"Hey, now, Professor, we can handle it. This thing isn't called a Shark for nothing. This is the ITAA's premier fighting vehicle, there's nothing it can't kill."

"There are other machines, are there not? What if they have the other machines?"

"Sharks only respond to ITAA command codes; it's actually built into the hardware control interface. If you take that out you have to fly the things manually, which is very tough to do since they're about as aerodynamically stable as a rock."

"It won't matter. This is what killed Saskatch."

"We know that, and we have been trained to handle this. I've got an entire orbital strike force on hand here."

"I don't think that'll be enough."

Chang was nettled more than she liked to admit by this lack of confidence.

"Well, then, think of this: Within a few hours there'll be a full division in orbit up there, not to mention a capital ship capable of destroying the entire continent, razing it down to the bedrock if need be."

"Death, I am sure of it." Reese turned away, her focus inward, her face slack.

"Great, a wonderful contribution to morale, Professor."

Her commo beeped. It was Povet.

"We have contact with Captain Cachester again."

"Good, put me through."

She dropped into her seat as Cachester came on line. In fact, she was surprised he was still on the ground; she'd heard that he'd applied for topside, to transfer to Empress Wu at the earliest opportunity.

Heidheim collecting his own, she'd understood.

"Where are you, Captain?" she said.

Cachester's voice was faint and crackly; his image was jumpy. "Position is as described previously, about two hundred meters down the approach way from the spaceport."

"What're you talking on, signal is badly broken up."

"I'm patching this through the Wasp commo. The air-base commo room went down about five minutes ago."

"Wasp?"

"Ground-attack vehicle."

"Got it. So what's happening in the air-base?"

"Well, it's hard to know exactly. There's still some shooting going on. Basonth is dead; apparently he was killed early on."

Chang felt her jaw muscles tighten. Cachester always had this effect on her.

"I know about Basonth. What I want to know is what's going on now. So I'm going to suggest you take the Wasp ground-attack vehicle back into the spaceport and find out for me. You may also help the ones still fighting." She used a very patient voice.

"We were in retreat, you see, we didn't know what was happening in other parts of the base."

"How many effectives do you have, Captain?"

"Uh, not many."

"Give me a number, Captain."

"There's just two of us here."

"Where is everybody else?"

"I don't know, uh, Colonel, we've taken a lot of casualties.

This is pretty bad."

And so they bad. As the story was pieced together it sounded worse and worse.

The attack had come with a skillful one-two combination that Clang would eventually recognize as the style of her opponent.

A diversionary incident had erupted in broad daylight. Explosions shook down a section of the perimeter fence.

Something ran across the open field and attacked the nearest booster cradle. It was an unmanned station but its doors were blown open and odd-looking creatures ran through it, ransacking it, in fact, searching for weapons.

A reconnaissance force was dispatched to the BC by Captain Basonth, who then went out to lead it in person when some of the members started wavering.

This force ran into very accurate small-arms fire from hunting rifles. The group's progress was slowed.

They retreated into the safety of the nearest booster cradle station.

At about the same time a second group of the creatures broke into the air-base main terminal. Nobody knew how they had gotten in, but they began killing everyone they ran into and they were able to seize a number of weapons from ITAA military staff members they caught in the corridors. With these weapons they'd quickly cleared the terminal building, shooting upward of fifty people in the process.

The shooting and the panicked mobs that ran from the terminal sent the gridlocked traffic jams into a paroxysm. Thousands of people abandoned their cars and took to their heels in utter panic. ATVs started driving back, over the roofs of other cars. People started shooting at them to try and save their vehicles.

At some point in the confusion Captain Basonth attempted to retreat back to the terminal but was shot dead by the accurate sniper with the hunting rifle.

With the terminal cleared and the ITAA administration block emptied the only humans on the base complex were the handful of men holding out in the booster cradle.

Captain Cachester had been sitting in a car, sipping a cold beer, alone with his thoughts about Doisy-Dyan and nine good, profitable years. In a few more minutes he was going to ride out on a shuttle and leave it all behind, including the meddlesome Colonel Chang and her damned audit of the base accounts.

Then had come the sound of gunfire, a lot of it. Bullets smashed into the windows on the upper floors of the spaceport block. Screaming people ran hither and thither. Cachester got out of the car to see what was happening. But the windows on the ground floor of the terminal offered little view of the action. He tossed the beer at that point and headed for the command post, which was in the roof blister atop the terminal.

He passed a few officers on his way. No one knew anything, except that terrorists were attacking the spaceport for some unknown reason. Cachester had decided it was some Liberators playing a prank, or even the CPS doing it to get Liberators of some sort blamed. He would have been amused, except that it promised to delay his own flight and that could create a ticklish situation. He had been counting on having a nice long interview with Heidheim personally before Heidheim confronted Chang.

Things would be much more difficult if he had to do his talking with Chang present, which was possible if Empress Wu got into low orbit before he did. Heidheim might even drop to dirtside to see things for himself.

Then Captain Basonth had led out a squad from the 624 to confront the intruders. A Wasp ground-assault vehicle was on its way from the ITAA base in West Doisy-Dyan. More gunfire bad erupted. This time, however, it sounded much closer; in fact, it was coming from inside the terminal.

Cachester was appalled. What the hell did the boys think they were doing? This would really set things on the boil. He was glad he was getting out of here before the ITAA tried to crack down after this.

There was screaming and more gunshots; in fact, it was the sound of a regular slaughter. Someone ran into the control center with the news that "creatures" had broken into the Departures Lounge and were killing everyone there.

Creatures? Cachester's eyebrows rose at the word.

The news bearer was pale with terror. They were creatures, he was emphatic, he'd seen them, fortunately from the safe distance of the escalator well in Departures. They moved faster than any human being he'd ever seen. They were killing everyone.

At that point Cachester had decided to put discretion before valor, and he sprinted for the rear exit to the building. Emerging onto a sublevel beneath the departures area he saw something lean and gray, with the body of a child. It was pursuing two men and a woman who were running for their lives. It was armed with a peasant machete. It caught up to the older, slower of the men and bounded high for a moment, the machete swinging and neatly beheading the man with a single stroke.

The surviving man and the woman, both in the dress of business executives, scrambled around a corner with shrieks of terror. The thing bounded after them with an insectile rapidity.

Cachester had bolted like a terrified rabbit straight across the approach road and onto a ramp that fed down to the spaceport field level. There he had the good fortune to run into Private Forsht at the wheel of the Wasp ground-attack vehicle that was on its way to back up Basonth and his ground team.

Cachester got Forsht to stop and turned him around and took the Wasp back up the ramp and down the approach road to a distance he judged as safe, for the moment. Then he paused and decided to call Cowdray-Kara and pass on the news to Chang that her creatures were for real.

Chang made her decision.

"Captain, I want you to go back into the air-base, with the Wasp, and find out what the hell is going on in there."

Cachester did not reply.

"Captain, can you hear me?"

Cachester still did not reply; then he said, "I'm not receiving you very clearly, is something jamming the line?"

"Captain!" she yelled.

"Sorry, I can't hear a thing," Cachester said.

Luisa felt a blood vessel pounding in her forehead. "Cachester, stop this, now!"

"There's something wrong."

Cachester was gone, he'd broken commo. Luisa wanted to kill; she imagined throttling Captain Cachester. It made her feel fractionally better but no more.

CK Air&Space appeared beneath them. The Shark landed with its characteristic abruptness.

Caroline Reese was whisked away by a security detail to the waiting shuttle.

Darel Hopester was there, waiting to board. Hopester still wanted to come, despite the news from Doisy, which had already leaked network-wide.

What had been raging panic before was turning quickly into a convulsive, catastrophic chaos all over Wexel.

Hopester still wanted to come.

Chang was surprised once more by the glamo newsman.

"To Doisy? You want to get closer to this?" Luisa was impressed even more than surprised.

"Of course, that's where the story is."

"Well, well, an anchor who really doesn't mind getting his feet wet, not to mention cut off and eaten.

This isn't a bunch of dumb Regulators we're going up against now."

"Yeah, I know that, but WEXnet really wants this story, and I have to take the opportunity if you'll give it to me."

Chang pondered this, but only for a moment. "Why the hell not? Let's take the newsman to the news, because this is either going to be great TV or we're going to be dead and it won't matter anyway, right?"

"Right, Colonel."

"And besides, it'll be a historical record, right? Get your cute ass onto my Shark, Hopester, and get it there fast because we leave in a minute and five seconds."

Hopester drew in a breath. He was visibly reconsidering.

"How great is the danger, Colonel? I mean, I should tell my wife."

"You heard, Mr. Hopester. There's just a few of them."

Hopester nodded and started out of the room.

"I hope you have plenty of disk," she said to his back. He turned, his face animated by a new excitement.

"We go live if we can. Direct satellite feed."

"Live? Has this all been live, Darel?" "No," he said, obviously wistful.

"Goddamn TV people," she snorted. "You're all crazy."

Then he was gone and she was in motion. The hatch to the roofpad cracked open to the code on her card and she was outside again. The Shark was revving quietly. It seemed to shudder at the sight of her as if exulting in the action to come. Did war machines feel excitement? she wondered for a moment, listening to it chugging away. There was a strange, high charge in her chest; her pulse was racing, but time seemed to be moving very slowly.

Get a grip, Luisa Chang! She heard an ancient drill sergeant's voice inside her head. War machines were machines, no more. They had software, not brains.

On her way across the pad she beeped Blake, who was in orbit with the first assault squad.

He was out of touch, in the radio chaos of hot reentry. Damn him! He'd dropped without waiting for her order. He would be in Doisy-Dyan in a matter of minutes.

Concealing a surge of irritation, she jumped into the Shark and told the metallic monster to go.

Rotors thundered and the Shark went.

On full burn, with rotors retracted, the Shark was capable of a suborbital jump that would get them to Doisy-Dyan in less than half an hour. It would also leave them low on fuel at the other end.

Chang decided she didn't want Blake on his own down there for any longer than absolutely necessary.

She sent the Shark into a shuttle-style boost, once they were clear of the terminals and the massed traffic.

The rotors retracted and they were all jammed into their acceleration couches as they picked up speed.

A beep from the commo announced Captain Blake, now deploying in drop mode over Doisy-Dyan.