But most soared onward. The two lines met with a series of brilliant, orange-white flashes. These flashes went on and on, increasing in frequency until they resembled splattering raindrops of fire—but at last, the moment passed. The antimissiles had all been spent. Some had hit their targets and knocked them out, others had failed…

  “Three, I count only three left—no, four!” Harris said excitedly. “Those crazy, genetic-robot Clavers knocked out ninety percent of the incoming warheads. That’s amazing! These guys know their shit.”

  “They sure do,” I said, “but now comes the hard part. Put your heads down, everyone.”

  My troops hastened to do as I suggested. Around us, the Claver-Threes watched our odd behavior quizzically. They resembled house pets who were puzzled by the antics of their masters.

  Then the strikes began to land. You could feel the rocky mountainside jump under your body. Dirt sifted down from the roof of the bunker, and the Claver-Threes howled with concern. Wide-eyed, they studied the walls of the chamber. A few hunkered down like we did, but most of them just looked around in fear.

  A roaring sound finished off the attack. It sounded as if a sky-train had run right over our bunker.

  Twenty seconds later it was all over, and the base fell eerily quiet. In the distance, we heard sirens blaring.

  “Okay, okay!” I boomed, standing tall and hitting my head on the low ceiling. I pretended not to care. “Kivi, give me a reading on the external environment.”

  She looked at me with frightened eyes, but she nodded and crawled to the main doors. They were sealed with a big wheel and strips of rubber. She tugged at the wheel for a few seconds.

  “The door won’t open. I can’t budge it. I think the ceiling has shifted.”

  “Weaponeers, let’s get some muscle up there to help her…” I trailed off.

  Three of the Clavers had stood up. Opening a stuck door—that they understood. I waved my weaponeers back. In case it was Hell on Earth outside, I would rather scorch the Clavers.

  They heaved on the metal wheel. Their shoulders bulged and veins stood out on their faces. Kivi stood back, as she was just in the way.

  After a few long seconds, the wheel shifted a few centimeters with a squealing sound. Then it began to spin. Heaving together, the three Clavers managed to force the wheel to move to the opened position. A green light went on.

  They pushed on it—but it still didn’t move.

  “There might be something in the way,” Sargon said.

  I could tell he wanted to step in and help, but I put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a shake of the head.

  “Those boys have got it!” I said encouragingly. “Don’t worry about a thing. These guys have plenty of muscle.”

  Breathing hard, the three Clavers laid their six gloved hands on the door. They shoved and kicked at it. After a full minute of this, it finally swung outward with a loud groan of grinding metal.

  Outside, I expected to see a flaming wasteland—but it wasn’t that bad. Sure, the sky was kind of a lurid red, and there was smoke everywhere, but—

  “Holy shit,” Harris said. “Where did all the snow go?”

  He was right. The ice and snow that had coated the valley had mostly melted. There were patches of it still, looking like melted white wax, but those were rare.

  In the sky overhead, the dome was still there, but it was flickering and orangey-brown.

  “Radiation levels, Kivi?” I asked.

  “Oh… one second…” She deployed drones and crept out into the open, slipping between the befuddled Clavers. She took measurements and transmitted them back to me.

  “It’s hot out here—hot with radiation, I mean. No one should breathe the air. No one should get out of their spacer suits. But the levels of toxicity aren’t higher than we can tolerate in our regular suits.”

  I spent a few minutes trying to tell the Clavers to keep their helmets on, which they seemed to grasp. Then I marched out onto the rocky slopes of the mountain with Harris’ armored platoon at my back. Counting the Claver companies, we were about two hundred strong.

  My first move was to march back to the breach at the bottom of the wall. I didn’t want Tau soldiers to slip through our lines at that easy entry point, while we were still shell-shocked.

  Arriving at the base of the wall, we were met with a grievous sight. Sprawled all over the melted snows were the heavy troopers that had been left outside our bunker.

  Not all of them were outright dead. They were a tough breed, after all. But at least half of them were face down in the bubbling mud that had once been a snowbank. Some of the rest of them were blind and helpless.

  “The light burned them,” Kivi said. “We should have taken them into the shelter with us.” She looked at me reproachfully.

  “Come on, girl,” I said. “We couldn’t have done that. There wasn’t any room. Hell, I don’t think they would have even fit through the bunker’s doorway.”

  She wasn’t happy about my answer, but she didn’t argue with my words because she couldn’t.

  After marching among the troops, I had to personally put down seventeen of them, but we managed to give medical care to another twenty or so. The rest were dead.

  “That’s not bad at all,” I lied. “We’ve got a full platoon left, and they’re all in fighting shape. I’ll report in to Graves.”

  Primus Graves didn’t take my news very well. “You mean your unit sat in an underground bunker while multiple companies of Blood Worlders perished right under your nose? And you did nothing to save them? I know you don’t like aliens McGill, but this is unconscionable.

  “Huh?”

  Graves glared up at me out of his tapper. “Don’t even try to play dumb with me. You knew what you were doing when you abandoned those men at their posts.”

  “Sir, they wouldn’t fit in the bunker! I couldn’t—”

  Graves waved away my protests. “I don’t want to hear excuses. Here’s your new mission: babysit the survivors. You’re in command of all Clavers and the surviving Blood Worlders at the southern redoubt—their squid commander is dead anyway.”

  “Uh… thanks a bunch, sir,” I said, but he was already gone.

  Sucking up all my swearing and misgivings, I walked among the Blood Worlders. I had to kill a few more while we patched up the rest. Altogether, I managed to put about forty of them into service. It would have to do.

  Once the cooked bodies were removed, I decided it was a good time to do some trenching. There hadn’t been much point when the ground had been frozen solid. But now, with the big thaw temporarily in effect, the surface dirt could be scraped away.

  We found three pigs that could still operate and put them to use. Pretty soon, the noisy drones were shoveling and drilling into what amounted to half-melted permafrost. The Blood Worlders tried to help, but they just ended up breaking their shovels and blunting their cutlasses. The dirt was too hard and frozen just a few inches down.

  “Nice looking speed-bump you’ve got there,” Harris commented, laughing at my meager trench.

  This pissed me off, so I sent his heavies into the shallow ditch with their force-blades out. Harris was soon lamenting every joke and sneer he’d ever given one of his bigger cousins.

  About half an hour passed. During that time, I saw what looked like sparklers falling from the sky in the distance, out past the dome. Downslope, the enemy ships were landing and deploying troops. It was only a matter of time until they reached us.

  The forests and snowfields we’d struggled through when attacking this stronghold were both pretty much gone. It was a blasted wasteland outside the dome. We’d lost a number of lifters and troops out there, too. The Tau should be able to march here pretty fast.

  Urging my ragtag army to greater effort, I watched as my speed bump grew to a hump, then a meter-high hill. There wasn’t much time left, but I figured we might as well do what we could.

  -47-

  The Tau are a strange species. They’re humanoid, but smaller than Earthmen. Normally, they aren’t known for marching in armies. Only when they’d had their brains addled back on Tech World had they managed to gather the strength and organization to attack in concert.

  Today seemed like another rare exception to their usual reluctance to fight. We knew without asking what had prompted the change.

  “They’re here for the money, aren’t they?” Carlos asked. He was earning his pay today, patching up Blood Worlders who mostly had sunburns from the fusion warheads the Tau had showered us with. Those who had been wise enough to hide in the breach directly under the wall made up the majority of the survivors. Despite the fact he was being useful at last, practicing his medical skill, he still wasn’t happy. “Those greedy little bastards...” he muttered half to himself.

  “I reckon you’re right,” I said. “Your average Tau will do almost anything for a Galactic credit. These boys have turned mercenary on the promise of cashing in—that said, we’re doing the same damned thing they are.”

  Carlos didn’t seem to hear the last thing I said. He was fixated on making our enemy as evil as possible. I guess that was only natural. “Treasure hunters, that’s what they are,” he complained as he wrapped up a Blood Worlder’s burnt fingers. “Well, good luck down here in the dirt, McGill. Leeson is asking for me to help with some scratches his boys suffered up top.”

  He turned away, but a heavy hand in a thick gauntlet landed on his shoulder. He stopped with a grunt and looked up at me.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Not so fast, Specialist Ortiz. I’m overriding Leeson. You’re staying down here with me.”

  “Seriously? This isn’t payback for some of those comments I made, is it?”

  I shook my head. “Nah. I just figure we’re going to be taking more casualties down here, so we need you more than Leeson does. The Blood Worlders, for instance, don’t have a single medic in their group.”

  “I’m one lucky bastard then, aren’t I?”

  “That’s what I always say. You go find a hole and crouch in it. The enemy is on the way here.”

  Grumbling about grudges and permadeath, Carlos found a trench as far back from the wall and the dome as he could. He squatted in there like a toad in a pothole. I couldn’t blame him for that. He was wearing no armor and carrying nothing more than a snap-rifle. His kind weren’t expected to be frontline fighters.

  About twenty minutes later, when my makeshift wall was a meter high and the hole behind it was about the same in depth—the Tau appeared.

  At first, their assault was kind of pathetic. Little guys came trotting through the dome with lightning guns in their hands. That was the typical weapon they liked to use. Lightning guns were energy weapons with a short range and only about thirty seconds of firepower—but they hit hard.

  Before any of the first ragged line of individuals so much as got off a shot, snap-rifles from above us had pretty much wiped them out. We had the range, the accuracy, experience, and surprise on our side. The Tau melted and soon ran back out of the dome. They left half their number twitching on the melted snow, which was now transforming into icy mud.

  “Good job, troops!” I whooped and hollered. I carried on like we’d won the pennant. My adjuncts and some of the noncoms looked at me like I was crazy, but the Blood Worlders were fooled. They thumped their fists on their legs with approval, like gorillas who’d been trained to clap.

  Ten minutes passed. During that time, I contacted Leeson.

  “You okay up there, Adjunct?” I asked.

  “ Right as rain, Centurion.”

  “Any particular reason why you didn’t burn that line down with your 88s? You could have made a clean sweep.”

  He laughed at me. “I’m engaging in the fine art of trickery, McGill. We don’t want to reveal our true firepower right off—not when we don’t need to in order to win. When they attack again, they’ll have underestimated us a second time. Just you watch.”

  We didn’t have to wait long to test Leeson’s theories. The second wave came in, and this time they came in strength.

  The second line of Tau was ragged but determined. They were spaced out about five meters apart, and they were rushing toward us headlong, ducking behind cover when they could find it. Right behind the first line, another line appeared. They were coming in real numbers now, and I wondered how many we’d see before they ran out of bodies to throw at our wall.

  Leeson again held his fire, but Barton and her lights didn’t. Barton was up on top of the wall, and her troops were plinking away with deadly accuracy. They didn’t wipe out the Tau in a few seconds like they did last time, but they were still taking a grim toll on the attacking troops.

  Crouching behind my trench-line, I bided my time. This was hard on both the Blood Worlders and the Claver-Threes. They sensed a fight was going on, and like watchdogs they wanted to wade into it. Since I was their commander, they cast me constant itchy glances. Every time I stood up or moved suddenly, they all became alert, ready to charge. I had to watch what signals I gave them. They were easily triggered.

  At last, when five full ranks of Tau had penetrated the dome, Leeson’s 88s sang loudly. There were a few other units up there with him, so in all nearly ten 88s gushed deadly radiation.

  I was impressed by the results. The Tau melted—hundreds of them did. They didn’t have a chance.

  So sudden and unexpected was this blistering attack from above that the Tau lines immediately crumpled. The survivors—less than half of the troops involved—fell back. Thy exited the dome and disappeared.

  Leeson came on the line, and he was laughing in my headset. “How’d you like that, Centurion?”

  “Better,” I admitted. “Much better. I don’t think we’ve taken a casualty yet.”

  “We probably won’t. These Tau are amateurs.”

  I disconnected, hoping he was right. A few more long minutes passed. Graves checked in, asking how I was holding out. I assured him we hadn’t been challenged yet.

  “Good to hear. What about their siege-tower things? Not giving you any trouble?”

  I blinked and fell silent for a second. “Siege-towers?”

  “Yes. Big things covered with black armor and gun turrets.”

  “Oh… uh… haven’t seen any of those yet.”

  “You will. They’re rolling on the other two walls right now. Since you’ve got the breach to contend with, I’ll send you two more units of fresh troops.”

  “That’d be mighty considerate of you, sir.”

  Graves was gone again. He had a lot to coordinate, so I understood. It was funny how he often led ops when it came down to actual battles. Sure, there were usually other officers around who outranked him, but they all seemed to know who the best ball-carrier on the team really was.

  Right about then, something freaky-looking broke through the dome. It was tall—about thirty meters tall in fact, and it rolled on treads. It was covered in black armor that I recognized right off—because I was wearing some of the same stuff.

  The armored monstrosity trundled toward our half-broken wall at a sedate pace. Behind and around it, perhaps a thousand Tau ran across icy mud, bodies and burnt tree stumps.

  The Tau siege-tower had appeared, and I had no doubt of its intentions. It was built to break through our walls. Possibly it was a sheer coincidence, but I was surprised to see the tower was just tall enough to reach the top of our wall.

  Hmm…

  That simple fact gave me a pang of worry. These Tau… how had they known they were going to have to break through a wall? And where in the hell had they gotten black Rigellian armor?

  Obviously, the Tau had been tipped off about this stronghold and the local Claver defenses. The height and nature of these siege towers made that much very clear.

  Did that mean the enemy had someone on the inside? If so, that someone had to be one of the Clavers. No one just “whipped up” a stack of siege towers on a whim. They’d built these before they’d ever lifted off into space from their home world.

  Harris was banging on my shoulder, so I gave him my attention.

  “Centurion! You see that bullshit? Who gave these fuckers magic armor like yours? All our small-arms fire is bouncing right off that frigging thing!”

  I saw immediately that he was right. Power bolts, snap-rifle rounds, sizzling beams from belchers—it was all bouncing off. The surface of the tower, which tapered somewhat at the top, smoked and puffed white when we hit it—but we weren’t blasting holes in it. We weren’t affecting it at all.

  My mind accelerated. I knew already we were in trouble. Experienced soldiers always had a sixth sense for these things, and my sorry excuse for a brain was tingling like mad.

  I envisioned the next few minutes. The tower was going to roll right on up to the wall, and then it was going to drop a ramp or something. From that lofty perch, attackers would flood onto the wall top. With only lights and specialists up there, Leeson was going to be in trouble.

  “Leeson,” I called, “light that thing up with your 88s. Don’t wait for the perfect moment!”

  “We’re firing on it, sir. You see those slashing stripes of steam on the midsection—that’s us.”

  “Holy shit… it’s not working.”

  “Don’t I know it, Centurion.”

  I thought hard for another spare second. The oversized lightning guns that poked out of the tower were swiveling now, coming to life. They moved this way and that with an eerie intelligence. They might be driven by AI or Tau—I couldn’t tell which.

  “Leeson! Forget the siege tower, hit the troops on the ground. We’ll worry about the tower ourselves.”

  “You’ve got it, McGill.”

  He sounded freaked out, but he was also game. He was in the fight to the finish. Unlike Harris, Leeson didn’t try to run off all the time.

  About then, the first lightning gun on the tower lit up. It fired down onto our trench from an angle. Dirt and troops exploded everywhere. Apparently, we were inside enemy range now.

  “Troops,” I roared, “focus fire on the Tau around and behind that siege tower. Harris, form up your heavies on me.”