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Two of the chibas were swinging around their tripod-mounted weapon, bringing it to bear on Hark and the men around him. For an instant, he thought that he was dead, then the first troopers were in the gunpit. Renchett was among them, going to work on the chibas with his knife, slashing at the soft, yellow-gray organic parts of their bodies through chinks in their somewhat minimal carapace armor. It seemed that a species that could grow-build its troops as it needed them paid little attention to protecting them on the battlefield. Renchett worked with a savage relish until his suit was slick with the transparent goop that fountained from their wounds.

"I hate chibas, they're an abomination."

He was carefully wiping his knife as he reported to Rance.

"We got the left gunpit secured." "Right gunpit also secure."

The gunpit provided a brief respite, an interlude wi no one shooting at them. Hark hunkered down an* leaned against the parapet wall. "What happens next?"

Rance wasn't slow in supplying the answer. "Anyon over there know how to fire a Yal PBA?"

Helot answered. "I've checked out on one of these."

"So stay with it and give us covering fire."

"A-firm."

"Volunteering your way out, Helot?" "Screw you, Renchett. I don't enjoy the shit the way you do. I'll grab at any chance to save my ass."

There were distant screams in their helmets. Another twenty must have walked into the grinder.

"Okay, let's move out. Keep that covering fire com-ing.

This time they ran in V formation, with the sappers finding what protection they could in the angle of the V, covering the ground with fast ten-meter leaps. They were flanked by fire from the two PBAs. Once again, Hark had the feeling that some external force had a grip on him-it was akin to the fighting madness that had overwhelmed the young men back on his planet. He was taking risks that he would not normally contemplate. By the time they had overrun two more gunpits, Hark was so pumped up that he almost stumbled into a foxhole containing two chibas. They had light-yield energy weapons fastened directly to the ends of their mechanical arms. Somehow he had the impression that they were surprised. Renchett was right-they were an abomination. Fortunately, they were also slow. Hark blasted by instinct before they could bring up their weapons. He noticed that the chibas wore no helmets. The word was that they could breath anything.

"Wirefield ahead!"

The charge halted as the men flattened rather than blunder into an expanse of deadly molecular wire. Blast fire roared over their head$.

"Alternate blast and concussion to plow that wire under."

The massed fire boiled the ground in front of them, and the dust swirled up into a purple storm. There were a dozen major explosions in fast succession, driving the dust even higher. Hark hugged the quaking ground. What had been the wirefield looked like the end of the world. The pale dust even blotted out the light of the blazing thunderhead above the domes.

"That's the mines."

"Stay down, there may be still be jumpers."

A jumper was a saucer-sized disk that, when triggered, jumped to a height of a meter and a half and then sprayed rotating fire through a full 360 degrees. Sure enough, there were flashes of swirling fire inside the dust. When they stopped, Rance ordered the troopers up again.

"Into the dust, it's perfect cover. Watch your step, though, there may still be coils of wire lying around. Take it slow and easy."

They moved cautiously into the dust cloud. They were walking almost blind. One of the recruits turned on his helmet light.

"Turn that damned thing off," Rance ordered. "You want to be a perfect target?"

The light went off. The men pressed forward. The dust was starting to settle. They were all covered with a fine purple film. They were about to get through the wirefield unscathed when somebody began screaming.

"My foot! My goddamn foot! It's gone. The wire got me!"

Again Rance was directly there.

"Calm down! Get a seal dressing on the bleeding and lie down, try and dig yourself in. The e-vac will pick you up. In the meantime, your suit will take care of the pain."

The screaming sank to a drugged whimper as the suit blanketed its wearer with secreted analgesics.

"Move on," Rance told the others. "He'll be okay. Watch your own feet."

The dust had drifted and settled and was no longer any use as cover. There was firing all around, but none of it was directed at them and the majority of it came from Alliance weapons, not those of the Yal. There was a bout of ragged cheering as the first human troops reached the base of the dome. A port in the dome opened, and a squad of chibas rushed out, firing the weapons that they had instead of hands. They were quickly burned down.

"Okay, hold it. We can stop right here. The sappers can move up to the dome. The rest of us will hold this position."

They were standing on the edge of a trench filled with dead chibas. They had been dead only for a matter of minutes, and already they were starting to decay. The yellow-gray flesh was liquefying away from the metal skeletons that had supported it, turning back into the oily protein goop whence it had come. Nobody was in any particular hurry to get into the trench, and fortunately that didn't seem necessary. The only firing still going on was the mopping up of scattered chiba positions. Hark couldn't believe that it had actually happened, that it was over. He felt sick and dizzy-he believed that he would never be able to face food again. His hands shook except when he clutched his MEW, and yet, if anyone had yelled "Run," he would have run with desperation.

"Take the weight off but stay alert," Rance ordered.

Renchett had his knife out. "You want us to go and mop up the stragglers?"

"You've had your share of butchery for the day."

Renchett shrugged and sheathed the knife. The sappers were stringing explosives. Rance looked at the huge bulk of the dome and refused to imagine what might be happening inside the monster. He'd been inside Yal installations a number of times, and they always made him feel bad. They were just too alien. The outside was quite enough. What culture would fashion this gigantic curve of what looked like semi-polished purple stone? They must know what was about to be done to them. How did Yal panic? Rance shook his head and looked away. Hark was staring back in the direction from which they had come. The poor bastard probably didn't believe what had happened to him. The ground around the domes was like something out of a nightmare. There was charred and fused sand; some areas still smoked, others glowed. There were bodies all over, scattered among blackened wreckage from the downed dropcraft. "Mother of Gods!"

Instinctively everyone ducked. Something was happening in the blazing sky. The halo of warring energy that was now directly above them had abruptly and radically altered. What had once been a glaring white had dimmed to a suffused, bloody red. Rance was one of the few around the dome who knew enough to suspect what might be happening. Was the Yal shield weakening? If his installation was going to be destroyed, it was a logical move for the commander of the battery to try to take as many of the enemy with him as he could. If he dropped his shields, the forces on the ground would be wiped out by their own orbiting guns. The real question was how long it would take him to shut down the shields.

The sappers were through with their work. Rance started waving everybody back. "Back to the assembly points! On the double! We're pulling out!"

He tongued open the long-range communicator. "Bring down the e-vacs as fast as you can."

A strange voice came over Rance's helmet.

"This is Lanza, topman of sappers. I'm staying here with a guard until close to detonation. I don't want any chibas coming out and dismantling the charges.