Harris was ahead of me. He was personally commanding the first platoon of heavies, and you could tell he wasn’t a happy camper. I was six kinds of sorry about that, but we were all going to have to do or die at this point.

  Less than a minute after we’d arrived planet-side, our first beam lanced out and melted the side of one of the missile batteries. It was in the very act of firing at that moment, and the whole installation went up in a fireball of smoke and flame.

  “Well, if they didn’t know we were here before, they do now,” Leeson told me.

  I pointed toward the next missile launcher. “Beam that one—use your missiles on the rest across the valley.”

  He hustled to comply, and soon we were laying down some righteous firepower from those icy slopes.

  The enemy response wasn’t long in coming. A series of hatches opened in the middle of the base. Black-dressed troops poured out of all of them. Hunched figures in heavy winter gear moved in our general direction, like beetles swarming over bones.

  “Barton, Harris, put all your fire down on those troops! Get them ducking!”

  A storm of small arms fire began. We were partially exposed on these rocky slopes, but it was always better to have the high ground. Every boulder on the mountainside had a soldier behind it, and we were all working our rifles for all we were worth.

  The enemy troops were Claver-Threes, I was pretty sure about that. They were the most basic but physically capable of the clone types. They were dumb, mean, and absolutely incorruptible.

  Two minutes of hard fighting passed. To be honest, I was already starting to feel good about this fight. Sure, we were eventually going to eat a biscuit up here on this mountainside. There was no way we could stop a thousand enemy troops from overwhelming us, even though we had the better terrain and the element of surprise.

  But that didn’t matter. We were buying the time the legion so desperately needed to get our lifters down on the ground. Once all of Legion Varus and our supporting zoo-legion was deployed farther down the valley, the base was doomed. Sure, we’d all be dead by then… but those were the breaks.

  My growing sense of elation and victory was short-lived, however. A crackling buzz began overhead, and it spread rapidly across the sky.

  Looking up and gaping, our rate of fire slowed and almost stopped. All over the valley, to the limits of our vision in the snowstorm, a glassy field was appearing above us.

  Harris growled in frustration. He grabbed Leeson roughly and pointed overhead. “That’s a force field. We’re inside a dome now—and we’re trapped under it with them!” He pointed down into the valley, where the black-coated Clavers were still pouring out of their underground bunkers like ants.

  Looking around, I realized Harris was right. The entire valley seemed to be domed-over, with blue-white electrical flashes showing us where the field was contacting falling snow. It was like being under an umbrella made of electricity.

  The dome seemed to let the weather through it. The snow penetrated the force field, as did the high winds. Experimentally, I fired a few bolts at the roof that enclosed us. They were reflected.

  “Never mind that dome,” I ordered. “Keep up your rate of fire. If we kill all of them, we win. We can do it!”

  Even as I said these words, I knew they were a bald-faced lie. Most of my troops did, too. Certainly, my officers knew I was full of shit.

  Still, no one threw down his weapon and ran, nor did they try to surrender or cry for their mommas. This was Legion Varus, and if we were good at any one thing, it was dying hard.

  -33-

  The long and the short of it was we were wiped out. After most of us died a gruesome death, the survivors were pushed back into the caves we’d come from. Something like forty minutes after we landed, it was almost over.

  Some of my men tried to escape. They tried to teleport out—but their crushed bodies tumbled back down from the sky, thumping and splatting on the rocks outside.

  “They can’t pass the barrier,” Kivi explained to me in a wheezing voice. She’d been lung-shot, but she still had some strength in her. She was just gasping for air whenever she spoke.

  “Not even with a full charge?” I asked.

  “No. I checked. Even the last few of Barton’s lights who retreated into this rat hole can’t get out. We’re trapped, sir. What are your orders?”

  Kivi eyed me, and I eyed her back. I didn’t have much hopeful stuff going on inside my head. Harris, Barton, Leeson—they were all dead. Sargon had died early. They’d gone for him and his weaponeers first, as we had been effectively destroying their AA batteries.

  “Okay… okay, let me think…”

  “I’ve got an idea, sir,” asked a voice from nowhere.

  I reached out a fast hand, but it closed on nothing. Cooper, my top-rated ghost specialist, had gotten good at throwing his voice. It was a survival skill for him.

  “Tell me your idea, you chicken-shit,” I said.

  “I’m going to strike out from this cave before they get here. I’ll try to find my way out of the valley. If I make it before I freeze to death, I’ll let them know we wiped.”

  I thought it over for about five seconds. Finally, I nodded. “What about Della? Is she—?”

  “She’s gone, sir. I’m your last ghost.”

  I nodded. “Go Cooper. Go. Take the roster of dead with you.” After I transmitted the files to his tapper, he took off. He was probably outside the cave, sprinting away from this deadly trap as fast as he could—and I couldn’t really blame him.

  “McGill,” Kivi said, “if he dies out there, alone, and the legion finds us… they might never find him. He might be permed.”

  “Better a chance of that than having us all be permed right now.”

  She shut up, and we hunkered down as a squad of heavy Clavers reached the cave entrance. Kivi set off three grenades she’d rigged on our doorstep, and the Clavers melted.

  “That won’t hold them for long,” she said. “If they’re smart, they’ll just fire shells in here until they’re sure we’re all dead.”

  “Yeah… we don’t have long. Got any ideas?”

  “We could… no… not now, it’s too late.”

  “What?”

  She wheezed tiredly. I could tell her mind was fogging due to her injuries. She’d stopped coughing. Maybe she was going into shock. “I was thinking we could use the charged teleport suits, retarget them just outside the valley and then run out of the dome on foot. Maybe someone could escape that way.”

  “That’s a great idea!” I told her.

  Kivi shook her head. She pointed out the cave entrance. “We can’t do it. The only charged harnesses are out there—Barton’s lights were wearing them when they died.”

  “Oh yeah… shit.” My mind churned for a moment, but then I got an idea. I contacted Cooper, tapper to tapper. He didn’t answer right off, so I used my override code to force the issue.

  Not being a complete asshole, I didn’t say anything. I muted my microphone, in fact. I didn’t want to give away his position just in case he was sneaking past a Claver patrol right now.

  “…Centurion?” a voice whispered about a minute later. “What the fuck is this? A pants-check? Let me do my job, sir!”

  “Your job has changed, Cooper. You’re going to sneak back here, and you’re going to bring a charged teleport harness with you. That’s an order.”

  Cooper cursed me a bit, and I didn’t blame him at all. Then the signal went dead.

  I sighed and put my rifle back to my shoulder. Either he’d do it, he’d fail, or he’d ignore my order and do what he wanted. No matter which of these paths lay ahead, further calls weren’t going to help.

  Two more squads assaulted the cave entrance, but we repelled them. Claver-Threes weren’t too bright, you have to understand.

  Clavers were created in three basic forms. There were Claver-Primes, who were the smart bossy ones. The original model. Claver-Twos were technicians. Unimaginative, loyal, just smart enough to do the job. They were the worker-bees of the hive.

  The most common flavor however were the Class-Threes. These gorillas were made for combat and obedience, nothing else. It was my impression that the ruling Clavers feared making armed versions of themselves for defense, so they’d concocted a genetic mix that was pretty stupid. It was this stupidity that we were able to take advantage of now in our last stand.

  “McGill?” a voice called into the cavern.

  It wasn’t Cooper. It was a Claver-Prime. My teeth bared themselves when I heard that voice.

  “What do you want, Claver?”

  “Prisoners, that’s what. Drop your weapons and come on out of there. We can talk.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “That’s foolish, boy. Even for you. You’re trapped in there—even a first-class dolt such as yourself should have figured that out by now.”

  “We’ll keep killing your boys until you run out, or we do. Or maybe, when our assault ships land, we’ll spit on all your dead faces.”

  Claver laughed. “That’s not a very neighborly attitude. Here I am, trying to help you out because I’m feeling extremely generous today—and you’re shitting on my hospitality.”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” I shouted back. I’d already decided to keep him talking as long as I could to give Cooper more time.

  “I’m sure you are, but let’s do a little thought-experiment together, okay?”

  “A thought-experiment?” I asked, feeling elated. That sounded like a giant time-waster. But I didn’t want to seem too eager, so I answered him in a scoffing manner. “Shit, Claver, just tell me what you want.”

  He laughed again. “I want you as my prisoner, I already told you. But what I’m going to do now is go through some mental gymnastics called thinking—something you might not be familiar with.”

  “What’s the frigging point?”

  “The point is that if you’ll listen to me, you dumb ape, you’ll realize you should surrender pronto.”

  Thinking for a second, I came up with another distraction. “Hey,” I shouted, “what’s with all the Claver-Threes? I thought you guys used dog-men now.”

  “You’re right,” the prime shouted back. “Most of our planets do use specially bred hybrids these days, but we’re old school here. I suppose when these clowns die out, we’ll replace them with canines.”

  “What’s it like living with dog-men anyway? I always wondered—”

  “Are you stalling me, McGill?” Claver snapped back. “I’m beginning to smell a rat, here.”

  Kivi and I eyed one another. She looked kind of half-dead, but she showed me a detonator. “I think I can nail him with these charges. He has to be close to the cave entrance.”

  I signaled for her to stand-down, and she lay back on the rocks and closed her eyes.

  “All right,” I called out to Claver. “Let’s talk about surrender. Why should I even consider it?”

  “That’s the topic I’m interested in. My pitch goes like this: You came out here a few weeks back—you still remember doing that, right?”

  “I sure do. Your Lady Claver made me feel right at home. I think she has a thing for me.”

  He was quiet for a second, but when he started talking again, he sounded kind of pissed. “You’d best not be talking shit about my one and only sister. You hear me? If you do any more of that, I’ll dust off your survivors right here and now.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Just tell me your damned story.”

  “Try to keep up. You came out here, and you talked to us, and then you took off. The last time you did that, our base was attacked a few days later. So… what do you think we expected this time?”

  “Uh… an attack?”

  “Bingo! You see, my brothers? I told you he wasn’t as dumb as you guys. Almost that dumb, but not quite. So, McGill, the point is we expected this attack. How could we not?”

  What he was saying made sense. I was frowning, as I didn’t like the way this fireside chat was progressing. “Get to the point, Claver, or we’re going to have to blow all the mines we left near the entrance of the cave.”

  We heard nothing from him for about a minute, but then something was thrown into the cave. It was a com-box. The thing lit up, and Claver’s voice came out of it.

  “Listen to me, you irritating man. I’m trying to help you, you idiot!”

  I laughed. “Sounds like you wet yourself and threw a com-box in here to do your talking for you. But okay, okay. Explain away.”

  “We sent for help, McGill. Lots of help. We’ve got cash here, you see. I’ve learned over the years that people like money. Even aliens like Imperial Credits. I’m paying them for help, and they’re arriving real soon. They might even be in orbit right now.”

  That thought alarmed me. All of a sudden, I was getting what he was talking about.

  We had, after all, pretty much telegraphed this attack with my recon mission. This base might not be the only Claver base, but it was certainly their piggy bank. They wanted to protect it.

  Without enough troops or ships of their own... they’d done what rich people with no army had always done in history—they’d hired their defenders.

  “Huh…” I said. “That’s very interesting, and it makes sense, but I’m not quite sure why you’re telling me this.”

  “Because I want to get information out of you, and I can get more out of a live body than a dead one. I want you to understand that if you die right now—you’re permed. There’s no way come hell or high-water Legion Varus is busting into this fortress before my mercenaries arrive. I’ll grant you that that initial surprise strike was good, but it didn’t take us out. That’s all that matters now.”

  While Claver was speeching, something pressed against my ribs. I reflexively lashed out—and Cooper’s invisible body rolled in the dirt. He was invisible, but I now saw what had been pushing into my belly. It was a teleport harness, and the battery light was shining green.

  I grinned. “Sorry, Cooper. Good job.”

  “Thank you, sir…”

  “Now,” I told him in a whisper, “I want you to worm your way to the front of this cave, and throw a grenade into Claver’s teeth. Make sure you’re dead-on.”

  “Uh… are you sure about that, sir?”

  “Reveal yourself as you do it. Make sure the Class-Threes see you do this—that way, they’ll murder you instantly, and you can get your revive.”

  “You’re all heart, Centurion.”

  He vanished and I saw the dirt move where he’d been.

  Over the next ninety seconds or so, I had Kivi dream up some coordinates that should reach to the other side of the mountain we were sitting inside of. Fortunately, her computer was still in good shape, and she had a full scan of the area recorded inside it.

  “Dammit, McGill, answer me!” Claver demanded. “You’re trying my patience! Will you surrender or not? Not even a dolt like you can be so—”

  Claver cut off, and I saw sporadic fire at the cave entrance. At the same time, the outside world flashed with the impact of a grav-plasma grenade. Grunting Claver-Threes ran in every direction, but they were knocked flat. As far as I could tell, the prime who’d been talking to us had died, too.

  A few seconds later, the cave lit up like a Hegemony Day celebration. The Clavers were unloading grenades and everything else they had in a full-on rage.

  “Good old Cooper…” I said, and I touched the teleport button.

  I vanished and reappeared in the crowning branches of one of those weird-looking, swirly pine trees. My left boot was hooked up, so I didn’t fall to the ground right off. Slashing at the branch I was tangled up with, I broke free and fell another dozen meters.

  Fortunately, the branches and the snowy ground broke my fall. I wasn’t dead yet—not by a long shot. Lifting my leg, I examined my left foot. Just as I thought, there was a pine branch sticking out of it. I’d merged up with the tree when I’d teleported out here.

  Dammit. I was just on the inside the dome, but outside the ring of mountains. Hobbling on my messed-up left foot, I made it to the dome and pushed through it, exiting the force field. The field itself was kind of weird feeling, it was like pushing through a giant mess of spider webs. I could tell it wasn’t a solid wall, but rather one meant to keep out fast moving things like bullets and missiles.

  Once I broke through and was outside the dome, I checked my gear. There wasn’t enough juice left in the harness to jump to Dominus—and I didn’t know exactly where she was in any case. What I was able to do, however, was connect the battery to my tapper to amp the output. I aimed a signal into the sky and gave it a shot.

  A minute passed. Then a second minute came and went. By minute three, I was cursing up a blue-streak.

  “All this for nothing? Dammit. Come on, Varus. Answer me!”

  “McGill? Is this really Centurion McGill?”

  Like magic, my tapper had begun talking. I could hear some drones in the forest by now, however, so I started running. My left foot was heavy-feeling and sore, but I forced it to thrash through the snow, wincing with every step.

  “Dominus, this is Centurion McGill. I’m transmitting a list of the dead from my unit. I’m requesting immediate evac.”

  “Stand by, McGill.”

  I waited, and the wait wasn’t a long one. It came down to a race, really. An attack drone appeared, it must have been launched by the Clavers—damn, those guys seemed pissed.

  The drone shot at me, and I returned fire. I took a round in the chest, and I fell back on the snow, panting. The drone was a smoking wreck—but so was I.

  My breath became ragged, so I pressed the call button on my tapper repeatedly.

  Finally, a familiar voice and face appeared. It was Graves. “Keep your shirt on, McGill—damn... you’re a mess.”

  “Yessir, I am.”

  “What’s the status of your command?”

  “I don’t have one, sir. I transmitted the dead list—it’s pretty complete.”

  Graves paged unhurriedly at his screen. “Ah yes, I see… a near total loss. All right, why are you bothering me now?”