"What's he doing?" demanded Droad.

  "I don't know, sir. Wait," the operator's jaw sagged down. His console had gone blank.

  With alarming rapidity, systems began to go down all around the security center. Steinbach's image on the holo-plate was one of the first to vanish.

  "What's happening?" asked Droad, with the sinking feeling that he already knew the answer.

  "I--he must have released a virus, sir. The whole system is going down. The security applications, the network, even the operating system itself has been corrupted. It'll take hours to reload and reboot."

  Jarmo burst into the center, his sides heaving from running.

  Droad glanced at him angrily. "It seems that General Steinbach has schemes of his own. He's now boarding the Gladius."

  Jarmo flushed, his massive neck turning red first then his heavy face.

  "I thought you were going to keep an eye on him."

  Jarmo glowered, looking chagrinned. "He moved more quickly than I expected, sir. I underestimated him."

  Droad nodded, accepting the apology. He doubted that Steinbach would fool Jarmo again. Not now that his professional pride was involved.

  "With your permission, sir, I'll take a team up and retrieve him."

  "No, no. For now he has escaped us. We have far more pressing problems."

  "Yes," agreed Jarmo reluctantly. "What are we going to do about Fort Zimmerman?"

  Droad sipped his hot caf, then set it down with a grimace. It had become cold caf. "We have to take it back. Has Dorman returned yet?"

  "He's on his way. A few minutes ago he reported having shot down most of the enemy Stormbringers and having driven off the rest. He said there was heavy damage to the city."

  "What about our own losses?"

  "He only lost three planes in the engagement. According to him, the aliens are excellent instinctive pilots with inhumanly good reflexes, but they just don't know the planes as well as our pilots do. Not yet, at least."

  Droad sipped a new mug of caf--a hot mug this time. It made sense that the alien pilots were naturals. It was beginning to seem that this bewildering variety of aliens were all of the same basic genetic stock, perhaps even the same species. "We aren't fighting an alliance of several alien races, Jarmo. We're fighting just one race, one very adaptable race."

  "Your theory fits the facts, sir. Every time we meet a new type of alien, they seem to be experts at one part of warfare or another. Almost as if they were designed for it."

  Droad touched his lips to his mug again, feeling the heat. It was with great trepidation that he asked the next question. "What's the situation in Grunstein?"

  Jarmo turned and their eyes met. "Grim."

  "The missile bombardment continues?"

  Jarmo nodded.

  "Then we haven't got time to wait. Get the men regrouped. As soon as Captain Dorman has rearmed his planes, we go on the offensive."

  * * *

  Standing in disgrace, the eldest nife presented his report with drooping stalks. His cusps were mere slits, all but hiding his orbs from view. The Parent and her three young daughters sat on their individual birthing thrones, their tentacles moving in agitation.

  "We should expel him from the nest," suggested one of the young parents. She clacked her mandibles contemptuously. "Without killbeasts to slaughter his prey and trachs to bring it to him, he'd starve within a week."

  "You are far too lenient sister," admonished the second daughter. "I say we remove his genitals and send him into the field alongside the killbeasts. Let him lead the charge during the next slaughter he orchestrates."

  The remaining daughter only grunted and warbled through her foodtube inarticulately. She was passing a particularly large larva and was beyond making sensible commentary. Behind her, a group of clattering hests reached anxiously for the new squirming form even before it had cleared her orifice and hit the chute. When she had passed it, she slumped over her birthing throne. "There, I have finished one replacement jugger for those you so stupidly squandered," she said.

  "Yes, to have wasted so many of our precious juggers, that is his greatest crime to date," said her sister. "When I think of the agony I'll have to go through passing their huge bodies and those single thorn-like immature horns of theirs, I wish my chambers would just rupture fatally right now. It would be a relief."

  "Those horns do almost invariably cause tearing," agreed the other daughter. "You are a most wretched mutation, commander."

  Half-listening to her offspring, the eldest Parent, the one who had first invaded Garm, regarded the nife she had melded with so recently. How had such a genetically well-designed commander failed so miserably? Could there be a hidden flaw in his DNA? Could it be that he simply wasn't of good type? Something the checking enzymes hadn't picked up and repaired? A mutation of such magnitude would be a reflection on her own genetics. It made her shudder to think she could have produced something flawed from her own birthing orifice.

  "No," she said aloud. Her daughters quieted immediately and the nife raised his stalks a fraction, hoping. "I won't accept that he is flawed. The only answer is that the enemy is of greater capability than we had previously assumed."

  "But that oversight would still be his fault," the daughter to the Parent's left pointed out petulantly.

  The Parent hesitated a moment, passing another larvae. It was only a hest and thus gave her no discomfort. With a liquid slapping sound, it rolled down the chute beneath and behind her. "I myself was as fully taken in as was he. I've reviewed the records of the battle transmissions; the bio-computers have sufficient capacity to track everything now. The enemy surprised us by adapting quickly to a new threat, then again by bringing in reinforcements from their great ship. Reinforcements that we had no prior knowledge of. All our software worms have been unable to penetrate the ship's systems."

  "That's essentially correct," chimed in the nife. Already his stalks were on the rise. "In fact, every net on the planet surface has been penetrated and compromised. We've yet to get in viruses to disrupt them, but we have tapped them all. Every hour our knowledge of the enemy grows exponentially."

  His stalks were nearly at full extension now, and he took the opportunity to stride up and down before his massive mistresses. Pausing in front of the youngest, he blinked his cusps twice in a conspiratorial and suggestive manner. She responded by sucking air through her foodtube, but didn't make any public complaints.

  The nife continued to pace before them and speak with growing enthusiasm. "I'll take a chance, right here, right now, and say that victory is in sight for the Imperium. The planet is all but in our control--except for two pockets of real resistance. One is the united forces in the southern estate areas, where the enemy rulers seem to reside, the second is associated with the spaceport and the great ship itself.

  "All we really need to do is take the ship. Besides giving us the high ground in this conflict and vast amounts of data concerning the highest technological achievements of the enemy, it will provide us an out if things should sour down here."

  A chorus of blatting noises filled the throne chamber. The three daughters were voicing their displeasure by expelling air through their foodtubes. "Did I hear correctly? Not only does this buffoon fail us as a commander, but immediately he begins to plan for the failure of the entire campaign! What can be gained by planning for gross error?"

  "But with one blow we could secure everything!" retorted the nife, excitedly. His mandibles worked the air like frenzied snakes. "We must seize the moment and mount a second, massive assault!"

  Further rude noises greeted him.

  The Parent slapped her tentacles against her throne, calling for order. Truly, things had been more orderly before she had birthed her daughters. Not for the first time, she considered sending them away with an umulk each to begin their own nests. Let them mature through hard labor and independence. However, she stayed this decision, telling herself that they were yet too young. Perhaps by tomorrow or the next day they would have matured sufficiently to run their own fledgling nests. Thoughtfully, she sat for a time, listening to her digesters and feeling her birthing chambers contract and expand.

  "I have made my decisions," she said after a time during which the others had become increasingly restive. "You, eldest of my nife offspring, must gather all our strength in the polar region for one fatal thrust against the enemy. We will take the spaceport and the great ship."

  "Oh, thank you, my Parent," cried the nife, his orbs wide and beaming. "You will not be disappointed, not in the least. I will--"

  "See that I am not," said the Parent, overriding him. "Or else you will be both gelded and expelled from this nest."

  The three daughters found this immensely amusing.

  "I have further decided," continued the Parent, "that my daughters are quite ready to face the outside world alone. Tomorrow, with a small dowry of offspring, each of you will be transported to a strategic spot on the continent to begin new nests in secret."

  It was the nife's turn to laugh. The daughters all but swooned at the idea of leaving the home nest, but the Parent remained adamant.

  The nife then proceeded to flirt with them all in his customary, brash manner, winking his cusps and massaging their birthing thrones suggestively. When he finally exited, it was with a handsome flourish that left them all with their hormones flowing.

  * * *

  By nightfall, Droad and Jarmo were walking the walls of Fort Zimmerman, inspecting the damage. It had all gone with surprising ease. Taking complete leadership of the militia had been easy after Steinbach had run off. That single action, combined with the generally cowardly performance of the militia leadership during the battle had done wonders for Droad's popularity. The men were loyal to him now, he, his amazing mechs and his giants had saved them from the aliens.

  Leaving the spaceport in the hands of Major Lee and a handful of his former staff, Droad and Jarmo led their small army against the fort. The assault on the fort itself had been little more than an exercise. It had been held only by a skeletal force of aliens, mostly the multi-armed, multi-eyed types that piloted the Stormbringers and the other vehicles they had captured. Captain Dorman had blown a hole in the outer fences and the rear wall of the fortress. Two lifters full of militiamen and mechs had stormed through the smoldering breach and slaughtered what resistance there was. The enemy had had only enough time to destroy the missile launchers before they were retaken.

  "This easy victory doesn't make me feel much better," complained Droad, gesticulating at the fortress around them.

  "At least we stopped the missile attacks on the city."

  "Yes, that's excellent, but where are the enemy? There aren't even any corpses left behind except for those octopus pilots of theirs. Where are our dead militiamen from last night's banquet?"

  "My initial investigation indicates that all the bodies have been removed and carried into the tunnels we found in the banquet hall."

  "What do they want with all the bodies?"

  "The social structure of these aliens reminds me somewhat of insects," said Jarmo, thoughtfully. A chill wind rippled his heavy coat. "The orderly way that they approach warfare and everything else; their lack of concern for their individual well-being. They are similar to ants, or termites. They even dig tunnels with fantastic speed."

  Droad stopped walking and turned to Jarmo, listening carefully. The clouds had broken over the polar region and the sun could be seen, scudding along just above the horizon. Its light was welcome, but seemed to provide little heat.

  "I can only surmise that after a battle they would eat our people and probably their own dead as well," concluded Jarmo.

  "They eat their own dead?"

  "Insects are very efficient."

  "But these things aren't insects," argued Droad. "They're more like hot-blooded reptiles, like dinosaurs, than insects."

  "Physically yes, but not socially."

  Droad started walking again, and Jarmo fell in step beside him. He looked back toward the spaceport and the dark shaft of the space elevator that reached up into the sky, all the way to the orbital platform. It was like a metallic umbilical cord, stretching for miles right up into space.

  "I still wonder why they pulled back. They must be regrouping, planning something big."

  "I agree," said Jarmo. "They are probably massing in the mountains for a counterattack."

  "Get the fort's battle computers online. I want them tracking all the appropriate radio frequencies. Find those aliens, Jarmo."

  Jarmo smiled grimly. "They won't surprise us again."

  Nineteen

  The weird, table-like creatures carried Sarah and the others down into the tunnels. Sarah was wrapped in womb-like blackness. For seemingly an endless time she rode on the warm, undulating back of her beast.

  Dazed by her recent experiences she stared upward, watching nothing but the colorful after-images that played on her retinas. The darkness didn't seem to bother the aliens; they apparently needed no help to guide themselves through their own tunnels.

  Sarah began to feel a deep hopelessness, a pitiful despair that wasn't familiar to her. She tried to get herself out of this defeatist malaise, to tell herself there was always hope, but somehow the blackness and the odd stinks and sounds drove the hope out of her. It was as if grotesque minions of evil were carting her into the depths of hell.

  An unwelcome addition to her discomfort was the terrible headache she had from having been drowned. Oxygen deprivation had sent a herd of galloping horses through her head, pounding down the gray matter with sharp hooves. She wondered vaguely if she had sustained any brain damage--and whether or not it would be possible for her to tell if she had.

  Slipping in and out of consciousness, she slept.

  * * *

  Mom?

  Mom, are you there?

  Sarah reached up and touched her itching nose. The itch didn't go away however, as it was an alien stink, not really an itch.

  "Mom?" asked a tiny voice from somewhere.

  With a sudden intake of breath she came awake and sat up halfway. She only made it halfway because her head hit the roof of the tunnel that they still traveled within. "Bili?" she cried, ignoring the jolt of pain in her head. "Bili, where are you?"

  "Here, Mom," said Bili, not so far away. From the sound of it, he was on the next animal up. She noticed something in her eyes, something that stung briefly. It was blood from her forehead.

  Something came out of the darkness and touched her. It was an alien appendage of some kind, a hard horny thing like the claw of a crab. It touched her and pushed her firmly back down. She realized, swallowing a great scream, that it was only the beast she was riding on, pushing her flat for easy transport. Feeling like livestock on the way to the slaughterhouse, she let herself lie flat again.

  "Bili, what's been going on? Are you okay?"

  "You're alive," said Bili with intense relief in his voice. "The aliens haven't hurt me yet, but something's wrong with Daddy, he's breathing like a walker on a mountainside and won't talk to me. He just moans every once in awhile. I hope he dies, the fat bastard."

  Sarah felt a sudden added weight on her shoulders. She had been so concerned about Bili that she had blanked out all the recent events with Mudface and Daddy. She shivered, although the air in the tunnel was surprisingly warm, even hot. She noticed that her clothes were still wet from the pool, which meant that she couldn't have slept too long. Now that she was more fully awake, she realized just how much pain she was in. Being murdered and then brought back to life played hell with your body. She felt like a bruised lump of overripe fruit.

  "Daddy's here? What about Mudface?"

  "They offed him," said Bili, sounding positively cheerful. "It was enough to make me cheer for their side. Almost."

  Sarah was again taken by a wave of guilt. This whole situation was her fault. She had gone for the money by dealing with Mudface and Daddy in the first place. She had even given the aliens her ticket for a ride down to the planet when they needed it. Worst of all, she had dragged Bili into all this with her, her own son.

  "Oh, Bili," she said, her voice weak in the darkness. "I'm so sorry for getting you into this."

  "It's okay, Mom. Besides, I'm the one you did it for. I guess I'll never get that regrow for my arm now."

  In the blackness, Sarah let tears run down her face, but she didn't make a sound. It would only upset Bili.

  After an unknowable length of time, during which Daddy made fitful mewling noises and breathed like a smithy's bellows, they reached an opening. Sarah could feel the wash of moving air, the different reflection of sound.

  "We must be in some kind of big chamber," she said.

  "You think this is where they're going to eat us?" asked Bili.

  Sarah blinked rapidly in the darkness. "What are you talking about?"

  "Well, why else would they drag us down here?" asked Bili reasonably. "These things are just like the bone-cutter ants down in the jungles around Bauru. They dig tunnels, attack everything that moves, carry food back to the nest on their backs."

  Sarah could think of nothing to say. The boy was probably right.

  After crossing the great chamber, which took long enough to convince Sarah that it was truly huge, they reentered a smaller side tunnel again. Soon they became aware of a growing glow of light from down the tunnel. Sarah raised her head and saw the dim outline of her son, crouching on the next animal up ahead.

  The column stopped, and they were unceremoniously tossed into a shaft that branched off from the tunnel. Inside was a small, low chamber, perhaps thirty feet deep, six feet wide and three feet high. The room contained several people, in the midst of whom sat a tiny, portable glow-lamp, which was the source of the illumination.

  They turned to look back at the beast of burden and were just in time to scramble out of the way as the massive form of Daddy rolled into the cramped chamber. At the entrance, one of the carrying types levered a heavy thickness of some kind of transparent material into the opening. Another type that they hadn't seen before, a small spidery creature with many eyes and appendages, squirted a substance around the border of the transparent material, sealing them in.