Excerpt

"We killed you," the unknown woman was saying as she squatted beside me. "We had to. You weren't responding to the reactivation protocols. Left us no choice but to take you down manually. I need you to sit up slowly. Breathe deep. Get your bearings."

There was a chalky texture in my mouth, as if I'd been eating dirt. My vision cleared and I considered the person before me. Pale eyes in a lean face. Cheekbones that looked like they could cut glass. Spiked hair. She was Martian-tall and ensconced in beetle-black armor. On her left breastplate, a military insignia depicted two dots flanking a large circle – Mars and her moons.

The insignia of the Order of Stone.

The enemy.

"We don't have a lot of time," the woman insisted. "But I can't send you back into the field until we've determined the upload has taken."

"What upload?"

"Sit up, soldier."

I didn't have the vaguest idea what she was talking about, but there was no harm in complying with her demand. For some reason, I'd been lying on the floor. Mouth still gritty with Martian dust – that shit gets into everything, like talcum powder. My back felt like it had been knifed just under the left shoulder blade. I rubbed my eyes and took stock of my surroundings.

We were in an airy building that had apparently come down on our heads: slabs of masonry lay scattered like giants' teeth. Twisted I-beams snaked through the debris. The green of an algae-lamp reflected in crumbled glass. That solitary glow steeped everything in a swampish, sickly hue, providing just enough light for me to read the placard on a nearby wall: BAGGAGE CLAIM – GATES D, E, F.

Beneath that was a large poster, red background and stylized silhouette of a Partisan soldier, accompanied by the words:

TRUE MARTIANS STAND TOGETHER. REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY, PEOPLE, OR CONVERSATIONS TO THE TIP LINE.

YOUR ANONYMITY IS GUARANTEED.

"Look at me, soldier," the woman commanded.

My gaze flicked from the poster to her stare.

"Tell me your name, rank, and current mission."

"My name?" Memories shuffled like mah-jongg tiles. Despite the rubble, I recognized that I was in Bradbury Shuttleport in the city of Hellas, Mars. I remembered being in a dropship, skimming the city's medinas and ziggurats. Remembered seeing sandclaws roaming the streets like the oversized metallic crabs they were, striding over makeshift barricades as easily as I might step over a rolled-up towel. Hellas was a war zone.

Mars was a war zone.

At war with itself.

I remembered the thrum of the dropship beneath my boots. Remembered it hovering above the shuttleport like a dragonfly over a pond.

The feel of a rappel cord in my hands. My heartbeat pounds in my temples. The excitement and fear of fast-roping out of a dropship never ebbs. The airport tarmac is deserted – the sitrep is that civilian air-traffic in Hellas is grounded. But that didn't mean the enemy wasn't already here.

My six-man squad clutches their rappel cords alongside me. We slide out together like spiders on silk tethers. Hit the tarmac. Spread out, advancing three-by-three formation, into the empty shuttleport. The dropship tilts away and vanishes over the building, keeping mobile until we signal for evac.

I remembered all this.

But my name? It was a blank spot in my mind. Like a sun-bleached corner of brocade.

"Soldier!" the woman snapped. "Your name, rank, and current mission. Report!"

"I don't know my name," I breathed, astonished to be saying the words. "But I know yours: Lieutenant-Commander Natalia Argos, First Sentinel with the Order of Stone."

The woman nodded. I abruptly sensed tension pouring off her. Her fingers whitened around the trigger of her multigun.

Following this one bright thread through faded tapestry, I continued. "You're Number Eight on the Partisans' Most Wanted list. Dead or alive."

Alive was the preference, because the Partisans employed uniquely skilled interrogators against enemies of the state. They would strip out Natalia Argos's neurals and plumb them for every scrap of information she had. Mars had been embroiled in a civil war for twenty years. The legally elected Partisan government had been increasingly challenged by a loose grouping of insurrectionists who, as the years rolled by, had coalesced into a formidable opposition: the so-called Order of Stone.

The Partisans therefore needed to know the enemy's battle plans, supply lines, covert operatives, sympathizers, intelligence cells. Needed to pinpoint the locations of their underground factories where they printed weapons of war. We especially sought to ascertain the names and locations of their leadership…the shadowy, ever-secret commanders of their resistance. And Natalia Argos would have that intel. She probably had a killswitch – an implanted bomb to blend her brain into useless soup. But a skilled interrogator could render her unconscious before she could activate it….

Natalia abruptly shoved the muzzle of her multigun into my neck. A standard-issue, Greely model with default 3.33 millimeter unjacketed lead-alloy haze-release fleschettes, five additional magazines in the ammo wheel, and an EMP carriage beneath it.

"Last chance, soldier. What is your—"

"Harris," I blurted, the name seeming to outpace my conscious thoughts. "My name is…Harris Alexander Pope."

"Rank?"

Another blind spot. I was wearing the rust-red armor of a Partisan soldier, but I suddenly realized it was just a costume. Like one of Prospero's guests at his ill-fated masquerade.

And then the knowledge welled up within me, and I said, "I'm Special Operations for the Order of Stone."

"Very good," she muttered, a bead of sweat rolling down her neck.