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“Go check on Lamond,” I said. “And good luck, love.”

“You too.”

There wasn’t any time for a kiss, and we both knew it. We were both behind visors
anyway. She vanished into the hallway and I wondered if I’d ever see her again.

Welter and I were the last people on the dead bridge. The battle outside had subsided.
There were still crashing sounds, thumps and shuddering, but there was much less noise
than there had been.

 “How many cruisers are left?” I asked.

 “I don’t know, sir. My counter stopped working at nine. That was about one minute
ago. I’m not sure if they flew past and moved out of range, or what.”

I thought about his
or what
. Most of the possibilities were very negative. I suspected we’d lost power on much
of the station, and lost virtually all external offensive weapons. The fact the firing
had died down indicated we’d either killed them all, or they’d decided to try for
an invasion after all.

I called for all personnel to sound off. I listened closely after transmitting the
order, and thought I heard a few burbled replies. Someone was still alive out there.
But the central com system was down, and our individual transmitters couldn’t communicate
through the heavy shielding around every chamber on the station. We were cut off,
out of power, and probably vastly outnumbered. Even if we had wiped out all the cruisers,
there was still the dreadnaught out there, and the Crustacean ships, which we hadn’t
seen yet. Things looked grim.

I did a full weapons check. Welter and I couldn’t fight an army alone, but we were
still two, fully-outfitted Star Force Marines. Hopefully, if the machines did board,
we’d take a few of them down with us.

-8-

Standing in the dark and relative quiet of my dead bridge, I recalled reading that
humans often reacted to disasters with a similar pattern of behavior. Doomed individuals
caught up in a battle or a plane crash often fought on until the bitter end. In denial
as to the truth of the situation, black boxes recording flight crews in their final
moments rarely captured panic or despair. Instead, crews tended to work every angle
they could, always planning to survive somehow, always intending to get out of their
dire situation. It wasn’t until the very end that the final, undeniable shock of truth
struck home: the realization that you were well and truly screwed. Welter and I had
almost reached that point—but not quite.

“We’ll move through the ship to the upper battlements, picking up anyone we can to
form a squad,” I said, my voice steady and strong.

Welter nodded, but said nothing. He hoisted his heavy beamer to his chest and made
final adjustments to his battlesuit.

“I’m glad I insisted on everyone having heavy infantry equipment available,” I said.
“I’d hoped we’d never need it—but events had gone in unforeseen directions.”

Was that a tiny snort I’d heard? I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d heard Welter scoff
into his microphone. I decided to pretend I hadn’t noticed, and ignored his poor attitude.
Morale was understandably low.

The station was dark except for the brilliant, stabbing beams from our suit lights.
Smoke hung in palls, and there were whistling leaks at the structural joints as air
escaped out into space. We didn’t bother to repair anything, but instead marched onward,
heading into the shafts and toward the upper decks.

The bombardment of the hull slowed and finally ceased. The vast hulking station became
eerily quiet. I was pretty sure we hadn’t taken out every enemy ship, so that left
us with only two viable possibilities: either the surviving enemy had passed us by
and sailed off out of range, or they’d decided to try to invade the station and capture
it after all. I considered the latter option to be far more likely.

“Keep a sharp eye, Welter. You aim your beamer left, I’ll cover right.”

“Are you kidding, Colonel?” asked Welter, breaking his silence at last.

“Kidding? I don’t often make jokes in the midst of a battle.”

“Sir, this is no longer a
battle
. This is a brief interlude between defeat and annihilation.”

I stopped marching and turned to him. My suit lights bathed him in a white glare.
I saw his autoshades automatically darken his visor in response. Before the visor
went black, I thought I saw his lips twist into a disgusted expression.

“I’m not getting your point, Commander,” I said.

Welter made a sound of exasperation. “My point? We should be planning to hide, escape,
or blow up this station. Instead, you’re proceeding as if we have a chance to win
this conflict.”

I turned away from him and began marching again. After a moment, he followed.

“I’m surprised at you Welter,” I said over my shoulder. “I’d never have figured you
for a quitter. If you want to stand around in your suit right here, be my guest. You
can shiver and sweat, or just piss yourself. Whatever seems appropriate to you. But
until I’ve reconned the status of this new stage of the conflict, I’m not joining
you.”

Stung by my comments, I heard Welter give a blowing sigh over his microphone. I didn’t
turn around, but I knew he was still there as I could hear him stomping after me.
His boots rang on the deckplates, and I was glad to hear them behind me. I didn’t
relish marching through these dark, empty spaces completely alone.

At that moment, I wished First Sergeant Kwon had been at my side instead. I’d left
him back at the inner planets, guiding the setup and construction of small outposts
on each of our three planets. The Centaurs had cut a deal with us to give Earth the
three inhabitable inner planets, each of which had warm waters and bright sunny skies.
We didn’t have anything like enough personnel to populate them, of course. But I figured
if I put a squad down on each world and had them build a few structures, we’d learn
more about them. I’d also wanted to stake my claim, and let the other species living
in this system know that humans were here to stay.

Kwon would have been nice to have along. I knew he’d never have given me defeatist
talk in the face of the enemy. Welter was a better pilot, an excellent gunner and
a strategic thinker, but Kwon was the man I wanted at my back when the machines were
in my face. I thought about telling Welter this, but passed on the idea. I’d slapped
him enough by suggesting he stand around and pee in his armor. It was time to let
him show me he didn’t deserve the criticism.

Our first unexpected encounter in the passageways came when we reached the power couplings
that isolated the top section of the station from the midsection. I’d been on the
lookout for Marvin in this region, and at first I thought that’s who we’d run into.
But although it was large, rasping and definitely made of metal, that’s where the
similarities ended.

“Marvin?” Welter said over his proximity com-link.

“That’s not Marvin,” I transmitted back.

This machine didn’t fit Marvin’s MO. Instead of whipping black arms made of nanites,
it had segmented silvery legs that flashed when they moved. I was reminded of a grasshopper
made of welded steel.

I fired first, not waiting around to ask the invader for its hall pass. My big beamer
flared, burning through the thin atmosphere in the hallway and causing our visors
to darken instantly, almost to pure black. The machine twitched toward me, even as
the beam played along its thorax. We seem to have caught it by surprise. It had been
doing something with its head-section, which was jammed into an open panel.

A weapon of some kind on its head-section flared, returning fire, but it was already
too late. It fired back, lancing out with a stitching series of pulsing beams. They
scored my armor with two glancing hits, and then the machine’s core ruptured and it
exploded with a puff of roiling gas.

Smoke looks different when released into a low-pressure corridor. It spreads out explosively,
filling the entire area around us with a swirl of particles. The air was escaping,
I realized, and already quite thin. I figured the hull-breach where this thing had
broken in must not have resealed.

Welter charged forward, and burned the twitching Macro with a few short bursts at
point-blank range.

“Did you get it?” I asked, chuckling.

Welter looked back at me. “I wanted to be sure. Looks like it’s a technician, sir.
Looking at these tools in the head-section… It was doing something, working on our
power-couplings.”

“Humph,” I said. “Maybe we should have let it keep working. Maybe it was trying to
restore power.”

“Yeah, it was all a tragic misunderstanding.”

I moved forward and we checked every nearby hatchway. The technician appeared to be
working alone. We were jumpy now, however, as we could no longer fool ourselves: the
enemy was aboard.

“Kyle?” I heard in my helmet. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

One irritating thing about radio communications in infantry combat situations was
the lack of directional hints from people’s voices. Our big suits were powerful and
tough, but they turned us into one-man vehicle-operators. It could be hard to tell
which direction someone was calling to you, and when you turned your helmet this way
and that, it was never as fast as simply looking over your shoulder. Still, in a situation
like this, the armor was indispensable.

I finally pinpointed Sandra’s position using the display in my helmet. According to
her signal, she was approaching me from the panel we’d found the technician digging
into. With Welter’s help I heaved it out of the way. I ducked my head into the opening
and peered inside.

Sandra crept out to greet us. She had on only a lightweight crewman’s suit, which
she preferred in combat. I was glad to see her, but surprised.

“You are away from your post, mister,” I said.

She shrugged. “You assigned me to a gun, and I’m trying to get it working again. These
things shut down our weapons systems—or rather killed our power. They’re all over
the station, breaking the heavy power junctions. My gun quit, so I followed the leads
back to here. I was going to kill it myself, but you beat me to it.”

“All right,” I said. “Where are the heavy troops, then? Have you seen what they have
besides a few technicians?”

“No, nothing else. Not yet, anyway.”

I frowned inside my helmet. The situation was unusual. I didn’t understand why we
weren’t under heavy assault. I’d expected two possible developments by this point:
either they should have stood off with their dreadnaught and pounded our station to
fragments, or they should have invaded with Macro marines and wiped us out. This injection
of a few technicians to disable our weapons—it seemed too subtle for Macro tactics.

“We need to find out what the hell is going on,” I said. “Let’s get closer to the
outer hull. Where’s the nearest observation portal?”

Welter pulled up his map, I could see it glowing colorfully in reverse on the inside
of his helmet. I stood guard while he tapped fingers at virtual controls in the air
in front of him.

“I’ve got it. Let’s backtrack about a hundred paces and take a side passage into laser
battery three.”

“That one’s knocked out,” Sandra said. “Not just the power, either. Everyone is dead,
and the bulkheads have automatically sealed.”

“Sounds just right for taking a look outside,” I said, leading the way.

When we finally convinced the nanite-sealed bulkhead to let us pass we were propelled
forward by a surge of escaping gasses at our backs. It was like having a minor hurricane
behind you for a few seconds. Sandra was the only one seriously affected, as we were
too heavy in our battlesuits to be swept off our feet. She whooped as she lost her
footing, tumbled over me, and grabbed my power pack. Her fingers latched on like steel
claws. I chuckled as I walked forward into the destroyed gun emplacement. She rode
my back like monkey until we resealed the bulkhead and were safely in a quiet vacuum
outside the station.

The view was spectacular. To our left the star at the center of the Eden system burned.
It was like a very bright full moon at this distance. The frozen planet Hel was visible
in the opposite direction. It glowed an ice-blue along the rim of the crater of metal
we stood within. The station was still slowly rotating, I realized now. I supposed
that with the power gone, the impacts we’d endured had not been compensated for by
the automatic stabilizers. The entire station was a slow, tumbling spin.

“This is convenient,” I said. “If we just watch for a while, we’ll probably be treated
to a full view of the battleground.”

“We’ll be spotted and burned by then, if there are enemy ships parked out there,”
Sandra said.

I had to agree with her. “Let’s move up and take a quick look around. Keep all sensors
on passive mode.”

Our suits were miniature spaceships, effectively, and they were equipped with long-range
vision enhancement systems. You couldn’t navigate in open space effectively without
better sensory support than human eyeballs.

We all crawled up to the jagged rim of the crater that had once been a gun emplacement
and peered in various directions. I saw twisted wreckage floating here and there in
the immediate area, but it was difficult to pick out much more at greater range. There
was so much shrapnel floating along with our station, resembling a swarm of orbiting
insects, I couldn’t tell what was going on. Battlefields in open space were nothing
like battlefields in an actual planetary grav field. They were so spread out, you
had to really look around to see any hostile entities.