“No, Captain”

“Do it quickly,” he said.

When he looked back, he saw that the other ship had stopped firing. The helicopter had managed to put it out of action, at least temporarily.

The American bastards! He would take revenge with his bare hands if necessary.

“Captain, we have a lock,” said one of the men behind him. “Fire, damn it!”

The Albatross Quad launcher shrieked and hissed as a pair of Aspide missiles flew upward. The missiles rose for a short distance, then began angling downward. The helicopter jerked to the right, firing flares and speeding away as the missiles flew toward it. Dazhou gripped his binoculars tightly as he watched first one and then the other missile veer off, exploding harmlessly. As he cursed, a second salvo was launched. This time, four missiles left the ship.

The helicopter seemed not to realize that it had been targeted again. It started back toward the Gendikar, firing another pair of its missiles. Suddenly it veered away, zagging left and right. It ducked the first Aspide but the second found its side, igniting with a red and white spark. The helicopter reared upward, then seemed to slide into another missile. It crashed into the sea, a white and black smear on the waves.

As Dazhou watched the steam and debris settle, he finally felt some of the satisfaction he had longed for. He scanned the ocean; they were now within sight of the platform area.

“It still stands,” he told his crew. “Ready another missile,” Dazhou said. “Strike it again. And let us see to Gendikar.”

As the order was passed, the radar operator called over the other officer. The man looked down at the console and then over at Dazhou with a puzzled expression. “The radar detects something overhead,” he said.

“Where?”

The man pointed in the sky. Dazhou searched the area with his glasses but saw nothing.

“Where?”

He handed the glasses to the other man, who searched in vain. Dazhou stared with his naked eyes, but still saw nothing.

“It appeared immediately after the missile struck the platform. There may have been some sort of radar jammer there.”

“You’re sure it’s not a malfunction?” Dazhou asked.

“I don’t believe so. It’s hovering, like some sort of spy plane, but the signature is small.”

“Shoot at it. Target it and shoot it down.”

Dog was waiting for her in bed, beckoning to her.

“We should get married,” he told her.

“Married? How?”

“We find a minister—”

“I mean, how would that work?”

“It would work, like now”

Like now? Not better?

Like now with her head slammed up against the wall, her legs tangled up, and the platform swaying?

I’m on the platform, she realized, not in San Francisco.

I have to get out of here!

Jennifer crawled back to the desk. The words CONTROL TERMINATED flashed in the center of the screen. Dreamland now had control of the blimps.

She collapsed the control box, pushing out the large cable that connected it to the power and antenna feeds. One of the de-tents at the bottom failed to clear; she leaned against the cable and the metal sheered off from the box. But though it looked light the control unit weighed nearly two hundred pounds; she tried to pull it off the desktop but it fell to the deck, the crash reverberating and the list increasing.

“We must go now,” said Liu, looming above her.

“Help me get this out.”

“We must go,” he said, taking one end of the control box and pushing it up toward the door.

Jennifer scrambled to follow. Outside, Liu struggled to get the control case up the inclined deck. Jennifer watched as he pushed it past the open hatchway.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and then she realized.

“Don’t!” she shouted, but it was too late — Liu pushed it over the side and the one-of-a-kind-control unit, built at a cost of at least a million dollars, fell into the sea.

“There’s no time,” said Liu. “The ships are coming. Come.”

He grabbed her wrist and pushed her down the hatchway.

With their forces stretched thin, Dog oversaw the grim task of removing Major Alou’s body from the Megafortress himself, working with two of the Malaysian soldiers as the dead pilot was carried from the wreck to the bunker area. Lieutenant James “Kick” Colby had already been brought to the small, fetid underground room, along with a Malaysian who had been killed from fragments from one of the shells. Dog pressed his teeth together, ignoring the stench that had already gathered around the bodies; the odor was a final cruelty, depriving the dead men of their last scrap of dignity, reminding all who lived that they, too, would decay.

Starship appeared in the outer bunker area as Dog left. “Lieutenant,” said Dog, nodding at him.

The young man seemed to want to say something. Dog recognized the look in his eyes, the question — the demand, really, for something that would make sense of the deaths of his friends.

No words could do that. Dog simply shook his head.

“We have to carry on as best we can,” he told Starship.

Tears began to slip from the young man’s eyes, though he tried to fight them back. Dog felt a surge of sympathy for the young man, and yet he shared his impotence. He said nothing else, pressing his teeth together and walking toward the wrecked Dreamland Command trailer. Danny Freah had retrieved some of the backup radio gear and set it up in the shade behind it.

“I’ve just been talking to the Brunei army command. They’re about to attack the capital,” said Danny when the call ended. “They have the terrorists on the run.”

“What’s Penn’s status?”

“They’re trying to reach the drilling platform and find out what’s going on with the Malaysian ships. The Malaysian navy claims they’ve been hijacked by the terrorists. Colonel, the platform was hit by at least one missile. The helicopter managed to disable one of the ships but was shot down. Dreamland’s been watching the whole thing, but they haven’t been able to communicate with the Whiplash people since the attack. It may just be that they’re too busy”

Jennifer was with the Whiplash people aboard the platform. Dog resisted the impulse to ask if she was okay — he didn’t want to hear that she wasn’t.

“Penn should be there in a few minutes. There’s a possibility the sultan’s forces will be in control of the capital by nightfall,” added Danny. “The people in the city are rebelling against the terrorists. They want their lives back.”

“I can’t blame them,” said Dog, sitting at the portable communications console so he could get an update from Dreamland Command. The console was actually an oversized laptop attached by wire to a satellite antenna.

“Colonel, the platform has been attacked,” said Major Catsman from the control center.

“I’ve heard.”

“We have control of the system, but we have to make some changes so that we can broadcast the signal over to you. Dr. Ruben has an idea of how to do it by changing the programming in your com units. He needs some technical people to implement it.”

“We have very limited personnel here,” said Dog.

“I’ll take what I can get, Colonel,” said Ray Rubeo, appearing on the screen. The scientist’s frown seemed surprisingly reassuring on the small screen.

“All right, then,” said Dog. “Tell me what it is you want me to do”