2.

Convoy A22 left Sydney Harbor at three o’clock in the afternoon Sunday. The first day it sped over the waters at fifty kilometers an hour. Thirty hover transports carried the 20th FEC Division and the 101st Jump-Jet Battalion, which was composed of veteran Hawk Teams. They skimmed over the choppy waves in a diamond formation. Playing shepherd to the transports were four Gladius Class Hovers, small and deadly destroyer sized vessels. They bristled with guns and missiles launchers, and dropped probes as they hunted for enemy submarines. In and out of the diamond formation, they roamed on the prowl. On picket duty twenty to forty kilometers out roved ten V-Boats, hydrofoil ships badly tossed among the waves. Ocean duty left the crews exhausted. A journey all the way to Japan hammered them. In the middle of the transports hovered the VTOL Carrier. Sleek HK-Leopards—reconnaissance planes—and sleek attack choppers lifted from its flat top as they scoured the sea for enemy.

A quarter of the way through the journey, storm warnings forced the convoy off course to the west. The sea grew rougher, until the hovers shut down turbines, settled unto the gray waters and moved like ordinary sea vessels. Overhead, dark clouds threatened rain. On the former cushion of air, the trip had been relatively smooth. Now the men found themselves pitched to-and-fro. Many grew seasick, crawling to the head and spewing or limping into their bunks and trying to endure the endless motion. A few stubbornly continued their crap and card games.

Lieutenant Marten Kluge, his Top Sergeant Omi and Sergeants Stick and Turbo had squeezed themselves around a bolted down table in a little cubby in the rec-room. There they played five-card stud. Each wore the dusty brown uniform of FEC volunteers. Turbo and Stick wore their slouch hats. With a stylus and plex-pad, Omi kept track of the won or lost fortunes. The worn cards rested in a table holder specially made for sea duty. The discards they held with their elbows propped on the table. The room, as did everything aboard the sea-borne hover, pitched back and forth with exaggerated motion.

“Card,” said Turbo.

Omi slipped him one.

Turbo frowned as he settled the card into his hand.

“I heard we’re gonna be fed into the Tokyo maw,” said Stick. “For once Social Unity refuses to be overrun. It’s a meat-grinder from what I hear.”

Marten shrugged. He hadn’t heard anything like that.

“They said High Command wants… some kind of missile battery taken out.”

“Merculite missile battery,” Turbo said, still mulling over his cards. He’d become the Second Platoon’s newsmonger, finding it wherever he found his illegal drugs.

“What’s a merculite missile?” asked Stick.

Turbo tugged the peak of his hat lower over his eyes. “It’s fast, is what it is. Zooms out in seconds and drops orbital fighters so they plop into the ocean. High Command’s gone crazy over it.”

“Precious Highborn losses,” grumbled Stick.

“Yeah,” breathed Turbo. “Twenty credits!”

Omi scratched that onto the pad and quietly set his hand down. “Out,” he said.

Stick flicked a gaze over his cards.

Omi’s stylus hovered over the plex-pad in anticipation.

“They say it’s a blood-bath in Tokyo,” said Stick. “The Japanese have lost their minds, is what I hear. They run screaming at you with bombs strapped to their chests, and they blow both you and them to death. Behind them, follow honor-mad Samurai Divisions, one after another in an endless procession. And don’t let them capture you alive, either. They got these knives, sharper than my vibroblade. They use them to cut off your balls and—”

“You in or out?” asked Turbo

Stick nodded for a card.

Omi’s stylus glided over the pad.

“Two cards,” said Marten.

“It’s called the Siege of Tokyo,” said Turbo matter-of-factly. “And yeah, it’s a blood-bath all right, but with FEC Divisions and a scattering of Jump-Jet battalions.”

“No panzers?” asked Marten.

“Nope,” Turbo said. “They’re up north sweeping the home islands, as the Japanese buggers call them.”

“What about Highborn?” asked Omi.

Turbo shrugged as he adjusted his hat. He squinted at Marten to make up his mind.

“So we’re all killing each other for some worthless missiles?” asked Stick.

“Earth is on the run, don’t you know,” said Turbo. “But it’s gotten too easy for the High Command, so this time they’re not using as many Highborn. It’s an all-volunteer show.”

“The Earth on the run part is right,” Stick said. “An old-timer told me the Highborn move all their units like lightning, theirs and the volunteers. He said their staff work is amazing. If they’d ever tried this in the Old Army, said the old-timer, it would have been a balls-up from the get go.”

“In and call,” said Marten.

With a grin, Turbo spread his cards: three queens, ace high.

Stick threw down his hand with disgust. Marten quietly folded his and handed the cards to Omi. He slid out from the booth and stretched, staggering as the ship rolled. He bumped against the table as the ship swayed in the other direction.

“I’m going topside,” said Marten.

Omi grunted and slid out too. “Mind if I join you?”

Marten nodded.

As they left the rec-room Turbo yelled, “We need two more players.”

Marten and Omi slid along the corridor and crawled up the stairs. They donned rain gear, slick hats and staggered to the front deck railing, where they hung on. Huge gray waves rose and fell, while darkening clouds loomed threateningly in the sky. Only sailors moved here and there above deck, attaching lines or running to perform some unknown chore. Behind the lead hover followed the other twenty-nine transports. Overhead a chopper thumped somewhere, barely audible over the blistering wind.

Cold salt spray lashed the two men. They wiped their faces constantly.

“I’ve never been on the ocean before,” Marten shouted.

“Just one time for me when my mom and I visited Korea,” Omi said.

“You’ve been out of Sydney before?”

“A year before she was divorced and escorted into the slums. Thanks to my dear old dad.”

Marten rubbed salt out of his eyes, glancing at the grim-faced gunman.

Omi’s mouth twitched. “A drunk fell overboard that journey.”

“Yeah?”

“They stopped the ship and picked him up, but he’d broken his neck, probably from the fall.”

“Probably?”

Omi shrugged.

Marten was struck by Omi’s moodiness. Normally the man was the Rock, as some of the men had taken to calling him. “What really happened?” Marten asked.

“A thief pinched the drunk’s wallet. But the drunk wasn’t so drunk and whirled around, starting to holler for help. So the thief, he was a little guy, hardly even a teenager. He used a martial arts move. He snapped the drunk’s neck, and was pretty surprised it worked liked it was supposed to.”

“So the thief pitched the drunk overboard?”

“Yeah.”

Marten thought about that, finally asking, “So what’d he find in the wallet?”

Omi frowned sourly, taking his time answering. “Some plastic, a sheaf of porno pics, nothing much for all the work he’d gone to.”

Overhead a bomber zoomed low over the water. It seemed to be in a hurry somewhere. Marten and Omi watched. Thirty seconds later what seemed like small packages tumbled out of the bomber’s bottom.

“Depth charges?” asked Marten.

“Seems like.”

The packages plopped into the wild sea and disappeared.

They watched the spot. Suddenly, water sprayed upward, twin geysers. They kept watching, but nothing like oil or mangled bodies or anything else surfaced to show that an enemy sub had been hit.

“Turbo tells too many stories,” Omi said.

“You mean the ones about convoys that get hit before they ever reach Japan?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re right. He shouldn’t tell those.”

“I think they’re BS.

“Why is that?”

“The Highborn have the game sewn up,” Omi said. “Social Unity is on the run. No way is Social Unity going to train soldiers fast enough to face the Highborn before it’s all over.”

“Social Unity might get desperate.”

“So?”

“Desperate men do dangerous things.”

“I suppose…”