“There will be more fapping,” Dandy said. “You can bet our certified computers will be polluted.”

“Comes from too much reliance on Earth,” Jack said sourly, “Ma’am, what I need to know is, why would Earth do this? Just to screw up our government?”

“No,” I said. “They’d want to deal with a stable government.”

“Have we got something going that would scare them that bad?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” I said, cutting through all my instinctive equivocation. My life probably depended on these two men.

“The Olympians?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m just asking because they were put under top security protection a month ago, and I planned the pattern,” Jack said. “Unusual for industrial stuff.”

“Is there any chance this is just a local failure?” I asked, the strain in my voice obvious. My last ray of hope was about to be extinguished.

“No, Ma’am,” Dandy said. “We’d get Point One immediately.”

“Then I’d like to be with the Olympians, and as soon as possible,” I said.

Dandy and Jack considered this in silence. “Ma’am, you undoubtedly have your reasons. But we have to make you available for talks with negotiators representing the aggressor. You will be exposed before the President, in case the aggressors are trying to decapitate Mars. Security for the Olympians assumes they will be killed if the aggressor knows their whereabouts. They’ll be removed from Melas Dorsa as soon as possible, and we don’t know where they’ll be.”

“I need to communicate with them, then.”

“Nobody’s talking with anybody for the next few hours, perhaps longer, if we guess correctly.”

“If it’s that bad, then people are dying,” I said.

Jack nodded. “Yes, Ma’am. Power blackouts, tunnel collapses in the fancier stations, oxydep, recycler failures…”

My neck stiffened with rage beneath the armor. “When will Ti Sandra and I be able to talk?”

Dandy was about to answer when his slate chimed. Coded signals flashed onto the screen.

‘That’s Point One,“ he said. ”Someone’s popped up a mini satcom. Things are happening fast. We’re to get you to a shuttle and take you to Many Hills immediately. You’re to meet with someone who has a message from Earth.“

“I hope you like adventure, Madam Vice President,” Jack said.

“Not this kind,” I said.

“Nor I, Ma’am.”

“What’s your last name, Jack?”

“Name’s Ivan Ivanovitch Vasilkovsky, Ma’am, from Yamaguchi BM in Australe.”

Terror can only last so long before it subsides into numbness and a sour stomach.

A sleek black and red maintenance train engine had been sidelined in the depot roundhouse. We boarded through the engineer’s lock. Dandy checked the computer and found it had been completely deactivated. Together, Dandy and Jack pulled the computer offline so it would not start with powerup, switched the engine to emergency manual override, turned on safety sensors but left lights and beacons off, and took us out of the roundhouse. Dandy took the first watch in the driver’s seat.

I did not want to go to Many Hills, but their arguments were irrefutable. Running unloaded, on a straight trace the engine could push up to four hundred kiphs. The trip would take at least fifteen hours.

Saddled with authority, away from Ti Sandra and out of touch possibly for days, I felt like a lost child. Mostly I stayed quiet in the tiny compartment, lying on a hard cot that belied the colloquial name from centuries past — “featherbedding.”

Jack Vasilkovsky sat on a pulldown stool, face unreadable. He would give up his life for me if called upon. And he would kill.

I had thought these matters through before, but never with such intensity and urgency. I was no longer simply myself or even the Vice President. I was the face of the Republic until Ti Sandra could safely emerge.

In a few hours, I would examine all the contingency plans made by our defense and security staffs. And shortly after that, whether or not I had spoken with Ti Sandra, I would be facing someone representing Earth — who? And with what demands?

The compartment’s tiny port allowed small glimpses of pink sky darkening into dusk. The pink shaded into deep brown filled with stars. Came a quick flash of pale blue along the horizon, something I had never seen live before, and night black and cold.

The compartment smelled of stale nano and dust. The engine flew at speed, silent on straight trace. There might be other trains stranded on the tracks, their computers dithering from Earth’s merciless evolvons. Jack looked as if he was prepared to blast them out of our way — but then I thought more as he and Dandy were thinking, and realized they would simply commandeer the next engine, leaving the stranded passengers to fend for themselves.

Oddly, only now did I speck that these events were going to be historic. Whether we won or lost, the scattering of Mars’s leaders — President, Vice President, and presumably the district governors — would become a Martian legend. Intrigue, decoys, shuttle flights and trains in the night.

Jack’s slate chimed and another coded message came in. “Another pop-up,” he said dryly. “Point One is still operating, but our satellites are brought down as soon as we put them up. They must want us really scared.”

“What’s the message?” I asked, rising from the cot.

“I have something from the President, your eyes only, and status on who we’re talking to at Many Hills. Cailetet seems to be functioning, and maybe a few small renegade BMs. Nothing else.”

He transferred Ti Sandra’s message to my slate, simple text and one picture.

The text was followed by a small picture of Ti Sandra, face smiling but haggard. I signaled the wiping of the message and the picture faded.

Locusts.

Jack leaned forward, touching my hand in concern. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“What do you know about locusts?” I asked.

Jack sat upright and rubbed his hands on his knees. “Jesus,” he said. “Contravened by treaty throughout the Triple. What in God’s name could we do to Earth… Have they?”

“The President says they have.”

He looked as if he might cry, caught between anger and horror and helpless to act. “Jesus,” he repeated, and could say no more for a few seconds.

“Locusts,” I said, trying to bring him back.

He folded his arms and looked away, eyebrows drawn together. “How do you control an entire planet from across the Solar System? Seed it with nano factories that can build a variety of automatic weapons, self-directing warbeiters. Mars’s soil is ideal. High silicate and aluminum, high ferrous content. Choose old mines or seemingly depleted sites, still rich with the basic minerals, open to deep exploration and concealment without triggering alarm. Sprinkle nano factory seeds from orbit. A single small ship could do it. We have no defense against such an atrocity.”

I thought of Cailetet’s attempt to expand mining claims. As if Crown Niger had tried to warn us, one last signal flag of honor before handing himself to Earth on a platter, sole political survivor of conquered Mars.

I wondered now if Stan and Jane were even alive. “We could fight the locusts,” I offered.