Tanzin/All Ships: "It's got to be a trap."

LNTCVP1-Bob/Runagate: It is a trap.

PereSnik't/'Reen Channel: *Surely, then, the prey is attempting to gull us.*

Runagate/LNTCVPI-Bob: It is a trap.

Morgan/All Ships: "Okay, let's boost hard!"

The machine suddenly came alive, bristling missiles as though they were quills erecting on a Q-beast. The missiles flew just as its enemy shattered into a cloud of wildly varied trajectories. The boojum had three hundred and seventeen separate sentient enemies to contend with now, not to mention the thousands of semi-intelligent missiles erupting from the fighters like insects swarming from a nest.

Skeins of contending particle beams crisscrossed the sphere of defensive s.p.a.ce, a traveling net with the machine spidered at the center. The boojum's shields and weapons phased in tandem. Incoming missiles sputtered, fused, and burned luridly. The machine had no program for esthetics, so it could not appreciate the beauty of nuclear flowers blooming brilliantly in the garden of the firmament.

The machine looked for patterns to form as the human ships flew in all directions. It had projected that the battle might be won in the first twenty seconds. That was now clearly impossible.

Victory was still a clear probability, but it would be neither fast, nor simple.

SHIP'S LINK.

CHANNEL CHECKS.

Amaranth/All Ships: "We're in. Dammit, we're in!"

Tanzin/All Ships; "Take it easy. We're just fleas, and it doesn't mean spit if the dog hasn't decided to scratch yet."

Holt/'Reen Channel: *Close, we're close.*

ThunderWalker/'Reen Channel: *Good. The chant will also wipe away the noise of my pilot.*

MussGray/'Reen Channel: *At least your pilot has kept you alive.*

Holt/'Reen-Channel: *We are all still alive.*

Tanzin/All Ships: "Look out! It's scratch-"

Morgan whirled her ship into a maneuver she could term, but never could have identified as to origin: an Immelman turn. Runagate looped around, rolled, then accelerated as a brace of boojum missiles flashed by.

The woman blinked through the array of images Runagate projected throughout the control s.p.a.ce. In the holographic display, the lasers and parade beams were colored bright neon shades for clarity. The webwork patterns danced around the painfully slow midge that was Runagate closing on the boojum.

Sparks cascaded around the miniature image of the ship. Some were accelerating missiles. Some were bits of debris from the dead and dying.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

Morgan glanced at the 'Reen. beside her and did a double take. The artist MussGray had brought on board a pad Dr. Epsleigh had given him. Grumbling happily, he was staring at the screens, displays, and images, and sketching furiously. The pilot shook her head and her mind retreated to speed. She slammed Runagate into a full-ahead feint at the growing ma.s.s of the boojum.

PereSnik't granted as the restraining straps dug into his thick shoulders. Bob rolled into a hard zig-zag, and Holt prayed the AG would stand up. If it didn't, the inside of the c.o.c.kpit would look like it had been spread with berry jam.

"You're within the parameters you requested," said Bob. "Good luck."

Holt scanned the instruments, glanced at the chunk of machine balefully occluding his main screen. No casualties among the 'Reen ships yet.

"Now!" he said into the ship's link. *Now!* he said to the 'Reen.

*Hyo* came the chorus.

He glanced aside at PereSnik't. The 'Reen shaman held tight to the alloy effigy. Fur glittered, reflected in the stylized circuitry. Holt wanted to touch his father a final time, but he didn't want to alter PereSnik't's concentration.

The 'Reen reached over and clasped Holt's upper arm. *Remernber* said PereSnik't. *You are as much I as them.*

Holt smiled.

PereSnik't began the chant. His voice rumbled as the others picked up the resonance.

*You are near*

The ship's skin rumpled slightly. Bob's skeleton creaked. Holt couldn't see it with his eyes, but the instruments told him a charged beam had pa.s.sed within meters of Bob's wingtip.

*Come to us*

*As we come to you*

"Closer!" Holt said into the ship's link to the other pilots. "We've got to get in so close, the machine will take up the whole screen."

PereSnik't's voice filled the ship. The chant filled the s.p.a.ce between ships.

*With your pardon*

*We shall kill you-*

Holt prayed thai the other ships, the ones not carrying the 'Reen, could continue to draw the machine's attention and its firepower.

*-and devour you*

He realized he was chanting too. 'Part of his mind, his concentration, his attention, more and more of it, was drawn into the skein of power. I have to pilot, he told himself. Careful, Careful- *That we the People*

"I'm closer to that son of a b.i.t.c.h than you," said Morgan's voice. "Get in here, love!"

*Might live*

"I'm even closer," said Tanzin over the link. "Move it, Holt."

*You are near*

PereSnik't began the chant again. This time Holt sang with them from the beginning.

*Come to us*

*As we come to you*

The images flashed in front of his eyes. The main screen swept across what seemed an endless expanse of machine.

*With your pardon*

The screen was filled with the images of asymmetric metal forms. The song, the ship-Holt meshed.

*We shall kill you-*

It all worked. He could be both- "Hey!" Amaranth's voice yelled. "We're in! Did you ever-" The transmission cut off Vacuum filled that s.p.a.ce.

One of the boojum's particle beams punched through Amaranth's ship transversely. Clubbed by a weapon moving at lightspeed, some things just were there, and then they were not.

The components of the ship's brain instantly stressed to destruction under the energy overload and flared into darkness. The ship died of a thousand electronic aneurisms.

Pa.s.sing through the c.o.c.kpit, the beam did far more immediate damage to Amaranth than to ThunderWalker.

As the ship twisted sickeningly and began to break up, Amaranth could look down and see little where his chest had been. The scarlet spray beginning to cloud his eyes told him the AG was going wonky.

He knew it should hurt, but it didn't. Shock. It wouldn't. No time.

Amaranth saw a field of spring flowers, all red and gold and vibrant, in a meadow at the foot of the Shraketooths. He died before the season changed.

The particle beam had barely grazed ThunderWalker. That was sufficient to vaporize the 'Reen's shoulder.

*We shall kill you-*

The chant still reverberated inside ThunderWalker's head. And continued for the hunter. *-and devour you*

The ship split into ragged sections. The last air was expelled from the c.o.c.kpit, ripping from ThunderWalker's lungs. Still held back by the elastic restraints, the 'Reen glared out at the machine that filled his sky.

*That we the People*

The 'Reen hunter was dying in a sea of debris. He reached and grabbed with his remaining paw. Claws tightened around something substantial and silky-the wrist of his severed arm.

He grinned out at the prey filling his eyes and mind, feeling the chant rise to its climax.

*Might live*

Expending the last of his fury ThunderWalker whirled the orphaned limb around his head and then hurled it directly into the face of his prey.

He could do no more.

The smallest segment of the boojum's defensive brain detected she strange object moving toward it from the destroyed ship. Circuits reacted. A beam flicked out and turned the arm into a dissipating trace of ionized gases.

The action was the result of a reasonable judgment on the part of the machine. Had the arm not been there to draw fire, the boojum would have selected another target...

Bob flashed across the boojum's surface.

Holt looked at PereSnik't and said, *Now!* The 'Reen' shaman felt the pattern of the magic that had just been worked. This prey was no different than a skelk- just, larger and inedible.

The People repeated the sum of the chant.

*We shall kill you*

*And devour you*

PereSnik't focused and guided the dispa.s.sionate grasp out and into the prey. He soared along the guideways and glowing paths of the boojum's mighty heart.

It too was much energy even to imagine. But not so much be couldn't interrupt it. PereSnik'i touched the true heart of the machine.

*That we the People*

One millisecond the electrons spun and flowed in streams; the next, the wets of energy surged, staggered, choked- *Might live*

-and died. Struck through its heart, the great, dead machine hurtled along its course.

Bob abruptly angled to avoid a desultory defensive missile.

The machine was an inert body in the center of a cloud of angry wasps.

Holt looked at PereSnik't and the 'Reen nodded.

*It is done* he said into the 'Reen Channel. Holt translated that for the other pilots.

"Amaranth..." said Bogdan mournfully.

"We'll count the dead later," said Morgan. Her voice was sober. "The machine-are you sure it's finished?"

PereSnik't growled softly.

"It is dead," Holt said.

"Now to dispose of it," said one of the link voices.