“And probably tore up more of the damned city than the friggin’ aliens have in the process,” Potts snarled, and then forcibly relaxed. “Any signs of survivors from the ship, Sergeant?”

“No sir, but I put in a note on the boards and got a reply from CONCOM. Word is that they abandoned ship before the Odyssey hit the sky, sir.”

“Abandoned ship? Someone was running those guns.”

“Yes sir. Captain Weston went down with her.”

Potts sighed, shaking his head. “Damn shame. He was a good man in the war. I fought under more than one sky he made friendly.”

“Yes sir.”

“Alright, we don’t have time to worry about what we’ve lost. From what intel says about these things, if we slip off the ball, we’ll lose everything. If we can’t clear them out of the city, I’m authorized to call in a tactical hit. Let’s not make that my only option, right, Sergeant?”

The Command Master Sergeant paled slightly, but nodded fervently. He’d seen a lot of shit in his time in uniform, but he’d never seen an American officer . . . or a Confederate one . . . call in a nuclear strike on any city, let alone one on the home continent, and he wasn’t about to see it happen now.

“We’ll wipe those fuckers out, sir. Guaranteed.”

“See that you do, Sergeant. To the last,” Potts said simply. “To the very last.”

NACS ODYSSEY, COMMAND HABITAT

ERIC OPENED HIS eyes in the dark and licked his lips as he lay against the floor of the inner section of the habitat.

Well, at least I’m not walking on the ceiling anymore.

The last thing he wanted to do was to move even a quarter of an inch. But as pleasant as lying there in the dark sounded at the moment, Eric sucked it up and rolled over to his knees. Getting to his feet this time was easier, but still sucked. He paused and leaned against the wall, willing the habitat to stop rotating around him while trying to ignore the sheer irony of that thought.

Should be a security station just over here somewhere . . .

He felt himself along the wall, making his way back up the curve of the habitat. The security locker wasn’t hard to find. It was the double reinforced door with a lockout that wasn’t working because the power was out. Eric popped the door access panel and confirmed quickly that it was indeed dead as the proverbial doornail.

He pulled his suit power and wired it into the door long enough to get the computer to reboot so he could put in the code. It only took him three times to hit the right numbers, which Eric figured wasn’t bad given that he was seeing triple at the moment.