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on my way this afternoon. Have Jenny book the tickets for me and I’ll pick them up at the spaceport.”
    “Good luck,” Ward said. “Don’t forget that I will be expecting regular reports from you as soon as the lockdown is dropped. And don’t forget to get their agreement to regular reports in writing.”
    Adrienne sighed. “I won’t forget,” she assured him. “See you in a few months.”
    She put down the phone and looked into the mirror. The blonde girl with long hair and tired eyes seemed a stranger. She had a lifestyle many would envy, with a chance to travel the world and even fly through interstellar space to another world, but she was tired. Perhaps the lockdown wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe there’d be a chance to relax. Reporters tended to get star treatment unless they embedded in frontline units.
    Shaking her head, Adrienne returned to bed after setting her alarm. The spaceport wasn't that far from her apartment, after all. There’d be enough time to catch forty winks and then take a taxi to the spaceport. Ward could hardly complain if she slept in a little after she’d agreed to go straight out again on assignment, could he?
     
    * * *
     
    Topsham was a pleasant little country town in Devon, England, on the east side of the River Esk. Sergeant Conrad McDonald had fallen in love with it the first time his Royal Marine platoon had driven through the area to attend a wedding in nearby Torquay, and it had been an easy choice to decide to have his own honeymoon there. Transfer to the Federation Marines – who had been crafted along the same lines as the Royal Marines – meant that he couldn't leave the country without special permission, if only because the Federation Marines were kept permanently ready to go into action within 48 hours.
    He looked over at his wife of three days and smiled at her. The wedding had been a brief service in a nearby church, followed by a dinner at a countryside lodge in an area of natural beauty. Conrad had been posted to Clarke and seen video of Terra Nova, but the English countryside was still the most beautiful place in the world to him. Some of the old Bootnecks, the ones who had fought in Afghanistan, claimed that that shithole of a country was remarkably beautiful, but Conrad wasn't inclined to agree. Having someone taking pot-shots at him from a distance or placing IEDs along his path wasn't his idea of a pleasant day out with his wife. Afghanistan was now even more of a shithole than ever, particularly since the NATO forces had been pulled out with indecent haste after First Contact.
    “Fancy a beer?”
    “I could do with one,” Cindy agreed. She was the daughter of an older Royal Marine, now retired and tending a pub in Portsmouth. Her father had threatened all sorts of things, just to see if his prospective son in law could be deterred, before cheerfully standing beside Cindy to give her away at the altar. “Just don’t drink too much or you’ll be paralytic in bed tonight.”
    “Nag, nag, nag,” Conrad said. He leaned close to kiss her, and then reach down to her chest, stroking her breasts gently. They were getting into heavy petting when his bleeper went off. “Oh shit!”
    “Ignore it,” Cindy said. “There isn't time...”
    Conrad shook his head, not without regret. All of the Bootnecks – the slang for Royal Marine had transferred into the Federation Marines – knew better than to ignore their bleepers. No one became a Federation Marine without a perfect service record in their national militaries, if not Special Forces experience in combat. Conrad had taken part in operations in Jeddah five years ago, working with American and French soldiers. It had been enough to get him into the qualification course for the Federation Marines, but sheer determination had taken him the rest of the way. Even hardened SAS blades and Paras had been known to blanch when confronted with the Federation Marine training course.
    He picked up the bleeper –