Her legs started to scratch out a message. They opened fire.

Chapter 20.

Holtzclaw couldn"t reach most of his own men by link, and he hadn"t been able to get an update on the a.s.sault in orbit, either. The squads that had moved out had been able to daisy chain their communications when the jamming had turned against them, but nothing outside his a.s.sault group could be reached. That included the h.e.l.lrakers.

"Sir, take a look to the east," a member of his squad transmitted. Holtzclaw turned in his powered suit to take a look.

Black clouds of smoke rose into the sky behind them. So the camp had been hit, too. Just minutes ago a flurry of fire had come in, seemingly from all directions. Some of the Guardians had been taken out by guided missiles. Holtzclaw"s own squad still had their Guardian, though he half expected it to blow up at any moment.

This may be our last battle. This must have been UNSF after all, or at least a well-armed expedition.

"Stay in range of each other. Time to strike back. Remember, we still outnumber them. Likely they just blew their entire ordinance supply on our base," Holtzclaw told his men. Of course, it was pure speculation. Highly optimistic speculation.

He left his cover and resumed the advance. His squad joined him. They rose from behind rocks, through plant patches, and emerged from niches between the ruined buildings. The Guardian machine resumed its march, adding the sound of moving machinery to the march.

Kowalewski sent him a private message.

"Arakaki"s out there. She"s wasn"t synced up to cut through the jammers while we had them up, and now I can"t reach her anyway."

"She"s a good survivor," Holtzclaw said. "She"s on our friendly list, and that"s going to have to be enough." He double-checked his weapon"s settings and verified all his men were in it. The list was considerably shorter than it had been when he stepped up as a colonel.

"Split up. Kowalewski leads five squads to their big ship. We have to take it. I"m with the rest of us going into the ruins after the scientists we saw. We"ll need to secure their cooperation, maybe even use them as hostages. So set your weapons to wound."

Their PAWs and the projectiles they used could distinguish friend from foe with fair accuracy, and the rounds could veer in flight to strike things matching their target signatures. That included the ability to turn some percentage of lethal hits into disabling ones. Holtzclaw checked his men"s weapons through his link. They had all obeyed his orders.

The battle group split. There were now two missions. Holtzclaw"s squads turned south and moved through the ruins at a good clip. The city looked the same as it did on any other day-a maze of old buildings and alien plants. The sky remained as clear as always. It rarely rained, and when it did, all the water drained into the fissures where the plants rooted themselves.

Holtzclaw picked up information from another probe. He checked its history while his hand found its way to his shoulder to sc.r.a.pe off more old skin. Arakaki! She had taken it into the ruins after the monster. And there had been non-UED Terrans within its range.

"We have a friendly in the area," Holtzclaw reminded his three squads. It was easy to forget things like that when the fighting started. "Arakaki. She was after the monster."

"I hope she got it, sir," Schimke said.

Holtzclaw knew between the monster and the scientists she might have had her hands full.

If anyone comes out of this alive, she will, he thought.

"We have to find these scientists or whatever they are. They may be key to getting what we need from the ship. These three buildings first," Holtzclaw said, showing the men his map. "Each squad take one and work your way down to the tunnels below. Most likely that"s what they came to investigate. Arakaki may well have found her way to the tunnels as well, if she was hunting the Konuan. Report any signs of recent activity so we can close in on them."

Holtzclaw and his officers had long suspected the Trilisk tunnels were heavily used by the monster to move about the city without being detected. They had set a few traps down there, but somehow the thing that hunted them never fell for it.

The squads approached the buildings Holtzclaw had indicated. His personal squad"s Guardian covered them as they moved forward to find new spots next to buildings or in depressions in the rock. Then the Guardian machine moved forward. Holtzclaw caught sight of the probe, stationed outside one of the buildings he"d targeted.

Holtzclaw told his Guardian to patrol the vicinity of the buildings on the surface. It would never fit into the tight Konuan warrens. He configured it to fire low, at the feet of any Terrans it did not recognize. Its projectiles were so powerful, even striking the rocks below a running person would likely cause pieces of the sharp red rock to fly up and wound the target.

His squad had just reached the building and sent in a couple of grenades when combat broke out at one of the other buildings. Holtzclaw heard distant shots fired.

"We"re taking fire! Light so far. We definitely have some of them holed up in here," came the message from his second squad leader.

Holtzclaw"s squad looked to him. He checked the tunnel map. As expected, the two buildings linked up.

"Pressure them from topside," Holtzclaw told the second squad leader. "We"ll come in from below in the tunnel from the west. If we hurry we might trap them in there."

Then to his own squad: "Double-time it! Through the building! Find the well room and get into that tunnel!"

Chapter 21.

Telisa awakened.

Not again! c.r.a.p.

She drew in a long breath. In fact, the breath continued flowing in, in, in for a long time, until her chest had expanded like a giant balloon.

Chest? I have lungs. Big lungs.

She moved an arm. An immensely huge, strong arm that extended so very far.

Wait. Wait. This is different, but it"s good different. Human different?

She saw only darkness. Her hearing felt muted. Normal, lame Terran hearing. She felt around in the dark. Was it her own body?

Female. I"m female...

She felt a tiny ridge of a scar on her wrist where a Vovokan nasty had sampled her. And her hair was the right length.

I think I"m me! And my link?

An army of view panes exploded in her mind"s eye. Her link offered her its many services.

"Anyone there?" she asked tentatively through her link.

"Telisa?" The reply was marked as coming from Cilreth.

"Yes! Where in the h.e.l.l am I?"

"Stay calm. I think you"re...I think you"re in a Trilisk column."

"Please get me out." Telisa asked it in a calm way, but the panic was only just below the surface. Her recent experiences had all been too much.

"Then just think it: open. Think you want it open. Pray to it."

"There"s a prayer device?" she said. Without waiting for an answer, she thought: I want out. Please open!

At first there was only a humming sound. Then a growing sliver of light appeared above her. It widened until she could see that some kind of sheath over the tube was dropping down from the top. In a few seconds she would be free!

"It"s opening!" Telisa said. "Wait. I"m still inside some kind of clear tube."

"It takes longer," Cilreth said calmly. Her friend"s voice rea.s.sured her. "Telisa, can you hear me?"

"Oh, thank the Five," Telisa croaked.

"It"s okay now. Let"s get you out of there."

"Cilreth. You"re not going to believe where I"ve been! Magnus just killed me!"

"Maybe you"d better just rest for a minute and take some deep breaths."

She think"s I"m delusional. Lack of oxygen?

"It"s a Trilisk body switcher," Telisa explained.

"That"s not possible."

"Think about it, Cilreth. This is Trilisk stuff we"re clowning around with."

"Your brain is trained throughout your infancy to grow and adapt its connections and signals from your own-"

"Yes, I know. Believe me, I know. But sufficiently advanced technology can adapt my personality and thought patterns onto other nervous systems and map my body signals to those of radically different creatures." Telisa stood up carefully.

"It would be much more complicated than a simple mapping unless the target creature was totally humanoid." But now her voice carried less conviction. Cilreth was thinking on it.

"I know. I know. Yet it only took a bit of practice. I was one of the slugs. The Konuan were a lot cooler than stupid slugs, by the way. Just ask Magnus when he gets back. He killed me."

He must think I"m dead. Even if he doesn"t know that was me.

"What?" Cilreth asked.

"I"m going to have to give him a hard time for that."

"You really believe all that happened? It was probably virtual," Cilreth said.

Telisa nodded. She didn"t believe it had been imaginary at all, but she didn"t blame Cilreth for thinking it. It was more logical to a.s.sume such adventures had occurred in a simulation.

It was just that Telisa knew the Trilisks could do it.

A tremor rumbled through the tunnels. Telisa felt her body shake. Her legs still felt just a bit long. Her head was so far from the ground. She bent her knees to compensate for a sudden lack of confidence in her ability to balance herself.

"Uh oh," Cilreth summed up. "Are you okay?"

"I"m still adapting to my new body," she said. Cilreth"s face reflected the oddity of Telisa"s statement. Then she got a link connection from Magnus.

"Telisa?"

"Magnus! Where are you?"

"The building where you got separated from Cilreth," he said. "I"m coming toward you."

"Oh! I guess our links are working again then," she said. "Who is that woman you"re with?" Telisa"s voice sounded a bit more accusatory than she intended. But her demand had a lot of emotional charge to it.

"What? How do you know about her?"

"Long story. Is she an explorer?"

"She"s UED. She took off. I"m not sure we can count her as a friend."

"What? They"re here?"

"Cilreth didn"t tell you? Are you with her?"

"Yes. She didn"t say anything yet...she hasn"t had a chance, I guess." Telisa said out loud to Cilreth, "I"m in touch with Magnus."

"Me too," Cilreth said.

"I heard an explosion," Telisa said. "Well, felt one, anyway."

"It wasn"t the Clacker," Magnus told them.

"I can"t believe the UED still exists. What can we do?"

"We have to stay in the buildings and tunnels. Anything on the surface is a sitting duck. They can kill us from kilometers away with a standard artillery system and a basic detection grid, which they have to have set up. I saw some combat machines. Nothing frontline, but maybe they have more than I saw. There"s no way you could get out unless you use Cilreth"s stealth suit."

"We"ll wait for you," Telisa said.

"Prepare yourself. We may have to surrender. We can"t fight robots. And there may be hundreds of them."

"I have the breaker claw," she mentioned.

"What"s its range? I doubt your reflexes can compete with military hardware. Good news is they may want us alive to get them the Clacker. They must wonder what the h.e.l.l it is."

"That"s good news? That just means we"re about to be captured and tortured," said Cilreth.

Telisa looked around the room. Three tunnels led out in different directions. One of the three huge pillars had opened to emit her. The room looked empty otherwise, though she suspected the other pillars and maybe the walls were full of surprises.

"You two could use your stealth to leave and get back to the Clacker," Telisa said.

"No. What would you do?" Cilreth said.