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whining revs on the engines.
Then from the darkness -- plasma fire, sizzling through the rain-sodden,
saturated air. Some
Cetagandan hero -- officer, troop, tech, who knew? --
had crawled up out of the rubble and found a weapon
-- and an enemy to fire it at. Splintered afterimages, red and green, danced
in Miles's eyes. A
Dendarii patroller rolled out of the dark, a glowing line across the back of
his armor smoking and sparking until quenched in the black mud. His armor legs
seized up, and he lay wriggling like a frantic fish in an effort to peel out
of it. A second plasma burst, ill-aimed, spent itself turning a few kilometers
of fog and rain to superheated steam on a straight line to some unknown
infinity.
Just what they needed, to be pinned down by sniper fire now. . . . A pair of
Dendarii rear guards
started back into the fog. An excited prisoner -- ye gods, it was Pitt's
lieutenant again -- grabbed up the armor-paralyzed soldier's weapon and made
to join them.
"No! Come back later and fight on your own time, you jerk!" Miles sloshed
toward Murka. "Fall back, load up, get in the air! Don't stop to fight! No
time!"
Some of the last of the prisoners had fallen flat to the ground, burrowing
like mudpuppies, a sound sensible reflex in any other context. Miles dashed
among them, slapping rumps. "Get aboard, up the ramp, go, go, go!" Beatrice
popped up out of the mud and mimicked him, shakily driving her fellows before
her.
Miles skidded to a stop beside his fallen Dendarii and snapped the armor
clamps open left-handed. The soldier kicked off his fatal carapace, rolled to
his feet, and limped for the safety of the shuttle. Miles ran close behind
him.
Murka and one patrolman waited at the foot of the ramp.
"Get ready to pull in the ramp and lift on my mark,"
Murka began to the shuttle pilot. "R -- " his words were lost in an explosive
pop as the plasma beam sliced across his neck. Miles could feel the searing
heat from it pass centimeters above his head as he stood next to his
lieutenant. Murka's body crumpled.
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Miles dodged, paused to yank off Murka's comm headset. The head came too.
Miles had to brace it with his numb hand to pull the headset free. The weight
of the head, its density and roundness, hammered into his senses. The precise
memory of it would surely be with him until his dying day. He let it fall by
Murka's body.
He staggered up the ramp, a last armored Dendarii pulling on his arm. He could
feel the ramp sag peculiarly under their feet, glanced
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down to see a half-melted seam across it where the plasma arc that had killed
Murka had passed on.
He fell through the hatchway, clutching the headset
and yelling into it. "Lift, lift! Mark, now! Go!"
"Who is this?" came the shuttle pilot's voice back.
"Naismith."
"Yes, sir."
The shuttle heaved off the ground, engines roaring, even before the ramp had
withdrawn. The ramp mechanism labored, metal and plastic complaining --
then jammed on the twisted distortion of the melt.
"Get that hatch sealed back there!" the shuttle pilot's voice yowled over the
headset.
"Ramp's jammed," Miles yowled back. "Jettison it!"
The ramp mechanism skreeled and shrieked, reversing itself. The ramp
shuddered, jammed again. Hands reached out to thump on it urgently. "You'll
never get it that way!" Beatrice, across the hatch from
Miles, yelled fiercely, and twisted around to kick at it with her bare feet.
The wind of their flight screamed over the open hatchway, buffeting and
vibrating the shuttle like a giant blowing across the top of a bottle.
To a chorus of shouting, thumping, and swearing, the shuttle lurched abruptly
onto its side. Men, women, and loose equipment tangled across the tilting
deck.
Beatrice kicked bloodily at a final buggered bolt.
The ramp tore loose at last. Beatrice, sliding, fell with it.
Miles dove at her, lunging across the hatchway. If he connected, he never
knew, for his right hand was a senseless blob. He saw her face only as a white
blur as she whipped away into the blackness.
It was like a silence, a great silence, in his head.
Although the roar of wind and engines, screaming and swearing and yelling,
went on as before, it was lost somewhere between his ears and his brain, and
went unregistered. He saw only a white blur, smearing into the darkness,
repeated again and again, replaying like a looping vid.
He found himself crouched on his hands and knees, the shuttle's acceleration
sucking him to the deck.
They'd gotten the hatch closed. The merely human babble within seemed muffled
and thin, now that the roaring voices of the gods were silenced. He looked up
into the pale face of Pitt's lieutenant, crouched
beside him still clutching the unfired Dendarii weapon he'd grabbed up in that
other lifetime.
"You'd better kill a whole lot of Cetagandans for
Marilac, boy," Miles rasped to him at last. "You better be worth something to
somebody, 'cause I've sure paid too much for you."
The Marilacan's face twitched uncertainly, too cowed even to try to look
apologetic. Miles wondered what his own face must look like. From the
reflection in that mirror, strange, very strange.
Miles began to crawl forward, looking for something, somebody. . . . Formless
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flashes made yellow streaks in the corners of his vision. An armored Dendarii,
her helmet off, pulled him to his feet.
"Sir? Hadn't you better come forward to the pilot's compartment, sir?"
"Yes, all right . . ."
She got an arm around him, under his arm, so he didn't fall down again. They
picked their way forward in the crowded shuttle, through Marilacans and
Dendarii mixed. Faces were drawn to him, marked him fearfully, but none dared
an expression of any kind.
Miles's eye was caught by a silver cocoon, as they neared the forward end.
"Wait . . ."
He fell to his knees beside Suegar. A hit of hope . .
. "Suegar. Hey, Suegar!"
Suegar opened his eyes to slits. No telling how much of this he was taking in,
through the pain and the shock and the drugs.
"You're on your way now. We made it, made the timing.
With all ease. With agility and speed. Up through the regions of the air,
higher than the clouds. You had the scripture right, you did."
Suegar's lips moved. Miles bent his head closer.
". . . wasn't really a scripture," Suegar whispered.
"I knew it ... you knew it ... don't shit me . . ."
Miles paused, cold-stoned. Then he leaned forward again. "No, brother," he
whispered. "For though we went in clothed, we have surely come out naked."
Suegar's lips puffed on a dry laugh.
Miles didn't weep until after they'd made the wormhole jump.
4
Illyan sat silent.
Miles lay back, pale and exhausted, a stupid trembling concealed in his belly
making his voice shake. "Sorry. Thought I'd got over it. So much craziness has
happened since then, no time to think, digest. . . ."
"Combat fatigue," Illyan suggested.
"The combat only lasted a couple of hours."
"Ah? I'd reckon it at six weeks, by that account."
"Whatever. But if your Count Vorvolk wants to argue that I should have traded
lives for equipment, well
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