Conquerors' Legacy

7

The room was a large one, probably encompassing the entire underground structure, though measurements would have to be taken to confirm that. The beams from the hand lights swept across Human-Conqueror-style chairs and tables, a curved desk with a ring of darkened monitors facing an empty chair, and walls lined with tall, slender equipment cabinets. Some of the cabinets hummed softly, with small rows of colored lights set into their fronts, which glowed steadily or flicked on and off in complex patterns. Other cabinets stood quietly, with no indication as to whether or not they were functioning.

"Looks like some sort of command room," one of the warriors commented.

"Perhaps," Klnn-dawan-a said, looking behind her. There was a hand-sized panel with two small blue lights set into the wall just beside the door. She waved her hand over them without effect, then gingerly touched the rightmost light with a fingertip. She'd guessed correctly: abruptly the room was filled with a soft white glow radiating from hidden sources behind the cabinets.

A strange multiple stuttering sound came faintly from the direction of the stairway. "What was that?" she asked.

"Human-Conqueror projectile weapons," one of the warriors told her, moving to the door and looking up. "Better hurry, Searcher—I don't think we're going to have much time."

"Understood," Klnn-dawan-a said, feeling her tail speed up again as she crossed to the cabinet directly facing the monitor desk. That particular cabinet was also the one with the most flickering lights: fifty of them, laid out in a rectangular pattern of five rows with ten lights each. A row of Human-Conqueror letters was affixed beneath each of the lights, with other lines of letters in the cabinet's two upper corners. The cabinet itself was humming—a low, pervasive tone—and felt oddly cold to the touch. "Do any of the warriors on Dorcas understand the Human-Conqueror language?" she asked, pulling a field camera from her waist pouch and starting to photograph the letters.

"We all had a short orientation course before we got here," Tbv-ohnor said, stepping up beside her. "The written language ought to be programmed into our interpreter, though."

Another stutter of projectile gunfire from overhead wafted its way down the stairway. To Klnn-dawan-a's apprehensive ear slits, it sounded as if they were getting closer. "Here," she said, thrusting the camera into Tbv-ohnor's hands. "I want you to get me photos of all the cabinets. Pay particular attention to words and other lettering. I'm going to take a look inside this one."

"Right," Tbv-ohnor said, slinging his laser rifle and moving off across the room with the camera.

The front panel, Klnn-dawan-a quickly discovered, was an independent piece of metal, attached to the sides of the cabinet with a variant of the helical fastener that the Zhirrzh and every other race they'd come across had independently developed. One of the fingers of her manifold tool was the right size for the cruciform fastening slots of these particular helics, and in half a hunbeat she had the front panel off.

Given the obviously advanced state of Human-Conqueror technology, she had expected the equipment inside the cabinet to be highly complex. What she hadn't expected was the incredible extent to which that equipment had been miniaturized. Perhaps a hundred cables fed into the cabinet from openings in the back panel, snaking their way individually and in bundled groups to a mere six sites evenly spaced from top to bottom along the centerline. There the cables split into individual fibers of metal or glass, which vanished into the faces of small cubes suspended in midair by thick gray cylinders running horizontally across the cabinet. The cylinders themselves disappeared in turn through openings in the right and left walls, presumably into the cabinets on either side.

It was strange and very alien, and for a beat a disturbing vision flashed through Klnn-dawan-a's mind: that of a group of trillsnakes trying to swallow cube-shaped nornins, sculpted perhaps by some old neofacetist artisan.

Hastily, she chased the image from her mind. Considering what was going on above them, the last thing she wanted to think about was trillsnakes devouring nornins. Leaning halfway into the cabinet, she focused her light on one of the cubes, looking for some way to open it.

Surrounded by the pervasive hum of the cabinet, she never heard the footsteps that must have charged down the stairway. But suddenly Tbv-ohnor was there beside her. "Time to go, Searcher," he said urgently.

"Now?" Klnn-dawan-a asked. "But—"

"Now, Searcher," Tbv-ohnor snapped, grabbing her upper arm and yanking her bodily away from the cabinet. "The enemy's almost here."

Klnn-dawan-a's protests died at the back of her tongue. A few beats later they were all heading up the stairway.

"It might already be too late," Tbv-ohnor warned grimly as they clumped hurriedly up the steps. "Commander Thrr-mezaz pulled some trick that's keeping the Human-Conquerors' warcraft out of the sky in this area—I didn't get the details. But their ground warriors were already down, and the commander's reinforcements won't get here before they do."

"Maybe we should just stay down here," Klnn-dawan-a suggested, her tail spinning harder with the exertion of the climb. "If the room is that important to them, they won't risk damaging it. We could wait until it's safe to come out."

"Unless they prefer destroying it to letting us have it," Tbv-ohnor countered. "In which case they'll just roll some of their explosives down the stairway."

The stuttering sounds of Human-Conqueror weapons were getting louder, and as they neared the surface, Klnn-dawan-a could hear the hissing of laser rifles as the Zhirrzh warriors returned the fire. They reached the entrance chamber at the top of the stairs to find one of the warriors crouching beside each of the walls while the third, lying on the metal floor a stride back from the entrance, methodically sprayed laser flashes back and forth across his angle of fire. "Are they out there?" Tbv-ohnor asked as they reached the chamber.

"I don't know," the warrior at the right-hand wall said. "The Elders say they're not close enough to see us yet, but I keep seeing movement out there in the trees."

"Nothing that says Elders can't make mistakes," Tbv-ohnor grunted, moving up behind him and peering cautiously outside. "Especially with the kind of visual camouflage the Human-Conquerors like to use. Question is, how do we get around them?"

Klnn-dawan-a eased a stride forward. A dozen small smoldering fires and general haze of smoke could be seen throughout the area the third warrior was still sweeping laser fire across. "That question's going to be academic if you set the whole forest on fire," she warned.

"It'll also be academic if we let them get a straight shot in here," Tbv-ohnor retorted, throwing a glare at her over his shoulder. "Let us handle this, all right?"

Flicking her tongue, Klnn-dawan-a stepped back behind the warrior on the floor. As she did so, an Elder appeared just outside the outer doorway, almost invisible against the mottled light pattern of the forest. "Watch out, Warrior First," he warned. "Three of the enemy have reached firing position. The other twelve are still approaching, using what seems to be a modified closed-talon formation."

"What about the warcraft?" Tbv-ohnor asked.

"Commander Thrr-mezaz's scheme seems to have driven them from the area," the Elder said. "Only temporarily, though, I suspect. Our commander at the Battle of F'orshn on X'sin tried a very similar trick, and—"

"Then we need to break out now," Tbv-ohnor cut him off. "Give me targeting on those three warriors."

The Elder vanished, was back a few beats later. "The first is there," he said, pointing with his tongue. "Behind the large tree—he's looking around it to the left of the bole. The second and third are there"—he pointed again—"on either side of a half-buried boulder."

"Right," Tbv-ohnor said, hefting his laser rifle as the Elder vanished again. "Fhz-gelic, get up off the floor—we're going to want two shots on each target. All warriors: aim and fire on my command. Prepare—"

Abruptly, the Elder reappeared. "Warrior—wait. The enemy warriors have suddenly pressed themselves into the ground. They must know—"

"—now!" Tbv-ohnor barked, jerking his laser rifle into firing position. In perfect unison the other five warriors did the same—

And as they fired, the forest to their left seemed to vanish in a dazzling explosion.

Klnn-dawan-a staggered back with a scream, her midlight pupils stabbed with pain. A split beat later she was slammed hard onto the metal floor as the ground bucked like a wild animal beneath her feet and a roar of sound hammered across her body.

Her midlight pupils were still useless; cautiously widening her darklight pupils, she saw the remnants of what must have been a huge fireball rising above the nearest trees. "What happened?" her numbed ear slits heard her voice say.

But there was no answer. Cautiously lifting her head, she looked around her.

Her first horrible thought was that that single blast had raised all six of the warriors to Eldership. They lay on the floor at the front of the entrance chamber, unmoving, their laser rifles lying haphazardly across the floor or still held in limp grips. But even as she stared in rising panic, she saw Tbv-ohnor's left foot twitch and realized what had in fact happened. Standing at the outer door, mostly outside the limited protection of the entrance chamber, they'd been hit much harder by the light and shock wave of the explosion.

It wasn't as bad as she'd feared. But it was bad enough. Stunned warriors were no more capable of fighting than warriors who'd been raised to Eldership... and there were fifteen enemy warriors converging on them.

Which meant it was up to her. Pressing her tongue against the side of her mouth, fighting a sudden wave of nausea, she got to her knees and crawled across the floor toward the warriors.

Tbv-ohnor's tail had begun a sluggish undulation by the time she reached the nearest laser rifle. Getting a grip on the shoulder brace, she hauled it over to her, wondering uneasily whether her limited experience with handheld stingers would be any help in handling the vastly more powerful warrior weapon. Picking it up, she climbed to her feet and stumbled to the entrance.

And froze. There, not twenty strides away, a line of eight Human-Conquerors stood or knelt in their camouflage clothing. Their weapons pointing straight at her.

"Pull up, Vanbrugh!" Holloway barked into his comm as the laser beam raked across the Corvine's underside. "Pull up, damn it!"

"He can't," Takara bit out, waving a fist toward the display as the Corvine twisted violently to the right.

He was right, Holloway knew, watching helplessly as the Corvine slid even farther to the side. It was done for, with bare seconds left before either the enemy laser sliced it open or else it crashed onto the forest floor. He cringed in anticipation, wondering why Vanbrugh and Hodgson didn't eject; realized an instant later that they had neither the time nor the altitude left to do so. They were going to die out there. Violently, uselessly, they were going to die.

"Look!" Takara said suddenly, jolting Holloway out of his horrified fascination with the doomed Copperheads. "Bethmann's coming back."

Holloway swore. Bethmann was coming back, all right. The second Corvine had veered around in a tight curve and was blazing full throttle back toward Vanbrugh's crippled fighter and the laser attacking it. Recklessly flying back into danger— "Bethmann, get out of there," Holloway snapped into the comm. "You can't help them now."

There was no answer... but even as Holloway started to repeat the order, he saw it was too late. The heavy laser had flicked away from the crippled Corvine, relinquishing the chance for a direct kill in order to deal with this new threat bearing down on it. Helplessly, Holloway watched as the brilliant beam came on again, grazing the flank of Bethmann's approaching fighter.

And then, abruptly, the Corvine's nose pitched violently upward, the movement all but killing its forward momentum. The laser swung wide, its operators caught off guard by the maneuver. For a split second the aircraft seemed to stand on its tail in midair, its underside blatantly exposed to the enemy. The beam checked its movement, tracked back toward its target—

And in a burst of Icefire the Corvine vanished.

"What the hell?" Takara said, blinking. "Where did it go?"

"It went up, sir," Crane said, sounding more than a little stunned himself. "Just straight up."

"Track him," Holloway ordered.

Crane keyed his board, and the monitor view pulled back and swung upward. Sure enough, there was Bethmann's Corvine, halfway to the stratosphere and just starting to curve over the top of his arc. "Incredible," Takara said. "There's a solid year's worth of dumb luck shot all to hell."

"I don't think there was any luck to it at all," Holloway said, a sudden suspicion striking him. "Crane, see if you can locate Vanbrugh's Corvine."

"Yes, sir." The monitor screen split, bringing up a second image....

Takara whistled softly. "I'll be damned."

Holloway nodded silently. Vanbrugh's damaged Corvine, not looking nearly as crippled now as it had when Bethmann had come charging to the rescue, was flying low across the Dorcas landscape, racing back toward the relative safety of the mountains.

"It was a diversion," Takara said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Vanbrugh couldn't slide out of firing range fast enough, so Bethmann charged in to draw the heat away from him."

"And got the enemy to split his attention just long enough for both of them to get away," Holloway said, a shiver running up his back. A maneuver improvised on the spot, its details communicated between the two crews, its execution handled with exquisite timing and coordination. All of it accomplished in perhaps half a dozen seconds.

A few years back, when Lord Stewart Cavanagh and Commander Adam Quinn had raised the issue of improper Copperhead cadet screening, there had been long and heated debates throughout the Commonwealth as to whether the Copperheads were even worth all this effort and money. As a good Peacekeeper officer, Holloway had of course stood solidly behind the Copperheads in his own discussions with civilian friends and relatives. Privately, though, he would have had to admit that he really didn't understand why Peacekeeper Command was so adamant on keeping the unit.

He did now.

His hand was still squeezing the comm tightly. Easing his grip, he clicked it on. "Vanbrugh, this is Holloway."

"Marlowe, Colonel," the voice of Bethmann's tail man came back promptly. "Vanbrugh can't respond—their main comm system's been damaged. Copperhead laser link's still working, though."

"What's their situation?"

"Bad, but not critical," Marlowe said. "They've lost some maneuvering ability and about half their targeting equipment. Still flyable, but they'll need some patchwork before they're ready for full combat again."

Holloway and Takara exchanged glances. Their supply stockpile was barely adequate to maintain the Peacekeeper unit and the twenty-five thousand civilians bivouacked behind them in the mountains. Their chances of having replacement parts for a Corvine fighter on hand were well-nigh nonexistent. "Understood," he said. "What about you?"

"We lost a little paint, but nothing serious," Marlowe assured him. "All major systems are up and humming, and we're ready to go burn some backside."

"Stand by." Holloway shifted his attention to Crane. "Strike-force status?"

"They're on the ground, sir," Crane said. "Duggen reports they're moving toward the target zone; getting some enemy fire and returning it, but at this point both sides seem to be shooting blind. They have no air cover, though—the aircars had to pull back when that ground laser opened up."

"I see," Holloway said, chewing that one over. On the one hand, with one Corvine already damaged, the last thing he wanted was to lose any more of their already inadequate air power. But on the other hand, the aircars' unauthorized withdrawal from the scene meant that Sergeant Duggen's strike force was completely open to an attack by the Zhirrzh copters. And if the Zhirrzh commander hadn't realized that yet, he would soon.

And they couldn't abandon the tectonic station to the enemy. Which left him exactly one option. "Marlowe?"

"Sir?"

"You think you and Bethmann can take out that ground laser station by yourselves?" Holloway asked. "Without losing more than paint in the process, I mean?"

"Piece of pie, Colonel," Bethmann cut in. "Just give the word."

"Consider it given," Holloway said. "But watch yourselves."

"Acknowledged. Copperheads out."

The radio went silent. "You think they can do it?" Takara asked.

"If that's the only surprise the Zhirrzh have planned, I'm sure they can," Holloway said. "My only worry is that there might be another half-dozen ground stations stashed around that we don't know about. How in hell did they manage to set that one up without our seeing them do it?"

"Sir, we may have an answer to that," Crane spoke up. "Gasperi's done a quick analysis of the spotter tapes, and he thinks the laser was that belly payload we saw one of the copters carrying. He set it down before they all scattered back home."

"Tricky," Takara said. "Speaking of copters, it looks like they're regrouping."

He was right. Regrouping and shifting direction, and a moment later heading back north toward Duggen's strike force.

"Terrific," Holloway growled, searching the monitor for Bethmann's Corvine. The fighter was still cruising across the sky, a couple of klicks above the ground and nearly five klicks northwest of the target zone. "Bethmann, whatever you're planning, you'd better get to it," he warned. "The copters are on the move."

"We see them, Colonel," Marlowe said. "Just keep your aircars out of the area. And warn the ground troops to brace themselves for one hell of a shock wave."

"Relay that, Crane," Holloway ordered, frowning at the monitor. What did the Copperheads have in mind...?

And then, even as Crane spoke softly into his microphone, the Corvine rolled almost lazily onto its back and abruptly dropped nose first toward the ground.

"Cass—!" Takara gasped.

"Easy, Fuji," Holloway said, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping fervently the dive was planned and not the result of some sudden malfunction. The Corvine continued its plunge, building up incredible speed; and then, just when it seemed a crash was inevitable, its nose pulled up and it leveled into horizontal flight. An instant later it was burning through the air at nearly Mach 2 toward the Zhirrzh laser installation.

Flying below treetop level.

The diversionary maneuver a few minutes earlier had been impressive. This one literally took Holloway's breath away. Flying just over the tops of the shorter trees, corkscrewing deftly between the tops of the taller ones, the Corvine was only sporadically visible even to the Peacekeeper spotters. To the lower-flying Zhirrzh copters, it would be all but invisible. The Zhirrzh at the laser would never even see it coming.

Five seconds to go. Holloway hoped Duggen's strike force had gotten the word to go flat.

And then, suddenly, a small but brilliant fireball bloomed in the forest. Half a second later the Corvine reappeared, climbing into clear air again and curving hard around back toward the incoming copters.

Takara shouted something in Japanese. "They did it!"

"Crane, get the aircars back in the area," Holloway ordered. "Form up to support the Corvine—I want those copters warned away. Then get me a status check on the strike team."

"Yes, sir."

The monitor area's mess table was a few steps away, sparsely stocked with local fruit, Peacekeeper field meal bars, and drink carafes. Holloway walked over to it, stretching tired leg muscles, and pulled himself a steaming mug of tea. "You think it's over?" Takara asked, coming up beside him.

"I suppose that depends on how badly the Zhirrzh want a fight," Holloway told him, adding a few precious drops of lemon.

For a moment Takara was silent. "You really think it's in there?" he asked quietly.

"What?" Holloway asked, taking a sip of the hot liquid and turning around to look at the monitor. Nothing had changed: the Zhirrzh copters were still there, and the Corvine was still drawing the equivalent of an imaginary line in front of them. So far they hadn't taken the dare to cross it.

"You know," Takara said. "A CIRCE component."

Holloway looked at him, his stomach tightening. "Is it that obvious?"

Takara shrugged. "Probably not to anyone else. I just happen to know you better than most of the others. You wouldn't risk your people like this unless the stakes were astronomically high. There's not much on Dorcas that comes under that heading. At least nothing I know about."

Holloway looked back at the monitor. "I don't know anything either, at least not for certain. There were never any official disclosures or even unofficial hints—it was Dr. Cavanagh, actually, who got me thinking this direction. But the longer this war drags on without CIRCE making a grand entrance, the more I wonder if maybe we really are sitting on a piece of it."

Takara grunted. "Let's just hope the Zhirrzh don't get hold of it," he said grimly. "If they do, we might as well start calling them the Conquerors again."

"Yes," Holloway said. But even as he envisioned those invulnerable Zhirrzh warships armed with CIRCE weapons, the face of Melinda Cavanagh floated into view. Her earnest, serious expression as she'd relayed that Zhirrzh ghost's opinion that this war was a mistake...

"Colonel?" Crane called excitedly, half turning in his seat. "The outriders have reached the target. Looks like Duggen's got the drop on them."

"Get me a picture," Holloway ordered as he and Takara hurried back to their places. A moment later the image came up.

Holloway leaned forward, resting his mug on the back of Crane's chair. It was the entrance to the tectonic station, all right—he'd been there once and remembered what the place looked like. The outer door had been opened and swung wide, and he could just make out some figures inside the darkened entryway. "Can you enhance it?"

"Yes, sir." Crane worked his board, lightening and sharpening the view.

Takara whistled. "That's not getting the drop on them, Crane. That's a full-fledged thud."

"A thud and a half," Holloway agreed. A group of Zhirrzh—the whole contingent, it looked like—were lying unmoving in the front of the entryway. Stunned or dead.

He clicked his comm onto Duggen's channel. "Duggen, this is Holloway," he said. "Looks like you've got a clear path."

"Already on it, Colonel," Duggen's voice came back. "Squad One: pincer in. Outriders, stay sharp—we don't know how fast they can recover."

And as if on cue, the alien farthest back in the entryway cautiously lifted his head. For a moment he peered toward the doorway, apparently assessing the situation. Then, keeping low, he began slinking toward the door. "Duggen, you've got movement," Holloway said.

"I see it," Duggen said. "Outriders, stand ready; Squad One, hustle it to backup. You got a choice here, Colonel: you want a prisoner or a cadaver?"

"Prisoner, if possible," Holloway said. "But don't lose anyone in the process."

"No problem," Duggen said. "I doubt they've got much fight left in them."

The alien was still moving, and now Holloway could see involuntary-looking twitches in some of the others. "Looks like they're all starting to come to," Holloway warned.

"Squad Two's just about here," Duggen replied. "Soon as they're in backup, we'll move in."

Holloway bit at the inside of his cheek. They'd saved the tectonic station—at least for the moment—and in another minute they'd have some prisoners. Bargaining chips, if the Zhirrzh understood such things. Maybe even a way to corroborate this ghost/Elder thing of Melinda's.

And then the alien reached down and picked up one of the laser weapons.

At the edges of the monitor screen the muzzle ends of two Oberon assault guns appeared as the Peacekeeper outriders within camera range drew a bead on the enemy soldier. "So much for their not having any fight left," Takara said.

Holloway didn't answer. A word from him—a couple of bursts from those Oberons—and that would end it. The Peacekeepers could take the time to well and properly seal the tectonic station, and this potential threat to a possible CIRCE component would be finished. Certainly enough humans had died already in this war; and if Melinda was right, the aliens probably wouldn't take another six or seven Zhirrzh deaths all that seriously.

But if Melinda was also right about this war's being a mistake...

The alien had gotten the weapon to his shoulder, its muzzle angled downward toward the ground, and was moving with a strange awkwardness toward the entryway door. "Target him," Duggen ordered. "If that muzzle starts up, take him down."

The alien reached the entryway door and stopped. For a heartbeat he just stood there, weapon ready but still not aimed.

And Holloway came to a decision. "This is Holloway. All Peacekeepers, hold your fire."

"Sir?" Duggen said.

"You heard me," Holloway said. "Hold your fire unless and until fired on."

"Colonel, we're damn exposed out here," Duggen said, his voice tight. "If we wait until he fires, we could lose half the team."

"That's an order, Sergeant," Holloway said, clicking his comm to the aircars' channel. "Aircars, this is Holloway. Do either of you have a working external loudspeaker?"

"Aircar One, sir," the answer came back promptly. "I have one."

"I want you to fly over toward the Zhirrzh village, Erikson," Holloway said. "Not fast, like an attack. Just sort of drift over toward there, the way Sergeant Janovetz flew in four days ago. Be sure to stay well away from the white pyramid."

"Yes, sir."

"Crane, give me a split screen," Holloway ordered, ignoring the look on Takara's face. "Strike-team monitor and spotter view of the aircar."

"I hope you're not planning to send him all the way in," Takara murmured. "We still don't know what's happened to Janovetz."

"This is a different kind of experiment," Holloway assured him, watching the monitor. Aircar One had left its position and was moving gingerly toward the waiting line of attack copters. So far they were just hovering there watching him. "I want to see how willing their commander is to make deals."

Takara snorted under his breath. "Cass, these are the Conquerors," he reminded Holloway darkly. "You don't get a name like Conquerors by making deals."

"Maybe," Holloway said. "On the other hand, they did let Duggen's team get away unharmed the last time we tried to get to the tectonic station. That kind of lenience wouldn't seem to fit the Conquerors tag, either."

Takara grunted. "If they even spotted them. I'm still not convinced they did."

The copters had broken formation now, one of them moving to flank Aircar One. Holloway held his breath; but the alien aircraft didn't open fire. Instead, it merely dropped into a parallel course, its weapons trained warningly on the Peacekeeper craft. "Hold it steady, Erikson," Takara reminded the pilot. "No sudden moves."

Holloway glanced at the ranging data from the spotters displayed at the bottom of the monitor. "Close enough," he told Erikson. "Do some lazy circles around that spot and put me on loudspeaker."

"Yes, sir. On loudspeaker."

Mentally, Holloway crossed his fingers. "Zhirrzh commander, this is Commander Holloway of the Peacekeeper forces. We have seven of your soldiers trapped. I want to offer you a deal for their return."

Takara threw him a frown. "I thought you wanted them as prisoners."

"I've changed my mind," Holloway said. "Crane, I need a contrast or gain change on the strike-force picture. Something that'll pick up faint objects, focused on the area around that entryway. Can you do that?"

"I'll try, sir," Crane said, fiddling with his board and splitting the strike-force picture into two duplicates. One of the images zoomed forward to frame the dark entryway, then faded into a strange pattern of black-and-white blurs. "How's that?"

"We'll know in a minute," Holloway said, leaning forward to gaze at the blurs. If Melinda's ghost had been telling anything even approaching the truth...

And, suddenly, there it was: a ghostly figure, barely visible even on the enhanced picture but clearly recognizable as a Zhirrzh, floating just outside the dark blob of the entryway. One of the blurs in the entryway moved, and on the unaltered strike-force picture the Zhirrzh holding the laser weapon lowered its muzzle the rest of the way to the ground. Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the ghost vanished.

Takara whistled softly. "I'll be damned. She was right."

"Looks that way," Holloway agreed, feeling a shiver run up his back. Real, living ghosts...

"Sir, report from Aircar Two," Crane spoke up. "The Zhirrzh reinforcements moving up from the south have stopped."

"Confirm that."

"Copperheads confirm, Colonel," Crane said. "Enemy reinforcements holding position one hundred forty-three meters south of the target zone."

"Maybe they're setting up another of those ground laser stations," Takara said.

"There's no indication of that, sir," Crane said. "They just seem to be waiting."

"Colonel, I'm getting something," Erikson's voice came from the speaker. "Boosting gain on the external mikes..." The speaker crackled for a second with background noise. Then, as the enhancers cleaned up the sound, a distant and oddly mechanical voice came through. The same voice, as near as Holloway could tell, that had been in the recording Sergeant Janovetz had sent back before his pulse transmitter had gone silent. "—of the Zhirrzh. Speak your offer."

Holloway clicked on his comm. "Your soldiers may return to you unharmed," he said. "But they must first leave behind all equipment and weapons that they are carrying."

He lowered the comm, his eyes on the enhanced strike-force picture. A few seconds later the ghost flicked into sight, its hands gesticulating, its tongue flicking in and out of its insubstantial mouth. On the other picture Holloway could see the Zhirrzh soldier responding, his tongue doing some serious flicking of its own. One of the other Zhirrzh had rolled groggily to his knees, and the first Zhirrzh broke off the conversation to lean over for a quick consultation. The kneeling Zhirrzh's tongue flicked, and the first straightened again for more discussion with the ghost. He leaned over for another dialogue with the other Zhirrzh, then stood upright again.

"I wonder why the Elder doesn't just move in between the two of them," Takara said.

"He can't," Holloway said. "Check out the geometry: the walls of the entryway are blocking a straight-line path between that point and the nearest white pyramid. Elder's can't go through metal, remember?"

The ghost flicked its tongue and vanished; and as it did so, there was another crackle of background static from Aircar One's external mike. "Why do you want their equipment?"

Holloway grimaced as he clicked on his comm again. He didn't give a damn about the soldiers' equipment, actually—the Peacekeepers had already collected enough alien stuff to keep the ordnance techs busy for months. All he wanted was to make sure none of the Zhirrzh carted away something that might turn out to be that elusive CIRCE component. But he could hardly tell the Zhirrzh commander that. "I want to make sure they have no weapons they can harm my troops with as they leave," he said instead. "Do you agree?"

He clicked off the comm. "Maybe you should point out that we can turn the whole bunch of them into Elders if he refuses," Takara suggested.

"I'm sure that's already occurred to him," Holloway said. "Anyway, I'd just as soon he not know that we know anything about that."

The ghostly Elder messenger had reappeared beside the entryway now and was holding another conversation with the standing Zhirrzh soldier. A fairly animated conversation, from the looks of it.

And understandably so. This was the critical moment, Holloway knew: the point at which the alien commander had to choose between his soldiers' lives and whatever passed for pride or command authority in Zhirrzh psychology. If he decided to slug it out rather than buckle to enemy demands, the first Holloway would know about it would be those laser weapons swinging up to target his men....

And then the standing Zhirrzh leaned over one final time, lowering his laser weapon to the entryway floor.

There was another crackle from the speaker. "I agree," the mechanical voice said.

Holloway took a deep breath and clicked the comm on again. "All right, Erikson, pull on back," he ordered. "Again, nice and easy. Duggen, have you been listening?"

"Yes, sir," Duggen answered. "I don't trust them, Colonel."

"I don't necessarily trust them, either," Holloway said.

"Stay sharp, and make damn sure none of them is carrying anything before you let them go. Watch for attempts to palm anything, odd bumps in their clothing—you know the drill."

"Understood, Colonel."

"I hope you're doing the right thing, Cass," Takara said as four Peacekeepers moved into the picture from off camera and headed purposefully toward the Zhirrzh. "We're outnumbered enough down here as it is. I don't much like the idea of letting seven of their soldiers go back home. Especially when we still don't know what they've done to Janovetz."

"I'm betting he's still alive," Holloway said. "They didn't let him land in their camp just to kill him. Not unless he attacked them first."

And yet, it suddenly occurred to him, perhaps Janovetz had done precisely that. The recorder and transmitter they'd attached to Janovetz's cheek dumped its reports via a pulsed, multi-high-frequency radio signal. Would the Zhirrzh have interpreted that as an Elderdeath attack? Probably. Would they have then killed Janovetz in perceived self-defense? Probably.

"Keep on top of this, Fuji," Holloway said, moving away from the monitor. "Vanbrugh and Hodgson should have their Corvine on the ground by now. I want to go check out the damage."

"Yes, sir."

Holloway threw one last look at the Zhirrzh soldiers divesting themselves of equipment under the watchful eyes of the Peacekeepers. Proud warriors—Conquerors—yet submitting to this indignity with only minor argument.

He wasn't yet ready to take everything Melinda's ghost friend, Prr't-zevisti, said at face value. But it was clear that there was more to all this than met the eye. And much more that needed to be learned.

"So that's that," Klnn-vavgi said as the last of the Elders vanished from the command/monitor room, heading out to quietly oversee the operation to the north. "We lose a mobile ground defense station, get eight warriors raised to Eldership—and then we just give up and let them have their underground structure back."

"I don't see a lot of practical alternatives," Thrr-mezaz growled, his tail spinning with frustration. Outmaneuvered, outgunned, and utterly dazzled by those unbelievable Copperhead warriors, the operation had been a fiasco. To have his warriors captured, disarmed, and sent back was just the crowning flick of the tongue to the whole thing.

"I don't see any, either," Klnn-vavgi said. "But not everyone will let it go at that. And I'm sure there'll be some who'll say you gave in just to keep Klnn-dawan-a from being raised to Eldership."

"And when they say that, you can tell them Eldership wasn't one of the options," Thrr-mezaz retorted, his tail twitching. "If I'd refused their commander's offer, the Human-Conquerors would have cut down Klnn-dawan-a and the warriors right where they stood. And inside all that metal, they would have been dead. Not raised to Eldership. Dead."

Klnn-vavgi's tongue flicked involuntarily. "Yes. Well... yes."

"Besides, the operation wasn't a complete waste," Thrr-mezaz went on. "The warriors got into the structure and had some time to look around. Maybe Klnn-dawan-a was able to figure out what the place is used for."

"Maybe," Klnn-vavgi said doubtfully.

Thrr-mezaz looked at the row of monitors, and at the Elders popping in and out with continuous reports about the disarming. They were proud and savage warriors, these Human-Conquerors. And yet they'd just passed up a chance to slaughter a group of their enemies.

Just as, six fullarcs ago, they'd let Thrr-mezaz himself and his two climbing companions leave the area of the Human-Conqueror stronghold.

Thrr-gilag had suggested to him that there were some intriguing inconsistencies in Human-Conqueror aggressiveness—inconsistencies that might be biochemically based. Thrr-mezaz wasn't yet ready to accept any such theory, at least not without some tangible proof. But it was becoming increasingly clear to him that there was more to these Human-Conquerors than what was on the surface.