Then our house explodes in a red mushroom cloud.

"Matt! Matt!" I yell in my headpiece.

There's no answer. Of course there's no answer. He was in the house, and the house is gone. Two shock waves strike me. The one from our home, which knocks me down, and the emotional one, which keeps me down. Despite the fury of the Gatling gun, the Telar above me have resumed fire. I don't fire back. Tucking into a ball, I try to hide in the deepest part of my sniper hole.

"He can't be dead," I whisper to myself.

Matt leaps into the hole beside me and shakes his head.

"Ye of so little faith," he says. "Put on your gas mask."

I sit up and hug him. "How did you get out in time?"

"I saw it coming."

"What was it?"

"A disruptor blast."

"It looked like a nuclear bomb," I say.

"I'm not surprised. It works by splitting atoms."

"Then we'll die if we stay here. We have to get in the mine."

"Hold on." The weapon's fire from the Telar above us irritates Matt. He stands and, aiming faster than I could on my best day, fires his laser rifle three quick times. The shots stop. Matt turns off the Gatling gun and sits back down beside me. "Where was I?" he asks.

"We should get in the mine."

"We will. But this is only the first wave. The next will be worse."

In addition to his twin laser rifles, he has a laptop equipped with a joystick. He flips it open and scans the screen. I assume it's linked to his cameras, but I'm confused when I see a rapidly changing shot of this part of the state-seen from an altitude of a thousand feet. He pushes a button, and the view shifts to a rear shot of a dozen cargo planes.

"Damn," he says.

"What's wrong?"

"They're close."

"The second wave?"

"Yes."

"They're going to drop in on us, so to speak?"

"Oh, yeah. Hundreds of them."

I feel a wave of despair. "I should have joined the IIC."

Matt talks as he hooks his laser rifles into my battery source.

"They'll parachute in. Close enough to rush us on foot, but far enough away that we'll have trouble shooting them out of the sky."

"What's the range of our lasers?"

"If they have on body armor, three miles."

"I didn't know the beams dissipated that fast."

"This isn't Star Trek. These aren't phasers. But to kill us, they'll have to get close. We have the higher ground, and we're dug in. We can take out a lot of them before we retreat."

"Who's taking the picture of the planes?"

"It's not a who, it's a what. You'll see in a few minutes."

While we wait for the "second wave," Matt makes quick work of the remainder of the first wave. He fires without pause, like a robot. Apparently, his father taught him to shoot this way.

He kills the last of the nearby Telar just as the cargo planes come into view. They're at two thousand feet. They will have to pull their parachutes at six hundred feet or higher. Unfortunately, the planes are at least four miles away. They have anticipated us having laser rifles. A trail of dark figures pours out of a dozen planes. They're dressed in special-ops black, and after a quick ten-second drop, they pull their cords. I'm not surprised to see their parachutes are also black. Your average human wouldn't even see them in the night sky.

When they hit the ground, the Telar quickly pack their chutes and head toward us. For the most part, they appear armed with laser rifles and normal sniper rifles. But a few could be carrying disruptors-it's hard to tell from this distance.

"Haru's making more noise than I expected," Matt says. "You must have really pissed him off."

"Me? You don't see him calling me the Abomination."

"My mother pissed him off when she had me."

"I take it Haru wasn't invited to Umara and Yaksha's wedding?"

"Who says they got married?"

"You mean you're a bastard? Can I call you that?"

"Why not?" He splits his screen in four and studies each square. The air shot appears to be losing contact with the planes. Now he's more focused on the terrain the Telar are crossing as they advance toward us.

"How far out are the mines?" I ask.

"They start two miles out."

"How many did you bury?"

"Thousands."

"I'm surprised they're not scanning the ground for them."

"That would take time. Haru sees these soldiers as cannon fodder. He's willing to accept a high level of casualties to bring us in."

"The Gatling gun can hit them from this distance," I say, as I swing the tip of the weapon toward the advancing army.

"Its heavy rounds might trigger my land mines. Let me detonate them first, and then we'll turn it on."

The soldiers continue to approach, running fast. I count four hundred. Many are less than a mile away.

"What are we waiting for, damn it?" I snap.

Matt sets his laptop aside. "Start shooting. But remember, our goal is to back them up, slow them down, so they crowd together. That way the land mines will be more effective."

"Roger that."

We start shooting. The Telar immediately hit the ground and shoot back, using their lasers. This upsets Matt and for good reason. His mines are largely "Bouncing Bettys." A Betty, when triggered, tosses a shrapnel-filled bomb three feet into the air. That's the "Betty," and it's the main explosive component of the mine. Because it lifts off the ground, its shock wave and shrapnel spread in a large circle. But Bouncing Bettys don't work so well if the enemy is already lying on the ground.

Hundreds of lasers scorch our side of the ridge. But I'm surprised at their lack of effect on the granite. It must be because the rock is dry. The bush and shrubs catch fire, but we don't take any damage.

Matt pauses. "Sita, stop, I've changed my mind. We have to get them back up. Turn the Gatling gun on them and sweep it back and forth." He reaches for his laptop. "I'm going to call in help."

"You have someone on our side?"

"It's not a person. It's a machine."

"Great." I set the Gatling gun on high-speed automatic fire. After I'm sure it's swinging back and forth in a wide arc-over sixty degrees-I drop back in the hole and resume fire with my laser. I'm afraid to stay close to the Gatling. Already I see a hundred bolts of laser fire trying to take it out. The Telar are excellent shots, but the weapon is buried deep. Still, it's only a matter of time before one of them gets lucky and the thing explodes.

Matt is focused on his laptop, which annoys me-I could use some help. Especially when a heavily armed assault helicopter swoops over the mountain behind us. I expect it to riddle us with rocket shells. Instead, it opens fire on the Telar, hitting them with mortars, machine-gun rounds, missiles. Now, at last, I know where he's been getting his air shots from.

The Telar leap up and race toward us.

"Don't tell me that's our escape helicopter," I say.

"I have a spare," Matt replies. "Cover your ears."

"I'm wearing earplugs."

"Put your hands over them."

I stop shooting and do what he says.

Matt detonates the Bouncing Bettys. All of them, thousands of them. For a minute I imagine the earth's mantle for miles around has shattered and the lava beneath has been released. For the advancing Telar it's literally hell on earth, for they're caught in waves of fire. And buried in this terrible tide, hidden as smoldering black specks, are countless pieces of shrapnel. They rip into the Telar, their body armor notwithstanding, tearing them to shreds, to bloody meat, and it's perhaps the tragedy of my immortal life that I've lived so long that I'm forced to hear four hundred souls scream at once in agony.

I cannot bear it. I cannot look.

I feel Matt tugging at me, anxious. He has his gas mask on.

"We've got to go, Sita. We have to get inside the cave."

I gesture weakly to our annihilated foe.

"But they're all dead," I mumble.

"We can't be sure." He's pulling my mask over my face. "Put this on and let's get out of here!"

I feel dazed. My voice comes out muffled by the mask.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

He holds the back of my hand up to my face.

Blisters are forming on my skin. Some dark.

He rubs my skin and takes his hand away.

It's covered in blood.

"They've released something in the air," he says. "We have to get in the mine and seal it. The others will die if this reaches them."

"What is it?" I moan as I follow him toward the cave. Seconds ago I felt physically fine. Now it's as if a thousand fireflies have landed on my skin and vomited gasoline into my pores. The burning sensation is matched only by an unbearable itch. I can't stop scratching, and the more I scratch, the more I bleed. Matt's next words sting as badly as our invisible ailment.

"It's what Haru's going to use to kill humanity."

TWENTY-SIX.

We are at the mine entrance when I hear them. My ears might be the one part of my body that's stronger than Matt's. I have to stop him. He's preparing to arm Telar grenades and bring the walls down behind us, sealing us inside with the others.

"There are three Telar above us, on the other side of this hill," I say.

"I don't hear them."

"They're there."

"I don't care. Whatever's out there has to stay out there. We have to block the entrance."

I grab Matt's grenade to stop him. "What if it's not gas but a virus of some kind? We could already be infected. We could carry it straight to the others."

"It feels like an external agent."

"That's because it's driving us crazy. Listen to me. I never noticed these Telar before until we got this close. They must have been either hiding underground or they're wearing something that blocks their heartbeats and breathing."

"Your point?"

"I think they've been here awhile. They might have been given orders to observe the battle, and if it started to go against them, they might have had instructions to release this toxin or virus or whatever it is."

"More the reason to seal this door now."