Sensing his scrutiny, his mother glanced over at him, and her clapping faltered as she saw the papers laid out before him and the insignia emblazoned at the top.

"Arcturus...." she said hesitantly. "What's that?"

"Enlistment papers, Mother," he said. "For the Confederate Marine Corps. I went to the recruitment offices this morning."

Katherine looked down at the papers, her confusion turning to cold dread in the space of a heartbeat. “Oh Arcturus, no...please, no... What have you done?"

She went to lift the papers from him, but he was quicker, and snatched them up before she could take them as the cheers of the crowd suddenly swelled in volume.

"Arcturus, what did you do?" cried his mother. "Tell me!"

"I joined up," he said.

"No, no, you didn't!" said Katherine. "You didn't. Arcturus, if this is a joke, it's in very poor taste."

"I'm not joking, Mother," said Arcturus. "As of this morning, I'm part of the officer corps of the 33rd Ground Assault Division under Commander Brantigan Fole."

"No, no, you're not. This is some kind of prank, isn't it?" said his mother, and Arcturus saw real panic in her eyes. "Isn't it? Tell me it's one of your stupid pranks!"

People were turning from watching his father below on the Senate floor to the growing commotion in the gallery as Katherine's voice rose in pitch and volume. The applause was still loud and cheering echoed around the chamber, drowning out their words to all but the nearest spectators.

"It's not a prank, Mother," said Arcturus, cold fury entering his heart at the idea that something this important to him would be dismissed as a prank. This was his life, and she thought he was joking?

"I'm leaving this afternoon," he said.

His mother slapped him across the cheek.

Gasps of surprise spread like ripples in a pond at the sound of her palm connecting with his cheek.

"You stupid, stupid boy," stormed Katherine. "You stupid, selfish boy. Is this your way of hurling your falher? Of hurting me? Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"I know exactly what I've done," said Arcturus, his resolve now hardened in the face of his mother's insulting slap. "And you've just made it easier for me."

Katherine reached for him, but he batted her hands away and rose to his feet. His mother looked up at him, tears spilling down her cheeks, but Arcturus didn't care anymore. He slid his enlistment papers back into his coat pocket and said. "Good-bye, Mother. Tell Dorothy I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to say good-bye to her. Tell her I'll write."

"No!" wept Katherine, her heartbroken cry swallowed up by the clapping that still filled the Senate chamber. “Oh God, please don't do this! Arcturus, please, please...wait!"

Arcturus ignored his mother's terrible, aching grief and strode through the astonished crowd silting in the viewing gallery. He could feel their eyes upon him, but kept his head held high, determined to leave this place with dignity.

A strong hand gripped his arm, and he turned to berate the person for this impudence.

Ailin Pasteur stood behind himm his face a mask of anger. "Your father will never forgive you to this, Arcturus."

"I'm not asking him to," snapped Arcturus, shrugging off the Umojan ambassador's hand.

"Of all the days you could have done this, why today?" demanded Pasteur.

Arcturus returned Pasteur's stare with a steel gaze of his own. The man recoiled from the determination in Arcturus's eyes as though struck.

“Sometimes you have to do something dramatic to make your point," said Arcturus.

Pasteur shook his head sadly, turning to look at his weeping mother.

“Well, boy," he said sadly, "you've certainly done that. I just hope you don't live to regret what you've done today."

“I won't," promised Arcturus, turning and walking away.

THE DROPSHIP SCREAMED THROUGH THE UPPER atmosphere of Sonyan, trailing fire from its wings like a swooping phoenix. The armored plates of its heat-shielding rippled with blazing orange fire and left a streaking contrail of vapor in the craft's wake as it dropped rapidly toward the planet's surface.

As flying machines went, it was proof that with a big enough pair of engines, you could get anything to stay in the air. Its front wings were stubby, swept forward and down, behind which enormous jet engines coughed to life as the craft hit the atmosphere.

Dropships were designed to carry Confederate military forces unto battle in safety and at speed—though they achieved neither objective particularly well—and as Arcturus gripped the metal stanchion next to his head he knew that, regardless of any other considerations, comfort had certainly not been uppermost in the designers' minds.

Dropships could carry anything from troops to siege tanks in their transport compartments, and thus the cavernous bay housing Arcturus's armored marines—designated "Dominion section"—was an oily, dust-filled metallic cavern.

The dropship shuddered as it leveled out, wind roar and engine noise making conversation impossible unless carried out over the helmet comms. As well as the six armored soldiers, the dropship carried a huge siege tank, its colossal, groaning mass held fast with clanking chains and filling much of the dropship's internal space. It was breaking regs putting this many soldiers in with a siege tank, but the orders had come from on high to get them there like this, and Arcturus wasn't about to question orders this early in his career.

His five soldiers sat toward the rear of the red-lit compartment on uncomfortable metal benches that looked as though a blind welder had attached them to the fuselage's interior.

"So what's the situation, LT?" asked Yancy Gray for the hundredth time. "What are we flying into?"

Arcturus sighed. The irrepressible kid from Tarsonis never let up until he got an answer and he had a strange, naive belief that the chain of command would keep him informed al every stage of what was going on. He hadn't been with the military long enough to know that the grunts on the front line were like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed shit.

"Aw, man, how many times you gonna keep asking that, Yancy?" said de Santo, her face belligerent. "LT's gonna tell us what's up when he knows. Right, LT?"

Diamond de Santo (or Dia, as her section-mates knew her) was a dark-skinned girl who had grown up on Tyrador IX, the daughter of indentured workers who toiled in one of the many spas and resort cities that made the planet such a refuge for the scions of the Old Families. Armies of men and women who owed money to one of the many Confederate financial institutions were forced to work there to repay their debts and ensure that guests didn't need to lift so much as a finger.

Needless to say, Diamond de Santo hadn't enjoyed that life much, and she'd signed up at the first recruiting office she could find on her eighteenth birthday. In the six months Arcturus had known her, he had seen the core of a good soldier, but one who had such a chip on her shoulder that it kept her mouth truculent and her manner rebellious.

Arcturus liked her immensely.

And by some strange, inverted magnetism, de Santo recognized a kindred soul and displayed a loyalty to Arcturus that reminded him of the bond between his father and Achton Feld.

"Hey, I'm just asking," said Yancy. "Nothing wrong with wanting to know what's going on, is there? I was supposed to be on leave until this new assignment came down the pipe."

"We were all supposed to be on leave," said de Santo pointedly, making no secret of her irritation at that particular stroke of genius from the brass.