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Tightening my face into a grim set of lines, I crept forward into the deep, dark grooves
that opened into the battery control room. I saw movement in there, and flashes of
bright metal.

“Frag out!” I shouted, and threw a grenade dead ahead. The art of grenade tossing
in zero G was something that had to be practiced a lot, but which was easy in a circumstance
like this. Because the enemy was inside an enclosed space, and I didn’t have to worry
about any drop-off due to gravity, all I had to do was throw it in a straight line.
It was more like precisely throwing a dart at a dartboard than it was lobbing a grenade
under planetary conditions.

The grenade vanished into the dark groove and struck something, then bounced. A silent
flash went off, darkening my visor a fraction. In rapid succession, more flashes went
off in there, as my marines came up at every angle and added their grenades to my
own.

“All right,” shouted Kwon, “that’s enough. Rush ‘em!”

About twenty marines dropped into the opening. I saw flashes and flares, but nothing
disastrous. I dropped into the groove myself, and vanished into the dark. When my
boots hit something again, the surface slid away under my feet. I almost went down,
and thought I’d landed on top of another marine.

“Sorry about that!” I said, rolling and picking myself up.

A huge gauntlet grabbed my pack and hauled me up. Kwon huffed with laughter. He pointed
to the stack of dead enemy troops I’d landed on.

“They don’t care sir,” he said. “You can jump on them all you like!”

I chuckled and looked around. It appeared the Lobsters had been taken out effectively
by our shower of grenades. “Let’s keep moving. Put two scouts into every hallway.”

Kwon stumped away, slapping helmets and pointing. Mostly, he struck Centaur helmets.
This wasn’t any kind of discrimination on his part, as they outnumbered us ten to
one.

When the all-clear was given, we marched down the main hallway which led to the primary
generators. If we could take those out, the station’s weapons would be disabled. Then,
at least this structure wouldn’t be a threat to the relief fleet, which was on its
way.

I noticed something odd as I advanced down the passageway. A pack of Centaurs were
following me closely. They almost bumped into my butt with their nanocloth-covered
horns when I rounded a corner.

“What it is, gentlemen?” I asked them, turning on them.

To my surprise, they were all lieutenants. I frowned, wondering what the hell they
wanted from me now. All I needed were a pack of scared Centaurs, ramming me from behind
in the coming firefights.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” said the nearest. He was a big buck with a set of horns on him
that would have made any doe back home swoon.

“What is it, Lieutenant? Why are you marines following me around, rather than leading
your own platoons?”

They shuffled on their hooves. “We don’t have a leader sir. Except for you.”

“Yeah? Who’s second in command?”

“That has yet to be determined. We haven’t had time for a duel amongst ourselves for
the honor. Normally, we don’t duel until after a battle is complete. There is no honor
in it, and the wind will not tolerate—”

“Well,” I said, “the part about not dueling in the middle of a war sounds like an
intelligent policy. But don’t you work out who is second in command of a given herd
before you go into a fight, in case the leader falls?”

“No sir. We follow the next higher commander.”

“What if your top guys are all taken out?”

“Then the battle has been lost, sir.”

I filed that factoid about Centaurs away in the box marked “cultural failures.” It
was amazing the predators hadn’t come out on top on their world. A moment later, I
realized why they were hugging up to me like I was giving milk: the highest available
commander was obviously me.

“All right,” I said, making a mental note to retrain some new protocols into my native
levies after this was all over—if I was lucky enough to survive it. “You’re the new
Captain,” I said, pointing to the one with the big horns who’d been doing all the
talking. “When the battle is over, you can defend that rank against the others, if
that is your tradition.”

“Thank you, Colonel!”

“What’s your name, marine?”

The translator buzzed in my ear: “I’m known as Captain Sky, sir.”

“Of course you are,” I said.

-40-

The battle began to heat up. On the surface of the station, Major Reza was putting
up a good show of attacking the landing bay. I could tell she didn’t really want to
be the sideshow in this assault, and if she could press ahead and enter the big portal,
she would do it. I was happy with that, as I wanted her attack to be as convincing
as possible, without costing us a lot of men.

Unfortunately for the Major, the Lobsters were just as determined to hold onto their
position as she was to push them back. The fighting was fierce, lighting up the region
with a continuous glow of dust, vapor and reflected laser light. I looked out toward
the battle, and saw the rising cloud of debris which was lit up from the inside in
brilliant flashes. A fierce firefight with beam weapons often looked like that. So
much energy was released that it vaporized rock and metal. A haze would arise, and
as the beams continued to burn through it, the dust itself was ignited and became
visible. It looked as if a lurid red dome had grown over the region, reminding me
of a laser show at a rock concert, or a particularly wild aurora borealis display.

Out at the laser batteries, things were progressing more smoothly. All but one of
the companies assigned with assaulting a battery had been successful enough to get
inside. My group headed down into the dark passages, eager to push the enemy back.

“I want us to break down into platoons now,” I told the Centaur officers. “You know
the target, marines. Don’t get bogged down, keep moving. If you meet stiff resistance,
you’re to take another route, even if you have to cut your way through the walls.
The goal isn’t to stand and fight the enemy in the passages. We
must
take down those central generators.”

The orders were met with no response. I heard them on their own channel, making a
few remarks. But they didn’t say anything to me. We’d yet to train them to acknowledge
commands the way human troops were accustomed to doing. Under Centaur cultural rules,
when the commander gave an order, there was no need to acknowledge it. Everyone in
the herd assumed that the order would be followed without question.

For me, it was a little unnerving to have them all just stare at me silently. It gave
me the feeling they didn’t like the orders. I knew they might not consider them honorable,
as they didn’t involve a straightforward fight on an open plain. To the Centaur way
of thinking, just being down here in these dark tunnels was demeaning, lowly and faintly
disgusting. We’d gotten them past their fear of such situations thanks to Marvin’s
Microbial baths, but they still didn’t like it.

“You’re now part of Riggs’ Pigs,” I told them. “We’re famous for our bravery, for
doing what must be done, no matter what the cost. We’re famous for our victories,
victories that often come at a high price. Marines, we must not think of ourselves
today. Don’t dream of lush grasses, shining waters, or even the wide open sky. What
we do today we do to honor those we left at home, those who we must defend with our
sacrifice. We will honor them and gift them life through the loss of our blood. Is
that clear, platoon leaders?”

“Yes, Colonel!” all of them answered. Their voices crashed into my helmet in unison.
At least they knew how to yell like real marines.

I smiled as I led them into the tunnels of steel. They ran faster now, their short
tails flipping high inside the special sock-like appendages we’d built into their
nanocloth suits. High tails were a sure sign of high spirits. I felt I’d hit a home
run with that quick speech. I’d managed to learn how they thought by now, and I could
tell I’d revved them up. Really, it wasn’t hard to do.

Very shortly after my speech was over, we met our first obstacle. Our rush forward
toward the core of the station was halted by a defensive bulwark thrown up in the
primary passage in the center of the structure. Here, the passageway was almost circular,
and was about thirty feet across. Depending on your point of view, it resembled a
mile-long shaft, or a tall corridor, if you walked on the walls. We’d built it with
size in mind in order to let big equipment such as generators and projectors move
through the station. I’d envisioned being under siege, and hadn’t wanted to have to
fly or drag new equipment into place over the surface of the station. Anything outside
the armored hull was exposed, and could be vulnerable to bombardment.

Now, the central shaft served us as an odd battleground. The Lobsters had formed up
a wall in the central region—a wall made up of rounded humps of some kind. I frowned
when I spotted this structure, uncertain where’d they gotten these yard-wide spheroids.
Whatever they were, they’d piled them into place and welded them together with a layer
of metal. I wasn’t sure, but I figured they’d probably taken parts of the station
to do it, such as broken boulders from the outer hull and metal from the station itself.

I frowned at the structure and decided I didn’t care how they’d built it. The thing
was in the way, and it had to come down.

“All beams, concentrate on the—”

“Behind us, sir!” shouted Kwon. His voice boomed in proximity chat, indicating he
was very close. A big hand swatted me and I automatically tightened my body.

For perhaps the first time since I’d met Kwon, I stood up to one of his bear-claw
blows that were meant to take me down to the ground with him. I watched as he slammed
down on the floor of the shaft near me. He was on his belly, turning his projector
back the way we’d come.

I lifted my projector. Things were moving in slow motion now, as time always seemed
to slow down when a firefight began. Looking forward at the barrier ahead, I realized
what its true purpose was. The Lobsters hadn’t put it there to stop us, they’d put
it there to trap us.

The sizzle and snap of beams began. My body entered that state I think of as full
battle-mode. I hadn’t experienced my new body in a firefight since I’d undergone fresh
microbial baths, new nanite refills and donned the latest in battle armor.

I turned around and saw what was coming. A mass of enemy troops boiled out of the
side passages. My Centaurs were running everywhere, spinning around, running up the
walls, firing and being shot down. Several had already taken hits and gone tumbling.

I realized in an instant the Centaur species had a critical flaw in their body structures
for this kind of fight. They couldn’t lie flat and shoot. It just didn’t come naturally
for them. They could fold up their legs, but their horns and head were still up high,
as their arms weren’t positioned as close to their heads as was the case for a human
body. Worse, they didn’t want to throw themselves flat under fire. It was the absolute
last thing a herd animal did when in danger. Falling down meant certain death when
being chased by a predator.

All around me, my Centaur marines whirled, stood their ground, and fired at the humping
horde of enemy that appeared behind us. I was just as bad as the rest of them, burning
away while presenting a big fat target.

I was hit almost immediately, then hit again. My body rocked, and my armor smoked.
But I didn’t feel any pain. I kept firing, taking out an advancing attacker with every
strike.

I felt the armor plates on my body moving of their own accord. They were reactive,
and as smart as the nanocloth underneath them. When a region was damaged, that region
moved out of the line of fire and rolled another plate into position. I kept firing
and advancing.

Our weapons were more powerful than the enemy’s, I realized. Even better, their armor
was like tinfoil. Unfortunately, my Centaurs weren’t heavily armored like I was. They
were taking a beating.

Kwon had finally given up on getting me to lie on my belly.

“This sucks!” he shouted. “I can’t even get a shot, all I see are Centaur legs!”

“Get up and advance,” I said.

He did as I ordered, and together we marched toward the Lobsters, burning them. Each
one died with a plume of expanding steam, as their suits were at least partly filled
with water. Before it was over, they’d managed to hurt me, putting a hole in my left
kneecap. It was a small hole fortunately, and the suit resealed itself. I cranked
up the exoskeletal setting on that leg and it forced me to walk. My step changed to
an uneven one, but I kept moving. I gritted my teeth against the pain and continued
advancing.

They broke when about half of them were dead. They’d fought well, and had wiped out
most of my platoon. I counted twenty enemy dead, some of them still twisting and writhing
in agony. Kwon kicked one of them, and in the low grav the body went twisting down
the shaft ahead of us.

“That was bullshit,” he said. “They knew we were coming.”

“Well, that’s their job. These guys are smart, but they aren’t the best fighters.”