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wasn’t even going to try. He’d seen what happened to a planet called Umeh. It was a sad day when the best intelligence he had was a long-running series of documentaries from the Cavanagh system that most of the public had ceased to care about, because there were much bigger disasters at home.
    We lost interest in life on other worlds. What does that say about us?
    â€œThey made their mind up a long time ago,” Bari said. “And if it doesn’t suit the FEU, that’s too bad. I’m authorizing use of force under emergency powers. If the FEU crosses that line—turn them back.”
    Normally, a superpower’s warship on the doorstep would have been the most pressing item on a ministerial agenda. But the Eqbas had much bigger guns, they weren’t going to go away, and they were still the best chance this country had of surviving in a deteriorating global environment.
    The Eqbas were Bari’s priority.

2
    For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
    But it’s “Saviour of ’is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;
    An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
    But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!
    â€œTommy,” R UDYARD K IPLING , 1865–1936
    Eqbas flagship: Earth orbit.
    Â 
    Marine Ismat Qureshi stared at the ESF670 rifle in her hands as if she knew it was as obsolete as a Lee-Enfield. “She did it, then.”
    â€œWho did?” asked Barencoin. Beyond the transparent bulkhead was an intense rust red desert. Ade had once thought that all deserts looked the same, but they didn’t. It was red in a way that Mars wasn’t. “Who did what?”
    â€œShan got us all home,” Qureshi said. “She said she’d get us back, and here we are. Back on the rock in one piece. Well, nearly back.”
    Qureshi touched the bulkhead and the image zoomed back with a speed that made Ade’s stomach lurch at the illusion of instant takeoff. All she’d done was change the magnification; they were back in orbit again, looking down on the blue-white globe they’d expected to see. The Arctic icecap was a small patch even in January, and although the very worst climate predictions didn’t appear to have happened yet, it still wasn’t the world they’d left.
    Qureshi zoomed in with the bulkhead again, this time on the Pacific to the east of the Sinostates.
    â€œShit, the coastlines have changed a bit.”
    Barencoin moved the focus. “Look, mum, no islands.”
    â€œGod, look at Australia. The sea’s really carved into the south.”
    â€œThere’s only so much you can do with sea defenses, I suppose.”
    â€œWhose bright idea was it to come back?”
    â€œIzzy, you’re the one who wanted a shag and a real beer. You could have been happy with sobriety and contemplative self-abuse, but no…”
    Qureshi whacked Barencoin sharply on the backside. This had been Ade’s sole objective—getting his people home alive. There was nothing he could do about the state that home was in.
    Six out, six back.
    They’d embarked in EFS Thetis for the Cavanagh’s Star system in 2299, and all that mattered was that they were back in one piece. The scientists who’d gone with them hadn’t been so lucky, but that was their own stupid fault for pissing about with the wess’har; but the rolling clusterfuck that the mission turned into wasn’t the marines’ fault, even if Ade still felt it might have been his. Now they were nearly home— no, not home, not for me —and somehow the injustice and shame of being court-martialed didn’t seem to matter. They’d step off the ship, and people would just look at them as a five-minute wonder, people from the past. The world wasn’t going to go on as normal. The Eqbas were going to turn it upside