By this time Jane had also started in with knives, having burned through her flamethrower fuel at the expense of nearly a platoon's worth of Arrisian soldiers. Jane dispatched some of the more grievously burnt soldiers and then turned her attention to those that were still standing, or, actually, running. They ran fast but Jane, modified as she was, ran faster. Jane had researched the Arrisians, their armaments, their armor and their weaknesses. It happened that Arrisian military body armor was vulnerable at the side joins; a sufficiently thin knife could slip in and sever one of the major arteries that ran bilaterally down the Arrisian body. As I watched I saw Jane exploit that knowledge, reaching out to grab a fleeing Arrisian soldier, yanking him back, sinking her knife into his side armor and leaving him to sag away his life, and then reaching out to the next fleeing soldier, without breaking stride.

I was in awe of my wife. And I understood now why General Szilard didn't apologize for what he had done for her. Her strength and speed and pitilessness was going to save us as a colony.

Behind Jane a quartet of Arrisian soldiers had sufficiently calmed themselves to begin to think tactically once more and had begun to slink toward her, guns abandoned, knives out. This is where I, stationed on top of the inside track of the cargo containers, came in handy: I was air support. I took my compound bow, nocked an arrow and shot it into the neck of the forward-most of the soldiers; not a good thing as I was aiming for the one behind him. The solider pawed at the arrow before falling forward; the other three broke into a sprint but not before I shot another one in the foot, once more not good because I was aiming for its head.

He went down with a screee; screee; Jane turned at the sound, and then headed toward him to deal with him. Jane turned at the sound, and then headed toward him to deal with him.

I looked for the other two among the buildings but didn't see them, and then heard a clang clang. I looked down to see that one of the soldiers was climbing up on the cargo container, the trash bin he had jumped on to get up to where I was clattering away on the ground. I nocked another arrow and shot at him; the arrow struck right in front of him. Clearly the bow was not meant to be my weapon. There was no time to string another arrow; the soldier was up on the cargo container and headed toward me, knife out, screaming something. I had the sinking suspicion I killed someone he really cared about. I grabbed for my own knife and as I did so, the Arrisian attacked, covering the distance between us in an astoundingly short time. I went down; my knife flew off the side of the cargo container.

I rolled with the Arrisian's attack and kicked him off me, scrambling to the side and out of his way. He was on me again instantly, stabbing me in the shoulder and meeting the police armor there. He readied to stab me again; I grabbed an eyestalk and yanked it hard. He scrambled away, squealing and grabbing at the eyestalk, backing up toward the edge. Both my knife and bow were too far away to get to. f.u.c.k it f.u.c.k it, I thought, and launched myself at the Arrisian. We both flew off the side of the cargo container; as we fell I jammed my arm into his neck. We landed, me on top of him, my arm crushing his windpipe or whatever the equivalent was for him. My arm throbbed in pain; I doubted I would be using that arm productively for a while.

I rolled off the dead Arrisian and looked up; a shadow was hovering up on the cargo container. It was Kranjic; he and Beata were using their cameras to record the battle.

"You alive?" he asked.

"Apparently," I said.

"Look, could you do that again?" he said. "I missed most of it."

I flipped him the middle finger; I couldn't see his face but I suspected he was grinning. "Throw me down my knife and bow," I said. I glanced at my watch. We had another minute and a half to go before we dropped the shield. Kranjic handed down my weapons, and I stalked through the streets, trying to pick off soldiers until I ran out of arrows, and then kept out of their way until time ran out.

Thirty seconds before the shield dropped, Hickory opened the gates of the village and he and d.i.c.kory stepped away to let the survivors of the attack flood out in retreat. The couple dozen or so remaining soldiers didn't stop to wonder how the gate had opened; they got the h.e.l.l out and broke toward their transports stationed a klick in the distance. The last of these soldiers cleared the gate as we dropped the field. Eser and his remaining guard were midway in this pack, the guard rudely pushing his charge along. He still had his rifle; most left their rifles behind, having seen what happened to those who had used them in the village, and a.s.suming they were now entirely useless. I picked up one, as I followed them out; Jane picked up one of the missile launchers. Kranjic and Beata hopped down from the cargo containers and followed; Kranjic bounding ahead and disappearing in the darkness, Beata keeping time with Jane and I.

The retreating Arrisian soldiers were making two a.s.sumptions as they retreated. The first was that bullets had no currency on Roanoke. The second was that the terrain they were retreating across was the same as the terrain they had marched in on. Both of these a.s.sumptions were wrong, as the Arrisians discovered when the automatic turret defenses along the retreat path opened fire on them, cutting them down in precise bursts controlled by Jane, who electronically signed off on each target with her BrainPal before they opened fire. Jane didn't want to shoot Eser by accident. The portable turrets had been placed by the colonists after the Arrisians had been shut in Croatoan; they had pulled them out of holes they had dug and covered. Jane had mercilessly drilled the colonists who placed the turrets so they could move them and placed them in the s.p.a.ce of just a few minutes. It worked; only one turret was unusable because it was pointing in the wrong direction.

By this time those few remaining Arrisian soldiers with their rifles began to fire them out of desperation and seemed surprised when they worked. Two of them dropped to the ground and began to fire in our direction, to give their compatriots time to get to the transports. I felt a round whistle past before I heard it; I likewise dropped to the ground. Jane turned the turrets on these two Arrisians and made short work of them.

Shortly only Eser and his guard remained, save for the pilots of the two transports, both of whom had fired up their engines and were preparing to get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge. Jane steadied the shoulder-mounted missile, warned us to hit the deck (I was still there) and fired her missile at the closest transport. The missile blasted past Eser and his guard, causing both to dive to the ground, and slammed into the transport's bay, bathing the interior of the shuttle in explosive flame. The second pilot decided he'd had enough and launched; he got fifty meters up before his transport was struck by not one but two missiles, launched by Hickory and d.i.c.kory, respectively. The impacts crushed the transport's engines and sent it careening downward into the woods, tearing trees from the ground with a wrenching, woody sound before crashing with a shattering roar somewhere out of sight.

Eser's guard kept his charge down and stayed low himself, firing in an attempt to take some of us with him when he went.

Jane looked down at me. "That rifle have ammunition?" she asked.

"I hope so," I said.

She dropped the shoulder rocket. "Make enough noise to keep him down," she said. "Don't actually shoot at him."

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She stripped out of her police gear, revealing the skintight, matte black nanomesh underneath. "Getting close," she said, and moved away. She quickly became next to invisible in the dark. I fired at random intervals and stayed low; the guard wasn't hitting me, but it was a matter of centimeters.

There was a surprised grunt in the distance, and then a rather louder scree scree, which stopped soon enough.

"All clear," Jane said. I popped up and headed toward her. She was standing over the body of the guard, the guard's former weapon in her hand, trained on Eser, who lay cowering on the ground.

"He's weaponless," Jane said, and handed me the translation device she apparently took off him. "Here. You get to talk to him."

I took the device and bent down. "Hi there," I said. "You're all going to die," Eser said. "I have a ship above you right now. It has more soldiers in it. They will come down and hunt all of you. And then my ship will blast every bit of this colony to dust."

"Is that so," I said.

"Yes," said Eser.

"I see I have to be the one to break this to you, then," I said. "Your ship's not there anymore."

"You're lying," Eser said.

"Not really," I said. "The thing is, when you took out our satellite with your ship, that meant the satellite couldn't signal a skip drone we had out there. That drone was programmed to skip only if it didn't receive a signal. Where it went, there were some skip-capable missiles waiting. Those missiles popped into Roanoke s.p.a.ce, found your ship and killed it."

"Where did the missiles come from?" Eser demanded.

"It's difficult to say," I said. "The missiles were of Nouri manufacture. And you know the Nouri. They'll sell to just about anyone."

Eser sat there and glowered. "I don't believe you," he finally said.

I turned to Jane. "He doesn't believe me," I said.

Jane flipped me something. "It's his communicator," she said.

I handed it to him. "Call your ship," I said.

Several minutes and some very angry screees screees later, Eser flung his communicator into the dirt. "Why haven't you just killed me?" he asked. "You've killed everyone else." later, Eser flung his communicator into the dirt. "Why haven't you just killed me?" he asked. "You've killed everyone else."

"You were told that if you left all of your soldiers would live," I said.

"By your secretary secretary," Eser spat.

"Actually, she's not my secretary anymore," I said.

"Answer my question," Eser said.

"You're worth more to us alive than dead," I said. "We have someone who is quite interested in keeping you alive. And we were led to believe that turning you over to him in that condition would be useful to us."

"General Gau," Eser said.

"Right you are," I said. "I don't know what Gau has planned for you, but after an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt and a play to take over the Conclave, I can't imagine it will be very pleasant."

"Perhaps we-" Eser began.

"Let's not even pretend we are going to have that conversation," I said. "You don't get to go from planning to kill everyone on the planet to cutting a deal with me."

"General Gau has," Eser said.

"Very nice," I said. "The difference is that I don't believe you ever planned to spare any of my colonists, while Gau went out of his way to a.s.sure that they could be spared. It matters. Now. What's going to happen is that I'm going to hand this translation device over to my wife here, and she's going to tell you what to do. You're going to listen to her, because if you don't, she won't kill you but you'll probably wish she had. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Eser said "Good," I said, and stood up to hand the translation to Jane. "Jam him into that cargo hold we use for a jail."

"Way ahead of you," Jane said.

"We still have the skip drone set up to deliver a message to General Gau?" I asked.

"We do," Jane said. "I'll send it once I get Eser squared away. What do we want to tell the Colonial Union?'

"I haven't the slightest idea," I said. "I suppose when they haven't gotten any skip drones for a couple of days that they'll realize something has happened. And then they'll be p.i.s.sed off we're still here. I'm inclined at the moment to say 'screw them.' "

"That's not a real plan," Jane said.

"I know, but that's what I've got at the moment," I said. "In other news, holy s.h.i.t. We pulled this off."

"We pulled it off because our enemy was arrogant and incompetent," Jane said.

"We pulled it off because we had you you," I said. "You planned it. You pulled it off. You made it work. And as much as I hate to say this to you, your being a fully-functional Special Forces soldier made a difference."

"I know it has," Jane said. "I'm not ready to think about that yet."

In the distance we heard someone crying.

"That sounds like Beata," Jane said. I took off toward the sound of the crying, leaving Jane to deal with Eser. I found Beata a couple hundred meters later, hunched over someone.

It was Kranjic. Two of the Arrisians' bullets had hit him, in the collarbone and in the chest. Blood had soaked out into the ground beneath him.

"You dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h," Beata said, holding Kranjic's hand. "You always had to chase a story."

She leaned over to kiss his forehead, and to close his eyes.

FIFTEEN.

You know you can't stay on Roanoke," General Gau said.

I smiled and looked across at him in the tiny conference room of his flagship, the Gentle Star Gentle Star. "Why on earth not?" I said.

Gau paused for a moment; the expression was new to him. "Because you survived," he said, eventually. "Because your colony survived, no doubt to the surprise and irritation of the Colonial Union. Because you gave the enemy information vital to his survival, and because you accepted information from him vital to yours. Because you allowed me to come here to retrieve Nerbros Eser. Because you're here on this ship now, talking to me."

"I'm a traitor," I said.

"I didn't say that," Gau said.

"You wouldn't wouldn't say that," I said. "You're alive because of me." say that," I said. "You're alive because of me."

"Fair point," Gau said. "But that's not what I meant. I meant you're now a traitor because your allegiance was to your colony. To your people. You've never betrayed them."

"Thanks," I said. "Although I don't think the Colonial Union will like that argument much."

"No," Gau said. "I don't expect they would. Which brings me back to my original point."

"What are you going to do with Eser?" I asked.

"My current plan is to put him on trial," Gau said.

"You could just throw him out of an air lock," I said.

"That would give me a great deal of personal satisfaction," Gau said. "But I don't think it would be good for the Conclave."

"But from what Zoe tells me, you've started making people give you personal loyalty oaths," I said. "It's just a short jump from that to having the right to s.p.a.ce those who annoy you."

"All the more reason for the trial, wouldn't you say," Gau said. "I would prefer not to have had the loyalty oaths. But apparently there's only so much humility people will take out of their leaders, especially when their leaders have had their fleets blown out from under them."

"Don't blame me," I said.

"I don't," Gau said. "Whether I blame the Colonial Union is another matter entirely."

"What do you plan to do about the Colonial Union now?" I asked.

"The same thing I originally planned to do," Gau said. "Contain it."

"Not attack it," I said.

"No," Gau said. "All the Conclave's internal rebellions are tamped down. Eser isn't the only one facing a trial. But I think it's clear to the Colonial Union now that the Conclave is not easily eradicated. I'd hope they wouldn't try to break out of their box again."

"You haven't learned much about humans," I said.

"On the contrary," Gau said. "If you think I'm simply going back to my old plan, you're a fool. I'm not planning to attack the Colonial Union, but I'm also going to make sure it doesn't get a chance to attack either me or the Conclave a second time."

"How?" I asked.

"You don't really expect me to tell you," Gau said.

"Thought I'd ask," I said. "It was worth a shot."

"Not really," Gau said.

"And what are your plans for Roanoke?" I asked.

"I've already told you that I have no plans to attack it," Gau said.

"You did," I said. "Of course, that was when you had no fleet."

"You doubt me," Gau said.

"No," I said. "I fear you."

"I wish you wouldn't," Gau said.