The Apocalypse Troll
Copyright (c) 1999
ISBN: 0671-57782-4  (hardcover)
ISBN: 0671-57845-6  (paperback)
First Publication January 1999 
by David Weber

troll n. 1. Obsolete. A creature of Scandinavian myth, sometimes portrayed as a mischievous or friendly dwarf, sometimes as a destructive giant, living in caves in the hills. 2. A cyborg fighting machine of the Shirmaksu Empire. [Norwegian, from Old Norse tršll, monster]

-Webster-Wangchi Unabridged
Dictionary of Standard English

Tomas y Hijos, Publishers

2465, Terran Standard Reckoning

CHAPTER ONE

TNS Defender, flagship of BatDiv Ninety-Two, was forty light-months from anywhere in particular, loafing along under half drive and no more than four or five translations into alpha-space, when the atonal shriek of General Quarters howled through her iron bones.

Her crew froze for one incredulous moment. Ridiculous! They were headed for the barn, and the Kangas were penned up in a miserable three star systems, the nearest of them almost exactly one hundred light-years away. What kind of nit-picking silliness could have possessed the Old Lady to call a drill now? 

Then wonder was forgotten as they thundered to their stations.

Colonel Ludmilla Leonovna, commander of BatDiv Ninety-Two's strike group, was immersed in the new history text on her book-viewer when the alarm's high-pitched shriek jerked her away. She was into the passageway outside her quarters before she realized she'd moved, and halfway to the hangar deck before she remembered she'd left the viewer on.

She made a sliding turn around the final bend, ricocheted from a bulkhead in an experienced rebound trajectory, and emerged into the cavernous hangar to find her flight crews already assembling.

"Make a hole!"

Personnel scattered as they recognized her voice, and she went through the sudden opening and into the ready room like a more-or-less guided projectile, then came to a rocking halt beside the duty intelligence officer bent over the battle plot repeater. His face was intent, and her own lips pursed in a silent whistle as her eyes joined his on the crawling light dots on the screen. Her left hand rose to touch the ribbons on her tunic as if in memory, but she caught herself and lowered it deliberately, concentrating on the plot.

There was something odd about this, she thought. Very odd. . . .

Commodore Josephine Santander's stern, composed face appeared on Captain Steven Onslow's com screen almost before the echoes of the alarm had died, though he knew she'd been in her quarters when it sounded.

"Talk to me, Steve," she said without preamble.

"Scan reports a Kanga force closing slowly from about sixty light-hours, Ma'am. Azimuth one-four-niner, elevation two-niner-three. I don't have a firm track yet, but it looks like they'll cross our wake about twenty light-hours behind us. Preliminary IDs look like an Ogre with escorts." 

"An Ogre?" Commodore Santander allowed herself a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, Ma'am. It- Just a moment, Ma'am." He glanced at a side screen connecting him directly to Central Scanning, and his black face tightened.

"We're getting better data now, Ma'am. Scan confirms the Ogre. It's a full battle squadron-so far we've picked up three Trollheims siding her." 

"I see. Put it on Battle One, please." 

Onslow touched a button, and the big holo tank on the flag bridge lit with a three-dee duplicate of his own display. Commodore Santander studied it for a moment.

"We've got their course, Ma'am," Onslow said, and a thin red line appeared on the plot, predicting the hostile force's movements. "They're pulling about four lights relative and translating steadily." 

"Gradient?" the commodore asked sharply.

"Steep, Ma'am. They're eight or nine translations out already. The computer estimates they'll break the beta wall in-" he glanced at his readouts "-about five hours." 

Commodore Santander frowned and swung her command chair slowly from side to side. It was unlike the Kangas to pile on that sort of gradient. They must be in one hell of a hurry to run that big a risk of acoherency.

She wished there were someone she could turn this over to, but Admiral Wierhaus had detached only half of Battle Squadron Ninety for a badly needed overhaul, and she-for her sins-was the senior officer present. They were just over three light-years out of 36 Ophiuchi, and no one closer than the fleet base there could have taken the responsibility for her. She sighed silently. What she wished didn't change what she had.

"All right, Steve. Get Commander Tho to work on a pursuit course. Maximum drive and optimum translation curve." 

"Optimum, Ma'am?" Onslow asked carefully.

"You heard me. Toss out the safety interlocks. They wouldn't be translating that fast if they weren't in a hurry, and there wouldn't be three Trollheims riding herd on them if it wasn't important. So get that course worked out soonest, then put the squadron on it." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Captain Onslow said just a bit too expressionlessly, and Santander turned back to her plot, forcing herself to project an aura of confidence. She understood his unhappiness at pushing the multi-dimensional drive that hard and only wished she had another choice.

Unfortunately, she didn't. The multi-dee could be dangerous, but the old Einsteinian limit held true, more or less, in normal-space. As it happened, the most recent hypotheses suggested that there were ways around that after all-in theory, at least-but the relativity aspects still turned theoretical physicists' hair white. Until they worked the bugs out (if they worked the bugs out) practical spacers would stick with something which at least let them predict the decade of their arrival.

Theoretically, the multi-dee was an elegant solution. If light-speed was inescapable, simply find yourself another dimension in which space was "folded" more tightly, bringing equivalent points "closer" together. That was a horribly crude description, but the commodore had yet to meet anyone who could describe it any better without resorting to pure math models. For her purposes, it worked well enough to visualize the galaxy of the FTL-traveler as consisting of concentric rings of dimensions; by moving "higher" in multi-dimensional space, a ship translated itself into rings with shorter and shorter radii, which meant that the same absolute velocity seemed higher in relation to normal-space. The physicists assured her she wasn't really moving at more than light-speed, but the practical result was FTL travel.

Still, there were limitations. The multi-dee was unusable inside the "Frankel Limit," a flexible point in stellar gravity wells which varied widely depending on spectral class and vessel mass, and though one theoretically could simply translate directly from normal-space into whatever other dimension one chose to use and vice versa, it was far wiser to translate gradually from one to another.

Dimensional energy flux could be vicious, and many things could happen to people who took liberties with the multi-dee. Few were pleasant. The alpha band-the "lowest" of all-was only about twenty dimensions across. At its upper limit, the maximum effective velocity of a ship (relative to normal-space) was about five times light-speed. Higher bands offered greater effective speeds, but at the cost of increasingly unstable energy states and consequently increasing risk to the ship. And there were barriers, still imperfectly understood, between the bands that meant cracking the wall was always risky. If a ship hit the wall just wrong or with the slightest harmonic in her translation field, she simply disappeared. She went acoherent, spread over a multitude of dimensions and forever unable to reconstitute herself, a thought which broke a cold sweat on the most hardened spacehound, for no one knew what happened inside the ship. Did the crew die? Did they go into some sort of stasis? Or did they gradually discover what had happened . . . and that they had become a galactic Flying Dutchman for all eternity? 

Not that there was too much danger in the lower bands. Humans routinely used the beta band, or even the gamma and delta bands, though Kanga vessels ventured as high as the delta band only when speed was of over-riding importance. But no one in his right mind hit the wall as fast and as hard as BatDiv Ninety-Two would have to in order to overhaul these Kangas. Not if they had a choice.

"Course laid in, Ma'am," Captain Onslow said tonelessly.

"Then execute, Captain," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." 

Defender
shuddered as her normal-space drive went suddenly to full power. It felt smooth enough, but Santander knew how dreadfully overdue for overhaul Defender was, and she spared the time for a silent prayer against drive flutter as Defender's three million tons wrapped themselves in the n-drive's space-twisting web and swung in a radical course change. 

The drive surge was disorienting despite the grav compensators, and the light dots of Defender's two sister ships and their escorts followed her on the plot as the under-strength battle division swerved to pursue humanity's mortal enemies across the trackless depths of more than a single space. Mangled ions streamed astern as their massive drives wailed up to max, and the high-pitched whine of the multi-dee generators sang in their bones.

"Time to the wall?" Santander let no awareness of the state of Defender's drive color her question, and Onslow hid a wry, mental grimace of appreciation for her projected sangfroid.

"Fourteen hours, Ma'am," he replied.

"Rate of closure?" 

"We should make up the absolute speed differential in about ten hours, Ma'am. If they were to maintain their present gradient, we'd need over eighty standard hours to match bands. I can't give you a realistic estimate without knowing when they're going to level out." 

"I don't think they're going to," Santander said softly.

"But they'll break the gamma wall in fifty hours at this rate!" 

"That's a heavy force, Captain, a long way from home and in a hell of a hurry. I think they're headed for the delta band-maybe even higher." 

"But, Ma'am-they're Kangas!" Onslow protested.

"True. But they know they're losing, too. They wouldn't pull this big a force off the Line unless its mission was critical, and their current gradient is a pretty good indication of the risks they're willing to run." 

"Yes, Ma'am," Onslow said finally, clearly taken aback by the whole idea.

"Run a track projection," Santander said abruptly. "I know you can't nail it down, but define a general volume for me. As soon as you can, please join Commander Miyagi, Colonel Leonovna and me in the flag briefing room. I've got a bad feeling about this." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Captain Onslow said. He watched his gray-haired commodore's screen blank, and his heart was cold as the vacuum beyond Defender's hull. He had served with Commodore Santander off and on for ten subjective years. He'd seen her in the screaming heart of battle and listened to her voice snapping orders while her ship bucked and jerked under the enemy's pounding, and this was the first time she had ever admitted the least uncertainty. . . .

Commodore Santander's eyes narrowed as Captain Onslow stepped through the briefing room hatch. He looked shaken, and she braced herself for bad news as she waved him to a chair between the two officers already at the table.

Plump, fair Commander Nicolas Miyagi was physically unprepossessing, but his deadly quick mind and a flood of nervous energy poorly suited to his appearance made him an excellent planning officer. Colonel Leonovna, however, was much more than that. Indeed, she was something of a legend in the fleet, and, at a moment like this, Santander was profoundly grateful for her presence.

Commodore Santander had never resented the colonel, but she understood why some did. Leonovna was twenty bio-years older than the commodore, but she looked a quarter of her age in her impeccable Marine uniform. The colonel would never be accused of classic beauty, but her wedge-shaped, high-cheekboned face was striking, and her bright chestnut hair and blue eyes might have been designed expressly to contrast with her space-black tunic.

Yet for all her undeniable attractiveness, Santander reminded herself, Leonovna was lethal. Her golden pilot's wings bore three tiny stars, each representing ten fighter kills, but the ribbons under those wings told the true story. They were headed by one the commodore had seen on precisely three officers during her entire career: the Solarian Grand Cross. Among other things, it entitled Colonel Leonovna to a salute from any officer who hadn't won it, regardless of rank-and, as far as Josephine Santander was concerned, that was an honor to which she was more than welcome.

But that wasn't why so many people resented-and feared-the colonel. Oh, no. Those reactions stemmed from something else entirely, for Ludmilla Leonovna was descended from the Sigma Draconis First Wave.

The commodore shook herself free of her thoughts and cocked an eyebrow at Onslow. "May I assume you have more information now, Steve?" 

"Yes, Ma'am. There's still room for error, but the computers make it an Ogre, three Trollheims, and one Grendel, plus escorts. There may be a Harpy out there, too." 

She nodded calmly, but her mind was anything but calm. A single Ogre was bad-almost five million tons, with the firepower to sterilize a planet-but the Trollheims were worse. Far less massive (they were actually slightly smaller than Defender), they were even more heavily armed, for they were "crewed" by servomechanisms slaved to the cyborgs humans called "Trolls." A Grendel assault transport was bad news for any planet, for it carried an entire planetary assault force of Trolls and their combat mechs, but it meant little in a deep space battle. By the same token, the possibility of a Harpy-class interceptor carrier made a bad situation very little worse, for she could be only a spectator until and unless the action translated down into the alpha or lower beta band.

But any way Santander looked at it, BatDiv Ninety-Two was out-gunned and out-massed-badly-and she was far from certain the traditional human technical advantage could balance these odds. Yet suspicion stuck in her mind like a sliver of glass. The Kangas would never have wandered this far from the desperate defense of their three remaining systems unless they were engaged in something of supreme importance to their ultracautious race.

"That's a heavy weight of metal," was all she said softly.

"Agreed," Onslow said grimly, "but there's more. Commander Tho ran that track projection for you, Ma'am; they're headed for Sol." 

"Sol?" Miyagi sat straighter, his blue eyes sharp. "That's insane! Home Fleet will blow them to plasma a light-month out!" 

"Will they?" Leonovna spoke for the first time, looking like a teenager in her mother's uniform as she raked chestnut hair back from her forehead. "What about their gradient, Captain? Is it holding steady?" 

"No," Onslow said, "it's still rising. I've never heard of anything like it. I wouldn't have believed a Kanga multi-dee could crank out that much power if I wasn't seeing it. We're wound up to max ourselves, and we're only reducing the differential slowly." 

"That's what I was afraid of." Leonovna turned back to the commodore. "Could they be looking for a Takeshita Translation, Ma'am?" 

There was a moment of dead silence. Trust the colonel to say it first, Commodore Santander reflected wryly.

"The thought had crossed my mind," she admitted, and touched her com button. "Navigation," she told the computer, and Commander Tho appeared on her screen. Santander was normally a stickler for courtesy and proper military procedure, but this time she didn't even give Tho time to acknowledge her call.

"Assuming present power levels remain constant, Commander," she said without preamble, "where will our Kangas break the theta wall?" 

"The theta wall?" Commander Tho sounded surprised. "Just a moment, Ma'am." He looked down at his terminal to make calculations, then looked back up. "Assuming they do break it, Ma'am, they'll be two-point-one light-months from Sol with a normal-space velocity just over four-fifty lights. But-" 

"Thank you, Commander." Santander stopped him with a courteous nod, then switched off and looked around the briefing room. There was tension in every face, and she noted tiny beads of sweat at Onslow's temples as she nodded slowly.

"It would seem, Colonel, that you're onto something," she said. "And that, people, leaves us with a little problem." 

Silence answered her, and she turned back to Onslow.

"You say we're closing the differential on them, Captain. How long before we can bring them into MDM range?" 

"Normally, we'd have the range in about-" he glanced at his memo comp "-thirty-two hours, but their gradient's a bitch. Their translation curve is flattening, but so is ours. We've never seen a Kanga multi-dee run at this output, so I can't predict when their gradient will max out. It looks like we still have the edge, but we're into emergency over-boost now." 

He did not add that no one ever used emergency over-boost, even on acceptance trials, and certainly not with drives in need of overhaul. Such demands on the multi-dee generators tremendously multiplied the chance of setting up a disastrous harmonic between them and the normal-space drive which actually moved the ship.

"Assuming we stay coherent," he went on, "I'd guesstimate that we should be able to range on them dimensionally in about two hundred hours." 

"And at that time we'll be where, dimensionally speaking?" 

"Well up into the eta band, Ma'am. And-" he frowned "-as far as I know, no one's ever used MDMs above the delta band. Gunnery isn't sure what effect that will have on the weapons." 

"It looks like we're going to find out." Santander forced herself to speak calmly. "If Colonel Leonovna is right-and I think she is-they're headed for a Takeshita Translation. I know no one's ever tested the theory, but we have to assume that's what they're doing. If so, we know where they're headed. The question is when. Comments?" 

"I'm no dimensional physicist, Ma'am," Colonel Leonovna said after a moment, "but as I understand it, that's a function of too many variables for us to predict. The mass of the vessel, the gradient curve and subjective velocity during translation, the deformation of the multi-dee . . ." She raised her hands, palms up. "All we can say is that if Takeshita's First Hypothesis is right, they'll flip backward in time when they hit the wall and go on translating backward until they hit Sol's Frankel Limit." 

"You're overlooking a few points, Milla," Miyagi said. "Like his Second Hypothesis, whether or not time is mutable, or whether or not anyone can survive a Takeshita Translation in the first place." His tone was argumentative, but he was punching keys on his console as he spoke.

"True," Commodore Santander said, "but we have to assume they can do it unless we stop them. We can't afford to be wrong-not about this one." 

"Agreed, Ma'am." Miyagi nodded. "And Colonel Leonovna's pretty much right about the problems, but we can make a few approximations. We know the mass of an Ogre, and they'll have to balance their multi-dee deformation to match the mass-power curve of the Trollheims' multi-dees and n-drives. . . ." He tapped keys quickly, and the others sat silent to let him work undisturbed. It took several minutes, but he finally looked up with a grim expression.

"Commodore, it's approximate as hell, but it looks like they'll hit the Frankel Limit something on the order of 40,000 years in the past. Could be closer to 90,000 if they lose the Trollheims." 

"They won't." Colonel Leonovna shook her head. "Kangas are sure-thing players," she said softly. "They'll want to be sure Homo sapiens is around." 

"Of course," Commodore Santander murmured. She sat wrapped in her thoughts for a few moments, then shook herself.

"Captain Onslow, pass the word to the other skippers, please. If Defender goes acoherent, whoever's left has to know this is for all the marbles. Breaking off the pursuit is not an option." 

"Yes, Ma'am," Onslow said quietly.

"Very well. I think you can stand the crews down from action stations until we reach effective MDM range, but keep your scanner sections closed up in case they try a surprise launch down-gradient." 

"Agreed, Ma'am." 

"Nick-" she turned to Miyagi "-warm up the simulator. As soon as the Captain has everybody tucked in, we'll start working on tactics." She smiled without a trace of humor. "We're not exactly the War College, but we're all humanity has at the moment.

"Colonel." She met Leonovna's blue eyes levelly. "I hope we won't have anything for you to do, but if we do, it'll be one hell of a dogfight. Inform the squadron commanders on the other ships, then get with your planning officers. Work out the best balance you can between antishipping and antifighter ordnance loads. Then make sure every interceptor is one hundred percent. We can't afford any hangar queens." 

"Understood, Ma'am." 

"All right, people," Santander sighed, rising from her chair. "Carry on. And if you find yourself with any spare time-" she managed a wan smile "-spend it reminding God whose side He's on." 

CHAPTER TWO

Battle Division Ninety-Two, Terran Navy, closed steadily on its foes. They had crossed the beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, and most of the zeta band without loss, but engineers hunched anxiously over their panels as the eta wall approached. The Kangas had already cracked that wall . . . and lost two cruisers doing it. The implications were not lost on BatDiv Ninety-Two.

The commodore sat doing the only thing she could do-projecting a confidence she was far from feeling. She knew her officers knew she was pretending, but their part of the game required them to pretend they believed her anyway. The thought amused her, despite her tension, and she smiled.

"Coming up on the wall, Commodore," Miyagi said softly, and she nodded watching BatDiv Ninety-Two's meticulous formation on her plot. For a unit which had considered itself well behind the front lines, they were doing her proud.

"Update the next drone," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." 

This far out dimensionally it would take weeks for a message drone to reach the nearest fleet base (assuming it made it at all), but at least someone might know what had become of BatDiv Ninety-Two if it never turned up again. And, she was forced to admit, even if they succeeded in stopping the Kangas, the odds were that none of them would ever see Terra again. Her crews were equally aware of it, she thought, and that only made her prouder of them.

"Eta wall in ninety seconds, Ma'am." 

"Launch the drone," she ordered.

Commodore Santander gripped the arms of her command chair and set her teeth. Breaking the wall was always rough, but at this speed and gradient, each wall had been progressively worse, and this time promised to be-

The universe went mad. Defender's mighty bulk whipsawed impossibly, writhing in dreadful stress. Bright, searing motes spangled Santander's vision, and her heart spasmed sharply. The shock was lethal, impossible to endure . . . and over so quickly the mind scarcely had time to note it.

She shook herself doggedly, sagging about her bones, and sensed the same reaction from her bridge crew. Then she focused on her plot once more, and a spasm worse than translation squeezed her heart.

"Ma'am," Miyagi said hoarsely, "Protector's-" 

"I see it, Nick." She closed her eyes in grief. Three million tons of ship and nine thousand people-gone in an instant. And she'd thought Defender's drive was in worse shape than Protector's. . . .

"Launch from Bandit Three!" her tracking officer reported suddenly. "Multiple launch!" 

"Target?" Santander demanded sharply.

"Tracking on Sentinel, Ma'am. Scan shows eight incoming." 

Eight! That was a full load for a Trollheim's stern battery! Heavy fire, yet not heavy enough to be automatically decisive at this range-which sounded more like a Kanga's idea than a Troll's . . . thank God.

"Deploy decoys," she ordered. "Stand by to interdict." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

Both remaining dreadnoughts vomited decoys. Each massed well under a hundred tons, with a drive of strictly limited life, but while they lasted their scan images exactly matched that of the ship which had launched them.

Gunnery's lock on the incoming missiles was tenuous under these conditions, despite the devious scientific tricks which shifted their scan signals up a couple of levels and made them FTL for their current band, yet the idea of evasive action was laughable. It was all up to the decoys and interdiction fields, and at least they had the advantage of human technology.

The Multi-Dimensional Missiles flashing to meet BatDiv Ninety-Two mounted no explosive warheads; they carried something far worse: small, powerful multi-dee generators of their own. They were huge-even Defender could squeeze in only twenty-four similar weapons-but they were carried despite the squeeze they put on magazine space for any other purpose because they were lethal to any multi-dee field. In the microsecond before contact, their onboard generators spun up to full power, and they hit their target's field as a directly opposed surge field, inducing harmonics guaranteed to drive any target into acoherency.

Fortunately, Kanga MDMs were stupid compared to human weapons, and these had to make a half-dozen "downstream" translations to reach Sentinel. If tracking problems afflicted BatDiv Ninety-Two's defenses, they would also force the Kangas' missiles to rely almost entirely on their homing systems, and they were bleeding energy all the way down-gradient. That lost energy would form a "bow-wave," inducing myopia in their onboard tracking systems guaranteed to degrade their accuracy dramatically. It would have required the full efforts of all three Trollheims to guarantee saturation of Sentinel's defenses at this range, and that was why Santander was certain no Troll tactician had ordered this launch.

"Interdiction fields active," Miyagi reported, and she nodded. The last-ditch interdiction fields, like all active defenses, worked best against the longer flight times of missiles chasing from astern. They were simple in concept: focused directional energy fields projected into the paths of incoming attackers. A Guardian-class dreadnought could put out ten of them, but each was relatively tiny. The trick was to drop them exactly into the attacking weapons' line of flight, and when flight time was short and gunnery's lock was weak, it was almost as much a matter of experience and intuition as computer prediction. . . .

Three decoys vanished, and four incoming missiles went with them. Two more MDMs ran headlong into interdiction fields and disappeared into infinity. The remaining pair whizzed past Sentinel at almost the same instant-clean misses, with absolutely no chance of tracking back around at this velocity and translation gradient-and Commodore Josephine Santander realized she had been holding her breath only when she let it out. A third of the enemy's after firepower had just been expended for absolutely no result! 

"All right, Nick," she said flatly, "we should have the range in another few minutes. Dust off the tac net and kill me some Trolls." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am!" 

BatDiv Ninety-Two continued to overhaul at close to ninety percent of light-speed, winding down its translation gradient steadily. Commodore Santander heaved a surreptitious sigh of relief as the multi-dee generators dropped back from emergency over-boost to saner power settings. Something decidedly unnatural had been done to those Kanga multi-dees to wring such performance out of them, but the higher power margin of the human generators was still sufficient-barely-to outperform them. And once they were in the same eta band level, fire control would become far more effective. . . .

"Dropping into dimensional synchronicity-now!" Miyagi reported.

"Gunnery, fire plan alpha!" 

"We have a second launch, Ma'am. Two launches! Bandits Two and Four are launching full salvos at Sentinel!" 

"Replenish the decoys! Stand by to interdict!" 

Five of Defender's MDMs spewed out. Kanga decoys blossomed on her plot as Sentinel spat out a second quintet of missiles, but human MDMs were smarter-and faster-than anything the Kangas had. Even in a pursuit curve, they streaked past the enemy's decoys before the return fire could range on the human lures, and she felt a savage grin stretch her lips as one group of missiles ran in on each of the two rearmost Trollheims.

Troll reflexes were quick, but their predictors were less efficient than BatDiv Ninety-Two's. Interdiction fields destroyed seven missiles in bursts of light like brief suns-but the other three went home, and the capital ship odds were suddenly even.

Yet sixteen Kanga MDMs still raced into the teeth of the depleted squadron's defenses. Decoys called to them and died. Interdiction fields flared with eye-stabbing intensity as they crashed into the barriers and disappeared uselessly. And one slid past everything both dreadnoughts could throw at it.

Josephine Santander bit her lip hard as TNS Sentinel vanished into the howling depths of eternity.

The bridge was silent with the stunned stillness of shock.

"Abort engagement." Santander's soft command seemed shockingly loud in the silence, and Miyagi shook himself, then relayed the order quietly to the rest of her division. She closed her eyes briefly. Sentinel should have come through-but she hadn't. And without Sentinel or Protector to support her, Defender had no MDMs to waste at extended ranges. There were still nine warships in front of her, and she had only nineteen more of the big missiles.

The commodore leaned back in her command chair, fighting the shock and grief of eighteen thousand lost lives as she grappled with the imperatives of her situation. She had Defender, one heavy cruiser, and three destroyers against four capital ships and five light cruisers. As long as she remained astern, she was safe, for the Trollheim had expended her aft MDMs and the Ogre mounted no stern battery . . . but if she stayed behind them, she gave them every defensive advantage there was.

"Captain Onslow," she said calmly, "we'll have to get ahead of them." 

"Understood, Ma'am," the captain's voice was harsh but level. "Going back to over-boost now." 

She closed her ears to the keen of the multi-dee as it rose once more, but she could not close her thoughts. If she lost the ship now, there was no hope, for Defender was her only remaining dreadnought. Her chance of stopping the enemy was horrifyingly slim, but without her flagship, BatDiv Ninety-Two's escorts had none at all.

"Scan reports they're trying to crank their translation fields up a bit, Ma'am," Miyagi said quietly. She opened one eye and gave him what she hoped was a confident look. "They're not getting very far; we're level-reaching on them now." 

"Good." She inhaled. "What's their formation?" 

"The heavies are moving into translation lock, and the cruisers are closing up to cover the rear of their formation, Ma'am." 

"I see." She glanced at her com screen and saw the understanding in Captain Onslow's eyes. It was a smart move, if a cold-blooded one. But then, those cruisers were crewed by Trolls. They were expendable.

In fact, they were more expendable than her own MDMs. Above the beta band, nothing else could get through the interface of a translation field and an n-drive's field. The translation field exerted a "dimensional shear" effect on anything that tried to cross it, while the n-drive distorted the space about a vessel and distributed all the tremendous mass it built up at relativistic velocities across the surface of its field. Either alone could be handled; hitting their combined strength with anything less than an MDM was like trying to split a planet with a claw hammer.

Once a ship dropped into the lower bands or sublight, it was another matter. But the Kangas and their Trolls wouldn't do that until they arrived at Sol, and they could not be permitted to arrive.

Yet the threat to humanity rode in the Ogre, which was precisely why the light cruisers had dropped back between it and Defender. Their translation fields were the only ones the seekers in Defender's MDMs could now "see," and each would cost her two or three-possibly even four-MDMs to pick off. Which meant that she would run out of missiles before she even got a shot at the ship she had to destroy.

"Time to crossover?" she asked Miyagi.

"Forty-five minutes for translation crossover. How soon we can overhaul them spatially depends on how far we want to level-reach on them." 

"And from crossover to the theta wall at their present power curve?" 

"Another hundred and twenty hours, Ma'am." 

"All right." She sat up straight, meeting Onslow's eyes. "Captain, you will reduce drive power to maintain this spatial interval until you have attained a six level advantage, then go to full power and overhaul them. We'll have the scanner advantage for fire control, and we'll just have to take our chances on level drop when we fire." 

"Yes, Ma'am. Understood." 

"Nick," she said softly to Miyagi, "close up the tin cans. Put them between us and the Kangas when we begin to overhaul." 

"Yes, Ma'am. They'll understand." 

"That doesn't make me like it," she said bleakly, then pushed her inner anguish aside. "Once we start overhauling, they'll probably shift formation to keep those cruisers in our way, but we'll be shooting down their throats. Even with level drop, that should let us take out a cruiser with only a pair of missiles, and if we can blow them out of the way, we'll have a shot at the leader. That's all we really need. Just one good shot at him."

"Agreed, Ma'am. But what about their translation lock?" 

She knew what he meant. By locking their multi-dees in phase, the enemy ships presented what was, in effect, a single target to Defender's MDMs. It was a colossal game of Russian roulette, for the level drop penalties meant that once her missiles were launched, Defender had no means to influence the ships they actually targeted. And just to make things more difficult, the massed defensive systems of all the targets could combine against her salvos.

"We'll just have to do our best, Nick. It's the only game in town." 

She brooded over her plot a moment longer, then sighed.

"All right, Commander," she said finally, "get those destroyers moving." 

CHAPTER THREE

Commodore Santander gripped her command chair arms to still the tremble of her fingers, and her face was haunted. Fifty-three sleepless hours might explain her gaunt, hollowed cheeks, but not the ghosts behind her eyes.

A strange and terrible tension had invaded Defender's heart, and the viscous air shimmered with a vibration as eerie as it was indefinable. It wore away at tempers and fogged minds which sought to concentrate on vital tasks, and voices sounded tinny and unnatural, falling upon the ear with a peculiar brittleness-a sense of dŽjˆ vu, as if each sentence were an echo of something which had been said but a moment before.

She no longer tried to hide her fear. It would have been pointless, for her people all shared it, just as they shared her exhaustion. Worse, every one of them knew what she knew: the fate of the human race rested upon their shoulders . . . and they were failing.

"All right, Steve," she said, "how bad is it?" 

"Bad, Ma'am," Onslow said heavily. His screen image's shoulders hunched against the exhaustion and strain trying to drag him under, and his sentences were short and choppy. "No one's ever been this high in the eta band. Our scanners are packing up; they can't make the shift over the theta wall. We tried linking with Dauntless, but her scanners are in even worse shape." He drew a ragged breath and rubbed his puffy eyes. "I can't lock in a good solution, Ma'am. I'm sorry." 

Santander closed her eyes under the strain of a responsibility greater than any task force or fleet commander had ever faced. One she faced with but a single dreadnought and only one heavy cruiser.

Beyond the hull, Defender's translation field was a crackling corona, a crawling sheet of icy flame no human had ever seen before. The eta band was worse than anyone had thought, and conditions in its uppermost levels were indescribable. Humanity had no business in this haunted, curdled space, in these distorted dimensions where even time felt twisted and alien. But they were here, and all of her destroyers had died, absorbing missiles meant for Defender, to get them here.

She shook the thought aside, forcing her mind back to the task at hand. She had one MDM left-only one. The Kanga cruisers and the Grendel were as dead as her destroyers, but three heavy units remained . . . three targets for her single missile. They had expended most of their own MDMs on her destroyers, but her increasingly unreliable instruments could not tell her exactly how many they still had. It could be as few as two or as many as six-she simply didn't know. And the only way to find out, she thought grimly, was to offer her own ship as a target.

"All right," she said finally, "how close do we have to get under these . . . conditions?" 

"Two hundred thousand kilometers, Ma'am." Onslow's mouth twisted with the bitter taste of his words, and she flinched inwardly. Less than one light-second? That wasn't point-blank-it was suicide range. Under normal circumstances, that was. Here? Who could know? "Even then," Onslow continued slowly, "Gunnery can't guarantee to hit the Ogre. They're still holding translation lock-God knows how-and sensor conditions are so bad that the seeking systems can't possibly differentiate target sources, however close we come." 

"All right," she sighed. "We're sixty-five hours from the theta wall, but our options won't change." She met his eyes levelly and drew a breath. "Close the range, Captain," she said formally. "Get us close enough to score just once more." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Onslow said simply, and the drive shrieked as it was suddenly reversed.

The abrupt alteration was a strange and terrible anguish in the uncanny surrealism of the eta bands, and Santander fought the quivering pain in her muscles and nerves, watching her plot as the range to the fuzzily defined dots of the enemy shrank. The glowing diamond of her last escort clung immovably to Defender's flank as the heavy cruiser Dauntless matched her flagship's maneuver.

"Range twelve light-seconds," Miyagi reported. "Eleven . . . ten . . . nine . . ." 

"Bandits are slowing," Tracking reported suddenly, and Santander bit her lip. The Kangas had been glued to full power since detection, disdaining any tactical maneuvers as they followed the precise, preplanned course to their Takeshita Translation. She'd hoped they wouldn't change that now.

"Range still dropping," Miyagi said tersely, "but the closure rate's decreasing. Eight light-seconds. Coming up on seven." 

"Hostile launch!" Tracking snapped. "Multiple launch. Four-no, five incoming! Time to impact twelve seconds!" 

Santander's eyes met Onslow's in horror, but neither spoke the truth both recognized. The enemy had preempted their own attack. His MDMs would arrive before Defender reached launch range. They had no way to know how good his targeting was. All they knew was that, unlike them, he was firing up-gradient, which meant his missiles' seekers would be far less degraded by the local conditions . . . and that there were five of them. The Kangas' odds of scoring a hit had to be several times as great as Defender's, which meant Santander had to launch now. She had to get her own MDM off before the incoming fire killed her ship and destroyed the weapon in its tube. But she couldn't hope to hit her target at this range and under these conditions, and the commodore's brain whirred desperately as she tried to find some answer-any answer-to her impossible dilemma. Only there wasn't one. There was only-

"Ma'am! Dauntless-!" Her plotting officer's shout whipped her eyes back to the display, and a fist squeezed her heart as the heavy cruiser began to move relative to Defender. Slowly, at first, then more rapidly. The commodore had a moment to realize that Captain McInnis had rammed his drive power past the red line. He'd known this moment might come, and her mind shied like a wounded horse from the thought of what conditions must be like aboard the cruiser as she crashed across the screaming distortion of Defender's drive wake and offered herself to Defender's executioners.

There was time for no more thoughts than that as Dauntless met the incoming missiles head-on. No more time for thought-only for grief as her last remaining escort vanished in a wracking spasm of outraged space-time and took the missiles with her.

"He did it," she said softly, appalled by the cruiser's sacrifice. Yet elation warred with her horror, and the realization touched her with self-loathing. Dauntless had died, but now no Kanga MDMs remained, and that was the only thing she could think about now. No other consideration was acceptable, and she kept her gaze on her plot, refusing to meet any other eyes.

"Captain Onslow," she heard her voice as if it belonged to someone else, "hold your fire, please. We will close to ten thousand kilometers and match speed and translation with the enemy before we attack." 

The range dropped unsteadily, and inner ears rebelled as drive surges added to the stress already afflicting Defender's crew. The Kanga commander was desperate, Santander thought coldly. He'd shot his bolt, freeing Defender to seek optimum firing range at last, and he juggled his own drive frantically. But there was little he could do, and the dreadnought closed grimly, matching him lunge for lunge, sliding inexorably closer until the fringe of her own translation field was barely five hundred kilometers clear of her foes'. She dared come no closer, but at this range her missile could not miss at least one of her enemies, despite the fuzziness of her fire control. Not even Trolls would have time to react before it struck home, yet even at this short a range, fire control couldn't guarantee which enemy their bird would destroy.

Commodore Santander sat tensely in her command chair, knuckles white on its arms. One last shot . . . one chance in three. . . .

"We're as close as we can come, Ma'am," Onslow reported tersely.

"Very well, Captain. Fire at will." 

"Missile away-now!" 

It happened like lightning. There was scarcely time to register the launch before the missile flashed into the enemy formation . . .

. . . and struck the remaining Trollheim full on.

Josephine Santander sagged in her command chair. They'd come so far, paid so much, and they'd missed. Defender rode the Kangas' flank at less than a light-second, and it was over. The Ogre still had to make its final translation, but she couldn't stop it. She couldn't even follow into normal-space to engage the Kangas there. They knew when they were going, and even if she'd known that herself, it would have taken months of calculations by the best theoretical physicists to put Defender on the same gradient and follow them.

She'd failed. The bastards were going to get away with it, and there was noth-

But then her brain hiccuped suddenly, and she straightened slowly as an idea flickered. It was preposterous-insane!-but it refused to release her. . . .

She raised her head, looking into the screen to Defender's command bridge. Onslow had aged fifty years in the last twenty seconds, she thought, and his shoulders were as slumped as hers had been.

"Captain?" He didn't even blink. "Captain Onslow!" His dulled eyes flickered, and a tremor seemed to run through him.

"Yes, Ma'am?" His voice was mechanical, responding out of rote reflex.

"We may still have an option, Steve." He looked at her incredulously. "We've still got Defender's multi-dee," she said softly.

His face was blank for an instant, and then understanding flared.

"Of course." Life returned to his eyes-the blazing life of a man who has accepted the inevitability of something far worse than his own death and then been shown a possible way to avert it after all-and suppressed excitement lent his voice vibrancy as he nodded jerkily. "Of course!" 

Animation rippled across the flag bridge as the commodore's words sank home. Defender herself could become a weapon. It had never been tried before-as far as anyone knew-but it was a chance.

"Nick?" Santander watched Miyagi fight off his own despair to grapple with the new idea. His was the closest thing she had to an expert opinion.

"I . . . don't know, Ma'am." He closed his eyes in thought, his tone almost absent. "It might work. But it wouldn't be like an MDM . . . not a surge so much as a brute force hammer. There's the Harpy, too, and the interference of our n-space drive. . . ." 

Sweat gleamed on his forehead as he tried to envision the consequences, then he opened his eyes and met her gaze squarely.

"I'll need to build some computer models, Ma'am. It might take several hours." 

"In that case," she said, glancing at the chronometer, "you'd better get started. Even with their evasive maneuvering, we're only about sixty hours from the wall." 

"Yes, Ma'am. I'll get on it right away." 

"Good, Nick." She stood with a chuckle that surprised her even more than the others. "Meanwhile, I'm going to take a shower and grab a little nap." She reached out in a rare gesture of affection and squeezed his shoulder. "Buzz me the minute you have anything." 

Commodore Josephine Santander walked slowly from her bridge. As she stepped through the blast doors into the passage, she heard Miyagi calling sickbay for another stim shot.

"All right, Nick." 

Commodore Santander leaned back in her chair, incredibly restored by a shower and eight straight hours of sleep. Her crushing sense of failure had been driven back by the forlorn hope of her inspiration, and her face was calm once more, filled only with sympathy for the bright, febrile light in Miyagi's eyes. He was paying the price for seventy hours of strain and stim shots, and his glittering gaze held a mesmerizing quality, like the fiery intensity of a prophet.

"I can't give you a definitive answer, Ma'am, not without more time than we have, but the models suggest three possible outcomes." His voice was as tight and intense as his eyes.

"First, and most probable, we'll all simply go acoherent." He said it without a quaver, and she nodded. Survival was no longer a factor.

"Second, and almost as probable, all three ships will drop into normal-space with fused multi-dees and heavy internal damage-possibly enough to destroy them. If our own multi-dee were up to Fleet norms, we'd have a better chance of surviving than they would; as it is, it's a toss-up. Either way, though, they'll be light-months from Sol without FTL capability and in easy detection range of Home Fleet's pickets. Which-" his grin was feral, flickering with drug-induced energy "-means the bastards are dead." 

Captain Onslow made a savage, wordless sound. He, too, had rested, yet he was not so much restored as refocused, with a flint-steel determination to destroy his enemies. Steven Onslow was a wolf, his teeth death-locked on a rival's throat, unwilling and possibly even unable to relinquish his hold.

"Third, we may push them right through the theta wall," Miyagi went on. "I can't predict what will happen if we do, Ma'am, but I suspect it will still throw them into a Takeshita Translation. On the other hand, our hitting them will screw their flight profile all to hell. We might throw them further back than they planned, but it's more likely they'll come up short, and the degree of deviation is absolutely unpredictable, whichever 'direction' it goes. There's even a faint possibility we could toss them into the future. In any case, the further from their planned break point we hit them, the wider the diversion will be." 

"I see. And if they go through the theta wall, what happens to us?" 

"Commodore, I'd say there's about an even chance we'd go with them. It depends on two factors: the exact mass-power curve of our translation fields at impact and how close to phased our n-drives are. Our scan data's too unreliable for us to match deliberately, but the tolerance is pretty wide-assuming my model's sound." He showed his teeth again. "I'm wired to the eyebrows, Ma'am, but I think it's solid." 

"And if we go with them?" 

"Then we're probably looking at something very like possibility two, Ma'am. All three of us in normal-space, no multi-dees, and unpredictable degrees of damage all round. The odds are we'd bleed a lot of the surge in the translation, so the damage might be less extensive than if we don't break the wall, but that's only a guess." 

"I see." She looked at her two ranking officers. "Captain Onslow?" 

"I say do it," the captain said savagely. "Even if we don't kill them outright, we may drop them in short enough for Home Fleet-or a fleet, anyway-to be waiting for them." 

"Colonel?" The commodore swiveled her gaze to Leonovna.

"The Captain is right, Ma'am. It's our only option." 

"I agree," Santander said calmly. She folded her hands on the table in front of her and nodded. "Very well, we'll try it. But when we do, we'll play the odds-all of them. If we do drop into normal-space and all three of us survive, we'll have our hands full. The Ogre's got at least as much firepower as we do and a lot more defense, and they still have their Harpy." She nodded to Leonovna. "Assuming she survives-and we do, of course-your interceptors are going to be outnumbered three to one. Can you hack those odds, Colonel?" 

"My birds are better, Ma'am, and so are my people. We'll keep the Harpy off your back." Leonovna's smile echoed Miyagi's.

"Good. But, Colonel, remember this-" Santander stabbed her with her eyes "-the carrier is secondary. The Ogre and the Kangas are what matter. If even one Kanga tender gets away, you will break off the engagement and pursue it. Kill that tender, Colonel Leonovna! If they dust the planet, everything we've done is meaningless. Is that understood?" 

"Yes, Ma'am," the colonel said softly.

"All right." Santander glanced at the bulkhead chronometer. "We're still over forty hours from the wall. I'll give you twelve hours to make your final preparations. Captain, have Doctor Pangborn and his staff get out their injectors. I want every member of this crew to get at least six hours of sleep during that time if it takes every trank in his dispensary." 

"Yes, Ma'am." 

"Very well," the commodore said. "Let's get to it, then." She rose, and the others rose with her, but she stopped them with a raised hand.

"In case I don't get a chance to tell you afterwards," she said quietly, "I just want to say well done . . . and thank you." 

She held their eyes for a moment, then turned away before they could respond. They followed her from the briefing room in silence.

" . . . so our attack plans have to be extremely tentative," Major Turabian, Strike/Interceptor Squadron 113's exec, said. "Red and Blue Sections will be tasked with fighter suppression and armed accordingly. White and Gold Sections will carry mixed armament. White Section's primary target will be the Harpy; Gold Section will form the reserve with primary responsibility for nailing any Kanga tenders. Captain Hanriot will lead Red Section, Captain Johnson will have Blue, and I will lead White. The Colonel will lead Gold Section and exercise overall tactical command. Primary and alternate com frequencies are already loaded into your birds' computers." 

He sat down, and Ludmilla Leonovna crossed slowly to the traditional lectern, her hands clasped behind her. Interceptors required youth and fast reflexes, and the colonel was by far the oldest person in the squadron, yet she looked absurdly young as she faced her crews. Like them, she wore her flight suit, her side arm riding low on her hip, and if she looked like the newest of new recruits, none of them were fooled. This was a veteran outfit, all of whom had flown combat with the colonel before.

"All right, people," she said softly. "I only have a few points.

"First, you can all count, so you know casualties will be high-accept that now, but don't resign yourself to being one of them." Her voice was cool and calm; only her sharpened eyes betrayed her own tension. "Anyone who goes out expecting to get the chop will get the chop, and we need to kill Trolls and Kangas, not ourselves.

"Second, you've got better onboard systems, smarter weapons, and more reach-maintain separation and use them. Don't screw around in gun range.

"Third, kill any Kanga tender any way you can out here, but if it turns into a stern chase, either get them short of atmosphere or make damned sure you use a heavy nuke. We don't know what kind of bugs they're carrying, and if they get to air-breathing range, any non-nuke shot could be as bad as not shooting at all." 

She paused and surveyed them levelly once more, as if to make certain that they all understood.

"And fourth, remember this: Whenever we are when the shit stops flying, we're going to be in life-support range of a planet full of humans. And humans, people, have bars." A soft chuckle ran through the assembled flight crews. "And while-" she flashed a wry smile "-I am the sole member of this squadron who doesn't partake, I realize full well that I'm going to have to buy every one of you thirsty bastards a drink. But I warn you-I'll be damned if I'll listen to more than one glorious lie from each of you!" 

"All right," she said when the laughs died away, "let's saddle up." And her flight crews funneled through the hangar deck hatch.

Colonel Leonovna strode briskly to her own interceptor. Some pilots carried out a meticulous inspection of their birds before any launch, but she wasn't one of them. Sergeant Tetlow had looked after her fighter for over three subjective years; if anything ever had been wrong, Tetlow had fixed it long since.

Yet this time she paused by the ladder, looking up at the sleek shape of her weapon. A hundred meters from blunt nose to bulbous stern but barely twenty in diameter, the interceptor crouched in her launch cradle like Death waiting to pounce. Her hull bore a stenciled ID number, but, like most such craft, she had been named. Yet this name had been chosen not by her pilot but by her tech crew, who knew all about their squadron CO's heritage and her fascination with history. The name Sputnik Too gleamed in scarlet above the golden stencils of thirty-four oddly shaped silhouettes: one for each fighter Ludmilla Leonovna had killed. Under them were thirteen larger silhouettes, representing the starships squadrons under her command had destroyed. She looked at them silently, then reached up to touch the lowest-and largest-symbol, the silhouette of an Ogre-class capital ship. Only her interceptor had returned from that multisquadron strike.

Sergeant Tetlow was there when she lowered her hand. It was impossible to tell from his demeanor that he knew he was almost certainly about to die, and the colonel squeezed his shoulder gently.

"Ready to flit, Sarge?" 

"Green and go, Ma'am." He nodded. "Give 'em hell." 

"With pitchforks," she agreed, and climbed the ladder without another backward glance. She had to find her grip by feel, for her eyes burned strangely, and it was hard to focus.

She settled into her padded seat before the steady green and amber glow of her instruments. Light from the hangar deck flooded through the centimeter-thick armorplast overhead, and despite the grim situation, her lips quirked with familiar amusement. The human eye was useless in deep space combat, but something about human design philosophies demanded a clear all-around view anyway.

The familiarity of the thought put her back on balance, and she pulled her helmet down against the tension of the connector cables. She drew it over her head, sealing it to her flight suit, and the flat electrodes pressed her temples.

"Activate," she said clearly, and shuddered as the familiar sensory shock hit her. Sputnik had a complete set of manual controls, but using them in combat gave a Troll too much advantage, so human ingenuity had provided another solution. Her nerves seemed to reach out, expanding, weaving their neurons into the circuits of the gleaming weapon which surrounded her. Direct computer feeds spilled information into her brain-weapon loads, targeting systems, flight status. . . .

Even after all these years, the rush of power was like a foretaste of godhood, she thought, dimly aware of her crewmates strapping in. Unlike the other ships in the squadron, Sputnik and Major Turabian's Excalibur carried three-man crews, not two. Each of her pilots had an electronic systems officer to run the electronic warfare systems and monitor all functions not directly linked to combat and maneuvering, but she and her exec had a com operator, as well, who also served a plotting function for engagements which could range over cubic light-minutes of space.

She grinned as Lieutenant O'Donnel, her ESO, plugged in and she felt an echo of her own sense of invincibility in his cross-feed.

"Ready, Anwar?" 

"All systems green and go, Skipper." 

"Prissy?" 

"Green board, Skip," Sergeant Priscilla Goering announced from her isolated compartment behind them.

"Good." Leonovna pressed a button that lit Sputnik's light on the hangar deck officer's console, then settled down in her seat. "And now, boys and girls," she announced over the squadron net, "we wait." 

"Ma'am," Captain Onslow said formally to the commodore who no longer had a battle division, "we are closed up at action stations." 

"Thank you, Captain." Commodore Santander glanced at her plot. Defender had climbed slightly "higher" in the eta band than her quarry and dropped astern. According to Miyagi's models, their best chance for success was to strike their enemies' translation field down-gradient at a slightly accelerating velocity. It was grimly ironic, she reflected, how synonymous "success" and "self-immolation" had become.

She touched a com button.

"Stand by, Colonel Leonovna," she said.

"Standing by, Commodore." The strike group commander sounded as unflappable as ever, and Santander's lips twitched in a ghost of a smile.

"Very well, Captain. Execute your orders." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Captain Onslow said, and Defender's bones came alive one last time with the high-pitched scream of a multi-dee in over-boost as she stooped upon her foes.

The glaring corona of Defender's translation field filled the visual display-a chill, beautiful forest fire that dazzled the eye and hid the featureless gray of alien dimensions. It beckoned and whispered to Commodore Santander, but she wrenched her eyes from it with an effort and watched the plot as the diamond dot of her last vessel plunged towards the tight-linked rubies of her foes. The range fell with terrifying speed, and she had time only for one last surge of adrenaline and excitement and fear and determination.

Then they struck, and Josephine Santander screamed. She wasn't alone. No human frame could endure that crawling, twisting agony in silence. It was like every translation she'd ever endured, combined into one terrible whole and cubed. She writhed in her chair, eyes blind and staring, nerves whiplashing within her flesh as overloaded synapses shrieked in protest. It went on and on and on-an eternity wrapped in a heartbeat-and ended so abruptly it nearly broke her mind.

She moaned softly, pushing herself weakly up in her chair, feeling the warm trickle of blood over her chin and down her upper lip. She shook herself groggily, fighting for control, and looked around her flag bridge.

Commander Miyagi hung in his combat harness, his blood-frothed lips blue. He was not breathing, and beyond him a scanner tech was curled as close as her own harness allowed to a fetal knot while a high, endless mewl oozed from her. Santander had no idea how long that terrible moment had lasted, but she felt her own heart still shivering madly within her chest as she reached shakily for her com controls.

Her screen lit a moment before she touched them. Captain Onslow looked out at her, and she'd never seen him look so . . . dreadful. His face was cold, hammered iron, but there was a terrible, hungry fire in his eyes. He was no longer simply a warrior; he had become a killer.

"Commodore." His voice was hoarse as he wiped blood off his chin and glanced at his reddened fingers almost incuriously.

"Captain," she managed in return. "We've . . . got some casualties up here," she said. "One of the scan crew . . . and Nick. . . ." 

"Here, too, Ma'am," Onslow said, and an echo of the horror they'd endured touched his voice. But he shook himself, and a bleak smile mingled with the cold fire of his hunger. "Scanning's still here, Ma'am, and Nick's-" he faltered for a moment, then made his voice go firm once more. "Nick's models seem to be holding; we've got a gradient I never saw before: straight down. Of course, we've got a long way to fall. We should hit bottom in about twenty minutes . . . and both of those bastards are coming with us." 

"Damage?" she asked, feeling something almost like life spreading back through her abused flesh.

"Multi-dee's fused, Ma'am, and Power Two and Four went with it. N-drive is functional. We've lost about twenty percent of our computers and a quarter of our energy weapons. Defensive systems are generally intact. Personnel losses are still coming in." Pride in his ship strengthened his voice. "She's hurt, Ma'am, but the old bitch is still game!" 

"Good, Captain," Commodore Santander said. "Stand by to engage." 

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." 

Three ships fell through the depths of dimensions not their own, plunging like storm-driven mariners towards the reefs of normal-space, and throughout Defender's hull dead or incapacitated men and women were hauled away from their consoles. Casualties were worst closest to the fused multi-dee at her core, and the interceptor squadron, isolated by the hangar deck's location just inside her armored skin, had come through dazed but intact. Now Colonel Leonovna scanned the data feeding into her brain as the moment for launch approached. Drive and translation fields came to standby aboard thirty-two sleek and deadly vessels, and she felt the electronic caress of the launch field on her fighter's flanks like silken fingers.

"Stand by," she told her crews, and then the seconds were flashing by and the moment was no longer approaching-it was there.

"Hangar Deck, Bridge: launch interceptors." 

"Launching, aye, Bridge!" the hangar deck officer snapped, and the launch fields focused tight. "Good hunting, Colonel!" an unknown voice called, and then the fields hurled the fighters from their launch cradles and drive interface penetration whiplashed through bone and sinew.

Leonovna took the shock with the ease of long practice, hardly even noticing the sudden, high-pitched squeal of her fighter's n-drive as Sputnik crashed through Defender's drive into space. The awareness of godhead was upon her, and her senses reached out into the cold, black-velvet vastness upon the wizardry of her scanners. The emptiness which had frightened her so the first time she tasted it had become an old friend long, long ago, and her magic vision saw and absorbed everything in the flicker of a thought.

The Ogre was already turning to flee Defender, and there was the Harpy, to the side and "below" the others. She concentrated on the carrier as the first missiles went out from the warring capital ships, and Troll interceptors were already spitting from their bays to meet her fighters.

"Red Leader, take the first wave head-on. White Section, get that bitch before she respots her cradles! Blue Section, cover the strike." 

Acknowledgments flowed over her, and her unfocused eyes were dreamy as her brain digested direct sensory input with long-trained efficiency. She absorbed and registered everything as the first wave of ripple-launched homing missiles went out from Red Section and White Section snarled up and around, going in over the Troll fighters under Blue Section's protective fire. Enemy interceptors tore apart or exploded, but there were so many of them! Even more than predicted! They must have fitted extra cradles and stuffed that Harpy to the deckheads, she thought, but if they had, something else had to have come out, and it might just be-

White Section's heavy ship-killers speared out, and the battle screen which interdicted them was far weaker than it ought to have been. The protective force field wavered as the first warhead detonated, and Leonovna felt a stab of elation. Turabian's impeccable attack had been sequenced to take out full-strength battle screens; the understrength defenses he actually faced were hopelessly outclassed. Fireballs polarized visual pickups and clawed her electronic senses with thunderbolts of static, and a glaring patch of localized failure crawled along the Harpy's screens just as the second wave of ship-killers arrived. The heavy missiles plunged through the opened chink, and two million tons of carrier buckled, broke, and vaporized as megaton-range warheads savaged unshielded plating.

She took her second wave with her, but her first outnumbered One-Thirteen's fighters by more than two to one, and human fighters began to die.

"Blue Section, take them from behind. White Section, form on me. And maintain separation, damn it!" 

Acknowledgments came through the blur of battle chatter, mingled with shouts of triumph and the sudden, mid-word interruption of thermonuclear death. Even with her computer sensors, she had trouble sorting out details, but the pattern was clear. Her crews had struck first and hard with their longer-ranged missiles, but the number of first-wave Troll fighters was far higher than expected, and their massed missile fire had saturated the defenses of more than one of her interceptors. Red Section had lost three already, and Blue was down two. White Section had lost none on the run against the Harpy, but Lieutenant Kittihawk paid for their success. Elated by the destruction of their target, she allowed her attention to waver, and a Troll rolled in behind her before she could evade.

The Troll fighters lacked humanity's advanced tracking systems, "smart" missiles, and sophisticated ECM, and their less efficient drives were slower to accelerate. But the cyborgs had a reaction speed few humans could match, even with their neural links, and their fighters were marginally faster and far, far more maneuverable than any human-crewed interceptor ever designed. At knife range, nothing in the galaxy was as deadly as a Troll interceptor, and snarling power guns ripped Kittihawk's fighter apart.

The victorious Troll tried to swing onto her wingman, but Casper Turabian was there, raging back and around in a vicious climbing attack that took it from below like a shark.

Twenty percent of Leonovna's fighters were gone, but the Troll losses were even higher, and her order to open the range took effect quickly. The humans used their higher power curves ruthlessly, accelerating clear to use their missiles like snipers before the Trolls could close again. Gold Section joined them, streaking in behind the turning Trolls, and an almost orgasmic thrill ran through the colonel as her first missile dropped free and guided. She picked another victim, lips wrinkled back in a hunting tiger's snarl as she tracked her second target and-

"Defender to Strike Leader!" 

She broke instantly, turning away from the snarling ball of fighters to refocus her attention, and her wingman came with her, guarding her back. The capital ships had drawn well away from the fighters, and she blanched as the fury of their engagement registered.

Both ships were haloed in escaping atmosphere and water vapor, trailed by drifting wakes of molten debris, and she winced as fireballs savaged Defender's battle screens, frantic to claw a hole for follow-up fire. The Ogre was in trouble, too, and the big ship staggered as one of Defender's heavy missiles exploded just short of her heavily armored hull, but her sheer size was gradually overpowering the smaller human-crewed ship.

"Defender, this is Strike Leader," she snapped. "Go ahead." 

"Colonel, this is the Captain." The blurred voice could have been anyone as radiation threshed the com channels with static. "The Commodore's had it. We've got heavy damage, but this bastard isn't getting away." More explosions flared, and the vicious thrust and parry of energy weapons was like ozone on her skin through her sensors.

"They're launching tenders with escort, Strike Leader. Go get 'em." 

"Understood, Defender. I'm sending White Section to your assistance. Red and Blue will-" 

"Don't bother, Strike Leader," Onslow said distantly through the crashing static. "Just kill those fucking tenders. See you in Hell, Col-" 

The channel went dead as TNS Defender rammed her massive enemy and their outraged drive fields exploded like a nova.

courage 
n. 1. The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or 2. vicissitudes with self-possession and resolution; valor; bravery. [From Middle English corage, heart, as representing the seat of feeling.] 

-Webster-Wangchi Unabridged
Dictionary of Standard English

Tomas y Hijos, Publishers

2465, Terran Standard Reckoning

CHAPTER FOUR

"What the hell?!" 

Master Sergeant Andrew Slocum chopped himself off and felt his face tighten. Colonel Archer had the duty for the US Space Defense Operations Center, and he disapproved of profanity and unprofessional conduct generally. But he was sipping coffee at the far end of the subterranean room-fortunately-and Slocum cleared his throat and raised his voice.

"Colonel? Could you take a look at this, Sir?" 

"Hm?" Colonel Archer moved towards Slocum with a raised eyebrow. One thing about the colonel, Slocum thought; he was a pain about some things, but he respected his people's judgment enough not to waste time with dumbass questions. He bent over the sergeant's shoulder to peer at the scope.

He didn't react at all for an instant, then he stiffened in shock.

"What the h-" He cut himself off, and Slocum felt an insane urge to giggle as the colonel leaned even closer. "Why didn't you report this sooner, Sergeant?" Archer demanded.

"Because they just popped onto the scope, Sir. Right about there." Slocum tapped the screen with a fingertip, and Archer frowned. A bright red line indicated the unknowns' track as they stabbed down into his area of responsibility, and he didn't like what he saw.

"Why didn't SPASUR alert us sooner?" he demanded irately. SDOC's primary mission was the management of the G-PALS system which defended the United States against limited missile strikes. The latest carve up of responsibilities had given it control of virtually all of the US military's ground-watch and near-space surveillance systems, plus general management of the information stream, but the actual monitoring of space beyond three hundred miles' altitude remained the responsibility of other commands, like the Navy-run Space Surveillance System Command. Archer had always had his doubts about the Squids' suitability to run what obviously should have been an Air Force command properly, but he'd never seriously expected them to drop the ball this badly.

"SPASUR, did report them, Sir," Slocum told him. "They only picked them up-" he glanced at a digital time display "-two-seven-five seconds ago. It's on the tape, Sir," he added respectfully.

"Impossible!" Colonel Archer muttered.

"I think so, too, Sir-but there they are." 

"Well, they can't be a hostile launch. Not coming in from that far out," Archer said to himself. "What's their exact location, Sergeant?"

"Longitude twenty-one north, latitude one-five-five west, altitude nine-six miles and still dropping. They're out over the Pacific. Looks like they'll cross central Mexico on a rough heading of one-six-oh magnetic, but they're pulling a little further north. Course is pretty irregular, Sir, but they're slowing. They were pulling over seventeen thousand knots when we first picked them up-they're down to just over seven thousand now." 

"What?" 

"That's what it says here, Sir . . . and that means they've lost over ten thousand knots in the last four minutes. And look-look at that, Sir! See that little bastard jink around?" 

For once, Colonel Archer evinced no desire to complain about Master Sergeant Slocum's language. He was not only a technician, but a highly experienced jet jockey, and he had never-never!-heard of anything, reentry vehicle or aircraft, which could pull a ninety-degree turn at such speeds. He reached for the phone that linked him to the duty watch battle staff, his eyes never leaving the impossible display.

"General Goldmann? Colonel Archer. I've got something very strange on my scopes down here, Sir." 

The squadron commander had no name. He had never possessed one, nor had he needed it. He was a tool to his creators, not a person, and one did not waste names upon tools. Indeed, the Shirmaksu had never even dignified his kind with a label. That had been left for humanity, and they called him Troll.

His fighter had no instruments. He was part of the fleet, deadly craft, merged with it as he merged with all the manifold devices of death he had been designed to manage so well. He needed no readouts to track the single, persistent human interceptor which clung to the rear of his formation like Death incarnate. The fighter which had destroyed ten of his own squadron. The last human fighter in the galaxy, in a sense. The one which had stubbornly refused to die for over three Terran weeks.

He was a thing of circuits and servomotors. Of chill alloy and electromechanical visual receptors. His body's veins carried no blood, for it had no veins. There was only the smooth, cool flow of power and the ever-renewed nutrient bath which fed his sole organic component.

Yet he was no stranger to emotion, this Troll. His kind knew the sustaining ferocity of hate, and it nurtured them well. Hate for their creators, who saw them only as disposable, expendable mechanisms. Hate for the humans they had been created to destroy. Hate for themselves, and the destiny which pitted them against humanity in the service of the Shirmaksu.

And at this moment, more than any other entity in the galaxy, the Troll commander hated the pilot who dogged his wake.

He knew what sort of human rode behind those guns and missiles. He had suspected from the first, when he noted the elegance with which that fighter flew and the deadly quick reactions which guided it. It could only be one of the cralkhi, the humans his masters had inadvertently created for their own downfall. Only a cralkhi could have evaded his own tireless pilots so long, clung so close, destroyed every fighter he'd been allowed to detach against it. Only a cralkhi . . .

And there was a certain bitter amusement in that, for the beings his squadron fought to protect were responsible for the very symbiote which enabled their enemy to threaten them. Deep inside, the Troll envied the cralkhi its freedom to strike at their mutual creators, for that was the one forever unattainable freedom for which the Troll longed with all the living passion trapped within his mechanical shell.

The first shockwaves screamed past his frontal drive field as his masters dipped into the atmosphere of the planet they had come to murder, and the hate within him cursed his Shirmaksu commander for refusing to let him take his remaining fighters back to overwhelm their single pursuer. But he could afford to wait. The cralkhi would come to him soon. It could not delay much longer. It could not afford to let the Shirmaksu tender slip from its grasp . . .

. . . not if it wanted this planet to live.

Desperation clawed at Colonel Ludmilla Leonovna. She was so tired. Not with physical weariness, but with accumulated mental fatigue. She'd drawn ruthlessly upon her symbiote, knowing the price she must pay-if she survived-for the demands she made. She had no choice, yet there was a limit even to her vitality, and it was nearing. If the Trolls ahead of her ran an analysis of her maneuvers, they couldn't miss her increasing sloppiness. The delay creeping into her responses was minute, so tiny no human would have noted it, but the computers would see it.

She forced the thought aside, concentrating on her task. The pursuit had snaked its way deep into the Sol system. Fighter multi-dees were weaker than those of starships, but they had far lower Frankel Limits in partial compensation, and the Kangas had fled madly, weaving up and down the alpha and beta bands to evade her. She'd long since stopped thinking about the strain on her onboard systems. Her life support had almost a full week still on its clock, but her drive had never been designed to run so long at such ruinous power, nor had her multi-dee been intended for such extended operation. She knew the abused interceptor was nearing the end of its endurance even as she neared her own, yet Sputnik hadn't failed her-not with Anwar O'Donnel to nurse and baby her systems.

She stank. She would have traded a year in hell for a shower, she thought, smiling wearily, and knew her crew felt the same, yet they hadn't complained once. Anwar had been her ESO for over two years-long enough to understand the differences between them-and he hadn't argued even when she ordered him to sleep at regular intervals while she managed his systems as well as her own.

Sergeant Goering hadn't been with her as long, but she, too, had done well. Indeed, it had been she who managed to deduce approximately when they were. Commodore Santander had succeeded in crippling the Kangas' planned Takeshita Translation; Sputnik's crew knew that, for Goering had monitored crude, old-style radio and microwave communications as they raced into the system at FTL speeds. They couldn't be much further back than the late twentieth century-yet it might as well have been 50,000 bc, for all the ability humanity would have to defend itself.

Her crew knew that as well as Leonovna did, but their unshaken confidence in her had been a tower of strength. And she'd needed that strength. Human hardware surpassed the best the Kangas could build, but there were always tradeoffs. Sputnik was faster than the tender she pursued, but despite her more advanced drive, she was no faster and far less maneuverable than the Troll-crewed fighters which guarded that tender. They had no need for life support, nor for the gravity compensators a human crew required. They had more mass to spare for other purposes, and their tremendous drives made up for their lower efficiency with pure, brute power. In deep space, with room to use the superiority of her technology, her bird was the equal of any three Troll fighters, but not if the Trolls could pin her. Not if they could somehow close the range through her superior missiles and more deadly power guns and force her into maneuvering combat in range of their own guns.

And that was exactly what they were about to do.

Her mind flicked over her remaining weapons automatically. She'd expended all but one of her heavy missiles, and she dared not waste that one on a Troll. It was a ship-killer, the last nuke she had, and it could be used on only one target. To get into range of that target, she had only three of the "Skeet" missiles with their deadly powered flechettes designed for short-range snapshots-only the Skeets and her guns.

She sighed and glanced over at her sleeping ESO. She would have to wake him soon, for she couldn't manage her electronic warfare systems as they must be managed if there was to be any hope for a shot.

She'd begun the pursuit with only two wingmen, deliberately sending Casper Turabian and her other five survivors after the only other surviving Kanga tender when it broke out-system. It had been a cold-blooded decision, but Casper had understood. His pilots stood a better chance against a tender which would be forced to turn back towards them if it was to reach its target before it expended its life support. They had a better chance to wait it out before fatigue crippled them. But by the same token, she'd known they would face a frontal attack by all sixteen of its escorting Trolls when the Kangas ordered their cyborgs to clear a path for it.

They had, and none of them had survived the encounter . . . but neither had the Kangas or their Trolls. Casper had lasted long enough, drifting in his crippled fighter, to confirm the kills. Then his life support had failed. She'd heard nothing from him in over a week.

She pushed the grief aside again. There was no time, just as there was no time for so many things. The long, grueling pursuit had come down to these last fleeting minutes, and soon it would end. Her last wingman had died five days ago when a trio of Trolls whipped back and up before Lieutenant Durstan could rouse from the sleep she needed so desperately. Colonel Leonovna had destroyed her killers, but it had been cold comfort. She'd scored seven more kills during the long stern chase, but five remained, covering the tender, blocking every firing angle, and if she came close enough to use her remaining Skeets, the surviving fighters would close to gun range and nail her short of the tender.

She sighed again and nudged her ESO.

"Wake up, Anwar," she said gently, and his head jerked up, his eyes clearing almost instantly. But only almost, and it was that brief hesitation which would have killed a normal human pilot long since.

"Time?" he asked, rubbing the last sleep from his eyes.

"Just about," she said. There was no defeat in her weary voice, only a tinge of sorrow.

"Think of anything better while I was napping?" he asked, yawning as he tugged his helmet back into place.

"Sorry." 

"Oh, well. I always wanted to go out with a bang. Should I wake Prissy?" 

"Go ahead," Colonel Leonovna said absently, running deliberately back over her checklist. The process was normally so automatic she never thought about it, but her growing fatigue was yet another enemy she must defeat.

"It's been a hell of a ride, Skip," O'Donnel said, reaching for the button that would wake Sergeant Goering in her isolated little compartment. "Love to do it again sometime." 

"You're a piss-poor liar, Anwar," she said affectionately, sparing him a smile, and he grinned back crookedly.

"True. But at least Prissy may come through it." 

"I hope so," Colonel Leonovna said softly as he pressed the button, and there was no more to be said, for she and O'Donnel were about to die.

She'd tried to find another answer, but she had only one weapon besides her missile which might take out the tender: Sputnik herself. It had worked for Defender, and it should work again, if only she could get a clear run. She and O'Donnel had discussed it exhaustively, and they'd reached the same conclusion each time. The best she could hope for was to cross over the Troll rearguard once they entered atmosphere, then turn back, blow her way through the lead fighters by relying on the blast effect of exploding her last nuke in atmosphere, and ram the tender head-on. The fireball as their drives overloaded would be hotter than any nuclear warhead ever fired.

But she couldn't do it until they were in atmosphere, and she couldn't do it without Anwar to run ECM interference for her, so he would be included in her death. Yet it might be possible to save Goering. They had no more need for a communications ofting the crew of the first LAV, Slugger Force took nine casualties, three fatal, on the way through . . . and left thirty-five bodies in its wake.

 

Taggart stood in the fighter, breathing hard. The sound of battle was silenced here, but it haunted him still, and he drove his mind at the Troll without response, more frantic every second, until desperation made him bold. He pressed the button he'd been ordered to touch only in gravest emergency.

 

The Troll floated in sensual glory, tingling with the shock and crash of destruction. Asheville flamed against the heavens, streets littered with bodies and wreckage. Even the stubborn, bitter defiance of the city's defenders was a kind of perfection. It whetted the burning edge of his impatient fury, and it would make the ultimate ruin of their hopes even sweeter.

He'd been surprised when the new defenders suddenly appeared, and he chided himself for forgetting their transport aircraft. He hadn't expected them to react so quickly, and the polished efficiency with which they sliced through his rabble dismayed him.

But only for a moment. There was no room in his ecstasy for anything else. Even if these newcomers drove his creatures back, he could always whip them on afresh elsewhere. It was-

An alarm jangled deep in his brain, shattering his rapt contemplation, and a snarl of fury filled him as he roused from his dreams of death. How dared it? How dared it disturb him now?! 

He gathered himself to lash out, and Taggart moaned in terror, falling to the floor and covering its head. But the blow did not fall. Before he could strike, the Troll felt its urgency-and then the reason for it.

A tsunami of ferocity washed over him. He was under attack! He was under attack! These crawling, puling primitives dared to attack him!

Rage shook aside the webs of his dreams, but not the blood-taste of their fury.

 

"Romeo One, this is Screwball. Come in, Romeo." Aston paused, crouched and panting just below the crest of the ridge. Moonlight gleamed on treetops below him, and he could see the crash and sparkle of combat to the west. There were flames, too. At least two vehicles burning-maybe three. They had to be his, he thought coldly, because they were behind the advancing muzzle flashes and explosions.

"Romeo One, this is Screwball. Come in," he repeated into his boom mike. There was a moment more of silence, then a voice replied.

"Screwball, Romeo One. Proceed." 

"Romeo One, Screwball is on the field. I say again, Screwball is on the field. Set up the bleachers." 

"Screwball, Romeo One copies. Going to burner." 

Forty miles to the northeast, forty-eight Navy aircraft rocketed upward and streaked towards Sugarloaf Mountain.

 

The fifty men Taggart had sent rushing to reinforce the sentries were half a kilometer short of their positions when Slugger Force rolled over them.

Contributions were generous when the Troll "solicited," and ordnance depots were manned by humans, many of whom could be touched and recruited or manipulated. As a result, the Apocalypse Brigade had excellent equipment, but its men had no idea what was coming towards them, and they were far less experienced than Slugger Force with their night-vision gear. Nor were their scouts far enough out.

The Marines' quickly set ambush ran over them like a threshing machine; seven lived long enough to run.

 

Aston waved to Abernathy, and the bulk of Company T started down the mountain. Second Platoon and its attached Dragons and heavy weapons were already set up, with a better field of fire than he'd dared expect. Trees were a problem immediately to their front, but the critical fire zones were wide open.

"Dick," it was Ludmilla, speaking in his ear, "I'm picking up scan patterns. He can see us now." 

"Slider, Screwball," Aston said quickly. "Grendel's eyes are open." 

"Screwball, Slider," Abernathy responded instantly. "Affirm. People, watch yourselves. We may lose touch. Stick to the plan and-" 

A wash of static drowned the major's voice, and Aston cursed. They'd known it could happen, especially since the Troll's people probably used his communications equipment and didn't have to worry about jamming at all. He only hoped the air cover remembered that and didn't panic.

 

"Backstop, Romeo One. We've lost contact with Screwball. Orbit at three-oh thousand, but keep your fingers off those launch buttons. Romeo Team, that goes for you, too." 

Confirmations came back, and Staunton banked gently, circling the mountain and watching the pinprick flashes of light.

 

"What the hell?" Lieutenant Spillers stood erect in the hatch of his battered, smoke-stained APC for the first time in an eternity. The fire was slackening. In fact, it looked like some of the bastards were running! 

 

"Very well, Blake Taggart," the Troll snarled. "You were correct to summon me. Return to your guards while I determine what has happened." 

Taggart bowed himself out gratefully, running for his command post under the canopy of false treetops, and the Troll activated his scanner stations. He spotted the oncoming vehicles instantly, drawn by the pulse of their engines and their heavy electronic emissions, and his mind sorted through the possibilities. It was impossible for these crude humans to have guessed his own presence, so no doubt Blake Taggart's troops had been careless. They had drawn attention to themselves, and this was the result. The same humans who had cut through his rioters with such ease had dispatched some of their number to deal with what they thought was another rabble. Well, that was their mistake, he thought savagely. Now he would make them pay for it.

He blotted out their communications, depriving them of coordination, and sent orders to his own troops. The Apocalypse Brigade fell back, breaking contact, and then began to shift position as he peered through his scanners to guide its men into positions of advantage.

 

Captain Tom Grant, call sign "Slugger," knew he was in trouble the minute his radios went out. Captain Ross had warned them it might happen, and the Corps had a doctrine for communications loss, but it assumed the other side could be jammed, too. And that, he knew, was not the case here.

His attack slowed, and his perimeter expanded automatically to win more room for maneuver along the narrow road. Hand signs, runners, and flares were all he had now, and they weren't enough.

 

The Troll exulted as he sent a wave of LAWs and light machine-gun fire slicing into his enemies' left flank. The night was day to his sensors, and he watched camouflaged figures tumbling under the hail of fire. Ten went down in the first attack, and he waited for the others to break and run.

 

The heavy machine-gun team saw another LAV brew up to the left, and the stutter and dance of muzzle flashes winked above them. Their own vehicle was essentially unarmored-a carrier for their weapons and little more-but they knew the penalty for bogging down in a fight like this. Their fifty-calibers raked the hillside and grenades exploded on the enemy position. Their attackers reeled back, abandoning their wounded, and wood smoke billowed above the crackle of flames and gunfire.

 

The Troll cursed as his minions retreated. He knew he shouldn't blame them, but he did. That hurricane of fire had surprised even him, but the need to destroy was upon him, and how could he do that when his tools died or ran so easily? 

 

Aston and Ludmilla slithered down the slope in Sergeant Major Horton's wake, and First Platoon fanned out around them while they caught their breath and oriented themselves.

The sound of battle had become even more vicious, with heavier fire coming from both directions, and Aston and Horton looked at one another grimly. They knew what the sounds meant; Slugger Force had lost its radios, and the advantage had shifted to the Troll.

"There," Ludmilla said quietly, pointing. "The scanner post." 

Aston stared at the weird latticework of aerials under the false foliage and saw a single, solid structure with a door facing them. He looked about, astounded that they'd gotten this far without being spotted, then nodded to Horton.

"Sar-Major." 

"Sir!" 

"Deploy the men. Then I want that place wrecked. Now." 

"Sir! Ashley, set 'em up. Kiminsky, Sloan-this way." 

He was away before Aston could stop him, vanishing into the undergrowth with his chosen corporals and slithering through the brush, more silent than a trio of snakes, while Master Sergeant Ashley positioned his men. Aston hadn't wanted Horton to get that far away from him; at the same time, he knew the sergeant major was the best man for the job. That was one of the problems with combat. The best men were always spread too thin, and too often it got them-

Small arms and grenades suddenly exploded to his left, and he fought an urge to duck. That had to be Dan and the other two platoons.

 

Abernathy cursed as the night erupted in fire and death. It was bad luck, plain and simple. He had no idea why forty or fifty hostiles should be moving around behind their own line so far from the fighting, but there they were, and they'd blundered right into his leading squad.

He stole one brief moment to watch the pattern of muzzle flashes in the undergrowth. There-those were his men. They'd broken down into fire teams around the 5.56 millimeter, belt-fed squad automatic weapons out of sheer reflex, and the SAWs were laying down a deadly fire. But they were under heavy fire of their own from two directions, and he gripped Lieutenant Warden's shoulder and pointed.

"Move the rest of your platoon up the slope and take them from behind!" 

"Sir!" 

"Corporal Holcombe!" 

"Sir!" 

"Put your Dragons right here, Corporal. See that building?" He pointed at the distant loom of aerials, and the corporal nodded. "Take it out, Corporal." 

"Aye, Sir!" 

The bulky launch tubes went up into firing position, assistants waiting to reload, but Abernathy had already turned away. He waved Lieutenant Atwater's Fourth Platoon into motion behind him and trotted straight for the closest weapon pit.

 

The Troll twitched in shock as the force he had pulled back to hook further out around his enemies' flank suddenly stumbled into a blazing wall of fresh attackers well behind his fixed positions. How had they-? 

The cliff! They must have come down the mountain . . . but how had they known to do that? 

 

Captain Grant watched one of the heavy-weapons vehicles vomit a ball of flame, taking half its crew with it. The forest was a nightmare of burning brush and weapon flashes, and Slugger Force was pinned right in the middle of it. He estimated that over a quarter of his men were down already.

He left his vehicle and started forward on foot. It was all he could do without radios.

 

Sergeant Major Horton exploded to his feet and slammed a size-fourteen combat boot against the door of the hut. It smashed open like a piece of cardboard-the idiots hadn't even bothered to lock it! 

The observation was a distant thought as his hip-high M16/M203 blazed. The assault rifle laced the hut's interior with fire, and then the under-barrel launcher capped it with a forty-millimeter grenade.

There was no one in the structure-just a dinky little box with tentacles sitting on its wheels before a panel. His slugs punctured it in a dozen places, and it gouted sparks and smoke. More slugs went home in the panel it had been tending, and then the grenade exploded in the middle of it. He ducked back out of the way, and Kiminsky and Sloan tossed their satchel charges.

They'd hardly hit the ground when the hut became an expanding fireball in the darkness.

 

A fresh flare of fury rippled through the Troll as he felt his right flank scanner systems die, and then his remaining sensors saw the crude chemical rockets flashing towards them. He had less than two seconds to realize what was about to happen, and then he was blind.

Enough! He had suffered enough from these savages! 

A snarling signal sent his combat mechs gliding out of the cavern.

He was too suffused with rage to wonder what evil chance had sent the enemy so unerringly after his scanners and jammers.

 

Company T's radios came back to life, and Captain Grant breathed a silent prayer of thanks. Slugger Force had been savagely mauled, but now the survivors were back in the net. The result was obvious almost immediately as the handful of surviving vehicles rumbled off the road into the trees, working as teams once more and flushing the enemy from cover.

 

Aston moved through the fire-sick night in a familiar half-crouch. His assault rifle stuttered viciously, and two men went down. Ludmilla was behind him, her fire seeking out her own targets, and all about them, First Platoon was on the move, swarming over fallen false-treetop camouflage to hit a cluster of weapon pits behind the crash of grenades. The barracks they'd chosen as Ludmilla's fire position loomed ahead, and he saw two Marines charge the wall. They rolled up against it, arms moving almost in unison, and hand grenades smashed through the windows.

Glass and debris blew outward, and a SAW gunner kicked in the door, hip-held automatic weapon hosing the interior on sustained fire.

They were moving, he thought hopefully, and so far their casualties weren't too bad. Maybe . . .

 

Blake Taggart crouched in the darkness, trying to picture what was happening. He'd never seen a fire-fight before, much less a night assault, and nothing less could have prepared him for the reality. It was all movement, muzzle flashes, and savagery, with no pattern he could grasp, but deep inside he knew the enemy was imposing his pattern on the chaos, and a sense of doom touched him.

No! He shook doubt aside. He'd been promised power! He was the anointed viceroy of the world! No one would take that from him. No one! 

He darted a frantic look over his shoulder. There! The fire was heaviest on the left end of the line.

He punched a frozen gunner savagely to get his attention. The man jerked and saw his commander's pointing finger, then swiveled his otherworldly weapon and squeezed the trigger.

 

The night exploded. Half of Fourth Platoon vanished in a lick of blue-white fury, incinerated by the "light" power gun the Troll had given his men. Abernathy rolled away from the glaring scar in the mountainside, beating out the flames on his camo jacket as he tried desperately to spot the source of the fire. But like Ludmilla's blaster, there was no muzzle flash, no discharge to betray its location.

 

Ludmilla staggered. Her flight suit sensies were cranked up to full gain, trying to spot any communication between the Troll and its combat mechs, and the sudden energy surge was agonizing. She went to her knees, groaning, cursing herself for not considering the possibility even as she turned down their sensitivity. But at least she knew where the thing was.

Corporal Bowen went down beside her, a .50 caliber slug through his chest, and she snatched the laser target designator from his back, blessing the endless hours spent learning to use Company T's equipment. She laid the sight on the power gun's pit even as its gunner fired again. The energy bolt exploded against the mountain, killing more of her friends, and she keyed her radio.

"Romeo One, this is Sneak Play," she said clearly over the net. "I've got a target for you." 

 

Ed Staunton stiffened in his cockpit. A woman? That was a woman's voice! What the hell was she-? 

Then the call sign registered. Of every human soul in that inferno, "Sneak Play" had absolute priority.

"Sneak Play, Romeo One," he snapped. "Where?" 

"Romeo, Sneak Play is prepared to laser paint. Target is a pit with heavy weapons." 

"Roger, Sneak Play. Romeo One copies." He thought furiously for a second. All right.

"Romeo Four, Romeo One. Line 'em up, Freddy. Sneak Play's gonna light up a target for you. One round only. Confirm copy." 

"Romeo One, Romeo Four copies one Maverick on the illumination." 

"Sneak Play, Romeo One. Light up." 

"Roger, Romeo One. Illuminating now." 

A Hornet sliced down out of the heavens as a thin, coded laser beam flashed invisibly through the dark. It touched the housing of the power gun as it ripped off a third blast, killing twenty more Marines, and high above, a single AGM-65E air-to-surface missile separated from Romeo Four and dove for the beckoning laser.

Nine seconds later, Blake Taggart, Viceroy of Earth, was blown to bloody fragments by a two hundred fifty-pound blast-frag warhead.

 

The explosion trembled through the earth to the Troll, and he felt Taggart's mind die. It was only a human, but they had been deeply linked for many months, and the sudden loss was agony. Hurt roared through his brain as his first combat mech slid from the access tunnel on anti-gravs, distracting him from the quick three hundred sixty-degree scan he'd planned upon. Instead, he sent the mech raging towards the spot where Taggart had died.

 

The hostile fire ringing Slugger Force faltered as Marines slid through smoke and flame like vengeful devils. The men of the Apocalypse Brigade died or fled, and what was left of the decoy attack shook itself out into some sort of order and probed cautiously after them.

 

"Target left!" somebody shouted, and Major Dan Abernathy watched the Dragon team slew their launcher around. He rolled up on an elbow, conscious of the waiting pain as one of his men worked on his shattered left leg. Funny. He didn't remember being hit.

The Dragon belched sudden flame, roaring away through the dark, and his eyes flashed ahead to its target. There! So that was what a "combat mech" looked like.

He barely had time to register the weird curves of its form before the Dragon crashed home and a ten-pound shaped charge slammed the alien war machine to the ground.

So they could be killed. The thought came in a queer little voice deep within him, and on its heels came the pain.

 

The Troll roared with mental fury as his mech went dead. Those hairy primitives were destroying his irreplaceable equipment! 

Yet even through his fury, he began to feel a tinge of doubt. The invaders were dying, but they were hurting him. Hurting him badly. What else could they do to him? For the first time he began to regret the delay in completing his bomb.

 

Staff Sergeant Leroy Sanderson saw the explosion of the combat mech from his perch high above, but one of his teammates was already punching his shoulder. Another machine floated before them, rising silently, glinting blood and gold with reflected fire, and he laid his sights with care.

 

There! The Troll "looked" up from his second combat mech. Aircraft! There were aircraft above him! A cold stab of fear touched him at last, but he refused to panic. Instead, the mech tracked the nearest warplane, locked its sights, and fired.

 

"Jesus!" 

Commander Staunton never found out who shouted the single blasphemy as Romeo Twelve vanished in a terrific ball of blue fire that came right out of nowhere. It could have been him. He'd never seen anything like that-never even imagined its like! Whatever the hell it had been sprayed the hapless Hornet over the heavens in molten droplets, and there was no chance at all of a chute.

Another explosion winked far below him, almost in the same instant. He barely noticed it, and he never knew it marked the death of the machine which had killed his pilot.

 

The Troll noted the death of his second combat mech, but he was almost calm now. He'd determined that the aircraft were easy targets and also that his light armor could be killed. Very well. He had three light mechs left, but he would not waste them.

He made rapid calculations from the data his mech had garnered before it died. There was a way. He could blast every one of those aircraft from the heavens in a single paired salvo if he did it properly, and the ridiculous chemical explosives which had killed his light armor would be powerless to stop him.

He sent commands to his fighter, and a panel opened. His organic component disconnected quickly from the flight controls, and the smoothly efficient machinery transferred it to the waiting combat chassis parked beside the medium combat mech in his forward hold.

 

"Romeo One, Screwball," Aston snapped, watching tears of flame weep down the heavens. "Romeo One, come in!" 

"Screwball, Romeo One," a shaken voice said, and he sighed in relief. The odds had been against that being the nuclear-armed aircraft, but . . .

"Romeo One, Screwball. Get your ass out of the line of fire. Watch yourself. We may need you." 

"Roger, Screwball. Romeo One copies." 

Commander Ed Staunton's Hornet peeled off to put a mountain peak between his weapons load and whatever had killed Romeo Twelve.

 

"Sweet suffering Jesus! What the hell is that?" 

Sergeant Major Horton looked in the indicated direction. "That" was bigger than two M1 tanks, rumbling out of the ground like a surfacing whale, and the flicker and flare of explosions and flames glittered on its bronze-colored surface. He didn't know what it was, but, from Captain Ross's descriptions, he knew what it wasn't. It was no light combat mech . . . and it wasn't the Troll either.

A hissing sound slashed at his ears as a ghastly burst of green light erupted from whatever it was. Screams at its heart marked the death of a Dragon team, and a terrible, shuddering vibration hammered Horton's nerves. The bodies of his men were twisted and grotesque, tortured and writhing as whatever it was ground the life slowly and hideously from them, and he swallowed bitter-tasting bile.

Fear was an icy fist about the sergeant major's heart, freezing his blood, but he started to crawl. Not away, but toward the launcher.

* * *

Aston saw it all, and he also saw Horton crawling towards the launcher. He didn't know what it was either, but he didn't think the sergeant major had a chance in hell of stopping it with a Dragon. But if he did, he'd need a loader.

"Milla! Trouble at the tunnel!" he snapped into his radio, and he was already scuttling across the smoking ground in Horton's wake.

 

Ludmilla paled as the whickering flash of the neuron whip crackled through her sensors. Dear God, she'd been wrong! She'd assumed the Troll would have only light armor, but he had at least one medium mech, and nothing Company T had would stop that monster! 

She shuddered at the thought of the whip. The Kangas had rejected it as inefficient, but the Trolls loved it. It went after nerve tissue and incapacitated its victims instantly, but death took long, terrible minutes, and it was lethal up to twenty meters from its point of focus. Its effects were far slower at the greater range, but they were no less certain or agonizing. Not even a Thuselah could survive a direct hit, and they had a less than even chance of surviving a near miss.

The thoughts flashed through her mind in an instant, and she slapped her flight suit's power switch, killing her suit sensors instantly. She turned to run up-slope, seeking a position to take the mech from the flank, and then her heart seemed to stop as she saw Horton . . . and Dick.

 

Alvin Horton reached the Dragon and lifted the bulky tube to his shoulder while a corner of his mind worked with almost detached precision. He remembered generations of boots, remembered beating into their heads that their object was to kill the other guy, not die gallantly. He'd always sworn that whatever happened, he would never go out pulling a John Wayne, but sometimes a man had no choice.

He heard someone shouting his name from behind him, recognized Admiral Aston's voice, but there was no time to think about that. He knelt beside the writhing, sceaming bodies of his men, rocked up on one knee, rested the launch unit on his shoulder, and captured the alien vehicle in his sights.

 

Aston saw Horton moving like a man on a training field, saw the combat mech rumbling towards him, saw the sergeant major take the time to do it right.

The launcher belched fire, sending its missile roaring down range, and it was perfect. The screaming weapon hurled itself directly at the enemy's bow, slashing in to take it dead center, and exploded in a terrible burst of light.

Which left the armored monster totally unmarked.

Horton didn't even stand up. He only reached down for a fresh bird, fighting to reload the two-man weapon single-handedly even as the leviathan ground straight towards him, and Aston hurled himself to his feet. Bullets shrieked past him, but he ignored them, running desperately to help the sergeant major.

And then that dreadful emerald light tore the night apart once more. It struck directly on Sergeant Major Alvin Horton, outlining his convulsing body in a hideous corona, and it reached out past him. Some corner of Aston's brain saw it coming, almost like a tide racing across a mudflat. Then it was upon him, and the universe vanished in an incandescent burst of agony.

 

Ludmilla saw the Dragon explode. She saw the sergeant major fall.

And she saw Dick Aston convulse as the edge of the neuron bolt hurled him to the ground in twitching torment.

 

The Troll exulted as humans died under the fire of his mech while his own chassis rumbled down the tunnel. Together, he and the mech would wipe the heavens clean and he would escape. He could always start again elsewhere, and this time he would finish his bomb before he did! 

He was still in the tunnel when an alarm woke to clangorous life.

 

Ludmilla Leonovna planted her feet wide in a marksman's stance. Bullets cracked and whined about her, but she did not notice. Her face was wet, but she blinked her eyes furiously clear of tears. And then she reached for her blaster, drew . . . and fired in one clean, flashing movement.

 

Blue-white lightning etched the valley rim against the sky as the first full-power blaster bolt in Terran history struck home.

"Ground force battle screen has one great weakness." Ludmilla could hear the long ago instructor's dry, lecturing tone in her mind. "Unlike deep space battle screen, it cannot reach into other dimensions due to the Frankel Limit of a planetary body. Therefore, it cannot protect against an attack delivered through multi-dimensional space." 

Eighteen hundred tons of explosive energy struck the combat mech's frontal armor, concentrated into an area only two millimeters across. Armor that would have withstood a ten-kiloton area blast was paper under that focused stiletto's fury, and the plasma ripped into its heart. It happened so fast the eye could not see it, the brain could not record it, and then there was only a mounting pillar of terrible fire as the war machine spewed itself into the heavens.

 

How?! How?! He'd killed the last of them himself!

But only a human from his own time could have fired that weapon, and that meant . . . that meant these primitives knew everything! The whole time he'd plotted and spun his webs, they'd known! They'd been searching the entire time, hunting him-waiting for him to reveal himself so their informant could kill him! 

He writhed in exquisite torment. They knew, and there were too many of them. Whatever his individual power, however subtly he could bend and shape their minds, there were simply too many of them for him to conquer if they knew to hunt and fear him, and that meant his freedom, his omnipotence, had been a charade. Because that other being from his own time had lived, he would forever be a hunted animal on this putrid planet, with no hope of conquest, no choice but to destroy it, for they'd been warned.

And worst of all was the bitter, bitter realization that it had always been that way. That he had only thought it was different. That his power was hollow, an illusion he'd forged for himself.

His tenuous hold on near-sanity snapped. His dream had been stolen. Worse, it had been revealed as only a dream. As self-deception. He should flee, and he knew it, but he couldn't. Only vengeance mattered now.

 

Ludmilla holstered her blaster and sprinted. She had to get clear of her present position before the Troll himself emerged and spotted her. She fled through the light gravity of the motherworld, and her flashing feet carried her towards the twitching body of the dying man she loved.

 

Even in his madness, the Troll retained his cunning. No human could match his reaction speed. He noted the disappearance of the blaster from his sensors, but he knew what to look for now, and no one but his enemy could kill him without using nuclear weapons and killing his enemy, as well. He hugged that thought to him with hating, hungry fury, and fed power to his treads, grinding from the tunnel in a billow of dust.

If the human drew its weapon again, it would die before it could aim. If it did not, he would simply kill and kill and kill until the laws of chance sent the killer of his dream into death.

 

Ludmilla skidded to a stop as the Troll emerged at last. Half again the size of the medium mech it loomed, dark and evil, squat on its treads, and its weapon ports were open.

She knew what it must be thinking, and she was afraid it was right.

It halted, scanning its surroundings, ignoring the rockets bursting against its battle screen, and her hand hovered a millimeter above her blaster. She dared not touch it. She must find some sort of cover, something to give her a fleeting instant of advantage. It was the only way.

And then the Troll started forward.

 

The enemy was hiding. Madness gibbered in the Troll's mind, and it ground the rich leaf mold under its cleated treads.

 

It was headed straight for Dick! 

Logic told her he was already dead; only the dying remained, and it could not come soon enough. But logic was a cold, dead thing. She didn't consider it. She didn't think at all, and her hand moved.

 

Surprise. It was a fleeting thing, but the Troll felt it. Surprise that its enemy should stand boldly before it and activate its weapon.

Perhaps it was that brief moment of astonishment, or perhaps it was the fact that Ludmilla Leonovna had heavy-grav reactions and a cralkhi's neural impulses, moving at more than human speed. Or perhaps it was a combination of both those factors and the blind workings of fate.

The blaster rose with the deadly, fluid grace Dan Abernathy had seen on the Camp Lejeune combat range. It was a single, supple movement, and her finger squeezed the trigger stud before she even realized she'd drawn.

The Troll had time for one last emotion: disbelief. Disbelief that any human could move that quickly. Even a cral-

A sliver of pure energy blew him into infinity.


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

She holstered her blaster slowly, turning away from the corona of fury crackling about the massive combat chassis. Awareness of victory pulsed deep within her, but it was a feeble, joyless thing as she dropped to her knees beside Richard Aston in a litter of fallen camouflage.

His body jerked and shuddered, and his face was soaked with sweat, his eyes blind above bared teeth locked in a snarl of agony. She knew the signs. She'd seen them before, and she lifted his head into her lap, staring down through her tears while bullets cracked above them.

He couldn't speak, but she hoped he recognized her as she pressed her fingers to his carotid. She held the pressure firmly, mastering his agonized shudders with gentle strength, until unconsciousness took him.

She knew she should maintain the pressure until death stopped the pain, but she couldn't. She knelt over him, sheltering him with her body, and her gentle fingers were ready to drive him back into the merciful dark.

She was still kneeling there when Gunnery Sergeant Morton Jaskowicz skidded to a stop beside her.

"Cap'n?" She raised her head slowly, cradling Aston protectively as she stared blindly up at the big, tough sergeant.

"Cap'n, we need you," Jaskowicz said, his rumbling voice strangely gentle against the crackle of weapons. "You're in command, Ma'am." 

Her mind worked sluggishly. It was unfair. She'd come so far. Paid so much. The Troll's death should have freed her, not burdened her with fresh responsibility.

"Where-" She cleared her throat and made her voice work. "Where's Major Abernathy?" 

"Major's out of it, too, Ma'am. Lieutenant Atwater's dead and Lieutenant Warden's hurt bad. I think Lieutenant Frye's still on his feet, but he's up-slope." 

"I-" She broke off as a Marine corpsman slithered to a kneeling halt across Aston's body from her. His teenaged face was strained, but his hands were steady. Ludmilla stared at him for just a moment. Then the despair in her own face hardened into determination, and she nodded curtly.

"With you in a minute, Gunny," she said. "Get Third and Fourth Platoon moving this way. We'll set up a perimeter against the mountain. Tie in at either end of the tunnel-Second Platoon can cover us from above. Then find me a FAC team." 

"Yes, Ma'am!" Jaskowicz took a fraction of a second to salute-something a Marine in combat never did-and dashed off through the darkness. As he vanished, Ludmilla turned to the corpsman.

"Do you have a hypodermic?" she asked calmly, and he nodded. "Good." 

 

Lieutenant Spillers couldn't understand. The howling, blood-crazed demons who'd been attacking all night had vanished. Only scattered shots rang out as a handful of more stubborn invaders went on firing until they were flanked and finished by National Guardsmen moving with the cold skill of survivors. They'd paid cash for that skill, Spillers thought grimly. Rumor said the brigade had taken fifty percent casualties-closer to eighty among the junior officers-and Spillers believed it.

But what unnerved him most were the rioters who just sat or stood there, glaze-eyed and slack-faced, fingers twitching gently while spittle oozed down their chins. It was as if whatever had driven them had also consumed them, he thought shakenly.

 

Ed Staunton couldn't help himself. He had to keep ducking up to see what was going on, and he'd climbed up over his protective mountain just in time to see both fountains of light and fury erupt into the heavens.

That had to be it, he decided, his thoughts oddly detached and distant. That had to be the "Troll" thing Commander Morris had told him about. And that meant his "special weapons" would not be required . . . thank God.

But the sparkle and flash of small arms and heavy weapons continued to flare, and that looked like a nasty forest fire starting to the southwest.

"Romeo Team, Romeo One," he said. "Catcher, get ready. Bullpen, open your orbit and get clear." Catcher was VFA-432's call sign; they were equipped for general support. VFA-433-"Bullpen"-carried precision-attack weapons he judged would be less useful in the new situation below.

"Come on, Sneak Play," he murmured, orbiting high above the blazing firefight. "Talk to me, damn it!" 

 

The Apocalypse Brigade was far more confused than its enemies. Most of its men had no idea Taggart was dead, few realized there were aircraft above them, and none had the least idea what the Troll was, where it had come from, or what had happened to it. But they did know they were trapped and under attack . . . and that their attackers had been badly hurt.

Their initial shock faded as they recognized how substantially they outnumbered their enemies. And then, on the heels of that realization, came a second: they must escape, and their vehicles were under the guns of Ludmilla's hastily assembling perimeter.

They came from everywhere, recruited because they'd required little shaping. The Troll had touched them less deeply, bent them less terribly, than he'd been forced to do with those less inclined to violence. All he'd done was program them with fanatical loyalty to their leaders and their "cause," and his death had not impinged directly upon them. They honestly believed they were fighting for themselves, and Taggart's third in command was still alive. He was a hard, hating man, and he knew his enemies were hurt and bleeding.

Even if he hadn't needed the vehicles, he still would have attacked.

 

Ludmilla looked up as the first recoilless and mortar rounds came in. She'd hoped the enemy would break with the Troll's death, but she hadn't reckoned with the sort of men Taggart had recruited, and she ducked lower in her weapon-pit command post as mortars, machine guns, and covering Dragons from Second Platoon hammered back at their attackers. The unwounded survivors of the three oversized platoons which had come down the mountain would scarcely have made a single normal one, but they couldn't withdraw: there were too many wounded for the fit to carry.

"Slugger, Sneak Play!" She shouted into her mike, her voice fighting the crash of battle. "What's your situation?" 

"Sneak Play, Slugger is stuck." If Grant was surprised to hear her instead of Abernathy or Aston, his voice gave no sign of it. "We're down to one LAV. Estimate sixty percent personnel casualties, and the woods are on fire." 

"Slugger, can you take your wounded with you?" 

"Affirmative, Sneak Play."

"Pull out, Slugger. Get clear as soon as possible. Inform me when you reach-" she crouched over her map card "-Victor-Four. Confirm copy." 

"Sneak Play, Slugger confirms. Pull back to Victor-Four and advise." 

"Luck, Slugger." She switched channels on her radio chest pack. "Romeo One, Sneak Play. Still with us?" 

"Sneak Play, Romeo One. Glad to hear your voice. What can we do?" 

"Stand by, Romeo One. We'll have targets for you-" She broke off as Staff Sergeant Ernest Caldwell tumbled into the pit with her. The other two survivors of his forward air control team were with him. "Romeo One, our FAC just turned up. I'm handing off to him." The rattle of incoming small arms roared higher. "I'm going to be busy." She turned to Caldwell as she reached for her blaster once more. "When Slugger gets clear, I want those woods hit with everything they've got, Sergeant. Burn them out." 

"Yes, Ma'am." 

She rose higher in the pit, listening to the cacophony of her men's weapons, her suit sensors and the Troll's dying glare showing her the enemy. She braced her firing hand on the lip of the pit, and her radio was back on Company T's tactical net.

"Here they come, boys," she said calmly. "We've got to hold them till Slugger gets clear-then the airedales can have them." 

There was no more time for talk. The Apocalypse Brigade swept towards the Marines, muzzle flashes and the back-flash of recoiless rifles and rocket launchers lighting their positions like summer lightning.

Company T's survivors poured back an avalanche of answering fire, but the attack rolled in. Ludmilla picked a clump of enemies clustered around an M60 machine-gun team and squeezed the trigger.

 

Ed Staunton watched the bright, blue-white bursts explode below him and wondered what the hell made them.

* * *

Her blaster might have broken the attack, but the Apocalypse Brigade had once had energy weapons of their own and they knew its weakness, knew its targeting systems would lock on the first solid object in its line of fire-including trees and underbrush. They recoiled, but they quickly realized there was only one of it and began to work around her flanks.

"Skipper!" It was Jaskowicz, shouting into her ear as she sought fresh targets through the smoke. Flame roared everywhere she had used her blaster, but at least the wind was away from them. "Right flank's going, Skipper!" the sergeant shouted. "Not gonna last another three minutes!" 

"Move the reserve squad in!" 

"Already done it, Skip!" 

"Damn!" She keyed her radio. "Slugger, Sneak Play. State position!" 

"Sneak Play, Slugger is at Victor-Five," the reply came back instantly, and Ludmilla nodded. It would have to do.

"Get your heads down, Slugger," she told Grant, then turned to Caldwell. "Set?" He nodded.

"Do it," she said.

 

The world exploded.

The Hornets shrieked down like invisible demons, a long, endless line of them spilling napalm and cluster bombs, and the Apocalypse Brigade died. Perhaps as many as fifty escaped the attack and the forest fires and managed to sneak past what was left of Slugger Force as the Ospreys swept down into the vicious thermals of the fire-torn night to take Company T's survivors out of Hell.


genesis
n., pl. -ses. The coming into being of anything; origin; beginning; creation. [Latin, from Greek, generation, birth, origin.] 

-Webster-Wangchi Unabridged
Dictionary of Standard English
Tomas y Hijos, Publishers

2465, Terran Standard Reckoning

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Richard Aston woke from dreams of agony to an unfamiliar ceiling. He'd never seen that particular swatch of acoustic tiles before, but he'd put in too much recovery time not to recognize a hospital ceiling when he saw it.

He tried to remember how he'd gotten here, but it was a blank. He turned his head and saw the IV plugged into his left arm, then carefully wiggled each finger and toe in turn. It was a ritual testing, first devised thirty years before, and he breathed a sigh of relief as each joint bent obediently, confirming its continued presence.

In fact, he couldn't find a single thing wrong with himself, except for a ravenous appetite. Which was strange. Why was he-? 

His thoughts broke off as the door opened quietly. He turned his head and smiled as Ludmilla entered-then frowned as she froze just inside the door. She stared at him, her eyes huge, and he held out his right hand.

"Milla?" 

Her name broke the spell, and she hurled herself forward, her arms opening wide, and the strangest thing of all was the tears spilling down her face as she laughed and murmured his name over and over between kisses.

 

It took fifteen minutes for her to calm, and her tearful, wildly emotional state was a shock. It was so unlike her . . . and so filled with love he almost came unglued himself. But the pressure of her feelings slowly ebbed, and she slipped into the chair beside his bed, holding his hand in both of hers as she recounted all that had happened.

"I'd seen neuron whips before, Dick," she said finally, shivering. "I knew you were dying." Her hands tightened on his. "So . . . I took a chance. I made the corpsman inject you with about twenty cee-cees of blood-from me." 

She paused, her eyes locked with his.

"But-" He broke off, his own eyes widening in shocked speculation.

"That's right," she said. "It could have killed you-should have killed you, really-but you were already dying anyway. So I did it, and . . ." She paused again, drawing a deep breath. "It worked." 

"It worked?" he echoed blankly. "You mean it-? I-?" 

"Yes," she said simply, smiling tremulously. "I know I didn't have any right to do it, but-" 

"I'm a . . . a Thuselah?" he demanded, unable to grasp it.

"Yes," she said again, smiling at last. The wonder on his face was too much for her, and she lifted his hand to his head. "Feel," she commanded.

His eyes went wider than ever as his palm touched his smooth scalp and felt a soft, downy fuzz. Hair. It was hair! 

Then it was true . . . he was a Thuselah! And that meant-

He stared at her and saw the future's endless promise in her deep-blue eyes.

 

"Well, Admiral," President Armbruster said, smiling from the bedside chair, "you did it." 

"Yes, Sir." Aston sat upright in bed, a tray of food on his lap. It was remarkable; his symbiote's demands actually made hospital food taste good. "But it cost us." 

"Yes," Armbruster said softly, his smile fading, "it did." 

It had. A third of Asheville lay in ruins, as did more than half of Hendersonville, and virtually all of half a dozen other small towns and cities. The fighting had cost the North Carolina National Guard over eight hundred dead. The count of civilian casualties was still coming in, and the already hideously high figure didn't yet include the thousands of rioters who'd died . . . or the ones whose minds had broken when the Troll was killed.

Nor did it include Company T. Major Abernathy's leg had been saved, but it would be severely impaired for the rest of his life. At that, he was one of the lucky ones. Fifty-two percent of Company T's men were dead; another thirty-one percent had been wounded.

Oh, yes, Jared Armbruster thought, it had been a costly victory. But compared to the price they might have paid- 

"At any rate," he said, shaking himself, his voice intentionally loud to break the somber mood, "we're all grateful to you. So grateful," he added with a twinkling smile, "that I'm going to give you two a choice." 

"A choice, Mister President?" Aston was puzzled.

"Yes. I understand from Colonel Leonovna that this symbiote thing is going to make some changes, Admiral. Going to get a bit younger, are you?" 

"Well, yes, Sir, I suppose." Aston shrugged. "I don't understand it all yet, but Milla tells me no self-respecting symbiote would want to live in an old hulk like this, so-" 

"I don't blame it a bit." Armbruster grinned. "But that means you've got quite a few years ahead of you, and it occurred to me that you two might like to spend them without official interference." 

"Interference, Sir?" 

"You understand, don't you, Colonel?" Armbruster said, and Ludmilla nodded slowly, her eyes locked intently on his face.

"You see, Admiral," Armbruster continued calmly, "the Colonel's in what you might call a precarious position-not right now, but sooner or later.

"At the moment, you and she are international heroes, but eventually someone's going to want to talk to her. She knows too much for her own good, I'm afraid. Too much about her own past-what would have been our future without her-and about her technology." 

Aston stared at his President in dawning awareness.

"Exactly," Armbruster said more grimly. "At the moment, the United States is in possession of a warship from five hundred years in the future, and every major power on the planet knows it. We can't make heads or tails of it yet, but you can bet we'll keep trying till we can. And the rest of the world knows that, too. Wars have been fought over far less, Admiral.

"But that's all right, because I don't plan on fighting any damned wars. Thanks to Colonel Leonovna-and you, and a lot of other people with guts-we kicked one Troll's ass, but there's a whole damned race of genocidal fanatics out there in the stars. We beat them in Colonel Leonovna's past, but we were lucky. I don't intend to rely on luck this time around, and President Yakolev, Prime Minister Henderson, and Chancellor Stallmaier agree with me. When the first Shirmaksu fleet enters the solar system, we intend for a united Earth to kick its miserable ass from here to Antares, and that ship is our leverage to make sure it happens.

"You've been closed up in here for three weeks, Admiral, so you may not realize what a state the world is in. The story's still coming out, but the pressure to do something is tremendous. Ambassador Nekrasov is already in Washington with a special delegation from Moscow and others are on the way. As I'm sure you can imagine, a few nations-like France, the PRC, and a dozen or so Third World states-are howling over our 'high-handed, arrogant chauvinism' in keeping them in the dark. But that's all right. I'd anticipated something of the sort, and with Britain, Germany, and Russia backing us in Europe and Japan, South Korea, and the Republic of China backing us in Asia-not to mention the fact that we're the ones with all Grendel's hardware in our grasp-I think we've got the leverage we need. With a little luck, I'll have Congressional authority to begin negotiations for the creation of a real world government within the month. I don't say it will be easy, but I think we'll manage it. We have to.

"Which brings us back to Colonel Leonovna. I can absolutely guarantee that no one will lay a finger on her while I'm President, but I won't be President forever. And even if I were, the combination of her knowledge and her symbiote would almost certainly be too much for other governments to keep their hands off her." 

"What exactly do you mean, Mister President?" Aston spoke sharply, but he knew. And, he thought with cold ferocity, he should always have known. Would have known, if only he'd actually expected to live and let himself look that far ahead.

"I mean that the Colonel is unique," Armbruster said, confirming Aston's grim thoughts. "An oracle to be consulted. The only female 'Thuselah' in existence-or likely to exist, this time around. And, forgive me, Colonel, there will be those who suspect you could give them much more technical information than you have. If you're lucky, they'll be very civilized about it, but they won't let you run around loose once the truth starts to penetrate." 

"Protective custody?" Aston's voice was harsh.

"If, as I say, you're lucky," Armbruster said evenly. "Don't be too hard on them, Admiral. Remember that she represents the humanity of the future-or a species-threatening abomination, depending on your viewpoint-because she's the only person on this planet who can possibly conceive and bear Thuselah children." 

Aston's blood chilled as he recalled Ludmilla's description of how Thuselahs had been treated even when there were millions of them; how would the only Thuselah mother in existence fare? 

"That would be enough all by itself," Armbruster said quietly. "But it won't be by itself. I may be confident that we'll get a united world in the end, but it's not going to be easy, it's not going to be simple, and unless I'm very much mistaken, it won't be bloodless, either. There are enough regimes out there with leaders who'd rather fight to the death than surrender their power and authority to anyone else, and you're a career military man. What wouldn't any war department give for the ability to field and train special forces, or elite antiterrorist squads-or terrorists of their own-with the advantages the Colonel's symbiote could provide them, especially in the face of everything that's about to come down? I can think of a dozen nations right off hand who would do anything to get their hands on her. Or, failing that, on samples of her DNA. Cloning is no longer a mystery of the future, Admiral. We have it now, and the techniques will only improve, which means-"

He shrugged, but his eyes never wavered from Aston's, and it was the admiral's turn to nod grimly.

"And even aside from that, as I say, they'll suspect she can give them more technical information than she has," Armbruster said almost gently. "Speaking of which, Colonel, I hope you'll forgive me if I suspect the same thing." 

"Why should you, Mister President?" Ludmilla asked.

"You've been just a bit too vague, Colonel. I think you're holding back-on the very wise premise that we're not ready for all you know." 

"Not ready yet, Mister President," she corrected gently, and he smiled.

"So, you have been holding out on us." He chuckled. "Very, very wise of you, Colonel. But I've known quite a few military people, and no 'simple fighter jock' I ever met was quite as ignorant of theory as you are." 

"Actually," she confessed calmly, "Thuselahs have lots of time to study. I have three advanced degrees: one in microbiology and two in molecular electronics and sub-particle physics." Aston stared at her in shock, and she smiled. "You know, Mister President, I rather thought you were suspicious." 

"Damn right I was," he agreed cheerfully. "But it happens I agree with you-though I trust you will make some of that knowledge available if it becomes obvious our own R&D people have hit a brick wall?" 

"I will," she said, then paused. "But that sounds as if you think I'll have a choice." 

"I intend to see that you do," he said, suddenly very serious. "I probably shouldn't. Looked at in one way, letting you out of my grasp will probably constitute the greatest act of treason any sitting president has ever committed, because all the things I just said could be squeezed out of you by unscrupulous nations could be squeezed out of you by us, as well. But it happens that I would prefer to be able to sleep with myself at night, and given how much we owe you, that would become just a tad difficult if I didn't let you go. And," he added with a wry smile, "not giving you the chance would present difficulties of its own. Yakolev, Henderson, Stallmaier, and I are going to have a tough enough time determining how, when, and where to share access to the Troll's fighter, but at least that's only a piece of hardware-and one no one will be able to figure out for a while, anyway. If we handle it right, we can turn it into a focus for the new government we need to put together, make it into a sort of combined Rosetta Stone-Manhattan Project-Moon Race as we rally the human race's best and brightest in an effort to take it apart and learn how to reverse engineer it for our own use.

"But if you were available, Colonel, you'd make that much more difficult. People would keep turning to you for explanations instead of figuring things out on their own. And that doesn't even consider all the fights and squabbles we'd get into over which nation should have the privilege of serving as your 'host.' After all, if I can see the advantages to grabbing you off, so can anyone else. And even if they weren't so nefarious as to want you for their own purposes, they'd sure as hell want to make sure that none of their rivals got hold of you."

"I see." Ludmilla gazed at him calmly, then cocked her head. "Obviously, I'm pleased to hear you coming up with all those reasons you should let me go, Mr. President. But are you certain you've really thought this through? We may have killed the Troll, but as you just pointed out, the Kangas are still out there, and they will be along in less than eighty years."

"Indeed they will," Armbruster agreed. "But we fought them to a standstill when they arrived in your own past, and that was without even knowing they were coming. This time we'll be forewarned-thanks to you-and, I feel quite certain, forearmed-thanks to Grendel's fighter. I'm sure we'll hit lots of problems in figuring out how it works, but those sorts of problems bring out the best in people and help pull them together, which is exactly what we need. So I'm confident that we will get it figured out . . . and I also hope that you'll be good enough to give us the coordinates of the Kangas' home systems before you swiftly and silently vanish away?"

"Oh, I think you can be reasonably confident of that, Mr. President," she said with a quirky smile.

"Well, then-there you have it!" Armbruster raised both hands shoulder high, palms uppermost, and grinned at her. "Yakolev, Henderson, Stallmaier, and I will use possession of the fighter and access to it as bait to draw the rest of the world into our coils. At the same time, we'll use our combined military strength to discourage anyone who might have thoughts of gaining control of it for themselves or simply destroying it to deprive anyone else of it. Once we've got the world headed in the right direction, we'll use the job of taking it apart and learning how it works-and how to duplicate or even improve upon it-as the challenge to get us used to working together and keep us heading in the right direction. And frankly, Colonel, I think I can convince my conscience that having you around, as well, would only interfere with my nice, neat plans. It may take me a while, but I'm pretty sure I can pull it off if I try hard enough. So if you'll be good enough to give me those coordinates on your way out . . ."

He beamed at her, and she chuckled. Then she looked at Aston. The admiral looked back with a smile of his own, but then his expression sobered, and he turned his eyes to the President.

"That all sounds good, Sir. It may even sound logical and reasonable . . . to us. But it's not going to sound that way to some of those other nations you've mentioned, or even to some US politicos-or big corporations, for that matter-that I can think of right off hand. So just how do we go about letting Milla fade into the woodwork?"

"I've given that some thought," Armbruster said more seriously, "and that's one reason the official press release hasn't gone out yet. If you two want it that way, the record will show that Admiral Richard K. Aston and Captain Elizabeth Ross died of their wounds. The only people who know better are the survivors of your Company T and the MAG pilots who pulled you out. I think you can trust them to keep their mouths shut." 

"So do I," Ludmilla said softly. "Long enough for it not to matter if they don't, anyway." 

"Exactly, Colonel," Armbruster said. "In the meantime, you two will be free to fade away. If you like, I'll have Commander Morris set it up-we can trust him to hide you so deep I couldn't find you. I'll provide ample funds to a blind account and see to it that no one but you and I know that he did it." He paused, then shook his head.

"It's your choice, of course, and I could be wrong about how hunted and harried the two of you would find yourselves. But I might not be, too. So think about it, people." He smiled again, a gentler, warmer smile than many people would have believed he could produce. "Whatever you decide, you've more than earned it." 

 

The seventy-foot twin-masted schooner Beowulf sliced through the Pacific swell under a forest of stars. Her tall, youthful skipper had originally intended to sail the South Atlantic on their first long cruise, but the first mate had changed his mind, and they were still a week out from Hawaii as they sat together at the wheel, sipping coffee and watching the sky.

Evelyn Horton snuggled into the curve of her husband's arm, her chestnut hair blowing on the wind to mingle with his own shoulder-length mop of dark black, and Adam Horton pressed his palm to the still tiny bulge of her abdomen. A girl, he hoped, and not just for evolutionary purposes. He'd always secretly wanted a daughter; he suspected most men did, whatever they might tell the rest of the world. But there was another reason he hoped for one in his own case, for his wife had threatened to complete Mordecai's joke by naming a boy Cain.

Evelyn checked her watch again, then looked back up at the sky.

"Any time now," she murmured.

"Are you sure?" he asked softly.

"Jared had NASA run the figures even before we caught up with the Troll," she replied. "I'm sure." 

"In that case-" he began, but she shook her head and pressed her fingers to his lips.

"Just hold me, Dick," she whispered, and his arm tightened.

They stared up together, and then she stiffened with a quick, convulsive gasp. High above them, the cobalt sky blossomed with light-a brilliant, flaring light, bigger than any five stars and brighter than a score of them. A light which had come from another universe to die . . . and taken fourteen months to reach their eyes.

It glowed in the depths of space like a searing beacon-beautiful and defiant, yet somehow forlorn and lost-a glorious diadem marking the trackless graves of the men and women of TFNS Defender who had died to save an Earth not even their own. It grew and expanded as they watched, and then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone, snuffed by the breath of eternity, and Richard Aston felt his wife sob against his shoulder, weeping for her dead at last.


THE END
Copyright (c) 1998-1999 by David Weber