by Timothy Zahn
"Understood," Klnn-dawan-a said, feeling her tail speed up again as she crossed to the cabinet directly facing the monitor desk. That particular cabinet was also the one with the most flickering lights: fifty of them, laid out in a rectangular pattern of five rows with ten lights each. A row of Human-Conqueror letters was affixed beneath each of the lights, with other lines of letters in the cabinet's two upper corners. The cabinet itself was humming-a low, pervasive tone-and felt oddly cold to the touch. "Do any of the warriors on Dorcas understand the Human-Conqueror language?" she asked, pulling a field camera from her waist pouch and starting to photograph the letters.
"We all had a short orientation course before we got here," Tbv-ohnor said, stepping up beside her. "The written language ought to be programmed into our interpreter, though."
Another stutter of projectile gunfire from overhead wafted its way down the stairway. To Klnn-dawan-a's apprehensive ear slits, it sounded as if they were getting closer. "Here," she said, thrusting the camera into Tbv-ohnor's hands. "I want you to get me photos of all the cabinets. Pay particular attention to words and other lettering. I'm going to take a look inside this one."
"Right," Tbv-ohnor said, slinging his laser rifle and moving off across the room with the camera.
The front panel, Klnn-dawan-a quickly discovered, was an independent piece of metal, attached to the sides of the cabinet with a variant of the helical fastener that the Zhirrzh and every other race they'd come across had independently developed. One of the fingers of her manifold tool was the right size for the cruciform fastening slots of these particular helics, and in half a hunbeat she had the front panel off.
Given the obviously advanced state of Human-Conqueror technology, she had expected the equipment inside the cabinet to be highly complex. What she hadn't expected was the incredible extent to which that equipment had been miniaturized. Perhaps a hundred cables fed into the cabinet from openings in the back panel, snaking their way individually and in bundled groups to a mere six sites evenly spaced from top to bottom along the centerline. There the cables split into individual fibers of metal or glass, which vanished into the faces of small cubes suspended in midair by thick gray cylinders running horizontally across the cabinet. The cylinders themselves disappeared in turn through openings in the right and left walls, presumably into the cabinets on either side.
It was strange and very alien, and for a beat a disturbing vision flashed through Klnn-dawan-a's mind: that of a group of trillsnakes trying to swallow cube-shaped nornins, sculpted perhaps by some old neofacetist artisan.
Hastily, she chased the image from her mind. Considering what was going on above them, the last thing she wanted to think about was trillsnakes devouring nornins. Leaning halfway into the cabinet, she focused her light on one of the cubes, looking for some way to open it.
Surrounded by the pervasive hum of the cabinet, she never heard the footsteps that must have charged down the stairway. But suddenly Tbv-ohnor was there beside her. "Time to go, Searcher," he said urgently.
"Now?" Klnn-dawan-a asked. "But-"
"Now,Searcher," Tbv-ohnor snapped, grabbing her upper arm and yanking her bodily away from the cabinet. "The enemy's almost here."
Klnn-dawan-a's protests died at the back of her tongue. A few beats later they were all heading up the stairway.
"It might already be too late," Tbv-ohnor warned grimly as they clumped hurriedly up the steps. "Commander Thrr-mezaz pulled some trick that's keeping the Human-Conquerors' warcraft out of the sky in this area-I didn't get the details. But their ground warriors were already down, and the commander's reinforcements won't get here before they do."
"Maybe we should just stay down here," Klnn-dawan-a suggested, her tail spinning harder with the exertion of the climb. "If the room is that important to them, they won't risk damaging it. We could wait until it's safe to come out."
"Unless they prefer destroying it to letting us have it," Tbv-ohnor countered. "In which case they'll just roll some of their explosives down the stairway."
The stuttering sounds of Human-Conqueror weapons were getting louder, and as they neared the surface, Klnn-dawan-a could hear the hissing of laser rifles as the Zhirrzh warriors returned the fire. They reached the entrance chamber at the top of the stairs to find one of the warriors crouching beside each of the walls while the third, lying on the metal floor a stride back from the entrance, methodically sprayed laser flashes back and forth across his angle of fire. "Are they out there?" Tbv-ohnor asked as they reached the chamber.
"I don't know," the warrior at the right-hand wall said. "The Elders say they're not close enough to see us yet, but I keep seeing movement out there in the trees."
"Nothing that says Elders can't make mistakes," Tbv-ohnor grunted, moving up behind him and peering cautiously outside. "Especially with the kind of visual camouflage the Human-Conquerors like to use. Question is, how do we get around them?"
Klnn-dawan-a eased a stride forward. A dozen small smoldering fires and general haze of smoke could be seen throughout the area the third warrior was still sweeping laser fire across. "That question's going to be academic if you set the whole forest on fire," she warned.
"It'll also be academic if we let them get a straight shot in here," Tbv-ohnor retorted, throwing a glare at her over his shoulder. "Let us handle this, all right?"
Flicking her tongue, Klnn-dawan-a stepped back behind the warrior on the floor. As she did so, an Elder appeared just outside the outer doorway, almost invisible against the mottled light pattern of the forest. "Watch out, Warrior First," he warned. "Three of the enemy have reached firing position. The other twelve are still approaching, using what seems to be a modified closed-talon formation."
"What about the warcraft?" Tbv-ohnor asked.
"Commander Thrr-mezaz's scheme seems to have driven them from the area," the Elder said. "Only temporarily, though, I suspect. Our commander at the Battle of F'orshn on X'sin tried a very similar trick, and-"
"Then we need to break out now," Tbv-ohnor cut him off. "Give me targeting on those three warriors."
The Elder vanished, was back a few beats later. "The first is there," he said, pointing with his tongue. "Behind the large tree-he's looking around it to the left of the bole. The second and third are there"-he pointed again-"on either side of a half-buried boulder."
"Right," Tbv-ohnor said, hefting his laser rifle as the Elder vanished again. "Fhz-gelic, get up off the floor-we're going to want two shots on each target. All warriors: aim and fire on my command. Prepare-"
Abruptly, the Elder reappeared. "Warrior-wait. The enemy warriors have suddenly pressed themselves into the ground. They must know-"
"-now!" Tbv-ohnor barked, jerking his laser rifle into firing position. In perfect unison the other five warriors did the same-
And as they fired, the forest to their left seemed to vanish in a dazzling explosion.
Klnn-dawan-a staggered back with a scream, her midlight pupils stabbed with pain. A split beat later she was slammed hard onto the metal floor as the ground bucked like a wild animal beneath her feet and a roar of sound hammered across her body.
Her midlight pupils were still useless; cautiously widening her darklight pupils, she saw the remnants of what must have been a huge fireball rising above the nearest trees. "What happened?" her numbed ear slits heard her voice say.
But there was no answer. Cautiously lifting her head, she looked around her.
Her first horrible thought was that that single blast had raised all six of the warriors to Eldership. They lay on the floor at the front of the entrance chamber, unmoving, their laser rifles lying haphazardly across the floor or still held in limp grips. But even as she stared in rising panic, she saw Tbv-ohnor's left foot twitch and realized what had in fact happened. Standing at the outer door, mostly outside the limited protection of the entrance chamber, they'd been hit much harder by the light and shock wave of the explosion.
It wasn't as bad as she'd feared. But it was bad en
ough. Stunned warriors were no more capable of fighting than warriors who'd been raised to Eldership... and there were fifteen enemy warriors converging on them.
Which meant it was up to her. Pressing her tongue against the side of her mouth, fighting a sudden wave of nausea, she got to her knees and crawled across the floor toward the warriors.
Tbv-ohnor's tail had begun a sluggish undulation by the time she reached the nearest laser rifle. Getting a grip on the shoulder brace, she hauled it over to her, wondering uneasily whether her limited experience with handheld stingers would be any help in handling the vastly more powerful warrior weapon. Picking it up, she climbed to her feet and stumbled to the entrance.
And froze. There, not twenty strides away, a line of eight Human-Conquerors stood or knelt in their camouflage clothing. Their weapons pointing straight at her.
"Pull up, Vanbrugh!" Holloway barked into his comm as the laser beam raked across the Corvine's underside. "Pull up, damn it!"
"He can't," Takara bit out, waving a fist toward the display as the Corvine twisted violently to the right.
He was right, Holloway knew, watching helplessly as the Corvine slid even farther to the side. It was done for, with bare seconds left before either the enemy laser sliced it open or else it crashed onto the forest floor. He cringed in anticipation, wondering why Vanbrugh and Hodgson didn't eject; realized an instant later that they had neither the time nor the altitude left to do so. They were going to die out there. Violently, uselessly, they were going to die.
"Look!" Takara said suddenly, jolting Holloway out of his horrified fascination with the doomed Copperheads. "Bethmann's coming back."
Holloway swore. Bethmann was coming back, all right. The second Corvine had veered around in a tight curve and was blazing full throttle back toward Vanbrugh's crippled fighter and the laser attacking it. Recklessly flying back into danger- "Bethmann, get out of there," Holloway snapped into the comm. "You can't help them now."
There was no answer... but even as Holloway started to repeat the order, he saw it was too late. The heavy laser had flicked away from the crippled Corvine, relinquishing the chance for a direct kill in order to deal with this new threat bearing down on it. Helplessly, Holloway watched as the brilliant beam came on again, grazing the flank of Bethmann's approaching fighter.
And then, abruptly, the Corvine's nose pitched violently upward, the movement all but killing its forward momentum. The laser swung wide, its operators caught off guard by the maneuver. For a split second the aircraft seemed to stand on its tail in midair, its underside blatantly exposed to the enemy. The beam checked its movement, tracked back toward its target-
And in a burst of Icefire the Corvine vanished.
"What the hell?" Takara said, blinking. "Where did it go?"
"It went up, sir," Crane said, sounding more than a little stunned himself. "Just straight up."
"Track him," Holloway ordered.
Crane keyed his board, and the monitor view pulled back and swung upward. Sure enough, there was Bethmann's Corvine, halfway to the stratosphere and just starting to curve over the top of his arc. "Incredible," Takara said. "There's a solid year's worth of dumb luck shot all to hell."
"I don't think there was any luck to it at all," Holloway said, a sudden suspicion striking him. "Crane, see if you can locate Vanbrugh's Corvine."
"Yes, sir." The monitor screen split, bringing up a second image....
Takara whistled softly. "I'll be damned."
Holloway nodded silently. Vanbrugh's damaged Corvine, not looking nearly as crippled now as it had when Bethmann had come charging to the rescue, was flying low across the Dorcas landscape, racing back toward the relative safety of the mountains.
"It was a diversion," Takara said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Vanbrugh couldn't slide out of firing range fast enough, so Bethmann charged in to draw the heat away from him."
"And got the enemy to split his attention just long enough for both of them to get away," Holloway said, a shiver running up his back. A maneuver improvised on the spot, its details communicated between the two crews, its execution handled with exquisite timing and coordination. All of it accomplished in perhaps half a dozen seconds.
A few years back, when Lord Stewart Cavanagh and Commander Adam Quinn had raised the issue of improper Copperhead cadet screening, there had been long and heated debates throughout the Commonwealth as to whether the Copperheads were even worth all this effort and money. As a good Peacekeeper officer, Holloway had of course stood solidly behind the Copperheads in his own discussions with civilian friends and relatives. Privately, though, he would have had to admit that he really didn't understand why Peacekeeper Command was so adamant on keeping the unit.
He did now.
His hand was still squeezing the comm tightly. Easing his grip, he clicked it on. "Vanbrugh, this is Holloway."
"Marlowe, Colonel," the voice of Bethmann's tail man came back promptly. "Vanbrugh can't respond-their main comm system's been damaged. Copperhead laser link's still working, though."
"What's their situation?"
"Bad, but not critical," Marlowe said. "They've lost some maneuvering ability and about half their targeting equipment. Still flyable, but they'll need some patchwork before they're ready for full combat again."
Holloway and Takara exchanged glances. Their supply stockpile was barely adequate to maintain the Peacekeeper unit and the twenty-five thousand civilians bivouacked behind them in the mountains. Their chances of having replacement parts for a Corvine fighter on hand were well-nigh nonexistent. "Understood," he said. "What about you?"
"We lost a little paint, but nothing serious," Marlowe assured him. "All major systems are up and humming, and we're ready to go burn some backside."
"Stand by." Holloway shifted his attention to Crane. "Strike-force status?"
"They're on the ground, sir," Crane said. "Duggen reports they're moving toward the target zone; getting some enemy fire and returning it, but at this point both sides seem to be shooting blind. They have no air cover, though-the aircars had to pull back when that ground laser opened up."
"I see," Holloway said, chewing that one over. On the one hand, with one Corvine already damaged, the last thing he wanted was to lose any more of their already inadequate air power. But on the other hand, the aircars' unauthorized withdrawal from the scene meant that Sergeant Duggen's strike force was completely open to an attack by the Zhirrzh copters. And if the Zhirrzh commander hadn't realized that yet, he would soon.
And they couldn't abandon the tectonic station to the enemy. Which left him exactly one option. "Marlowe?"
"Sir?"
"You think you and Bethmann can take out that ground laser station by yourselves?" Holloway asked. "Without losing more than paint in the process, I mean?"
"Piece of pie, Colonel," Bethmann cut in. "Just give the word."
"Consider it given," Holloway said. "But watch yourselves."
"Acknowledged. Copperheads out."
The radio went silent. "You think they can do it?" Takara asked.
"If that's the only surprise the Zhirrzh have planned, I'm sure they can," Holloway said. "My only worry is that there might be another half-dozen ground stations stashed around that we don't know about. How in hell did they manage to set that one up without our seeing them do it?"
"Sir, we may have an answer to that," Crane spoke up. "Gasperi's done a quick analysis of the spotter tapes, and he thinks the laser was that belly payload we saw one of the copters carrying. He set it down before they all scattered back home."
"Tricky," Takara said. "Speaking of copters, it looks like they're regrouping."
He was right. Regrouping and shifting direction, and a moment later heading back north toward Duggen's strike force.
"Terrific," Holloway growled, searching the monitor for Bethmann's Corvine. The fighter was still cruising across the sky, a couple of klicks above the ground and nearly five klicks northwest of the target zone. "Bethmann,
whatever you're planning, you'd better get to it," he warned. "The copters are on the move."
"We see them, Colonel," Marlowe said. "Just keep your aircars out of the area. And warn the ground troops to brace themselves for one hell of a shock wave."
"Relay that, Crane," Holloway ordered, frowning at the monitor. What did the Copperheads have in mind...?
And then, even as Crane spoke softly into his microphone, the Corvine rolled almost lazily onto its back and abruptly dropped nose first toward the ground.
"Cass-!" Takara gasped.
"Easy, Fuji," Holloway said, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping fervently the dive was planned and not the result of some sudden malfunction. The Corvine continued its plunge, building up incredible speed; and then, just when it seemed a crash was inevitable, its nose pulled up and it leveled into horizontal flight. An instant later it was burning through the air at nearly Mach 2 toward the Zhirrzh laser installation.
