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littoral or inshore.”
    “Sometimes wish I had been.”
    “You shouldn’t.”
    “Why ever not? The decisive clash of the Frontier War. The one where we finally settled the digimentalists’ hash. Who wouldn’t want to have been there? Glorious moment!”
    Dev did not remember Leather Hill as glorious at all. He remembered day after day of grinding, gruelling attrition. Slow advances, desperate retreats, determined re-entrenchments. Troops thrown headlong into the threshing machine of the Polis+ lines. The Plussers pitching everything they had into the fray, every mech, every organic war beast, crab tank, suicide spider, zombie clone battalion, and blade-flailing samurai robot, all the time proclaiming in high, ululating voices the majesty and wonder of their god the Singularity...
    It was tempting to put Maddox straight, to point out that Leather Hill had not been a victory but rather the final straw for both sides, a mutual massacre so extensive that it had eventually brought them to the negotiating table to sue for peace and sign a treaty.
    But here was a man who relished combat. Lived for it. No amount of slaughter could ever dismay or deter him. Death was just an unavoidable necessity, as far as Maddox was concerned, the fire that he snuggled close to for warmth even though it could burn him. Dev had no hope of persuading him otherwise.
    So all he said was, “You had a good war, I’m guessing.”
    “The best,” Captain Maddox replied. “Loved it. Every minute of it. You’re not one of those limp-wristed liberal pacifists who’d rather we never got involved, are you?”
    “We did what had to be done. I did.”
    Maddox nodded. “Good an answer as any. It’s just that I’ve met some vets who seem to have turned their backs on the whole concept of fighting. They resent it. It’s as though we weren’t engaged in a struggle for the human race’s existence, as though the decade we spent keeping the Plussers at bay was somehow a complete waste of time and a senseless loss of life.” He snorted. “I have no truck with that attitude whatsoever, as I’m sure you’ve gathered.”
    “Ahem.” Handler looked sheepish. “I fear we’re straying from the point, captain.”
    “Men,” said Maddox. “You’re after a detail of my men to accompany you south to the Tropics of Lei Gong, where the Tritonians are raising the biggest ruckus.”
    “I appreciate that it’s a big ask.”
    “It is a big ask. As things stand, I’m under-staffed. I could do with another three stations this size, the better to keep an eye on the Plussers.”
    “There are Plussers on-planet?” Dev said.
    “Not that we know of.” Maddox waved an arm skyward. “The ones out there. What do you think this base’s purpose is, after all? I’ll give you a clue: we’re not here for the surfing and the seafood.”
    “Forward reconnaissance,” said Dev, “that’s what I think.”
    “Clever fellow.”
    “There are deep space radio telescopes orbiting above us, peering into Polis Plus territory. All those people we passed on the way in, I thought they were monitoring Triton, but now I see they’re not. They’re analysing and assessing regional Plusser activity and relaying it to high command on Earth.”
    “Precisely. This isn’t some peacekeeping force I’m in charge of. We’re not policemen. Station Ares is a high-value listening post, and it needs to be properly safeguarded. If the locals are busy attacking Terran interests, who’s to say we’re not next on the list? Meaning I need all hands on deck. That said...”
    Maddox rocked on his heels, mulling things over.
    “We can’t really look the other way and whistle when things are so clearly turning sour,” he said. “And TerCon must have a hunch it’s the Plussers who are getting the Tritonians all uppity, or why else bring ISS in?”
    “Covert Polis Plus plots are kind of our speciality,” Dev said.
    “And if that’s what’s happening, then it’d be a dereliction