The Growing

As Kirsten pushes her way through the last of the trees, she finds herself face to muzzle with an automatic weapon. Even though she recognizes the man who wields the weapon, instinct stops her strides, and her hands go up, palms out.

“It’s alright, Ma’am,” Jackson says, meeting her eyes quickly before returning his gaze to the man in back of her. “Just step to my right. I’ve got the asshole covered.”

Instead of stepping away, Kirsten instead steps forward. Raising a hand, she gently pushes the muzzle of the weapon to the left and holds the Lieutenant’s startled gaze. “Relax, Darius. He’s one of the good guys.”

“Good guys, Ma’am? You mean there were humans there?”

“He’s not human, Lieutenant.”

The weapon comes back up, a long dark finger tightening on the trigger. Once again, Kirsten pushes it away. “Stand down, Lieutenant. That’s an order.”

She’s serious. He can tell that from the blazing emeralds all but soldering him to the ground at his feet. Deeply ingrained respect for a superior officer wars with his absolute need to keep said officer safe and whole.

“Do it, Lieutenant, or I’ll have my buddy Max here take that gun and twist it into a pretzel.”

“Max?”

“Unit MA-233142176-X-83,” the android helpfully supplies.

“Max.”

“You got it,” Kirsten replies, smiling slightly. “Now, are you gonna lower your weapon? I’d kinda like to get out of here.”

“Are we taking him…it…whatever, back with us to the base?” Jackson asks, disbelief plain in his voice.

“Not…exactly,” Kirsten smirks. “Let’s just say we’re gonna play a little game of hide and seek. We hide. He seeks.”

“And what is he going to be seeking, if you don’t mind my asking, Ma’am?”

Kirsten’s smile becomes positively predatory. “Androids.”

*

“Hey, soldier, how far is it to Minot?”

As the sentry turns, Koda steps in to wedge her thumbs in his elbows, going for the nerves. His rifle drops to dangle against his belly, and she deftly relieves him of it before it can hit the ground. Behind the guard, only the glint of his eyes visible by the quarter moon, Tacoma raises both fists and brings them down on the unprotected back of the man’s neck with a dull thud. He slumps, folding in on himself with a soft “Uhhhhh….”

Dakota breaks his fall, laying him out face down in the grass while Tacoma pulls his hands behind him, slipping a length of self-locking plastic into place around his wrists. “That’ll hold him for a while,” he breathes. “Let’s go.”

“Right behind you, thiblo.”

Tacoma slips into the tall grass before her, bending low to minimize the rippling wake in the purple spikes above him, black now in the moonlight except for the dangling chaff. Their shimmering silver echoes the moonsheen on Tacoma’s form, and Koda’s sight shifts almost imperceptibly to show her not a man but the lean, muscularity of a stalking cougar, his fur silver-gilt in the pale light. With that shift her own hearing becomes more acute, bringing her the small rustlings of mice and kangaroo rats as they go about their business under the shelter of the grass, bringing her the high-pitched whir of moth wings, the frequency so high it almost hurts her ears even now. Her feet go lightly among the tangled stems and roots, yet it seems to her that if she looks down she will see the rectangular print of wolf pads, the indentations of claws.

She does not look down.

This has happened to her before, but never with this intensity. Her vision in the sweat lodge has changed her in ways she does not yet understand. She does not look at her hands, either, as she holds the grass apart from her passage.

A faint, pale smudge to her left, seen intermittently as she slips along like a shadow, tells her that they are moving parallel to the ranch road, moving toward whoever or whatever the sentry has been set to guard. After a time the ground beneath her feet begins to slope and the grass to thin. It gives way to shorter plants, sidas and clover, bluebells with their dark cups, columbine with tails like shooting stars, white as ghosts under the moon. The ground opens up and flattens, and Tacoma crouches, making for a line of trees at a shambling run that only reinforces the unfocussed image of a tawny cat that overlays his own shape. Koda follows, her feet making no sound on crumbling earth and gravel. Great wings drift by overhead, and she shivers.

Owl. There is a death waiting in the night. She feels it in the chill of her blood, the touch of ice on her skin.

Not hers. Not Tacoma’s.

Dakota drops to her belly beside her brother where he lies among the trees, looking intently down at the ranch house and outbuildings a hundred yards ahead. Yellow light shows in the windows, soft and haloed. Kerosene lamps or candles, then, not electric. The space between the house and the barns is crowded close with vehicles: Jeeps in Air Force blue, desert camo Humvees, a pair of 60 millimeter guns on their own carriages. One barn also shows lights; the other stands dark. Barracks and ammo dump, most likely. There is no sign of droids. On the long, low porch of the house, an orange glimmer betrays a burning cigarette. Guard, probably.

Tacoma whistles almost soundlessly. “Got a bomb or two in your pocket, sis?”

“Left ‘em back in the APC. Sorry.”

“We don’t have the firepower to take them, not even with the whole team.”

Koda’s blood stirs, hot and hungry and not entirely human. Her tongue runs along her lips. “Maybe,” she says. “Maybe there’s another way.”

“Such as?”

“We don’t need to take the weapons. Just the men.”

Tacoma’s finger jabs the darkness, counting the shapes in the farmyard. “There’s a dozen and a half transports and guns down there. Count three or four men for each one, and we’re outnumbered even without their firepower. The odds are still bad. We’ll have to skirt around them.”

“One on one is even odds.”

*

“Unit grouping detected six-point-two-seven kilometers west-northwest of this position.”

From her place in the passenger’s seat, Kirsten looks over her shoulder at the android smushed in the tiny space in the back. “How many? Have they spotted us yet?”

“Fourteen. Negative. These units are equipped with line of sight technology only.”

“Ok, how close can we get to them before they spot us?”

“Two point three kilometers to the west of this position is a small ridge. Should you drive to the bottom of that ridge, you would be safe from their sensors. The pathway down is rather rutted and washed out, but I believe this vehicle is quite capable of making the descent with no untoward difficulties.”

“Thank you, Max. Jackson, you heard the droid. Let’s find that ridge and make tracks!”

The set of Jackson’s jaw lets Kirsten know just how much he likes the order he’s been given, but he follows it anyway, going, once again, against every single instinct that has kept him alive for the last of his twenty seven years.

“Darius,” she whispers, knowing the young man will hear her. “Please, trust me.”

After a moment, the stiff bundle of muscles at his jaw loosens just slightly. “I do trust you, Ma’am. It’s—.” His eyes flick to the rearview mirror, then back to the road in eloquent explanation.

“Trust me,” Kirsten repeats before hanging on for dear life as the truck pounds its way down the pitted, potholed road wannabe.

Several bone shaking moments later, they are at the bottom of the ridge, though Kirsten wonders if perhaps her stomach and kidneys are lying, quivering, back up at the top. “Wonder if you could call that an ‘untoward difficulty’”, she mutters, half to herself, earning a half grin from her driver and a purposefully blank stare from the android in the back.

Opening the door, she heaves her hurting carcass out of the truck, then eases the seatback over so that Max can extricate himself, which the android does with easy grace.

Too easy, Jackson thinks as he grabs his weapon. Exiting the truck, he places himself between his President and the android, taking no chances. Kirsten notices the move, but says nothing, satisfied for the moment that at least he’s not trying to ventilate their temporary ally.

They make their way up the rocky, vine-covered ridge until their heads are just below the lip. Max stops them there. “If you take care to keep hidden, you will be able to see the units just ahead.”

Jackson takes the lead, and peers over the very edge of the ravine. When his eyes clear the lip, he can see the westering sun glinting off of the plastic and metal casings of the androids. Kirsten quickly scrambles up beside him and likewise looks over the top. “Any idea what they’re doing?” she asks Max who hunkers down beside her—if, in fact, an android can ‘hunker’.

“I am not programmed to read their transmissions. However, from what I can interpret, they appear to be awaiting reinforcements.”

“And they haven’t spotted us.”

“Not that I can detect.”

“Ok then. You know what to do.”

“Affirmative.”

Kirsten finds herself not quite knowing what to say. The android isn’t human, and members of his kind have killed millions, if not billions, and enslaved millions more, subjecting them to rape and god knew what other tortures. And yet…and yet…she can’t help, if not liking, at least appreciating the polite, soft spoken being that looks so human even she herself can’t tell the difference easily.

Having no need for such pleasantries, he gives them both an android’s approximation (a very good approximation, if the truth be known) of a smile, and without further words, hops easily to the top of the ridge and strides off in the direction of his kindred.

Jackson sidles over closer, looking her and not quite able to hide the ‘I think you might have a screw loose somewhere’ expression on his face. Kirsten doesn’t really blame him, since his knowledge of this plan encompasses the words “trust me”, and nothing else. She sighs quietly. “Ask away, Lieutenant.”

“Why are we letting an enemy, who knows where we are, go off to a whole group of other enemies so he can bring them back here and kill our asses? Ma’am?”

“Darius, I know you’ve been very patient with me, and I appreciate it, believe me.”

Jackson nods.

“But…in some cases, seeing something is much better than hearing about it. So I’ll ask you one last time to trust me, if you can.”

Taking his eyes off of the retreating android, he gazes at her for a very long moment, jaw working silently. “Alright,” he says finally. “We’ll do it your way, Ma’am.”

“Thank you.” A beat. “And Darius?”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“If they do start heading back this way….”

“Yes?”

“Run.”

His hands go white knuckled on his weapon as he once again peers in the direction of the android group, very shortly to be increased by one.

As both watch, Max is scanned, and then accepted into the group, much to Kirsten’s silent relief. It is only now that she wishes she’d thought far ahead enough to have attached a transceiver onto the droid so they could get back some information before his task was completed. No use crying over fried circuits, she thinks as she begins a silent countdown in her head.

At ‘one’, she ducks down, grabbing Jackson by the shoulder and pulling him with her.

A loud, sharp cough-like sound rockets through the cool, still air, followed by the great whoosh of an explosion. Heedless of the possible danger, Jackson shakes loose from Kirsten’s grip and pops his head up to see a giant plume of fire rush up from where the droid group used to stand.

“Holy FUCK!” he shouts. “What just happened?!?”

“Max,” Kirsten retorts, quite unable to keep the smug expression from stealing over her face.

“Max? Your android…did that?!? But how?”

“He’s what we’re calling a ‘suicide bomber droid’. Big government secret. One of those guys hit a convoy and did a good bit of damage to it, but we were able to gather up some of the remaining parts, and viola! I simply changed the code from killing humans to killing androids, and there you have it. One good guy and a bunch of dead bad guys.”

Jackson slowly turns to look at her, a whole ocean’s worth of new respect shining in his light-colored eyes. “Jesus Christ, Ma’am! That was…amazing! Shit! How many more of those bad boys do you have wandering around?”

“As of now, twenty five, plus any more that they manage to make back at the plant. I changed the code for all of them.”

“So, why don’t we go back and get ‘em all now? Man, this kicks ass!”

“First off, Lieutenant, where would we put twenty five androids in this truck?”

“Hell, Ma’am! We’ll send out a damn convoy for these suckers!”

“Secondly,” Kirsten interrupts, holding up a hand as she watches the flames continue to burn, “we can’t let the regular androids who are making these new units in on the secret. If we do, obviously, no more androids for us. So, we wait as long as we can, then we send that convoy of yours back down here, and take it from there.”

Jackson looks back over at the killing field, the grin on his face a mile wide. “Whatever you say, Ma’am. Whatever you say.”

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

“WHAT?” TACOMA’S VOICE hisses with alarm. “Oh, no. Don’t you even—”

“Cover me,” Dakota says, getting to her feet and starting toward the house below. Her own rifle slants across her back; she carries the weapon captured from the sentry in full view, its curved magazine marking it as an AK. One of theirs. They will assume she has killed their man for it. Behind her, Tacoma is swearing, violently and very softly. He cannot cover her, and they both know it.

If her plan works, he will not need to.

She is ten yards from the sentry before he sees her. “Hey!” he yells, dropping the stub of his cigarette as he fumbles to being his rifle to bear. “Who’s out there? Identify yourself!”

“Dakota Rivers,” she says, moving from the shadow of one vehicle to the next, keeping their metal bulk between her and the guard. “I want to talk to your commander.”

“Yeah?” A snort. “You got an appointment? Step out here into the light, or I’ll shoot.”

He raises his rifle.

“Put that down, soldier. Go tell your captain there’s somebody to see him.”

What he does is of no consequence. His shouting will bring the others out into the open in a moment or two, and that is what she wants. His shouting, or a gunshot.

“Fuck!” he yells, and fires. The shot goes wide, clanging off the armored hide of a Humvee behind her.

Koda brings her own gun to her shoulder and squeezes the trigger gently. The guard drops onto the boards of the porch, screaming. And finally the doors of the house and barn slam open, and men pour out into the night, surrounding her. Just what she wants.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she says, and grins at them.

They are young and grubby and unshaven, most of them half-dressed in camouflage pants or shorts, most of them carrying rifles or pistols pointed at the ground rather than the intruder. Most of them green as the prairie grass that grows in a sea around their camp. One of them sidesteps his way through the parked vehicles to the side of the man doubled over on the porch. “Jem? Jem! You fuckin’ bitch, what’d you do to my brother?”

“Quiet!” The roar comes from the porch, somewhere behind the hapless Jem. An older man steps into the light, his grizzled hair buzz-cut, the planes of his face smooth and sharp in the hard light. “What’s going on here?” Gold maple leaves glint on his squre shoulders, and he holds a nine-millimeter pistol loosely in his hand, not aimed. It does not need to be.

“Major,” Koda says, stepping out from among the parked Jeeps. “You’re the commander here?” It is not really a question, only a confirmation. She keeps her eyes on his face, not his gun. If he is going to shoot, she will see it in his eyes.

“Calton,” he says. “Ted Calton. Who the hell are you?” He ignores Jem, now being helped to his feet and led away by his brother.

“Dakota Rivers.” For a split second his eyes widen; then the steel is back. “You’ve heard of me.”

“We’ve heard what happened on the Cheyenne,” he acknowledges. “That was good work.”

Koda makes a show of looking around her, her finger still light on the trigger of her weapon. “I don’t see any droids here.”

“And you won’t. We’ve destroyed every one we’ve found.”

“Good work,” she echoes. “Want to do some more of it?”

“We do more of it every day.” Calton moves forward, standing on the highest step. “We protect the people and the land around Minot.”

“For a price?”

“For a price.” Something that is almost a smile touches his mouth. “We can’t patrol and farm, too. The civilians are grateful.”

Koda raises her voice to carry to the barn and the men still hovering in the door there. “The droids and their allies are massing around Offut and to the west. We expect them to try to take out Ellsworth, again. If they get through us, they’ll roll over you. We have a common interest.”

“Not necessarily. If you stop them, they won’t bother us. If you don’t stop them—well, we don’t have what they want, now do we? No high-powered cyberwonks here.”

Cold runs over Dakota’s skin. But of course they know Kirsten is at Ellsworth; the same tales that brought her own name north would have brought Kirsten’s and Maggie’s. Blind Harry’s ballad is sung here, too, for all she knows. “You have lives,” she says evenly. “And you have weapons. If those civilians include women, the droids have a use for them, too.”

“Breedstock?” Calton snorts. “We’ve heard those stories. What the hell would a droid want with human pussy?”

“More humans. We don’t know why, yet.” She raises her voice. “You men! You want your wives and girlfriends, your sisters, shipped off to be bred by the kind of scum the droids keep alive to do their work? We killed the rapists at Mandan when we bombed the droid factory. We just executed a second batch at Ellsworth. How many have you caught?”

A murmur ripples through the knots of men, and a scowl appears on Calton’s face. He glances quickly about the perimeter of the farm buildings; he has to assume that she has men in place to cover her. “We deal with anyone who threatens us. Anyone. Got that?”

Koda grins at him, and again she feels the heat course through her blood. “That B-52 back in the field yours? We have reason to think the enemy may have air power. Got anything to protect you from high-altitude fighters?”

Calton gestures with his gun. “Go back to your people. Tell ‘em no deal. We stay here and protect what we’ve got.”

“You men!” Koda shouts. “What do you think about that? Are you going to sit here on your butts and miss the chance to get your world back? Or are you coming south with me?”

“I’m going.” One trooper, a bit older than most of the others, steps out of the ring of men. Another follows, then three more.

The roar of Calton’s gun splits the night. “The hell you are! Get back in your quarters, all of you! This is my command! As for you—” He lowers the pistol he has fired into the air to aim at Koda. “Get the hell out. While you can.”

Carefully Koda raises the gunstrap over her head and lays the AK aside. It seems to her that she hears the breath of every man around her, harsh and rushing like winter wind. She smells their sweat, the fear in some, arousal in others. The flesh of Calton’s face lies lightly on the bone, so that she can almost see through it to the white skull beneath. See his death. “I’ll fight you for them,” she says.

“What?” Fear flickers in his eyes, is gone.

“I’ll fight you for your command. You win, you keep your men. I win, they go with me.” Her words fall into silence.

“Fight you?” Calton glances at his pistol. “How?”

For answer, Koda bends and draws the knife from her boot-top. The light catches its ten-inch blade, runs along it like quicksilver. “Like this.”

He is trapped, and knows it. His eyes widen, then narrow again. He cannot afford hesitation. “All right,” he says. Setting the pistol on a windowsill behind him, he draws the knife from his own belt. “Don’t expect me to go easy on you because you’re a woman, though.”

Dakota laughs, tossing her blade end for end and catching it again. The men shift to form a ring around them in the open space between the farmhouse and the parked vehicles. Someone brings a kerosene lamp to set at the perimeter of the circle, then another. Their light throws Calton’s shadow and her own huge on the ground, distorted, creatures with impossibly long legs and arms sprouting from attenuated bodies. Slowly they circle each other, Koda keeping her eyes on Calton’s face. His blade glints in her peripheral vision, shines like a beacon to her heightened vision.

He feints, cutting low for the belly, and Koda steps lightly out of his reach, spinning wide to her left. He turns with her, but too slowly, and she whips toward him, her blade opening a gash on his upper arm. His blood runs black in the dim light.

Voices come to her on the wind of her passing, but she does not heed them. “Surrender,” she says.

For answer he attempts to close with her again, this time coming on straight at her. She blocks his upward stab with a sweep of her left arm, whirling again out of his reach. Her wrist is cold and wet, but the cut is shallow. It stings, barely perceptible. The blood from Caltons cut, though, falls on the earth in dark spurts. She need only avoid injury, wear him down.

He knows it, too. Fear flickers across his face, is gone. With a yell, he comes in low and fast, butting at her with his head while his knife goes for the tendons in her left leg. She rolls with the blow, planting a foot in his gut to carry him up and over, to land hard on his back behind her. Koda scrambles to her feet, stepping hard on the wrist of his knife hand with the heel of her boot. His fingers open, and she kicks the blade away.

Behind her a cheer starts up, to be abruptly broken off as Calton grabs at her ankle, turning it hard to bring her down with him. She falls halfway across his body, rolls as he surges off his back to pin her, reaching for her throat with both hands. His fingers close around her neck, bearing on her windpipe and the great veins in her neck. Pressing down and back, seeking the leverage that will break her neck, his grip tightens as she gasps for breath, her chest grown suddenly tight. Calton’s face is a grinning skull mask above her. A shadow passes over her eyes, and she brings her knife up between their straining bodies, finds the soft spot just beneath the join of the rib cage. She thrusts straight up, the blade grating on bone, then making easy passage through the soft tissue of liver and lung, cutting upward. For a moment Calton remains above her, his hands tightening convulsively about her throat, bringing on the darkness. Then he collapses across her, blood running from his mouth in a black torrent, and is dead.

Silence holds her. Then she pushes Calton off her to stagger to her feet. His blood stains her hands, her face, her shirt, dark and wet in the dim light.

Then the sound begins, softly at first, the men chanting her name. “Koda. Koda.” The murmur becomes a shout, swells, grows to a roar. “Koda! Ko-da! Ko-da!”

She lets it wash over her, drawing strength from it. She raises her head to search the faces around her, mouths straining, eyes wide. These are her men, now. Won in battle, paid for in blood. The thought sends a shiver down her spine, and she throws her head back, howling wordlessly with them.

“Koda! Koda!” It goes on and on, the rhythm carried on stamping feet. Finally she raises an arm to silence them. They quiet gradually, as her senses contract about her, and she is one human woman again, standing in a circle of men who are not entirely sure what has happened to them. “All right,” she says quietly. “Get your gear. We’re pulling out now.”

They move to obey, all but one. Tacoma stands before her, his eyes dark. “Are you all right?” he says. “The blood—”

“Not mine.” She glances down at her ruined shirt. “Not most of it, anyway.”

“What happened? For a moment there, I didn’t know you.”

She meets his gaze steadily, seeing herself though his eyes. The fight, and the kill. “You saw it all?”

He nods.

“For a moment there, I didn’t know myself,” she says slowly. “It’s as though something—slipped. It’s happened a couple times since—since—”

“Since your vision?”

“Yeah. I feel—different. Inside. Things look different. My hearing is different.”

“You talked to Ate?”

Her hand makes a small arc in the darkness. “About some of it. This was almost like that time on the bridge. I felt—out of myself, somehow.”

Some of the rigidity goes out her brother’s shoulders, and he says,” It’s the warrior-gift growing in you. It can be hard to live with.” He glances down at Calton’s body. “Did you mean to challenge him all along?”

She shakes her head. “That just happened. But it was so—familiar. Like I’d done it before. Like the knife was part of my arm. It knew what to do. I never thought.”

Tacoma gives her shoulders a quick squeeze, stepping away from her as the first of the troopers steps out of the barn, his pack on his back, his rifle slung about his neck. The others follow, coming to stand beside the Jeeps and Humvees. Tacoma’s presence does not seem to surprise them. Like Calton, they must have assumed that Koda had men all around them. Let them continue to assume.

Tacoma steps toward one of the Jeeps, glances at the ignition. “Keys?” he asks the man nearest him.

“In the glove compartment, Sir.”

Tacoma fishes for them, finds them. Koda comes to stand by the passenger door and shouts, “All right! We’re moving out! Follow me!”

They cheer again, and again she feels their energy surge within her, obliterating the pain of her cut, the bruises on her throat. She slips into her seat, and Tacoma steers the Jeep out onto the road.

Behind them the rest follow, raising a cloud of luminous dust in the moonlight.

*

The convoy moves swiftly through the night. The full moon rides high in a blaze of stars, bright enough to cast shadows in a world where the glare of civilization no longer rimlights the horizon. Koda dozes fitfully in the lead Jeep, the APC’s from Ellsworth dispersed at regular intervals down the line to ride herd on their new recruits and guard against second thoughts. The tide of adrenaline that carried her through the duel has spent itself, leaving a strange restlessness behind. Her dreams, when she sleeps, are full of drifting voices.

Dawn comes on a chilled breeze as the gates of Ellsworth roll open to receive them. The startled MP salutes as Koda passes, Tacoma returning the gesture with a snap of his own wrist. In the rearview mirror, Dakota can see him counting off the vehicles that follow her in, an easy dozen more than followed her out. The men in the Jeeps and APC’s cheer as they pass the sentry box, honking and waving their rifles in the air.

“Better see the Colonel first,” Tacoma says quietly.

Koda rolls her head back, attempting to work the knots out of her shoulders and upper back. “They’re not exactly the supplies we meant to pick up, are they? Try her office first.”

They catch Maggie just as she closes the door behind her, probably on her way from her cramped work space cum living quarters to the mess hall for breakfast. Koda watches her back straighten, then stiffen, as she spots the caravan sweeping up the length of the runway toward her, taking in its length and the unfamiliar Minot ID codes on the. Her fists settle on her hips as Tacoma pulls up directly in front of her, her eyebrows rising halfway to her hairline while a smile pulls at her mouth. “Well, now,” she says. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Tacoma grins at her as he climbs out of the Jeep. “Thought you’d like ‘em.” Turning to the line of Jeeps and troop carriers, he bellows, “Pile out! Form up!”

As the men scramble out of their trucks and prepare to stand the Colonel’s inspection, Dakota levers herself up and out the passenger door, feeling the blood rush into her tingling feet, the ache as the sinews of her joints stretch and flex. The bruises on her neck throb with her pulse.

Maggie flashes her a grin of welcome. Then her eyes widen, raking Koda from the reddening marks on her skin, down the front of her shirt, still stiff with dried blood, to the stained length of torn T-shirt wrapped around her left forearm. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s not mine, or most of it isn’t. I haven’t had a chance to wash up.”

“I do not,” Maggie says precisely, “see any injuries on anyone else. Tell me what I’m missing here.”

Koda shrugs. “What’s missing is these men’s former commander.”

“You killed him?”

Dakota nods. “It was a fair fight.”

“A. Fair. Fight.” Maggie lays out each word precisely. “And the prize was his men?”

“Them and their equipment. At least, they seemed to think so.”

“They’re from Minot?”

“They’re what’s left of it. They were fighting droids and running a protection racket while they were at it.” Koda turns slightly to watch as they form ranks, straggling into line under the whip of Tacoma’s voice. “They had ambitions. They tried to get a B-52 operational. It crashed.”

The blood leaves Maggie’s face, leaving her skin grey. “Gods. They could have blackmailed the whole damn country, what’s left of it. We don’t need loose nukes.”

“We need to get control of those bombs.” Koda swipes a hand over her face, and stares at her palm when it comes away red. There is blood even in her hair. ” Not today, not this side of battle. But before someone else gets ideas.”

“You need to get a shower and go to bed,” Maggie says flatly. “Anything else can wait.”

“I’m not—”

“No argument. Larke!”

The Corporal double-times it from one of the mid-line APC’s. “Ma’am.”

“Drive Dr. Rivers home. Don’t let her argue with you.”

Larke glances from the Colonel to Koda and back again. “Yes Ma’am. To the best of my ability, Ma’am.”

“Have mercy on him,” Maggie says pointedly. “We’ll talk later.”

Koda cannot quite bring herself to order Larke to disobey his Colonel. She does not particularly want to go back to the house, though, doubts she can sleep with the strange energy that hums through her. A part of her still lingers in the night just past, in the ring of fire and shadow where she killed a warlord for his command. Or, more accurately, the fight has stayed with her, a humming in her blood. It is something she has never felt before, yet it seems familiar. She could name it, if only she could find the word on her tongue.

“Ma’am? Doctor Koda?”

Larke holds the passenger door for her. She is not sure whether it is archaic courtesy or whether he can think of no other polite way to get her to move. Surrendering, she folds back down into the seat she has occupied for most of the past eight hours and lets him steer the Jeep for home.

Over the mile’s distance from flightline to officer’s housing, soldiers salute her as she passes. That, too, seems strangely familiar. She waves briefly back, noting with satisfaction that Shannon is turning the sign on the clinic door to OPEN as they drive by without stopping, her own insistence dying in her throat. As they round the former parade ground, now thick with rough wooden markers for the dead of the Cheyenne, she makes note of three new plots of disturbed earth. There is no memorial for them.

The house, when she enters, is chill and empty. Asimov must be out with Kirsten, wherever she is. Her absence is a dark void inside Koda, and the sharpness of her disappointment gnaws at her.

Kirsten could not have known that she would return early. She had not known it herself.

She sheds her clothes in the hall and heads for the shower.

*

Kirsten pushes open the kitchen door, feeling pleasantly warm and loose from the half-mile run from the woods to the officers’ housing section. Asi, not at all tired from the exercise, gives a high, loud yip as he shoulders past her, sending the door banging against the wall next to the fridge, and dances across the tiles to his empty bowl.

“All right. All right. It’s coming.”

She rummages about in the pantry, looking for the Base’s last surviving box of Milk-Bones. The ancient pipes in the wall hum and thump with water; Maggie must have come in for a shower and change of clothes. With the thought comes disappointment. Koda is not due back from Minot for at least another day, assuming everything goes well. And when, she reflects, was the last time everything went smoothly? Sometime in a past life, when she was a Washington wonk and had barely heard of South Dakota, still less of a woman named Dakota River

Asi yelps again, louder and more urgently. Kirsten stifles a surge of guilt at the thought that the big dog—the big baby, truth be told—has missed her so badly, even though he clearly has not lacked for attention. “Think of it as gaining a second mother,” she says as she finds the box and rips it open. “Twice the attention, twice the walks. Twice the flea baths.”

She turns to toss him the treat, but he is no longer there. From the hallway comes the sound of whining, the sharp click of his nails on the hardwood floor. Frowning, she sets the box on the counter and follows just in time to see him fling his whole weight against the bathroom door, shaking it on its aged hinges. From deep in his throat comes a howl like the winter wind over snow, and Kirsten’s breath catches in her throat, then resumes on a sigh of relief. On the floor, piled in careless abandon, lie a pair of jeans, a shirt, underclothes. The flannel shirt, in Black Watch tartan, she recognizes as Koda’s. “Easy, boy,” she says, pulling at Asi’s scruff, and lays her free hand on the knob. She grins. A shower a deaux is just what Dr. King would have ordered for herself had she known her lover was home early. Asi batters at the door a second time, and in a shaft of light from the lamp in the front room she sees what Asi has smelled since they came through the kitchen door. Almost all of the shirt, and both legs of the jeans, are soaked stiff with something half-dried, something the color of rust. The sharp scent of iron rises from them.

Blood.

“Koda!” she screams, and throws herself against the door.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

KODA SHIVERS AS she stands on the bathmat, the breeze that stirs the curtains ghosting over her skin. Despite the morning’s brightness, it leaves no warmth behind it, and she feels the gooseflesh rise and tighten along her arms. More out of habit than conviction, she turns on the hot tap and lets the water run while she collects towel and washcloth from the tall, narrow cabinet above the clothes bin. The stench of blood is on her still, mingled with sweat and dirt and the oil-and-metal smell of the APC. She is used to blood, and used to smelling of it. You cannot, after all, turn a breech foal or perform emergency field surgery and remain clean. It goes with the job.

Killing a man in a duel and taking his warband for prize does not go with a veterinarian’s job. It does not go with a warrior’s job, either, she reflects. Or it has not, at least for the last thousand years or so.

Yet there was nothing in it that was strange, or unfamiliar to her. There had been a pattern to the encounter that revealed itself as the fight played out, a choreography. It was as if she had been thrust out in front of the footlights in riding boots and a complete innocence of Tschaikovsky, and had danced a perfect Swan Queen. Tacoma had called it the warrior spirit waking within her, growing. He should know. As she had been called to the life of a shaman, he had been born a warrior. Strange, that like as they are, each has been given the other’s heart’s desire.

Koda steps into the shower and pulls the curtain to keep off the draft. The water hits her like a rush of snowmelt, so cold it burns. Gritting her teeth, she stands still, shivering, watching as the brown stains on her skin liquify and sluice down her body, swirling crimson around the drain at her feet. She unwraps the length of cotton around her arm and lets her own blood join the flow. As if, she thinks, we were making relatives in the Hunkapi. At that moment, her enemy seems as close as her own brothers and sisters, as her own lover.

Her hand, half numb, closes on the soap, and she begins to work it into a lather on the bathsponge. Just as she turns off the frigid water pelting down on her, Asi’s deep bay sounds in the hall, and the door shakes on its hinges. The dog’s howl comes again, with a second battering against the door, and with it Kirsten’s voice, high pitched in fear. “Koda!”

*

Kirsten’s weight hits the door for the second time, and suddenly its solidity is gone, giving way before her and carrying her straight into Dakota where she stands wet an naked on the bathmat, her hair streaming down her back and over her breasts like dark floodwater, water and blood running red in branching rivulets down the length of her legs, dripping from a long, shallow cut visible on her forearm.

The cold water soaks through her own thin shirt, chilling her. But it is the fear that causes her to shudder as she pushes Koda away, holding by both arms as her eyes run the length her body, searching for the source of the blood on the clothing still lying in a heap on the floor. But there is only the single wound, clearly not lethal, only a crimson thread against the copper of Dakota’s skin. Kirsten’s heart, lodged in her throat, slips back into its accustomed place, and she begins to breathe again. “All that blood,” she gasps. “It isn’t yours.”

“Not mine, no,” Koda echoes. “I killed a man.”

Her fingers tighten on Dakota’s arms, making small white marks where they dig into the skin. “At Minot? They fought you?”

“Not ‘they.’ Just one.” Koda’s eyes are on hers, a light in them that is part triumph, part desire, part something else she cannot name. “We took his men from him.”

“We?” Kirsten asks carefully. “You mean ‘you.’”

“I challenged him. None of our soldiers was killed, none of his. Just him.”

Once again, she sees the tall figure racing ahead of her onto the shattered bridge at the Cheyenne, dark hair streaming behind her like smoke. Once again, the fear strikes through her, this time without the hum of adrenaline in the blood that had drawn her out of herself and propelled her across the pile of tumbled concrete after the other woman. She is still not sure whether she acted from blind trust or blind panic. “How dare you,” she says softly, the words hissing between her teeth. “When so much depends on you.”

“When what depends on me?” Dakota steps closer, so that Kirsten can hear her breathing, not quite steady now. The light from the open window, glancing through the blowing curtains, shimmers over Koda’s wet skin, slipping over her shoulders and breasts like silk.

She is made lean and hard, lithe muscles stretched over long bones. The form of the hunting animal, elegant in understatement—long-legged cheetah moving with harsh and angular grace through the high grass, gerfalcon stooping on her prey like a meteor out of the blue heaven.

“I depend on you, goddammit.” A tremor runs through her, part fear, part not. “You have no right to risk yourself alone.”

“I wasn’t in any danger. No greater than we face here, every day.”

Kirsten opens her mouth to make the obvious retort, but instead looks away, silent. I risked as much, myself. Hypocrite.

But if she died, I would be so alone. So alone.

Again.

Intolerable.

Her breath catching, Kirsten runs her hands up Koda’s arms, over her shoulders and up into her hair, pulling her head down. Dakota’s mouth meets hers, hot and open, and Kirsten’s tongue traces the austere lines of the other’s lips, savoring the heat and the acerbic tang of salt. Koda pulls back abruptly, lowering her head to Kirsten’s throat to trace a line of hard kisses from her ear to the hollow of her collarbones.

She can feel the heat of Dakota’s skin through her clothing, the hardness of her nipples through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. Fire begins in the cleft between her legs, licks down her thighs and up her spine, knotting in her belly. “Bedroom,” she gasps, pulling back just enough to move, drawing Koda after her by the hand.

Dakota growls deep in her throat. The scent of blood on the clothes at her feet stirs her; a primal, animal sensation that is equal parts rage and lust.

The lust of the battle she’s fought.

The lust of the blood she’s spilled.

The lust of the woman who stands before her, so open and so ready.

It all coalesces within her, a spiral of red and black, pulsing with the beat of her heart, growing more acute as the scent of blood mingles with the scent of Kirsten’s need, and the scent of her own. It pulls each muscle taut, tension thrumming like a live wire, threatening to burn out of control with the tiniest of sparks.

Pausing only to kick the pile of bloody clothing out of view into the bathroom, Kirsten leads Dakota into the bedroom that has become theirs. Like a distant drum, Koda feels the pounding of her blood in its hidden channels, flowing hot as molten earth from the veins of Ina Maka. As she moves, Kirsten’s free hand claws at the fastening of her jeans, pushing them down around her ankles where she can step free of them. Her sandals follow, and she looses Dakota’s hand just long enough to pull her shirt over her head, flinging it unheeded onto the floor.

“You hunger,” Kirsten states as she stares up into a face haloed with black silk and lighted by heated silver eyes.

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

Fully naked, Dakota presses her roughly down onto the bed and stands for a long moment, taking in the compact body before her. Her sight narrows, hunter vision, and she runs her eyes over Kirsten’s face, open now with hunger to match her own, eyes dilated to midnight pools in their thin rim of green. She notes the pool of shadow at the base of the throat where the pulse beats visibly in its blue vein; her breasts rising and falling in short, sharp spasms, tight rippled flesh about her nipples; the hollows of ribcage and belly; the shadows between the lean legs. “Mitawa,” she growls, low in her throat. “Winan mitawa.”

She kneels on the bed, predator, hunter, running one hand over the Kirsten’s belly, tracing the hollows of her hipbones, slipping between her thighs. The pulse beats there, too, against her hand as Kirsten’s legs part for her and she runs her thumb through the soft curling hair to spread the lips of her lover’s sex. The wetness flows free there, and she growls, deep and long.

She feels Kirsten’s body jerk as she finds the nub of her clitoris, circling it slowly, pressing hard against its own hardness. Her mouth follows, and Kirsten moans, a low, animal sound, as her hands tangle in Koda’s hair. Dakota scarcely feels it, caught up in the throbbing of flesh against her mouth, the blood singing against her lips. She pulls away abruptly, running fingers down the wet curve of flesh, sinking fingers deep into Kirsten’s body and withdrawing only to thrust again and again, feeling the other woman’s hips buck against the long, hard strokes. Growling, needing, she adds another finger, feeling the tender tissues stretch to their limit as she pushes inside, curling her fingers into blunt claws.

From somewhere comes a cry, piercing and wild, and hot liquid flows over her hand and Kirsten’s thighs. The other woman’s body shudders as the waves of orgasm beat over her, pounding their rhythm against Koda’s hand.

Kirsten feels the cry leave her throat, a wild thing escaping into the air. Her body shudders with the force of her coming, pleasure so intense it is hardly distinguishable from pain shaking her flesh loose from her bones. Above her she sees the strong curve of Koda’s spine, the fall of her hair spilling down her back like a cataract. Her lover’s fingers withdraw from her, Koda turns to trace curving signs on her belly with her own essence. “Mitawa,” she says again, huskily. “Mine.”

“Mine,” Kirsten echoes. “You’re mine.”

Rolling over onto her side, she brings Koda down beside her, covering the long body with her own. “Mine,” she says again, tongue outlining Koda’s mouth, licking away the fine beads of sweat that have gathered over her lip. Moving down the column of her neck she laps at the moisture there, savoring the salt taste mingled with the sharp sweetness of lavender that runs along her tongue. Drunk, says the small part of her mind still capable of words, drunk with her.

Koda stretches under her, her hips lifting blindly, searching. “Wait,” says Kirsten. Beneath her lips, Koda’s throat vibrates with a small, incoherent sound, half moan, half growl. For answer, Kirsten presses her down against the bed again and sinks her teeth into Koda’s shoulder, tasting salt again as blood flows.

“Damn vampire,” Koda breathes, her fingers digging into Kirsten’s arm. But Kirsten pulls away, biting her own forearm this time, pressing the flesh with its thin red trickle against Dakota’s lips, feeling sharp white teeth against the edge of the wound as Koda sucks at it. Kirsten draws her arm away, then, and brings her own mouth down on Dakota’s, stained now scarlet as her own. She feels a shudder pass through Koda’s body as their tongues meet, tasting themselves and each other. Blood of my blood. The phrase floats up from some dark place in her mind.

“Hunka.” It is Koda’s voice, no more than a breath ghosting over her ear. She does not know the word, though she knows what it must mean. Bound now, inseparable. For this life and forever.

Her mouth moves to Koda’s breast, tongue swirling around the nipple, her free hand slipping down the smooth skin of her flank to slip between her legs. They part for her, and she trails her fingers along the tender skin, rakes through the triangle of dark curls at their apex, slips her fingertip into the growing wetness beneath her hand, withdraws to trace again the long muscles of flank and thigh. Koda’s head tosses against the quilt, eyes narrowed to blue slits, her breath coming in small, hard gasps.

“What do you want?” Kirsten whispers. “Tell me.”

“Want—”

“Is it this?” Kirsten’s hand covers Koda’s sex, spreading the flesh wide to press her mouth against the clitoris, tracing its shape with her tongue. She feels Koda tense, her climax gathering, and withdraws. “Or is it this?” she asks, her fingers following her mouth, then sliding down circle the hot entrance to Koda’s body.

“Want—”

“Tell me.”

“Fuck me,” Koda gasps. “Now. Now!”

“Oh, yes,” Kirsten answers, and slips her fingers inside, holding still.

Past words now, Koda thrusts her hips against Kirsten’s hand, and Kirsten at last begins to move in long, slow strokes, her thumb finding the clitoris again, pressing and releasing, then swirling over the distended head until Koda’s spine arches and her body goes rigid. Looking up, Kirsten can see the pulse where it hammers against her lover’s neck, point counterpoint to the frantic beating of blood under her hand. Koda cries out wordlessly, and her climax takes her, rippling through the taut belly under Kirsten’s hand.

“Mitawa,” Koda murmurs again after a time that seems to stretch into infinity. “Winyan mitawa. Cante mitawa.”

“Mitawa,” Kirsten agrees, drained now. She rocks back on her heels, then shifts to lie beside Koda, who slips an arm under her head. Dakota’s eyes slide closed, and darkness takes them both.

*

For the second time this day, Koda emerges shivering from the shower. She wraps one of Maggie’s luxurious towels around her—another amenity that is among the last of its kind; there will be no more Egyptian cotton anytime soon—snatches her clean clothes from the hooks on the door and runs the half-dozen steps to the kitchen.

Kirsten already has soup on the stove, with the oven lit and its door open.

Within the compass of its heat, Koda pauses in the doorway, struck once again by the compact grace of Kirsten’s body as she goes about the mundane tasks of preparing a belated lunch. Her shorts and tank top leave her arms and legs bare, browned skin smooth over muscle attesting to unexpected toughness. Her hair, drying rapidly in the warm air, curls around her ears and over the back of her neck. The late afternoon light streaming through the window as she sets out bowls and spoons touches it to gold.

The sight brings a flush of warmth to Koda’s own skin, mingling with the heat from the stove as she steps over Asi’s snoring bulk, unfurls the towel and begins to rub herself dry. But she says only, “Grandma Lula used to talk about how she and her brothers bathed in a big aluminum washtub in front of the stove back on the rez. Maybe we should start doing that, too.”

“Grandma Lula?” Kirsten flashes her a smile and an inquiring glance. “Reservation?”

“My mom’s mother. Pine Ridge. She believed that suffering is good for you. Builds character.”

“Catholic school?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s why Ina’s such a radical. Equal and opposite reaction.”

Kirsten sets the last of the silverware on the table, then turns to face her. “Your mother’s going to object, isn’t she?”

There is no need to ask what Themunga will object to, no need to skirt the answer. Koda lays the towel over the back of a chair and begins to pull on her clothes. “She’s going to have a conniption, if she hasn’t already. But Ate will win her over.” She pauses for a moment, head buried in a long-sleeved shirt in Black Watch tartan. “He already counts you as a daughter, you know. So will she, given a little time to get used to the idea. It doesn’t hurt that you’re already picking up some Lakota ways.”

“Like talking to raccoons?” Kirsten’s mouth twitches in a quizzical smile.

“Among other things.” Koda grins in return. “Not even Themunga would argue with one of the Four-foot spirits.”

“Mm,” Kirsten observes noncommittally. “How’s your arm?”

“Just a scratch.” Koda rolls up her right sleeve, peels the backing off a clear Coloplast bandage and slaps it over the cut. “Next week you won’t even know it was there.”

“Sure I won’t. Let’s eat?”

The meal is simple, lentils and vegetables stewed together; they are rationing the meat brought by Wanblee Wapka because there is no time to hunt, and no rancher thins his herd in the spring. It occurs to Koda that there is a certain optimism in the assumption that they will last as long as their supply of protein; unless they win the upcoming confrontation, it will hardly matter whether there is meat for the next month or not. “So,” she says, sopping a piece of frybread in the savory broth, “what did you find out about that bomber droid while I was gone?”

Kirsten drops her eyes, giving her entire attention to the soup plate in front of her. “Pass the bread?” As Dakota hands her the basket, she says, “I found the control code. So I made a few more of them.”

The tone is so casual that it almost gets by, but the sheer improbability of it snags on Koda’s brain and hangs there, flapping in the breeze. She sets her spoon down carefully. “Say again, please.”

Suddenly losing interest in her own food, Kirsten pushes her bowl away with a short, sharp gesture. “I said, I found the code and made some more bomber droids.”

It makes no more sense than it did the first time. Granted that Kirsten is brilliant in her field and could probably rig a working computer out of string and paperclips and a few printed circuits. But the Base does not have the materials to make a convincing android, much less “a few more” of a very specialized model. Not in the space of three days. “What,” she says, “did you make them from?”

“The droids already assembled. At the plant down at Butte.”

Butte is just over the state line in eastern Nebraska, perilously close to Offut and the massing enemy. Dakota leans her forehead on her clasped hands. “You want to tell me about it? Or do I have to keep playing twenty questions?”

Kirsten reaches across the table to touch her arm briefly. “It was no big deal. I put together a patch that will target other droids instead of humans. Then I went down to Butte, did my biodroid act, and installed it in their inventory. I tested it. It worked. End of story.”

“Tested it on what?”

“A squad of military units.”

Koda lifts her head from her hands, her eyes on Kirsten’s face. “When did you decide to go?”

There is no sign of a struggle there; the clear green gaze meets her own. “When Jimenez brought me the part of the bomber droid that gave me the idea. Before you left for Minot.”

At least there will be no lie between them. It is cold comfort. “You might have mentioned it.” Koda speaks very clearly, biting off the words. “Say, just in passing. Something like, ‘Koda, I’m going to risk my life and everybody else’s chance of survival on a solo, possibly suicide, mission to a droid plant.’ Would that have been so hard?”

“Yes,” Kirsten snaps. “It would have.”

“You had no right!” Koda’s fist comes down on the table, rattling the soup bowls. “You’re the President! You’re the fucking Commander-in-Chief! Get used to it!”

“I had the obligation! The goddamned fucking obligation!” Kirsten rises and flings away from the table, facing for a moment out the window. Koda cannot see her face, only the rise and fall of her back with her rapid breathing. When she turns, the color has risen in her face, flushing her skin from the base of her throat to her forehead, turning her tan almost to copper. “I can’t ask anyone else to take risks I won’t take myself, Dakota. That includes the lowest private on the Base. That includes Maggie.” She pauses a moment. “And that includes you.”

“Goddam it, Kirsten. No President since Washington has led his own troops, much less—”

“Much less fought Cornwallis for his!” Kirsten’s chin comes up, eyes blazing. “Don’t talk to me about not having the right. The world has changed, Koda. You know that.”

A silence stretches out between them, spun fine along the currents of anger. Koda’s eyes linger along the red line of her wound, visible under the cloudy plastic of its dressing. Finally she says, “Fair enough. But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I could have died.”

At that Koda looks up, searching Kirsten’s face as she goes on more quietly. “Or you could have, only I had no idea how. And I didn’t want this fight to be the last of us.”

“I wouldn’t have—”

“Yes you would. I’d have tried to stop you, too, if I’d known you were going to fight a duel.”

“I’d have gone with you.”

“And you wouldn’t have been where you were really needed.” Kirsten meets her gaze levelly. “There are things only you can do. Things only I can do. We have to acknowledge that.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either. But we are what we are.”

Stalemate. Don’t leave me! Don’t you leave me! The words echo in the dark places of Koda’s mind, driven on the wind of panic. But she will not speak them. Instead she says, very quietly, “I don’t want to lose you.”

After a moment Kirsten steps around the table to lay her hands on Dakota’s shoulders. “You won’t. We’ll see this out together, wherever it leads.”

Koda turns in her seat, covering Kirsten’s hand with her own and laying a soft kiss on her wrist. “Wherever.”

Kirsten’s arms slip down over her own, soft hair tickling her cheek, followed by soft lips. She leans back into the embrace, giving herself up to her lover’s persuasion. “If you keep this up—” she murmurs.

“—we’ll end up back in bed. Hmm?”

“You have anything better to do?”

“Not a thing.” Very delicately, Kirsten bites the side of her neck.

“Vampire.”

Koda draws Kirsten around to stand before her, then down, straddling her lap. “There’s really something to be said for this kiss and make up thing, you know? Let’s—”

She never finishes her suggestion. A fist falls on the door like a hammer, and Jackson follows it into the room as it swings open and Asi scambles to his feet, baying. “Ms. President! Ma’am—oh.” He fixes his gaze on a point somewhere midway the lintel of the door.

“Quiet, Asi!” Kirsten gets to her feet and turns to face the airman with what Koda considers remarkable aplomb under the circumstances. “What is it, Jackson?”

“Ma’am!” he gasps. “The Colonel’s compliments, and would you both please come to her office. General Hart has gone missing!”

*

Maggie looks up as the door to Hart’s office flies open and Koda comes storming in, Kirsten following on her heels. She holds up a hand. “Hang on, guys. We just found out.”

“How,” Kirsten demands, coming to a stop before an immaculate, and empty, desk.

“He set up a meeting with his secretary for noon. She waited for an hour or so before checking out his house.” Though it’s late in the afternoon, Maggie looks, as always, neat, trim, and immaculately pressed.

“Empty?”

“A hovel,” Maggie answers succinctly, rapping her knuckles on the desk. “But he wasn’t there.”

Koda, having gone over to the window, parts the blinds and peers out into the warmth of the sunny spring day. “A note?”

“Suicide?” Maggie guesses.

Still peering out the window, Koda lifts a shoulder in elegant reply. A shaft of sunlight lances through the blinds and across the room, to land on the scuffed and bland military tile, highlighting its many imperfections.

“No. But she was looking for a man and not a note, so….”

Nodding, Dakota turns from the window. “How about the gate?”

“Already checked. Nobody in or out since you came back.” She turns a significant eye toward Kirsten who, to her credit, hides her flush well as she peers around the empty room as if looking for something she’s lost. Maggie, who isn’t buying the ruse for a moment, hides her smile behind a patently faked cough, earning her a right proper glare from glittering green eyes.

“Anybody spot him before then?” Koda intones, deliberately ignoring the none-too-subtle byplay between her two companions. “He might have slipped out when the convoy returned.”

Maggie narrows her eyes, about to protest. Then she thinks better of it and sighs, resigned. “I’ll check again, but I doubt it. No one made any mention of seeing him at all since sometime yesterday.”

Crossing the room, Koda lays her hands, palm down, on the Spartan desk. “Do you know where Tacoma is?”

“Yeah, I sent him out with the squad to scour the base. Why?”

“He’s a damn good tracker.” Rising to her full height, Dakota eyes Maggie steadily. “Send someone out to find him and tell him to see if he can spot any tracks that might lead to our man. Kirsten and I will comb over his house and see if there’s anything to be found there. We’ll meet you back here, or in your office in, say, two hours. Sooner if we find anything.”

Maggie nods crisply, resisting the urge to snap off a salute. Inwardly, though, she’s smiling at the effortless way that Dakota assumes command of the situation. It’s something she saw in the tall, quiet woman from the first moment they met, and she’s pleased to see the shining potential slowly coming to fruition.

It is only when the dynamic duo has left the office and the door closes quietly behind them that she lets the smile bloom fully over her face. With a jaunty little whistle, she turns back to work.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

“GOD! THIS PLACE stinks!!” Striding across the darkened living room, Kirsten draws aside the heavy, smoke-impregnated curtains, and throws open the large westward facing window. Fresh air flows in on a strong breeze, helping neutralize the stench of unwashed clothes, rancid food, half-empty beer and liquor containers, though doing nothing to touch the foul undercurrent of far more identifiable, and personal, odors permeating the house like a miasma.

Turning, she watches as Koda, seemingly unaffected, casually lights one of the two kerosene lamps she’s brought with her and lifts it in her lover’s direction. “You have a cold or something?” Kirsten asks as she approaches and grasps the lamp’s wire handle. “This place is enough to gag a maggot and you’re not even breathing through your mouth!”

“I’m a Vet. I grew up on a ranch. I have seven brothers.” Koda lights the second lamp, her smirk hiding in the shadows sliding over her features.

“Point,” Kirsten grants, hefting her lamp and turning in a circle. “Well, this is gonna be fun.”

“You take out here and I’ll tackle the bedroom.”

Kirsten grins over her shoulder, straight white teeth glittering in the flickering lamplight. “Better you than me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Holler if you find anything.”

“In this mess? If you hear me holler, it’ll be because a rat just bit me.” Shuddering inwardly, she makes her way, with her lamp, to the tiny kitchen. As she advances, she hears her partner’s soft steps retreat, and she silently wishes Koda luck in her quest.

Holding the lantern shoulder high, Koda uses her free hand to push open the door to the bedroom. It gives grudgingly, jammed from behind by gods only know what refuse. The boards groan as she forces her way into the dark, stinking room, and she lifts the light high, scanning the small space with narrowed eyes.

The bed, unmade, sports sheets that she’s quite sure could stand up on their own and dance a jig with the equally offensive pillowcases. The quilt and blanket, lying in a tangled heap on the floor and covered with dried filth that Koda can all too readily identify, are obviously lost causes.

Pushing several glasses onto the carpeted floor where they land with muted thunks, she sets the lamp down amidst the half empty bottles of Ol’ Grandad and Wild Turkey on the small bedside table. Rounding the bed, she lifts the fallen quilt and blanket, shaking them out and turning her head from the stench the covers emit as they’re disturbed. She drops them back down into a heap when nothing is shaken loose.

Walking over to the closet, she shuffles through the few remaining uniforms that hang with military precision on the rail, turning up nothing of interest. A quick pass-through of the bathroom makes her wish she hadn’t, and then she heads back to the nightstand, opening its single drawer with a smooth tug. Her search yields a small bible, well-read, but with nothing pressed between its thin, fragile pages.

With a soft sigh, she replaces the bible, closes the drawer and lifts the lamp, heading back into the living room and closing the bedroom door behind her.

“Anything?” she asks Kirsten as her partner steps out of the kitchen.

“Not unless you want to count the swarm of drunk cockroaches breeding merrily in what’s left of the beer. You?”

“Zip.” She takes another quick look around the living room. “There’s no way to tell if he’s been gone hours or weeks in this mess.”

“Maybe Maggie and the others have found something by now.”

“Maybe,” Koda agrees, though it’s clear she doesn’t really believe the word she’s uttered. “Shall we?”

“None too soon for me, thanks.”

*

Dakota, Kirsten, Manny, Andrews, Harcourt, Maggie and several other ‘insiders’ are packed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip in the Colonel’s small office. Before them, just inside the door, stands Tacoma, a slightly chagrinned expression on his otherwise somber face. “I wish I had better news to report,” he intones. “Fact is, it’s just been too dry, and with all the base traffic, trying to track one human male is difficult, to say the least. Especially if he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Alright, then. We’ll need to—.”

Before she can finish, Maggie is interrupted by the door being flung open, almost sending Tacoma across the room. Kimberly, winded and disheveled, steps through, a mess of slickly printed leaflets in her left hand. “Toller’s gone.”

“General Hart’s assistant?” Kirsten asks.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Moving fully into the room, she closes the door behind her and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought that since you guys weren’t having any luck in the search, I’d see if Toller knew where he was. I went over to his house. It was all closed up, which isn’t like him. He must have forgotten to lock the side door, though, because it opened right up.” She worries her lower lip for a moment before continuing. “He wasn’t there. His uniforms were gone. His luggage was gone. All that was left behind were these.”

Dakota takes the leaflets from Kimberly’s outstretched hand, riffling quickly through them and glancing at the titles only.

Android = Armageddon

Multiculturalism: Satan’s Garden

Will YOU be among His Saved?

Curling her lip, Koda tosses the pamphlets onto Maggie’s desk where they splay out in a fan of Fundamentalist claptrap. “Answers that question.”

“What now?” Kirsten asks, thumbing through the leaflets and wincing at the titles.

“Little weasel’s got family in Grand Rapids,” Andrews remarks. “We could—.”

“I’m there,” Tacoma interrupts, already headed for the door before he’s stopped by his sister’s voice.

“Wait.”

He turns, eyebrow raised. The expression is so eerily like that of his sister’s that Kirsten finds herself turning to the woman beside her to make sure she’s still there and not suddenly across the room.

“Look,” Koda continues, spreading her hands out on the desk, “I appreciate wanting to find the man, but what I appreciate more is the fact that those androids out there aren’t going to wait for us to do that. We need to start planning for the war that’s just outside our doorstep, and that planning includes everyone in here.” Turning her head slowly, she eyes them all, watching as they straighten and seem to throw off the fatigue touching each and every one of them.

“I shall endeavor to track down your vermin and his master.” Harcourt’s voice is soft from the corner where he’s been quietly standing throughout the proceedings. He eases his way forward until he is standing before Maggie’s desk. He holds up a hand in the face of Dakota’s immediate objection. “We had a deal, Ms. Rivers, as you’ll recall. I enter and leave when I please, as I please. While I am far too old to be lobbing armaments at the enemy, I am quite experienced in hunting down animals who have gone to ground, as it were.” He smiles slightly, and there is something of the predator in it. “Make your plans, prime your trumpets for the walls of Jericho. I shall play my small part through to the end.” His own look, diamond hard and razor sharp, cuts off any and all objections at the knees. His smile broadens infinitesimally, showing the points of his canines. “I bid you all adieu, then, and wish you luck.” He turns to Dakota. “Should you wish to contact me again, you know where to find me.”

With a slight incline of his head, he eases forward as the bodies give way, and slips through the door, leaving everyone to stare, stunned, after him.

“Be right back,” Dakota remarks and pushes through the crowd and through the door.

*

“Fenton, wait!”

Hearing Koda coming quickly up behind him, he stops, back still turned to her, and surveys the land before him. His voice is soft and contemplative as he recites from a favored poem.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.”

With a smile set on his face and a fine walking stick in his hand, he turns to his listener, eyes seeming to glow with vitality and a surge, seldom seen, of good humor.

“I believe, for my purposes, I shall take the road less traveled. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’d rather you didn’t take any road.”

“Ah, but where would be the fun in that, Ms. Rivers?”

“This isn’t a game, Fenton.”

“True, but it is an adventure, and one which I am uniquely suited to undertake. Androids have no interest in me, an old man well past his prime, and I am more than wily enough to avoid their reach should they change their circuited minds on the matter.” In a rare show of warmth, he reaches out and lays a gnarled hand on Dakota’s wrist. “I know the import of hunting down the good general, Dakota. He may hold few secrets, but any secret is one too many if it is given unto the enemy.” He squeezes the thick wrist under his hand briefly before drawing away. “We all have our parts to play in this, Ms. Rivers. Allow me the dignity to see mine through, no matter what that end might be.”

After several moments of complete silence, Koda finally nods. “You’ll have some help, however.”

“I assure you, Ms. Rivers, I am quite capab—.”

His discourse is interrupted by a loud whistle, and a moment later fiercely beating wings herald the arrival of Wiyo, who lands easily on Dakota’s wrist. “She can see what you can’t. She can warn you if there’s danger ahead, or behind. She’s a friend. Take her with you, and I’ll feel much more comfortable about letting you go.”

The face of granite, the face that has frightened years off of criminals through the decades, dissolves like sugar in water, transforming the harsh planes of his face into soft lines of wonder and joy.

“Wiyo, hup.”

The redtail easily hops from Koda’s wrist to Fenton’s arm, then sidesteps up until she is perched quite comfortably on his shoulder.

“Now this isn’t a gift, so don’t be thinking you’re gonna be taking her home to live with you, you old codger. When you’ve done what you set out to do, set her free. I may have need of her yet.”

Harcourt chuckles, enjoying the feel of the weight on his shoulder and the odd sense of comfort it brings him. “Not to worry, Ms. Rivers. This bird knows who she belongs with.” His smile falls away, and he inclines his head respectfully. “Thank you, Dakota. You’ve given me a companion beyond price.”

Reaching out, she takes his hand and squeezes the gnarled fingers warmly. “Good luck to you, my friend.”

“And to you as well. May we meet again under better circumstances.”

With a last nod and a fleeting smile, he turns from her to begin his journey. She watches him until he rounds the curve leading to the gate, then makes her way back to Maggie’s office, and the problems within.

*

Kirsten watches as the civilian population of Ellsworth files into the Base theater. Their number has held steady over the last several weeks, since sealing the gates to all but authorized traffic. Still, they number close to three hundred. About half are women rescued from the droid breeding facilities. The remainder consist of families in various configurations; in the first row an elderly couple accompanied by two toddlers shuffles sideways past a pair of young fathers holding hands with their three pigtailed daughters between them. They take their places beside a middle-aged woman and a teenaged girl with a face that is a mirror image of her own and eyes dead and dull as granite. They greet each other with quiet nods, subdued and somber. Though information about the approaching enemy has been closely guarded, they must know that a crisis is at hand. Koda’s return with a strange warband will not have gone unremarked, nor the suddenly increased number of Tomcat flights taking off for day-long missions to unspecified destinations. The Base is a small town, with a small town’s instant transmission of gossip.

Maggie, standing beside her on the small stage, says softly, “They know.”

“They’d be fools not to,” she answers. “Nobody’s ever thought the droids would give up. Ellsworth is a prime target.”

Maggie flashes her a grin. “Our defenses are good. Better since your little excursion.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” Kirsten returns the grin, showing her teeth. “You’re still Base Commandant, General Allen.”

The promotion cannot have been unexpected, but Maggie stares at her wide-eyed for a moment, the breath gone out of her. Before she can speak, Kirsten says flatly, “It gets worse. You’re Air Force Chief of Staff, as of now. If we make it through this upcoming fight, we’re going to have to start looking for and organizing other surviving forces. Persuade them if we can, appropriate them if we have to.”

“Like Koda ‘appropriated’ the Minot militia?”

Kirsten nods. “We do what we have to. We’re not going to come out of this with the same kind of society we had going in. At least for a while, we’re going to have to be the biggest, meanest, most ruthless dog in the junkyard. Because that’s what we’re going to have to deal with—junkyard dogs.’

“Some of them rabid.”

“Some of them rabid,” she affirms. “And some of them we’ll have to deal with as we would with rabid dogs.”

At the back of the auditorium, Andrews pulls the double doors closed and turns to wave at the stage. All in.

“You sure you don’t want to do this?” Maggie asks Kirsten.

“Positive. It’s your Base. I’m just the civilian authority.”

“Okay, then.” Maggie steps forward to the podium, flanked on one side by the Stars and Stripes, on the other by the blue Air Force banner. She taps the mike softly and says, “Is this thing working? Can you hear me?”

A murmur of assent comes in answer, and Kirsten notes the rise in her shoulders as she takes a deep breath. She has just made Maggie the supreme uniformed authority in what remains of the United States. Which is only fair, she thinks, if I have to be President. Serves her right.

But that is not the only change that needs to be made. It is becoming increasingly clear that Koda’s position with the troops will have to be formalized, some title found that she will accept. “First Lady” sure as hell isn’t going to do it. Suppressing a smile, she turns her attention back to Maggie.

“. . .some cause for concern,” the new General says quietly. “General Hart has gone missing, and our efforts to find him have so far been unsuccessful. We do not know whether he left of his own free will, nor do we know whether he is safe, or even alive. I urge anyone who may have any information about the General to share it with the MP’s and help us to find him.

“Now. The real reason we asked you to come here. As most of you know already, the droids have regrouped since their last attack on Ellsworth. They are currently gathering troops and materiel at locations to the south and west of us. We have every reason to believe that they will attack Ellsworth again.”

A murmur runs through the crowd, quickly stilled. Maggie continues, “So we’ve asked you here, President King and I, to offer you a choice. Anyone who wishes to leave the Base should be packed and ready and at the gate tomorrow morning at eight. A bus will be made available to take you into Rapid City. Unfortunately, we cannot spare either the personnel or the vehicle to take you further. If you wish to leave the area entirely, we suggest that you go into North Dakota, then east. You will have a better chance of avoiding the enemy if you move in that direction. Lieutenant Andrews—he’s the redhead over there—will have a list for you to sign as you leave here tonight, so the bus driver will know who and how many to expect.

“On the other hand, you are welcome to stay on Base if you prefer. The only condition is that able-bodied adults must serve in support capacities to free up as many troops as possible for fighting. We will need you as cooks, messengers, orderlies, clerks. Someone will have to set up a child-care center. Lieutenant Rivers has the list where you can sign up for the job you prefer. We’ll give you your first choice if we can, but there are no guarantees.” She pauses a moment. “Are there any questions?”

The grandfather in the first row stands. “Will you be able to defend Rapid City?”

“We will have a fighter designated to attack troops that may approach you from the west. But that protection will be minimal. We are not prepared for urban ground fighting. We don’t have the numbers for it.”

A ripple of sound runs through the audience again. Here and there faces go grey; not all had realized the gravity of their situation. A woman in the last row speaks for all of them. “Is there anyplace that’s safe? Or safer?”

“No, ma’am. There isn’t.”

A silence falls, then. Maggie waits at the podium, but no one has anymore questions. After a moment, people begin to move out. Most, Kirsten notes with satisfaction, pause to sign Manny’s list; perhaps a dozen opt to evacuate.

She moves to stand beside Maggie. “That was a dose of reality.”

“Oh, yeah. They knew there was a problem. This was just the first time somebody official said it.”

“How long do we have?”

“Maybe a week. They’re not moving yet, but the recon flyer that came back about an hour ago says their numbers have doubled in just a couple days. Not good.”

Not good at all. Kirsten says, “I’m going back to the house. See if I can turn up anything else on the code.”

It is an unlikely hope, and they both know it. When Kirsten leaves the auditorium, Maggie is poring over the lists with Manny and Andrews. Past the veterinary clinic, past the stand of woods to the west of the street that leads to the residential section, strings of code run through her head. All futile; she’s been there before and come away empty. At the curve of the road, a rustle in the tree above her catches her eye, startling her out of the endless loops of binary. Sitting in the fork of the trunk, regarding her with eyes like onyx, is a large raccoon. “Yo, Madam President,” he says. “How’s it hanging?”

Kirsten stares for a moment at the masked face a foot above hers, the snap of mockery plain in the dark, bright eyes. Tega’s long fingers lie interlaced against his chest; replete and self-satisfied, he grins down at her. After a moment she says, “I don’t talk to hallucinations. Go away.”

“Hallucinate this,” he says amiably, and drops a small bird’s egg to splatter against her boots.

The yellow stain on the sidewalk looks very real. So does the sticky mess running down the laces of her Timberlands. She looks from her fouled hikers to the raccoon and back. “Damn,” she says. “You didn’t have to do that. That was going to be a bird.”

“No, it wasn’t. Those eggs were orphans.” Tega’s tongue runs the circuit of his muzzle.

“You mean you—no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“As Madam President wishes.” Delicately, Tega picks a small brown and grey feather from his ruff and looses it to fall floating down to join the broken egg. “I do pride myself on my table manners.”

Kirsten looks furtively around her. The street and sidewalk are both deserted at this hour, the folk who will stay sitting down to their suppers, those who will leave in the morning no doubt packing. It will not do to be seen talking to a raccoon in a tree. “You’re going to get me locked up if anybody sees us. Wearing one of those jackets with the extra long sleeves.”

“You wouldn’t be the first Great White Father—or Mother—to be a few kilowatts shy of a glimmer. Now among the Real People, that’d make you a holy woman. I don’t suppose you feel particularly holy?”

‘Holy—? Look, dammit. I’m a scientist. I believe in what I can see or calculate. I don’t believe in—” Kirsten makes a dismissive, circular gesture with one hand—“all this—this mumbo-jumbo. I don’t believe in you. You’re something I ate.”

Tega bares his teeth again, white and sharp as lancets. “Don’t even think it, schweetheart.”

“Don’t be absurd!” she snaps back. “You’re not edible.”

“Ah, dere ve haff it.” Tega leans back against the tree trunk with his hands once again folded over his midsection. He sounds, to Kirsten’s ears, like a Viennese psychiatrist in a bad TV drama. “Kultural differencesss.” Absurdly, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses has appeared perched just behind the black button of his nose.

“Cultural—” she repeats blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Kirsten King, P. H. of D., President of the U. S. of A., wearing buckskin and feathers and opening the Sun Dance. How does that grab you?”

A flash of memory, involuntary and unconcealable: the slanting scars on Tacoma Rivers’ chest, the same scars on his father’s and cousin’s, and her own distaste. She had not been quick enough to keep Tacoma from reading her face; she is not quick enough to evade Tega’s eyes now. “It— All right. It makes me uncomfortable. Not the buckskin and feathers; I’d be honored to wear Dakota’s traditional dress. It’s—it’s just—”

“The blood, the mutilation, the primitiveness of it all?”

Her own blood rises hot in Kirsten’s face; she feels the blush spread from her neck up to her forehead. “It’s— Yes. It’s not—” The word she needs will not come. Perhaps it does not exist. She says, “It’s not quantifiable. Not—containable. It could get out of hand.”

“Oh, it could. Not to mention what could happen when people start up with the Ghost Dance again and all those dead Injuns born into white skin wake up and realize who they really are. That could get waaaayyy out of hand. You just can’t let it get out of your hand.”

Not for the first time, Kirsten wonders if her mind has shattered under stress. “I don’t see what that has to do with me. Dakota’s a medicine woman, I know that, I respect that—”

A hoot of laughter, strangely not human, comes from the tree above her, and Tega leans back, holding his sides. “Medicine woman! You silly girl, you’re marrying the fuckin’ Pope! Get used to it!”

“That’s crazy! You’re crazy!” Kirsten hisses. “I’m crazy for thinking I’m having a conversation with a—a—talking raccoon with perverted dietary habits!”

Tega turns suddenly serious. “Oh, you’re crazy all right. No sane woman would get herself into—and out of—the tightest droid facilities on the continent. No sane woman would try to put this wreck of a society back together. Now would she?”

“I had to! I’m the only one who could do that! The droid part, I mean.”

“True,” says Tega. “And you, and Dakota with you, are the ones who will lay down the pattern for the New World Order.” Kirsten can hear the capitals as his eyes dance behind their ridiculous lenses. “A mixed culture, where even white boys do the Sun Dance. And a blonde Lakota woman opens the ceremony beside the Medicine Chief of the whole nation.”

Kirsten head spins. Almost she can see it, herself in braids, carrying a hawk’s wing fan, stamping out the rhythm of the drums at the head of a line of women, all in Native dress, their skins and hair all the colors of the human spectrum. Behind them, making the circuit of the dancing ground, come the men with wreaths of spruce crowing their long hair, eagle-bone whistles between their lips. Among them are Andrews and Darius. And the implication hits her like the meteor that extinguished the dinosaurs.

“That means—we’re going to survive! Gods—!”

Before her, Tega begins to fade, the rough texture of the bark becoming visible through his rough fur. Only his voice remains, becoming fainter and fainter. “Remember: the past is the future, the future is the past. Round and round she goes. . . little wheel, spin and spin . . .round and round . . . and where she stops. . . nobody. . .knows. . . .”

And Kirsten is alone, standing on the empty sidewalk, staring up at the empty fork of the tree. She swallows hard; her throat is painfully dry. I need a drink, she thinks. I need a drink bad. Swiftly, almost running, she sets off for the relative security of home and Asi.

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

THE CONVOY WEAVES in and out among the wrecks on Highway 90 like a line of dancers, stately and nimble. The lead Humvee bristles with weapons, a roof-mounted M-60 and an AK in the hands of its gunner, the tail vehicle identically armed. In between, Tacoma drives an open Jeep, Koda in the seat beside him, Maggie Allen in the back with a topo map and a laptop open on the passenger bench beside her. They are moving just fast enough that the odor from the shattered and torn-open derelicts cannot settle about them. Even so, Koda can hear the occasional strangled breath from Maggie. An airborne warrior skims above the stench of death; a foot soldier and a medic spend their lives in its penumbra. In any case, Koda’s mind is on another matter.

A shadow has followed them since they set out from Ellsworth, a shape that glides along just beyond the screen of the treeline, disappearing at intervals where the ground rises or a streambed cuts below the road. The sun, standing down from noon, glints off the new green of leaves, laying long shadows the length tree trunks. The shadow never quite separates itself from them, never comes clear into the light. The wreckage slows the convoy to a pace that a swift four-footed creature might match, and it has paced them tirelessly. Though it is beyond the range of sight recognition, Koda knows it for a manitu, a power. Tacoma does not seem to have noticed, nor has Maggie. The creature’s message is not for them. Dakota simply makes note of the presence and waits for what will come.

“We need to get a dozer out here,” the Colonel observes as they veer around yet another overturned eighteen-wheeler, its open door bent back like the lid of a tin can. Its upholstery is streaked white with lime where the carrion birds have perched. Just visible through the spiderweb of cracks in the windshield, an arm picked down to bone angles over the steering wheel. “We can’t get an armored column up this road unless we get some of this mess cleared off.”

Tacoma nods as they pass a minivan whose windshield crawls with maggots. He waves a hand at it. “There’s a real morale booster for you. We need a burial detail out here before we bring troops through.”

Maggie pauses a moment, her face thoughtful in the rearview mirror, and Dakota knows that she is weighing resources. “All right,” she says finally. “Nothing fancy. Just a backhoe and a ditch. Get half a dozen volunteers and promise them . . .whatever bonus you can realistically promise them. We’re as short of perks as we are of time.”

Just ahead of them, a fox climbs out the broken window of a car that remains crumpled into the back bumper of a pickup. A scrap of blue cloth still clings to its muzzle as it hops down and disappears into the grass grown tall by the side of the road. Spring thaw has brought the scavengers out to feed. From the corner of her eye, she catches movement of something larger in the rippling stalks, and watches as the fox’s smaller wake veers wide to pass it by.

Something born on Ina Maka, then, physical. Not something purely of the spirit world.

Briefly the shape of Wa Uspewikakiyape floats across her mind, and with it a stab of grief that remains sharp, even though she has managed to hold it distant from her in the crisis of the coming battle. It is too soon for his return, even should he choose to be reborn again. And, she acknowledges to herself, one of his wisdom has no need to walk the earth another lifetime.

“Tanski? You with us?”

Tacoma’s brow knits in concern for her, and she reaches over to pat his arm. “Present and accounted for, thiblo. Just thinking.”

He grins, and she watches the snappy comeback fade before it reaches his tongue. More and more of the Base personnel have begun to exchange knowing glances when she and Kirsten enter a room together; it is, she supposes, something that goes with being a newlywed.

More or less. Formalizing their relationship is something she and Kirsten have not talked about yet, cannot talk about at least until they are past the coming battle. When she had married Tali, fresh out of graduate school, they had gone away to Greece for their honeymoon and had been spared the grins and the elbow jabs of friends and kin. Odd, that her life should have taken a turn for normal in this one small thing amid the wreckage of a world.

She says, “How far out you think we should meet them?”

“Far enough out to give us some maneuvering room between there and the Base.” He glances back at Maggie. “Colonel?”

“Fifteen miles. Twenty would be better. There’s a place up past the bridge where the land falls away. They’ll have to come along that stretch strung out on a narrow front. We can control their approach there easier than just about anywhere else.”

A shiver passes over Koda’s skin, despite the warmth of the sun. “I know the place you mean. Anything on wheels will have to keep to the highway there.”

“Their armor won’t, though.”

Koda frowns, an idea forming slowly as the convoy negotiates yet another narrow passage between lines of wrecked vehicles. “We can block them, if we have time,” she says. “Or at least slow them down. How many heavy dozers can we get working?”

“Two or three,” Tacoma answers. “What d’you have in—oh.”

“Exactly.” She grins at him.

“Care to share?” Maggie asks, her voice dry.

Tacoma says, “Tracked vehicles can climb just about anything that’s not vertical, but if we ram a pile of these wrecks into a defensive berm, we can stop the enemy’s wheeled transport cold wherever we want to.”

“Or funnel them where we want them,” Dakota adds.

Tacoma shoots her a glance warm with appreciation. ” And we can direct the tanks, too. Colonel?”

“Sounds good to me. You’re the dirt soldiers.”

Koda notices the plural, and it makes a small warm glow somewhere under her sternum. There is a familiarity to the acknowledgement, and a certainty. It fits her, the same way her scalpel fits the shape of her hand, or the tortoiseshell rattle that had been her grandfather’s last gift to her.

The lower west fork of the Cheyenne passes beneath them, the highway curving away from the bridge to pass along the spine of a ridge that falls sharply to the bank of a stream on one side. The water runs parallel to the road for perhaps a mile, with a broad meadow spread out between it and another rise to the south. Koda lays a hand on Tacoma’s arm. “Stop. Stop here.”

Tacoma waves to the Humvee gunner ahead of them, then pulls the Jeep over to the side of the road. Koda climbs out and goes to stand by the guardrail, shielding her eyes as she looks over the level space between Highway 90 and the lift of earth not quite a mile away. A line of trees marches along it, and it seems to Koda that something moves in the laddered shadows that spill down its slope, but she cannot be certain.

The Interstate here is almost clear of wrecks, an open stretch between Rapid City and the small towns linked to it by farm-to-market roads. The air above the tarmac seems to shimmer in the sun, and through the rippling heat Dakota catches the glare sun off the metal hides of military droids, the sudden glint of light striking the silver collars of androids marching in uniformed ranks, the tireless crunch of their boots on asphalt a constant grinding that blends with the whine of tanks and the ponderous crawl of big guns. Then time slips back into place, and the vision fades. The road runs empty through the spring fields, overgrown now with grass and self-seeded crops, sprinkled here and there with patches of bright yellow and blue, rose and lavender.

“Tanski?” Tacoma touches her arm. “You okay?”

“Here.” Dakota says. “The battle will be here.”

“It’s a good place for it,” Maggie says, thoughtfully. “We can block this road at two or three places to slow them down and control their options once they get here.”

“We need to prevent them from fanning out on the north side of the road,” Tacoma says. “Or spilling down over the stream.”

“We’ll mine the north side,” Koda answers. “Maybe dig some ditches. How wide do they need to be to stop the tanks, thiblo?”

“Maybe ten feet. If we can dig them that deep, with straight sides, they’ll have to go around.”

Maggie nods assent. “Get the backhoes out here the minute we get back. Bury the dead as quickly as you can, then start to work on those trenches.”

“Spike the bottoms,” Dakota says suddenly. “Cut enough brush to camouflage the digging until the enemy is too close to turn back. What have we got besides fuel that will burn?”

“Asphalt. Tar. We repaved the runways just a few months ago, and there were supplies left over.”

Tacoma grins. “Thank the gods for government waste. What d’you have in mind, tanksi? Fire the ditches?”

Koda grins in return. “Between the spikes and the fire, we can immobilize anything that tries to cross them. Then we can use shoulder fired anti-tank missiles to explode their fuel and ammo once they’re stuck.”

“I like it,” says Maggie. “What about the ones that get through?”

“Use the wrecks to funnel them back behind our lines. Surround them, cut them off, and destroy them.”

“A strategic retreat could draw them in,” Tacoma adds, his dark eyes far away on a battle not yet joined. “Half our armor could fall back maybe five miles toward the Base through the open country. Then the other half could come in behind.” He raises his hands and brings them together. “Squeeze ‘em like a python.”

“What about this open space here on our right?” Maggie gestures toward the meadow and the treeline in the distance.

“Spike the slope, too,” Koda answers. “Tacoma, could we dam up this stream and muddy the ground enough to mire their trucks if they try to leave the road?”

Tacoma leans over the guardrail, staring up and down the narrow watercourse for a long moment. Then he says, “We could dam it, no problem. The question is whether there’s enough water volume. We could probably get a hundred-meter strip nice and wet, though.”

“Do it,” says Maggie.

Movement behind the trees to the south catches Koda’s eye again. Something is there, pacing, the long shadows rippling with its passage. “But leave it passable on foot,” she says, as the image forms in her mind. “For the force we’ll hide behind that rise over there.” She turns to meet Tacoma’s gaze, half startled, half admiring. “We’ll block them, draw them in on the left, turn their line, and roll them up from the right and behind. Piece of cake.”

“Fuckin’ A better-than-sex cake,” Tacoma laughs. Then, as Koda and Maggie both stare at him repressively, “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“Themunga makes a chocolate better-than-sex cake that’ll melt in your mouth,” Dakota elaborates, noting Maggie’s puzzled frown. “Only she calls it a not-quite-as-good-as-sex cake.” She pauses a moment. Then, careful to keep her face straight, “We’re a big family.”

“I noticed,” her friend says wryly. Then, “What about the ground over there? How big a flanking force can we put behind that rise?”

Again the movement catches her eye, and Koda says, “I’ll go scout it.”

Tacoma motions to one of the gunners from the lead Humvee. “Take an escort.”

She shakes her head. “No need. Back in a flash.”

With that she is gone down the slope, jogging over the matted grasses that spring under her feet. At the base, she leaps the stream easily as a deer, landing lightly on the far bank and sprinting across the meadow. Grasshoppers whirr out of her way; once she starts a young rabbit from its form, and ground squirrels, chittering, dive into their holes as she flies past them. Her feet seem to brush the ground only briefly; she is lighter than air, barely ruffling the grass as she passes. The sense of presence grows stronger as she approaches the fold of land with its crown of trees, stillness settling over her even as she reaches the foot of the rise and begins the ascent, leaping from rock to rock up its stony side.

At the top, she pauses, looking around her. The top of the knoll is perhaps a hundred feet wide, dropping down perhaps a third of the distance on the other side to a broad meadow. Sycamore and cottonwoods grow thickly along the spine, once, perhaps, planted as a windbreak before so many family farms failed in the second half of the past century and the Dakotas’ population bled away to the cities. In their cover, and on the field below, it should be possible to hide several hundred lightly armed fighters, far more than she will have at her disposal. And where, she wonders, does that come from? Who’s decided I’m the one to lead the ambush battalion?

Why, you have, of course.

Dakota wheels around, scanning the trees and the underbrush that grows thick beneath their branches, but there is no one. The voice is everywhere and nowhere, a ripple of laughter in her mind. The manitu.

Drawing her own silence around her then, Koda waits for the being to make itself known.

Or herself. She can sense that it is female in the current of savage tenderness that flows about it, running above the wild abandon of the hunt, the burst of joy at the kill. With a start, she recognizes the blood hunger as her own, the savage pulse in her own veins as she fought an alpha and killed him. My band now. My pride.

For what seems an eternity, the voice does not speak to her again. She can feel eyes on her, though, from somewhere within the trees. Watching. Waiting. Testing her patience. Finally the vigilance relaxes, and the thought comes to her, Oka was right. You have the makings of a warrior.

She gives a start, at that. Oka, Singer, is Wa Uspewikakiyape’s true name, the name by which his own people knew him. The name by which only Dakota among the two-footed has ever known him. I give you his greetings, the silent voice goes on. He has taken his place at the council fire in the other side camp. He will not walk the Red Road again.

I miss him, she says without sound.

You grieve because you love. That is as it should be.

Again, silence falls, and Dakota waits. It is not her place to hurry an elder, or to speak before spoken to. After a time, the light shifts among the trees, shadows rippling with the movement of a long body as it walks between them. Koda catches the sheen of sun off golden fur, the twitch of the end of a long tail. Igmu Tanka. At the thought, a puma steps out of the woods and comes to sit in the center of the small glade, gazing up at Koda with eyes like molten bronze. Round patches of fur show dark against her belly. She has cubs.

Ina, Koda acknowledges.

And I must kill something for them by nightfall, comes the answer, and with it the taste of hot blood. As you must kill for your own.

A pang stabs through Koda’s heart. I have no cubs. My child died with my beloved.

Igmu Tanka nips at a bit of twig caught in the fur of her shoulder. There are cubs, and there are cubs. Those for whom you are responsible are not of your body, yet they are yours nonetheless.

My responsibility is to fight this battle.

Your responsibility is to fight this battle, and others. And then it will be your responsibility to rule.

Rule? But Kirsten—

Is Chief. You are something new.

I don’t understand.

You don’t need to, not yet. I have something to tell you: do not hesitate to flee when the time comes. Victory will follow you.

Koda feels her brows knit. I don’t—

Understand. That does not matter. What matters is that you should obey my younger sister when she gives you an order. 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.

With that, the puma turns and pads back into the trees. Koda follows her movements until she is lost in shadow, then turns back toward the road and the burden laid on her.

*

A somber, thoughtful Dakota opens the door to the house and steps inside, more by rote than conscious act. Padding softly through the kitchen, gaze turned more inward than out, she stops upon sighting Kirsten. Sitting on the tattered sofa, her legs tucked up under her, the young scientist stares into the monitor of her laptop as her agile, graceful fingers fly over the keyboard. The window across the room is open, and from it, a shaft of sunlight lances in, gilding her in pure gold, her hair a halo that quickens the pace of Koda’s heart. The love she feels for this woman is so strong, and so pure that it hurts, deep within, like a tight band across her chest.

Quite without her permission, her mind drifts back to her conversation with Igmu Tanka, and she finds herself comparing this new love with the one she lost so long ago, comparing Tali’s dark, reed-slender lines with Kirsten’s golden, muscled curves, Tali’s quiet sweetness with Kirsten’s mercurial intelligence, passion, and deeply hidden pain. What paths, she wonders, would her life have taken had Tali not been taken so quickly from her?

“You have the makings of a warrior,” Igmu Tanka had said. Would Tali have appreciated this growth in her, accepted it as simply and wholeheartedly as Kirsten does? Perhaps, she thinks. Tali had a good heart, a good soul. But she valued constancy in her life; the safety and security of knowing that each day would be much the same as the last. Family was the most important thing to her. Their loving was gentle, and quiet, fulfilling and comfortable. She gazes at Kirsten again, remembering their joining of last night. Her blood stirs hot in her veins and she moans softly. Kirsten accepted the raw desire, the deep passion in her. More than that, she embraced it, craved it with as much fire as Koda herself.

Tali was the love of who I was, Dakota realizes, with something akin to shock. But she, she is the love of who I am becoming; the woman I am meant to be.

At that very moment, Kirsten, who has turned her implants off for convenience’s sake, turns her head and locks eyes with her lover. Koda finds herself falling into the sunlit green of her direct, loving gaze, her sprit separating from her body seamlessly, painlessly as the world around her tunnels and rushes past, unacknowledged.

She’s running through a jungle thick with moisture and the scent of the earth. Broad green leaves caress her face as she passes, coating her with their moisture as her heartbeat, loud in her ears, sets her pace. Her spirit is filled with an almost savage joy as she runs, her feet light on the ground cover, her pace easy and relentless. She is the hunter, and her prey is very close. She can smell blood and earth, and a predator’s smile breaks over her face, turning her eyes to molten silver.

A sunlit clearing of deep green grass suddenly appears, and she stops, blood thrumming, as a woman, dappled green and gold, rises from her crouch, swaying to the tempo that Koda’s heart has created. Her hands reach out, gracefully beckoning, and Koda heeds their call, running to her, merging with her. They are one body, one spirit, one essence, writhing, pulsing in an ecstasy neither has ever known.

They explode then, their atoms scattering through space, and reforming randomly as the earth spins above them, blue and green and glowing, lit behind from the sun. Their combined heartbeat fades, to be replaced by the squalling of an infant breathing her first, then by the triumphant yowl of a hunting cat, until finally, it becomes the howl of the wolf going on and on and on until it is everywhere and everything.

Dakota comes back to herself as she is pulling away from Kirsten’s soft, swollen lips. They collapse against one another, panting breaths mingling, hearts thundering against their bony cages.

“Dear God,” Kirsten whispers when she finally has the breath to speak.

Cupping her lover’s cheek, Koda stares down into her eyes, so green and shining. “Did you…?”

“Feel that? God, yes. It was the scariest, most wonderful thing I ever felt in my life.”

A sudden wave of dizziness rolls over her, and her knees give out, dumping her less than gracefully back onto the couch. Dakota follows her down, squatting between her splayed legs and grasping her hands gently, chafing them with concern as she looks into clouded green eyes.

“Are you okay?”

Though she can read her lover’s lips easily, Kirsten suddenly craves the sound of her voice, and, pulling one hand away from its warm nest, thumbs her implants back on.

“Kirsten?”

“I’m—.” She lets out a breath, long and shaky, almost, but not quite, a laugh. “I’m…not sure. I think I may be…taking a little vacation from reality.”

Cocking her head slightly, Koda narrows her eyes, all but pinning Kirsten to the couch with the strength of her gaze. “Explain.”

“That’s just the problem,” Kirsten replies, tucking her free hand under the thick fall of her hair and rubbing at the back of her neck, where a mountain of tension has suddenly decided to take up residence. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Try.” Koda’s voice is soft and soothing, and Kirsten clings to its timbre like a lifeline.

“Remember when I told you about my raccoon visitor?” she begins, blushing slightly. “The one that wasn’t really there?”

Dakota nods.

“He wasn’t really there again today.” She laughs. It’s a dry, almost bitter sound. “Sitting in a tree just as big as life.” She shakes her head. “A full blown visual and auditory hallucination that I would have heard even with my implants off.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, he had a lot to talk about, most of it put-downs.” The laugh sounds again, though a bit more genuine this time. “I can’t even manage to come down with your garden variety delusions of grandeur. Noooo, I have to hallucinate a wise-cracking vermin with a nasty attitude who seems to find my general ineptitude with life quite amusing.” Closing her eyes, she hangs her head, her chin not quite touching her chest. “When he’s not getting his jollies out of dropping eggs on me, that is.”

Koda’s eyes dart over to where Kirsten’s boots stand at the foot of the couch. With a small smile, she notes the dry streaks of yellow on the laces. Her suspicion fully confirmed, she releases Kirsten’s hand and, reaching up, gently cups her lover’s cheek, her strong thumb tenderly tracing over the baby soft skin. She remains silent, allowing Kirsten the much needed time to process her thoughts.

Deep green eyes finally raise and open, and Koda feels, once again, that sense of temporal dislocation. This time, she fights the urge, biting down on the inside of her lip until the feeling passes and she is firmly in control of her spirit. This is not good, she thinks, before Kirsten begins speaking, and she turns her attention to that instead.

“I feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole. Just when I think life is making sense, things start spinning out of control. And sometimes I think that if I just close my eyes real tight, maybe I’ll wake up and find this has all been a dream.”

“Do you want it to be a dream?” Dakota’s voice is steady and soft, but Kirsten has no trouble seeing the unease in her striking eyes.

Without thought, she takes the hand cupping her face and brings it to her lips, brushing a kiss against the warm knuckles. “Not even one second of it. I should hate myself for feeling this way. It’s so damn selfish. But if none of this had ever happened, I would never have met you, and that is something I would never want to change. No matter what.”

“Nor would I.”

The two embrace and hold each other tightly for a very long moment before Koda pulls, with reluctance, away. “For what it’s worth, love, you’re not crazy, ok?”

Kirsten looks up at her, clearly wanting, needing to believe, but, equally clearly, not believing—not entirely, at any rate.

“Maybe….” Koda’s throat clicks audibly as she swallows. After a split second of hesitation, she gives voice to the thought plaguing her for the past several days. “Maybe you should go off base until all this is over. My parents would keep you safe, and I’m sure by now the entire family is dying to meet you.”

Kirsten’s eyes widen as her jaw sets. Koda fancies she can feel the anger building in the smaller woman, and she winces internally.

“I—,” Kirsten begins. “You—. You want to send me away?!? I can’t—you really do think I’m losing it, don’t you!” She gathers her legs, beginning to stand, but Koda holds tight to her waist, pulling her in again. “Let me go.”

“No.”

“Damnit, Koda! I said—.”

“Listen to me, Kirsten!” She pulls back just enough to meet her lover’s blazing eyes. “It’s not you! I don’t think you’re crazy! You’re saner than anyone I know! It’s me! Don’t you see it?! I can’t lose you! Kirsten, I…can’t…lose…you!”

The hoarseness of Dakota’s voice finally filters through the red heat of Kirsten’s anger, and she relaxes against the large, trembling body holding her with desperation. “What—What did you say?”

“I can’t lose you,” Koda repeats, voice muffled against the fabric of Kirsten’s t-shirt. “Not now. Not ever.” Her hands tighten and tangle in the cloth, pulling her lover so tightly against her that not a molecule of air can pass between them. Kirsten can feel her breaths, tight and raspy, against her chest, and her arms close instinctively about Dakota’s broad shoulders, giving what comfort she can.

She’s scared! Kirsten realizes. For me! Dear God…! With a feeling of wonder, she slowly rocks the body half in her arms, her restless hands smoothing over Koda’s thick, shining hair as she replays her lover’s words to her over and over. Finally, slowly, she pulls back, and tips Dakota’s chin so that their eyes meet. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says firmly, with finality. “Not without you. We started this together, and we’ll end it together, or not at all. Understand me?”

After a moment, Dakota nods.

“I can’t lose you either, my love. Not when I’ve just found you. I—I can’t ask you not to do what you do best out there, once this war finally starts. What I can ask is that you come back to me, whole and healthy. Be careful. Okay? For us?”

“For us.”

They embrace again, tightly, and this time, neither is inclined to pull away for a very, very long time.

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

“ALRIGHT, YA BIG goober, just give me a second here.” Asi dances on his forepaws as Kirsten struggles with a screen door that doesn’t want to open. Though the sky is a crisp, almost autumnal blue, the wind howls through the trees as if heralding a hurricane. “Damn…stupidass…state…” she grunts, giving the handle one final heave, and almost falling over as it opens far too easily, nearly taking her hand with it. Uncaring, Asimov dashes into the house, yodeling.

With a sigh, Kirsten releases the door, and it slams closed on another gust of wind. Instead of trying to wrestle with it again, she turns away, content, for the moment, to put off going in the house to spend more long hours in fruitless pursuit of the missing code. Even if the breeze is stiff enough to drop a mule, the sun is warm on her shoulders, and the air is fresh and sweet.

What a difference a week makes, she thinks to herself. The tepid, frightened, holding-pattern feel of the base has been replaced, almost overnight, by an almost hive-like intensity. Men and women, civilians and military alike, move across the grounds with purpose, heads held high and shoulders squared. She even spies several groups that appear to be drilling. Broken into squads of twenty, they run about the grounds in orderly rows to a musical cadence sung out by the squad leader.

As she looks on, one such group rounds the curve toward the house. She smiles as she recognizes the leader, and raises a hand. Clad in running shorts and a green T-shirt emblazoned with ARMY across the chest, Tacoma spies her, grins, and snaps off a stiff salute, barking to his charges to do the same or risk his wrath. Watching the few civilians in the crowd stumble about trying to salute and run at the same time causes Kirsten’s grin to broaden, but she reins it in and returns the salute as solemnly as she can manage. Her smile breaks through at last when Tacoma tips her a wink, and she watches with true pleasure as they all run off in step, even the four sixty something year old men, veterans of the first Gulf War who had buttonholed Tacoma and warned him that if he even attempted to get them off base and out of the fighting, they would stage a coup and depose him.

With a last, deep breath of fresh air, she turns back to the door, yanks it open, and strides inside. Her steps slow as she becomes aware of a presence she does not expect, and a smile of joy crosses over her face as she looks at her lover, seated cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, eyes closed, breathing soft and even. Dressed in cargo shorts and a black tank-top, her beauty is a Siren’s call to Kirsten, and she finds herself heading into the living room without being aware of her movement.

Koda’s eyes open, and the simple welcome and deep affection in them warms Kirsten’s heart so greatly that tears spring to her eyes. As Dakota rises easily, fluidly, to her feet, Kirsten holds up a hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—.”

The rest of her statement is muffled as she’s gathered into a strong embrace. Koda’s warmth, scent, and strength surrounds her, filling her with a peace she’s long been lacking.

“You’re all knots,” Koda murmurs into her hair, long fingers pressing gently against the bands of tight muscle along Kirsten’s back and shoulders.

“Nerves,” Kirsten replies, wincing as the gentle pressure sends sparks of pain down her arms.

“Let’s do something about that.” Pulling away, Koda smiles down at her.

“A massage?” Kirsten asks innocently, well remembering where their massages have ended up in the past. “I suppose that will relax me. Eventually.”

Rolling her eyes, Dakota takes a step back. “Let’s try something else first, shall we?” Strong hands still on her shoulders, she gently urges the young woman to sit on the floor. “Here, cross your legs and get comfortable, alright?”

“C’mon, Koda, I’m no good at this meditation stuff. Remember what happened at the sweat hut?” A tremor of anxiety wends its way through her belly as she remembers that time, quite well. Muscles which were starting to relax instantly become tense again.

“Relax, cante skuye. You’ll be fine. Just relax and close your eyes.”

Sighing softly, Kirsten does as requested. Closing her eyes is the easy part. Relaxing is something else altogether.

Dakota’s hands come down on her shoulders again, their heat filling her body with a sweet, welcome warmth. “Relax and concentrate on your breathing.” Koda’s voice sounds very close to her ear and she shivers slightly as the dulcet tones sooth their way through her. “Deep cleansing breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Yes, like that. Good. Now, with each breath, feel some of your tension drift away. Can you feel it?”

Not really, Kirsten thinks, but doesn’t speak aloud, not wanting to disappoint her lover.

As if reading her thoughts, Koda chuckles and squeezes the firm flesh beneath her palms. “Don’t try so hard, my love. If nothing else, think of it as a few minutes without worries, ok?”

“Hm. Well, if you put it that way….”

“I do.”

“Alright, then.”

Wiggling her backside a little to try and gain more comfort on the hard wooden floor, she makes a great effort to relax her muscles and control her breathing. She can feel her lover’s solid presence behind her, and takes in her scent on an indrawn breath, letting it surround her and mingle with the warmth of the strong hands on her shoulders. Without realizing it, she slips into a light meditative state.

Opening her eyes, she finds herself in some sort of field. The land is flat and treeless and empty, stretching on for miles as far as her eyes can see. Tall grasses with feathery tufts have been pressed flat against the ground, laying a rich golden carpet over the earth.

A familiar, piercing cry sounds overhead, and she looks up, smiling as she sees what can only be Wiyo circling overhead on the warm, late-summer breeze. Instinctually, her hand raises as if to wave to her old, trusted friend, then freezes as the slanting sun winks off something on her finger.

A ring.

On the third finger of her left hand.

Her vision blurs as she stares, dumbstruck, at the simple golden band through a film of sudden, joyful tears.

The hawk’s cry sounds again, and this time it is answered by an identical cry to her left. Blinking, she shifts her gaze in that direction, looking on in dazed wonder as Dakota appears as if from nowhere. She is a magnificent sight. Dressed only in a beaded loincloth of red, yellow and black, her skin is dark and shining with sweat and oil. Her feet are bare as are her breasts. Her hair, drawn into two fat, shining braids lying easy over her broad shoulders, sports two eagle feathers, both pointing toward the heavens.

In one hand, she holds a handled drum, and she taps on it with the fingers of her free hand. The rhythm is that of Kirsten’s heartbeat. With each tap, Dakota takes a step, ball of her foot to heel and ball to heel again, approaching her in a slow, sinuous and utterly captivating dance.

Her mouth opens, and she utters, again, the cry of the hawk, which is echoed by Wiyo, and then by human voices.

Many human voices.

A long line of men and women appear behind Dakota. Leading the line is Tacoma, dressed identically to his sister save for the single feather in his hair and the bone whistle cradled securely between his lips.

He looks at her and winks. She can’t help but smile back, filled with a sense of warmth and family far beyond anything she has ever conceived of knowing. She almost laughs aloud as the line dances slowly forward to Koda’s rhythm and she recognizes the men and women following. Andrews, his shockingly red hair free and down past his shoulders, wears a pair of Army camo pants and no shirt, his fair, freckled skin already starting to burn in the blazing light of the sun. Manny is next, looking every bit the full blooded Lakota, his hair finally grown out enough to braid.

Her jaw drops slightly as she recognizes Maggie, breasts proudly bared, her ebony skin shining blue in the sun, her teeth a blinding white as she nods to Kirsten and breaks into a beaming grin.

“My family,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears once again. “My people.”

The strident scream of an air-raid siren breaks through her vision, jarring her back to full consciousness as her muscles close their steel traps once again.

She feels herself being lifted to her feet and steadied as she sways the tiniest bit, still caught between the present and what can only be her future. Can it? the more cynical part of her mind asks. Can it really? Dreams like that are not for you, Kirsten King. Not for you. Not for you. Not for you….

“We’ll just see about that,” she growls, grabbing Dakota’s hand just as the door bursts inward and Jackson plows through. “The enemy’s been spotted, Ma’ams. They’re coming.”

“In the air?” Dakota asks.

“No, Ma’am. On the ground. It’s….” He shakes himself out of his nervousness. “The Colonel requests your presence in her office. Best possible speed.”

“Let’s go.”

Jackson leads the way back out, but as Kirsten is about to follow, she’s tugged to a gentle stop by Dakota. She looks up into gleaming eyes.

“You were given a vision.”

It’s not a question, and she doesn’t have it within her to demur. Not now. Instead, she nods.

“It will come true.” Again, the tone of complete, unalterable certainty.

Lifting Kirsten’s hand, Koda places a kiss in the palm, then holds it over her own heart. “It will come true,” she states again, her belief bedrock.

“I hope so,” Kirsten whispers. “More than anything in the world.”

*

Hours later, with the last of the plans set into motion, Dakota and Kirsten return to the house for a brief period of privacy, each knowing that such a chance will not come again for a very long, strenuous time.

“I saw Manny earlier,” Kirsten says, looking up from her laptop where binary code continues to march futilely across the screen. “He’s not a happy camper.”

Koda lifts the kettle from the stove with both hands and pauses on her way to the bathroom. “I ran into him, too, when I made a last check on the patients in the clinic. He was walking around in the middle of his own personal cloud, but he didn’t say what was bothering him.”

“I know Maggie isn’t letting him lead the chopper squadron tomorrow. He’s been a glorified baby sitter for the last several weeks; that’s got to smart.” From the bathroom, Kirsten hears the water splash into the tub. They may die tomorrow, maybe tonight. But, by all the gods past and present, they are going to have a hot bath first. “How’s it going?” she asks as Koda returns to fill the pot and set it on the stove where two others are just beginning to steam.

“Almost there. I found a last bit of bath salts in the back of the cabinet. Want to go for it?”

“Oooo, decadence. Need help?”

“Nah, I got it.” Koda lifts another pot from the stove and disappears again.

The figures march across the screen in ranks, and it seems to Kirsten that they possess the same sort of mindless, mechanical determination that has been programmed into the droid soldiers. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die . . .. The odd bit of poetry, relic of some long-ago literature class, floats up from her memory. And how, she asks herself wryly, is that so different from us? If we fail here, we all die, sooner or later. Some later, but just as surely. And then what?

Her vision, or her imagination, had seemed to promise that she and Koda would survive. So had Tega.

But she knows enough, by now, to know that prophecy is conditional, not what will be but what can be. It is up to her, to Dakota, to Maggie and Tacoma and Andrews and Jackson and Manny and all the rest, to carry that future and ultimately to bring it forth into the world. And there is a battle between that conception and that birth, and in that battle is death.

She lowers the top of her computer, pushing it away from her, and with it the thought. They are as ready as they can be: ditches dug, derelict cars and trucks rammed into barricades, troop placements and strategies mapped out. Even from the distance of the officers’ quarters, Kirsten can hear the steady roar of engines as their transports pull into formation on the flight line, the higher pitched whine of tanks and their two self-propelled howitzers as they take up their positions. Their rumble vibrates through the floorboards under her feet.

We’re going to make it. We have to. Failure is impossible.

In two hours, she and Koda will take their places in that line, move up the road to block the droids’ advance. The enemy has the numbers, but, given the rigidity of their programmed logic, the Ellsworth force has the tactics and the flexibility to exploit even a minuscule advantage to the fullest. And, despite the air raid siren, the droid army is dirt-bound. At need, Maggie will put the Tomcats into the air and bomb them to flinders. Which is, it occurs to Kirsten, probably why Manny is being held back.

The last pot comes on the boil, and Kirsten carries it into the bath. The steaming water smells sharply of lavender and something sweeter and more subtle, running under the astringent scent of the bath salts. Koda kneels by the tub, stirring a thin stream of cooler water from the faucet into the mix. Curling vermilion petals skim the swirls, here and there the bell of an entire flower, its anthers leaving a trail of gold in the water. Koda glances up, one hand still in the water. “Try the temperature. See if it’s right.”

Kirsten’s eyes sting suddenly, a prickling that has nothing to do with the eyestrain of the past hours. “It’s right,” she says around the catch in her throat. “It’s the best bath I’ve ever seen.” Then, more steadily, “Where’d you find the tiger lilies?”

“In the garden of one of the vacant houses. They’re panther lilies, actually, wild flowers. Someone must have brought them here from California.”

Bending to add her own pan of hot water, Kirsten looks more closely. She brushes a silken bloom with one finger as it floats by. “You’re right. They grow all over in the woods; I used to see them when my dad took us camping.”

Koda reaches up to capture her free hand, turns the palm up and kisses it. Her eyes, when she raises her head, are the deep blue of gentians, trouble in their depths. She says softly, “You’re trembling.”

Wrapping her fingers about her lover’s longer ones, Kirsten closes her own eyes. “I’m scared, Koda. I don’t know—” With an effort, she steadies her voice. “It bothers me when I don’t know what outcome to expect. It’s the scientist thing.”

“You have seen beyond tomorrow. Wika Tegalega has given you a prophecy.”

“Do you believe that? That we are going to make a whole new kind of world? Truly?”

“I do.” Something else stirs in Koda’s eyes, a question Kirsten cannot quite read. “When I scouted the battlefield with Maggie, I spoke with—I spoke with one of the Four-Footed people, Igmu Tanka. She said she wait for our return.”

“Igmu Tanka? Igmu is ‘cat’—a mountain lion?”

Koda nods. “We will survive, cante mitawa. Not just us, but our people—all our peoples. If we use all our weapons, all our knowledge. It is promised.” Her expression changes, a smile breaking over her face. “Now get into the tub with me, or the water will be cold.”

Kirsten rises, turning away and slowly drawing her shirt over her head. Behind her, she can hear Koda’s breath catch, and wonder washes through her that she has such power to move her lover. But she says, laughing, “I know how we can warm it up again.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Koda answers, a hint of laughter in her own voice. Kirsten hears the quiet murmur of cloth on cloth as Dakota’s jeans and shirt drop to the floor, the soft splash as she steps into the tub and settles into the water. “Oh gods,” she breathes, “this is heaven. I could die happy right now.”

Kirsten turns to face her, taking in the long, copper legs that stretch all the way to the front of the tub, the angular shoulders contrasting with the upper curve of Koda’s breasts. The blue eyes are closed in sheer, abandoned ecstasy, incredible long lashes fanned out on her cheeks. A more inviting prospect would be hard to imagine. But, “How are we going to do this? That’s not exactly designed for a hot tub.”

“True.” Koda sits up straight, drawing her knees up almost under her chin. “Come on in. No, not that way,” she says as Kirsten steps in, facing her. “Turn your back. That’s it.”

As she moves to comply, Koda’s legs part to let her sit between, and Koda’s arms come around her, holding her gently. “This is better, no?”

“Much better,” she breathes as she feels a kiss, soft as the spring breeze, ruffle her hair. Her own hands on Koda’s she leans back against her, feeling the embrace tighten. The warmth of the water, the silkiness of her lover’s skin, the rich scent of the lilies combine in something close to sensory overload. For a long moment, they remain motionless. Then Kirsten sighs, letting go Koda’s hand and reaching for the puff of pleated tulle that hangs from the hot water tap. “Time to scrub.”

“Let me.”

There is not room to turn around, but, Kirsten hands the sponge and the bottle of soap backward, laughing. “Who’d have thought the woman waving an M-16 in my face would turn out to be such a hedonist? Just goes to show first impressions aren’t all they’re racked up to be.”

Koda chuckles, deep in her throat. “Who’d have thought the cute little android taking a leak in the snow would be such a sucker for it?” Kirsten opens her mouth to protest, but closes it abruptly. Koda’s hands, slick with the soap, pass over her shoulders in long, slow, circles, slip down her spine and up her flanks, the pattern repeating again and again. Through the film on her skin, she can feel Koda’s nipples harden as they brush against her back. Koda’s hands continue to spiral across her shoulders, down her flanks, sweeping across her thighs, circling her belly. They rise to cup her breasts, thumbs lightly brushing her own nipples, the touch and the cool air tightening the flesh around them. Koda’s mouth moves along the back of her neck, nibbling at her ear. Kirsten presses herself back against the strong body behind her, her own hands gliding over the long legs that arch beside her. “Nun lila hopa,” Koda whispers. “Cante mitawa.”

“Cante mitawa,” Kirsten echoes, her breath catching as Koda’s hand slips between her legs, then, fingers parting the labia to find the nub of her clitoris. Fire catches under her touch, strikes along the nerves of Kirsten’s legs, flares to life up the column of her spine. “Cante mitawa,” she says again, while she can say anything at all, and her head falls back as release takes her and she feels her pulse hammer against Koda’s hand that still cups her sex, shuddering through her again and again.

When she can move, she turns to kneel between Koda’s thighs. Dakota’s eyes, wide and unfocused with desire, draw her down and down, until it seems that she glides slowly through dark water, while shapes move along the verge of the pool above her, slim-legged and swift, slow and lumbering, moving on four legs or two or none. Around her she hears the darting passage of bright fish, the roll and tumble of otters. Then they are gone and she is back in the world she knows, her lips seeking Koda’s in a long, lingering kiss as her knee presses against her lover’s center and Koda comes, the blood pounding in her throat under Kirsten’s mouth, beating frantically, then slowing as the after-languor takes them both. For a long moment they remain still, holding each other. Then Kirsten says huskily, “You remember that ring I saw in my vision?”

“Mmm,” Koda answers, her head still against Kirsten’s shoulder.

“Well, then, are you gonna marry me?”

“Are you proposing?”

“I am.” Kirsten smiles against the dark hair that coils over her own shoulder and Koda’s. “One of us had better.”

“Since you put it that way—” Koda raises her face to Kirsten’s, claiming her mouth in a kiss that takes Kirsten’s breath. Then, “Since you put it that way—yes.”

“How—that is, I don’t know what the Lakota custom is? How do we do it?”

A glint of mischief comes into Koda’s eyes. “Well, first, you take Wanblee Wapka a string of ponies. Say about a dozen, you being President and all. Then you get a courting blanket and come calling. Then—”

“Then we elope,” Kirsten says succinctly. ‘When does the Judge get back?” A shadow crosses Koda’s face, and a stab of regret goes through Kirsten. “I’m sorry, love. I’m worried, too.”

“I know,” Koda answers. “But we’ll make our own rules. It’s a new world. We’re something new. We just need to get through this fight. Then we can plan.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Kirsten leans forward into a kiss. “Hold you now and forever.”

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

KIRSTEN SITS CROSS-LEGGED on the springy, cool grass beneath the heavy boughs of fragrant trees that dot the residential area of the base. At her back, the waters of the stream chuckle merrily as if listening to a joke only they can hear.

The scent of the rendered fat in the bowls before her doesn’t exactly rival perfume, and she resists the urge to sneeze just to get the smell out of her sinuses. She settles for what she hopes is innocuous mouth-breathing instead, flushing slightly at the look she receives from Tacoma. A touch to her knee draws her attention back to Dakota, who is sitting with a bowl of yellow paint cradled in her lap, and a small twig laden with the same held up, elegant eyebrow raised slightly, questioning.

Kirsten nods, almost shyly, and, smiling, Koda brings the loaded twig to her lover’s cheek, painting a design with sure, deft strokes. After several moments, she pulls the brush away and tilts Kirsten’s chin, eyes raking over the design she’s just created. A quick touchup, and she nods, satisfied with her work.

“Iktomi zizi.”

The words bring smiles to the faces of Manny and Tacoma, and a frown of puzzlement to Kirsten’s. “Excuse me?”

Reaching up, Dakota gently touches Kirsten’s face, then lays two fingers on her partner’s chest, right above her heart. “Iktomi zizi.” With her free hand, Koda lifts a bowl of clear water and hands it to Kirsten, gesturing for her to look into it.

The surface of the water ripples, and Kirsten watches her reflection waver in it, squinting as the image slowly comes into focus.

An intricate web design covers most of her left cheek. A similar one, though smaller, dots her right. She raises her head slowly, looking up at Dakota, wide-eyed. “A spider? You’re calling me a spider?”

“Iktomi zizi. Yellow spider.”

Kirsten’s face wrinkles. “I don’t think I—.”

“Hey!” Manny interrupts, chuckling, “I think it’s perfect. Spiders might be small, but some of them can bring down a man, or even a full grown horse with just one bite.”

“Yeah, but they’re—.”

“Crafty and intelligent,” Tacoma intones. “Creators of incredibly complex designs, and absolutely fearless.” He grins. “The name fits you perfectly.”

Kirsten eyes the three steadily. “Yeah, well just remember something else about us spiders.”

“Yeah?” Manny asks. “What’s that?”

“We eat our mates.”

There is a moment of absolute silence as her words are absorbed. Then Tacoma and Manny both blush, their copper skin tinting toward tomato red as they break into laughter and smack Dakota on the shoulder with good-natured teasing.

Kirsten looks on, a bit confused with the reaction she’s receiving. It is only when she spies Dakota’s rakish, eyebrow waggling grin that the subtext of her words blooms fully in her mind, and the blush that crawls up from her shoulders is so deep and dark that her pale eyebrows stand out in vivid relief against its heat. “Oh my god,” she moans, dropping her face into her hands. “I cannot believe I just said that!!”

Chuckling, Koda rubs her back. “Just relax, love. We know what you meant.” After a moment, she eases Kirsten’s hands away from her face and checks to make sure the designs aren’t smudged. “One last thing. Close your eyes.”

Said eyes narrow. “Why.”

“Relax and just close your eyes. Trust me.”

Sighing, Kirsten lets her lids slide closed over her eyes. “I’d better not regret this.”

“Just keep ‘em closed.” Taking another bowl, this filled with thick black paste, she dips three fingers in, coating them liberally. Lifting her fingers, she tilts Kirsten’s face toward her, then draws them across her lover’s eyes, from temple to temple, creating a crude, but effective black mask. “Ok, you can open your eyes now.”

Dakota grins as vivid green eyes open, their color all the more striking when set against the black paint surrounding them, like emeralds in a black-velvet jeweler’s box. “For Wika Tegalega. Look.”

Kirsten glances down into the still water, then back up at her lover. “I look like the Hamburgler.”

A moment of silence, and then the group roars in laughter. Kirsten merely rolls her eyes. “Can we get on with this, please?”

The others eventually sober, and Dakota takes back the water bowl with a grin that is slightly abashed. Her face has already been painted with the symbols of Crazy Horse, and the backs of both hands bear stylized wolf prints done in black and red.

A piercing cry spears the silence, and the four of them look up to see Wiyo circling down toward them. With a great beating of wings, she lands upon Koda’s outstretched forearm. A leather pouch dangles from one of her legs, and Kirsten eyes it curiously. “What…?”

“A note,” Dakota intuits, using her free hand to untie the simple slipknot. She hands the pouch to Kirsten. “Get it out of there for me, willya?”

The bag’s laces are tight and slippery, but Kirsten finally manages to fumble them open. Upending the small pouch, she shakes out a tiny, tightly rolled slip of paper, which she proceeds to unroll. Without her glasses on, the tiny writing is just one big blur, so she hands the scrap off to Dakota, who peers down at the message while Wiyo looks on, placidly. “It’s from Fenton. He found Toller.”

“Oh yeah?” Tacoma asks. “Where?”

“Just outside of Grand Rapids.” Dakota raises her eyes from the note. “Dead.”

“No shit!” This from Manny, who looks on, wide-eyed. “How?”

“Single gunshot wound to the back of the head.”

“Sounds like an execution,” Kirsten murmurs. “Did the judge say who he thought did it?”

“He’s guessing androids. There was talk in town about a small group of them in that area over the last week or so.”

“Any sign of Hart?”

“None.”

“Bet the metalheads took him,” Manny observes, raking a hand through his hair. “He’s the fucking commander of the base they’re about to attack. Jesus Christ.”

Kirsten rubs at the back of her neck. “Well, he’s been kept pretty well isolated from our plans for awhile now, so while it’s not the best news in the world, I’m not sure it’s the worst, either.”

“Yeah, but,” Manny argues, getting up to pace, “he knows the base layout like the back of his hand, he knows our numbers, our weapons, our strengths, our weak spots, and, worst of all, he knows you’re here. That sound like pretty damn bad news to me.”

“Manny. Sit.”

The young pilot looks over at his cousin, sighs, and sits.

“Alright,” Dakota continues, “we’re not even positive that the androids have him, but if they do, it’s a bit late to worry about it now. They’re at our gates, and with or without Hart’s information, they’re gonna be damned tough to fend off. So…we stick to the plan, and see what develops, alright?”

“We should probably let Maggie know,” Kirsten replies softly.

“Sounds good.” Koda eyes her brother and cousin. “Anything else?”

Both shake their heads in the negative.

“Good.” Shifting her gaze, she looks into the golden eyes of her feathered companion. “Thank you, my friend.”

Ruffling her wings, Wiyo closes her lethal talons around Koda’s forearm until the needle-sharp points break the skin. Three fat beads of blood well up. Cocking her head, she lets go a loud, almost triumphant cry, then launches herself into the air, wings flapping strongly, elegantly. With a feeling of almost stunned disbelief, Koda looks down in her lap, where two perfect feathers now rest. As she watches, the blood from her arm drips down onto the feathers, anointing them.

“You have been blessed, Tshunka Wakan Winan,” Tacoma says, his eyes sparkling reverently, joyfully. “By Ina Maka herself. Surely we are meant to win this fight.”

Still staring down at the feathers in her lap, Dakota finds that she can say nothing at all.

*

Kirsten sits on Maggie’s cot, the blanket tucked drumhead-tight around the narrow mattress, systematically shoving rounds into the spare magazines of her .45. One, already filled, lies beside the weapon on top of her pack. She is halfway through the second, her face frozen in concentration as she thumbs bullet after bullet into their flat carriers. Koda watches her from the desk, where she is marking their force’s final battle positions on a topo map of the ground where they plan to meet the android army. Tacoma has another copy, as does Maggie. Like them, she has no illusion that these are anything but a diagram of their opening gambit; if she had learned nothing else from the battle of the Cheyenne, from her fight with the Minot war leader, she would have learned that battle is unpredictable.

She has also learned that men and women will follow her, and that still frightens her. It frightens her all the more when one of those women is Kirsten. Perhaps she should feel easier knowing that her lover will be at the command center, guarded by Manny and Andrews and Maggie herself. A part of her mind remains convinced that Kirsten is safest at Dakota’s own side, with love as well as friendship and duty between her and harm.

But that is an illusion, and she knows it. There is no safety anywhere. Not on the battlefield, not off it. They must break the enemy here, and they must break him now. There will be no second chance. I will be here when you return, Puma had said. But prophecy is contingent. None knows that better than Koda.

We could still lose. We could lose it all.

Finished with the map, Koda folds it and slips it into her field pack. “About ready?”

Kirsten shoves the last round home, slipping the full magazines into loops in her belt. She looks up, smiling briefly. “I’m ready.” Then, the smile fading, “I’ll be glad when this is over.”

“Me, too,” Koda says quietly. She rises and shoulders her own pack. One way or another, the world will be a different place in twenty-four hours.

Kirsten follows suit, snapping down the holster on her Colt and lifting her kit by its straps. Her helmet dangles from it by the chinstrap. Her battle dress, like Koda’s own, bears no insignia. No need to advertise their identity to the enemy. Forward parties have already caught and killed half a dozen human spies; it would take only one to recognize her and carry word of Kirsten’s presence to the enemy. They have no way of knowing how many they have missed, any one of whom could betray their strategy to the enemy.

Go to Plan B . . ..

Unfortunately, there is no Plan B. They have not the resources.

A shadow passes across the window, dark in the light of the low sun. Knuckles rap lightly on the jamb, and Maggie pushes open the door. Like Dakota and Kirsten, she wears combat fatigues, the bulk of her Kevlar vest showing clearly beneath her tunic, an M-16 slung over her shoulder. A wry smile quirks her mouth upward. “Madam President. Would you like to inspect the troops?”

“No,” Kirsten says succinctly. The tension in her voice runs along Koda’s nerves. “Let’s just go.”

Maggie’s mouth tightens, her eyes narrowing. “Let’s try that again. Madam President, would you like to inspect the troops?”

Kirsten glances up at the taller woman, her own face set. “I said—”

“Kirsten,” Koda says softly. “You are their Commander in Chief.”

Koda notes the rise and fall of Kirsten’s shoulders underneath her jacket, hears the breath as it leaves her. “All right. Nothing formal.”

Maggie nods. “Nothing formal. They need to see you, though. They need to know you see them.”

It is something Koda has learned over the last months, slowly and with reluctance. A commander is as much symbol as leader, as much a fighting band’s faith as its head. The troops who had followed her across the bridge at the Cheyenne had not done it for freedom or democracy or the idea of a state. They had done it for her. Kirsten’s face loses its stubbornness as the realization comes to her as well. “All right,” she says again and steps through the door Maggie holds for her.

Over her head, Maggie’s eyes meet Koda’s. “You’ll do,” she says, and Koda is not sure whether she means Kirsten or herself. “You’ll do just fine.”

Outside, the low sun lays long shadows on the tarmac, fantastic angular shapes that barely suggest the APC’s and Humvees and Bradleys that cast them. The vehicles themselves form a convoy strung out half the length of the runway, most single file. Lead and rear contingents are both armor, tanks and their two mobile howitzers. Personnel carriers cluster in the middle. All along the line, the troops stand at attention, men and women drawn from every branch of service, the reserves, the civilian population. All are well armed, most are, more or less, in uniform. There is no shortage of equipment, only of soldiers to use it.

Parked just outside the office, the Jeep that had once been General Hart’s stands waiting. Its door bears his three stars, or once did. Now all that remains of them is a single star and two splotches of fresh paint. From the front fenders fly miniature flags: the Stars and Stripes from one, the blue Air Force banner from the other. Andrews sits at the wheel. Maggie slips into the front seat beside him, Koda and Kirsten into the back. Just as Kirsten turns to arrange her gear, Koda says, “Stand, cante skuye. Let them see you.”

For a moment it seems that Kirsten will demur. But she faces front, one hand on the rollbar, as the Jeep begins to roll. A ripple precedes them up the line, hands raised to salute. Koda watches as Kirsten smiles and acknowledges the gesture, her own back straight as a young birch tree, all traces of anger and tension gone from her face. It comes to Koda that Kirsten has a true gift for leadership, one very different from her own. Her lover’s wildness is all for her, nothing that near-strangers or even friends will ever see. To them she is a still point of order in chaos; a fragment rationality in a spinning vortex of dementia. She is the center that will hold against the circling dark.

The Jeep comes to the end of the line, the rear brought up by one of the howitzers. Then it swings back to take its place in the middle of the column, and the line of vehicles shudders into motion.

“Here we go,” Kirsten says, taking her seat. In her eyes, apprehension shadows her pride in the moment, and Koda knows what she fears.

“Here we are,” she answers, taking her hand. “Always.”

*

“It’s a good thing they already know we’re coming,” Kirsten shouts into Koda’s ear, “because this is sure as hell no sneak attack.”

Koda grins and nods, not even attempting speech. Before and behind them, the Bradleys and howitzers, the mortars and the other tracked vehicles crunch along the asphalt. The tanks’ characteristic shrill whine carries on the evening air like the howl of lost souls, punctuated only by the whup-whup of a pair of low-flying Apache choppers scouting the margins of the road. The air chills as they pass, blue with dusk, shadows fading into the oncoming night. Stars hang low on the eastern horizon before them; behind them the scudding clouds flame gold and crimson as the sun slips below the edge of the world. To either side of the road, barriers of derelict cars and trucks loom high, broken shapes out of nightmare bulldozed into place to funnel the enemy advance between Tacoma’s forces and Maggie’s. Also along their flanks, invisible now under brush and rubble, ten-foot wide trenches run from the pavement into the trees that line the road. If the enemy follows the battle plan hammered out by the Ellsworth officers—if the enemy can be forced to follow it—the ditches will trap and incapacitate the droids’ armor. At intervals, two-and-three man teams peel off the line of march to take stations, in the woods or behind rocks, where they can lob armor-piercing missiles into the mired tanks from shoulder launchers.

Koda fastens the chin strap of her helmet, pulling it tight and checking the adjustment of the night sight. She does not lower it yet; there is little to see now save the bulk of the APC lumbering along ahead of their Jeep, the heaps of wrecked metal looming on either side at irregular intervals. Beside her, Kirsten does likewise, her lover’s smaller hand seeking hers again. They will separate soon, Koda to lead her detachment into its position on the south flank, hidden from the road, Kirsten to remain with Maggie among at the command post personnel as communications chief. It is not a position of safety; Maggie will have charge of the center, where the enemy attack will fall hardest. In the dark, in her own mind, she tries to find reassurance in Kirsten’s vision, in Puma’s promise that she would be here, on this ground, at Koda’s return.

But this is a return, now, and Puma is a warrior spirit. It is battle that waits. There is no guarantee of ever coming here again.

Neither is there any guarantee of leaving.

As they pass the ten-mile mark out of Ellsworth, the pace of the column picks up, the whine of the tanks suddenly diminishing. Kirsten’s fingers tighten around her own; Tacoma has left the interstate with the armor squadron, gone to take up position in the thickening dark to the north of the road, where they will both protect the flank of the main force and, with luck, draw the enemy tanks and Bradleys into a death trap.

The moon is up, just off the full. A stiff wind blows from the south, and clouds scud across its face, narrow ribbons of black and silver. Suddenly Kirsten turns, her profile rimlit in the pale light, her pointing finger tracking something moving along the treeline. As Koda’s gaze follows, she can make out a white shape beyond the reach of the branches, propelled by slow, deep wingbeats. Owl. The moonlight strikes silver from its feathers, ripples over the fan of its pinions where they spread out like fingers at the ends of its wings. Though it does not call, a shiver passes through her, chill along her skin. There will be death tomorrow; she needs no omen to tell her that.

With the armor gone, the convoy picks up speed. The barricades grow fewer as they approach the place where they will deploy in preparation to meet the enemy, and the last mile or so of road lies open and unobstructed to give their own forces room to fall back. Kirsten no longer needs to shout to be heard. “We’re almost there.”

Koda turns to face her. The moon is higher now, and the fear in Kirsten’s eyes shows plain. She does not fear for herself; no woman who could be intimidated by a mere army could have made her way across a continent alone, could not have gone cold-bloodedly, twice, into the heart of the enemy stronghold. The fear is for the world they will leave behind them if they fail. It is also, she knows, for her, Dakota.

There are no words to answer it. Her own fears have burned themselves clean: for Kirsten, for Tacoma, for the men and women whose lives are in her hand.

She touches a finger to one of the hailstones painted on her face. Hoka hey, Tshunka Witco. It is a good day to die.

It is a better one to live.

Ahead of them, the APC’s slow even further and begin to fan out across the width of the interstate. Andrews brings the Jeep to a halt beside the truck that will house the command post, parked now facing back the way they have come so that Maggie, Kirsten and their staff will be able to see out the open back. Kirsten’s hand tightens on Koda’s almost convulsively. They will separate here.

Maggie gets out of the Jeep and begins to move toward the line of APC’s disgorging their loads of troops. Koda can hear the rattle of their gear as they jump to the pavement, the occasional “Moth-er-fuck!” as someone drops a piece of equipment or jostles the soldier ahead. She will have to sort out her own squad and lead them into position behind the rise that lifts dark against sky to the south. Andrews has also found urgent business ahead, leaving Koda and Kirsten a small moment of privacy in the midst of chaos.

“Dakota—” Kirsten breaks off, her voice catching. Then, “Be safe.”

Koda lays a hand on the other woman’s cheek, feeling the helmet strap under her palm. Awkwardly, because the night sights project from above the rims of their helmets, she bends and kisses Kirsten gently. “Till morning,” she says. “This is the easy part.”

“I know,” Kirsten answers. “I’ll just be glad when we’re through it.” Under her hand, Koda feels her lover’s mouth quirk up in a wry smile. “Can’t wait to get to that hard stuff.”

Koda kisses her again, lingeringly, and turns to go. Before she can move from where she stands, a whistling howl splits the air above them, a metallic shriek that is followed by another and another. Koda tracks the sound as it dopplers down the highway. A mile beyond them to the west, a flame-shot cloud rises from the pavement, roiling with the violence of the explosion. A second flares just beyond it, and a third.

“What the hell was that?” Kirsten demands of the sudden silence.

Maggie appears again beside them. “Howitzers.” Even in the darkness, her grin is visible. “We just got lucky. The bastards are overshooting us.”

*

Kirsten walks the line in the darkness, feeling as much as seeing the mass of the metal wall thrown up across the width of the interstate. The moon gives light enough to make out the crumpled metal rammed into barricades; here and there it glints off chrome trim or the arc of a hubcap. Here and there, too, it catches the shape of an M-16, where a soldier crouches at one of the firing slits left open or perches six feet up, straining to catch some glimpse of the enemy. They nod and salute as she passes, their movements visible only in the shift of shadow. At the other wall, the one a hundred yards behind this one, Maggie is doing the same thing, checking their defenses, rallying morale. In the hollows of culvert and the drainage ditch that runs along the road, soldiers crouch with grenade launchers held ready. Ideally, the enemy will not breach the first barricade. Practically, they are certain to do so. And when they do, they will be trapped between the two barriers, caught in crossfire from three directions. Kirsten cannot see the ambushers, but is aware of their eyes on her as she moves. The howitzer shells still scream overhead at regular intervals, still landing well behind them.

Kirsten grimaces at Manny, walking beside her. “I’m beginning to think they’re just trying to keep us awake.”

The light gleams off the glass of his night scope as he nods. “Weakens morale. Or maybe they’re just trying to cut off our retreat by tearing up the road.”

“Or maybe they’re just dumb. They’ve got to wonder why we’re not shooting back.”

“Goddam metalheads. Who the fuck’s in charge over there, anyway?”

“Or what’s in charge.”

“Yeah.” Manny pauses a moment, listening. “Here comes another one.”

The round shrieks as it flies over them, landing with force that shakes the ground beneath them where they stand, half a mile away. With the wall behind them, she cannot see the fireball rise. “Good thing we don’t plan on retreating. Maybe they’ll run out of ammo eventually.”

“Nah. Ammo, small arms, they’re just like us. They’ve got more stuff than they have troops to shoot it.”

Kirsten gives him a wry grin. “Well,” she says, “that’s a comfort.”

*

Koda moves among her troops, stepping without sound over the springy new grass that carpets the meadow below the rise that shields them from the interstate. She does not speak to them, but touches a shoulder here, an arm there, letting them feel her presence and her concern. They will not let her down; she must help them know that she will not fail them.

Just like an old war movie, she thinks with a fleeting bit of self-mockery. Patton, maybe or Prince Hal moving among his men before Agincourt, pretending to be a common soldier.

Except that she knows that it comes from no film, nor from any history book. This is instinct with her. Memory. She has never doubted that she was born to be a shaman. Has never doubted, either, that she required every moment of learning and practice her father and grandfather demanded of her. Her leadership has come to her as easily as her breath, and that frightens her.

Because I don’t know what I don’t know. And what I don’t know can get us all killed.

She shivers a little in the night wind. Another of the seemingly interminable hail of howitzer rounds passes to the north of her position, to impact somewhere on the other side of the main force’s position on the highway. Either they cannot find their targets or the Ellsworth force is within the big guns’ minimum range.

Or they want us to think we are. Spook us bad.

She completes her round of her squadron, finally settling on a rocky outcropping where she can just see over the crest edge of the embankment. The hollow beyond is lost in shadow. In the moonlight, she can just make out the irregular shapes that she knows to be the barricades and the strings of empty vehicles behind the second one. Kirsten will be there, operating the main communications net. It ought to be a place of greater safety, but Koda knows that it is not. None of them is any safer than any other, which is to say that none of them is safe at all.

The moon climbs as she watches, the stars pacing across the sky in their myriads. Ares the ram, Taurus the bull, constellations of spring, both associated with the turning of the seasons and the time of planting from time immemorial. Both, in their own time, gods who saw the rise of civilization and who may now see its ending.

The sweet scent of the grass comes to her, mingled with the sharper tang of gun oil. Above her, the sound of a thousand voices skims the air, and she looks up to see a wedge of geese pass before the moon, followed by another and another, the flocks arrowing north to the tundra’s edge to mate and rear their young. In the fall, their passage will blacken the sky as they fly south, fearing none but eagles, their human predators all but vanished.

A hand tugs at her sleeve, and she turns to find one of the Minot men just below her. “Ma’am, look,” he whispers.

Koda follows his pointing finger to the meadow behind them. Fog is rising, billowing up from a small branch of the Cheyenne. “Damn,” she says quietly. “God damn.”

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

TOWARD DAWN, THE big gun falls silent. The fog, rolling in from the stream to the south, blankets the highway and the ground to either side. The figures that emerge from it from time to time to speak to Kirsten, or to Maggie, trail mist through the back door of the command truck, like ghosts with fragments of shroud still clinging to them. At her post , numbers marches across the screen of Kirsten’s computer, tallying their strength, coding the position of their forces. Maggie, beside her, studies a map of the field, searching for the overlooked weakness that may give advantage to the enemy.

Tacoma and his armor have spread out on their left flank, reaching north into the open ground that once was a wheat field. Behind him lie the trenches and barricades that will funnel the enemy into the two-pronged trap so carefully laid for them. On their other flank, behind a rise to the south, Koda holds her force in reserve to hit the droids and their allies from the side and rear once they commit fully to the attack. The task of the center is simple: to take the brunt and hold. If they break the way to Ellsworth lies open, and humanity has no more defense.

Maggie glances at her watch, then looks up to catch Kirsten’s eye. “That’s twenty minutes since they’ve fired. They’re getting ready to move.”

“Relay,” Kirsten says, and Manny begins to speak quietly into the radio. Kirsten can make out a few of the Lakota words—mazawaka is “gun;” toka, “enemy” —and allows herself a fleeting second of satisfaction as the replies come in. “Han,” she says, adding her own sign-off to Manny’s “Hau.” Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Maggie grinning at her. For once she does not blush, her answering grin part pride, part the rising excitement that comes with the approach of battle.

“Hoka hey,” Maggie says, “you’re learn—” She breaks off abruptly. “I hear them.”

Kirsten’s touches a finger to her implants, boosting the volume. The low vibration, felt as much as heard, becomes the crunching of treads on asphalt, the high whine of powerful engines. “It’s their tanks,” she says, just as the door bursts open on one of the corporals from the forward barricade.

“Col—I mean General, Ma’am! They’ve got their armor out front.”

“We’re on it. Rivers,” she raps out. “Tell your cousin we need two of his tank killers on the south side of the road ASAP. Herd them off toward our left flank.”

“Ma’am.” Manny turns back to the radio, rattling out orders in Lakota, this time too rapid for Kirsten to follow. She concentrates instead on the mounting crescendo of the enemy approach, sorting out the grinding of the armor, the steady stamp of mechanical and human feet. The low “whump!” of the lead tank’s cannon comes a fraction of a second before her own cry, the shock of explosion as the shell plows into the road just ahead of the barrier drowning out her voice.

“Shit!” Maggie swivels in her seat. “Kill the bastards! Now!”

*

Koda watches the slow approach of the enemy column as it makes its way down the highway toward the center of the battle line. The mist drifts green and eerie in front of her nightscope, allowing her hardly more than a glimpse of the lumbering shapes of tanks and Humvees where the headlights of the troop carriers strike them. The growl of their engines comes to her muffled by the fog, the vibration of their movement a steady rumbling in the earth. Behind them come ranks of marching troops, their height uniform, their guns all canted at identical angles, their step perfectly paced and synchronized. Droid soldiers. And behind them, followed by more heavy vehicles, supply trucks perhaps, come the fully militarized androids, some on treads like the tanks’, others on more human-looking legs with nothing else human about them.

A chill runs down her spine. The charge across the Cheyenne had been easy, the warrior spirit overriding her mind to take possession of heart and body and drive her like an arrow straight at the enemy. Here she must wait until the first blow of the droid advance falls against the Ellsworth center—against Kirsten, against Maggie and Manny—to close from behind in a pincer movement calculated to trap the enemy between their forces.

Then she had run her prey to earth. Now she must lie hidden, stalking silently until the time comes for the killing charge, each move calculated in cold blood to a margin without tolerance. It is the way of the warrior, the way of the cat.

I am on your ground, Igmu-tanka. Teach me patience.

Teach me the cold equations.

Sudden fire blossoms amid the fog, arcing upward to explode just short of the first barricade. Smoke boils up from the ground, mingling with the mist, shot with red and orange as the asphalt burns. Koda’s hands clench around the scope, her fingers fumbling with the knob to sharpen focus. But the mist closes in again over the road, and she never sees the two men who crouch in the drainage ditch, only the muzzle flash as their shoulder launchers kick out armor-killing rockets, and a tank goes up in a ten-meter high flare of diesel fuel that splits the darkness punctuated by smaller explosions as the ammunition explodes still in its magazine, ripping the monster’s steel hide apart from within. Around it movement ebbs and flows, a second tank lumbering up beside it to take lead position and fire, its shell tearing into the berm of wrecked cars, metal shrieking against metal while smaller arms fire peppers the culvert where Tacoma’s men lie hidden.

Again the shoulder launchers spit out their missiles, this time a good ten meters from their first position, and the second tank bursts in a fireball of burning fuel and cannon shells, showering white-hot fragments on the troops behind it.

“Two down.”

Koda can just make out the black-painted face of the Minot sergeant beside her. His nod of satisfaction makes a small shift in the darkness about them both. A third vehicle goes up, not a tank by the size of the explosion, and a man’s scream stabs through the fog as yet another rocket streaks down on the column, this one from closer to the barricade, and a third M-1 bursts into flame.

“I think they got one of our guys, Ma’am,” the soldier observes quietly.

“I think you’re right. That was a suicide mission.”

“But it worked. Look.”

On the road, the column halts briefly. A flurry of movement runs along its flank, droids or humans assessing damage, probably, checking the road. Then the tanks’ engines rev and they begin to lumber off the highway, moving onto the shoulder and then over the open field to the north, where Tacoma waits for them.

Koda breaths a long sigh of relief, her breath frosting in the early morning cold. The enemy has taken the bait. It is now a matter of waiting, and the kill.

*

He walks along the line of his squad, noticing the facepaint on the majority with an interior smile. His mother, he knows, would be furious, offended. These are not our People, he can hear her saying, as if she is even now standing right beside him, how dare they presume to know our Ways?

What she doesn’t know, what she would refuse to acknowledge even if she saw, is that these men and women have adorned their faces with paint for much the same reason Tacoma himself has. For honor. For courage. For hope, and for remembrance. There is no mockery in the eyes that meet his own steadily. Stalwart resolve? Yes. Fear? Oh yes. All of that, and more. Much more.

Andrews looks up at him from his place near a small rock outcropping. His face is a harlequin’s mask of green and orange, and his eyes sparkle with an inner light, his perennial good cheer not failing even in this, their last, desperate attempt at freedom. Tacoma gives him a nod and continues walking the line, murmuring words of encouragement to the men and women who stand guard against what is to come. He steps in next to a small woman who, from behind, looks like a young boy trying on his father’s work clothes. Her helmet is much too large, tending to slip down over her eyes no matter how tightly the chin strap is snapped. She is one of the women rescued from the living hell of the jails, one of the very few who remained behind.

Oh, most had volunteered, quite vociferously, but revenge had been their reason for staying, and despite the temperature at which that particular dish needed to be served, it could only cause more harm than good in the end.

Slate gray eyes stare up at him, and the ex-State Trooper gives him a little grin, her body loose, but ready for any command given. The marks of her abuse still linger in the bruises on her jaw and neck that the jagged lines of red and black paint don’t quite cover. Her gaze, however, is nothing but professional. He finds himself returning the grin. “Doin’ ok?”

“Five by, Cap,” she replies softly, reaching up to push the helmet from her brow. “How much longer, do you think?”

“Not much.” The howitzer fire flies overhead, but they’ve all become, more or less, used to it. “Just be ready,” he says before moving on.

He gets no more than two steps away when his headset crackles. “Yeah?”

Manny’s voice sounds over the less than stellar comm., low-pitched, but with a kernel of excitement ready to bloom. “Hipi. Aka iyiciyapo!”

A thrill of adrenaline flows through Tacoma’s body, speeding his heart, sharpening his senses until all around him is as keen as a well sharpened blade. He clicks off the com and turns to his troops. “It’s time. Mount up!”

With a silence and a professionalism to please the hardest hearted four star general, the squad eases into their Bradleys, their Humvees, and their tanks. Their engines start, one after another, and with a “Wagons ho!” signal from Tacoma, sitting in his Jeep, they move forward, ready to engage an enemy they cannot see, hear, or smell. The fog seems to move with them like a second army, this one as much enemy as ally.

A mile or so ahead, the Hummers pull off to the side, and heavily armed troops jump off to the right and left, flanking the road and getting quickly into position. The sound of the enemy comes to them then in the clank of rolling metal and the heavy, cloying scent of gun oil.

The Bradleys and the tanks move ahead several yards, then form a line across across the field to the north of the road, behind the carefully camouflaged deadfalls, guns ready. They wait.

Tacoma swings his jeep back around the line and parks to the rear. Hopping out, he nods to the troops manning the vehicles, then breaks off to the right of the road, jumping down onto the embankment and approaching his men. Johnson, Tooms, Carruthers, Chin, and Wayley stand down in the natural ditch, shoulder launchers up and armed. Seven others kneel behind them, boxes of ammunition open and ready. They all meet his gaze steadily. “Hold fire,” he says. “Let them come to us.”

*

The second tank round shakes the earth, sending Maggie to one knee as she bolts for the back of the truck. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Kirsten clutch at her computer just as it slides toward the edge of the folding table that is her station. Manny grabs at laptop and operator both, steadying them against his own stocky bulk. “General, you okay?”

Maggie levers herself up, hardly breaking stride. “I’m fine. Look after Kirsten!” She steps out onto the bumper and takes the drop in one step, feeling her knee fold under her again. Swearing silently, she jogs lopsidedly to the front of the truck. About thirty yards ahead of her, a crater in the pavement smokes with the heat of the tank round. One soldier lies some ten feet to the side, arms and legs bent at impossible angles. All broken. As she approaches, another soldier gently removes the gun from the dead hand and pulls the body to one side.

She has no trouble seeing the hole the shell drilled in the barricade; its metal edges remain white-hot with its passing, glowing like a will-o’-the-wisp in the swirling fog. Lowering her night goggles, she peers through it, watching as first one tank, then another, bursts into flame and dies. Above her, perched precariously among the twisted metal, snipers wait with hands clenched on the grips of their rifles. Until the armor is off the road, they are useless. “Hold your fire!” Maggie yells. “Wait for the droids and traitors!” Then, to a private crouched beside the wall, “Run back and tell Martinez to move up a couple of the machine guns. We might as well make use of this goddam hole!”

The soldier scrambles to obey, and as she sprints for the rear of the column, the forward tanks of the enemy force begin to lurch off the pavement onto the shoulder, spreading out across the field to their north. “Yessss!” Maggie allows herself a small moment of triumph as the whine of their engines dopplers off, then turns back to the task at hand.

The tanks move with remarkable speed for behemoths of their weight and size, and within minutes the last of their bulk disappears to the left. With her night sight, Maggie can make out, dimly in the fog, the advancing ranks of the droid infantry, marching in perfect unison toward the barricade. They do not break step even for the gaping holes left by the tank shells, adjusting their speed automatically to maintain perfect formation. These are the cannon fodder, then, not programmed for differential determination of their situation or independent analysis. Good soldiers. Not a thought in their metal heads to question their orders or to opt for their own survival. Somewhere behind them will be the more advanced models, and somewhere among them, please Goddess, are the self-destruct bombers programmed by Kirsten.

A pair of infantrymen land beside her, each carrying an M-60; a third and fourth drop an ammunition chest between them, then sit on it, panting. “Ma’am. The guns you ordered,” one gasps.

Maggie grins at them. “Good. Set them up here, aimed out of this hole. Get as much crossfire as you can. Spray anything that gets in range, once it’s in range.”

“Ma’am.” The two sitting on the case drop to their knees and set about threading the ammo belts into the guns’ feeders. Maggie slaps a couple shoulders as she rises and moves down the barricade, checking her troops. Except for a couple burns and a few more bruises, the soldier killed by the shell’s concussion is the only casualty so far. The rest hold their posts, guarding their flanks where the barrier curves to the rear. Advantage, good guys. She does not expect it to last.

It does not. From behind the barrier come the sound of shots, fired in single volleys as M-16 shells begin to rain down on troops and vehicles alike. “Shit!” she yells. “Get to cover! They’re firing high!”

Around her soldiers scramble to flatten themselves against the barricade, a few diving under trucks. Behind her the M-60’s open up, and she darts for the command truck, reaching up to grab Manny’s arm as the door flies open and he pulls her up and in. Shells strike the truck’s roof and bounce off, clattering harmlessly against the armor plating. “Sounds like a hailstorm out there,” Manny observes.

“Nah.” A wry grin quirks up one side of Kirsten’s mouth. “That’s freakin’ Santa Claus and eight tiny reindeer.” Then, to Maggie, “Tacoma’s drawing fire. Nothing’s headed Koda’s way. The guys in the back want to know if they should move up.”

“Woman, you pick the damnedest time to develop a sense of humor.” Maggie shakes her head at Kirsten. “Tell ‘em come on. All hell’s about to break loose out there.”

*

The battle comes to him as sound. Even through the night-scope, the fog and trees obscure the enemy advance. Tacoma knows when the tanks leave the highway by the suddenly shriller whine of their engines, knows when another of them dies before it can make the descent to the field by the shock of the explosion. He holds his forces ready, waiting silently, their engines cold. Neither noise nor heat will betray their position.

From his vantage point to the side, he hears the grinding of metal treads in the soil, the timbre changing as they begin to crush the woody undergrowth covering the open space between the field and the treeline where the ranks of armor lie hidden from both sight and heat sensors. The enemy rides without lights, relying, like the Ellsworth force, on night scopes and the sensors feeding data to mechanical brains. The first of the droid tanks pitches into one of the camouflaged trenches with a crash, landing squarely on the clutch of mines awaiting it. The double blast, mines and fuel, shudders through the ground, and a fireball blooms upward into the dark, briefly burning away the fog to illuminate the long barrel of a cannon here, the low curve of a turret there. “Got one,” Jackson observes in the momentary silence. His hands lie slack on the Jeep’s wheel, waiting the order to move.

The roar of the explosion drowns the last of his words, and Tacoma can only give a brief thumbs-up signal in reply. In the instant before the fog closes in again and obscures the advancing armor, he counts four more tanks and a pair of Bradleys. About half the enemy cavalry, judging by the noise. A second fireball goes up as one of the two fighting vehicles tips into another deadfall, and Tacoma speaks into his com. ” Wana,” he says, “Now.”

In response, the engines of half a dozen armored units growl to life, and flame bursts from the long muzzles of the two M-1’s in the center of the line. A pair of anti-tank missiles streak upward from their hidden launchers in a steep trajectory, their white contrails pale against the swirling mist. The M-1’s and Bradleys on the flanks, though, skulk silently, holding their fire, hidden in darkness.

An enemy tank shell lands on one of the fighting vehicles, its fuel going up in a torrent of flame, fragments of its steel sheathing clanging against the turret of an M-1 half a hundred yards away. The fire illuminates the tank’s cannon for the instant of its recoil as it returns fire, striking, too, off the taut knuckles of Jackson’s fist as he pounds it in soundless rage against the rim of the steering wheel, his lips moving in curses Tacoma cannot hear above the roar. The concussion from the blast shivers through his bones.

There is no hope that the Bradley’s crew has survived; armored vehicles are death traps under a direct hit.

A shell bursts overhead, its white phosphorus glare burning through the fog to show Tacoma the grinding advance of the enemy armor. One tank, bizarrely, craws over the remnants of another to bridge a deadfall; others batter their way through the woods, crushing trees, root and branch, under their metal hulks. Tacoma shouts into his com, “Willie Peter! They’ve seen us! All units fire!”

The thunder of the cannon rolls over him like a shockwave. An enemy shell gouges out a crater less than fifty feet away from Tacoma’s position, and the Jeep rocks beneath him. A second volley uproots a thirty-foot larch pine, to bring it crashing down on one of the enemy’s Bradleys. The tree, its pitch taking fire from the burning diesel, flames through the fog like a candle.

Another enemy tank succumbs to a deadfall and to the anti-tank missiles from the snipers hidden on the flank. The others go wide to skirt it, swinging back to reform and drive snarling toward Tacoma’s center. He watches them come, gauging their approach to the last second. He can feel Jackson’s eyes on him, taking their own measure. It is an unsettling feeling, one he has no time to analyze. He lets the enemy come on until he can almost make out their shapes, hulking in the mist. “Hektakiyanapepi!” he yells into his mike, then hangs on for his life as Jackson turns the Jeep on its own footprint and falls in behind the armor, now retreating at full speed along the trails already blazed over the rough ground. “Goddam!” Darius yells as they bounce over an axle-shattering outcrop of limestone, a grin splitting the grease paint streaking his face. “This is fun!”

*

A thunder of bootsoles on pavement announces the arrival of the troops from behind the second barricade. Maggie flings the door wide and jumps down among them, heedless of the hail of bullets pelting down on their position, running with them for relative safety of the wall. “Grenade launchers!” she yells. Get up on the wall and let ‘em have it! Get as many as you can before they hit the mines! We want to save those for the heavy models!”

A dozen soldiers scramble up the irregular pile of metal, finding holds among the dents and the protruding door handles and axles. Maggie gestures toward the top with a sweep of her hand. “Some of you rifles get up there, too! Snipe off any humans you see. Don’t waste your ammo on the metalheads!”

“Ma’am!” a Sergeant salutes and hits the wall, swinging with a gymnast’s skill to a position where she can fire over the top, her platoon swarming up after her to spread out between the grenade launchers. Maggie watches them go, strange green shadows in the light of her night scope, a hand here, a helmet rim there, lit to white glare by the muzzle flashes of their weapons.

“The rest of you, reinforce the flanks! Once they get to the wall they’ll try to go around!”

As they split and sprint for the sides of the highway, Maggie grabs hold of a protruding wheel and levers herself up to a slit in the wall. The mist still swirls thickly along the ground, but overhead she can make out a faint gleam that she is almost sure is a star, Siurius, maybe, well toward its zenith, and another glint, reddish, that may be Betelgeuse. Dawn is perhaps two hours away, and the fog will thicken again as the temperature drops just before sunrise.

The good news is that it should cover Koda’s advance. The bad new is that she won’t be able to see where she’s going. She will have to find her way to the line by sound.

Not that that should be a problem. A grenade sails overhead to land just behind the wall, spraying asphalt and metal fragments upward toward the snipers’ perches. One of the men above her yells “Fuckhead!” and opens up with his own launcher, firing grenade after grenade as a thin wet trickle drips down the wall past Maggie, black in the sheen of her night scope. From both flanks comes the rattle of small arms fire, troops on the flanks making a distraction or picking off humans among the enemy troops. They are few, uniformed no differently than the droids. They give themselves away, though, as they break ranks and split for the edge of the highway, one throwing away his weapon as Maggie watches, and tumbling headlong into the ditch under sniper fire.

No sympathy from you own kind, now, you bastard. Tell your sad story to the Jackal-god. Maggie pulls her handgun from its holster and pots a second would-be deserter as he slithers low along the highway shoulder. The droids advance steadily, stand and fire, march forward, stand and fire. The muzzle flashes of their rifles light the tendrils of fog that curl about them, their crack lost in the thunder of the bigger guns, the unremitting cacophony of the two heavy machine guns. It will not be long now before they step into the field of claymores and Bouncing Betties, and the easy part will be over. She squints into the fog and fires twice more. Another of the enemy slumps down to be trodden underfoot by his mechanical brothers. She begins to back her way down the wall. Time for com check.

She is almost to the pavement when she the scream of the howitzer shell streaks over her, its tracer light streaming behind it like a comet’s tail. It slams into the highway just in front of the second wall, sending a wall of flame licking up its metal bulk, setting fire to the paint and traces of gasoline and oil that linger on the wrecked cars. The impact shudders through the ground, tossing soldiers at random ahead of the concussion wave, rocking the command truck on its wheels. For an instant it tilts, poises, and falls with a crash onto its side. A grenade arcs overhead to gouge out a crater, the rear tire of the upended truck spinning in the swirling smoke. Two soldiers flap at the last of the flames with their jackets. The vibration of Maggie’s com unit ceases abruptly as it loses contact with Kirsten’s laptop.

“Goddam!” She half falls, half jumps the rest of the way to the tarmac, feeling her knee give under her again but ignoring it, hurtling across the fifty feet that separate her from the vehicle. At least the gas tank hadn’t blown.

Just as she swings around the corner of the roof, the door opens horizontally, like the hatch of a Normandy Beach landing craft. Manny crawls out, clutching his M-16 and a string of grenades. Kirsten follows, a darker wet streak cutting through the yellow spider traced on her face. A spot of blood beads on her lower lip, probably bitten when she went over with truck and equipment. Her M-16 slants across her back. “GODDAM MOTHRFUCKERS GOT MY COMPUTER!!” she bellows at Maggie.

“Are you hurt?”

“WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO GO?”

“Just a minute. Are you okay?” Maggie yells back as machine gun fire breaks out behind her.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

“Manny, is she hurt?”

“Just banged up a bit when the table tipped over,” he shouts back. “Computer hit the wall and bounced!”

Kirsten’s eyes dart between them, a frown wrinkling her forehead. She puts a hand to the bone under one ear, then, presses and repeats the gesture on the other side. The frown relaxes. “My implants! Must have gone when I hit my head.”

“How bad?”

For answer, Kirsten shrugs. “We’re going to have to make do with messengers if we need to talk to the others.”

“Where’s Tacoma? Did you hear anything before the rocket hit?”

“Headed back down the highway, with the droid tanks in hot pursuit.”

“Koda?”

“Still waiting.”

“All right then. Manny, take her back behind the second wall. See if you can get the computer back up.”

Kirsten’s face sets. “I. Will. Not. Go. Back,” she says, biting each word off. “Tell me where you can use me, or I’ll make my own choice.”

Manny shrugs, the rise of his eyebrows visible only in the dim light’s reflection off his facepaint. No help there. She shouts, “Take the right flank. They’ll try to get past us at some point—make sure they don’t!”

With a nod, Kirsten turns to jog over to the group crouched at the south end of the metal wall, Manny on her heels. He glances back briefly, a grin splitting the shadows of his face, fingers snapping to his forehead. “Nice try, General!”

She returns his salute with the one-finger variation. Pausing only to pull one soldier off the line at the wall for a courier, she scrambles back up, aims along the sight of her gun, and resumes shooting.

*

The battle rolls like thunder down the road, lit by occasional flashes of the big guns. The fog obscures all but the general movement, the enemy advancing, the Ellsworth forces holding. She can feel the tension in the men and women behind her, straining to hear, willing their sight to pierce through the shroud of the fog. She feels it, too, in the taut muscles of her own body, her hands clenched around her binoculars as if they gripped an enemy’s throat.

Deliberately, she allows her grip to slacken, forces the strained tendons in arms and legs to relax. Learn the lesson of the cat. Patience.

Koda raises her optics again, trying to pick out recognizable shapes along the enemy front. Far from dissipating, the mist begins to thicken, the air taking on a distinct chill through the layers of her shirt and camo jacket. It is perhaps an hour to dawn. Her force will need to move soon.

Beside her, Sergeant Beaufort echoes her thought. “If we’re gonna surprise those bastards, we better get about it. Sun comes up, we might as well send out announcements.”

Koda nods. “Form the line. Be ready.”

“Ma’am.”

Behind her, she hears the clatter of gear shifted into place, slides pumping rounds into the chambers of sidearms, magazines snapped into the grips of the M-16’s. She can feel the frustration dissipate, replaced with the more subtle tension that is half excitement, half fear. She keys her com, but before she can speak the shriek of a howitzer shell splits the night, its arc etched crimson against the darkness. The earth trembles with the explosion, a rippling pulse that spreads through rock and fog and flesh. It booms, too, through the speaker in her hand, punctuated by a muffled shout, then a distinct “Shit!” Kirsten’s voice.

Then silence.

Koda’s heart clenches in her chest. She stabs at the transmit button repeatedly. “HQ. Come in. Come in. Kirsten! Answer!”

Nothing.

She is not dead. I would know.

It is what she does not know that frightens her. “All right!” she shouts, stepping up to the crest of the ridge. “Move out!”

*

Kirsten crouches among the snipers strung out in a line from the south end of the wall to the drainage ditch beside the road. The tramping of mechanical feet, marching in inhumanly perfect unison, comes to her as a steady drumbeat, a vibration through her bones. Grenades rain down on them from behind the barricade, but do not slow them. They are not programmed to tend their fallen companions; their survival overrides, designed to remove them from a hopeless situation, will not kick in until they are trapped between competing priorities. Walking into a minefield or getting picked off by snipers, for instance.

Underneath their steady cadence, perhaps audible to no one else, the steady grinding of treads comes to her. Not so heavy as the tanks, nor even Bradleys; the next wave to break against their defenses will be the heavy-duty military droids.

And with them, the counterprogrammed models whose mission is to destroy their own kind. Please— Kirsten stumbles over the prayer. She is a scientist, agnostic, does not believe in the god of her childhood, perhaps never did. She bites her lip, drawing blood salt on her tongue. Listen, Ina, Tega, Wa Uspe—Uspewika—Whothehellever. Listen. We need help. Not just for us. For all the earth. If you have a stake in this, too—then let the goddamned things blow up on schedule. Please.

A ripple of laughter runs through the back of her mind, partly human, partly not. Appealing to enlightened self-interest, are you? Fight without attachment, Iktomi Zizi of the Lakota. Trust your actions and move on.

For instance, you might blow away a couple of droid sympathizers—right—about—now.

The first rank of the enemy steps into the minefield. The roar of multiple explosions echoes off the metal barricade, doubling and redoubling as smoke, laced with fire, billows out into the mist and pieces of fragmented droid clang off the wall to take down more of their comrades on the rebound. Kirsten cannot make out individual figures, but she can see, green in her night sight, swirls of motion where intact droids or their human allies have broken formation to veer away to the side of their inexorably advancing column. Kirsten aims into the middle of one such vortex and is rewarded with a man’s scream, high-pitched and cold with his death. She seeks a second target and finds it as a soldier stumbles blindly into their position; she fires point-blank into his face and shoves the body aside with her rifle’s butt.

From the ditch come sounds of a brief struggle, then two shots, then more fire into the mist. Behind her, Manny alternately swears and shoots, swears and shoots again. “Don’t let ‘em get down into the pasture! Koda won’t be able to see the bastards coming—they’ll give away her position!”

Kirsten’s world shrinks to the small space before her, where the mist hides an enemy she cannot see. She fires until her magazine is empty, shoves another one home keeps firing.

There is only the enemy and her finger on the trigger.

She kills coldly, human and nonhuman alike. Without attachment.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

THE NIGHT SCOPE shows the mist that surrounds them as green wraiths, the uneven ground beneath their feet as an uncertain patchwork of black and green. Koda can see the man on either side of her and little else. From time to time she catches a glint off the gear of a troop a few feet further down the loose skirmish line, but none of them can spare much attention for anything but the jutting rocks and tussocks of thick grass that can send them tumbling, turn or break an ankle. The one good thing, Koda reflects wryly, is that they do not need to see where they are going. The sound of battle draws them steadily toward the highway, where they will attack the droid army on its vulnerable—and with luck, unsuspecting—flank.