1

FIRST STRIKE

Mars was under attack. A huge salvo of missiles, fired from Earth several weeks before, was now five thousand kilometres out from the Red Planet, and the Martian defences were on full alert.

In the ten weeks since Earth’s formal declaration of war, barely a week went by without another wave of missiles reaching Mars. Today’s attack would be the seventh, with a further three already on the way, and each wave contained thousands of warheads. Many were destroyed en route, intercepted by the scores of warships that guarded the outer reaches of Martian-controlled space, and many more would be picked off by the laser defence grid once they reached the upper atmosphere. But some would make it through; they always did. And as each warhead had been programmed to seek out a specific military target, the planet’s defences were slowly, and surely, being worn down.

Colonel Naifeh, senior controller for the Martian defence network (northern sector), was also being worn down. For those past ten weeks he had hardly seen his family, had barely managed more than four or five hours sleep a night, and regularly found himself stuck for days on end inside the dreary bunker complex from where his particular section of the defence grid was operated. He was exhausted and on edge. Those days when the Terran missiles rained down on Mars were always difficult, but today’s shift was being made doubly stressful by the fact that the top brass had decided today would be the perfect opportunity to make the thirty-minute flight from the capital, Minerva, in order to watch the action for themselves.

They were up there now, in the observation gallery behind him. The generals. The ones who were supposed to be running the war, the ones who issued their orders then hid themselves away from the Terran missiles, the ones who reported directly to the president, and always told him the war would be won within six months. But it wasn’t the generals whose presence was making him nervous. It was her: Kalina Kubin, the president’s chief of staff, head of security, and any other title she chose to give herself. She had also come along to observe the day’s events, and her report to the president would no doubt carry a lot more weight.

‘Please,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Let today be a good day.’

The young woman standing behind him stepped forward. ‘What was that, sir?’

‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant Holt. It wasn’t an order, just a little prayer.’

‘That none of the Terran missiles make it through the grid?’

‘No.’ He lowered his voice and risked the briefest of glances up at the observation room window. ‘That the president’s chief of staff doesn’t have to mention me in her report.’

‘Copy that, sir. The woman terrifies me.’

To her face everyone called Kalina Kubin ‘ma’am’, and behind her back they didn’t dare call her anything like the names they would have liked to. She had a way of finding out things – like who was talking about her behind her back – and the list of peo