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  The first rounds slammed into the treetops. The directed blast tore through pines and shredded every single needle and branch. White splinters fell like slender snowflakes. Rounds pounded down every fifty meters.

  Jack ran now with a speed he’d never thought possible. His eyes were wild. There was no escape. He tried to dodge one way, then the other, but at every turn more artillery slammed down around him.

  Something pricked him in the face, but he didn’t even notice. Vision went dark in one eye; he wiped his face and his hand was red.

  When he tried to cry out, the deafening roar of more artillery drowned out his voice.

  He tripped and tumbled down the ridge. Dirt and shredded trees covered his body. He rolled and finally came to rest against a stump. He was on his feet and sprinting again.

  The artillery barrage was behind him now. He slowed his pace. Everything looked the same now. Every tree was the same, the ground was the same, even the slope. Down he went, away from the booming artillery and toward the bottom of the valley.

  It hit him that he was in hostile territory. He fumbled to draw out the pistol again. With one hand he checked the safety and with the other searched for a bandage. Where was it? He was sure he’d been issued one.

  Jack stumbled on a ridge of moss and caught himself before he fell face first onto a road. Shock. He was going into shock. He recognized it from his training. How bad was the wound? A line of stubby pines rose up, and there, just on the other side, was a truck.

  He struggled to focus his eyes.

  The vehicle had a flat bed with troop rails. A single Qin trooper stood with his back toward Jack. Kneeling on the other side was McCloud, bound with plastic restraints. The trooper had the barrel of his weapon pointed right at the ranger’s chest. Fifty meters down the road was another ranger, sprawled out dead.

  Jack looked down at his hands, saw the pistol, and decided to make himself useful.

  McCloud looked up just in time to see Jack coming.

  Jack pushed through the pines. Branches cracked and popped.

  The Qin trooper, his face obscured behind a tactical shield, swung his weapon.

  “Shoot!” McCloud yelled.

  The pistol barked at almost the same instant as the Qin raised his weapon up. The round sheared through the tactical shield. Jack fired a second time and this round missed, slamming into the truck bed.

  The Qin trooper slumped down and fell sideways.

  Jack wavered where he stood. The bile rose up and his vision closed in on him.

  I shot a man, I shot him dead.

  “Jack! Stay with me, Jack!”

  Jack fell to his knees and vomited. He crawled toward McCloud.

  “Cut me loose. You’ve got a knife next to your pistol holster.”

  Jack tried to stuff the pistol into the holster, and instead it plopped on the ground. His fingers fumbled for the stubby-bladed knife, but finally he plucked it out.

  “Take a breath, just slice away from me. You’re in shock, Jack.”

  Jack’s vision narrowed again, and all he could focus on were McCloud’s words. He exhaled and pushed the knife against the binding.

  “Stop, stop!” McCloud cried out. “That’s my wrist!”

  Jack gagged again and this time pushed on the plastic strap. He sliced through it and fell backward. The nausea and horror washed over him. He struggled to stay awake.

  McCloud kneeled next to him and pulled out a med kit from his chest pack. First he washed away the pine needles and dirt, and then sprayed Jack’s wound with antiseptic. He tore open a clotting bandage and placed the sticky side onto Jack’s head. The wound was a ragged slit from one eyebrow to the peak of his skull.

  “Eat this,” McCloud said. He cracked open a capsule and poured it into Jack’s mouth.

  It was like a bolt of lightning struck his tongue. Jack’s eyes went wide and everything focused. “Woah.”

  “Combat boosters. They don’t give those to the average grunt,” McCloud said.

  Cross came loping up and surveyed the scene. “Locksmith, you look like shit.”

  “Jack’s OK,” McCloud said. “See if you can drive the truck.”

  Jack stood and felt the boosters wash over him. Jack. He called me Jack.

  Cross climbed into the cab and a second later there came the sound of an electric motor. The truck lurched ahead and then slammed to a stop. McCloud took a few magazines from the dead ranger and ran back.

  “Get in,” McCloud said to Jack. The two climbed into the rear of the transport.

  “Maria?” Cross said.

  McCloud shook his head.

  Cross slammed down onto the accelerator. The transport rocketed down the wooded lane.

  The trees broke into an empty area with nothing but stumps. They blasted past a line of parked trucks without a word. A few Qin troopers looked up, but no one did anything. Then they were back into the forest.

  Jack watched down the road. Wreckage was scattered everywhere, wreckage he recognized. TU transports, aerial capsules, Fury interceptors, and bodies. The further they drove, the more bodies he saw.

  “Cross, hold up.”

  The truck stopped. McCloud jumped down and checked a line of corpses. Each had a bullet hole in the back of the head. He turned away and climbed back in.

  “Officers. They’re all officers,” McCloud said. He leaned over and tore the rank off of Jack’s uniform, and then did the same to himself. “Let’s go.”

  The truck burst out from the tree line. An enormous dropship burned in the dying light of the day. A towering pillar of flame scorched the grass. Smoke rose up and obscured the far side. The truck slowed for a moment.

  Gunfire peppered out from the far side of the clearing. Then, as if to answer it, more gunfire rose up from behind them.

  “Go, go!” McCloud yelled.

  Cross hammered the accelerator. Rounds pinged off the armored prow. A rocket sailed out and exploded just to the side.

  Jack latched on to the handgrips and prayed that friendly troops didn’t do them in.

  McCloud kept yelling into his comm microphone. “Friendlies! Cease fire! Fifth Rangers coming in. Goddammit, stop shooting!”

  A mortar round fell just in front of the truck, and one of the wheels blasted off. The front of the truck drove a furrow into the dirt and the rear swung wildly before it groaned to a halt. Cross was out in a second and hunched on the back side. McCloud dragged Jack down, and the three huddled in the dirt.

  “How long till the Qin realize who we are?” Cross said.

  “Hopefully once we get to the friendlies,” McCloud said.

  “Flare?” Cross said. He pulled out a slender tube from his pack.

  McCloud nodded. “Do it.”

  Cross pulled off the bottom and slammed the tube into the hull of the truck. The top flared a chemical green. The weapons fire died off a few seconds later.

  “Go, go!” McCloud said.

  The three men raced ahead through the clouds of smoke. The Qin line opened fire, but none of the rounds connected.

  “Fifth Rangers coming in!” McCloud yelled as they neared the far tree line.

  “Hurry up!” a coarse voice yelled back.

  Jack leaped into a hastily dug trench just after Cross. All around them were wounded men and women.

  A sergeant was on a comm set. He looked up and shook his head. “You’re it?”

  “We need to get to a command node,” McCloud said.

  The sergeant hooked his thumb behind him. “Delta Brigade HQ, Thirteenth Light Infantry is a kilometer back. But they’re packing up.”

  “Packing up?” McCloud said.

  “What unit you with?”

  McCloud climbed out of the shallow trench. “Fifth Rangers. Now let’s go.”

  Jack climbed out and followed closely behind.

  The sun had just set and the woods were strangely dark. Both McCloud and Cross had night-vision glasses.

  Soon they came to a dirty-brown command node.
Troops and transports came in from everywhere. A team of military police struggled to keep order, but no one seemed to know where to go. More units and wounded were piling in from everywhere.

  They entered the front of the node. Inside, it was chaos. Officers were slagging consoles and cracking tablets in half. Only one module was still operational.

  “Wait here,” McCloud said. Cross followed after and the two disappeared into the chaos.

  Jack pushed himself through the crowd and stopped at the working module. By habit, he pulled out his tablet and connected to the network. Alerts and alarms flowed in from all across the planet. Somehow his hack was still active and transmitting.

  “I can fix it,” he mumbled.

  Jack squatted down and typed as rapidly as he could. Lines of code grew and blossomed into executables. He stopped for a breath and wrapped it all up. All he had to do was engage the Qin system and load it. Then it’d be proper protocol, keyed into Terran Union encryption.

  He tapped “execute” and held his breath. The buffer rose up. The link struggled to connect. He covered his mouth with one hand and watched. The boosters burned in his veins.

  “Come on. Come on. Go. Go.”

  BUFFER COMPLETE

  CONNECTING

  …

  TRACE

  TRACE

  TRACE

  “Oh shit. Oh shit.” Jack slammed his palm down and cut the wireless link. They knew. Someone knew.

  “Hey!” McCloud yelled. He pushed through the crowd and halted next to Jack. “Dropship is coming in fifteen minutes. Let’s go.”

  “Yah, yah,” Jack said. He stood and his legs wobbled. His hands shook so badly that he almost lost the tablet.

  “You OK?” McCloud said.

  “It’s the boosters,” Jack said quickly.

  “They do that. Now come on, this is our last chance.”

  Jack followed and hoped the trace was wrong.

  ####

  Claire rushed past the security teams and ran down the center of the command area. The room, before so quiet, was now bursting with energy. Teams yelled and exchanged information. At the same time, runners crossed everywhere with data tablets. She pushed her way through a crunch of officers.

  “Keep them moving. We’re reaching criticality on that zone,” Davos said. He stood before the main display. His hand twisted, and the screen zoomed into the Claymore drop zone. Red and gray marked the Terran Union forces while pinpricks of blue marked every single human serving in the Qin Coalition. Larger blocks and diamonds marked armor and gunships.

  Every single bit of it was constricting like an iron noose.

  “Report,” Claire said.

  Davos looked at Claire and continued to speak. “Hammer that zone. Bring in every asset. A bit more and they’ll be unable to evacuate.”

  “What then?” an officer asked.

  “Then we let them surrender, just like the plan says.”

  A woman cleared her throat. “Does the protocol stand?”

  “Yes. But don’t liquidate until after a DNA screen.”

  “Davos,” Claire said louder. “Report.”

  “We’ve shifted armor through the maglev. More air assets are deploying now. We believe the screen failed and the rangers made it out.” Davos looked away.

  Claire frowned. She’d left to report directly to High Command and expected all of this to be taken care of. “We’re past recovery at this point. Number one goal is to deprive them of our orbital assets. Only if—“

  A man’s voice started yelling; a data tech jumped up a cell away and hollered, “I’ve got a trace! They accessed the virus!”

  “Where? In orbit?” Davos said. His voice was quiet, the usual sarcasm gone.

  “There! I got it! There!” The man was crawling through the next cell to get to the command group. “It’s right there!”

  A glowing red cube blinked brightly, right in center of the map. Blue pinpricks were closing in from all sides, but none were close.

  Claire took in the entire scene. She saw a squadron of heavy armor on one flank, a dozen aerial bombers on the other. Two wings of gunships were about to deploy. One brigade of fresh infantry was just coming up.

  “Send in—“ Davos said.

  “Shut up,” Claire said. She pushed past Davos and started keying up orders. One by one, the assets acknowledged orders. She focused every bit of her tactical skill and training on bearing the proper assets at the proper points. Finally, satisfied with the orders, she stepped away.

  Davos scowled at her.

  “Halt liquidations. Find those soldiers.” Claire turned and faced the officers. Her eyes sparkled. “We’re about to bring the plan back into focus. Now go!”

  The officers scattered to all corners of the room. What was chaos before was now a carefully orchestrated dance of violence and grace.

  “I’ll notify command,” Davos said. He turned away.

  “No. We’ll wait until we have them. Then we’ll tell them.”

  Davos gave her a single nod and said nothing.

  Claire turned to the tactical display. The greens and blues lit her face. The pincers were closing like an unstoppable vise. “We’ll show them. We’ll show them all.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  McCloud ran out of the command node and into the humid night air. The sky was lit with fires and explosions. Tracers careened through the air like angry fireflies. More vehicles swarmed in; the drivers parked wherever they could, as if they’d found some refuge.

  Cross followed with Jack just behind. Two light colonels came out.

  “You’ll have to get to the launch site. It’s a kilometer due east,” the first man said. “They can’t wait.”

  “Is it clear?” McCloud said.

  The first man glanced at the second. “Maybe, I don’t know. We think so. The orbitals start in ten minutes. After that, the dropship launches. Then”—he looked pained—“we begin to surrender.”

  A wide-wheeled, low-slung infantry scout vehicle drove up. It had room for three soldiers and no more. The body was all sharp angles, tubing, and tire. There wasn’t a bit of armor plate on the whole thing.

  The second officer looked at Cross. “I was told to remind you of your duty, whatever that may be.”

  Cross swung his legs into the driver’s position and fired up the turbine. He adjusted the driver’s helmet and put it on.

  The first officer walked back into the command node without saying anything. The other gave a salute and followed.

  “Get in,” McCloud said.

  Jack climbed into the rear and tucked himself into the gunner’s seat. The pivot mount for the machine gun was sheared off. Blood speckled the rear area. Jack didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care.

  McCloud climbed into the other side. He waved straight ahead.

  Cross drove them carefully out of the command zone and weaved past troops and vehicles all coming in. Men and women stared at them with wide eyes, questioning eyes, as if wanting to know where they were going. One man tried to stop them, and Cross clipped him with the front of the vehicle.

  A line of weapons fire rose up from the tree line. Tracers tore through the air and clacked off the command node behind them. Then a terrible roar shredded the air and a titanium-white arc shot into the node. Two seconds later it exploded. Debris tumbled through the air.

  The troops all around scattered and fled away from the burning command node.

  McCloud watched it and knew this was the end of Claymore. All he could hear on the comms were pleas for help. Units were isolated. Lost. Begging to be broken free from encirclement.

  Cross punched the accelerator, and the little vehicle jumped over the trench lines. Trees flew by. He darted from one side to the next. The line of distant lights grew closer. The night air was both cold and wet.

  McCloud shivered. He glanced back at Jack. The locksmith was trembling where he sat.

  Missile alarms blared on the console of the vehicle.

  Cross slam
med the vehicle off the side of the road. A missile exploded into the ground just behind them.

  The vehicle lurched to one side, wobbled on two wheels, and then bounced onto the others.

  McCloud didn’t remember hitting the tree. He came to with the taste of blood in his mouth. The front of the scout car was crushed into a V. Cross mumbled at his side with his head resting on the steering panel. Camo-brown air bags hissed and expelled a foul brown gas.

  “Oh God,” Jack said.

  McCloud just took in a breath. His heart beat in his ears, and the mission suddenly came back to him. “Get up. Everyone get out.”

  His fingers were like sausages. He fumbled to unclasp the seat belt.

  Jack fell out and lay on the ground, moaning.

  Cross pulled his head back. Blood streamed out of his crooked nose. “They told me to shoot you, Captain.”

  “Hold on,” McCloud said. He couldn’t get the belt undone, so instead he pulled out his knife and sliced through it.

  “Said if you were gonna fall into enemy hands I had to shoot you and the locksmith.”

  McCloud glanced at Cross and then cut the other strap. “We all have our duty, Cross. Now get out. We can make it.”

  The roar of turbines echoed through the woods. Explosions seemed to come from everywhere. Pinpricks of gun fire winked everywhere in the forest. The woods were alive with those fleeing and those seeking.

  Cross got out and hobbled over to Jack. By then, the locksmith was on his feet and stumbling toward the lights. McCloud racked in a fresh round and led the way.

  A hundred meters later, McCloud caught movement. “Down!”

  Gunfire rang out. Slugs slammed into the ground and punched holes into the trees.

  “Drop your weapons! Drop them!” a heavy-accented voice called out.

  “Now, now!” Another voice from just behind them yelled.

  McCloud was trapped. Troops behind. Troops ahead.

  Cross tried to turn. A round punched into the dirt next to him.

  “Don’t make me shoot you!”

  McCloud gently laid his rifle on the dirt and stood slowly. “I’m getting up.”

  “All of you now!” the voice said.