The platform seemed to move as she got onto the deck, reverberating maybe with the footsteps of her companions who were just now coming up the ladder. Jennifer tried to ignore the gentle shaking, climbing up the second ladder to the charred and mangled upper deck. A large hole had been blown in the front of the deck to her right where the missile had hit. Metal twisted every which way, and she could see that the double-girdered pier no longer connected to the structure. The building looked as if it had been punched; part of the roof cantilevered up, almost like a baseball cap whose peak was pushed upright. A sooty black star with two dozen arms covered about half the front of the building, but the shock of the explosion had not mangled the interior, and as she crawled out on the sloping deck she could tell that the building itself had not caught fire. Two of the windows, in fact, had managed to somehow stay intact.

The floor of the building angled roughly thirty degrees to the side, sharper than the deck outside. One of the large suitcases that held the LADS control gear had been thrown against the rear wall so hard that it had embedded itself there. But the control panel itself—a pair of large LCD screens that folded out of a long trunk—sat on the desk where they had been mounted at the start of the mission. One of the feed windows on the left-hand screen was blank, but the other showed the ships approaching, with the Quick Bird dancing in front of them.

Jennifer hunched awkwardly in front of the station, one hand against the desk to keep her balance as she punched the keyboard with her right hand. She selected the handoff sequence from the command tree, but after she authorized it the screen seemed to freeze. Cursing, she was about to try again when the superstructure groaned, and the list increased five degrees. She lost her balance and slid all the way to the wall, smacking her head against the deck.

*   *   *

DAZHOU TI WATCHED THE HELICOPTER WITH HIS BINOCULARS, his anger growing with every second. The crew of the Kalsamana continued struggling with their sea-to-air missile battery, unable to lock on the target. The Aspide missile had an effective range of up to 18.5 kilometers; they were now within ten. Because of their incompetence, the gunship that had joined him was now coming under fire.

The Gendikar had been his last command before the Barracuda; his old executive officer was now its captain, and Dazhou knew he could count on his loyalty to the death. The ship had been instructed to stop him—and as soon as the radio instructions were received, its captain had radioed Dazhou to tell him that he wanted to join his crusade.

The Bofors cannon at the front of the other ship began to fire at the helicopter. Something flared from the chopper; it fired a salvo of rockets or missiles at the bridge area of the Gendikar, then bolted away.

“Have you locked the missiles on the helicopter yet?” demanded Dazhou.

“No, Captain”

“Do it quickly,” he said.

When he looked back, he saw that the other ship had stopped firing. The helicopter had managed to put it out of action, at least temporarily.

The American bastards! He would take revenge with his bare hands if necessary.

“Captain, we have a lock,” said one of the men behind him. “Fire, damn it!”

The Albatross Quad launcher shrieked and hissed as a pair of Aspide missiles flew upward. The missiles rose for a short distance, then began angling downward. The helicopter jerked to the right, firing flares and speeding away as the missiles flew toward it. Dazhou gripped his binoculars tightly as he watched first one and then the other missile veer off, exploding harmlessly. As he cursed, a second salvo was launched. This time, four missiles left the ship.

The helicopter seemed not to realize that it had been targeted again. It started back toward the Gendikar, firing another pair of its missiles. Suddenly it veered away, zagging left and right. It ducked the first Aspide but the second found its side, igniting with a red and white spark. The helicopter reared upward, then seemed to slide into another missile. It crashed into the sea, a white and black smear on the waves.

As Dazhou watched the steam and debris settle, he finally felt some of the satisfaction he had longed for. He scanned the ocean; they were now within sight of the platform area.

“It still stands,” he told his crew. “Ready another missile,” Dazhou said. “Strike it again. And let us see to Gendikar.”

As the order was passed, the radar operator called over the other officer. The man looked down at the console and then over at Dazhou with a puzzled expression. “The radar detects something overhead,” he said.

“Where?”

The man pointed in the sky. Dazhou searched the area with his glasses but saw nothing.

“Where?”

He handed the glasses to the other man, who searched in vain. Dazhou stared with his naked eyes, but still saw nothing.

“It appeared immediately after the missile struck the platform. There may have been some sort of radar jammer there.”

“You’re sure it’s not a malfunction?” Dazhou asked.

“I don’t believe so. It’s hovering, like some sort of spy plane, but the signature is small.”

“Shoot at it. Target it and shoot it down.”

DOG WAS WAITING FOR HER IN BED, BECKONING TO HER.

“We should get married,” he told her.

“Married? How?”

“We find a minister—”

“I mean, how would that work?”

“It would work, like now”

Like now? Not better?

Like now with her head slammed up against the wall, her legs tangled up, and the platform swaying?

I’m on the platform, she realized, not in San Francisco.

I have to get out of here!

Jennifer crawled back to the desk. The words CONTROL TERMINATED flashed in the center of the screen. Dreamland now had control of the blimps.

She collapsed the control box, pushing out the large cable that connected it to the power and antenna feeds. One of the de-tents at the bottom failed to clear; she leaned against the cable and the metal sheered off from the box. But though it looked light the control unit weighed nearly two hundred pounds; she tried to pull it off the desktop but it fell to the deck, the crash reverberating and the list increasing.

“We must go now,” said Liu, looming above her.

“Help me get this out.”

“We must go,” he said, taking one end of the control box and pushing it up toward the door.

Jennifer scrambled to follow. Outside, Liu struggled to get the control case up the inclined deck. Jennifer watched as he pushed it past the open hatchway.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and then she realized.

“Don’t!” she shouted, but it was too late—Liu pushed it over the side and the one-of-a-kind-control unit, built at a cost of at least a million dollars, fell into the sea.

“There’s no time,” said Liu. “The ships are coming. Come.”

He grabbed her wrist and pushed her down the hatchway.

Malaysian air base

1735

With their forces stretched thin, Dog oversaw the grim task of removing Major Alou’s body from the Megafortress himself, working with two of the Malaysian soldiers as the dead pilot was carried from the wreck to the bunker area. Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby had already been brought to the small, fetid underground room, along with a Malaysian who had been killed from fragments from one of the shells. Dog pressed his teeth together, ignoring the stench that had already gathered around the bodies; the odor was a final cruelty, depriving the dead men of their last scrap of dignity, reminding all who lived that they, too, would decay.

Starship appeared in the outer bunker area as Dog left. “Lieutenant,” said Dog, nodding at him.