He was pelted with a few pieces of the shelter and the crates inside, enough to sting, but nothing that did any real damage.

“Sarge…”

Thoms was running down the street toward him, two of the others right behind.

“We found the main arsenal and rigged it to blow. We got maybe fifteen seconds…”

Hargraves turned, letting his three Marines move past him and then following them. The four of them ran hard, out of the small camp and over a small rise. Then Hargraves yelled, “Down…now!”

The Marines dove to the ground, covering the backs of their heads with their arms. A second later the explosion came. It was vastly louder than the one Hargraves had triggered, and the Marines felt the ground under them shaking.

Hargraves could feel the heat from behind him, and when he looked up he could see the plume of fire rising to the sky as the enemy arsenal consumed itself in a fiery spectacle.

The sergeant stood up slowly and looked back the way they had come. The camp was gone, nothing but fire and smoke. Their job was done.

“All right, Marines,” he said as he scrambled to his feet. “Mission accomplished…let’s get the hell outta here.”

*   *   *

Millius froze where he was, snapping his head around for an instant. The plume of smoke rising up over the hills told him all he needed to know.

The arsenal…

He realized immediately what had happened. The remnants of the original Confederation garrison must have snuck around his main force, and hit the camp. But how? There were only a few of them left, he was sure about that. And he’d left more than a dozen guards behind.

Who are these soldiers?

The Confeds were good fighters, that much was clear. But his troopers were too. It was the enemy’s tenacity, their stubbornness that had gotten the best of him. How had a battered force, frozen and exhausted, at twenty percent strength, pulled off an attack on his camp? Would Alliance stormtroopers have dared such an assault?

He turned to face forward. Whatever had happened to the camp, whatever the implications, it didn’t matter now. He had to get his troopers forward, over the hill…and destroy the Confeds.

He threw his assault rifle to the ground. He’d used all his cartridges. His hand moved down to his waist, pulled his pistol from the holster. But even in the heat of battle, his mind was wandering, dark thoughts creeping up from within.

I am disgraced. Half my soldiers are gone…and the rest are in a fight to the finish, one few on either side will survive. I had numbers, support, every advantage. Yet the destruction of these Confed soldiers eluded me.