The earth kept shaking. Incoming Projectile? I looked around for something to cling to, then looked up. In the distance an Interceptor lifted off, slow, majestic, and rumbling. Perched on an orange flame pillar, it arrowed skyward from blooming white smoke.

Silhouetted against the smoke and fifty feet from me Metzger stood, arms folded and grinning, a regular recruiting poster. His Class-A’s were blue and fancier than mine. He wore those plink flyboy ribbons on his chest. Okay, the Rocket Jocks were saving the world. He deserved them.

He walked toward me, silver captain’s tracks on his shoulder boards. I saluted automatically, and he returned it, sloppy the way the Space Force does. Ord made us press our tattered fatigues like they were Armani tuxes. World War II pilots thought nothing of burning aviation gas, flying beer to thirty thousand feet to cool it. Maybe flyboy ribbons were plink after all.

He rested his hands on his hips, looked me up and down, and whistled. “You got in shape.”

I shrugged. “Infantry runs for its life.” I guess I could have punched his arm or hugged him or something.

I had my head tipped back, still gawking like a hick at a skyscraper.

He jerked a thumb at the Interceptor, now a speck atop a curving contrail, white against the cold, gray Florida sky. “Rocket Jocks fly from here, from Vandenberg on the West Coast and Lop Nor in China. Johannesburg covers the Southern Hemisphere alone. Not a lotta targets to protect south of the equator.”

He reached across the space between us, took my duffel, and led me to his car. Vanity tags read rokjok on a Kia Hybrid.

I whistled. “These cost the brick!”

“She’s fine on batteries, and she flies when she’s on gasoline.”

“You can get gasoline?”

“Rocket Jocks get everything.” He tossed my bag in the back seat “Get in. The girls are meeting us at the party.”

“Oh.” My social life since puberty consisted of doubling with every zit-faced, prude sidekick of every cheerleader who ached to lose her virginity to Metzger. Of course, my dates probably saw me the same way.

“No Your date’s cream. Honest.” That was the nice thing about being with somebody you grew up with. You could talk without saying much.

We passed few cars. Nobody else got a Rocket Jock’s fuel ration. The cars we saw drove lights on to penetrate the impact-dust twilight. We didn’t even need our lights because Metzger’s car had a night-vision heads-up display.

The perpetual overcast and the lack of traffic made the civilian world quieter. Or maybe it was the funerals.

Metzger’s hands on the wheel seemed older, more surgical. He asked, “How’d you swing leave?”

I told him. The whole mess. Walter. The admin hearing.

“Oh.”

I knew he meant it sounded bad.

I shrugged. “So, how’s Large Ted and Bunny?” He wouldn’t have brought up his parents because it sucked that my mom died just for taking a trip to Indianapolis. I had to ask about them.

He grinned. “Still living in Denver. Saw them last month. Large Ted still thinks you made a good choice with Infantry.”

Metzger lived off post in Greater Orlando. Disney Universe had closed down for the duration, but the Orlando Metroplex was the closest thing to a playground left in the US. Temperatures still got up to sixty in Florida some days. We rolled past condo complexes fronted with palm-tree trunks hung with brown, drooping fronds.

“Metzger, you think we’ll ever go after the bad guys? Really win this thing, instead of just slowing down the end of the world?”

“Maybe.” He looked down and sideways. The last time he looked away from me like that was when a babe I idolized passed him a note that I had wolverine breath. But she made him swear not to tell me. He knew more than he could say.

“Oh.” My reply told him I knew he knew something.

The party was in a gated community with dark streets. Well, all streets were dark, now.

The party house was more like a hotel, set behind vast lawns with its own gate and a grumpy, tuxedoed bouncer out front. He leaned into the car, smiled at Metzger’s uniform, shrugged at mine, and waved us in.

You could have played ball in the house’s foyer, but we chased the live music through it and back outside to the pool deck. A couple hundred guests glittered poolside in sunshine.

Sunshine?

I looked up. From the still-green fronds of the palms that lined the deck shone man-made sunshine. Days ago in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, the survivors had been burning candles at noon. There was something about the sleek, bronzed crowd. Bronze. Since the war, the bare, Caucasian butts in barracks showers and the faces in Philadelphia bread lines were the color of risen dough. But these people afforded suntans.

My jaw dropped, and I grabbed Metzger’s elbow and hissed. “Whose place is this?”

“Aaron Grodt’s. The holo producer.”

The band played an excellent cover on a Cannibal hit. I looked again. It was Cannibal. They finished and left the muted buzz of clinking crystal and laughter. Metzger and I were the only ones in uniform, and heads turned.

Our dates were already there, cocktail-dressed in spiderwebs of fabric that would have frozen them anywhere else on the planet. Metzger introduced me to his girl. Shelly had the most perfect face and the best shape I’d ever seen.

Until he introduced me to Crissy. She was blond and stood as tall as I did, on Everest-high heels. I smelled perfume when she pecked my cheek and as she bent forward other Himalayan comparisons leapt to mind. She drew back and ran her eyes up and down my uniform. Uh-oh. Ground-grant green, not Rocket Jock blue.

Her eyes widened. “Metz says Infantrymen have incredible stamina. That absolutely makes my tummy flutter.”

Mine, too.

“So, Crissy, what do you do?”

“Can’t I just show you later?” She giggled. “Really, I model. Lingerie and swimwear. Not for the big weblogues. They say my breasts are too large.”

Thank you, God.

The buffet would have been impressive before the war. Filet mignon so real they left it pink in the middle. Pyramids of roasted quail. Whole bowls of fresh fruit. Apples. Bananas. You name it.

As the four of us balanced our plates and looked for a table, I spotted a redhead, my age and as perfect and empty-looking as Crissy. She hung on a bearded, tuxe-doed guy Ord’s age but soft and round. They glided toward us, and the old guy took Metzger’s hand in both of his. “Captain! Wonderful you could come!”

They say holos add twenty pounds but I did recognize him from the Oscars. It was Aaron Grodt.

He held his champagne flute above his head, then tinged it with a sterling fork. Everyone shut up and stared toward us.

“Here’s me man who made our picture possible! Even if he wouldn’t play himself.”

I rolled my eyes. Hollywood was making a holo about Metzger while I was humping a machine gun through the woods. Story of my life.

Grodt kissed Metzger on both cheeks, then said to everyone, “We all owe so much…”

My stomach chilled, and my plate felt heavy. How could I be so stupid? These days, not even a Hollywood producer could throw a bomber like this without collecting a cover. Cannibal, alone, probably cost as much as a house. Between me and my date, I’d just blown a month’s pay and allowances.

Grodt dragged me next to Metzger, an arm around each of us. Instead of whispering what the tab was, he said, “Where would we be without brave men like these?”

People applauded. One by one, they came up to us, shook our hands and thanked us for serving. It was nice, and nobody knew I was such a hick I’d thought I had to pay for the party.

I read in a history chip that during one of the ancient wars, Vietnam I think, some GI on leave was at a party like this. A flat-screen star came over and spit on him. And the other guests clapped for the movie star.