He charged onto the command deck, bellowing: “Tracking! Do we have him? Where is he?”“I can tell you where we lost them, sir,” said Tracking. “The lupes must have killed all the corns and the tracking units. The colonel’s disappeared from the grid.”The corns and the tracking units were dead. And what of the Marines wearing them?Farragut stalked the confines of the crowded deck with a ready fist. Nothing safe to hit, and it was all his equipment anyway. “What was Steele’s next target?”“Space control relay tower, five clicks from where the lupes grabbed them.”“Let’s go get it.”“It’s shielded top to bottom, Captain,” Gypsy advised, only after giving the orders to put Merrimack on course to the target.Merrimack descended back into Palatine’s atmosphere. Because the ship and her shields were designed to deflect anything she met head on, she plowed sideways into the relay tower.The enemy shields held, but the tower canted over, its foundations uprooted.Merrimack rose out of the atmosphere to massing Roman warships, avid as piranha, Gladiator in the thick of them.The command crew could tell that the captain wanted to get into a street fight with Numa Pompeii.
