A second ion pulse hit a power injector, exactly where the Paris experts had told Edmund to aim. It was suddenly very quiet. The alternating red and white light outside had stopped.

Very slowly, Edmund Li turned around to face the person who was shooting, knowing what he’d see. Tarlo was standing to one side of the open door, his arm outstretched, holding an ion pistol.

“Why?” Edmund asked.

Tarlo simply smiled as he swung the pistol around to point at Edmund Li’s head. He fired again.

Adam was sweating inside his armor. He’d calculated the firepower of the atom lasers himself. It should have been enough to break the force field, especially with the dump-web stressing it. Instead he was watching the awesome energy blasts ricochet dangerously.

The force field vanished. “Dreaming heavens,” Adam grunted. “Your inside man did it.”

“What do you know,” Alic said. “Edmund came through.”

Adam moved the Ables ND47 forward cautiously. Radar scanned ahead, showing him the tracks were broken less than a kilometer in front of them. “We’re not going to get much farther in this,” he told the teams back in the wagons. The sensors showed him the phalanx of vehicles around the gateway that led to Half Way. He launched another zone killer. The triangular shape streaked away from its launcher on top of the engine, curving in a short ballistic arc. It detonated in a cascade of green scintillations that sank toward the ground in a display of perverse splendor. Harsh orange fireballs spoiled the beauty as the vehicles and their munitions exploded.

The train braked again, grinding over the last few meters of track before coming to a halt in front of the shallow blast crater that had destroyed the rails. “End of the line,” Adam said. He unlocked the wagons.

“I’m staying here,” Vic announced as Kieran gunned the armored car down the ramp.

There were eight of them crammed inside, Vic, Alic, Wilson, Anna, Bradley Johansson, Jamas, Ayub, and Kieran up in the driver’s seat. All of them wore armor suits of various marques, though externally there was little difference: stone black figures that outlined a rough human shape. Additional weapons packs distorted their basic humanity.

“I understand,” Bradley said

“No you don’t. He’s still here.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I can feel it. Getting in was too easy. Tarlo’s a smart bastard. He doesn’t play a straight game.”

“Then you should stay inside this armored car,” Bradley said. “It is extremely well protected.”

“No. I’ll find him out there. Hey, I’ll be covering your ass. He’ll have something planned for you.”

“My team has planned for most eventualities.”

Vic stood up. “But not all of them.”

“As you wish,” Bradley said.

The side door slid open. It was dim outside, the air layered with smoke from the ruined vehicles.

“You coming, Boss?” Vic asked.

“We know the Starflyer’s real,” Alic said. “It’s just on the other side of that gateway. That’s my priority. Jim, Matthew, if you want to go with Vic, that’s fine by me.”

“I’ll stick with you, Boss,” Jim said.

“Sorry, Vic,” Matthew said, “but this is bigger.”

“That’s okay.” The big man stooped to get through the door. “I want this for myself. And Gwyneth.”

“Good luck,” Alic said.

Adam climbed down the ladder on the side of the engine, thankful for the suit’s electromuscle. It was a long way to the ground, and he was getting tired after days of high-pressure preparation. Three armored cars were waiting beside the broken track for him, blunt olive-green ovals with a smooth skin of passive deflector panels riding on ten independent mesh-flex wheels. They were in a triangular formation around three Volvo trucks. The Volvos were based on the twenty-wheel GH chassis, developed for rough terrain on developing worlds. They’d been customized with a cruder version of deflector paneling than the armored cars, then beefed up with extensive electronic countermeasures, turning them into squat brutes a dull gray-blue in color. With their diesel tanks full they should have the range to dive from Armstrong City to the Dessault Mountains, where the components they were carrying were desperately needed for the planet’s revenge.

As Adam made his way over to the armored car taking point duty he saw Vic walking away, and shook his head in regret. They could have done with a genuine professional. Personal feelings were always bad news in combat situations.

The armored car’s side door slid open, and he climbed in. There was one seat left, opposite Paula Myo. Oh, crap.

“Do you want to drive, sir?” Rosamund asked.

“No, that’s okay. Just remember what I taught you.”

“If she does that, she’ll probably wind up in suspension, just like you’re going to,” Paula said.

“We’re not in that courtroom yet, Investigator. We both have to live through the next couple of days first, and personally I don’t give us particularly high odds.”

“You want us to kill her for you, sir?” Rosamund asked. She sounded very hostile.

“Oh, dreaming heavens, no. Let’s just all stay civilized, shall we? All of you, leave the Investigator and me to work out our own little problem by ourselves.”

“Okay. But you just have to say the word.” Rosamund fed power to the engines, and the armored car rolled forward.

“You should watch your mouth,” Adam told Paula. “Remember this is my home ground.”

“To the best of my knowledge you’ve never been to Far Away.”

“No, but these are my people.”

“I don’t think so. You’re a black market arms dealer who gave them some training. Do they know how many innocent people you slaughtered before Johansson sheltered you?”

“You two,” Bradley said, “knock it off. We have a different war to fight today.”

Adam bit back on his next comment. He was sure the Investigator was smiling inside her helmet. His virtual hands pulled sensor images from all the armored cars out of his mission display grid. They were heading across the last few hundred meters of ground in front of the small gateway. It shone a pallid coral-pink in front of them.

“It’s open,” Rosamund said.

“Pay attention to the weapons,” Adam told her. There were over twenty maser cannons covering the gateway, the first line of defense in any alien invasion. Ironic, Adam thought, ultimately they wound up facing the wrong way. The X-ray lasers on the armored cars began firing, targeting the cannon.

Adam switched his attention to the person next to Myo. He was wearing absolute state-of-the-art armor, which Adam envied; despite his every effort and contact in the black market he hadn’t been able to get his hands on the suit that the navy had used to equip all its Lost23 insurgents. “Hello, Rob,” Adam said. “Good to be working with you again.”

“For you, maybe,” Rob retorted. “I didn’t even know it was you last time, and I wound up with a two-hundred-year life suspension.”

“We almost made it though, didn’t we? Almost stopped the Second Chance. If we had, we wouldn’t be here today.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“Just pointing out how things go full circle.”

“Elvin, you took no part in the Second Chance assault,” Paula said.

“I planned it, I organized it. The damn thing would have worked if the SI hadn’t thrown in on your side.”

“Look,” Rob said. “I didn’t know I was working for you. And the only reason I took the job was because I owed some very bad people a lot of money. Okay? We’re not comrades, we’re not buddies; that’s it, period.”

“Were you recruited through an agent?” Paula asked.

“It’s in my file,” Rob said. “I cooperated fully with the police. Much good it did me.”

“Give it a rest,” Adam snapped at her. “We’re about to face the Starflyer itself.”