SHARED EXPERIENCE

Part 1 of 3

by

Christopher Stasheff

Copyright © 1994

Titan slept and dreamed, but his dreams were of war.

Rampart, harpies attacking at twelve o'clock!

These dreams were brought not by the subcon­scious, but by memory, and the continuing transmis­sions of his comrades as they fought, so that all would know which tactics succeeded, and which failed.

Dark against a sky lit by energy bolts and bomb explosions, a horde of vaguely feminine shapes rode the air on vast beating wings—feminine shapes clutch­ing forms of death, rocket-launchers and slug-throw­ers that chattered like the insane gibbering of demented birds, while below them, scimitar talons curved to grasp and gouge.

The huge Bolos, each named for a defensive struc­ture, trundled out to meet the enemy—an enemy with wings, that struck from the air with talons.  The sentry who had first nicknamed the Xalontese "harpies" had definitely had a warped sense of humor—or some very strange perceptions, if he thought these winged, scaly, six-limbed saurians looked like women.  On a very dark night, silhouetted against a glowing sky, perhaps there was a very slight resemblance—the swell of the keel-bone might be mistaken for that of a bosom, and the ventilating headcrest might be confused with an elaborate hairdo—but in anything resembling good light, the monsters were obviously much closer to a pterodactyl than to a human woman.

But they smelled.  That characteristic, they shared with the harpies of legend.  And they spread foulness, droppings, wherever they went.  That, too, they had in common with King Phineus's nemeses.

Rampart sped out to meet them, his treads a blur, his drive-engines filling the world with their roaring, almost drowning out the shrill shrieks of joy that served the harpies as a battle-cry.  He slewed aside and filled the sky with the stream of fire from his starboard guns, while his Hellbore tracked along the line of enemies, filling the sky with fire.

But no matter how many he burned in instant explosions of flame, no matter how many dropped screaming with his bullets in their hearts, a thousand more survived to fly through and above his screen of fire, to drop their bombs on and before him.

 

*          *          *

 

"I've hated you from the day I saw you," Dawn said.

"Me, too," Larry shot back.  "So how come we're in bed together?"

"This is a bunker, not a bed, you heel!  I wouldn't get into bed with you if you were the only man in the world!"

"I'm the only man in your world, right now," Larry pointed out.  "But don't worry, you won't have to prove your claim—if one of us has to sleep, the other one has to stay awake."

"If anyone can sleep, when they're surrounded by cannon fire," Dawn muttered.

The remarkable thing about this exchange was that neither of them was looking at the other.  They sat back to back in a concrete-walled chamber twelve feet square, watching screens that showed them a variety or information—infra-red, radar, sonar, even visual.  The last screen was large enough to seem a window on the outside world—but their station was ten feet underground.  Only their concrete roof showed above the earth—charred and scarred, but the two cannon bar­rels that poked out of it were still in excellent working condition.  Not that the harpies hadn't tried to bomb them, of course—but whenever a saurian came too close, they fried him ten meters away.

Sooner or later, one would make it through; there would be one they wouldn't notice in time.  Either that, or one of the harpies they scared off would call in a ship, and its beams would crack them like an egg and roast them instantly.

But they couldn't think about that, of course—so they argued.  It helped distract them, it kept them from thinking about it—and it kept the adrenaline flowing, kept them ready to fry anything that came too close.

There was a single cot at one side of the room, just barely wide enough for one person.  Near it, there was a small table, one chair, and a hot plate with a kettle, a sink, and a large pile of ration packs.  That was only half the ration packs they had begun with, but they weren't worried.  In fact, they were surprised they themselves had lasted long enough to eat so many.

Neither of them could tell that to the other, though.

So they sat and watched, and from time to time, one of their hands twitched to hit a firing button.  There were busy times and slow times.  During the slow, one of them would watch both sets of screens while the other slept.  If business picked up, the sentry could always call the sleeper.

"The day you wake me up for anything but battle," Dawn said, "is the day I start standing watch alone."

"So why would I wake you?"

Dawn was silent a moment, trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that.  She decided that any way you looked at it, it was an insult.  "Every reason not to—especially since you have to sleep some time, too."

"Yes, I do," Larry sighed, "so I can think of you waking me for all the wrong reasons."

"How about waking you with a blaster?"

"Hey, at least it'd be quick."

"Well, that's all you're interested in."  Dawn hit the button, and the cannon above them coughed.  At least, all they heard down here was a cough.

"I wouldn't wish the poor things a slow death."

"Don't worry—with me, death's always quick."

"The big death, or the little one?"

"How big is a harpy?" Dawn demanded.

"You should know," Larry retorted.

Dawn hit the button again.  "Damn!  Almost missed!"  She fired again.  "There, got him.  Hate to have him suffer for a second, though."

"Oh, you were very helpful.  How'd you know it was a him?"

"Why should I think it was a her?"

Larry nodded.  "Good question.  No answer.  I think each one is an 'it'."

"Well, I haven't heard anything from the scientists yet," Dawn snapped.

"I know what you mean," Larry agreed.  "I haven't read any good books lately, myself."  He hit the firing pad.  The gun coughed above him, then coughed again.  "We'll find out some day—if I don't quit before then."

"Can't be too soon for me.  I can just imagine your replacement—tall, handsome, muscles on his muscles…"

"And I can imagine yours—built out of normal dis­tribution curves, blond, sweet-tongued…"

"The only sweet tongue you'll ever get is on a sandwich!"

"I'll settle for a side without sauce."

And on they went, on and on.  Above them, the harpies kept coming, carrying bombs to drop, bombs which exploded with them when the blast from the can­non touched them.  Others hovered a few feet out of range, lobbing in rockets and grenades, which did no damage, but occasionally loused up the sensors for a few seconds.  No matter how many died, more and more kept coming—because sooner or later, the flare that blocked the sensors would coincide with a harpy coming close enough to drop its bomb.  It had worked before, against hundreds of others of these human outposts; it would work against this one, sooner or later.  What matter how many of the almost mindless happy "workers" died?  The intelligent ones, the ones aboard ship with minds, could always make more—and did.  In fact, they couldn't help themselves.

Neither could Dawn and Larry.  The only thing that kept them from tearing each other apart was fatigue.

 

*          *          *

 

Harpies stooped from all over the sky, converging on the lone Bolo.  Equal to the attack, Rampart tra­versed the heavens with fire and shot, shells exploding before the ungainly fliers, shrapnel tearing them apart—but as a thousand died, more thousands pressed on in their places.  Still Rampart held them off, still Rampart stood indifferent under their rain of bombs and bolts…

Until the blasted eggs from which they had hatched spun into view, bulbous ellipsoidal ships spewing har­pies in their wakes—but walking over the blasted plain on pillars of fire, stabbing down at the ground with bolts of pure energy, half a dozen of them converg­ing on Rampart.

His cannon tracked and blasted again and again, hitting the one huge ship where Intelligence said the power plant was housed, hitting it again and again, slowly burning through the shielding as his rocket launchers targeted other ships and hit them again and again, but the energy bolts walked toward him inexo­rably, the huge ships waded through his fire, slowed but never stopped…

Until five of the six ships stood over him, blasting downward with artificial lightning, raising the stink of ozone, then the stink of burning steel.  As the sixth ship fell out of the sky, its power plant exploded at last, and the melting column that was Rampart's Hellbore traversed to center on another enemy ship, almost straight above him, even as its shell turned yellow, then white, then flowed, and all the rounds within him detonated and exploded in a single bright burst that shook the whole of the blasted plain, taking with it the hundred or so harpies whose lust for ven­geance had been so strong that they had stayed to watch, instead of retreating beyond range.

But even as he died, one last searing message sprayed out from Rampart like the molten steel of his dying body, one last demand that seared through the Titan even in his sleep:

Avenge me.

And Titan knew that he would, even if he died as Rampart had died—for what better death could any warrior ask, man or machine?

Merlon, sally forth to sweep the talus slope!

Below the fortress and the bunkers that shielded it, another horde of harpies came crawling up the scree, below the level of the automatic guns.  There seemed to be no end to them and, like worker ants, they pressed on mindlessly, intent only on the damage they could do, the number of humans they could kill, driven by a single hive-mind, a single instinctive lust for destruction.

The gate slammed open, and Merlon shot out, holding place and filling the slope with fire until the gate had grated shut behind her.  Then she rolled forth to the edge of the hill, her cannon lowering, her guns depressing, then filling the whole slope with shell and fire.  Harpies screamed and rolled back while others dug frantically, trying to dig themselves into the loose rock beneath the scrub grass—and roasting in an instant, when Merlon's hot breath touched them.  Dragon stood at bay, burning down the horde of har­pies who tormented her.  But with mindless bold­ness, harpies fired rocket launchers even as they died, and Merlon took hits low, between her treads and on her treads.  No one hit meant anything, really, but their steady rain would bum through her armor eventually.

She turned sideways, raking the slope with fore guns and aft guns and side guns as she traversed slowly, circling the fortress, filling the slope with death—but more harpies clambered over the charred remains of their fellows, still kept low by the auto­matic fire of the defending guns, slowed but advanc­ing, and nearly reaching the crest by the time Merlon came in view again, limping because of a blown roller on her starboard tread, a tread that was holed in sev­eral places but not quite enough to bring it down or break it through.  Her cannons blasted the aliens at the brow of the slope, then traversed downward, working their way slowly through their ranks—but not a single reptile fled; they only struggled on up to their deaths with mindless shrieks of joy.

Above them, Merlon turned, presenting her less-dam­aged port side.  The guns roared mayhem, and she began the slow circuit back.

Finally the great dark eggs hove in view; finally half a dozen of them walked their way over the plain to converge on her.  Fire met fire, but that of six ships was far more than even a Bolo could bear.  Melting but firing back, Merlon too died, and when only slag remained, the great charred ships stepped over a few paces farther, squatting atop the fortress, and slowly, ever so slowly, burning their way in, now that the defender was a pool of spreading lava.

Spreading lava, but also one last spreading message, rippling outward in a wave of electromagnetic energy:

Remember me!  Avenge!

I shall, Titan promised, and strove to rouse himself from the lethargy of standby mode—but the switches would not close, and he lapsed back to slumber.

Bulwark, enfilade ground at seven o'clock—har­pies mining!

Bulwark stood alone in the center of a blasted heath—blasted by its own energy weapons, but also by those of a thousand harpies, whose ashes covered the ground.

From among them rose the wreckage of a great dark egg.  Bulwark had learned as Rampart had learned, but had lived to tell of it—he had targeted one particular area on the ship's hull and had poured in fire.  He had hit the reactor, and the ship had exploded.  Bulwark immediately sent out news of his discovery, and all the Bolos immediately copied his technique.  That was why there were only forty-eight ships left.

In vengeance, they converged on Bulwark.

But the miners got there first.

Bulwark depressed his cannon and all his guns, fire blasting a ring-trench in the dirt of the heath, a hundred meters in diameter.  Within that circle, his guns sprayed a hail of bullets down into the ground.  Armor-piercing rounds slammed through the hardpan and into the folded wings in the tunnels below.  Harpies shrieked, and were dead.  Those few who were wounded were instantly consumed by the firebolts that followed.

But while Bulwark was busy weeding out the sap­pers who would have undermined him, three huge ships drifted across the plain, almost invisible against the night sky, their energy-projector beams dark for stealth.  Attuned to radiation or plasma, scanning for engine activity, Bulwark's sensors overlooked the silent enemies…

Until they were almost squarely above him.

Then, nearly too late, Bulwark's guns swooped upward, slashing fire into the night.  The huge cannon-barrel followed more slowly, then belched pure energy up at the looming ships.  He left two of them to his smaller weapons and poured the fire from the big Hellbore into the same spot low down on one ship—but the egg began to turn, slowly on its axis, dissipating the heat somewhat, while it joined its com­panions in stamping with legs of lightning, full on the mighty machine.  Bolt after bolt ran off Bulwark's carapace, grounded against the soil—but the heat of its passage lingered, building slowly.

Beneath the ground, harpies screamed and died, caught in the corona of their own ships' discharge—but more pressed forward with the tenacity or the hive-mind, each taking a few more bites out of the soil before it died…

With a roar, the ground gave way beneath Bulwark, and grenades carried by the miners erupted in thun­der.  Surrounded by fire, mired in a huge trench, Bul­wark's shots went wide for a few vital minutes, and the ship above cooled as it stamped down with lightning legs.  Its companions joined it, the heat of their bolts reflecting back from the sides of the hole, the earth itself melting, their liquid fire wooing the molecules of Bulwark's armor, leading them off into the dance of Brownian movement as the huge machine began to melt, even as it poured fire into the sky, but with less and less aim, its shots at random now, as Bul­wark's carapace fell away and his inner shielding began to melt.

Finally his power plan erupted in a final, huge explosion, a wave of devastation that swept outward, bearing the message:

Avenge me!

1 shall, Titan promised yet again—but he could not, for he still sat dormant as the technicians swarmed around and within him, soldering, cleaning, mending in a race against time.

Donjon, meet enemy invading force from 2 o'clock.

Donjon finished incinerating the thousand winged monsters who had surrounded the isolated bunker that held a dozen humans, half of them wounded.  He pivoted a hundred eighty degrees and rolled toward the northeast a hundred yards—no further; he had a nest of humans to protect.

Onward they came, dark against the fire in the sky—a horde of wings, too many for the mortal eye to count—but not too many for electronic scanners and microprocessors.  Donjon numbered them at eleven thousand, two hundred eighty-nine even as his guns began to sweep them from the sky.

But far below, a long line of motorized unicycles bounced over the ground, stabilized by the wings of their riders, but carrying heavier guns than the harpies could bring aloft unaided—guns that hailed bullets on Donjon, that stenciled graffiti of death on him with pencils of fire.

Donjon turned broadside, depressing several guns to rake their line with fire more deadly than their own—but still his cannon stood mute at forty-five degrees, waiting for the egg-ships that he knew must come.

And there they came, stalking across the hills from the northeast—at two o'clock, just as the human sent­ries in the orbital fortress had told him.  Donjon knew he must keep them from approaching the human nest behind him for, even though the soft ones were well-hidden and walled in by three feet of steel, they were still vulnerable, so much more vulnerable than a Bolo!  Therefore he lashed out at the ships with a gout of fire from his cannon while they were still out of effec­tive range, in the hope that they would think him closer than he was, and stay well back.

It was a forlorn hope; any scanner could analyze his distance from the attenuation of the energy-bolt.  All it did was give the ships a more accurate fix on Donjon himself—but they'd had that, anyway.

Therefore he only traded fire with them for a few minutes, just long enough for them to begin to cluster as they approached—then he whirled and raced off across the floor of the valley, abandoning those in his charge—but leading the enemy away from them, too.

Like predators everywhere, the ships followed.

When their lightning-bolts were almost upon him, Donjon spun about, skidding through a hundred-eighty-degree turn and shooting back the way he had come.  Taken by surprise, the eggs slowed, trying to stop, still stamping at him with legs of plasma—but Donjon sped through the fire-fall and on away.  He stopped a hundred yards past, swinging broadside, Hellbore elevating, rotating, fixing on the central egg, pouring fire into its lower section.  Taken by surprise, the egg was slow in beginning its rotation—too slow.  Fire rained down around Donjon from the central egg's companions, and his temperature-register began to climb near the danger point, but he held on, just a minute longer, just a second…

With a huge mushrooming blast, the central egg exploded, then hurtled down to the ground, broken open, its power plant erupted, its crew dead.

Donjon shot toward it, taking his pursuers by sur­prise again.  His skin cooled as he passed the curtain of plasma, cooled further as he roared past the wreck­age of his fallen foe.

The remaining eggs swung together and gave chase again.

Donjon's skin was cooled completely now, but he sped away still, on and on.  Above, the eggs reached full acceleration, gaining on him, catching up…

A mile from the human nest, Donjon sped into a maze of gullies.  He skidded to a halt, targeted an egg-ship, and unleashed his torrent of fire, even as Bul­wark had taught him.  It poured into the skin of the ship, tracking it, staying with that same spot even as the ship came on, trying to slow enough to begin rotation.  Its skin began to glow with the heat, and the pilots must have realized that they could not slow down in time to rotate—it would have crushed the crew with Coriolis force—so he began evasive action.  Out of Donjon's beam he bobbed, swerved closer, dodged again…

Donjon analyzed the pattern.  His gun locked on the egg again, pouring energy in, staying with the alien snip as it danced and weaved…

Its mates arrived.

They hovered over the gully, pouring fire down.  Donjon held his place for a second more, then another second and another, as his temperature gauge climbed higher and higher…

The second ship blew out in a gout of flame and tumbled out of the sky.

Donjon didn't stay to look; his gauge had hit the danger point.  He turned and sped down the gully, out of the rain of fire.  Its walls blocked him from the egg-ships' line of sight.  He found a side-gully and swerved into it, slowing to negotiate its rocky, bumpy surface, but keeping on, keeping on, as the egg-ships passed by behind him, following the main gully.  Then Donjon found another side-passage, another and another, until he emerged into the main gully again.  Overhead, the harpy ships had slowed, were hovering, searching for him…

Donjon unleashed his own lightning-streak, plasma from his main gun, lancing up to the vulnerable area of one of the egg-ships.

The whole basketful shot toward him.

Donjon tracked the one he had chosen for his tar­get, even though it had begun rotating, coming much more slowly than its fellows.  Donjon knew he couldn't possibly burn it through in time, so he shifted abruptly to another ship, much closer, hovering over him…

His plasma-bolt shot up into its downward-pointing gun.  Energy smote energy and exploded, even in the mouth of the harpy's cannon—an explosion that shook the whole plain, Knocked the ship out of the sky…

…and tumbled Donjon onto his side.

The Bolo could cope with that, of course.  Jacks extruded from his side, levering him off the ground just enough so that his cannon could pour fire into the dirt, pushing him away, pushing him back upright…

But it took time, and his main cannon could not track the egg-ships.  His smaller guns could and did, but what use were they when four huge ships were clustered about, pouring their fire into the fallen Bolo?

His temperature gauge climbed, screamed, as Don­jon slowly tilted further up and further.  His carapace began to melt.  Fire poured down from above, almost cancelling the push of his own guns against the earth, but even so, he rose closer and closer to the vertical, closer and closer to the point when gravity would take over…

But his carapace melted, his inner armor began to flow…

With a sudden jarring shock, the huge machine swung upright, slamming down onto his treads.  But they were weakened by the heat, they gave way, and their rollers fouled in the liquid iron.  Inner armor dripped and flared, and the shielding of the power plant gave way.

Donjon died in a roaring fountain of flame, a blast that reached up to an egg-ship that had come too close in its eagerness and went tumbling to earth for its greed.  Donjon died in a cascade of gamma rays and heavy particles, in a burst of radiation that sur­rounded but did not quite obliterate his final message:

Remember and avenge me!

I will, Titan promised, struggling toward conscious­ness.  I will.

But his promise had to wait, for flesh-and-blood technicians can move only so quickly.

Chateau, enemy ships approaching from five o'clock, at twelve thousand feet.

Chateau had perched herself atop a mountain—low, as mountains go, but still craggy and rocky, its walls streaked with metal ores.  To a scanner, she would seem to be just one more outcrop among many; to the naked eye, she would seem to be another rough-hewn shape carved out by wind and water.

To the eye assisted by a telescope or magnifier, she would seem to be a Bolo.

There came the enemy ships—only specks against the orange sky, but to her computer-enhanced vision, their shapes were crystal clear.  She waited, every sys­tem at maximum energy flow… and waited, and waited…  With her response time speeded up, her time sense had slowed relative to real time, and the wait seemed to last forever…

Finally, they were in range.

Chateau loosed a blast that tore through the sky at the speed of light, instantly illuminating the lower half of one of the approaching ships.  The egg instantly went into evasive action, and Chateau lost it for the first three twists and turns, then analyzed the pattern and locked onto it.  The skin of the ship heated, and the pilot switched to a different evasive pattern.  This time, though, Chateau identified it in two twists and turns, and locked on again.  The ship slowed, still evad­ing, and began to rotate.

But its companions accelerated, stooping on Cha­teau like hawks on a chick.

This chick, though, had a very sharp beak—and a very long one.  Chateau's lesser guns came up and filled the air with fire between herself and the invad­ing ships even as she kept her main cannon locked onto the twisting egg.  With delight, she detected tor­pedoes loosed, and targeted them with three of her guns.  Shell met torpedo, and the sky went white with flame.

When it cleared, Chateau was no longer there.

Under cover of the sheet of fire, she had slipped back along the ledge.  With sensors fore and aft and a rotating turret, she could go equally well in either direction; "front" was really defined as the direction she happened to be facing at the moment.  She sped along a ledge just a meter wider than herself—a ledge that she knew was safe, because she had come along it earlier in the day, to take up her station.  Then, she had sounded each square meter of rock ahead of time, probed it for soundness with sonics and sounders; now, knowing it was solid, she raced along it, gyros holding her steady.  Then she killed the gyros to turn, running up another ledge of rock, back to the battle.

She came out through a tunnel only a little higher than herself—a tunnel only fifty feet long, but enough to hide her.  Sure enough, the enemy ships were just passing her to gather around the spot where she had been, a quarter of a mile further on.  She waited until they were past, then spat fire at the nearest egg and locked on.  Sure enough, the pilot sent his ship into evasive action—but he used one of the patterns she had already analyzed.  Her main gun tracked him every inch of the way, every twist, every kink, and he shifted to another pattern—but again, one that she had already analyzed.  After two twists and a dip, the pilot shifted again—and Chateau lost him for two zigs and a zag.  Then she picked him up again, and tracked him effortlessly—the pilot must have given up using computer-randomized patterns, and tried his intuition.  But sentient beings are creatures of habit, and after the first two evasions, Chateau tracked him almost without effort.  In desperation, he slowed and began to rotate—but too fast, too fast.  One spot had not yet cooled before it came about for another blast.  All he accomplished was to smear a circle of heat all around his craft, a circle that grew brighter and brighter with every turn.

But his companions had realized what was happen­ing, and had come to his aid.  The huge ships came to cluster about the ridge, pouring their fire down onto the mountaintop where Chateau hid.  Lightning tore at rock, shattering, vaporizing—but slowly, slowly.  Inch by inch, the granite wore away under a tidal wave of plasma—but it took time, precious sec­onds, and Chateau held on, tracking the bobbing, weaving ship as its pilot finally realized his mistake and slowed his rotation rate…

Slowed too much.  The metal of his hull, already overheated, melted and flowed.  The entire bottom of his ship fell away, and Chateau's stream of fire tore into his power plant.  She waited only long enough to see the blossom of flame burst from his power plant, then raced back into the tunnel.  The great egg-ships, unaware that the tunnel was so short, pounded it unmercifully, and it finally cracked and fell in.

But Chateau was already taking the final road up the mountaintop.

She came out onto the plateau at the crest just as the egg-ships cut off their flow of fire and lowered themselves down to inspect the fallen bridge, sam­pling it with sensors for the lode of metal that would show them a wounded Bolo.

Chateau depressed her Hellbore and fired down onto the egg that was farthest into the defile.

The rock walls reflected the heat.  The egg swerved up to escape—and collided with another of its kind, taken by surprise, unable to escape in time.  Both exploded in a huge fiery eruption.

When the fire cleared, the other ships had gone.

Chateau instantly started a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan—but before she could find them, the clustered ships rained fire on her.

Evasive action was impossible.  All she could do was to back down the mountainside, feeling her way with sonar, as she poured her own fire back up at the assembled ships, hoping against hope that it would penetrate their hail of fire and somehow muzzle them.  Her temperature gauge screamed; she knew her cara­pace had begun to melt as she crawled downward, aiming for the shelter of a cavern she had mapped ear­lier in the day.  She descended to a horizontal ledge, turned ninety degrees, then raced along it—out of the enemy fire.

But only for a few seconds.  That was all it took the egg-ships to recover from surprise and target her again.  Waves of plasma poured down; her carapace melted through, her shielding softened, but the cavern mouth was only a dozen meters ahead.

A torpedo struck two yards ahead of her, blowing a hole in the side of the mountain, taking away the trail.

Chateau slammed on her brakes but skidded—on and out, over the sudden lip at the new-carved end to the path.  Down she fell through air that screamed about her, down and down a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, knowing there was no chance of survival, at least as a whole fighting unit, and her death-cry spread out about her, unseen and unheard by any but her own kind:

I die.  Make it worth my death.

Within himself, Titan promised that he would—if this infernal sleep would only end, if only he could wake, if only he could be restored to function!

All these images, all these scenes of battle, mingled in Titan's sleeping mind so that he could not have said which were past, and which present—but one, at least, was memory.

Titan, harpies advancing on foot through gullies from river.  Advance with caution; field is mined.

Titan had rolled out to meet the invaders, metal detectors alerting his computer-brain to the presence of buried explosives.  He twisted and turned, his guns automatically compensating for every shift in angle and movement.  But one of the mines must have been made of plastic, one of the mines didn't register on his sensors…

One of the mines blew up beneath his right tread.

The soldiers patched him up with a temporary tread and escorted him back to the repair depot.  After the first two fell to harpy fire, he told the rest to ride inside—which they did, with gratitude.  Limping, star­board circuits heavily damaged, memory banks shred­ded, Titan crawled back to the depot, his small guns shooting down attacking harpies as they went.  But for every one he shot down, a hundred more came shriek­ing.  A few got through his screen of fire, of course—a few grenades exploded on his upper mantle, scarring the metal but doing no real damage; a few energy bolts eroded craters in his armor, a few exploding rounds pocked his shielding—but none did any real damage, and before and behind and above and beside him, screams of delight turned into shrieks of agony as harpies plummeted to earth, blasted, burning, and ground beneath his treads.

They cleaned the sludge off in the repair depot.

Now Titan stood inert, all systems shut down to standby mode—sleeping, in human terms—as human technicians swarmed over and inside him, replacing memory chips, refurbishing connectors, welding in new plates.  But dimly as a dream, so dimly that they might have been memories, the radio voices of his comrade Bolos and their human allies sifted through into his crystal mind.

 

*          *          *

 

Larry was asleep when the harpy got through.

The whole bunker shook, and the explosion slammed at him from all sides.  The floor heaved beneath him, and he found himself scrambling up to his knees before he was quite awake.  Terror and disorientation seized him—for a moment, he thought he was out on the battlefield crawling away from a harpy shell.  Then the emergency lights came on, and he saw Dawn picking herself up off the floor and crawling back onto her stool, cursing.

For once, Larry didn't waste time with a snide remark.  He limped over to his own stool and sat down, staring at blank screens.  He snarled and slapped the side of the console in sheer frustration—and the vision screen lit.

A cloud of harpies was descending on them.

The gunsight glowed to life.  Larry pressed the "lock on" button, but nothing happened.  He spat a mild obscenity and turned to the anti-personnel guns.  They were smaller, but still effective—and they worked!

Above him, he heard the hammering of machine-gun fire and knew Dawn's were working, too.  Even now, their rivalry goaded him into faster action—he locked onto his target and pressed "Fire," traversing the guns as he did.  Then he grabbed the right-hand joystick and mowed away with fire and bullets both.

Still the harpies came, a sudden wedge of them.  He shot them away; they fell back from the core of their group like the rind of an orange…

Revealing the bomb-carrier hidden in their center.

Larry hit him with fire, and the beast flared into ash—but the bomb hurtled on…

The noise was all around him, inside him, lifting him with a gigantic hand, and this time, the darkness was complete.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…