"Oh, give me a break," Lewis said. "If they go for anything, it's not going to be some punk delinquent working off a court rap."

"I fucking volunteered for strategic security!"

"What the chicks go for is a guy with some experience. Right, Dennis?"

"Bull's-eye. You've got tonight's tactics all wrong, kid. We have a certain novelty value: face it, technically we're aliens from another planet. The ladies will be intrigued by us. We can snag them with that. And the more planets we've been to, the more fascinated they'll be by us. Everyone apart from Hal will benefit."

"Hey!"

"Face it, kid, you just haven't got the staying power us mature guys have."

"That's a bunch of crap. You old farts can't even get it up, never mind keep it there. The girls know what they like, and tonight they're going to overdose on me."

"Let's keep this formation tighter," Amersy said before the bull got any worse. "Come on, Jones, you're falling behind. And, Dennis, close in; give Odel some support."

"You got it, Corp."

The platoon checked their relative positions and improved their formation.

Up ahead of Lawrence, the street opened out into a small square where a tiny central lawn was surrounded by neat flowerbeds. Clunky old gardening robots crawled along the edge of the white-and-scarlet salvias, rusty implements prodding at the soil. The constables slowed their pace, dropping behind. They did it every time there was a major junction, in case there was some kind of ambush around the corner.

Edmond and Lewis went wide, getting close to the shop fronts and covering the opposite sides of the square as they moved forward. There was no ambush. No KillBoy. The platoon crossed over the square with the constables ambling along behind.

"Do you reckon we should buy some clothes from around here first?" Hal asked. "I mean, to blend in with the fashions, and such. We don't want to come over as total dumbass aliens. You've got to look sharp in any bar."

"Hal," Lawrence said, "let's stay focused on current affairs, shall we?"

"Sure thing. Sorry, Sarge."

Lawrence walked off the grass and crossed the road. He didn't like to intervene with the normal platoon bull. But the kid was too boneheaded to take Amersy's hints. With a bit of luck, tonight he would actually find some silly tart who fancied screwing an alien invader. The kid needed some way of letting off tension. He was starting to irritate everyone.

Red icons flashed up over Lawrence's sensor grid. The suit AS spliced his communications into the link that Oakley's platoon was using. A 2D indigo city map expanded out of its grid, featuring deployment symbols blossoming with script orders as the headquarters tactical AS analyzed the incident.

The incident: one of Oakley's platoon was down, a squaddie named Foran. A stone wall had collapsed on top of him. Civilian datapool overlap showed some kind of traffic malfunction in the same location, a thirty-ton robot truck had gone offline. Foran's medical telemetry was intermittent from underneath the pile of rock, but the information so far showed that his Skin carapace had been breached in several places by the fall. Internal organ damage, broken bones and blood loss were showing.

Oakley's platoon was patrolling the sector adjoining Lawrence's.

"Dispersal pattern one," Lawrence told his platoon. It could be a classic diversionary tactic, in which case it was unlikely that the true assault would come quite so close by. But he wasn't taking chances, not in this environment.

The platoon exited the street with smart professionalism, going into the nearest buildings through doors and larger open windows. Lawrence himself darted into a small hairdresser's. The row of women sitting under tentacle-armed IR drying units went rigid with alarm. Both the constables were left alone outside, staring around in astonishment. Video telemetry grids showed Lawrence several outraged homeowners yelling at his troopers.

Lawrence switched to the command channel. "Oakley, do you need help?"

"Shit, dunno—! Get it, get it That one! Come on, lift."

"Oakley, what's your status? Is this a prelim diversion?"

"No, it's fucking not! A goddamn wall has fallen on him. Shit, it's the size of a mountain. We're never going to shift it."

Lawrence saw the deployment icons representing Oakley's platoon all clustering in one spot. "You're getting dense. If that sniper's around, you're going to get punished. Suggest you pull some of your team back."

"Fuck you, neurotronic-brain Newton! That's one of mine under there."

"Newton," Captain Bryant said, "take some of your platoon and help the dig. We need to get Foran out of there."

"Sir, I don't think that's—"

"He's alive, Sergeant. I'm not allowing one of my men to die here. This was a traffic accident, not a setup for a sniper. Understand?"

"Yes, sir." Lawrence took a moment to compose himself, knowing full well what his own medical telemetry would be showing Bryant. Not that the captain would be looking. "Hal, Dennis, you're with me. Amersy, finish our sweep."

It was a narrow alley in an old commercial district. Vertical stone-and-concrete walls with white paint badly faded and peeling, scraggly weeds sprouting all along the base. The only windows were high up and covered with bars, glass too dirty to see through; doors were sturdy metal, welded up or sealed with thick riveted plates. Dust was still rolling out of the entrance when Lawrence arrived, thick gray clouds of dry carcinogenic particles that latched on tenaciously to his Skin carapace. Crowds of civilians were gathered around on the main street, several with handkerchiefs over their faces. They all peered into the gloomy alley. Two TVL88 helicopters were circling just above the rooftops, magnetic Gatling cannon extended from the noses like squat insect mandibles. Their rotors were exacerbating the dust problem.

Lawrence checked around quickly. There was no obvious high building providing a firepoint nest down the alley. His suit AS increased the infrared sensor percentage as he made his way into the dust; his visual picture lost all color apart from gray, black and pink—though the general outlines maintained their integrity. He saw rubbish piled up against the walls on either side of the alley: boxes, bags and drums all printed with the town's civic emblem, denoting it ready for collection. There couldn't have been a pickup truck down here for a month. In some places the piles were so big they actually sprawled right across the cracked tarmac. Lawrence had to clamber over them.

There was a kink in the alley, and he was abruptly facing the collapsed wall. He grunted in dismay. "Shit, this is a mess." A huge section had collapsed, leaving tattered shreds of tigercotton reinforcement mesh flapping along the jagged upright edges. The building behind had been some kind of warehouse, or disused factory, a big empty cube with aging metal beams and ducts running up the walls, now bent and twisted, whole strands torn free and dangling precariously. Its flat concrete panel ceiling had collapsed along with the wall, crashing down and shattering over the floor and a big crumpled truck. On the opposite wall at the front of the building, a roll-up door had been torn apart, showing a wide street outside that was clogged with stationary traffic.