Apollo's Outcasts

He was right...almost.

The same time while I was making the vid, Ball North's Liberty Two team launched another attack on Apollo. I watched the assault from MainOps, and although I still wanted to put on my suit and get into the fight, my help wasn't necessary. There were twenty men in Liberty Two; unlike Liberty One, though, they didn't have Cyclops armor. The Duke wasn't big enough to carry that many powered suits, so they were forced to rely upon moonsuits not much different from our own, and their guns were also HK-11 lunar carbines. So the odds were more evenly matched than they were at Cabeus Station.

Liberty Two's intent was to take control of the solar farm and fusion reactor on Krantz Road. So they'd divided into two squads: one to cover Apollo's airlocks and keep anyone from coming out, and the other to attack the power stations. If they'd been successful, they might have shut down our power supply and forced us to surrender. What they'd neglected, though, was the fact that Apollo had dozens of auxiliary airlocks, and they simply didn't have enough men to cover them all.

The Chief knew this, of course, so when he figured out what Liberty Two meant to do, he instructed the Rangers to exit through Airlock 29, at the northeast side of the crater across Loop Road from the industrial park, and take positions on Krantz Road near the solar farm. The Ball North goons never had a chance. As soon as they tried to take the power stations, the Rangers opened fire from behind the regolith berms we'd spent weeks building for this very purpose.

Liberty Two lost three men almost immediately, and two more when the squad sent to cover the airlocks came in as reinforcements. The fifteen survivors were forced to retreat to the freighter. The Rangers didn't lose a single person. Some of our guys wanted to go after them, but Mr. Garcia ordered them to return to the crater.

"That was their best shot," the Chief said to me as we watched the battle come to an end, "and they blew it." He nodded to the left-center wallscreen; it displayed a distant image of mercenaries bounding toward the distant hills. "I give them...oh, three days, maybe four...before they give up and leave."

I gave him a sharp look. "How do you figure that?"

A wry smile. "They're using the Duke as their staging base. It probably has only enough air and water for a hundred hours, tops. Meanwhile, we have enough air and water in reserve to keep everyone in here alive for three weeks." He shrugged. "Like I said, all we have to do is hunker down for a while, and we'll outlast them."

"Standing in place, you mean."

He raised an eyebrow, surprised that I'd remember what he'd said months ago at the town meeting. "Something like that, yes."

It wasn't quite that easy, though.

We couldn't ration air, but we did have to carefully monitor our water consumption. Bathing was out of the question--besides, the only showers were located in the crater apartments, which were inaccessible until the dome was repaired--and everyone was limited to one quart a day for drinking water. Disinfectant towels were issued to everyone, and they helped a bit when it came to personal hygiene, but it wasn't long before all of us began to stink.

Food was likewise in short supply. We'd already stockpiled plenty of vegetables from the farms, and there were crates of ration bars as well, but with about a thousand mouths to feed every day, we could've quickly eaten our way through the pantry. So, the community breadline shut down right after breakfast and didn't open again until dinnertime, and even then we were often hungry again within a few hours. No one starved, though, and I actually learned to like chettuce.

For entertainment, we had vids. Someone had the foresight to stash a small collection of disks in the shelter; after dinner each evening, the ceiling lights would dim, the wallscreen would light up, and we'd all sit down to watch something together. Much of what we saw was fairly recent, but there were also a few 20th-century classics: The Wizard of Oz, The Big Sleep, the Star Wars movies. Some people managed to grab their pads before they fled underground, so they had books to read and games to play; after awhile, a lending-library system came into being, with pads being shared and swapped much like everything else we had.

Indeed, the shelter was filled with a spirit of a comradeship as its inhabitants figured out they'd need to rely on each other to get through. To my surprise, no one exemplified this spirit better than Melissa. Something happened to my sister when she saw how Eddie sacrificed his life to save Nina's. Almost overnight, MeeMee vanished, to be replaced by someone who was no longer vain and selfish. Never once did I hear her complain about the lack of privacy, not being able to bathe, or having to wear the same clothes day after day. She spent a lot of time with Nina, comforting her as best she could, and she also helped Ms. Lagler in the breadline, doling out soup and sandwiches with a smile on her face. For the first time, I became proud of my sister.

Nonetheless, we were living under siege conditions. Just outside was a small yet well-armed force, and although they couldn't get to us, that didn't mean that they had given up trying. Every day, I put on my moonsuit, picked up my gun, and went on patrol with five other Rangers, making sure that our airlocks remained sealed and that the enemy hadn't found another way in. Nothing happened while I was outside, but there was the occasional skirmish when another patrol would come under attack and would have to return fire.

Only once were we seriously threatened...yet that incident was probably the worst of all.

The third night of the siege, I was about to go on duty when the patrol that was already out there came under attack near the North Field Road entrance ramp. A Ball North squad opened fire on them from behind a rover they'd stolen from the depot, and the Rangers took refuge behind the reflector ring supports and returned fire. I was still getting into my moonsuit when I heard another report over my headset: the mercs were giving up the attack, and instead were piling into the rover and taking off again.

This was weird. There didn't seem to be any point behind the attack. After all, the garage doors were shut tight; there was no way the bad guys could have gotten through. But one of the Rangers who'd fought off the attackers noticed that the assault team consisted of only a half-dozen mercenaries, and that made someone in MainOps wonder where the rest of the goons were.

So MainOps quickly scanned the periphery, checking all the external cameras one at a time...and sure enough, they picked up thermal images of nine other mercenaries trying to hide within the shadows of large boulders near Apollo's southern end. They weren't moving, but instead seemed to be waiting for something.

I was about to close my suit when Mr. Garcia's voice came over my headset: "Barlowe, Tate...head down to the south airlocks and check them from the inside. I want to make sure they're secure."

"Copy," I said, and looked over at Billy. "Suit or no suit?"

Billy was about to climb into his moonsuit. He thought about it a moment, then grabbed the bar above his head. "No suits," he replied, doing a chin-up while withdrawing his legs from his outfit. "We can move faster that way."

My thoughts exactly. Moonsuits would be unnecessary if we were going to remain within Apollo's underground levels, and wearing them would only slow us down. So, I had a tech come by to help me out of my suit, then I picked up my carbine and joined Billy at the ready-room door. We took a few seconds to grab a couple of headsets from a locker and do a quick radio check with MainOps, then we set out for the south end.

Once we were past the shelter, we entered the point in Apollo's subsurface labyrinth where the corridors had been blacked out to preserve power during the siege. I found a couple of flashlights in an emergency locker, though, and once we switched them on, we were able to locate the stenciled wall signs pointing the way to Airlocks 1 through 4. Unfortunately, we didn't also find one of the electric carts used by maintenance crews to move through the base; apparently they had been parked somewhere else. We would have to make our way on foot. I was glad we'd left our moonsuits behind; they would have been cumbersome in the narrow corridors.

Billy and I said little to each other as we headed for the south end. It had been a long time since we'd been foes, but we hadn't really become friends either. I owed him for getting me through Ranger training, but I hadn't forgotten the way he'd treated me and the other outcasts--particularly Eddie--when we'd first arrived on the Moon. Nor had Billy ever apologized for the things he'd said and done back then; he stopped acting a jerk, but that didn't mean he wasn't still one. So, while I was willing to work with him in the Rangers, I hadn't yet figured out whether I could trust him.

The air became colder as we moved away from the inhabited areas of the underground, and every now and then we'd come to a pair of pressure doors which had been shut. One of us would quickly check the adjacent wall gauge to make sure that there was pressure on the other side, then we'd use our wristbands to unlock the doors. We did this six times before we reached the corridor leading to Airlocks 1 through 4, and when the final pair of doors quietly slid back into the walls, we immediately realized that we were no longer alone.

Until then, the only illumination we'd seen had been wall gauge readouts or the beams of our flashlights. When the doors parted, Billy and I saw something new: about fifty feet down the corridor, a glowing rectangle seemed to hover in midair. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: the window of an inner door leading to an airlock ready-room.

Someone was in there, all right.

Billy and I glanced at each other. Neither of us spoke, but instead we raised our guns and switched off our lights. Then we crept down the corridor, passing Airlock 4 as we carefully approached Airlock 3.

Upon reaching the airlock, we discovered that the inner door was shut. I inched closer to the window, ducked down low, then slowly raised my head to peer through the window. The ready room was vacant, but the door leading to the airlock was half-open. I checked the wall gauge next to me; neither room had been depressurized. Or at least not yet; a quick glance at the suit racks, and I saw that one of the moonsuits was missing.

I looked at Billy and nodded. He nodded back, then grasped the door handle with his free hand. The door came open, but not without a faint creak of hinges that, in the silence of the darkened corridor, sounded as loud as a rusted cogwheel. I winced and Billy swore under his breath, and we both froze, but nothing moved on the other side of the airlock inner door.

We waited another moment or two, then slowly stepped into the ready-room, walking on tiptoes with our carbines raised to firing position. Step by careful step, we made our way to the airlock. We'd almost reached the inner door when we heard a quiet voice from the other side:

"Mole Man to Beta Team...Beta Team, this is Mole Man...standing by for insertion...do you copy? Over."

"Aw, dammit!" Billy snarled, so loudly that he could just as well have used a bullhorn. Before I could stop him, he slammed the door the rest of the way open and barged straight into the airlock, pointing his carbine at the figure standing near the outer door.

"Uncle Don," he yelled, "what the hell are you doing?"

Caught by surprise, Donald Hawthorne turned around so fast that he almost tripped over his own feet. He wore the missing moonsuit, although he hadn't closed his helmet faceplate, and in his left hand was a small unit that could have only been an encrypted short-wave transceiver. He stood within hand's reach of the airlock control panel, and propped against the wall was the cane he was still using to get around.

"Billy." Hawthorne stared at his nephew, his eyes wide with...I wasn't sure what. Astonishment? Fear? Maybe just a bit of shame? "What are you...?"



"You know damn well why I'm here." Billy's voice was taut with anger. He didn't even notice that I'd come up beside him, my own gun raised as well. "And it's pretty obvious why you're here, too."

"No, Billy." Hawthorne slowly shook his head. "This isn't what it looks like. I'm just..."

"Checking the airlock to make sure it's shut?" I couldn't help myself; I was almost as mad as Billy. "There's a Ball North squad waiting just outside. Tell me you didn't know that."

Hawthorne gave me a mean look, but didn't bother with any more denials. He knew that we knew why he was there. And although he could have punched the EMER. EVAC. button which would have jettisoned the outer doors and instantly voided the airlock, I knew he wouldn't. Doing so would have killed me, but also his nephew as well. He was wearing a moonsuit; we weren't.

Instead, he turned his gaze toward Billy.

"You know what to do." His voice was low and menacing. "Put this little twit down."

Hearing this, it felt as if every nerve in my body had suddenly turned to ice. My gun was pointed at Mr. Hawthorne and so was Billy's...but I'd seen Billy play moonball, and I knew how quick he could be. In an instant, he could turn his gun on me and blow my head clean off my neck. And sure enough, his eyes twitched in my direction, as if calculating the distance between the two of us.

I'll never know what thoughts ran through his mind in that moment. But in those seconds that seemed much longer, he came to a decision that probably haunted him for the rest of his life.

"Jamey," he said, so quietly that I barely heard him, "call MainOps and tell the Chief we've found someone down here trying to open the door."

Mr. Hawthorne stared at him. "Billy, don't do this..."

"Shut up." Billy's gun remained leveled at his uncle. "Just back away from the airlock and drop the radio."



Donald Hawthorne didn't respond. He regarded his nephew with eyes that seemed to burn. When I was sure that Billy wasn't going to obey his uncle, I raised my hand to my headset. "MainOps, this is Ranger Barlowe," I said. "We've...we've got a situation in Airlock 3. Please send a backup team. Over."

The Chief's voice came over: "Copy that, Jamey. What's going on down there?"

I couldn't bring myself to explain. "Just hurry up and send someone." I left the mike open, though, so that he could hear what I was saying. "Mr. Hawthorne, drop the radio and get away from the hatch."

The radio fell from Mr. Hawthorne's hand. It broke apart as it hit the mooncrete floor, but he didn't seem to notice. "Billy," he said, raising his hands unnecessarily, "I cannot believe that you'd ever stoop to treason."

"I'm not a traitor," Billy replied. "I'm a Ranger."





Billy and I held Mr. Hawthorne at gunpoint until two Rangers in moonsuits arrived at Airlock 2. Accompanying them were Mr. Garcia and--much to my surprise--Mr. Porter. By then, Billy's uncle was a broken man, his anger replaced by humiliation, unable to look his nephew in the eye. I had no sympathy for Mr. Hawthorne, yet I couldn't help but feel sorry for Billy. Of all the people to catch his uncle, it was sadly ironic that he'd have to be the one.

In hindsight, it wasn't surprising that Mr. Hawthorne had done this. He'd always been opposed to both the embargo and the refusal to surrender Apollo, claiming that it was treason against the United States. When Mr. Porter questioned him, he confessed that he'd swiped the transceiver from the mining crew; once he'd used it to get in touch with Ball North, they coordinated a sneak attack in hopes of taking control of Apollo.

Mr. Porter and Mr. Garcia stepped away from us and spoke quietly for a couple of minutes. Then they came back to Mr. Hawthorne and gave him a choice: he could leave Apollo right then and there, or he could stay and face everyone whom he'd betrayed. Donald Hawthorne quickly made up his mind. Borrowing my headset, he contacted his pals waiting outside and told them that he was coming out alone. Then Mr. Garcia got on the line and told the Ball North strike leader that they were opening the airlock, but that several Rangers would be standing just inside and that they'd shoot anyone they happened to see.

The goons got the message. No shots were fired when Airlock 2 was opened. Mr. Hawthorne left Apollo without a final word to anyone, not even Billy. The last we saw of him, he was hobbling on his cane back to the Duke with the Ball North team.



I tried to talk to Billy, but he didn't want to discuss the matter. He walked back to the shelter in silence.

That was Ball North's last attempt to take over Apollo. For the next six hours, nothing moved outside the city. No more mercenaries came our way. Then, suddenly and with no further communication, the Duke lifted off from beyond the hills east of the colony. MainOps tracked the freighter as it ascended to low orbit; it swung once around the Moon, then its main engine fired and it headed back to Earth.

Just like that, the siege came to end.



It was unbelievable how long and loud everyone in the shelter cheered when Mr. Porter announced that the enemy was gone. All around me, people hugged each other, danced, yelled and screamed in delight. Of course, it was always possible that the White House might dispatch another strike force to the Moon, one better equipped and more determined than Ball North. For the time being, though, victory was ours, and it tasted sweet.

Yet our triumph wasn't complete, or without cost. Fifteen people had died during the invasion, including those who'd been killed defending Cabeus Station. The crater dome was still damaged, so most of Apollo was uninhabitable until it could be repaired; until then, we'd have to continue living like rats in a cellar. And there had been no further contact from anyone on Earth. The loss of the communications satellite had severed our broadband links, and there hadn't been any further transmissions since President Shapar's ultimatum. We didn't even know for certain whether anyone had picked up the speech I'd made; the only response was silence.

So we did the only things we could do. We recovered our dead and temporarily entombed them in an underground storage area, with Mr. Porter leading a memorial service in their honor. We took care of those who'd been injured; most were on the way to recovery, and a few had already left the infirmary. And then we rolled up our sleeves, put on our moonsuits, and began the long, back-breaking business of rebuilding Apollo.

I was among those who entered the solarium for the first time since the attack, and it was awful to see what had happened. It was as if a tornado had ripped across the crater floor. The sudden decompression had torn apart the entire solarium, tearing up grass, gardens, and trees, then flash-freezing everything that hadn't been blown through the hole in the western side. Most of the livestock had been evacuated to the shelter, but a few didn't make it, and none of the songbirds had survived; their bodies lay everywhere. Most of the apartments in the crater wall were undamaged, since emergency pressure doors had come down when the blowout occurred, but the schools were in ruins, along with most of the other free-standing structures on the crater floor.

I didn't visit Ag Dome 2. I just didn't have the heart to go looking for Eddie's body. But Melissa surprised me by volunteering for that duty. She felt like she owed it to him. When she got back, she held Nina in her arms and cried for a long time.

I saw Hannah only occasionally. Both of us were too busy to do anything else besides have lunch now and then. Besides, privacy was scarce, and we'd become all too aware of the fact that curious eyes turned our way whenever the two of us were together. Perhaps it was only inevitable that, even if the invasion hadn't been forced everyone into the shelter, people would've learned that the former First Daughter had a new boyfriend. Neither of us were comfortable with the attention being paid to us, but there was nothing we could do about it.

At least, so I thought.

Four days after the Duke lifted off, that evening's vid was an obscure movie from the late 20th century called Moon Zero Two. The Apollo High kids decided to get together to watch it. Now that the crisis was over, we had a little more time to see each other again, and we wanted to get away from the adults for a little while.



So we claimed a spot over to one side of the room where we could rest our backs against the wall. As a bonus, there was also a support column that would hide us from most of the room. We dragged our sleeping cushions over there and put them close together, and cold-shouldered anyone older than eighteen who tried to sit with us. It had been weeks since the last time we all had been in the same place at the same time; the adults seemed to figure out that we wanted to be left alone, and so they gave us our space.

Hannah and I sat together near the edge of the group. We carefully maintained a couple of inches of distance between us until the lights went down, just in case anyone happened to look our way, but even before the opening credits were over I'd put my arm around her and she'd curled up against me. Nicole favored us with a sly smile and a wink, Melissa stared at me until I glared at her and she turned away, and after that everyone decided to ignore us.

The movie was terrible. Trying to show what life out here would be like and managing to get everything wrong, now and then it was unintentionally funny, but most of the time it was just a bore. As it dragged on, though, Hannah gradually drew closer to me, until her head was on my shoulder and her arm was draped across my knee. All I had to do was turn my head a little and her face would be against mine, her mouth only an inch or two away. It wasn't long before even that distance ceased to exist.

In the middle of the scene where the space cowboys start brawling in the space saloon, Hannah suddenly pulled herself away from me and rose to her feet. For a moment I thought I'd done something wrong, but then she reached down and took my hand. She didn't say anything, nor did she need to. I got up and let her lead me from the room. Glancing back, I saw Melissa watching us go. My sister didn't say anything, yet there was a knowing smile upon her face.

There was a large storage closet just down the corridor that Apollo General had turned into a temporary surgical room. It had all the necessary medical equipment, but just then the most important thing in there was the operating table. It was narrow and not very soft, yet it was just large enough for two people. The ceiling lights went off again almost as soon we shut the door, leaving only the red and blue glow of diodes.

From nearby, we could hear the sounds of the movie, the occasional burst of laughter from the audience. Otherwise, we were alone. I started to sit on the table, but then Hannah pushed me all the way down upon its thin mattress. A second later she was on top of me, straddling my hips, her hair falling down around my face. My hands found her body in the darkness, and it was warm, tense, and eager. Her lips were soft against mine, and it wasn't long before we were fumbling at each other's clothes.

She'd just opened my shirt and I was starting to remove hers when there was an sudden uproar from the shelter, as if everyone in there was shouting at once. Both of us stopped for a second to listen, then we decided that nothing could be happening over there that was more important than what was happening in here. Yet Hannah was about to oblige me by pulling her shirt over her head when the door banged open.

"Jamey!" Melissa stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light streaming in from the corridor. "You gotta...!" Seeing what she'd just interrupted, she stopped. "Oh...sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't know...I mean..."

"What do you want?" If there was ever a time that I wanted to murder my sister, this was it. Hannah hastily pushed herself off me, yanking her shirt back down. "You better have a..."

"There's a transmission coming in!" she snapped. "It's from the White House...and it's not President Shapar!"

Hannah and I stared at each other for a second. An instant later, we were off the table, straightening our clothes as fast as we could as we ran down back the corridor, Melissa right behind us.

Everyone in the shelter was on their feet, yet a silence had fallen across the room. The only thing we heard was the voice of the woman on the wall screen. It took me a moment to recognize her: Mildred Ferguson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, last seen in handcuffs as federal marshals escorted her down the front steps of the Capitol. Now she was standing behind a podium upon which was the symbol of the President of the United States.

Hannah, Melissa, and I came in after she'd begun speaking, so the first thing I heard was: "...inform you that, at 5:45 PM Eastern Standard Time today, officials from the Department of Justice, under armed escort by members of the Virginia National Guard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, accompanied me to the White House, where we confronted President Shapar in the Oval Office. There she was informed that the United States Supreme Court, by a majority decision of six-to-three, had ruled that there were sufficient grounds for immediate removal from office for both her and Vice President O'Hanlon, pending federal investigation of charges that her administration has acted against the interests of the people of the United States..."

Hannah's hand clenched mine so painfully that my knuckles hurt. I barely noticed. My attention was fully upon the woman on the screen.

"President Shapar refused to voluntarily surrender office, so she was taken into custody by FBI agents. Vice President O'Hanlon was arrested ten minutes later when a car containing him and his aides was pulled over by District of Columbia police while it was attempting to leave the city. By then, I was administered the oath of office by Chief Justice Marco Gonzales and sworn in as President Pro Tem, a duty I will serve while an impeachment trial is..."

I didn't hear the rest. Everyone around me was yelling too loud. All except Hannah, who let out her breath and closed her eyes.

"It's over," she murmured, almost too quietly to be heard. "It's all over."



In the end, it wasn't guns that brought down Lina Shapar, but words. Hannah's, the ones of the Resistance and the International Space Consortium, even mine...but most of all her own. It wasn't until everything was over and done that we got the whole story, but what essentially happened was this:

When my firsthand account of what really happened at Cabeus Station was transmitted back to Earth, the Shapar administration made sure that it was blocked from American newsnets. As before, though, the transmission was also received in Europe and South America, and the Resistance made sure that it was fed to pirate servers in the United States that the government hadn't been able to shut down. So within hours of Shapar's speech, my rebuttal was seen by hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Public support for Lina Shapar had been steadily eroding ever since Hannah revealed the fact that her father had died of natural causes, not from an assassin's bullet. The declaration of martial law, the detainment of dissidents, the shutdown of the legislative branch, the US withdrawal from the ISC...all of these actions had led even the most passive citizen to become worried about what the president was doing. In the meantime, the Resistance wisely adopted a nonviolent approach; no bombings or other acts of sabotage that would have been considered terrorism, and therefore could have thrown public support behind the Shapar administration. Instead, they opted for peaceful demonstrations, even when the usual result was mass arrests, along with the dissemination of uncensored information about what Shapar and her cronies were doing.

When it came out that it wasn't American special forces who'd attacked Apollo and Cabeus, but private mercenaries instead, the public wasn't the only ones who were surprised. Throughout the crisis, the military had remained loyal to President Shapar in keeping with its mandate to follow any orders issued by the commander in chief. Nonetheless, the Pentagon had refused to send Marines to the Moon, the joint chiefs telling the president that it wasn't defense policy to attack American civilians when they did something the White House didn't like. So they were already aware that President Shapar was lying when she told the nation that Marines had been dispatched to the Moon, and they were still trying to swallow this when they learned that the Shapar administration had attempted to get around them by hiring Ball North IU instead.

The fact that Lina Shapar was using the Cabeus Station battle as a pretext for declaring war on the PSU was a threat no one could ignore. So the chairman of the joint chiefs quietly got in touch with his counterpart in People's Army of the Pacific Socialist Union, using diplomatic back-channels that even the president didn't know about, and asked him if my account was true. The Chinese general who knew about these things confirmed my side of the story.

Further confirmation came a few days later, when the surviving Ball North forces returned to Station America following their retreat from Apollo. They were immediately taken into custody by real Marines, and once they were questioned by military intelligence officers, a classified report was sent to the Pentagon. When the joint chiefs received this information, they secretly convened to discuss the matter, whereupon they decided that the commander in chief had gone out of control. Like it or not, President Shapar had to be removed from office before she declared war on the PSU.

At the direct command of the Pentagon, a company of Virginia National Guard soldiers was sent to the former resort hotel in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the Speaker of the House and other government dissidents were being held in custody. Once they'd set Mildred Ferguson free, she immediately got in touch with the nine justices of Supreme Court; they convened in emergency session and, in private, determined that there was sufficient evidence for the removal both the president and vice president from office, pending investigation of the claim that President Shapar's actions were illegitimate and constituted a threat to the people of the United States.

The speaker of the House then returned to Washington and, escorted by National Guard soldiers, FBI agents, and Justice Department officials, went straight to the White House. The justice officials ordered the Secret Service detail to stand down, then the Speaker went to the Oval Office, where Lina Shapar was found seated behind the presidential desk, wondering why her phone had suddenly gone dead.

She refused to surrender, of course, but her fate was no longer hers to decide. Five minutes later, she was led from the White and taken to the same Maryland military base from which she'd summoned troops the day she'd taken power. Someone must have told Vice President O'Hanlon that the jig was up, because a few minutes later Capitol Hill police pulled over his limo on Independence Avenue just before it crossed the Potomac.

As her first act of office, President Pro Tem Ferguson issued an executive order calling for an end to martial law; all federal troops were to stand down, and all political prisoners were to be set free at once. No shots were fired; the insurrection was peaceful. By midnight, the crisis had come to an end.

At least, that's the way it was back on Earth. Where I was, things were a bit different.



I'd just dropped another armload of dead branches into a wheelbarrow when my wristband beeped. Brushing wood chips from my hands, I pulled off my work gloves and raised it to my face. "Jamey here."

"The ferry just touched down at North Field," said the voice of a friend who worked in MainOps as a traffic controller. "Passengers will be here in about twenty minutes."

"Thanks, Stu." I'd asked him to let know me when the ferry arrived. It was supposed to rendezvous with an LTV from Earth scheduled to reach the Moon that day, and I wanted to meet the passengers when they showed up. No sense in sitting around until then, though. There was no shortage of work to be done, and Colony Service was now a full-time job for everyone.



Shoving my gloves in my back pocket, I turned around. Hannah was kneeling on the ground, pulling up dead flowers from a nearby garden. They may have been ones that Eddie had planted; it made me sad to see that, but now that the dome had been repaired and the crater's atmosphere restored, the next step in bringing the solarium back to life was gathering and composting all the plants killed by the blowout. I told myself that Eddie probably would've been happy to do the job again; these gardens had been his pride and joy.

Hannah glanced up as I walked over to her. "Ferry's here," I said. "Want to come with me to meet them?"

"Umm...I dunno." There was a hesitant look in her eyes. "I'm not sure if that's such a good idea. I mean, they might not be so happy to see me."

"Yeah...maybe you're right." I squatted beside her. "It's not like you haven't met them before, but now that we're going together..."

"That's what I mean. I..." She shook her head. "Maybe you ought to do this on your own. It might be...y'know...awkward."

The last thing I wanted to do was make her uncomfortable. "Okay, sure. Maybe later?" She nodded, giving me a quick smile. I kissed her on the forehead, then I stood up and headed for the bike that I'd parked nearby. If I hurried, I'd have time to run up to the Laglers' place, change into some clean clothes, and get to Customs before the ferry passengers showed up.

Melissa was already at the apartment. I'd asked Stu to call her, too, and she'd left her job in Ag Dome 1 as soon as the call came in. I hastily pulled on a clean shirt and a fresh pair of trousers, and Mr. Lagler showed up just as we were getting ready to leave. There was no reason to ask why he wanted to come with us; he knew who was on the ferry.

The three of us went back downstairs, where a small crowd had already gathered on the balcony outside Customs to await the incoming passengers. Mr. Porter was among them; I gave him a brief wave, which he returned with a smile and a nod, then Mr. Lagler excused himself and went over to speak with them. I made small talk with a couple of people, and it wasn't long before the Customs exit door opened and the first of the newly arrived passengers came through.

Dad was the third person to walk through the door. Jan was the fourth.

Melissa and I had spoken to both of them a couple of times already, after the lunar comsat was replaced during the month that had gone by since Lina Shapar was forced from office. Nonetheless, their physical changes since the morning they'd put Melissa and me on the magcat were startling. My father had put on weight during the time he'd been held prisoner in upstate New York; too much starch in his food and virtually no exercise had done a number on him. Although Jan had washed the brown dye from her hair and was starting to let it grow long again, she was still scrawny from being on the run with her Resistance cell. Both of them had haunted eyes; although they'd been reunited shortly after Dad was freed, I don't think an hour had gone by when they weren't worried about each other, or Melissa and me.

The first thing they noticed was that I was standing upright, without crutches or leg braces to hold me up. They'd never seen me do that before, not in my entire life. Jan's mouth fell open in astonishment, and I don't think Dad even recognized me at first. They were still getting over their disbelief when I walked over to Jan and, without any effort at all, wrapped my arms around her.

"Hi, sis," I said. "Good to see you again."

Jan's duffel bag fell to the floor. She slowly let out her breath, then her body shook within my arms. She was sobbing with relief, but that wasn't what I noticed. Until then, I'd always looked up at her from the seat of a mobil. Now, all of a sudden, I discovered that she and I were the same height.

Dad had also dropped his bag to hug Melissa, and it seemed to me that he was surprised to find that she was letting him do so, without any trace of self-conscious embarrassment. Melissa had made some changes, too, since she'd been away; he was going to be pleasantly surprised to find how different she'd become.

But then he looked at me again, and an eyebrow went up in disapproval. "So...who said you could get a tattoo?"

I felt my face go red. "Didn't you see it when you called me?"

"The phone picture wasn't clear. I thought it was just a smudge on your face."

"I think it's cute." Jan smiled as she reached up to touch the wings-and-crescent moon Rangers symbol on my right cheek. "Does your girlfriend like it? Hannah, I mean."

"She wants me to have it moved to..." Then I stopped. "Hey, who told you she's my girlfriend?"

I'd deliberately refrained from mentioning Hannah when I'd spoken to both of them on the phone. I didn't know how they would feel about the fact that I was having a relationship with the girl for whom Jan had given up seat on the shuttle. After all, she'd made that sacrifice so that President Wilford's daughter could escape her father's enemies, not so that her little brother would have a steady girl when he got to the Moon. Hannah had felt the same way, too, so the revelation that they already knew about her was something of an embarrassment.

"Your friend told us," Dad said, then he nodded to someone standing beside me. "Didn't you, Captain Rogers?"

I looked around to see Gordie's broad grin. "Y'know how it is," he said. "Three days from Earth to here...you got a lot of time to talk about stuff."

I'd all but forgotten that Gordie had gotten back his old job as an LTV pilot, and that his first round trip would include transporting my father and older sister to Apollo. Maybe it was because, when he'd left two weeks ago, his outbound cargo had included the caskets containing Logan and Eddie's bodies. Nina had gone with him, too, and Melissa and I had spent a lot of time preparing her for that sad ordeal. It had been painful for all of us, and during the last couple weeks, I tried to put it out of my mind.

"You told them..." I began, and Gordie's grin disappeared when he saw the expression on my face.

"Don't worry about it." Jan gave me another smile. "It's okay. I mean...y'know, it's nice to know my little brother has good taste in women."

Dad didn't appear to be quite so amused. Perhaps the knowledge that his son was going steady with a president's daughter was just as much of a shock as discovering that he was no longer an invalid. And the tattoo didn't help, either. He was about to say something when Mr. Lagler walked up to us.

"Algis...good to see you again." Gently disengaging himself from Melissa, Dad offered his hand to him. "Thanks for taking care of my kids."

"The pleasure's been all mine, Stan. Same goes for my wife." Mr. Lagler took my father's hands in both of his. "We're just relieved that you and your daughter are safe again. It was a terrible thing, what you've been through."

"Yes, well..." Dad's voice trailed off as he looked down at the balcony tiles. I'd already noticed that he didn't like talking about his incarceration. He hadn't been tortured, but apparently the interrogations he'd gone through had been pretty grueling. He was probably mending wounds of his own, and it would take time for them to heal. "So long as Jamey and MeeMee..."

"Melissa," my sister said quietly. "I'd rather not be called that anymore...please."

Dad and Jan both stared at her. "Please" had never been a word in Melissa's vocabulary. Jan shot me an inquisitive look and I slowly nodded. If they were shocked by the fact that I was walking, then they were going to love the changes that Melissa had gone through. Before either of them could respond, though, Mr. Porter came over to join us.