Cilreth had made it clear during the voyage that she preferred women, though with Telisa already in a monogamous relationship with Magnus it hadn"t impacted the group"s dynamic much if at all.

"Oh, I have spy programs for that," she said.

Telisa smiled. She noticed Cilreth had a stunner on one hip and a machete sheathed on the other. Our weapons fetish has already spread.

"I guess it"s up to us to find out what we can with the scouts. Shiny didn"t know much except he swears this used to be a Trilisk planet," Magnus said.

"Well, he said it used to have Trilisks on it," Telisa corrected.

"So, I did manage to get a scan off from orbit," Cilreth said. "According to the Clacker, there aren"t any major settlements, at least not at any level of technology we"d notice. The interface still needs some work. I know the ship has to be capable of more thorough searches; I just can"t operate it well enough yet."

And it"s so d.a.m.n advanced I can barely find my own location marker in it.

"Any information is better than none," Telisa said.

"So, anyway, I was kinda rushed with that work and didn"t get a chance to learn about the planet from Terran sources," Cilreth continued.

"I didn"t find much on this planet anyway except that it"s one of the open worlds," Telisa said. "It says there was a group of creatures here called the Konuan. Now extinct. Some kind of primitive culture. Shiny, are you sure Trilisks were here?"

Shiny joined the channel they shared, presumably at Telisa"s invitation. "Certain, verified, known. Ruins around you contain traces of Trilisk presence."

"They may have been here because of the Konuan," Telisa said. "They may have been studying them. Or conquering them. Or whatever it is the Trilisks did."

Cilreth could tell from the edge in Telisa"s voice that her companion didn"t like being in the dark about the Trilisk"s modus operandi.

"Let"s get in there and find out what they did," Magnus said enthusiastically.

Chapter 2.

The smart screen above the camp flexed gently in a light morning breeze. The screen lay just below most of the green clumps that terminated the stalks, about three meters above the rocky ground. Soldiers worked under the screen. The thin, translucent fabric contained a network of sensors and emitters that scattered their radiation signatures, providing excellent camouflage from orbit. The camp adjoined an escarpment where two square tunnel entrances had been put into the rock. Some men moved in and out of the tunnels while others rested in tents that shifted color lazily to match the densest part of the alien flora above.

Colonel Lance Holtzclaw stood in the center of his camp. This had been home for seven long months. Long enough to become familiar with a place. Long enough to hate a place.

Holtzclaw scratched his infernal itch for the thousandth time. He had started to leave his armored suit open at the front so he could slip his hand in to scratch the pink skin where his replacement arm had been grafted on.

Dammit. What did they do, put someone else"s arm on me? Why does it still itch so much?

He glanced at the graft site on his shoulder. The skin of his new arm had proven more aggressive than his old skin. It had grown out from the old line between his new arm and the stump, taking over the original skin of his shoulder. A star-shaped scar still held on at the edge of his chest where part of the seeker round that had taken off his arm had flown out of him.

Maybe they did too good of a job selecting cells to seed the arm. That skin is just healthier than the rest. It"s going to take over my whole body...and itch me insane the entire time.

"Colonel," a soldier addressed him, saluting.

Holtzclaw took a deep breath. "Yes?"

"I"ve picked up activity in the atmosphere. A big ship. It landed on the other side of the ruin, down past the broken spire."

"Any chance it"s one of ours?"

"No, sir. It"s got to be s.p.a.ce force. The signature is nothing civilian, nothing like I"ve seen anyway, and it"s really big."

Just when you thought things couldn"t get any worse.

"Tell Silvarre and get him to the h.e.l.lrakers," Holtzclaw ordered. The soldier rushed off.

Holtzclaw opened a channel to his perimeter captain as he hustled to the artillery. "Possible incoming," he said. "I"m showing up at HR-2 for an inspection. Double check the perimeter drones."

"Yes, sir."

"Are all the Guardians active?"

"Yes, sir, though Shredder-that is, number five-has only seventy rounds. It"s on the north side."

Holtzclaw nodded. It was as he remembered. He simply wanted to double-check everything and get everyone ready for the worst. If the UNSF was here, chances were it wouldn"t be a minor attack.

h.e.l.lraker number two sat beside one of the largest alien plants in the camp. The men called it Thor. The robotic artillery piece was in the best shape of the four h.e.l.lrakers his unit had once operated. One of the four had been cannibalized for a few parts too sophisticated for their a.s.sault ships to fabricate. The other two were operable though compromised in one way or another. Thor was just about perfect. It was a treaded vehicle, five meters on a side, taller than Holtzclaw, and covered in dull black armor with a group of four stub barrels pointed at the sky.

With the help of the spotting drones, or any other accurate information source, the machine could deliver anti-personnel sh.e.l.ls to any location within thirty kilometers. The smart sh.e.l.ls it launched were rocket/projectile hybrids. They were also highly configurable and could alter their own course enough to change the destination by kilometers on the way down. They could also be directionalized to deliver more power in a particular direction upon impact. The kill radius of each smart sh.e.l.l when the blast was evenly distributed extended over one hundred meters.

The h.e.l.lrakers could launch two sh.e.l.ls per second (though the one dubbed Conan had to fire more slowly), which was often useful for saturating defenses. The h.e.l.lrakers were their only real chance of fighting back if the UNSF had found them. Though with only three machines left, Holtzclaw knew any engagement with s.p.a.ce force robots could be disastrous for him and his unit. They were simply running too low on men, machines, parts, and ammunition.

The fourteen Guardian robots on their perimeter could buy them time, but those machines were old and had limited range. As soon as any sophisticated fighting unit acquired them, the Guardian"s lifespan would be measured in seconds. To make matters worse, the s.p.a.ce force usually fought with support from orbit.

Silvarre showed up ten seconds after Holtzclaw. Silvarre had short charcoal hair and a deep tan. Holtzclaw"s highest ranked subordinate looked lean compared to the solid block of Holtzclaw"s square body. The man"s cheeks looked more sunken. Holtzclaw thought Silvarre looked worse than when he last saw him, but said nothing.

Holtzclaw thought about their other ordnance. He had four lightly armed a.s.sault ships, designed to carry his men from world to world. The ships had been able to produce just enough food and parts to keep them going. He could scramble those and try to attack the enemy ship while they were on the ground. If the UNSF was conducting an armed drop, though, there would be other ships in orbit prepared to interdict.

More men started to arrive.

"Crack open the backup magazines," Holtzclaw ordered. The men obeyed, showing him the reloads they had waiting for the artillery machine. Silvarre and Holtzclaw examined what they could and ran some diagnostics while their UED remote sensor probes waited for signs of an incoming attack.

Fifteen minutes ticked by with no sign of the enemy. If the s.p.a.ce force came, he would order his officers to disperse, have the link jamming turned on, and bolster the defense. They saw only the red rocks pocked with holes, the tall alien plants, and the old buildings of the Konuan ruins. All their scans, electromagnetic, seismic, and chemical, indicated nothing amiss.

"They must not know we"re here," Silvarre said. "There would be no reason to hold back after a drop in the open like that."

"Then why are they here? This isn"t exactly a point of strategic interest. And they"ve won the war, at least for now."

"It"s time to reexamine our a.s.sumption that it"s the s.p.a.ce force," Holtzclaw said.

"Whoever they are, maybe the d.a.m.n monster will get them," Silvarre said.

"It"ll get a few of them, sure," Holtzclaw said. "Then they"ll get wise and start hunting it. Unlike us, they"re bound to have plenty of supplies to use against it."

Which means we should make their supplies our supplies, he thought.

"Maybe it"s just a big science expedition," Silvarre suggested. "We could take *em."

"Hang low. Maintain surface camouflage discipline. We"re getting close to some of the inner chambers. I"d like to see if we can find what we want before they notice us."

"Yes, sir."

"Send out a couple of probes under cover of darkness. Don"t let them get too close, you hear me? Set up some surveillance about a kilometer out from where they touched down."

"Yes, sir..." Silvarre hesitated. "It"s going to be a dicey night here without those sensor probes, sir."

Silvarre referred to the monster that hunted them. They had just enough detection to make it challenging for the creature to hunt them. Every now and then a scout probe spotted the thing and recruited a nearby Guardian to take a few shots at it. When that happened it usually retreated.

"I know it. But we won"t be here much longer. Either we"re going to get out of here, or we"re going to hit them and take everything they have. Just sleep with your finger on the trigger tonight."

Silvarre nodded grimly.

Maybe we"ll get lucky and blast the monster"s brains out this time. Or maybe it will find easier prey across the ruins.

The next hour drew itself out slowly, agonizingly. Holtzclaw finally decided no attack was coming. He left men at the ready by Thor just in case. He went down into the tunnels to check on progress. The arrival of the strange ship meant the schedule had to be accelerated even further.

He entered the room near the heart of the Trilisk complex, or at least the spot they had decided had the most promise. Men worked all around him.

We"re already working as fast as we can, he told himself. You can"t make it any faster. You just can"t.

The room had been enlarged, though it had cost them dearly. The Trilisk walls were strong, amazingly strong, and self-healing. After a few failed attempts, the UED soldiers had placed large steel columns around the room and slowly jacked up the ceiling after they had cleared the stone above the room from the outside. They cut the ceiling and held it open with cables. Then the Trilisk columns inside were pried from their mounts. All three columns would be removed together, as they were still attached to each by several umbilical lines of varying thickness. No one knew what the lines were for or how they could be disconnected.

A heavy lifting robot stood ready to carry the Trilisk machines. Parts of the robot had been stripped down and reconfigured to fit down into the tunnel. Everything had been a struggle from the beginning. Yet it had given the men purpose, and hope.

It is as if the entire tunnel system was just grown in place, all in one piece by nanomachines, one of his engineers had said. Having to take out the columns by themselves had been like trying to remove a brain intact from its skull with a few wooden sticks.

The whole time, as they had worked feverishly in the tunnels, the monster had been hunting them. Extracting these devices had been their last hope. The scientifically inclined among them had chosen these columns carefully. They had said one was a power source. A staggeringly powerful one. No one knew what the other two columns were, but sitting next to that power they must be important. Possibly weapons or defense of some kind. And that was all they knew.

Forty-three lives lost, and a good part of our sanity, and we don"t even know what we"re stealing.

Holtzclaw wondered what he had done to anger the Five Ent.i.ties in a previous life.

Chapter 3.

The trio of Terrans followed their scouts toward the center of the ruins around them. Magnus and Telisa eagerly took the lead, while Cilreth was content to follow behind. The rocks were ridged and sharp, clearly not worn by weather as they would have been on many other habitable planets. Cilreth couldn"t spot a speck of dirt or even one dead leaf; just the red rocks, the greenish clumps atop their stalks, and the blue sky.

I"d probably be more useful back on the Clacker, trying to figure it out, Cilreth thought as she picked her way over the rough terrain. But after being stuck in there, it"s nice to get out and see a new world.

Cilreth had discovered that even a huge ship was still an enclosed microenvironment. She often roamed through virtual worlds, which fed her advanced mind, but some primitive instinct in her brain still cried out for a real planetary surface.

"What do you think?" asked Telisa, bubbling with enthusiasm.

"I can see why you enjoy it," Cilreth said neutrally.

"You like it, too," Telisa said. "The excitement of checking out a fresh, new world!"

"Yeah, well, so far so good, but where"s the dirt? The leaves? And Shiny said there were dangerous things here."

Telisa shrugged. "I don"t know. We can find out."

Something made a noise to their right. It sounded like a clicking or grinding on the rocky ground. Telisa raised her weapon. "Magnus."

"Telisa," Magnus replied and turned. Telisa indicated the direction of the noise.

"Check your feeds," Magnus said, turning away. "That"s one of ours."

"s.h.i.t," Telisa said. Cilreth checked her own scout information and finally found the one Magnus had mentioned.

He"s good at that. Must be military training.

The scout robot came into view, checking the dark holes in nearby rocks with a measuring laser and an ultrasonic probe. Cilreth checked its data. The larger plants it had investigated had created underground fissures in the rock filled with softer material. She thought all the surface particulates might have been washed into the resulting holes.

Self-made plant pots?

Telisa and Cilreth walked after Magnus. The first of the ancient houses they found were broken open and destroyed. Cilreth thought of them as houses because they were small and isolated on the outskirts of the ruins. The structures were always cubical. Each house held the rubble of its own broken walls and ceiling. Nothing had really survived on the surface of the original furniture or decor, if there ever was any. They continued on toward denser groups of buildings visible on the hillsides ahead, jutting above the strange plants that grew from every crevice in the rocks.

The plants had thick trunks like bamboo plants, but they quickly split into three branches that in turn split into three again. Each branch then terminated in clumps of greenish material three or four meters above the ground. Each clump looked like moss or hair. The effect was odd; in fact, if they hadn"t been on an alien planet, Cilreth might have suspected herself to be in a children"s VR.

She spotted a flash of bright red on a plant stalk.

"Wait, stop, I see something," Cilreth said.

Telisa turned back to look. Cilreth pointed at the red shape wrapped around an alien plant. The plant stood more or less alone amid a pile of spiky reddish rock.

It"s probably just a flower and you"re making an idiot of yourself.

Magnus turned as well. He pointed his rifle and backtracked the way he"d come. Cilreth glanced around to see if anything else looked odd while she pulled out her stunner. Soon Magnus had interposed himself between Cilreth and the plant where she"d glimpsed movement.

Typically male of him to step to the fore as if he has to protect us. But it makes sense, too; he is the most experienced with dangerous environs.

"I see it," Telisa said. The nebulous red shifted. It was hard to follow. "But it"s hard to track. I feel like there"s something wrong with my eyes when I look at it."

Whatever it was reared up from the plant it encircled. It emitted a half hiss, half buzz. Cilreth saw the creature was partially transparent. Once armed with that knowledge, what she saw started to make more sense.

"It"s mostly transparent. That red part is...inside," she said. "You"re p.i.s.sing it off."

Telisa kept glancing behind herself, though Cilreth couldn"t see why. Magnus stepped back.