They were a piratical-looking band, and none knew that better than Brasednewic himself. No two were dressed or armed the same, their uniforms a hodgepodge of civilian clothing arid bits of uniforms and body armor taken from Kurita troops. Brasednewic carried a 5 mm Magna laser rifle taken from a Combine soldier, and Yolev cradled the massive squad machine gun he'd lifted from the body of a Verthandian militiaman. The rest carried a variety of hunting rifles, competition weapons, and handguns. Javed carried a single-shot flare pistol, with extra rounds for the ungainly, snub-nosed launcher stuffed into the pouch slung at his belt From the brush behind them came the low rush of silenced swamp skimmer engines. That meant the pilots were keeping their vehicles ready for a fast getaway, if one was necessary.

Their guide was Li Chin, son of a local plantation owner named Li Wu. None of the rebels trusted the man entirely, not with so many orientals serving in the ranks and in command of the hated Kurita legions. Li had often helped the rebels before, however, warning them of sweeps by Kurita patrols and of ambushes along the roads at the jungle fringe. This time, Li's story of a spaceship thundering across his plantation and into the sea to the north had been too intriguing to ignore. If the man was telling the truth, the vessel had crashed just a few hours before, and it might yet be possible to salvage the wreckage before the hated Brownjackets arrived on the scene.

That Kurita troops would arrive was a foregone conclusion. The spacecraft was almost certainly one of theirs, probably containing military supplies that they would not want to fall into the hands of Brasednewic's little rebel band. Radio transponders or emergency beacons would bring other DropShips to rescue the first Maybe, though, with cunning and a bit of luck, they could arrange a surprise for old Nagumo's troops when they arrived. It would be nice to be the hunter rather than the hunted for a change.

Li signaled them ahead. They moved forward cautiously, parting the vines and overhanging branches that partly blocked the path. Beyond the jungle was the tidal marsh, a barren wasteland of salt pools, sand bars, and mudflats. Beyond that lay the sea.

The sound of the surf was a gentle, distant thunder, intermittent behind the racketing of bright-winged marine omithoids circling above the water's edge. The sea was flat and azure-blue, tinged with green from the sky. Not far from shore, the surface of the water was broken by the hemispherical curve of a huge, metal shell lifting and falling with the waves that broke against its steel-grey flanks.

Brasednewic raised his Micheaux electronic 'nocs to his eyes and touched the zoom adjustment. That hand scanner was a battered souvenir of a raid on Port Gaspin, and the carrying strap bore the stain of where it had bitten into the throat of its former owner. At high magnification, he could make out streaks of rust across the DropShip's hull and the vast, coal-black scars that spoke of violent re-entry. High up along the flank, the re-entry burns could not quite mask the black-on-red dragon circle of Kurita. Down at the water-line, waves broke and surged through a gaping hole. Everywhere, there were puckered craters and the slashed and partly melted gouges of laser fire. The surf rumbled and roiled in white foam around the hulks of what appeared to be hull armor fragments or blocks of heavy machinery scattered about the wreck and sunken in the shallows along the shore. There could be no doubt that this DropShip had been brought down in combat.

The rebel leader dropped the scanner from his face, suddenly puzzled. What combat? If a Kurita ship had been knocked down, that meant friendly ships must be in the Norn System. But whose? The rebels had no ships of their own, no AeroSpace Fighters, no way at all of striking at Kurita DropShips from the sky. Who had? And why?

He raised the scanner again. Movement had attracted his eye, a disturbance along the beach. He could make out a party of men, apparently the wet and bedraggled survivors of the crash. There were too many to count. Many seemed to be...what? Digging, it looked like. They were digging in the sand. What were they doing... burying their dead? Scratching an SOS into the sand? Strange. As he watched, black smoke began boiling from the largest knot of people.

His jaw muscles clenched as he ground his teeth together, a nervous habit acquired long before the coming of Kurita's soldiers. Troops and vehicles from Regis would be along at any moment to rescue their own, and they would be drawn by the smoke. The rebels would have to strike fast if they hoped to capture some of those survivors for interrogation.

Brasednewic gave orders, hand signals understood and passed on by the men waiting silently behind him. Preparation was silent, save for the soft clicks of bolt-action and slide auto-weapons being cocked to fire rounds. The band split up into teams of four and five men apiece, each group slipping through the jungle and out onto the mudflats by a separate route. Messengers melted back into the swamp to alert the skimmer pilots.

The survivors numbered perhaps fifty or sixty, though small parties were scattered up and down the beach collecting boxes and crates of supplies that had drifted ashore from the wreck. Norte appeared to be posted as lookout, and none appeared to be armed. Brasednewic smiled to himself. So much the better. This was going to be too easy.

* * * *

Grayson looked up as his communicator whispered in his ear. "They're moving, Captain. Spread out along the jungle line, range one hundred meters."

"I've got them, Lori," Grayson said. "Be ready."

He stood up, still a bit unsteady on his feet. The shock of the fiery plummet through Verthandi's atmosphere, of Martinez's last-second thruster maneuvers, and their nearly successful landing at the edge of the Azure Sea had left him weak and rubber-kneed.

It was Martinez's skill that had kept them from plunging too steeply into the atmosphere. After the grazing collision with the plummeting fighter, she had recovered control of the ship and braced them against the shuddering vibrations of re-entry, tail-first. They had not burned on their descent, though the hull temperature had soared so high that outer hull elements of the main drive had slagged away entirely. Enough thrusters had survived the heat to allow their semi-guided touchdown at the water's edge.

Once down, the sea had poured in through the rents and slashes in the DropShip's hull, of course, but the wreck looked far worse than it actually was. Five of the Phobos'screw had been injured in the descent, but no one was killed. That they were all alive with much of their gear still intact, Grayson was more than willing to count as a miracle. There was even a chance that the Phobosmight even fly again, if they could find enough time and a well-stocked repair facility. Repairing the Phoboswould require a second miracle.

Now, though, Grayson was willing to defer Miracle Number Two if they could only secure a third miracle in very short order. Forces that Devic Erudin had identified as rebels were approaching rapidly, and Grayson knew they had to establish friendly relations with them, fast. If he failed, the firefight could end their mission before it had properly begun.

Sergeant Ramage was on his knees nearby, using an entrenching tool from the Phobos's equipment locker to scrape a hasty depression into the sand. "You look right at home, Ram," Grayson said, "and that hole looks deep enough. Why don't you pass that thing on to someone else?"

"Bloody-funny," Ramage said, but he grinned as he handed the tool to Tomlinson, a young Tech kneeling nearby.

"You never looked better, Tom," Grayson said to the Tech. Tomlinson was another Trellwanese, a red-haired minor genius with things mechanical, and Grayson's own personal Tech. Tom had replaced his usual layer of grease with a smearing of wet sand and mud.