"It is a twist that will probably allow them to win the day's challenge," the compy said. The fact that EA would make such an observation made Tasia hope the Listener compy was at last thinking for herself.

Tasia smiled through her helmet faceplate. "I'll have to commend those soldiers for ingenuity. Doing impossible and unexpected things is the only way the EDF'll make headway against the drogues."

She knew that the large rammer fleet would soon be completed: extraordinarily armored kamikaze battleships to be crewed by Soldier compies. The rammers would tackle the drogue warglobes head-on, one for one. An exceedingly expensive defense, but one that would hurt the hydrogues without a cost in human lives. So far, nothing else had worked. As soon as the big rammers were ready, they would look for the right opportunity. As long as the new vessels performed up to expectations, the Eddies would have a proven new weapon against the drogues. Maybe, if they began to win against the hydrogues, they would finally stop picking on the Roamer clans as a surrogate enemy...

The EDF was having a difficult time convincing people to enlist, and each batch of kleebs seemed worse than the last. That was why the battle groups depended more and more on Soldier compies to fill out their crews.

And Tasia had to groom the rest. What a waste of time! Why should she be forced to train more soldiers who might one day turn against the clans and cause more destruction?

The glider troops landed, stripped off their giant flexible wings, and took up their positions to meet the oncoming second team. Tasia watched them, paying attention only because she would have to submit her own report and analysis of the day's results.

From her observation site, she scanned the teams of trainees running through drills. Most of them were impossibly slow, reacting with clumsy book-learned responses that were a long way from becoming swift instinct. Their lives had been too easy, too comfortable, and their mistakes had rarely had serious consequences. They were not accustomed to a daily awareness that any botched move might bring catastrophe.

Because she hadn't joined the military to fool around, Tasia had risen swiftly in rank. She hadn't coveted medals or promotions, and she didn't play political games, but she worked damned hard and excelled at each tested skill. Though she claimed no political or career ambitions, the advantage to having a higher rank, as she saw it, was that she could do more important things. That was the idea, at least.

But now, thanks to their Roamer boondoggle, they'd pulled her from her Manta command and placed her in cold storage on Mars while the EDF picked on the clans. Couldn't they at least have given her something useful useful to do? to do?

She clicked her helmet transmitter. "Team Sapphire, what are you doing down there? Looks like you're trying to light a campfire!" Despite the lack of oxygen in the air or any form of burnable material, she wouldn't actually put it past them.

"Hadden has a leak in his air tank, Commander. He fell on his back during the last cliff descent, and now we're trying to swap out with a spare tank," said one of the kleebs.

"Pressure's dropping fast!" Another voice, with an edge of panic.

"The speed you're going, you may as well start planning Hadden's memorial service. I could fill out the forms and requisition an EDF coffin while I'm waiting for you to finish goofing around."

"We're bringing in a spare tank, Commander, but I don't know if we can get it up the canyon fast enough. We locked it in a cache when we secured this quadrant from Team Jade."

"Commander, I need to abort the exercise! Call in an emergency rescue lift!"

She scowled. "Instead of hitting the panic button-which will never work in a real real emergency, dammit!-try some creativity. Find a different way. If his tank is leaking, then seal it!" emergency, dammit!-try some creativity. Find a different way. If his tank is leaking, then seal it!"

"How? We've got nothing but wound sealant in the medpack, and that's not for use in this cold."

"Slather it on anyway! It's designed to hold up against spurting arterial blood; you can bet it'll clog a pinprick in an air tank. And the cold will keep it harder than a metal weld. Should hold at least until you can get that spare tank humped up to you. If that doesn't work, try something else. Solve the problem." She shook her head, grinding her teeth together to calm herself. "Once you stop the leak, he's got enough air inside his suit's reserve bladder to keep him alive for fifteen minutes even if his tank is empty."

"We'll try, Commander!"

As they jabbered to each other, scrambling to fix the leak, Tasia continued, "In the field, you'll have limited resources. You have to know your supplies and equipment and what exactly they do. Just because a purpose isn't listed on the instruction label doesn't mean you can't improvise."

Not surprisingly, by working together they easily saved the kleeb with at least ten minutes to spare. She refused to let them bow out of the exercise, though they wanted to run back to base and lick their wounds after the close call. Team Sapphire lost a lot of ground, and would probably come in dead last in the scoring, but they had learned something...for a change.

Out of the loop on Mars, Tasia gleaned whatever information she could about the continuing stupid strikes on clan outposts. Rendezvous gone, even Hurricane Depot...

Tasia had been to Hurricane Depot only once, on a flight with Ross when she was twelve. Ross had been assigned to guide a water tanker from Plumas, and took Tasia along to show her the Galaxy. He had even let her do some of the piloting-at twelve she was already rated for most of the ships used around the water mines-but he himself had flown the vessel through the gravitational obstacle course to the stable island between two orbiting rocks.

The Depot had been a marvelous example of Roamer engineering, a bustling trading bazaar and meeting point for all the clans. Tasia had eaten exotic foods there, listened to tall tales from clan traders, seen so many people and strange clothes and traditions that she felt her head would explode. She'd always wanted to go back.

And now, after seizing everything they wanted, the Eddies had simply swatted Hurricane Depot out of its stable point and smashed it like a bug. A show of force. A demonstration of General Lanyan's cold stupidity...

After that provocation and show of force, the Hansa seemed frustrated that Speaker Peroni had not simply capitulated. Tasia couldn't believe the bull-in-a-china-shop way the Chairman was handling the entire situation. When she was a young girl, she had heard that the Earth military was a bunch of bullies and thugs. Apparently those stories were accurate.

While on board her Manta, and during R&R stops at EDF bases, she had listened to the Hansa's smear campaign against the "treacherous space gypsies." Many stories implied that the clans were in league with the hydrogues because they had cut off shipments of stardrive fuel "solely to weaken the effectiveness of the Earth Defense Forces"-which was ridiculous in so many different ways she couldn't even count them.

There was no official announcement of the newly declared "war" against the clans, but most of the EDF soldiers knew (and celebrated) the recent provocative actions. Still, much as she hated their screwed-up priorities, the bureaucracy and prejudices, and all the ill-advised things they insisted on doing, the Hansa's powerful military was the only force humanity had that might stand up against the hydrogues.

And she hated the drogues more than anything the EDF had done...so far.

Unexpectedly, while she watched the teams wrap up their scheduled exercises, a transmitted request and event summary appeared on the small screen of her suit's text unit. "Roamer outpost captured at Hhrenni, numerous prisoners taken at greenhouse domes. Request assistance/reassignment of Commander Tamblyn to liaise with new Roamer detainees and escort them to Llaro. Her background may be useful."

Appended to the formal request, she saw a single line from Admiral Willis, her Grid 7 commanding officer. "Request approved. But only if Tamblyn wants to do it."

Tasia caught her breath. Another Roamer facility trashed? She tried to remember what sort of settlement had been located at Hhrenni and which clan had run it, but she'd been away from that way of life for so long. Even though her last battle had been a debacle-at Osquivel, where she had lost her lover and friend Robb Brindle-Tasia wished she could be out fighting the enemy. Making sure Roamer prisoners weren't abused might be the next best thing.

"Rest assured, Admiral," she keyed into the response window, "Tamblyn wants to do it."

Here on Mars, her talents were being wasted. She was bored, forced to stay where absolutely nothing was going on. Anyplace had to be better than this.

Chapter 11-ROBB BRINDLE.

Would the nightmare ever stop in this impossible place? He had no way of determining how long he'd been trapped among the hydrogues, but Robb was sure his imprisonment had already lasted more than an eternity. The unbroken tedium was almost as bad as the constant fear. Since he was nominally in charge of the group, he led regular workout sessions and skill games to keep up morale as much as possible and keep their minds and reflexes sharp. None of his fellow captives could guess what the hydrogues meant to do to them. Robb wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"I wish that little compy would come back," he muttered. He had said it countless times before.

"We're on a completely different planet now," said Charles Gomez, whose hangdog expression never changed. "Remember, they evacuated us." His eyes remained fixed on the spongy, sloped floor, rarely meeting the faces of his miserable comrades. Gomez had been captured when hydrogues overran the lumber operations on Boone's Crossing, annihilating several villages that EDF ships could not rescue in time. The drogues had snatched Gomez for their...experiments? Their zoo? All the prisoners had similar stories.

"The drogues'll never tell us what that emergency was," Robb said, "or where they took us." All he remembered was a flash of light and a lurching sensation. Then the clouds outside the immense wonderland city were different. Still hellish, but different. "I don't suppose standard POW protocols translate into their language."

Robb hunkered down. His wing commander's uniform was stiff and rumpled from countless weeks without washing or changing. The hydrogue captors provided water and rubbery blocks of "food," and somehow the captives' waste was disposed of from time to time, but the liquid-metal creatures did not seem to comprehend the human need for bathing or clean clothes. The transparent holding chamber reeked, but Robb no longer even noticed the smell.

Though there wasn't much hope they could ever set foot outside their confinement chamber, much less discover a way out of the gas giant's depths, the captives followed the unspoken imperative of survival. But they had few resources and even less information. Some had tried to think of ways to commit suicide, surrendering utterly to despair, but Robb was not one to give up. And he did not give up on his companions, either. He wouldn't admit, not even in the back of his mind, that their chances of getting out of this ordeal were incalculably remote.

Workouts and skill games could not fill up the time between sleep sessions, so with nothing else to do, Robb and his comrades had shared family memories, talked about their lives. By now, they knew each other as intimately as if they had grown up together. One man missed his large family with a crippling misery; another woman grieved that she had never had children. Others apologized for past wrongs they had done to people who would never now hear their regrets.

Robb had already shared the news of how the EDF had mounted a terrific attack on the hydrogues at ringed Osquivel, how he had gone down in an armored encounter vessel in a last attempt at diplomacy-but the hydrogues had seized him, and the EDF attack had begun. There had been explosions...and he didn't know what had happened after that.

Most of all, Robb talked about Tasia Tamblyn. Of course she must consider him dead by now; Tasia was a tough girl, not given to believing in silly fairy tales. Everyone here had similar longings for their loved ones.

Outside, multicolored chemical and polymer mists drifted through the bizarre geometric metropolis like tendrils of fog. The amorphous quicksilver hydrogues moved like lumps of molten metal, going about their incomprehensible purposes. One of the captives, Anjea Telton, whistled to alert the captives. A trio of flowing hydrogues was coming toward their curved cell.

"This can't possibly be good," said Gomez. Robb didn't argue with him.

The hydrogues rarely communicated with them, and then only with terse commands. None of the human prisoners could understand what the deep-core aliens wanted wanted from them. from them.

Beyond the bubble wall, the three ominous beings rose up and shaped themselves into identical forms they had copied from their first victim, who looked like a Roamer skyminer. Two of them carried the halves of a perfectly transparent shell about the size of a coffin. It was empty.

The deep-core aliens stepped against the curved wall and slowly pushed, easing themselves through the membrane. All the captives shrank away to the opposite side of the chamber, but the hydrogues moved forward. In the confined space, the humans had nowhere to run.

The hydrogues selected one of the prisoners at random, Charles Gomez, and closed in, carrying the opposite halves of the man-sized container. The third hydrogue gestured the other prisoners away. Gomez tried to flee, but could not get around the creatures. The drogues encircled their hapless subject like hunters using nets to capture a specimen.

"What are you doing?" Robb shouted at the aliens. "What do you want with him, or any of us?" The hydrogues went about their business without saying a word, as if simple communication was beneath them.

Robb threw himself forward. "Leave him alone! Leave us all alone!" He closed with the third hydrogue, landing a punch against its quicksilver amorphous body. His fist unexpectedly sank into the shimmering liquid metal.

He let out a shriek as unbearable cold shot through his fingers, hand, and wrist. Staggering back, he withdrew his arm from the quicksilver creature. The skin of his hand crackled with ice, steaming as it began to thaw. Nerve pain continued to scream into his brain, but he couldn't move his fingers. He sank to the floor, nursing his hand.

Robb looked back up in time to see the two halves of the coffin container seal tight, trapping Charles Gomez inside, like a mummy in a sarcophagus. The walls of the container must have been thick, for though the victim thrashed and pounded and shouted, no sounds escaped.

The hydrogues carried the coffin container to the curved wall, where they slowly melted back through. The chamber membrane shimmered and then solidified behind them, allowing none of the external pressure in. Robb cradled his aching hand and joined his fellow captives as they pressed against the transparent wall.

Outside, another group of hydrogues had hauled a much larger object forward, something made by non-hydrogue hands. Despite the horror and confusion around him, Robb's face lit up. "That's my encounter chamber! The hydrogues kept it."

A flood of unreasonable optimism rushed through his brain. "What if they're taking Charles into the diving bell? Maybe they'll pressurize it and let him go."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Anjea Telton.

Robb shook his head, refusing to give up hope. He had experienced too much despair over the past months of being trapped here. But even if the diving bell was shot back up to the clouds-of whatever planet they were inside now-how would Gomez ever get to a human settlement or even another ship?

"They might've arranged some sort of hostage transfer," Robb said. "The military has done it many times before. Maybe the drogues sent another emissary, like the one that killed King Frederick. Maybe they've arranged a cease-fire or peace terms. Maybe-"

But when he saw what the hydrogues were doing, his excitement drained away into a bottomless pit. The creatures stood around the transparent coffin and activated a vent on the sides, slowly letting in their own atmosphere.

Trapped inside, Gomez began to struggle and pound even more furiously.

"What are they doing?" Anjea said.

"They're gradually increasing the pressure. They're opening up his chamber to the outside environment."

"That'll kill him."

"I think that's the idea."

Inside the coffin-shaped transport bubble, Gomez grew wild. The hydrogues looked down at him, as if studying his reaction for later discussion. Gomez pounded, kicked. His mouth stretched open in a scream. His eyes were wide and bulging.

"Stop it!" It was useless, and Robb knew it. The other captives moaned or cried.

As the pressure continued to increase, Gomez finally ceased his thrashing. His eyeballs hemorrhaged, and blood began to run out of his nose and ears. By now all of his internal organs must have been crushed. Robb blinked tears from his eyes. He wanted to look away from the horror, but couldn't.

The hydrogues didn't stop there. Even after Gomez had been killed, they continued to let the atmospheric pressure grow greater and greater, until the dead prisoner's body began to snap and implode, all of its structure breaking down.

It took almost ten minutes for the body to be squeezed into a gruesome paste. Then the three implacable hydrogues unsealed the halves of the coffin and upended it to pour out the gelatinous pulp. The reddish mess, spangled with splinters of bone, spread out in a heap outside among the hydrogues' geometrical structures. The three quicksilver figures stared at the runny mess, as if waiting to see if it would form itself into a body like their own. Instead, the organic matter that had been Charles Gomez simply bubbled and oozed.

The hydrogues finally left. What had they hoped to accomplish? What had they expected? Was it some sort of cruel experiment? A torture? A punishment, or even amusement? Robb didn't speak; the other captives remained sullen and silent.

"We'll never get out of here alive," Anjea said.

Then, as the remaining prisoners backed toward the rear of their protective chamber again, the hydrogues came forward to take another experimental subject.

Chapter 12-ADAR ZAN'NH.

From his command nucleus, the Adar stared in disbelief at the images from the besieged docking bay. His escort troops, protocol officers, and reception committee lay sprawled on the deck, cut down by stunners or beaten senseless. The doors were sealed, all access blocked. Rusa'h had barricaded himself in with his hostages, and demanded the impossible.

"Get our engineers and constructors working. I want them to break through that door. Recapture my docking bay." Grudgingly Zan'nh added, "Keep the Hyrillka Designate alive, if possible...but do what you must."

Teams outside the sealed doors were using cutters and prybars, but the barriers had been designed to hold even against an explosion.

Knowing Zan'nh was eavesdropping, the Designate showed no compassion, not a trace of emotion, as he ordered his rebels to gather the stunned reception committee. Rusa'h sat in his imitation chrysalis chair, directing his followers. "You have little time remaining, Adar. Surrender this warliner, or I will begin executing captives."

Zan'nh found it inconceivable that his uncle would do such a thing. But he had already slain Pery'h...

The Adar called to his communications operator. "Have we heard from Qul Fan'nh? Warn him that the Prime Designate may also attempt treachery. I do not understand what is happening here, but we dare not trust Thor'h."

"No response from the first warliner, Adar. The qul does not respond to our communications."

An icy fist gripped Zan'nh's heart. Was he already too late?

"Your time is up, Adar," Rusa'h announced, leaning close to the imager so that his expressionless face filled the screen. "By hesitating, you force me to demonstrate that my demands must be taken seriously."

Attender kithmen moved his chrysalis chair to give the imagers a full view. The Designate raised a hand, and two of his brainwashed guards dragged the groggy primary protocol officer into view. He had not yet fully recovered from the effects of being stunned. "This one will be first."

Zan'nh observed with growing alarm. How far would Rusa'h carry this mockery? "Uncle, wait! Allow me to-"

The Hyrillka Designate gestured calmly and sat back in his cushions. The two guards slid crystal blades from jeweled sheaths at their sides, then moved with mechanical efficiency. One stabbed the protocol officer in the chest. The other drew the sharp edge along his throat. Arterial blood poured out in a foaming stream. The two guards released the body, letting the dead man slump to the deck plates. They stood back, their uniforms splashed with Ildiran blood.

Zan'nh gasped. Two of his officers in the command nucleus became noisily ill. "You...you have killed-"

By commandeering the imaging network, Rusa'h had transmitted the gruesome scene to every crewmember aboard all forty-seven warliners. "In another three minutes, I will execute a second victim. I should point out that as the effects of the stunners begin to wear off, the hostages will feel the agony of death more acutely. The reaction through the thism thism will then be more painful to all of you." will then be more painful to all of you."

"Stop this!" Zan'nh demanded.

"You know how to stop it, Adar. I urge you not to let the slaughter continue." His voice was bland, smug.

On a private channel, Zan'nh demanded of his security crew, "How soon can you break through?"