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SHARED EXPERIENCE

Christopher Stasheff

Titan slept and dreamed, but his dreams were of war.

Rampart, harpies attacking at twelve o'clock!

These dreams were brought not by the subconscious, but by memory, and the continuing transmissions of his comrades as they fought, so that all would know which tactics succeeded, and which failed.

Dark against a sky lit by energy bolts and bomb explosions, a horde of vaguely feminine shapes rode the air on vast beating wings—feminine shapes clutching forms of death, rocket-launchers and slug-throwers that chattered like the insane gibbering of demented birds, while below them, scimitar talons curved to grasp and gouge.

The huge Bolos, each named for a defensive structure, trundled out to meet the enemy—an enemy with wings, that struck from the air with talons. The sentry who had first nicknamed the Xalontese "harpies" had definitely had a warped sense of humor—or some very strange perceptions, if he thought these winged, scaly, six-limbed saurians looked like women. On a very dark night, silhouetted against a glowing sky, perhaps there was a very slight resemblance—the swell of the keel-bone might be mistaken for that of a bosom, and the ventilating headcrest might be confused with an elaborate hairdo—but in anything resembling good light, the monsters were obviously much closer to a pterodactyl than to a human woman.

But they smelled. That characteristic, they shared with the harpies of legend. And they spread foulness, droppings, wherever they went. That, too, they had in common with King Phineus's nemeses.

Rampart sped out to meet them, his treads a blur, his drive-engines filling the world with their roaring, almost drowning out the shrill shrieks of joy that served the harpies as a battle-cry. He slewed aside and filled the sky with the stream of fire from his starboard guns, while his Hellbore tracked along the line of enemies, filling the sky with fire.

But no matter how many he burned in instant explosions of flame, no matter how many dropped screaming with his bullets in their hearts, a thousand more survived to fly through and above his screen of fire, to drop their bombs on and before him.

 

"I've hated you from the day I saw you," Dawn said.

"Me, too," Larry shot back. "So how come we're in bed together?"

"This is a bunker, not a bed, you heel! I wouldn't get into bed with you if you were the only man in the world!"

"I'm the only man in your world, right now," Larry pointed out. "But don't worry, you won't have to prove your claim—if one of us has to sleep, the other one has to stay awake."

"If anyone can sleep, when they're surrounded by cannon fire," Dawn muttered.

The remarkable thing about this exchange was that neither of them was looking at the other. They sat back to back in a concrete-walled chamber twelve feet square, watching screens that showed them a variety or information—infra-red, radar, sonar, even visual. The last screen was large enough to seem a window on the outside world—but their station was ten feet underground. Only their concrete roof showed above the earth—charred and scarred, but the two cannon barrels that poked out of it were still in excellent working condition. Not that the harpies hadn't tried to bomb them, of course—but whenever a saurian came too close, they fried him ten meters away.

Sooner or later, one would make it through; there would be one they wouldn't notice in time. Either that, or one of the harpies they scared off would call in a ship, and its beams would crack them like an egg and roast them instantly.

But they couldn't think about that, of course—so they argued. It helped distract them, it kept them from thinking about it—and it kept the adrenaline flowing, kept them ready to fry anything that came too close.

There was a single cot at one side of the room, just barely wide enough for one person. Near it, there was a small table, one chair, and a hot plate with a kettle, a sink, and a large pile of ration packs. That was only half the ration packs they had begun with, but they weren't worried. In fact, they were surprised they themselves had lasted long enough to eat so many.

Neither of them could tell that to the other, though.

So they sat and watched, and from time to time, one of their hands twitched to hit a firing button.

There were busy times and slow times. During the slow, one of them would watch both sets of screens while the other slept. If business picked up, the sentry could always call the sleeper.

'The day you wake me up for anything but battle," Dawn said, "is the day I start standing watch alone."

"So why would I wake you?"

Dawn was silent a moment, trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that. She decided that any way you looked at it, it was an insult. "Every reason not to—especially since you have to sleep some time, too."

"Yes, I do," Larry sighed, "so I can think of you waking me for all the wrong reasons."

"How about waking you with a blaster?"

"Hey, at least it'd be quick."

"Well, that's all you're interested in." Dawn hit the button, and the cannon above them coughed. At least, all they heard down here was a cough.

"I wouldn't wish the poor things a slow death."

"Don't worry—with me, death's always quick."

"The big death, or the little one?"

"How big is a harpy?" Dawn demanded.

"You should know," Larry retorted.

Dawn hit the button again. "Damn! Almost missed!" She fired again. "There, got him. Hate to have him suffer for a second, though."

"Oh, you were very helpful. How'd you know it was a him?"

"Why should I think it was a her?"

Lany nodded. "Good question. No answer. I think each one is an 'it.'"

"Well, I haven't heard anything from the scientists yet," Dawn snapped.

"I know what you mean," Larry agreed. "I haven't read any good books lately, myself." He hit the firing pad. The gun coughed above him, then coughed again. "We'll find out some day—if I don't quit before then."

"Can't be too soon for me. I can just imagine your replacement—tall, handsome, muscles on his muscles. . ."

"And I can imagine yours—built out of normal distribution curves, blond, sweet-tongued . . ."

"The only sweet tongue you'll ever get is on a sandwich!"

"I'll settle for a side without sauce."

And on they went, on and on. Above them, the harpies kept coming, carrying bombs to drop, bombs which exploded with them when the blast from the cannon touched them. Others hovered a few feet out of range, lobbing in rockets and grenades, which did no damage, but occasionally loused up the sensors for a few seconds. No matter how many died, more and more kept coming—because sooner or later, the flare that blocked the sensors would coincide with a harpy coming close enough to drop its bomb. It had worked before, against hundreds or others of these human outposts; it would work against this one, sooner or later. What matter how many of the almost mindless happy "workers" died? The intelligent ones, the ones aboard ship with minds, could always make more—and did. In fact, they couldn't help themselves.

Neither could Dawn and Larry. The only thing that kept them from tearing each other apart was fatigue.

 

Harpies stooped from all over the sky, converging on the lone bolo. Equal to the attack, Rampart traversed the heavens with fire and shot, shells exploding before the ungainly fliers, shrapnel tearing them apart—but as a thousand died, more thousands pressed on in their places. Still Rampart held them off, still Rampart stood indifferent under their rain of bombs and bolts . . .

Until the blasted eggs from which they had hatched spun into view, bulbous ellipsoidal ships spewing harpies in their wakes—but walking over the blasted plain on pillars of fire, stabbing down at the ground with bolts of pure energy, half a dozen of them converging on Rampart.

His cannon tracked and blasted again and again, hitting the one huge ship where Intelligence said the power plant was housed, hitting it again and again, slowly burning through the shielding as his rocket launchers targeted other ships and hit them again and again, but the energy bolts walked toward him inexorably, the huge ships waded through his fire, slowed but never stopped. . . .

Until five or the six ships stood over him, blasting downward with artificial lightning, raising the stink of ozone, then the stink of burning steel, as the sixth ship fell out of the sky, its power plant exploded at last, and the melting column that was Rampart's Hellbore traversed to center on another enemy ship, almost straight above him, even as its shell turned yellow, then white, then flowed, and all the rounds within him detonated and exploded in a single bright burst that shook the whole of the blasted plain, taking with it the hundred or so harpies whose lust for vengeance had been so strong that they had stayed to watch, instead of retreating beyond range.

But even as he died, one last searing message sprayed out from Rampart like the molten steel of his dying body, one last demand that seared through the Titan even in his sleep:

Avenge me.

And Titan knew that he would, even if he died as Rampart had died—for what better death could any warrior ask, man or machine?

Merlon, sally forth to sweep the talus slope!

Below the fortress and the bunkers that shielded it, another horde of harpies came crawling up the scree, below the level of the automatic guns. There seemed to be no end to them and, like worker ants, they pressed on mindlessly, intent only on the damage they could do, the number of humans they could kill, driven by a single hive-mind, a single instinctive lust for destruction.

The gate slammed open, and Merlon shot out, holding place and filling the slope with fire until the gate had grated shut behind her. Then she rolled forth to the edge of the hill, her cannon lowering, her guns depressing, then filling the whole slope with shell and fire. Harpies screamed and rolled back while others dug frantically, trying to dig themselves into the loose rock beneath the scrub grass—and roasting in an instant, when Merlon's hot breath touched them. Dragon stood at bay, burning down the horde of harpies who tormented her. But with mindless boldness, harpies fired rocket launchers even as they died, and Merlon took hits low, between her treads and on her treads. No one hit meant anything, really, but their steady rain would burn through her armor eventually.

She turned sideways, raking the slope with fore guns and aft guns and side guns as she traversed slowly, circling the fortress, tilling the slope with death—but more harpies clambered over the charred remains of their fellows, still kept low by the automatic fire of the defending guns, slowed out advancing, and nearly reaching the crest by the time Merlon came in view again, limping because of a blown roller on her starboard tread, a tread that was holed in several places but not quite enough to bring it down or break it through. Her cannons blasted the aliens at the brow of the slope, then traversed downward, working their way slowly through their ranks—but not a single reptile fled; they only struggled on up to their deaths with mindless shrieks of joy.

Above them, Merlon turned, presenting her less-damaged port side. The guns roared mayhem, and she began the slow circuit back.

Finally the great dark eggs hove in view; finally half a dozen of them walked their way over the plain to converge on her. Fire met fire, but that of six ships was far more than even a Bolo could bear. Melting but firing back, Merlon too died, and when only slag remained, the great charred ships stepped over a few paces farther, squatting atop the fortress, and slowly, ever so slowly, burning their way in, now that the defender was a pool of spreading lava.

Spreading lava, but also one last spreading message, rippling outward in a wave of electromagnetic energy:

Remember me! Avenge!

I shall, Titan promised, and strove to rouse himself from the lethargy of standby mode—but the switches would not close, and he lapsed back to slumber.

Bulwark, enfilade ground at seven o'clock—harpies mining!

Bulwark stood alone in the center of a blasted heath—blasted by its own energy weapons, but also by those of a thousand harpies, whose ashes covered the ground.

From among them rose the wreckage of a great dark egg. Bulwark had learned as Rampart had learned, but had lived to tell of it—he had targeted one particular area on the ship's hull and had poured in fire. He had hit the reactor, and the ship had exploded. Bulwark immediately sent out news of his discovery, and all the Bolos immediately copied his technique. That was why there were only forty-eight ships left.

In vengeance, they converged on Bulwark.

But the miners got there first.

Bulwark depressed his cannon and all his guns, fire blasting a ring-trench in the dirt of the heath, a hundred meters in diameter. Within that circle, his guns sprayed a hail of bullets down into the ground. Armor-piercing rounds slammed through the hardpan and into the folded wings in the tunnels below. Harpies shrieked, and were dead. Those few who were wounded were instantly consumed by the firebolts that followed.

But while Bulwark was busy weeding out the sappers who would have undermined him, three huge ships drifted across the plain, almost invisible against the night sky, their energy-projector beams dark for stealth. Attuned to radiation or plasma, scanning for engine activity, Bulwark's sensors overlooked the silent enemies . . .

Until they were almost squarely above him.

Then, nearly too late, Bulwark's guns swooped upward, slashing fire into the night. The huge cannon-barrel followed more slowly, then belched pure energy up at the looming ships. He left two of them to his smaller weapons and poured the fire from the big Hellbore into the same spot low down on one ship—but the egg began to turn, slowly on its axis, dissipating the heat somewhat, while it joined its companions in stamping with legs of lightning, full on the mighty machine. Bolt after bolt ran off Bulwark's carapace, grounded against the soil—but the heat of its passage lingered, building slowly.

Beneath the ground, harpies screamed and died, caught in the corona of their own ships' discharge—but more pressed forward with the tenacity of the hive-mind, each taking a few more bites out of the soil before it died . . .

With a roar, the ground gave way beneath Bulwark, and grenades carried by the miners erupted in thunder. Surrounded by fire, mired in a huge trench, Bulwark's shots went wide for a few vital minutes, and the ship above cooled as it stamped down with lightning legs. Its companions joined it, the heat of their bolts reflecting back from the sides of the hole, the earth itself melting, their liquid fire wooing the molecules of Bulwark's armor, leading them off into the dance of Brownian movement as the huge machine began to melt, even as it poured fire into the sky, but with less and less aim, its shots at random now, as Bulwark's carapace fell away and his inner shielding began to melt.

Finally his power plant erupted in a final, huge explosion, a wave of devastation that swept outward, bearing the message:

Avenge me!

I shall, Titan promised yet again—but he could not, for he still sat dormant as the technicians swarmed around and within him, soldering, cleaning, mending in a race against time.

Donjon, meet enemy invading force from 2 o'clock.

Donjon finished incinerating the thousand winged monsters who had surrounded the isolated bunker that held a dozen humans, half of them wounded. He pivoted a hundred eighty degrees and rolled toward the northeast a hundred yards—no further; he had a nest of humans to protect.

Onward they came, dark against the fire in the sky—a horde of wings, too many for the mortal eye to count—but not too many for electronic scanners and microprocessors. Donjon numbered them at eleven thousand, two hundred eighty-nine even as his guns began to sweep them from the sky.

But far below, a long line of motorized unicycles bounced over the ground, stabilized by the wings of their riders, but carrying heavier guns than the harpies could bring aloft unaided—guns that hailed bullets on Donjon, that stenciled graffiti of death on him with pencils of fire.

Donjon turned broadside, depressing several guns to rake their line with fire more deadly than their own—but still his cannon stood mute at forty-five degrees, waiting for the egg-ships that he knew must come.

And there they came, stalking across the hills from the northeast—at two o'clock, just as the human sentries in the orbital fortress had told him. Donjon knew he must keep them from approaching the human nest behind him for, even though the soft ones were well-hidden and walled in by three feet of steel, they were still vulnerable, so much more vulnerable than a Bolo! Therefore he lashed out at the ships with a gout of fire from his cannon while they were still out of effective range, in the hope that they would think him closer than he was, and stay well back.

It was a forlorn hope; any scanner could analyze his distance from the attenuation of the energy-bolt. All it did was give the ships a more accurate fix on Donjon himself—but they had had that, anyway.

Therefore he only traded fire with them for a few minutes, just long enough for them to begin to cluster as they approached—then he whirled and raced off across the floor of the valley, abandoning those in his charge—but leading the enemy away from them, too.

Like predators everywhere, the ships followed.

When their lightning-bolts were almost upon him, Donjon spun about, skidding through a hundred-eighty-degree turn and shooting back the way he had come. Taken by surprise, the eggs slowed, trying to stop, still stamping at him with legs of plasma—but Donjon sped through the fire-fall and on away. He stopped a hundred yards past, swinging broadside, Hellbore elevating, rotating, fixing on the central egg, pouring fire into its lower section. Taken by surprise, the egg was slow in beginning its rotation—too slow. Fire rained down around Donjon from the central egg's companions, and his temperature-register began to climb near the danger point, but he held on, just a minute longer, just a second . . .

With a huge mushrooming blast, the central egg exploded, then hurtled down to the ground, broken open, its power plant erupted, its crew dead.

Donjon shot toward it, taking his pursuers by surprise again. His skin cooled as he passed the curtain of plasma, cooled further as he roared past the wreckage of his fallen foe.

The remaining eggs swung together and gave chase again.

Donjon's skin was cooled completely now, but he sped away still, on and on. Above, the eggs reached full acceleration, gaining on him, catching up . . .

A mile from the human nest, Donjon sped into a maze of gullies. He skidded to a halt, targeted an egg-ship, and unleashed his torrent of fire, even as Bulwark had taught him. It poured into the skin of the ship, tracking it, staying with that same spot even as the ship came on, trying to slow enough to begin rotation. Its skin began to glow with the heat, and the pilots must have realized that he could not slow down in time to rotate—he would have crushed his crew with Coriolis force—so he began evasive action. Out of Donjon's beam he bobbed, swerved closer, dodged again. . . .

Donjon analyzed the pattern. His gun locked on the egg again, pouring energy in, staying with the alien ship as it danced and weaved . . .

Its mates arrived.

They hovered over the gully, pouring fire down. Donjon held his place for a second more, then another second and another, as his temperature gauge climbed higher and higher . . .

The second ship blew out in a gout of flame and tumbled out of the sky.

Donjon didn't stay to look; his gauge had hit the danger point. He turned and sped down the gully, out of the rain of fire. Its walls blocked him from the egg-ships' line of sight. He found a side-gully and swerved into it, slowing to negotiate its rocky, bumpy surface, but keeping on, keeping on, as the egg-ships passed by behind him, following the main gully! Then Donjon found another side-passage, another and another, till he emerged into the main gully again. Overhead, the harpy ships had slowed, were hovering, searching for him . . .

Donjon unleashed his own lightning-streak, plasma from his main gun, lancing up to the vulnerable area of one of the egg-ships.

The whole basketful shot toward him.

Donjon tracked the one he had chosen for his target, even though it had begun rotating, coming much more slowly than its fellows. Donjon knew he couldn't possibly burn it through in time, so he shifted abruptly to another ship, much closer, hovering over him . . .

His plasma-bolt shot up into its downward-pointing gun. Energy smote energy and exploded, even in the mouth of the harpy's cannon—an explosion that shook the whole plain, knocked the ship out of the sky . . .

. . . and tumbled Donjon onto his side.

The Bolo could cope with that, of course. Jacks extruded from his side, levering him off the ground just enough so that his cannon could pour fire into the dirt, pushing him away, pushing him back upright. . .

But it took time, and his main cannon could not track the egg-ships. His smaller guns could and did, but what use were they when four huge ships were clustered about, pouring their fire into the fallen Bolo?

His temperature gauge climbed, screamed, as Donjon slowly tilted further up and further. His carapace began to melt. Fire poured down from above, almost cancelling the push of his own guns against the earth, but even so, he rose closer and closer to the vertical, closer and closer to the point when gravity would take over . . .

But his carapace melted, his inner armor began to flow . . .

With a sudden jarring shock, the huge machine swung upright, slamming down onto his treads. But they were weakened by the heat, they gave way, and their rollers fouled in the liquid iron. Inner armor dripped and flared, and the shielding of the power plant gave way.

Donjon died in a roaring fountain of flame, a blast that reached up to an egg-ship that had come too close in its eagerness and went tumbling to earth for its greed. Donjon died in a cascade of gamma rays and heavy particles, in a burst of radiation that surrounded but did not quite obliterate his final message:

Remember and avenge me!

I will, Titan promised, struggling toward consciousness. I will.

But his promise had to wait, for flesh-and-blood technicians can move just so quickly.

Chateau, enemy ships approaching from five o'clock, at twelve thousand feet.

Chateau had perched herself atop a mountain—low, as mountains go, but still craggy and rocky, its walls streaked with metal ores. To a scanner, she would seem to be just one more outcrop among many; to the naked eye, she would seem to be another rough-hewn shape carved out by wind and water.

To the eye assisted by a telescope or magnifier, she would seem to be a Bolo.

There came the enemy ships—only specks against the orange sky, but to her computer-enhanced vision, their shapes were crystal clear. She waited, every system at maximum energy flow . . . and waited, and waited . . . With her response time speeded up, her time sense had slowed relative to real time, and the wait seemed to last forever . . .

Finally, they were in range.

Chateau loosed a blast that tore through the sky at the speed of light, instantly illuminating the lower half of one of the approaching ships. The egg instantly went into evasive action, and Chateau lost it for the first three twists and turns, then analyzed the pattern and locked onto it. The skin of the ship heated, and the pilot switched to a different evasive pattern. This time, though, Chateau identified it in two twists and turns and locked on again. The ship slowed, still evading, and began to rotate.

But its companions accelerated, stooping on Chateau like hawks on a chick.

This chick, though, had a very sharp beak—and a very long one. Chateau's lesser guns came up and filled the air with fire between herself and the invading ships even as she kept her main cannon locked onto the twisting egg. With delight, she detected torpedoes loosed, and targeted them with three of her guns. Shell met torpedo, and the sky went white with flame.

When it cleared, Chateau was no longer there.

Under cover of the sheet of fire, she had slipped back along the ledge. With sensors fore and aft and a rotating turret, she could go equally well in either direction; "front" was really defined as the direction she happened to be facing at the moment. She sped along a ledge just a meter wider than herself—a ledge that she knew was safe, because she had come along it earlier in the day, to take up her station. Then, she had sounded each square meter of rock ahead of time, probed it for soundness with sonics and sounders; now, knowing it was solid, she raced along it, gyros holding her steady. Then she killed the gyros to turn, running up another ledge of rock, back to the battle.

She came out through a tunnel only a little higher than herself—a tunnel only fifty feet long, but enough to hide her. Sure enough, the enemy ships were just passing her to gather around the spot where she had been, a quarter of a mile further on. She waited until they were past, then spat fire at the nearest egg and locked on. Sure enough, the pilot sent his ship into evasive action—but he used one of the patterns she had already analyzed. Her main gun tracked him every inch of the way, every twist, every kink, and he shifted to another pattern—but again, one that she had already analyzed. After two twists and a dip, the pilot shifted again—and Chateau lost him for two zigs and a zag. Then she picked him up again, and tracked him effortlessly—the pilot must have given up using computer-randomized patterns, and tried his intuition. But sentient beings are creatures of habit, and after the first two evasions, Chateau tracked him almost without effort. In desperation, he slowed and began to rotate—but too fast, too fast. One spot had not yet cooled before it came about for another blast. All he accomplished was to smear a circle of heat all around his craft, a circle that grew brighter and brighter with every turn.

But his companions had realized what was happening, and had come to his aid. The huge ships came to cluster about the ridge, pouring their fire down onto the mountaintop where Chateau hid. Lightning tore at rock, shattering, vaporizing—but slowly, slowly. Inch by inch, the granite wore away under a tidal wave of plasma—but it took time, precious seconds, and Chateau held on, tracking the bobbing, weaving ship as its pilot finally realized his mistake and slowed his rotation rate . . .

Slowed too much. The metal of his hull, already overheated, melted and flowed. The entire bottom of his ship fell away, and Chateau's stream of fire tore into his power plant. She waited only long enough to see the blossom of flame burst from his power plant, then raced back into the tunnel. The great egg-ships, unaware that the tunnel was so short, pounded it unmercifully, and it finally cracked and fell in.

But Chateau was already taking the final road up the mountaintop.

She came out onto the plateau at the crest just as the egg-ships cut off their flow of fire and lowered themselves down to inspect the fallen bridge, sampling it with sensors for the lode of metal that would show them a wounded Bolo.

Chateau depressed her Hellbore and fired down onto the egg that was farthest into the defile.

The rock walls reflected the heat. The egg swerved up to escape—and collided with another of its kind, taken by surprise, unable to escape in time. Both exploded in a huge fiery eruption.

When the fire cleared, the other ships had gone.

Chateau instantly started a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan—but before she could find them, the clustered ships rained fire on her.

Evasive action was impossible. All she could do was to back down the mountainside, feeling her way with sonar, as she poured her own fire back up at the assembled ships, hoping against hope that it would penetrate their hail of fire and somehow muzzle them. Her temperature gauge screamed; she knew her carapace had begun to melt as she crawled downward, aiming for the shelter of a cavern she had mapped earlier in the day. She descended to a horizontal ledge, turned ninety degrees, then raced along it—out of the enemy fire.

But only for a few seconds. That was all it took the egg-ships to recover from surprise and target her again. Waves of plasma poured down; her carapace melted through, her shielding softened, but the cavern mouth was only a dozen meters ahead.

A torpedo struck two yards ahead of her, blowing a hole in the side of the mountain, taking away the trail. Chateau slammed on her brakes but skidded—on and out, over the sudden lip at the new-carved end to the path. Down she fell through air that screamed about her, down and down a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, knowing there was no chance of survival, at least as a whole fighting unit, and her death-cry spread out about her, unseen and unheard by any but her own kind:

I die. Make it worth my death. Within himself, Titan promised that he would—if this infernal sleep would only end, if only he could wake, if only he could be restored to function!

All these images, all these scenes of battle, mingled in Titan's sleeping mind so that he could not have said which were past, and which present—but one, at least, was memory.

Titan, harpies advancing on foot through gullies from river. Advance with caution; field is mined.

Titan had rolled out to meet the invaders, metal detectors alerting his computer-brain to the presence of buried explosives. He twisted and turned, his guns automatically compensating for every shift in angle and movement. But one of the mines must have been made of plastic, one of the mines didn't register on his sensors . . .

One of the mines blew up beneath his right tread. The soldiers patched him up with a temporary tread and escorted him back to the repair depot. After the first two fell to harpy fire, he told the rest to ride inside—which they did, with gratitude. Limping, starboard circuits heavily damaged, memory banks shredded, Titan crawled back to the depot, his small guns shooting down attacking harpies as they went. But for every one he shot down, a hundred more came shrieking. A few got through his screen of fire, of course—a few grenades exploded on his upper mantle, scarring the metal but doing no real damage; a few energy bolts eroded craters in his armor, a few exploding rounds pocked his shielding—but none did any real damage, and before and behind and above and beside him, screams of delight turned into shrieks of agony as harpies plummeted to earth, blasted, burning, and ground beneath his treads.

They cleaned the sludge off in the repair depot.

Now Titan stood inert, all systems shut down to standby mode—sleeping, in human terms—as human technicians swarmed over and inside him, replacing memory chips, refurbishing connectors, welding in new plates. But dimly as a dream, so dimly that they might have been memories, the radio voices of his comrade Bolos and their human allies sifted through into his crystal mind.

Larry was asleep when the harpy got through.

The whole bunker shook, and the explosion slammed at him from all sides. The floor heaved beneath him, and he found himself scrambling up to his knees before he was quite awake. Terror and disorientation seized him—for a moment, he thought he was out on the battlefield crawling away from a harpy shell. Then the emergency lights came on, and he saw Dawn picking herself up off the floor and crawling back onto her stool, cursing.

For once, Larry didn't waste time with a snide remark. He limped over to his own stool and sat down, staring at blank screens. He snarled and slapped the side of the console in sheer frustration—and the vision screen lit.

A cloud of harpies was descending on them.

The gunsight glowed to life. Lany pressed the "lock on" button, but nothing happened. He spat a mild obscenity and turned to the anti-personnel guns. They were smaller, but still effective—and they worked!

Above him, he heard the hammering of machine-gun fire and knew Dawn's were working, too. Even now, their rivalry goaded him into faster action—he locked onto his target and pressed "Fire," traversing the guns as he did. Then he grabbed the right-hand joystick and mowed away with fire and bullets both.

Still the harpies came, a sudden wedge of them. He shot them away; they fell back from the core of their group like the rind of an orange . . .

Revealing the bomb-carrier hidden in their center.

Larry hit him with fire, and the beast flared into ash—but the bomb hurtled on . . .

The noise was all around him, inside him, lifting him with a gigantic hand, and this time, the darkness was complete.

 

The nighttime seemed filled with hammering wings now, and a last redoubt of humans clustered on top of a hill in a low-domed bunker that bristled with cannon and laser projectors, impregnable against any land-borne enemies—but vulnerable as a nut in a cracker, to the walking energy bolts of the harpy eggs.

But surely those ships could not approach so closely! On the plain below the hill, seven bolos stood sentry-duty, immobile as statues, a fortress far more intimidating than any granite walls.

Seven bolos—all that were left of the force of eighty that had been stationed to hold off the advance of the enemy tide, to delay the harpies long enough for the central worlds to arm themselves to the teeth, to put a vast armada into space capable of overwhelming whole suns, let alone a cluttering swarm of hollow-boned humanoids. The harpies would be crumpled and swept aside, they would be ground to mince in the jaws of the vast fleet, they would be shredded and pulped . . .

When the Armada came.

But it would not come for years, and the last seven Bolos stood at bay, guarding three hundred of the last thousand humans on the planet, while fifty-three great dark eggs strode through the sky to fall upon them.

But the harpies flew before them.

They flew, they stooped, raining foulness and destruction on the fortress and its guardians—but the Bolos lit the night with a ring of fire, and the foulness burned before it could land, as did its sources. Leather wings burst into flame, crested heads went up in fireballs; only ashes drifted to earth, those few that slipped between fiery updrafts. Ashes of saurians and their foulness landed on the roof of the fortress, but none knew, none cared. Sooty and ashen, the fortress dome stood.

But the harpies carried rocket launchers and energy rifles as well as foulness, and bombs that dropped from nerveless claws even as their owners burst into flame. Most of the bombs fell wide, only a fraction fell on the dome—but it was a fraction of thousands, and each bomb that struck weakened the concrete a little more, each rocket-flare vaporized a few molecules of granite, each energy bolt vaporized a gram. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, the dome began to wear thin.

Then the ships arrived.

They came looming over the Bolos, looming even over the hill and its fortress, legs of energy bolts smiting down into the earth, melting bedrock.

The Bolos spoke with one voice, and that voice was the roar of cannon.

Fifty-two ships answered, but their fire-lances had limited range; the attenuation made their plasma bolts mere nuisances to the Bolos. Their cannon, on the other hand, fired blasts of coherent energy, that did damage much farther away—so each Bolo had already picked out one ship apiece, and centered its cannon fire on the lower quadrant. The targeted ships dodged and dived, but the Bolos had learned the harpies' basic evasive patterns from Donjon's transmissions of his last battle. They followed their targets from loop to twist to zigzag, only one beat behind as the harpy pilots switched patterns. The saurians' computers knew more patterns than Donjon had learned, of course, so the last seven Bolos finally began to lose their quarry—but even as they did, they analyzed, then locked on again, learning more new patterns, and more. More importantly, all seven targets went through the exact same sequence of pattern-changes.

But as they did, their fellow ships stamped closer to the redoubt, and its ring of guardians.

Fire fell on the Bolos—but for the fire to do damage, it had to hit the same spot on the Bolos' armor for several minutes at a time. It could not; the Bolos began to dodge and weave, each with a pattern more complicated than any the harpies knew—and each interlocking perfectly with all six others, so that seven mighty Bolos wound their way through a dance of death, around and around in a circle, but with quick dashes outward and inward. The harpy ships strained to keep up with them, managing to lick a Bolo's mantle with a tongue of fire here, a lance of flame there, but never for more than a few seconds.

All the time, though, the bolos stayed locked on their targets, their central computers compensating not only for the harpy ships' evasive patterns, but also for the Bolo's own. The harpy ships could not escape them; the other harpy ships could not keep up with them.

Finally, the harpy admiral must have realized that he should use his only truly overwhelming advantage—sheer numbers. At some unseen, unheard signal, the mighty eggs began to draw in, to surround the circle of Bolos . . .

One of their ships erupted in the brightness of a burst power plant.

The Bolo shifted to another target.

It flinched away, sped out of the closing circle, up out of range . . .

The Bolo shifted to a third target. The one who had fled was no longer of concern—it was too far away for its fire to be effective against a Bolo's armor.

A second ship blew up—a third, a fourth, stabbed to earth by the Bolos' fire. A fifth, a sixth, a seventh—and seven new targets glowed.

Finally the harpy admiral learned from his quarry; finally, the great egg-ships began to move around one another in a slow and ponderous dance, each shielding the other from the Bolos' fire for the crucial minutes necessary for cooling down. All began to rotate slowly, spreading the heat of the Bolos' fire over a larger area . . .

And their lightning-legs stumbled and wove and clashed with one another. Their cannon were fixed in the hulls, not rotating in turrets, as the Bolos' cannon did; if the eggs rotated, they could not hold their beams steady on a target.

The Bolos could not whoop for joy, but they could press their advantage with a sudden savagery. They dashed out to slide between the egg-ships' legs, dodging and weaving, dashing out to slam a shell up at their foes, then back. Sure enough, the pilots could not resist the temptation—they stopped rotating to try to slash each offending Bolo with radiation. But as soon as they stopped rotating, the Bolos transfixed the eggs with lightning of their own.

Finally, the harpy admiral realized that the Bolos had left the redoubt temporarily unprotected. Ignoring them, his ships pressed inward.

Back the Bolos dashed, to take up their elaborate dance again—and once more, the harpy ships tripped over each others' beams. At last the admiral realized what he must do; at last seven of the ships stopped rotating and pressed in to follow one Bob apiece, while their mates wove and dodged about them to intercept the Bolos' fire.

But there were too many eggs; dodging and weaving about one another that way, they could not come close enough to cage the Bolos.

Again the admiral learned; half of the ships drifted back, out of the battle—but stamping quickly if a Bolo lunged through the veil of fire from the inner circle. Even so, with the swirling ships' dance, the eggs could not tighten the circle enough, so another quarter of the ships had to retire to a second, and larger, circle.

The remaining quarter drew in with deadly grimness, their companions bobbing about them in a sinister dance. There were few enough of them, now, to bathe the whole ring of Bolos in fire.

Beyond them, the second tier laid down another ring of flame—and beyond them, the third ring blasted, too.

One Bolo streaked away, firing upward as he went, but the veils of fire rained down and down. His upper mantle melted, his carapace; he penetrated the second ring, his temperature gauge soaring, targeting a ship in the third ring, trying to scare it out of the way . . . he was into the third ring, dashing for freedom, and several of the ships broke off to follow . . .

His shielding melted through, and he blew up in a fountain of fury that brought down two ships that had pressed too closely in pursuit.

His death-message drifted out. Remember. Revenge.

His mates learned from his example and stayed dodging and weaving themselves, each targeting yet another ship even as its upper mantle melted, its carapace, knowing he could not run, knowing she could not leave the humans unguarded, knowing that all they could do was to try to bring down one more enemy as they died . . .

They erupted, they exploded, they bathed the plain in fury, and the ships hovering above them learned that they had pressed too closely after all, as a dozen ships flared, their power plants going up in chain reactions triggered by the six Bolos' deaths. Perhaps they sent out death messages of their own, but all that penetrated Titan's dream were those on his own frequency, his fellow Bolos insisting,

Avenge. Do not forget.

I will. Titan promised in his sleep, and I will not.

As the flames died, the harpy admiral pressed inward with his second ring of ships. They clustered, they hovered over the redoubt, they poured their flame down. Concrete cracked and broke; armor melted. Finally the roof fell in, huge half-molten blocks crushing and burning anything that lived beneath them . . .

But there was nothing living there. The Bolos had bought enough time; the humans' mining machines had burrowed their way to safety—at least, safety for a while longer. Until they should be discovered. . . .

The harpy eggs stamped the redoubt into rubble with their legs of lightning, pulverized it, watched it melt to lava and flow, then harden to glass. Finally, the hill fallen and unsalvageable, the ships turned away, the harpy host departed, spreading outward like the ripples of an underwater volcanic eruption, breaking apart into armies centered around each ship, a hundred swarms clustered about their queens, searching with their mother ships, searching, scanning, seeking for any trace of life, any trickle of electrical flow, of neuronic activity, of synapses firing . . .

Below the artificial hill, technicians closed access panels, dogged doors shut, inserted last components and locked tight. They checked the meters for full charge, disconnected the cables from the power plant to the great Bolo, powered down the whole repair depot, trying to minimize electrical activity to lessen chance of discovery. . .

Too late.

One harpy egg halted, hovered in midair, smelled the ether with antennae, probing, sifting . . .

Pointing toward the east, toward the last repair depot.

The egg began to move toward the human's nest.

Deep within its bowels, the chief technician cried, "You are repaired, Titan! You are fit for service again!" He reached up to press the patch that would signal Titan's central computer to begin the sequence that would power up the huge machine, return it to full operational capability, to full awareness . . .

But his hand paused as the man turned in panic, hearing the cry, "They found us! They're here!"

His eyes flashed up to the huge screen high on the southeast wall, showing the whole of the perimeter as a horizontal line—and all along that line were staves of fire, with black eggs balanced atop them. He could have sworn he heard the thunder of ten thousand wings, of the harpies that surrounded their mother ships, but that was ridiculous, the screen was supplying video only . . .

The fiery legs stalked closer, the screen filled with their glare . . .

The roof groaned.

"They're coming!" someone shrieked. "Take cover!"

Then the roof fell in.

The roof roared as it collapsed into hundreds of fragments, each twice the size of a man's head, each able to crush a man's head. Technicians screamed and ran, but the fall of rock struck them down where they fled, and those who still moved were instantly charred by the rain of fire that followed.

Hot air searing his lungs, the chief turned back, reached up higher, only a little higher as his vision turned red and death seared his lungs. Only a little more, hold to consciousness a little more, never mind the pain, the agony, press the patch . . .

He felt it give beneath his fingers just before the heat ceased as his whole body exploded.

But Titan did not explode.

Titan was a Mark XXVIII, the largest and latest model of all the Bolos shipped in for this suicidal defense; Titan, whose ablative tiles shed the rain of fire as though it were water. Titan awoke to irritation, irked that the temperature was so high as to be inconvenient—then woke to anger as he saw the piles of ash that had been the technicians who had repaired him. Titan roared with the revving of mighty engines; Titan turned and thundered up the ramp even as the walls gave way and fell inward in an implosion of flame.

Out of that inferno rolled a huge monster, a vast machine, cannon roaring, treads thundering across the plain, its program demanding a ship for every human life, a thousand harpies for each Bolo dead, its cannon pouring annihilation into the sky, its energy projectors and machine guns spewing death in high arcs. It ravened through the night, a demon bent on destruction, a kinsman bent on revenge.

Deep inside, its computer tripped over into full battle mode, cold and ruthless, computing at nearly the speed of electric flow, icy rage within, all fire and hurtling steel without.

The ships surrounded it, the ships poured fire down upon it—but Titan raced between their energy beams and dashed toward the hills, far faster than any Bolo ever had, for the repairmen had supercharged him, had scavenged engines from several Bolos and added their thrust to his, had built into him a jet from a fallen flier. Titan slipped into neutral and lit his jet. Away over the flat plain he shot, and the ships swerved to chase—but they were slow, they were ponderous.

The harpies were not.

The harpies sped after it with the laughing joyful shrieks of the predator chasing a helpless quarry—ten thousand harpies, but Titan counted their silhouettes and checked his data, and knew they were only a tiny fraction of the million or more that had smitten the planet a month before. His humans had died, his brother Bolos had melted and gone, but they had taken a fearsome toll as they went. There were only ten thousand harpies left for Titan to slay, and could he do less than his valiant predecessors?

He ground to a halt, spraying fire into the sky; he rotated in place, sweeping the harpies with a ring of fire. The vanguard shrieked in alarm, screamed in an instant of searing pain, then rained to the plain as ashes. . . .

And Titan turned and sped away again, the main body of the harpies still following, but more slowly now, for they had seen what happened to those who sped too eagerly.

Behind them, the forty-five ships still stalked.

While they lingered, Titan sped. He bounced and swayed over the inequalities in the terrain, even though they were very minor, the plain almost flat as a table. If it had been really flat, Titan could have moved so fast that he could have outrun the harpies easily—though not their ships, once they were up to full velocity.

He did not plan to give them the chance to reach that speed.

He swerved about, suddenly and with no apparent reason, just as he had dreamed of Donjon doing. Then he revved his motors and sprang back the way he had come. He raked the flying line with bullets, torched the few who had dropped down near the ground.

The harpy host stalled, squalling in consternation, but the ships saw, and leaped forward.

That was all Titan needed. He spun and raced away, bouncing and jouncing over the plain—and into the river.

Under the water he sped, a bow wave spreading out behind him to roil the waters. He had not been built to be submersible, but all his circuits were encased in airtight boxes, to protect against corrosive gasses—one never knew how low the enemy might stoop—and what was proof against air would certainly keep out water. His treads sank low, down through muck, slowing him tremendously—but he had sounded the river before he plunged, and knew how shallow the sludge was. His treads touched bedrock only four feet down, and he ground through the water, heading downstream faster than any powerboat, even with the mud to slow him. His computer calculated his own speed relative to that of the harpy ships; when he estimated the distance was right, he surged out of the water, dripping and festooned with seaweed, his cannon belching energy-bolts at the back of the line of harpy ships.

His fire centered on one ship in particular, low down, focused, holding steady.

It took a precious few seconds before the ship even realized it was under attack.

Then it began to bob and weave frantically—but Titan recognized the pattern; he had absorbed it from Don-jon's broadcast in his sleep, had absorbed Chateau's discoveries, too, and tracked the ship through every dip and curve, recognizing when it changed evasive patterns, shifting with it.

Its companions came crowding to the rescue. An avalanche of harpies struck, but Titan burned them out of the air as fast as his small guns could traverse their line. Other ships stooped upon him, but he fired rockets with both launchers; they exploded against the sides of the harpy ships, doing little damage, but throwing the pilots off balance for a few precious minutes.

Finally, the ship he had picked for his target began to rotate—but Titan demonstrated one other improvement his technicians had given him; he increased the intensity of his fire. The ship did not recognize the difference and sped up to the rotation that had proved safe for its companions—but overheated quickly.

Its companions recovered and pressed in for the kill—and pressed in too quickly, in numbers too great; they blocked each other from coming close enough, and their fire was attenuated and at the wrong angle. One of them began to revolve around its wounded sister, but Titan charged forward, shooting up between the two ships, holding his beam fast on his target. Fire fell about him, all about him; six of the ships fell back to form an outer ring, and the remaining two pressed in behind, the target and its companion in front—but the plasma rained off Titan's ablative tiles, heating them, yes, but slowly, slowly . . .

Finally the target recognized what was happening—but too late. Its bottom fell away a split second before its power plant went up.

Titan did not stay to watch; he turned and raced away. The enemy ships cut off their fire, realizing their quarry had fled, and lumbered into motion behind him, accelerating, gaining . . .

Titan lit his jet and sped away, bouncing, bounding over the terrain, keeping his speed just low enough to guard against overturning.

The ships sped up even more. The harpies followed, but more slowly, no longer quite so eager to dive into battle. The gap between them and the great eggs widened.

The ships gained, came closer, close enough to lash out at the impudent mite that fled before them—and when Titan felt the lash of their fire, the itch of their bullets, he whirled about, speeding back through the veil of destruction, as Donjon had shown him. He paused almost beneath a ship and fired a rocket directly up into the mouth of its cannon with unerring accuracy. Plasma detonated the missile; it exploded, and took the bottom half of the harpy ship with it, falling down to crush anything beneath it . . .

But Titan was no longer there; again, he had not stayed to watch. Away he ran, and the harpy pilots turned their ships after him in anger. A silent call went out, and all across that hemisphere, other ships dropped the search and sped to join them in squashing this arrogant midget.

All over the hemisphere, human survivors, buried deep in bunkers and redoubts, huddling high in mountain caverns, looked up from their screens in disbelief, hope springing anew inside them. "Visual check! Are the eggs really going?"

"They're going." a sentry reported, staring at a monitor.

In shelter after shelter, cheers shook the walls.

But Titan heard none of it; he only knew that he had a hundred meters to go before he reached the gullies, and the ships' fire was hot on his aft section. His temperature gauge began to climb as the tiles heated, but he was almost to the gully now . . .

He plunged in, rolling and skidding down the slope, tumbling, landing flat on his side, treads spinning uselessly in the air—but he remembered what Donjon had done, and fired a low, sustained blast with his side guns, raising him up off the earth enough so that he could pour slugs into the rock, chipping and spattering granite, but lifting him up higher, high enough to Slow a full blast of plasma out the side . . .

Above him, three ships gathered, pouring fire down.

With a shuddering shock, Titan was back on his wheels. Away down the gully he raced, remembering the pattern from Donjon's broadcast of his last fight. He skidded into a turn, ducking down a side gulley, turning again and again . . .

These particular ships had not been there for Donjon's fight. They cast about aimlessly, seeking, searching, their sensors foiled by the traces of metal in the rocks.

Titan surged up out of the ravine, behind but near, his cannon already blazing at the nearest target. Its companions were quick to begin to weave about it, and it began to rotate, but Titan pushed close, ignoring the fire-fall, and stepped up his blast to full intensity.

More ships crowded in from the plain.

The bottom exploded off the target ship, and Titan fled, his temperature gauge screaming. Beneath the gathering ships he ran, through their veils of fire. A hundred harpies burst from the ground in a crowd, hoping to shock him, but he plowed through, treading them underfoot, incinerating them with his side guns, racing flat-out across the plain again, broadcasting every move, every second, for he could not know but that some defender, somewhere, was watching and learning, even though he had counted all his companion Bolos, and knew they were dead. But he bore the burden of their revenges, all of them . . .

And would see them fulfilled. He had promised, even though they could not have heard, and he was bound to that promise.

The mountains loomed before him, but the speeding ships loomed behind.

Up the mountain trail he sped, remembering the route Chateau had taken. The fire of the harpy ships splashed harmlessly against the rocks to either side of the trail, fragmented fires; what reached Titan himself was negligible. His tiles were charred black from heat, but all intact, none even weakened. . . .

Yet.

Up to the tunnel he went—or to where it had been; now there was only a pass, its floor choked with jumbled rubble. But that rubble had half-melted from the heat, had flowed enough to form a ramp. Up Titan went, rolling across the grave of two egg-ships. What more fitting place to stand, while he avenged Chateau?

The harpy ships stooped, rushing to pour fire on the Bolo they saw as trapped between two low cliffs, a sheer drop-off, and the egg-ship that was swinging down behind him.

Titan rotated his turret and poured fire into that egg.

The others crowded in; three stood right over him, pouring down fire. It splashed off his tiles and struck the cliffs to either side, heating the stone to cherry-red and splashing back off it to strike at his cowling. He knew he couldn't last long under such a heat bath; he only hoped the egg could last even less.

It was going to be close, because the egg was rotating unwilling to give up its blocking position—but unable to find the correct angular velocity. It speeded up, it slowed down—but it became hotter and hotter . . .

At the last second, it gave up, screaming toward the sky—but Titan's stream of plasma followed it, boring in, even though his sensors reported a cracked tile, then another and another, and the metal beneath it beginning to register dangerous heat levels . . .

The rocks shuddered as the harpy ship exploded.

Titan was out and away before the pieces had begun to separate into shrapnel. He shot back down off the mountain crest—but suddenly there was a host of harpies in front of him, battering him with their wings, clustering close about his guns, trying to block his sensors and air intakes, to plug his barrels, to render him blind, to smother him, to keep him penned. He blasted before they could come close enough to be any real danger, though, blasted again and again as he roared through the rain of their ashes. Still they would not stop coming, swooping in at him by the hundreds, the thousands, driven by some instinct for self-immolation, or by some superior will. Titan drove through them, blasting as he went, not taking the time to make sure he killed every harpy he could, feeling his way by sonar, following the mountain road down, then up again, just as Chateau had. Still the harpies came, and with sudden clarity, he knew they were calling, reporting his position . . .

Sure enough, as he came out to the lip of the chasm, there the ships were, ahead, clustered around the rockfall, some following where he had gone . . .

And some turning to move toward him.

His main gun targeted the leader and spat fire, tracking as it began its evasive patterns. His side guns lashed its companions; others shrouded harpies in fire. The latecomers sheared off from the cloud of flame, and at last Titan was rid of their pestiferous presence. But he could see that he could not remain where he was; the egg-ships loomed too closely, and had already begun their evasive dance, taking turns coming between himself and his target—and with the drop-off before him, he could not come close enough to drive under their guard.

Then an explosion rattled his aft plates, and his scanners registered a rocket blast. The harpies had sheared off, all right, but they had also resorted to weapons other than their own blind suicidal diving. He was targeted with rocket launchers, and even as he realized the fact, two more explosions registered.

He cut off the stream of plasma; his turret swiveled about, making aft into fore as he charged out at the multitudinous pests. They scattered before him, leaving their weapons behind, weapons that crunched under his treads as he swept forward, beginning his headlong rush down the mountainside . . .

Until sonar detected a cave.

A cavern, rather—at least, at the front. The portal was easily large enough to admit even a Bolo, and a quick preliminary sounding indicated huge spaces beyond. Without hesitation, Titan dived in. If he found no back door, he would make one.

Down he went, down and down, in a rough corkscrew that must have been cut by a flow of lava, a million years before, seeking out weak spots as it chewed its way to the surface. Titan certainly had no desire to go down to the core of the planet, so when his calculations of vertical distance matched the log of his trip up the slope, he started sounding for tunnels. Sonar probed all about him, seeking.

The mountain shook about him.

Titan never wavered, knowing the harpy ships were bombarding the peak. They could not see where he had gone, so they were leveling the mountain to find and destroy him. For a moment, he almost admired their sheer audacity—or sheer blind thoroughness.

The mountain shook again, and Titan still had not located another tunnel—but he did find a narrow seam in the rock, a gradient between two layers that was filled with ash, compressed now into rock. He halted and leveled one of his side guns at it. With low intensity first, he melted out the beginnings of a hole. The mountain shook again, but he had expected it, and held steady with computer-guided reflexes.

The hole grew, more in depth than in width. Titan let the intensity of the gun's beam build rapidly. The hole deepened, widening to half a meter, three-quarters, a meter . . . When it was two meters across and five deep, Titan boosted the gun's power to full intensity. The rock melted and flowed at the end of the hole, lava trickling down, and Titan had to divert another gun to carving a channel downslope, that would take the molten rock away from him before it could melt his treads. As the tunnel widened, he began to move the gun in a circle, playing fire across the end of the hole. Finally it was wide enough for another gun to join in, then another—then, finally, wider than Titan was high. He cut off the side guns and rotated on his treads, pointing himself into the gap and firing his main cannon.

Rock flowed and came rolling out of the tunnel in gouts.

Titan carved a run-off channel with his side guns, then rolled forward slowly, staying back far enough so that the reflected heat would not harm him. The mountain had stopped shaking—presumably, the harpies had leveled enough of it to be sure of Titan's destruction. So much the better—they would be pleasantly surprised when he re-emerged. Pleasantly for him, that was.

With a roar, the rock at the end of the tunnel blew out.

Instantly, Titan cut his main gun, then sat and waited for the lava to harden as he tested the outer world with his sensors. Telescopic sight revealed nothing—only darkness; the day had gone while he tunneled. Scanners revealed no electromagnetic activity, audio sensors heard only the night wind—and precious few living creatures, only a few insects, ,and the inevitable scavengers who come to feed on the dead. They would probably die from the alien protoplasm, or from the diseases that sprang from microbes the harpies no doubt carried that were harmless to themselves, but would prove lethal to humans, or the life-forms they had brought with them. But there was no sign of a harpy or a ship, so when the rock had cooled, Titan trundled slowly out into the night air.

In the distance, he saw a dozen ships—or rather, their lightning-legs. They were trying to break into one of the human strongholds. There might be people left in it, or it might only have been a control center, for all they knew—but they had to be sure of it.

Titan knew. All the human shelters and control centers were logged in his database, and he knew that this one, Coventry Central, was a prison. Yes, there would be humans within—dangerous humans, but humans nonetheless. He could not let them be killed.

He checked his records with a quick scan and was surprised to discover that, if he had kept count correctly (and he was sure he had), the dozen ships before him were all that were left of the original invading force of one hundred twenty-eight. His fellow Bolos had died, but they had died hard, each bringing down two or three ships before dying. So had the humans, apparently—there might be very few of them remaining, but they had left their mark.

Surprise would be the key element. Titan rolled forward at only a moderate pace, following the dips and gullies, making as little sound as possible, hiding from sight.

 

Larry woke to see light, bright light. He pushed it away a little, with a feeble hand, and saw Dawn bending over him, looking scared. The fear disappeared as she saw him squint, and her mouth moved, but he couldn't hear the words—probably because of the ringing in his ears, a steady tone that went on and on and wouldn't go away. One of the pieces of electronics that had shorted somewhere in its innards, no doubt. He shook his head and pointed to his ear. She shut up, looking scared again.

Finally, fear touched him. Had he gone deaf?

But Dawn was trying to pull him to his feet—or at least to a sitting position. Well, if she wasn't too worried about it, why should he be? Especially since it might go away in time—but time was one thing he didn't have, time to wait and see. He nodded and pushed himself up—carefully; there might be an injury somewhere. But miraculously, his ribs didn't stab him, and there was no sudden flare of pain from a broken bone. Cautiously, he tried kneeling, then standing, all with the same success rate. The bunker seemed to have done its job—he was alive, and unbroken. Oh, he ached like fury, and if he had seen a mirror, he probably wouldn't have been able to find himself among all the bruises—but he could function.

Could the bunker?

He looked up at the ceiling, and saw stars. Then the sky went orange with a distant fire-fight, but after a minute, it cleared enough to show stars again.

He nodded to Dawn, and she finally let go of his arm—but she was pointing at the broken ceiling. Larry got the idea—they had to get out. She was right—the bunker had been turned into a glorified foxhole, and they had no weapons but their sidearms. He looked around, and saw huge jagged blocks of concrete sitting on the remains of smashed electronic equipment, with broken cannon-barrels and the racks with the viewers sticking up from them. He knew the roof had been designed to tall inward against the walls if it did break, but even so, he shivered as he realized how close they had come to being crushed as flat as the guts of the equipment.

Then he realized that if the electronics were wrecked, the reactor might be, too.

His mind knew that a fusion reactor can't blow up—as soon as the electromagnetic bottle breaks down, the reaction ends. But someone had let the genie out of this bottle, and he wasn't about to stick around to find out whether or not he would die from its spell. He turned to Dawn with a nod, stepped over to the nearest concrete pile, set a foot against a broken chunk, and shoved. It held, so he turned back to Dawn and bent his knees, cupping his hands to make a stirrup. "Up you go."

"Up there," Dawn stared up at the jumble of blocks. "You're out of your mina!"

Lany was delighted to discover that he could hear her—distantly through the ringing, but nonetheless, he could. Only temporarily deaf, then. "No, out of here—I hope. The ceiling was only ten feet high, and I lift my hands up to at least five. No climbing, just jumping. Or would you rather stay and wait for the harpies to find us?"

Dawn imagined a score of shrieking harpies pouncing on them with sharp talons and shuddered. Of course, the aliens were much more likely just to drop another bomb in and mash them, but that wasn't much better. "I'll take that lift." She stepped forward, put her hands on Larry's shoulders, and stepped into his hands. For a moment, she balanced precariously, gathering herself for the leap.

"Ready?" he asked.

Dawn didn't trust herself to answer; she just nodded.

Larry heaved with all his might, as straight as he could. Dawn felt herself surging upward and leaped at the last second. The edge of the hole shot past her head, and she threw herself forward. The jagged concrete slammed into her hips, and the pain was sharp—but she was up and out from the waist up. For a moment, she scrabbled precariously; then Larry's hand pushed hard on one foot, and she got the other one over the edge and rolled out, face flaming—that push on the foot had made her realize what she must have looked like from Larry's point of view. Nothing indecent, of course—they both wore the same trousered uniform—but very embarrassing. Of course, Larry probably wasn't in any condition to snicker, but still . . .

Snicker? He was in no shape for anything, stuck down in that hole! How was he going to get out?

Cursing herself for an inconsiderate fool, she swung about, pulling her belt loose and dropping back down on her belly, to dangle the strap over the edge. "Come on! Grab hold, and you . . ."

She'd come just in time to see the concrete block shift under his feet; he was halfway up the slope of rubble. He lurched forward, grabbing the belt. She held on with both hands, puffing as strongly as she could. He stepped up to the next block a half-second before the first went crashing down, then held on tight as the whole pile shifted under him. His face was pale, his eyes huge—but the slope steadied again, and he grinned up at her. "Thanks."

"Just part of the service. Can you jump?"

"I'd be scared to try. In fact, I am scared to try. Just a couple of more steps, though . . ."

He freed one hand from the belt to steady him against the edge of the hole as he stepped up to another block, very slowly and carefully. It groaned and shifted a little, but it held.

"Just one more," Dawn said.

"One it is." Larry shifted his weight gradually, set one foot on a block fifteen inches higher, braced himself, then lunged forward. The block groaned, but he threw his torso over the rim of the hole and didn't care as the block started to slide down the slope with a grinding that turned into a rumbling as the whole side of the pile shifted and slid.

"You can have your belt back now," he panted.

"As soon as you get a leg up." Dawn tossed the belt behind her and grabbed his arm with both hands.

Larry struggled, panting, and managed to kick one knee up over the rim. Then he rolled, up and over the edge, all of him out of the pit. He just lay there panting. "Th-thanks."

"Any time." Dawn fumbled her belt back through the loops. "Just don't think I did it because I liked your face, or anything."

"Why—no." Larry grinned, the hardness coming back. "Just your duty. Right?"

"That," Dawn allowed, "and the fact that I stand a better chance of getting back to base if I have someone with me, than I do alone."

"Truth in that," Larry admitted. He pushed himself up to a sitting position. "I'm better than nobody, huh?"

"You are if you're armed." Dawn cast about her; there was no shortage of weapons on the ground, from all the harpies they had killed. The question was, would they work after having been torched? She picked one up and handed it to Larry. "Here."

He shrank away to the side, then took it from her. "Mind not pointing that thing in my direction?"

She stared at him, taken aback. "Is that the front? These birds do build crazy weapons!"

"Well, it might be the front." Larry carefully pointed it crosswise to both of them. "Where's the trigger on this model?"

"They don't seem to use them." Dawn picked up another weapon, one that looked much more complicated than the first. "No, mine has a trigger, or something like one. I think yours is a rocket launcher."

"If it is, it's a repeater." Larry eyed the huge magazine with apprehension. "Get down, would you?"

Dawn whirled. "You're not going to point that at me!"

"No, but for all I know, this thing could shoot out the side."

"I don't know, and I don't want to have to find out. Ready?"

Dawn hit the dirt.

"Here goes." Larry pressed a large button.

There was a flash and a roar, and a streak of light lanced out of the back end of the gun, almost knocking Larry onto his face. He caught himself on one hand and looked backward over his shoulder, watching the rocket race off across the plain until it hit something and exploded in a huge shower of fire. "I hope that was one of theirs."

"As long as it wasn't one of us. I think that's the back end that you're pointing forward."

"Yeah, I think you're right." Gingerly, Larry reversed the weapon and started hunting around on the ground.

'What are you looking for?"

"More . . . aha!" Larry came up with a bandolier that carried two of the huge magazines on an unimaginably small loop of leather. "It'll do for a necklace, anyway."

"Just the right fashion for this fall," Dawn said drily, but she began to look around for ammunition, too. She came up with a bandolier of her own and looped it over a shoulder, then turned to Larry just as he finished draping the rocket-packs around his neck. She stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

'Well, I'm glad you can see the humor in any situation," he said sourly. "What's the matter? Don't like my taste?"

"I don't know how you taste, and I'm not going to find out. But you look like the White Rabbit."

"Huh?" Larry looked down and, sure enough, the rocket pack did kind of look like a tabard. "You should talk! You look like a fullback!"

"Shoulder pads, huh?" Dawn glanced down at her figure with a smile. "With you around, I need all the armor I can get. Now—where do we go?"

"Back to headquarters, if it's still standing." Larry glanced up at the sky.

After a minute of silence, Dawn asked, "You studying to be a statue?"

"Huh? No, I'm studying the stars, as a matter of fact—or didn't you bone up on the local constellations on the way out?"

Dawn flushed. "No, I didn't! I had more important things to do than star-gaze."

"Not now, you don't. Okay, the flare has died—momentary lull in the fighting; just an accident, I bet . . . there!" He pointed toward the unseen mountains.

Dawn looked up at the sky, frowning, but she couldn't see anything except faint points of light, and even they were washing out by a new flood or orange light from an explosion. " There' what?"

"The Lorry—at least, that's what the colonists call it. It's north. So we want to go . . ." Larry pivoted, his arm standing out like a compass needle. ". . . there!"

He was pointing straight into the worst of the glare and clamor.

"There?" Dawn blanched. "You would pick the worst of the battle!"

Larry shrugged. "You wanted to know where headquarters was. Makes sense that the worst fighting would be around the fort. Doesn't mean we have to go there, of course."

"So where are we going to go? Into the nearest forest, assuming we could leg it a hundred miles without getting fried? Or maybe we should just wander around until a crowd of harpies picks us off?"

"I've been wondering how they taste," Larry said thoughtfully. "We didn't bring out any rations, you know."

"Eat a harpy? You cannibal!"

"No—they're not my species. Still, I suppose you're right—intelligent life is our own kind, no matter what its form. Of course, that's assuming that these lizards have minds. . . ."

"Some of them do, and they won't take kindly to our eating their children!"

"Assuming that isn't a cultural norm, where they come from. Come to that, I don't like them slaughtering our people and wasting our planet. Of course, I'm sure they'd say that they wouldn't have been doing either, if we just hadn't been so rude as to fight back."

"I'm not too eager to be a slave to a bird-brain, thank you!"

"How about a snake?"

"What's that, a proposal? No, thanks, hammerhead. I'll wait for the next one."

Larry frowned at her. " 'Hammerhead?' "

"You figure it out." Which was good, because Dawn couldn't. She covered by stepping around him toward the brightest glare in the night sky. "Come on—maybe we'll meet a Bolo."

"Oh, yeah," Larry said slowly. "I forgot to tell you."

Dawn stopped dead, then turned back to look at him slowly. "Forgot what?"

"The news came in the last time you were asleep. There're only two Bolos left, and one of them is down for repair."

Dawn stared in horror. "The harpies got all the others?"

"All" Larry confirmed. "Safety in numbers, and all that."

Dawn turned back toward the glare, her face pale. "That's not good."

"No," Lany agreed. Neither of them could bring themselves to put it into words: that the humans were on their own, or nearly. Their guardians were gone. Dawn shook off the mood "and started out again.

"Come on. Doesn't look as though our chances are going to get any better."

"No, it doesn't, does it?" Larry followed her before he could change his mind, muttering to himself.

" 'Hammerhead'. Let's see, now . . ."

 

Titan came out only a hundred yards from the ring of ships. From this point forth, he would almost doubtlessly be seen. He didn't light his jet, but he shot forward at full engine acceleration, guns poised and ready, his Hellbore already tracking his chosen ship.

At fifty yards, he opened fire, but he did not stop.

The harpy ship did not realize what was happening at first. By the time its sensors screamed the alarm, a patch of armor was already glowing red. Even then, it did not move—no doubt its inhabitants were trying to discover where the beam was coming from.

A hundred harpies shot toward him with shrill cries—into communicators, no doubt. They sheared off, but his side guns began to mow them ruthlessly, even as the alien ship finally began to revolve.

Too slowly.

At last, two other ships shot to its rescue, sliding between Titan and his quarry, leveling their fire at him—but he was now so close that their shots went wide, and the only way to interpose themselves between him and his target, was to get so close that his Hellbore tore through the ship's skin in a matter of minutes. The harpy ship shot away, but too late—Titan tracked it, and its bottom exploded out even as it fled. Titan didn't stay to look—he swung back to the other "rescuer," even though it was already retreating, angling away, trying to take up a position from which its guns could actually strike at him. But the jockeying interfered with its evasive action, and it forgot to rotate; Titan's beam centered on its vulnerable spot even as it rained fire on him. The ablative tiles shed the plasma even as the ship, finally realizing its predicament, began to revolve—and of course, its beam could not hold steady on Titan.

But his could.

His could, and the harpy ship had waited too long to rotate. It blew, and rained shrapnel on the huge machine—but Titan turned back to his first victim even as its cannon leveled at him, ignoring nine of the harpy ships that came crowding around—he could afford to ignore them; there were too many to come close enough to do damage. Instead, he took careful aim into the egg's own guns, and fired.

The egg blew up, and Titan took off running across the valley floor. He lit his jet and shot forward, jouncing and bouncing—bouncing too hard; he realized he could easily go over at this speed. He cut the jet—he had gained enough distance anyway—and realized, with surprise, that the enemy ships were milling about behind him in a search pattern.

Of course! They had been following the light and heat of his jet, and with it gone, they were slow to resort to their electromagnetic detectors to find him. Realizing that, he shot away from his previous path, swinging wide around the valley to come at the nine survivors from a new angle.

A hill rose before him—good! It would be first a firing platform, then a shield. He ground up its slope—almost directly beneath a harpy egg. He leveled his gun . . .

And a cloud of harpies descended shrieking upon him.

He fired anyway, his beam burning through a dozen harpies on its way to score the ship. His side guns leveled more of them, and his computer busily traced each separate burning body. The ship lingered, unable to resist the temptation to stamp out this presumptuous bug—and the presumptuous bug shifted tactics, slamming a shell up to follow its own bright beam, a shell that exploded against weakened armor, that blew through the lower part of the hull, and the ship tumbled out of the sky.

Titan reversed engines and shot down the hill. Still the harpies clung to him, shrieking and crying into their communicators, so that their ships would not lose the monster this time. Titan burned them apart and blew them out of the air, but a dozen more came for each he slew.

The eight remaining harpy ships shot toward him, lightning smashing down . . .

Into the shielding earth of the slope.

But Titan was away from the hill already, running down and into the river. The darkness hid his exit, and the water hid the traces of his heat. The harpy ships did not even realize he had gone; indeed, when he surfaced half a kilometer downstream, the great eggs were gathered around the hill, busily pulverizing it with plasma-bolts.

 

They had been hiking for half an hour before the harpy patrol found them.

The saurians pounced, shrieking what were no doubt obscenities in Harpy. Larry dropped to one knee, bringing up his bazooka. "Hit the dirt!"

But Dawn was already kneeling, taking aim at the left hand side of the line and squeezing the trigger—very awkwardly, but very effectively. The gun stuttered, and Dawn was amazed at the lightness of the recoil—but then, they would have had to have perfect recoil-less weapons, if they were going to fire them from the wing.

Recoil-less and light, but very effective. The harpies seemed to stumble in mid-air, then pitched forward, falling in series as Dawn's gun traversed the line, falling down to earth with horrible screams, revealing . . .

A knot of larger harpies in the middle of the flock.

Larry's bazooka roared, and the knot exploded.

Slowly, Dawn lowered her weapon, staring at the rain of ash. She had seen it hundreds of times before, on the visual monitor in their bunker—but never with her naked eyes, or so nearby.

"The poor wretches," Larry whispered.

"They had it coming." Dawn shoved pity behind her and pushed herself to her feet. "Or would you rather have let them do it to you?"

"No," Larry said slowly, "all things considered, if it had to be us or them, I'd rather it was them."

"How kind of you," Dawn said witheringly, "and you may be sure they felt the same way. Come on—we've got miles to cover."

Lany went along, wondering what had happened to the more gentle emotions in her.

Of course, he knew what had happened to them in himself. There are fatalities in every war, and nobility and generosity are high on the list. In his case, he was sure they had just gone underground for the duration—and he hoped it wasn't any worse than that, for Dawn. After all, she herself had been safe so far—not captured or wounded, or mistreated . . .

So far.

He resolved to do what he could to make sure she wouldn't be.

He had just come to that conclusion when a horrendous shrieking and cawing split the air. His hand snapped up, and he saw what had to be a hundred harpies descending on them. Their bias held, even though it had been the undoing of so many of them, so often—they would rather use their talons than their guns.

Wrong choice. He dropped to one knee, leveled the rocket launcher, and loosed a flaming round into their midst. A huge flash lit the immediate sky, and scraps of bone and leather rained down—but the shrieking went on; there were just too many of them.

As the glare died, Dawn's machine gun went to work. The harpies fell in a neat line, then fell again as she traversed backward. Larry's bazooka roared, and the flash lit the sky again. The rain was continuous now.

Finally, the harpies realized they had to use their weapons. Mechanical chattering ripped the night from a dozen guns.

"Get down!" Larry caught Dawn to him and hugged her hard as he dropped down, then rolled over on top of her, waiting for the terrible pain, hoping it would be short-lived, hoping their bullets couldn't penetrate through his body into hers . . .

A huge roar filled the night, a roar with a thousand echoes, and suddenly the chattering was quiet, and the only sound was the distant booming where the harpies fought the fort.

Larry decided he was still alive, and risked a peek upward.

"Let me up, you fool!" Dawn snapped.

But Larry was frozen staring up—and up, and up, at the huge battle machine that towered over him, as tall as a building, a very large building, as high as the sky . . .

"What is it? I can't see anything but your collarbone!"

"It's a Bolo," Larry whispered, unbelieving.

Dawn struggled out from under him enough to see, and stare. "It's a Bolo! But how . . ."

The huge machine began to move. It rumbled straight toward them.

"No, wait!" Lany cried, waving frantically. "We're good guys, we're on your side . . ."

But the Bolo's noise drowned out his voice, and all he could think as the huge treads passed to either side of him and the vast underside became the sky, was that the world had gone crazy, because this very machine had just saved them from a horde of harpies, and here it was running them over . . .

But the machine stopped, and its bottom was six feet overhead. The huge treads were a dozen meters or more to either side.

"How . . . what. . . ?" Dawn wasn't sure which one of them had said it.

Then a huge trapdoor slid open, and light spilled down from above them. "Get in, little allies," a rich amplified voice said. "You need shelter."

"You were never more right in your life!" Larry scrambled to his feet and made a stirrup again. "It's the cavalry, Dawn! Up and in!"

She didn't stay to argue, just stepped into the stirrup and caught the edge of the trap as he lifted. She vaulted in—no straining or struggling here, where all was clear and clean—and spun about to reach down for Larry. He had already leaped high, though, and caught the edge of the door; she only had to help pull him aboard when his knee came over the edge.

The trap slid shut and the huge machine rumbled into motion with the two of them inside, safe in a warm, carpeted room, with the sounds of cannon fire dimmed by heavy armor. For a little while, the war was shut out; for a little while, they were safe inside again.

Dawn rolled over and hid her face in his shoulder. Her whole body began to tremble.

Amazed, Larry brought his arms up around her. "Hey, no fair," he whispered. "I was about to get the shakes."

"Too late," she sniffled. "My turn."

"Well, okay," He patted her back. "Get it out of your system. Then you can hold me while I fall apart."

She did.

 

Titan crept up quietly, sneaking close.

A dozen harpies burst on him out of the darkness, screaming in dreadful rage and loosing rockets, and bolts from energy rifles.

The bolts scarred his carapace, of course, but did no other damage. Titan's guns rattled, his projectors enveloped him in fire. When it died, only ashes remained. Titan did a quick scan of the area and was amazed to find it empty. Had he slain the last of the aliens?

His computer began to tally the dead it had seen and heard reported, but the great ships had seen the commotion and heard the alarm that their progeny had given their lives to raise. They swung away from the hill and out toward Titan, no doubt cursing this temerarious mite that had the audacity to survive.

The mite turned and ran; if he had been human, he would have cursed the luck that had spoiled his sneak attack. In darkness and over unfamiliar territory, he didn't dare light his jet; instead he ran, scanning on infrared, at full velocity.

The ships were slow to gain acceleration, but they were gaining indeed.

Titan fled, searching for some sort of cover, something to make a diversion, searching his database for any nearby human installations that might still be inhabited, and therefore must be avoided.

He found instead a building that was probably empty of life, but nonetheless something very much to be sought.

 

When Dawn and Larry had readjusted to temporary safety, they investigated their surroundings. They were in the crew compartment that was still built into every Bolo, even though it was rarely used—in fact, to the right of the control console glowed a large green rectangle with the word "auto" on it. Below it was a red rectangle marked "Manual Override," but it was dark, and behind a pane of glass. A small hammer hung next to it, with the notation, "In case of emergency, break glass."

"Does this qualify as an emergency?" Lany asked.

"Only for us," Dawn answered. "The Bolo seems to know what he's doing."

"You are aboard Mark XXVIII Bolo Titan the rich voice informed them. "Please strap yourselves in securely."

Dawn stared blankly. "What?"

Larry caught an arm around her and pulled her toward the large, padded chairs. "Come on! The ride's going to get rough!"

That was an understatement. They jumped for the chairs and strapped themselves in, just before the floor started to bounce and heave beneath them.

'What is this—the roller coaster?" Larry called.

"No, just a very fast ride." Dawn nodded at the screen. "Look."

Larry did. There was an array of screens before him. The largest was central, showing a view of what lay ahead of Titan. At the moment, the scene was very dark, but Larry could make out some landmarks that had become familiar in the past couple of weeks, though only seen on his viewscreens. Now, though, they were moving—past him, and rapidly.

"What's he running from?"

"Look behind." Dawn said in a strangled tone, pointing at another screen. It was right above, but smaller, and showed the rear view.

Larry caught his breath. "What is that—the whole Harpy navy?"

"What is left of it, I believe," Titan answered. "Do not be afraid if they fire upon us. I am very heavily shielded. The heat may become oppressive, but my cooling system is excellent, and you will not be in danger."

Larry just stared, but Dawn remembered her manners. "Thank you, Titan. That's very reassuring."

Suddenly the view whirled; just looking at it gave Larry motion sickness—but he could feel the movement, too, as Titan slewed about. His stomach had barely adjusted to it when the forward acceleration began again.

"He's going back toward the ships!" Larry yelled, terrified.

"Let's hope he knows what he's doing," Dawn called back, her teeth gritted.

Then the screens filled with fire, and Larry clenched the arms of the chair for all he was worth, thinking crazily that Titan seemed to feel it necessary to prove how good his air conditioning was. But the screens cleared again, and they were racing over the night landscape once more.

"He bluffed them!" Dawn cried. "He went right through their fire and came out the other side!"

"Neat," Larry said, numb. "Let's hope he doesn't have to try it a second time."

Dawn shrugged. "Won't matter. Harpies learn slow."

Larry had noticed that, himself. He recognized the behavior from arrogant teenagers he'd known in high school. They were so sure of their own superiority that they couldn't believe anyone outside their own group could know anything worth their learning—so they didn't. "Cultural superiority complex," he quipped.

"Is that what they call it?" Dawn asked.

Larry stared, surprised, then shrugged. "Don't know. Just an idea."

"Oh," Dawn said, with scorn. "Got any facts?"

The Bolo ground to a halt so suddenly as to slam them into their belts; then the room spun about them. Well, no, actually—they were spinning with it. But it was so fast and so sudden that it seemed to be the other way around.

Larry stared at the viewscreen to kill the sensation of movement and the nausea it was raising, but all he could see were legs of lightning, not very far away, with great dark eggs on top.

There was a lance of light skewering one of those eggs, and it seemed to be coming from a little way above the viewscreen.

"He's attacking!" Larry yelped. "The fool machine's actually trying to take on that clutch of eggs!"

"This unit is programmed to destroy as many enemy as possible, whenever possible," the Bolo informed him.

"But not when it's suicidal!"

"I will not die, nor will you."

"I just wish he could be sure of that," Dawn whispered.

Titan must have overheard her, but he did not reply.

Fire sheeted down the screen.

"Think it's getting hot in here?" Larry said nervously.

"Just in your mind," Dawn retorted. "Come from looking at that screen." But Larry noticed she didn't glance at the temperature gauge.

There was a sudden blinding flash that washed the screen in pure white.

"He's blind!" Larry shouted.

"No he's not," Dawn grated, "just us."

Then their insides roiled as the tank swung about again and shot into motion. The acceleration pressed them back into the cushions, and Larry kept telling himself the chairs were built sturdily enough so that they wouldn't break, no matter what the acceleration was.

The screen cleared, and he saw they were racing through the countryside; dimly perceived shapes were whipping by them. The glare from the distant battle showed them a scene of ruin and carnage all about.

The Bolo stopped, whirled, and the lance of fire stabbed out from above the screen again. Larry pried himself away from the side of his chair. "I sure hope he's not picking on any more ships!"

'Why not?" Dawn said bitterly. "At least we've lived a few minutes longer than we would have if he hadn't rescued us."

Suddenly, the screen was filled with leathery bodies—then with fire. The rain of ashes began. Then the blinding flash washed the screen again, and the room spun about them once more.

"I'm beginning to feel like a martini in a shaker," Dawn groaned.

"Better than feeling like an egg in the frying pan we left," Larry said, hoping it was a comfort.

"This egg is feeling pretty broken, thank you! How did I get into this centrifuge?"

"Through the floor," Larry answered.

"Down, quickly!" Titan told them.

They didn't wait for explanations; they just scrambled out of their belts and down from the chairs, but Dawn protested as she moved. "This can't be all that safe!"

"We will be passing only a kilometer from the fort," Titan told her. "I must drop you very soon, for I do not think I can stand against these ships indefinitely. You will have a short but hazardous walk to the fort, but I believe you should be able to deal with any problems you encounter."

Larry hesitated just as he was about to throw himself to the floor, then spun and grabbed two blast rifles from the rack on the wall. Titan lurched, and Larry more fell than jumped to the carpet.

"Do not lie on the trapdoor," Titan warned them.

"Don't worry," Dawn assured him. "We're not."

Suddenly, the tank jarred to a halt, and Larry's stomach went hollow, afraid that the Bolo had run into some opponent it couldn't knock aside. His imagination quailed at the thought of what that enemy might look like—but Titan was saying, "Down, now, and lie low—I will lead the enemy away from you! Good luck, small allies!"

The trap door's latch clunked, and it dropped open.

"Thanks, Titan!" Dawn called, and dropped through the hatch.

"Good luck to you!" Larry called, and followed her.

They threw themselves flat on the ground, and Dawn shrieked, "Hold me!"

At that point in time, there was nothing Larry wanted to do more. He couldn't fight, he couldn't run, and the feel of another human body would be awfully comforting. He wrapped her in his arms and lay huddled around her as the huge machine ground away from them, leaving them naked to the night. Minutes later, thunder swelled and lightning stabbed down not two meters from them—but it didn't hit them, only left a stink of ozone as the alien ships passed by. Harpies scurried in their wake, but didn't notice the humans who were trying to disappear into the ground—their attention was all on Titan.

Then they were gone, but Larry just stayed put, wrapped around Dawn with arms and legs both. Finally, her voice came muffled: "I think we'd better get going."

"Do we have to?" Larry asked plaintively. "It's so nice and cozy here."

They lay alone and uncovered in the middle of a plain of death, but Dawn said, "I know what you mean. If we don't make it to the fort before the ships finish with Titan, though, there won't be anything left of us to be cozy."

"But if I let go, I'll never get to hold you like this again."

Dawn lay very still in his arms for a moment, then said, "We're in the middle of a war, you know. We could be dead any minute."

"All the more reason to hold on while I can."

"Look," she said, exasperated, "if we make it to the fort, I promise you can hold me again. Will you let me up now?"

"Oh, I guess so," Larry sighed. He uncurled, and Dawn sprang to her feet. He was a little slower getting up, but when he did, he said, "Here," and handed her a rifle.

She stared at it. "Where did you get these? They're even built for people!"

"Off Titan's emergency arms rack," Larry said. "This is what they're for. Come on, the fort's that way."

They could tell, because the sky was still bright with the cannon shots from the fort—but they were shooting at a fleeing enemy.

"What happened to all the ships that were shooting at the fort?" Dawn wondered.

"They've gone after Titan," Larry said. "We're not the only ones he was leading them away from."

"But why? Why would they need to go after a lone Bolo when they've got a fort they have to destroy?"

"Pride." Larry shrugged. "They can't stand to see a Bolo blow up a few of them and get away with it. Besides, the fort will still be there when they're done with the Bolo, but it might not work the other way around."

"No, it wouldn't, would it?" Dawn said softly. "The Bolo would run and hide. But they can be sure it would come back."

Larry nodded. "Come back again, and again, and again—until they were all dead. No, on second thought, if I were commanding those enemy ships, I'd probably go after Titan, too."

"I hope he survives," Dawn said softly.

"So do I," Larry said, "but even if he doesn't, he wasn't alive in the first place. All he really cares about is finishing the job he was set to do."

"But he can't. There are too many of them!"

"He doesn't know that," Larry said softly. "Maybe he can't, but we can."

"What? Finish the job for him? There can't be even two thousand humans left on this planet!"

"If he takes enough of them with him, we just might do for the rest." Larry held out his hand. "Come on. Let's get to the fort. We've got a job to do—and you've got a promise to keep."

"I might ask for a promise from you before I keep mine'' she warned him.

"And I just might be willing to give it. Let's go get safe so we can find out, okay?"

And they set off across the wasted landscape, hand in hand, but very vigilant.

 

Titan swerved, running with a purpose now—but not too apparent a purpose. He took evasive action, zigging and zagging with the most randomized pattern he had, switching between two other patterns constantly for good measure—but it took far more time than a straight-line course, and the ships were gaining.

They were almost upon him when the low concrete mound rose before him. All to the better—he alone could not blast through that bunker in anything resembling time enough, let alone melt through the shielding beneath. He lurched up onto the structure and halted dead center, cannon rotating and elevating to target the nearest ship. He knew what he must do, knew the probability of survival was so low as to be negligible—but he had to do it anyway; it was the only chance. He poured fire into the harpy ship, and it began to dodge through evasive maneuvers, rotating and hitting the proper rate instantly—so the saurians could learn, after all! Slowly, handicapped by their own assumption of superiority, but they learned,

Two other ships instantly broke off to bob and weave about the target ship, becoming a three-body system, each absorbing some of Titan's fire so that none would be destroyed. It was useless; Titan left off and swerved to take aim at another.

But they had taken aim at him, too. Three huge harpy ships crouched over him, pouring down lightning. He shot back, but they were moving just enough so that his bolts missed their tubes.

He could feel his tiles cracking.

The heat shivered the concrete beneath him.

Finally, one shell slammed into a harpy tube, and the cannon blew up, taking the ship with it—but another swung into its place.

More lightning poured down on Titan, but he held grimly to his purpose, slamming his own bolts back upward, aiming for a cannon-mouth, but they danced and swerved erratically . . .

With a roar, the concrete gave way. The alloy steel beneath it, already hot, glowed red. The heat beat up at Titan in waves; he could feel his own belly-plates melting . . .

But the alloy was melting, too. Suddenly, it went, and Titan sank down into a mire of molten steel—down and down, still firing up at the enemy until the lake of liquid metal closed over his cannon, melting his gun barrels, melting his Hellbore, too, and his treads, and his shielding . . .

But the liquid steel poured down into the complex below, the installation it had protected, and melted shielding there, too—lead shielding, which boiled in seconds, and the graphite rods beneath—the graphite rods that had made a chain reaction manageable, that had controlled the furious continuing explosion of pure plutonium in the ancient nuclear fission reactor, built by the planet's first colonists but still operating, still fueled . . .

Still lethal.

Before Titan's shielding was quite gone, before memory banks could melt, before his silicon chips had begun to turn to slag, the reactor core beneath his melted down. It blew, and it blew high and wide—high enough to reach the ships that had torched it, wide enough to atomize them all—and as he died, Titan knew that he had kept his promises.

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Framed