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see blue."
    "I can handle it."
    "Right," Ferris replied. "Well, if it's all the same to you, I'm not going to stick around when we land. You saved my ass, I give you a lift, we're even."
    Rogue's rifle made a derisive snort. "Huh. Civvies. Got no stomach for a fight, have ya?"
    "You're a gun. What the hell do you know about anything?"
    The GI broke in before Gunnar could frame an angry reply. "He used to be a soldier, like me." He indicated the biochips in his helmet and backpack. "They all were, once."
    Ferris looked away, his expression souring. "Yeah, well, it ain't my war. You know, if I had my head straight, I should land at the nearest Souther base and turn you in. I'm guessing the reward for a deserter is pretty high."
    Rogue gave a dry chuckle. "You're not going to do that. Those MPs weren't busting you up for fun, you must have a Milli-Fuzz warrant on you. You'd be about as welcome as me if you touched down on Souther turf right now." The soldier leaned forward. "And if it's nu-credits you're after, how about a little business proposition?"
    Part of Ferris's mind, the rational, sensible part of it, rang an alarm bell the moment the words left the infantryman's mouth; hooking up with this battlefield horror story would be worse than flying for Gog. And yet... The well-honed sense of greed that guided most of Ferris's deals was smiling widely, sensing the taste of money in the air. "Keep talking," he said automatically.
    "Rogue, why do we need this guy-" began Helm.
    "Quiet," said the GI, removing a cluster of circuits from his pack. "You know what this is, Ferris?"
    The pilot's bloodshot eyes widened. "Datacore, right? Looks like Nort issue."
    "Good call. I stole it from a listening post in the Orange Sea. The contents are less than a day old. Now, I'm willing to bet you know some dealers who'd pay very well for a look at what's on here."
    He nodded. "If it's genuine."
    "Oh, it is," said Bagman. "Count on it."
    Rogue pocketed the device. "I'm gonna need to leave San Diablo in a hurry. You keep the meter running for me and you get the core. Do we have a deal?"
    Ferris didn't hesitate. "Deal."
    "And don't even think about a double-cross," growled Gunnar. "Compared to the guys we've rubbed out, you're a wet fart in a chem-shower. Got me?"
    "Uh-huh," said Ferris. "Nice to be, uh, working with you."
     
    San Diablo, like so many cities on Nu Earth, was built on a foundation of broken promises and half-truths. The Southers had proclaimed it would be a model community, constructed using advanced techniques from the rocky buttes of the NuVada plateau, powered by the fierce energy of the Diablo Springs. The searing hot sulphurous waters that surged and plumed like clockwork would turn massive turbines to light the metropolis, and the population would be able to move from place to place via a state-of-the art sub-train network. It looked good on paper, but like so many things, the war changed it for the worse. Half-built, the vast construction site of a city became the focal point of a Nort armoured thrust from Oman-3, and so began its metamorphosis from township of the future to a nightmare of sniper corridors and six-foot deep drifts of broken glass from the unoccupied skyscrapers.
    The Norts had been holding San Diablo for over four years now and they were well settled in; two divisions of Blackmare tanks kept the land approaches clear and Grendel air patrols swept the skies. On their initial capture of the city, the Nort occupation force was dogged by Souther sappers, who used the incomplete sub-train tunnels to pop up amid ammo dumps and barracks for hit-and-run attacks. Brigadier Trager, the officer in charge of the Nort units, was a clever soldier with an eye for the dramatic; he set geomag charges at points along the tunnels where the thermal vents from the springs were closest and blew them open. When the daily surges came, boiling fluid flooded the San Diablo transit network and every Souther who didn't emerge into the