the Captain to the bridge."

* * *

Jovian Space , Earth Intercept Orbit, Sol System

Five hundred million kilometers away, a small yet imposing task force cruised along an elliptical intercept, changing their revolution vector about the sun with consistent, period acceleration changes. The entire procedure demanded incredible coordination, with navigation officers and their crews working tirelessly to keep the group moving together. Some of the group's docksmen peered into the darkness with their magnificent instruments, trying to find a pinprick against the black background that was the homeworld of humanity. Others, however, looked for smaller signatures in the emptiness, points of light that if ignored could pose mortal danger to the entire task force. So many people, fixated on disparate specifics, needed a strong hand to guide and coordinate their efforts. If anything, the most tedious, time-consuming and unenviable responsibilities in any fleet are assumed by the flag commanders and their staffs. Nevertheless, the UEF suffered from no shortage of officers and crew willing to sit in the hot seat. The glory, privilege, and experience that came with staff duty could offset any cost.

On the Battlecruiser Lee Teng-hui's Flag Bridge, there were no exceptions.

"Good morning, Admiral," Captain Junior Grade Dana Li, Chief of Staff to the Mars Division Commander, greeted cheerfully as she poured an extra cup of coffee and set it on the armrest of the Admiral's command chair. Rear Admiral Bella Abregano Guineve, replied with a typical grunt and a curt glance at the chronometer before entering the Flag Bridge. Of course, she was gracious enough to accept the coffee her chief of staff had prepared. "Quiet night."

"It always is," Guineve observed to no one in particular. She seemed particularly detached today, but Captain Li had grown accustomed to her admiral's mood swings. After all, Li was only thirty-two years old herself, and Guineve had graduated from the Monument City Officer Candidate School only three years before her. The decimation of the Earth officer corps during the First Robotech War left the armed forces starved for leadership. While the age of the average senior officer had increased over the past decade, the United Earth Forces' senior positions were still populated by very young, very impressionable people -- many still shy of forty. To compensate for the lack of experienced hands, the Earth Forces selected for headstrong and tenacious youths with raw leadership ability. Many, like Li -- a senior-grade Captain with less than twelve years in the uniform -- learned to understand and respect their limits, growing into their responsibilities admirably. They were bound to make more mistakes than somebody with maybe six or seven more years on them, but they knew that success in the service meant learning how to do your job right -- more often than not learning on the fly and in the thick of combat. Still, others were either insufferably bullish or incredibly shy of responsibility, making their way through the ranks through the UEF's sheer necessity for manpower. They often exceeded their limits and did great damage before the system could shift them out of harm's way. For the time being, the UEF looked like the Continental Army and Navy during War of American Revolution, a hodgepodge collection of ambitious young officers, tired old salts, and childish astronauts, marines and soldiers. They were all out of their element, hanging on to their jobs -- their lives -- by a tattered shoestring.

Jeezus! Li forced her mind back to her present duties. Talk about getting reflective in your old age!

"Report," Admiral Guineve muttered, almost under her breath. With a barely visible sigh of resignation, Li took her cue as the Old Lady helped herself to the coffee mug. The call from the scout group had come in only thirty minutes ago. The timing could not have been any better. Bravo Shift was in full swing at 1120 Mars Division time and everyone was in their prime working condition. The Admiral herself had just come up to the Flag Bridge after a good six hours of sleep and a hot breakfast. All in all, not a bad way to start the day. Except for the bad news.

"All ships are standing by for Lollipop rendezvous at Lunar Coordinates Alpha Zulu Three Nine Zero. Last report from AluCE: they're standing by to support and will await burst signal to commence operations. Signal from the Reagan flag. The Mason had an engine casualty at 0330, but expects to be back underway in twenty minutes. Other than that, the group is ready to move at a moments notice. We completed morning fire control tests. The fire control datalink is operational, and the computers are operating the laser points at peak effeciency.

"General Morgan's office messaged the Flag at 0510. The transports will hold back at Point Gold Two and move to Gold One upon receipt of our signal. The McCain and the King detached at 0600 with their escorts. We can break out the tachyon transmission protocols when the operation starts, so we can call them up to Lollipop almost immediately."

"And General Gamboa?" Guineve asked between sips of her coffee, with a touch of invective in her tone. It was almost as if she suspected that Li was going to cut that little detail out.

"The Sixth Wing has its forward deployments loaded on our racks. We're still waiting for the Thirty-First Tactical Fighter Wing to transfer to the Reagan, but the General says he can launch off the Marchant if we have to bring her forward."

"That's not acceptable," Guineve mumbled put down her coffee, her eyes turning up towards Li. "That transport's an essential part of our operations profile."

Captain Li swallowed softly. The order to liberate Earth from her Invid occupiers came directly from the Plenipotentiary Commission, essentially the only acting body of the United Earth Government, through CINCREF, but the planning effort proceeded under Rear Admiral Guineve. Now, she led the task force charged with liberating Earth. Captain Li suspected she was the likely choice for Admiral Guineve's chief of staff. First, Li had extense experience of flag staffs, serving in every section except intelligence and supply. She served her last tour as the XO onboard the Battlecruiser Winston Churchill; working under Admiral -- then Captain Senior Grade -- Bella Guineve for the first time. When Guineve made her first star, she pulled some strings and got Captain Li promoted. Not long after that, Li was packing her bags and headed pack for Tirol, to serve on Guineve's staff as a planner for the Earth operation.

Li suspected one other reason she got the privilege of serving her mentor once again. She had working experience with flag officers that spanned her entire career. She knew their strengths and weaknesses. In a day and age where the average age of an O-8 was under just shy of thirty-five, UEF Command looked for innovative ways to compensate for the shortfall of experienced leadership. Flag and general officers frequently suffered from pride issues, especially in planning scenarios. Many grew very attached to their work, now that they had the power and position to claim all the credit for their brainchilds. Guineve, a fresh, young member of the brass, had fallen into that very trap. Now, on the day of reckoning, Captain Li's superior had an acute case of grumpiness, and it seemed to react to any mishap -- no matter how inconsequential. The Marchant fiasco provided a real outlet for Guineve to vent some of that frustration. Li would never think to say anything to discredit the Admiral, but she couldn't help thinking about it. Hell, the United Earth Space Navy paid her to think about it.

Of course, Li admitted, dragging the aircraft transport Marchant along with the rest of the Division would be a major headache. Not only would Tac Air throw fits once the news broke out, but Brigadier General Rico Gamboa would have to rewrite Guineve's deployment orders and draw on naval mecha support until he could unload his planes during the reentry assault. Li didn't like the figures herself. Guineve, who was never really good at math, at least understood that General Gamboa's delay would result in extra work for the Navy,

"I'll talk to General Gamboa personally," Admiral Guineve decided. "And Wing Ten?"

"Captain Houston's working with Colonel Hsar very closely to coordinate the initial air deployments," Li answered promptly, but then thoughtlessly added a point she probably should have left unvoiced. "It's moving pretty well, considering how hard it is to coordinate an operation as plane-heavy as this one."

Admiral Guineve eyed her chief of staff contemptuously. "Do you have a criticism you'd like to share with me?"

"No, Ma'am," Li whispered with genuine deference. She had not intended her comment to be a passing knock at the Admiral's strategy -- after all, she wasn't the operations officer -- but Guineve had a tendency to get defensive right before an operation. Hopefully, the Admiral would wind down after they had kicked some Invid ass.

"Very well, then!" Admiral Guineve clapped her hands together as her expression turned to one of mock delight. "Let's get to work, people."

* * *

Cislunar Orbit, Earth-Lunar System

"It's briefing time, folks. Shut up and listen."

The room fell silent as the cantankerous, olive-skinned Colonel at the head of the table took his seat. "We've got a lot of ground to cover, so I expect you to take good notes and keep your people informed."

Marcus hadn't met the Colonel before today, but Rusford Hsar had a fleet-wide reputation. Rumored to have mastered English from old Charles Bronson flicks, Hsar was a rough'n'tumble 'first-generation' Zentraedi -- meaning he went as far back as the Bad Ol'Days. Once junior aviator with the Jiaabo Seventh Mechanized Army, he ended up stranded on Earth with many of his brethren -- leaderless and deprived of the cause they once proudly served. A calm, collective individual rumored to hunger only for the strong direction of authority, he quickly rediscovered his passion in life serving in a United Nations Forces uniform and suppressing human and Zentraedi malcontents around the world. After two years of dispassionately killing both Earthers and his own people, Hsar earned the trust of the Earth military leadership. Command decided he and nearly eighty thousand other Zentraedi were reliable enough to serve side by side with humans. For a while, that meant serving with the all-Zentraedi Twenty-Third Tactical Fighter Squadron under a human CO. Eventually, somebody in Monument City figured he was keen, loyal and 'Miriya-like' enough to not only join a previously all-human fighter squadron, but take command of it as well. His time with Expeditionary Force as CO of the Fifty-Eighth Wild Weasels had made him famous. During that time, the Colonel developed an entirely new electronic warfare doctrine for planetary assault operations. Marcus knew of at least one tactic -- the Ruford Bait -- that had stormed the EW world by surprise when it was during the Mop-Up and the Ugari Conflic and now bedrock study material for Wild Weasel enablers and operators.

It took nearly ten years for the Tactical Aerospace Force to move human and Zentraedi aviators and crews into integrated units. A quarter century after he and his kind had nearly wiped humanity out of existence, Hsar now worked effortlessly with Marcus and many other humans to liberate Earth from a new enemy. As commanding officer of the Three Thirty First Tactical Fighter Group, Colonel Hsar was also the senior aviator on the Division's flight roster.

Marcus' eyes surveyed the room. He briefly glanced over at Reika -- Lieutenant Commander Yumashita in this setting, Marcus reminded himself. Unlike Hsar, but very much like Marcus and most of the other officers here, she wore the uniform of the United Earth naval aviator. Officers and enlisted alike made life easier on themselves -- they simply called it 'the Navy.' In any case, Reika commanded the SVFA-437 -- the 'Bulls.' Marcus remembered how she'd suckered him into tagging along as her adjutant. He didn't like playing pet puppy, but Reika had a way of bringing the most stubborn leading chief aviation mechanics to her way of thinking. Not bad for a junior officer.

Several squadron commanders and their operations officers occupied the other seats at the table. All were O-4 or above, but not a one was over thirty. There was of course his squadron commander and the CAG; Marcus sit next to them. He fiddled with his pen, his eyes settling on the only other Black man seated: Daniel Houston, CO, CVW-15. Captain Junior Grade Houston also commanded two of the Navy squadron launching off Reagan; he'd just returned to McCain two hours before this final pre-op brief. The CAG caught Marcus' sideways glance, nodding gently in return.

Lieutenant Keynes knew the other officers only by reputation. Strike Fighter Squadron 21's CO, Scott Bernard, was spending an awful lot of time onboard Catfish, the Horizont shuttle cutting the path before the McCain scout group. Since Bernard had spent the most time with the Flag prepping the naval air cover plans, his command would head up the landing wave's fighter screen during the approach. Not the most attractive position for a naval aviator looking to live long enough for the post-action drinks -- let alone citations and promotions -- but safety had always been a rare commodity for a combat flier.

One question rested on Marcus' mind and probably those of everyone in the Scout Group. What the hell did the Admiral intend to do with only one Tactical Fighter Group forward and ready? The op plan called for most of the Third Tactical Air Wing to hold back until Division naval air had cleared the orbitals thoroughly. Not the quickest way to liberate a planet from the Invid -- most operations during the last war saw very focused, rapid strikes using overwhelming firepower against Invid planetary installations. That meant delivering your transatmospheric attack assets as quickly and directly as possible on the main target. However, Admiral Guineve wanted just one TFG forward at this time. Moving on, CVW-13 -- spread out between the Cole and the Ramage -- sent three spooks forward to refresh the Group on operational intelligence. The Marine air group -- split between the King and the Burke -- didn't send anybody; neither did the Lee battlegroup. Overall, leadership was pretty heavy in rear and sparse at the front. It didn't really worry Marcus that he was right at the tip of the sword. Like most of the Bulls aviators and crew, he had never seen combat on the scale they'd face today.

Most were too young to have fought in the Sentinels War.

The operations briefing went quickly -- less than fifteen minutes. CVW-15's intelligence team handled the deep background before Colonel Hsar began his review of the operational points. Marcus tried to absorb as much information as possible, but the plan was intensely complex. First, the Admiral wanted the Scout Group to advance to low earth orbit beyond the fighter cover of the Churchill BCs. Without that support, they'd be attractive bait for the heaviest carrier platforms the Invid could throw up, or at least that's what Command wanted Marcus to believe.

"…after which, we will close with the Lee battlegroup…" Marcus caught, only after it was clear that he and his squadron were expected to remain engaged with the enemy (or, hopefully, drifting quietly and peacefully through space -- assuming the Invid decided not to show up).

Colonel Hsar wrapped the talk up and opened the floor to discussion. Almost immediately, someone cleared their throat to beg recognition.

"Ruford, what's really holding up the rest of the Division?" Captain Galen, McCain's CO, inquired intently. Yet another lesson in the intricacies of Navy custom, Marcus reflected. The command of a warship mitigated even familiarity across two whole grades of rank. Galen, as McCain's skipper, had a right as the commanding officer of a warship and an obligation to the prestige of his post to treat even an officer as senior as Colonel Hsar as an equal. "I don't like the idea of moving in without the full composite wing on our asses. Our strikecraft profile is way to thin."

"It won't be a problem, Hans," Colonel Hsar answered. "We won't commence operations until the Division is in place. As for the hold up, well…you know how we Air Force types need to pretty up before sticking it to the Slugs."

Hsar turned to the rest of the assembly: "Just to be perfectly clear, Command wants us to run this by the Book. No assumptions, no rumors, no raised hopes. No one wants to get taken off guard, not on this run. Think of it as another slug-hunt, people."

"With all due respect, Sir," SVFA-12's commanding officer spoke up, his voice flat yet deferential. "then that cloud of debris at Archie Golf Sierra isn't Liberty?" Archie Golf Sierra was short for Archimedes Geostationary, an orbital point thirty-thousand miles straight up from the Norristown, capital of the Republic of Tocantins-Goias. It was also the final resting place of Space Station Liberty. As far as the returning United Earth Navy group could discern, the orbital facility had been destroyed some time ago.

"Fair enough," Hsar nodded in gruff agreement. "In any case, the results of the Flag's assessment should be with us before we cross into lunar orbit. After we check to see if the coast is clear, they'll fold in and then...well, that's when fireworks start."

"Oh great," SVFA-12's CO sighed. "So will we be heading up a recon to check out the Lagrange Points on our flank?"

"The Flag doesn't think that's necessary," Hague replied. "Admiral Guineve expressed her utmost concerns on tipping off the enemy more than we have to. Moon Base has come up with something clever to make sure we can talk with the group and amongst ourselves despite enemy jamming ops. If they're still going at it -- "

"They are," Captain Galen volunteered.

"Thanks, Hans," Hsar nodded appreciatively. "Those jammers have to be interfering with their ability to detect incoming contacts. Now the Group's sensors will have a hard time burning through the jamming until we're right about to cross into low earth orbit, but they won't be able to see us either. We'll make that work to our advantage. If we maintain space superiority we shouldn't have a problem. If not, I'm sure the cover squadrons and ships from AluCE, Luna and Apollo can handle any attempt to envelope our flank. We'll drift at idle speed once we cross the terminator, then make a short engine burst to coast into geosynch -- intially over the Pacific. Any Invid craft should be easily detectable from such an observational position."

"Surface to orbit threats?" Scott Bernard thought to ask. His point was obvious. The First Fleet, attached to the Expeditionary Force since the beginning of the Sentinels War, had taken a savage beating over Optera when -- all of a sudden -- the Invid unveiled a rudimentary, yet brutally effective trans-atmospheric missile system.

"The latest from Flag," CVW-15's senior spook answered for the Colonl, "says few or no ASATs. Since Optera's the only hive anybody's ever encountered with any serious ASAT capability, Intel thinks it's unlikely we'll encounter anything like that here. As for their capacity to put firepower vacuum-side, Intel estimates are no more than forty-two percent to fifty percent higher than the suspected number."

"That's a pretty wide margin of error, Captain," Scott noted. "And what about the landing operation? Four million Invid combatants to begin with is something like one half more or twice the Sig Drack hive." The mop-up operation uncovered an Invid hive on a moon in the 28 Sigma Draconis System. Like always, there were no Invid non-combatants. The whole hive died and the few that survived wasted away soon after being defeated.

"Expect saturation fire from the battlegroup by then, and the destroyers will return to medium earth orbit to complete the central home-hive bombardment within a secure shell. That should give us more than enough edge. With our advance attack base at Point K, we should have more than enough firepower to deal with the slugs."

"Probably so," CVW-10's CAG, Houston, responded, "but Command isn't willing to risk the heavy collatoral, particularly in the Northlands. This is a hostage planet, not another slash-and-burn mop-up operation. Rules of engagement have been transmitted to all combat commanders."

Marcus knew as well as anybody that most of the commanders and top pilots present were too young to remember when liberation, and not displacement, had been the REF's primary task, back when they fought a horrifying war with the Invid Regent.

"Skipper," Lieutenant Commander Reika Yumashita spoke up just as Marcus was going over the Table of Organization and Equipment for the upcoming fight. He fidgeted noticably as his young squadron commander chimed in on the discussion. "Should we count on surprise?"

"The Flag says surprise is almost certain," Hsar pointed out, but his qualification was clear. "I wouldn't count on it though. Personally, I don't know what to make of it. There's a good chance they could have picked us up on the move to Gold One, but if I were them I would have responded already. Also let's not forget they've been running interference on our space-to-dirt communications with the resistance on Earth for the past eight or so months. It's just a good idea to keep alert while you're out there. Expect them to be well organized and prepared."

Gawd, Marcus thought. Talk about razor thin intelligence. He didn't understand how the Flag could be so confident. The Invid had managed to prevent the UEF from maintaining consistent communications with the dirt-side forces for nearly six months. It wasn't exactly going in blind and deaf, but it was damned close.

"Sir, have we heard anything from Point K?" Houston brought up the stickiest issue facing the Mars Division.

"Flag doesn't know for certain," Colonel Hsar tried to clarify, "but Admiral Guineve claims they should be good enough condition to fight. I have agree wit the Admiral, I don't think the Invid could've run them over this fast. As you know, the entire Southern net is on the fritz -- we haven't talked to them in nearly four months. Even if we could, we're not going to risk hailing them and exposing our position until the last possible minute. Either way, we're either coming to help them or they're coming to help us."

"Sir," SVFA-12's CO picked at the point, "Let's say Point K was neutralized. I mean, Sir -- they're the crux of our mission profile in the Southern Hemisphere. What does Flag want to do if they're just not there anymore?"

"We'll probably end up ferrying forces down to link up with what resistance is still in the Americas and Europe and supporting them from space until we can secure a new beachhead. Now I don't have any illusions, people. This is gonna be a tough, stand up fight. Either way, we have the advantage. We've got the firepower and the experience. Keep your heads up, though. Just because we're on another slug-hunt doesn't mean you go off half-cocked as soon as you clear the bay."

Marcus felt strangely reassured. The Colonel was right, it was just another slug-hunt.

* * *

Valhalla, State of Pará, Brazil

0640h EST, 13 March 2034, Operation Sparta Time: -07:50

How long does it take to move a single man three thousand kilometers through the most dangerous territory in the world?

Twenty four hours.

Just last night, Dr. Louie Nichols had been holed up in Portland, watching the telemetry data fed down to Earth by the Resistance's pathetic satellite network. Immediately after identifying the new contacts, Portland put itself on the communications blackout list. They couldn't risk the Invid getting a hold of this information -- or so went the conventional wisdom.

Still, Carpenter needed to get this information out as quickly as possible. After pulling a few dangerous stunts, he managed to sneak Nichols to Panama onboard a Learjet confiscated shortly after the Invasion. A submarine -- an ancient Dutch diesel -- carried the scientist from the Canal to the coast of Colombia and Peru. Surfacing at small town port near Cuzco, he bumbled around the downtown area long enough to remember the signals necessary to hitch a ride to Valhalla. By the thirteenth hour of his trip, he was onboard a British Harrier flying out of an abandoned airfield on the border of Peru and Brazil. Their convoluted flight path that took him over the thick rain forest growth before turning northeast along with the Amazon.

After close to two hours of bouncing around in Northern Brazil's airspace, the Harrier touched down at another evactuated strip two-hundred and forty kilometers south-west of Valhalla. From there, an Armored Personnel Carrier shuttled him on a six-hour trip through the back-roads of the northern Amazonas. The sun was creeping over the horizon as APC dipped into the canyon leading up to Valhalla's vehicle entrance.

"Mornin', Sir," the sentry guarding the entryway remarked as he inspected Nichols' credentials, "The General's been expecting you."

"Thank you, Corporal," Louie Nichols adjusted his sunglasses to block the incoming glare over the horizon. Instead of the tight-fitting cloths he wore in the more moderate north, he had donned khaki shorts and a light green tee-shirt. He dismounted the APC and followed the guard into the fortress city. An elevator to the street level deposited them well within the four armored walls surrounding the fortress. An old two-and-a-half ton truck awaited them as Nichols and the corporal stepped out of the lift. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Nichols tossed his duffle bag in the back and hopped into the cab. When the corporal turned the key, Dr. Nichols was shocked to hear the rumble of a fifty year old internal combustion engine trying to turn over. After a minute, some curt language and a few smacks on the dash, the vehicle finally started.

"Sorry about the ride, Sir," The corporal shook his head in genuine embarrassment. "We tried req'ing a hover, but y'know how these things work out sometimes."

"It's no big deal," Nichols sighed as he rolled down his window. No air conditioning? What a raw deal!

"Well, good thing the General's office isn't too far. I'll get you there quick as I can."

"Thanks, Corporal," Nichols hung his arm over the side of the door. He had little luck catching the breeze. The fortress passed by slowly as civilian traffic picked up on the main artery of highways. The crater was only ten kilometers across, but that only meant it was as long as Manhattan down the diameter. Ever since Vahalla started accepting civilian refugees, the fortress had grown into a full blown city. And since the Invid had never bothered to move far beyond those tracts of lands suitable for their harvest, Vahalla had grown virtually uninterrupted.

"So tell me," Louie struck up conversation. "How've things been around here since I left?"

"A lot've things going on, Sir..." the guard explained. Nichols looked around and noted that a good number of the buildings here resembled those in pre-2030 Monument City.

Interesting. The corporal continued, "We haven't hit a hive in something like eight months. We're doing something out on their supply routes through Brazil, but that's about it. I don't know much about that. I've been posted here ever since I signed up."

"How's the General holding up?" Nichols thought to ask. He hadn't seen the General since the last abortive raid on Reflex Point. Neither had John Carpenter, the scientist knew. Both men had a hard time forgiving Wolff for his conspicuous absence from humanity's last major counter-offensive against the Invid. From the look on his escort's expression, the corporal clearly didn't know anything about the bad blood between the Splinters and the Vahalla resistance. His response certainly didn't betray any ill will towards Wolff from anybody in this outfit.

"Real great guy, Sir." The escort smiled, his eyes on the traffic building up around them. "He goes out on as many ops as he can. The General has a reputation for bringing home the big wins, y'know."

I bet, Nichols narrowed his eyes.

"Anyway, after a lot of the Americans bugged out, we've kept the resistance down here alive. The General's kept things running nice and smooth 'round here. Real great guy, Sir."

Nichols didn't respond.

The truck finally came to a stop at the fortress headquarters. Sending the corporal on his way, he stepped into the building lobby. Another sentry stood ready to take him to the General's third-floor office. Within moments, he was standing before the South American Resistance Theater Commander.

"Dr. Nichols," Wolff's hair had turned to steel-brown from the strikingly pitch-black from fifteen years earlier. Nichols had first met him aboard the Marcus Aurelius, the dreadnought flagship of the Relief Group. He and Wolff worked together to ready the battle damanged vessel for its return trip to Tirol, along with over a hundred thousand surviving clones gathered up from wrecked Tirolian motherships. Wolff went on to work for the Special Operations Command, bringing the Cosmic Units and the Global Military Police up to speed on special warfare strategy and tactics. He had been the first to argue that the UEM, weakened after the war with the Masters, needed to sacrifice strategic depth and let the next invaders, should they come, take the planet. When they did, the focus should be on stopping them on the surface and then rolling them back from advance attack bases supported from space. Eventually, the enemy came; this time, it was the Invid. When United Earth Forces Command changed their plans at the last minute, launching their counterattack within minutes of the Invid invasion, finally validating then-Colonel Wolff's loud and frequent objections and protests about the hot-headedness running wild amongst much of the UEF's senior leadership. The enemy wiped out many of the beachheads Wolff and Admiral Hunter had set up around the globe, allowing them to drive back the first two attack waves from Expeditionary Force. Within a few hours, low earth orbit had fallen temporarily under Invid control. In less than a day, Earth forces in North America, Europe and large tracts of Asia were either destroyed or retreating. Within a week, the Invid destroyed the last major outpost of in the Northern Hemisphere with a nuclear bomb that took a large portion of downtown London with it.

The methodical brutality exhibited by the Invid, combined with the failure of the UEF to protect Earth's citizens, had left soldiers bearing a sharp, oftenly deadly, stigma in the eyes of the world's civilian population. Nichols knew this well. There had been a time in Tokyo where any attempt to form a resistance against Invid dominion was punishable by a Japanese government that had grown sympathetic to the Invid cause out of sheer sense of survival. Intimidated, Japan's last group of Earth-first patriots left to link up with other resistance groups. Months had passed by after the Invasion with the stranded Earth fighters doing nothing but planning, preparing, and waiting for another attempt by the Expeditionary Force to strike against the Invid. Finally, in late 2031, with a new communication link with AluCE base on the moon, the combined forces of several hundred resistance battalions and elements from Point B in Baja California committed themselves to battling the Invid for control of the Southwest United States.

The Invid quickly overwhelmed and slaughtered them, the few survivors sent packing in bitter defeat.

Only two years later, Nichols thought, and we think we're ready for another go?

"Good evening, Sir," the final rays of the sun set over the horizon. "It's been awhile."

"Not since Trenchtown, Dr. Nichols," Wolff retained his trademark debonair smile. At that meeting, Wolff had informed his comrades he would not be committing his forces to an attack on Reflex Point. Part of it stemmed from his objections to the operational concept. Wolff had always held that their forces were not strong enough to mount a rollback offensive against the Invid in the North. Instead, he chose to launch a raid against one of the most fortified enemy installations on-planet, an operation most of his comrades considered mad as a concept and evidence of negligence on his part. That the September 2031 attack on Reflex Point had failed only served to harden the feelings of Wolff's fellow freedom fighters against him. That the General had lost one-hundred and fifty of his troops, including one of Professor Nichol's good friends, trying to take down the largest Invid hive south of Reflex Point only added more injury to the insult. "We've been busy since then. Are you still on the Portland satellite link?"

"Yes, Sir," the professor nodded. "We also managed to lay some underwater cable to keep Tokyo appraised. Right now I'm their liaison -- the Shimadas will only deal with us through me. However, it'll have to do until I ease Eiten into a more comfortable arrangement." After the aging Kan Shimada retired, Eiten Shimada took over the newly legitimized yakuza organization. In a way, he was a minister without a portfolio -- manipulating the new Prime Minister not unlike the way his old man had used Etchi Misui. "Dr. Ling has been very successful in developing the new control software for SATCOM. We've doubled our efforts to get it deployed. That's part of the reason I'm here."

"I understand. And John? How is he?"

"They're hanging on, if that's what you mean," Nichols replied coldly, knowing full well he was dodging the question. "We're trying to take heat off the Vancouver Spaceport, but we're too close to Reflex Point to do anything other than risk what we have out west. Portland's pretty quiet."

"I mean, how is John," the General cleared his throat and clarified.

"Honestly, General," Nichols adjusted his glasses, not giving the pregnant moment a chance to grow awkward. "He has gotten over it."

Wolff looked away for a moment. Dr. Nichols knew Wolff wouldn't buy it. Carpenter was a man widely known for not easily forgiving or forgeting.

"I commend you for getting down here so fast, Dr. Nichols." Wolff walked over to the bookcase on the southwall. Removing a bottle of brandy, he poured himself half a wineglass. Nichols declined when offered. "It could take a week by car. Remember that a lot of us go by foot nowadays. How'd you do it?"

"I came alone, Sir." Nichols explained. "The Invid still tolerate some civilian emigration of the West Coast from the sympathizer cities, and so long as we don't abuse the airspace they don't pay us any mind. In any case, once I got to San Diego the rest was easy. They still can't bust through the air defenses there, and General Murtogh's keeping their Shock Troopers entertained in Nevada. I don't know how long that can last, not with Point B gone now."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Doctor." Wolff remarked as he bottomed-up the glass.

"Back to business, General. You asked me how my work in Portland was coming along, with the satellite link."

"Yes, I did."

"I'd like to show this to you as quickly as possible. Is there any place we can assemble your staff and sixes? A big viewscreen?"

"Eh?" Wolff raised an eyebrow. His staff and armored battalion commanders -- "Sixes" in tanker talk -- would've busted out laughing at that. "Portland must be making Carpenter soft in his old age. I'm afraid the best we've got here is a few portable units."

"Good enough," the young technician replied. "If you could gather your senior officers, Sir -- we've got a lot to chew on tonight."

* * *

Cislunar Orbit, Earth-Lunar System

Operation Sparta Time: -05:50

The forcefields that hummed against the impressive emptiness alone shielded the open hangar bays from the deadliness of the vacuum. Marcus, during his first outer space training sessions, once approached these hangar bays with fear; if the fields would collapse, he would be blown out into the darkness -- either burned to a crisp by unabashed stellar radiation or deep-freezed in the deathly cold of space's eternally dark shadows. However, a year and a half of training and preparation had partially overcome that fear. In the event that the fields did collapse, he would have enough time to secure himself in his Alpha fighter, assuming he was close to it, and close the canopy. His mecha would protect until such time as the bay doors were closed or the forcefields re-established.

As he finished waxing the coat of his Alpha's nose, the klaxons in the bay suddenly went off, sounding a long awaited alert. That could mean only one thing.

The Division had arrived.

On McCain's bridge, the excitement had sparked a rush of activity.

"Skipper! Heavy gravitational activity around reference vector Three Zero Nine," one of the enlisted behind the command deck reported over the klaxons. "IFF clears, it's Lee and her battlegroup."

Commander William Kathey followed the voice to see Docksman Seylia Benjamin holding her own over the Tracking console. His attention shifted to the Captain, who was already out of his seat and making for Benjamin's station.

"Secure from general quarters," Captain Galen ordered. He waited for the alarm to shut off before turning to his XO. "What's the profile, Bill?"

"Count'em, Benjamin," Commander Kathey turned the query over to the female docksman at the tactical station.

"They've just cleared the gravity wake," Docksman Benjamin replied earnestly. Kathey appreciated the effort Benjamin -- the whole bridge crew, in fact -- were putting up to keep their anxiety in check.

"Profile confirmed," Benjamin followed up. "It's the whole group. Two battlecruisers, three destroyers, four heavy cruisers, six destroyers, and fourteen assault shuttles. Yep, that's everybody. Group One is crossing the lunar face right now Ma'am; signature's bearing three-fiver-zero alpha. I'm also picking up additional flucuations at reference vector Four Two Zero. Looks like the Reagan group."

"Very good," Kathey remarked, noting that Danny Houston and his people would probably want to get the hell back home as soon as possible. In the meantime, he ran through the basic vector calculus in his head. Right now, the McCain and the Scouts held the Mars Division's vantage point over Earth after finishing their run to geostationary orbit twenty minutes ago. Now, the converted escort carrier's antigravs ran at max as it fought against the tidal forces struggling to draw it into Earth's gravitational maw. They ran a not-so-trivial risk of being detected by the Invid, but the enemy would find nothing more than what Admiral Guineve and General Morgan wanted them to see. Personally, Kathey did not enjoy playing a worm on a fishhook. From the look on the Captain's face, neither did he.

"On screen, chief," Commander Kathey ordered. The McCain had flown over to the daylight side of the lunar surface less than ten minutes ago. Four Horizont assault shuttles had taken the point, heading towards a geosynch orbit. By 0230h, in just under six hours, the entire Mars Division would be in position to launch their attack.

The tech replied without hesitation. Magnifying only four times, warships of three basic designs were highlighted in red hue against the black back drop. The computer identified the Churchill-class battlecruiser as none other than the Lee.

"Incoming traffic from the Flag, Sir," the duty communications petty officer piped up. "They're taking flank behind our group. The Burke and the King are moving back towards our flank."

"Well, looks like the new frequency hopping package is working," Captain Galen observered. Commander Kathey nodded in agreement. Moon Base Luna's electronic warfare people had been working overtime trying to break the Invid jamming efforts in the high orbitals. "It looks like we've got better returns on from Radar and Lidar as well. I guess those Moon guys have outdone themselves."

Still, best not to get to cocky. The heaviest jamming would be at five thousand klicks above the surface, give or take a thousand. They'd still only hit clear sky once they dropped below a thousand klicks, or nine hundred kilometers out of the atmosphere. That wasn't a lot of vertical space to work with, but they'd have to make do.

"Show me where the Cole's at now." The point escort carried the extensive communication equipment which would fire several hyperwave bursts towards expected key cities, hoping to establish contact and link up with any resistances planetside.

Benjamin fielded the question: "She's already taken the lead of our Horizont group, about five-thousand kilometers dead ahead."

All right. "Thank you, gentlemen," Captain Galen warmly extended to his bridge crew. "Get the Lee on a secure channel. Let's find out what the hell we're supposed to be doing anyway."

* * *

"Jesus, Skipper!" the plane captain complained as his CO flipped open the canopy. He climbed out, his eyes quickly inspecting the cockpit airlock latchings -- they'd hooked onto the docking collar pretty hard. His skipper, a young naval aviator who looked way too young for his rank and responsibility, shrugged apologetically as the chief climbed out of the cockpit "Do you want your plane for gametime or not?"

"Sorry, Chief," Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard tossed his helmet out of the cockpit, where Senior Chief Aviation Mechanic Danny Barnes caught it easily. Both had just shuttled over in their Alpha-Beta Legios from the McCain. Barnes' plane crew went to work. The oldest of the six junior mechanics had just turned eighteen, but Barnes had molded them into an efficient pit crew Commander Bernard could trust to keep his Legios space fighter in top condition. Pretty soon, the Boss would be back in space -- this time not for a pleasant visit to the Group commodore. The ordnance jockies were already guiding anti-grav beds loaded with long range, anti-fighter missiles as Barnes and Bernard strolled over to the locker room.

"Well, it's a good thing I work for you, Sir." Danny Barnes stripped out of the CVR-3 flight suit and exchanged it for an orange flight deck jacket. "She'll be ready by the time your squared away with Commander Gardner. You gonna get any sack-time before take off?"

"Probably not," Bernard answered non-chalantly, stowing his flight gear before keying open the locker room's access hatch to the Engineering Deck. His thoughts were clearly elsewhere as he packed. "Say, can you look over the tac-net trimmer as soon as possible? I'm getting static on the tower channel."

"No prob, Skipper," Barnes clicked his tongue disapprovingly as they stepped out of the locker room and into the Catfish's center-line corridor. "The way you park the thing, you probably knocked off the receiver antenna I'll get Murray on it right away, Sir."

"Scott!" Barnes turned to see a young brunette running towards them. Lieutenant (JG) Marlene Rush threw herself in Commander Bernard's arms.

The plane captain stepped away. Let the kids enjoy the break. While it lasted.

* * *

Valhalla, State of Pará, Brazil

Louie Nichols watched disinterestedly from his seat at the far end of the table as Wolff's senior adjutants clashed over the most irrelevent aspects of the tape recording. He was an engineer by trade, a scientist by fashion, and a straight up tanker by misfortune. The former assistant professor of computer science at the University of Chicago couldn't think of anything more dull than watching a bunch of navy types playing 'Guess that Ship.'

"It's too damn small to be anything more than a light battlegroup, if even that." One of the intelligence officers circled the bead of his laser pointer around the cluster of blips on the left wall pull-down screen. "Those two bigs ones look like Churchill­­s. The ones in the rear look to small -- money they're Burkes, also? Hey, what are those really small ones?"

"Horizont assault shuttles," Lieutenant Commander Ahmed Rashoma, United Earth Space Navy and Wolff's joint intelligence chief, answered dryly. Most everybody here recalled the Horizont's larger scale precursors -- the Archangel general purpose warships. The break from the traditional battlewagon design made most COs nervous about the battleworthiness of these avian-like warships. To Rashoma and to other Navy types whose careers revolved around the battleline, the Archangel GPWs were ugly as sin. The Horizont, therefore, wasn't a great improvement in the swarthy toned tactical officer's mind. "These were still prototypes when we left. Looks like Space Systems finally got the go-ahead. Just when you thought we'd gotten over our infatuation with those damned bat-crazy contraptions."

"That damned bat-crazy contraption saved our asses more than once," General Wolff commented. "I want definite types on these before nine, Rashoma, and an estimate to how much force our boys are bringing to bear. Now...where the hell are we. Oh, yes. Doc?"

"Its six forty five right now. I'd get on the horn with Portland and see if we can set something to coordinate space intel down here. Also..."

Nichols produced a small CD. Having already shown the footage of the returning Expeditionary mission's orbital approach, he now enjoyed the full attention of the General's staff. With Wolff's approval, Nichols inserted the disc.

"...mander Gardner...piditonary Force....clear it up?" .

"If you'll please be patient," Nichols beseeched his audience, "The recording cleans up in just a little bit. The guy speaking is Commander Gardner -- some of you may recall the name. Either way, he introduces himself and says he's part of the Earth Liberation Mission. Just another thirty seconds and it'll clear up."

"I say six to ten hours before they attack," guessed the Marine major filling in for Wolff's operations officers as they waited for the audio to clear up. "I'd have to run this by my Navy guy, but my take is they're going to drop down to somewhere between two and ten thousand kilometers before opening fire. Either way, hell if I know how they're going to pull this one off."

"If they are forcing Churchill on Reflex Point -- say, what's the range of the maingun on the Churchill?" Rashoma thought to ask one of her intel people

"About two-hundred thousand klicks," The civilian behind her piped up.

That immediately caught the Marine major's attention. "Hey, you think they might try point blanking -- "

The static suddenly gave way to the gentle hum of a crystal clear carrier and well reproduced audio, interrupting all ancillary discussion between Wolff's officers.

"Ah, here we are," the professor replied. "Video kicks in right about now."

The blank screen was replaced by the image of an old man, probably his late fifties and dressed in the cross-service UEF uniform. Commanding an assault shuttle? Wolff thought, recalling Gardner and his exemplary record during the Sentinels War. Well, the old curmudgeon had beaten off every attempt by Command to frock him out of field grade; even retiring to the Reserves just before Wolff left for Earth.

"Commander Gardner, DTTS Catfish, Alpha Penetration Task Element, Main Naval Battlegroup, Mars Division. Tune to Three-India-Niner burst band. Intercept Lima-Bravo-Three-Three MILCOMSAT at thirty thousand, forty-four degrees north by seventy-eight degrees west. Do not respond to this transmission. Maintain space radio silence until otherwise noted.

"Great news. As we speak, we are bringing a full task force on Reflex Point. We will relay attack coordinates on 13 March at 1420 Zulu on Three-India-Six band. Colonel Wolff, if you're still operational, we will relay instructions for launching Operation Sicily as soon as the attack commences. Repeat, maintain radio silence. This message will not be repeated. Do not to attempt to acknowledge...repeat...maintain radio silence.

"We're on our way..."

The room suddenly reverberated as nearly twenty cantakerous cheers rang out. Then, Nichols' beaming eyes picked up on a stone-faced Brigadier General Wolff -- whom Gardner had erraneously referred to as Colonel -- and his smile suddenly flat-lined. The famed commander of the Wolff Pack, his hands tensely pressed against the surface of the conference table, rose slowly from his seat.

The color had drained completely from his face.

"Oh my God. They don't know. They don't -- " His voice drowned in the joyous uproar.

* * *

Portland, Oregon

Operation Sparta Time: -05:10

The moutain-side log cabin doubled as command center for the Splinters -- the Pacific Northwest's ad hoc resistance group. Beneath his wooden porch was a two-feet thick plate of ceramisteel; one of the strongest ceramic alloys ever developed on Earth. Below that, nearly seventy people worked day and night monitoring, dispatching and directing the tendrils of his command.

Brigadier General John Carpenter, the Splinters senior military officer, had received a communique from Valhalla four hours after learning of Louie Nichols safe arrival. Meanwhile, he was already preparing his own forces for the attack. The survivors of the Ninety Third and Eighty Fifth Fighter Squadrons from ALuCE, devastated two years ago during the ill-fated Reflex Point attack, were regrouping forty-eight miles to the South, on an abandoned airstrip near what was once Secena, an Oregon town that had sustained a direct burst from a Zentraedi cannon a quarter century earlier. The crater had evolved into Edwin Air Force Base by the time the UEF was formed in 2022, and since the Invid Occupation, it had served as the North's answer to Valhalla; a truly modern facility that had managed to avoid destruction by Invid -- at least for the time being.

The Splinters outwardly resembled a hodgepodge of professional warfighters, mercenaries and militia volunteers, but they were as close to a functional military outfit anyone could hope to find in North America. Most of it centered around the Ninety Third and Eighty Fifth Pursuit Squadrons, but the Splinter's organization stretched all the way to Southern California -- all the way to San Fransisco where a small naval contingent, composed of a handful of retasked diesel attack boats, lay waiting in its enclosed port. These were assets that only the highest levels of the Splinter's and Wolff's contingent knew of, for they were the only links between the resistance and the rumored "ghost ships" -- the submersible landing ship Achilles and Prometheus-class carrier Phoebe -- waging a guerilla war in the Pacific. It had been three months since he had heard from Rear Admiral Haglin and his Pacific forces, and he feared that another leg of the resistance's infrastructure had been cruelly knocked out from underneath them.

Lieutenant General Aldershot and Colonel Nova Satori -- their forces depleted to the point where they were compelled to opt out of the upcoming operation -- recamped in Portland only seven hours ago. Not wanting to be left out, Aldershot was acting as a strategic reserve for Carpenter's forward strike forces, deferring operational command to his junior in deference to Splinter's superior fighting condition. Nevertheless, Carpenter's forces weren't exactly top-of-the-line, his preparations were extremely hasty and he had no way of coordinating with the Southlands resistance.

The General's mind was fixed on several, uninviting scenarios as he stared out into early morning sky, rocking back and forth in his chair. His entire career had been as a a witness to the gruesome realities of war, from his first stint as a Spacy flight operations officer with the Togo's ARMD air wing during the First Robotech War to his fifteen years on and off the Wellington. His last assignment aboard that ship, nearly five paygrades ago, had seen him directing TAF fighters into battle as the Wellington's Chief Aerospace Operations Officer. He sometimes asked himself how a carrier ops specialist like himself ever ended up as a jumped-up commander of a "short-brigade" made up almost entirely of ragged freedom fighters, ex-Army guys and local volunteers. Maybe, he thought, it was because he was the senior surviving officer to escape Wellington before she rammed one of the Robotech Masters' motherships, or maybe it was because Supreme Commander Leonard and the United Earth Forces Joint Staff thought his experience with the REF made him valuable enough to joint the Leonard's staff for war plans and operations. Maybe it was because Wolff -- damn the man! -- discovered something in John's broken shell that cried out for another opportunity to serve. Was that why he had never retired after more than twenty years of doing nothing but fighting aliens? No matter how much he wanted to rest, his heart simply wouldn't let him walk away from it all. God knows he tried. When Wolff absented himself from the Reflex Point operation over two years ago, when former Chief of Staff of the United Earth Forces General Anthony Vincinz took up with the Invid sympathizers and Warsaw and conquered the Sudetenland for his new masters, when the Regis' Invid utterly destroyed Seattle. Each time he felt as if he could simply step back and get away from it all.

But he couldn't. Not now, not ever. Even as he sat relaxed in his rocking chair, he felt a pang of guilt for not being down in the dungeons with his comrades, for providing his body with the necessary rest it needed to direct his troops into battle. Never in his life did he ever expect to shoulder this much responsibility, but very few people in recent memory had lived their lives according to plan. For humanity, the twenty-first century had been a most ironic and cruel adventure.

Just as he watched the stars blink out of existance as dawn spread into the valley below, the cabin's front door suddenly swung open. The man who darted out donned civilian clothing, but the jolted Carpenter instantly recognized him as his staff operations officer.

"Er, what is it, Henry?" he said cloudily, his mind still nebulous from fatigue.

"Sir, we just got a communique in from Brazil -- land-line," Land lines were highly insecure, and if it was a routine, low-risk communication, Henry Dobson would have never interrupted the commander's time for rest and reflection. No, anything coming across a land-line that attracted Dobson's attention -- ergo, Carptenter's attention -- came Priority One with no time to waste. With an Expeditionary Force fleet bearing down on Earth, he could damn well guess the contents.

"All right then," Carpenter got to his feet. "Let's go."

* * *

Valhalla, State of Pará, Brazil

Wolff looked with tired eyes at his assembled staff -- now numbering one more since Louie Nichols' arrival. It hadn't taken long for reality to set in, and now they were left at an impasse.

It had been nearly a month since the Preble had escaped Earth, breaking past the Invid and the REF's cislunar blockade to deliver an intelligence update to exiled United Earth Forces commanders. The spacefold would have taken two months to complete, and that left six months for the Expeditionary Force to update the fleet en-route for Earth.

Colonel Wolff, is what Gardner had said. They don't even know if I'm alive or dead.

He'd been promoted shortly before the Preble punched through the Slugs' planet-side blackout, but the periodic communication lapses between Soldiertown, Point K and AluCE that ultimately led to a complete blackout January meant the Resistance had to hold onto their intelligence 'take' for weeks at a time. After the black out, the Preble was a desparate gamble to get information space-side to the Expedition -- one the Resistance thought they'd pulled off. Somehow, they were wrong -- dead wrong.

Does Expedition know about the Hive Sensors? All the assembled officers asked themselves the same question. The Invid Collective's new theater protoculture sensors had taken the Resistance by surprise -- that, and a number of other things -- when they tried to run interferance against Reflex Point's efforts to cut off communications. Since the Protoculture sensors were passive, yet could pick out out distinct emission signatures associated with protoculture fusion reactions, they weren't encumbered by the Invid's own radio frequency jamming efforts. The enemy's ECM was already way too spectacular for comfort, and their efforts at knocking down UEF communications and spy satellites had been too successful.

They should have at least suspected that the Invid might be trying to develop a theater protoculture sensor. The Slugs spent a lot of time and energy eagerly picking through the wreckages of Tirolian technology leftover from the Second Robotech War, and the Masters had been in possession of devices that could pinpoint protoculture emissions from countless lightyears away. Wolff's best intelligence suggested the Invid could track a single fighter in passive mode all the way out by the moon. Such an advantage, especially if the approaching REF fleet didn't know about it, could prove devastating.

"Well, I've recommended Point K stand by until they receive our signal," Wolff informed his staff. "We've planned for this moment for years, people. It looks like a crucial element of our plan will fail even before the shooting starts, but we at least know what those guys up in space don't. We're short on time, gentlemen. Options?"

"We can break radio contact and tell them straight up, Sir," the operations officers pointed out. "If they don't know we don't have space supremacy anymore, they're gonna walk right into an Invid trap."

"If we do that," Intelligence objected, "we risk pushing the Invid into responding prematurely. We have no evidence that the Invid know the Expedition's returned. If they did, why haven't they launched their carriers yet?"

"Maybe they're setting up the trap," Wolff proposed. "We all know they've been up to something lately. We know they have some advantages that may, conceptually thinking, convince them to try something clever. They were getting a whole lot better at knocking our satellites out of the sky and for months we ignored it. Next thing we know, they've sweeped up all our assets below high MEO. Besides, communicating with them is a no-starter. We still can't burn through their exo-atmospheric jamming net."

"Sir, we haven't even tried," Planning spoke up. "I mean, we have a whole damned Destroyer Squadron on the Macapá tarmac!"

"Farber won't want to risk them until we have the go ahead from whoever's in command of the liberation force," Wolff grimly pointed out. "Besides, we really need to focus on how we're going to accomplish SpecFor's mission. Personally, I don't see how we can. We haven't had much success getting people in place to strike Rondonia Hive.

Louie shook his head in noticable disbelief, earning an angry glare from Wolff. The professor didn't care. He recalled a cardinal rule of command from his days as a tanker during the Second Robotech War. A commanding officer was a source of hope and confidence for his men. Wolff, on the other hand, was obviously tired, anxious and openly punching holes in his subordinate's options and advice. Why isn't he ready to go after the Porto Vello Slugs? Wasn't he responsible for getting those Indians -- Louie's briefs said they were of the Uru and Jabuti ethnologue -- to help out? What'd gone wrong? Leadership, probably. How far had Wolff walked down this path of self-destruction. Louie shivered at the thought, but his face gave the weary general no hint of his failing confidence.

Fifteen minutes later, Wolff had convinced his senior operators that there was little they could do but wait and see. As they gloomily filed out of the room, Louie was suddenly taken with memories of the last time he'd heard this sort of defeatism from Wolff. Once they were alone, the professor found he could no longer contain his frustration.

"I can't believe you actually going to sit this out. I mean -- Jesus, General! Point K's counting on you!"

"Louie, we can't get involved in this. If General Farber can't move against the Invid on our northern frontier -- worse, if he's overrun -- we'll be encircled so fast they'll be sweeping up our body parts before the dust settles. Now we know the Invid won't move against us unless they perceive us as an open threat."

"But, Sir -- "

"Son, I know you're a brilliant scientist," General Wolff cut him off, "but please leave the warfighting to pros."

Louie shut up and even managed to fight off a hurtful glance at the Hero of Garuda. In a way, he knew Wolff made a lot of sense. The Invid were up to something, and if they had anticipated this stage in the war and had prepared properly for it…well, he didn't want to think about the consequences just yet. He stood up to leave without being dismissed. He had to get word to Carpenter about this.

"One more thing, Professor," Wolff said just as Louie reached the door. "I want you packed in three hours. I've arranged to have you transferred to Tokyo."

Louie didn't turn around.

"With all due respect, General," he intoned in quiet anger. "I didn't sign up to run away."

"No, you didn't," Wolff observed with a snort, "but you're too valuable an asset to throw away in the Southlands. My liaisons have already arranged this with General Carpenter. We want you in Tokyo as soon as possible. The Japanese have managed to keep off the Invid radar for some time, now. There are some very interesting developments in Tokyo you really need to see for yourself. If things go bad this time around, we're going to need you there to make sure the Japanese stay onboard. Can you do it?"

Louie hesitated before answering. It'd been two years since he'd fled Yokohama Bay, heading for Pearl Harbor, under the cover of night -- not necessarily just to avoid the Invid, either. Two years since he'd had any contact with the Shimada kireitsu that controlled the Japanese government from behind the scenes. His inherent curiousity, newfound fears and outright disgust with being asked of this mission by General Wolff -- a man he'd once respected and now couldn't help but see in a diminished, almost cowardly light -- wrestled with each other before the strongest finally won out.

"I'll go, Sir."

* * *

East of Macapá, Northeastern Brazil

Operation Sparta Time: -00:55

Nearly two hundred miles to north of Valhalla lay Point K, a space port and the rally point for all Expeditionary Forces in Latin America awaiting the arrival of reinforcements from space. Lieutenant General Michael William Farber, United Earth Marines, had stared down the Invid and brought some semblance of security and order to the Southlands with what was once over five wings of Veritech strikefighters and a full division of Marine Raiders. However, last winter's campaign had whittled his force to two thirds its original strength. Farber doubted he still had capacity for conducting offensive operations, and as of late the Point K had taken on the role of a covering force for Brigadier General Wolff's special operations units. Not the most respectable job in the universe, but it gave Farber time to lick his wounds and reorganize.

From the desk-side window of his three story office building in the valley village three miles to the northeast, he could see the outlines of Destroyer Squadron 36 against the mountains. The warships were grounded shortly after the Invid started knocking the Earth Forces' space-borne installations four months ago. General Farber had just gotten out of a teleconference with his liaisons in Valhalla. If Wolff was right, those ships would be lifting off soon enough. Hopefully they'd come back with reinforcements for his under-strength combined arms task force.

As he mulled these thoughts, he thumbed a Cuban cigar with his left hand. Fortune had it that a shipment had come in through a smuggling operation ostensibly based in Brazil. It amazed him that even while his homeworld was largely occupied by an utterly alien species, trade -- even if it was the new black market -- still persisted between the occupied and the free landmasses of Earth. Life really does march on, that little voice in the back of his head reminded the forty-two year old general. If so, then is the soldier a part of life's natural progression or some aberration hindering it? Farber shook his head, flushing these questions from his mind. His degree was in history, not philosophy.

"General?" General Farber's personal intercom sounded. He turned around and keyed on the speaker.

"Go ahead, Liz."

"Mayor Estevez is here to see you."

"Thanks, Liz. Come right in." The general straightened his uniform. He'd expected this meeting since his civil-relations officer informed the village council four hours ago. The door swung open, revealing a supple teenage clerk followed by a short, stocky man no younger than fifty.

Mayor Juan Estevez had won his first election shortly after the Expeditionary Forces put down. The small suburb survived the destruction of Amapá's capital city, Macapa, in the early days of the Occupation. Since then, a small alliance of Western towns and small cities either worked with the Invid to guard the treacherous passes through the northern mountains or openly sympathized with the collaborators. Estevez was lucky -- or unlucky, if the Invid ever gained a foothold here -- to enter the political arena in "free territory." Since then, he'd worked tiredlessly to ensure relations between his constituents and General Farber's ever alert forces. Today, Farber sadly noted, would change everything.

"What the hell do you people think you're doing?!" the Mayor didn't waste a second before dressing down the Southland's senior military commander. "We've been nothing but good neighbors ever since you show up and now you want us to abandon everything? When exactly were you going to tell us?"

"I'm sorry, Mayor," Farber replied evenly. He'd known the man for three years, and he wouldn't insult him by letting his famous temper flare. "We just confirmed it a few hours ago ourselves. If we're right…well, we both know the risks to the civilians."

"Do we really have such little time?"

"Mayor, I can't say." General Farber conceded. "If this information is accurate, we can expect hostilities anytime now. If I had to guess, I would start packing right now."

"But how am I supposed to move that many -- "

"Sir, our resources are at your disposal. I've ordered the evac task force to commence operations. We've drilled this for years now, Sir. You know we'll do our best."

"And you?"

Farber hesitated. After halting the Invid southward advance three years ago, he would have once thought his force to be the first to roll the Slugs all the way back to Reflex Point. Now --

"Like I said, Sir. We'll do our best."

* * *

Near the Venezuelan Border

A single Pincer flew two hundred kilometers north of the human encampment. Its sensors peered beyond the Collective's frontal positions and at the Enemy's space port. Airspace just forward of friendly lines buzzed with activity as several squadrons of Veritechs took to flight, searching the skies for Invid strikecraft not unlike the solitary recon mecha. They would discover nothing, until it was too late.

Not too far away, a Hive Mind retrieved and quickly assessed the reconaissance data. The Regis herself would apply much of her mental energies in directing the Southern campaign. Once the invaders from space were done away with, then they would finish off the enemy on the surface. If all went to plan, within days the human resistance in the South would be nothing more than a memory.

Across the globe, the minds of every Invid -- from hive worker to the elite commanders of the Invid ground and air forces, swelled in anticipation.

* * *

Earth-Lunar System, Crossing Into Low Earth Orbit

Operation Sparta Time: -00:25

The anticipation ran high as well amongst the returning United Earth Forces in space. The Lee and Reagan battlegroups spent the last hour closing with McCain'sscout group as the whole Division slowly cut across the North Pacific, a haze of blue marred with a growing storm cycle roughly two thousand kilometers below the Lee's keel. The Reagan and her escorts had already crossed out of no-man's land, the dangerous region in Medium Earth Orbit neither Invid nor Earther could claim, forming up on McCain's tail at two hundred kilometers and closing rapidly on the execution point -- Gold Zero. But Lee still had to pass through Black Zone, the region of space at MEO where the Invid jamming field was at its strongest. Pretty soon, the Division would see how much better the Invid had gotten at electronic warfare. All indications from Moon Base suggested they'd improved a lot. However, the Captain of the Lee Teng-hui wasn't about to assign credit without proof. His people were top-notch, better than any Slug.

A calm and collected atmosphere swilled about the bridge, surprising considering the importance of the task at hand. No more than twelve people were present including the Captain, and everybody was comfortably seated behind a large viewscreen situated forward of the workspace. A three-dimensional plot of the Lee, the Reagan, the Scout group and small fields of blue spots representing the naval air cover for the Division had been superimposed on the view of Earth in the viewscreen. If the Captain zoomed in to just beyond McCain, running across the lower right hand corner of the screen and just below the Earth's inverted horizon, he might've spotted the leading fighter squadron -- Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard's SVF-21 -- or elements of Reserve Carrier Air Wing 15 forming the left flank of the Horizont assault shuttle group that formed the spear-tip of the first combat drop wave. He'd actually had a hand in helping the Admiral plan that part of the plan, as he was the Division's skipper with the most experience in planetary assault opertions. He was neither so invested in his contribution to the op-plan or insecure with his skill that he would distract himself by worrying about other people's jobs. He had better things to do.

"How we doing, Chris?" the Captain queried his navigation officer.

"Gold Zero in two zero minutes, Sir."

The Captain nodded softly, taking quiet exception to the seemingly endless waiting. He turned back the main viewscreen. Earth's curvature had grown rapidly in the past hour; at taking up almost three quarters of the visible sky now without magnification. If he peered closely enough, the Captain could see two points of light hanging high over the horizon. Almost a thousand kilometers distant, the exhaust trail from the hot, burning engines of the Lee's forward Burke escorts left a trail that only the strong eyes of a seasoned astronaut could detect.

Well, if the Invid didn't know we were coming they sure as hell know now.

So where the hell are they?

The Captain hated talking to himself, a bad habit he'd managed to fall into before any operation. At least he'd finally gotten enough control over it to do in his head.

"All right. Denise, inform Admiral Guineve that we're in place. XO, I think you're gonna be needed in the CIC."

"Aye aye, Sir," his executive officer walked towards the bridge lift to the aft while Denise moved quickly to carry out her orders.

"Admiral Guineve on the line, Captain."

"On screen."

"Well, Captain." A face not much older than the Captain's youthful thirty-three flashed on screen. "This is it. Are you in place?"

"Yes, Ma'am. We'll be across Gold Zero in…"

"Twelve minutes, Sir," Chris the NAVO filled in.

"Very shortly, Ma'am," the Captain followed up. He could almost feel the anxiety brimming underneath his Admiral's disconcertingly calm and collected expression.

"Good, good," Guineve managed to smile. The Captain returned the favor. He hadn't seen her smile since the rally point at Acrux. In fact, he couldn't remember her smiling at over the past few months. She looked better rested. Good thing she's got Dana Li as her chief of staff, he thought. He and Li had come out of the United Earth Naval Academy at Annapolis years ago. Even if Guineve lived up to her hotheaded, shake'n'baker reputation -- the Captain had an admitted bias towards officers who graduated from the candidate schools instead of the academies -- Li could keep pace with her and make it look obscenely effortless. "Keep up the good work, Captain. Flag bridge out."

As the screen switched back to the overlay of Earth's curvature against the black matte, speckled canvas of space, the Captain's mind returned to the mission at hand. There wasn't any rush yet. They hadn't even hit the ten minute mark. Still, he had a few things to finish up before game time. "Denise?"

"Yes, Sir?" No one would call the technician at the communications console lithe or waspy. Her powerful, voluptuous frame exuberantly eminated feminity while at the same time her brawny musculature left her looking odd and out of place with an ear plug, sitting behind her terminal like some docile secretary at a computer. Not that he'd act on it, but the Captain had to admit she was more than just attractive. That he didn't know that he was breaking his own reward system rules for his subordinate officers by calling an enlisted person by their first name should've spoke mountains about how distracting this particular duty communications tech was. So far, only Chris, his NAVO, had earned the privilege of being called by his first name. It was supposed to be a reward for the performance of his division, not something he did because his horomones had seized his better judgement. How did Chris feel about the fact that he'd called Denise by her first name twice today. How many times had he done it in front of him, or in front of his other officers for that matter.

Oh c'mon. Can't a guy pamper himself every once and a while?

Cut it out, man! You're the friggin' Skipper! "Uh…well, yes. Inform the CAOO he needs to tie in with the Flag. Immediately."

"Aye aye, Sir," Denise's red, full lips pursed and puckered -- or at least the Captain could've sworn they did -- to acknowledge something akin to compliance. "CAOO acknowledges. He's all set."

"Thanks, Denise," After which the Captain silently scolded himself for wasting so much time ogling over an enlisted woman. "Hey, wait a minute. Tracking. What's the deal?"

"Mid-point on the Black Zone now," the docksman standing over the Tracking terminal reported. "The jamming's pretty intense, Skipper."

"That's all right," the Captain said. "We were expecting it."

"Orders from the Flag, switch to lidar and whiskers."

"You heard him," the Tactical Action Officer pointed to his docksman, who promptly complied. Within moments, the entire group was tied into a network of impenetrable, encrypted laser communications and feeding their fire control computers with thin, active laser sweeps. At no other time was the formation more vulnerable. Laser communications -- the whiskers, as communications specialists took to calling them -- required the operator (actually, a computer) to pinpoint a beam directly atop the other ship's receiver. And if the line of sight demanding limitations on the group's mobility weren't enough, active-mode lidar effectively took away their stealth. Well, they'd at least closed to below medium earth orbit -- wasn't that enough to achieve surprise?

"Five minutes to Gold Zero." Helm chimed in.

"Okay, PO. Weps, how green are you?"

Weapons nodded silently as he dispatched orders of his own to the missile and particle beam gun crews spread throughout the ship. "We are green for weapons, Sir. Ready main armament, aye aye."

"All right, Chief Miskey? One Em Cee, please."

"Aye aye, Sir," the bridge bosun, an imposing man who was older than anyone onboard the Lee (arguably the entire Division) and responsible for keeping every enlisted man on every deck and at every bulkhead up to speed, tapped a code into a wall panel console. The bridge microphones focused on the Captain as he bellowed out the order for "general quarters."

"General quarters, Captain, aye aye," Miskey reported. "All decks report they are ready at battlestations."

"Thank you -- "

"Sir! I think you want to see this," Tracking piped up. Before the Captain could turn around the TAO had already walked the three meters over to the docksman's station. "What is it, TAO?"

"Uh hold on a second, Sir." the TAO and the docksman hovered over the console for a few seconds before they threw the object of their interest onto the mainscreen. "Two probable contacts at one seven seven mark six relative, four thousand klicks. Designate Bogey Sierra One, Bogey Sierra Two."

"Solution, TAO?"

"None yet, Captain," the young lieutenant replied. "The passive signal is too weak to get a lock on. I'm trying to filter out the background noise.".

"Firm it up and get back to me, Lieutenant." The Captain frowned. Why only two? "Denise, inform the Admiral we've got company."

"Aye aye, Skipper," The communications operator engaged the tactical database with her terminal, linking the Tracking objects to the data packet she was about to send to the Flag bridge.

"Prepare to illuminate -- "

"Skipper," the docksman called out. "Something's lighting us up!"

What the hell? "Whaddya mean something's lighting us up? We're still two minutes to burn through range!"

"It's something new! The signature keeps changing, but whatever it is it's powerful and it's coming from the planet!"

The Captain hated surprises, especially surprises that ended with him being in the sights of some nasty, hostile Slugs. They were in the densest part of a jamming field, the enemy's jamming field. If they could throw that much jamming power at the top of the low orbitals and still track adversaries in fire control mode…my God!

"Get that information to the Admiral! Chris, plot a new unpowered course for the Bravo outbound perigee and keep updating it until I tell you to execute. I want to put as much planet between us and them before we make our round for Reflex Point."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Good. TAO, get Commander Medgers on the line. I want to know if their flight operations profile is ready."

"Already on it, Sir. The XO and Commander Medgers report they are in the CIC. We're ready when you are."

At some point, the Captain had step aside so Medgers, the Chief Aerospace Operations Officer for the Lee battlegroup's naval air, and his Tactical Action Officer -- by regulations the man who fought the ship in tandem with the CAOO -- could do their job. He hated the thought, but unlike most people here he could recall when as a young, junior grade on with his first cruiser command when an Aerospace Force officer (space naval air used to belong to the UE Space Navy's childhood rival, what was once called the Tactical Aerospace Force) maybe two or three paygrades below the Skipper could effectively take over the ship. The new system specifically provided for a tactical action officer to make sure that Medgers and the airedales remembered that they were guests onboard a regular Navy warship, commanded by a regular Naval officer. Still, the Captain couldn't help but feel that in reality the only thing the TAO did was band together with strangers to steal a few hours of the authority and responsibility that came with the coveted Skipper's Cap.

"One minute to Gold Zero, Captain." The helmsman volunteered just when Admiral Guineve's face appeared on the mainscreen suddenly

"Captain?"

"Yes, Ma'am. You've got our latest Tracking information."

"Yes, Captain. I'm going to start the show a little early, okay? Prepare to transfer combat command to your CAOO."

The Captain simply nodded with professional resignation. This was it; time to let go.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." A few moments later, one of the side screens near the TAO's station was replaced with a view of the CIC and Commander Medgers. For the rest of the battle, the Captain would be essentially a glorified passenger on his own ship.

It didn't take long for the bridge chronometer to click down to zero. As the Lee crossed over into Low Earth Oribt, traveling at ten kilometers per second (a miserably slow velocity, considering that anti-grav drive could propel Lee through space at 300 gravities. However, maintaining orbit kept power usage down, emission signatures low, and consequently reduced the possibility of detection. That, and traveling at velocities two or three orders of magnitude more than necessary to hold orbit would be like blowing past the grocery stoor in a race car.

Almost immediately after Lee exited Black Zone and touched Low Earth Orbit, Admiral Guineve's voice came over the ship's intercom. Her order was simple and to the point; from here on out the Division would follow along the lines of a carefully planned operation developed hundreds of lightyears away. To say that the Captain -- or any skipper with the Division -- was anxious about its prospects for success would qualify as an understatement of epic proportions, especially since he was basically a spectator at this point in the game.

Regardless, the order was given, carried through, and passed on with just three simple, yet forcefully proclaimed words:

"Sparta execute, execute!"

* * *

"Weapons free!" another order, issued by another abstract entity so senior in rank that Marcus couldn't put a face to the voice, raced across the tactical net. Moments later, a field over a thousand kilometers wide suddenly blazed with the exhaust of thousands of fighter-launched missiles racing towards their targets.

Marcus -- when crafted to his Alpha fighter he went by "Mack" -- anxiously locked his eyes on his center display screen. The fire control report from the Flag had been dead on; two waves of Invid Pincer mecha were boosting against Earth's gravitational pull in a mad rush towards the Division. The visual display showed his missiles racing towards them; inch after agonizing inch their signatures crawled across the screen towards the disparate blips representing incoming contact groups.

Contact. The hexagonal flashes sparkling his HUD indicated the good hits, but more than a third of the fighter group's missiles had scattered before making their final attack run, missing their targets completely. Even so, he watched as one hundred and three of the two-hundred and seventy five enemy craft in their sector disappeared into the oblivion -- harmless debris racing towards them in space. Despite the immense UEF advantage in long range, anti-fighter missiles, the Invid Pincers still bore down on the task force. Marcus had grown accustomed to fighting an enemy that remained undeterred no matter what you through at it.

The order to bank across to the Division's flank came moments later, opening up the path for the next wave of fighters to launch their missiles at the enemy laying within the Division's direct path. Somewhere, thousands of kilometers behind them and riding in a lower orbit, one more Invid carrier, a clamshell like affair that could put in space over 400 Pincer mecha -- complete with armor and extended-range boosters, were trying to cut across to head off the task force. The Alpha-Beta Legioses of Strike Fighter Squadron 437 resolved their vectors to intercept the new wave of Pincers climbing up towards Reagan's tail. It took a few minutes, but they were able to commit themselves to a vector that would zero-zero (match location and velocity) with the incoming Invid fighter group in roughly half an hour. In reality, the Legios was two aircraft docked with one another -- the Alpha unit and its larger Beta cousin. While "married," the Beta acted as a booster (the Beta could lift itself and an Alpha Unit into space with a full combat load), reserve reaction mass tank, and a weapons bank chock full of missiles and other goodies.

"Yo, Mikey," Marcus switched his mic to the intercom circuit. "How we looking on reaction mass?"

"So far so good, Mack," Ensign Mike Shipman, the Legios' combat systems operator and -- if and when the two aircraft separated -- the pilot for the Beta fighter sent a read out to the visual displays in Marcus' helmet. "Call it two, maybe three more big burns like that and we're gonna have to re-tank."

"Copy that, give me a check on Bogey Group Two."

"Six hundred, twenty klicks. Nobody's got a good fix yet. It's too damned fuzzy."

Another voice came over across the tactical net. It was Reika: "Bull Leader to Flight. Bull Leader to Flight. Queers hot. Be advised. Queers hot."

Marcus plugged his onboard computer into the tactical data net and called up the positioning display on his forward screen. A Queer squadron -- electronics warfare VE-7 Betas -- were about to suppress the Invid jamming satellites that lay just above and between the converging adversaries. Although he couldn't see it, the display traced lines outward from the Queer group that represented radar seeking missiles. Ten minutes after launch, twenty eight of the impacted thirty six launched detonated on target. It took another two minutes, but the fuzz on the radar display finally cleared up -- a lot.

"Hot damn!" Shipman yelped over the intercom circuit. "I've got a shitload targetable data on those bastards! I count -- shit! One six zero bad guys, Mack!"

Marcus cursed quietly to himself as he watched the distance drop closer and closer towards missile range. If they played it right, the Bulls would cut into range at least three minutes before the Pincers did. That was key, because with only twenty eight fighters in their attack sector to stand between close to two hundred enemy fighters and the Division, they'd have to kill as many as they could as far away from the group as possible.

"Bull Leader to Flight. Range in two zero minutes. Heat'em up."

Marcus checked his missile count against that of the group. The - 201 datalink reported that the Bulls had expended twenty-eight of their sixty-four long range missiles during the first run. He still had a the half load of sixty Tiny Tim short rangers for a close engagement; eventually, they'd want to run those through the works for as long as their reaction mass budget permitted. A fit of excitement took him as he directed Shipman to re-arm the Stilettos, two of which were still in their conformal bays riding along on the side of his Alpha unit's leg thrusters. He wish that the combat profile had called for loading the Beta with their "sure-kill" Switchblades -- anti-mecha missiles with a thousand kilometer range -- but the plan called for keeping the Pincers as far away from the Division for as long as possible. In other words, he needed to get more bang for his buck out of the Legios' total reaction mass budget -- loading out the Beta with a combat configuration would've thrown an extra metric ton of mass per plane that the squadron couldn't afford. Automatically, the combat computer switched the radar from intermittent to search mode. As soon as it identified four enemy targets, it switched to fire control mode and counted down the range.

"Plenty'o'time, Mack," Ensign Shipman reported. "We'll be tone in one five minutes. I'm still searching for surviving group leaders."

Marcus acknowledged with a curt "roger" and turned back to the business of flying the plane. He knew from both his training and experience that the Invid, the quintessence of communism in evolution, utterly relied on the effectiveness of their hierarchal command and communications structure in order to fight effectively. The Expeditionary Force naval aviators had collected the most experience of any other combat community in fighting the Slugs in space. The Queer's had thrown identifiable portions of the incoming Invid fighters into disarray, their radar-hunting missiles homing in on most active sources radiating on that strange bandwidth the Invid used to telepathically communicate with each other. Marcus would ignore the Pincers teams flying in dumb -- some actually falling towards the atmosphere in lemming-like fashion -- and work on those still trying to fight Shipman's sensors. "All right, I got something. One leader at zero-zero seven mark zero-two. Switching target."

One of the target squares displayed on the main screen, the HUD and in Marcus' helmet shifted up and to the left ever so slightly. He hoped to God that Shipman was right; the tactical datalink showed no other Bull fighter trying to pick at his target. "All right, Mikey. That's one shot, got it? Make it count."

"Roger that," Shipman said as he waited for final release order. The last ten minutes slipped by quickly, but not quickly enough. Marcus could already feel the itch creeping on his trigger finger as he awaited authorization from the squadron commander. Soon, the minutes turned to seconds, then the last ten…

"Flight! Weapons freei!" Reika shouted again. "Weapons free! Scatter! Scatter!"

Marcus' two missiles blew out of their conformal bays and into space, their thrusters lighting up a split second after separation. The Stilettos quickly accelerated at nearly forty gravities until both missiles attained two kilometers per second. Cutting across three hundred kilometers gulf between the Alphas and their targets in just under three minutes, the long range missiles etched a vapor trail through the dark sky for as far as the eye could see. No jammer could have stopped them, not with that ELINT flight some sixty miles to the rear supplementing the fighters' fire control. Each missile fell into its final attack fifteen seconds short of their deadly flight's termination, locking onto different targets. Marcus ignored the target block indicating the location of the first Slug Shipman had picked out for him. Instead, he focused on the one covering the command Pincer's desparate attempts to avoid a bright, golden "kill" hexagon.

As soon as he confirmed his kill with the telescope, he threw the Legios into a tight right bank and turned away from the incoming bogies. Within a matter of half-an-hour, Marcus and the Bulls had decapitated two thirds of the enemy fighter squadrons. That still left over a hundred survivors, and those bastards were determined to close the range. Marcus understood that Reika wanted to open up the distance a bit before going head to head with those bastards. At these velocities and with the squadron's reaction mass budget running low, they had no choice but to commit to a close range battle. Still, he wish he could have killed more of the leaders before getting into a knife fight with these bastards.

"Contact in four zero seconds," Reika announced. "Get ready people, it's not Miller time yet. Go to Battloid in two minutes. Bull Leader out."

Marcus checked in once more before recalculating his vector. They were heading back towards the McCain -- already falling back to the rear to cover their return and trap them. "You ready to go home, Mikey?"

"Fuck yeah, Mack. Ready for release."

With the flip of a switch, Marcus disengaged the Legios' docking clamps. His Alpha fighter's vernier thrusters pushed him gently forward and down from the Beta unit as they separated. Moments later, Shipman took the stick for his plane and punched the thrusters. They'd proceed back to the McCain to refuel, but when they came back they'd come complete with a short range combat load-out (and the Legios' from SVFA-31) and a new full combat reaction mass budget before the Alpha's went Winchester and Bingo on their internal tanks. The Legios system maximized the fighter firepower a single ship could put in space for any given duration of time, but it would work only if Marcus and his buddies could stall the Invid bastards creeping up from behind.

"We're out of here, Bull Flight," Marcus heard Reika's CSO and Beta unit pilot announce over the tac-net as he watched his CSO and others maneuvering their Beta's on the leader. "Good hunting."

"Copy that, Rear One," Reika acknowledged. "See you in a few."

The Beta fighters kicked in one last burn as they set off for towards McCain. It was up to the Alpha aviators now. The squadron commander's spoke again, her voice level yet with a tinge of excitement as she readied her troops for the deadliest aspect of a space naval aviator's career."

"Bull Leader to Flight. We still got some Slugs to kill. Go to Battloid, people."

Marcus was already moving, his fingers depressing the key marked "B" to the left side of his display. The airframe whined as the stresses of reconfiguration strained the body up to the edge of the envelope. Within seconds, however, his fighter had been replaced with a six meter tall, anthromorphic machine armed with a carbine-like autocannon. Marcus used the vernier thrusters to bring him in close to the rest of the flight. Moments later, the order to engage the enemy ripped into his ears.

Just one simple word -- "Tallyho!" -- and the dying began anew.

* * *

Earth-Lunar System, High Earth Orbit

Operation Sparta Time: +01:49

Circumstances made it extremely difficult to coordinate, but the Collective was adept in conducting complex operations with dispersed forces. Their own efforts to jam enemy communications and sensors had inhibited the ability of the Royal Hive to guide them and console them in these uncertain times, but their path had been decided long before this day.

The carrier group had advanced on the new enemy under a cloak of deception, covering the distance from its station on the far side libration point slowly. This way, the preserved precious precious reaction mass and reduced the chances that the formidable sensors the humans had installed on this world's moon and throughout lunar orbit would detect their engine signatures. Defeating the human's minefield had also been very difficult, but the Collective had provided him with a minesweeper -- a derivation of the snail-like capital ship type that had recently been retired from service -- worthy of his task. Months passed by before anti-mine operations could quietly clear a path for his carriers. Still, as they inched closer and closer towards their prey the carrier group's Commander the knew the effort was entirely worth it.

As a royal with a mind purpose evolved to lead, the Commander knew that even despite their efforts to the contrary, the probability of being detected by the enemy base on the Moon game was very high -- especially at this late stage in their approach. Even so, the jamming operations in medium earth orbit would make it difficult for the humans to relay their contact information to the attacker or even keep their own contact reports properly updated. Still, deception was not without consequences. In another hour or so, they'd cross the jamming perimeter, making it ever more difficult to maintain the link with the Collective. Still, the Commander knew his duty. They had the advantage of surprise, an powerful telescopes that had located all of the enemy's ships and intelligent hive-mind computers to keep them locked on target, and the high ground. He was uncomfortable with commiting himself to a close enveloping action, but the Commander understood the reasons why he had been ordered to look specifically for an oblique opening. The Planners had foreseen and the optical data confirmed the enemy's intensions to devote a good portion of his strength to protecting his rear. After all, the ECM activity in the far-side libration points had probably tipped them off to a potential Invid threat in that direction. Still, it was unlikely that the humans could have seen him move his carriers out of station; by the time they figured out what he had done, they would have to spend a lot of time and effort trying to relay that information

When the range closed to fifteen thousand kilometers, he queried the Collective again -- this time reaching it through the painful noise eminating from the jamming satellites his comrades had deployed over the azure globe -- appraising his carrier and fighter group commanders of the situation on the battlefield. One of his many sisters, leading the carrier group that was attacking the invaders from the front, had performed better than the Planners had expected. The new tactics worked well, overwhelming the enemy's strikefighter fire control and forcing their warships into close action with suicide runners. Some had already been damaged, but none destroyed. No matter. When he reached the battlefield, he'd force them to consider a whole new axis of threat. They would kill many of his people, the warrior drones piloting the Pincer units, but they would die as well. They had the numbers to spare; such is the grim mathematics of attrition.

* * *

Earth-Lunar System, Low Earth Orbit

Operation Sparta Time: +01:56

"This doesn't look good," Admiral Guineve noted for the eighth time in the past hour. Captain Li sighed and continued to scan through the reports. "We're too open, they're exploiting the gap around the King and moving to the center."

Captain Li would have nodded in agreement only if the Admiral's obvervation had been anything but obvious. McCain's fighters had been diverted to cover Reagan against a new Invid carrier attack coming up from the European continent. Unfortunately, doing so had left the fighter screen towards the front so questionably thin that Li was only starting to understand the implications.

"Admiral!" the flag communications officer almost screamed across the bridge. Guineve and Li whirled about to face the left bulkhead.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Li got out the question before her Admiral did.

"King signaling! Enemy fighters just broke through her point defense screen. They're coming about -- shit! Admiral, King says enemy fighters are lining up to ram her!"

* * *

Missiles ripped through the enemy ship's barrier and drive fields, savaging the hull with merciless hatred. The Pincers expended their long-range missiles, and closed to make the best use of their directed-energy armoment. They died by the tens -- by the hundreds -- but they did not die alone. More than twenty Invid craft attempted to fly kamikaze into the warship's dorsal hull. Only three made it through the point defense, but that was more than enough. Just one of them hit the vital point just aft of the enemy destroyer's forward command decks.

* * *

"King just dropped out of the net, Ma'am!"

"My God," Admiral Guineve's face paled, fear flashed across her face and simultaneously through the mind of anyone in earshot of her aide. The King linked all the ships in the forward assault line. If she was dead, then the fleet had just lost its front-line fire coordination platform. Guineve's forward assault shuttles were now fully exposed to enemy fighters. Taking McCain off the line to cover their rear had been a mistake, or had it? What alternative did she have?

She desperately turned to her chief of staff . "Li?"

Captain Li kept her calm, permitting only a frown to break her expressionless image. She resisted the urge to field the question herself, turning to the operations officer instead. It was her purview anyway. "Celia?"

"We can back up through McCain or Catfish," the young lieutenant commander stationed to the Admiral's left proposed, "but we shouldn't expose the destroyer like that. We put McCain on our starboard flank for a reason, and she's already deployed her planes. It'll take Catfish time to fall back, but -- "

"I need Catfish where she is," Guineve interrupted Celia, much to Li's surprise. "Can she get in line faster without trapping her birds?"

The suggestion threw ice down the length of Li's spine.

"Ma…ma'am?" Captain Li stuttered. "You're not serious are you? McCain traps an entire wing!"

"We can cycle them through Reagan, Gonzalez and the rest of the flank decks," Guineve rationalized, with much less confidence than junior officers should expect their flag officers to exude. "We'll take a hit in turn around rate, but we have to break through. I need McCain's guns up front; her fighters can wait. Order one squadron to trap on McCain to provide her screen, but I want her on the line in the next hour."

Li couldn't believe what she was hearing. She knew the group orders, and nothing warranted throwing the entire task force into harms' way in this manner. Nobody really expected the Invid to get to the King, but this new tactic of swarming small craft in overwhelming numbers had taken its toll throughout the Division's entire offensive depth. Even so, doctrine said you couldn't successfully assault a planet without a forward datalink. Instead, Admiral Guineve -- for whatever reason -- felt compelled to drive on; Li could see it in the Admiral's uneasy expression. If they opened up their flank again, the Invid might have an opening to savage the fleet, and one look into Guineve's eyes told Li all she needed to know -- there was nothing she could do to stop it!

Her fears were all too promptly realized.

"Admiral! We're back in touch with Moon Base Luna. They've been trying to flash us a new contact report for the past fifteen minutes. Tracking two new contacts originating from L4. Designate new contacts Sierra Six and Sierra Seven, bearing one two two at twelve thousand kilometers!"

"What?! On screen!"

My God, was all Li could think as a new, horrific picture finally came into focus.

* * *

"New orders, people." Reika sounded tired. Well she should be; she'd just been fighting the squadron through hell, and of the sixteen planes that SVFA-437 had put in space during the first cycle, only ten were on their way back home. "We're gonna trap with McCain and move forward -- and it's just gonna be us. Form up."

What? Marcus thought. What about the rest of the wing? However, there wasn't to time for debate. They were already about ready to cycle in for a re-tank -- filling up on reaction mass. Still, the Line was over five thousand kilometers away. Marcus guessed the Flag could run the rest of the wing through Reagan; how well it would work was neither within his scope of expertise to judge nor his job to assess. The Admiral's staff had signed off on the plan, and that was that as far as he and the rest of his squadron mates were concerned.

So, Marcus checked his reaction mass to make sure he had enough to get back to McCain -- he did -- and turned to form up with the rest of the squadron. Ten minutes later, McCain finished trapping all of the Bulls' planes and turned back towards the forward line. Her thrusters lit up once again just as her ECM shifted back to maneuver mode. For the second time today, McCain abandoned a field of debris and carnage to re-locate to another.

* * *

"McCain's in position and launching fighters." The staff operations officer announced quietly. Captain Li ignored it, concentrating on the gap that was widening in Lee's starboard flank fighter screen. Taking McCain away had been a mistake from a purely tactical perspective, just giving Lee's engagement area. Then again, Guineve was right. Catfish couldn't move back to coordinate fire control; they needed her for coordinate the forced landing on Reflex Point. Moving McCain to the front had taken some of the heat off the landing forces, but at what cost?

"Admiral, our flank doesn't look to good," Li finally leaned over to whisper in Guineve's ears. "We're too slow in meeting these new fighter groups."

"I know, Captain." Guineve didn't take her eyes off the main screen, which was for the moment relaying data back from the landing force. Ten minutes earlier, the Cole had signaled an "all hands evacuation" and moments later detonated in space. McCain had arrived just in time to help take the heat off Ramage, and the extra space they'd achieved by leaving most of RCVW-15 to cover the Lee did speed up turn-around time in the front. Still -- "I need McCain where she is. So long as -- "

"Admiral! Signal from Reagan." Everybody turned to see the officer at Tracking, eyes wide open, stare increduously at his display. "Enemy fighter group has broken through our left flank! Heading for the Gonzalez!"

Guineve's face went white: "Celia! Can Gonzalez move within range of our screen and covering fire?"

"Not before the bad guys catch -- wait a minute." Celia paused as she considered the data Reagan had real-timed over to Lee. "They're definitely kamikazes; looks like some of them are vectoring to target Reagan. Two nine seconds to impact."

There was nothing they could do as they watched the point defense guns on both Reagan and Gonzalez desparately fill empty space with beams of light. Of the twenty that broke through the fighter screen, four had been picked off by pursuing Legios units. Ten more feel to Reagan's point defense lasers, but Gonzalez wasn't shooting back at her attackers for some reason. The surviving Pincers, two on Gonzalez and four on Reagan, dropped below the effective horizon of both ships' point defense and rushed in at oblique angles to their targets' aft hulls. Three of the four targeting Reagan missed completely, falling rapidly back into her firing scope where they were quickly destroyed. However, the slower one found its mark just aft of the reflex furnace spaces. For a moment, it looked as if the battlecruiser was on the verge of tearing apart, but as the seconds passed by it was clear that the superstructure was holding together -- for now.

Gonzalez wasn't so lucky. Both of her suicide runners dipped under the "waterline" and aimed for the fighter bay -- the weakest structure onboard a Burke destroyer. The leader smashed just nigh of the starboard-aft side, opening the bay to space. The second one penetrated the weak rear shielding only a few meters port of the leader's impact point. The Pincer survived long enough to savage the fighter munitions racks towards the rear of the underslung bay before it exited back into space. The pilot apparantly lived long enough to pull his kamikaze up ever so slighty as to ensure impact with the meson gone. A fireball tore the Gonzalez's underside structures free from the main hull, leaving vast tracts of unprotected the ventral-side hull torn open and exposing the lower decks to space.

"Reagan doesn't look so -- fuck!" Tracking suddenly stopped in the middle of the contact update. "Gonzalez is streaming air, Ma'am! Looks like she's going to -- "

The world caught up with the Flag bridge staff faster than Celia could explain it. They all watched as Gonzalez's runaway reflex reactor detonated into thermonuclear fire. Within a blink of an eye a blinding flash seized the entire field of view and then subsided into gently sparkling nothingness.

A perfunctory "dear, Lord" was all Li could manage before yet another disaster seized the Flag Staff's attention.

Lee's point defense was the best in the Fleet. Her gunnery crews had taken home top honors for the past three fleet exercises. However, even the best in the business were bound to make mistakes from time to time; only in war, even the smallest mistakes could be fatal.

One Pincer was all it took. The point defense guns on the dorsal deck had killed four of his friends from ten kilometers away, but they were already training on a new set of victims when that sole survivor burst through the cloud of fragments to bear down on a gap in Lee's pinpoint barrier defense. Before the crews could override the targeting computers and reaim for the kamikaze, the Pincer broke past the minimum arc for the point defense guns and tore into the armored hull just below Lee's command sail.

He came in hard, but at such a low angle that most of the force was deflected into the rest of the superstructure, softening the blow. Still, that wasn't enough to protect the people who had virtually no warning before the suicide runner hit the ship.

An unknowable span of time passed by before Li came to. Carefully, she hoisted herself up against the bulkhead she hit when the kamikaze impacted. Instinctively grasping for the sharp pain that throbbed against the back of her head, only to pull her hand away and feel the dark, sticky wetness against her hair. Slowly, she rose to her feet, testing her balance before stepping away. It was so dark, and it wasn't long until she lost her balance.

"Watch yourself, Captain," a hand reached out to steady her. Li suddenly realized her eyes were closed. She blinked a few times to clear them of smoke and blood before taking stock of her helper. It was Celia, the operations officer. She carefully positioned herself under Li's left armpit to buddy carry her away from the crumpled bulkhead, steering her clear from the live wires sparking wildly in the acrid, smoke-filled air. "You took a nasty hit to the head."

"I noticed," Li managed a small laugh. "I'm all right. Where's the Admiral."

Celia said nothing as she let Li take a few steps on her own.

"Celia? Where's the Admiral?"

Li looked down at the deck. A few feet away she watched as a corpsman fussed over a bloodied and battered body with its legs trapped underneath a pile of scrap metal and bolted cushioning. All of a sudden, she realized that she was looking at the command deck, and the victim wore the purple and green of a Navy flag officer.

"Oh shit. Oh my god."

Li stumbled over to her fallen admiral, dropping to her knees just as the corpsman was testing her blood pressure. She looked pleadingly at the young petty officer, a man barely eighteen years of age who carried out his duties with the same dispassionate bearing as he exhibited in front of all his patients. This time, her eyes met his as they communicated the obvious. The corpsman shook his head and rose to his feet, turning his attention to another victim moaning in pain. Li quickly moved to take his place, drawing up Admiral Guineve's broken body up onto her lap, cradling her commanding officer's head within her arms. One of the Marines that had come to assist the corpsmen with their duties moved to Li's side. There was still a job to do.

"Captain? Commander Seilly, the ship's XO, wants you to know that the Captain is badly hurt. That makes you the Division's senior officer. He recommends transferring your flag. My CO says the same. We've got to move you now."

Li looked up at him with the same blank look she'd held since she'd first seen the Admiral like this. Then her eyes scanned the rest of the carnage. At the communications station, where a young girl barely twenty years old had kept the Fleet informed of the Admiral's will, was covered in blood and gore; a broken, gruesome mess of flesh, bone and fluid replacing a once plain yet mildly attractive face and a stylish, close-cropped head of brown hear. The body of a docksman she'd never seen before today had been sliced in half by a bulkhead that had violently buckled. The images of so many victims seized her mind and body, leaving her almost limp. But she still held onto the Admiral, and the weak yet steady heaving of Guineve's chest finally drew Li's eyes back to her fallen CO.

"Ma'am? It's me. Captain Li. Can you hear me?"

Guineve coughed violently, her arms too limp to lift a hand to her mouth. Li didn't care. A woman she'd served so many years with lay dying in her arms. "Li? Li? Is that you?"

"It's me, Ma'am. You took a nasty fall."

"Not…not going to make it?"

Li didn't answer. She'd seen death to many times to lie to someone about to meet it for the last time.

"Get…them…out of here." One last breath, a violent fit of shakes, and then Bella Abregano Guineve's eyes closed forever.

"Ma'am, you heard the Admiral." The corporal insisted. Celia, tugging at Li's shoulder nodded in agreement. They succeeded in wresting Li from the Admiral's dead body, struggling to drag her back to her feet. Dumbfounded, the chief of staff stared blankly at her two rescuers.

"You have to transfer the Flag, Ma'am," the operations officer reminded her. "It's time to go, Captain."

Li need more time to think, to take it all in. But that was time she didn't have. She was it, the senior officer in a decapitated chain of command. The Admiral was dead, as was General Morgan. General Gamboa was out of touch. Lee's Captain was severely injured. There was nobody else. Everyone who'd survived, everyone who whatever power that ultimately held life and death in the palm of its hand had decided should live a little while longer, would die here and now if she didn't step up to the plate.

Training finally conquered fear, saddness and raw nausea, allowing her to make that necessary decision. Li rose to her feet by herself, reaching down deep into herself to refresh her strength. "All right. Let's get to the boatbays. Celia, signal all hands evacuate and call back McCain. That's where we're going."

"But ma'am!" the operations officer protested. "If we do that we'll have to call off the landing!"

"No shit, Commander," Li said coldly, finally following her Marine escort to the emergency exit lift. "but we're done here. We've been beaten. I'll signal the disengage order from McCain, all right? After your done here clear the bridge."

Tears almost swelled up in Celia's eyes as the gravity of the situation finally sunk in. With both battlecruisers out of commission, six of their twelve destroyers and countless Horizont troop shuttles already destroyed or damaged beyond utility, they couldn't hope to follow through with a landing. They're only hope for survival meant retreating back to lunar orbit. Li saw through Celia's despair and felt sorry for having pointed out the obvious to the Admiral's operation officer and chief advisor on planning matters. No, she's mine now, isn't she? Celia had been responsible in no small way for developing and executing Sparta's plan, and in some sense -- a Board of Inquiry would see it that way -- she bore some responsibility for its failure. Captain Li still hadn't felt the full weight of her new responsibility, but it would have to wait.

She had a job to do.

* * *

"Beans! Six o'clock -- oh fuck!" Marcus felt his stomach lurch as his telescope homed in on an up close view of Lieutenant Monica -- "Beans" -- Lee's bird being ripped to pieces by three, devilish looking Pincers. Only Shipman's incessant screaming knocked him back into reality. Jesus, not Monica. So many of his friends, some for years, were lifeless corpses floating amongst the strewn debris. He stowed his grief in that special place warriors hid their pain and suffering, turning his anger back into the deadly focus his training had prepared him for and now demanded of him. Shipman quickly targeted the Pincers that had killed their mutual friend, leaving Marcus the unwanted pleasure of finishing them off. The two short-range launchers riding the rear fuselage two belched nine of his Tiny Tim missiles. They formed in groups of three as they closed the ten klicks between his Legios and Monica's final resting place. The Pincers barely had time to react before each missile group found their targets and detonated. When three speckles of light reported across his canopy, the vengeful feelings that had taken him for a minute subsided into nothingness.

Fight it, man. He told himself. A lot of people had died today, his friends and friends of fellow officers. More still would. Finally, he broke the top of his depressing hump and poured himself back into the mission. Just in time, too. Two Pincer units had closed within five hundred meters before Shipman could get off a warning. Almost instinctively, he switched his fire control over to the main cannon and licked off a hundred rounds at each Slug. This time, his fire had landed on the lead Pincers' reactor; it blew up into a spectacular, blinding flash that, when it finally dissipated, left no enemies within his reach.

"Bull Four to Leader," he managed not to choke as he finally got around to the hardest, saddest job of any aviator's career. "I just lost Bull Five. Repeat, Beans and Cactus are down. Beans and Cactus are down."

There was a brief moment of silence -- Marcus couldn't tell if Reika was as shocked by the news as he was or if she was busy with her own problems. Finally, she spoke up. "Copy that, Bull Four. Form up with Bull Seven. We lost Eight, too. Also…Captain Houston's dead."

It was almost too much to bear. Marcus hadn't known the CAG personally, but like every other aviator and crewman with the Wing he had looked up to him as the unit's father figure, the man who had the responsibility and authority to send the Bulls and her sister squadrons into harm's way and bring them back. He wanted so desparately to cry out something, but Reika wasn't finished yet.

"Orders from the Air Chief. I'm to pass you off to Squadron Two One and Catfish. Commander Bernard needs help getting the first wave dropships through the enemy fighter concentration. Looks like you're going dirt-side, Lieutenant. Bull Leader out."

Steve, Lin. Marcus thought. Now there were only eight Bulls left. "Bull Leader, we're getting killed out here! You need me!"

"Fuck you, Four!" the rebuke came as quick as it was sharp, and Marcus felt almost ashamed for letting loose like that. "Form up on Seven or I'll kill you myself! Is that clear?! Acknowledge!"

Marcus managed a weak "roger" as he set his vector for another Legios thirty kilometers on his two o'clock. Shipman didn't say a word as his Beta's thrusters kicked in, sending both aviators hurtling towards a new killing field.

* * *

Dana Li had taken the last boat off of Lee along with the surviving Flag staff. The boat's pilots had put just over two hundred meters between their craft and Lee's dying hulk when the inevitable finally engulfed all of space around them.

Two more suicide runners had penetrated the desparate and diminishing fighter screen only to find a massive target unwilling or unable to defend itself. Li could almost imagine the mindless glee that must've overtaken those two Slugs as they aimed their craft straight for Lee's engine spaces. The first one had misjudged its vector and slammed into the port-side thruster assembly, but the second found its mark just milliseconds after the already weakened containment fields enveloping the battlecruiser's gravity drives collapsed. The combined effect was spectacular; the drives distingrating the rear of the ship just as the reflex furnace gave way and finished the job.

The deadly shell of debris racing outward from the explosion miraculously missed her boat as it expanded into space. Two other escapees were not so lucky. Li felt strangely numb as she watched the hailstorm of wreckage end the lives of forty seven of Lee's crew.

In the distance, a minute pinprick of light in a small sliver of vacuum that Reagan had once occupied instantly ballooned into a small circle, disappearing just as quickly.

* * *

"There they are, Captain," the officer of the deck announced as Captain Galen confirmed it with his own eyes. Reagan and Lee were gone, both from catastrophic engine casualties inflicted by the suicide runners. Ironically, the Invid willingness to concentrate all their Pincers on the center of the Division's formation had taken a lot of the heat off the forward units.

"All right, try and find Li's boat. Also, get me Saks on the line."

"Aye aye, Sir," the OOD somberly acknowledged the order. Today had been hell for everybody.

Barely five seconds passed before the Air Chief was on Galen's armrest viewscreen. "Let me guess, Sir. Bring'em in?"

"And quickly. We're going to have to pick up some stragglers in the center. It looks like we're pulling back to Moon Base."

"Sir, how much time do I have? I'll need a half hour to try and trap all my planes."

Galen paused to gather his thoughts. How can I do this. "Commander, we're not going to have time to pick up everybody. We'll have to think that one through later. Get our screen back in -- you've got ten minutes."

Saks looked as if he already knew and had resigned himself to that answer. "All right. Any orders for the ones we're leaving behind?"

"Nothing yet, Commander." Deciding the fate of the men and women -- some friends, all compatriots -- who flew the birds was up to the wing commander. "I imagine most of them are going to be transferred over to the Catfish and the rest of the assault division. They're committed to reentry, so there's nothing we can do from this end."

"Very well, Sir." Saks sullen face grew even darker. "I'll pass that along to my fliers. I'll bring'em home."

"Thank you, Commander," Captain Galen muttered weakly. "I'll contact you as soon as we've got a fix on Captain Li's boat. Bridge out."

With that, the screen went blank, leaving the Captain to quietly wonder how many of those young aviators would live to see tomorrow.

* * *

Reentry Vector Six Dog Alpha To Reflex Point, Over the Atlantic Ocean

Operation Sparta Time: +02:14

Before the Catfish took its first hit, Danny Barnes was already in his skinsuit and CVR-3 armor. His console was tied into the assault shuttle's defense radar, but he'd lost Bernard's transponder signal early in the engagement. Shit, he thought as he suddenly figured out where the Catfish's current vector was taking him.

That's when the missile impacted with the aft-starboard engine.

Danny was tossed ten meters across the flight deck and into a Marine Sergeant barking orders at his squad to brace for missile impact. The lights flickered violently for a minute or so before they finally came back on. The only thing Danny could feel was a sharp pain on his ass and his pride sting from not having secured himself at his station as his training dictated.

"What the fuck's goin'on here?" Sergeant Adams swore as he climbed out from underneath Danny helped the plane captain to his feet.

"That was a missile. Sounds like it hit somewhere close." And for the first time Danny, was surprised that the paper-thin bulkheads separating the main bay from outerspace wasn't streaming air.

"Looks like the Man's going to try and planetfall this bird."

"White people. Hey, wait a minute! Didn't the PA just say we'd takin some pretty bad scoring on the underbody shielding?"

"Tell me about it," Danny said, tossing through the lockers. Where the hell is it? "Save it for later. We've gotta get our people ready to punch outta here."

"Whaddya mean, Chief?"

"You ever wonder what happens when one hundred tons of partially stripped alloy hits a nitrogen-heavy atmosphere?"

"Huh?" Adams replied with the characteristic dumbfoundedness Marines reserved for Navy technobabble.

"Well, let's just say that unless the Commander's really lucky, you don't want to be around to see it. Strap this on." Danny tossed Sergeant Adams a skin suit. Adams nodded and helped his people, already suited up, to the boatbay. Danny's crew was already warming it up for evacuation.

Just as Adams confirmed that the first emenrgy boat had cleared the Catfish, another missile impacted. A massive shock ran through the shuttle's entire infrastructure, this time sharper and harder than any before. Adams was knocked to his feet midway through snapping the skinsuit collar in place. A bulkhead buckled and nearly cut Adams head off as it flew into the port-side escapd pod rack. Unfortunately, two of Danny's techs that had stayed behind to help their chief weren't so lucky. It took all of the Chief's raw nerve to keep his heaving his lunch.

"What the fuck -- "

"Shh!" Danny cut him off quickly. A calm followed the reverberation, but pretty soon the world around him starting vibrating again -- worse than before. "Fuck, they must of sheered off a stabilizer. Sergeant, we're getting out of here."

"How -- "

"These," Danny pointed to two escape pods. The bulkhead that had torn his people apart had nearly ripped into them, but the pods' indicators were still lit green.

"We're in the middle of fucken reentry!"

"So?" Danny looked at him, a frustrated, anxious look on his face. "We gotta better chance in those pods than staying here. Don't argue with me. Just get'em prepped."

"All right, Chief," Adams nodded. The kid was excitable, Barnes thought, but professional enough to know his job. In any case, he had to do one more thing. Running back to the rear, he quickly found the comm terminal and clicked the circuit to the bridge.

"Skipper, this is Alpha Bay."

"Go ahead, Barnes," Commander Gardner's voice pierced through the awful racket.

"We're a total loss down here, Skipper. I don't think we can get Commander Barnes back onboard. Somehow, I don't think you expect me to."

"That's right, Chief," Danny could detect the disturbing finality in Gardner's voice. "I want you and anyone else down there out of there now."

"And you, Sir?"

"Wish us luck, Chief. We're going to try and cut through, but it doesn't look good right now. You got four minutes to get the hell out of here, so make it count."

"Aye, aye, Sir. Alpha Bay out." With that, Danny killed the circuit. He was too worked up -- his adreneline flowing too hard -- to really feel anything but excitement. That Gardner had just told him he didn't expect to survive this craziness hadn't hit Danny yet; it wouldn't for some time.

Behind him, he heard Adams shouting: "Chief! Time to punch out, man!"

"Gotcha!" Danny shouted, making his last sprint back forward. Suddenly, another shock ripped through the deck. Danny was thrown six meters forward before crashing into the bulkhead. Adams saw the whole thing. A split second later, Danny felt 105 kilos of raw Marine lift him into a fireman's carry. The Sergeant, miraculously, made the last ten meters at full sprint -- as if Danny's 87 kilos didn't even matter.

"It's my leg, man!"

"Relax, Chief. I gotcha." Adams shoved Danny back first into the escape pod. With drilled-in effortlessness, the Marine strapped the aviation mechanic into the seat, sealed the pod, and activated the ship-side eject sequence. Ten seconds later, the magnetic chamber shot Danny's pod into space. See you dirt-side, buddy.

Adam's admired his handiwork before strapping into his own pod. But just as he depressed the eject key, another explosion rocked the assault shuttle. What Sergeant Clayton Adams would never know was that the last eruption took the Catfish with it

As his escape pod blew away from the Catfish, shrapnel from the engine fixtures rear-ended him. Two pieces lodged into the reaction mass tanks just behind his head. There was no leak. The slush hydrogen, now exposed to the ultra-hot atmosphere racing along the pods contoured body, ignited almost immediately.

Danny never saw the pinprick of light, almost forty kilometers behind him, marking Adams' final resting place.

* * *

They were too late, coming just in time to watch the Catfish glaze the atmosphere with fire and debris. By that time, Marcus, Shipman and the Alpha-Beta Legios crew known as Bull Seven were already running to low on reaction mass to decommit from reentry.

"You see Commander Bernard?" Marcus clicked the circuit to his CSO as he watched the explosion . At ten o'clock low, almost a hundred kilometers forward and starboard, he saw the space around the Catfish morph into an arrow of flame, spewing shrapnel in all directions. Eventually, the cloud of debris formed an umbrella almost twenty kilometers wide. Shit, was all Marcus could say.

"Nothing, Mack," Ensign Shipman replied. "God, I hope he was clear when she went."

"Mack to Godfather. What do you see?"

"Zilch, Mack." Bull Seven's Alpha pilot's voice filtered through the tactical net. "Looks like -- "

No one saw it coming, but one second Bull Seven was coasting gently in formation with Marcus and Shipman and the next second they were gone. Marcus watched as Bull Seven's blip on the radar screen turned dead green.

"Fuck!" Ensign Shipman cried out, but he kept his head long enough to throw the radar into search-mode. "Pincer at eight o'clock high -- ten klicks! He's headed right for us!"

"Can you see him? Can you see him?"

"Two klicks -- he's shooting!"

Marcus didn't wait for the data to show up on his screen. He pulled up hard until Earth's rapidly approaching curvature fell beneath his nose. He couldn't separate now, he couldn't get in line to shoot back, he'd just have to hope --

The annihilation disks overshot his canopy by just meters, close enough to almost force him to do something really stupid -- like jam the throttle up and the nose down. Instead, he held his cool and counted to five. Then he watched as the Pincer's radar blip crossed behind him, missing its chance to get on his six. He was dropping too fast -- way too fast to break out of the unhealthy reentry vector he was committed to no matter how much reaction mass he tanked. "That was close."

Two more friends, he added silently. It was just a matter of time now. He resolved his vector for Reentry Eight Bravo--the alternate reentry path. If all went according to plan, it would take half an hour to land at Point K. After all, he didn't want to go to Reflex Point with nothing about his CSO if he could avoid it.

Not that fate would let them off that easy: "Hey, Mack. See what I see?"

Marcus looked up and to the right as his helmet overlayed new data across his visor. Hundreds of lines were stretching out towards the planet -- the computer identified them as escape pods and fighters. His radar couldn't find McCain, or the Division's capital ships for that matter. "Jesus, who the hell planned this clusterfuck?"

"Beats me, Mack," Shipman shrugged audibly. "I just hope -- "

For the umpteenth time, Marcus' CSO was interrupted by circumstances. A red flash over one of the escape pods -- apparantly from the Catfish -- signaled trouble. Instinctively, he keyed the guard signal. "Hey, Pod Six Two Six. What's the problem?"

Static.

"Pod Six Two Six, this is Bull Four. Come in, Six Two -- "

"Help…!" the reply came back before more the signal succumbed to more static. Marcus peered at the diminutive metal box through his telescope and noticed it was tumbling. A second later, Marcus knew why.

"Shit, that guys stabilizing thrusters must be off-line!" He checked the range -- about one hundred twenty lateral kilometers and growing at a rate of six kilometers per minute. It was on the same general reentry vector as the Catfish.

"So? He'll live," Shipman noted diffidently. Escape pods were designed to withstand reentry even if their stabilizers went out. The unlucky bastard inside the pod would probably get bruised and such, and landing near Reflex Point was never a fun thing. Except --

"How the hell is he gonna land if he can't stabilize to deploy the shoot?"

Shipman didn't answer. Marcus didn't waste any time resolving his vector to intercept the pod.

"We're gonna go in too high to hit Point K, Mack!" Shipman reported as he checked their new vector. They were eyeballing it for Reflex Point.

"Jesus, Mikey! If we don't catch that bastard, he's dead for sure. I'm not gonna watch somebody else die if I can stop it. We're gonna punch in here!"

Shipman muttered a curse under his breath as both braced for reentry. A minute later, both Alpha and Beta airframes -- the Beta's legs extended to cut into the Legios' terrible forward momentum -- shook violently as Earth's atmosphere thickened and brushed up against their combined heat shields. Marcus remained calm -- he'd experience worse onboard a Horizont shuttle that had been forced to do an aero-braking maneuver in Fantoma's far thicker atmosphere -- but Shipman was yelping like a little girl. "Calm down, Mikey! Three minutes!"

God, I hope that guy's all right. It'd be at least five minutes before his sensors and comm systems stabilized enough to locate and pick up the escape pod. He ran the mass numbers in his head again and tried to assure himself that he'd come out right on top of him, or at least close enough to do something before he hit the dirt.

The heat shields did their job, and soon the red lights flashed off and the cowling telescoped back into its storage box. He checked his airspeed -- it had dropped almost sixty percent from the reentry friction alone, the thrusters had knocked off another twenty -- before looking at a coastline approaching rapidly at sixty kilometers below. It was maybe a hundred klicks away, and the computer said it was North America. His mind decided that was more trouble than he needed to think about right now; Marcus could worry about getting his bearings back later. He had to find that escape pod.

"Mikey, where is -- oh, I see it. Damn, he's still tumbling man. Pod Six Two Six, this is Bull Four, you copy?"

A low rumble -- this time it wasn't static -- carried over the guard channel.

"Repeat, Six Two Six. This is Bull Four. Do you copy?"

"Jesus," came the reply a moment later. "What the hell happened?"

"You just made reentry. We're descending towards a landmass right now. I'm gonna pick you up, do you copy?"

"Copy that. My left side stabilizer is out. I can't get the computer to turn control over to me. Over."

"Relax, Six Two Six, we're on our way. Out." Marcus checked his reaction mass readings. They were still to high to switch to jets. He needed to use a lot of that just to maneuver in the thin air, but his instincts were working faster than his mind could make decisions. The thrusters burned once again as he altered course to intercept the pod.

"I'm lining up on you, Six Two Six. Just stay calm."

"What the fuck you expect me to do, Four?"

"Copy that, Six Two Six. Just bear with us a second." How am I gonna pull this one off. "Mikey, think you can catch that bastard in free fall?"

"Oh great," Shipman groaned. "I'll try, Mack."

"That's all I wanted to know," Marcus was totally bent on saving the pod, an intense sense of purpose took him so forcefully that it pushed the grief and terror that had been building up in his mind. "Let's do it."

After the thrusters cut, the Legios' altitude dropped more quickly than the range between Marcus and the escape pod. As soon as Marcus got a visual on their target, Shipman reported their predicament over the intercom.

"Fifty thousand meters!" The CSO yelped over the headset. "You wanna wrap this up, Mack?"

"Shit -- hold on!" Marcus shouted as he jerked both sidesticks hard right. The Legios shook under the high-gee stress as he swung it on onto its back. That left him with what? A little over a minute of freefall left? Manipulating the Beta's left arm, Shipman reached out for the escape pod. "Grab'im, Mikey!"

"Fifty seconds!"

Suddenly, Marcus heard the clink of metal on metal as his mecha grasped ahold of the arrowshaped body to the left. "I gotcha man!" Shipman announced over the guard channel.

"Sweet Jesus Christ!" the guy in the escape pod shouted back as Shipman guided it back underneath the Legios' armpit.

"Fuck -- grab something!" Marcus screamed back. "It's gonna be close!"

Locking the pod in place, he worked the control frantically, flipping the Beta unit towards the ground. Twenty seconds. Marcus flipped the safeguard on the throttle control, jamming the overboost key with all his might

Several hundred kilonewtons of thrust cut on sharply. Marcus strained in his belts, trying to keep conscious as the Legios and its newfound friend shook under eight gees -- vectored in the opposite direction of their descent. The acceleration piled on as they fought desparately against gravity. Marcus hit the chutes at ten seconds, giving him additional drag. At five seconds, he punched the Beta unit's leg thrusters to the max, further slowing them down and also throwing them in a northbound, sidelong fall to the Earth.

The Legios craft stopped falling at tree level, less than six meters above the ground before racing at nearly one-hundred knots straight up. Marcus kept his wits about him, circling back around until his Alpha unit faced forward. Throwing the Battloid's legs forward and down, he added down the forward momentum until it lifted the Legios back up to two hundred meters

"Reaction mass dry in five seconds! Better land this baby, Mack!" Ensign Shipman warned. Even now, they were drifting steadily back to the ground. Marcus struggled to drop their air velocity, but he could only hope to control the crash. "Cut me loose!"

Good idea, Marcus thought. Just as their reaction mass ran out, he flipped the Legios disengage switch. Alpha and Beta separated in midair; Shipman's airfoils finally providing the lift he needed to stay aloft. Marcus then switched off the rocket engines, opening his turbojets up for the first time. The monster GE-100s jealously sucked on Earth atmosphere, thrusting the Alpha ever faster along its forward vector.

"Beta is clear, Mack!" Shipman confirmed separation belatedly. "Clear, clear!"

"Toss me the pod, Mikey!" Mack ordered as he pressed the Guardian key, turning his fighter into something resembling a pterodactyl. Shipman did as he was told. The pod cleared the widening gap easily as Marcus effortlessly swung about to catch it. As soon as he had a handle on it, he tucked in close to the airframe.

Marcus looked aft-port, spotting Shipman's Beta fighter -- switching back to Fighter mode -- gaining on his five o'clock and clearing the Alpha's tail. Likewise, Marcus swung his plane's underbody back towards the Earth. The leg thrusters kept him aloft as he built lift against his foils. His Alpha responded gracefully as he picked up airspeed and rose back into the sky, retracting its legs much like a condor lifting off from a perch. The escape pod remained cradled in his Veritech's arms as he watched the treeline fall underneath him. He'd have to land soon to put it down. Marcus' eyes scanned the landscape, looking for a safe place to put down. A moment later, he spotted a small lake opening out from a reasonably paved road.

"I see a clearing at three o'clock low, twenty klicks! We'll make for that!"

Shipman signaled okay over the tactical net, but Marcus could only note grimly that only he and his CSO were still on it. He set the computer to continuous query mode, seeking out any survivors in SVF-21 who had made it down, but he doubted he'd get in touch with anyone. They were too far North.

At least the Invid haven't spotted us yet, he tried to console himself. Then again, that thought wasn't much comfort as he suddenly realized how lost he was.

Where the hell are we?

* * *

Earth-Lunar System, Crossing Into Medium Earth Orbit

Operation Sparta Time: +02:36

Tens of thousands of kilometers above New York State, an Alpha Battloid placed Dana Li's escape boat squarely on the upper deck as the Cachelot's hangar doors swung closed. A Marine guard was waiting to relieve the tired and battered squad that had accompanied Li from the the former flagship and a medical team was already tending to the wounded -- including Lee Teng-hui's badly hurt Captain. She looked her new escorts over quickly and issued a single order: "To the bridge."

An intra-ship car arrived to take Li and her escorts forward to the command section. During the ride, Li took time to get her bearings. The Division was in disarray, and during the time she'd evacuated from Lee and arrived onboard McCain all three destroyers holding the frontline and supporting the failed landing operation had been destroyed. She'd already issued the regrouping order to the survivors -- three Burkes and fifteen of the sixty Horizont troop shuttles the Division had carried half way across the galaxy -- and pretty soon the Division would retreat to the safety of medium earth orbit, ironically because of the Invid's own jamming fields. At least she hoped they'd be safe. The electronic deception part of Operation Sparta obviously hadn't worked out as well as the planners thought it would; in fact, it had been the Invid who'd gotten the drop on them. It would be a long time coming before they could explain that one, but now wasn't a time to analyze the data and conduct a "lessons learned." Her duty was to save the Division from destruction, and that meant getting back up to lunar orbit.

The car finally stopped, its doors opening to reveal a stark contrast to the destruction she'd seen back on Lee. The acting Division commander stepped out just as the senior officer present walked up to meet her. "Commodore Li? Welcome aboard the UES McCain."

"Thank you, Captain." Dana appreciated the courtesy promotion. A ship could have only one captain, after all, and neither her seniority nor her new responsibilities could erase that timeless truth. "We've got a lot to do, Hans. We're falling back to the moon."

Captain Galen looked dumbfounded, turning instead to his leadership team. They'd anticipated this, but not one of them was actually prepared to absorb the order. Li could see that in them as plainly as she could read a children's book.

"Ma'am," a barrel-chested man who seemed not that much younger than herself stepped forward. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Saks, McCain's CAOO. As you know, we've got Alpha-Beta Legioses still out there, fighting and dying."

"I understand the situation, Commander," Li's eyes narrowed. She knew what Saks was thinking, but she had the big picture to think about. Furthermore, she needed to stake out her authority -- in plain site of the Division's senior operators. "But there's no time to mount recovery operations. The Invid are regrouping and getting ready to finish the survivors off. If we're gonna get anyone out of this alive, we've got to work together. Even if it means that some of us are going to have to sacrifice themselves. Order all craft out of immediate recovery range to make planetfall if they can."

"And those who can't?" Galen asked, pushing the protest to the edge.

"I have the Flag, Captain." Li's darkening gaze turned towards Galen as she looked him squarely in the eye, "Our people know their duty and the risks. The Group will evacuate back to Moon Base in ten minutes. That's an order."

* * *