Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles

episode 133: The Longest Day

Part 3: Last of the Tigres

By Brian Campo

Disclaimer #1:This is a work of fan fiction. It is in no way to be taken as official. If the producers of the series ever see fit to finish it, I would be the first one to plunk down my money to buy a copy. This is simply my way of expressing my affection for a TV series that has brought me many hours of pleasure. This is my version of episode 133, an episode that was planned but never produced by the makers of the series. It is partially based on information about the episode that can be found on the net and stuff that was mentioned on the homefront dvd commentaries. I also borrowed from the original novel for some ideas. The original episode would not have played out like the one I have written. This is just how I would have done it. Hope you like it.

Disclaimer #2: The politics of this story are not necessarily my politics.

Sixty years ago, the city of Buenos Aires was in an economic slump. In the plains to the west, a drought that was entering it's second decade had withered Argentina's agriculture. In turn, the factories and ports of the city that had processed and exported all that produce, beef, and grain had taken a drastic downturn. The export business had dropped by seventy percent, resulting in high unemployment. High unemployment lead to higher crime, which impacted the city's other big business, tourism. It was a city in rapid decline with no reason to believe that things would get any better.

It was Esteban Ramiro that turned it all around. Ramiro was a twenty seven year old genius in theoretical physics with a left leaning, socialist bent. At the University of Buenos Aires, he headed up a team of like minded physicists and engineers, none of whom were over the age of thirty-two. Together, they built the first working Cherenkov drive. As any school kid can tell you, the Cherenkov drive changed everything. This new slipspace technology meant that intergalactic travel was suddenly possible and a universe of resources and possibilities were opened up to us.

Ramiro may have opened up the universe to the human race, but as far as he was concerned, what mattered most was the city of his birth. In an act of selfless philanthropy, he and his team gave the exclusive rights of their invention to the city of Buenos Aires. Within a matter of months, the first starship yards began to spring up in the place of all the abandoned factories and warehouses of the city's long dead industries. As time passed, Buenos Aires became the top starship building city on the planet. Over the next sixty years a full ninety percent of the starships built came off of Buenos Aires shipyards. One hundred percent of the starships built contained parts built in her factories.

Almost overnight, it seemed, Buenos Aires boomed. Employment bounced back and the ghettos became middle class neighborhoods. As the economy gained momentum, crime rates dropped, and the tourists returned. Knowing that Buenos Aires was where all the action was going to be, the federation started a fleet academy on the outskirts of the city. Creating homes for all those new workers and cadets caused construction to take off and soon towers of steel and glass were climbing into the city skyline.

Esteban Ramiro and his Cherenkov drive changed Buenos Aires forever, turning it into the gleaming jewel of South America and making the city essential to human intergalactic space travel. If you were an alien race waging an intergalactic war with said humans, and you wanted to hit them where it would hurt the worst, you could not have picked a better target.

The Memoirs of Robert Higgins, Fednet Journalist

RICO -

Johnny Rico awoke to the sound of a heavy rain and the frantic squirming and contractions of his Spook Suit. He was laying flat on his back in the middle of a street, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring up into a dark, cloud filled sky. The rain spattered on his goggles, making splotches and streaks in the soot that covered them.

"Must have nodded off again." he thought.

He couldn't be sure how long he'd been out, but there hadn't been a hint of rain earlier and there was a steady downpour now. He turned his head to look around, and could see most of his squad facing outward in a loose circle around him, on the lookout for bugs. Further away, he saw his lieutenant with his back to the squad, engaged in what looked like a very lively conversation with himself. He was waving his arms in the air and jabbing his fingers forcefully at someone who wasn't there, driving home some point that the squad couldn't hear. Rico figured he was on the horn, trying to arrange some kind of evac for them, and it wasn't going well. Within the confines of Razak's soundproofed helmet, someone was receiving the full brunt of the El-Tee's displeasure.

Lieutenant Razak's temper might have been a little shorter than usual, but that was understandable. It had been a very long day. To Rico, it felt like the longest day of his life. It had started over twenty hours ago at a supply depot in northern Oregon. The Bugs had used a new weapon to incapacitate all the psychics in the Federation, including Alpha Squad's own psychic, Carl Jenkins.

With the help of a genetically engineered canine, the Roughnecks had tracked the source of the attack on the psychics to a cave system in the jungles of Guatemala. After fighting their way through a swarm of Spider-Bugs and past a trio of Shield Bugs, the troopers had successfully destroyed the weapon.

Soon, they would discover that the attack on the psychics had only been a diversion from the Bug's far more sinister plan. With the psychics all out of commission, there was no one to warn of the kamikaze Transport Bug that was about to impact itself right into the heart of Buenos Aires. When the Transport Bug hit ground, further devastation had been caused by thousands of large meteors dragged along in it's gravitational pull. A massive smoke cloud now covered the city, hiding the full extent of the damage, but early estimates of the dead numbered in the millions.

Among the Roughnecks, the attack on Buenos Aires hit closer to home for some than for others. Literally. The city was the hometown for troopers Johnny Rico, Dizzy Flores, Jean Razak, and the squad mate they'd been forced to leave behind in Oregon, Carl Jenkins. The horror of it weighed heaviest on them. While they forged ahead, trying to do their jobs, they were privately struggling with fears and anxieties that threatened to overwhelm them. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, their friends and family could be dead or dying, and the military response so far had seemed excruciatingly slow.

SICON forces had converged on the city, but a mobile battery of Plasma Bugs had held off any large transports from landing to offload troops and supplies. As one of the few squads lucky enough to slip past the deadly Plasma barrage, the Roughnecks had been sent in to eliminate the Plasma Bugs. To aid them in their mission, they used top-secret, previously untested in the field camouflage technology. This technology came in the form of "Spook Suits" and while they had nearly as many drawbacks as advantages, the suits had allowed troopers Rico and Flores to sneak past an escort of Warrior Bugs and plant homing beacons on the Plasma Bugs. With the help of Fleet bombers and some unconventional use of DETCORD, the Plasma Bug battery had been destroyed.

It had been a very long day and they were all running on fumes at this point, none more so than Rico and Flores. The Spook Suits seemed to be living things, some kind of symbiotic parasite and a major side effect of wearing one is that it severely dehydrated it's host. The suits could only be safely worn for a couple hours at a time, and they were well past that limit now.

With their mission completed, Alpha Squad had started the long hike back through the abandoned, ash covered streets of north Buenos Aires. The plan was to reach their commandeered transport, an electrician's utility truck that they had left parked miles away. Once they reached the truck, they could drive the last few miles back to the airport at the northern edge of the city. But they had only made it a couple of blocks before the two troopers wearing Spook Suits had started to succumb to their side effects.

For some reason, the suits seemed to be affecting Rico far more than they were getting to his squadmate, Dizzy Flores. It could have been that she'd gotten a little more sleep than he had the day before, or she'd managed to get more water down when they'd had the chance a few hours earlier. Whatever the reason, while she was tired and sore, she hadn't yet reached the levels of distress that Rico had. His walk had become very unsteady, never in a straight line but weaving from the right to the left. His head kept trying to outrun his body, and he'd nearly fallen forward onto his face numerous times. When he straightened up, trying to keep his balance, he'd nearly ended up falling over backwards. A black cloud at the periphery of his vision kept threatening to close in on him.

For the eighth or ninth time, Lieutenant Razak asked him if he was okay, and Rico had responded once again that he was, but this time the words had come out in a drunken slur. Looks had passed between Razak and the squad's medic, Richard 'Doc' Lecroix and then the Lieutenant had called a halt, telling Dizzy and Rico to take a load off. Rico had dropped where he stood and flopped out on the ground. Dizzy came shuffling up next to him and then followed suit. They were both breathing hard, like they had just finished a half mile sprint.

Doc had knelt down next to them and offered them some water from his canteen. With a little help, Dizzy was able to sit up, raise the bottom of her respirator a little and take a few sips from the canteen. When Rico tried, though, he'd retched, dry heaved and waved the canteen away before falling back. When he looked up, the buildings above him seemed to slowly rotate around him and combined with the ash slowly falling from the sky, he felt like he was inside a snowglobe that someone had given a good shake. He closed his eyes and hoped the world would stop spinning.

That was the last thing he remembered before the patter of the rain and the renewed movement of his Spook Suit. Over the last few hours, the movements of the symbiotic parasite had become more lethargic, mirroring his own. Now, the rain seemed to have woken it, too. The sensation of the suit's slimy inner surface squirming against his bare skin wasn't doing anything for his nausea. He raised one hand above his face to look at it, and could see tiny pores on the suit's skin opening and closing, as if they were tiny mouths trying to drink up the rainwater. His flesh crawled in revulsion at the very sight of it.

Looking past the hand, Rico saw something that caught his interest. He brought the hand down and wiped it across his goggles, clearing away some of the ashy sludge for a better look. As he squinted at the sides of the buildings that receded into the dark sky above him, he thought that maybe he could see the brickwork with just a little more clarity than he had when had first flopped down there. Like maybe the rain was clearing the air just a bit.

"How long has it been raining?" His words came out in a croak.

"I don't know." he heard Dizzy say. "Half an hour, maybe?"

"I must have been seriously out."

"They keep checking you to make sure you haven't died on us."

Rico started to laugh, but it quickly turned to a cough, and then he realized it wasn't that funny. The urge to just lay there and drift off back to sleep was powerful, but Rico fought it. He turned over onto his side, then struggled his way to a sitting position. His stomach rolled in protest at the sudden movement, so he just sat there for a minute with his head slumped and his eyes closed, letting it settle. The immediate threat of vomiting having passed, he reached up to pull the respirator part of the way out and took a trial breath of air. It was like he thought; just the barest hint of smoke. Rico pulled the respirator the rest of the way out and set it on the ground, then pulled the goggles free, too. Using both hands, he shoved the cowl of the Spook Suit toward the back of his head, pushing his face through the mouth hole. The elastic flesh of the suit stretched to accommodate his head and when his head was free, the cool rain felt delicious on his bare skin. He tilted his head back, letting the fall on his parched face, and taking in deep breaths of cool, clean air.

Doc noticed what he was doing, and said, "Rico, you really should be using the respirator. There's got to be all kinds of junk floating around in this air."

Rico shook his head. "It's okay. The rain is clearing the air up."

Doc continued to protest, but Rico ignored him, choosing to focus instead on extracting himself from the Spook Suit. He grabbed the part of the suit that was bunched up around his neck and pulled, stretching the hole wide enough to wriggle a shoulder up through it. A little more wrestling freed an arm to the elbow and then he was pulling his hand out, turning the sleeve inside out. The other arm came out even easier and then he was able push the suit down to his waist, leaving the top half of his body bare and blessedly free of the suit's claustrophobic grip.

Hearing Doc admonishing Rico, Corporal Jeff Gossard had turned to see what was going on, and seeing Johnny's state of undress, he said, "Whoa there, Sarge. Pull that suit down any further and we're going to lose our PG rating."

"I'm pretty sure we've been running with a PG-13 for a while now, Goss." said Rico. "What with Higgin's potty mouth."

Bobby Higgins, who's nuclear option for cursing was, "Ah, heck." spun around to object to this attack on his character. Before he could get going, Dizzy cut him off with one of the squad's most popular refrains: "They're only messing with you, Bobby." then said, "Does the fact that I can see Rico's buttcrack affect the rating?"

"It affects my ability to not picture Rico's buttcrack." said Goss as he turned back to resume his watch. "Bad form, Diz."

Seeing that Rico wasn't immediately dying from exposure to the air, Dizzy sat up next to him and removed her own goggles, respirator, and cowl. She took a couple of deep breaths of the cool, moist air and then scowled sideways at Rico, envious of his partial nudity.

Johnny, meanwhile, was beginning to feel as though the cooling rain was reviving him, clearing up his head. Even his nausea seemed to be fading.

"Hey, Doc." he said. "Let me have another shot at that canteen."

Doc reached over and handed him the canteen while saying to both of them, "If you end up with mesothelioma or something, just remember I warned you."

"I'll risk it." Rico took a sip from the canteen, swallowed it, and was delighted that it stayed down. He took a few more drinks and thought he might live after all.

Razak agreed. "You're looking better, Sergeant." he said as he came striding over to join the squad. "Thought we were going to have to put you down for a while there."

"For a while there, I kind of wished someone would. What's the word from on high, sir?"

"The word is SNAFU." said the Lieutenant. "HQ absolutely, emphatically can not spare us any kind of transport for an evac."

He paused for the groans and grumbles, giving Goss the chance to interject, "The 'F' stands for 'Fouled', Higgins."

Razak, understandably baffled, said, "What?"

"Sorry, sir." Gossard explained. "As a squad, we've decided to try to help Higgins integrate into polite society."

Razak took it in, nodded and then rolled with it. "A noble, but, I fear, ultimately futile endeavor."

Higgins didn't respond, only muttered unintelligibly to himself.

"Rico and Flores can not walk all the way back to the truck." Doc stood up and turned to face Razak. "They're both exhibiting symptoms of extreme dehydration, and should be on IV fluids right now. Walking that far, especially in the Spook Suits, could kill them."

"There is a Plan B." said Razak.

Dizzy rolled her eyes. "And as we all know, the 'B' in 'Plan B' usually stands for Bull-."

"-derdash'" Goss cut her off. "The 'B' stands for 'Balderdash'. Honestly, Diz, how do you expect the kid to learn?"

Razak ignored them. "Plan B is a detour. Some folks have set up an aid station at a high school only about half a mile from here. I'm told we can hole up there until they can spare us a transport."

At the mention of the school, Dizzy and Rico looked at each other.

"Too close to be ours." said Rico.

"Gotta be Freemonte." replied Dizzy. "Enemy territory."

"Walking to the truck is sounding better and better." said Rico.

"Stow that." said Razak. "I'm sure that your old cross town rivals will be the very paragons of hospitality, so don't even start."

"I hear what you're saying, El-Tee." said Rico. "but I would like to point out just one thing. As a teacher at B.A. High, to those savages at Freemonte, you're enemy, too."

Razak snorted and shook his head. "Grow up, sergeant. I'll expect you both to be on your best behavior." Then pointing at the canteen, he said, "Now, drink up. We move out in five."

After he had turned away, Rico and Dizzy discreetly bumped fists and whispered, "Go, Tigres."

Doc trailed after Razak as he walked away, still having two cents he wanted to pitch in. "Even half a mile in those suits might be too much for them, sir."

"I'm open to suggestions, Doc. What do you got?"

"We have to get them out of the suits. Top priority."

"And what will they wear?" asked Razak. "Can't have them running around in the buff."

"There's got to be something they could wear in one of these buildings. We could start kicking in some doors until we find something."

As Rico looked up and down the block, he couldn't help but have his doubts. They were in a business area, and the street was lined with office buildings. Insurance salesman, lawyers, travel agents, and tech companies. Not a lot of opportunities for a new wardrobe.

Doc continued to make his case. "Even if we manage to find them clothes, they should probably be carried there on stretchers."

Rico made a sour face and leaned over to whisper to Dizzy, "Ain't no way I'm getting carried into Freemonte on a stretcher."

"Ditto on that." she said.

Rico took another long pull from the canteen, then handed it over to Dizzy. He pulled his feet up close and using a hand on the ground to push off, stood up. For a few seconds he stood there, swaying, finding his balance. He felt about as steady as a newborn fawn, but was able to keep himself from toppling over.

"Doc," said Razak. "I don't have stretchers anymore than I got spare sets of clothes, and we really don't have time to find or make them. Time spent on a scavenger hunt is time we could be using getting them to the aid station, where they could be treated. We just have to get as much water as we can into them and then get them there as fast as possible. We'll fireman carry them if they start lagging."

Rico shuffled past them, his feet squelching through the ash-based mud that covered the ground. His gait was a little herky-jerky, not unlike that of a drunk. The arms of his Spook Suit were swinging limply around, threatening to entangle his legs. Razak watched him go past, one eyebrow arched.

"Rico? Where are you headed?"

Rico pointed up the block. "Casper and Gomez, Attorneys at Law."

Razak looked toward the end of the block, where he could see the law office on the corner. "I don't think they're open."

On the corner in front of the law office was a bus stop and a concrete garbage bin. When Rico reached the corner, he stopped to remove the lid of the garbage can and pull out the metal inner liner. Then he turned, took a couple of steps to build up momentum, and smashed the can into the window of the law office. The plate glass shattered at a cringe inducing volume.

"That's vandalism." called out Razak. "You are vandalizing an attorney's office."

"Spook Suit induced dementia, sir." Rico yelled back. "Can't help myself." He attacked the window again, knocking loose any pieces that had survived his first strike.

The rest of the squad moved in Rico's direction for a closer look. T'phai offered Dizzy a hand to help her to her feet, which she gratefully accepted, and then they brought up the rear. As they neared the corner, Rico was setting aside the garbage can and reaching inside to grab a hold on the drapes that hung there.

"Can I borrow someone's knife?" he asked while he gave the drapes a sharp tug. They came part of the way free with the sound of tearing fabric, and then, once he had yanked a few more times, came sliding out the window.

Razak pulled his combat blade out of it's sheath and held it out to Rico, handle first. "I thought you always had that Swiss Army knife on you?"

"I didn't have any place to hide it this time."

Doc chuckled and said, "Am I the only one who is simultaneously relieved and disappointed to hear that?"

Rico took the knife, and held it in his clenched teeth while he first held the drape up to shake it out, and then folded it in half. He handed the drape to Goss with the fold at the top, saying, "Hold this."

Goss held it up for him, and and watched the knife blade warily as Rico used it with unsteady hands to cut a foot wide slit at the middle of the fold. Then he turned to reach back into the window, to cut himself a few feet of curtain cord.

Dizzy was starting to see the method to his madness and moved over to start pulling the other drape out of the window. Rico handed the knife and cord to Razak, and then reclaimed his drape from Gossard. He slung it over his head and slid his head through the hole he had cut. It fell over him like a poncho, the length reaching a little past his knees. The cord he used for a belt, cinching the drape just above his waist.

"You may not want to watch this next part." he told them. He ran his hands up under the poncho, hooked his thumbs on the waist of the Spook Suit and started shoving it down. The squad found something else to look at while he struggled to get the suit off of his legs. The suit wasn't coming off without a fight. At the end, he was breathing hard, stepping on it with one foot while he tugged and pulled himself free with the other. Higgins stepped in to help pin it with one boot while he hopped and pulled the last foot free.

"Sweet relief." he sighed when he had at last kicked it away. He stood in the falling rain and smiled.

"What do you plan to do for shoes?" asked Razak.

Rico shrugged. "I'll go barefoot. I can do half a mile barefoot."

Goss held Dizzy's drape for her while she cut the hole for her head and then she asked T'Phai to hold it up in front of her while she got out of her Spook Suit. Gossard found cause for objection in this.

"Hold on. Why T'phai?"

"Why T'phai, what?" Her lip curled with annoyance.

"Why have T'Phai hold the curtain and not me? You think T'Phai is more trustworthy than me?"

She gave him a flat stare for a couple of moments, and then said, "Is this something I actually have to explain?"

"I'm sensing some kind of discrimination here, Diz."

"Look," she explained in the kind of tone you would use to explain something to a toddler, or a neo-dog. "if I catch T'Phai peeking, I'll know he's not being a perv, it's just out of scientific curiosity."

"Fair enough. How about I promise that if I peek, it's only in the name of science?"

"Goss, give T'Phai the drape."

"You know what you are, Flores? You're a speciesist. Some kind of self-loathing speciesist "

Dizzy tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and slowly exhaled. Tiny nods of her head indicated that she might be silently counting to ten. "Goss?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm remembering how roguishly handsome you looked that time you had to wear an eyepatch."

"Oh?" He donned a pleasantly surprised smile. "Do tell."

"Yep." she said. "If you don't hand T'Phai the drape, I'm going to put you back in an eyepatch."

His smile faded. "Oh."

He handed the drape to T'Phai and went to stand next to Doc. Leaning over to whisper, he said, "That didn't come off as sexual harassy, did it?"

"A little bit." Doc nodded thoughtfully. "A little bit sexual harassy."

T'Phai held up the drape, providing Dizzy with a little privacy. While she stripped out of her Spook Suit, he said, "You do not have to worry, Dizzy. I will not be peeking. A trooper on the Valley Forge showed me a periodical that was full of images detailing Terran female anatomy. I assure you, I learned all I care to know."

Dizzy wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she only said, "Um, thanks, T'Phai."

RAZAK -

Once Dizzy was changed into her make-shift poncho, they made a few last preparations before heading out. First, the Spook Suits themselves would have to be dealt with. SICON regulations insisted that the suits could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands, so if they could not be returned to supply, they must be destroyed. While Rico and Dizzy strongly felt that they should be destroyed immediately, Razak quashed that, saying that they had neither the time nor the resources to make sure the job was done correctly. Instead, he ordered Higgins to empty out the bag from the garbage can and use it to carry the suits. And since his hands would be full with the bag and his camera, Razak suggested that perhaps Higgins should let Dizzy use his Morita Rifle. No suggestion was made that perhaps the rifle might be put to better use in Dizzy's hands than it would in Bobby's.

There was no extra Morita for Rico, but Razak handed him his .45 automatic sidearm and it's spare clip. "It ain't much against a Bug," he said. "but it's better than hurling curses."

When they moved out, Razak and T'Phai took the lead, followed by Dizzy, Rico, and Higgins. Gossard and Doc brought up the rear. It was the two shoeless troopers that set the pace. They picked their way slowly, using the helmet lights of their fellow troopers to avoid stepping on any sharp objects hidden in the mud covered streets. They were able to make better time once they moved out of the area that had been damaged by bombs and the passage of Plasma Bugs. It made for less rubble and broken glass to avoid.

Their destination was a half mile southwest, as the crow flies, but was actually further once you factored in the city blocks they had to zigzag through. At first, they had the streets to themselves, but the closer they got to the school, the more people they began to see. The vast majority of these were on foot.

One of the joys of living in Buenos Aires was it's public transportation system. It's network of high speed subways and monorails could only be matched by a few other cities on the planet. The system was so fast, efficient and cheap that most people who lived here relied on it entirely and only about one in ten even owned a car. The problem was that all those trains relied on the city's power grid and the power had gone out when the Transport Bug hit.

On the good side, fewer cars had meant that the streets had not become clogged with traffic jams after the initial attack. But the bad side was that moving from one place to another in Buenos Aires now required you to cross potentially bug infested territory on foot.

Word had gotten out that people were gathering at Freemonte, and other places around the city that were adjacent to large open fields. The logic was that once the evacuation transports started coming in, they would be using the football and soccer fields at the schools and stadiums for landing pads. So far, there had been no official word that this was, in fact, true. It just seemed to be accepted wisdom.

The refugees were moving in groups, and there were a few members of each of these groups that were armed. Citizens you could identify easily. They were the ones with the automatic weapons. Occasionally you would see a civilian with the only weapon they were legally allowed to carry; a bolt action hunting rifle capable of holding only one round at a time. Technically, the civilian should only be using the gun in a designated hunting range with a hunting license and tag or on a federally operated target range, but shortly after the Bugs had invaded earth, the federation had declared the entirety of the planet earth to be a Bug hunting range, and that there was a no limit open season on all Arachnids.

Razak couldn't help but feel sorry for the civilians. Unless you were very familiar with Bug anatomy and were a very good shot, those single shot rifles were not going to be of much use should a Bug come charging at them. But it also made sense that they were carrying the guns anyway. In situations like this, any hope, no matter how feeble, was better than no hope.

Besides, he knew why the civilians were not allowed to have better weapons. He'd spent years teaching students that there was no point in limiting a civilian's voting power if you left them with any significant firepower.

Along with ever increasing groups of people, the squad began to see an increase in Bug activity, also. At first, it was only a Hopper or Rippler spotted on a rooftop, a clatter, a swift moving silhouette, and then the beat of wings. These Bugs did not attack, so they may have only been operating as scouts. Soon, though, they began to see lone Warrior Bugs coming from the south, and these Bugs were definitely on the offensive. They threw themselves at the clusters of humans, causing as much chaos and damage as they could before they were cut down by gunfire. The Bugs weren't coming in large numbers yet, but Razak knew that it was only a matter of time.

A squad of MI troopers seemed like a good bet for traveling companions and soon the smaller groups of people they met along the way were merging into a large crowd around the Roughnecks. The crowd grew until it filled the entire width of the the city street and extended back a block and a half. Razak tried to keep some kind of order to the procession, encouraging those with weapons to move to the outer edges of the group, but the people were scared and everyone was shouting at once, so there was not much chance of organizing them. Even using his helmet's loudspeaker technology, he couldn't make himself heard over the clamor. He gave up and focused on keeping them moving, trying to get them to Freemonte as quickly as possible.

In all this confusion, Razak quickly lost track of his squad. T'Phai had stayed close to his lieutenant's position at the head of the throng, but everyone else had been swallowed up by the droves of refugees. Worried that he might lose someone, he tapped his com, and said, "Alpha Squad, sound off." Over the next few seconds the squad checked in, with the exceptions of Rico and Flores. For a moment, he worried that he may have let them fall behind somewhere, but then he remembered that the mics for their coms had been in the respirators the troopers had discarded. They could still receive through their ear pieces, but could not broadcast. He kicked himself for not thinking about it earlier.

"Anyone got eyes on Rico and Flores?"

Higgins came back. "I'm right next to them. We're good."

"Stay with them." Razak told him.

Just like the humans, the Bugs were forming up into larger packs also, so far in groups of only three or four. They were trying to hamper the group's advance and prevent them from reaching the shelter of the school. Razak knew that the if they allowed themselves to be slowed down, it would only let more Bugs amass against them, so he kept pressing forward, opening up with his Morita on any bug that tried to block their way. T'phai kept pace with him, working his one-shot, one-kill magic on the Warriors.

Encouraged by how easily T'phai was doing with every single shot, a short, portly man carrying a hunting rifle pushed his way up out of the crowd. Over business attire he was wearing a soot covered yellow rain slicker and over the slicker, he had a bandoleer full of rifle cartridges strapped across his chest. He was breathing hard from the brisk pace of the walk and rain was running down the lenses of his glasses. At the sight of the next Warrior Bug, he excitedly raised his gun and fired. The bullet chipped a small pock mark into the beak of the Warrior, which didn't even seem to notice that it had been shot. T'phai leaned over slightly to angle a shot up under the Bug, and when he fired, it spasmed and toppled over.

"How the heck does that Skinny keep doing that?" said the civilian as slid another round into his gun.

Razak cringed at the word the man had just called his friend and squadmate, and felt his face flush with anger. "His kind are called Tophetti." he growled.

"Really? I thought they called 'em Skinnies." He worked the bolt, raised the gun, aimed, fired and annoyed another Bug.

"No. That was the name we gave them when we were at war with them." Razak paused long enough fire a burst into a Warrior that had come screeching out of a side alley. "It's a dehumanizing, derogatory slur."

The man turned to look at T'phai, then back to Razak. "Dehumanizing?"

"Yup." said Razak. "He finds it offensive." Then he turned his head so that he could look the man in the eye. "I find it offensive, too"

"Oh. I, uh, um," the man stammered. "I understand. I'm sorry, didn't mean anything by it." He turned to T'phai, and apologized again.

Satisfied, Razak said, "Now, if you ask T'phai nicely, he'll probably tell you how he kills Bugs like that."

With his usual politeness, T'phai told the man how to locate the nerve cluster on the Warrior's underside that would cause instant death if you could shoot it. Of course, this much easier described than actually done. It helped it you had a Tophetti's eagle eyed vision and steady aim. Razak consider himself a good shot, but he could not take out a Bug with a single bullet like the Tophetti could. T'phai continued to coach the man as they encountered more bugs along the way but he might as well have been trying to teach the man to fly. He just couldn't get the knack of it.

Still, the man's shots were all hitting the Bugs, and the sound of his gun was contributing to the overall threatening appearance of the group, so he saw no harm in letting the man keep shooting. The way Razak figured, if they made enough racket, it might discourage a Warrior or two from coming at them.

It felt like they had been walking for hours when Razak and the mob he was leading finally arrived on the northeast corner of the Freemonte High School complex. As they rounded the corner and turned right, he was brought to a halt by what he saw there. At first, he could not make heads or tails of what he was looking at. The light was bad and there were just so many things moving all at once. When he started to make sense of what he was seeing, he realized that it was hundreds of people all converging on one spot from all points of the compass all at once. Interspersed among these people were many, many Bugs. It was a scene of absolute chaos. The night sky was filled with a cacophony of screams, shouts, and shrieks. He heard gunfire and he could have sworn that he heard bullets buzz past, just a few feet over his head. Across the street, there was a parking lot in front of the school and in this space, multiple fires were burning. He could not tell if they had been intentionally started or not. Some of the fires looked like they might have been burning vehicles.

He didn't know how long he had been standing there staring when he heard T'Phai say his name. Razak shook off the shock of what he was seeing. When he had stopped, the crowd had halted behind him. They could not stay here, they must move. Despite the terrain they would have to cross to get there, the school still offered their best chances of survival.

"Keep moving!" he shouted at the crowd. "We are surrounded by friendlies. Be very careful what you shoot at. Do not shoot unless you are certain you have the shot!" If anyone had heard a thing he'd said, they gave him no indication. There was no time to try again. He had to get them moving. He turned and moved forward into the madness. The mass of people surged after him.

In the space that they were now crossing, anarchy ruled. Between the falling rain and the darkness, he could only see a few feet ahead at any given time. The lamp on his helmet was next to useless. He caught glimpses of running people, lit up for only a second in the barrel flash of firing guns.

A Bug was tearing and stabbing at something on the ground, something Razak didn't want to look too close at. As he approached, the Warrior turned to rush at him in a clatter of hard claws on pavement. He filled his guns sights with it's ugly face and went full auto on it. It teetered, stumbled sideways, then fell over onto it's side and thrashed. It's legs flailed at the air as it struggled to rise. Razak saw the man in the yellow rain slicker run up next to it, aim his rifle at the nerve cluster and fire at point blank range. The Bug kicked, went rigid and then went limp. The man did not take time to celebrate, just wasted a second on stunned surprise that it had actually worked, before reloading and moving on.

Tiny pieces of asphalt exploded from the ground dead ahead, someone's machine gun fire gone wild. Razak cursed the fool as he skipped to the side to avoid being shot. Someone barreled into him from behind, nearly knocking him right off of his feet. For a second there, he didn't think he could keep from going down as he continued to be buffeted by running people. When he found his balance again, he poured on the speed, trying to get back to T'Phai's side. There was an opening in the crowd to his left and he bolted for it.

It turns out that the opening was caused by people trying to avoid a Warrior Bug that was coming from that direction. By the time he saw the Bug, it was suddenly so close he didn't have room to line up his gun on it. At the last instant, he twisted and dropped, landing on his hip and skidding under the Warrior's scissoring mandibles. His momentum carried him under the Bug and he fired up as he slid, leaving a line of perforations along the Bug's underside. Twisting and turning, he came up on a knee as he cleared the other side with his Morita aimed at the back of the Warrior's thorax. It was already weaving like it was on the way down, but he put another burst into it, just to be sure.

His gun went dry, so he took a moment to switch out the clip as the wave of running people washed past him. Then he was off and running, trying to get back to the front. That was where he could do the most good, running interference. The crowd packed him in, leaving him no opening to squeeze through. No matter which way he tried to go, there was just no give in that mass of bodies. Giving up on trying to shove his way through, he used the jump jets on his power suit to launch himself to the front of the line. From the air, he spotted the Tophetti and the man in the yellow slicker and he angled his flight towards them. He cuts the jets and landed hard, his feet throwing up a splatter of mud. They both seemed surprised at his sudden appearance.

They were getting close to the front of the school, and Razak could see that someone had been setting up some defenses. A line of large vehicles formed a wall across the front of the building, made up of city buses, school buses, utility vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances, and a variety of police vehicles, including a SWAT van, prisoner transport vans, and even an armored personnel carrier. It appeared that all the local emergency responders had decided they could do the most good by relocating their bases of operations to the school, and had brought everything but the kitchen sink with them.

There was space in the barricade close to where the front entrance of the building would be, and the crowd was piling up there as it funneled through the narrow gap. There were armed men and women up on top of the wall of vehicles, keeping the Bugs from breaching the defenses and providing cover fire for the people on the ground. The fire engine had it's pumps running and a firefighter was manning a water cannon on top of it, using it to beat back any Bug that approached.

A pack of five Warriors came skittering along in front of the wall, headed for the mass of people gathered at the opening. Razak and T'Phai moved to cut them off. The man in the yellow slicker tried to come with them, but Razak told him to go back, to get inside. The hurt expression on the man's face was just about the saddest thing Razak had ever seen, but he did as he was told.

The troopers received assistance of another kind as they closed in on the Bugs. It's arrival was heralded by heavy thumps, the hiss and clunks of hydraulic pistons, and flashing red lights. Then an honest to god mech came stomping out of the darkness. It wasn't a marauder, but it was similar in size and build to one of the mobile infantry's APE marauders. This was the civilian version, built for fire departments, with a flashing light whirling on each shoulder. The glass of the cockpit window was a highly reflective silver, impossible to see through from the outside. The mech was painted red, but right now, that paint job was covered in what looked like a liberal application of Bug juice. It had no guns, and no armor other than heat shielding. In place of a marauder's cannon, it had a rack full of attachments that it could fit onto it's arms, a variety of tools that firemen were likely to use. Currently, one arm ended in a saw attachment, something you might use if you had to cut through a wall or through a wrecked vehicle. The other arm ended in a thick, heavy, three foot long pry bar.

The driver of the mech raised the pry bar and charged at the Bugs. Just a couple of strides put the mech close enough to stab at the nearest Bug, and it punched the yard of metal through the Bug's shell. The weight of the mech drove the Bug to the ground and pinned it there. Knocking aside the swiping claws with the other arm, the driver stepped the mech in closer. The saw attachment screamed to life and was shoved into the junction where the thorax and mandibles connected. The pinned Bug shrieked and jerked as the blade tore through it's shell, spraying the Bug's vibrantly colored fluids into the air.

The mech operator had succeeded in drawing the Bug's attention away from the crowd, but they were about to find themselves in trouble. The other four Bugs were coming to avenge their comrade, climbing over each other to get at the fire-mech. Their claws would tear through that heat shielding like it was made of paper if they were given a chance to get that close.

T'Phai and Razak provided the driver with some support, squeezing off shots as they ran to their aid. It divided the Bug's attention long enough for the firefighter to disengage the tools from the Bug they'd been sawing on and prepare to defend their self. As the Bug's closed in on the mech, it swung both arms back and leaned forward. When one of the Warriors came in range, it stepped forward and swung both arms up, hard. The heavy metal attachments at the end of the arms connected under the lower beak of the Warrior with a deafening crack. The Bug was lifted off of the ground and sent flying backward into his cronies, his legs trailing limply behind him. As all four Bugs went down in a tangle, the mech driver pressed their advantage, stepping closer to jab with the pry bar and hack with the saw.

The two troopers had reached the firefighter's side and were firing into the pile of Bugs. Between the Bug's thrashing limbs and the firefighter's flashing lights, it wasn't easy to pick out any good targets in the mess, so they just kept firing into the pile and hoped that they'd hit something important. After a few more moments, the mound of Bugs stopped twitching and lay still.

The mech turned toward Razak and the rough voice of an older woman with a smoking habit came from it's external speaker. "Thanks for the assist, troopers."

Razak used the index finger of his mechanical hand to flip his visor down a little before letting it pop back up, then said, "Glad we could be of any help, ma'am."

The mech saluted back, it's pry bar clanking against the roll bar over the cock pit. It turned and stomped back out across the parking lot, and soon only it's flashing lights could be seen.

"He was a very good at killing Bugs for a simple firefighter." said T'Phai. So far, T'Phai had not managed to learn how to tell human males and females apart just based on the sound of their voices.

"I believe that was a woman." Razak replied. "She was probably a vet. Most of the civil services are made up of veterans. Come on, let's get inside."

Razak turned on his coms as he and T'Phai jogged back toward the opening in the wall. "Alpha Squad, rendezvous on me once you get inside the wall. I'll be waiting by the . . ." He turned to look at the utility truck he was passing and read the company name off of the door. "North B.A. Electric Co-op truck to the left of the opening."

Doc and Gossard acknowledged, and then Higgins acknowledged on behalf of himself and the two troopers he was traveling with. Razak and T'Phai hugged the wall, pushing themselves through the crowd towards the opening. They cut their way into the queue up near the front, earning themselves some complaints and dirty looks. The line moved forward at a slow crawl and Razak was beginning to consider using his jets to jump the wall when they finally got through the entrance. Once they were on the other side, Razak hooked a left and went to wait for the rest of his squad to arrive.

Nearly ten minutes passed before he saw the first of them. Higgins, Rico and Flores came walking up, the latter two looking like they'd been put through the ringer. They were limping and the looks on their faces suggested that there were very few steps left in them before they collapsed.

Rico handed Razak back his .45 saying, "It's empty."

"You guys catch some action?" Razak slipped the handgun back into the holster on the back of his belt.

"Some." said Dizzy. "You should have seen these guys. Once Rico's gun was empty, both of them were hiding behind me. Like scared kittens, they were, but I kept 'em safe. Didn't I, boys?" She punched Higgins in the shoulder. Higgins scowled at her.

Rico looked too tired to feel offended. He just nodded and yawned. His drapery had soaked up the rain, and he was no longer overheating. He was shivering, and his teeth chattered. "It was a lot warmer back in the middle of that crowd." he said.

"Yeah," agreed Dizzy. "but people kept stepping on my feet."

Doc and Gossard joined them a few minutes later, and while they had encountered some Bugs of their own at the rear of the column, they were looking none the worse for wear and in their usual cheerful dispositions. With everyone in one piece and accounted for, Razak lead them toward the front doors of the school.

Over the main entrance, there was a sign that read, Freemonte High School, Home of the Terrorbirds. Just as Buenos Aires High's mascot was the prehistoric sabertooth tiger, Freemonte had adapted the long extinct south american nightmare, the terrorbird. In the cartoon picture of it above the school's doors, it looked like the offspring of a romance between an eagle and an ostrich.

Dizzy looked up at it, then turned to Rico and in what sounded like a scottish accent riddled with speech impediments, she said, "My shun, we're pilgrimsh in an unholy land."

"On your best behavior, Flores." warned Razak. "And that was a terrible Sean Connery impression."

"I'll work on it, sir." she said, but she wasn't clear which thing she was promising to work on. As she walked through the door, she sniffed and said, "I smell food. Like, real, not an MRE, cooked, hot food."

Rico inhaled and smiled. "Please don't let it be a trick."

The rest of the squad was taking off their helmets, with the exception of T'Phai. They inhaled and sighed in unison.

"They must be running on propane." said Gossard. "That means they might even have gas powered water heaters."

Rico and Flores looked down at themselves, covered in mud and Spook Suit secretions. "A hot shower?" said Dizzy. "Do I even dare to hope?"

In the hallway the emergency lights were running, providing some illumination. Not enough to read by without giving yourself eyestrain, but bright enough to keep you from walking into walls. It wasn't a steady kind of light, it pulsed like maybe it was running off of a generator somewhere. There were more lines waiting for them, one of which took up about half of the width of the hallway and lead into the cafeteria. Another shorter line started further up the hall. A sign written in black marker on yellow poster board indicated that the shorter line lead to the med station, in the gymnasium. The squad started in that direction, but were stopped when a man came running out of the front office and chased after them, yelling, "Hey! Troopers! Wait!"

He was slim, a clean cut man but with a day's beard growth, probably in his fifties, dressed in a button up white shirt,a tie and tan pants. There was an M4 rifle on a strap slung over his shoulder and in one hand he carried a clipboard with a yellow legal pad attached to it. The front page of the legal pad was covered with notes written in a neat hand. A picture ID badge hanging from his shirt pocket indicated that he was Harold Shubert, the Principal of Freemonte.

"The Mobile Infantry are here?" he asked, his face aglow with the delight of seeing them. "We've been hearing that we shouldn't expect to see any troops for a long while yet." His eyes fell on Rico and Flores and saw the way they were dressed, and that dampened his spirits some.

"I'm afraid it's just us." Razak told him. "We came in on a mission and SICON left us stranded. At this point we're more in need of help than we are able to offer it."

Harold seemed to deflate a little. "That's disappointing. I gotta warn you, you've found yourself in a barely hanging on kind of situation here."

"Well, we're not going anywhere until we can get a transport, and it doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon. We'd be happy to pitch in any way we can." Razak pointed at Rico and Flores. "These two need medical attention, but once that's taken care of, we're at your disposal. Doc, there, is a fine medic, Gossard is handy with repairs and making things explode. The rest of us are pretty good at killing Bugs."

Shubert nodded as he listened and when Razak had finished he said, "Don't get me wrong. It's just that I saw troopers and thought the cavalry had arrived. We're glad to have you and I'd appreciate any help you could offer. Now, come on, let's get your people to that aid station."

"Were you able to secure the entire school?" Razak asked as they headed up the hallway.

"Only about half. All the buildings this side of the football field. We've been digging in, putting up what defenses we can. You saw the vehicle wall coming in. We had lots of school buses so it covers three sides of the land we're holding. We pulled a chain link fence up from around our baseball field and stretched it along the southern border. If you tilt a chain link fence the right way and stretch it out a little, it makes a really good bug obstacle. Better than barb wire."

Razak could see how the Warrior's legs could easily get trapped in a fence like that, if you set it up right. Something else was bothering him. "What I don't understand is, with all these buses, why aren't you evacuating?"

"Too many people to take out that way, and no place to go if we did." said Harold. "The streets are still pretty clear here inside the city, but we're hearing that traffic has come to a standstill on all the roads leading out of it. Word is that the traffic jams out on the outskirts are taking a beating from a swarm of those flying Bugs. This place seems like it's about as secure as we could hope for, for the time being."

It really sounded like things were going from bad to worse out there. Razak remembered how heavy and slow the traffic had been near the airport when the squad had come south. If it was like that all over, he could see how easily the Bugs could be gumming up the works. With that many cars trying to leave the city at once, all it took was for the Bugs to hit a few here and there at key intersections and then you had yourself a nice r-triple-d type situation.

"Just how many people do you have here?" he asked the Principal.

Shubert nodded his head to the right and left, silently calculating a rough estimate. "It's got to be closing in on three thousand. That number is increasing steadily."

The line to the cafeteria was on their left as they walked up the hall and at the sight of the troopers, people waiting in the line were shouting out questions, most of them the same questions over and over again.

"Is the military here?"

"What's the word from down south?"

"Are the Bugs coming?"

"When are we getting out of here?"

Shubert just kept saying back, "We don't know. We'll let you know when we know."

They passed the cafeteria and through the doors they could see crowded tables full of people eating. More people were sitting on the ground in clusters, eating off of trays sitting on their laps. The Roughnecks felt their mouths water at the sight of it. They forced themselves to move on, toward the other line further up the hall.

Shubert didn't let them wait in line for medical attention, just one of the perks of bringing your own medic. As they moved past the line for the aid station, there was more of the same questions, mixed in with angry complaints that they were skipping the queue. Shubert responded to the complaints by asking, "When the next wave of Bugs comes, where would you rather these these troopers be? Here, waiting in line, or out on the wall?"

That shut up some of them. One man asked what part of the city they were coming in from. A woman asked if Buenos Aires was the only place that had been hit. What was taking the military so long, a man wanted to know. Someone made a comment about the weather. A woman wanted to know if it was true about the ship yards.

A man with a blood soaked bandage wrapped around his head and his arm in a sling got quite irate when he saw the troopers walking past. "Sure!" he shouted, throwing his good hand in the air. "Why not just let the troops go first?! Us lowly civilians are happy to wait out here with our bleeding head wounds and broken arms! Ain't that how it always is? Wouldn't want to make the troops wait! Oh, no!"

Razak took a few more steps and then stopped. He cocked his head to the side a little, like he was thinking about something. The rest of the squad came to a halt and turned to look at him, puzzled. His head turned to look back the way they had come and his hand came up to scratch at the stubble on the back of his scalp. He looked over at Higgins and then the camera he was holding at eye level. For a few more seconds, he just just stood there, staring off in the distance, as if lost in thought. Finally making up his mind, he handed his helmet to Gossard, then grabbed Higgins by a shoulder pad and pulled him in tow as he headed back down the hall.

As he neared the man in the bandage, he said, "What did you just say?"

The rest of Alpha Squad exchanged uneasy looks. Higgins eyes went wide as he filmed from over the lieutenant's shoulder.

The man in the bandage looked at the gun in Razak's hand and hesitated before replying. "Look, man, I'm just saying. . ." he said. "I mean, here we are, all just waiting our tur-"

"Not you." said Razak. He shoved the bandaged man aside and pointed a gloved finger at the man standing next to him. "You. What did you say?"

This man was neatly dressed, average build, bland features. He pulled back a little when Razak spoke to him and his eyes flicked to the left and right, like he thought Razak might be speaking to someone else. It seemed like he was trying to avoid making eye contact with the lieutenant. The expression on his face was almost, but not quite, uncertainty. He opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. Then he said, "Afternoon. Lovely weather, wouldn't you say?"

Razak drove the butt of his Morita straight into the bridge of the man's nose, sending him stumbling backwards with his arms pinwheeling. The crowd around them drew back with a collective gasp of shock as the man fell against a mobile infantry recruiting poster taped to the wall behind him. Razak snapped the butt of his gun to his shoulder, and sighted. There was blood gushing from the man's nose, but it wasn't any shade of red. It was the bright green of a Bug's blood. The man looked almost, but not quite, surprised. His flesh rippled, and he began to change shape. Bug-like attributes began to reveal themselves. Compound eyes, mandibles. As the crowd began to scream in terror and fall all over each other to get away, Razak squeezed the trigger. The half man, half bug jerked and danced in the hail of bullets, it's center mass quickly turning to mush. After a few seconds, Razak released the trigger and took a step back. The Bug-man kept standing for a little longer, then it's knees buckled and it collapsed forward onto it's face. Despite being punched full of bullet holes and dripping with Bug juice, the words on the recruiting poster were still legible. JOIN THE MOBILE INFANTRY! DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

"Imposter Clone Bug." Razak explained to those around him. "Sorry if I frightened anyone."

DIZZY -

Dizzy sat wrapped in a silver mylar emergency blanket, staring off into space, slack-jawed. Squatting next to her, Doc scrubbed a small spot on her arm, cleaning and disinfecting an area large enough to insert an IV needle. She wasn't a big fan of needles, but she was just too tired to worry about it, or anything else, really. There was a lot of activity going on all around her, but her brain was not acknowledging most of it. She felt checked out, removed from everything else.

Rico had been hooked up to his bag of IV fluids first, since his symptoms continued to be worse than hers. He was sitting next to her in an identical plastic chair, with an identical mylar blanket, and with an identical vacant look on his face. A metal stand with a wheeled base was placed between the two chairs, and the two bags of saline solution hung from it.

The rest of the squad stood nearby along with Principal Shubert, and she was half hearing what they were saying.

"The Imposter Clones have a very limited conversational skills, so you'll want to tell your people at the gate to be on the lookout for anyone using that phrase he kept saying. 'Afternoon. Lovely weather, wouldn't you say?' Higgins, I want you to let Mr Shubert take your camera for a while, so he can show folks what the Imposter Clones look like. Keep in mind that there are a few variants but they all say that same phrase."

That'll go over well, thought Dizzy. Taking Higgin's camera away was likely to leave him curled up in a fetal position.

"In the meantime, Higgins," continued Razak. "I need you to see if you can find Flores and Rico some clothes and shoes. Do you have a lost and found, Mr Shubert?"

"We do but it's been picked clean already." said the principal. "We'll find them something to wear."

"That would be appreciated. Now, Gossard, I need you to start seeing what you can do about bulking up the defenses. Is there someone who can show him what you have on hand?"

"Our maintenance man is in the building manning the generators. He can help Corporal Gossard find anything he needs."

"Good. T'Phai, I think you could do the most good either out on the wall or up on the roof, doing sniper duty."

"Yes, sir. I will go right away." answered the Tophetti before he turned to leave.

"Wait." said Mr Shubert. "When was the last time any of you had anything to eat?"

"My stomach thinks my throat's been cut." said Gossard by way of answer.

"There is plenty of food." he told them. "If you come with me, Lieutenant, I can see to it that the kitchen sets you up with something to eat."

"Again, we would be much obliged, Mr Shubert."

"Think nothing of it. The addition of your squad to our defenses gives me hope that there's a chance we'll get out of this whole mess alive. Why don't you come with me, and we'll get you all set up."

The Principal lead the Razak and the others out to the hall. She heard Razak describing T'Phai's special dietary needs as they went. Dizzy really hoped they didn't forget to bring some food back for her, Rico, and Doc.

Wondering what was taking so long, she turned to check Doc's progress and was surprised to see that the IV was already hooked to her arm, and that he had moved on to help with other patients. She hadn't felt a thing.

They have a pretty good operation going here, she thought as she looked around the gymnasium. There was actually a surprising number of medically trained personnel on hand to offer help to those who needed it. Those ambulances and firetrucks that they had seen parked outside had come with a number of paramedic crews, who were now set up at little stations all over the gymnasium. A man that Dizzy thought might be the school nurse was running triage at the doors, sending the most serious cases on to the paramedics to be treated while the others he was directing into a waiting area with rows of plastic chairs to sit in. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than she would have expected.

She and Rico were sitting in the waiting area and many of the seats around her were full. There were some grumbles and complaints about the wait, the kind of thing you would hear in any emergency room. Some people were second guessing the triage nurse's decisions on who needed treatment first.

Her emergency blanket was helping her feel a little warmer, but the rain soaked drapery was still leaving her chilled. Every few seconds she would give a little shiver. If the choice had been left up to her, she would rather have just gone straight to a hot shower before getting set up with the IV. But Razak was letting Doc call the shots and he thought the IVs could not wait. She could not wait until someone brought her some clothes.

Dizzy could remember when her wants and needs in life used to be more complex and nuanced. Now they had been broken down to the very basics. Warmth. Food. Sleep. That's all she wanted.

From over her right shoulder, she heard the scrape of a chair on the gymnasium floor. She turned to look and saw a man in the corner of the gymnasium who had set up a little area for himself. He looked to be in his sixties, bearded and with long grey hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. He was dressed in camo fatigues, but with the length of his hair and the beard, she figured he wasn't current military, but probably a vet. Whatever it was that he was doing, it didn't seem to be related to the medical treatment that was going on in the rest of the gym. He had a little card table with fold out legs and on it sat some pens, a yellow legal pad, and a battery powered radio of some kind. He was wearing a wireless headset and a microphone was on the desk in front of the radio.

Pinned to the wall behind the table she could see he had a large map and from the look of it, she would say it was a map of Buenos Aires. The map had thumbtacks stuck into it all over and the man was taking some red yarn and winding it around the thumbtacks, connecting them like a dot to dot. Her sleep deprived brain tried to make sense of it, wondering what shape he was making and why he was doing it on the map. Occasionally he would stop, presumably to listen to whatever was coming over the radio, and then he would take another thumbtack, locate some spot on the map and press the tack into it.

Dizzy watched him for several minutes, and then her curiosity began to get the better of her. She turned to Rico and said, "Hey, Rico."

He had managed to nod off and at the sound of her voice, he jerked, looked around like he was trying to figure out where he was, then turned to look at her. "Djoosaymaname?"

"I want to go see what that guy is doing." said Dizzy. She pointed over at the man with the radio.

"Kay." he said, dropping his chin to go back to sleep.

"I want you to come with me." she said. "Come on." She reached over and rattled the IV stand.

Rico shook himself back awake. "Why? What's he doing?"

"I don't know. That's why I want to find out. Come on. Get up." She stood herself up from the chair, swayed, found her balance. She stood there, staring at him expectantly.

Rico looked at her, then over at the radio man, then sighed, "Fine."

They shuffled over, the IV stand's wheels squeaking as it rolled between them. She saw that she had been right, that it was a map of the city. They stood a few feet off for a while, watching as the man continued to work on his project. The yarn and tacks formed multiple circles on the map, one very large and then a dozen or so smaller ones. The largest circle surrounded the greater part of the city's shipyard district. The smaller ones contained business districts, residential neighborhoods, and industrial areas. Even the smallest of the circles encompassed many, many city blocks.

She thought that she already knew what she was looking at, but felt she had to ask, to be sure. "What are you working on?"

Because of the headphones, the man didn't hear her. She waited a couple more seconds, and then knocked on the hard surface of the card table. "Hey! What are you doing?" A little louder this time.

The man turned from the map and saw them standing there. He pulled the headphones off of his ears and let them rest wrapped around his neck. "Pardon?" he said.

"What is that?" asked Dizzy, pointing at the map.

"Oh, just my way of trying to keep busy. I'm listening to emergency bands on this radio, and mapping out where the damage is. Every time I hear a report from a location, I stick in a tack. Somethin' to do, you know?"

"So, inside the circles, there are buildings knocked down and stuff?"

He looked at her, then at Rico, then back to her. "Honey," he said. "I don't know how to break it to you, but these were meteor strikes. High speed, lots of energy. Everything in those circles is gone. Pulverized. Big hole in the ground."

The old man watched her reaction, and she could see by the look on his face that he wasn't meaning to be cruel. There was just no way to pull that punch.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Are you folks from here in the city?"

Dizzy didn't respond. Her gaze shifted back to the map. She started trying to locate a family member that didn't live in one of the smaller circles. Tried to locate some place that they might have been when the attack came that wasn't in one of the circles. Her mother would have been at home, or she might have been at the corner grocery. Her father would have been at work. Her grandparents would have been at home. Or maybe at the Elks lodge or at the local diner. Her brothers would have been at school, or at home, or working at a factory. Her brother Eddy might still be out there, somewhere, and crazy Uncle Roberto, the black sheep of the family, he lived far to the south, so he might have been spared. Everyone else was gone. There had been no warning, no chance for evacuation.

Dizzy turned to Rico and said, "They're all gone, aren't they, Johnny?"

He nodded, never taking his eyes from the map. The color was gone from his face. He had a death grip on the IV stand and it looked like that was the only thing holding him up.

She turned back to look at the map. I should be crying, she thought. Dizzy had known already. From the moment they'd first heard of the attack, she known that they had all been taken from her. But she hadn't allowed herself to accept it then, telling herself that it wasn't time to grieve yet, because there was no way to be sure. Maybe that's why I'm not crying now. Still no way to be sure. I haven't seen the bodies. I'm never going to see the bodies. High speed, lots of energy. They were dust now. Ashes and dust.

Her one consolation was that it had been quick, and painless. She often had nightmares about the Bugs killing her family, and in many ways, those nightmares had been the motivation that had kept her going through the last couple of years. But in her nightmares it was a wave of Warrior Bug's washing over her home, tearing through the walls to get at the people within. Her family had been spared that kind of horrific death. Her fears of losing the ones she loved had been realized, but at least they had not suffered.

Then, a terrible thought occurred to her, made all the more awful by the ring of absolute truth to it. The Bugs were going to win. We've been fooling ourselves. Up until now, she'd believed that if everyone did their part, they could win this. Kill enough Bugs and in the end, humanity would come out on top. But the Bugs had the numbers and sheer relentlessness on their side. They weren't like us. They weren't dreaming of some peaceful day in a far off future. They lived in the moment and only dreamed to fill every moment with a human death. They would spread throughout the galaxy and they would consume every living thing until everything was Bug.

Sabertooth Tigers. Terrorbirds. They had their day in the sun, and never thought it would end. Then something better came along, and where were they now? Nothing lasts forever, and humanity was no exception. Someone was always going to have to be the last of us. We're just the ones who picked the short straw.

As a species, we'd had a pretty good run. We tamed fire, built some pyramids, and traveled to the stars. Along the way we'd painted some pretty good pictures and written some really catchy songs. She'd even heard that some had experienced loving someone and being loved back. That would've been a kick.

A numbness settled in, a potent mix of shock and exhaustion and she kept losing track of where she was and what was happening. Later, they were sitting back in their chairs and she didn't remember walking back there. There was a tray of food in her lap, but no memory of where it had come from. Then the food was gone, but she couldn't swear that she had eaten it. Higgins brought them clothes. One piece Terrorbird football uniforms, red with a black feather pattern all over and wide yellow stripes down the side. Tennis shoes. She took the clothes without complaint. Someone knocked on the shower stall door and asked if she was alright. She was being lead into an empty classroom. There were wrestling mats on the floor and Rico was curled up on one, wrapped in a mylar blanket. She lay down next to him and closed her eyes.

Had the last sabertooth known he was the last? Had he fought that much harder because of it?

She had no idea how long she had been out when she awoke thinking of a tree and the initials carved on it. It was a memory from her early teenage years. It was the only place from her childhood that she could remember that was not now gone from the earth.

The tree grew next to a creek at a camping site far outside the city. That summer her parents had packed her up along with her army of brothers and taken them to a campground for two weeks of vacation. She'd been kissed there for the first time, by a boy her age whose family was staying at the same campground. She'd liked the kiss, but then the boy had talked and he'd had so many stupid things to say, and it had kind of ruined it for her. Bored by the boy, she'd ditched him and gone to sit alone by the creek and wonder what her best friend Johnny was doing at that exact moment. He was far away, on a vacation with his own family in Australia.

She wish that the boy could have been more like Johnny. She could talk to Johnny all day every day and never grow tired of it.

That was when she'd started to wonder what it would be like to kiss Johnny. At first, the thought had seemed weird. She had never thought of Johnny that way. He was her friend, the kid she played sports with, rode bikes with, stayed up all night playing video games with. But the more she thought about it, the less weird the idea became. Having thought about it, there was something very right about the notion. She thought that she would like very much to kiss her best friend. Some kind of secret, solemn vow had been made there, and she'd sealed it by engraving her initials and those of her best friend into the wood of the tree and then enclosing them with a crude heart shape.

The image of the tree was still lingering in her mind, when she quietly said his name.

He must not have been asleep, because he answered almost right away. "Yeah, Diz?"

"Remember that summer that your parents took you to Sydney and my parents took me camping?"

After a few moments he said, "Yeah. Why?"

She struggled to frame her question. "What happened to you there?"

"What do you mean? It was a vacation. Hung out at the beach most of the time, I think."

"No, I mean. . .When you came back, you were different. When you left, we were best friends, but when you came back, it seemed like you didn't want to have anything to do with me."

She waited for his answer, and when he didn't, she said, "You probably don't even know what I'm talking about."

"No, I remember. But, you were the one who changed, Diz."

"What? How?"

"When I left, you were my best buddy, just one of the boys. I came back and you'd started wearing a bra. Everything was different. You were always giving me these weird looks, like you were expecting something from me, and I had no idea what it was. Everything you said seemed to have some double meaning and I always felt like I was missing the punchline. Everything I said seemed to be taken the wrong way and you would get all hurt by it. I felt like I was walking on eggshells around you."

"I was a teenage girl, all hopped up on hormones. We're like walking open wounds at that age."

"Yeah, well, I got tired of feeling like an idiot, that's why I stopped hanging out with you."

"I was the idiot."said Dizzy. "I acted that way because I liked you, and I wanted you to like me."

"I already liked you. You were my best friend, remember?"

"No, I LIKED you and I wanted you to LIKE me."

"Like I said Diz, you were just one of the boys. Thinking about you that way would have taken a sudden one hundred and eighty degree mental turn, and I don't know if you've noticed, but my head's got kind of a wide turn radius."

She snorted at that and he gave a little laugh, too. They lay in silence for a while, and she thought that they might be getting closer to dawn. What she could see of the sky out the windows seemed to be changing from a dark overcast glum, to a slightly less dark overcast glum.

"Rico?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

"Yeah."

"Since when?"

"I dunno."

She thought that there was a chance that her youthful infatuation had made her see him as a better conversationalist than he really was. Dizzy turned over to her other side to face him. He was laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. She watched the light from the window slowly get brighter on his face. She thought of millions of dead and what they would have done if they had known that yesterday would be their last day She thought of the ones she loved and things not said.

It was now or never, she decided. Can't count on a tomorrow. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and then moved to straddle him. It took him by surprise.

"Diz, what. . ."

She cut him off with a kiss. Soft and sweet.

He made one more attempt at protest and then she told him, "Shut up, Johnny."

She kissed him again, this time more deeply, and then he reached up and his arms were wrapping around her, pulling her down onto him and he was kissing her back.

RAZAK -

Razak had been prepared for hours more on an already long day, but he had been pleasantly surprised to find that everything he could think of to do to strengthen the defenses of the school had already been done by the Principal or was now being done by Gossard. The Principal, it turned out, had been a sergeant in the Mobile Infantry, and he must have been a good one. Shubert had the answer to any question Razak had asked. Sometimes he'd needed a few seconds of flipping through the notes on his clipboard, but most of the time he'd plucked the answer right off the top of his head. He had a running census of any citizens that they had on site and what kind of weapon each citizen was carrying and how much ammo they had arrived with. If the information was needed, Shubert knew what special skills they had learned while they were in the service. The contents of a police SWAT van outside had been inventoried as they were brought inside, and he had a page on his clipboard that detailed it's contents. Should they find that they had to evacuate by vehicle, he knew who in the school knew how to drive. He knew who had eaten, who had slept, what classrooms were in use and which were empty. He was so good that Razak began to suspect that maybe SICON had secretly developed a new type of CHAS unit and were testing it out in schools. Only this time, CHAS stood for Cybernetic Humanoid Administrative System. A CHAS probably wouldn't have needed a clipboard, though.

When Razak had run out of suggestions that Shubert hadn't already thought of, they stood there for a few minutes waiting to see if something else would occur to him. Finally, the Principal asked, "When was the last time you got any sleep?"

Razak tried to remember, and thought he might have dozed off at one point back in Oregon but couldn't swear to it. "I think it might have been during the last Sky Marshall administration." he told Shubert.

"Well, things are quiet at the moment. Maybe you should go try to catch forty winks, and I'll wake you if we need you."

Razak could see the sense in that. He felt dead on his feet. "Maybe for just an hour."

"An hour." repeated Shubert. "Then I'll come roust you."

The Principal had put him in the Vice Principal's office and flipped off the lights on his way out. Razak had flopped out on the floor, with the VP's suit jacket for a pillow. He'd fallen asleep almost right away, but had jarred back awake almost immediately. It was always this way when he let himself get this exhausted. He would start to drop off, and then he would swear he heard someone shout his name. Sometimes the voice sounded like his mother, other times like his drill sergeant back in basic. Either way, every time he'd sit bolt upright, heart pounding, and then realize he had only imagined hearing it. The second time he'd crashed out for good and had been dead to the world until he heard the Principal's knock upon the door.

He squinted at the clock on the wall and said, "That time already?"

"That time, Lieutenant." Shubert agreed. "There's a woman out here who wants to speak to you. She says she knows you."

That made him a little curious. "Send her in." he said as he got himself up off of the floor. Shubert held the door open for her, and then excused himself.

Razak recognized the black woman that walked through the door as soon as he saw her. She was in her late thirties, dressed in blue jeans, a faded Washout Wally t-shirt and a grey hooded sweatshirt. Her hair was dyed a deep, dark blue color and was done up in tight cornrows that came together into a ponytail of braids at the back of her head.

Razak smiled when he saw her and said, "Topper!"

Topper's real name was Andrea Lincoln, and she had been the dropship and retrieval ship pilot on many of Razak's earliest drops as a lieutenant. Her nickname was short for "Treetopper" because of how low she would fly on a mission when she was trying to stay below radar. She'd been known to clear her path of a particularly tall tree with her ship's minigun rather than gain altitude and risk being pinged.

He stuck his hand out to shake hers, and she reached to accept, then hesitated, looking down to see which hand he was offering. "Sorry." she said. "Just making sure you weren't trying to grab me with the mangler."

He held up his left hand, wiggled the mechanical fingers. "This isn't the same one that you remember. This one's got some subtlety to it. I can pick up kittens and everything."

"Jean Razak petting kittens." she said with a smirk. "Please tell me there are pictures."

He extended the other hand, and she grabbed it, but then pulled him into a tight hug. "How you been, Jean? You telling me SICON hasn't found a way to get you killed?"

"Not for lack of trying, I assure you." Razak replied. "I'm holding together alright, I guess. How about you, Lieutenant?"

She released him and stepped back, looking at him quizzically. "I'm not fleet anymore. Hadn't you heard?"

"What's this bunk? You finally see sense and go to work for the private companies?"

"I got myself booted."

It was his turn to give her the funny look. "How would you have gone about doing that?"

"How well do you keep up with the news?"

"I ignore it for the most part. I've been on the ground too often when it was being made, and saw how backwards the journalists got everything later. Call me crazy, but I guess I'd rather be uninformed than misinformed."

"Same old Jean." she said. "Well, you did hear about the Dantana evacuation, right?" Andrea paused for a second to steal a glance out the door to the left and the right before closing it behind her and taking a seat in one of the chairs placed against the wall. Razak leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Dantana. Hmmm. If memory serves, it was one of the few pieces of rock that we decided it wasn't worth fighting the Bugs for."

"That's the one." she said. "There was a big settlement there named Fort Joe Smith made up of about fifty thousand people. SICON decided they didn't want to hold it, so they sent Fleet transports to load everyone up and hightail it out of there. Mine was the last ship on the ground, and the MI general who running the whole operation was on board my ship. He began to get antsy when the Bugs started getting close to the fort. He ordered me to take off, even though we still had a few thousand people that were coming in from the outer settlements. I couldn't leave them behind, so I refused. He threatened to shoot me, and let the co-pilot fly the transport out."

"This co-pilot. Was it Lucy?"

"It was." said Andrea. He thought he saw her wince a little at the mention of the name.

"Then him threatening to shoot you must have gone over like a wet fart. How is she doing?"

Andrea didn't say anything for a few seconds, just looked down to study the carpet. Then she looked up and met his eyes. "Lucy . . ." she had to stop, then take another run at it. "Lucy died."

"Oh." was the only thing Razak could think to say at first. "I am so sorry, Andrea. When?"

"Late last year. Our supply convoy got hit by plasma fire on the way into Klendathu and her ship burned up."

The stood for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. Jean remember Lucy McHale as a short, freckled redhead with a crew cut and a sense of humor that inevitably strayed to the bawdy. "She was one of a kind." he said, fondly.

"That she was." agreed Andrea.

"So, Lucy didn't shoot the general, did she?"

"No, but only because I wouldn't let her. We just tossed him out of the cabin and barred the door. We sat there and waited for the rest of the evacuees and the entire time he was yelling at us through the door, making all kinds of threats. He even had someone bring up a cutting torch and try to cut their way through. Once we had everyone on board, we took off, and I'll admit, it was a squirrely dust-off. But we all made it out in one piece."

Razak could only see one way it could have gone from there. "How come you didn't get the firing squad?"

"Because the general had a very big mouth and it didn't take long before everyone on board the transport knew what was going on. If they'd tried to put me on trial, there would have been a huge uproar. On the other hand, we'd manhandled a general and refused direct orders. About all they could do with me is cut a deal. If Lucy and I left quietly, we could keep our pilots licenses but we would not get our citizenship. If we ever made a stink, they would put us on trial and see us shot. We took the deal."

"So, now you're raking in the dough in the private sector?"

"Not exactly. Any reputable company wouldn't have us. Our military records are sealed, so any potential employed can only see that my discharge was not honorable. I can't explain myself, or I'll risk having to face trial. We ended up taking whatever work we could get. I've been piloting for a merchant marine vessel until I can find something better."

"Well, it sounds like you've had a rough patch going for a while now."

"True, but believe it or not, Jean, I'm not actually here just to belly ache."

"Oh? What's on your mind?"

"We got a ship."

"Really? Where?"

"Here in Buenos Aires. At the shipyards."

Razak looked confused. "Are you sure that you're keeping up with the news? The shipyards are gone, Topper."

"Most of them are, yes. But as far as we can tell, where we got our Sweet Madeleine parked is outside the crater. The shipyards have an auxiliary landing pad further to the south. It used to be a warehouse property, but they tore it all down and paved it. If repairs are getting backed up at the main yards, they put the overflow out 's where she is."

"Okay, what kind of ship are we talking about? This something that runs? Why is it at the 'yards?"

"Maddy is a transport. " said Andrea. "She's a Maden-Reber heavy class, about as big as they get and still be able to land in an atmosphere. Built for the military fifty years ago and then decommissioned about twenty five years ago. She's ancient, and she's ugly, and the way she handles, it's like she takes steering as merely a suggestion to consider, but she was built to last and her hull's solid. As far as what's wrong with her, about eight months ago, her Cherenkov drive crapped out on us. We were on the way back to earth at the time and had dropped out of slipspace out by Pluto to offload some supplies. Fizzle, pop, and then we ain't going anywhere fast. Had the drive worked, we would have been home in three hours. Instead, we spent the next six months limping her home the old fashion way. We got her home and she's been parked for the last two months at a pad at the south end of the city, waiting her turn for repairs."

"And you think it's still there and can fly?"

"I've looked at the maps and she looks like she's in the clear. As long as the Bugs haven't found her, she'll fly. I can't take you to the other side of the solar system any time soon, but I can get you out of town."

"Is this ship big enough to evacuate four or five thousand people?"

"We've hauled three thousand head of cattle before. Maddy's holds are all empty, so there should be more than enough room for that many people. My main worry is having enough room to land her. I've been looking at the sports fields outside, and between the football field, the soccer field and the baseball diamond, I think there will be enough room to bring her down. We're going to cause some destruction but she should fit.

"You have enough crew to fly her?" This was all sounding a little too good to be true, and Razak was trying not to let himself get too excited. He knew there must still be a big "But" coming and was trying to find out what the weevil in this biscuit was going to be.

"Sure do. We've all been stuck here doing nothing, waiting on Maddy to get her repairs. My boss has spent the last two months losing money and losing his mind, shelling out on food and lodging for an eight man starship crew. You've met him, by the way."

"When was this?"

"Remember the mouthy twerp in the hallway with the sling and the bloody head bandage?"

"Ah, yes. He's a charmer." Then he connected a few dots and had an ah-ha moment. "Were you there, too? I was wondering how you knew I was around."

"Yeah, I figured you hadn't seen me. I was two feet from you but apparently you had something else on your mind. If I'd have been a Bug I would have bit you."

"Says the woman who had actually been standing next to a Bug."

"He didn't look like no Bug." she said, her expression turning playfully sheepish.

"You didn't think he was acting a little strange, commenting on how nice the afternoon weather was in the middle of the night?"

"We were standing in line for medical attention. I thought he was in shock or something."

Razak let it drop with a bemused smirk and a shake of his head. "Your boss doesn't seem too keen on the MI."

"He sure doesn't." she said with a nod of agreement. "He's always had a chip on his shoulder about the service. I don't know, he may have washed out at some point or something. But right now, I think part of his frustration with everyone in a uniform is because of the runaround he's been getting with Maddy's repairs. Don't get me wrong, he is a Class A jerk, but what we've been putting up with would try anyone's patience. The military gets priority on all repair facilities, even the private ones, so we just kept getting bumped back over and over again."

"Does he know you're talking to me about this?"

"I told him I was going to, but he's not exactly sold on the idea. It's not like he's got a lot of choice, though. If he leaves the ship there, the Bugs will find it. It's not like we can go get it ourselves. We're merchant marines, so, by law, all our guns had to stay on the ship. If we were to try to go get her, we'd be crossing a lot of Bug territory unarmed."

"All right, so why is he dragging his feet?"

Andrea rolled her eyes and shook her head. "He claims that he's afraid you'll seize the ship."

"If we did the government has to pay him the current value, which I believe has increased exponentially since yesterday. He'd be filthy rich."

"Yeah, well, I think what he's really worried about is something else. He doesn't know that I know, and he sure wouldn't want you to know, but I've heard from some of the guys on the crew that he sometimes skims a little off of the military shipments. He's got stolen military gear stowed away in some hidden compartment somewhere on the ship."

"Shady guy, your boss. What's he doing with it all?"

"Black market, I think. He gets caught, he gets shot."

"And hence, all his hand wringing." Razak scratched his chin and looked through the window at the rainy gloom outside. He turned back with a sigh and a look on his face like he'd just taken a bite of something nasty. "I'm willing to pretend that I don't know what I know, if it means I can get all these people out of here. If we get you guys out there, is he going to give us trouble about coming back to pick up all these passengers?"

"Wouldn't matter if he did." said Andrea. "He and I are the only ones who can fly her, and there's no way he could handle her with that broken arm. Maddy's going where I say she's going."

"I'd just hate to find myself dealing with him if he decides to do something stupid. Once he's on the ship, he'll be armed, and that makes me very nervous. Any chance we could go get it without him?"

"Sorry, but I'm afraid not. Maddy won't fire up without his thumbprint and voicescan. Our boy's got what you'd call a touch of the paranoia."

"It was worth a shot." he said. "Look, I feel bad for even asking, but there is one thing I need to know. If things came to push and shove with him, can I expect you to be pushing on our side?"

She laughed at him. "What? You think I've been running with scoundrels and maybe it's rubbed off on me?"

"That's not what I mean, and like I said, I'm sorry for even asking. But, I understand that working on this ship is your livelihood, and the way SICON has treated you wouldn't exactly inspire feelings of loyalty in anybody. I could see how you might feel conflicted."

"Jean, no matter how SICON has treated me, I'm still the same woman I've always been and you can count on me to do what I've always done. Which is the right thing as far as I can see it. If you're on the side doing the right thing, then you know which side I'll be standing on."

"Good enough for me." he said. "What say you introduce me to this boss of yours?"

Within a minute of meeting Andrea's boss, Razak knew that working with the man was going to be the hardest part of the mission. It was going to require the patience and calm of a zen master and the congeniality of a wartime diplomat. For the most part, he had decided to let Andrea take the lead in the negotiations. She had spent six months stuck on a ship with the man and had somehow managed to resist the urge to eject him out an airlock. Clearly, she had developed some strategies for dealing with him.

They met in an empty History classroom, with just the three of them being present. "Tom, this is Jean Razak." said Andrea. "Jean, this is Tom Dahl, the owner and captain of the Sweet Madeleine ."

Tom wasn't a big guy, about five six and maybe a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He was dressed in denim and flannel, with a stained canvas jacket draped over his shoulders. There was a nervous energy to him; he constantly fidgeted and seemed to have a hard time just standing still. His appearance was scruffy, with a few weeks of beard growth and a head full of black hair that hadn't seen scissors in over a year at least. However, someone had used clippers to shave out a strip of hair across the left side of the top of his head, to make it easier to stitch his head wound. It was a nasty looking cut, about five inches long. His right forearm had been put in a temporary cast and was held close to his body by a sling. The fingers sticking out the end of the cast were nicotine stained.

Razak felt he should offer to shake hands, but wasn't sure that was such a good idea. With Tom's right hand in a cast, he would have to offer his left hand, the mechanical one, and he thought that might do more harm than good. He decided to forego the handshake, instead, putting on a smile and saying, "A pleasure to meet you, Mr Dahl."

Dahl grunted in response, then stared at him.

The fixed smile on Razak's face quickly began to hurt, and he doubted it was looking that authentic anyway. Dropping it, he said, "Well, I wanted to start by saying that I'm sorry if I startled you earlier when I went after that Imposter Clone Bug. That was not my intention."

"Right." said Tom.

Razak looked over at Andrea for any kind of direction. She looked back at him and then said, "Tom, I talked with Jean about the situation with Maddy."

"Yeah." said Tom. "I hear you want to hire my ship."

Razak focused on keeping his face neutral and crossed off the first nine responses that occurred to him.

"Tom," said Andrea. "we talked about this. Don't even try it."

"Try what, Lincoln? I still don't understand the issue. The Federation needs my services and the services of my ship. Shouldn't I be compensated for them?"

Razak was impressed by the level calm of Andrea's tone when she said, "Under normal circumstances, yes, but right now your ship is parked deep in Bug territory."

"Oh, she's got a strong hull." he said with a shrug. "She'll probably be just fine until I can get to her."

Andrea started to say something in response, but was cut off when Razak snorted, then started coughing as he choked off a laugh. The fit lasted a few seconds and then he cleared his throat before saying, "Mr Dahl, you are either trying to bluff, or you have never seen what a Bug's pincers can do to solid steel. What Bug Plasma can do. Or Blister Bug acid. Or Tanker Bug fire."

Tom Dahl glared at him and Razak regretted allowing himself even the hint of laughter. This was a man who could not abide the thought of being laughed at.

Razak ignored Dahl's hostile looks and pressed on. "Fact is, I'm only considering all this because I figure there's a coin toss chance that the Bug's haven't got to your ship already. At this point in time, I'm willing to take those odds."

Dahl chewed on the corner of his lip as he considered, then dismissed him with a swish of his good hand. "Why am I even talking to a lowly lieutenant, anyway? Get someone on the horn that matters and I'll negotiate with them."

"We do not have time for this. You understand that eventually, Bugs are going to be coming here, and they are going to come by the thousands. We do not have the weapons to hold off that many Bugs."

"Sounds like you better hurry, then, lieutenant. Send me up the chain of command until I find someone that can see sense." As Tom spoke, Razak looked down and saw that one of the man's knees was shaking. Apparently, he wasn't as confident as he was trying to pretend to be. But clearly, things like reason, common sense, or just basic self preservation were not going to be of any use in trying to appeal to Tom Dahl. Razak would have to switch gears.

"We can go that route, if you insist." Razak told him, looking up to meet Dahl's eyes. "But, they're going to want my opinion on the situation, and I'm going to recommend that they give Maddy a thorough, every nook and cranny type inspection before they sign any contracts. You think the Sweet Madeleine can pass those kinds of inspections right now?"

Razak put on his poker face, crossed his arms over his chest and held Dahl's gaze while the captain had himself an internal debate. Dahl had no poker face; every thought going through that head was being written out in little twitches on his face. It was Dahl who broke eye contact first, flicking his eyes over to Andrea, as if he was expecting some kind of support from that direction. She had nothing to add. Razak looked down, and noticed that his boots had mud on them. He nonchalantly scraped one against the other, knocking some loose. Still watching the ship captain peripherally, he could see that Tom was just about on the verge of a seizure. The look on his face gave the impression that he was trying to swallow a hot baked potato, whole.

He's trying to figure out how much I know and how I would know it, mused Razak.

Tom's voice had a little quiver to it when he said, "There are private companies. I'll -"

Razak let the laugh out this time. "What private company is going to come into Buenos Aires right now? The Mobile Infantry has hundreds of troops at the north end of the city, and they aren't even coming in yet. You going to hire some mercenaries to help you go out there and get it? How long is that going to take? What do you think it will cost?"

"Look, you don't have to -" Tom attempted to get a word in edgewise, but Razak spoke over him, raising his voice.

"Face it, Mr Dahl, you are talking to the only person with the means and the motivation to go right now and get you your ship back. And all it's going to cost you is an act of human decency. Come back here, pick up the people in this school, and get them out of town. Now, can we please stop messing around and pretending that you actually have some kind of choice here?"

The two men stared at each other, unblinking. Razak could see that Tom was on the ropes, but knew the man was not going to go down without a few more swings.

Sure enough, after much huffing and puffing and chin scratching, Dahl said, "I want a promissory note, signed by you that after this is all said and done, I'll be paid the going rate for -"

"No."

Dahl let out a frustrated whimper. "I want a signed document stating if any damage is caused to my ship during the course -"

"Not going to happen."

Frankly, Razak found himself a little surprised that Tom wasn't falling on the floor, kicking and screaming. Apparently the man was capable of a little more restraint than the lieutenant would have given him credit for.

With a sigh of resignation, Tom said, "Once we are on my ship, I am the Captain of a Merchant Marine vessel and I want you and your crew to treat me as such. I don't want you ordering my crew around, or talking down to me in front of them. I'd like a little respect."

"Fair enough." said Razak. "I'll go get my people."

A few minutes later, Razak was with Gossard, surveying what he had managed to accomplish since they had arrived at the school hours before. They were standing in what was once the chemistry classroom but now had become a weapons factory. The tables had been set up as workstations and the people clustered around them were building the components of several kinds of explosives. Some of them were mixing liquids in beakers, while others were grinding powders with a mortar and pestle. Glass bottles were being filled and capped with lids fitted with fuses. A woman at one table was filling baking pans with some kind of clear gel then pounding them on the table, presumably to shake out bubbles. A group of high school age kids at another table had shallow baking pans filled with what looked like some kind of greenish clay. They were wearing heavy rubber gloves and carefully pressing heavy nuts and bolts into the soft surface of the clay. A fuse protruded from a hole drilled onto the side of the pan.

"I know you're talented, Gossard, but i got to admit, this has far exceeded my expectations."

"I'd like to take the credit, sir, but my chemistry knowledge is way too basic for any of this. All the credit really goes to Mr Fohler over there."

He pointed out a dark haired bearded man sporting a lab coat who was over in the far corner of the room. He was standing with his hands clasped behind him, overseeing the work with a watchful eye.

"He's Freemonte's chemistry teacher." explained Goss. "I was mixing up molotov cocktails and came up here to see if he had any beakers I could borrow. I asked him if he had any ideas for explosives we could make and I swear, it's like he'd been waiting his entire life for someone to come along and ask him that question." Gossard turned so he was facing away from Mr. Fohler, and then leaned in to whisper to Razak, "He's kind of scary."

"Oh, yeah? How so?"

"He has spent way too much time thinking about how to make explosives. He's got notebooks, note the plural, notebooks full of formulas."

"Makes sense." said Razak. "I've always suspected that every chemistry teacher I've ever known was a secret pyromaniac. They're all just a little too eager to blow things up." He leaned over, snuck a peek at the teacher. "He does kind have crazy eyes, doesn't he?"

"I know! Right?!" whispered Goss. "He doesn't blink. I mean, ever."

"Playing devil's advocate, I would point out that there are times when we kind of have the same worries about you, Corporal. Perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt for now."

"I see your point." said Goss. "But, hey, at least I blink on a regular basis."

"You think all this stuff is going to work?"

"From what I can make of it, the chemistry is sound. He says he's only using his simplest, most stable formulas, since these folks doing all the mixing aren't chemists. Oh, and by the way, he also says that if we feel we need it, he could mix up something that would take out half the school. I'll let you make of that what you will."

"Okay, I'll grant you, that's a little disconcerting." said Razak. "Let's just assume that he describing some kind of 'the Bugs have taken the school and we're taking them with us' kind of scenario. How would they even have the supplies for something like that on hand?"

"I asked him the same question. He said that they are putting in a new olympic size pool this summer and they have a half dozen barrels each of plastisteel resin and hardener. According to him, he could use the resin and other materials we have on site to whip up a high explosive."

"Oh, my god. Okay, you've convinced me. He's a little bit scary. I guess we should just be thankful he's on our side. How about you? How are you holding up? With all this work, have you managed to get any sleep?"

"I got about a forty five minute nap while we were waiting for that gel stuff to cook to the right consistency. I think I would have been better off without it, though. Woke up more tired than when I went to sleep."

"I hear you. You got any idea where everyone else is?"

"Last time I saw Doc, he was looking for a place to crash out for a little while. Rico and Diz are still snoozing in a classroom up the hall. I saw T'Phai out on the wall when we were delivering some of our goodies. He hadn't slept, but I don't think it's even that time of the week for him, yet. Higgins is curled up in the bottom of Mr Fohler's coat closet over there sawing logs."

Razak tried to make sense of that last part, but had to ask. "Why is Higgins in the coat closet?"

"He tried to crash out in the same classroom with Dizzy and Rico, but he said the door was locked. He came back here, looked for the first out of the way, dark place he could find and crawled into it. I think the little tike had wore himself out and he really needed a nap."

"Well, give him a shake, and then meet me in the room where Rico and Diz are sleeping in five. We've got work to do."

After leaving the Chemistry Lab, Razak asked around until he located Doc, and sent him to join the others while he went outside to find T'Phai. There he discovered that T'Phai's shooting skills had earned him quite a fan club amongst those guarding the wall and they were not happy to see him go. There were groans of disappointment and complaints about the unfairness of it all when Razak came to collect the Tophetti.

"You bringing him back?" one of the men yelled down to Razak from the roof of a bus.

"Sorry, folks, but I don't think so."

A chorus of expletives rose up. One of the men came up and was going to bump fists with T'Phai, but then he saw the sharp claw sticking out from the back of the alien's hand, and thought better of it. Instead, he grabbed T'Phai up in a bear hug to say goodbye. Knowing T'Phai as he did, Razak knew this kind of display of affection probably made the alien feel uncomfortable, but he accepted it graciously, and even patted the man awkwardly on the shoulders.

As they walked back towards the doors, Razak said, "I take it you guys saw some action this morning?"

"The Bugs came a few times, and they are coming in greater numbers. The fighting was . . ." he searched for the right word. "intense. They were calling me the Terror of Tophet. Do you think that is good or bad?"

"I would say in this case it's good. It means they liked you."

"I thought so," said T'Phai. "but could not be sure. There was once a great warlord on Tophet that was given a similar name, but he is not remembered affectionately."

The others were waiting when they got back inside. Gossard was keeping everyone entertained by ranking Rico, Flores, and Higgins' bedhead, and since they had both gone to sleep with wet hair, Rico and Dizzy were currently in a dead heat. Ultimately, he decided that the asymmetry of Dizzy's do plus how high it stood straight up put her over the top and awarded her the prize.

Higgins was tapping at the top of his own head with a flattened palm, trying to determine how high his hair stood while comparing it to Dizzy's when he noticed something and leaned in for a closer look. "Are those hickeys?" he asked.

Simultaneously, Rico and Flores put their hands to their necks and said, "What? "Where?"

Goss looked closer and said, "Yeah, I think so. Oh, man, you got them everywhere."

Razak noticed that Rico and Dizzy's eyes were firing daggers at each other for some reason.

"Look." said Doc. "They're on your hands, too."

The two troopers looked down and saw what everyone was talking about. All across their skin were tiny circular bruises that Razak had to agree, did look a lot like hickeys. Each bruise was about half in diameter and they were evenly spaced.

"You've both had all your immunizations, right?" Doc held Rico's hand up so he could get a better look at it in the meager light coming through the window.

"I've been to Klendathu and back," Rico replied. "I sure hope I've had all my shots."

"It's probably from the Spook Suits." Goss offered. "You know, all those little mouth things on the inside?"

Everyone else said, "Oooooooooh. Of course." Face-palms all around.

"Spook Suits. They are the gift that just keeps on giving." said Dizzy.

"Speaking of the creepy pajamas," said Rico. "whatever happened to those?"

"I tossed them into the furnace down in the school's boiler room." Higgins told them.

Dizzy let out a disappointed little moan and everyone looked at her, a little baffled by her reaction.

"I thought you hated those things." Higgins said.

"Oh, I do. Don't get me wrong. I just kind of wanted to watch them burn. Hey, don't give me that look, paperboy. I spent several hours getting touched inappropriately by that thing. I think getting to see it burn is the least I was owed."

"Well, if I know Higgins, he probably filmed it, so you may still get the chance." Razak told her. "In the meantime, I'd like to talk about why I had us gather here."

Razak informed them of the plan to go out and get the Sweet Madeleine. The plan was met with unanimous approval. While they hadn't been vocal about it, none of them had been feeling particularly confident that the school's defenses were going to be able to hold when the Bugs started coming in greater numbers. Risky as the mission was undoubtedly going to be, they very much preferred actually being able to do something that might improve the situation, rather than just sitting and waiting for the Bugs to come.

"We're going to be taking the eight member crew of the Madeleine out with us, and their Captain is a sensitive, fragile little thing. We need him and I need you to handle him with kid gloves. We can't be making any jokes or wisecracks that he might take the wrong way." Razak paused for a second and let his gaze slide over to Gossard, meaningfully. Goss nodded and Razak continued. "These are merchant marines, so keep in mind, once they are on their vessel they are legally allowed to carry any weapons they might need to defend their ship. I have reason to believe that they may even has some very high end military hardware on board. We obviously want to avoid any kind of confrontation with them. Understood?"

They acknowledged him with a. "Yes, sir."

Something about being back in a classroom with Razak made Rico raise his hand before he spoke. "Is there a reason why you think there might be a confrontation, sir?"

"My interactions with the Captain so far have lead me to believe that he has a serious deficiency of common sense, and he strikes me as someone who, in the right circumstances, might be capable of pulling epic acts of stupidity. Him being the way he is, I can't see his crew being fiercely loyal to him, but you never know. Let's just be careful."

"Mr Shubert has informed me that the contents of a SWAT van have been stored here in the school. I want you to use it to gear up. Restock on anything you think you might need. Rico. Flores." He looked at them, dressed in their Terrorbird football uniforms. "There should be some armor in there. Do your best with it. Everyone meet me at the front doors of the school in thirty minutes. I'm going to go try to talk Mr Shubert into loaning us a section of his wall."

When next he saw them, Rico and Flores looked a little more like troopers. Each wore a tactical helmet, a bulletproof vest, pads on their elbows and knees, and shin guards over combat boots. Over the bulletproof vest was a set of suspenders that supported the weight of a backpack and a pouch laden utility belt strapped around their waists. The rest of their gear included a pair of amber colored shooter's glasses, a respirator/com unit, and for weapons, they were both armed with a Richen-Huang UAR-15 carbine and a combat knife in a thigh sheath. The glaringly bright colors of their football uniforms still showed through in places, but the SWAT gear did cover up quite a bit of it, which they might find handy later, should the troopers not want to be spotted by Bugs.

The rest of the squad made their appearance over the next few minutes and they joined Razak on the steps of the school to watch as the vehicles that made up the wall were being rearranged. Once Mr Shubert had been told about the proposed mission, he hadn't hesitated before agreeing to let the Roughnecks use the police armored personnel carrier that formed a section of the wall four spots in from the opening. There was another vehicle available only a few blocks away to fill in the spot, once it was vacant. They had passed on it earlier, because it was a garbage truck and it was still full of several tons of rotting garbage. It seemed like a fair trade. Put up with a few hours of stench in return for the chance of an escape from the city.

Andrea and Tom arrived a short while later, along with the rest of the Madeleine's crew. They were all far more clean cut than he would have expected for a civilian starship crew, but then again, they had been shacking up in hotels for the last two months, not out on an extended voyage. Only Tom seemed to have maintained his poor grooming habits while dockside.

Introductions were made all around, the squad and the crew exchanging handshakes and names. Razak's impression of them was that they were all far more level headed and friendly than their boss.

The Madeleine's crew only numbered six now. Two of the men had opted out of going with them to get the ship and had shrugged it off when they were told that it would cost them their jobs. Razak asked Andrea if that was going to affect their ability to fly the ship and she assured him that it would not. The men who had been dismissed had only worked in the cargo area so their absence would probably go unnoticed. However, those crew members that remained were all essential to the operation of the ship, so they must be kept in one piece if there was to be any hope of success for their mission.

When the APC was in the clear, they all went out through the wall to load up. The APC was the standard type for big city police departments, only about three quarters of the size of the ones the troopers were used to using in the Mobile Infantry. It was painted blue, had eight wheels, a large access door in the back, two portholes on each side and two on top, one forward, one aft. The top ports were each ringed by one and a half foot tall wall of armored plate that would provide cover to anyone using them for machine gun nests. There were fittings for 50 caliber machine guns, but unfortunately no fifty cals to mount on them. On the front of the APC was mounted a heavy steel plow blade, capable of blocking shots fired at the tires from the front and clearing the APC's path as it moved forward. Below the rear access door was a winch system which could be used for anything from towing, getting unstuck, or ripping the doors off of a building. Running boards ran along both sides, along with a series of grip bars, allowing for more men to ride along on the outside of the vehicle if necessary.

The cargo area of the APC was designed to carry a dozen passengers, but the designer hadn't intended for those passengers to be wearing armor quite as bulky as the trooper's power armor. Even with Razak and Andrea up front in the driver's section, that still left ten people in the back, four of which were in powersuits. As the two teams loaded themselves into the APC, things began to get a little too close for comfort very fast. To make a little more room, it was decided that two of the troopers would stand up through the top ports. Since the powersuits would not fit through the ports, the job was left to Rico and Flores, who had to shed their backpacks and utility belts to fit through the holes. It was a little better now, not spacious, but at least everyone could breathe. The open ports would allow rain to drip in, but everyone was fine with the tradeoff.

Once everyone was situated, Razak started the APC and headed southwest. The roads were clear for the most part, and he drove as fast as he felt was safe, which was around fifty miles per hour. They circled far to the west, giving the Transport Bug's impact site a wide berth. It was in their best interest to try to avoid the Bugs as much as possible, as dealing with them would only slow them down.

In spite of taking the long way around, they did encounter some Bugs along the way. These were Warrior Bugs, running in packs of about a dozen or so. They did not engage the enemy, unless you count not slowing down a bit and plowing through them at fifty miles an hour an engagement. As he approached each of these packs, he would shout a warning back to Rico and Flores, giving them a chance to duck down. More often than not, one of the Bugs was thrown up and over the top of the APC, the Bug's shell shattering, it's limbs flailing, and it's insides splattering across the roof of the vehicle.

Bugs on the ground could be avoided, run down, or out run. They weren't very fast and could quickly be left behind. Bugs in the air would have to be dealt with. They could easily keep up with the APC's breakneck speed and would continue to follow them all the way to the Sweet Madeleine, if allowed. When Razak spotted a couple of Rippler Bugs in the rearview mirror, he ordered Rico and Flores to shoot them down.

He saw one of the Bugs fold and topple from the sky, but the roar of the APC's engine and the automatic gunfire attracted a couple more replacements for the downed Rippler. A glance in his side rearview showed that the Bugs were gaining on them.

"T'Phai!" Razak turned his head and shouted back into the cargo hold. "Throw that rear door open and lend a hand, will ya?"

The Tophetti squeezed and negotiated his way through the cramped quarters to the rear of the vehicle. Daylight flooded in as the door was thrown open, and T'Phai dropped to one knee before beginning to squeeze off shots at the Bugs. Because of the bouncing and rocking of the APC, his efforts were not much better than those of Rico and Flores. A rare event, T'Phai even switched his firing rate from single shot to three round burst.

The burned out husk of a city bus blocked the street ahead, so Razak shouted a warning to those in back that he was going hard right and at the next intersection he cranked the wheel. The APC fishtailed and the rear end obliterated a news stand on the corner. Razak straightened it out and accelerated.

The corner had slowed them down, allowing one of the Bugs to catch up. It dove at the front roof porthole, spitting spines at Flores. She ducked down into the cabin, firing her UAR up through the hole. The Rippler tried to follow her down into the cabin, and managed to get it's head and one leg through before the tight passage stopped it's progress. It snapped it's mandibles at the passengers inside and swiped at them with it's claw. Everyone in the passenger compartment began shouting at once and crawling over each other to get away from the Rippler.

Razak hazarded a quick glance back, and didn't like what he saw. Flores had fallen onto her back on the floor as the Rippler followed her in, and she was using her rifle to block the Bug's claw from getting at her. She had her combat knife out and was stabbing at the Bug's face with it.

Razak turned back to watch his driving, but yelled back at those in the rear. "Could someone please do something about the Bug trying to get in our ride?!"

"We're trying!" he heard Gossard shout back. "Can't get a clear sho-."

The sound of full auto fire from the roof of the APC drowned out whatever Goss was trying to say. Bug juice sprayed out over the front of the vehicle, coating the windshield. Rico must be up there just emptying the clip into the back end of the Bug at point blank range. The Bug's claws were making horrible, ear splitting sounds as they scraped across the metal roof. The wipers were already running because of the rain, but he cranked them up to help clear his view. That was when he started hearing multiple people screaming in agony in the back of the APC. It was the kind of sound a man makes when a Bug tears into him. Well, that's it, he thought. We just lost some people. Mission failed. Then Andrea started coughing in the seat next to him and pulling her sweatshirt up over her face.

Bewildered, he whipped his head around to look back and could see that the Rippler was now hanging limply through the porthole. "What is going on back there?"

"I'm sorry, I was just trying to-" he heard Tom Dahl blurt out.

"Captain Dahl just pepper sprayed the Bug." Doc said. "He got a couple of his crew mates, too."

He felt a mixture of relief and bewilderment as he turned back toward the front. Who pepper sprays a Bug? "Do I need to stop?" he called back.

"No, I got it." Doc told him. "Just go."

"It's just that the Bug and no one was and what else should I -" Dahl's mouth was running double time. He received no response to his apologies or excuses.

Flores, Gossard and the two unsprayed merchant marines shoved the now dead Rippler back up through the hole and Razak saw it go tumbling over the side in his mirror. He continued to watch the mirror, but didn't see any more Ripplers tailing them.

"T'Phai!" he called back. "You got eyes on any Bugs?"

When the Tophetti replied in the negative, Razak said, "Well, stay where you are. Keep your eyes peeled."

Since the last turn, they had been heading west, nearly the opposite direction of where they needed to go, but until they knew whether they were going to have enough crew to fly the ship, there really was no point in continuing on the way there. For the moment, the best thing he could do is let Doc tend to the two injured crewman and see if the situation was salvageable. To give the medic a smoother ride to work with, Razak decelerated to a slow crawl and maintained a westbound heading.

As he drove, he listened in on what was happening in the back, trying to gauge how much trouble they were in. Doc was having the others use their canteens to slowly flush out the eyes of the men who had been sprayed. Once the canteens had been emptied, he took two small cups from his med kit and filled them half full with fluid from a bottle. He had each man lean forward, put a cup over one eye, then tilt his head back. Then he instructed them to open their eye as wide as they could and roll the eye around in the socket. After about thirty seconds, he took the cups back, tossed the contents, added more fluid and had the men repeat the exercise with the other eye. When they were finished, he turned each man's face into the light coming in from the open back door and looked closely at their eyes, even pulling the lids back a little to look under them. He spoke with them, but too quietly for Razak to hear what was being said.

When Razak saw the medic start to put away his gear, he figured he had waited long enough, and asked Doc for a situation report. "Talk to me, Doc. These men going to be able to do their jobs?"

"Luckily, we treated them quickly." Doc told him. "Their eyes are going to be red for a few days and they'll probably sting for the next few hours, but they should be able to see just fine."

"Glad to hear it. Sounds like the mission is back on, folks." He started looking for the next opportunity to get the APC turned south.

The westbound street they were on turned into a bridge up ahead and as they passed over it, Razak saw that a southbound expressway crossed below. At the end of the bridge he steered off of the road, up and over a sidewalk, spinning the wheel and continuing to bring the APC's nose around until it was aimed down a steeply sloped, grass covered embankment. He straightened the wheel, shouted out a warning to his passengers to hold on to something and then he hit the gas. They bounced and slid down the hill, all eight wheels fighting for purchase and slinging dirt and grass into the air. The APC wanted to turn sideways, first one way and then the other. Fearing a rollover, he kept turning into the direction of the slides and managed to keep them moving in the right general direction. At the bottom of the hill, they tore through a chainlink fence, off of a three foot drop, and then they were on the expressway, heading south again.

After fifteen minutes driving in that direction, Razak thought they should be well past the southern end of the big crater, so he found another of the city's main arteries that was headed east and got on it. Along the way, they saw no more airborne Bugs, but smashed their way through several clusters of Warriors and continued unimpeded.

The areas they traveled through now were mainly industrial parks, vast stretches of land full of warehouses and factories. Andrea had told him that the shipyard's auxiliary landing pad sat in the middle of a warehouse district, so he thought they must be getting close. He asked Andrea if it was much further.

"It's not too far." she replied. "We're probably about ten minutes out." She pulled a map from the pocket of her sweatshirt and unfolded it. After taking a few seconds to orient herself, she began to give him directions to the landing pad.

The ship became visible when they were still a mile away, despite the rain and fog. It's black hull was like the back of some enormous whale, breaching from an ocean of cityscape. The ship only seemed to get larger the closer they got to it. He began to understand why Andrea had been worried about having enough room to land it.

"Your Maddy's a big girl, Topper." he said to Andrea.

In response, she sang a line from an old song. "She's a brick. . . house."

"Mighty, mighty." he agreed with a nod.

She directed him to an exit and then they had a straight line to the Madeleine's landing pad. As far as he could tell, the ship appeared to have remained unmolested. The Bugs must not have got to this area yet, because there was just no way they could have missed that behemoth.

Higgins stuck his head up between the two seats, wanting to get a peek at the ship. "Whoa." he said, taken aback by the sight of it. "It's like some kind of giant metal zeppelin."

From the back, Gossard spoke up, saying, "Higgins, 'metal zeppelin' may be the two coolest words ever to have toppled from your mouth. Kind of makes me want to air guitar."

Upon hearing that, Razak let out a little laugh, but he could see what Higgins meant. The Sweet Madeleine was from the early days of large scale starship building, and the style back then was loosely based on that of twentieth century nuclear submarines. Picture one of those, double it in scale, add a bank of thrusters at the rear and two massive vertical thrusters on each side and you had the general idea. She rested her bulk on six landing legs that folded down out of the belly of the ship and the feet on the end of those legs were larger than the APC they were riding in. They had to be, in order to evenly distribute that much weight. Any smaller and they would have shattered the concrete of any landing pad they set her down on.

They parked just up under the nose of the ship and everyone climbed out of the APC, some of them stretching to work out the kinks from being stuck in such a confined space. With Andrea in the lead, they walked about a quarter of the length of the ship to where a set of mobile stairs had been left placed under an entrance hatch. Captain Dahl went up the steps first to open a small panel next to the hatch and punch in a code on the keypad within. They heard the loud clunk of a hydraulic lock disengaging and then he stepped out of the way so someone with two functional arms could work the handles on the hatch and get it open. Andrea did the honors and swung the hatch down.

There were rungs on the inside of the hatch and they ran up the wall of the narrow shaft above. Andrea climbed up first, followed by a couple of her fellow crewman. Razak leaned over beneath the hatch and formed his hands into a stirrup, offering Tom Dahl some assistance with getting up onto the ladder. His broken arm would have made getting onto the ladder by himself next to impossible. Dahl accepted the offered leg-up, but did not bother to acknowledge the man who offered it. Razak nodded as he waited for the captain to clear the hatchway, considering the possibility of taking up yoga after all this was done. He was learning that taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly was doing wonders for his urge to wring the necks of those that deserved it.

Once Dahl was off the ladder, Razak climbed up it and found Andrea waiting at the top. She waited until the rest of the crewman and troopers were on board, and then she used another keypad set into a panel on the floor to raise and seal the hatch below. The room went dark, save for the lights on the trooper's helmets. Andrea continued pressing buttons on the keypad and lights began flickering to life around them.

While she was doing that, Captain Dahl and her fellow merchant marines had moved over to a bank of storage lockers and were using keys to unlock them. From the lockers they began to pull out a small arsenal of weapons and spare ammunition. Most of the guns were MMK-9As, more commonly known as "fleet rifles". They were slightly different than the standard MMK-9, because they had fixed stocks instead of the extendable variety and had no scope. There were also a few handguns, standard .45 automatics. Razak had to wonder if the MMK-9s had been bought legally, or if they had "fallen off a truck". He watched Andrea also unlock one of the lockers and pull out a machine gun and handgun of her own.

With only one good hand, Dahl was having trouble getting his gun loaded, and none of his crew were making any offers to help him. After watching him struggle with it for about a minute and a half, Razak decided that in the name of expediency, he would offer to load the gun for the captain. When he asked the man if he would like some assistance, Dahl only grunted and shoved the gun at him. Jean took the gun, slapped in the clip, chambered a round and engaged the safety. He smiled as he handed the gun back, but he was thinking of how difficult it would be for Dahl to get that safety switched off one handed. He might even have to try flipping it using his nose. The thought made it easy for Razak to smile. Apparently, none of this occurred to the captain, because he just slung the gun's strap over his shoulder, as is.

Figuring a little diplomacy wouldn't hurt, Razak said, "Mr Dahl, this is a beaut of a ship you got here. They sure don't make them like this anymore."

Dahl looked at him suspiciously, as if searching for a way that Razak's words could be taken as insult, but then must have decided that he was being sincere. "Yeah, well, she didn't always look this good. Twenty five years ago the Federation decided they were done with her, and sent her to the scrap heap. My father bought her from them, restored her and refitted her to be a merchant vessel. Up until her Cherenkov drive went out, she's been running like a dream the entire time." He slapped a bulkhead with his good hand and said, "Yep, she's seen a lot of space, this old girl."

There was a lot of pride on Dahl's face and Razak couldn't begrudge him that. However, hearing the part about his father did go a long ways in explaining how someone like Tom could end up the captain of a ship like the Madeleine.

"She probably saw some action when she was a troop transport." said Razak. "She would have been in her heyday during the war of thirty-two."

Tom didn't give any response to that, other than to turn away with a look of mild disgust on his face. Clearly, he loved his ship, but he sure didn't like to think about it's military past. Wanting to keep the good will going, Razak changed the subject.

"Did your father rename the ship when he bought it?"

"Yes." said Tom. "Her name was the Chamber's Ridge before."

"And who is Madeleine?"

"Madeleine was my mother's name." said the captain. "Why?"

Razak nodded, thoughtfully. "I was just curious. It didn't sound like the kind of name Fleet would have pinned on it. I think it's kind of sweet that your dad named it after your mom."

Dahl squinted at him, then said, "Yeah, well. I suppose we should get her underway. Everybody to your stations. Lieutenant, I'd appreciate it if you and your troopers would follow me to the bridge."

He wants to keep an eye on us, thought Razak. Can't have us snooping around.

Captain Dahl lead the way, followed by Andrea, a couple of the crewmen and then the troopers. The rest of the men had headed aft, presumably to some engine room.

One of the crewman that was accompanying them was named Greg Rouse, and he'd told them that he did something he called 'collision avoidance', which Razak could only assume involved running the radar or something like it. Collisions sounded like something they wanted to avoid, so whatever the man did for a living, Razak was glad to have him there. The other man, whose name was Mike Yoder, ran internal and external communications and managed the networking of the equipment on the bridge, which he said was akin to being the translator at the Tower of Babel.

Their path lead them through a series of hatches and narrow walkways, and along the way, Razak found that the interior of the ship were just as similar to that of a submarine as the exterior was. Tight spaces, rounded hatches for doors, walls lined with exposed plumbing. The floors were made of metal grating, and more plumbing was visible through them, running beneath their feet. Dim light came from rounded fixtures that stuck out from the walls, the glass of the lights protected by metal frames. Razak could see the breath of everyone who wasn't wearing a power suit, so he assumed it must be cold and a little damp inside the ship. There was condensation dripping from the ceiling in places.

After a short walk toward the bow of the ship, they turned off of a main passage, stepped through a pressure hatch and into a room with a metal spiral staircase. The stairs ascended around a central column into a circular shaft that reached far up into the ship over their heads. Tilting his head back and looking straight up, Razak could see a hatch about every ten feet up the shaft with a level number painted on the wall next to it. Aside from the staircase, the room also contained a narrow door that Andrea opened to reveal a small elevator, big enough to carry only three people at a time. The sight of that elevator came as a great relief, because the prospect of climbing that staircase had zero appeal.

Starting with Razak, Andrea and Dahl, the group started transferring to the bridge, three per trip. The three of them rode the little car to the top in silence, Razak self-conscious about how much his bulky armor must be crowding the other two people in such a small space. Fortunately, the little elevator moved surprisingly fast and it was only a few seconds before they were stepping onto the Madeleine's bridge. The elevator door shut behind them and they heard it plunge back down the shaft to bring up more of those waiting below. Within a few minutes time, the remaining crewman and troopers had joined them in the ship's control room.

Andrea and the other crewman moved to their stations and began the process of powering everything up. The bridge was soon full of the sounds of humming power supplies, the whir of cooling fans, boot beeps, the clicks of drives, and the high pitched whine of touch screen vid panels heating up.

The bridge was placed at the very nose of the ship at the exact halfway point of it's height. A window, four feet tall starting at waist level, curved uninterrupted all the way around the bridge, allowing for an external view of over one hundred and eighty degrees. Most of the room was occupied by a series of stepped platforms that comprised the ship's control stations, the central and highest of which was the pilot's station. Each station consisted of a flight seat, complete with a full safety harness, and a wrap around bank of instrument panels, with only a narrow space left to provide entry.

As Razak watched the ship's operators take their seats, he realized that the Madeleine was run with a mixture of modern and antiquated technology. A lot of the equipment had obviously been added since the ship was originally built, and some of it was probably only within the last few years. However, he would guess that most if not all of the original equipment was still there. coexisting with the new. Some of the the new vid panel controls were mounted on articulating swing arms that were bolted onto the walls or the sides of the old equipment, but others had just been mounted flat on spacers directly over the obsolete instrument panels they had replaced. Despite all the updating, Razak could see that a lot of the old school starship tech that was mixed in with the new was apparently still in use. There were many panels full of dials, gauges, switches, sliders, levers, throttle controls, and rows upon rows of different colored buttons each with it's own with flashing light, all of which had powered on with the rest of the newer equipment. It looked like a big jury rigged mess to Razak, and the fact that Tom Dahl and his crew use it to criss-cross the galaxy was a wonder to him.

While the Madeleine's crew went about the business of getting the ship up and running, the troopers moved over to look out the window of the bridge, taking in the view their high vantage point offered. The weather was preventing them from seeing too far out across the city, but within their field of view, they could see several meteor impact sites, marked with wide columns of smoke that were drifting up into the air. A wind from the west was pushing the smoke out toward the Atlantic Ocean. It was too far and too rainy for them to catch a glimpse of where the Transport Bug had hit.

"The city looks dead." said Dizzy, almost in a whisper.

Razak knew what she meant. He had never seen the city look so still. On any normal day, the sky would been full of a thousand ships and transports coming and going. He would have been able to see the monorails whipping along their tracks. The huge billboard screens attached to the sides of tall buildings would have been playing their 24/7 cycle of commercial advertisements. There would have been people; they would have appeared ant sized from here, but they would have been walking up and down the streets by the millions. But there was nothing moving out there, other than the smoke billowing up from the meteor craters. It did look dead. He wondered, had the Bugs managed to kill his city?

He'd had a look at the map at the school earlier, and he knew that when the war was over, there wasn't going to be anything for him to come home to here. The house he had grown up in, and then inherited from his parents was gone along with everything else he owned. The school he taught at was gone, too, so he couldn't even expect a job to be waiting for him when he came back. Maybe some of his friends had survived, but he had never been that close to anyone that lived here, anyway. Acquaintances, really. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that maybe he wouldn't come back here at all. He would start over someplace else. Maybe he'd buy some property by that lake in Colorado and put a cabin on it, like he had always wanted to.

A vibration in the floor beneath his feet pulled him from his thoughts, and he realized that he was feeling the engines starting. When he turned around, he saw that Andrea was sitting in the pilot's seat, flipping switches and tapping away at her vid panels. The vibration of the ship was making a coffee cup on a shelf next to her chair slide around and rattle.

"I don't want to sit here too long with the engines running." said Andrea. "It might catch some Bug's attention. But she's been sitting here for couple of months, so I do need to give her a couple of minutes to warm up."

"I understand." Razak told her. "It's pretty quiet out there right now."

Tom was at an instrument panel that was labeled 'engine thrust output' and he was making tiny adjustments to a set of sliders and watching the height of the bars displayed on the screen. "Her numbers are looking better than I would have expected with her having sat for so long." he said to Andrea over his shoulder. "Should only take a couple minutes to get her tuned."

The crewman Mike popped his head up from behind a wall of vid screens, "Looks like the surface scanner updated it's software while we were gone. It'll be fun figuring out where they put everything this time."

A vid panel to Andrea's left started to flash on and off, and she extended a leg and gave it a good solid kick with her boot. The screen popped on and stayed on. She looked at another screen and said, "Looks like the TDR didn't update, so naturally, there's a conflict. We ain't got time to do an update right now, so we'll have to use the RAYSYS."

"Hopefully anyone else flying out there will have version seven or higher, otherwise, they may not see us." said Greg Rouse.

Andrea was tapping and swiping on one of her larger touch screens, adding views from the ship's many external cameras. "Yeah, well, Maddy's running lights are on, and she ain't exactly petite. They'd just better be watching where they're going, 'cause it ain't gonna bother Maddy none if they run into us. I doubt there's a ship flying within the 'sphere that could even put a dent in her. "

The captain and his crew continued to talk in indecipherable acronyms, jargon and nomenclature, but none of it sounded like it was the showstopper kind, so the troopers just tried to stay quiet and out of the way. As Dahl continued to manipulate the sliders, Razak noticed that the vibration he had been feeling was gradually going away, and soon all he felt was a low thrumming sensation.

About five minutes after the engines had started, Andrea said, "I got all greens from the engine room. I guess it's time to see if Maddy remembers which way is up."

"Should we be sitting somewhere?" asked Higgins, as he swiveled his head around, looking for seats. "Strapping in or something?"

Andrea smiled at him and said, "Don't worry. I'll take it easy on you. We're going to be moving slow and low." Keeping one hand on the yoke, she reached over with the other and gripped the nearest of the throttle controls. Very slowly, she eased it forward and as she did, the engine thrum went up in pitch

The floor shifted below Razak's feet and he felt his stomach lurch a little He put one hand back on the window sill to steady himself, then turned to look through the window and saw the city falling away below them. They continued to rise until a Greg gave Andrea an altitude reading of three hundred feet, then she made an adjustment to the throttle, and brought the ship's ascent to a stop. Then the view out the window spun counter clockwise as she twisted the yoke to bring the bow around to point north east. She reached over to push her other throttle forward a tick and the Madeleine slowly started moving forward.

As she piloted the ship, Razak could hear Andrea talking quietly, and at first, he wasn't sure who she was speaking to. But when he listened a little closer, he picked up the name, "Maddy" and realized she was talking to the ship itself. Her tone was soothing and the phrases sounded like the kind you would use with a horse. "That's a girl. Easy now. Steady." He thought he could remember hearing her do the same thing back in the old days, with retrieval ships and drop ships. And he also seemed to remember her giving a ship a blistering dress down if it wasn't behaving like she wanted it to. Threatening to have it dismantled and sold for scrap if it didn't get it's nose up and keep it up, that kind of thing .

Rico stepped closer to his lieutenant. "Just out of curiosity, do we have a plan for where we are taking all these people after we pick them up?"

"That's actually a good question." Razak replied. "Maybe we should ask the folks who are running the show. Dahl? Topper? You got any notion of where you're heading after the pick-up?"

Tom said, "Outside of the city, that much is sure. I ain't staying in this Bug infested burg one second longer than I have to."

Andrea's eyes continued to flicker back and forth between her multitude of vid screens while she said, "I kind of like the looks of Rosario, a couple hundred miles toward the north east. It's a bigger city, so it can probably handle the influx of refugees, plus I'm seeing that they have some big airfields there."

Captain Dahl was nodding like that sounded good to him. "A couple hundred miles sounds about right."

Razak liked it, too. Far enough away that the refugees would have some warning should the Bugs make a move in that direction, but still close enough that it wouldn't be a huge hassle to get back home if and when this whole mess was over.

"I'm seeing a lot of Bug movement on the ground." Andrea tapped on the screen with the camera views, and a larger version of one of it's view popped up on a different screen. She spun it around to give them a better look at it.

The camera pointed straight down from the bottom of the ship, a bird's eye view of the building tops and streets below. Warrior Bugs were flowing through the streets in a steady stream, by the hundreds now.

"Hopefully they aren't all headed towards the school." Goss' voice was tense with concern. "They wouldn't be able to hold off this many for very long."

"I don't think that's where they're going." Andrea told him. "That camera is oriented the same as the ship, so those Bugs are headed southeast. The school's to the northeast."

Razak watched the screen and could feel his own anxiety mounting, but he had a different worry. "Thing is, our school is probably not the only place out there that people are gathering up. We should probably find out where they are all headed."

"Let's go check it out." Andrea said.

"Oooh, no!" Tom jumped in with both feet. "No way! The deal is that we rescue the people from the school, and then we leave. You're not taking my ship anywhere else. Absolutely not."

Razak and Andrea exchanged looks and she nodded. "Tom," she said. "we need to go find out what these Bugs are up to. People could be dying."

"I'm sure people are dying, all over the city. But that's not for us to worry about. Citizens and the military, they're the ones who are supposed to deal with that. That's why the rest of us peons have spend our lives letting them walk all over us. I say, let them deal with it. If the lieutenant and his squad would like for us to drop them off here, I'll be happy to do that, but this ship is going back to the school, and then it's lighting out."

Andrea wasn't listening, she was already bringing the ship around. When Tom saw this, he reached back with his good hand for the grip of his MMK. "Andrea, this is my ship! Do not even try it!" The words came out in what was meant to be a stern commanding shout, but instead it came off like the petulant protest of an angry toddler.

In sharp contrast, in his calmest, most reasonable tone, Razak said, "Mr Dahl, take your hand off the gun, please."

Tom's head whipped around, his eyes full of fury. "Now, you listen here-" He stopped mid sentence as the two men made eye contact. Something that he saw in Razak's face had given him reason to pause.

"Please." Razak said again. "Let's not do anything stupid. I'd hate to see the bridge of this beautiful ship get all shot to pieces."

Tom clenched his teeth, his lip quivered, but he did not take in the deep breath that would come before he raised the gun. Razak waited and watched. Finally, the captain stretched his fingers out straight and moved his hand away from the MMK.

He turned to Andrea and snarled, "When this is through, you're fired."

"It's what you have to do." She didn't take her eyes from her screens. "I understand."

While Dahl's attention was elsewhere, Razak turned around and caught Dizzy's eye. He pointed two fingers at his own eyes and then a thumb back at the captain. Watch him. She nodded and crossed the bridge to where she would have a clearer line of fire. As far as he could tell, the other two crewman had made no move to back their captain, so he was less worried about them. His first instincts that they were more level headed than their employer seemed to have proven correct

Andrea had swung the Madeleine's nose around and they were now tracking the stream of Warrior Bugs from above as they weaved in and out of the city blocks, their overall bearing a constant southeast. Rico went to the window and looked out ahead, trying to determine what the destination was.

"I think I see something big ahead." he said. "Some kind of arena."

"Greg," said Andrea. "can you look up what that arena is?"

Greg Rouse tapped away at a keyboard, swiped a couple times at a map on a vid screen and then told her it was a soccer stadium.

"Well, crap." she replied.

"That not good?" asked Razak.

"Too small to bring Maddy down in by a long shot. What I'd give for a good car racing track right now."

"Maybe there's a big parking lot." he suggested.

"Not in this city. If there is a parking lot, it will most likely be underground, beneath the stadium. A place that small, I doubt it will have even that."

As they drew closer to the arena, it became clear that whoever was holed up in there did not have someone like Principal Shubert on hand. Other than some buses parked in front of the various entrances, no defenses had been set up outside the stadium. Instead, they were relying entirely on the walls of the stadium itself. It might have been a passable plan if it wasn't for the fact that the arena was constructed of wood. This was not one of the big professional soccer stadiums; it only had enough seating for around five thousand people and it's surrounding walls were only about two stories high. The river of Bugs that they had been following was washing up against the walls of the stadium, and the wooden structure was no match for Arachnid beak and claw.

Along the top of the wall, they could see the barrel flash of automatic gunfire being aimed down into the mass of Bugs below. There were so many Bugs, though, it was impossible to see if it was having any effect. Razak could see that the Bugs had managed to tear some small holes in the walls, and the only thing preventing them from swarming through them was that in their eagerness, multiple Bugs were trying to go through the holes all at once and were only managing to get themselves stuck.

They were close enough to see inside now and a crowd of several thousand could be seen on the grass of the soccer field. Some of them were huddling beneath sheets of clear plastic and blue tarps, trying to stay dry in the cold drizzle. He saw upturned faces, people pointing up at the ship. They think they're saved, he thought. He didn't know if they could be saved.

It looked to Razak like the number of people that were armed were a small minority, and most of those were at the top of the bleachers, defending the walls. He saw some more weapons on a small group of men and women down near the home team goal line, and he had to wonder why they weren't up on the wall, too. Then he noticed that that all seemed to be using a wheelchair, a cane, or crutches of some kind. It was the steep steps of the bleachers that were keeping these men and women out of the fight.

Razak triaged. The school was better defended than this, and there was a chance that it may not even be getting swarmed yet. The soccer field had too few defenders, and could not be held. All those people would be slaughtered once the Bugs broke through. This situation would have to be dealt with first. The ship could not land, so the Roughnecks would have to go down into that nightmare. The weapons the squad had on hand were not going to be enough. They would need whatever hardware Dahl had squirreled away on board and Dahl wasn't going to give that up without a fight.

He wished more than anything that Carl Jenkins was with them. It would only have taken the psychic a few seconds to pluck the location of the military supplies out of Dahl's head. Wait. An idea came to him.

He turned to look at the members of his squad, one after the other, evaluating their suitability for his plan. His eyes landed on Higgins, and he gave a little nod, before crossing the bridge to lean in close to to the young journalists and say, "Play along and follow my lead."

Higgins looked bewildered and started to ask what he meant, but Razak had already spun in his heel and was headed back over to stand in front of Captain Dahl.

Dahl looked at him with with a scowl of angry distrust. "What do you want?"

"Captain, it's come to my attention that you have been holding onto some of the Federation's military hardware for safekeeping. The Federation thanks you for the service, but we will need that equipment back now."

At first, Tom only looked at him blankly, like he had no comprehension of what the Lieutenant had just said. Then his body jerked as the words finally got through, and his eyes went wide. He started to say something, but then it sounded like he was trying to say three sentences at once and it all came out in a sputter and a coughing fit. He sucked in a breath and took another shot at it. "Wha-Wai-Who- I mean, I don't, I don't know what you're talking about." He managed to muster up a little angry indignation just at the tail end of the sentence.

"I really don't have time to argue about this, so I'm going to make it quick. You see Trooper Higgins over there? What do you suppose he does for the squad?"

Tom glanced over at Higgins, then back to Razak. "He's always got that camera stuck to his face. I figured he was one of Fednet's reporters."

"I understand why you would think that, because that is his cover. But, Higgins is actually a Spec-ops trained psychic."

Dahl's eyes locked onto Higgins, and suddenly, they were nearly bulging from their sockets. Razak glanced over at Higgins, who was trying to recover from the shock of learning that he was a psychic. His expression changed to what must have been his idea of what a psychic should look like. His lips pursed slightly and he raised one eyebrow. He raised his hands and placed the tips of the first two fingers of each hand on the temple area of his helmet. The barest cock of the head completed the look. Razak prayed that none of the squad burst out laughing.

"Yeah, he's like a drug sniffing dog, only instead of drugs, he's trained to sniff out two things. Bugs and lies. He says you can't stop thinking about that hidden cache of weapons, and that you're terrified we'll find them."

"He's a liar!" Tom shouted, then at Higgins, "You stay out of my head! I got rights!"

"Tom, the jig is up. We know you have the stuff, and what you need to understand is, I don't care if you stole it. What's important is that we need it now, because me and my squad are going to drop down into that mess of Bugs and we are going to need all the help that we can get. The way I see it, there are two ways we can go about this. You can tell me where you got them stashed and no one is the wiser. In all this chaos, there's no way anyone would ever be able to figure out how a bunch of missing hardware should suddenly show up in Buenos Aires."

"I don't have any-"

"Or, I can have Higgins start going through your head like it's a file cabinet, and he'll dig out the answer."

"You can't do this!" Tom wailed. "I got rights. The right to my own mental privacy!"

"You ever seen anyone after a psychic has done some deep digging through their mind? It ain't pretty. Drooling catatonics. The lucky ones, that is."

"Wait! Wait! Let me think." Tom held his good hand up, and shook it in the air. "Give me a second, here." He stared at Razak's feet, talking to himself quietly.

"We don't have time for-"

"Shut up!" said Tom. "You know what? I think you're lying. I don't believe that kid's a psychic. I don't."

"Then how do I know what I know?"

"You don't know nothing. You just see a hard working merchant marine and you figure, I bet he's skimming off the Federation. This is a bluff, that's all."

"Mr, Dahl," said Razak. "do you remember back at the school? How long were you standing in line next to that Imposter Bug? You didn't have the first clue that it wasn't human. How do you think I knew?"

That made Tom a little uncertain. "I dunno. Maybe you'd seen one before, and recognized it."

"Topper was standing right next to you, and I had worked with her for years. I didn't see her in that crowd. No, it was Higgins that told me about the Bug. Remember him standing right there next to me?"

Tom closed his eyes tight, trying to remember how everything had played out. He'd been angry at the time, so the details are going to be fuzzy. "I can't remember if. . ."

"Look, time's up. We'll do this the hard way. Higgins, why don't you come over here and give Mr Dahl's noggin a good and thorough probing?"

"No! Wait! You stay over there!" Tom jabbed a finger in Higgins' direction. "All right, now. Look, sometime the military folks do a shabby job, and when they unload, some things get left behind on the ship. That ain't my fault. I can't just leave that stuff sitting around, so-"

Razak tapped his wrist. "No time. I don't care. Show me where it is."

"Fine. I'll show you. But you keep that freak away from me!"

"Thank you, Mr Dahl. I really do appreciate it. Just give me one moment." Razak walked over to Andrea's pilot chair and leaned down to speak to her quietly. Before he could say anything, she spoke first. "Jean, there are a lot of Bugs down there."

"I know." he told her. "Options are few and far between here, though. I need you to keep me on coms, even after I'm off the ship."

She nodded. "I'll have Mike patch it through one of the long range channels, but I'll warn you, her coms are old and dodgy, and Tom's too cheap to get them fixed. You got a plan?"

"Still working on that. How far is it from here to the school?"

She tapped one of her screens, pulled up a map, held a finger on it to zoom, then dragged the finger to connect two places. "Looks like about two and a half miles, straight flight, figure three and a half with city blocks."

He grimaced upon hearing that. "That's going to be a long stroll through hell."

"The streets were pretty clear." she told him. "Maybe they have enough buses."

Razak shook his head. "Didn't look like enough by half. What they have will help, but a lot of us are going to be hoofing it. Nothing to be done about it. Look, once we're off of the ship, just get yourself to the school. Get everyone on board and then wait for us as long as you can. I'll get these people there as fast as I can. Now, if Dahl gives you any trouble. . ."

She cut him off. "Look, I know I said he couldn't fly one handed, but that doesn't mean I can't." She reached over with one hand and pulled back her sweatshirt to reveal her .45 tucked into the seat beside her. "Don't you worry about Tom."

"Good." he said as he stood back up. "SICON was a pack of fools when they let you go, Topper."

"Hey, that's my daily affirmation!" she said with a cocky grin. "Take care of yourself down there, Jean."

Tom Dahl lead the Roughnecks down through the ship's narrow winding passages to the cargo bay, to show them where he had the stolen hardware hidden. Along the way, he continued to try to explain why it was perfectly reasonable that he should have what appeared to be stolen hardware on board, and Razak kept reassuring him that once the squad had taken it off his hands, he had nothing more to worry about. Once they reached the cargo hold, he used a winch and pulley system that ran across the bay's ceiling to raise one of the heavy metal floor panels up, then removed another false panel beneath it that was covered with fake plumbing and electrical conduit. A hidden compartment was revealed, forty feet wide, twenty feet deep and it extended further up into the darkness under the cargo bay floor. Tarp covered crates were stacked to each side of the compartment all the way to the top, and while many of them looked military, there was civilian merchandise down there as well.

A ladder was propped against the closest wall of the compartment, and Gossard and Razak used it to climb down for a closer look, ignoring Tom when he started asking how much Razak's amnesty would cover. Was it just the military hardware, or would he keep quiet about the stolen civilian property, too?

"Crooked little son of a gun, isn't he?" said Goss quietly.

"As a dog's leg. Let's see what the little thief has got for us." Razak lifted a tarp, saw that it contained solar power cells for an atmospheric processor. The crate beneath it was full of starship hull patching kits.

"You have to wonder how many more like him there are out there." said Gossard. "It's no wonder we've spent this war undersupplied." Goss pulled back a tarp that was partially covering some SICON stamped crates. Stenciled letters on the side said that they were full of mortar rounds. "I can remember times that those would have come in handy." he said.

"If he's got a launcher in here somewhere they'll come in handy now." Razak searched the labels on nearby crates.

"I think we'd be better off without the launcher, anyway. None of us have the training. We can arm these by hand and just drop them off the ship straight onto the Bugs."

"You know how to arm them?"

Goss nodded."It's easy. Twist the top, bang the bottom on the ground, then get rid of it fast. So simple, a Brutto could do it."

Razak looked at the crates of mortars, and then at the stacks of hardware yet to be revealed. "Let's start softening the Bugs up while we check out what else we've got here. Have them hoist these mortars out and then show the others how to use them. Not Flores, though. Tell her to keep her eye on the Captain."

"Will do, sir." Gossard replied, before shouting up to those on deck to lower the winch line.

While the mortars were being transferred to the deck above, Razak called up Andrea on coms to request that she lower the cargo bay's loading ramp and put the ship in the best position to bombard the Bugs. Then he ventured down the walkway between the crates, lifting tarps and letting his helmet light illuminate the labels.

The civilian stuff was pretty useless to their cause, mainly toys, electronics, medications, and designer clothing. Even some of the military items were not going to be of any help in this situation; MREs (why someone would steal them, Razak could not fathom), water purification systems, latrine composting enzymes, several complete sets of ship maintenance tools. One very large wooden crate at the very back of the compartment had a label that said that it contained a pair of vertical thrusters for a dropship. He saw some Marauder replacement parts that he could remember needing desperately several times over the course of the war.

Despite those interesting, but ultimately disappointing finds, there were some gems to be found in the mix, too. He located four crates, each containing a dozen Morita assault rifles, two more loaded with MMK-9s, and four boxes full of ammo. There was a crate containing fifty fully stocked medic's kits he thought they might need as soon as they reached the ground. A case with two flamethrowers but no fuel was no good to anyone, but there was a grenade launcher and twenty grenades.

He found two cases with all the labels and stamps scraped off, and when he opened them he found a pair of Perfs, a type of chain fed, three barrelled minigun that was capable of spitting out around a thousand rounds a minute. These came with a backpack that replaced the standard MI rocket-pack with a large ammo case that would feed a belt of ammunition into the gun. The backpack weighed a hundred and fifty pounds and the gun itself was another twenty-five, but this was perfectly reasonable for anyone in a powersuit. The Perf guns were even compatible with the powersuit's computer assisted targeting systems. For a support weapon, these were about the next best thing to a Marauder.

Razak started pulling out the gear he thought they could use, but paused when he heard a distant thump. When he heard more of them, he decided it must be the sound of the mortars landing on the Bugs. He went back to his task, and was soon joined once again by Gossard who reported that the thinning of the Bug herd had begun.

Several pallets were tucked in between a couple stacks of crates near the front, and Razak pulled one out to lay it on the floor. Then the two troopers each grabbed one end of a crate and together they began carrying them out to stack on the pallet. He felt Tom Dahl's eyes watching them as they carried out each piece of hardware, trying to see what stolen goods Razak was reclaiming from him.

When the captain saw them carry out the cases with the Perf guns, he glowered down at them with flared nostrils, looking like some enraged chimpanzee. No doubt, he had been counting on the scraped off labels and stamps to keep these valuable items from being discovered. Even with the proof of his crimes in their hands, Dahl was still managing to see himself as the wronged party, the victim.

"You're doing the right thing here, Mr Dahl." Razak told him. "This stuff is going to save lives."

The Captain made no response, other than to turn his head to spit and then stomp away.

Gossard smirked as they heaved the crate up onto the stack. "He's a real credit to the species, that one."

Razak nodded. "I think I'd be relieved to find out he was being manipulated by a Control Bug, but realistically, I don't think any Bug is capable of being that motivated by self interest. I'm afraid we have to claim him."

Razak had to admit, he was starting to let the captain's behavior get to him. Actually seeing the items that Tom had been skimming had made him feel angrier than he had expected. If there was one thing he knew, it was that troops lived or died depending on the supplies they were provided. How many lives had been lost because of this kind of theft? He had given his word that the man had nothing to fear if he showed them where the goods were, but in Razak's opinion, Dahl's crimes were worth at least a flogging, if not a firing squad. His word was bond, but he didn't know how much more of the captain's unrepentant attitude he could take. The best thing to do was hurry up and get off the ship, before he felt provoked to do something he would regret.

Once all the crates that they would be taking were stacked on the pallet, Gossard went up to rig a harness on the winch line, and then used a remote operator control to lower it down to his lieutenant. Razak centered the harness on the stack, then pulled the straps down over the sides and slid the hooks through the appropriate holes in the pallet. When he was done, Gossard raised the stack up out of the hole and started running the winch down it's track towards the open loading ramp.

Razak climbed up the ladder, and out of the compartment. Across the cargo bay, he spotted Tom Dahl leaning against the wall, with his good arm crossed over the one in the sling, soaking in his own self pity. Nearby, Dizzy was sitting on the raised blades of a forklift with her gun in her lap, trying to inconspicuously keep one eye on the captain while at the same time watch with open envy as her squadmates threw mortars off of the ramp onto the Bugs below. He thought she looked a little pouty, too, but figured he would make it up to her by letting her have the grenade launcher. It was one of her favorite toys and should perk her right up.

Dahl pushed off the wall and followed Razak as he strode down the length of the cargo bay, with Dizzy trailing behind him to the rear. Gossard had the winch extended out to the end of the ramp and had lowered the crates to rest on the platform. At the end of the ramp, Razak looked into the mortar crates to see how many were left and saw that they were down to the last few. Then he took a look down to the ground fifty feet below to see what affect they'd had and the results brought a smile to his face. A few hundred of the Bugs were now in pieces, piled up around the base of the arena. More Bugs were still streaming in, but there was nowhere near the number they had seen when they had first arrived.

"I like what you've done with the place." he said to the squad as they used the last few mortars to continue their bombardment .

"The elements were all there," explained Doc. "they just needed a little rearranging. Once you realize the Bugs look better without legs, it all just falls into place."

Rico reached into the crate, pulled out a mortar and said, "Last one, Diz. You want the honors?"

"Sweet!" she said, and caught the shell when he tossed it to her. She crept over to the edge of the ramp and took her time locating a nice cluster of Bugs before arming the mortar and throwing it off the ramp in a perfect spiral. After Razak heard it explode, the rest of the squad congratulated her on her aim. "Still got it." she said with a grin.

"Before we head down, there's a few things in the stack that we need to pull out. Doc and Gossard, those unmarked crates are for you."

Goss faked surprise. "What? Why didn't you tell us earlier, El-Tee? We didn't get you anything."

While they loosened the straps and removed the crates, he told Flores that she could use the grenade launcher and informed Higgins that he would get to play her porter, and carry the grenade supply for her. One of them was very happy, the other not so much.

"Whoa-ho-ho!" said Doc when he flipped his weapons case open and saw what lay within. He stood up wielding the Perf gun and said, "Say hello to my little friend!"

Gossard paused in the middle of unpacking his own and frowned up at Doc with a quivering lip. "But, but. . ." he whimpered. "Doc, I thought I was your little friend."

Doc busted out laughing. "Goss, my man, you are a freak."

"Can we please roll credits on comedy hour?" asked Razak. "We do have some things that need doing. You know . . Bugs. . . people in danger. . ." It came out sterner than he had intended and he immediately regretted it. He knew that humor was one of the things that kept his squad's morale up, even in the most dire of circumstances. Sometimes, it was the only thing. The truth was, he was very tired, very irritated and he just really wanted to hurry up with getting off of this vessel, and away from it's captain. It was all making his temper a little shorter than he would have usually allowed.

"Sorry, boss." said Doc as he tried his best to stifle a laugh. It was a lost cause, though, because the rest of the Roughnecks were just as tired as their lieutenant was, and a bad case of the giggles was taking hold. It soon spread infectiously to the rest of the squad and all the lieutenant could do was stand there staring at the ceiling of the cargo bay while they got it out of their systems. Doc and Gossard tried not to look at each other as they removed their backpacks and replaced them with the Perf's ammo feeders, but all the while they still couldn't help letting a snicker slip out here and there. While that was underway, Rico and Dizzy were securing the harness straps back onto the pallet and cinching them down tight. Razak heard Dizzy snort, then sniff loudly. Higgins let an almost girlish giggle that made Razak feel a smile threaten to break out on his own face.

Shaking it off, he said, "Alright, knock it off before you get me going, ya' bunch of lunatics."

The squad responded with a chorus of "Sorry, sir."

With the help of Higgins and Rico, Doc and Gossard got the ammo belts drawn out of the backpacks and fed into their guns. Higgins did have to be reminded that the pointy end of the bullet pointed forward, and the belt would function much better without a twist in it, but even with that minor setback, they were soon ready to rock and roll.

They couldn't afford to take Doc and Gossard's rocket packs with them, so for once, Tom was going to be able to legitimately claim that the military had left gear behind on his ship. Before leaving them behind, however, Razak stripped out the fuel and power cells, and replaced the nearly depleted fuel cell from his own rockets with the completely full one from Gossard's. The rest he tucked away into the pouches of his power suit, in case they would be needed later. The Moritas that belonged to Goss and Doc were taken along and would be given to someone on the ground.

When everyone stood ready, Razak told them, "I expect things will be crazy when we get on the ground, so I better give you your marching orders before we head down there. Sergeant Rico, you will stay with me and help me hand out the weapons. The rest of you I want to get to the top of the bleachers and reinforce those shooters." He reached over and knocked on two of the cases at the top of the stack with the knuckles of his prosthetic hand. "Flores, Higgins, these two are the grenades and the launcher. Flores, you need to take it easy on the grenades. Only use them for clusters of three Bugs or more. Any less than that and I want you to use your UAR-15. I want a nice wide perimeter around the arena cleared of Bugs. After we get the weapons handed out, I'm going to be going out to inspect those buses, and I don't want to see any Bugs out there. You get me?" The team acknowledged him with a "Yes, sir." and he continued. "I figure the best way to get everyone to the ground is for the rest of you to ride the crates down while I lower them. After that, I'll just drop down on my own using my rockets. Anybody got any questions? No? Good. Mount up."

While the team climbed up onto the crates and got themselves a good hand hold on the winch cable, Razak radioed up to let Andrea know that they were ready to disembark. He asked her to move them out over the soccer field and she obliged, gently reversing the Madeleine until they were over the grass and the crowd of refugees.

He used the winch control to raise the crates, slowly moved them out past the end of the ramp and pushed up on the little joystick that made the winch unwind it's cable. When the crowd below saw that they were coming down, it pulled back out of the way, giving them a clear space of open grass that they could set the crates down on. When Razak saw the cable start to go slack, he knew the supplies had touched ground, and he let off on the joystick. The squad below was unhooking the harness when he handed the control over to Tom.

He stood there for a moment watching as the harness was being reeled in, then said, "Captain, I'm going to move these people to the school as fast as I can. I expect to find you waiting for me when I get there."

Tom made no reply, and Razak had not expected one. He did not turn to look at the captain, knowing that he would probably have that same disgusted scowl on his face, and he thought that if he had to see it again, he might not be able to resist the urge to punch the man in the face. Instead, Razak pulled out the control for his jetpack, fired the rockets up and jumped off of the Madeleine and into the open air.

As his rockets lowered him to the ground, Razak could see that the crowd has closed back in around his troopers and their supplies. He could hear the din of their clamoring even over his rockets and assumed they were all trying to shout questions over each other, demanding news from his squad. They weren't really leaving him with a lot of options for places to land. He aimed for the only safe landing spot he could see, the top of the crate pile. Cutting the jets while he was still a little bit above the target, he dropped the last few feet and landed on the cases with a loud thump.

His sudden appearance made for quite the dramatic entrance, and the crowd was stunned into silence. Taking advantage of the temporary lull in the noise, he launched immediately into taking control of the situation.

Remaining up on top of the crate stack where everyone could see him, he used his helmet's external speakers to amplify his voice. "Alright, everybody listen up. I'm Lieutenant Razak of Alpha Squad, Mobile Infantry. I know a lot of people are scared and everyone wants to know what's going on, but I need you folks to calm down, then back up and give us some breathing room. We need to let my squad get up on the top of the wall so they can start doing some good, and then I can start letting you know what's going on. That's right, back it up. That means all of you. You people over here, I need you to make a path so these troopers can get through." He indicated with two hands pointed due east where he wanted a hole made in the sea of people. The crowd divided in the spot he had indicated, pushing and shoving against each other to clear a walkway.

The squad waited for Dizzy and Higgins to dig out their cases and then together they pushed into the narrow track the crowd had provided for them, headed for the nearest staircase that would take them to the top of the bleachers.

Once he saw that his troopers were in the clear, he resumed his address to the surrounding mass of people, saying, "Okay, I need everyone to close their mouths and listen to what I have to say. I know you have been waiting for the cavalry to arrive. I'm am sorry, but for the foreseeable future, we are all the cavalry you can expect to see. SICON has all available transports tied up with moving troops and supplies, and can not spare any for civilian evacuations."

The crowd erupted into a deafening uproar of protest, so he cranked the volume on his helmet, and shouted, "Quiet, now!" He had cranked the volume a little too high and some of the closest people, including Rico, were covering their ears and cringing. It had the desired effect, though and they quieted down again.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean for it to be that loud." he said as he dialed the volume back down. "We do not have time for long explanations, and I do not have time for arguments, so I will just say this once, if you want to live, listen carefully and do what I tell you."

"You can not stay here. The Bugs are going to keep coming and this arena is not strong enough to keep them out. They will tear this place apart. We do not have the personnel, supplies, weapons, or ammunition to withstand a sustained attack. We can not hold this arena." He pointed at the Madeleine, which was now moving away to the north. "This place is too small for our transport to land."

"What?" he heard someone shout. "They're just going to leave us here?"

"No, let me finish. Please be quiet. I want to get each and every one of you out of this alive, and I can only do that if you close your mouths and do as I tell you. We need to move to Freemonte High School, because that's where that transport will be waiting for us. It's going to be a walk of about three and a half miles."

When the crowd started to protest this time, he pulled his Morita from his backpack and fired a short burst into the air. "Look, you do not have to come with us. Like I said, I'm only talking to those who want to live. The rest of you can do what you want, but you have to shut up and stay out of our way. Now, I see you have some buses outside. I need to to speak to the drivers of those buses and we need to find out which of the buses will still run. There are not enough buses to carry everyone, so a lot of us are going to be walking. The only people that we will be loading onto the buses are those that absolutely can not walk three and a half miles. The elderly. The disabled. The very young. Let me be clear, if you are capable of walking, you will not be allowed on the bus."

He gave them a few moments to let that seep into their brains before moving on. "There will be Bugs attacking along the way, and the more of us that are armed, the better chance we all have of surviving.I have here several cases of automatic weapons along with the necessary ammunition. Any person that can show me a citizen ID, I will provide with a weapon. After that, I will give a gun to anyone over the age of eighteen that can show me a civilian ID that doesn't have a washout stamp on it and is willing to be sworn into the Mobile Infantry. I will swear you in on the spot. We can sort out all the paperwork and other details later. "

"If we work together, watch out for one another, and keep our wits about us, I believe we can get every one of us to the transport safely. We need to get ourselves organized, and get this show on the road. We are burning daylight, and that transport is not going to wait forever."

"The first thing I want to do is start handing out these weapons. If you feel you qualify to have one, come up and see us. Have your IDs out, because we will not give a weapon to anyone without one."

He hopped down from the crates to the ground next to Rico, and said, "Sergeant, get one of those cases open."

They sorted through those who lined up for a weapon as quickly and efficiently as you could expect, under the circumstances. There were many people who were not citizens, but were willing to be sworn in, and these they diverted over to a designated section of the bleachers. where they could wait while Razak and Rico processed through the rest of the crowd, turning away those that did not qualify and handing over guns to anyone who could prove citizenship. There were more people wanting guns than guns to give out, so Rico suggest that they start collecting the ID cards of those who wanted to swear in to the service and later they could use them to do a drawing. Razak agreed, as giving the guns away by lottery seemed like the only fair method. There were arguments along the way, from those who swore they were citizens but had no proof, and some of them were probably telling the truth, but Razak had to hold his ground. He felt bad for them, but he couldn't even offer to let them join those waiting to take the oath because without identification, they could not prove that they weren't washouts.

There were actually very few citizens among those that came up seeking a gun. Citizens only made up around ten percent of the population, so out of a crowd of a couple thousand people, you could expect a couple hundred citizens. Most of those had brought weapons of their own. A few citizens had come up who were only armed with handguns and Razak had let them trade up for an assault rifle, and kept the pistol to give to someone else.

As they carried out that task, they were also able to find all of the bus drivers, as one by one, they came up and identified themselves. Razak asked these men and women to wait over by the prospective recruits until he got everything else sorted out. He was pleased to have found them, but with what he'd seen from the air, he suspected that they were going to end up having a surplus of drivers and a deficit of functional buses. The improvised barricades had been crawling with Bugs when they'd come in, and he feared that most if not all of them were going to be undrivable. But until they got out there and actually had a closer look, there was no way they could know for sure.

It took nearly three quarters of an hour, but they finally made it the end of the line. After the citizens were given their pick of the guns, they were left with eighteen MMK-9s, thirty-three of the Moritas, and eight handguns. The number of people who wanted to be sworn into service totaled one hundred and eighty-six. They asked for anyone in the group who had not given them an ID to bring it down, then tossed all the IDs into an empty ammo case and gave it a good long shake to mix them up. Razak began pulling identification cards out of the ammo case and reading off the names. Those that were selected were told to come down out of the bleachers and wait off to one side until fifty-nine had been picked. Razak led the lucky ones through the oath of service, while Rico returned the rest of the IDs back to the disappointed one hundred and twenty-seven men and women who were walking away empty handed.

Now that they had reached the point where they would start handing out the guns, Johnny volunteered for the duty. "I'm sure there must be another few thousand things that could use your attention right now." he said to his lieutenant.

Razak looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "If you're sure you don't think you'd need me. Before you start handing them out, it might help if you gave them a quick demonstration on how to load the gun, where the safety is, and how to shoot what they want to shoot and not shoot anything else."

"I'll do that." said Johnny. "Hey, I've managed to keep Higgins from shooting himself or anyone else this long."

Rico flipped open the lid to one of the cases of guns, pulled out a Morita and held it above his head. As Razak collected the bus drivers, he heard his sergeant begin his gun safety lesson by saying, "This is a gun. It is not a toy. It puts holes in things. It's not picky. . ."

Knowing that there was going to be a lot of heavy lifting that would need to be done before any of the buses were drivable, Razak asked for volunteers from the crowd to go outside and assist with the repairs. He was surprised by how many people offered themselves up, especially since many of them were unarmed civilians. Provided with cover fire by the shooters atop the arena walls, he led the group of around two dozen people outside to inspect the buses and see if any could be salvaged.

Outside the walls, they found that the parking lot was surprisingly free of living Bugs. The presence of Alpha squad up on top of the wall, and the added firepower of Doc and Gossard's Perf guns had made it possible to clear the immediate area of arachnids and while they were still coming out of the nearby streets in a steady stream, they were being cut down only a few feet after they broke cover. The corpses of the Warriors were beginning to pile up over there and were serving to slow down those that were forced to climb over the mounds of their dead comrades. Which was all well and good, but this temporary reprieve from being overrun would only last as long as their ammo did and it would be in their best interest to be headed up the road before the guns began to run out.

They inspected the buses on the east side of the soccer field first, and they found that it was as he had feared; the Bugs had really done a number on the vehicles. They had worked well enough in preventing the Warriors from gaining entrance to the arena, but the Bug's efforts to get past them had left the vehicles in shambles. The thin metal sides of the public transit buses had not been able to withstand the assault of the very determined Bugs trying to get through them. Holes had been torn through the bus' sides, the roofs had been peeled back like the tops of sardine cans, and the passenger seats inside had been mangled and ripped from their moorings. The tires on the side facing away from the arena had been shredded, leaving the buses leaning over on bare rims.

Seeing the state of these first two buses put knots in Razak's gut. If all the buses were in the same condition, moving everyone to the school was going to take much, much longer than his previous estimates. Fortunately, they found that the damage to the buses at the north and south entrances had been less extreme, with only a few flat tires and some broken windows. Only two of the buses has escaped unscathed. Those were the two on the west side of the building, opposite from the direction that the Bugs were approaching. If Razak and his squad had not arrived and slowed the onslaught, the Bugs probably would have worked their way around to those, as well.

Everyone agreed that the two buses on the east side were a lost cause, so they were cannibalized for their parts. Their good tires were stripped off and used to replace the flats on the north and south side buses. Four working buses was actually better than the number that Razak had been expecting that they would be left with. They parked all four buses on the west side of the building and began loading them, starting with the people with the most severe disabilities first.

Remembering the small group of about a dozen or so disabled veterans that he had seen earlier, Razak went to find them and offer them seats on the bus. They flatly refused, saying they would have no issue crossing the three and a half miles to the school under their own power. Besides, the steep steps of the bleachers had kept them from giving the Bugs their comeuppance, so far, and there was no chance they would allow themselves to get stuck on the buses and kept out of the fight. Razak was glad to have them and told them as much.

Having been curious about them since he had first seen them from the air, he took the opportunity to ask how it was that they were all together. They told him they were an amputee support group and had been at a meeting at the local VIPW (Veterans of Interplanetary Wars) when the Transport Bug hit. It was lucky for them that it had worked out that way, they said. Any other time, most of them wouldn't have had their weapons on them, but it was hallowed tradition to bring one if you were going to the VIPW.

One of the men in the group was missing not only his legs, but one of his arms, too. When he noticed Razak's prosthetic hand, he asked whether it was any good and if it was something he'd gotten from veterans benefits.

"Sorry, no." he answered "It's a prototype built by a private company up in Detroit. After I lost my forearm on Pluto, they offered to let me field test it for them. It requires surgical implants in the stump to function, and I had to sign a three inch stack of contracts and waivers, but I'd say that it's worked out pretty well for me. To be honest, though, I'll probably be in the market for something a little more natural looking once I get out of the service. I mean, it's a great hand if you really needed something that comes with a laser and is capable of crushing a pool ball, but I think that something that doesn't frighten children might be more my style."

He felt a kind of easy comradeship with the little group and could have stayed to chew the fat with them all day. But he knew the clock was running, so after only a few minutes, he excused himself to go tell the people loading the buses not to hold seats for the veterans. Those seats were quickly filled by other people who needed them and before long, people were packed into every inch of available space within each of the buses.

Razak would not allow a repeat of the breakdown into chaos that had happened when he brought the civilians to the school the night before, so with this in mind, he carefully organized how the march north would proceed. According to his plan, the buses would be kept to the center of the procession, and driven at an easy walking pace. The civilians were arranged in columns roughly five people wide to each side of the vehicles, and along the outer edges of these columns, he dispersed armed citizens and recruits at twenty foot intervals. He split Alpha Squad between the far ends of the column, with himself, Higgins, Doc, and Flores taking point, and Gossard,T'phai, and Rico bring up the rear.

When they were finally able to get under way, it had been nearly two and a half hours since the Madeleine had left, bound for Freemonte. He could only hope that all his precautions and organization had not cost them too much precious time. Anxiety ate at him as they started the march north and he had to fight the urge to speed up the pace. Most of these people were not military and many would not be used to these kinds of walks. Go too fast, and he ran the risk of having some people lag behind and stringing out his column until it was indefensible.

A corporate business district sprawled up into the area between the soccer stadium and Freemonte High School, made up of tall skyscrapers and luxury hotels. The marchers soon found themselves advancing down through deep canyons of steel and glass. The gloom of the day was even worse here, as the massive buildings were blocking what meager daylight had broken through the clouds.

The Bugs were following them, and could be seen moving in a parallel column only a few blocks over. At each intersection, a pack of Warrior Bugs would peel off from the main company and cross the streets between to probe the human's defenses, looking for weak spots. They had been lucky to have enough people with weapons that they could be spaced fairly close together, so when one of these Bug attacks came, they were met with overlapping fields of fire. So far, the Bugs had been killed or driven back before they could get close enough to hurt any of the civilians.

About a mile into the march, Razak started catching little bursts of radio traffic on his coms, and while he couldn't make heads or tails of what was being said, he thought he recognized Andrea's voice amid all the static and squawks. The only thing he could figure was that all that skyscraper steel was playing havoc with the signals being kicked out by the Madeleine's antiquated communication equipment.

"Say again, Topper." he said into his helmet's radio mic. "I did not copy."

All he got back were more fractured words and sentences that sounded like they were being whispered from the far side of a malfunctioning blender. What could she be trying to tell him? Was he just being told to hurry, or that she could not wait any more and was leaving the school? Without knowing which, he could be leading these people into anything. Perhaps he could get a better signal if he went to higher ground, but he would have had to found a way to the top of one of the surrounding buildings. Those skyscrapers were so incredibly high, he could see no way to get to the top of one of them in any reasonable amount of time. Unless he learned more, he couldn't see any choice other than to stick to the plan and keep going forward.

Fifteen minutes later, and another half a mile to the north, he heard the deep rumble of an explosion to their rear. It hadn't sounded close enough to be an immediate danger to his column, but it had been close enough to make the windows in the surrounding buildings fluctuate in their frames. The procession stopped as everyone turned to see what had blown up. When he couldn't see anything by looking over their heads, he used his jump jets to jump to the roof of the front bus for a better view. Far, far down the street, past the last of the corporate towers, he could just barely see the edge of a massive fireball peeking out from behind a building as it lazily mushroomed into the sky. Flipping down his visor, he used it to zoom in for a closer look.

He couldn't be certain, but he thought the explosion might have been back at the soccer arena. The distance seemed about right. Had the Bugs done something? He couldn't see the point, now that the humans had abandoned the stadium, and besides, he couldn't think of anything back there that could have caused an explosion, at least not one that big. Maybe some fleet bomber pilot had seen all the Bugs going there earlier and decided it might be a juicy target?

Hoping that he might have a better idea of what had happened, he radioed Rico at the rear of the column and asked if he could see what had exploded. His sergeant was on the same page that he was; no idea what had exploded, but thought it might be at the soccer field. Unable to make sense of it, he decided that whatever had happened, he was thankful that it happened back there, and not here.

Jumping back down to the ground, he got the column moving again. His mind kept going back to the explosion, trying to make sense of it, and wondering what Topper had been trying to tell him. All these unknowns were leaving him feeling uneasy, and he kept having to tell himself to focus on the task at hand, and watch for Bugs. They would just have to deal with whatever problems were coming, when they came.

As they started into the next intersection, he heard Dizzy shout, "Tanker Bug at three o'clock!"

Razak turned to his right and saw the Bug she was talking about at the far end of the the street. It was fifteen tons of armored ugly, twice the size of a garbage truck and looking like some kind of freak cross between a turtle, a beetle, and an armadillo. Upon seeing the humans, the Bug tossed it's head up and twin streams of liquid fire squirted from it's mandibles to arch through the air towards them. The only thing that saved them from the Bug's naturally excreted napalm was that it's spitting capabilities were only about half a block. The burning liquid splashed to the ground halfway down the length of the street, but the Bug was shuffling closer every second and would soon have them within range.

Razak turned on his loud speaker, then spun around to face those coming along behind and threw up his arms. "Whoa! Stop! Stop! Back it up! Go back!"

Things got very loud, very quick. First there was the shouting and screaming of the panicked crowd, and then he heard the whine of the electric motor on Doc's Perf gun winding up. When the minigun began to fire, it's roar nearly drowned out all the other noise. Next, there was a series of deafening bangs as Dizzy opened up with her grenade launcher. The bangs echoed off of the side of the surround buildings, accompanied by the crash of shattering windows, and the tinkle of spent rounds bouncing on the ground. Razak glanced over to see if the Perf gun or grenades were having any effect on the Bug.

The armor plates that covered Tanker Bug's back were very nearly invulnerable, and the thick skin that covered the rest of it's body wasn't easy to penetrate, either. Tankers were practically unstoppable, and without some Javelin mini-nukes, a smart squad would avoid going up against one, if at all possible. Flores and Doc were trying to at least slow it down, focusing their fire on the Bug's weakest spots. Flores had dropped to her belly on the ground and was firing from a prone position, letting her grenades skip across the asphalt and up underneath the Bug. Whenever one of the grenades went off under there, the Bug would be jarred by the explosion, causing it to stumble to the side. Razak didn't know if the grenades were doing any real damage, but the low bellowing noises the Bug was making sure didn't lead him to believe that it was enjoying the sensation. All that stumbling around was definitely slowing it's forward progress. Doc was focusing his Perf gun fire on the head and neck of the Bug, chipping away at the overhanging plates of exoskeleton that protected the eyes, then switching to shoot straight down it's throat whenever it tried to spit.

The procession began to reverse direction as the crowd started to understand the danger it was in and a wave of panic washed down through the mass of people The men and women driving the buses seemed to be the last to understand what was going on, and continued to roll forward, even as the crowd turned to flee back down the street. Razak kept waving his arms, trying to get them to reverse. He had to get them going the other way before the Bug reached the intersection, or those buses would be transformed into incinerators and the people that were trapped on those vehicles would be the least able to escape from them. Finally, he ran up to the front bus and gave the grill a good solid kick, getting the driver's attention.

"Go back!" he shouted, and pointed back the way they had come. For the first time, the driver noticed the troopers at the corner behind Razak that were firing their weapons down the side street, and finally caught on. He laid on the bus' horn, reached up for the shifter, and pulled it down into reverse. Sticking his head out the side window so he could see where he was going, he started backing the bus down the street

Razak pulled his Morita from his backpack and raced back to the street corner, hoping to find some way to be of any help against the Tanker. But he knew that there wasn't much he could do with just a Morita. If a Perf gun wasn't getting the job done then his smaller caliber machine gun wouldn't either.

Higgins was reloading Dizzy's grenade launcher with grenades from the case he had been toting, while Dizzy used her rifle to fire three shot bursts from behind a concrete column she was using for cover. He thought about trying to call the rest of Alpha Squad to his position, but knew that they would have to push their way up through a mass of scared people that were running in the opposite direction. It would be like trying to walk upstream through whitewater rapids. By the time they got here, he would probably be yelling at them to head the other way.

"Loaded!" Higgins shouted.

Dizzy let her UAR drop to hang from it's strap, and caught the launcher when Higgins tossed it. Higgins was reaching for his own Morita, but Razak told him to take his grenade case and head back down the street. He could wait for them at the next intersection. While the young private closed up his case, Razak stepped out from around the corner to see where the Bug was. It was less than half a block away. It could have doused them from there, but Doc's constant Perf gun fire was making it keep it's head tucked down to protect it's eyes and that was preventing it from spitting at them. It was still inching closer, though, and Doc's ammo belt would not last forever.

He racked his brain for some method to put this Tanker down and was coming up with nothing That thing was going to just keep coming, and he couldn't see any way that he could get his column around it. Unless someone came up with a brilliant plan to stop it very soon, he wasn't going to be able to get all these refugees to the school, and onto the transport.

It's starting to look pretty bleak for Plan A, he thought, then he remembered that Plan A had been getting a little transport for his squad to take them back to the airport the night before. Plan B had been get to the school and wait. They had to be on Plan P or Plan Q by now. They would have to come up with Plan Q while in retreat, because the Bug was getting really close.

He backed up until he could look down the street and see how far the column had made it. They were about a block and a half away. It would have to be good enough.

"Let's pull back." he told Doc and Flores. "It's too close."

"No argument here." said Dizzy. "That thing looks as eager to spit fire as my old drill sergeant."

She was right, and the moment Doc stopped shooting, it was going to let them have a facefull. He needed to buy them a few seconds. "Flores, lob a few of those grenades right under it's chin. Give it something think about while we get ourselves around the corner. Come on, Doc, let's go!"

After the sustained roar of the Perf gun, it seemed unnaturally quiet when Doc let off the trigger. Doc backed up quickly, keeping his gun trained on the Bug until he was far enough past the corner of the building to lose sight of it, then he turned to jog back up the block. As Razak followed him, he heard the quiet fump, fump, fump of Dizzy's grenade launcher, and then her running footfalls. He heard the first bang of a grenade going off, and then, unexpectedly, there was a boom. A vibration passed through the ground beneath his feet and a concussion hit him in the back so hard that he felt as though he'd been shoved from behind. He stumbled, but kept his feet and saw his shadow on the ground in front of him as he was silhouetted by some bright light to his rear. More booms, five of them in quick succession. Glass and concrete pinged and ricocheted off the sides of the nearby buildings.

He stopped and turned, looking for answers. His ears were ringing, and what he was hearing sounded muted and muffled, like everything was happening in another room. Doc had turned back, and the words, "What just happened?" were written plainly on his face. Dizzy had stopped running a couple yards from the corner of the building. She was just standing there, looking down at the grenade launcher in her hands with eyebrows furrowed, as if she was trying to make sense of what it seemed to have done. Razak walked back toward the corner, cautious and slow.

The Tanker Bug had been blown sideways through the wall of the building across the street. It looked like it had been caught broadside by a three ton wrecking ball. It's left side had been caved in, it's armor plates shattered, and it's juicy insides had been squeezed out around the pieces. The Bug's mandibles hung limply from it's head, and a small stream of liquid fire dribbled from it's mouth. Razak had seen many a dead Bug in his day, and in his expert opinion, that was one dead Bug.

It didn't make any sense. A grenade could not have done that kind of damage, and even if they had somehow managed to get the Tanker Bug's napalm to explode with one of the grenades, which would have been extremely unlikely, it would have blown outwards, not caved in. As he looked around for clues, he noticed that the ground, the Bug, and the walls of the two buildings on each side of the street were covered with black burn marks. Across the asphalt he saw fragments of blackened, twisted metal, too big to have come from a grenade. A fleet bomb, maybe? He walked forward, kicked one over, and saw the partially burned label of a paint can.

He was still trying to puzzle that out when he realized that the ringing in his ears had quieted a little, and he was hearing something else. The roar of very large vertical thruster engines. He looked up, and high above the top of the buildings, he saw the Sweet Madeleine. Her loading ramp was lowered and he could see people standing out on it, waving down to him.

Razak flipped down his visor and zoomed in. Among those standing on the ramp, he recognized Principal Shubert and Mr Fohler, the chemistry teacher. The paint can bombs suddenly made sense.

He tapped on his coms and said, "Topper, this is Razak. You copy?"

With the clear line of sight to the ship, she came back loud and clear. "Hello, Jean. How are things down there?"

"I'm feeling a little out of the loop, actually. Mind filling me in?"

"Things got bad at the school and we got overrun." she told him. "We got everyone loaded and waited for you as long as we could, but I had to take off or the Bugs would have had us."

"I'm sure you didn't have a choice." said Razak, then he asked, "You have any suggestions for an alternate landing site?"

"If you head back to the soccer field, we'll pick you up there."

He thought that maybe he still wasn't hearing things right. "Come again? I thought the soccer field was too small, and besides, I think I saw something big blow up over there a little while back."

"Yeah, we did that." said Andrea.

"Hold on? That fireball I saw looked like it could have come from a fleet bomb. You telling me Dahl had something that big hidden on board?"

"The bomb didn't come from Dahl." she said. "Right before we left the school, I noticed this guy pulling up next to the ship in a pickup truck. He had a truck bed full of fifty gallon barrels, all of them rigged with fuses. I asked him what that was all about and he said it was an explosive he'd whipped up as a little goodbye present for the Bugs, and that it was powerful enough to take out half the school. After the initial shock wore off, it occurred to me that it might be of more use if we used it to level a soccer stadium."

"Mr Fohler had said that he could build something like that, but I kind of thought that he might be exaggerating."

"He wasn't whistling dixie, I assure you." said Andrea. "That arena is nothing but smoldering splinters now."

"Let's hear it for better living through chemistry." Razak said with a laugh. "How is Captain Dahl behaving?"

"Tom's napping."

"Huh?"

"Well, when we brought the bomb on board, he lost his mind a little."

"Yeah, that's the reaction I would have expected from him."

"He started waving his gun around, threatening people and a bunch of the cops dogpiled him. They were not gentle."

"I wish I could have been there to see that." said Razak. "Why is he napping? Did they give him a concussion or something?"

"No, one of the paramedics gave him a sedative to calm him down."

"I gotta tell you, Topper, I'm so tired right now, I kind of envy him. Just to be certain, before we walk all the way back to the soccer field, are you sure you can land there now?"

"Trust me." she replied. "With the place flattened, I got room to spare."

"Then I guess time's a wastin'. I better go catch up with my column and herd them back the way they came."

"Sounds good, Jean." said Topper. "We'll meet you there."

The Madeleine came about to face south and then moved slowly down the street two blocks over. Shortly afterward, he started hearing loud booms again as the veterans aboard the ship dropped more of Mr Fohler's IEDs onto the Warrior Bugs coming up the street.

As Razak led his troopers at a jog to catch up with the rest of the column, he heard Dizzy say, wearily, "Is this day over yet?

"Almost." he told her. "Barring further unforeseen complications, that is."

"I don't see how it could even be possible for us to have unforeseen complications, sir." said Dizzy. "We got us a Spec-ops trained psychic on the squad. Ain't that right, Higgins?"

At the end of the block, Higgins was standing with his back to them, watching the crowd as it continued to flee towards the south. Upon hearing his name, he spun around. "Huh? Wha?"

"Exactly." said Dizzy.

Epilogue:

The following is an excerpt from an interview of journalist/author Robert Higgins, conducted by Amanda Cresswell thirteen years after the Bug invasion of Buenos Aires.

AC: Have you seen the film "Escape from Buenos Aires?"

RH: No, but I've read the book it was based on.

AC: Then you are aware that there is a character based on you in the film.

RH: I think you mean 'loosely based'. But, yes, I'm aware there is a character that shares the same name as me.

AC: Are you suggesting that Tom Dahl's depiction of you in the book is inaccurate?

RH: (laughter) I think the phrase you're looking for is 'wildly inaccurate'.

AC: I see. How do you respond to his allegations that you psychically assaulted him in an attempt to obtain passwords that would allow your squad to steal his ship?

RH: I am not now, nor have I ever been a psychic.

AC: Is that a denial?

RH: Maybe Mr Dahl's ghostwriter made a typo and it was supposed to say physically instead of psychically. I've always had a reputation for a propensity for violence. (laughter) Sorry, no. Dahl's version of events are absurd.

AC: So, your squad did not attempt to steal Mr. Dahl's ship from him in order to transport weapons you had stolen from SICON and intended to sell on the black market?

RH: No, that didn't happen.

AC: What about his claim that he single-handedly retook the ship from you in order to use it to rescue refugees?

RH: (sustained laughter)(coughing fit) I'm sorry. I mean, I've read what he claimed, but I'd never actually heard anyone say it out loud before. . .