The Growing

They are perhaps halfway across when the minefield goes up. A collective gasp runs up the line, punctuated by one clear “Jesus god damn!” and a grunt as someone elbows her vocal compatriot in the ribs.

Except as a matter of discipline, the exclamation hardly matters. The roar as half a hundred claymores and as many Bouncing Betties go off in chorus will drown anything but the report of a big gun. In the red-lit chaos ahead of them, Koda can make out the vague shapes of bodies pitched into the air, their severed limbs arcing above them to rain down on their fellows and clatter against the barricade. Others, still apparently on their feet, make for the edge of the highway and relative safety, only to run into a solid line of rifle and small arms fire. The fog muffles their screams to vague cries out of nightmare, distant, contextless.

Without warning, a burst of white light cuts through the mist along the highway, etching the scene for a microsecond into her memory: scattered arms, legs, some human, some not; the asphalt slick with blood; craters gouged into the roadway. And it shows her two things more. Behind the ranks of cannon fodder, the military droids grind inexorably on toward the wall, the hard light from the phosphorus shell sheeting off their metallic hides. And along the edge of the road, a troop stands looking directly toward the gorge, raising his gun to his shoulder.

“Down!” she bellows. “Keep moving!”

Dropping to knees and elbows, she humps her way over the damp earth, crawling a space, then levering herself up to a crouching run. Behind her, where she had stood a handful of seconds before, an M-16 round kicks up the water in a small puddle. A second whistles over her head to land silently in the earth beyond. She jabs the man to her right, harder than she had meant because she cannot judge distance. “Hold fire. Don’t give ‘em our position till we have to. Pass it on.” She gives the same message to the sergeant on her left.

The shooter at the edge of the road has apparently been joined by others. Enemy fire quickens, becomes heavier, pelting down on the length of the line. Koda puts her head down and keeps on crawling.

*

The M-1’s and Bradleys run with their lights high now, lurching over the uneven ground at top speed, spraying dirt from under their treads. Tacoma’s Jeep bucks and yaws in their wake, throwing him alternately against the straps across his chest and the unyielding back of his seat. In the occasional beam of light that rakes over him, he can see the steering wheel spinning under Jackson’s left hand, his right taut-knuckled on the gear shift. It occurs to Tacoma that after this he will never need a chiropractor if he lives to be a hundred and ten. He might never need a dentist either, except for his helmet’s chinstrap. Pitching his voice just under a bellow to make himself heard above the din of the surrounding engines, he yells, “Did you”—thump!—“drive like this”—bang!—“when you went”—slam!—“with Kirsten to”—whump!—“Minot?”

“You kidding, man?” Darius favors him with a thousand-watt grin for a split second, then turns his eyes back to the road. “And have that sister of yours”—he pauses to steer around a large chunk of limestone—“hang me up by my heels and skin me?”

“The General’d—get you—first. Koda’d—just take—your hair!”

A shell from one of the droid tanks sails overhead, to gouge a crater in the field to their right. Turning to look behind, Tacoma can see their halogen lights where they punch through the fog. What he cannot see, and with luck the enemy cannot either, is the other half of his armored cavalry, running dark behind them, ready to cut them off once the lead units lure them onto the Interstate and into the trap that has been laid for them.

“Pull us off when we get to the road,” Tacoma shouts. “Get us in under the overpass!”

“You gonna lead from behind?”

“You got it!”

The tanks at the front of the column take a sudden hard left, ploughing their way over the soft shoulder to the highway access road. As they sweep up the on ramp, Jackson steers the Jeep out of the line and into the shelter of the huge struts and pylons holding up the highway above the Elk Creek interchange. The racket as the behemoths lumber up the slope is beyond deafening, and Tacoma hunkers down and covers his ears as they pass. The metal plates above him rattle against their bolts, and it seems to him that every bone in his body hangs loose, clattering against its neighbor. Then the last of them is up and racing west, the whine of their engines fading with their speed.

The silence lasts for perhaps a minute. Tacoma savors it, the first respite they have had since the droid howitzers began their siege. Then, “Here they come,” Jackson says quietly.

Bursting out of the fog with engines howling, the enemy armor follows their own forces up onto the highway. As the first of them commits to the ramp, Tacoma feels his shoulders go slack with relief. Bait taken.

Perhaps five minutes after the last of them has passed, Tacoma hears the growl of their second unit’s engines. “Here we go,” he says, and Jackson keys the engine and the lights, steering the Jeep out onto the access road and into the lead as the half dozen M-1’s speed for the ramp. “Gonna send all those good little droids home to cyber-Jeezus!”

*

When the smoke from the mines clears, Maggie looks down on a scene straight out of Hieronymus Bosch by Bill Gates. Mechanical body parts litter the highway below the wall: a leg with its struts and dangling wires jutting up out of an asphalt crater here; a head there, recognizably non-human only by the absence of blood; impaled on a spar of steel protruding from the barricade, a hand still clutching an automatic rifle. Fanned out on the margins lie the human casualties, most of them picked off by snipers as they tried to flee. To her right, from the north lip of the gorge which Dakota must cross, she can hear the pop and rattle of rifle fire. Not good. Even in the fog, even with enemy shooters they can pick off by sound, Koda and her troops are at a disadvantage, their whole traverse exposed. And the phosphorus shell would have shown them to their enemies, mercilessly trapped in its glare.

Mentally, Maggie reels through a catalogue of her troops. The worst of the attack is yet to come; the full-bore military droids have halted their advance, but the lull will not last, not beyond the few minutes required for them to assess their losses. She can, perhaps, spare a platoon.

Clambering down from her vantage point halfway up the wall, she snares one of the men crouched at its foot. His helmet shows three stripes; his shirt pocket proclaims him McGinnis, Ralph. “Corporal, I need you to carry a message to Dakota Rivers in the gorge. Can you do it?”

McGinnis’ face, pale beneath its black grease-paint, goes paler still. But he snaps off a salute. “Yes, Ma’am!”

“Good man. Ask her if she needs reinforcing. I can send her a dozen troops if she does.”

He salutes again and is gone.

Maggie takes advantage of the momentary calm to walk the length of the barricade again. Supply runners race past her, carrying ammunition and grenades. She is halfway back to her post when she hears the grinding of treads on pavement. Her heart bangs once against her rib cage, then steadies. They will hold because they must. A passing runner carries grenades; she snags a belt of them and a launcher, finds a gap in the wall big enough to admit its muzzle. She loads and waits.

*

There is no time. Koda has no idea how long she has been humping over the wet earth of the gorge. The new grass, slick with the mist, slides easily beneath her body. The musty scent of sodden vegetation mingles with the sharper smell of black powder and cordite drifting down from the battle. Direct fire from above has tapered off, become sporadic as the enemy has either given up wasting ammunition or has found more immediate matters to occupy them.

Or simply decided to pick them off later, when they come into visible range. They had been on the edge of the burst of light from the Willie Peter, but almost surely the enemy has marked their position. It is not a comforting thought.

From the highway comes the sound of small arms fire and the occasional concussion of a grenade. The mines have gone up in a roar, presumably taking out the first wave of droids. For a moment the fog had glowed red, then settled into its pervasive grey, hiding the road and what she hopes is the successful completion of the first phase of the battle plan.

“Hey, Chief.’ The sergeant appears out of the void to her left, his helmet and night scope protruding over his eyes giving the shape of some early cinematic Martian. His hoarse whisper is the sound of wind in dry grass. “You got any idea where we are?”

“About halfway, I think,” she answers. “Ground’s leveling off.”

“We need to pick it up, Ma’am. If we’re caught down here once they get past whatever’s keeping ‘em busy up there, or they start picking us up with the infra-red, we’re fucked.”

The thought is not new. They need to be in position when the ringer droids blow, and position is within seconds of the highway. “Pass the word down,” she says. “Tell the troops to get to their feet. We have to risk it.”

“Ma’am.” She can just see his form rise and lengthen as she levers herself to her own feet, feeling rather than seeing the woman on the other side of her do the same, the order rippling down the line. She plods on, straining her senses to pick up the breathing of the troops closest to her, the faint variations on grey nothingness where the fog eddies and pools.

She picks up the thudding footfalls from yards away. Half-running, half-stumbling, a man solidifies from the mist, his hands up. “Friendly, Doc! Friendly!”

Her M-16 slaps down into her hands and is leveled at him before the first word is out. The sargeant and the man next to him haul the newcomer down to his knees, pulling back his collar to inspect his neck. It is clean flesh; no silver collar. “Doc Rivers?”

“That’s me.” Koda does not lower her weapon.

“McGinnis, Ma’am, Third Montana Reserves. General Allen’s compliments, Ma’am, and do you need any reinforcements? She says to tell you she can spare a platoon.”

The droids Kirsten programmed to destroy their own kind have not yet detonated. For the first time, Dakota allows herself to think that they might not. If their destruct program fails, Maggie will need every weapon, every pair of hands she can muster at the wall. She makes her decision almost without conscious thought. “Tell the General we’re doing fine, Corporal. We’ll see her topside.”

“Chief.” It is the sergeant. “We’re spread thin.”

“No.” Koda’s voice is firm. “If we take none of the troops from the main front, they’ll have a better chance of holding when we hit the metalheads from the side and drive them against Allen’s line. Tell the General we’re doing well, Corporal. There’s no other message.”

“Ma’am.” The Corporal salutes and disappears once again into the fog.

“Sergeant,” says Koda. “Pass the order to pick up the pace. We need to get at least part way up that slope before they recoup. Continue to hold fire until I say otherwise.”

There is a small pause, and Koda shifts the muzzle of her rifle slightly. She cannot tolerate disobedience, or even discussion. Not now.

Even in the fog, though, she can see the sudden grin break across his face. “Ma’am, you got brass ones, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind. Now move it.”

The fog swallows him again as he begins to move along the line. They have passed the mid-point; land begins to rise again, punctuated by deep ruts where snow has melted off the flat surface above, cutting down the side of the embankment and carrying gravel and asphalt pellets with it across the winter-bare ground. The treacherous footing slows them. Koda swears softly when her ankle turns, pitching her down on her right hand and knee. Up and down the line, she can hear the crunch of pebbles under boots, the troops’ heavy breathing as they negotiate the ragged slope. To her right, she sees a woman pitch forward onto her face, tripped up by a jagged ridge of flint justting out from earth. The man between them grabs for her, helping her to her feet.

She sees them. Faintly, she sees them. The fog is beginning to thin with the dawn. Carried on a gathering wind, its tendrils whip by her face, scattered in the growing light.

With the realization comes a crack of gunfire from above, the enemy shooting almost straight down on them. There is no point in silence now. “Return fire!” she bellows. “Hose ‘em!”

Up and down the line, the M-16’s open up on full automatic, their rattle punctuated by the clang of rounds off metal and the sharp, strangled scream of a man going down somewhere to her right. Koda braces her weapon against her shoulder and empties the magazine at the enemy still invisible along the highway shoulder. She wrenches it free, slams in another, and keeps firing as she storms up the slope. Without warning the ground shakes beneath her, tumbling her back onto her butt, and the wave of sound washes over her, huge, apocalyptic, the thunder at the end of the world. Fog glows crimson and burns away, leaving clouds of red-shot black smoke roiling over the battlefront. Kirsten’s trap has sprung.

She scrambles back up onto her feet, seeing for the first time the line of soldiers stretched out along the lip of the rise above her. “Come on!” she yells at her troops. “Take the fuckers down!”

Yelling and whooping, they charge up the slope, into the hell of lead blazing down on them.

*

Tacoma’s Jeep speeds along amid the thunder of his armored cavalry. The smaller vehicle darts in among the Bradleys and M-1’s, nimble as a dolphin among great whales. The wind of their passage tilts his helmet back on his head, snags his braids from under its rim and sends his loosened hair flying behind. Here on the road, steadily rising as they race west, the low sun has begun to burn through the fog, tingeing the mist with a strange, golden iridescence. Ahead of them, the enemy still runs blind, though the sun will soon show them what even their high-intensity spotlights cannot. Neither will there be any cover for this rear half of his split force, should the enemy have the wit to look behind them. Given a few more minutes, though, that will not matter.

Muffled by mist and distance, the roar of guns comes to them on the wind. “That’s it!” Tacoma yells. He keys his mike and shouts into it. “Slow down! Form a line across the road! Make it tight!”

The behemoths around them lurch as their drivers stand on their brakes. They maneuver the M-1s into a long-legged, inverted V that rapidly becomes a flying wedge in reverse. Bradleys take their places on the on the fringes. There is barely space for an armed infantryman to squeeze between them, no more than a meter from vehicle to vehicle. A second, staggered line closes in behind. Jackson swerves the Jeep to take up the outlier position along the south flank, and the line begins its inexorable grind forward, to take the enemy from behind.

“We got ‘em!” Jackson shouts in his ear above the lower, but still deafening, racket.

“We got ‘em as long as they don’t turn and bust back through!”

A second volley rolls over them, louder, more than one cannon this time. Up ahead, a column of roiling black smoke rises above the road, burning fuel. As it coils upward into the thinning fog, the tank’s ammunition goes up in a series of short explosions. There is no way to tell yet if it is one of their own or an enemy. Cannon reverberates around them, rattling the glass in the windshield, shattering the air to echo off the hills that rise, black against the sky, to the north of the highway.

Just ahead of them, the road curves sharply to the right. As they round the bend, Tacoma can see the two lines of armor, his own drawn up in tight formation to block the path westward, the other straggled out across the front, individual units angled to try to wedge their way between their opponents. Some have forced their way so close that they cannot use their cannon or swivel their turrets. Behind the enemy line, the torn hulk of a burning tank lies heaved onto its side, ragged holes in its armored carapace, its treads still running clanking over its wheels. The smoke stinks of diesel fuel and scorched meat.

“Damn, looks like a bunch of dinosaurs fighting!” Jackson shouts. “Those things with horns on their heads!”

Tacoma laughs. “And here comes T. Rex to finish ‘em off!” He thumbs the button on his com. “All units, close in and fire at will—just watch your range!”

*

Kirsten lies flat on the shoulder of the road, her elbows propping her up, as she methodically searches the thinning fog for more solid patches. The mines have done their work on the first lines of the enemy. The casualties are mostly droids, but the severed fingers of a human hand dangling from a metal strut in the wall testify that humans had been among them. Kirsten has no time for them, no pity. She knows better than most what bargain they might have made, the safety of a family, the remnant of a life, even a life of slavery. Other renegades string out the line on the edge of the gorge, mingled with android troops.

Kirsten picks off another; behind her Manny’s rifle stitches a line of fire up and down the road’s shoulder, steady and careful. From several hundred meters away, her implants pick up the faint whine of the military droids’ motors. They are still waiting, perhaps allowing the Ellsworth forces to expend time and ammunition before closing in for the kill.

Got a surprise for ya, motherfuckers. Any time now. She sights carefully and picks off two more hostiles.

The explosion, when it comes, rattles the scrap metal in the wall that looms above her, and one sniper, less securely perched than he might have been, slips down to land sprawled beside her, shaken loose by the blast. “God damn!” he yells above the echoing blasts. “What the hell was that?”

“Suicide droids!” Manny shouts back. “Takin’ their friends with ‘em!”

Kirsten smiles tightly, feeling the knots in her shoulders relax a minute fraction. The program worked, and however many metalheads come grinding down on them, it will be fewer than it would have been before. Maybe the difference will be enough to make a difference. At least give them a better chance. In the lull that follows, she hears human voices off to her right. Koda’s troops, closing in to trap the enemy between their force and Maggie’s.

The pitch of the droid’s motors changes suddenly. Mingled with their high humming,

Kirsten can make out the tramp of flat metal feet, the snarl of treads biting into the pavement. “They’re coming!” she yells over her shoulder at Manny. “Send someone to tell the General!”

The freshening wind tears at the last rags of the fog. She can see them now, the sun glinting off their titanium hides as they grind toward the barricade. The first volley from their M-60 caliber arms clangs against the wall, a drumming like fist-size hail on the roof. Grenades plow into the pavement ahead of them, some landing in their ranks to knock the droids over onto their sides. The ones on treads cannot rise, and lie with their wheel belts spinning, like upset beetles. Others step or crawl over them, unheeding.

A LAAWs rocket tears into the line, sending bright fragments flying in the growing light, like spray off a fountain. To her right, the snipers on the edge of the gorge pot steadily away at Dakota’s troops as they attempt to scale the slope, but Kirsten can also see that they are beginning to fall in greater and greater numbers before Koda’s advance. So far, so good.

There is a microsecond’s warning, no more, as the howitzer shell screeches toward them. It rips through the barricade to land somewhere in the midst of the line of vehicles drawn up between the two walls, sending metal debris and bodies fountaining into the air, the roar of the explosion rolling on and on, unfolding like the cloud of smoke and flame that billows up from the pavement. A section of the barricade groans, its rammed steel blocks grating against each other, and very slowly, almost gracefully, begins to slide toward the ground. The treaded droids crawl up its slope, followed more slowly by the flat-footed models. Too close. Kirsten swivels her rifle to aim at the optic shield of the nearest, but Manny grabs her belt from behind and jerks her out of the way just as a twisted chunk of steel tumbles down to l and where she had crouched a moment before. A cartwheeling fragment strikes her helmet, and darkness, sudden as thunder, closes in about her.

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

THE WEDGE OF armor closes inexorably in on the enemy where they stand locked with the first line. The Bradleys swing wide, speeding to block escape off the shoulders of the road, while the crews of the advancing M-1’s crank up the angle of their cannon to lob their shells high and short into the droid tanks. Hatches on the roofs of the Bradleys crack open, sprouting the long tubes of tank-killing missiles. As Tacoma watches, two of the launchers send their warheads streaking toward a single enemy tank, slamming through its armor and sending it up in a ball of fire and smoke. A cannon shell lands short of a second, gouging a crater in the pavement but doing little other harm. A second finds its mark, and a Bradley fragments, spewing glass and bolts, flesh and blood, for a radius of half a hundred meters in all directions. Red spatters cover the tread and turret of one of their own tanks near it; a human crew in that one. An enemy tank flounders as it attempts to turn its guns on the closing force behind it, the turret still mobile but its cannon wedged against the bulk of its neighbor. Its gears snarl like a rabid thing, snared and careless with its pain.

A missile takes one of the Ellsworth Bradleys in the side, tearing open its plating and spinning off the road to tumble down the embankment and come to rest with a final clatter thirty yards away. A second sweeps up from behind to take its place in the wedge, blocking off an APC that suddenly breaks from its hulking companions to attempt to dart through the narrow gaps in Tacoma’s line. The Bradley rams it headon, turning it end for end and slamming it into the path of an enemy M-1 as it attempts to extricate itself from its deadly embrace with one of its own allies. A shell from the center tank in the wedge settles its difficulty, blowing the fuel tanks of both and sending their ammo up in a series of short, sharp explosions that leave the highway pocked with craters and scars on the flanks of friend and enemy alike.

Tacoma, watching, takes a quick count. The enemy are outnumbered and blocked off. It comes to him that the battle is decided; has in truth been decided ever since the enemy took the bait and followed the forward unit onto the highway. It remains only to end it as quickly as may be. Keying his com to universal frequency, Tacoma shouts into the microphone, ” Ellsworth, hold your fire! Droid forces, surrender! You are surrounded, with no hope of escape! Humans among you will have the protections of prisoners of war! Androids will be reprogrammed! Surrender now and spare yourselves!”

And, though he does not say so, spare the tanks and fighting vehicles that they may well need another day. No one will be manufacturing any more anytime soon.

There is no response. More quietly Tacoma adds, “You have sixty seconds.” He glances down at his watch, and the luminous sweep of the second hand. “Mark. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. . . ..”

On thirty, Tacoma raises his hand to signal resumption of the attack. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jackson’s taut face, watching not him but looking beyond for signs of compliance or attack. On twenty-five, Jackson guns the engine, ready to move again. Tacoma’s breath comes short and hard. Please, Ina, let this work. And on twenty, a tank hatch cracks open and two humans climb out, waving a white T-shirt.

A wide grin splits Jackson’s face. “Well dayyyum. And I thought your sister was the magic one.”

Tacoma’s pounding heart and lungs slow toward normal. He grins back. “No magic to it. Appeal to enlightened self-interest’ll do it every time.” He climbs out of the Jeep and signals the Bradley crews to dismount. “Let’s round ‘em up.”

Twenty minutes later, the human prisoners have been separated from the droids, hogtied and deposited by the side of the road for later pickup. The androids, no more than half a dozen, pose a different problem. They stand together, guarded by two troopers armed with grenades. Tacoma glances around the field, where his men and women are busy untangling the traffic snarl and lining up the enemy armor for a run back to the barricades. They cannot spare anyone to stand guard over the droids, cannot leave them unsupervised, either.

“Waste ‘em, Major. You don’t need to keep a promise to no damned metalhead.”

Tacoma turns to confront the speaker, a tanker of twenty years and four wars’ experience. “If I do that, then the humans have no way of trusting my word, either. You know the code.”

“That was then, Major.” There is only weariness in the man’s leathery face; no cruelty, no vengeance. “Now is different.”

Tacoma nods, agreeing. He has fought in Kashmir and in the horn of Africa, in Macedonia and Korea. This war is different beyond imagination. A warrior’s honor is still worth preserving. He claps the man on the shoulder. “Thanks, Reilly. All the same, get one of those Bradleys off the road. We’ll pull the wires out of the engine and lock ‘em in it till we get back.”

Shaking his head, Reilly moves to obey, and Tacoma turns his attention back to reforming his line. Beside him, Jackson says, “That was a tough one.”

“That was a necessary one.”

“That’s not in the UCMJ, y’know.”

Tacoma gives him a half smile. “Different code. Lakota.”

The wedge forms up again, this time pointing east and augmented by the captured armor. By the side of the road, Reilly has a fighting vehicle pulled to the side, its engine on the ground beside it. Not one to do things by halves, Reilly. Tacoma, satisfied with his formation, makes one last circuit to check for external damage. Jackson shadows him, one hand on his sidearm, his eyes on the knot of androids preparing to load into the Bradley. Tacoma gives him a grin. “Relax, Darius. Nothing’s going to hap—”

He never finishes the sentence. With a yell, Jackson springs, flattening him to the tarmac, rolling over and over away from the spot where a spray of M-16 rounds clangs against the side of an APC and the air shudders with the explosion of half a dozen grenades. When the roaring stops, he is lying on his face in the loose dust of the road shoulder, with Jackson on top of him. He lifts his head slightly, gasping for air. “What—What the fuck—was that?”

“Reilly,” Darius says shortly. He pushes up to his feet, leaning down to help Tacoma up. “You okay?”

Tacoma takes a quick mental inventory. No blood, nothing broken. “Yeah. Just winded.” He grins at Jackson. “Thanks, man.”

“Yeah, well.” Oddly, Darius does not meet his eyes, finding a sudden interest in the scorched hole in the embankment where Reilly had stood. Reilly himself lies yards off, his rifle gone, his helmet and the back of his head crushed. A pry bar lies among the remains of the droids. “That’s gratitude for you. At least we won’t have to deal with the metalheads now.”

“You okay?”

“’M fine.” Jackson tilts his helmet back, and for a moment his eyes meet Tacoma’s. Fear is there, and relief, and the hint of something else, gone as soon as it appears.

There is no time. But a small warmth has settled in somewhere around Tacoma’s breastbone, something that will bear more attention on the other side of battle. For now he turns back toward the Jeep and says only, “Let’s move ‘em out then. We got work to do.”

*

“Goddammit, Manny, put me down!”

Kirsten’s head, sore but clear, bangs against Manny’s ammunition belt. From her inverted perspective, she can see only the rubble-strewn pavement and the backs of his heels as he jogs away from the breached wall, herself slung over his shoulder like an untidy bedroll.

“In a minute!” he yells, tightening his grip across the back of her knees. “Hang on!”

Swearing, she digs her fingers into the loops of webbing that holds his gear around his waist. A roar like the rush of a great river pounds in her ears. Some of it, she knows, is her own blood; some of it the report and recoil of the big guns at the rear of their line. And some of it is fire. The red sheen on the asphalt, on the heels of Manny’s flashing boots, is not all blood. A wave of heat washes over her from somewhere on her right. Something is burning. Something large.

“Manny—!” She tries again, “Lieutenant Rivers, I order you to put me---”

“—Down. I know. Hold on!”

She thumps against his back as he takes an obstacle at a running leap, then another. I’m going to bust him back to private. I’m going to put him on permanent latrine duty. I’m going to make him peel potatoes right into the next ice age—

From her upended position, she sees a pair of soldiers crouched behind the wreckage of a Humvee, feeding grenades into an array of squat, tubular launchers that slam back against the pavement as the belch out their rounds. Others scramble to assemble an M-60, weighting down the legs of its tripod with the detached wheel of a truck, its tire stripped off. Someone has set up an impromptu med station in the lee of another wreck, Shannon from the vet clinic using the injured troops’ own T-shirts and sleeves to bind off wounds. With a start, Kirsten recognizes the half-burned truck as the command post. She had known they were in trouble, but not just how much. It’s bad, then. It’s really bad. Gods, I wish Dakota—

Were a million miles away and safe. Fat chance.

She grits her teeth and involuntarily tightens her grip on Manny’s belt as another howitzer shell screams overhead. This one lands somewhere beyond the second barrier. To cut off our retreat. Then they’ll get around to finishing us.

Abruptly, Manny comes to a halt and bends at the waist, decanting her gently into a hastily thrown-up bunker of torn metal and sandbags. Maggie looks up from the battered laptop where she is apparently keeping track of her units, holding one half of a pair of headphones tightly to her ear and tapping on the keyboard with the other. When she sees Kirsten, the tightness in her face relaxes visibly. “Are you hurt?”

“Just banged about a bit. Give me—”

She does not even complete the sentence before Maggie shoves the computer into her hands. “Rivers, stay with her. Nice one with the suicide droids,” she says, and is up and gone.

*

The battle has become a siege. It was always intended that it should; Maggie and her forces are the anvil, Koda and her troop, swinging around to flank the enemy from the south, are the hammer. All she has to do, she reminds herself as she pushes the computer into Kirsten’s far more knowledgeable hands and sets herself to make the round of her nest of machine-gunners and snipers, is hold firm. She has enough heavy munitions to stave off the swarming mass of killing machines for half an hour more, perhaps an hour. If the enemy manages to cut Dakota off, if they delay her advance up the embankment and onto the road, she still has a pair of options left. Both are suicide.

Crouching, she watches as the droid line shifts slightly. One of their number, a humanoid model, leans out from between the heavily armored models, aiming a shoulder-held rocket launcher. Before it can bring the tube to bear, a LAAWS fired from one of the upended Humvees behind her finds its mark, leaving a break in the line where the droid had stood. Two of the heavy models go down with it, one smashed to metal flinders, the other decapitated, its sensor array blown straight off its mountings. In some weird cyborg version of spinal reflex, it raises both its arms and sprays 60-caliber rounds across the space separating the two lines, kicking up asphalt pellets from the roadway, clanging off the armor of trucks and personnel carriers. The others join in the barrage, the sound trapped between the two metal barricades that hem them in. From somewhere to her right, Maggie hears a man scream; closer to, she can see another slump against the sandbags of his post, blood and flesh from the melon-sized exit wound in his back spattering the troops next to him.

From behind the wall, she can hear the higher-pitched rattle of M-16’s, the occasional heavier thump of a grenade. Koda must have made her way up to the rim of the embankment, then. That will not take pressure off Maggie’ forces, though. Not yet. Not till Dakota has fought her way past the android contingent set to block her, not till she has gotten p ast the first barricade, over it or around it. Hammer and anvil, with the titanium and steel of the enemy between.

A trooper sprints across the open space between Maggie’s position and Kirsten’s makeshift com center. He dives and rolls under the hail of gunfire, landing half on his face beside her. Levering himself up beside her, he manages a credible salute. “General—Dr. King’s compliments. She says to tell you Major Rivers has neutralized the enemy armor and is on his way back. Instructions?”

“Yeah,” she says, a laugh that his half relief, half amusement at the young man’s formality. “Tell him get his ass back here as fast as those tanks’ll go. We need him yesterday.”

*

Koda pulls herself up the slope, using her rifle butt to steady her, hugging the ragged outcrop to keep within the angle of fire raining down on her troops from above. The fog still shrouds them, but only faintly. The freshening wind tears it, whipping it by in tatters. From time to time she catches the glint of metal from above, weapon or droid, she cannot tell. Her men, strung out on the face of the embankment, appear as clotted shadow in the mist, here and there a glimpse of mottled green camouflage or the clear shape of a weapon. And always there is the rattle of automatic fire above her, unremitting. The enemy has only to hold them in the gorge until full light, and they will die.

She cannot allow that to happen. They have to get up and over. Now.

Fumbling at her belt, Dakota slips one of her two remaining grenades from its loop. She pulls the pin with her teeth, then counts the seconds as the fuse burns down. With a high, wordless scream, she sends it arcing up over her head to land among the enemy on the road above. Its concussion beats at her like great wings flailing the air, but she strains against it, hauling herself to within striking distance of the top as the droids shift and reform. All up and down the length of her skirmish line, other grenades go sailing into the enemy ranks. Through increasing gaps in the fog, she catches sight of her troops. One man, only yards away, sprawls face-down on the earth, his left side soaked in blood, his arm gone. She cannot stop to tend him. She screams again, part anger at her helplessness in the face of his helplessness, part red blind lust for the destruction of those who have killed him. Her second, and last, grenade flies true, gouging out a hole that sends asphalt particles stinging into her face as she crests the top of the ridge. The last of her squad’s grenades explode somewhere down the line. They swarm up over the top, screaming, shooting point-blank into the sensor arrays of the few enemies left standing. All about her lie the broken remains of droids, wire and shattered circuit cards, metal fragments and titanium bolts bright in the sudden sun that breaks upon them as the last of the fog whips away. And there are the wrecks of the droids’ human allies, blood and bone and muscle spattered over half the width of the highway. The air smells of iron.

Down the line from her, her troops set about mopping up anything still functional. At her own feet, a prone droid’s arms make futile paddling motions at its sides, and she places the muzzle of her M-16 carefully against the back plate that covers the power supply. The gun jerks against her elbow. Two rounds, and the thing lies still.

To her left, the bulk of the first barricade wall appears, half of its middle section tumbled to the pavement where the howitzer shell has torn through. From behind it comes the din of battle—the rattle of M-60’s and automatic rifles, the dull whump of grenade launchers. A quick survey of the field shows her no more enemy troops as far as she can see to the east. They are all behind the wall, then. And most of them will be the military models, mindless killing machines, impervious to small arms.

“Where now, Ma’am?”

Their task is to squeeze the enemy between their line and Maggie’s. The men and women trotting toward her down the curve of the road are fewer by a third than those she set out with across the gorge. If she sends them around and through the wall, crashing into the droid’s line from behind, the enemy will simply turn and cut them to pieces. “Sergeant,” she says slowly, “How many big guns do you think they have back there?”

“Ma’am?” He blinks into the sun that strikes glare from the broken metal all around them, sweat running down his blackened face into his eyes. “There’s a couple howitzers back there, maybe a couple big mortars, too.”

“Good,” she says. “Let’s go.”

She begins trotting east, toward the back of the enemy line, stepping nimbly as a dancer among the scattered debris. Her troops form a wedge around her, their faces puzzled, as they jog away from the fight. None of them asks what she is about, and for a fleeting moment their obedience frightens her. Behind them the noise of the fight lessens, buffered now by the remains of the barricade and the trees that line the north of the road here. The sergeant, keeping pace with her, pants, “Ma’am. Ma’am. The range is off. We can’t fire those mothers now—we’d hit our own people.”

Koda flashes him a grin. “We’re not gonna fire ‘em, Sarge.”

“Wha— Oh. Gotcha.”

The droids have left no rearguard. Their vehicles, clustered a mile and a half back from the battle line, sit neatly parked across the road, Humvees and troop trucks lined up as carefully as if they were about to stand motor pool inspection. There are no hospital trucks, no rations supply. What the hell did they expect their human troops to run on? But Dakota has no time for the thought. “All right,” she says, coming to a halt before one of the APC’s. Her squad form a knot around her, some of them heaving with the effort of the run, others bright-faced and eager. “Anybody here have experience with heavy machinery—cranes, tractors, anything like that?”

A half dozen hands go up: the Sergeant, a couple reservists, armored cavalry that Tacoma had no place for. “Good. You come with me. The rest pile into a couple of these carriers, get the ammo threaded, and get ‘em started. We’ll be back.”

With that, she sets off at a run toward the hulking shapes she can just make out in the distance, where the fog lingers along the course of a small stream. Two howitzers loom out of the mist, their barrels, huge-seeming as ancient sequoias, canted upward to shorten their range. The squatter shapes of self-propelled mortars hulk beside them. Koda slows, dropping her M-16 from her shoulder into her hands; there may be no guards, but the droids may have left gunners behind. With the thought, the sun glints off the barrel of a weapon aimed from behind the nearer howitzer. She pulls and holds the trigger of her rifle, spraying the pavement, the tread, the armored side of the monster. “Split up!” she yells. “Go around!”

They move to obey, two lines swinging wide to flank the big guns. Koda charges straight for the middle, aiming not for the enemy gunner’s position but for the howitzer itself. A flying leap lands her on its tread, and she pulls herself up its curve, using its metal grips like rungs on a ladder. On top, she clambers past the driver’s perch and scrambles over the main gun mount to the rear. The sniper lies sprawled at the rear of the tread, blood seeping from beneath him. Dakota fires a single shot, straight between his shoulder blades, to be sure. From the end of the line, behind one of the mortars, come two more sharp reports, then silence. “Got ‘em, Ma’am!” a trooper sings out, and a moment later the Sergeant appears atop the other howitzer, making for the controls.

“Okay,” Koda shouts. “One operator and a back-up on each of the guns! Let’s go!”

She slips into the driver’s seat aboard the howitzer, taking a moment to study the dashboard. Ignition is no problem; she turns the key and the huge diesel motor under her kicks to life, shaking and shuddering like her grandfather’s ancient John Deere with its front-loader exhaust pipe and its metal bicycle seat. Only bigger. Much bigger. Fit to rattle her teeth loose, she thinks as she straps herself in. Gonna join the Polident crowd way too young, here.

One of the sticks is obviously the gearshift. The smaller one—she shoves it away from her, and the huge barrel over her head begins to descend like a falling tree. “Timber!” somebody shouts, and she gives it an abrupt push in the opposite direction and keeps pushing until it is as near vertical as it will go. Down the line, the other drivers crank their guns up; the barrels will foul each other when they begin to maneuver. “Man, oh, man!” yells the driver of one of the mortars. “If that ain’t the biggest goddam hard-on I ever saw!”

“Dream on!” the Sergeant sings out. “Good to go, Ma’am!”

“All right!” she yells above the din of the engines. “We get back to the line as fast as we can. Then we flatten the bastards!”

Her back-up slides into place behind her, perched between her seat and the tread housing, as she lets out the gearshift and the huge gun lumbers forward. It is not so bad once in motion; maybe just a three-legged mule, not the antique tractor. “You okay back there?” she yells, half-turning her head.

“I’m hangin’, Ma’am!”

“Strap yourself to one of those eye-bolts back there, or you’ll come loose when things get serious. This is not gonna be a joyride!”

It is not. The going is rough for the first several hundred yards as she explores the controls. Slow and awkward, the guns must have been what kept the enemy to its crawling advance, even more than its foot soldiers. Most of those, after all, were droids, who did not need to sleep or eat or fall out to pee. No. They had brought the guns with the idea of laying siege to Ellsworth from a distance, maybe using them to disable the fighter squadrons and bombers before making a direct assault. Damn. Better park the Tomcats out on the runway where they can take off at a minute’s notice. There may be more of these motherfuckers where this one came from. And more droids.

The noise of battle comes to them over the roar of the howitzers’ engines. Most of it is small arms fire, M-16’s and M-60’s. Koda has begun to be able to tell the difference; it is what she does not hear, though, that alarms her. No grenades. No LAAWS.

Nothing left but the little stuff.

Fuck.

She throws the throttle wide open, bracing as the huge gun lurches forward, grinding under its treads the remains of droid and human alike as they round the curve and enter the straight mile of highway remaining between them and the ruined barricade. She can see it clearly, the tumbled wreckage where the wall was breached forming the ramp that let the attackers through. Whether it will hold something as large as the gun, though, is an open question.

One about to be answered. Koda waves the mortars on either end to go around the wall, and they break off to comply. Setting her teeth, she pulls back on the joystick, slowing the howitzer as it finds its traction in the crumpled metal beneath it. The bulldozers have done their work, though, and after a split second in which the gun seems to sink, and Koda’s heart with it, its treads bite into the steel slope and propel it up and over, spilling it out onto an even steeper angle on the other side. Koda stands frantically on the brakes, her breath stopped in her throat, the weight of her back-up thrown sharply against her shoulders, the barrel of the howitzer wobbling visibly above her head.

And then they are on the level pavement, lurching toward the battle, which seems to be concentrated behind the remains of the Ellsworth vehicles. With a stab of fear, she recognizes the command truck, overturned and half-burnt, black smoke still billowing out of it. But I would know, dammit. I know I would know.

Swinging around the wreckage, she can make out the fight now, only half a mile distant, backed up against the second barrier wall. The droids seem to be almost entirely the military models, the humans invisible behind bunkers of sandbags and overturned APC’s and Humvees. “Here we go!” Koda shouts, shoving the gearshift forward into first.

I’m hallucinating.

Kirsten shoves her laptop aside—it has long since ceased to be useful in any case—and grabs her rifle. The monsters lumbering onto the battlefield are nightmare come to life: enormous snouts uplifted in wrath, impervious metal hides clanging as rounds glance off them to ricochet and scatter among the droids. For a moment a flash of memory crosses her mind: Micah and his oil-pump dinosaurs on the flat plains of the Texas panhandle, their kin come suddenly to life here in the north where the wide salt sea drew so many of them into its sands.

“Goddam.” Manny, beside her, fumbles in his pack for the last of his grenades. “They’ve brought up their field guns.”

Recognition snaps into place. These are nothing out of her schoolday dreams. This is the enemy’s final assault on their depleted troops, the last blow that will smash their already broken lines. Grimly she shoves the last magazine into place on the stock of her M-16. What was it Leonidas had said there in the Hot Gates when the Persians demanded his weapons? Oh yeah. Come and get them.

Come and get me, fuckers. I’m not going down easy.

Lying flat, Kirsten sights along the barrel of her gun. Beside her, Manny pulls the pin of a grenade and cocks his arm back. Kirsten squints, her finger tightening—

With a cry that is not quite a shout of triumph, not a scream of fear, either, she lunges to her feet, knocks Manny down, and tosses the grenade clear of the oncoming howitzer, into a mass of milling droids that seem suddenly to have lost their bearings, a tangled mass like a circle dance that has lost the music.

“What—!”

“Look who’s driving, Manny! It’s the goddam cavalry!”

From the corner of her eye, Koda catches a flurry of movement behind one of the upended Humvees, a pale blonde head and a dark one. A wash of relief goes through her, so strong it almost rocks her where she sits. Safe.

A grin, feral as a wolf’s, pulls her lips back from her teeth as she swings the gun around on its footprint and plows it into the nearest pack of droids. Their metal hides crunch and pop as she pulls back on the stick, raising the front of her gun carriage to slam down on them, grinding them under the treads that loop inexorably on and on, carrying her over the wreckage and into the next squad of them, even as they raise their arms and begin to empty their magazines at her, spraying lead over the housing of the engine and the treads, shooting indiscriminately to kill her or disable the howitzer itself.

All along the battle front, the droids turn to face the new attack, tangling in knots around each of the four field guns. One of the mortar drivers slumps in his seat, only to be pulled aside as his second slips into his place and charges into a line of droids near the end of the wall. Koda swerves again to mow down a contingent that has turned, running as best their mechanical legs will take them, for the breach in the first wall, then takes another clutch as they split off from the main body and make for the edge of the road. The grinding of the guns treads brings with it a fierce joy, part battle-lust, part relief, part astonishment at her own competence. But you have done this before, a laughing voice says in her head. We did not meet for the first time, there beyond the trees.

For a fraction of a second, the puma’s face passes before her, eyes golden with the sun that now shines full on the field before her. Then it is gone, replaced with the enemy who fall beneath her, noticeably fewer now, their fire slackening. A little more to do, and all is done.

Behind the barriers, Maggie’s forces have gathered themselves, raining their last grenades and LAAWS rockets into the droids’ rear, driving them toward the crushing treads of the guns. Above the racket of the engines and the slackening gunfire, roaring down on them from beyond the western wall, comes the high whine of tank engines and the rattle of treads on pavement: an armored column bearing down on them. Tacoma returning? Or droids? She has no way of knowing. Driving hard to intercept a line of stragglers making for the ramp, Koda cuts them off just as one of them raises its arm, raking the side of the howitzer with rounds that sing by like hornets. Dakota feels her second slump against her back, wet warmth gushing down her back and legs. Something impacts her right arm just behind the wrist, and her hand on the stick goes limp. Swearing, she shifts slightly to get a grip on it with her left, still feeling nothing as a red stain soaks into sleeve of her shirt and spreads, wetting her pants leg where the arm lies useless

With a crash the returning tanks hump up onto the pavement from their detour around the back wall, Tacoma riding outlier in his Jeep beside them. A great relief washes through Koda, and she lets her gun grind to a halt as she watches the armored behemoths stream by her now, chasing down the few enemy left as they attempt to flee.

It is over.

The pain of her arm slams into her, then, taking her breath away. Maggie emerges from behind her bunker, Kirsten and Manny from theirs, making for her where she still perches above them on the gun carriage. Awkwardly she releases her harness, sliding out from under the dead weight behind her, and begins the climb down. Halfway to the pavement she slips, but Kirsten’s hands are there to receive her, steadying her as she finds her feet. All around them lies the wreckage of the droid army, with much of their own. Victory has come at cost, cost they may not be able to recover.

“You’re hurt!”

Kirsten’s voice, sharp with alarm, cuts into her thought, and she musters a smile for her lover. “Hey,” she says softly. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

A frown knits Maggie’s brows. “Let’s see.” She continues to scowl as Koda peels back the sleeve of her shirt, carefully turning the arm to see the wound more clearly. The frown relaxes. “You’re right, nothing broken. Let’s get you to Shannon.”

“No,” she says, with a wave of her good hand. “I need to help with the wounded—”

“Which you can’t do with a bum wrist. Come on, cuz.” Manny takes her by her good elbow, firmly propelling her in the direction of the aid station. “Let Shannon bandage that and get some Novocaine into it.”

Kirsten says quietly, “Koda, please. You can’t go bleeding on your patients.” Dakota gives her a long, look, taking in the toll of battle printed on the dark flesh under Kirsten’s eyes, in the haunted gaze that turns on her with both relief and hunger.

It is easier not to resist. Taking off her helmet, she lets her hair spill down her back, the two hawk feathers brushing the side of her face. From above her comes a scream, fierce and high, and she looks up to see broad wings spread against the blue, copper-colored tail catching the light. “Look,” she says. “Wiyo.”

“She agrees with me,” Kirsten says steadily.

With her good hand, Koda runs a finger down Kirsten’s cheek, tracing the spider shape painted there. “Iktomi Zizi. Cante sukye.”

At that, Maggie lays a firm hand on Manny’s arm and steers him down the line to check on the troops, the injured and the dead. Around her, the men and women of Ellsworth are beginning to deal with the aftermath of battle, gathering up the wounded and dead. Gently, Kirsten laces her fingers through Koda’s. “Let’s go home,” she says. “This is over.”

“Over,” Koda echoes. A chill runs down her spine. “For now.”

Without further protest, she allows Kirsten to lead her to the medical station, and from there to an APC with other wounded. She will tend them when they reach the Base.

For now, she braces herself against the cold metal side of the truck, and holds tightly as she can to Kirsten beside her.

Cante mitawa.

Now and forever.

CHAPTER FIFTY

THE SUN RISES slowly, finally clearing the eastern ridge. Simmons, on the tail end of his shift in the guard post, leans over and rubs his eyes as the first rays glint off of something just beyond the bushes close in. “Holy fuck!” he grunts, elbowing the half-asleep Roberts. “Do you see that?!?”

“See what?” Roberts leans out, then ducks back in again, quick. “Shit! Shoot it!”

“With what? My dick? The land-grubbers took every bit of ammo not nailed down, you idiot!”

“Well? What the fuck should we do?”

“Get the General. She should still be in her quarters.”

“Huh uh. I just got these stripes, Simmons. I’m not gonna go in there and let her rip ‘em off with her teeth for wakin’ her up. No thanks.”

“Would you rather stay up here while that thing draws a bead on your hairy ass?”

Roberts thinks about it for a moment before bolting for the stairs, taking them three at a time and almost tripping over his own feet.

“Asshole,” Simmons sighs before turning back toward the metal thing bristling with weapons that seems content to just stand there, watching.

Ten minutes later, Roberts returns, Maggie in tow. Aside from a few bruises and scrapes, and bags beneath her eyes that would make a Samsonite salesman jealous, she seems none the worse for wear. She returns Simmons’ salute crisply, then takes a look out the bolthole, eyes narrowing as she glimpses the military droid and his just arrived buddies standing in a semi-circular formation. “Well, well, well, look who’s come for breakfast. Have they done anything?” she asks Simmons without moving her gaze from their newly arrived friends.

“No, Ma’am. Just standing there.”

Suddenly, the air is rent by a loud piercing blast that resembles an air-raid siren, though lower in volume. Roberts covers his ears, then quickly drops his hands after the glare from Maggie all but melts his fillings. He looks at her, shamefaced, as the siren blast tapers off, then starts up again. The pulses are regular, and Maggie can just begin to get a handle on them when Simmons breaks in, his voice loud to compensate. “It’s Morse, Ma’am. It’s telling us to listen.”

“I got that part, Corporal,” Maggie replies dryly. “Listen to what, though?”

Simmons shrugs. “I dunno, Ma’am. Just keeps repeating ‘listen’ over and over again.”

Maggie crosses her arms over her chest. “Alright, you bastards, I’m listening.”

The two men turn as a noise from behind them attracts their notice, and they stiffen to granite attention as Kirsten enters the watchhouse, Koda following, fiddling with the pristine white bandage covering her forearm. “What’s going on?” Kirsten asks, eyeing Maggie directly.

“See for yourself,” Maggie replies, stepping aside and allowing Kirsten a clear line to the bolthole.

Kirsten peers out, unconsciously easing slightly to the side to allow Koda room beside her. Dakota’s eyebrow edges upward as a white flag is raised from the center of the android grouping. The pair exchange glances before returning their gazes back to the area just outside the front gate.

“Je-sus!” Kirsten breathes as the androids break rank and none other than Sebastian Hart steps through, white flag in one hand, battery powered bullhorn in the other. He’s dressed in the same black uniform that clothes the other humans within the ranks of the androids, and aside from being a bit pale and gaunt, Kirsten thinks he actually looks better than he did when he left the base.

“Guess we know the answer to that question,” Koda mutters as Hart looks around, then lifts to bullhorn to his mouth.

“Hail the base!”

Kirsten looks to Koda, who shakes her head, very slightly, in the negative.

“Hail the base!” A beat later, “I come to parley under a flag of truce! Who speaks for you, base?”

“Let him lay out his hand,” Maggie murmurs, coming to stand behind Kirsten and touching her shoulder as she looks over the smaller woman’s head.

“What hand?” Kirsten asks. “We’ve decimated his troops! What could he possibly be bargaining for?”

“We won’t know until he asks,” Koda replies, keen eyes narrowing on the man below.

“Does no one speak for you, then?”

Maggie feels a moment of pride as the entire base keeps its silence, like an abandoned castle of a long-ago time. She senses the eyes and the attention of those who stand below and wait, and blesses them for their loyalty.

“Very well, then. If you will not speak to me, I will speak to you.” A brief pause, as he surveys the exterior of the base, much as a deposed emperor who knows his palace will again soon be his. An expression more smirk than smile flicks across his lips before they’re covered, once again, by the bullhorn. “I’ve worked with many of you, most of you, for a long number of years on this base. You know me. You know my honesty, and you know my integrity.”

Maggie snorts, shaking her head in patent disbelief. The others remain silent, though their thoughts are easily read through the set of their bodies.

“And because of your knowledge of my honesty, my integrity, I feel it is safe for me to stand before you and say this: People of Ellsworth, you are being lied to.”

“What the fuck?!?”

Kirsten is kept from diving out the bolthole and taking on the ex-general by a quick hand to the belt of her pants. She grounds on Dakota, glaring, color high. “What are—?”

“Shh. Just wait a minute. Let’s see what he has to say.”

“But—.”

“Don’t let him know he’s gotten to you, Kirsten,” Maggie interjects softly. “That’s his game.”

With a look of biting into a very sour lemon, Kirsten finally relents, shaking off the gentle arms holding her and stalking to the side of the knothole, away from the others. Koda looks after her with concern, but Maggie shakes her head, just once. Koda nods, and peers back through the knothole, elegant brows drawn down low over piercing eyes.

“To set the record perfectly straight, ladies and gentlemen of Ellsworth, you were not lied to when you were told that there had been an android uprising. No, all of you were part of that horror, seeing sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and loved ones taken away from you or killed before you. No, that certainly is not the lie. Nor is it an untruth that some of those women, your daughters, your mothers, your relatives and dear friends were taken and incarcerated against their wills, defiled in the most horrendous of ways. You have seen such horrors with your own eyes, or heard them with your own ears. A great abomination has been visited upon our country, people of Ellsworth, a great abomination that continues still!”

“This asshole missed his calling,” Maggie mutters. “He should have run for office.”

“Or the pulpit,” Koda smirks.

“The lie,” Hart continues, “concerns these beings standing beside me. They, ladies and gentlemen, are not your enemy!”

“That’s it,” Kirsten grumbles, heading for the door and pushing the guards aside like tenpins. “Let me at that overbearing, underachieving, bald-headed, drunken asshole motherfu—.”

“Woah there, spitfire,” Maggie says, grabbing Kirsten by the arm and hauling her back inside. “Let him finish his lies, then you can go out and knock him every which way from Sunday, ok?”

“You know,” Kirsten remarks, yanking her arm from the General’s grip and glaring at her, “I’m getting mighty tired of being manhandled and told what to do here. I thought I was the one who gave the orders. Remember? Me? The frikkin President of the U S of A?”

“You need to keep your calm, Kirsten,” Maggie replies as the two guards look away, uncomfortable. “You’re playing right into his hands. This brand of warfare might be a little more subtle than what we just went through, but its war just the same. Please, just listen to the rest of it, ok?”

“It’s only going to get worse.”

“No doubt it will, but we all know he’s lying, so….”

“These androids standing with me now are what they have always been: a boon to all mankind. There is no harm in them. They live only to serve. They are programmed only to serve. Not to kill, but to preserve life, to aid…life. These very androids, and hundreds, thousands like them, have gone through the jailhouses, the detention centers, the hospitals and rescued thousands of your loved ones.”

“He lies!” Kirsten growls, moving forward again, but stopping herself just at the edge of the bolthole, hands clenched tight over the lip, knuckles as bloodless as her lips. “He fucking lies!”

“Loved ones who even now, as I speak to you, are receiving the very best of care administered by beings just like these who stand in solidarity with me before all of you.” Lowering the bullhorn for a moment, Hart looks down at the ground, much like a keynote speaker, or a preacher, who is gathering himself for a momentous announcement.

In the guardshack above, Kirsten’s jaws clench tighter and a thick vein throbs to prominence at her temple.

“Androids, as you know, must be programmed to go against their natural actions. They must be programmed to kill instead of save, to harm instead of help. And I tell you, ladies and gentlemen of Ellsworth, there is only one person, one person in this country of ours with the means, the opportunity, the ability, and the reprehensible morality to get that job done. The one person who was seen, and captured, at Minot, the world’s largest android construction factory in the process of aiding and abetting the enemy, disguised as the enemy herself! Disguised so well that her co-conspirators had no idea who she really was!! The one person in this country who stood to gain the most, to attain the highest of peaks, to sit at the head of this great and undaunted country.

“The very person who lives with you now, who pretends to share your lives, your worries, your goals, but who is, in fact, continuing her quest for world domination by reprogramming our good and safe androids into brutal killing machines.

“And that person, ladies and gentlemen, that person is none other than the woman who would have the audacity to call herself YOUR President. Kirsten King. Traitor. Abominator. Killer of innocents.”

The rage washes over Kirsten in red waves. Her fingers clench into the palms of her hands, itching for the small cold curve of a trigger under them; her blood slams in her ears. She pushes away from the wall and steps up to the opening, shouldering Maggie aside, reaching for the sidearm of one of the guards—Simmons, she thinks—where he attempts to shrink himself small in a corner.

That’s what he wants. The thought comes to her from somewhere cold, deep in her mind. He wants us to lose it. That’ll prove he’s right, at least start some people thinking we want to silence him.

Very carefully, she lets go of Simmons’ gun, handing it to Koda. She meets her lover’s eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to give him anything.”

“I know you won’t,” Koda replies, handing the gun back to Simmons and turning Kirsten back toward the bolthole, large hands resting comfortably on her shoulders. “Let’s just listen to the rest of his spiel, and then go on to doing something productive with our day.”

“I have come to parley,” Hart continues. “This country cannot rebuild itself and achieve the greatness for which God has intended until such a monster is removed from her self-appointed post. I wish, all of us here wish, that this be done peacefully. Open your gates and we will retrieve the good “Doctor” and you all have my word that you will be able to go on about your lives as best you see fit. If, however, her words have so brainwashed you that you are unable to see the truth that lies at your feet, we will be compelled to use force. It is a force that, I am sad to say, you will not survive. The battle you have just endured will be like a campfire to the blaze of true Armageddon.”

Lowering the megaphone, he appears to touch something at his belt. Within seconds, the formerly empty clearing is suddenly populated with androids, appearing as if from the ether.

“Jesus Christ! Where the hell did they come from?”

Kirsten turns and looks helplessly at Maggie.

“Simmons!” Maggie barks. “Get down to communications on the double and find out why we’re standing here with our asses hanging in the wind! Now!!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

As Simmons disappears, Koda reaches for a pair of high intensity binoculars hanging from a hook on the wall. Putting them up to her eyes, she adjusts the focus, and whistles. Wordlessly, she hands them to Kirsten, whose jaw drops. “There’s got to be more than a thousand out there!”

Shouldering in, Maggie grips the proffered binoculars and brings them up to her eyes. Her lips go tight, a bloodless slash against the deep ebony of her face.

“How…couldn’t we know about this?” Kirsten’s voice is soft in the silence of the shack.

Simmons steps back into the shack, followed by Tacoma, who eases his bulk into the already crowded room with some difficulty. His expression is apologetic. “We can’t read ‘em,” he says, peering over Maggie’s head and squinting as the sunlight reflects off of highly polished armor. “I don’t know if they’re jamming us or what, but all of our scanning equipment says there’s an empty field out there.”

“Shit. And my damn computer’s totally trashed.”

“I’m not sure if that would help or not,” Tacoma replies, shrugging his shoulders. “I just…”

“I realize,” Hart resumes, “that this is not an easy decision to make, and I am sorry, deeply and truly sorry, that Dr. King has put you in the position of having to make it. That said, since I am a fair man, as most of you are aware, I will give you five hours to hand the good doctor over. Rest assured, she will be treated fairly and receive due process as is her right under the law. A law we follow. Even if others don’t.”

He pulls the megaphone away for the final time, looking supremely smug.

Kirsten’s summing up is succinct.

“Fuck.”

“Ok, let’s think about this for a moment here,” Maggie says, turning away from the bolthole. “Kirsten, are there any of your ‘Traitor Tommies’ lying around anywhere?”

“I left ten behind at the factory in case we needed them later,” Kirsten responds, rubbing at the back of her neck, where a huge knot of tension has merrily taken up residence, “but I can’t activate them without my computer.” Her eyes brighten. “I’ll head down there—.”

“No.”

Kirsten stares at Maggie as if she’s suddenly grown a second head and is preparing to use it to commit cannibalism upon her person. “Wha-at?”

“You need to get out of here, Kirsten. And not down to that damn factory, which is likely crawling with Hart’s new groupies. You need to get somewhere far, far away from here.”

“Now, wait just a minute here. I’m not going to be chased away from this base by some asshole with an agenda. I don’t care how many ‘friends’ he has, and how big his guns are. No how, no way, so just put that out of your head right now.”

“Kirsten, it’s not that.” Maggie smiles, a little, caught out and knowing it. “Ok, it’s not just that.”

“What is it, then?” Kirsten’s arms fold themselves across her chest, implacable armor against Maggie’s coming words.

“Listen to me, please.” Maggie heaves a sigh. Her hand lifts, and she begins ticking points off on her long fingers. “Your computer is gone. The code that you risked your life at Minot for is gone. And with it is any chance of you being able to turn off those damn droids, not just for now, for this damn battle, but forever. There has got to be some place, some other place, where you can get what you need to get to do the job you need to do.”

“But I can do that after—.”

“No. No, you can’t. Don’t you see, Kirsten? Hart’s primary purpose is to destroy you and all the goodness in this world, and he’s not gonna stop until it’s done. Whether it’s this battle, or the next, or the next. He’s got more manpower than we could ever hope to possess, more firepower, more everything. Our only chance, this damn world’s only chance, is for you to cut his troops off at the source. Now. Not later. Because later will likely never come. You need to go. And you,” she says, turning to Koda, “need to guide her.”

Kirsten looks at her lover, horrified when she realizes that Dakota is actually considering Maggie’s insane order. “Koda, you can’t possibly—.”

The rest of Kirsten’s words fade down to a meaningless drone as another voice, one well remembered if little heard, weaves its way through Dakota’s brain, like a mist before the dawn. “I have something to tell you: do not hesitate to flee when the time comes. Victory will follow you. For the sake of all the People, two-footed, four-footed, winged and creeping, you must do what you least wish to, when you least wish to. I will be here waiting when you return.”

“We need to leave.” Dakota’s voice is low, and tortured, as if the words are being forced from her by something, or someone, beyond her control. They set badly in her mouth, but their truth is undeniable in the hard shine of her eyes.

“What? What are you saying? We can’t run!”

“We need to leave,” she repeats, trance-like. “We need to find the answers. They’re not here. Victory will follow us.”

“Dakota, you’re not making any sense!”

Ignoring Kirsten for the moment, Koda looks over at Maggie, eyebrow raised. The general smiles, and nods. “We’ll do okay, I think. I still have a few aces up my sleeve. Aces even Hart doesn’t suspect exist. It’ll be hard, but…we’ll do okay.”

Koda nods, and a subtle transference occurs between the two women; one that Kirsten can’t, to her great consternation, read. Then the blazing blue eyes turn back to her, and the young scientist is once again captured effortlessly within their pristine depths. “This is the right thing to do, my love. It’s the only thing we can do and hope to win in the end. Anything else will only delay the inevitable. I know you know this…deep inside. Look. You’ll see.”

But Kirsten doesn’t need to look. She’s known the truth from the very second Maggie suggested leaving. It sits across her shoulders like a yoke, like a cross, growing heavier with each passing second, each passing thought.

“I’ll help you carry it,” Koda says, reading her effortlessly. “Together, to the end of whatever journey the gods have planned for us.”

“Where will we go?” Kirsten asks, beginning to accept the inevitable.

“It’s your call,” Dakota replies, reaching out and grasping her lover by the hand, a hand that is cold, slightly damp, but strong and steady. “Where is Westerhaus’ inner sanctum? That might be the most direct route.”

“Silicon Valley, but god, that’s so far….”

“We’ll get there. Somehow, we’ll get there. Unless there’s somewhere else that you think is better? You’re the boss here.”

Kirsten thinks for a moment, then nods. “If we want to stop this shit at the source, we need to go to the source. You’re right.”

“Great,” Maggie interjects. “Then it’s settled. Manny will take you out with the Cheyenne.”

“The river?” Kirsten asks, confused. “How will we get past all those droids?”

Maggie smirks. “Just go over to hangar twenty two. He’s waiting for you.”

Kirsten scowls. “You had this planned all along, didn’t you.”

“We knew it would be an eventuality, Kirsten. It’s happening a little sooner than we expected, sure, but the sooner you get out of here, the sooner we can all breathe a little easier.” Her smile softens as she closes the two steps between them, and looks down into Kirsten’s clear, beautiful eyes. “You’re our hope, Kirsten. And I, for one, am glad of it.” Leaning forward, she brushes a soft kiss against her lips, then pulls away. “Good luck.”

*

Maggie’s keys flash in the early sun as she tosses them to Simmons. “Take my Jeep. Take Dr. Rivers and President King home to pick up their things. Then take them out to the flightline. Hangar 22.”

Simmons’s eyes go wide, his eyebrows ascending his forehead in surprise. “Hangar 22?” he squeaks, making a dive for the keys that ends in a two-handed catch.

“You got it. Koda.” Dakota walks into Maggie’s open arms, returning her hard embrace and the chaste kiss on her cheek. “You know what you have to do. Be safe.”

“You’re in more danger than we’ll be,” Koda says, stepping back, letting her hands linger a moment in the other woman’s. “Tóksha aké wanchinyankin kte.”

“We’ll make it. Until then. Kirsten.” Maggie hugs Kirsten tightly, whispering something in her ear that Koda cannot quite make out. It is something that makes her smile, though, and Kirsten says softly. “Don’t worry. I will.”

“Go, now. We’re going to stall them as long as we can. We’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

With an arm around each of their shoulders, Maggie half hugs, half pushes, them both out the door. Koda’s last sight of her is a straight-backed silhouette at the view slit, raising the binoculars again to her eyes.

They pass the ride home in silence. Kirsten, regardless of Simmons in the front seat, leans into Koda’s arm, clinging to her. Her hand in Dakota’s feels cold as the frozen dead of the Hurley farm, all those months ago. And with reason. It comes to her that this is the second time Kirsten has been forced out of a place of safety and purpose and thrust into the unknown with the fate of her world and her species riding squarely on her shoulders. At least for her brief sojourn at Shiloh, and again at Ellsworth, that burden had been shared. “Hey,” Koda says softly. “We’ll make it. We’re a hell of a team.”

“What about Maggie? And Tacoma? How—”

“The best way they can, cante sukye. They’re warriors, blood and bone. They’ll hold.” Her fingers tighten involuntarily on Kirsten’s shoulder. “However they have to, they’ll hold.”

“However,” Kirsten repeats, her voice flat.

The words hang in the air between them, unspoken. Kirsten will not say them; neither will Dakota, who knows that words have power. Even at the cost of their lives. Even if they can only hold the enemy temporarily.

The Jeep buckets up into the driveway, and Koda gives her lover’s hand a last squeeze. “Take Asi out to pee. I’ll start packing.” To Simmons she adds, “Fifteen minutes.”

Dakota shoves the kitchen door open, Kirsten on her heels. Tacoma stands at the table, stuffing a backpack with MRE’s and various more palatable items; Koda’s quick glance takes in oatmeal, a plastic zip bag of sugar, salt, what must be the last of their meager stash of coffee. Her brother looks up from his task for a second, smiling. “I packed up some clothes for you. Not much, but I figure you can get more on the road. Go check if I’ve missed anything.” To Kirsten he adds, “Asi’s done his duty. You just need to get his leash on him.”

“Thanks,” Kirsten says, bolting for the living room and the seldom-used lead hanging on the hall tree. Koda follows, veering off into the bedroom where a small rucksack stands open on the dresser. A quick inspection shows that Tacoma has packed a pair of jeans and a shirt apiece, all their socks and underwear, extra boots. A Colt .45 automatic and its ammunition belt lie on the bed, with her bow and quiver. A soldier’s choices. She adds toothpaste and brushes to the pack—no need to go without until they have to—a couple bars of soap, a bottle of aspirin and an elastic athletic bandage from the medicine cabinet. They will have to be prepared to go on foot at least some of the time; a pulled muscle or a turned ankle cannot be allowed to slow them down. She straps on the gun, shifting its weight to lie comfortably against her thigh.

She zips the bag and hoists it onto one shoulder, testing the weight. She slings her bow and its arrows over the other. Not bad. Not bad at all. In the hall, a sharp bark registers Asi’s protest at being collared and leashed, together with Kirsten’s murmured, “Sorry, guy. But we’re gonna have to strap you in when we get to the chopper.”

“Ready?” Koda emerges from the bedroom, shutting the door carefully behind her. The house is no one’s home now, but her memories, and Kirsten’s, deserve a kind of privacy. Say goodbye.

Asi whines again, this time plaintively. He knows something is not right. “Easy, boy,” Kirsten says again, “easy.”

In the kitchen, Tacoma stands ready with their provisions. Koda reaches for the pack, but Kirsten forestalls her. “I’ll take that,” she says, and slips quickly out onto the carport, Asi tugging on his leash.

Tacoma’s face is solemn, but a glint in his dark eyes betrays a flash of humor. “You’re marrying a tactful one, tanski.”

Dakota takes his hands in her own. “Promise me—”

“I’ll be careful,” he says quietly. “That’s all the promise I can make.”

“I know.” She looks away for a moment. Then, “When we went to scout the battleground, Igmu Tanka spoke to me. She said that we must do what we least wish to, when we least wish to. That victory would follow.”

The lines around Tacoma’s eyes deepen, and the smile spreads to his mouth. “She’s a warrior spirit, with a warrior’s honor. If she says you will be successful, then you will.”

“She said we would come back, that she would be waiting.”

He touches her cheek lightly. “Then you must be careful, too, and not only for Iktomi Zizi.”

Koda raises her hand to cover his, not willing to lose the contact. “I will.”

“I dreamed last night. I saw all of us back at the ranch, with Ate and Ina. You and Kirsten. Me and—” He breaks off abruptly, a dark flush spreading across his face.

“Darius,” she supplies, smiling.

“Hau. Darius. And a little black-haired girl with green eyes. It’s not hopeless for us here, tanski. It only looks that way.”

She pulls him close, holding hard for a long moment. “Well then,” she says. ” We’re off. Come on outside and say goodbye to your sister-in-law.”

*

“What the—”

“Hell is that?” Koda finshes the sentence for Kirsten.

“That” sits on the tarmac in front of the apparently off-limits until now Hangar 22, an aeronautical engineer’s nightmare of a craft. Roughly the size and general shape of a Chinook, its slate-blue belly and tail have been sleeked for speed behind a pointed nose like a bomber’s. Wings protrude from its flanks, a jet engine underslung from each, each sprouting double co-axial rotors from a mast that holds their drooping blades up and away from the body of the craft. A smaller engine, and a tail rotor, adorn its rear. Its forward door stands open, with a short flight of boarding steps leading into its dark interior.

Manny, flight-suited and helmeted, grins at them from behind the half-loosened oxygen mask that covers most of the lower half of his face. “It’s your taxi, ladies.” He relieves Kirsten of their provisions, pausing a moment to ruffle Asi’s fur where he dances at the end of his leash. “Now haul it, and let’s get the hell outa Dodge.”

The interior of the craft is configured for MEDVAC, with brackets for stretchers and half a dozen jump seats, hardly more than round steel stools, cantilevered out from the wall. Manny pulls down two for them, then clips Asi’s leash to a D-ring in the floor, crossing a pair of safety belts over his chest. “That’ll hold him. You two okay?”

“We’re fine,” Koda answers, clipping her own belt in place. “Where are we going?”

“I’m gonna try to set you down a couple hundred miles into Wyoming. She may look weird, but this baby’s a true VTOL. We can put down any reasonably flat place that’s wider than the wingspan, even in the middle of the woods.” He looks around him, apparently satisfied that they and their gear are safely stowed, then pulls two pairs of earphones down from a rack above them. “Wear these. They’ve got mikes attached. Yell if you need me; we’ve also got autopilot.” With that he disappears into the forward cabin, and a moment later, the rotors set up a steadily increasing racket. Out the port, Koda can see them gradually lifting, then standing straight out from their masts as the spin faster and faster. The turbos cut in, their whine rising octave by octave into a steady scream. Asi howls in sympathy.

“Oh man.” Kirsten grins at Koda, rolling her eyes. “And to think how I used to bitch about the morning red-eye out of Washington,” she shouts.

Koda flashes her a smile in return. “The Concorde champagne flight it ain’t! Put on your earphones!”

Koda slips on her own, and blessed quiet descends. Beneath her, the floor of the craft seems to lurch forward. Then they are up and airborne in a surprisingly smooth sweep, lifting straight up into the bright morning. The shadow of the rotors flashes across the port as she watches the hangar and the base recede below her. A part of her life remains there, a part she may lose in spite of dreams and visions. Silently she takes Kirsten’s hand.

“Jesus,” Kirsten whispers, looking down at the long line of droids laid out below them like a malignantly sparkling river. Her hand clenches on Koda’s to the point of pain. “How can we leave them to that?” she demands, eyes sparking fire of their own. “How?!?”

“Because we must,” Dakota replies, voice soft, sad. Her right hand comes up to curl over the one in her left. “Because we must.”

They turn west toward Wyoming and the beginning of the quest before them.

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

GRINNING, KODA PULLS away from Manny, giving his short braid a little tug. “Get back safe, and good luck.”

“You too, shic’eshi. Be careful. Be safe.”

“We will.”

Stepping around her lover, Kirsten smiles at Manny. There is a trace of uncertainty in the expression. Though things between them have warmed considerably over the months, there is still a subtle distance between the two that, quite suddenly, Kirsten doesn’t want to be there anymore. “You’re a brave man, Manny. Good luck. Fight well.”

Reaching for her stiffly extended hand, he gives her an ‘aw, what the hell’ grin and pulls her against him in a tight embrace, kissing both of her cheeks soundly before pulling away. “You take good care of my shic’eshi, understand?” he teases.

“I swear it,” Kirsten replies, deadly serious. “And you take good care of yourself, and Tacoma, and Maggie, and everyone else. I expect you all to be there, and happy, when we get back.”

“Count on it. I’m a Rivers.” He thumps his chest proudly. “We wear away mountains, given enough time.”

“That I don’t doubt,” Kirsten returns, finally breaking into a smile. “I mean it, Manny. Be careful, alright?”

“Will do, Ms. Prez.” He sketches a cocky bow, grins, winks at his cousin, and, in the blink of an eye, disappears back into the cockpit of his Picasso-nightmare inspired ‘copter. A second later, the thing is airborne and over the horizon.

In its wake, a silence so profound that not even the ever-present wind soughing through the boughs of the large pines surrounding them can penetrate, descends, and Kirsten shivers.

“You alright?” Koda asks, stepping closer and slipping an arm around her lover’s shoulders.

Leaning her head against her lover’s strong chest, Kirsten takes in the world that surrounds her. Trees, trees, and more trees, as far as the eye can see. The wind, now coming to her, carries with it the sweet scent of life, underlined with a darker, richer, almost secret scent that she can only identify as decay. And amidst this, she stands alone, save for the strong body at her back, promising her protection and comfort. And love beyond measure.

Not so alone now, she thinks. The thought brings with it a small, secret smile, and a tiny thrill of joy suffuses her chest, warming her from within even as Koda’s radiant head warms her from without.

“Yeah,” she says finally. “I think I am.”

“Good.”

They stand that way, body pressed to body, for a long span of moments, content to allow the forest carry its secrets to them, one at a time, absorbing the peace and contentment that seems to be theirs for the wishing. She can almost…almost…forget what lies ahead, and behind, and resolves to take full advantage of this small slice of peace for as long as it is gifted unto them.

Finally, though, the words push forth from their place in her chest. “So, what now?”

Koda smiles and slips her arm away, digging her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. “How do you feel about camping?”

Kirsten pretends to give the question serious thought. “The Beverly-Hills-‘cabin’-with-all-amenities-and-you’ll-never-see-so-much-as-a-mouse-dropping kind of camping, or the ‘let’s grab us a pup tent and a couple cases of beer and shoot us up something to mount on the wall’ kind of camping?”

“I’d say the second,” Koda responds, chuckling, “minus the beer, unless you’re suddenly partial to the stuff.”

“Nah. Never developed much of a taste for it. A little of Maggie’s sipping whiskey might go down real nice on a cool night, though.”

Koda’s grin broadens. “I’ll see what I can come up with, then.” She looks around, getting her bearings. “I’m pretty familiar with this area. My grandfather used to take us out here sometimes when the woods around our place got a little too easy for us kids to figure out. Unless it’s been torn down in the interim, there should be a pretty good camping and hunting shop not too far to the north of here. We can stock up on the supplies we’ll need and start off from there.”

“How will we get around?”

“Walking seems the best bet, for now at least. I want us off the main roads as much as possible. We don’t know how many unfriendlies are still around patrolling, and we’re prime candidates for a trip to the local rape ward if they don’t recognize you. And if they do….”

Kirsten doesn’t need Dakota to finish that particular sentence for her. She well knows the size and shape of the axe hanging over her head, but is determined to push through, no matter how thin the thread holding it up there might be. “That’ll be pretty slow going, though,” she muses.

“We might be able to rustle up a couple of mountain bikes. Horses, if we’re lucky. That should speed things up some, but for now, our feet are our best bet.”

“Lead on, then, MacDuff,” Kirsten jokes, passing the leadership of this particular part of their quest on with a sweeping hand gesture that earns her a fond swat on the backside. Her happy laughter is answered by the chirping of birds, and for this one second in time, all is right in Kirsten King’s world.

*

“Wow,” Kirsten remarks to the woman standing before her, grinning. “If we were playing ‘Cowboys and Indians’ right now, I’d be mighty confused.”

“Good thing we’re not, then,” Koda replies, chuckling and looking past Kirsten into the mirror that hangs along one wall. A soft flannel in red and black hangs open over a tight, white ribbed tank top, which in turn is tucked into soft bluejeans whose cuffs are, in their turn, tucked into calf high moccasins with thick treads. A gun is holstered and hanging low on her right hip, a hunting knife at her left. A rifle strap crisscrosses her chest with the strap that holds her arrow quiver over her back. Her black Stetson is in its customary position atop her head, though a hank of braided hair hangs down, twined with the two hawk feathers she’s yet to remove. Her medicine bag lays close against the hollow of her neck, completing the picture. Leaning against one leg is a vacu-sack, all the rage in hiking equipment before the androids had made such a pleasure an outright necessity for so many. Clothes and sundries are stored in the roomy sack, then vacuum sealed, cutting their total bulk down to almost nil. The pack would fit easily over her hips and lower back, leaving her easy room to reach her weapons, should she have need for them. The tent is similarly stored.

Kirsten is dressed a bit more conservatively, in jeans and a T-shirt with a Gore-Tex jacket rolled in her pack. “Hey, look what I found back there!” She grins as she holds up her prize: a fully loaded solar laptop with all the amenities. “Damn thing’s about five pounds lighter than my old one and damn, it’s fast!!”

“Only you,” Koda grins, shaking her head.

“Yeah, well, get used to it, Vet. You’re marrying a geek. Our toys come with the territory.”

“Just as long as you’re the one carrying ‘em,” Koda jokes.

“Don’t you worry about that. I always carry my weight.”

“We’ll see.”

*

Already dressed in her flight suit, Maggie runs out to greet Manny as he swings out of the copter, instinctively ducking low to avoid decapitation by the still slowly spinning blades, thought in this particular model, that really isn’t much of a danger. The roters are high above her head. “You get em down safe?” she shouts.

“And sound,” Manny returns, giving her shoulder a quick, calming pat. “For better or worse, they’re on their way.”

“Good. One less thing to worry about.” Turning, she begins to walk back toward the command post, Manny at her left heel like a well trained dog at a show.

“How are things on this end?”

“Ten minutes to the deadline. We still can’t read em on radar or GPS. Line of sight only, and it’s not good.”

“Has anyone figured out where the hell they came from?” he asks. “I mean, where the fuck were they when the rest of their little friends were getting shredded?”

“Don’t know, and at this point, I don’t care,” the General retorts, dragging a hand through her hair. “We’ve gotta take em down as fast as they put em up. It’s the only way.”

“Got a plan for that?” Manny asks slyly.

“Don’t I always? C’mon.”

*

“You hungry yet?”

“Is supper gonna be MRE’s?”

“’Fraid so. Unless you want to stop and fish. I haven’t seen a whole lot of small game around here, yet, and I’m not too keen on lugging around sixty pounds of venison from killing one of those big bucks you keep scaring.”

Kirsten’s face brightens for a moment. Then the smile fades. “It was a nice thought. We’d better keep going as long as we have light, though.”

‘That won’t be long. Better start looking for a place to camp.”

Around them the shadows of pine and aspen lie long upon the ground. The low sun strikes glints of gold and silver from the rippling current of the Little Medicine Bow, visible here and there through the trees where the river bends west. Asi runs alongside, snuffling happily at fox scrapes, occasionally pausing to inspect the tangled roots that hump their way across their path. They have been walking steadily for almost eight hours, pausing only to take compass readings and refer to the Ordinance map Manny had stowed among their gear. Their course angles south and west from the clearing where they set down an hour after leaving Ellsworth, past the historic town of Medicine Bow and the Medicine Bow Range beyond. Here the land lies in sharp folds, rising gradually toward the higher peaks of the Sierra Madre, interspersed with streams and alpine meadows. They have seen no sign of humans. The woods and the river are as they might have been a thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, when her people first moved west into the plains, following the buffalo.

“It all seems so far away,” Kirsten says quietly, echoing her thoughts. “Almost like none of it ever happened.”

“This is Ina Maka’s place. Her time, not ours.” Above them, a dark speck appears against the sky where the gold sheen of the westering sun meets the deepening blue of the east. It circles above them, growing larger as it spirals downward. A cry floats down to them, high and wild and triumphant.

Koda stops in her tracks, staring upward. As the speck comes nearer, it takes on the shape of wings, a bright copper tail fanned out to the beating light, its feathers sheened like hammered bronze. The cry comes again, and the broad wings cup the air to slow the hawk’s descent. “My God,” Kirsten breathes. “My God.”

Koda does not speak, only stretches out her arm. Wiyo lights delicately on her wrist, protected only by the thin fabric of her shirt, and walks sideways up her arm to rest on her shoulder. She ruffles her feathers once, gives a small, incongruous chirp of greeting, and settles, ducking her head to preen under a wing. Koda strokes her lightly under the throat, drawing a finger across the white breast feathers and the dark belly-band below. Around them dusk thickens as they move west, toward the mountains, the sea beyond, the crimson sky.

*

The midday sun beats down on the tarmac in front of the main gate, making rippling the air above it. From where she stands in the watchtower, Maggie can see metallic glints here and there that must be either droids or armed humans, but they are scattered among the tumbled buildings across the road and in the open fields beyond. She has not been able to get good instrument readings on their number or their placement. All she knows is that there are too goddammed many of the goddammed things for her depleted forces to hold off. All she can do is keep their attention on the Base and stall them for as long as she can.

And give Dakota and Kirsten as much time as she can, measured out now in minutes, in hours at best.

Next to her, Andrews settles the muzzle of his rifle against the edge of the wall slit, squinting for perhaps the dozenth time through the scope. “Nothing there, Ma’am.”

Maggie sets down her own binoculars. “I know. They’re keeping under cover until the last minute.”

“But Hart’ll have to show himself.”

“Oh, yeah. And when he does . . ..” Maggie lets the words trail off. They both know what will happen when he has outlived his usefulness. To both sides.

The early summer heat settles about them, a stillness in the air that has nothing to do with the impending conflict. It is not so much the calm before a storm as it is the earth settling into its season despite the human goings-on that scrabble along its surface. The planet, for the first time in decades, is no longer at risk from its inhabitants. Only one species stands to vanish now, eradicated by its own hand. A bee, drawn by the scent of soap, buzzes lazily in front of Maggie’s nose, and she bats it away gently. On the road, nothing moves.

Then, “Here he comes,” Andrews says quietly.

Hart moves out from between the remains of a McDonald’s and an auto parts store, his blue shirt open at the collar, head bare. He no longer carries a flag of truce, only the bullhorn swinging from one hand. A snap and whine of feedback breaks the silence as it powers up. “Colonel Allen,” says the flat, amplified voice. “Do you have an answer? Open the gates and surrender your so-called ‘President,’ and we will leave you in peace.”

“Cover me,” Maggie says, and steps out of the guardroom onto the catwalk that circles the tower. Below her, Hart stands alone in the middle of the road, the breeze ruffling his grey hair and the beginnings of a patriarchal beard. She stands in the sun, letting him see the stars on her shoulders and the one on her helmet. Letting him see, too, that her hand rests on the butt of the pistol at her waist. With five generations of gospel singers and twenty years in command of troops behind her, she has no need for a megaphone. “Hart!” she shouts. “I have a deal to make you!”

“No deals, Colonel. Meet our demand or not: that is the only choice you have.”

Maggie smiles grimly. It is no more than she expects. But she says, “It’s not the only choice you have, though. What do you think your little metalhead pals out there are going to do with you when you’ve outlived your usefulness to them? Which is—” she glances ostentatiously at her watch—“right about now.”

Hart shakes his head, a gesture meant to convey a response more in sorrow than in anger. “Wise humans have allied themselves with these good beings, Colonel. I am not alone, I assure you, nor am I in any danger. Nor are you or the troops under your command, if you surrender Dr. King. Your answer, if you please.”

Crunch time. “Then you have it, and it is this.” She pauses, letting the moments draw out, in case any other human collaborators are listening. “President King has authorized me to allow you, and any other human who has had second thoughts about cooperation with the enemy, to return to the Base to face charges of desertion in time of war and treason. If you give yourselves up, your lives will be spared. If you don’t, you will face the full penalty of the law when you are captured.”

The expression on Hart’s face might almost be a smile. “And I offer you and your people the same amnesty, Colonel, provided that you hand the good Doctor over. Now.”

The parley, Maggie knows, is essentially useless. The best she can do is buy a few minutes’ more time to prepare, give Koda and Kirsten a few more moments to get that much further away. Once, long ago, she had seen a film in which the hero, about to be hanged, requested time to make his confession. After half an hour, he was still owning up to affairs with “Maisie, and Gertrude, and Lollie, four times with Wilhelmina, and twice with Tom.” And of course, rescue had arrived just as his captors’ patience ran out. Her own list, alas, is not nearly long enough to inspire either patience or awe. And what time she has is running out, with no help in sight. “Withdraw your android troops as a sign of your good faith, General. Then we can talk seriously.”

“Bring Dr. King outside the gates where we can see her—as a sign of your good faith, Colonel—and we can talk seriously.”

And that time has just run out. Hart and his cohorts have to have seen the Cheyenne take off; they have to have seen it return. They must at least suspect that Kirsten is no longer on the Base. They hope for an easy conquest, no more. Maggie steps away from the slit in the wall behind her. “Now, Andrews.”

The crack of his rifle shocks the bright afternoon air. Almost simultaneously, Hart’s head jerks back violently, spraying blood and brain matter in a cloud of droplets that catch the sun, sparkling like summer rain. The bullhorn drops to rattle along the pavement as he falls. There is no sound, no movement, from the buildings across the road, nothing to give away the enemy that she knows is there.

“Ma’am! Inside!” The door behind her jerks open, and Andrews pulls her bodily back into the guardroom by the straps of the Kevlar vest she has buckled over her flight suit.

“Out! Now!” she snaps, giving him a shove toward the stairs and pounding down behind him, two steps at a time. Pulling a walkie-talkie from her belt, she thumbs on the transmit button and yell “Fire!” into the speaker just as they sprint out of the tower at ground level and into the waiting Jeep. Andrews guns the engine, zero to sixty in what seems less than a breath. A shell from one of the big guns hastily dug into makeshift bunkers that morning arcs whistling overhead to land beyond the gate with a burst of fire and a roar. The concussion sends a shudder through the Jeep and rocks them against their seats.

“With luck, that got a few of ‘em,” Maggie shouts. And into her com, “Hold your fire until we have the enemy in sight or incoming! Don’t waste our ammo!”

“At least we got that son-of-a-bitch traitor,” Andrews says, satisfaction in the straight set of his mouth as they speed down the Base’s main drag toward Wing Headquarters and the guns arrayed around it. “That ought at least to send a message to any other collaborators out there.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says, her voice grim in her own ears. “But the message they’re gonna get real quick now is that we can’t hold out against them for more than a couple hours, maybe not that, if they launch a massed attack.”

“Remember the Alamo, huh?”

“Remember the Alamo,” she agrees. “But remember something else. We’ve still got a few Tomcats with some fight left in ‘em.”

*

A small fire is blazing cheerily in the center of a tiny clearing just west of the river. Next to it, coals lie in a ring of stones, and on those coals, two plump chukar roast away; lucky finds that Koda was able to take with a bow after Asi had accidentally flushed them from their hiding place while sniffing around in search of a good place to mark his territory.

The hero of the food getting venture is sprawled on his back near the fire, eyes open and alert to every movement, hoping beyond hope that his hard earned work will earn him some of the catch.

The savory scent of cooking partridge sets Kirsten’s belly to grumbling, and she covers it with a hand as Dakota looks up from her work and grins at her. “Won’t be much longer.”

“Thank god for that. I’m starved!”

“Did you finish setting up what you needed on that thing?”

Kirsten’s blush is luckily hidden by the glare from the computer’s large screen. “Um…yeah, just now,” she replies, quickly clicking off the solitaire game, mid-hand. The computer beeps out a mechanical sigh—it had been winning—and obligingly shuts down.

“Good.” Nodding, Dakota returns to her task of sharpening the hunting knife she’s used on the birds. As Kirsten looks on, she experiences a sense of déjà vu so strong that she wonders, albeit briefly, if she’s undergoing an actual time transfer. The woman sitting next to her looks exactly the same, minus the hawk feathers and much of the clothing Koda now wears. The weapon she sharpens so carefully by the firelight is not a knife, but a sword, well used, and well loved. She looks down at herself, noting absently the similar lack of clothing, and sees, not a computer, but a flattened piece of parchment. A quill and small inkpot sit to her right.

The dark, glossy head looks up from its work, deep blue eyes meeting hers with the same look of total adoration and devotion, and Kirsten can’t help but smile until it feels as if her face is about to split in two.

A dark eyebrow lifts. “Are you alright?”

Kirsten blinks, and the déjà vu, or time travel, or whatever it is that she has experienced, is gone, and a perfectly normal looking Dakota Rivers looks back at her, a question in her eyes.

Taking off her glasses, Kirsten rubs her eyes. “Just…processing the day, I guess.”

“Mm.”

Taking a quick peek, she sees that Koda is already back to her sharpening, and lets go a small sigh of relief. Closing her laptop completely, she sets it to the side and stands, stretching out muscles pleasantly tired from their long hike. Simple physical tiredness, of late, has been replaced by bouts of emotional overload shot though with darts of adrenaline, keeping her on hair-trigger edge. Her body, though tired, thanks her for the respite, and she, in turn, thanks it for bearing up remarkably well under these changed circumstances. Her belly grumbles again, and she laughs, watching as her lover puts down her work and fishes the game birds from the coals, setting them on two camp plates already garnished with the fresh herbs she’s picked from the forest.

Not even using the spork provided, Kirsten rips into the stuffed bird with her bare hands, shoveling the food into her mouth as fast as it will go, and groaning, eyes rolling in ecstasy as the spicy flavor coats her palate with ambrosia. “Jesus!” she exclaims around a bulging mouthful, “this is fantastic!!”

Koda looks on in awe, decimating her own bird with more delicate motions while feeding several morsels to the raptly attentive Asimov. “Glad you like it.”

“Like it? I never had something so good in my life! You should have been a chef!”

“Exercise and fresh mountain air,” Koda replies, tossing another morsel to Asi. “Does it every time.”

“Huh uh,” Kirsten disagrees, still shoveling as fast as her hands can move, her mouth and chin liberally coated with grease. “You’ve got talent, woman. Ever think of opening up a Vet clinic with a restaurant on the side?”

“I…think that would give customers the wrong idea, don’t you?”

Kirsten thinks about it for a moment, then realizes the outcome of her suggestion. “Ew.”

“Ew is right.”

The rest of dinner is finished in silence, and after the leavings are buried and the dishes cleaned, Dakota sits back against an overturned log, Kirsten comfortably ensconced between her legs holding the arms crossed over her belly. Both are lost in the contemplation of the stars above. With no streetlights, no cars, no sirens, and only the wind for company, the night is profoundly silent. After a moment, Kirsten sighs.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Koda asks, pressing her cheek atop the soft blond hair of her lover.

“I…don’t know, really.” She laughs a little. “Maybe I’m getting an attack of the guilts or something. I mean, here I am…here we are…in…well…in paradise, while our friends are back home fighting for their lives, getting hurt, maybe getting killed.” She turns a little, meeting Dakota’s eyes. “What right do I have to feel so at peace, so happy, when people I care about are dying? Because of me?”

Dakota tightens her grip around her lover, settling Kirsten more comfortably against her and pressing a kiss into the crown of her hair. “It’s their freedom they’re fighting for, canteskuye. Theirs, ours, everyone’s.” She pauses for a second, then resumes. “Do you think, really think, that if Maggie had given you to Hart on a silver platter, he would have let everyone on the base just walk away?”

“Well….”

Koda remains silent, letting Kirsten think it through.

“I guess not. I mean, he’s lied about everything else, so why would he suddenly be telling the truth about that?”

“Exactly. Hart’s an opportunist. The androids cut him a deal, and he’s keeping up his end of that bargain. You might be the ‘prize’ at the moment, but every single man, woman and child outside of the control of Westerhaus and his gang is the ultimate target and he won’t stop until he has every single one of us under his thumb, one way or the other.”

“I know this,” Kirsten says, shifting a little. “In my head, I know this. It’s just….”

“Your heart. You feel because you’re human, because you’re a compassionate person, and because you love.”

“This being human stuff is hard,” Kirsten mumbles, snuggling further into Koda’s warm embrace.

“But worth it, don’t you think?”

Kirsten’s grin is hidden in the folds of Dakota’s shirt. “Oh yeah.”

*

“Isaac Asimov King, you get your furry, flea bitten behind out here this instant!”

Chuckling, Dakota opens the smallish two-man tent’s flap a bit wider and spies Asi lounging in royal splendor over their sleeping bags, his head daintily placed on Kirsten’s camp pillow. His tongue lolls as his tail beats a tattoo against the side of the tent.

“I mean it! Right now! I built a nice blanket nest out here for you to lie on, so get out here and use it! Now!”

Asi’s tail beats harder against the fabric of the tent, putting on his best ‘ain’t I lovable?’act.

“Don’t make me come in there and pull you out by your ears, son.”

Dark, doggie eyes roll over to Dakota, who smirks. “I think she means it,” she says, sotto voce.

Asi whines.

“Oh, believe me,” Kirsten replies sarcastically, “she does.”

With an Emmy-worthy groan, Asi rolls over and stands, then begins to slink, tail and ears drooping, toward the exit, like a convict on his way to the Chair.

“Save that load of bull for the fertilizer salesman and get your hairy butt moving.”

With a last, mournful look at them both, he exits the tent and sniffs at the blankets Kirsten has set up for him right outside the entrance. In a quiet flutter of wings, Wiyo glides down from her perch on a nearby tree to land on the tent’s support post.

“Look,” Kirsten says, “Wiyo’s here to keep you company.”

That gets an interested look from Asi, who, on the spur of the moment, decides to try out his newly acquired partridge flushing skills on the newcomer. Wiyo, who isn’t anything close to even resembling a partridge, is particularly unimpressed. Asi barks softly and noses the tent again. Wiyo ruffles her feathers and hisses at him, making him take a step back in surprise and growl low in his throat.

“Play nice,” Koda orders softly, eyeing both of them as she urges Kirsten inside the tent.

She receives two supremely innocent looks in return.

The tent is just tall enough for Kirsten to stand up straight, and she does, hands clamped to the small of her back as she stretches it, groaning unhappily. “Dear god I’m stiff.”

“I’ve got just the cure for that.”

Kirsten looks over her shoulder, a smile forming. “You do, do you?”

“Mm. Take off your clothes and lie down.”

Kirsten chuckles. “Honey, you know I love you, but I’m about as sore as one person can be and not require large doses of Morphine. I don’t know how much I can contribute to—.”

“Just take off your clothes and lie down, please.”

“Well…if you insist.”

“I insist.”

Slowly and stiffly, Kirsten removes her clothes, then slowly kneels down atop the opened and connected sleeping bags, stretching out on her belly with a loud groan. “I think it’s gonna be a toss-up as to whether I can ever get back up again.”

“Oh,” comes Koda’s smooth voice from above and behind her, “you’ll get up. Now just close your eyes and relax.”

Doing as she’s bade, Kirsten jumps just a little as something warm and heavy is laid across her shoulders. “Mm. What’s that?”

“Warm packs. Just stay relaxed and let me do all the work.”

Several more packs find their way across her back and legs, their warmth immediately penetrating her overstressed muscles and coaxing them into gradual, and welcome, relaxation. “Oh,” she moans, “this is bliss.”

Something faintly spicy scents the air just then, and Kirsten wakes up from a half-doze to feel her right foot cradled gently in Dakota’s large hands. One strong thumb comes down on her instep, making her hiss with pain, then groan with pleasure as heated oil and gentle pressure soothes its way into the tender sole of her foot. “I’m in Heaven,” Kirsten croons off-key, her voice slurred against the incredible pleasure she’s feeling. “God, what hands you have, my love.”

Dakota’s laugh is soft as she continues to tend to every muscle, every pore, every inch of skin on Kirsten’s foot, soothing the aches with deft strokes of her strong, gentle fingers. Then she lays the limp appendage down on the sleeping bag and lifts the other, repeating the process until Kirsten’s blissful snores fill the tent.

“That’s it, cante mitawa,” she whispers lovingly. “Let it go for tonight. Just let it go.” Brushing a kiss against the foot she’s holding, she places it down with its mate, languidly removes her own clothing, and slips into the sleeping bag next to her partner. Removing the warm packs, she presses her length against Kirsten’s naked side, places the palm of her hand on the small of her partner’s back, and falls quickly asleep, a small smile on her face.

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

“THEY HAVE HEAVY guns here, and here, in the valleys.” Tacoma points to the rippling contour lines on the ordinance map spread out on the table before them. “And we’ve been taking rocket fire from higher elevations here.” He taps the map again, indicating the low hills to the west of the base that gradually rise into the sacred Paha Sapa. “They’re spread out all around us. We can backtrack and return fire, but we have no way of knowing what else they have or where it is. And we’re going to run short of ammo in a very short time.”

“We need recon,” Manny observes. “Let me take an Apache up, General. Or the Cheyenne—I can get it up high enough, quick enough they won’t be able to hit it.”

“Hell,” says Tacoma, with a grim smile. “One sight of that thing’d scare the bejesus out of ‘em if they were human.”

Manny shoots him an aggrieved look over the bandana that wraps the lower half of his face, even though Maggie suspects he agrees. Goddess knows she does. Soot from the burning HQ building drifts through the air, settling under the canvas flap that constitutes the temporary command post and falling as fine dust on the map. Further away, black smoke pours from a burning fuel tank, shot through with tongues of flame. Its stench, rank with oil and kerosene, comes to them on the thick air. Maggie waves a hand in front of her offended nose and says, “We don’t just need recon. We need aerial fire power.”

“And we need it now,” Tacoma agrees. “Toller knows the Base as well as Hart. Sooner or later they’ll get the range on the planes.”

“Shit.” Manny jerks the kerchief of his face. “General, Ma’am—”

“Get suited up,” she says tersely. “Meet me on the flightline.”

Manny sprints from underneath the makeshift canopy, holding the bandana again over his face. Tacoma watches him go, his eyes troubled. “With respect, General—”

“With respect, Major Rivers. We have two Tomcats fueled and ready. Two planes, two pilots. You’re in charge on the ground as of now. End of discussion.”

“You know they’ve probably got anti-aircraft missiles out there.”

“They probably do,” Maggie agrees. “We’ll just have to dodge them as best we can.”

“We’ll do whatever we can to draw their fire, General.”

“Within prudence, Major. Within prudence. You’ll be able to see at least one of us. When you do, open up and give ‘em everything you’ve got. Andrews.”

“Ma’am.”

“Let’s go.” She turns again to Tacoma. “You remember I have to answer to your sister for you. Don’t do anything that’ll lose my hair.”

A flash of white teeth is her answer as he turns back to the study of the map, punching coordinates into his hand-held. Maggie races for the Jeep, her flight boots ringing hard on the pavement. Andrews paces her stride for stride. The dash for the flightline is, if anything, more harrowing than the white-knuckle race from the gate, clipping corners and bouncing over speed bumps with the kind of jolt that would knock the doors off a civilian vehicle. She holds fast to the rollbar and mutters a quiet prayer to Yemaya, cc’d to Koda’s Ina Maka.

Let us get there on time. Let us make it into the air.

Halfway there, a mortar shell goes screaming over their heads to land somewhere near a maintenance hangar. A second follows it before Maggie can draw a breath. The twin strikes hit like thunderbolts, blurring out the rattle of the Jeep and its snarling engine in a fog of white noise. Smoke rises from the street that runs along the flightline, and a second column from somewhere on the other side of the row of hangars. Maggie’s heart rises up and lodges in her throat, stifling speech. The enemy have found their range. “Go!” she yells, and Andrews floors the accelerator, rattling her teeth and shaking her bones loose in their sockets. The last half-mile streaks by in a blur, while the rockets begin to fall around the flight line like deadly hail, on ripping into the street just ahead of them, gouging a crater that Andrews barely misses, the tires of the driver’s side skirting its rim by millimeters.

Thirty seconds later, the Jeep skids to a stop on the apron that flanks the main north-south runway. The two Tomcats sit just outside the hangar doors, one with its canopy up, the other, Manny, suited and helmeted at the controls, already closing down. Throwing off her Kevlar vest and field gear as she runs, Maggie snatches her helmet from the waiting tech sergeant, slaps it on her head and scrambles up the ladder into the front cockpit of her craft. She straps in one-handed, fixing her oxygen mask in place, punching in the sequence for the automated systems checks that would normally occupy a quarter hour. Today they will run exactly as long as it takes her to get into position for takeoff. The green and red LED’s dance across the small screen, but the only figures that matter are the ones that tell her that she’s taking off fuel tanks topped off and the readout that confirms the ready status of the missiles that bristle along the undersides of her wings. It comes to her that this may be the last time that she will ever fly, that she has nothing to gain and only time to lose, but habit is too strong, and she continues to follow the check-list even as she shuts down her lexan bubble. The numbers still flickering in front of her, she revs her engines and begins her taxi to the north end of the strip.

She has beaten it into her student pilots’ heads for a decade and a half. If you’re going to fly, you don’t have options. Do it right. Do it right the first time.

Do it right the last time, too.

With a wave of her hand, she motions Manny into position at her left wing, just to one side and behind. As she turns to make her run, a rocket tears into the tarmac just behind her, and she opens the throttle, no time now for gradually gathering speed, and hurtles down the runway, pulling G’s before she ever reaches the end, Manny streaking along beside her, keeping pace. Then she pulls the nose up, feeling the lift of air beneath her wings and is airborne, climbing almost straight up into the sun.

At 10,000 feet she levels off, scraps of cloud like drifting feathers beneath her where she hangs in silence over the folded valleys and greening fields below. Sun glints off the nose of her plane, catching the edge of the lexan bubble as she banks to sweep in a wide arc south and west. Below her she can make out the rectilinear grid that is Rapid City and the dark ribbon of the highway where they made their stand against the droids a day, a lifetime, ago. She levels her wings and swings back toward Ellsworth, punching the display from the copilot’s monitor forward to her own screen. The radar might not be able to pick up the enemy, but the cameras should be able to find them. Even if the damned metalheads have found some way to shield themselves from long-wave frequencies, even if they can make themselves effectively invisible, they can’t make themselves transparent. If she can find the anomalies, she can bomb them.

And put an end to them once for all.

Far to the east, the sun strikes fire from a streaking silver shape that must be Manny’s Tomcat, turning as she is now to quarter the land beneath them. The gorges and ancient lava flows that spread out between the Base and the Black Hills ripple away beneath her, their shapes flowing across the screen. The camera’s lens, powerful enough to show a single buttercup growing in the summer meadows, singles out nothing of interest. No armored columns, no grinding mass of titanium canon fodder.

The blip appears on her screen without warning, something rising toward her from a winding gorge branching off from the Cheyenne’s south fork. She kicks up the Tomcat’s nose, and a Sparrow air-to-air missile streaks from beneath the left wing, locking onto its target as Maggie climbs and rolls away, sweeping back toward its launch point and punching coordinates into the laser guidance system that will drop 500 pounds of high explosive on the enemy. The offending blip disappears from her readout a half-second before she sends the bomb on its way. With luck, it will take out a whole nest, but it is luck she cannot count on. Neither can she afford to be free-handed with her payload.

Another ground-to-air rocket rises up as she loops back toward Ellsworth from the north, and she dispatches it, and its launcher, as easily as she did the first. There is still no sign of the android force that appeared around the base earlier that morning; the only indication that they were not an hallucination or some weird sort of image projection is the artillery fire that pours down on her ground forces even as she seeks out their operators, and even then, they are evidence of no more than one operator apiece.

What if . . ..?

But that is a fantasy. They have to be here somewhere. Have to be.

If I were a mule, where would I go to get lost? If I were a metal killing machine with printed circuits for brains and copper wire for nerves, where would I go to jam radar and avoid detection by conventional means?

Maggie sweeps low to obtain a clearer image of a line of vehicles on a farm road, but they are only more of the ever-present wreckage of the first days of the uprising. Putting on speed, she climbs again, sweeping up through wispy clouds to the relative safety of the sky. Beneath her, the land rises steadily, from black bedrock deposited by volcanoes when the northern prairies lay beneath an inland sea into the uplift of the Black Hills themselves, sacred ground to the Lakota from time before time.

Where would I go?

There’s gold in them thar hills.

Gold.

Not gold. Uranium. Vanadium. All of it lying exposed to the sky in the tiers of the huge strip mines gouged out of the earth at the turn of the century, shut down by treaties renegotiated by the Oglala and Northern Cheyenne less than a decade ago and never remdiated.

Radioactive ore, huge masses of it, busily throwing off electrons on its own bandwidths. It has been a sore spot with local citizens for years, disrupting the endlessly running talk radio stations, reducing cell phones to sputtering static, interfering with transmissions from civilian aircraft. How much? Maybe enough to mask the output from lesser masses and scramble incoming locator signals, even the special military frequencies.

That’s where I’d go if I were a droid.

Turning south again, she lays down a pattern of sweeps that covers the expanse of more hospitable terrain between the Black Hills and the Badlands to the south and east. Flying with one hand and only half her brain, the years, the decades, of practice more ingrained now even than instinct, she scans the ground beneath her, zooming the camera in on every outcrop she does not recognize, every glint of sun off twisted metal or the rippled surface of a stock tank.

For twenty minutes she flies low and slow. The camera shows her cows grazing, a stallion running with his mares, a coyote arcing up out of the tall grass in pursuit of something invisible beneath its green stalks, one human with a gun who stands transfixed as she passes, not even bothering to run for cover. The mines themselves stand deserted, great open wounds in the Mother’s body, their tiers descending into the earth like the narrowing circles of Dante’s hell. There is no sign of the droids.

Disappointment washes through her, leaving the taste of acid in her mouth. The damned things might as well be invisible. Maybe they are invisible. Maybe her brain has shorted out under the stress of the last several weeks.

Maybe Hart was right. She is not command material, never was.

Maybe she’s not even a goddamned decent pilot.

Banking one more time over the snaking canyons of the badlands, she follows the twisted paths of dry rivers among the bare rock where the relics of eons past lie open to the sun that stands now halfway down from noon, raking the landscape with harsh sidelight. The rocks stand forth like nightmares out of legend; giants turned to stone, Lot’s wife, looking back toward her burning city, transformed to a pillar of salt. Now blindingly bright, now running in shadow, streams that feed into the White River wind through them, the sun striking upward from their surfaces in sheets of light.

And there, in a bend of a narrow stream, the glare off their metal bodies blending with the reflection of the water, they are.

Thousands of them. Motionless, they stand in ranks as stiff as the terra cotta soldiers of Tchin-tsche Huang-ti, as unaware of the heat that beats off the dry rock as the rock itself. As she passes, a shiver of movement runs through them; their sensors are not shut down. But by the time they can react, she is far away again to the west, entering the bomb-release sequence into her console as she loops back. She passes again, high above them this time, laying down the long stick of 500-pounders that will reduce them to shards of molten metal. Her vid shows her the perfect string of explosions that follows in her wake, clouds of smoke and dust rising up out of the canyon, here an overhang toppling onto the wreckage of the droids beneath, there a tower of basalt crashing down.

Hoka hey. It is a good day to kill.

Maggie allows herself a grim smile as she makes a second, then a third, turn to check for enemy till standing. She finds none; nothing on the visual but tumbled stone and scrap metal. Satisfied, she allows relief to break over her and gives her wings a waggle, partly just in case Manny or someone on the ground can see her, partly out of sheer satisfaction. She can feel the knots loosen in her neck and in the muscles along her spine, unraveling like strands of rope.

Mission accomplished. She takes her heading and turns for home.

As the land slips by beneath her, badlands and prairie, she allows her mind to turn to what awaits her on her return. Obviously the droids and their human allies—or perhaps masters? At this point she is not sure what Hart was, dupe or agent, hostage or mole—had meant to pound them senseless with artillery, tear up the runways to ground their air defense, and move in at leisure. Not necessarily in numbers, though. She will need to make the circuit of the Base, spending her remaining missiles on the gun emplacements. They won’t destroy the howitzers or heavy mortars, but they should reduce their crews quite nicely to smithereens. Two keystrokes shift their mode from air-to-air to air-to-ground; the big guns generate enough heat to home them in. Always assuming Manny hasn’t already bombed them right into their next lives.

Q: Where does a bad droid go when it dies?

A: Helliburton.

The joke is as old as Westerhaus’ first military models, a dart aimed at his rival Army contractor. Ancient history now.

Maggie passes over Rapid City, looping around to the north to scan the valleys around Ellsworth. She sees only the river, running gold in the westering sun, the woods, the mass of the Black Hills thrusting up toward the sky. She feels an odd sense of homecoming, partly the welcome she always associates with the completion of a successful mission, partly something she cannot quite name, something that emanates from the sacred ground beneath her. All clear.

At the far eastern arc of her circle, she passes over the highway where the wreckage of the battle lies strewn for miles. Her monitor shows her only the tortured metal remains of tanks blown open and burned out from inside, the tumbled length of the first defensive wall. Nothing moves except the wind in the trees. She can go home.

As she banks, the sun glances off something miles up the road to the east. Something bright, something metal.

Something moving.

Maggie pulls back on the stick and streaks for the clouds again, kicking in the afterburners for speed. Once she levels off, she scans the stretch of tarmac that stretches out beneath her.

More droids. Not thousands, perhaps no more than several hundred, marching in a tight column toward Ellsworth. Reserves? Latecomers? She has no way of knowing. Neither has she the firepower to take them out. Manny might, but Manny obviously has not seen them. With luck, they have not seen him, either. She will not break radio silence.

She has only one weapon left. She checks her fuel guage. The Tomcat carries close to 20,000 pounds of jet fuel; close to half that remains in her tanks. Enough for the job.

Her premonition returns to her. With the runways and hangars pounded by enemy guns, this is her last flight. She will make it count.

Carefully she calculates the distance and trajectory to the enemy column and enters the coordinates into the autopilot. Loosing the last of her missiles, she aims the Tomcat’s nose toward the earth with one hand and jerks on the ejection lever with the other.

Nothing happens. The ground rises up at her, the column of droids growing clear in her sight. She pulls the lever again, and again.

On the third try, the bubble pops and she flies free of the plane as it gathers speed in its descent. But the delay has cost her, and her head strikes the canopy, hard, as her seat becomes a projectile. She sees the flash of silver as her Tomcat streaks toward earth, the blue sky above her.

And then the dark comes down.

The night is blue around her, the deep blue of the deepest sea. Overhead the stars dance in stately patterns, throwing off streamers of flame as they spin and whirl, jewels burning cold in shades of amethyst and emerald and sapphire, blazing ruby and topaz with hearts of fire. A breeze slips cool over her face, soothing against her skin. It stirs the pine needles that ring the clear space where she lies, soughing softly.

There are voices in the wind. If she tried, she could make them out. But she is tired, so tired. She lies under a billow of white silk. Perhaps she is dead, and it is her funeral pall.

If she is, she decides, death is not so bad after all. She knows that one leg lies twisted under her and is undoubtedly broken; from the way the blood pounds in her head, that may be broken, too. She can feel the grass through a cool wetness above one ear; more strangeness. Something has apparently happened to her helmet. Perhaps whoever has laid her out has removed it. Odd, though, that she seems to be lying on earth. No coffin, no burial platform, no piled wood. Just the silken pall.

With effort, but with no pain, she turns her head. Just beyond her reach, a large cat sits watching her, fur silver-gilt in the strange not-moonlight that shimmers in the air, eyes deep amber rimmed in shadow. The paler fur on her belly lies in darker swirls, made, Maggie knows, by her nursing young. Elegant in its length, her tail curls about her feet.

You wander, sister, the cat says in the silence, Igmu Sapa Winan.

Where? Maggie answers without sound. And why?

You stand with one foot on the Blue Road. If you wish, you may cross over.

If I wish?

Or not. Do you want me to summon help from your own kind?

Her own kind. She thinks about that for a moment. She knows of only three of her own kind, maybe four, who might hear a call like that. None of whom can be spared from duty.

It would be easy to slip away. A picture forms in her mind, unbidden, of sky-tall trees ringing a lake whose deep purple waters lap at shores dotted with gentians and spurred columbine. As she watches, a winter buck limps up to the shore, blood oozing from a wound in his shoulder, laid open to the bone. Maggie winces for what must be the pain of it, but as he bends to drink, the blood stills. Flesh folds back on itself, skin and fur spreading to cover it, and he stands there whole, sunlight streaming down through the trees about him. A woman stands beside him, her leather dress died green, yellow shells and beadwork running in rows down its length like kernels on an ear of corn. Her black hair spills down her back almost to her knees; silver shines at her ears and wrists.

Mother, Maggie says silently, awe washing through her.

Selu, the woman answers. And this is Ataga’hi, where the hunted may come to be healed. Though you are a warrior and have killed more two-foots than most, you have never harmed one of your four-footed brothers or sisters. Hunters may not come here. Will you drink, Black Cat Woman?

My people, are they safe?

They are.

For answer, then, she rises up and steps carefully toward the lake. The grass bends gently under the pads of her feet, and she is not surprised to find that her spine has shifted so that she does not stand erect. Her ears, inhumanly sharp, take in the murmur of small life around her, the calls of birds like music. The water, when she bends to lap, slips cool across her tongue, and she drinks her fill, life pouring back into her, and purpose with it.

Then she is back in her own body, and she gasps as sensation floods back into her from cracked bone and torn muscle. The puma, though, still regards her quietly. I will call, she says.

For an instant, Maggie thinks she is seeing double. A second great cat stands beside the first, gazing at her with eyes of warm brown. And there is a bobcat, too, grinning at her with open mouth.

Hang in there, he says. We’re on our way.

The blue begins to fade to black about her. The puma fades with it, a liquid shadow in the night. Pain from her leg rises about her on a swelling tide, bringing its own darkness with it. Just, she says to the wind as words begin to desert her altogether. Just move your asses.

*

The antelope crashes through the undergrowth, plunging through the copse that borders the open prairie to the east. Koda follows, making no effort now to be silent, her hat scraped off her head somewhere back there where she first entered the strip of woodland, her bow in her right hand, arrow nocked. Ahead of her, the young male’s rump patch flashes white, and she sweeps low branches away from her face as she fights her way through the whip-like saplings after him. Sweat runs stinging into her eyes, blurring her vision, but she cannot pause to wipe it away. If she can just keep in range, she will have him when he breaks from cover on the other side.

The wood is wider than she had first thought, and she slides down a steep bank toward a stream, bracing her feet against a fall like a skier. The antelope, ahead of her, splashes through the water and is up the other side before she can draw back her arrow. Neither is there time to unsling her rifle and aim; by the time she has it into position, he will be on open ground again. Pronghorn can sprint at speeds approaching seventy miles an hour, fast as a cheetah. If she is too far behind when they reach the edge of the grass again, she will lose him altogether. She crosses the ankle-deep brook in two strides, scrabbling for an instant on both knees and one hand as she races up the limestone outcrop opposite, ignoring the sudden burn as she scrapes her palm against the rock. Her heart slams against her breastbone, and her breath comes in short, panting gasps. She has run the better part of two miles, about half of it flat out, since cutting the yearling out of a bachelor herd. The meat will let them save their packed rations against emergencies, gain them another day or two. And Asi, held back by main force from following the chase, will appreciate his share.

The sun breaks through where the wood begin to thin, the pronghorn sprinting now nimbly through the mould and leaf litter that carpets the ground between the trunks of pine and aspen, gaining speed. With a last burst of speed Koda throws herself after him, even as he breaks from the trees and is gone. Koda swears under her breath, what she has of it, and follows, her blood not ready to give up even though her brain tells her that the antelope is already beyond range.

Somewhere just ahead of her, the crack of gunfire shatters the still afternoon air. Abruptly, Koda pulls up just short of the edge of the trees, unstringing her bow and sheathing it and its arrow even as she shrugs her rifle off her shoulder and into her hands. Carefully she steps to the edge of the treeline, keeping a pine trunk between herself and whoever has fired the shot. Squinting into the sun, she can make out only the rippling billows of short grass, interspersed here and there with clumps of scarlet sage and mountain globemallow, thick with rose-colored blooms. Behind a screen of the tall spikes, something moves. Something large, bending down now toward something else on the ground.

Koda steps away from cover, gun leveled. She is not quite prepared to kill another human for her supper, but neither is she prepared to give it up without protest. Not when she has done the work, not when she has given fair chase. Keeping the muzzle of her gun pointed toward whatever or whoever crouches on the other side of the dense shrubs, she gathers her breath and bellows, “Hey! You over there! Stand up! Slow! Or I’ll shoot!”

Two seconds pass. “Now!” she yells, and pumps a round into the ground at her feet. “Next one won’t be a warning!”

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

“OKAY! OKAY!” IT is a man’s voice, rich and resonant. He steps out from behind the sage spires, black curling hair and close-trimmed beard glistening in the sun, a sheen of sweat silvering his bare chest and the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders. He is tall, taller than she is, and made like a wrestler. For a moment he looks as though he might be made all of bronze, something cast by Michelangelo or Bernini to taunt their bloodless patrons tripping along the halls of the Lateran Palace. Then a sheepish grin splits his face and his hands spread open at his sides. “I’m sorry. Was that your pronghorn? I thought a cat might be after it, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Koda says, more equably, the muzzle of her gun never moving from its aim at his belly. “W— I’ve been after him for a couple miles or so, now. From back on the other side of that treeline.” Go on, be a good boy. Give it up.

“Look,” he says, the ingratiating smile never leaving his face. “You chased it, I shot it. Share?”

It is not, under the circumstances, a bad bargain. Half the antelope is still a substantial prize. “All right,” she says, lowering her rifle without taking her finger from the trigger guard. “I’ll help you field dress it.” She may have to set down the gun, but she will still have a knife in her hand. The sudden gleam in the man’s brown eyes tells her he understands and is not offended.

Far, it would seem, from it. He extends one huge paw toward her. “Ariel Kriegesmann. Call me Ari.”

“All right,” she says, shifting her 30.06 to her left hand and offering her right. “Koda Rivers.”

He gives no sign of recognizing the name, merely nodding in acknowledgement. His shake is firm, but not the finger-crushing grasp that she has encountered from men out to prove their macho. “Welcome to Elk Mountain, ma’am.” He gestures toward the line of hills that rises to the west across the miles of grassland. The peaks of the Medicine Bow Range lift into the sky beyond them, glittering even now with late snow.

“Koda!” The shout rings out from behind them, punctuated by furious barking. Asi streaks across the distance from the trees, Kirsten following more slowly, her own weapon at the ready. Koda’s vagrant Stetson perches on her head, casting hard shadows on her face. “You all right?”

Kriegesmann’s eyes dart between the two of them. One eyebrow canting upward, he asks, “Friends?”

“Friends,” Koda confirms, not at all sorry to have the back-up. “Asi,” she says, “Annie, meet Ari. We’re gonna split dinner.”

With a quick glance under her lashes at Koda, Kirsten extends her free hand, and Asi allows a quick scratch of his head and ruff. “Nice dog,” Ari says, admiringly, turning his thousand-watt grin on Kirsten. “You taking good care of your ladies, are you, boy?”

“Need help?” Kirsten asks, slipping their packs from her shoulders. Asi stretches out beside them, tongue lolling. Koda shakes her head, and Kirsten sinks down crosslegged onto the makeshift cusion, rifle still propped across her knees.

Koda lays her own gun down and draws the knife that hangs at her waist. Kneeling beside the antelope, all his grace and beauty now still, she begins to chant softly:

“Tatokala, misakalaki

Antelope, little brother,swift runner,we thank you for giving your lifeso that we might live.

Walk the Blue Road in peace.

May you have green grassand clear water,may you run freeforever.

Han!”

“Han,” Kirsten repeats softly. She has seen Dakota do this before, and can follow the sense of the prayer if not yet all the words.

Kriegesmann listens respectfully, his eyes lowered. Looking up to meet her eyes, he asks, “That was Lakota, wasn’t it? You traditional?”

She nods, bending to her work as she opens the antelope, picking out the liver and kidneys for Asi, who comes to her whistle and settles down to his meal with obvious pleasure. Ariel glances from Koda to Kirsten. “Both of you?” he asks.

“Both of us,” Kirsten answers. The tone of her voice is crisply authoritative, and Koda smiles silently. Translation: Keep off my turf.

“I can dig it.” Kriegesmann shrugs, unperturbed. “My community’s pretty traditional, too.”

“Community?”

“About fifty of us, mostly from Caspar. A bunch of us from my bank were up here snowshoeing, snowmobiling and like that when the uprising hit. We’ve picked up a few more survivors since.”

“Your bank?” Koda gives him a disbelieving look.

“First American. I’m an accountant. Or was.”

“You don’t look like a banker,” she says bluntly.

“That’s ‘cause you haven’t seen me in a jacket and tie. See that?” He grins and points toward one eye. “That’s the true capitalist glimmer.”

He is either amazingly disingenuous or going out of his way to be charming. Koda has known very few disingenuous bankers in her life. None, in fact. She waits for what she is almost certain is coming next.

It does. Kriegesmann sits back on his heels and wipes the sweat off his forehead, his hand bloody to the wrist. “Say. Why don’t the two of you come on back to the camp?” Asi looks up from his feast, growling and laying his ears back, and Kriegesmann chuckles. “It’s okay, boy. The three of you. I don’t know where you’re headed, and I’m not gonna ask, but you might want to spend a night under a roof. We’ve got a generator. And we’ve got hot water and showers.”

“Thanks,” Koda says evenly, “but we need to get on.”

“We also,” he says, and his voice turns serious, “have a couple sick kids. The way you’re dressing this buck, you’re either a professional meat-cutter or you’re a doctor. We’d appreciate it if you’d look at ‘em. And we’ll send you on your way with a full pack when you leave.”

“Your kids?”

“My sister’s girl and a couple others. They had something with spots a few weeks back, before the weather broke. Now it’s like they’ve got a permanent cold.”

Spots and a lingering respiratory infection. All sorts of unfortunate things can happen in the aftermath of measles or chickenpox. With the near-disappearance of many childhood diseases, more parents than not have chosen to avoid the possible side-effects of vaccination. Worse things can happen with scarlet fever. Not good. “You got any antibiotics?”

“Just what was in the first aid cabinet at the lodge. They’re gone.”

And probably misused, and overused. She looks up at Kirsten. “What about it?”

“Okay by me,” Kirsten says. “How far is it?”

Kriegesmann points at the rising slopes of Elk Mountain in the distance. “About three hours, maybe a little less.”

Koda wipes the blood from her knife on the grass, then gathers a handful of stalks to cleanse it more thoroughly. “I’ll cut a pole. We were headed that way anyway; we won’t lose time if we stay over for the night.”

Ten minutes later, the rough-dressed antelope is securely lashed to a straight branch of aspen. Koda shoulders one end, Kriegesmann the other. Asi paces beside them as they set off across the expanse of prairie, Kirsten pacing with the rifle still cradled in the crook of her elbow. Shadows lengthen as the sun begins to slip behind the mountains, and the breeze turns cool. Clouds darken the horizon to the south. Above them, a hawk rides the thermals, wings and tail spread as she coasts the currents of air. Her call drifts down to them, sharp and bright as steel. Kriegesmann glances up, admiration in his face. “Red-tail,” he says. “There’s lots of them around here. Golden eagles, too. Only you call them spotted eagles, don’t you?”

“Wanblee gleshka,” Koda answers. “Wakan.”

“Right,” says Kriegesmann, and keeps walking.

Dusk lies thick about them when they reach the lodge. Kirsten has limped for the last mile or so, and even Koda’s muscles are beginning to stiffen. The thought of hot water, faint temptation at first, has grown into a massive obsession. . Steaming water. Real soap. Standing under the shower while the spray pounds against her skin, working the knots out of her neck and scalp. Baths for the last several days have been cold-water exercises in endurance, hygienically adequate but a long way from comfortable. Even further from comforting.

I’d kill for a hot bath. No, not kill. Maybe maim somebody, though. Starting with Hunk-boy here.

A guardpost blocks their path about halfway up the mountain. A taut chain strung across the road at knee height bars wheeled traffic any larger than a bike. Both halves of the gate stand upright, the faint red of rust gathering about its nuts and bolts. Koda has seen no sign of a vehicle’s passage, no twin ruts of flattened grass on the prairie, no tire tracks on the sections of pavement washed out by the snow and rain of the last months. At a guess, the guests and staff of the resort used up their gasoline early and have not bothered to lower the double bars since. The sentry on duty, scarcely more than a silhouette in the gathering dark, grunts and waves Kriegesmann by. Koda can make out the shape of a rifle leaning up against the door of the booth, the motion of his head as his gaze follows them around the chain and onto the overgrown shoulder of the road, staring still as they head up the last, steeper, ascent. Perhaps it is the antelope he finds so interesting.

Then again, perhaps it isn’t. With her free hand, Koda loosens her handgun in its holster, watches as Kirsten furtively does the same.

“Hang in there, ladies,” Kriegesmann says cheerfully. “We’re almost there.”

“Oh, goody,” Kirsten answers, her voice flat.

“You okay?” Koda stops in her tracks, almost pulling the pole of Kriegesmann’s shoulder. He comes to an abrupt halt, a quizzical look on his face. Koda lays a hand lightly on Kirsten’s arm. “You still okay with this?”

“Yeah. We’re almost there. Let’s do it.”

Koda stands silent for a long moment, then “If you’re sure.”

For answer, Kirsten nods, and they resume the climb. Kriegesmann has said nothing, only watching. At the very least, Koda reflects, it should have made a thing or two clear to him. She grins to herself. No poaching here. And I don’t mean antelope.

“There,” when they slog round the last painfully steep switchback and emerge onto the more or less level top of the mountain, consists of a sprawling central building surrounded by a dozen or so smaller cabins set among century-old pines and balsams. Some show the A-frame silhouette popular for vacation homes forty years ago. Others, like the main facility, are constructed of redwood logs and wrapped in floor-to-ceiling glass and decks on at least three levels. Through the windows, Koda catches a glimpse of leather-upholstered sofas, pine-wood tables burnished to a golden glow, Navajo rugs hanging against the walls. A dozen or so people seem to be moving about in the common room, but Koda cannot see them clearly. It is precisely the sort of place where a clutch of affluent suburbanites would come to rough it for a couple weeks of winter sports, enjoying room service in the morning and the ski instructors at night.

Precisely the sort of place she’d never be caught dead before the war. It remains to be seen what its resident survivors have made of it.

Kriegesmann leads them around to the back, where a windowless building stands among garages, a couple of barns and other service buildings. “Meat locker,” he says, shrugging the pole off his shoulder. “I’ll hang this up, then we’ll get some supper. We can finish dressing it out in the morning.”

Glancing about her, Koda asks, “Where are your windmills?”

“Down on the floor of the valley on the other side of the mountain,” Kriegesmann answers from inside the cold house. Condensation billows out of the door, though the temperature has begun to drop rapidly with the oncoming dark and the increased altitude. “This place was originally supposed to be an off-grid retreat—you know, meditation gardens, resident gurus, drumming, that kind of thing. Not much money in it, though, and the bank wound up with the property.”

“Foreclosed on it, you mean,” Kirsten says suddenly. She has not spoken since they passed the gate, and Koda glances at her sharply.

“If you want to put it that way.” Kriegesman shrugs, grinning. “We call it—called it—assuming the burden of the investment. Très, très touchy-feely and all that.” He waggles his fingers at her as he emerges from the locker, snapping the door shut behind him and padlocking it.. “A kinder, gentler takeover, with full-color brochures and lots of western art on the walls.”

“And you run this place like you did the bank?”

“More or less. Most of the people here worked for us before. The rest, the hunting parties that were here when the uprising began, the skiers, the Christmas vacationers were almost all business people, too. They speak the language.”

Kirsten gestures toward the hasp and chain. “You ration out the food?”

“Not to raccoons and wolverines. Or bears. A couple years ago a yearling grizzly wandered into the lobby somehow. Scared half the guests and himself out of ten years’ growth. We’ve reinforced doors and double-locked everything on the ground floor ever since.”

It is not an unreasonable answer. Raccoons have no need for opposable thumbs to open doors and get into pantries, and bears and wolverines are notorious for raiding campers’ food supplies. Wolverines, especially, have nasty habits, fouling everything they do not eat or carry away with their overwhelmingly pungent musk. With the conservation policies and the reforestation work done under the last two federal administrations, they have re-established themselves along the spine of the Rockies and in the northern tier of states bordering Canada. With the near-eradication of the human population, their range is likely to expand even further. Kriegesmann’s explanation is plausible, makes excellent sense, and still leaves Koda with a vague sense of unease.

She cannot quite put her finger on it, and her left brain refuses to sort out the information into neat data points and conclusions. Something about Kriegesmann bothers her, beyond her general distaste for the sort of old-style coroporate solipsism he seems to represent—and, to be truthful, she has no firm evidence for that except for his offhanded contempt for the spiritual community whose property his bank (His family’s bank? There is that recurring ‘us.’) has apparently managed not only well but conscientiously.

Whatever it is, it cannot be her concern. She and Kirsten will have a good supper, she will look at the children as requested, and they will be back on the trail tomorrow after a night in a comfortable bed, richer by half an antelope.

Still, she intends to sleep in her boots, with one hand on her gun.

Kriegesmann sets off up the stone-paved path toward the rear of the lodge, waving them ahead of him with an exaggerated deference and a small bow. Closer to, the smell of meat and herbs wafts along the air, together with the scent of cornbread baking. Kirsten’s stomach rumbles audibly, and Koda flashes her a sympathetic grin. Whatever the ethical shortcomings of their host, his family and their corporation, they have evidently managed a comfortable sort of survival. Like every such enclave, they will have gathered in what livestock they could, raided what supermarkets and warehouses they could. Perhaps she can barter her veterinary services for some cornmeal and flour, maybe even a pack horse.

The door opens onto a substantial receiving area stacked with carboard boxes almost to the ceiling. Some few appear to be empty, but most, everything from canned beans and tomatoes to stomach acid remedies, are still stapled shut. Koda glances back at Kriegesmann. “You pretty much clean out Caspar, or what?”

“Or what. We got down to Boulder, too, before the gas ran out.”

“How bad is it in Caspar?” Kirsten asks, her eyes running over the piles of supplies. Koda can almost see the numbers cascading in her head. How many refugees at Elk Mountain? How long will this feed them? How long until they turn to preying on other survivors?

“It’s bad,” Kriegesmann answers, grimacing. “Even worse in Boulder. Lots and lots of droids for such a back-to-nature place.”

“Looks like you’ve got enough here to do you for a while.”

“Yeah. We found some seed, too, and some farm stuff. We’ve started growing what we can.”

Koda raises an eyebrow at him. “Kind of a change from banking, isn’t it?”

“I don’t do dirt.” Kriegesmann flashes her a grin. “I hunt. Lots more fun.” He bangs on the door that leads to the kitchen. “Yo! I’m back! There’s company!”

The woman who opens the door stands not much taller than Kirsten, but the legs below her running shorts are brown and tightly muscled. Her tank top does nothing to conceal washboard abs; the tendons in her hands and wrists run rippling under tanned skin. Her grey eyes slide past Kriegesmann, hardly acknowledging him. Her gaze lingers, though, on Koda herself and on Kirsten, appreciative but cool, almost aloof. She gives Kriegesmann a tight smile. “So I see. I’m Tanya Kriegesmann. Come in. You’re just in time for supper.”

“Sis, this is Dakota Rivers. Doctor Dakota Rivers. And meet Annie—” He pauses, his hand describing small circles in the air.

“Rivers,” Kirsten supplies, firmly. “Doctor Annie Rivers.”

“Funny,” Kriegesmann says, “you don’t look like sisters.”

It is either dry humor or stupidity; Koda opts for the former. “We aren’t. We are hungry, though. Chasing that antelope right into your sights was hard work.”

Tanya gives a small, amused snort. She says, “Ari’s good at shooting things. Particularly if he doesn’t have to get off his ass to do it.” She gestures toward a double swinging door, steel clad and further reinforced at the bottom for waiters with their hands full. “Supper’s this way.”

She leads them through the kitchen, still equipped to feed perhaps a hundred guests. Industrial-sized pots hang from tracks anchored to the ceiling; the sinks, all shining steel, are deep and long as bathtubs. A dusting of flour remains at one end of a polished pine workbench that anywhere else would pass for a banquet table. Kirsten walks between Koda and Tanya, her shoulders drawn in, hands on the straps of her pack. Consciously or not, she appears to avoid touching anything in the room, and a wisp of memory floats through Dakota’s mind. Persephone in the underworld, condemned to remain if she ate or drank from the table of Hades. For half a second she considers bolting here and now. Beside her, sensitive to her mood, Asi whines, and she reaches down to pat him.

Food first. Then a bath. If we still feel spooked, we can leave before dawn, no one the wiser.

The kitchen opens onto the dining room, its tables still white-draped like ghosts. In the darkened lobby, a cavernous room with exposed rafters, stuffed animal heads punctuate the walls. There are deer and elk, bear and buffalo. A pair of moose antlers over the mantle stretches almost the width of the large fireplace. Through the window Koda can see half a dozen children chasing a ball down the driveway, shepherding it for a stretch between their feet, then kicking. A woman follows them slowly, her body heavily pregnant. Her face, a little bloated with the nearness of her time, seems peaceful in the fading light, her hands clasped under her breasts as she paces. A golden retriever lopes along the path, shuttling between her and the children. Asi, his interest pricked at last, trots to the window and utters a sharp bark. The retriever looks around, puzzled, then resumes her care of her human family. “Shall we let him out?” Tanya asks, running her own hand down Asi’s back. “Or would you rather have him with you since he doesn’t know the area?”

“His feet are tired, too,” Kirsten says with a smile. “Let’s let him rest.”

A smaller room leads off the lobby to one side of the hearth. Bottles still line the wall

Behind the antique walnut bar, but half the shelves stand empty. Attrition has set in among the glassware, too; the stems for alexanders and whisky sours that hang above the bar show chips on some of the rims, and here, too, many seem to be missing. “Family dining room’s this way,” Kriegesmann says, turning to open a door carved with a line of quail, the young ones strung out between their parents as they make their way through a jungle of columbine and lupines. A discreet sign beside the jamb names it The Covey. “This used to be the VIP club. Still is, so to speak.”

The room is brightly lit by lamps and candles. Seven people sit at a long table in the center, staring at them as they enter. Tanya crosses the small room to a sideboard and begins to set two more places, while her brother introduces them. “My dad, Julius Kriegesmann.” The man seated at the head of the table, his white beard and hair impeccably trimmed, nods in greeting. “My mother, Harriet.” Harriet looks decades younger than her husband; not, in fact, much older than her son. Kirsten smiles at her, murmuring “Beaucoup Botox,” under her breath so quietly that even Koda barely hears her. Another sister, Diotima, who is evidently the mother of the two children lately afflicted with spots, waves and gives a blinding smile when introduced; neither offspring, however, can be coaxed to look up from their mashed potatoes long enough to greet the visitors. “Errolllll,” their mother whispers. “Vanesssa. Manners. Please.” Humphrey Smith, Diotima’s husband, and a black haired woman with uptilted black eyes, introduced merely as Elaine, round out the company. Tension hums around the room, running a three-pointed current among Harriet and the two daughters, between Julius and Elaine, between Tanya and Ariel.

Gods. We’ve gone through the rabbit hole and landed in a Faulkner novel. Or maybe Flannery O’Connor. Good country people, for sure.

Koda acknowledges the introductions politely, slipping into a seat across from Elaine, Kirsten beside her. Ariel, standing with his hand on the back of one of two chairs to the right of his mother, shrugs and accepts his plate without comment. Julius serves both Dakota and Kirsten with thick slices of the meat from the platter, and Koda is pleased to find that it is venison, excellently prepared with red wine and bay leaves. A helping of mashed potatoes follows, together with disappointingly insipid pea-green peas from a can. Beside her, Kirsten tucks into her supper with enthusiasm, leaving Koda to make conversation with their hosts. It is as much tactics as hunger, Koda realizes; while no one here has apparently heard of the battle of the Cheyenne, these are precisely the sort of people who might well recognize Kirsten despite her lengthening hair and bronzed skin. A turn of phrase, a tone of voice, could give her away as easily as her face.

So Dakota is left to answer the inevitable questions. They are traveling west from Minnesota, aiming for Salt Lake and Annie’s family there, if they’re still alive. Medical school? Sorry, vet school, at U Penn. Yes, she has some experience with human medicine, too; veterinarians dissect human cadavers along with animal corpses as part of their training, studying human infections right along with distemper and feline leukemia. At this, Harriet winces and reaches for her wine glass with fingers that still show traces of a professional manicure. The children’s eyes, in contrast, grow large as their plates, and Errol pronounces his approval. “Hey, that’s cool. I bet it’s really, really, gross.” This last is aimed at his sister, who smiles sweetly and rubs a handful of her potatoes into his face.

Koda aims a sharp glance at their uncle, two seats further up the table. “Looks to me like they’re making a normal recovery.”

“Yeah,” Kriegesmann answers shortly. “Pass the gravy, would you?”

“Recovery?” says Diotima, at the same time, frowning. “Oh, those spots.” She turns to Koda. “They have allergies, that’s all. They got into some poison ivy or something awhile back, and now it’s sniffles. Nothing serious.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Koda says thoughtfully. “They’re not used to the mountains in summer?”

“No, we usually go to the beach in June. We come here in winter, just like we did last year. And now—” Diotima shoots a resentful glance around the table—“we’re stuck. We can’t get out. We can’t go back. We’ll die out here in the middle of nowhere, all because of some stupid, stupid robots. The government never should have allowed Peter Westerhaus to make those things. He’s rich, but he’s crazy, you know?” She makes a circular motion around one ear with a forefinger. “If Clinton had stopped him, we wouldn’t be here now—”

“Dio,” her father says repressively, setting his fork down beside his plate. “We’ve been through all this. Make the best of it.”

“And how many droids did you have, Dio, dear?” Tanya looks up with a bite of meat halfway to her mouth. “At least your children were here with you. And your husband.” Her smile is pure acid as she gazes at Humphrey. “Such a comfort, I’m sure.”

“So many comforts,” Elaine sniggers. “A comfortable masseur, a comfortable tennis pro, a comfortable ski instructor. . ..”

“Like you’d know,” Dio shoots back at her. “At least I’ve got kids.”

“And how about you, Humph?” Elaine asks. “Are you comforted that she has kids? At least you have a chance to have some of your own now.”

Smith, arrested in the act of cutting his venison, slowly turns the color of old brick, the blood rising under his tan from neck to receding hairline. “I have,” he says, biting off each word as if it were the texture of pemmican, “fulfilled my obligations to this family and to the corporation. I will continue to do so.”

“There isn’t any corporation any more, you idiot!” Dio wads her napkin into a knot and throws it, violently, into her plate. “It’s over. It’s gone! There’s nothing left but this—” the sweep of her arm encompasses the lodge, the mountain, the empty months and valleys between this spot and an urban existence as dead now as Babylon— this hellhole! I want out! I want out now!” She swings around on Kirsten and Koda. “When you leave in the morning, I’m going with you. The rest of you can stay here and rot!”

With a sob, Dio pushes her chair back so violently it rocks on its back legs and stumbles across the room, both hands over her face. She jerks the door open and slams it behind her; hanging upside down in its rails above the bar, the crystal chimes gently. Julius Kriegesmann’s face, stony pale where his son-in-law’s is a shade just short of purple, half rises from his own seat. His wife lays one hand over his, clenched around his wineglass. “Well,” says Kirsten calmly, “now we know what happened to the glassware.”

Julius turns his gaze on her, his face still thunderous. Then Ariel’s head comes up from what has seemed to be an earnest contemplation of his meal. He stares at Kirsten in the silence, then begins to laugh, a chuckle that begins somewhere around the middle of his chest and gathers force as it rises, shaking his shoulders. “Dr. Annie Rivers,” he says between spasms, “you’re okay.”

The tension in the room snaps, and Julius carefully sets down his Burgundy. The two children return to their suppers with only perfunctory mayhem, overseen by Smith. Julius rises to offer after-dinner brandy to the adults, pouring Courvoisier into the bottoms of ample snifters. He hands Koda hers with a smile, half rueful. “Sorry about the fireworks. It’s been stressful since the uprising, especially for a city girl like Dio who’s used to all the luxuries. She’ll be fine in the morning.”

And we’ll be gone in the morning. Long gone. By ourselves. But she accepts her drink and the elder Kriegesmann’s oblique apology with a smile of thanks. The gathering breaks up into knots after that, the three men and Harriet huddling around the fireplace, Julius and Ariel gnawing the ends of expensive cigars. The Smith children—putatively Smith, at any rate, escape to play in the larger space of the lobby, where thumps and thuds attest to their energy. Tanya and Elaine seem to distance themselves from the rest, holding hands as their voices become quieter and more intimate. Letting her own hand linger on Kirsten’s arm, Dakota says, “You about ready to turn in? Tomorrow’s gonna be a long one.”

Tanya looks up from her conversation with Elaine. “I’ll show you to a cabin. Unless you’d rather stay here, in the main lodge?”

“Thanks, we’ll take the cabin,” Kirsten answers almost before the other woman finishes her question, and Tanya grins in silent agreement.

“It’s not always this bad,” she says. “But it’ll be quieter up the road.” To Elaine, she adds, “I’ll be up in a bit.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Elaine gives her a sultry look over the rim of her glass, all fire and smoke.

As they gather their things, Asi darts to the door ahead of them, whining. Ariel yells “Sleep tight!” to the accompaniment of quieter good nights. In the lobby, now well lit, the furniture shoved together in an improvised jungle gym, Tanya glances at her watch and announces, “Fifteen minutes, kids. Time to hit the books.”

“Awwwww, Aunt Tanya, that’s mean!”

“Pleeezzzeee, just half an hour?”

“Fifteen and not a second more. Suck it up, guys!” She lets Dakota and Kirsten out the main door onto the deck, and Asi shoots away, racing full out up the drive, turning and cannoning back at speed, only to hurtle off into the woods that line the road, barking furiously. Tanya laughs. “He’s off on one of the rabbit trails. I don’t blame him; it got pretty thick in there, didn’t it?”

The conflict on Kirsten’s face is almost comical. If she agrees, she insults the Kreigesmann family; if she does not, she contradicts the most normal one of the lot. Dakota rescues her. “People get on each other’s nerves when they get too close. Your mom and dad seem to have a pretty firm handle on it, though.”

“They’re used to managing hostile takeovers. Even our family’s a breeze after that.”

They set off down the path, the shadows thickening about them. The wind moves through the tops of the tall trees, sighing among the pine needles. Out here, free of the power struggles and tensions of the Kriegesmann brood, Koda’s own stress begins to fade. She feels as though she has been walking in boots half a size too small ever since they came upon Ariel and has only now been able to pull them off. Relief courses through her body, and, oddly, a sense of kinship with the woman beside them. There is strength in her, and though Koda suspects the presence of a wide ruthless streak, a kind of honesty she can respect. She says, “Your mother was with the bank, too?”

Tanya glances up at her, her face shadowed. “Oh, Harriet’s not my mother. Ari’s hers, and Humph from her first marriage. Dio’s the oldest, though she doesn’t want to be reminded of that. Then me, with Wife #2. Ari’s the baby.”

“And he doesn’t like to be reminded of that?” Koda finishes the thought for her.

“Or of the fact that he never made senior VP. A doorstop with a title, that’s our Ari. His talents—well, the one good thing about this situation is that he can be more useful here than he ever was at the office.” A wry smile twists her mouth. “Not that that outweighs the negatives for the rest of us.”

“Dio certainly doesn’t seem to think so.”

“She’s a born mall bunny. Julius got down in the muddy end of the gene pool with that one.”

Cabins line the main road once they pass the lodge’s turnout and parking area. Warm light spills from their windows, and the smell of woodsmoke rises from their chimneys. Though summer solstice is only a few days away, chill descends on the mountain with the dark. Here and there, women gather children into what seem to be family homes; elsewhere, two men, or three, sit late on the front decks, smoking and talking. Koda can feel their eyes on them as they pass.

Tanya follows her gaze to the men, then back. She says, “We had quite a few hunters here when the rebellion started. Some tried to get back to their families; others stayed to help defend Elk Mountain.”

“You’ve fought them?” Kirsten asks. Her voice is dry, her skepticism barely concealed.

“We caught a half dozen scouts, a couple of them human. Otherwise they either don’t know we’re here, or they haven’t bothered with us. There are relatively few women here. Maybe we’re just not worth it to them.”

“You know what they’re after, then.”

“We know they’ve been breeding the women they capture.” Tanya’s eyes narrow, her mouth tightening in a look of pure hatred. “We heard about it from the refugees who’ve settled with us. One woman escaped from a jail in Laramie, then damned near died when she took tickweed to induce an abortion.

“As to what they’re really after—hell, no, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does. Otherwise we could stop them, or at least have an idea how.”

About a quarter mile from the main lodge, she leads them onto a side path. In a small clearing at is end stands one of the A-frame cabins, its weathered boards and cedar shakes blending almost imperceptibly into the woods around it. Tanya opens the door for them, switching on the light as she does so. Someone has clearly prepared the place for visitors; the woodbox by the kiva-style fireplace is full of split logs, while a basket on the counter that divides the living area from the kitchen holds dishes, a small jar of coffee, a box of cereal, sugar and canned fruit. “Breakfast is at seven in the dining room, if you want to join us. Otherwise—” She gestures toward the provisions. “Bath’s on the other side of the kitchen; bedroom’s up in the loft. See you in the morning.”

An hour later, Koda slips into bed beside Kirsten, her whole body feeling polished from the blast of the water jets in the shower. Her hair, still damp despite a session with the dryer, lies heavily across her bare shoulders. The small soapstone stove fills the space under the peaked rafters with drowsy warmth. Kirsten, the quilt pulled up around her ears, lies on her side, breathing softly and regularly, already asleep. Her pale hair spread across the pillow catches the glow from the lamp, a spill of sunlight in the surrounding dark. Wishing she were not blind-tired from the day’s trek and the bizarre familial wrangling of the evening, Dakota checks the revolver on the nightstand and settles beside her lover, drawing her against her own body, back to front, fitting together as if made for each other. Love you, babe. Love to love you, but I don’t want to wake you, and I’m just tired, so tired. . .. She never finishes the thought. Sleep claims her between one breath and the next, and she slips away into the dark.

CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

SHE IS NEVER sure, afterward, what wakes her. Perhaps the snick of the key in the lock, perhaps a footfall or the voices of her dream, slipping through the pines in the wind. Asi stands by the bed, his ears up, tail stiff. Not a dream, then. Something is not as it should be. Early morning light sifts through the branches that are all that she can see out the one, high window at the apex of the roof, lays pale squares of light against the oak floorboards. She feels Kirsten’s body go suddenly rigid against her, her voice a barely audible whisper. “Dakota? What is it?”

“I don’t know yet. I think someone’s in the house.”

Carefully she slips from the bed, her muscles moving smoothly and silently as Igmu Tanka’s own. Without sound, she lays a quieting hand on Asi’s head, then pulls on the jeans and shirt folded over the back of a chair, tucking the gun on the lamp table into her waistband. Kirsten glides from the bed behind her in one, smooth noiseless motion, reaching for her own clothes and weapons. Still barefoot, Koda steals toward the spiral metal stair that leads down to the ground floor. The loft opens onto the long side of the house, giving it privacy from the kitchen and living area below; all she can see from the head of the stair is the small game table by the floor-to-ceiling window and the shadow of the roof where it slopes to within a few feet of the ground. She stands there, scarcely breathing, her eyes closed as she concentrates her whole attention on her hearing, her thought spiraling out from her to touch the sense of wrongness that pervades her whole mind.

Someone is in the house. Quiet, not moving. Waiting.

Danger.

“Koda. There are men in the woods behind us. With guns.” Kirsten’s voice is no more than a breath at her ear.

Dakota crosses the room to step up onto the chair beneath the small window. There are perhaps half a dozen of them, two of whom she recognizes from the bachelor groups of the night before. Which makes the whole situation quite suddenly quite clear. “Goddam asshole baboons,” she mutters, biting her lip as she assesses options.

One. They can break the window and pick the idiots off. While satisfying, that still leaves whoever is downstairs, not to mention a riled community. Not a viable first choice.

Two. The skylight over the bed is just low enough that she and Kirsten can pull themselves and Asi through it. That leaves a long, risky slide down the roof, possibly a long, risky, noisy slide down the roof into the arms of the idiots presently gathered behind the house. Asi, particularly, is not likely to perform the maneuver quietly.

Three. Draw the said idiots toward the front of the building. Then proceed with Two.

She whispers, “I’m going to go downstairs and create a diversion. While I’m doing that, break out the skylight.” Kirsten gives her an alarmed look, then her face clears as she nods her understanding.

Koda slips into her boots, loosening her shirt around her waist to hide the butt of the pistol. As she steps out onto the metal rungs of the stair, deliberately clanging her heels against them, she can hear Kirsten chiseling away with her knife at the sealer that holds the lexan skylight in place. She clatters down the staircase and around the corner of the kitchen. She pauses there for a long moment, hooking her thumbs into her belt next to her gun. A man sits at the table, a cup by one hand, a rifle by the other. Koda lets the silence drag out, then says, “Well, now. I sure don’t remember inviting you to breakfast.”

Ariel Kriegesmann grins over the top of his cup, taking a long drink of the steaming coffee. “I remember it just fine. And here I am.”

“How’d you get in?”

For answer, Kriegesmann dangles a ring of keys. “You forget. I’m the landlord.”

“Funny. I thought that was your father.”

A flush spreads across Kriegesmann’s face, pale in the early light, but he says evenly, “For the time being.”

Koda moves toward him, out of the east light that silhouettes her against the window. His gaze follows her, half appraising, half hungry. “Does he know you’re here?”

“Actually, it was his idea. We need someone with medical skills at Elk Mountain.” He shrugs. “We have plenty of food, relative safety, some of the comforts of civilization. It beats wandering around in the mountains.”

Crossing behind him, Koda is faintly surprised to find the door is not locked. That must mean there are more armed men out in front, which is where she wants them. Holding it open, she says, “Then tell Julius I appreciate his offer, but Annie and I need to get on to Salt Lake. It’s been nice knowing you, etc., etc.. Now get out.”

“Jeez, aren’t you the grateful one. How about, ‘Thank you for the good food, Ari.’ Or,

‘Thanks for letting us spend the night in the cabin.’”

“Thanks for the good food, Ari,” she says. Her sight narrows, hunter-vision pinpointing him in a cloud of darkness. With an effort she shakes it off. She does not want to have to shoot him. That would take time she does not have. “Thanks for letting us spend the night in the cabin. Now get your ass out of here.”

“Well, see, it’s not quite that simple.” He rises easily, stretching. Strutting. He comes to face her across the open door. “It’s not just doctors we need. You may have noticed we’ve got a surplus of men.”

“I noticed.”

” Well, then. We need women. Healthy women who can have kids. You, for instance.” He gestures toward the staircase. “Your little friend, for instance. You could be very comfortable here, you know.”

“Is that a proposal? I decline.” It requires all her strength to keep the contempt out of her voice. She does not want to goad him into a demonstration of his manhood here and now. The darkness closes in on her sight again. Gods, the stupid arrogance of the idiot.

Laying his hand on the door, Kriegesmann jerks it shut with a slam. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Get used to it.”

To the end of her life, she will never know how she manages not to laugh in his face. Instead, she steps back, and in one swift motion draws her pistol and fires three times past his head. The plate glass in the tall windows shatters and falls to the deck, and as Kriegesmann jerks around to follow the sudden sound, she darts around him, snatches his rifle off the table and sprints for the stair. Grasping the center post to swing her herself up the spiral two steps at a time, she never pauses to look behind her. From outside, she can hear shouting. That is good; that means that the idiots under the window are now with the presumed idiots at the front, reinforcing their inglorious leader.

Kirsten, her own gun in hand, stands at the head of the stairs, one foot on the first tread. She backs up, relief clear in her face as Koda steps out into the loft. The skylight leans against the wall by the bed, nothing now between them and the pines that tower over the roof.

She answers the unspoken question. “I broke some windows, that’s all. Give me a hand here—”

Together they pull the bed over to cover the stair head. It will not keep the men out for long; what will keep them out longer is the belief that she and Kirsten are holed up in the loft with a small arsenal. With luck, they will be long gone by the time the ruse is discovered.

“The packs?”

“Already out on the roof.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Making a stirrup of her hands, Koda boosts Kirsten up and halfway through the open skylight. Anchoring herself by the frame, Kirsten scrambles the rest of the way through and scoots over to one side. Asimov is next. Dakota gives him a pat and a “Good boy,” then lifts him through, halfway into Kirsten’s lap. Last Koda grasps the edge of the opening and levers herself up onto the shingles. The pine branches grow thick along this stretch of the roof, giving them at least some cover from below. Not that that will matter in a second or two.

From here, the slide looks decidedly longer and steeper than it did from below. Asi, looking down, gives an anxious whine, scrabbling against the rough surface with his nails. There is no time to waste thinking about it. Before Koda can speak, Kirsten gives herself a shove and goes hurtling down the slope, bumping along the shingles with Asi still halfway across her. Koda follows, coming off the edge of the roof six feet above the ground with a somersault that lands her, if not on her feet, at least not on her head or on her rifle. Kirsten, beside her, unfolds upward with a groan, while Asimov dances around her, tongue lolling. “Chirst, you beast,” Kirsten says, and it is not at all clear whether she means her dog or her lover. Then they are running, all three, for the line of woods behind the house, Koda with her rifle in her hands, Kirsten’s finger on the trigger of her automatic. From behind them comes shouting, the sounds of a coalescing mob. A single gunshot cracks the air, followed by a full-throated roar from a dozen throats.

Sprinting among the trees, leaping the tussocks of undergrowth that bar their way, Kirsten pants, “Y’know—I’m—not sure—that’s—all—about us.”

“I don’t think it is,” Koda answers without breaking her stride.

“They want—what I think they want?”

“Yeah. And Ari’s—” Koda pauses to duck under a low branch that bars their way—“got the Oedipal thing bad. Gonna overthow papa.”

Ahead lies the main drive to the lodge. Koda pulls up, motioning Kirsten and Asi to halt, and listens. The shouting of the idiot posse comes to them through the trees, along the side path that leads to the cabin. Faintly, from the tarmac that leads past the headquarters-cum-palace, comes the sound of running feet. A dozen or so, coming on fast. Shit. Koda pumps a round into the chamber of the 30.06; Kirsten, her mouth drawn in a grim line, pulls back the slide on her pistol. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Kirsten answers, and they burst out of the trees onto the road just as Tanya and Elaine, three other armed women behind them, come pelting around the bend of the road.

But Tanya yells, “Go!” motioning them across the road with the sweep of her arm. “I’ll deal with them!”

With a salute of thanks, Koda and Kirsten, Asi loping full out beside them, sprint across the road and into the deep woods. Behind them gunfire erupts in a rapid exchange. The sound fades as the trees, towering pines and spruce, close about them, fallen needles silencing their steps as they become shadows in the darkness only, running ahead of the sun.

*

At evening, they camp on the shoulder of the Medicine Bow Range. The Platte runs blue below them, its course marked with brilliant splashes of color: the scarlet of Indian Paintbrush, golden yellow columbines, lupines in rose and purple. Snow blankets the high ridges of the mountains that rear toward the sky behind them. A faint breeze, chill from its passage over the latest fall, winds about them as they sit by the remains of their fire, their pots scoured and stowed, their supper of jerky and tinned beans lying comfortable if not tasty in their bellies. Asi, oblivious, lies snoring in the warmth.

“I’m going to get up any minute and get into the tent,” Koda says, smoothing Kirsten’s hair against her shoulder. “Any minute now.”

“Mmmm,” says Kirsten. “Just drag me in after you.”

After a moment, Koda says, “Those are pretty big mountains. You wanna go over or run parallel to ‘em down into Colorado?”

“You’re supposed to be the trusty native guide. Which way’s quicker?”

“Over, probably.”

“Over it is, then.

“Know something?”

“What?”

“I’m never gonna say something’s no skin off my ass again. I’m almost scared to take my pants off and look at the damage.”

“Want me to take ‘em off for you?”

Koda flashes her a grin. “Why, Ms. President. I thought you’d never ask.”

*

“Looks like rain soon,” Kirsten observes as she looks up at the sky and its rapid gather of clouds like guests to a party they absolutely cannot miss. Her breath comes hard and fast from the exertion of climbing nearly (to her) vertical grades with not a level plane in sight. She walks with the aid of a stout stick nearly as tall as she is. Asi lopes along happily, occasionally darting off the game trail they are following to investigate something interesting to his dog senses. Wiyo easily paces them high above, riding the currents of the increasingly chilly air.

They have made good time since The Elk Mountain Incident—as Kirsten is coming to call it, capital letters and all. They’d managed to scare up a couple of mountain bikes that had gotten them a good long way before a blown out tire ended that adventure for good. Not that it would have mattered soon anyway. The grades they were now climbing were too steep to even entertain the notion of riding a bike, unless one was Greg LeMonde, a title neither of them claimed.

Cars, of course, were out. Even if gas hadn’t been a problem, which it was, and they had been able to find one that would start after sitting idle for six or more months, which they hadn’t, riding in a moving vehicle might as well have painted a target on their heads, together with a sign reading “KIRSTEN KING IS HERE!!! COME AND GET HER, BOYS!!”

Androids do not drive cars.

While continuing her easy, long-legged stride, Koda cants her head, nostrils flaring as she scents the air. “Not rain,” she murmurs. “Snow. And a lot of it by the look of those clouds.”

“Not that I’m a weatherman or anything,” Kirsten replies, chuckling, “but in case you’ve forgotten, it’s July, love. It doesn’t snow in July.”

“Up here it can. Weather patterns are different up this high. A July snowstorm isn’t all that uncommon. People can get tricked up here sometimes, and come unprepared.”

“If you start making Donner party cracks,” Kirsten states with a nervous chuckle, “I’m gonna start running back down this damn mountain as fast as my slowly blistering feet will carry me.”

Koda smiles. “We’ll be alright. We’ve got a little time yet to find shelter.”

Kirsten looks around, seeing nothing but trees, trees, bushes, and more trees. “Um…I don’t want to sound alarmist or anything, but I haven’t seen anything even remotely resembling a town for hours. Hell, I haven’t seen anything resembling a house for hours.”

“We’ll find something. C’mon.”

With an exasperated sigh, Kirsten trudges on, every so often taking a wary glance at the clouds continuing to build and stealing the last of the bright blue of the sky.

*

Heavy flurries are threatening to turn into a full-out blizzard as Dakota leads them deeper into the forest. Her eyes constantly scan, ears primed for any sounds of danger. Asi ranges back and forth in front of them, nose to the ground and tail held at stiff attention. Though Kirsten trusts Dakota with her life, her old childhood fears of being lost in the woods have sprung to the surface with the turning of the weather, and though a chill wind is now blowing, a greasy sweat dots the exposed surfaces of her skin, dripping into her eyes and causing them to sting.

Suddenly, Asi’s haunches stiffen and he lets go a volley of barks that almost sends Kirsten into orbit. She steps closer to Dakota as a huge flock of birds rises, screeching their displeasure. To her surpise, her lover seems quite relaxed, even smiling as she eyes the angry birds. “I don’t see what’s so funny,” she snipes, angry more at herself for her jittery nerves than at her partner’s seemingly inappropriate sense of humor. “For all we know, he could be barking at a grizzly.”

“It’s no grizzly,” Koda replies, still smiling as she meets her lover’s eyes. “Birds wouldn’t be roosting around a bear.”

“So…what is it then?”

“You’ll see.”

“It” turns out to be a shack, though to use the term does great disservice to shacks everywhere. Short and squat, perhaps eight feet to a side if that, it has the faintly listing look of a party-goer after one too many shots of Cuervo. The only window peers out at the world through shattered glass, and the door, or what’s left of it, hangs forlornly from one rusted hinge. The roof, minus most of what passes for its shingles, is slightly canted and the rocks from a fireplace chimney rise from it like a strangely shaped mushroom.

To Dakota, it looks like nothing so much as a long abandoned ice-fishing shanty, though she knows that the nearest body of serviceable water is miles away in any direction. Still….

“Well, it’s not the Watergate, but it’s got a roof.”

At this point in time, Kirsten is all in favor of anything that involves protection from the hard-driving snow and the wind that cuts through her light windbreaker like the blade of a knife. She takes a step forward, only to be held back by Dakota, who unshoulders her rifle and aims for the door.

“I thought you said there wasn’t any danger?”

“No, I said there weren’t any grizzlies,” Koda replies, smirking. “Stay here a second. I’ll be right back.”

Confident in being obeyed, Koda steps easily forward and nudges the door open with the nose of her weapon. It gives way grudgingly, squealing its protest via its one rusted hinge. The strong odor of animal spoor assaults her nostrils, but the scent is nowhere near as strong as it would be had it been currently occupied, so she relaxes and steps inside. Aside from the aforementioned spoor and spiderwebs festooning the corners like forgotten party streamers, the shack is abandoned. Warped floorboards bear dark stains and the walls have jagged cracks running through them, but even so, the place seems relatively sound for all that.

“Wowza. A little ripe, huh?” Kirsten’s voice sounds beside her left elbow and she turns her head to gaze down into the shining emeralds of her partner.

“I thought I told you to stay put?”

“So you did,” is the complacent reply. “The fault in your logic is thinking that I’d actually obey. And since I’m the President and you’re only the chief cook and bottle washer, well….” Kirsten’s tone is light and playful. “Besides, I didn’t want you having any fun without me.”

“Oh yeah. Fun.”

Setting her rifle to stand in one corner, Koda, after a questioning eyebrow toward her partner, liberates Kirsten of her walking stick and walks to the good-sized fireplace taking up almost one entire wall. Squatting on her haunches, she maneuvers the stick up the chimney and pokes. A soft rain of elderly, almost white ash filters down, together with sticks, twigs, leaves, and part of a very old bird’s nest, sans birds. “Flue’s clear.” With a nod of satisfaction, she hands Kirsten back her stick and rises gracefully to her full height, dusting off her hands. “I’ll go out and get us some firewood before the storm gets much worse, then we’ll figure out how to close off that window and get some warmth in here.”

“Hang on a second,” Kirsten says, unshouldering her pack, unzipping it, and pulling out one of their tightly rolled blankets. “Throw this around your shoulders. It’s too damn cold out there to be walking around in just a shirt.”