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  "Is that why you made so much headway before Lt took the fight to them," Lutz shot back. "Or were you so busy killing other people that you didn't bother to fight the fuckers at all?"

  Russel took a breath to say something, but Waldo cut him off.

  "We fought your men collaborating with the Licks," he shouted. "And now you're standing with them and telling us what you think we need to do."

  Renard and Weber let their hands drift over their weapons.

  "I did what was necessary to buy us time," Russel didn't raise his voice.

  "You collaborated," said Lutz. He spit it out like a curse.

  "We can't always pick how we survive," said Russel. "But we needed to survive so we could keep fighting."

  Lt would say something, Babe thought. But the words caught in his throat.

  Russel glanced over in of his shoulders in a dramatic way, indicating to the men sitting across from him that he knew what position he held over them.

  Burmage sniffed and stuck out his bottom lip. Doc crossed his arms over his chest.

  Sure, the men were armed, but Doc had the squad on his side. All but Jake, thought Babe.

  "How long are you going to let this go on?" Lutz said, working hard to keep his voice low.

  "They can talk as long as they want," Babe answered just as softly. "So long as they don't start taking shots at each other."

  "Doc isn't bulletproof," Lutz reminded him.

  "And neither are we if Chief decides to side with his Dad."

  "Of course, he's going to side with him," Lutz scoffed. "It's his Dad."

  "You ever go against your old man?"

  "All the time," Lutz sneered. "Oh."

  "Oh is right. Now shut up and stay ready."

  "This is a call to war," Russel said as he glared at the two men in front of him. "We have something they don't. My son has been telling me about the power these Suits give us and you're fools if you don't want to use them."

  "We have been at war," said Doc.

  "With you," Lutz called out.

  "Soldier, you're gonna have to let that go. I told you, we did what we had to do."

  "But you didn't," Lutz shouted. "You're talking to a group of people who didn't choose to work with the enemy, just so they could stay fed. They didn't choose to send people to the slaughter, to be slaves, just so they could live one more day."

  "Lutz," Babe said.

  "You didn't do what you had to do, you did what was easy for you."

  "I'm getting fed up with you," Russel heaved himself out of the seat, his hand on his pistol.

  "Does the truth hurt?"

  Russel drew his pistol and aimed at Lutz, but before he could fire, Jake slammed his arm up and the shot went wild in the air.

  Lutz raised his blaster and aimed at Jake's father, but the boy put his suit between the man and the other members of his squad as they readied their weapons against the contigent of former bandits.

  "I think we're done for tonight," Babe's voice cut across the campfire and commanded their attention. "Unless you want me to get my bat?"

  Russel turned to his men and motioned them to lower their guns.

  "Good idea," he said, trying to reassert control. "Jake, stick with us for a few minutes."

  Babe and Waldo moved to block Doc and Burmage from the men, in case any of them got an errant idea to shoot them and eliminate a roadblock.

  Weber, Renard, Steph and Crockett joined them.

  "That could have gone better," said Weber.

  "What? You don't think pissing him off and getting him to show his hand was a good idea?" said Lutz.

  "The round could have ricocheted off you and hit a civilian," said Babe. "You want that on your head?"

  Lutz turned to look at the crowd that lingered behind them, villagers from inside the warehouse, and many of the men, armed with ancient and tattered traditional weapons scrounged from wherever they could be found.

  "I wasn't thinking," Lutz said.

  "Damn right you weren't," said Babe.

  "None of us were," Weber said. "He's got this going according to his plan."

  "This is his plan?"

  "Don't be fooled," said Weber. "He wants in that building and he's got enough guns to do it. We would have to kill a damn lot of them to stop it."

  "If that's what it takes," Lutz sneered.

  "No," said Babe. "The mission was to combine forces and increase the resistance. Lt wanted us to work with all the groups."

  "Lt wouldn't have wanted us to work with collaborators," Lutz said. "He fucking hated them."

  "Yeah," Babe sighed.

  "We need an end game," Weber told him. "What are you working towards?"

  "Resistance."

  "Resistance is futile," said Weber. "They're going to fight us to get these suits, and then what?"

  "We don't know that," Babe said.

  "We don't know anything. But no plan survives contact with the enemy. Right now, we don't even have a plan, but we damn sure have enough enemies."

  "So, we make a plan?"

  "We make a plan," Weber agreed as the others nodded with him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lt wants to return to earth.

  “We can’t.”

  “Just take your little Tang licking finger and push that button on the console that says land.”

  “There’s no button on the console that says that.”

  “Don’t give me that shit. The one I was on had a button to self destruct. Just press the damn thing and get me home.”

  “That shuttle was idiot proof,” Annie snapped.

  “You know how to fly this thing, right?” Lt ignored her and focused on Columbus.

  The pilot nodded.

  “Then do your job. Fly me home.”

  “We literally can’t,” the pilot explained. “The Lick won’t let us.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why no ships came back from Mars?” CHECKNAME asked.

  Lt squinted at her and shrugged.

  “The way I figured it, we didn’t have any ships left. Turns out I was wrong on that count. Now I am a man who can admit his mistakes. We got us a fleet up here. Still a little confuzzled on why the fleet is up here and the fighting is down there,” Lt pointed. “But since ya’ll was doing a little fighting of your own when I got up here, I’m gonna guess you had your hands full.”

  “They won’t let us land,” Annie tried to hold the exasperation out of her voice and failed.

  “Let us. It’s our planet.”

  “They shoot down anything that takes off. Anything that lands,” she explained.

  "Tell me about this whole landing, can't land situation," Lt prodded.

  "What's there to tell," Annie answered. "We've been stuck up here for three years or longer."

  "Yeah, but you could have found a way I bet," said Lt. "We get reports about other parts of the world fighting back. They're doing better than what's left of the good old USA."

  Annie shook her head.

  "Have you ever seen a picture of the earth at night before they came?"

  Lt shrugged.

  "I guess I saw the same things most everyone else saw. Blue marble floating in space. Earth from the moon. Shit like that."

  She shook her head.

  "I'm talking about the lights on the planet. The Eastern Seaboard of the US was lit up like a Christmas tree. All of Europe glowed at night," she explained. "Almost the whole world glowed, and some pockets shined brighter than daylight, there were so many lights. Sure, parts were dark. The deserts and the third world countries. But even these had bright spots."

  "Yeah," said Lt. "I've seen those pictures."

  "It's not like that now," Annie said. "The whole world is dark. Gone. The light just disappeared, along with the rest of the technology. It stopped working as soon as they took over."

  "They turned out the lights," Lt agreed. "And the tv, and the radio, and the internet."

  "It's not just that," said Annie. "It's like they threw a blan
ket over every advancement we've made in the past hundred years. Two hundred years? I don't know. From up here, we can't make contact with the world below. And no one knows how they're doing it."

  Lt mulled it over for a minute, his eyes glazing as he stared at the image on the monitor. It didn't look like the picture books, but it was the earth at night. He was looking at the nightside of the planet, little more than a dark oval against a dark backdrop of space, a circle of light glowing on the edges as the sun on the other side shot rays through the galaxy.

  "You got a bunch of pedes up here," he asked.

  "What's a pede?"

  "Philosophy doctors. We got one down there," he nodded. "He built the Suits and got them going. I figure up here, you'd need some real big eggheads to keep all this running."

  Annie grinned.

  "We have a few."

  "And none of them can figure this out?"

  "We have more fighters left than doctors and engineers," she told him. "We had to repurpose a lot of people when we escaped from Mars."

  "Fighters, huh?"

  "The fall of Mars was a cluster," she told him, and he watched her eyes crinkle at the corner as she searched her memories. "There was a lot of fighting, a lot of running and a short time to get away."

  "But you made it," he said. "With some pedes."

  "Who can't figure it out," she said. "They need more information."

  Lt pointed at the screen.

  "Can they get it down there?"

  She shrugged.

  "It's a dead planet. Besides, we can't get there."

  "I'm thinking on that part," he said. "But if we could, do you think we could get your eggheads to get together with our pede and we can figure this shit out?"

  "I don't know."

  "I do. Besides," he glared at the dark image on the screen. "I got some ass kicking to do down there. A boy left me for dead and I'm going to return the favor. Where ya’ll keeping my suit?”

  CHAPTER 9

  Sherill stepped out of the shadows and seated himself on a log in front of the fire.

  Crockett held out a smoking stick with a charred bit of squirrel on it, and he slipped it off with his thick fingers to gnaw the meat from the tiny bones.

  “Well?” Babe said.

  “Let the man eat, Babe,” said Lutz.

  Sherill popped the last tiny morsel in his mouth and wiped the grease from his fingers on his pants leg.

  “I could kill him,” he said. “That’s not the hard part. Figuring out what the others are going to do when his head pops off. That’s what’s tough.”

  “Told you,” said Waldo as he leaned against a tree.

  “I was just gathering information,” Babe defended. “It’s not like fighting Licks. We can kill all of them.”

  Sherill shrugged.

  “The boy hasn’t left his side yet.”

  “We figured that much,” Babe nodded toward Oakley. “She’s been to see him a couple of times.”

  “Order him back?” Sherill asked.

  “I did. Said he’ll be here if we need him, but he’s staying with his dad.”

  “Can you blame him?” Steph played with her visor, slipping open and closed so that shadows danced across her face one moment and the next the small glowing fire reflected off the face plate.

  “Lt would call his Dad Lazarus,” said Lutz.

  “Or Dracula,” said Waldo.

  “Zombie?” Crockett offered.

  “Lt wouldn’t be skulking off in the woods for a private meeting,” Sherill told them.

  “Too many eyes back at camp.”

  “That where the other two are?” the big man noted the absence of Weber and Renard.

  “We needed to keep a watch and be ready in case something happens.”

  “You got any ideas about what’s going to happen?” Sherill asked.

  Babe shrugged.

  “We like playing the speculation game, but nothing concrete.”

  He stared into the fire for a few minutes. The flames felt warm on his exposed face, but he didn’t need the heat. The Suit took care of that.

  Still it felt good, familiar. The squad had shared hundreds of campfires over the past year.

  He sighed.

  Too bad they didn’t have the Suits back then. A lot of good men were gone in the fight against the alien invaders, and the exo-armor would have made a big difference in the fight.

  “You have any ideas?” Babe asked Sherill.

  “Kill him.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Steph. “It’s Jake’s Dad.”

  “You asked. I answered. He’s a threat. We don’t know what kind yet, but he collaborated with the Licks. Lt would say kill him.”

  Babe nodded.

  “If you get the shot, take it.”

  “Babe?” Steph protested, but he held up a hand to forestall her argument.

  “We’ll deal with the fallout with Chief after,” Babe stared up at Sherill. “Just do it.”

  The big man nodded and lifted his rifle.

  “Roger roger,” he said and turned toward the darkness.

  “You won’t be getting that shot.”

  Jake’s Dad stepped out of the woods as his men surrounded them, rifles raised.

  Babe lunged for his blaster, but Jake hopped out of the woods and punted him on the chin. The big man collapsed in a heap beside the fire.

  “Get their weapons,” his Dad ordered, and his men jumped to strip the Squad of their blasters. “Good work, Jake.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The lab served as a hydroponic garden and a relaxation room, in addition to housing the rediscovered generation one suit that hung on a rack on one side of the room.

  Lt had to nudge the door the rest of the way open when it got stuck halfway, but other than that, the room looked brand new.

  If you ignored the smell.

  “Smells like shit in here,” he gagged

  A scrawny bowlegged man with a pale shiny pate looked up from the boot of the suit of armor.

  “We use it to fertilize the garden,” he said in a serious voice.

  “Is it real?”

  “Yes,” the man stood up and wiped a gritty hand on his stained coveralls. “I rerouted the waste compacters to eject into the hydroponics system.”

  He sounded proud, and Lt supposed he would.

  Since they weren’t landing and as far as he knew, farms didn’t work on the moon, the surviving astronauts had to eat somehow and growing seeds in their own feces seemed to work.

  “Did you get the nanobot injection?” the thin man ran a purple tongue over his dry lips.

  Lt nodded.

  The man giggled. He was older, a veteran of the original Mars conflict and so a decade or two more experienced than Lt. At least in space flight, he amended.

  “Deter,” the older man held out his hand.

  Lt just looked at it.

  “I didn’t get to meet you on my nickel tour,” said Lt as he pushed past him and examined the suit hanging next to the wall. “Guess you was busy.”

  Deter moved to stand next to him, the cloying scent of fertilized sewer water clinging to him like a miasma.

  “We haven’t seen a Gen One in years,” he exclaimed. “They’re very- volatile.”

  “This one’s behaved,” said Lt. “Guess it only likes doing one thing.”

  “Killing the Lick?” Deter guessed.

  Lt grinned.

  “It’s what it was designed to do,” said Deter. “When we attempted to change the mission, that’s when the trouble started.”

  “See now there’s your problem. There is only one mission. Kill every last damn one of them fuckers. Anything that deviates from the mission would piss me off too.”