Shared Experience (Part 2)

SHARED EXPERIENCE

Part 2 of 3

Christopher Stasheff

The nighttime seemed filled with hammering wings now, and a last redoubt of humans clustered on top of a hill in a low-domed bunker that bristled with cannon and laser projectors, impregnable against any land-borne enemies—but vulnerable as a nut in a cracker, to the walking energy bolts of the harpy eggs.

But surely those ships could not approach so closely! On the plain below the hill, seven Bolos stood sentry-duty, immobile as statues, a fortress far more intimidating than any granite walls.

Seven Bolos—all that were left of the force of eighty that had been stationed to hold off the advance or the enemy tide, to delay the harpies long enough for the central worlds to arm themselves to the teeth, to put a vast armada into space capable of overwhelming whole suns, let alone a chittering swarm of hollow-boned humanoids. The harpies would be crumpled and swept aside, they would be ground to mince in the jaws of the vast fleet, they would be shredded and pulped…

When the Armada came.

But it would not come for years, and the last seven Bolos stood at bay, guarding three hundred of the last thousand humans on the planet, while fifty-three great dark eggs strode through the sky to fall upon them.

But the harpies flew before them.

They flew, they stooped, raining foulness and destruction on the fortress and its guardians—but the Bolos lit the night with a ring of fire, and the foulness burned before it could land, as did its sources. Leather wings burst into flame, crested heads went up in fireballs; only ashes drifted to earth, those few that slipped between fiery updrafts. Ashes of saurians and their foulness landed on the roof of the fortress, but none knew, none cared. Sooty and ashen, the fortress dome stood.

But the harpies carried rocket launchers and energy rifles as well as foulness, and bombs that dropped from nerveless claws even as their owners burst into flame. Most of the bombs fell wide, only a fraction fell on the dome—but it was a fraction of thousands, and each bomb that struck weakened the concrete a little more, each rocket-flare vaporized a few molecules of granite, each energy bolt vaporized a gram. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, the dome began to wear thin.

Then the ships arrived.

They came looming over the Bolos, looming even over the hill and its fortress, legs of energy bolts smiting down into the earth, melting bedrock.

The Bolos spoke with one voice, and that voice was the roar of cannon.

Fifty-two ships answered, but their fire-lances had limited range; the attenuation made their plasma bolts mere nuisances to the Bolos. Their cannon, on the other hand, fired blasts of coherent energy, that did damage much farther away—so each Bolo had already picked out one ship apiece, and centered its cannon fire on the lower quadrant. The targeted ships dodged and dived, but the Bolos had learned the harpies' basic evasive patterns from Donjon's transmissions of his last battle. They followed their targets from loop to twist to zigzag, only one beat behind as the harpy pilots switched patterns. The saurians' computers knew more patterns than Donjon had learned, of course, so the last seven Bolos finally began to lose their quarry—but even as they did, they analyzed, then locked on again, learning more new patterns, and more. More importantly, all seven targets went through the exact same sequence of pattern-changes.

But as they did, their fellow ships stamped closer to the redoubt, and its ring of guardians.

Fire fell on the Bolos—but for the fire to do damage, it had to hit the same spot on the Bobs' armor for several minutes at a time. It could not; the Bolos began to dodge and weave, each with a pattern more complicated than any the harpies knew—and each interlocking perfectly with all six others, so that seven mighty Bolos wound their way through a dance of death, around and around in a circle, but with quick dashes outward and inward. The harpy ships strained to keep up with them, managing to lick a Bolo's mantle with a tongue of fire here, a lance of flame there, but never for more than a few seconds.

All the time, though, the Bolos stayed locked on their targets, their central computers compensating not only for the harpy ships' evasive patterns, but also for the Bolo's own. The harpy ships could not escape them; the other harpy ships could not keep up with them.

Finally, the harpy admiral must have realized that he should use his only truly overwhelming advantage—sheer numbers. At some unseen, unheard signal, the mighty eggs began to draw in, to surround the circle of Bolos…

One of their ships erupted in the brightness of a burst power plant.

The Bolo shifted to another target.

It flinched away, sped out of the closing circle, up out of range…

The Bolo shifted to a third target. The one who had fled was no longer of concern—it was too far away for its fire to be effective against a Bolo's armor.

A second ship blew up—a third, a fourth, stabbed to earth by the Bolos' fire. A fifth, a sixth, a seventh—and seven new targets glowed.

Finally the harpy admiral learned from his quarry; finally, the great egg-ships began to move around one another in a slow and ponderous dance, each shielding the other from the Bolos' fire for the crucial minutes necessary for cooling down. All began to rotate slowly, spreading the heat of the Bolos' fire over a larger area…

And their lightning-legs stumbled and wove and clashed with one another. Their cannon were fixed in the hulls, not rotating in turrets, as the Bolos' cannon did; if the eggs rotated, they could not hold their beams steady on a target.

The Bolos could not whoop for joy, but they could press their advantage with a sudden savagery. They dashed out to slide between the egg-ships' legs, dodging and weaving, dashing out to slam a shell up at their foes, then back. Sure enough, the pilots could not resist the temptation—they stopped rotating to try to slash each offending Bolo with radiation. But as soon as they stopped rotating, the Bolos transfixed the eggs with lightning of their own.

Finally, the harpy admiral realized that the Bolos had left the redoubt temporarily unprotected. Ignoring them, his ships pressed inward.

Back the Bolos dashed, to take up their elaborate dance again—and once more, the harpy ships tripped over each others' beams. At last the admiral realized what he must do; at last seven of the ships stopped rotating and pressed in to follow one Bolo apiece, while their mates wove and dodged about them to intercept the Bolos' fire.

But there were too many eggs; dodging and weaving about one another that way, they could not come close enough to cage the Bolos.

Again the admiral learned; half of the ships drifted back, out of the battle—but stamping quickly if a Bolo lunged through the veil of fire from the inner circle. Even so, with the swirling ships' dance, the eggs could not tighten the circle enough, so another quarter of the ships had to retire to a second, and larger, circle.

The remaining quarter drew in with deadly grimness, their companions bobbing about them in a sinister dance. There were few enough of them, now, to bathe the whole ring of Bolos in fire.

Beyond them, the second tier laid down another ring of flame—and beyond them, the third ring blasted, too.

One Bolo streaked away, firing upward as he went, but the veils of fire rained down and down. His upper mantle melted, his carapace; he penetrated the second ring, his temperature gauge soaring, targeting a ship in the third ring, trying to scare it out of the way… he was into the third ring, dashing for freedom, and several of the ships broke off to follow…

His shielding melted through, and he blew up in a fountain of fury that brought down two ships that had pressed too closely in pursuit.

His death-message drifted out. Remember. Revenge.

His mates learned from his example and stayed dodging and weaving themselves, each targeting yet another ship even as its upper mantle melted, its carapace, knowing he could not run, knowing she could not leave the humans unguarded, knowing that all they could do was to try to bring down one more enemy as they died…

They erupted, they exploded, they bathed the plain in fury, and the ships hovering above them learned that they had pressed too closely after all, as a dozen ships flared, their power plants going up in chain reactions triggered by the six Bolos' deaths. Perhaps they sent out death messages of their own, but all that penetrated Titan's dream were those on his own frequency, his fellow Bolos insisting,

Avenge. Do not forget.

I will, Titan promised in his sleep, and I will not.

As the flames died, the harpy admiral pressed inward with his second ring of ships. They clustered, they hovered over the redoubt, they poured their flame down. Concrete cracked and broke; armor melted. Finally the roof fell in, huge half-molten blocks crushing and burning anything that lived beneath them…

But there was nothing living there. The Bolos had bought enough time; the humans' mining machines had burrowed their way to safety—at least, safety for a while longer. Until they should be discovered…

The harpy eggs stamped the redoubt into rubble with their legs of lightning, pulverized it, watched it melt to lava and flow, then harden to glass. Finally, the hill fallen and unsalvageable, the ships turned away, the harpy host departed, spreading outward like the ripples of an underwater volcanic eruption, breaking apart into armies centered around each ship, a hundred swarms clustered about their queens, searching with their mother ships, searching, scanning, seeking for any trace of life, any trickle of electrical flow, of neuronic activity, of synapses firing…

Below the artificial hill, technicians closed access panels, dogged doors shut, inserted last components and locked tight. They checked the meters for full charge, disconnected the cables from the power plant to the great Bolo, powered down the whole repair depot, trying to minimize electrical activity to lessen chance of discovery…

Too late.

One harpy egg halted, hovered in midair, smelled the ether with antennae, probing, sifting…

Pointing toward the east, toward the last repair depot.

The egg began to move toward the human's nest.

Deep within its bowels, the chief technician cried, "You are repaired, Titan! You are fit for service again!" He reached up to press the patch that would signal Titan's central computer to begin the sequence that would power up the huge machine, return it to full operational capability, to full awareness…

But his hand paused as the man turned in panic, hearing the cry, "They found us! They're here!"

His eyes flashed up to the huge screen high on the southeast wall, showing the whole of the perimeter as a horizontal line—and all along that line were staves of fire, with black eggs balanced atop them. He could have sworn he heard the thunder of ten thousand wings, of the harpies that surrounded their mother ships, but that was ridiculous, the screen was supplying video only…

The fiery legs stalked closer, the screen filled with their glare…

The roof groaned.

"They're coming!" someone shrieked. "Take cover!"

Then the roof fell in.

The roof roared as it collapsed into hundreds of fragments, each twice the size of a man's head, each able to crush a man's head. Technicians screamed and ran, but the fall of rock struck them down where they fled, and those who still moved were instantly charred by the rain of fire that followed.

Hot air searing his lungs, the chief turned back, reached up higher, only a little higher as his vision turned red and death seared his lungs. Only a little more, hold to consciousness a little more, never mind the pain, the agony, press the patch…

He felt it give beneath his fingers just before the heat ceased as his whole body exploded.

But Titan did not explode.

Titan was a Mark XXVIII, the largest and latest model of all the Bolos shipped in for this suicidal defense; Titan, whose ablative tiles shed the rain of fire as though it were water. Titan awoke to irritation, irked that the temperature was so high as to be inconvenient—then woke to anger as he saw the piles of ash that had been the technicians who had repaired him. Titan roared with the revving of mighty engines; Titan turned and thundered up the ramp even as the walls gave way and fell inward in an implosion of flame.

Out of that inferno rolled a huge monster, a vast machine, cannon roaring, treads thundering across the plain, its program demanding a ship for every human life, a thousand harpies for each Bolo dead, its cannon pouring annihilation into the sky, its energy projectors and machine guns spewing death in high arcs. It ravened through the night, a demon bent on destruction, a kinsman bent on revenge.

Deep inside, its computer tripped over into full battle mode, cold and ruthless, computing at nearly the speed of electric flow, icy rage within, all fire and hurtling steel without.

The ships surrounded it, the ships poured fire down upon it—but Titan raced between their energy beams and dashed toward the hills, far faster than any Bolo ever had, for the repairmen had supercharged him, had scavenged engines from several Bolos and added their thrust to his, had built into him a jet from a fallen flier. Titan slipped into neutral and lit his jet. Away over the flat plain he shot, and the ships swerved to chase—but they were slow, they were ponderous.

The harpies were not.

The harpies sped after it with the laughing joyful shrieks of the predator chasing a helpless quarry—ten thousand harpies, but Titan counted their silhouettes and checked his data, and knew they were only a tiny fraction of the million or more that had smitten the planet a month before. His humans had died, his brother Bolos had melted and gone, but they had taken a fearsome toll as they went. There were only ten thousand harpies left for Titan to slay, and could he do less than his valiant predecessors?

He ground to a halt, spraying fire into the sky; he rotated in place, sweeping the harpies with a ring of fire. The vanguard shrieked in alarm, screamed in an instant of searing pain, then rained to the plain as ashes…

And Titan turned and sped away again, the main body of the harpies still following, but more slowly now, for they had seen what happened to those who sped too eagerly.

Behind them, the forty-five ships still stalked.

While they lingered, Titan sped. He bounced and swayed over the inequalities in the terrain, even though they were very minor, the plain almost flat as a table. If it had been really flat, Titan could have moved so fast that he could have outrun the harpies easily—though not their ships, once they were up to full velocity.

He did not plan to give them the chance to reach that speed.

He swerved about, suddenly and with no apparent reason, just as he had dreamed of Donjon doing. Then he revved his motors and sprang back the way he had come. He raked the flying line with bullets, torched the few who had dropped down near the ground.

The harpy host stalled, squalling in consternation, but the ships saw, and leaped forward.

That was all Titan needed. He spun and raced away, bouncing and jouncing over the plain—and into the river.

Under the water he sped, a bow wave spreading out behind him to roil the waters. He had not been built to be submersible, but all his circuits were encased in airtight boxes, to protect against corrosive gasses—one never knew how low the enemy might stoop—and what was proof against air would certainly keep out water. His treads sank low, down through muck, slowing him tremendously—but he had sounded the river before he plunged, and knew how shallow the sludge was. His treads touched bedrock only four feet down, and he ground through the water, heading downstream faster than any powerboat, even with the mud to slow him. His computer calculated his own speed relative to that of the harpy ships; when he estimated the distance was right, he surged out of the water, dripping and festooned with seaweed, his cannon belching energy-bolts at the back of the line of harpy ships.

His fire centered on one ship in particular, low down, focused, holding steady.

It took a precious few seconds before the ship even realized it was under attack.

Then it began to bob and weave frantically—but Titan recognized the pattern; he had absorbed it from Donjon's broadcast in his sleep, had absorbed Chateau's discoveries, too, and tracked the ship through every dip and curve, recognizing when it changed evasive patterns, shifting with it.

Its companions came crowding to the rescue. An avalanche of harpies struck, but Titan burned them out of the air as fast as his small guns could traverse their line. Other ships stooped upon him, but he fired rockets with both launchers; they exploded against the sides of the harpy ships, doing little damage, but throwing the pilots off balance for a few precious minutes.

Finally, the ship he had picked for his target began to rotate—but Titan demonstrated one other improvement his technicians had given him; he increased the intensity of his fire. The ship did not recognize the difference and sped up to the rotation that had proved safe for its companions—but overheated quickly.

Its companions recovered and pressed in for the kill—and pressed in too quickly, in numbers too great; they blocked each other from coming close enough, and their fire was attenuated and at the wrong angle. One of them began to revolve around its wounded sister, but Titan charged forward, shooting up between the two ships, holding his beam fast on his target. Fire fell about him, all about him; six of the ships fell back to form an outer ring, and the remaining two pressed in behind, the target and its companion in front—but the plasma rained off Titan's ablative tiles, heating them, yes, but slowly, slowly…

Finally the target recognized what was happening—but too late. Its bottom fell away a split second before its power plant went up.

Titan did not stay to watch; he turned and raced away. The enemy ships cut off their fire, realizing their quarry had fled, and lumbered into motion behind him, accelerating, gaining…

Titan lit his jet and sped away, bouncing, bounding over the terrain, keeping his speed just low enough to guard against overturning.

The ships sped up even more. The harpies followed, but more slowly, no longer quite so eager to dive into battle. The gap between them and the great eggs widened.

The ships gained, came closer, close enough to lash out at the impudent mite that fled before them—and when Titan felt the lash of their fire, the itch of their bullets, he whirled about, speeding back through the veil of destruction, as Donjon had shown him. He paused almost beneath a ship and fired a rocket directly up into the mouth of its cannon with unerring accuracy. Plasma detonated the missile; it exploded, and took the bottom half of the harpy ship with it, falling down to crush anything beneath it…

But Titan was no longer there; again, he had not stayed to watch. Away he ran, and the harpy pilots turned their ships after him in anger. A silent call went out, and all across that hemisphere, other ships dropped the search and sped to join them in squashing this arrogant midget.

All over the hemisphere, human survivors, buried deep in bunkers and redoubts, huddling high in mountain caverns, looked up from their screens in disbelief, hope springing anew inside them. "Visual check! Are the eggs really going?"

"They're going," a sentry reported, staring at a monitor.

In shelter after shelter, cheers shook the walls.

But Titan heard none of it; he only knew that he had a hundred meters to go before he reached the gullies, and the ships' fire was hot on his aft section. His temperature gauge began to climb as the tiles heated, but he was almost to the gully now…

He plunged in, rolling and skidding down the slope, tumbling, landing flat on his side, treads spinning uselessly in the air—but he remembered what Donjon had done, and fired a low, sustained blast with his side guns, raising him up off the earth enough so that he could pour slugs into the rock, chipping and spattering granite, but lifting him up higher, high enough to allow a full blast of plasma out the side…

Above him, three ships gathered, pouring fire down.

With a shuddering shock, Titan was back on his wheels. Away down the gully he raced, remembering the pattern from Donjon's broadcast of his last fight. He skidded into a turn, ducking down a side gulley, turning again and again…

These particular ships had not been there for Donjon's fight. They cast about aimlessly, seeking, searching, their sensors foiled by the traces of metal in the rocks.

Titan surged up out of the ravine, behind but near, his cannon already blazing at the nearest target. Its companions were quick to begin to weave about it, and it began to rotate, but Titan pushed close, ignoring the fire-fall, and stepped up his blast to full intensity.

More ships crowded in from the plain.

The bottom exploded off the target ship, and Titan fled, his temperature gauge screaming. Beneath the gathering ships he ran, through their veils of fire. A hundred harpies burst from the ground in a crowd, hoping to shock him, but he plowed through, treading them underfoot, incinerating them with his side guns, racing flat-out across the plain again, broadcasting every move, every second, for he could not know but that some defender, somewhere, was watching and learning, even though he had counted all his companion Bolos, and knew they were dead. But he bore the burden of their revenges, all of them…

And would see them fulfilled. He had promised, even though they could not have heard, and he was bound to that promise.

The mountains loomed before him, but the speeding ships loomed behind.

Up the mountain trail he sped, remembering the route Chateau had taken. The fire of the harpy ships splashed harmlessly against the rocks to either side of the trail, fragmented fires; what reached Titan himself was negligible. His tiles were charred black from heat, but all intact, none even weakened…

Yet.

Up to the tunnel he went—or to where it had been; now there was only a pass, its floor choked with jumbled rubble. But that rubble had half-melted from the heat, had flowed enough to form a ramp. Up Titan went, rolling across the grave of two egg-ships. What more fitting place to stand, while he avenged Chateau?

The harpy ships stooped, rushing to pour fire on the Bolo they saw as trapped between two low cliffs, a sheer drop-off, and the egg-ship that was swinging down behind him.

Titan rotated his turret and poured fire into that egg.

The others crowded in; three stood right over him, pouring down fire. It splashed off his tiles and struck the cliffs to either side, heating the stone to cherry-red and splashing back off it to strike at his cowling. He knew he couldn't last long under such a heat bath; he only hoped the egg could last even less.

It was going to be close, because the egg was rotating, unwilling to give up its blocking position—but unable to find the correct angular velocity. It speeded up, it slowed down—but it became hotter and hotter…

At the last second, it gave up, screaming toward the sky—but Titan's stream of plasma followed it, boring in, even though his sensors reported a cracked tile, then another and another, and the metal beneath it beginning to register dangerous heat levels…

The rocks shuddered as the harpy ship exploded.

Titan was out and away before the pieces had begun to separate into shrapnel. He shot back down off the mountain crest—but suddenly there was a host of harpies in front of him, battering him with their wings, clustering close about his guns, trying to block his sensors and air intakes, to plug his barrels, to render him blind, to smother him, to keep him penned. He blasted before they could come close enough to be any real danger, though, blasted again and again as he roared through the rain of their ashes. Still they would not stop coming, swooping in at him by the hundreds, the thousands, driven by some instinct for self-immolation, or by some superior will. Titan drove through them, blasting as he went, not taking the time to make sure he killed every harpy he could, feeling his way by sonar, following the mountain road down, then up again, just as Chateau had. Still the harpies came, and with sudden clarity, he knew they were calling, reporting his position…

Sure enough, as he came out to the lip of the chasm, there the ships were, ahead, clustered around the rockfall, some following where he had gone…

And some turning to move toward him.

His main gun targeted the leader and spat fire, tracking as it began its evasive patterns. His side guns lashed its companions; others shrouded harpies in fire. The latecomers sheered off from the cloud of flame, and at last Titan was rid of their pestiferous presence. But he could see that he could not remain where he was; the egg-ships loomed too closely, and had already begun their evasive dance, taking turns coming between himself and his target—and with the drop-off before him, he could not come close enough to drive under their guard.

Then an explosion rattled his aft plates, and his scanners registered a rocket blast. The harpies had sheered off, all right, but they had also resorted to weapons other than their own blind suicidal diving. He was targeted with rocket launchers, and even as he realized the fact, two more explosions registered.

He cut off the stream of plasma; his turret swiveled about, making aft into fore as he charged out at the multitudinous pests. They scattered before him, leaving their weapons behind, weapons that crunched under his treads as he swept forward, beginning his headlong rush down the mountainside…

Until sonar detected a cave.

A cavern, rather—at least, at the front. The portal was easily large enough to admit even a Bolo, and a quick preliminary sounding indicated huge spaces beyond. Without hesitation, Titan dived in. If he found no back door, he would make one.

Down he went, down and down, in a rough corkscrew that must have been cut by a flow of lava, a million years before, seeking out weak spots as it chewed its way to the surface. Titan certainly had no desire to go down to the core of the planet, so when his calculations of vertical distance matched the log of his trip up the slope, he started sounding for tunnels. Sonar probed all about him, seeking.

The mountain shook about him.

Titan never wavered, knowing the harpy ships were bombarding the peak. They could not see where he had gone, so they were leveling the mountain to find and destroy him. For a moment, he almost admired their sheer audacity—or sheer blind thoroughness.

The mountain shook again, and Titan still had not located another tunnel—but he did find a narrow seam in the rock, a gradient between two layers that was filled with ash, compressed now into rock. He halted and leveled one of his side guns at it. With low intensity first, he melted out the beginnings of a hole. The mountain shook again, but he had expected it, and held steady with computer-guided reflexes. The hole grew, more in depth than in width. Titan let the intensity of the gun's beam build rapidly. The hole deepened, widening to half a meter, three-quarters, a meter… When it was two meters across and five deep, Titan boosted the gun's power to full intensity. The rock melted and flowed at the end of the hole, lava trickling down, and Titan had to divert another gun to carving a channel downslope, that would take the molten rock away from him before it could melt his treads. As the tunnel widened, he began to move the gun in a circle, playing fire across the end of the hole. Finally it was wide enough for another gun to join in, then another—then, finally, wider than Titan was high. He cut off the side guns and rotated on his treads, pointing himself into the gap and firing his main cannon.

Rock flowed and came rolling out of the tunnel in gouts.

Titan carved a run-off channel with his side guns, then rolled forward slowly, staying back far enough so that the reflected heat would not harm him. The mountain had stopped shaking—presumably, the harpies had leveled enough of it to be sure of Titan's destruction. So much the better—they would be pleasantly surprised when he re-emerged. Pleasantly for him, that was.

With a roar, the rock at the end of the tunnel blew out.

Instantly, Titan cut his main gun, then sat and waited for the lava to harden as he tested the outer world with his sensors. Telescopic sight revealed nothing—only darkness; the day had gone while he tunneled. Scanners revealed no electromagnetic activity, audio sensors heard only the night wind—and precious few living creatures, only a few insects, and the inevitable scavengers who come to feed on the dead. They would probably die from the alien protoplasm, or from the diseases that sprang from microbes the harpies no doubt carried that were harmless to themselves, but would prove lethal to humans, or the life-forms they had brought with them. But there was no sign of a harpy or a ship, so when the rock had cooled, Titan trundled slowly out into the night air.

In the distance, he saw a dozen snips—or rather, their lightning-legs. They were trying to break into one of the human strongholds. There might be people left in it, or it might only have been a control center, for all they knew—but they had to be sure of it.

Titan knew. All the human shelters and control centers were logged in his database, and he knew that this one, Coventry Central, was a prison. Yes, there would be humans within—dangerous humans, but humans nonetheless. He could not let them be killed.

He checked his records with a quick scan and was surprised to discover that, if he had kept count correctly (and he was sure he had), the dozen ships before him were all that were left of the original invading force of one hundred twenty-eight. His fellow Bolos had died, but they had died hard, each bringing down two or three ships before dying. So had the humans, apparently—there might be very few of them remaining, but they had left their mark.

Surprise would be the key element. Titan rolled forward at only a moderate pace, following the dips and gullies, making as little sound as possible, hiding from sight.

* * *

Larry woke to see light, bright light. He pushed it away a little, with a feeble hand, and saw Dawn bending over him, looking scared. The fear disappeared as she saw him squint, and her mouth moved, but he couldn't hear the words—probably because of the ringing in his ears, a steady tone that went on and on and wouldn't go away. One of the pieces of electronics that had shorted somewhere in its innards, no doubt. He shook his head and pointed to his ear. She shut up, looking scared again.

Finally, fear touched him. Had he gone deaf?

But Dawn was trying to pull him to his feet—or at least to a sitting position. Well, if she wasn't too worried about it, why should he be? Especially since it might go away in time—but time was one thing he didn't have, time to wait and see. He nodded and pushed himself up—carefully; there might be an injury somewhere. But miraculously, his ribs didn't stab him, and there was no sudden flare of pain from a broken bone. Cautiously, he tried kneeling, then standing, all with the same success rate. The bunker seemed to have done its job—he was alive, and unbroken. Oh, he ached like fury, and if he had seen a mirror, he probably wouldn't have been able to find himself among all the bruises—but he could function.

Could the bunker?

He looked up at the ceiling, and saw stars. Then the sky went orange with a distant fire-fight, but after a minute, it cleared enough to show stars again.

He nodded to Dawn, and she finally let go of his arm—but she was pointing at the broken ceiling. Larry got the idea—they had to get out. She was right—the bunker had been turned into a glorified foxhole, and they had no weapons but their sidearms. He looked around, and saw huge jagged blocks of concrete sitting on the remains of smashed electronic equipment, with broken cannon-barrels and the racks with the viewers sticking up from them. He knew the roof had been designed to fall inward against the walls if it did break, but even so, he shivered as he realized how close they had come to being crushed as flat as the guts of the equipment.

Then he realized that if the electronics were wrecked, the reactor might be, too.

His mind knew that a fusion reactor can't blow up—as soon as the electromagnetic bottle breaks down, the reaction ends. But someone had let the genie out of this bottle, and he wasn't about to stick around to find out whether or not he would die from its spell. He turned to Dawn with a nod, stepped over to the nearest concrete pile, set a foot against a broken chunk, and shoved. It held, so he turned back to Dawn and bent his knees, cupping his hands to make a stirrup. "Up you go."

"Up there?" Dawn stared up at the jumble of blocks. "You're out of your mind!"

Larry was delighted to discover that he could hear her—distantly through the ringing, but nonetheless, he could. Only temporarily deaf, then. "No, out of here—I hope. The ceiling was only ten feet high, and I lift my hands up to at least five. No climbing, just jumping. Or would you rather stay and wait for the harpies to find us?"

Dawn imagined a score of shrieking harpies pouncing on them with sharp talons and shuddered. Of course, the aliens were much more likely just to drop another bomb in and mash them, but that wasn't much better. "I'll take that lift." She stepped forward, put her hands on Larry's shoulders, and stepped into his hands. For a moment, she balanced precariously, gathering herself for the leap.

"Ready?" he asked.

Dawn didn't trust herself to answer; she just nodded.

Larry heaved with all his might, as straight as he could. Dawn felt herself surging upward and leaped at the last second. The edge of the hole shot past her head, and she threw herself forward. The jagged concrete slammed into her hips, and the pain was sharp—but she was up and out from the waist up. For a moment, she scrabbled precariously; then Larry's hand pushed hard on one foot, and she got the other one over the edge and rolled out, face flaming—that push on the foot had made her realize what she must nave looked like from Larry's point of view. Nothing indecent, of course—they both wore the same trousered uniform—but very embarrassing. Of course, Larry probably wasn't in any condition to snicker, but still…

Snicker? He was in no shape for anything, stuck down in that hole! How was he going to get out?

Cursing herself for an inconsiderate fool, she swung about, pulling her belt loose and dropping back down on her belly, to dangle the strap over the edge. "Come on! Grab hold, and you…"

She'd come just in time to see the concrete block shift under his feet; he was halfway up the slope of rubble. He lurched forward, grabbing the belt. She held on with both hands, pulling as strongly as she could. He stepped up to the next block a half-second before the first went crashing down, then held on tight as the whole pile shifted under him. His face was pale, his eyes huge—but the slope steadied again, and he grinned up at her. "Thanks."

"Just part of the service. Can you jump?"

"I'd be scared to try. In fact, I am scared to try. Just a couple of more steps, though..."

He freed one hand from the belt to steady him against the edge of the hole as he stepped up to another block, very slowly and carefully. It groaned and shifted a little, but it held.

"Just one more," Dawn said.

"One it is." Larry shifted his weight gradually, set one foot on a block fifteen inches higher, braced himself, then lunged forward. The block groaned, but he threw his torso over the rim of the hole and didn't care as the block started to slide down the slope with a grinding that turned into a rumbling as the whole side of the pile shifted and slid.

"You can have your belt back now," he panted.

"As soon as you get a leg up." Dawn tossed the belt behind her and grabbed his arm with both hands.

Larry struggled, panting, and managed to kick one knee up over the rim. Then he rolled, up and over the edge, all of him out of the pit. He just lay there panting. "Th-thanks."

"Any time." Dawn fumbled her belt back through the loops. "Just don't think I did it because I liked your face, or anything."

"Why—no." Larry grinned, the hardness coming back. "Just your duty. Right?"

"That," Dawn allowed, "and the fact that I stand a better chance of getting back to base if I have someone with me, than I do alone."

"Truth in that," Larry admitted. He pushed himself up to a sitting position. "I'm better than nobody, huh?"

"You are if you're armed." Dawn cast about her; there was no shortage of weapons on the ground, from all the harpies they had killed. The question was, would they work after having been torched? She picked one up and handed it to Larry. "Here."

He shrank away to the side, then took it from her. "Mind not pointing that thing in my direction?"

She stared at him, taken aback. "Is that the front? These birds do build crazy weapons!"

"Well, it might be the front." Larry carefully pointed it crosswise to both of them. "Where's the trigger on this model?"

"They don't seem to use them." Dawn picked up another weapon, one that looked much more complicated than the first. "No, mine has a trigger, or something like one. I think yours is a rocket launcher."

"If it is, it's a repeater." Larry eyed the huge magazine with apprehension. "Get down, would you?"

Dawn whirled. "You're not going to point that at me!"

"No, but for all I know, this thing could shoot out the side."

"How?"

"I don't know, and I don't want to have to find out. Ready?"

Dawn hit the dirt.

"Here goes." Larry pressed a large button.

There was a flash and a roar, and a streak of light lanced out of the back end of the gun, almost knocking Larry onto his face. He caught himself on one hand and looked backward over his shoulder, watching the rocket race off across the plain until it hit something and exploded in a huge shower of fire. "I hope that was one of theirs."

"As long as it wasn't one of us. I think that's the back end that you're pointing forward."

"Yeah, I think you're right." Gingerly, Larry reversed the weapon and started hunting around on the ground.

"What are you looking for?"

"More… aha!" Larry came up with a bandolier that carried two of the huge magazines on an unimaginably small loop of leather. "It'll do for a necklace, anyway."

"Just the right fashion for this fall," Dawn said drily, but she began to look around for ammunition, too. She came up with a bandolier of her own and looped it over a shoulder, then turned to Larry just as he finished draping the rocket-packs around his neck. She stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"Well, I'm glad you can see the humor in any situation," he said sourly. "What's the matter? Don't like my taste?"

"I don't know how you taste, and I'm not going to find out. But you look like the White Rabbit!"

"Huh?" Larry looked down and, sure enough, the rocket pack did kind of look like a tabard. "You should talk! You look like a fullback!"

"Shoulder pads, huh?" Dawn glanced down at her figure with a smile. "With you around, I need all the armor I can get. Now—where do we go?"

"Back to headquarters, if it's still standing." Larry glanced up at the sky.

After a minute of silence, Dawn asked, "You studying to be a statue?"

"Huh? No, I'm studying the stars, as a matter of fact—or didn't you bone up on the local constellations on the way out?"

Dawn flushed. "No, I didn't! I had more important things to do than star-gaze."

"Not now, you don't. Okay, the flare has died—momentary lull in the fighting; just an accident, I bet… there!" He pointed toward the unseen mountains.

Dawn looked up at the sky, frowning, but she couldn't see anything except faint points of light, and even they were washing out by a new flood of orange light from an explosion. " 'There' what?"

"The Lorry—at least, that's what the colonists call it. It's north. So we want to go…" Larry pivoted, his arm standing out like a compass needle. "…there!"

He was pointing straight into the worst of the glare and clamor.

"There?" Dawn blanched. "You would pick the worst of the battle!"

Larry shrugged. "You wanted to know where headquarters was. Makes sense that the worst fighting would be around the fort. Doesn't mean we have to go there, of course."

"So where are we going to go? Into the nearest forest, assuming we could leg it a hundred miles without getting fried? Or maybe we should just wander around until a crowd of harpies picks us off?"

"I've been wondering how they taste," Larry said thoughtfully. "We didn't bring out any rations, you know."

"Eat a harpy? You cannibal!"

"No—they're not my species. Still, I suppose you're right—intelligent life is our own kind, no matter what its form. Of course, that's assuming that these lizards have minds…"

"Some of them do, and they won't take kindly to our eating their children!"

"Assuming that isn't a cultural norm, where they come from. Come to that, I don't like them slaughtering our people and wasting our planet. Of course, I'm sure they'd say that they wouldn't have been doing either, if we just hadn't been so rude as to fight back."

"I'm not too eager to be a slave to a bird-brain, thank you!"

"How about a snake?"

"What's that, a proposal? No, thanks, hammerhead. I'll wait for the next one."

Larry frowned at her. " 'Hammerhead'?"

"You figure it out." Which was good, because Dawn couldn't. She covered by stepping around him toward the brightest glare in the night sky. "Come on—maybe we'll meet a Bolo."

"Oh, yeah," Larry said slowly. "I forgot to tell you."

Dawn stopped dead, then turned back to look at him slowly. "Forgot what?"

"The news came in the last time you were asleep. There're only two Bolos left, and one of them is down for repair."

Dawn stared in horror. "The harpies got all the others?"

"All," Larry confirmed. "Safety in numbers, and all that."

Dawn turned back toward the glare, her face pale. "That's not good."

"No," Larry agreed. Neither of them could bring themselves to put it into words: that the humans were on their own, or nearly. Their guardians were gone.

Dawn shook off the mood and started out again. "Come on. Doesn't look as though our chances are going to get any better."

"No, it doesn't, does it?" Larry followed her before he could change his mind, muttering to himself. " 'Hammerhead'? Let's see, now…"

TO BE CONTINUED…