“There hasn’t been any fighting back home yet,” Raynor said to Kydd, as they left the latest encampment behind. “But if the war spreads to Shiloh, my mom and dad could wind up like that.”

Kydd nodded, but looked away, clearly thinking about his parents. They, like most members of the Old Families, were safe on well-protected Confederate core worlds like Tarsonis.

“I can’t believe it’s this bad,” Raynor said.

“Me, neither.”

“It just seems so hopeless. What can we possibly do to help these people?”

“I don’t know. I guess just do what we’re told, and hopefully it’ll make a difference.”

“This isn’t what I thought it was gonna be like,” Raynor said.

“Tell me about it.”

They sat in silence for a while as the depressing scenery rolled by. After a while Raynor turned around and found Harnack quietly throwing dice with a hollow-faced marine named Max Zander. Raynor was glad to see that his boisterous friend had found something to do besides piss everyone off—even if he was destined to lose most of his money.

Still, all of the people he’d known in boot camp were starting to change, and that included Hank. He was still hair-trigger, and a bit unpredictable when off duty, but squared away the rest of the time. In fact, it was very rare for a noncom to find fault with either his uniform or his weapon.

That night was spent in a military rest area, which consisted of underground dormitories that had been scooped out of the ground and covered over with a thick layer of soil. The water tanks, septic system, and supply depots required to sustain the facility were buried as well. In fact, the only items visible on the surface were the command center, the comsat station adjoining it, and an engineering bay. It wasn’t fancy, but comfortable enough, all things considered.

Raynor caught an hour of guard duty that night, which sucked because his watch was a “splitter,” meaning that he had to get up in the middle of the night and then go back to bed again. But at least the watch was uneventful. He was able to get back to sleep without any difficulty, and felt reasonably rested when he got up in the morning. Then it was time to clean up, eat some rations, and reboard the trucks.

The sun was little more than a yellow bruise in a gray sky. The air was warm and humid, hinting that it might rain later in the day, and Raynor could feel his undershirt stick to his back as he followed Harnack up onto the truck. The vehicle had been left running, and for no good reason insofar as Raynor could see, especially given the fuel shortage back home. That pissed him off, but he lacked enough rank to do anything about it.

Having been cleared for departure, the trucks rolled onto the busy highway for what promised to be another boring day. One of the marines had a beat-up media box loaded with a selection of Rilian techno riffs, which he proceeded to play full blast, so that the vocals and the backbeat merged with natural sound to create what amounted to a soundtrack for the trip.

At some point it began to rain, but not that hard, so the marines elected to leave the side panels up even though that meant getting sprayed by vehicles headed in the opposite direction. The convoy entered a verdant valley, where mounds of burned-out rubble marked what had once been profitable moss farms.

Were the farmers still alive? And living in refugee camps? Or had they been killed? There was no way to know, and Raynor was thinking about his parents, when the first Kel-Morian Hellhound dropped through the overcast and opened fire. A truck exploded, another ran into the fireball, and somebody began to scream.

THE PLANET TURAXIS II

There were three enemy aircraft in all. They skimmed along no more than a hundred and fifty feet off of the highway, firing as they came. Nose cannons spewed beams of coherent radiation at the tubby transports even as rockets leapt off their wing racks and wove in for the kill. Some struck their intended targets and some missed. The resulting explosions sent columns of debris soaring into the air.

By a stroke of good luck, truck two, which Raynor and his buddies were riding in, was spared during the first pass and he found himself on his feet yelling, “Get out! Run like hell! Take cover!”

The Hellhounds pulled up, flew a lazy circle around the far side of the valley, and turned north again. Raynor and the rest of the marines were crouched in a neighboring field at that point, weapons raised, firing madly. “Lead them!” Raynor shouted, as he remembered the lessons learned in boot camp, but knew the likelihood of bringing one of the flyers down was next to nothing.

A succession of explosions marched up the highway as the KM pilots strafed the motionless convoy for a second time and a storm of small arms fire converged on them from both sides of the road. Raynor heard shouts of joy as the second Hellhound in line staggered, produced a thin trail of black smoke, and was forced to break away. The marines hadn’t brought the craft down, but they had inflicted enough damage to send it limping toward home, with the other Hellhounds providing cover.

The entire battle consumed just minutes, but destroyed two trucks and damaged a third. The fourth vehicle, the one loaded with gear, was untouched. Surprisingly, given the extent of the destruction, casualties were limited to one KIA and two WIAs.

Because the marines were replacements, and hadn’t yet been integrated into regular companies at Fort Howe, they didn’t have their own command structure with them. The sole surviving driver, Corporal Hawkes, took charge and got on the horn to the nearest source of potential help, which was an outpost designated as Firebase Zulu. His face was expressionless as he listened to a series of profanity-laced orders. Then when the download was over, he nodded. “Roger that, sir … I’ll get things going. Over.”

Hawkes’s first task was to choose three temporary squad leaders, which he proceeded to do based on what he’d seen from the newbies so far. That was how Raynor wound up in charge of the second squad, which included Harnack, Kydd, and Zander. Hawkes eyed Raynor. “Can you drive a truck?”

“Yes, Corporal, I can drive just about anything,” Raynor answered honestly.

“As long as it isn’t a vulture,” Harnack said sotto voce from a few feet away.

“Good,” the corporal replied. “Use truck four to push one and two off the highway before traffic starts to back up. As for number three, I’m not sure if it’s operational or not. Do we have anyone who knows their way around engines in this group?”

“I could take a look at it,” Zander offered modestly, and the noncom was quick to take him up on the offer.

“Great! You do that… . If you can’t get it going, tell Raynor. He’ll push it out of the way. As for everyone else,” Hawkes said as he looked around, “you have ten minutes to round up your B-2 bags if they still exist and get ready for a nice little stroll. Because even if we get truck three running again, there won’t be enough transport for everyone.”

With his squad in tow Raynor made his way past the still-smoking wreckage of trucks one and two, saw Zander peel off to examine three, and made a beeline for the last vehicle, which was battered but still running. “Hey, Hank!” he yelled, as he swung up into the cab. “It looks like traffic is starting to back up. Take the rest of the squad down the line and tell the vehicles behind us to take ten. And don’t let anyone below the rank of general push past. I need room to maneuver.”