As Begay had promised, the run through the Tir was easy. Except for the border crossings, they had traveled by day, which gave Sam a chance to see some of the magically restored forest. Beautiful as the land was in its natural state and vigor, the thought that powerful magics had made it so disturbed him. It was still more evidence he could not deny. As lush and cool as was the forest, Sam seemed to notice only the pools of shadow and the dark spaces under the trees, as though some danger or precarious instability hid within the leafy canopy. Or was it only his doubts?

Begay assured him that travel by day was a practical matter rather than for sightseeing purposes. Less local wildlife was active with the sun high in the sky, he said, leaving Sam to ponder what kind of animal could threaten a panzer. All Begay would tell him was to watch the target screens, which he did, though his datajack connection to the sensors brought on the usual headache. Strain, he told himself. Magic had nothing to do with it.

Once through the Tir, they traveled by night. "Sure, the IR signature's easier to spot," Begay said, "but watching an IR screen is like watching any screen. Ain't easy to do for long. People get tired and forget to watch their screens." Sam trusted his judgement. After all, Begay was the professional.

Crossing through what used to be Idaho, they had a run-in with a Salish-Shidhe helicopter, but Begay found a hiding place in the canyons along the Snake River. After that, he launched the T-bird's remotely piloted ultra-light aircraft to fly overwatch so that it might spot any telltale activity. Later, while pulling the RPV back as they bivouacked for the day, the rigger's control panel blew a chip, sending the aircraft crashing out of control at the edge of the river. They lost half the night salvaging the wreck, for Begay wouldn't leave without it. "Too fragging expensive," he said.

It was near dawn when they pulled into the shanty town the Dworshak Reservoir. Begay turned the Thunderbird toward a dilapidated barn where a bunch of the locals were lounging. As the panzer neared, however, they sprang up and opened the barn doors for the T-bird. The panzer tucked itself in and settled to rest.

From what Sam could see, the interior of the barn was at odds with the exterior; the floor was concrete and the walls kind of solidified foam material. Benches, power tools, vehicles, boxes, and crates were scattered about in haphazard array. Overhead, a heavy-duty crane held what like an engine within a net of braided wires. The locals, most of them Orks, closed the outer doors and moved toward the Panzer. Sam was still trying to understand what was going on when Begay popped the driver's auxiliary hatch and crawled out.

"Fill her up."

"You want your oil checked?" asked an Ork in grimy coveralls.

"I'll let you check the oil the day I own a well, Thumper."

"Ya got no faith, Begay."

"Your dipstick's too short."

"Man's gotta stay in the biz."

"Got that right."

To Sam, the exchange had the ring of an old routine. Climbing out himself, he saw the two exchanging handshakes, and knew they were old buddies. Begay waved him over.

"Twist, want you to meet Thumper Collins, best panzer mechanic in the west."

"Second best," the Ork contradicted. "Don't believe everything the Injun tells ya, kid. Willy Stein's still working with the Cascade boys." Collins held out a hand. "Pleased to meet ya, Twist."

Sam took the callused hand. Collins' grip was so strong that Sam got the impression that the Ork could crush the bones in his hand with only a fraction of his strength; ridged muscles made the Ork's already blocky frame more massive. Introduction over, Collins turned his attention to the rigger.

"Real mess you got in the starboard carry slot."

"Drek, yeah. Blew a chip on recovery."

"I can patch the R-P today, but the chip . . ." Collins shook his head, making reflections dance on his bald pate. "Ain't got nothing like that on the shelf and ain't nobody this far out can cut you one."

"Frag it. I need that bird." Begay spat on the floor and stared at the star pattern the spittle made on the concrete floor.

"Begay?" Sam waited until the Navaho looked up. "It looked like your aircraft had manual controls."

"Yeah. Used to be a spy dropper before I put in the rigger controls. Left them manuals in, 'cause I thought I might want to take up flying someday."

Collins snorted. "He means it was his backup getaway."

Begay gave the Ork a snarl, but there was no real heat to it. Sam realized the drone's use as an escape vehicle must be an open secret, but the rigger needed to establish that it was his secret to share.

"Begay, I used to do some small-craft piloting. My old Mitsubishi Flutterer was something like your ultra-light. I think I could fly it if you really need a recon."

"You're full of surprises, Twist. Next you'll be telling me you're a magician." Begay laughed. "You aren't a witch, are you, Twist? 'Cause if you are, you're walking from here."

Sam said nothing. The left side of his mouth twitched into a nervous half-smile. He was saved from the need to reply when Collins stepped into the silence. "If the kid was a skinwalker, Begay, he wouldn't need to ride with you in the first place."

"What would you know about it?"

The two old friends started wrangling over who knew more about magic and the ways of magicians, giving Sam the opportunity to slip away. He didn't want to get drawn into a discussion that might end up with Begay living up to his threat to leave him stranded here in the wilderness. Sam didn't think of himself as a magician, but he didn't know what Begay's standards were. Had the Navaho seen Sam scanning the chips the professor had given him? Was that what really motivated the seeming joke of a question? Feeling quite alone, Sam found a dark corner and settled in to watch Collins' crew service the panzer.

Boise belonged to the Salish-Shidhe Council, but it was different than the towns Hart knew from the coast, where the influence of the Northwest Coast tribes was strong. The flavor here was of the Plateau and Plains tribes, a lot more like the Ute Council burgs. That wasn't too surprising; Ute territory started just to the south beyond the Snake River. Still, it was the biggest settlement around and well situated for a move on the panzer while it crossed the Snake River Plains. She had picked it as a likely choke point once she'd found a street snitch who pegged the panzer's destination as Quebec. It had taken only minimal bribes for clearances and a place on the regular shuttle to put her here ahead of her quarry.

That was what she had thought on the flight here. The shadow underground wasn't very developed in Boise, but she made a few connections and learned enough to know at she had guessed wrong again. By pretending that she was looking for a panzer runner and needing to know the itchiness of local enforcement, she had found out that all was quiet. All of the-admittedly limited-excitement was to the north where, yesterday, a Council copter had reported contact with a panzer headed north along the river. The chopper pilot had lost the panzer in the canyons. No surprise there. Any good panzer runner could ditch a general patrol.

The panzer hadn't been identified, but Hart was reasonably sure it was the one Verner was riding. Her contacts had seemed anxious to do business, even with her flimsy story, which meant that the smuggling business was slow right now. It didn't seem that many other runs were in progress and the mystery panzer was headed in the right general direction. There were other paths to Verner's destination than the one she had decided to block, but all involved a lot of heavy terrain. Verner's run to Quebec would have gone a lot faster if they had taken the track through the plains. Perhaps the suit had anticipated opposition and chosen a less obvious route. If so, he was smarter than she thought. Or else his friends were. Or maybe he was just plain lucky.

The copter report placed the panzer too far north to reasonably expect that they would double back and take the lower road through the Snake River Plains. That meant they would be crossing the Rockies, somewhere in the wilder country. There were not many cities or even towns up there, and they'd be avoiding the few that were. Unless they were planning a long detour north, the likeliest crossing would put them out in Sioux territory somewhere near Great Falls, so that became her next stop. Great Falls passed for a city, but it was surrounded by badlands, prairies, and outback, none of which were her best working environments. And that's where they would be.

She had wanted to tie this one up herself because she was mostly to blame that Verner was still running around. She should have made sure that the Elves had done the job on him in the ambush. Now she couldn't hope to nail him herself out there. Tessien was better in the wild places than she was. She wanted Verner gone before he reached civilization again.

She stopped at a public telecom, slotted a credstick, and punched a number. She waited while the connections were made and a voice on the other end repeated the last four digits of the telecom code.

"Jenny, have our skinny friend meet me at Far Side North."

"Will do, boss."

The Thunderbird sat hunkered to the ground, quiet for the moment as Sam watched Begay crawl around the blackened scar on the side of the vehicle. The Navaho cursed as he fussed with the soldering gun, repairing damaged circuits.

"Why couldn't it have been Pinkskins that we ran into out here? With all their trying to be more Indian than Indians, their fragging arrows wouldn't have touched the T-bird. No. We got to flop on some lost patrol of fragging Wildcats. Drek, but there ain't no beauty in that."

"Wildcats?"

"Sioux special forces." Begay hopped off the T-bird and spat. "With anti-vehicle missiles, too. Missiles! What kind of mouse-minded idiot issues a squad missiles for a trek in the mountains."

"Maybe somebody was looking for panzers?"

"I didn't tell them we were coming."

"Neither did I."

Sam handed a water bag to the rigger. Begay swigged the water and spat again, then tossed the bag back to Sam. "Pretty slick the way you forced their Hummer into the ditch. Better shooting than I would of figured you for."

Sam shrugged off the praise.

"Woulda been easier to hose the Hummer."

Sam shrugged again. He didn't want to tell Begay that he had frozen once the sights had aligned on the Sioux military vehicle. He had not been able to pull the trigger. The lighter vehicle had been able to pace the normally faster panzer across the forested slopes, but it had no protection against the panzer's cannon. The Sioux had shown great courage in chasing the panzer and it wouldn't have been right to kill them. The Wildcats were just doing their jobs; Sam and Begay were the interlopers. The panzer guns didn't load gel rounds, so he had looked for a way to make them abandon the chase. The only thing he could think to do was to block the way, and the only way he could see to do it was to drop a tree in front of them. He had been appalled at how easy it was once the stream of projectiles from the T-bird's cannon buzz-sawed through the forest giant's trunk. If Begay thought that was fancy shooting, let him. He hoped the Wildcats weren't injured too severely when their Hummer had crashed.

Leaving Sam to his silence, Begay went back to complete the panzer's repairs.

Sam's head hurt from interfacing with the vehicle's targeting system. It didn't seem to matter what the technology, any interface always left him with the ache, and now a faint nausea. The latter might simply be reaction from the chase. He hoped so.

The pocket of his coveralls felt weighed down by the case of instruction chips the professor had given him. Scanning a few of them on the panzer's computer hadn't done much for his peace of mind. They made him nervous, and he hadn't even tried any of the exercises yet. The familiar hurt of machine interface was a lot more comfortable; he understood that, or thought he did. It made a lot more sense and seemed a lot more real than all of the professor's talk about magic.

"She's patched," Begay announced as the soldering gun rattled back into the tool bin.

"Good. We'll move at dark then?"

"Can't wait. Gonna have to move fast till we get out of Sioux territory. Those Wildcats will get word out and have half the Sioux military down on our heads. Only easy way through Sioux territory is to avoid being spotted, and it's too late for that." Begay scanned the landscape. "Gonna cut north. It's the shortest way out of Sioux lands. Longer overall, but healthier, because there are more places to hide. You still willing to fly the ultra-light?"

Sam looked up. It would mean interfacing with the craft's sensors. "If you think it will help."

"Eyes in the sky never hurt. When we hit the badlands, we can't afford to waste time running up a blind canyon."

"Let's go then."

They were mounted in minutes, Sam in the gunner's couch because Begay didn't want to launch the drone just yet. The Thunderbird howled into the twilight.

Hart sat listening to the chatter on the Sioux military radio channels. Civilian possession of a receiver able to pick up those channels was illegal within Council lands. That didn't worry her too much; her very presence in the Sioux Council was illegal, for she had no valid entry permit. As soon as her translator told her what was happening, she smiled. This time she had guessed right. She was only hours away from the quarry and well-positioned to intercept. If she sent Tessien on the right sweep, before long they'd have Verner for good.

32.

A sound like a dog's bark startled Sam from the reverie of flying. He had been daydreaming, reveling in the freedom he felt at the controls of the Little Eagle. The ultra-light was slow and sluggish compared to the sleek mono-wings he had flown in Japan, but after the claustrophobic confines of the panzer, the open sky around him was a joy. Half-dreaming he may have been, but not so far gone he couldn't tell that the noise he'd heard had come from the radio. A glance at the comm panel showed no light indicating an open channel with Thunderbird. The sound was a random burst of radio noise, then he checked the navigation screen. Seeing that he had drifted a bit from the planned course, he banked the Eagle into a gentle turn to correct the error. The late afternoon sky was a brilliant blue, spotted with islands of cloud. In the distance, he could see an occasional thunderstorm cell towering among its fluffier kin. Beneath him, the land stretched away in a subtle tapestry of gray and brown, with only the occasional patch of dark green.

Through gaps in the mounds of clouds, Sam found the Thunderbird exactly where she was supposed to be. The panzer's shadow bobbed and darted according to the vagaries of the terrain, sometimes racing ahead of the vehicle and sometimes falling behind as it negotiated the open badlands. The T-bird could make better speed, but it would mean traveling at a higher altitude that would invite an enemy's missiles. Lacking the stealthy profile that allowed the Eagle to slip unnoticed through the skies, the mass of the panzer would almost inevitably register on radar if she flew above a certain height. Stealth was important as long as they were still within the boundaries of the Sioux Council.

Thoughts of missiles became immediate as Sam noted a second shadow rippling over the ground. This one was more slender and faster-moving. Its shape seemed to flicker and change more than could be accounted for by the terrain. The puzzle resolved when he realized that the shape casting this shadow had wings, which beat as it flew. Magnification confirmed the approaching object's nature.

Sam's extremities went cold, while at the same time sweat began to bead on his forehead. The second shadow belonged to a Dragon. Watching with increasing trepidation, Sam saw the dracoform pass over a buffalo herd, apparently without noticing the animals. For their part, the bison decided that they wanted urgently to be elsewhere. If the Dragon wasn't hunting, what was it doing out here? Sam thought he knew the answer.

"T-bird," he called as he activated the radio link, "you've got a Dragon on intercept vector. Two o'clock relative."

"Say again. A what?"

"A Dragon."

"Roger," Begay responded calmly. The Thunderbird banked hard as the rigger spoke, changing its heading.

"If the newcomer was headed in their direction, it would soon be obvious. Sam prayed hard, but the Dragon adjusted direction to maintain an intercept course. To Begay, he reported, "Still following."

"Roger. It'll get nasty, then. Flash me a terrain pic, then stay high and keep your eyes open. I need to know if anyone is coming to play."

Maybe Sam was being unduly worried. Begay seemed unperturbed by the Dragon, less excited than during the brush with the Sioux Wildcats. Maybe his confidence was based on knowing what to expect. If so, Sam wanted to give him as much time as possible. He quickly keyed the instructions to the Eagle's computer, sending the terrain data downlink to appear on the panzer's navigation screen. That would let Begay select the best available spot for the coming confrontation.

Begay knew his vehicle, its capabilities, and its limitations. Why shouldn't he be confident? A Dragon was a mighty beast, but it was still an animal. What kind of animal was a match for even a light panzer like the Thunderbird? The beast would need composite armor like the T-bird's own to resist the 20mm shells of the chain gun, let alone the heavy vehicle killers that the main cannon could spew. This would be a short fight.

From his conversations with Begay, Sam knew that the rigger would try to keep the conflict as brief as possible. Not only to keep from attracting other unwanted attention, but to keep from using too many expendables that would cut into his profit margin.

The panzer lifted out of the valley and passed over a ridge into another gully that stretched toward an open space surrounded by sentinel mesas. Rushing across the clearing and banking across the lower slope of one of the boundary formations, the Thunderbird kicked up pebbles and dust. On the flat again, she ran back toward the gully more slowly, her turret angled toward the Dragon's approach.

The Thunderbird's chain gun ripped up real estate where the Dragon had first showed its fanged head, but the beast put on a burst of speed just before it broke cover. The unscathed serpent swept in toward the panzer.

"Frag, that worm's fast," Begay commented in mild surprise as Sam watched the fiery line of tracers chase the erratically weaving shape.

The Dragon unleashed a burst of flame as it swerved past the Thunderbird, but the jet of fire impacted the ground in front of the panzer. Sage blackened and smoked. The Dragon seemed reluctant to stay and slug it out with the tank. Orange tracers chased it across the valley.

From his aerial perspective, Sam observed activity a few dozen meters in front of the panzer. The earth was mounding, and Sam's first thought was that concealed enemy troops were breaking cover. The notion was soon dispelled when he saw the soil moving by itself. Rocks and pebbles rolled toward a central bulge that heaved itself up, making a wall across the panzer's path. Before Sam could warn Begay, the Thunderbird plowed into the weird obstacle.

Deprived of the sound, Sam could only imagine the grating and pinging of the gravel on hull of the speeding panzer. He feared that the debris would clog or damage the cooling vents, a fear more than justified as metal shrapnel from the protective louvers exploded out from the sides of the T-bird. The panzer charged on another ten or twenty meters, but the gravel still swirled around it in an unabated storm. Fist-sized cobbles struck the vehicle, rebounded, then struck again like maddened bees defending a hive from an interloper. The slowing panzer was nearly lost to Sam's sight in the swirling haze of sand and grit.

"How in hell do you fight dirt?"

Sam didn't think that the question was meant for him. Besides, he had no idea. Then he noticed something. "The gravel cloud's only five meters tall."

"Right." The rigger's response was clipped, but Sam knew Begay had understood when the Thunderbird rose up on a column of superheated air, her main thrust directed straight down. Soil and rocks were kicked out and away, only to curve about and rejoin the agitated mass. At first, it seemed that the T-bird's action only made things worse, for the gravel storm rose up along with the panzer. Then Sam saw that the malefic sediment was attenuating, being stretched as though it were somehow tied to the more placid earth. As the panzer reached ten meters, the surging mass fell back. Only fugitive pebbles and streams of sand cascaded from the now rapidly rising Thunderbird.

Then, sudden flame washed the belly of the panzer, taking the titanium compound of the already heated nozzles past its melting point. The Dragon had returned to attack from an unexpected angle. Its thrust directors warped and partially fused, the Thunderbird canted to port and lost height. Starboard thrust vents opened momentarily, increasing the panzer's speed to the left before they closed as the force of the laboring turbines was redirected aft. With that, the fall became a swooping dive that the rigger could control. Black smoke boiled from the Thunderbird's underside, but the chain gun whirled, sending avenging slugs toward Dragon. The beast ducked out of sight.

The Thunderbird's flight was wobbly. When she plowed a furrow through a thin ridge and slumped down the far side, the panzer slewed drunkenly to a halt. Sam was impressed with Begay's skill in managing to reach a thrust balance that had kept the panzer aloft.

"Where is it? Where is it?" Begay's voice howled through the speaker.

"Are you all right?"

" Where's the fragging Dragon?"

"I don't see it. It must have gone to ground."

"Drek!"

"Are you all right?"

"Me? I'm fine. The opticals have been sandblasted till they're frosted, the cooling system's skragged, and I got no lift. I'm just fine. Where is that fragging wizworm? I want its hide!"

Sam scanned the area, spotting the Dragon as it circled around to come at the valley where the Thunderbird was idling. Sam reported the sighting to Begay.