The siege tank had the range to engage the miners' camp from where they sat now, its main gun more than capable of pounding the camp to smoldering ruin without fear of reprisal.

But Arcturus didn't want to destroy the mining facility if he could avoid it, not if there was a chance it could be taken and put to use.

"Shut up, Yancy," said Arcturus, handing the optical viewers to Toby Mercurio and removing his helmet. He deposited the helmet on the tank's track guard and dropped down to the ground. "Chuck.,Dla. You're with me. Shoulder those weapons, and make sure they're safed."

Horner and de Santo dropped to the hard-packed ground as Arcturus marched uphill along the road toward the mining complex, his rifle hanging by its sling from his shoulder. After the frenetic carnage of the battle, this was almost peaceful. The road to the mine was relatively shielded from the fierce winds that swept the lowest reaches of the mountains.

Arcturus watched as a group of five men emerged from the complex above. Three were armed—more mercenaries presumably—while the two others had the weathered, permanently dirty texture of dyed-in-the-wool prospectors.

"LT, what you got in mind?" asked Chuck Horner.

"Yeah, I was kinda wandering that too," said de Santo.

"We're going to talk to them," said Arcturus. "And ask them to surrender."

"Surrender?" said Horner. "I gotta say, LT, they don't look like the surrendering kind."

"You leave that to me, Charles."

The two groups met at a bend in the road, some two hundred meters from the camp's gate, and Arcturus felt the hostility of the miners like a blow. One man was short and thickset, his flesh leathery and pitted from a life n hostile environments. The other was similarly squat, but his eyes had a wary quality to them that told Arcturus he wasn't going to be the one doing the talking.

The mercenaries kept back, though they made a point of showing that they were more than ready to use their weapons.

Before Arcturus could even open his mouth, the first man thrust out a sheaf of grubby, oil-stained papers and said. "This ain't your property, Confed. We own this claim fair and square. Go tell your bosses that we got the paperwork and everything. Y'unnerstand me?"

Arcturus nodded politely and said. "My name is Lieutenant Arcturus Mengsk of the Confederate Marine Corps. Am I speaking with the head of this facility?"

The man with the papers looked at him suspiciously and said. "Yeah, I guess you are."

"And you are?"

"Lemuel Baden—not that it makes a damn bit of difference. We ain't got nothin' to say to each other."

"I beg to differ," said Arcturus. "That's not entirely correct. I have a siege tank that says we have one very important matter to discuss."

"Yeah? What's that then?"

"Your immediate surrender and relocation to another planet."

Baden snorted with what Arcturus assumed was laughter. "Surrender? Hell, you got some nerve, boy. What are you anyway, twenty? Twenty-one?"

"Nineteen, actually."

This time both prospectors laughed.

"Go home, boy," snapped Baden. "I ain't gonna surrender. Leastways not to a kid that don't even need to shave."

"Oh, I think you'll surrender," said Arcturus. "In fact I'm sure of it."

"And why's that?”

"Because I have a siege tank and if you don’t surrender. I'll blow this place to hell."

"Don't make me laugh," sneered Baden. "You wouldn't dare."

"Try me," said Arcturus, meeting Baden's hostile stare with one of his own.

Arcturus saw beads of sweat gathering at the miner's temples. He could see courage in Baden's eyes, but also the wariness of not being able to read the young soldier standing before him.

"Right now you're trying to work out if I'm bluffing," said Arcturus. "I can assure you that I am not. I never bluff. If I walk away from this parley without your surrender, you everyone within your compound will be dead inside of ten minutes. I guaranlee it".

"Then maybe we oughta just kill you now," snapped Baden.

"You could, but then my men would kill you and everyone would die regardless," replied Arcturus. "So you see, you really have only one option."

Baden's eyes flicked to his companion, who said. "You goddamn Confeds can't keep doing this to us! This here mine's ours and we ain't gonna let you take it from us."

Arcturus ignored the man's outburst, knowing that Baden was the only man worth talking to in this exchange.

"Easy, Bill, leave this to me," said Baden. The miner looked back lo Arcturus. "Gimme twenty minutes to talk to my people?"

"Of course," said Arcturus. "But if I do not have your surrender after that, you're going to see exactly how powerful that tank is. And trust me, you don't want that."

Baden nodded, then stomped back to the mine complex with his companions without another word. Arcturus watched them go and turned on his heel, marching back down the road to where his marines and the siege tank awaited.

Arcturus banged on the tank's side when he finally reached it. "Stand down the gun."

"You were bluffing?" asked Dia de Santo.

"No," said Arcturus. "As I told Baden, I never bluff. I already know he's going to surrender."

"You sure?" asked Chuck Horner. "He looked like a stubborn mule, that one."

Arcturus nodded. "Indeed. But he isn't stupid."

"Sir?" said de Santo.

"He knows I'll destroy the mine and kill everyone there if he doesn't surrender." explained Arcturus.

Chuck Horner looked askance at Arcturus. "You ain't kidding, are you?"

"No," said Arcturus. "I'm not. And Lemuel Baden knows that."

The infirmary building of Camp Juno was a sterile, antiseptic place in every sense of the word. Its prefabricated walls were gleaming while and faced with ceramic tiles that reflected the unflattering lights strung from the green-painted girders that farmed the roof vault. Its structure resembled a fat tube split down its length and dropped onto the ground.

Pods of beds were spread throughout the open space, with ceiling-mounted extractors trying—and falling—to circulate the stagnant air and diminish the tang of disinfectant. Medics made their rounds of the injured, checking machine readings and administering pain meds, while marines stripped out of their armor and wearing fatigues visited those comrades who weren't too sedated.

Arcturus had expected the infirmary to be noisy, but it was instead subdued, filled with the quiet noise of professionals working hard and a background machine hum. The atmosphere was calm by virtue of the fact that the majority of the wounded marines hen were kept heavily sedated, since many of them were resoced. Numerous studies had shown that extreme trauma could have a negative impact on the strength of the neural reprogramming implanted over a subject's original memories, and no one was taking any chances that these marines might relapse to their previous, murderous personalities.

Having heard the lurid details of some of the more outrageous crimes committed by these marines prior to having acceptable behavioral patterns stamped on their brains, Arcturus was pleased to see such precautions in place.

He spoiled Captain Emillian lying in a bed pod she shared with three other wounded soldiers—two men and another woman—and made his way over to her.

Emillian smiled as she saw Arcturus approaching, then grimaced as she tried to sit up, the framework of silver steel encasing her pelvis and legs making even that simple act awkwardly painful. The swelling around her eyes and jaw had begun to come down and her bruises had turned an attractive shade of puce. Opposite the scar Emillian had received on Chau Sara was another angry red line of sutures.

Each of the patterns in the pod was hooked up to drips and monitored by complicated banks of boxy machinery, and Arcturus carefully negotiated his way through a tangle of wires to get to Emillian's bed.