“Third squad. Aye.”

Silence again from Fourth squad.

“Fifth squad. Aye.”

“On my signal,” Jonah said, “forward at the double. Stand by. Execute.”

Jonah throttled forward, taking the Stinger downhill at a lumbering stride, deliberately holding back the ’Mech’s speed so as not to outpace the soldiers of his company running along with him. Trees and underbrush splintered and crunched around him; then the ground opened up and he knew he had reached the antivehicle minefield. If he didn’t cripple himself with an unlucky step, he was through.

He saw Ma-Tzu Kai troops to the right, left, ahead… a wash of red light dazzled in his ’Mech’s ferroglass viewscreen… enemy laser? A flamer? He couldn’t be sure with his instrumentation so messed up. But it didn’t matter. Whatever it was had scored a crippling hit on the Stinger’s light armor. Only the safety webbing that kept him strapped into the ’Mech’s command couch kept him from being tossed about the cockpit as the Stinger swayed, toppled and fell.

The impact when the ’Mech hit the ground was bone-jarring, and his body slammed against the safety webbing with bruising force. His head rang and his vision blurred, but he knew that he had to get out of the ’Mech and keep on going.

He couldn’t afford to stay with the ’Mech and wait for field repairs and medical assistance—not now, when all that mattered was keeping the troops moving forward. He had to keep up with them, ’Mech or no ’Mech, and make sure that they didn’t lose the advantage of their charge.

Working frantically, he unstrapped himself from the command seat with clumsy fingers and unhooked the neurohelmet and the cooling vest. Then he pulled open the rear hatch of the cockpit and half-climbed, half-fell to the ground. Sergeant Turk came up out of nowhere to drape a field jacket over Jonah’s sweating shoulders and hand him a Gauss pistol. The indicator on the pistol showed fewer than a dozen shots remaining.

“Here you go, sir.”

“Right,” said Jonah. He raised his voice to a shout—he had to remember now that he didn’t have the ’Mech’s speakers to carry the sound for him. “Forward!”

The militia broke into a downhill run, and Jonah ran forward with them, conscious of Sergeant Turk’s presence a few meters away, keeping pace. I wonder if my family will be told what happened here? he wondered. Then a Ma-Tzu Kai trooper popped up in front of him, and he abandoned thought for reflex in time to snap a shot at the man.

The trooper fell; his companion sprang to his feet and turned to run. Jonah watched him go, not wanting to waste a shot on a fleeing soldier. He pushed on downhill.

He could hear shooting from his right and left. It sounded scattered and unguided. Then a sudden pain hit his leg and he collapsed. It felt like he’d been kicked. He looked down. Blood was running from his left thigh in a dark red flood.

Sergeant Turk was beside him, tying on a field dressing.

“Help me up,” Jonah said

“You’re hurt, sir.”

“I’m aware of that, Sergeant. Help me up.”

The sergeant grasped Jonah’s wrists and pulled. Jonah came to his feet, swayed, tested his leg. “It’ll do. Forward!”

The sergeant put his shoulder under Jonah’s left arm. “I’ll help you, sir.”

The sergeant had a knife, Jonah noted. No rifle, no grenades. Just that knife, and his knife hand was red up to the elbow.

This is bad, Jonah thought. This is getting very bad.

“We’re going to do this, right?” Sergeant Turk asked. Jonah realized suddenly that for all his prior service, the man was no older than he himself, and possibly younger.

“Right,” Jonah replied. “Let’s go.”

The two of them hobbled forward like contestants in some bizarre three-legged race, stumbling downhill at a clumsy run.

Jonah heard a falling hiss, followed by an explosion from the right. Someone nearby—the sergeant, maybe, he couldn’t tell—shouted out, “Incoming!”

“Never mind that,” Jonah said. He thought he shouted it himself, so everyone could hear him, but he couldn’t be sure. “We’re close now. Keep going!”

The ground underfoot was leveling off. They could run faster now, and not stagger as much. Jonah was surprised he had gotten this far.

“Up ahead!” he shouted. He was certain he shouted, this time. “The ammo dump! Go!”

A voice, he didn’t know who, yelled “Republic! Republic troops breaking through!” Someone else yelled, “They’re running! The bastards are running!” and the air filled with hoarse and breathless cheers.

Then Jonah heard an explosion, closer than any of the others, and knew nothing more.

Republic JumpShip

Unity

Prefecture VI

26 October 3110

After a period of gray fogginess during which voices came and went, saying things that he didn’t understand and couldn’t concentrate on long enough to force into meaning, Jonah Levin woke up. The fog hadn’t receded completely, but he had an awareness of himself now that he hadn’t before, enough to tell that he hurt all over, and that there was something he was supposed to remember. That he was supposed to ask, to know.

He wet his lips and tried to find his voice. “…the troops… off planet?”

“Shh. You need your rest.”

“No.” He couldn’t rest, not in the middle of a battle. If he’d fallen—he was lying down, so he must have fallen—then he had to get up. He struggled to rise, and collapsed again under the weight of sudden pain. “Sergeant! Sergeant Turk!”

“It’s all over now. You need to lie still so you can heal.”

He wanted to lie down. He was tired, so very tired, and he hurt all over. But he couldn’t rest. Not yet. “Sergeant, we have to—”

The grayness rolled him under again like a giant wave, and he knew nothing.

Much later, he opened his eyes. His mind was awake and clear, and he knew at once that he was lucid for the first time in a long while. The inside of his head felt empty and unused, like a room with its furniture missing. He still hurt all over, and was aware of needles and tubes binding him, holding him down. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d been strong enough.

He wasn’t on Prospect Hill any longer, but in a windowless, high-ceilinged room. Somewhere outside his range of vision, quiet machinery hummed and beeped.

“Good to see you awake again, Captain.”

That was Sergeant Turk’s voice, off to his right. With considerable effort, Jonah turned his head in that direction on the pillow. Turk sat in a wheelchair by the bed with one leg out and up, encased in orange casting plastic. His right arm ended in a bandaged stump just above where the elbow had been. He was pale and thin, but smiling broadly despite his injuries.

“It’s good to see you, too, Sergeant.” Jonah’s voice came out faint and thready, but he pushed on anyway. It was important that he know. “The company… we pushed Ma-Tzu Kai back? Held the line?”

“We held the line, Captain. They were confused by our rush, and the Republic troops took advantage and smashed through. Ma-Tzu Kai broke when we hit the ammo dump. By the time they pulled themselves back together, everyone was on their way out. We all got off-planet in a hurry. And now we’re back in The Republic.”

Jonah experienced a tremendous relief, like a lightness running all through him. He felt thin and insubstantial, as if he were scarcely present in his body at all. His eyes watered, so he closed them and waited for the feeling to pass.

“Captain?”

He opened his eyes again with an effort. “It’s all right, Sergeant. I’m just… tired, is all. What hit us, there at the end?”

“Rocks, Captain. Lots and lots of rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Ma-Tzu Kai long-range laser strike blew up a boulder close to where we were standing. We kind of got in the way of all the pieces.”