INCIDENT AT GOAT KILL CREEK

CAMAEL, GABRIEL75C .Y. 06/0849-PIONEERVALLEY, MIDLAND

A storm had passed over the valley during the night, leaving behind six inches of fresh snow. In the cool, clear light of morning, it lay thick upon the forest, an occasional gust of wind blowing tiny flakes off the branches, the bright sun causing them to scintillate like fairy dust as they drifted toward the ground. The snow muted all sound, turning the valley into a silent winter cathedral. Save for cakes of loose ice gliding along the half-frozen river that meandered between the mountains, nothing moved.

At the river's edge, a large brown form bobbed upon the cold water like a giant cork. Sunlight reflecting off glass caught Carlos's eyes. Training the binoculars upon the floating mass, his right forefinger found the autofocus; the image became sharper, losing its fuzziness. Even from a hundred yards uphill, he knew exactly what he was seeing: a Union Guard patrol skimmer, a flat-bottom hovercraft with a 30mm chain gun mounted above the glass hemisphere of its forward cockpit. The top hatch between its two fans was open; as he watched, a soldier climbed up through the hatch, looked around, then disappeared into the vehicle once more.

"Can you see 'em?" Marie whispered. She lay on the ground next to him, belly down behind the boulder that hid them from view. "How many are there?"

"Wait a minute. Still looking." The skimmer was floating next to the shore; he could hear voices, unintelligible yet distinct nonetheless. Carlos panned the binoculars toward the ramp that had been lowered from the craft, but there were too many trees in the way for him to make anyone out.

He lowered the binoculars, raised himself carefully into a kneeling position, and made a low chirping sound between his lips: too-too-sweet, too-too-sweet , the mating call of a grasshoarder, innocuous in the woodlands unless one knew that the small birds went into hibernation during winter. Most Guardsmen were too new to Coyote to be aware of such things.

The signal caught Barry's attention. Thirty feet to Carlos's left, he raised his head from behind the fallen trunk of a rough-bark where he and Lars were crouched. Carlos pointed to his eyes, then pointed down at the river, then traced a question mark in the air: How many do you see? Without hesitation, Barry raised an open hand, then added two fingers.

"Shit." Carlos settled back behind the boulders, turned to his sister. "There's seven . . . and that's just what Barry can see. No telling how many are still aboard."

"Seven? I don't think so." Frosted air drifted around Marie's mouth. "Gimme that," she said quietly, and Carlos handed the binoculars to her. She raised herself up on her elbows, took a brief look at the skimmer, then came back down again. "He's wrong. There's only six."

"How do you . . . ?"

"That's an Armadillo AC-IIb," she said, much as if she was reciting the table of elements in Bernie Cayle's science class. "Pilot, gunner, and four infantry in the back. Can't carry more than that." She caught the look in his eyes. "Sure, I'm sure. I know this stuff."

"I believe you." And it was a little scary that she did. Not so long ago she'd been a little girl playing with dolls; now her idea of fun was being able to reload a carbine in less than ten seconds with her eyes closed. That worried him; this wasn't supposed to be fun. . . .

Not a good time to reflect on such things. This was the first Union patrol anyone had ever seen in the valley. The skimmer had doubtless come upstream from the Great Equatorial River. It was a long way from home . . . and much too close to their home for comfort.

Another birdcall, this time from behind and to the right. He glanced back, spotted Garth crouched behind a faux birch about ten feet away, rifle in hand. Damn it, he'd told the kid to remain with the shags where they had left them farther uphill. He should have known better, though; the Thompson brothers were still new to the outfit, and wherever Lars went, Garth wasn't far behind. And neither of them was good at listening.

"Stay here," he murmured, then he crawled away from Marie, careful to keep his butt down and his rifle out of the snow as he made his way to where Barry and Lars were hiding.

"I was wrong," Barry murmured as he joined them. "There's six . . . five on the shore, one on the skimmer."

"I know. We figured that already." Carlos reached over to tap Lars's arm. "Tell your brother that when I give him an order, I want it obeyed," he said, switching to Anglo so Lars could understand him. "Got that?" Lars nodded, started to raise a hand to his jaw. "Not now! They might be on your frequency!"

"Sorry. Forgot." Red-faced, Lars lowered his hand. The Thompson brothers had subcutaneous implants that enabled them to communicate with each other. A little piece of twenty-third century tech that the kids from the twenty-first century didn't have. But the soldiers down there would have the same thing; birdcalls and hand signals might not be as efficient, but they were less likely to be intercepted.

"Think we can take 'em?" Barry asked, speaking in Anglo as well.

Good question. Five against six. They had the advantage of surprise, along with better knowledge of the terrain; he and Barry had hiked nearly every square mile of the valley ever since they moved there almost three Coyote years ago, with Marie joining them as soon as she was old enough to go out with Rigil Kent. Yet this would be the first time they'd try taking on the Union Guard, or at least in broad daylight. Before, it had always been guerrilla skirmishes, nighttime hit-and-run raids upon Liberty and Shuttlefield with darkness to hide them. This time it would be out in the open. And the chain gun on that skimmer intimidated him. . . .

"We can do it. No sweat." Lars pointed down the gentle slope; even without using the binoculars, Carlos could now make out the soldiers. Five figures, standing in a circle on the riverside. A couple of cases lay open between them; two of the men were kneeling, doing something he couldn't see. "The three of us come in on this side," he went on, "and the other two come in on the other side. Box 'em in, take 'em down. . . ."

"Let me decide the plan, okay?" But he had to admit that it was a good idea. If they came in from both sides, with any luck they might be able to catch the soldiers by surprise.

What then? Shoot them down? Carlos felt a cold knot in his stomach. As much as he despised the Union, the notion of killing six men had little appeal for him. It was different for Lars and Garth, of course; the memory of the battle at Thompson's Ferry was still fresh for them, and they had payback coming. Carlos glanced at Barry, saw the reluctance in his friend's eyes. They'd seen death a few times, too, but unlike the brothers, they weren't eager to repeat the experience.

"All right," he murmured. "You and Barry come in from the right. I'll take Garth and Marie and circle around from the left. When we're in position, I'll get Garth to com you." It was risky, but once they were closer the soldiers might get wise to any birdcalls. "One more thing," he added. "Hold your fire until I give the signal. I want to take 'em alive if we can."

"You're crazy." Lars regarded him with disbelief. "There's a half dozen guys down there. You think they're just going to . . . ?"

"I'm not kidding. We give 'em a chance to surrender first." Carlos stared him straight in the eye. "That's the way it is"

For a few long moments, the two of them gazed at one another, until Lars finally shrugged and looked away. "You're the chief," he mumbled, as if resenting the fact. "But if they start shooting . . ."

"If they start shooting, we fire back. But not until." Carlos hesitated. "That skimmer's going to be a problem, though. If the pilot gets to the gun . . ."

"Let me handle the skimmer." Barry's voice was low. "I'll circle wide, come in from the beach. If he tries anything, maybe I can pick him off first." He grinned. "And I'd love to get my hands on a skimmer, wouldn't you?"

Barry was a dead shot, and he knew how to sneak through the woods without being heard. And, Carlos had to admit, bringing home a Union Guard skimmer would be a major coup. "You got it. Are we set?" Barry gave him a thumbs-up; Lars shrugged again, his eyes on the soldiers gathered at the river's edge. "All right, then. We roll on my signal."

Carlos crawled back to the boulder, spent a few seconds explaining the plan to Marie and Garth. As he expected, Garth was just as reluctant as his brother to give the patrol a chance to surrender; he insisted upon joining Lars, until Carlos pointed out that he needed to keep them separated in order to facilitate communications between the two halves of the team.

"I'm going with Lars." Marie started crawling over to where the other two were waiting.

"Oh, no, you don't." Carlos snagged his sister by the hood of her parka; it pulled back, exposing her dark brown hair, tied into a bun behind her head. "You're sticking with me."

She angrily swatted his hand away. "If Barry's going after the skimmer, then Lars is going to need backup. Either you do it, or I will."

Marie was right; Lars couldn't handle his side alone. Carlos didn't like it very much-he was reluctant to leave his sister in a firefight-but the other reason he wanted to keep the Thompson brothers apart from each other was that they were bloodthirsty. Thompson's Ferry had been a massacre; none of the Union soldiers who'd raided the settlement had come away alive. Perhaps they had it coming, but then again . . .

"Okay. But no firing until I say so." Marie grinned, then scuttled away, keeping low to the ground. Carlos watched her go and prayed that he hadn't made a mistake.

Another exchange of too-too-sweets, then he and Garth began to advance down the hillside, moving single file on hands and knees, remaining behind trees and large rocks as much as possible. The deep snow muffled the sounds they made, and they were careful to avoid putting any weight upon dead branches their gloved hands found beneath the drifts. Once again, Carlos found himself impressed with how well Garth handled himself; the kid was only fifteen, but it was as if he'd been practicing this sort of thing his entire life. Perhaps he had; his uncle was a former Union Guard colonel, after all, before he'd decided to resign his commission and bring his nephews to Coyote in search of a new life.

Carlos had been Garth's age when he'd arrived here with his own family, but he'd been very much a boy then, still thinking all this was a great adventure. His childhood ended two days after the Alabama party set foot on New Florida, when his father and mother were killed by a boid. That was over thirteen Earth-years ago, and everything had been different since then. He doubted that Garth had much of a childhood, either. No one got to savor adolescence very long on Coyote.

The voices gradually became louder. Hearing someone laugh, he froze in place, thinking that they had been spotted. As he peered through the underbrush, though, he saw that the soldiers' backs were still turned toward him. The group was only a few dozen feet away, gathered around the two men kneeling on the riverbank. It appeared as if they were assembling some sort of instrument on a tripod. The three men standing carried rifles, but they were still hanging by their shoulder straps; the two kneeling on the ground, he noticed, weren't wearing Union parkas, but instead catskin jackets. Civilians? What were they doing with a Union Guard patrol?

Carlos glanced back to make sure that Garth was still with him, then he motioned toward a clingberry thicket at the bottom of the slope, not far from the group. Garth nodded, and Carlos began creeping closer. They could hide there for a moment, wait until Marie, Lars, and Barry were in position. Then they might be able to . . .

A shout from the skimmer. Once again believing that they'd been seen, Carlos dropped flat to the ground. Hearing footsteps against metal, he raised his eyes; the skimmer pilot was walking across the ramp, swinging a canvas bag by its strap. He was about to hop down onto shore when there was sharp bang like someone pushing a pin into a balloon, and the pilot suddenly twisted sideways and toppled off the gangway, falling into the shallow water below.

Damn it! Who fired? Carlos didn't have time to wonder. The men on the riverbank were already reacting to the gunshot, the soldiers reaching for their weapons, the two civilians scrambling for cover. More semiauto gunfire, again from the other side of the riverbank. One of the soldiers brought up his carbine, began firing wildly in that direction. The two civilians threw themselves to the ground, knocking over the tripod as they covered their heads with their hands.

Carlos leaped to his feet. "Hold your fire!" he yelled. "Stop shoo . . . !"

He didn't get a chance to finish before the nearest Guardsman whirled around, brought up his rifle. Carlos caught a glimpse of the black bore of the gun muzzle, and in that instant realized that he had made a mistake. The soldier was no more than thirty feet away, and he was completely exposed.

Oh, shit, I'm dead. . . .

The gunshots behind him nearly deafened him. He ducked, instinctively raising his hands to his ears, but not before he saw the soldier's parka rip apart, his helmet flying off the back of his head. Carlos barely had time to realize that Garth had saved his life; remembering his own gun, he brought it up to his shoulder, aimed at the soldier turning toward them.

No time to bother with the scope; he lined up the barrel, held his breath, and squeezed the trigger. The second soldier had just enough time to take his own shot before a bullet caught him in the gut. He doubled over like someone with a bad case of stomach cramps, then another shot from somewhere behind caught him between the shoulder blades, and he went down.

Carlos looked for another target, but there were none to be found. The remaining soldier lay facedown a few yards away, sprawled across a patch of red snow. All that could be seen of the Armadillo pilot was a pair of legs sticking up out of the water next to the skimmer's ramp. The hollow echoes of gunfire were still reverberating off the tree line on the other side of the river; the chill air, once fresh and clean, now reeked of gunpowder.

Carlos heard a rebel yell from a dozen yards away. Lars emerged from the undergrowth, his rifle held in both hands above his head. "Skragged three!" he shouted. "Score for the home team!" He did a little victory dance, looking like a soccer player who'd managed to drive a ball into the opposing team's net. "We rule!"

Sickened by what he . . . what they . . . had just done, infuriated by how it had happened, Carlos dropped his rifle, marched out from behind the clingberry bush. "You cold son of a bitch," he snarled, "I told you not to . . ."

Lars's face changed. Arms falling to his sides, he gazed at Carlos in confusion. "Whoa, hey, wait a second . . . I didn't shoot first. She did."

Carlos stopped. Unable to believe what he'd just heard, he stared at Marie, who was coming out from behind a tree, rifle clasped in her hands. He was still taking in the smile on her face when he heard a voice behind him.

"Carlos? Carlos, man, is that you?"

One of the two civilians who had taken cover when the shooting began. He had all but forgotten them, and it was only the fact that they had hugged the ground that had saved them. Carlos looked down at the person struggling to his knees, saw a face he'd almost thought he would never see again.

"Chris?" he whispered. "Chris, what the hell are you doing here?"

GABRIEL75/1012-WHSS S PIRIT OF S OCIAL C OLLECTIVISM C ARRIED TO THE S TARS

"Shuttle from Liberty on approach, Captain. Requesting permission to dock."

Fernando Baptiste lifted his head to peer up at the ceiling of the command center. Projected against the dome was the fourth moon of 47 Ursae Majoris-B: a vast landscape of islands, some the size of small continents, separated from one another by a sinuous maze of rivers. Above the silver-blue limb of the planet, he could make out the tiny form of the shuttle carrying the governor of the New Florida colony.

"Permission granted," Baptiste told the lieutenant seated at her console a few feet away. "Inform the Matriarch that I'll meet her in the conference room on Deck 10."

She nodded, then prodded the side of her jaw as she repeated his message. Baptiste took a last glance at the section report on his lapboard, then pushed it away and carefully stood up, feeling sluggish against the pull of gravity. Nearly a week had passed since he had been revived from biostasis; during this time, the internal gravity induced by the Spirit 's Millis-Clement field had been gradually increased to .68g to match Coyote's surface gravity, yet he still felt sluggish, perpetually off-balance. He wasn't the only person aboard-or at least, the only baseline human-experiencing such malaise; all around him, he observed crewmen with slumped shoulders, moving as if in slow motion.

All the same, he was looking forward to setting foot on the planet below. Before he'd been picked by the Union Astronautica to command the sixth ship to 47 Ursae Majoris, he'd spent almost his entire life on the Moon or Mars, with most of his adulthood aboard one vessel or another. What would it be like to walk beneath an open sky, without having a pressurized dome above his head or be surrounded by compartment bulkheads? It would be worth spending forty-nine years in biostasis for the simple pleasure of feeling unfiltered sunlight against his face, grass beneath his feet. Would he get a skin rash if he removed his boots? Perhaps he should query the doctor if he needed another inoculation before . . .

"I'd like to join you, Captain, if you don't mind."

Baptiste looked around, saw a tall form standing beside him. Wearing a long black robe, its cowl pulled up around his head, Gregor Hull regarded him with red eyes that gleamed softly in the darkness of the command center. Once again, the Savant had come up from behind without his noticing.

"Of course," Baptiste replied. "In fact, I was about to call you." It was a lie, of course, but if the Savant knew this, there was no indication on his metallic face. "Please, come with me."

"Thank you, Captain." Hull stepped aside, allowing him to lead the way to the lift. "I'm rather hopeful that the Matriarch will clear up a mystery."

"Oh?" He waited until Hull was aboard the lift, then pushed the button for Deck 10. A slight jar, then the cab began to move downward. "I'm surprised. I would have thought that there was little in the universe that remained mysterious to your kind."

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you well, sir." As always, the Savant's voice was dull, without inflection. Except when he laughed, and fortunately that was seldom-it sounded like acoustical feedback. One more thing Baptiste disliked about Savants. Perhaps he was subconsciously bigoted against them, but the fact remained that he'd never enjoyed their company.

"My apologies. I thought I was being sincere." Another lie,and they both knew it. "What's so mysterious?"

"Shortly after we made orbit, I attempted to make contact with one of my brother Savants . . . Manuel Castro. He has been on Coyote for the past seven years. I haven't been able to hear him."

"Hear him? I don't understand."

"My kind share a symbiotic relationship." Was he imagining things, or was Hull rubbing it in, the way he phrased that? "Virtual telepathy, achieved through extralow-frequency transmissions. A sort of group mind, if you will. It's usually short-range, but we can increase the distance by tapping into long-range communications systems. I've attempted to do so, but I haven't received any response from Savant Castro.

"Have you spoken with anyone in Liberty about it?"

"I have, yes. I was informed that Savant Castro disappeared over a month ago by local reckoning . . . about three months ago Earth-time. He led a military detail to a small settlement on New Florida, to round up some colonists who had fled from Shuttlefield. Apparently there was an incident during which the soldiers were killed. When another detail was sent out to investigate, they discovered that the settlement had been torched. The remains of the soldiers were found, along with those of a few of the colonists, but there was no trace of Savant Castro."

"Which means he's dead."

The Savant shook his head; it was strange to see such a human gesture, and it reminded Baptiste that Hull wasn't a robot, appearances notwithstanding, but rather a human intelligence downloaded into a mechanical body. That made Savants perfect stewards of starships outbound to 47 Ursae Majoris; they remained awake while everyone else lay in dreamless coma within their biostasis cells, carrying on endless philosophical arguments with each other, indulging themselves in studies of things that few people would ever understand or even deem necessary. Another aspect of their existence that made them seem so remote, so disconnected from the rest of humanity . . . but then, they preferred to refer to themselves as posthuman, didn't they?

"When one of us perishes," Savant Hull continued, "it's usually by accident. In that case, our internal systems are programmed to transmit a steady signal, indicating a state of morbidity. Since I haven't received such a signal, this indicates that either Savant Castro's body has been destroyed, or he's unable to respond."

Baptiste nodded. Total destruction seemed unlikely, at least under the circumstances Hull had just mentioned. For all practical purposes, Savants were immortal, their forms designed to endure all but the harshest of conditions; the quantum comps that contained their minds were deep within their chests, protected by layers of shielding. If Castro was still alive, then what would prevent him from being able to contact Hull?

He was still mulling this over when the lift glided to a halt. The doors whisked open, and they stepped out into one of the short, narrow hallways that led to the concentric passageways circling the ship's axial center. "Perhaps the Matriarch will be able to tell us," Baptiste said as he led the Savant to the nearest intersection and turned left. "There's probably a good explanation."

"I can already think of one." Hull stepped aside to allow a crewman to pass. "Not for the disappearance of Savant Castro in particular, but for the general reason why."

The captain nodded, but said nothing. A revolt among the colonists. This had been foreseen by the Council of Savants even before the Spirit left Earth nearly a half century ago. Four thousand people had been sent to the 47 Ursae Majoris system since 2256, aboard the four Western Hemisphere Union starships that had followed the URSS Alabama , itself launched in 2070. In their endless musing, the Savants had come to the conclusion that the original Alabama colonists would resent the arrival of newcomers; the political system of the Western Hemisphere Union, based upon social collectivism, was radically different from that of the United Republic of America, which the crew of the Alabama had sought to escape when they stole their ship from Earth orbit. This was one of the reasons why Union Guard soldiers had been aboard the WHU ships sent to Coyote nearly two hundred years later. . . .

To his right, a door abruptly slid open. A sergeant major, shaven-headed and wearing a cotton jumpsuit, stepped backward out into the corridor. "And no excuses," he was saying to someone on the other side of the door. "When I get back, I want everyone ready for weapons drill. I don't care if . . ." Looking around to see Baptiste, he quickly snapped to attention, his right fist clamping against his chest. "Pardon me, sir!"

Baptiste casually returned the salute. "Carry on," he murmured. Just before the door shut, he caught sight of the room behind him: two dozen Guardsmen, wearing identical jumpsuits, sitting on bunks or standing in the narrow aisles. Throughout the Spirit , there were many others just like them: men and women recently revived from biostasis, sent as reinforcements for the troops already on the ground. Unlike the first four Union ships, which had carried mostly civilians as its passengers, only a few colonists were aboard the Spirit . His mission was primarily military in nature.

This isn't why you came here, a small voice inside him said. This isn't what you were meant to do . And indeed, it wasn't. Until just a few days before the Spirit had departed from Highgate, his mission had been to bring more colonists to Coyote. He remembered Tomas Conseco, the young boy he'd met on the maglev train a few days before launch; he and his parents were in biostasis on another level, waiting to be revived. He'd have to wait a while longer before setting foot on Coyote; first, his captain would have to quell a potential uprising, by any means necessary.

That isn't for you to decide.Again he disciplined his conscience. You have your orders. Don't ask questions. Just carry them out .

The conference room was located farther down the corridor. The Matriarch hadn't arrived yet; doubtless she was still undergoing decontamination procedures. Seating himself at the console at the end of the table, Baptiste spent a few minutes checking on the status of the heavy-lift landing vehicles that would ferry soldiers down to the planet. The wallscreen displayed the cavernous interior of the Bay Four; crewmen moved around a teardrop-shaped spacecraft, loading cargo through the hatch beneath its horizontal stabilizer. The Spirit carried three HLLVs; he wondered how and where they'd be able to land. The shuttle fields outside Liberty weren't large enough for all of them. . . .

The door opened. He looked up to see two Guardsmen step into the room. They wore winter gear and had rifles slung over their shoulders; their faces were tanned, and one had a thick beard. Union soldiers, up from the planet below; they looked like barbarians tramping through the gates. They saluted as he stood up, then assumed positions on either side of the door, making way for the woman behind them.

The Matriarch looked different from the pictures of her he'd seen: auburn hair longer, now reaching her shoulders and showing streaks of grey, her stout figure was no longer as full as it had once been. She wore the gold-trimmed blue robe of her office, yet its colors were faded; beneath it was a brown outfit of some sort of animal skin. Like her escorts, she showed signs of having spent the last several years in an untamed environment.

"Captain Baptiste?" she asked. "I'm Luisa Hernandez, governor of New Florida."

"A pleasure, Matriarch Hernandez." As Baptiste stepped forward to extend his hand, he noticed the holster on her belt. Why did she feel it was necessary to carry a weapon, or be accompanied by armed men? "I must confess, I'm surprised to see you so soon. I thought . . ."

"We'd meet once you landed?" A quick smile that quickly vanished. "I'm afraid we can't afford the luxury of time, Captain. We're in the middle of a major military operation. In fact, I've been counting on your arrival."

"I take it that you've been waiting for us." Until then, Hull had been quietly standing off to the side. The Matriarch's eyes widened a bit as she saw him; Baptiste guessed that, for an instant, she thought he was Savant Castro.

"Oh, yes." She recovered quickly, returning her attention to Baptiste. "Quite so. The fact of the matter is that we have a situation down there. With your assistance, though, we may be able to bring it to a swift conclusion."

"Really?" Baptiste pulled a chair back from the table. "Please, tell me all about it."

Matriarch Hernandez ignored the offered seat. Instead, she reached into her robe, pulled out a datafiche. "This will supply most of the background," she said, holding it out to him, "but I'll make it simple. We're engaged in a manhunt for one of the original Alabama colonists. He now goes by the name of Rigil Kent, but his true name is Carlos Montero."

GABRIEL75/1038-PIONEERVALLEY

"C'mon, give us a break." Lars stood up from the hole he'd been digging for the last hour, rested his arms against the handle of the entrenching tool he'd taken off the skimmer. "We don't need to do this."

"You're right. We don't need to do this . . . but you do." Carlos didn't look up from the portable stove he'd set up a few yards away; the chunk of river ice he'd placed within the pot had melted, and he squatted next to the stove, patiently waiting for the water to boil. "If you're going to murder someone, then you're going to have to dig a grave for him."

"It's not murder if it's . . ." Marie caught the look in her brother's eye and stopped. The hole she excavated was barely deep enough for the body wrapped in a sleeping bag that lay nearby, but the ground was frozen, and she had brought up almost as much rock as soil. "Never mind," she muttered, and went back to work.

Garth had completed his task a few minutes ago. He stood next to the open grave, his hands thrust in the pockets of his parka. Another soldier lay nearby, also cocooned in a sleeping bag. "Go ahead," Carlos said. "Put him in. Then you're . . ."

"You put him in." The kid sullenly glared at him. "I'm done taking orders from . . ."

"Do as he says." Lars shoved the shovel blade back into the hard ground. "The sooner we're done, the sooner we're out of here." Carlos watched as Garth bent over, grasped the toe of the sleeping bag, and dragged it into the shallow grave. Stepping out of the hole, the kid hocked up a mouthful of saliva. For a moment it seemed as if he was ready to spit on the body, then he looked at Carlos, thought better of it, and swallowed. He picked up his entrenching tool and began to cover the corpse.

So much like David. Carlos thought. Same attitude . . .

That was an uncomfortable thought, and he pushed it aside. The water was boiling. Carlos picked up the pot, poured water into two metal cups he'd found in the mess kit. When Barry recovered the canvas bag the skimmer pilot had dropped in the water, they discovered that its rations included a small supply of freeze-dried coffee. Neither he nor Marie or Barry had seen instant coffee in many years . . . at least not since the last of the Alabama 's food supply had been used up, what seemed a lifetime ago. It was a luxury they had forgotten; no beans to grow, roast, and grind. No sense in letting it go to waste, yet Carlos couldn't help but feel another surge of guilt. The skimmer pilot had been doing nothing more offensive than fetching breakfast when Marie had shot him down.

Picking up the cups, he walked over to where the two prisoners were seated on a driftwood log. Kneeling in front of Constanza, he offered coffee to him. "Here you go," he said quietly. "Might warm you up a little."

Constanza remained silent. He stared at the ground between his boots, his arms wrapped tightly together against his chest, his hands bunched beneath his armpits. The fur-lined collar of his catskin jacket was pulled up around his face; his eyes gazed into some abyss only he could see.

"He's gone." Chris was sitting next to him, his ankles crossed, hands in the pockets of his jacket. "I've tried talking to him, but he's zeroed. Shock, I guess."

It was the first thing he'd said in nearly an hour. A sign of progress. Carlos silently offered the other cup of coffee to him. Chris hesitated, then reached up to take it from him. "Thanks. You're a real pal."

"You're welcome." Carlos walked over to the other end of the log, sat down next to him. For the moment, at least, the others ignored them. Lars, Garth, and Marie continued burial detail; Barry was aboard the skimmer, trying to figure out how to operate it. Carlos sipped the hot coffee, stared at the half-frozen waters of Goat Kill Creek. "Ready to talk?"

"What are you going to do to me if I don't? Sic your girlfriend on me?"

Carlos almost spit out a mouthful of coffee. For an instant, he felt an impulse to backhand the guy seated next to him, until he remembered just how long it had been since the last time Chris saw Marie. "That's not my girlfriend," he said. "That's my sister."

Now it was Chris's turn to sputter. He clapped a hand against his mouth as his eyes went wide in astonishment. "Holy . . . that's Marie? I didn't . . ."

"You thought she was going to remain nine forever?" Carlos shook his head. "She's eighteen, almost nineteen. Call her my girlfriend again, and we're going to have a problem." As if they didn't already.

"Sorry, man. I didn't . . ." Then Chris seemed to remember where he was. "What did you do to her? She shot our pilot down like it was a skeet shoot."

"I didn't . . ." Carlos let out his breath. He couldn't explain Marie's actions either; like Chris, he remembered when his little sister had been someone other than a sniper. Letting her join Rigil Kent had been a mistake; he saw that now. "Let's talk about something else, okay? Why are you here?"

For a moment, it seemed as if Chris was going to clam up again. He sipped coffee as he watched Marie and Lars dig graves; now that Garth had buried the third soldier, he was rummaging through the mess kit for something to eat. "I was their guide," he said, as if that explained everything. "Sort of their native sherpa."

"Don't lie." Carlos shook his head. "You've never been here before. Last time I heard, the Matriarch made you Chief Proctor of Shuttlefield. What are you doing with a Union Guard patrol in Midland?"

"Last time I heard, you were going by the handle of Rigil Kent." He smiled. "I looked it up, by the way. An old European name for Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth, besides Sol. Good name . . ."

"Don't change the subject. What are you doing here?"

Chris shrugged. "Sure, why not? Might as well tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"We're looking for you. Your little club, I mean." He gestured toward the tripod-mounted instrument, lying upended upon the ground near the bullet-pocked equipment cases. "See that? It's called a SIMS . . . schematic information mapping system. Your dad would have loved it. It's right up his alley."

"Forget about my family." Carlos felt his face growing warm; whether Chris meant to or not, he was scratching an old wound. "What does it do?"

"It's a full-suite sensory package . . . infrared, motion detection, body heat, the works. It's linked via satellite to a dozen or so like it they've been setting up all over Midland. The idea is to collect information on your people's movements. Once the data is collated, then they'll be able to predict where you're likely to be at any given time." He looked at Constanza. "It's his baby, so he might be able to explain it better. If you can get him to talk, that is."

A remote surveillance system. Carlos felt a chill that didn't come from the weather. If he and the others had been any slower coming down the hillside, then the SIMS would have picked them up as soon as they were within range. The odds would have been reversed; he might have become Chris's prisoner, and the soldiers would have been digging graves for Marie, Lars, and Garth.

Yet that was only conjecture. Reality wasn't much more kind. Goat Kill Creek led northwest into the Pioneer Valley until it reached the southern slopes of Mt. Shaw, where Defiance was located. If Chris was telling the truth, then his people were in danger of being found by the Union.

And Defiance wasn't the only settlement at risk. During the last few months, following the sabotage of the Garcia Narrows Bridge, several hundred immigrants who had been involved in its construction had managed to establish tiny villages here and there across Midland; most were scattered along the Gillis Range, with a few as far north as the Medsylvania Channel. It had become clear that the Union wasn't going to be content with New Florida; assuming control of the vast resources of Midland remained vital to its long-range plans, and the bloody events at Thompson's Ferry had demonstrated that Luisa Hernandez wouldn't tolerate any interference. The newcomers had already experienced the Matriarch's iron hand while living in the squatter camps of Shuttlefield, and they had no desire to do so again. Although Carlos had taken the name Rigil Kent for himself, it had since been adopted as the name of the resistance movement so many of them had joined.

Until recently, all they had to worry about were the Union Guard garrison on New Florida. Only a couple of days ago, another Union starship had arrived in orbit above Coyote; it could be seen from the ground at night, a bright star moving across the sky. There would be even more Guardsmen aboard that ship, more soldiers to be sent into Midland in search of Rigil Kent and his followers. The rebellion was still young, and it could easily be crushed.

Carlos glanced at the scientist seated nearby. Constanza might be persuaded to reveal where the other SIMS were located, but this was neither the time nor place. And Carlos didn't trust Chris. Even if he wasn't lying, there was something about his story that didn't quite fit. . . .

"So why are you here?" His coffee had gone lukewarm, and he made a face as he took a another sip. "Don't tell me you just wanted exercise and fresh air."

"Hey, I love the great outdoors just as much as you." Chris's expression became serious. "My mother disappeared last month. Where I come from, when people go missing, there's usually one place they go." He pointed to the ground. "You know where she is?"

"If I told you, would you help me?"

"Oh, c'mon. Get real."

"Didn't think so." Carlos stood up, tossed the rest of the coffee into the snow. "We'll take the skimmer. Your friend, too . . . he needs medical attention. I'll leave you with some rations and a compass. The East Channel's about two hundred miles from here. You should be able to find your way back."

"You wouldn't do that."

"You just said you love the great outdoors. Here's your chance to get as much of it as you want." Carlos started to walk away. "Nice to see you again. I'll tell your mom you said hi."

He was halfway to where the others were waiting when Chris called after him. "Okay, you win. What do you want me to do?"

Carlos turned around. "I want you to take a hike with me."

"A hike?" Overhearing this, Marie looked up from shoveling the last spadeful of dirt over Gondolfo's grave. "What do you . . . where are you taking him?"

"Back where we came from, of course." Before she could reply, Carlos stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply. Barry emerged from the top hatch of the Armadillo. Carlos gestured for him to come over, then looked at his sister again. "You guys take Mr. Constanza here-"

"It's Dr. Constanza," Chris said quietly. "Enrique Constanza."

"Dr. Constanza, I mean, and take the skimmer back. Chris and I will ride the shags."

"That'll take two days, at least." Lars put down his shovel. "Why can't you. . . ?"

"The skimmer only has room for six. Counting these two, we've got seven." Carlos glanced back at their two prisoners. "Kuniko should take a look at Dr. Constanza as soon as possible, so he'll go with you. Besides, we need to return the shags . . . hey, you think you can drive that thing?"

Barry had joined them by then. He shrugged. "Looks easy enough. Sort of like a maxvee, just a little different"

"I'm sure you can handle it," Carlos said. With his back turned toward Chris, he gave his friend a wink. "If we get lost, I can always call in and ask for help. Know what I mean?"

Rigil Kent avoided using satphones because they were dependent upon the Alabama for uplink; the Union might be able to triangulate their position by using RDF receivers to search for the point of origin. They carried short-range transceivers instead, but observed radio silence except in case of emergency. Barry understood his meaning; he gave a brief nod. "This is stupid," Marie said. "Someone can just hang on to the hatch, ride outside. We can be home in just a few-"

"Don't argue with me." Carlos dropped his voice. "Do as I say, and I won't tell anyone who fired the first shot." Marie turned red, looked away. "Just leave us with food and another pack for him. Or do you have one aboard, Chris?"

"It's in the skimmer. Of course, we could use another gun, just in case we run into any boids."

"The boids are wintering south of here. You know that." Carlos turned toward the Thompson brothers. "One more thing. Dr. Constanza is your responsibility. When I get back, I expect to find him in good health. If he has any accidents on the way . . ."

"That's not going to happen. Count on it." Barry gave Lars and Garth a dark look. "Are you sure you want to . . . ?"

"I know what I'm doing." Kneeling next to the camp stove, Carlos snuffed it out, then began to fold it. "Lars, Marie, load the SIMS and bring it with you. Barry, help Dr. Constanza aboard. Garth, pack some snow on top of those graves. I want this place to look just the way we found it."

As the others went about their tasks, Carlos shoved the collapsed stove into his backpack, then dug some rations out of the mess kit. "They follow orders well, don't they?" Chris murmured with just a trace of sarcasm.

"Sometimes." From the corner of his eye, he saw the entrenching tool Marie had dropped. It lay on the ground just a couple of feet away. For the moment, no one was paying any attention to them. Chris could easily snatch it up, bash him over the head. If he was lucky, he could then grab his rifle, shoot everyone while their backs were still turned. "When we're out here on our own," he added, "we learn to count on each other to stay alive. Know what I mean?"

Chris reached down, picked up the shovel. Carlos swiveled on his hips, watched as he folded the blade, collapsed the handle, and held it out to him. "Yeah, I know," Chris said quietly. "The only thing I don't get is why you're doing this."

"Haven't seen you in a long time." Carlos took the entrenching tool from him, shoved it into a loop on the side of his pack. "Think it's time we had a talk."

GABRIEL75/1422-FORTLOPEZ, HAMMERHEAD

Like an immense swoop descending upon its nest, the heavy lifter came in for touchdown, its VTOL jets blasting snow away from the ring of flashing red beacons that marked the landing field. The ground crew watched as the spacecraft settled upon its tricycle landing gear; they waited until the engines cut off, then trotted over to the aft cargo hatch, while an honor guard of six soldiers took up position, three on each side of the forward crew hatch. As the hatch swung open and the gangway ramp lowered, an officer standing nearby shouted a command. The soldiers came to attention, swinging their rifles to their left shoulders and snapping their bootheels together.

It wasn't the reception Captain Baptiste had anticipated; in fact, he was quietly appalled by the formality. But he said nothing as Matriarch Hernandez led the way down the ramp, Savant Hull bringing up the rear. She pointedly ignored the honor guard as she walked past them, pulling up the cowl of her cloak. "Many apologies for not giving you a proper welcome," she murmured once they were past the soldiers. "It's the best we can do under the circumstances."

"Think nothing of it." And indeed, the absence of whatever the Matriarch considered "a proper welcome"-a military parade, perhaps, with full colors-was the least of his concerns. A cold wind whipped across the plateau, stinging his face and causing him to shiver despite the thick parka he wore. He felt light-headed-the lower atmospheric pressure, of course; he had been warned about it-but when he took a deep breath, the frigid air caused his teeth to chatter. He pulled down the bill of his cap before the wind could snatch it away. All things considered, he reflected, he would have preferred New Florida; even the name sounded warmer.

By then, the officer in charge of the honor guard had dismissed his troops and come over to join them. "Captain, Savant Hull, may I present First Lieutenant Bon Cortez," Hernandez said. "Lieutenant, Captain Fernando Baptiste, commanding officer of the Spirit of Social Collectivism Carried to the Stars ."

"A pleasure to meet you, sir." Cortez clasped a gloved fist against his chest. "Welcome to Fort Lopez."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Cortez was younger than Baptiste would have expected for someone in charge of a military installation; no more than twenty-five Earth-years, his beard was probably the first one he'd ever grown. "I hope you've been able to keep warm," he added, at loss for anything else to say.

Cortez smiled, relaxed just a little. "We're keeping busy, Captain. It helps a little. If you'll follow me, please, I'll show you around." As they walked away from the HLLV, two platoons of Guard infantry were marching down the ramp; Baptiste could hear the shouted commands of their squad leaders as they fell into formation next to the craft. They stamped their feet against the hard ground and hunched their shoulders against the brutal wind. Only Gregor Hull was impervious to the cold; for once, he felt envious of the Savant for his lack of mortal concerns.

"We've only been here for the last eight weeks," Cortez was saying, "just after the beginning to the month, so you'll have to pardon our lack of facilities. There hasn't been time to build permanent structures." He was speaking of the semirigid inflatable domes, each a half acre in diameter, near the landing field. "The forest is about a half mile away, and we've begun marking trees for when we get around to-"

"We felt it more important to establish a base of operations as quickly as possible," the Matriarch interrupted. "I picked the lieutenant for this job because he was instrumental in selecting the site for the bridge we constructed across the East Channel. So far, he's done a commendable job."

Baptiste noted the expression on Cortez's face; he seemed to be chewing his lower lip. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, his voice tight. "I'm glad you approve." Then he pointed to the edge of the plateau. "If you'll come this way, I'll show you why Fort Lopez is here."

"I was wondering about that," Baptiste said. "After all, if you already have a large force on New Florida, then why put a base west of Midland?"

"New Florida has been compromised, sir. Rigil Kent can sneak across the East Channel anytime they want. They've already hit Liberty twice, not to mention the job they did on the Garcia Narrows Bridge . . ." Behind them, Luisa Hernandez cleared her throat. "The Matriarch Hernandez Bridge, I mean . . ."

"We had to look elsewhere for a military base," the Matriarch said, "and Hammerhead was the most likely place." She extended a hand from beneath her cloak. "As you can see, here we enjoy a certain geographic advantage."

They had reached the edge of the plateau. Below them, a sheer granite escarpment fell away; three hundred feet down, waves crashed against jagged rocks. Fort Lopez overlooked the confluence of the Midland Channel and Short River; in the distance to the south lay Barren Isle, barely visible as small dun-colored lump. To the east, they could see the shores of Midland, with Mt. Bonestell on the far horizon. As a military surveyor, Lieutenant Cortez had done his job well. The cliff offered a natural defense against anyone who might try to cross the channel, and the island itself was a perfect place for staging military operations.

"A good choice." Baptiste admired the view. This would be a great place to build a house, were he to decide to remain on Coyote. That wasn't his intent; nonetheless, it was tempting. "But I still don't understand why it's so important to expend so much effort upon capturing a handful of malcontents."

The wind ruffled the edge of the Matriarch's cowl; she pulled it back from her face. "I thought I'd made that clear already," she said, her voice low. "Perhaps I haven't. They've attacked us again and again ever since we arrived. They've stolen firearms, destroyed spacecraft, sabotaged a bridge, ambushed soldiers, and assassinated the lieutenant governor."

"You have no proof that Savant Castro is dead." Until then, Gregor Hull had been silent. "I tend to believe that he may still be alive."

"I have no proof that he is." Luisa Hernandez shook her head. "With all due respect, Savant, you and Captain Baptiste only arrived recently. We've been dealing with this situation for just over six Earth-years. What was once a local disturbance has become a major uprising. Left unchecked, it will metastasize into a full-scale revolution. Rigil Kent . . . that is, Carlos Montero and his followers . . . have made it their mission to chase the Western Hemisphere Union off Coyote. You know as well as I that this isn't an option. . . ."

"We're aware of that, Matriarch." Baptiste paused. A gyro was lifting off the landing pad, its rotors clattering as it rose above the shuttles parked near the HLLV. He waited until the noise abated, then went on. "Have you tried to talk with the original colonists? Open a dialogue with their leaders?"

"I met with Robert Lee shortly after we arrived." She lifted her chin, almost as if daring him to challenge her. "In fact, he led a small group to the Glorious Destiny. . . . It was his idea to negotiate, not mine. I attempted to reach an amicable understanding, but he refused, and instead abandoned the Liberty colony and fled to Midland. Since then, their actions have been nothing but hostile."

"Which makes me wonder what you may have said that would have caused them to-"

"Captain, I refuse to stand here and listen to someone second-guess what was done six years ago. As the colonial governor, my duty is to maintain a Union presence on this world. Your duty is to back me up, by force if necessary. I say that it's necessary."

"I only wish to . . ."

"Point out the alternatives, yes. Your objections are noted." The Matriarch turned away. "Come with me now. We have work to do."

Baptiste watched as Hernandez began striding back toward camp, Savant Gregor following her. He let out a breath, looked out over the channel. Cortez remained with him. At first the younger man said nothing, then he stepped closer. "You have to forgive her, sir," he said quietly, his voice almost lost in the wind. "Ever since Savant Castro disappeared, she's been . . . well, obsessed . . . with tracking down Rigil Kent."

"So I see. . . ." And to that end, she'd laid a trap, in hopes that Montero would take the bait. "And how do you feel about it? Do you think that she may have exceeded her authority?"

Cortez stiffened, his eyes raising to meet his own. "I lost several friends at Thompson's Ferry," he replied. "Please, sir, don't speak to me of excessive authority. I owe Rigil Kent."

Then he walked away, leaving Baptiste standing by himself. Feeling cold, and in a trap of his own.

GABRIEL75/1917-MT. ALDRICH

"This is as good a place as any." Carlos gently pulled the reins, lifting the shag's heavy head and bringing the beast to a halt. He shifted sideways on his blanket saddle, looked back at Chris. "Need a hand there?"

"No, I . . . how do you . . . ?" Chris yanked too hard; his shag bellowed in protest, and once again attempted to shake its rider off its hairy back. This time, it nearly succeeded; thrown off-balance, Chris stayed on only by grabbing two fistfuls of matted fur. The shag grunted and shook again like an enormous dog coming out of the water. Then, resigning itself to rude treatment, it obediently knelt on its elephant-like legs, giving Chris a chance to slip his feet over the side.

"A little better." Carlos suppressed a grin as the shag farted loudly. Chris staggered away from the animal, holding his nose as he massaged his aching backside. "You'll get the hang of it after a while. Once they get used to you, you hardly have to . . ."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." Chris regarded the shags with disgust. They resembled water buffalo with dreadlocks, save for elongated snouts with upward-curved tusks like those of a wild boar. Despite their ferocious appearance, the herbivorous creatures were as docile as cows and easily trained as pack animals. "I would have rather walked."

"We'll be doing that soon enough." Climbing down from its back, Carlos took the shag's reins and, coaxing it with a click of the tongue, led it to the nearest faux birch. Once it was tied up, the beast raised its snout, peeled a strip of bark off the tree, and began munching upon it. They'd left behind the three shags Marie and the Thompson brothers had ridden, after moving their blankets and bags; since shags had an unerring sense of direction, Carlos knew they'd make their way back to their point of origin. "They don't like having riders when they're going downhill," Carlos went on as he pulled off the saddlebags, "so we'll have to lead them once we head down the mountain."

Following Carlos's example, Chris gingerly approached his own shag, took it by the reins, and tugged it over to another tree. They had spent the better part of the day climbing Mt. Aldrich, following a game trail that led around the eastern slope of the mountain. Now they were on top of a ridge a few hundred feet below the summit. Through the trees, they could make out the other side of the valley; Uma was setting behind Mt. Shaw, with Coyote's sister worlds Raven and Fox beginning to glimmer in the dark purple sky.

Carlos stood off to the side, watching Chris as he pulled a tent from one of the saddlebags and began to unroll it on the snow-covered ground. "You can help by gathering some wood," Carlos said. "The stuff on top is wet, but if you dig under it, you can find-"

"I know how to find firewood." Chris eyed the rifle that Carlos pulled off his shoulder and leaned against a boulder. "You're awfully trusting, you know that?"

Carlos shrugged as he assembled the tent poles. "What would you do? You have no idea where you are. Without me, you'd be lost." He glanced up at the sky. "Better hurry. It's going to be dark soon."

Chris hesitated, then turned and walked away. By the time Carlos had finished erecting the dome tent and had unpacked the camp stove, he reappeared with an armload of dry branches. Carlos watched as Chris kicked aside the snow, built a miniature tepee of twigs, then used a pocket lighter to set fire to some leaves he'd tucked beneath the kindling. Within minutes, a small fire was burning, bringing a little patch of warmth back to the world just as the last light of day was fading.

They ate in silence, dining on rations reheated on the camp stove. As night set in, Bear began to rise to the east; it was a clear night, and soon the stars began to come out. Carlos left Chris with the cleanup; while he was scrubbing the plates and pan with water he boiled on the stove, Carlos walked over to the tent and produced a small catskin flask from one of the saddlebags.

Chris raised an eye as Carlos uncapped the flask. "What is that stuff?"

"Bearshine." Carlos took a sip, winced, and offered the flask to him. "You remember Lew Geary, don't you? This is his stuff . . . good old-fashioned corn liquor. Try some, it's good."

"I'll pass, thanks. Stopped drinking."

"Sorry. Didn't know." Recognizing his faux pas, he capped the flask, then sat down on the saddle blanket he had spread out next to the fire. "Glad to hear it. You were in pretty sad shape there for a while."

"Yeah, well . . ." Chris picked up a branch, absently stirred the coals. "Nothing like a little family tragedy to turn you into the town drunk."

Carlos hesitated. The memories of their last days together in Liberty were still sharp. "If you want me to apologize for David again . . ."

"I'm over that." Chris shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. David brought it on himself. He did something stupid, and . . . well, he's dead, and that's it." He was quiet for a moment. "And I'm not going to blame you for Wendy, either. She had a choice between you and me, and she picked you. How is she, anyway?"

"Wendy's fine." Carlos fed another piece of wood onto the fire. "Susan's growing up fast, going to school. We've got a dozen or so kids in Defiance now, so Wendy and Kuniko have their hands full, taking care of them."

"Good." Another pause. "And my mother?"

"Doing much better, now that she's . . ." Carlos stopped, reluctant to say more.

"Now that she's away from Shuttlefield?" Chris looked up from the fire. "Go ahead, say it. 'Your mother's great, now that she doesn't have you around . . . ' "

"You know that wasn't what I was going to say." Carlos felt his temper rise. "Why are you making this hard? I'm trying to . . ."

"Make friends again?" Chris remained irritatingly calm. "Was that your idea? Take me up in the woods, have a little cookout, slip me some booze. Pretty soon I'd soften up and let bygones be bygones? C'mon, old buddy . . ."

"Stop calling me that."

"Why not? Old buddy, old friend, old pal . . . best friend from childhood, all that." Chris smirked. "You know, even our names are alike. I was born just a couple of months before you, our dads were friends, so your father picked another name that began with a C. Chris and Carlos, Carlos and Chris. The folks thought it was cute. . . ."

"Stop it."

"Then you abandoned me. When the Union showed up, you locked my mother and me in a cabin while everyone else made a clean getaway. You know how hard that was, knowing that we were dirt so far as . . ."

"You transmitted a message to their ship, telling them where we were located." Carlos glared at him. "If anyone's guilty of betrayal, it's you, not me. And then you joined up with them, became their Chief Proctor."

"Like I had a choice? You guys weren't going to take us back. What else was I supposed to do? Live in the squatter camp along with all those poor bastards they'd conned into leaving Earth so that they'd have a source of cheap labor?"

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Is that it?" Carlos shook his head. "They're going to ruin this place. Every few months, another ship arrives, bringing another thousand people. . . ."

"Gosh, really?" Chris rolled his eyes in mock surprise. "Why, if a thousand more ships arrive over the next . . . oh, say, a hundred years . . . then we'll have a million people on this planet. Why, we might even have a population explosion!"

"Given our limited resources . . ."

"Oh, c'mon" Chris chuckled as he looked askance at Carlos. "We've barely explored one tenth of this world. Even if the Union emptied all the cities and sent everyone here, we'd still have miles of elbow room."

"Is that what you want? To have this place become just like Earth, complete with its own dictatorship?" Feeling the darkness encroaching upon them, Carlos stood up, walked over to where he'd left his rifle. He brought it back to the campfire and laid it down next to him. "That's why we came here in the first place, to get away from all that. So far as I'm concerned, the Union is no better than the Republic."

"And you really think you're going to get them to pack up and go home? Dream on." Chris gestured toward the rifle. "Why'd you do that? You said yourself that I'm not going anywhere."

Carlos didn't reply. He unstopped the flask and took a sip of bearshine that burned its way down his throat. He was surprised when Chris reached out his hand. "I thought you said you stopped drinking."

"It's cold. Unless you've got some hot chocolate stashed away . . ."

"Haven't had hot chocolate since we left Earth. Be my guest." Chris accepted the flask from him, upended it, and took a slug. He gagged, coughed into his fist. "Sorry," Carlos murmured. "Should have warned you . . . it's powerful stuff."

"God!" Chris gasped, pounding his chest with his fist. "Now I remember why I don't drink anymore." Tears seeped from the corners of his eyes as he thrust the flask back toward Carlos. "So . . . why'd you get your gun? Worried I might run away?"

For a second, Carlos was tempted to tell him the truth. For better or worse, they were talking to one another for first time in years. Yet he still couldn't trust Chris, and they still had another day of travel before they reached Defiance. If they made it as far as Johnson Falls . . . "Up here at night, sometimes you hear things." He pulled the rifle a little closer. "I'd rather be safe than sorry."

"What things?" Chris unbuttoned the canteen from his belt and drank some water. "The boids stay in the lowlands and the creek cats are in hibernation. What's going to bother you up here this time of year?"

"Remember Zoltan Shirow? The First Church of Universal Transformation?"

"The freak with the bat wings?" Chris laughed. "Oh, boy, do I remember him. I heard he brought his people over here from Thompson's Ferry early last year. Good riddance . . . whatever happened to him, anyway?"

"They tried to hike over Mt. Shaw, but they got caught in a nor'wester. Everyone died up there except their guide. Ben Harlan. You might know him . . . ?" Chris shook his head. "Anyway, Ben managed to make it down the mountain. When we found him, he said that they'd killed each other. When the food ran out, they went cannibal."

Chris whistled beneath his breath. "No joke."

"No joke. After the snow melted, Ben and some other guys hiked back up, found the place where he'd last seen them. From what I hear, it was pretty gross. But when they counted the bodies, they came up two short . . . and it's hard to miss someone with wings and fangs even as a skeleton."

"So what are you saying?" Chris peered at him from across the fire. "Zoltan's still running around up here?"

Carlos was tempted to uncork the flask again. He reconsidered and left it alone. "We've had patrols in these mountains for the last year. That's how we found you guys. Every now and then, they've come back, saying that they've seen things, heard things. . . ."

"Oh, get off it. I'm too old for ghost stories." Chris stood up, arched his back. "Go ahead, keep your gun handy if you want. I'm going to get some shut-eye." He shambled over to where he'd left his pack, hauled it to the tent. "Tell me if you see Zoltan. Maybe he'd like some of that rotgut you carry around."

"I'll do that." Carlos watched as Chris crawled into the tent, shoving his pack before him. He waited while he heard him unroll his sleeping bag, then he put aside the rifle and picked up the flask once again.

He dropped another piece of wood into the fire. Sparks flickered upward into the bare branches, melded with the stars in the black sky. He was about to look down again when he spotted a single point of light, slowly moving east to west across the night.

The latest Union starship. Watching it, he felt a twinge of unease, as if someone up there was spying upon him. An irrational thought. He took a last swig of bearshine, then stood up and headed for the tent.

One more day on the trail, and then he'd be home again. He missed Wendy and Susan. He hoped that the rest of the journey would be uneventful.

GABRIEL75/2302-FORTLOPEZ

"Captain Baptiste?" The warrant officer standing near the map wall cupped a hand against her earpiece. "Receiving orbital telemetry from the Spirit . They report tracking two clear signals from the ground."

"Thank you, Acosta. Put it up, please." Baptiste stood up from the chair in which he had been dozing for the last half hour, walked across the dimly lit situation room to join her. He needed to go to bed; it had been a long day, and the only thing keeping him awake was coffee. But he had been waiting all evening for his ship to fly over Midland; now that it was in position, they should be able to get a fix upon the extralow-frequency signals coming from the ground.

Giselle Acosta tapped a few keys, and a holograph formed within the map wall: a topographic map of Midland, its mountains and valleys depicted as contour lines. As Baptiste watched, two illuminated cross-hatches appeared on the southeastern corner of the island, so close together that they almost merged.

"Enlarge this area," he said, pointing to the markers. Someone came up behind him; looking around, he saw Lieutenant Cortez. "Didn't know you were still here," Baptiste murmured. "Are you off duty?"

"Thought you might need me, sir." Cortez watched as the image expanded, becoming a broad valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. "That's the southern end of the Gillis Range . . . Mt. Shaw up here and Mt. Aldrich down there." He pointed to a sinuous line weaving through the center of the valley. "This river comes down between them and empties into the Great Equatorial about a hundred miles to the south."

Baptiste nodded. The two markers had moved farther apart now: one on the river almost midway between the two mountains, the other near the top of Mt. Aldrich. "They've separated," he said, then he turned to call across the room. "Any further contact from the patrol?"

"No, sir." A corporal seated at the com station swiveled in his chair to look at him. "Last report was at 0830 this morning."

"Looks like we may have lost someone." Cortez frowned. "But the other two signals are still active. Should I wake the Matriarch?"

Baptiste shook his head. If they got Luisa Hernandez out of bed, she'd only demand immediate action. But a night sortie in unknown terrain was an invitation to disaster; their target wasn't likely to go anywhere before morning. "Let her sleep," he replied, then patted Acosta's shoulder. "Good work. Get a lock on those coordinates and tell your relief to keep an eye on them when Spirit makes its next flyover in about six hours."

Acosta typed another command into her keyboard, and a translucent grid appeared above the map, displaying latitude and longitude lines. Baptiste yawned, then he looked at Cortez once more. "Get a few hours of shut-eye, then muster two Diablo recon teams at 0500."

"Diablos?" Cortez raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure we're going to need them, sir?"

"Rigil Kent's been pretty good at taking down light infantry. Let's see how they handle heavy stuff." Baptiste raised a hand to stifle another yawn as he walked away. "Four Diablos on the flight line for liftoff at six. Tomorrow we go hunting."

ZAMAEL, GABRIEL76/0753-MT. ALDRICH

"From here on, we walk the rest of the way." Carlos hopped down from his shag into the snow. "You can leave your pack," he added as he withdrew his carbine from its scabbard and pulled its strap over his shoulder. "They'll carry that . . . just not you."

Chris carefully climbed down from his mount. His shag had come to a stop on its own, and it waited patiently for him to take the reins in hand. Ever since they had resumed their journey just after sunrise, the trail had gradually led down a gentle incline, taking them off the ridge where they had spent the night until they had come to the top of a sixty-foot granite bluff. Below them, the Pioneer Valley narrowed, becoming a deep and heavily wooded canyon. On the other side, only a few miles away, they could see the lower slopes of Mt. Shaw; Goat Kill Creek lay several hundred feet below, invisible save as a slender line that meandered across the valley floor.

"Watch your step. It gets pretty steep after this." Clucking his tongue, Carlos led his shag toward a break in the trees, where the trail began to descend into the canyon. He stopped to pick up a fallen branch; breaking it over a boulder, he tossed the other half to Chris. "Here, use this. Might make it a little easier."

"Thanks." They'd spoken little that morning; too much had been said the previous evening, and neither of them felt like talking. "Y'know, I'm just curious . . . why do you call this Goat Kill Creek?"

"First spring after we moved here, we let the goats graze near it." Keeping his eyes on where he put his feet, Carlos was paying more attention to the trail than to what he was saying. "We didn't know that it floods after the snow melts. Lost a few that way. The name stuck."

"Makes sense." Chris felt the soles of his boots slide on loose gravel beneath the snow; he used the stick to balance himself. "So I guess we're not far from Defiance."

Carlos suddenly realized that he'd revealed more than he should. "Not that far," he said noncommittally. "Maybe a few . . ."

He stopped. From somewhere not far away, a new sound drew his attention. At first, he thought it was trees rattling in the wind, yet it had a different quality: artificial, more repetitive. Carlos peered at the overcast sky through the snow-laden branches, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from.

"What?" Chris asked. "You think you-"

"Hush." Carlos held up a hand. The sound was louder. It also sounded like . . .

A gyro suddenly roared overhead, passing only a few hundred feet above them. It swept over the top of Mt. Aldrich, the rattle of its blades clattering against rock and timber, shaking snow off the treetops. The shags brayed in terror; Carlos grabbed his beast's reins and fought to keep it under control as the gyro skimmed out over the valley.

What the hell? Where did that . . . ?

And it wasn't alone. He could see another gyro, cruising at low altitude up the valley several miles away. As the first aircraft banked to the left, making a sharp turn that brought it back toward them, the second slowed to a near stop, its twin nacelles canting upward into vertical position. Like a giant dragonfly, the second gyro slowly descended into the canyon, gliding back and forth as if searching for a place to touch down.

"Duck!" he yelled, but it was much too late for that. The first gyro hurtled toward them once more, this time even closer. Carlos couldn't restrain his shag any longer; in blind panic, the beast tore loose from its reins, then turned and galloped back uphill. For an instant it seemed as if the shag would trample Chris, but he let go of his own mount and threw himself out of the way. The animals nearly collided with one another as they charged up the trail.

"They're getting away!" Chris scrambled on hands and knees in an absurd attempt to grab his shag's reins. "They've got our-"

"Let 'em go!" Carlos grabbed him by the back of his jacket, hauled him beneath the nearest tree. But Chris was right; all their gear-including, he realized, his radio, along with extra cartridges for his rifle-were in packs and saddlebags lashed to the shags. Given time, they might be able to chase them down. But they were out of time, and the gyro was closing in.

It was at treetop level, its propwash causing twigs and clumps of wet snow to rain down upon them; the noise of its rotors was deafening. Raising a hand to shield his face, he caught a glimpse of the gyro's undercarriage. The craft was hovering directly above them, nacelles rotated into landing position. In another few seconds, it would come down and . . .

Yet it seemed to hesitate in midair. A couple of seconds passed, then the gyro veered away. Coughing against the snow flurry, Carlos watched the aircraft as it retreated. Gaining altitude, it glided toward the summit, searching for . . .

Of course. There was no way it could touch down there. The mountainside was much too steep, with too many trees in the way; the pilot would have to find a level spot near the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, they had passed several clearings where the gyro could safely land. Once the pilot located one of them, then he could drop into it. And Carlos had little doubt that a squad of Union Guard soldiers was aboard.

"C'mon. We're going." Carlos pulled Chris to his feet. For a second, it seemed as if he was about to resist. Carlos shoved him in the back, propelling him down the steep trail.

Their bootheels dug into snow as they half ran, half fell down the rocky slope, grabbing at saplings for support. Within minutes, Carlos lost sight of the trail. Desperately trying to spot it again, he slipped, fell back onto his butt. Swearing beneath his fogged breath, he stumbled to his feet. Chris was already a dozen yards ahead of him; as much as they needed to put distance between themselves and the ridge, he couldn't afford to lose him. He'd had suspicions before; now their survival depended upon his instincts being correct.

Carlos charged downhill until he reached the base of the bluff. A massive stone wall rose above him, shelves of granite slate forming an overhang that loomed over his head. Piles of broken talus lay at the bottom of the bluffs, where erosion had caused the bluffs to gradually disintegrate, forming ancient rockslides. From far away, he could hear a low, steady rumble, like distant drums. The trail might be gone, but Johnson Falls was only a half mile away.

Chris was struggling across the talus when Carlos caught up with him. Grabbing his shoulder, Carlos turned him around, slammed him against the cold rock wall.

"Where is it?" he demanded.

"Where's what? I don't know what you're-"

"They didn't find us by accident." Carlos yanked the rifle off his shoulder. "You're wearing some sort of tracking device. Hand it over."

Chris's mouth trembled. "Man, you're paranoid. There's no-"

"I'm not kidding." With a flick of his thumb, he disengaged the safety. He backed up a step rested the stock against his armpit, and raised the muzzle so that it was aimed straight at Chris's chest. "So help me, I'll kill you if you don't show me where it is. And I won't count to three."

Chris stared back at him, not quite believing what he'd heard. Carlos's forefinger moved within the trigger guard, and that was all that it took. "All right, all right!" Chris tore off his jacket, turned around. "It's here!"

A small plastic unit was hooked to the back of his belt. "Take it off," Carlos said, and watched as Chris fumbled at the buckle. "Who else was carrying these things?"

"We all were." His belt now unfastened, Chris reached back to pull it off from behind. "If you'd checked the guys you shot, you would have found theirs. But you buried them. . . ."

"Leaving just you and Constanza. And we separated you." Carlos took the belt from him, gave the unit a quick examination. An ELF transponder of some sort, its signal capable of being received from orbit. Probably by the Union starship he'd spotted the previous night. He yanked the unit off the belt, dropped it on the ground, and stamped on it a couple of times until it made a satisfying crunch beneath the sole of his boot. "I figured this was some sort of setup. Finding you out here was too convenient."

"Damn, you're swift." Chris's smile was fatuous, the smug look of someone who'd played a good game and figured that he held the winning hand. "They're looking for you, genius. The famous Rigil Kent. And now they've got you where they . . ."

The distant sound of rotors interrupted him. Looking around, Carlos spotted the second gyro lifting off from farther down the canyon; it looked as if it had touched down somewhere on the river, at least three or four miles away. He couldn't see or hear the gyro that had been tracking him and Chris, but he had little doubt that it had managed to find someplace to land farther up the mountain.

One squad coming at them from above, another from below. The team in the canyon would be homing in on Constanza's transponder, though, and he'd just destroyed Chris's. He had something of a head start. So long as Marie and her guys weren't still . . .

"So what now?" Chris was almost casual about this. "Leave me? Shoot me? Better make up your mind. I think you're going to have company soon."

"That way." Carlos gestured in the direction of Johnson Falls. "You're coming with me."

"Sure. Why not?" Chris gave a nonchalant shrug. "Sort of figured you'd say that." He turned, then stopped to glance back over his shoulder. "In fact, so did she."

"What's that?" Carlos didn't have to ask whom he was talking about. "What did she say?"

"That you'd never kill me." Again, the self-assured smile. "To tell the truth, though, that's not why I told her I'd go along with this. I just want to be there when they bring you down."

"Sorry to disappoint you. I'm not dying today." Carlos pointed in the direction of the falls. "Now march."

GABRIEL76/0837-FORTLOPEZ

"Flight One reports Diablo Alpha is on the ground." The master sergeant seated at the carrel closest to Baptiste didn't look away from his wraparound console. "They've lost the transponder, but they've had visual contact with primary target. Closing in to intercept."

"Diablo Bravo reporting in, sir." Acosta, seated at the adjacent carrel, glanced back at him. "They have a clear fix on secondary target. It appears immobile. Moving to investigate."

"Thank you." Baptiste continued to study the map wall. Two red markers on a ridgeline below the summit of Mt. Aldrich indicated the position of Diablo Alpha. As Sergeant Cartman had just said, the crosshatch indicating the location of the ELF beacon worn by Chief Proctor Levin had disappeared shortly after he had been spotted by Flight One. The transponder worn by Enrique Constanza, though, was still active; it hadn't changed position since it had been acquired by the Spirit the night before, though, and that worried him.

He walked over to the Diablo Alpha carrel. "Tell them to proceed with caution," he said quietly. "This could be a trick of some sort."

"What makes you think that, Captain?" Luisa Hernandez came up from behind him, her cloak brushing softly against the cement floor. The situation room was crowded, filled with Union officers monitoring the operation. "For all we know, that might be the location of the Alabama party."

She had a point. Constanza's signal was coming from a point a considerable distance from the last-known whereabouts of the advance team. The loss of contact with its other four members tended to support the theory that it had been ambushed by Rigil Kent nearly fifty miles down-river; it had to be assumed that they were now dead, their transponders buried along with their bodies. If Constanza had been taken prisoner, then his captors might have taken him to a site somewhere upstream . . . perhaps even their ultimate objective, the Alabama party's hideaway.

Baptiste absently rubbed his chin as he watched the images being transmitted from Bravo Leader. One of the screens displayed a shot from the camera mounted on the Diablo's chest: fuzzy and monochromatic, lurching a bit with each heavy step that the team leader took, it showed a riverbank overgrown with dense brush, the river itself a silver surface reflecting the morning sun.

"Too easy," he murmured, not so much to the Matriarch as to himself.

"What did you say?" She stood next to him, her arms folded across her chest. "You think this is easy? Captain, this operation has been months in the planning. I assure you, we have the ability to . . ."

"And from what you've told me," he said quietly, "you've consistently underestimated them. You seem to believe that, simply because you have more men and more equipment, your adversary lacks resources. That's a mistake."

Her hands fell to her sides, and she glared at him with something close to contempt. Although he hadn't raised his voice, Baptiste was conscious of the fact that the room had gone quiet; all around them, officers were listening to the exchange. He wondered how many had felt the same way themselves but had been unwilling to challenge the authority of the colonial governor.

Hernandez stepped back, her eyes narrowing. "Perhaps you're correct, Captain. We should change the purpose of this operation." She turned away, walked over to the Diablo Alpha carrel. "Where are your men now?"

"Descending the ridge now, ma'am." Cartman pointed to a screen depicting the location of Diablo Alpha, a pair of asterisks slowly making their way down a close-set pattern of contour lines. Its chest camera displayed a blurred image of trees and snow-covered boulders. "They haven't made visual contact yet, but sonic patterns indicate movement about five hundred yards ahead. . . ."

"Show me the shot Flight One caught of them," she demanded. Cartman worked his keyboard, and another screen lit to depict a jolting overhead image: two men, captured for a few brief seconds by a gyro's belly camera, peering up at them from beneath snow-covered branches. "Freeze!" She pointed to the man on the right: young, bearded, a Union carbine slung over his shoulder. "Take a good look, Captain . . . Carlos Montero, Rigil Kent himself. Tell me, do you think this is a person you'd underestimate?"

"No, ma'am, I wouldn't." It wasn't fear that Baptiste saw in Montero's face, but something else . . . a determination that, under other circumstances, he would admire.

"Neither do I. And I've been dealing with him for much longer than you have." Hernandez prodded her lower jaw. "Patch me into Alpha and Bravo," she told Cartman. "I wish to speak with them directly."

"Matriarch," Baptiste said, "may I remind you that this is a Union Guard operation. . . ."

"And may I remind you that I'm colonial governor." She deliberately turned her back upon him. Cartman looked up and nodded, indicating that she was being heard by the two strike teams. "Diablo Alpha, Diablo Bravo, this is the Matriarch Luisa Hernandez. The mission objective has now changed. Your first priority is termination, not capture. Repeat . . . termination is now the primary objective. That is all." She prodded her jaw again, then looked at Baptiste once more. "I think that should convince you how seriously I regard this."

Baptiste regarded her with horror that he hoped his face wouldn't betray. This wasn't what he'd been led to believe they were doing. "I never doubted it," he said, carefully choosing his words, "yet you realize that your orders include the termination of two civilians . . . including your Chief Proctor."

Her face went pale, as if she suddenly realized what she'd done. There was always time to rescind the order, or at least change it. But then the coldness returned.

"Of course I know that," she said. "Just do as I say."

She walked away, and it was in that moment that Baptiste realized just how far her obsession with Rigil Kent had gone.

GABRIEL76/0846-PIONEERVALLEY

At first, the binoculars revealed nothing save the swaying of tree limbs in the wind. Then a shadow passed across the bottom of the bluffs, flitting across the rockslide. Almost as soon as Carlos spotted it, though, it seemed to vanish; as he continued to watch, he caught a brief glimpse of snow falling off a clingberry bush, as if knocked down by a specter following the tracks he and Chris had left behind.

"Having trouble?" Chris lay against the boulder next to him, a smirk on his face. "I imagine they're hard to spot in ghost mode."

"And I bet you're not going to tell me what that is, are you?" Carlos kept his eyes on the bluffs, hoping to spot any further movement. Yes, there it was again . . . but now there appeared to be two shadows, one just behind the other.

"Umm . . ." Chris thought about it a moment. "Okay, let me give you a hint. You're looking at them all the wrong way."

Carlos considered what he'd just said, then laid down the binoculars and picked up his rifle. Peering through the scope, he switched to infrared. Everything went dark, as if twilight had settled upon the forest. He could make out two hulking silhouettes, ill defined yet vaguely man-shaped, resembling eggs with short legs and oversize arms.

"There you go." Chris chuckled. "That's their weak point. Their suits are coated with some sort of polymer that lets them camouflage themselves, but they've never been able to mask the heat from their power systems. Go IR, and on a cold day like this, you can see 'em . . . sort of."

"You seem to know an awful lot about these things." Carlos studied the two figures slowly making their way along the bottom of the cliff. He had led Chris to a large, tooth-shaped outcropping about a hundred yards downhill from the bluff. For a few minutes, they were safe. Just enough time for him to take stock of their pursuers. "What did you call them? Diablos?"

"Diablo Mark III combat armor, uh-huh. Tactical assault gear. Some friends in the Guard told me all about them, but I've never seen one until now. Wanna let me take a look?"

Carlos ignored him as he squinted through the scope, lining up the two figures within the crosshairs. He had a clear shot, if he cared to take it. If their shielding was heavy armor, though, it was probably impervious to low-caliber ammo; shooting at them would only expose his position. "Anything else you'd care to tell me?"

"Well . . . if this is a standard hunter-killer team, then it means that the leader is probably sweeping this entire area with his sensor array. So if you think they don't know where we are, you're wrong. They're probably listening to us right now . . . if they haven't picked up the infrared beam from your scope."

Carlos felt his blood freeze. At that moment, the Diablo in front turned toward him. A cylindrical shape mounted on its right shoulder swiveled his way, as if taking aim directly at him. He ducked, pulling his rifle against his chest; an instant later, there was a faint hiss as hot flecks of superheated granite stung the right side of his face.

"Oh yeah . . . and they're armed with particle-beam lasers, too!" Chris laughed out loud. "Oh man, you are so screwed!"

Chris wiped a hand across his forehead and cheek; his glove came away with blood from a half dozen scratches. He cast a baleful look at Chris as he slid down the boulder. If they were fast enough, they might be able to get the rest of the way down the hillside before . . .

"Hey! Down here! You guys, down here!"

Carlos looked around. While his back was turned, Chris had scampered past him up the outcropping. He stood on top of the boulder, waving his arms above his head.

"I got him!" Chris yelled again, then whistled sharply and pointed toward him. "C'mon, he's here."

A dozen memories flashed through Carlos's mind as he brought up his rifle, leveled it at Chris's back. He tried not to think about all the things they'd done together when they were kids as his finger curled within the trigger guard. He took a deep breath, prayed that God would forgive him. . . .

There was a soft fizzing sound, like a white-hot rod being shoved into a pound of meat; for a half second, Carlos glimpsed a slight distortion in the air. Then Chris screamed and fell back from the boulder, clutching at his left shoulder just above the biceps. Carlos scrambled up the outcropping, grabbed Chris, and hauled him down next to him. He pulled aside his hand, looked closely: a blackened hole in his jacket, about a quarter inch in diameter. The laser had lanced through his shoulder, cauterizing the flesh and leaving an entrance wound that smelled like burned pork. Apparently the Diablo team wasn't being too particular about its targets. . . .

"Son of a bitch shot me!" Chris winced as he clasped a hand across his shoulder. "I don't believe it! He just-"

"Shut up." The falls were only a few hundred yards away, but Carlos needed to slow the Diablos down somehow, or they'd never reach them. "Stay here," he whispered, then he scrambled up the boulder again, careful to keep his head down.

A quick peek through the rifle scope showed that the two figures were still beneath the bluffs. They were heading in his direction, but their heavy armor and the loose rock beneath their feet might buy him a few seconds. Switching off the IR, Carlos peered through the scope at the top of the bluffs. There it was: an icicle formation, precariously suspended above the rockslide far below. He took careful aim, then squeezed the trigger.

Bullets split through the ice. The formation shattered, plummeted to the ground. The Diablos had no time to react before hundreds of pounds of ice cascaded down on them. The one in front escaped the worst of it, but the rear Diablo was knocked off its feet. Something within its carapace must have shorted out, because it suddenly became visible: a sand-colored golem made of ceramic alloy, its enormous arms awkwardly thrown outward as the man inside struggled to regain balance. As it toppled and fell, the team leader, now rendered tenuously visible by the ice and snow that covered its carapace, lumberously turned toward it.

Good. That might hold them for a few minutes. Carlos slid down off the boulder, wrenched Chris to his feet. "Get going! And if you do anything like that again, I swear I'll-"

"They shot me!" Holding his shoulder, Chris stared back at the Diablos. "I can't believe they . . ."

"You're expecting a medal?" Carlos shoved him. "Hurry up, or I'm leaving you behind!" He wondered why he hadn't done so already.

They plunged through the forest, dodging large rocks and fallen timber, branches whipping their faces as they raced down the hillside. Carlos felt ice within his lungs, burning him from the inside out; he coughed, wiping snow from his face with his free hand. The dull rumble of the falls grew louder, becoming a roar; through the trees, he could make out a thin white haze. Chris blindly followed him, staggering with each step he took. They needed to rest, take care of his wound, but that was out of the question. It wouldn't be long before the Diablos recovered; soon they'd be on them again, tracking them by their body-heat signatures, the sound of their breathing. If they stopped, even for a second . . .

The rumble became a deep-throated roar, and suddenly they were through the trees. A chasm opened before them: a vast gorge, several hundred feet in diameter, an enormous sinkhole deep within the mountains. Sixty feet to the right, Goat Kill Creek plunged into the gorge, a sixty-foot waterfall spilling down upon jagged rocks. Water foamed at the bottom of the falls, churned away into the valley beyond.

Chris stopped, stared into the abyss. "Oh, great," he rasped. "Just wonderful. Now where are we going to . . . ?"

"This way." Carlos turned to the right, began making his way along the edge of the gorge. If they hadn't lost the trail, it would have led them straight to the top of Johnson Falls. As it was, they'd have to bushwhack it. He could only hope that the Diablos were still behind them. . . .

From somewhere down in the valley, the distant chatter of automatic gunfire echoed off the granite well of the gorge. That would be Marie's group, engaging the other Diablo team. They must have homed in on Constanza's signal. Yet his sister had the benefit of three armed men at her side, along with a stolen skimmer. All he had was his rifle. . . .

"It's not too late. . . ." Out of breath, holding on to his shoulder, Chris collapsed against a tree. He gazed at Carlos with red-rimmed eyes. "It's not too late to give up . . . if we surrender, they might just take us prisoner . . . that's all she wants. . . ."

"You want to stay here, go ahead." Carlos searched the wooded slope above them. No doubt the Diablos were homing in upon their voices. "Give her my best regards."

At first it seemed as if Chris was going to remain behind. Then he apparently thought better of it and staggered to his feet. "Hope you know where you're going."

Carlos nodded, turned away. He did . . . but he wasn't about to let Chris know that.

They continued moving toward the falls. Without a trail to follow, Carlos had to rely on his sense of the land. Over the course of the last two years, though, he'd explored every gully and knob of this valley; the terrain was more familiar to him than the neighborhood in Huntsville where he'd spent his childhood. Somewhere farther up the hillside, he could hear faint noises; the Diablos weren't very far behind. The sound of rushing water was very loud now. Only a short way to go . . .

A sudden flash of heat against his face, and suddenly a tree branch just above his head snapped and fell, missing him by only a few inches. "Run!" he yelled, and took off, not bothering to look to see where the shot had come from.

They were sprinting headlong through the forest. Carlos couldn't see the falls anymore; the gorge was somewhere behind him. Chris was right on his heels, panting as he struggled to keep up. Another beam sliced bark off a tree a few yards to their right. The Diablo team knew where they were, but they didn't have a clear line of sight; they were firing blindly into the woods. All he and Chris could do was stay in motion, hope the trees would foul the Diablos' aim.

They were above the falls, with the creek to their left and the hillside to their right, when Carlos came upon the trail they'd lost. "This way!" he snapped, then turned to the left, his boots thudding against the soft snow on the path as he headed straight for the creek. He knew exactly where they were now; the rest of the way was clear. If they could only make it a few more yards . . .

There it was: the bridge.

Fifty feet long, a long row of rough-barked planks suspended by taut cables made of coiled tree vine, it swayed above the rushing waters of Goat Kill Creek, faintly obscured by the lingering haze of the morning fog. Two days earlier, he and his team had crossed the bridge while the first flakes of snow of the approaching storm fell upon them. Now the planks were coated with a thin glaze of ice, the ropes collecting snow; the bridge seemed frail and weather-beaten, but it was sturdy nonetheless.

Carlos sprinted past the two blackwood trees around which the support cables had been lashed. The bridge creaked as it took his weight, swayed slightly. On the way back, the shags would have waded across the shallows a little farther upstream while their riders leisurely marched across the bridge, but now the shags were gone and the bridge was his avenue of escape. Glancing back, he saw Chris right behind him. No time to savor the surprise on his face. Just a few more yards to the other side of the creek . . .

Carlos was halfway across the bridge, barely touching the frayed hand ropes as he dashed across the slick boards, when he heard someone shout his name. Looking up, he saw a figure emerge from the woods on the opposite shore, waving both arms above his head. Carlos raised a hand, started to wave back . . .

"Down!"

Carlos barely heard Chris yell before he was knocked off his feet. He went facedown; the rifle fell from his hands, clattered upon the bridge behind him. He glanced up just in time to see a thumb-sized hole appear on the walkway only a few inches away, melting the snow and causing the damp wood to sizzle.

Twisting sideways, he looked back, and for the first time he saw one of the Diablos clearly: a mechanical man, like a robot from one of the Japanese cartoons he'd watched on netv as a kid, only lacking a head. It stood at the end of the bridge, a sensor pod protruding from its massive chest peering at him like a cyclopean eye. The sausage-shaped particle-beam cannon mounted upon its right shoulder swiveled toward him. In that instant, he knew that the Diablo was locking him in its sights. The next shot wouldn't miss. . . .

"Run!" Chris shouted. "Go!" And then he brought up the rifle Carlos had dropped, opened fire on the Diablo.

Armor pinged as bullets ricocheted. The Diablo staggered, but didn't fall. Now he could see the second unit, coming down the trail just behind it . . .

"Get out of here!" Chris didn't look back at him. "Go, dammit!"

Scrambling to his knees, Carlos grabbed the hand ropes. He'd barely hauled himself to his feet when there was a hollow shush! above his head.

What the hell . . . ?

A half second later an explosion ripped across the place where the Diablos had been standing. He turned around to look. . . .

His feet slipped on the wet planks. Off-balance, he tried to grab the ropes, but the bridge seemed to twist beneath him, and suddenly he was no longer on it.

For a timeless moment, he was suspended in midair, a limp doll flying through space. Then there was a tremendous blow against his back, and he was underwater.

A thousand tiny knives stung his face. He involuntarily gasped, and freezing water rushed down his throat. Darkness closed upon him; fighting panic, he began to swim as hard as he could, kicking and clawing his way toward the shimmering blue light above him.

C'mon, c'mon,c'mon . . . ! You can't die here!

His head broke the surface. Coughing up water, Carlos began to thrash his way through the swift current. The undertow clutched at his ankles, threatening to yank him under once more. His thick clothing was waterlogged; it was as if the lining of his parka were filled with wet cement, his boots strapped to ten-pound weights. It was all he could do just to stay afloat.

Pain lanced through his right knee as it connected with a boulder he couldn't see. Gritting his teeth, Carlos floundered toward shore. It was still more than twenty feet away; and he could hear the roar of the falls as he was pulled toward them. Another dozen yards or so, and he would hurtle over the edge, falling into the gorge to be smashed against the rocks far below. . . .

He kicked harder, fighting to keep his head above water, trying to swim with the current instead of against it. Foot by foot, the shore came closer; he spotted a dead tree that had fallen into the creek. He managed to reach it, but when he grabbed at a branch it broke off at the root, and the rapids seized him once again and hauled him away.

The roar was deafening. Water spit at his face, blinding him. Turning his head, he saw the edge of the falls less than a dozen feet away. But his toes were touching sand, the soles of his boots sliding off rocks. If he could only grab hold of something, pull himself through those precious few inches that remained between him and dry land . . .

Another boulder rose from the waters only a foot from shore. The current swept him toward it. He wrapped his right forearm around the rock, held on with the last of his strength. He only had to reach out with his other hand, find something else to . . .

Something grasped the hood of his parka, hauled him upward. It was as if a mighty hand had reached down from the sky to tear him out of the violent water, for in the next instant he was dragged from the creek and onto firm ground.

Carlos lay facedown on the riverbank, gasping for breath as he trembled against the frigid air. So cold, so incredibly cold . . .

He saw a pair of boots, old and worn, with animal skins tightly wrapped the ankles. Someone from Defiance. Probably the same guys who'd taken out the Diablo team. "Man, I'm so glad to see you," he mumbled as he raised his head. "I thought I . . ."

The face that peered down at him was inhuman.

An elongated jaw, covered with a coarse beard, with yellowed fangs protruding from his mouth. A filthy parka beneath a soiled white robe, a pair of leathery wings rising through slits on its back. Eyes dark but brilliant, kindly yet insane.

"Zoltan?" Carlos whispered.

From somewhere nearby, voices. The gargoyle looked up, glanced in their direction. Without another word, he stood up and scuttled away, heading for the waterfall only a few feet away. He climbed onto a large boulder overlooking the gorge. His wings extended to their full length; he raised his arms to grasp their leading edges with taloned hands.

"No!" Carlos yelled.

Then the figure flung himself into the chasm.

Carlos raised himself on his hands and knees just in time to catch a glimpse of a bat-winged shape gliding across Johnson Falls. Within moments it disappeared from sight, vanishing into the shadows of the trees at the bottom of the gorge.

He was still staring after it when Chris came up behind him. Several men were behind him; Carlos couldn't tell if they were following him or chasing him, and for the moment it didn't matter. "Hey, man, you all right?" he said, laying a hand on his arm. "We thought you were dead."

"I just . . ." Carlos found himself shaking, not so much from the cold but from the face he'd just seen. Would they believe him? He wasn't sure he believed it himself. From somewhere not far away, he heard a gyro approaching. They weren't out of trouble yet. "Never mind," he murmured. "Let's just get out of here."

GABRIEL76/0932-FORTLOPEZ

The screen showed two men on a rope bridge, one lying face-down , the other standing above him with a rifle, firing toward the camera. Then the camera zoomed past them, briefly focusing upon a couple of figures within the shadows of the trees on the other side of the creek. One of them bore something on his shoulder. Above the chatter of gunfire, they heard the squad leader's voice:

"Reinforcements spotted. Moving in to . . . oh, shit, they've got a . . . !"

A brief flash from the opposite side of the bridge. The last image was that of a small, dark shape hurtling toward the camera. Then the screen went blank.

"That's it, sir." Cartman looked up from his console. "No contact after that."

Baptiste said nothing. He didn't need another replay from Alpha Leader's external camera to know what had happened: the Diablo team had been taken out by a shoulder-launched RPG, probably one of the weapons stolen from Liberty during one of Rigil Kent's raids.

And it wasn't just Diablo Alpha that had been brought down. When Diablo Bravo had closed in upon Constanza's signal, about seven miles downstream from the falls, they found the missing patrol skimmer afloat next to the creek bank, tied to a tree. It appeared to be abandoned, but when the Diablos moved in to investigate, they came under fire by a small group of armed men lurking on the nearby hillside. Bravo could have fought them off without any problem, but it turned out that they were only a diversion; the skimmer wasn't deserted, and the men aboard knew how to operate its chain gun. All contact with Bravo team was lost less than a minute later; ten minutes after that, Alpha went off-line.

Two Diablo teams-four specially trained soldiers, equipped with state-of-the-art Union Guard combat armor-taken out by little more than guerrilla forces armed with stolen weapons. What was supposed to have been a tactical operation had become a total loss of men and equipment. Baptiste closed his eyes, rubbed his temples with his fingertips. It should have been easy. . . .

"Sir? Flight One and Flight Two are still on standby. Awaiting new orders."

Baptiste opened his eyes. Cartman patiently waited for him to tell them what to do now. The situation room had gone quiet, the officers seated at the consoles silently watching him. Two gyros remained on the scene, hovering at opposite ends of the operation zone; if the mission had been successful, they would have retrieved Alpha and Bravo, perhaps even taken aboard prisoners. That wasn't going to happen now, though, was it?

"Tell them to return to base," Baptiste murmured. "We'll . . ."

"No. Cancel that order, Sergeant."

Luisa Hernandez had been standing quietly off to one side, observing events as they unfolded. Now she walked into the light, her back erect as she approached Baptiste. "We're not through yet, Captain. There's still work to be done."

Baptiste let out his breath. "With all due respect, Matriarch, I disagree. Our ground forces . . ."

"Nullified, yes. I'm aware of that." Her face was taut, her mouth drawn into a straight line. "Nonetheless, we still have two units in the air. We can use them to our advantage." Before Baptiste could object, she pointed to the screen he had just been studying. "Sergeant, run back what we just saw." Cartman turned back to his console, tapped a few keys. Once more, the last few seconds captured by the team leader's onboard camera appeared. "Freeze it. Look at this, Captain, and tell me what's out of place here."

Baptiste examined the image. Nothing here he hadn't seen twice already. "I don't understand what you . . ."

"The bridge, Captain. Look at the bridge. For almost nine Earth-years, we've searched every square mile of Midland, both from high orbit and from low-altitude sorties. Never once have we spotted anything like this. Now, out in the middle of nowhere, we find a rope bridge. Why do you think that is?"

Before he could answer, Hernandez marched over to the map wall. "No one builds a bridge unless they mean to use it," she continued as she pointed to the last-known positions of Alpha and Bravo teams. "It can't be a coincidence that there were armed men in the area." Laying a fingertip upon the glass, she traced a circle around the upper part of the river valley. "Put it together. Their settlement must be located somewhere within range. If we act quickly enough, we may be able to find it."

Murmurs around the room as officers caught on to what she was saying. Baptiste found himself nodding in agreement. With two gyros still airborne over the valley, they might be able to backtrack the opposition's movements to their base camp. And yet . . .

"We can do this," he said, carefully choosing his words, "but I must urge you to be cautious. You may be overlooking something."

Hernandez scowled. "And that is?"

"We tried to lay a trap for them . . . but could it be that they've laid a trap for us?"

GABRIEL76/0946-PIONEERVALLEY

Carlos was pulling on a dry shirt when he heard voices from the mouth of the cave. Leaving the coarse tunic unbuttoned, he bent down to snatch up his rifle from where he had rested it against the wall. A few seconds later, the chopping thrum of rotors echoed through the tunnel as a gyro passed low overhead, just a few hundred feet above the gorge.

"Someone's coming." Seated near the lantern burning on the cave floor, Chris looked up. "Think it's the other Diablo team?"

Carlos didn't reply. He checked the cartridge-about eight rounds left. Not enough to hold off a determined assault. He glanced at Ted LeMare; the older man was guarding Chris, his rifle pointed at his back. Ted said nothing, but his attention was no longer on their prisoner but on the cave entrance. Chris had sworn that he wasn't carrying another homing device, and even if he was, they were far enough underground that a low-frequency radio signal wouldn't penetrate the granite around them. The gyro could simply be making another random sweep, as it had done three times already.

Chris had saved his life up on the bridge. But Carlos wasn't ready to trust him quite yet.

Jack Dreyfus was standing watch near the cave entrance. As the gyro moved away, he raised a hand to signal that the coast was clear, then disappeared from sight. More voices, this time closer. One sounded like Barry; Jack was doubtless relieved to find that his son was still alive. Carlos relaxed; he put down his gun, reached for the wool sweater lying nearby. Jack wasn't the only one to be grateful; when Henry Johnson had discovered this natural cave in the bluffs below the falls that now bore his name, he recommended that it should be stocked with spare clothes, food, and a fish-oil lantern, just in case a hunting party who'd lost their way might need them at some future time. Henry's foresight had been correct; Carlos made a mental note to buy him a drink the next time he saw him.

Light flickered off the cave walls. Jack appeared a moment later, flashlight in one hand, his other arm around Barry's shoulder. Behind them were Marie, Lars, and Garth, with Jean Swenson bringing up the rear. Marie rushed past the others, almost dropping her rifle in her haste to embrace her brother. No words were necessary; they wrapped their arms around each other, and Carlos felt his sister tremble against him. The disgust he'd felt toward her only the day before vanished; she was safe, and right then that was all that mattered.

"Welcome to the party." Ted lowered his gun, stepped away from Chris. "Got some food if anyone's hungry. Just beans, but-"

"Man, I'd eat a creek crab if . . . hey, there's the son of a bitch!" Chris had barely risen to his feet before Lars lunged across the cave to grab him by the collar of his jacket and slam him against the wall. Before anyone could stop him, he yanked a Union Guard automatic from his belt. "Man, I was hoping I'd see you again," he snarled, shoving it against Chris's face. "Payback time for you!"

"Cut it out!" Carlos got his hand on the gun, pulled it away. "No one's paying anyone back! He's with us!"

"A little late for that," Marie said quietly, as Ted hauled Lars away from Chris. "His pal's already paid up."

Carlos looked at her. "Don't tell me you . . ."

"She had no choice." Barry went to assist Garth. For the first time, Carlos saw that the kid was walking with the aid of a tree branch, his right knee wrapped in a bloodstained bandage. "Constanza was playing possum all along," he continued as he helped Garth hobble over to the thin circle of warmth cast by the lantern. "After we made it to the rendezvous point yesterday, he dropped the shell-shock act and made a grab for Garth's rifle. He got off a shot before Marie took him down."

"Enrique was an intelligence agent." Chris's face was ashen; he avoided looking at anyone. "He was a civilian scientist, sure . . . I didn't lie about that part . . . but his primary mission was this operation. I guess he wanted to make sure that the skimmer didn't fall into enemy . . . into your hands."

"We searched his body, found the tracking device." Barry helped Garth sit down, making sure that his wounded leg was set straight. "We tried to contact you, but we couldn't get through."

"My unit was switched off. The shags bolted when the gyros showed up, and that's when I lost it." Carlos nodded toward Chris. "He was wearing one, too. The whole thing was a setup. We were supposed to capture them so that the Union Guard could track us down."

"But it backfired." Ted moved away from Lars. "When Marie called in and told us what happened, Captain Lee sent Jack and me out to find you guys and Jean to look for the others. Lucky for us that we caught up with you at the bridge."

"Lucky for us that you decided to pack an RPG, too." Carlos couldn't help but grin.

Jack shrugged. "No luck to it. We figured that you might need some heavy artillery if the Union was sending a squad after you."

"We left Constanza's tracker aboard the skimmer, then hunkered down and waited for them to show up." Marie bent down to check Garth's bandage. "The skimmer's gun was what saved us. Weren't counting on having those . . . what were those things, anyway?"

"Diablos. Nasty stuff." Chris was nervous, but he appeared to realize that he wasn't going to be executed so long as he cooperated. Or perhaps there was more to it than that; Carlos noticed how he kept looking at Ted, Jack, and Jean, former Alabama crew members, with newfound appreciation, familiar faces he hadn't seen in years. They were far from being long-lost friends, but neither were they strangers. "It's a good thing you managed to-"

"Stop yanking me." Lars wasn't in a forgiving mood. He took his gun back from Carlos. Although he didn't aim at Chris again, neither did he return it to his belt. "If you guys hadn't screwed up, we'd all be prisoners by now. Or dead."

"And Constanza might have led them to Defiance." Barry glanced at Chris. "You had the right idea, leading him away like that."

"I had a hunch, that's all." Carlos shrugged. "It was the long way, but . . ."

"What sort of . . . ? Wait a minute, I don't get it." Now Chris was confused; he looked first at Barry, then at Carlos. "I thought you were taking me back to your camp."

Carlos knelt by the lantern. "Not the straight way, I wasn't," he said, warming his hands. "The path we took is a hunting trail. We put up the bridge late last year as an easy way of getting across the creek to Mt. Aldrich, but it's not the direct route to getting home."

"Then you knew. . . ."

"I didn't know anything." Carlos shook his head. "Like I said, I only had a suspicion. That's why I told Barry to meet us upstream from where we found you. If your friends hadn't shown up, we would have crossed the bridge, then doubled back and met up with them a few miles down the creek. If everything looked safe, then we would have taken you to Defiance."

He clasped his hands together. "Which brings us back to the here and now," he went on. "Technically speaking, you're a prisoner of war. Not only that, but you're a traitor, too."

"I told you why I did what I did. You heard what I said last night. . . ."

"That was last night. We didn't know you were setting us up." Carlos turned the lantern's wheel, feeding more fish oil to the wick to make it burn a little higher. Different campfire, but the same conversation, continued only a few hours later. "Cards on the table, buddy. Only way either of us is going to get out of this is to deal straight."

From somewhere outside, they could hear the Union gyros prowling back and forth across the gorge as they searched for Rigil Kent. "We both have something to win," Carlos went on, "and we both have something to lose. You want to see your mother again . . . and believe me, she wants to see you, too. We've got an injured soldier, and no one wants to wait here until Hernandez sends in another Diablo team. And I think you know by now that she considers you expendable."

Chris slowly nodded. Everyone was watching him. "We want to go home," Carlos continued. "Some of these guys would just as soon shoot you, but I'm willing to give you a second chance."

"I . . ." Chris hesitated. "Why would you do that?"

"Oh, for the love of . . ." Lars turned away in disgust. "Don't trust him. He's a friggin' boid in the bush."

"Shut up and gimme your radio." Carlos held out his hand, staring at Lars until he surrendered his unit. "A long time ago we were friends. We grew up together. Then I made a mistake, then you made a mistake, then . . ." He shook his head. "Maybe it's time we got past all that. Do you want to go home, Chris?"

For a moment, there was no one else in the cave. Just the two of them, guys who'd played army with toy guns, told each other dirty jokes, shared secrets about teachers and girls. They had gone to the stars together, watched their fathers die, gone on a misguided adventure and survived only to become distant from one another, and finally enemies. Yet Carlos knew that, even if Chris said no, he'd never kill him. He'd had that chance once already that morning and hadn't taken it. For better or worse, he was still his friend.

"Yeah." Chris's voice was very quiet. "I'd like that."

Carlos nodded. "Okay. We can do that . . . but first you've got to prove yourself."

Chris watched as Carlos unfolded the radio antenna. "What do you want me to do?"

"You've been a traitor before." Carlos extended the unit to him. "Now I want you to be a traitor again."

GABRIEL76/1036-FORTLOPEZ

"Have they spotted him yet?" Baptiste approached Cartman; who was now monitoring communications from Flight One.

"No, sir. He's still . . ." The sergeant stopped, cupped a hand against his ear. "Just a moment. They've got movement on the river, not far from the falls."

"Pull up the forward camera." Baptiste watched as the middle screen of the carrel lit to display an image from the gyro's nose camera. He could see what its pilot was seeing: an airborne view of the gorge, the falls in the background, the creek directly below. The image tilted slightly to the right as the aircraft swung around. "Give me the audio feed, too," he added. "I want to hear what they're saying."

"Where's Flight Two?" Luisa Hernandez had come up to stand beside him. "They should be close by."

"Just saw something down there. Close to the creek bank, about seventy feet from the falls."The voice of Flight One's pilot was laced with static, yet discernible. "Closing in . . ."

"Flight Two coming in to cover Flight One, ma'am." Without waiting to be told, Acosta tapped at her keyboard. The screen above her board showed an image from the Flight Two's nose camera, nearly the same as Flight One's, except from a higher altitude. The other gyro was visible in the foreground, about two hundred feet below. "Do you want audio feed?"

"Negative." Baptiste spoke before the Matriarch could respond; he caught the sour look on her face, but chose to ignore it. He didn't want to be distracted by cross talk between the pilots. "Monitor their channel and tell me if something important comes up," he told Acosta, then returned his attention to the screen in front of him. "Patch me into Flight One," he said, touching his jaw. "Flight One, this is Gold Ops. What do you have?"

The image steadied, became horizontal; the falls were no longer visible, and they could only see the rushing waters of the creek. "Gold Ops, we thought we saw something move down there. Could be our man. Coming down to check it out."

"We copy, Flight One." Baptiste continued to stare at the screen. "Get ready for pickup, but keep a sharp eye out. We don't know what's down there. Over."

"Suspicious, aren't you?" During all this, Gregor Hull had glided up behind him; now he stood between him and the Matriarch, a black-robed specter, aloof yet omnipresent. "You don't trust our man anymore?"

Baptiste gnawed his lower lip, refrained from making a comment. No, he did not. Ten minutes ago, Flight One had received a radio message on a coded frequency from Chief Proctor Levin. Everyone else involved in the operation had been lost so far, and Levin's tracer had failed almost two and a half hours ago. Suddenly, Levin had made contact, claiming that he'd escaped from his captors and requesting rescue, with pickup in the gorge below the falls.

Baptiste shot a glance at the Matriarch from the corner of his eye. Her face remained stoical, registering no emotion. The moment the Diablo teams had hit the ground, she'd written off Levin as expendable; he'd been little more than bait for Rigil Kent, not worth saving if he got in the way. Now that he was known to be alive, she wanted him back. All well and good. The mission had been a failure; they might be able to salvage something from it yet.

Nonetheless, before Diablo Alpha had been brought down, the team leader's camera had captured two men on the bridge. The camera had moved away before their blurred features could be discerned. One of them had opened fire upon the hunter-killer team just moments before it was wiped out.

He could have been Carlos Montero. That was what the Matriarch believed. Yet he might have been someone else . . .

"Visual acquisition."The pilot's fuzzed voice jerked him from his reverie. "We got someone, Gold Ops. Two down, dead ahead . . ."

Baptiste rested his hands upon the back of Cartman's chair, leaned close to study the screen. Yes, there he was: a small figure, standing on a boulder near the creek's edge, waving both hands above his head. The camera zoomed in, caught a face: a young man, in his late twenties, with long blond hair and a short beard.

"That's him." The Matriarch smiled. "Flight One, go down and take him aboard."

"I don't think that's . . ."

"We need him," she said, barely glancing his way. "He's been in close contact with Rigil Kent. He may know something we . . ."

"Gold Ops! We're . . . !"

A sharp bang, followed by a high-pitched screech. In the same instant, the screen went dark. "Flight One down!" Acosta shouted. "Flight One is down!"

Hernandez's mouth dropped open. "What? I . . . what did you . . . ?"

Baptiste shoved her aside, bolted toward the next carrel. Acosta stared at her screen, watching in openmouthed horror as a flaming mass plummeted into the creek, rotors still spinning as it disintegrated against the rocks. "It just . . . sir, it just . . ."

"Get them out of there!" Baptiste yelled. The warrant officer was in shock, unable to perform her duty; he shoved her aside, stabbed at the console. "Flight Two, this is Gold Ops! Get out of there! Return to base at-"

"No!" The Matriarch rushed forward, tried to pull Baptiste away from the console "He's down there! Rigil Kent is down there! We've almost got. . . !"

Baptiste turned around, shoved her away with both hands. Staggering back, she tripped over the feet of the sergeant. She would have fallen to the floor if one of bodyguards hadn't been there to catch her. "Hold her!" Baptiste yelled, snapping his finger at the Guardsman. "Detain the Matriarch! That's an order!"

The soldier hesitated, caught in a moment of uncertainty about whose authority was greater. Baptiste was a Union Astronautica senior officer, though, while Hernandez was a civilian, so his duty was clear. He gently grasped Hernandez's arm, murmured something to her. For a moment it seemed as if she would resist, then she surrendered.

"We copy, Gold Ops. Returning to base."Baptiste looked at the screen again, saw the gorge disappear as the gyro peeled away. The pilot was probably grateful to receive the order to withdraw. Someone down there had an RPG; the next heat seeker would have his name on it.

"You're out of line, Captain." Hernandez glowered at him, still held back by the Guardsman. "I can have you placed under arrest for this."

"No, ma'am, you can't." Before Baptiste could respond, Savant Hull stepped forward. "This is a military operation, and Captain Baptiste is the commanding officer. In this instance, his authority supersedes yours."

She stared first at him, then at Baptiste. "You can't . . ."

"It's done." Baptiste let out his breath. "This mission is over. I'm not going to put anyone else at risk just so that-"

"Matriarch?" Acosta looked over at her. "Flight Two says they're receiving another ground transmission. The person sending it says he wants to talk to you . . . personally."

For a second, no one said anything. "Put it on so that we can all hear," Baptiste said quietly. "And tell Flight Two to remain on station."

A few moments passed while the orders were carried out. Then the fuzzed tones of a low-frequency radio signal filled the situation room, and they heard a young man's voice:

"Matriarch Hernandez, do you hear me?"

Acosta nodded, indicating that she was patched into the comlink. The Matriarch prodded her jaw. "I hear you, Chief . . . Chris, I mean. Good to know you're alive and well."

"Yeah, I'm still here."A short, rancorous laugh. "How nice of you to be concerned, considering that one of your men put a hole in me. Know what a laser feels like when it's going through your shoulder? Hurts like hell, lemme tell you."

"I'm sure it was a mistake." The left corner of the Matriarch's mouth twitched upward. "We tried to pick you up, but we came under enemy fire. If you'll tell us where you are, we can make another attempt."

A low hiss from behind Baptiste. From the corner of his eye, he saw Cortez standing nearby. Like everyone else in the room, he was silently listening to this exchange. The Matriarch's calm self-assurance had returned; she cast a smug look at Baptiste. This wasn't over yet. She'd get her man back, then they'd hunt down Rigil Kent.

"No, I don't think so, but thanks anyway. Before I go though, a friend of mine would like to talk to you."

The Matriarch's eyes widened. She was about to reply when another voice came over. "Matriarch Hernandez, this is Rigil Kent. . . ."

Murmurs swept through the room; Baptiste heard someone mutter something obscene. Acosta reached to her console, trying to get a lock on the source of the signal. "I'm going to make this quick," the voice continued. "You've succeeded in getting a lot of your people killed today, I'm sorry for that, but you picked the fight, not us. We appreciate one thing, though . . . convincing Chris that he was on the wrong side. He's back with us now. Thanks for that, at least."

Hernandez's face had gone pale. "You . . . you're holding him prisoner," she stammered. "I demand that you . . . that you release him immediately before we . . ."

"You're in no position to demand anything, Matriarch. Now go away. This is our home, and you're not wanted here."

The transmission ceased suddenly, as if someone at the other end had flipped a switch. Baptiste looked down at Acosta, and she shook her head; she'd failed to pinpoint its source. "Tell Flight Two to return to base," he murmured, then he turned to speak to the Matriarch.

Luisa Hernandez was no longer listening. Without another word, she turned her back on him and walked away. No one dared to speak or even look at her as she strode through the operations center, followed a few steps behind by her reluctant bodyguard. The Guardsman stationed at the exit saluted as she marched past him; his stiff gesture went unacknowledged. Winter sunlight briefly streamed through the door, followed by a cold draft before it slammed shut again.

It had been a bad morning for the colonial governor of Coyote.

GABRIEL76/1803-DEFIANCE, MIDLAND

Twilight came as a gradual lengthening of shadows upon the snow-covered ground, cast by Uma as it sank behind the summit of Mt. Shaw. A cool wind drifted through the blackwoods, curling the woodsmoke that rose from fieldstone ovens sheltered by the forest canopy, causing bamboo chimes to rattle and clank gently in random melody. As darkness closed upon the village, fish-oil lamps flickered to life within tree house windows. Dogs barked as they helped their masters herd goats and sheep into their pens; within work sheds on the ground, glassblowers and potters extinguished their kilns, put away their tools. The evening air was filled with the aroma of cooking food; here and there were the creaking of rope ladders, the muted buzz of conversation, an occasional laugh. The day was done; Defiance was settling down for the night.

"I can see why they never found you." Chris walked alongside Carlos as they strolled along a path leading through the center of town. All around them, small wood-frame cabins were suspended within the boughs of enormous trees, with rope ladders that led to floor hatches and porches dangling to the ground below. "A hundred people here . . ."

"A hundred and fifty-two. Like you said, we've been having a population explosion lately." Chris glanced at him, and he shrugged. "We've had a few more babies, and we've picked up some people from your side of the river."

"All these people in one place, and the Union never figured out where you were." Chris winced as he shook his head. He'd spent the better part of the afternoon in the clinic, letting Dr. Okada tend to his shoulder wound, yet every move he made hurt a little. "But the farms, the grazing land. How did you . . . ?

"See all those poles over there?" Carlos pointed toward a broad meadow near the edge of the forest. "That's where we hang camouflage nets. From above, it looks like just another empty field. Can't tell we've got crops there unless you approach them from the ground." He had already shown him the water tanks, the grain sheds, the privies and communal bathhouses, all concealed by the blackwoods surrounding them. "We're careful about how we do things," he added. "There's some rules you're going to have to learn."

"Like what?"

As he spoke, a figure came toward them: Ron Schmidt, who long ago had worn the uniform of the United Republic Service. Now he wore a catskin serape over his patched URS parka, a carbine slung on its strap from his shoulder. "Ten minutes," he murmured. Carlos raised a hand and he went on, pausing to shine a flashlight beam upon a couple of children playing on a catwalk between two tree houses.

"That's one of 'em," Carlos said. "No one outdoors after sundown except the night watch. Keeps down on thermal emissions . . . especially important during winter. The chimneys have caps on them, and all the windows have shutters. In ten minutes, it'll be dark as hell around here. Unless you know where to look, you'd never know there was someone living here."

"You've got it all figured out."

Carlos shook his head. "No, not really. We've been lucky so far. The Union hasn't found us because they didn't know where to look. But now they know we're somewhere in this valley, so they're going to come searching for us. I don't think trees and camouflage nets are going to hide us much longer."

"And you're going to blame me, right?"

"Uh-uh." Carlos stopped, turned toward him. He couldn't see Chris's face, but he could hear the accusation in his voice. "So far as I'm concerned, our bills are paid. You're going to have to work things out with everyone else, but . . ."

He stopped. They weren't friends again; there were still many things that had to be settled between them. On the other hand, neither were they enemies anymore. They would just have to see how things would come out, one day at a time. "When push came to shove, you did the right thing," he finished. "That'll get around."

"Yeah, well, maybe." Chris didn't seem convinced. "I've been away a while. I'm going to have to . . ."

From a tree house not far away, someone played a bamboo flute. An old tune, "Soldier's Pay," dating back to nineteenth-century America. A few seconds later, a second flute joined in, a little more hesitantly, as if the second person was still learning the melody.

Chris listened, turning his head to focus upon the music. "Is that her?" he asked quietly.

"That's her. She's been getting better. Allegra's been a great help."

"I thought she'd be. That's why I encouraged her to look after my mom." Chris started to walk toward the tree house, then stopped. "Look, there's one thing I've got to know."

"Sure." Carlos shoved his hands in his pockets. "What is it?"

"When you found me, you had a feeling that this was all a setup, but you didn't shoot me. Then you found out for sure that it was a trap, and you didn't shoot me. And then I tried to give you away to the guys who were chasing us, and still you didn't shoot me."

"Yeah? And . . . ?"

Neither of them said anything for a few moments. "Nothing," Chris said at last. "Just checking."

"Go on home," Carlos said quietly. "I think your mother's calling you."

An old line, remembered from a shared childhood, long ago and far away. Chris laughed softly, understanding something that didn't need to be said, then turned to walk toward the light gleaming through the cracks of a shuttered tree house window.

Carlos watched him go. It was late, and he was tired. His wife and child were waiting for him. He turned around, began making his way through the night. For the moment, at least, all was well. Now it was time to go home.