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"'Insubordination' is just a fancy word for 'washout recruit.' "

Lieutenant Marcus Quigby, Fort Howe, Turaxis II
May 2488

THE PLANET RAYDIN III, THE CONFEDERACY OF MAN

A full day had passed since the meeting with Gunny Sims. Drops of blood-warm rain were falling, and Tychus could hear the muted rumble of thunder as he made his way over to the main street. Civilians and soldiers alike were moving faster as they sought shelter from the coming deluge.

Tychus would have done likewise had he been free to do so, but he was due back at Company HQ by 1600 hours local, where he and the other members of the Tactical Response Squad would sit around and shoot the shit until they were relieved at midnight. Which, based on a twenty-six-hour day, made for a long watch. There was plenty of comm gear at headquarters though—and all it would take was a quick call to Master Sergeant Calvin to set the illicit scheme in motion.

So rather than enter a bar for some well-deserved R&R, Tychus marched uphill to the north end of town. That was where his CO had set up shop in the same two-story office building where one of his Kel-Morian counterparts had been doing business just a few days earlier. The sentry posted outside the front door nodded, but didn't ask for ID, since nobody looked like Tychus except Tychus.

The sentry posted outside the front door nodded, but didn't ask for ID, since nobody looked like Tychus except Tychus.

The noncom had to duck his head to clear the top of the doorway, which opened into an airlock, followed by the sparsely furnished office beyond. Supplementary oxygen was being pumped in through the air conditioning system, which made it possible to remove his nose plugs and let them dangle on his chest.

The office was decorated with a well-executed drawing of the Kel-Morian Outriders' famous death's head logo, plus dozens of scrawled signatures. Dead men for the most part—all buried in a mass grave outside of town. There were two desks up front, and Corporal Proctor was sitting at one of them. She looked up from her work as Tychus entered.

Proctor was pretty in an understated, no-nonsense sort of way and completely uninterested in casual sex, which was the kind that Tychus specialized in. Her bangs were straight, her eyes were gray, and Tychus saw what might have been a warning in them. "The captain has been looking for you," she said, without inflection. "He's in his office."

Tychus's face was impassive, but alarm bells were going off in his head, because "Captain Jack," as his marines referred to him, was one of the few people in the Confederacy who scared him. Not physically, because the officer was no match for Tychus, but in other ways. Captain Jack Larimer was not only mean as hell, he had an inexplicable tendency to volunteer his unit for dangerous missions, and that was a threat to the most important person on Rayden III: Tychus Findlay.

So it was with a sense of trepidation that Tychus placed his rifle on a wall rack and approached the open door. He rapped three times and waited for the word "Enter!" before taking the requisite three paces forward. A lot of officers would have forgone such formalities under the circumstances, but not Captain Jack. "Staff Sergeant Tychus Findlay reporting as ordered, sir!"

Captain Jack was about thirty years old and loved to run. There were some people who said he could run the ass off a wheel. And because of that he was not only lean but very sure of himself. In fact, self-confidence seemed to ooze out of every pore of the officer's whipcord-thin body as he lounged behind his desk and took pleasure in the fact that a man like Tychus had to follow his orders. The smile arrived slowly. "At ease, Sergeant. Have a seat."

Self-confidence seemed to ooze out of every pore of the officer's whipcord-thin body as he lounged behind his desk and took pleasure in the fact that a man like Tychus had to follow his orders.

"I'm going to take the Tac Squad out on a mission tonight," Captain Jack announced, "and you'll be second in command."

Tychus nodded woodenly. "Yes, sir. What's the objective?"

"We're going after a civilian collaborator," the officer replied. "A man who took money to provide the enemy with information about his neighbors."

Sounds like a picnic, sir," Tychus commented. "Why wait? Let's pick him up now."

"I said he was a civilian," Captain Jack replied. "What I didn't say is that he lives about fifteen miles north of here, in a fortified house, on top of a hill. There have been periods of civil unrest on Rayden III—and his home was built to take some punishment. So a bit of circumspection is in order. We're going to dress like Kel-Morians and arrive in a Kel-Morian transport, which was captured along with the town. It needed some repairs, but our people put the ship right and it's ready to lift."

"So if we arrive at night, the collaborator will believe we're there to pick him up," Tychus mused, "and allow us to land unopposed."

"Something like that," Jack agreed vaguely. "Round up your men, get some food in them, and order the duty driver to take you down to the warehouse where the stuff we captured from the Kel-Morians is stored. Do you know Gunnery Sergeant Sims?"

Tychus felt his heart beat just a little bit faster. "We've met . . . yes."

"Good. He'll help you get the team set up with all the proper gear. Meet me at the landing strip at 2000 hours. And don't be late, Findlay. . . . You know how that pisses me off."

Tychus knew it was time to leave, and stood. He was halfway out the door when Captain Jack stopped him. "One more thing, Sergeant. . . . Bring a rocket launcher. We might need it."

After spending a couple of hours getting ready, Tychus and his twelve-person squad drove onto the airstrip at precisely 1930, thereby ensuring that they would have plenty of time to run one last check on the team prior to liftoff. Lightning flashed in the eastern sky as the big truck came to a halt and the marines bailed out.

All the necessary arrangements had been made by Corporal Proctor, so none of the Confederate soldiers opened fire on what appeared to be a squad of Kel-Morian Outriders splashing across what had been a city park, to the row of aircraft parked beyond.

Kel-Morian battle dress was a good deal less formal than the color-coded gear issued by the Confederacy. In fact, in many cases the protective gear that each soldier wore consisted of CMC armor plating patched together with pseudo-leather padding. The uniforms were covered with Guild symbols and insignias that marked their specialty, a tradition that started all the way back with Moria's original mining guilds. The Rippers were known to be the best-equipped soldiers in the Combine, but even they had a preference for Confed armor when they could get their hands on it; a fresh coat of black paint easily erased its origins—and the blood the soldier surely would have spilled in procuring it.

The Kel-Morians knew where the improvised airstrip was, of course, but there was no reason to make the war easy for them, so, with the exception of handheld lamps and the spill of light that came from inside the Kel-Morian dropship, the entire area was blacked out. However, out beyond the area that was under the direct control of the military, some of the local citizens were making no effort to comply with the blackout, and the marines lacked sufficient personnel to chase them down.

"All right," Tychus said as his team assembled next to the ship."Pair off and check each other's gear. Wasser, you're with me."

Corporal Wasser, better known to the rest of the squad as "the troll," was short but extremely powerful. So strong, in fact, that it was necessary for Tychus to actually exert himself to beat Wasser at arm wrestling.

But Wasser's real claim to fame was his relationship with Captain Jack, which some likened to the bond between a man and his dog. Tychus knew that if Wasser was present, Captain Jack wouldn't be far away, and that proved to be the case as the squad members completed their checks and trooped into the cargo bay. Captain Jack, now Overseer Jack, according to the Kel-Morian insignias on his clothing, was chatting with the pilot. Once the squad was aboard and properly strapped in, he came back to sit with them.

"Lock and load," the officer said, as the engines ran up and the Kel-Morian dropship wobbled into the air. "We'll be over the target in about five minutes."

"Lock and load," the officer said, as the engines ran up and the Kel-Morian dropship wobbled into the air. "We'll be over the target in about five minutes."

The trip was so short there wouldn't have been any reason to use a transport if it hadn't been for the deception involved, but Tychus was glad of it, because the faster they could complete the mission and return, the sooner he could check on Operation Early Retirement. Calvin was supposed to send two trucks in at 0300 and Tychus wanted to be present.

Both of the ship's side doors had been removed to make way for an automatic weapon on one side, and a rotary rocket launcher on the other, both of which were manned by helmeted crewmen. The slipstream blew cold air and rain in through the doors, but Tychus was glad of the openings nonetheless, because they allowed him to catch an occasional glimpse of the countryside whenever abolt of lightning crackled across the sky.

As the ship flew north he saw clusters of lights and knew he was looking at homes that should have been blacked out. And that raised an interesting question. . . . Since he could see them--did that mean they could see the ship? And would they recognize it as a Kel-Morian aircraft if they did?

The fact that the dropship was flying low, only a couple of hundred feet off of the ground, seemed to suggest that it would be identifiable during a lightning flash. Tychus felt something cold trickle into his bloodstream. Did Captain Jack want people to spot the Kel-Morian aircraft? And if so, why?

There was no way to know as the ship banked and circled to port. That revealed a brightly lit house. The house, or so Tychus assumed.