Colonel Luton Arthur was tired, very tired, but unable to sleep. That was why he rolled off the rumpled cot, ran water into the store room's deep sink, and took a sponge bath. Then, wearing a fresh new uniform, he emerged to prowl the floor.More than two weeks had passed since the revolt. The Global Operation Center hummed to the never-ending flow of reports, requests, and orders. People nodded or in some cases saluted, but kept their distance. They knew his moods.Luton pushed to consider the gigantic globe. The holo seemed to shimmer as it turned. A less conservative man might have been satisfied with the territory under his control - most of North America, Europe, and Asia were red.But all Luton saw were Islands of blue, chunks of territory still identified by ancient names like Mongolia, Ethiopia, and a large part of Brazil. These were the places where resistance had grown and taken root. Partly because of the terrain, and partly because of the people, many of w

Ex-corporal and now Sergeant Sparrow had assigned himself to his commanding officer's staff, where he had assumed responsibility for Marco's personal security. He stood in an open hatch. Marco took one last look around, slid past the foot-thick door, and heard it thud into place. The officer's security detail consisted of Sparrow plus two of Goodear's scouts. The Naa were heavily armed and extremely alert. Fearing another mutiny, the noncom had requested a full squad. Marco had refused on the grounds that six guards plus a noncom was not only a waste of precious manpower but more than a little unseemly. Sparrow knew that the assault force was close and took issue with the way that Marco continued to risk himself. "About time, sir. No sense getting your ass blown off this early in the battle".The Naa fought to conceal their grins. Marco was about to take Sparrow down a notch when a satellite guided missile hit the center of the parade ground. The explos

The flight of six Daggers entered the stratosphere, shed heat from their specially designed skins, and bumped through the quickly warming air. Salom checked her heads up display, saw more red deltas than she cared to look at, but was grateful for the fact that they were still below. That was an advantage she was happy to have. The naval officer had targets, plenty of them, which meant they had her as well. Why no response, then? Were they blind? A voice sounded in her helmet. It was confident, verging on smug. "Victor One to incoming Daggers. Welcome to the party. Over". Salom marveled at her luck. The idiot assumed she was friendly! Not surprising, given the circle jerk up in orbit... but not very smart either. Her pilots followed as the naval officer rolled to starboard and dived towards the aircraft below. "Blue One to Victor One. Thanks for the hospitality". Victor One watched the delta-shaped icons roll in behind his formation, heard

Jyro peered around the corner, confirmed that the passageway was clear, and consulted his data pad, or more accurately Pardo's data pad, since the eighty year old device still worked and the skeleton had no use for it.Once the prospector had established a reasonable secure home, and moved Pardo's supplies to the new location, he redirected his attention.The vessel was big, but how big? Who constructed the ship, and why? Where was it headed? This was the sort of knowledge that would enable him escape.The first step was to create a map, and that's where the data pad came in. By taking copious notes, and marking each intersection with a self-invented system of coordinations, the human had established a fairly good idea of the ship's layout. He entered the latest findings and used blue spray paint to write "D-44" on the steel bulkhead.The Shem mother ship, if that's what the vessel could properly be called, was shaped like a Flava fruit, except that it had an eno

The village blacksmith waited for the farmer to inspect the newly healed metal, accepted payment with a courtly bow, and watched the tractor growl away. Ancient though the equipment was, the blacksmith was even older, and more machine than man.Marcus Doug Douglas had played many roles throughout his long and rather productive life, including those of son, brother, husband, father, uncle, friend, industrialist, politician, strategist, artist, and for the last six decades, village blacksmith.His biological body had died years before, which explained why, with the notable exempting of his brain and some spinal cord, the rest of Doug Douglas was synthetic. Nor was this the first such body. After being forced to occupy a blue eyed monstrosity immediately after his "death", the businessman had commissioned bodies that looked a lot like the original had. Pleasant but portly. His Asian-Parsian ancestors would have been proud. Not only of the body in which he had chosen to d