Chapter Fifteen

SANTA CHICO. THE ORIGINAL PARADISE PLANET.

From orbit its colors were intense—Earth-like, but brighter, more alive. There were no pastels here, no gentle shadings. Vegetation was vivid emerald; fast-growing, all-conquering. That made the few real deserts intolerably bleak: hot as hell and dry as Mars. Barriers between the extremes of rich life and barren desolation were short, making the contrasts ever more striking. The oceans that covered over half of its surface were livid sapphire. Snow-white clouds were magnified by the deep atmosphere as they hurtled through the high, turbulent jetstreams.

The air with its 30 percent oxygen content was poisonous to unmodified humans. But for native life, the abundant gas was raw nuclear power to its biochemical processes. Evolution here had grown thorns on everything.

For some it was a magnificent challenge. A chance to live differently, abandoning the strictures that governed society on Earth.

Just how differently, Corporal Lawrence Newton was only just realizing. Now that the company of eight platoons had arrived at the chemical-processing factory, all he could see was decay. The facility was spread out over several acres. Its design illustrated only too well the new angles with which Santa Chico’s inhabitants set about attacking old problems. The closest he could come to describing it was organic gothic. Large sections of the machinery were alive, membranes and nodules blending smoothly into the metal and plastic portions. Or had been alive. Or were still alive but de-evolving, reverting to more primitive forms. He couldn’t quite decide. The factory obviously hadn’t been in use for some time.

It had been sited in a small valley that was a natural habitat for the gargul plant, a bush of yellow-and-scarlet spongelike dendrites whose sap contained wondrously complex molecules that could be employed as vaccine bases. Such compounds were a big factor in the original settlement effort. Santa Chico’s vegetation was a natural pharmacopoeia, which when harvested properly produced an astonishing array of medical and industrial applications. Now the garguls had returned to the factory, growing over and under the inert machinery. In many cases, Lawrence could see fissures in the pipes and organolytic crackers allowing the bush to take root. Fluffy lichens tarnished the big metal mountings. Pink moniliform fungi spiraled up support struts. Vines and creepers scaled the highest burner towers, forming thick-webbed buttresses.

Jeeps and trucks transporting the platoons fanned out from the narrow, overgrown track and halted beside the fecund equipment. Captain Lyaute ordered a sweep of the area. “I know it looks like a complete waste of time,” he told the platoons over the general frequency. “But we have to find out if anything can be salvaged from this crock of shit.”

Lawrence took Kibbo, Amersy, Nic and Jones with him. They stuck together as they searched their assigned section of the factory. For an hour they wandered through the tangle of machinery. Green-and-yellow-striped tigergrass had sprouted along the roads between the equipment, reaching their knees, which made it tough to walk even with Skin. Pipes that looked as if they were made out of bark arched overhead, connecting tanks to refinery buildings. Dark, dank fluids dripped down from small splits. They walked around ion exchangers and splitters grafted together out of translucent mushrooms the size of apartment blocks. Metal pumps and valves jutted out of the ground at odd intervals, hopelessly antiquated and out of place amid the slick biomechanical systems. One end of their section had an office block of stacked oblong rooms in a cube of girders: no power, broken windows, dead electronics. When they peered in through the open doors, creatures slithered through the darker recesses, escaping observation. There was nothing of any value anywhere. Nothing left working.

Every time they saw a bird in the distance, Lawrence flinched. Four of the fleet’s drop gliders had collided with windshrikes, flying animals larger than pterodactyls. The impacts had killed the windshrikes instantly, but they’d also sent the drop gliders tumbling out of the sky to smash across the landscape.

That was when Lawrence knew they’d made a mistake coming here. From the moment 435KN9’s drop glider splashed down in the lake outside Roseport all he wanted to do was get into a spaceplane and fly back up to a starship. If there were any left. He really hadn’t wanted to fly down to the surface to begin with.

They’d encountered exo-spheric weapons on their approach. One starship wiped out completely, all hands lost. Two more badly damaged. You couldn’t keep that sort of news from the platoons in the surviving starships.

Rumor had it that at first the admiral and the captains didn’t even know what attacked them. Sensors showed massive storms within the planet’s far-flung magnetosphere, where the flux bands compressed and twisted into hundred-kilometer vortices that spat out lethal particle beams. Remote satellites sent into the heart of the magnetic hurricanes revealed huge webs of chain molecule filaments, spinning for stability and manipulating the planetary magnetic field. Santa Chico had discovered how to create ephemeral energy cannon on a titanic scale. They weren’t even purpose-built. As the fleet found out later, the webs were simple induction systems to power orbital craft and microgee station facilities. Turning them into weapons was just a matter of reprogramming.

When the starships did reach parking orbit, the satellites couldn’t find any major cities on the planet. There were just large towns like Roseport on the existing settlement areas. They did find thousands of smaller towns and villages, all with identical pearl-white buildings. And there didn’t seem to be a datapool, at least nothing the fleet could link into. Which meant there was no central government to receive Z-B’s legal claim for asset realization. The flipside of that was it left them unable to deliver a warning about the gamma soak threat. Not that they knew where to gamma soak to intimidate the locals.

It gave everyone a foretaste of future events.

For Lawrence the defining moment had come when he waded ashore from the drop glider. They’d aimed for a broad lake that ran along the side of Roseport, one of the first settlements. On the final approach the drop glider’s forward camera had shown them a smear of white houses almost engulfed by brilliant emerald vegetation. The place resembled a Greek fishing town embracing the stony slopes that led away from the water.

Roseport might have been built by humans originally, but the new-natives who occupied it now were no longer thoroughbreds. Bipeds, tripeds, quadrupeds, even serpentine organisms, were ranged on the open ground between the buildings and the lake; they were mammalian, reptilian, equine, canine, simian, hulking things that didn’t fit any terrestrial classification. Each of them had retained a few human elements—hands, limb joints, facial composition, even hair in the form of manes and plumes—but that was all. Most had a kind of segmented exoskeleton, a dark amber shell as flexible as thick rubber. Some had developed entirely new types of hides.

The Skins stood in silence just above the shore in a long line, staring up at the city’s inhabitants as a variety of eyes and sonic pulses stared back.

“Who the fuck are they?” Ntoko asked as he crossed himself.

He should have known.

The Santa Chico settlement and investment company had been formed out of some very specific companies on Earth, those that relished challenge and tackled it with a bravura lack of orthodoxy. The majority came from one location.

Always a technology leader, California attracted the smartest researchers and entrepreneurs to its cutting-edge companies, most of which were moderately unconventional. Money excused a great deal, allowing them to live almost entirely as they pleased provided nobody else got hurt, and the technology companies did make a great deal of money. With Hollywood as their neighbor and prime example, every combination of sexual and narcotic abuse was enthusiastically pursued, along with freewheeling households.

To start with, this hippie chic company culture was based on electronic hardware and software, spreading from the techno heartland of Silicon Valley to install factories in every urban industrial precinct. Then, with the human genome finally read, genetics and biotech began their rise to prominence. The whole nature of “outrageous behavior” began to alter. Instead of using drugs, the new lords of biotechnology experimented upon themselves. The ethical review boards that licensed their company research activities were predominantly made up of elderly advisors, many of whom had strong religious beliefs. They saw cloning as inherently evil, and altering the human norm as an unholy sin. These were not the kind of restrictions acceptable to pioneers who more often than not had a completely different set of moral values. Several areas of research went underground.

Rejuvenation was the main goal, biotechnology’s holy grail. Though to that should be added enhanced body and organ functions, new and expanded senses, innovative methods of pleasure stimulation and limb redesign, among others. Athletes, professional and amateur, were keen devotees. The cosmetic applications were also hot topics; California’s ultimate deity. Just as the Internet had broken down the privacy and censorship barriers fifteen years before, so the tidal wave of quasi-legal medical, genomorph and cosmetic products helped overwhelm the moral legislators.

Billionaires cured themselves of cancer, cloned themselves to create new styles of dynasties, changed sex, lost weight without resorting to diets or liposuction, added new senses and prolonged their lives for decades. Organic AIs were germinated, and in many cases interfaced with humans. The muscle skeleton suits (Skin’s predecessors) were a popular product with government and corporate paramilitary divisions. Neurotronic pearls dominated the processing market. Thousands of new products made extensive inroads into millions of lives. At the heart of it all were the specialist companies. Small partnerships of ideas people with a few research labs and a lot of stock options, whose products would be licensed out to the bigger companies for mass production. They were the ones who were fascinated by Santa Chico. Here was a whole new range of high-energy biochemistry ripe for exploitation. And the only way to physically access it was by taking their current physiology modification processes to the extreme. They didn’t need crude gamma soak areas on which to build settlements, they could adapt themselves to the excessive oxygen. Even body shape could be reprofiled to take advantage of the environment.

They never expected this conversion to be carried out in one clean switch. Various avenues would be explored over generations. Mistakes abandoned. Successes built upon. But slowly and surely the divergence from terrestrial humanity would grow until the final generation could walk naked under an alien sun and breathe the air without technological support.

Z-B’s briefing had explained all this to the platoons. The emphasis had been on cellular adaptation, giving the impression of ordinary-looking people with slightly different lungs. It had never mentioned just how great the physiological changes would be.

Looking at the inhabitants of Roseport, Lawrence knew the briefing had barely touched the history of Santa Chico. Whatever had happened here since settlement began, it wasn’t going to act in the platoon’s favor.

In the beginning, Santa Chico had been the one exception to interstellar trade being a nonprofit activity. Among other things, the planet churned out a panoply of high-grade vaccines, biologicals, antivirals, vector treatments and biotronics, products that were unique, cutting-edge, and hard to duplicate. With an entire planetary ecology of potent vegetation and aquatic plants as raw materials, every new batch was an improvement on the last: more sophisticated, more effective. New settlers would travel outbound from Earth, and the completed biologicals would return, paying for starship maintenance and any technological and industrial equipment the inhabitants had requested. But over the last few years the starships had been returning with less and less cargo. As fewer settlers were heading out, the Earth-based portion of the Santa Chico development corporation became heavily debt-laden. Zantiu-Braun had performed a leveraged buyout and sent its Third Fleet to realize all those highly profitable biological assets.

The platoons lining the shore were ordered to advance up into Roseport. Their audience moved aside, filling the air with a loud, high-pitched chittering sound, as if a whole jungle full of chimpanzees were screaming at once. Later, the AS up in the starship would decipher the chittering as a very-high-speed hybrid of Spanish and Valley English. Captains ordered snatch squads forward to fix collateral necklaces. Skin amplifiers boomed out instructions, telling the new-natives not to resist, that they were being held responsible for …

The fight started immediately. New-natives swarmed down the rocky slope into the line of Skins. They didn’t seem to have any weapons, but they were strong and extremely fast, easily a physical match for Skin. There were so many of them, and the platoons were so closely bunched still, that using darts and other nonlethal weapons was difficult.

What appeared to be a hairless ape leaped on Lawrence, carrying him to the ground. Huge clawed hands were either trying to remove his Skin helmet, or more likely just rip his entire head off. Lawrence gripped the thing’s wrists and tried to prize them off. His Skin wasn’t strong enough. Sheer surprise made him freeze for a second. Nothing in training had dealt with a situation like this. Skin always gave squaddies the advantage.

He pushed down with his right leg, shifting the pair of them over. Then he punched the thing on its sternum. It grunted in pain but kept twisting its claws round Lawrence’s neck. Lawrence punched it again, feeling the tough amber hide give fractionally. After a few more seconds of futile wrestling, Lawrence ordered the Skin to fire its electrical pulse. The apething screamed, its limbs locked as the charge ripped through it, then resumed its attempted decapitation. Something like a baby elephant joined in, kicking Lawrence in the ribs. He was left with no choice. His Skin’s nine-millimeter pistol deployed through the carapace, and he shot the apething at point-blank range. The first bullet simply enraged it further. Lawrence had to pump half a dozen shots into the demented creature before it finally lay motionless on the tigergrass. Vivid scarlet blood spilled out from the bullet holes in its torso and neck.

Lawrence staggered away from the thing, his ribs aching from the kicking administered by the baby elephant. He ignored that. Nausea and giddiness threatened to knock his legs from under him. He’d never killed anyone before. Not another human. And that’s what this was, however distorted. Those clever Skin weapons had always absolved him, turned it into a nonissue.

Now the air around him crackled with weapons being discharged. The agonized screams of mortally injured new-natives cut through it all. Something approximating a Neanderthal ran straight into Lawrence, sending both of them tumbling to the ground. Lawrence brought his pistol arm around automatically. Targeting graphics centered on the prehistoric throw-back’s head. It had a tall, scalloped ridge running from the top of its nose over the crown of its skull, with a lacework of blue veins throbbing prominently. Very Homo sapiens eyes stared wildly at him, allowing him to read the new-native’s fright and anger.

“Fuck off,” Lawrence bellowed. He jerked the pistol nozzle up and fired three shots into the air. The new-native rolled aside and scrambled to its feet, sprinting away. Lawrence slowly clambered up as his Skin’s peristaltic muscles pushed fresh ammunition along a feed tube into the pistol’s magazine.

There was movement on every side of him, with a hundred voices shouting into his communication link. It took Lawrence a long moment to realize what was happening. The fight was breaking up. New-natives were fleeing back up the slope into the streets and buildings of Roseport, running, galloping, limping, even hopping. Dozens of bodies lay behind them, draped over the pale rocks; some were drifting through the shallows, blood spreading out of their wounds to stain the water a dense crimson. Hundreds of little ripples were expanding as aquatic creatures began to feed on the unexpected bounty. It was carnage on a scale Lawrence had never envisaged. Nor was it exclusively new-natives sprawled on the ground. Several Skins were tangled among them, their carapaces pulped and buckled, oozing gore.

Shots were still being fired into the backs of the retreating new-natives. Sergeants and captains yelled to cease fire.

“Sweet Fate,” Lawrence whispered. Skins were on their knees around him, helmet valves open, allowing them to vomit. Lawrence’s Skin AS reported it was infusing a cocktail of narcotics to help him cope with the shock its medical monitors had revealed. He felt light-headed, as if everything he’d just witnessed were part of some terrible i-drama. He didn’t want to move, to take part, help his injured comrades. Just wanted someone to switch the whole image off and wipe the memory clean.

“Hey, look,” Nic shouted. “Look up there. Jesus God, what is the deal here?”

Lawrence pushed his sensor focus into the cloudless sky above. He almost laughed; the numbing drugs made it seem funny. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse … The cargo pods were hitting the lower atmosphere, their madcap descent slowing to subsonic speed. White-and-yellow parachutes bloomed high overhead, lowering them gently. A flock of windshrikes glided among them with fast grace. Massive crocodile-contoured jaws snapped and champed at the domes of fabric. Teeth the size of human hands tore easily through the nylon. With their chute panels ripped apart the pods began to plummet downward. They hit the ground at terminal velocity and burst apart in silent explosions of shattered crates and mangled equipment.

After the injured Skins had been treated as best their limited medical supplies would allow them, the erstwhile governor of Roseport gathered his officers for an emergency conference. They had been down for ninety minutes and hadn’t even entered the city yet, let alone established collateral. Nearly a third of their equipment pods had been wrecked. The local inhabitants were nothing like they’d been led to expect. And the starship captains were reporting continued attempts to sabotage and attack the big vessels in orbit: subversive software was contaminating every datalink, while kinetic spears in retrograde orbits were probing their physical defenses. The admiral’s orders were to establish a dominant presence among the new-natives, then draw up an inventory of possible assets.

Roseport’s governor went along with that, but put securing the local spaceport at the top of his priority list. Lawrence was in the company assigned to retrieve the pods that had survived. He just counted himself lucky 435NK9 wasn’t one of the platoons ordered into Roseport itself. As he and the others tramped through the clinging tigergrass, they heard a near-constant barrage of small-arms fire and grenade explosions. They could see very little movement amid the peaceful sprawl of squat white towers that formed the majority of the little city’s buildings. But the communications link gave them a continuing story of ambushes and booby traps.

Even out on the lush plain skirting the city they weren’t immune. Infrared sensors were all but useless in the rolling expanse of tall tigergrass. New-natives lay in wait, hunched down among the roots, bulky creatures capable of damaging Skin carapaces with a couple of swift blows and often making a clean escape after they’d battered a squaddie to the ground. Communications became difficult as interference and jamming increased throughout the day. Somebody here was operating sophisticated electronics.

By nightfall the company had gathered enough equipment to set up a camp with a heavily guarded perimeter. Jeeps and trucks transported the whole lot over to the spaceport, a single runway that had been set out to the north of town. With their escape route secure and a large-caliber arsenal at hand, the squaddies relaxed slightly.

Lights shone in the city that night, lemon-yellow windows radiant against the deep night. Strange shadows moved along the walls in jerky motions. Sounds echoed through the still air, helping to fuel the invaders’ imagination, making them wonder what the new-natives were busy building.

On the second day, the governor divided up his forces. Several platoons would attempt to establish a foothold in the city again, while other companies were dispatched to known industrial sites. Satellite observation had revealed the factory structures were still intact, though most were apparently deserted. Best of all, a squadron of twelve TVL88 tactical support helicopters had survived, and the engineers had spent the night assembling them. The companies could call on a full aerial assault if they got into any trouble. When Lawrence’s company drove out that morning, the pilots were taking odds on how many windshrikes they were going to bag apiece.

Lawrence called in the empty factory offices to Ntoko, and they turned around to walk back to the company’s vehicles. After the first few reports, Captain Lyaute had decided the factory was never going to work again. He was recalling all the scouting parties.

“I don’t get it,” Kibbo said. “Why did they let this place fall apart in the first place?”

“Fate knows,” Lawrence said. “But at least we know why they stopped exporting all that fancy expensive biological junk. They just don’t produce it anymore.”

“That’s not a reason, Corp,” Jones said. “Why did they abandon factories like this? We know they worked better than anything on Earth.”

“They’re animals, man, that’s why,” Kibbo said. “What are you, blind? Didn’t you guys see those things that attacked us yesterday? They ain’t human anymore; they’re freaks. This is a fucking great planet full of freaks. No animal can run a factory. And they don’t need human medicines anymore.”

“They’re not animals,” Lawrence said. “They’re people; they just look different, that’s all.”

“No way, man, they’re filthy animals. They don’t even talk, all they do is scream all funny. They attacked us for no reason.”

“It was territorial,” Amersy said.

“What?”

“Territorial; you said they were animals.”

“The corp said they weren’t.”

“In which case we’re in deep shit,” Jones said. “If they fight like that and they’re smart with it there’s no telling what they’ll throw at us next.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Amersy grumbled.

“So why did they dump this place?” Kibbo said.

“Who knows?” Amersy said. “They still use machinery. You saw the lights in Roseport last night. Our communications links are being screwed by their jamming. And the spaceport runway was intact. One of the engineers I talked to this morning said the spaceplanes they found in the hangar were still flightworthy. Somebody’s been maintaining them.”

“So there’s some real people left? So what? That doesn’t mean there’s anything here for us.”

Lawrence agreed with Kibbo, though not for the same reasons. He didn’t think the new-natives were animals. They might not have quite the same behavior pattern as humans, but they were certainly sentient. Exactly where that put them on the evolutionary scale he wasn’t sure.

Captain Lyaute got everybody into the vehicles and ordered them back to Roseport’s spaceport. When he called in their return to the governor, he was informed that all the similar exploratory missions had found the same thing. The cities were occupied by extremely hostile new-natives, while the factories were abandoned and decaying. No real dialogue with the new-natives had been established. The admiral and Simon Roderick didn’t know what to do next. They were considering sending a starship to rendezvous with the big captured asteroid that was in a two-thousand-kilometer polar orbit. Sections of the planet’s space-based industry were obviously still functioning, although a lot of the stations and microgee modules had been destroyed when the induction webs were eliminated. If nothing else, the starships could take the surviving orbital industrial facilities back to Earth; that would show some kind of gain on the balance sheet.

In the meantime, the governor advised, they were probably going to boost the platoons straight back up to orbit, although there were worries about the availability of hydrogen at the spaceports that had already been secured. Roseport spaceport did have several storage tanks full, but the refinery itself had been switched off. The engineers were going over it now to see if they could restart production.

Lawrence drove one of the jeeps, with half of 435NK9 as his passengers. They were eighth in the long convoy as it wound back along the route it had taken to the factory. It was slow going; the road was thoroughly overgrown with tigergrass and creepers, although there was evidence that some kind of vehicles still used it occasionally. Lawrence remembered the Great Loop Highway back on Thallspring and quietly wished for something that clear and level again.

The terrain they were driving through was hilly, a landscape of crumpled valleys and short, awkward slopes. Tall trees thrived along the upper slopes of the ridges, projecting impossibly slim spires above the forest roof. Topped with fluffy violet leaf plumes, they looked like the battle pennants of some medieval army marching to war. Down in the valley floors the trees were fat bruisers, nearly spherical, their gray-silver bark bristling with hard, venomous thorns to repel wood-drillers and acidlice. The upper half of their swollen boles sprouted concentric circles of whip branches, shaking small leathery leaves in the breeze to produce a continuous discordant clattering. They grew together in an almost solid fence, pushing and straining at each other as decades-long battles were fought for ground and light. Those that lost and died were riddled with holes as animals burrowed their nests into the rotting wood. Swarms of fungus leeched to the crumbling bark, producing a glistening rampage of color as they wept glutinous fluids saturated with spores. Ferns and tuber leaves dominated the dim floor of the forest, banishing tigergrass and bushes, while carnivorous coilwraiths hung from forks in the overhead branches to catch insects amid their wriggling fronds.

The road reached the first swath of forest a couple of kilometers from the factory. Its builders had tried to avoid the trees where possible, curving it around along valley walls or letting it run beside the fast-flowing streams. As a consequence, the lead vehicle could rarely see more than two or three hundred meters ahead.

Lawrence frowned as they began to slow. He couldn’t see any reason for it. The road was a mess, sure, but it didn’t pose too much of a problem for their vehicles. They weren’t even in the forest yet; it was running along the side of them fifty meters away. Up ahead there was a sharp curve around the base of a small hill. But there was no barrier, nothing blocking the track.

“What’s happening?” he asked over the command link. They were almost stationary now.

“Something up ahead. The ground’s moving.”

“Moving?” Lawrence didn’t understand.

“Can you hear that?” Nic asked.

Lawrence braked to a halt. “Hear what?” He ordered his AS to turn up the Skin’s audio sensitivity. That was when he realized the jeep was shaking slightly.

“That!” Nic insisted.

The Skin’s receptors were picking up a bass rumbling.

“Six-nine-three and Seven-six-two, deploy forward with carbines,” Captain Lyaute ordered. “Five-four-one, watch our tail.”

Skins were jumping down from the jeeps, moving forward in a double buddy formation. Squat muzzles had emerged from their arm carapaces.

Lawrence didn’t like the situation at all. None of his briefings had mentioned this being an earthquake zone.

The herd of macrorexes lumbered around the side of the mountain, a wall of beasts over eight meters high, with the smallest weighing in at ten tons. Unlike Earth’s dinosaurs, they didn’t have long necks and tails. Their bodies were husky cylinders fifteen meters in length, with three sets of legs. It was an arrangement that allowed them to move in a sequence of synchronized jumps, arching their spine so that a wave motion rippled down their dorsal column, each set of legs bounding forward in unison. A flattened heart-shaped head rose and fell as the body undulated, swinging occasionally from side to side as far as the stumpy neck permitted. The end of the jaw was caged by three curving tusks longer than a man’s arm, two pointing up, one down; they opened and closed in a steady rhythm. The sides of the head swept together in a series of bladelike triangular fins that looked as if they could cut through steel. Their eyes were invisible somewhere among the sharply crinkled bone ridges of the upper skull.

Now that the macrorexes were in full view, their trumpeting cries split the air. Shrubs and bushes simply detonated under the pounding impact of their legs.

Lawrence thought yesterday’s drugs must still be kicking through his blood cells. He remembered the giant beasts from his briefing files, but couldn’t really grasp that forty or fifty of the monsters were coming at him in a motion that resembled a perpetual skidding crash.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” Nic groaned. There was real fear in his voice.

The Skins out in front of the jeeps opened fire. Lawrence couldn’t even tell if the bullets were penetrating the filthy ash-gray hides. They certainly weren’t having any effect. The trumpeting rose to a crescendo, and Lawrence realized the macrorexes were only 150 meters away. Nothing was going to stop them.

Captain Lyaute was yelling incoherently in the command communication link. Someone else was calling desperately for helicopter support. Skins were running hard, ripping through the cloying tigergrass as the macrorexes pounded toward them. Lawrence jammed down hard on the accelerator and pulled the wheel over. Tires spun wildly in the greasy soil. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to loop around a full 180 degrees before the front rank of macrorexes reached them. “Hold on,” he shouted, and sent the jeep skidding and bouncing toward the edge of the forest. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a couple of macrorexes charging along the treeline. Smaller trunks were pulverized into a cascade of splinters as their huge armored legs plowed into them. Long whip branches were severed cleanly by the fin-blades on the edges of the beasts’ heads, twirling away through the air.

The first rank of the herd caught up with the fleeing Skins. Jaw tusks flashed behind the slowest, puncturing his carapace without even slowing. He was tossed aside, fountaining blood as he cartwheeled through space. A couple more were overtaken, vanishing below the thundering legs. The tusks chomped down again. Screams reverberated along the communication link, cut off with horrifying swiftness. The macrorexes were moving at a phenomenal speed. A cool part of Lawrence’s mind knew they’d never be able to keep it up for long, not even with this planet’s oxygen feeding them. They must have started the charge just seconds before meeting the company.

The corpulent trees were only fifteen meters ahead of him. His view jounced about wildly as the suspension thrummed over rocks and hidden furrows. He turned the wheel savagely, aiming for a gap that was probably wide enough to take the jeep. To his right, the macrorexes were closing fast amid a debris plume of shattered timber.

That was when he caught sight of something sitting on the neck of one of them. A crouched profile of a man-leopard hybrid, forelimbs windmilling with wild enthusiasm. Mouth flung wide in an insane jubilant laugh.

That Couldn’t Be—

“Lawrence!” Amersy shrieked.

Lawrence yanked at the wheel. The front fender of the jeep clipped a spiky, bloated trunk, knocking them violently to the right. Lawrence fought the motion, Skin muscles and power steering forcing the wheels around. Inertia shunted them through the gap at a wide angle. One tire burst as it slammed into a rock. Lawrence kept the accelerator hard down, sending them plunging farther under the trees. Whip branches slapped across the windshield. Then there was a giant tree dead ahead. Lawrence thrust his other heel down on the brake, which made no appreciable difference to the chaotic rush. The jeep’s front bumper hit the tree full on, sending everybody tumbling forward. Skin carapaces hardened, protecting the vulnerable bodies from the worst of the impact.

“Out!” Lawrence ordered. “Move it.”

It was as though the crash were still happening. The sound of disinte-grating wood grew louder. They could barely balance on the shaking ground.

Lawrence staggered onward, hoping to hell he was heading in the right direction. His orientation was screwed up. The AS display grid was out of focus.

Three meters behind him, a giant leg descended vertically on the jeep, crushing it into the soil. The shock wave sent Lawrence sprawling. Then the pillar of flesh was lifting. He managed to shift his helmet so the sensors showed him the compacted wreck, just before the beast’s midlegs streaked down. Lawrence crawled forward as fast as he could. The final set of legs landed, flipping the jeep through ninety degrees. It stood on its ruined tail as the legs disappeared up into the sky, then slowly toppled back. Several shredded whip branches rained down on top of it.

Lawrence twisted around. His nine-millimeter pistol had deployed from one forearm, while the carbine was sticking out of the other. He swung his arms in fast arcs, covering the trail of devastation the macrorex had left in its wake. Targeting graphics slid around the scene on semiautonomous seeker mode, hunting for any conceivable threat. Now would be a perfect time for ground troops to finish off the Skins. Neither Lawrence nor his AS could find a new-native.

His weapons retracted. He could still hear the herd thundering away, but the loudest noise right now was his yammering heart. The medical grid display showed just how much adrenaline was coursing through his blood. Beneath his Skin, his skin was already chilling as the immediate danger faded out.

He called up the telemetry grid, checking on the Skins under his command. Everyone, it seemed, had survived the jeep’s madcap dash. Looking around, he could see them picking themselves up. Dust churned through the air, glowing ocher in the bright sunbeams pouring through the broken forest canopy.

“Sarge?” Lawrence asked. “You intact?”

“Holy shit, man,” Ntoko spat. “Yeah, I guess so.”

It was the lead vehicles that had taken the brunt of the macrorex charge. Too close to get out of the way, either they’d raced into the forest like Lawrence, or the Skins had abandoned them to take their chances on foot. The jeeps toward the rear of the column had enough time to turn and drive clear of the rampage, though most of the trucks were too bulky and slow to maneuver like that. In total, four jeeps and one truck had survived. Over twenty Skins had perished, either mauled by tusks or trampled to death. There were a number of other casualties, as well.

One of the macrorexes had been felled, the victim of intense carbine fire from three Skins who made their stand from the edge of the forest. They’d managed to shatter its enormous skull. Even so, raw inertia had kept it slithering forward until it crunched into one of the bulky trees, knocking the trunk almost horizontal. It had plowed up a broad furrow of slick black earth behind it.

Captain Lyaute set up a field camp on the side of the forest. There were fifty-four survivors, of whom seventeen were injured; another five had damaged Skin. Two platoons were assigned to gather up what weapons and equipment they could find amid the trail of destruction left by the macrorexes. Communications with the spaceport were patchy. There seemed to be something wrong with the satellite relay. Lyaute’s urgent request for airborne evacuation was turned down flat. Two helicopters were already down. Other scout companies had been attacked. The governor was keeping the remaining helicopters assigned to guarding the spaceport.

A platoon dispatched to find out what had happened to the macrorexes reported that they were now milling about quietly a kilometer down the road. There was no sign of the new-natives who’d been spotted riding them.

Lyaute announced they were going to pile the wounded onto the remaining vehicles and make their way directly back to the spaceport. It was going to be a slow trip: some of the injuries were bad, and everyone else was going to walk escort. It had taken two and a half hours to drive out to the factory, and it was midday now; he estimated they should be able to make it back for nightfall. Lawrence knew that was bullshit.

“We’ll take point, sir,” Ntoko told the captain. “Scout out any trouble lying ahead of you.”

Lyaute agreed quickly enough. None of the other sergeants volunteered their platoons.

Lawrence switched to a secure link and asked the sergeant: “Why? Those dinosaur monsters were only the start; they won’t be the last assault today, no way. We’ll get hit by whatever it is they’ve got out there.”

Ntoko was walking along the line of salvaged weapons. He picked up a couple of rotary feed grenade launchers and handed one to Lawrence. “Maybe, maybe not.” His voice was quiet and intent. “Look at it this way. The captain’s just given us the pick of the weapons. We can deploy in a decent formation so nobody takes us by surprise. And we’ll be a good distance out in front.”

“Big deal.”

“Think, man. Right now we’re in shit that doesn’t get any deeper. Those injured guys we’ve got, there’s some that are in a real bad way. They’re going to slow the rest of the company down.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You been keeping up on tactical? There’s not enough hydrogen to lift everyone off, Lawrence. That’s if they even get the spaceplanes down past the windshrikes. Now do you want to be at the front of the line?”

Lawrence looked around the temporary camp. The wounded were being helped onto the jeeps. Field medics had already used a lot of aid kits getting them ready for that first move. A couple of engineers were working on a jeep, replacing bent suspension components with parts cannibalized off a wreck.

He had to admit, the company was hurting. When that happened, you mucked in and made sure everyone got back to base okay. That’s what his training and first instinct was, anyway. Ntoko had drilled that into him. Being part of a unit was what it was all about.

Now there was doubt, among other disturbing notions, bubbling around in his thoughts. But selling out the others … Although his loyalty had always been to the platoon itself. What the hell did a simple corporal know about the overall strategy? He couldn’t take the whole invasion force into account, much less save them. So where did you draw the line?

“We should never have come here,” Ntoko said.

Lawrence took the bulky grenade launcher from the sergeant and slung the ammunition bag over his shoulder. His Skin AS interfaced with the weapon’s targeting system. “Yeah, right.”

Platoon 435NK9 set off first, walking down the battered track that was the road back to Roseport. Ntoko had put Lawrence and Nic out in front, leaving the rest in single file, spaced about seven meters apart. He brought up the rear himself.

Lyaute’s brief was to flush out any possible ambushes. Don’t bother too much with investigating potential sightings, just use firepower to eliminate new-natives. The rest of the company would follow a couple of hundred meters behind.

Twenty minutes along the road they’d already built the distance to four hundred meters. Ntoko had dictated the pace to Lawrence. “I’ll handle any flak from Lyaute,” he’d said. They didn’t get any. The electronic interference was relentless. It had to be more than simple powerblock jamming. They were almost reduced to line-of-sight communication.

At the start Lawrence was busy with his AS, pulling in relevant data. They had enough bloodpaks to last twenty hours. He figured if they hadn’t reached the spaceport by then they’d be dead anyway, though he found it somewhat unnerving that they couldn’t just shed the Skins if they ran out of supplies. They needed some kind of protection from the oxygen. Ntoko had talked about disconnecting the helmet and using it purely as an air filter. It could remain plugged into the neck valves, and the body’s organs would be able to sustain it without too much strain. Lawrence also called up tactical scans from the low-orbit observation satellite, trying to predict ambush points. He would have handed over his entire mission bonus (not that he expected to get one) for a real-time infrared scan of the area around them. But the low-orbit satellites had dropped out of the communications network hours ago.

“Surprised you’re with us anyway, Corp,” Nic said as they splashed through a stream. “What happened to your transfer over to the starship boys?”

Lawrence would like to blame it all on Morteth, Laforth and Kmyre. But it wasn’t really their fault. They were the trigger, not the cause. They’d been dismissed from Z-B as soon as the platoon arrived back on Earth, sullen and thuggishly resentful to the end, swearing vengeance. It was the whole way the Arnoon village incident had been dealt with that troubled him. Maybe it was his own background that was the real problem, but he just kept thinking that the three of them should have been prosecuted. That way there would be accountability, responsibility. By agreeing to help out and play it quiet and canny he’d collaborated with the company. It was the kind of deal his father would have made. “The real way the world works,” Doug Newton called it.

So what the fuck did I ever leave Amethi for?

When he thought about it these days it was only ever Roselyn and the pain she’d inflicted. Joona hadn’t been too far wrong about the companies and their uniculture. Every human world was developing into a bland Xerox of Earth. Except for Santa Chico, of course.

“I got my promotion,” Lawrence said. “It was more important at the time. I can transfer over to the starship division whenever I want.”

“Not after this,” Nic said. “We aren’t going to have any starships left.” Lawrence kept expecting Lyaute to order them to slow down and wait. He’d kept up the same pace for over an hour and a half, striding along the track of beaten-down tigergrass. The jeeps were out of sight behind them now. Communications with Lyaute and his two lieutenants was becoming very intermittent. They just kept calling in their position and progress whenever they got a link.

Even in Skin, Lawrence was sure he could feel this planet’s thick, heavy atmosphere working against him. There seemed to be a slight resistance to every movement. It wasn’t gravity; Santa Chico was .95 Earth standard. It had to be the sluggish air pushing against him. Another damn problem.

Haze from the powerful sun was a further side effect. Anything more than a kilometer away wobbled in the heat radiating off the ground in fast distortion ripples. It played hell with their long-range sensors. Infrared was hopeless, of course. All a new-native had to do was crouch down in the tigergrass and scrub, and he’d become invisible. Platoon 435NK9 all had their laser radars on, sending out fans of pale-pink light to sweep the sides of the road. So far they’d had a few probable sightings, but nothing they could shoot at.

Ten kilometers out from the factory, the road emerged from the end of a wide valley onto a gently undulating lowland terrain of tigergrass. It made a change to have an open view of the countryside ahead, though when Lawrence scanned his helmet sensors around, the eternal wave motion of tigergrass in the wind swamped the discrimination program.

“Nothing in sight,” he reported.

“Keep going,” Ntoko replied.

They moved out. Away to the north Lawrence could see a couple of macrorexes moving along a stream. Their ponderous motion was easy enough to see, as was their grubby hide color against the bright tigergrass. He wondered what kind of nerve it took to climb up on the back of one of those brutes and goad it into a run. More than he had, that was for sure. Who in Fate’s name thought of doing such a thing in the first place?

“Somebody moving,” Nic said.

“Where?”

“Two hundred meters southwest.”

Lawrence expanded Nic’s telemetry grid, meshing the sensor imagery to his own. There was something, a blur that wasn’t all heat shimmer.

“I think we have a shadow,” Lawrence told Ntoko.

“We’ve got a couple back here as well,” Ntoko said.

Lawrence called up a tactical map. There was a small group of buildings a couple of kilometers ahead and to the east with small homesteads ranged around it, barely large enough to be classed as a village. The satellite sweep had revealed some activity, but that was a day out of date. Lyaute hadn’t bothered investigating the place when they’d driven past that morning.

“Close in,” Ntoko ordered.

“Easier target for them,” Lawrence said over the secure command link. “I know that. But they’re sneaking in anyway, that means they’re going to attack. This way we’ve got a better firepower concentration.”

Lawrence’s audio sensors picked up a number of warbling calls out amid the tall tigergrass. He was tempted to play one back at them on high volume. The Skin AS couldn’t translate them.

A small bronze-colored bird darted above the tigergrass, moving fast toward them. It had three wings, one smaller than the others, and used some kind of spinning motion, like an asymmetric propeller. Silver-tipped wings traced bright spiral afterimages as they caught the sunlight. Nic shot it with his nine-millimeter pistol. It burst apart in a mist of blood.

“What are you shooting at?” Ntoko asked.

“Nothing, Sarge,” Lawrence said. “Just a bird.”

“You guys keep calm up there.”

“You hear that?” Lawrence asked.

“I don’t trust nothing in this place,” Nic grunted.

Lawrence’s sensors were picking up bursts of motion all around now. New-natives were dashing through the tigergrass, running for a few meters, then ducking down. None of them were closer than 150 meters. More of the bronze birds were being flushed out of the clumps of tigergrass by their antics. Lawrence watched them flitter about. He wasn’t quite as suspicious as Nic, but he had his doubts. There were a lot of them. When he asked his AS to run a check through its files on indigenous life, there was no reference. But then the information was limited to a few dozen prominent species like the windshrikes and macrorexes.

The birds were clumping together in small flocks of six or seven, swooping and curving just above the tips of the tigergrass. The more Lawrence watched them the more he was convinced that they were being driven in toward the platoon.

“Sarge?”

“Yeah, man, I got them. But I can’t see us shooting every one—we don’t have enough ammo for that, even if we could hit them.”

One of the telemetry grids on Lawrence’s display flashed red.

“Shit!” Kibbo yelled.

“What is it?” Lawrence could see from Kibbo’s telemetry that his Skin suit had been struck by something.

“Took a hit. Ahh, shit.”

Lawrence turned to see Kibbo fifty meters away, stumbling badly. He fell to his knees, clutching an arm. Skins were running toward him.

The telemetry grid was scrolling down weird data. Lawrence had never seen anything like it. Something had penetrated the carapace, but it was small, barely a couple of millimeters wide. If a bullet had split the surface, the tissue underneath should have absorbed it and clotted immediately. But the synthetic muscle around the puncture was starting to overheat. Its nerve fibers were failing.

Kibbo started screaming. His medical readouts were going wild.

“Down,” Ntoko ordered. “Keep down, people.”

Lawrence arrived just as Kibbo fell flat on his face. His arms and legs started thrashing, hammering into the ground.

“Some kind of convulsion.”

“What’s his medical program doing, for fuck’s sake?”

“It’s his Skin, it’s spasming.”

Ntoko hurried up, so Lawrence was looking right at him when the dart struck. It slammed into the grenade-launcher ammunition bag he was wearing on his back, nearly knocking him off his feet. He dropped to all fours, grunting hard at the impact.

Lawrence scrambled over and pushed his sensor focus on the little crater in the bag.

“What the hell was it?” Ntoko demanded.

“Don’t know.” Lawrence shifted to infrared. The small hole was damp. Spectrographic analysis revealed an unknown type of hydrocarbon fluid. “Shit. Could be some kind of bio weapon.” His Skin deployed its aerosol nozzle and sprayed the area with a multispectrum neutralizing agent. The fluid fizzed a livid saffron.

Kibbo screamed again, his bucking lifting him off the ground. The rest of the platoon circled around, not knowing what to do. The Skin’s AS and medical systems couldn’t even stabilize him. The wild motions stopped suddenly. His helmet’s emergency disposal valves opened. Blood poured out.

“Jesus!”

The Skins lurched back, fearful that any of the crimson fluid should splash against them.

“Was that the birds?” Nic asked. “Did they do that?”

“No way, man,” Amersy said. “How could they?”

Lawrence risked a quick look around. The air was full of hundreds of fast-spinning birds, a sparkling river that hurtled through the sky. They’d formed a complete ring around the platoon.

“These are the people whose granddaddies invented Skin,” Nic said. “If anyone knows how to shut us down, it’s them.”

“Shoot them,” Ntoko ordered. “Carbines out; give me a circular formation, ten-degree overlap. Move.”

They were firing as they rose to their feet, hosing the bullets at the thick dazzling stipple gyrating around them. The birds broke apart, soaring higher in a scintillating plume. Targeting individual birds was impossible at that distance.

Foster screamed at the same time his telemetry grid flashed its alert. He toppled over, limbs jerking about. The rest of them automatically dived for cover.

“They’re killing us,” Jones cried. “We’re fucking dead. Dead!”

Foster’s agonized gurgling was filling the general communication link.

“Lawrence, incendiary grenades,” Ntoko said. “We’re going to start using this goddamn environment to our advantage. Range two hundred and fifty meters, semicircular pattern. You take north.”

“Got it, Sarge.” He rolled onto his back and angled the grenade launcher toward north, moving the muzzle until the targeting graphics confirmed he’d ranged ground zero. He began firing. The dull thud of the grenades was audible through his Skin helmet. Ntoko was firing in the opposite direction. Faint smoke trails appeared in the air, forming wide arches that radiated out from the huddled-up platoon.

The first grenade detonated. It was like the dawn of a blue-dwarf sun. A halo of fierce light rose out of the tigergrass. Designed for operation in a normal atmosphere, the incendiaries were burning far hotter than usual in the abundant oxygen. The undergrowth ignited immediately.

Lawrence kept firing, moving the launcher around in precise increments. The brilliant detonations merged swiftly into a solid wall of crackling light. Flames burned a vivid blue, consuming even the living vegetation. Sap sizzled and evaporated before the onslaught, leaving withered blades that burst alight instantly.

It took less than a minute before they were completely surrounded by flame. The circle began to burn inward relentlessly, though Lawrence’s sensors could just see another, wider, ring burning outward.

“Use the rest of the grenades,” Ntoko said. “I’m not risking the manufacturer’s heat-proof guarantee on these ammo bags.”

“Right.” Lawrence waited until he’d fired all the incendiaries, then switched to fragmentation, using a random dispersal pattern. When he finished, he unslung the bag and threw it and the launcher away toward the advancing inferno.

The birds had all gone, zooming high over the rampaging flames. Foster lay dead on the ground, blood soaking into the soil as it dripped from his open disposal valve.

“Now we’ll see,” Ntoko growled.

“How do we get out of this?” Jones asked. His voice was panicky. “There’s no way through the flame.”

“That’s the idea,” Ntoko said. “You’ve got to believe in your Skin, my friend. This flame burns so fast it’ll be past us in a couple of seconds.”

“Oh, Jesus fucking wept, Sarge!”

“Just hold your place.”

Lawrence nearly laughed. He’d worked it out just before he started firing. The time to object was long past. They’d all have to ride it out now.

His Skin’s audio sensors were relaying the fierce roar produced by the flames. It grew steadily louder. They were approaching at a phenomenal rate as they consumed the tigergrass. His briefing had included strong warnings about fire in this atmosphere, but he’d never imagined anything this potent. There were screams now, rising above the background roar. A new-native charged past the platoon. He was bipedal, with arms that reached down to his knees. There was a long mane of ginger hair streaming out from his spine as he ran, already singed and smoldering. Lawrence caught sight of a narrow bandoleer, with some kind of cylindrical electronic modules slotted into hoops.

The terrified new-native saw the platoon and immediately altered course, more from fear than sense.

“You can run, asshole,” Ntoko yelled after him, “but you can’t hide.”

Two more new-natives rushed past. One of them was a husky quadruped with some kind of canine DNA in its genetic makeup. Lawrence watched as it sprinted at the wall of flame sweeping in toward them. It jumped. He couldn’t believe anything that big could get so far off the ground. Even with its muscular limbs it didn’t get high enough. The ferocious blue flames speared into its underbelly, excoriating its tough amber hide. Raw splits opened into its blackening flesh, spewing out steaming fluid. It howled in agony as its entire epidermal layer ignited spontaneously. Death must have struck with blissful speed. It was silent and motionless as it struck the ground in the middle of the conflagration.

“Holy shit,” Ntoko whispered. The flames were barely fifty meters away and closing fast. They were stabbing up seven to eight meters into the air.

Lawrence’s display was already issuing heat cautions. His carapace was turning white to reflect the massive infrared input. He slowly stood to face the flames, seeing the rest of the platoon follow his lead and climb to their feet. Sensors had to bring two layers of filters online to combat the glare of hellish light given off by the flames.

He ordered the visual sensors off altogether in some crazy effort to make the horror go away. That didn’t work: the darkness was even more unnerving. His indigo display grid hung in the middle of nothingness. The digits recording external temperature blurred as if they’d begun to count milliseconds instead. He brought the sensors back online. The flames were ten meters away.

A couple of the platoon were murmuring prayers. He wished he knew how to join in. The temperature warnings were now so ridiculous they were laughable.

All around him the tigergrass was withering, vapor effervescing out of every blade as it smoldered and blackened. Then the grass burst into flame around his legs. The main tsunami of fire hit, nearly knocking him down again. Something gripped his Skin and started shaking him; it was like being trapped in a slow-motion explosion.

He could see nothing. No discrimination program could possibly make sense of the incandescent chaos buffeting against him. All he knew was the one display grid reporting his Skin status. Every thermal indicator was leaping toward overload. Yet here he was, perfectly comfortable at the center of the fury. He held his breath, tensing every muscle against imminent death, then forced himself to breathe out and inhale calmly. Nothing he could do would make the slightest difference. It was all down to technology, and just how much of a safety margin had been built into his Skin.

His hand went to the base of his throat, covering the lump that was his pendant. Patterns began to appear around him, faint shadows that purled within the intolerable light, then slowly began to darken. It was as if water were sluicing down a muddy window, producing streaked images of what lay outside.

Flames shrank away, revealing a land that was completely black. Spiky root clumps of incinerated tigergrass mottled the baked soil, puffing out streamers of grubby blue smoke. A dense rain of ash fell, flakes settling gently on every surface, including Skin.

He turned to see the wall of flame not ten meters behind him and retreating rapidly. The rest of the platoon was standing in a loose circle, sable silhouettes against the solid glare. When he brought a hand up to examine it, he saw his carapace was glowing a dull vermilion as the weave of thermal fibers hurriedly expelled their excessive loading. He reviewed his status, relieved to see his Skin’s reserve bladders had retained their integrity; with them and the spare bloodpaks he could easily make it back to the spaceport.

Laughter and delirious whoops began to fill the general communication band. The shouted jubilation had a strong note of hysteria.

Ash was still falling, but Lawrence extended his sensor range, trying to see what lay through it. The second wave of wildfire was still rampaging out ahead of him, lurid flames chewing their way voraciously across the tigergrass, sending up a broad veil of smoke and yet more ash. He couldn’t believe so much destruction had spread so quickly. The holocaust they’d unleashed was easily over a kilometer wide now and still expanding. He wondered how far it would continue for. Not that there was much guilt associated with the thought. Santa Chico must be used to such events.

“Can’t raise the captain,” Ntoko said.

“You reckon the fire’s reached him?”

“Could be. The Skins will come through okay. Don’t know about the vehicles.”

“You want to go back and check?”

“No. We keep going unless ordered different. Even then I’m not keen.”

“Sure.”

“One good thing, nobody’s going to be creeping up on us unseen now.”

“Sarge, there’s nobody left to creep up on us.” His sensors had found a small mound that was the remains of a new-native. It looked like a lump of coal.

There was no hint of where the road had lain across the land. They checked their inertial guidance and started marching again. A couple of them were unhappy about leaving Kibbo and Foster behind, but Ntoko quelled their dissent with a few gruff words about how the guys would want the platoon to reach the spaceport.

The ground was still furiously hot, although it didn’t present too much of a problem for their thermal fiber weave. As they walked they found patches of tigergrass and even trees that the fire had completely bypassed. There didn’t seem to be any particular reason for any of them being spared. Vagaries of the land. Streams too broad for the flames to leap. Even some scrub trees with fat spire leaves that were resistant to the flames entirely, standing alone and unblemished amid the scorched desolation.

A broad ridge of rocky ground had saved the village from the firestorm. They examined it through the continuing fall of ash. Their sensors detected movement among the buildings. Ntoko decided they couldn’t ignore it.

By the time they arrived, the carpet of delicate loose ash was a couple of centimeters thick, covering everything. Gusts would stir it up in small twisters, but that just rearranged it. Nothing was free of the mantle. The skirt of tigergrass around the buildings swayed and quivered in the breeze, as if trying to shake the flakes off. But they were too small, too insidious to release their hold.

The village homes were simple structures, broad circular towers with domed roofs, never more than two stories high. They seemed to be made from a pale cream coral with a rough, grainy surface that was a magnet for the ash, allowing it to lodge in every crinkle. Windows were arches covered with a thick membrane, laced with delicate silver veins.

The new-native inhabitants were mostly bipedal, smaller than the average human, with shaggy hair that continued down their spines in a thick mane; in some cases it extended out along their arms almost to the elbow. Their shirts and jerkins were cut to allow the hair to flow through. It was often braided. Bright-colored beads were favored by the children.

There were exceptions. Feline hominoids who struggled to stay upright, dropping down to use their forelimbs to walk a few paces. A squat giant that looked like a cross between a sumo wrestler and a troll. Delicate spindly elves, whose legs seemed too slim to support their bodies.

They didn’t look alien, Lawrence thought, so much as primitive, although their hides were the typical Santa Chico tough, translucent amber, and none of the bipeds had a terrestrial human rib cage and abdominal arrangement. Ridges around their torsos were more insectile than anything else. Their faces, though stiffer than skin, still managed to express basic emotions, although that could have been just the eyes. Sullen glances were more or less the same the universe over.

Ntoko took Lawrence and Amersy into the village with him, deploying the rest of the platoon outside. They were subject to blank stares from the inhabitants who stood in open doorways. New-natives in the streets moved aside to let them pass. It was the first time their authority had ever been acknowledged, even if it was at gunpoint.

Lawrence’s sensors detected a small level of electronic activity in the buildings, nothing above desktop pearl level. They seemed almost devoid of mechanical or electronic technology. Certainly there were no vehicles in evidence.

The new-natives appeared uncertain what to do about the Skins; they were waiting for them to set the agenda. As they walked into the center of the village more new-natives appeared and followed at a respectful distance. Unless half of the homes were deserted, the numbers didn’t match up. Lawrence wondered how many villagers had been in the group beating the birds out of the tigergrass. And how many had survived.

Ntoko stopped beside a big overhanging tree that had a coating of the ubiquitous ash. “Anybody want to tell me what’s going on here?”

“You fired our lands,” a voice said. It was heavily accented, but had the easy lilt of Spanish roots.

Lawrence identified its owner, a woman who wouldn’t reach his shoulder. Her luxuriant hair was snow-white, though whether that indicated old age he wasn’t sure. She had a flat face, with several creases in her cheeks, giving her jaw a considerable degree of flexibility. The robe she wore was decorated with silver piping: a DNA helix had been embroidered down the front in scarlet and turquoise.

“You the big chieftain around here?” Ntoko asked.

“No. I am Calandrinia.” She combed a hand through her hair, shaking out the latest dusting of ash.

“You going to talk to me?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Not unless you give me a reason.”

She bared her teeth, which were long enough to qualify as tusks. “I have many reasons, but I won’t be acting on them today.”

“Well, thank you. Now you want to tell me what the fuck is going on around here?”

“You violated our lives. This is how we respond. What did you expect?”

“Less violence would be a good start. You people have got to be crazy. Do you know how much firepower we’ve got backing us up?”

Calandrinia showed her tusks again. “Less than you started with.”

Lawrence used his secure command link. “Sarge, can I talk to her?”

“Sure, go right ahead if you think it will get us anywhere. I hate a smart-mouth.”

“Thanks.” Lawrence was never quite certain, but Calandrinia seemed to turn to him just before he started talking. “I’d like to know, why did you abandon your factories?”

“Why does anybody abandon anything, Earthman? They are obsolete and irrelevant. Now we grow whatever we need directly.”

“But your products weren’t obsolete on Earth; they were damn useful. Why stop exporting?”

“If Earth wants medicines it should make them for itself.”

“Well, for a start, without the cash from those exports you won’t be able to import the products you don’t make here.”

She laughed at him outright. “If we don’t make it, we don’t want it. If we don’t want it, we don’t make it.”

“So that’s it? You’ve kissed good-bye to technological civilization? You’re all happy regressing?” Somewhere at the back of his mind was the question of how many times he would have this conversation, and on how many planets. Regressor types seemed to get everywhere.

“Technological, no,” Calandrinia said. “Mechanical, yes. What do you need machines for? Biological systems are much more efficient at providing for us.”

“You can’t make biological equivalents of everything.”

“Not everything your society requires in order to function, no. But then we don’t have your kind of society anymore. We’ve adapted ourselves, not bent the world to our vision. Worlds are too big for that. Why live in isolated settlements built on dead, irradiated earth when you can modify yourself to enjoy the freedom of the whole world?”

“That must be quite an ideology you’ve got here, to convince people they have to leave their past behind.”

“It’s not ideology, it’s evolution. You know our ancestors came here with the intent of modifying themselves; why are you so surprised by what you found?”

“Nobody knew how far you’d taken the modifications. We didn’t expect any of this. If we knew what was here, we wouldn’t have come.”

“Yet here you are. Now what will you do?”

“Me personally? Go home.”

“Why not join us? Your children would have a beautiful future. They would never want or need for anything.”

“Excuse me, but that’s not even remotely tempting. If I take this helmet off, I die. You know it, and I know it.”

“I could grow you an oxygen filter in my housewomb. It would be a part of you in a way your Skin never is. You would live with it in perfect symbiosis.”

Lawrence held a finger up. “Yeah, stop right there. I’m not coming to live with you, okay?”

“Why? What do we lack? I do not mock, I am genuinely curious. You seem so primitive compared to us. I don’t understand your reluctance. Do you not wish to better yourself, to be a part of a richer, more mature culture?”

“We’re the primitives? Which of us is living in mud huts, lady? I wouldn’t wish this existence on my worst enemy, let alone my own children. You’re going backward faster than progress ever pulled us out of medieval squalor. Sure, this kind of life looks appealing now; you’re still close enough to the industrial market economy to make you think this is all stress-free and rich in karma. Another two generations, and you won’t be able to cure a cold, let alone cancer. And you call that living life to the full. I call it betraying your children.”

“Ah.” Calandrinia shook her hair again. “Now I begin to understand. How old am I, Earthman?”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

“I’m fourteen.”

The information left Lawrence nonplussed. He simply couldn’t see the relevance. “Really?”

“Yes. It wasn’t just their biotechnology skills that our ancestors brought to this world, they brought a saying with them as well. Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. Thanks to them I can do that.”

“How long do you live for?” Lawrence didn’t want to ask it, because he suddenly knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Probably thirty years. Can you imagine such a time? How it must stretch at the end.”

“The oxygen. It’s the oxygen, isn’t it?”

“Of course. Everything here is faster, more dynamic.”

“But … thirty?”

“Thirty whole years, during which time I will live and love and think. Why do you think that is wrong? Why do you want to live for such a long time?”

“To live is to experience. You can’t do that in thirty years. There’s so much of the universe to know.”

“I do experience, far more than you ever will. I grow faster. I learn faster. I live faster. We all do. This world’s life is so much more vital than your bland biology. As for the universe, it is contained in your mind. Observation is purely relative. I can watch the stars from here, all of them, while you crawl between them in your tin cans and see only one at a time. I appreciate my life, Earthman; there is less memory in my brain, and much more thought.”

“Thought,” he sneered. “But you don’t use it. What’s the point of thinking if you have no way to apply it, nothing to create?”

Calandrinia let her breath whistle out between her teeth, as did several other new-natives. “We do nothing else but create, Earthman. Do you think we have time to carry and birth our young as your women do? I adapt my children to the world as I see it and know it.”

“You’re talking about shape, aren’t you? That’s why you all look different.”

“We have become morphogenic, the greatest gift our ancestors left us. What I think, my children become. Can you imagine what that is like? If I see a tree that is so tall and full of grace that I have to sit at its foot and gaze up in admiration, I can engender a child who will be able to climb to its apex and laugh with the joy of doing so. When I swim in a mountain lake, I do so for a few exciting minutes, while my daughter will be able to glide through its deeps and play with the fish. And when I shake with awe as a macrorex walks past, I can absorb its essence and mingle it with my own.”

“Sweet Fate, you’re talking bestiality.”

“How simple your mind is. How pitiable. Do you think we alone should remain sentient and aware? If we are to live with this planet, we must share the best of what we are with it. Are you so unselfish, Earthman? Would you stop us from doing that, from waking Gaia?”

“I won’t stop you. But I want no part in it. You’re not human anymore.”

“Why, thank you. I rarely get paid such a compliment.”

“Wait a goddamn minute here,” Ntoko said. “Are you telling me that the macrorexes are part human, that they’re self-aware?”

“Some of them,” Calandrinia said. “They are our friends, they help us when we ask.”

“And the windshrikes, too?”

“Of course.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“If you don’t have pregnancy anymore,” Lawrence said, “where do all these kids come from?”

“The housewombs gestate them,” Calandrinia said simply.

“House … ?” He looked at the dumpy buildings that made up the village. “You mean your homes contain some kind of artificial womb?”

“Do you listen to anything? There is nothing artificial about a house-womb, it is perfectly natural. Our houses were the last stage in bridging the gap from what we were to what we are. Tell me, do your files have fast-rocks in them?”

“Yeah.” His Skin AS was retrieving the information. Fastrocks were essentially a polyp-type plant that grew quite slowly by Santa Chico’s standards. They resembled ocher stones that grew clustered together in vast colonies and were completely fireproof. Their shells were also tough enough to resist being split open by the jaws of anything smaller than a macrorex.

Calandrinia gestured at the houses. “Our ancestors modified those small plants into the sturdy buildings you see today, a true and grand amalgamation of the genes from two planets. Now we live in living houses. Their roots grow deep to collect water and nutrients, while their shells harvest the sunlight. Within our houses we are nurtured without violating the planet as you do. Their organs provide for us in the way your machines do for you, although our bond is closer and more appreciative.”

“You mean symbiotic.”

“Ah, you are listening. Yes, our houses are a part of our family. Once I have a fertilized ovum, I place it in a housewomb to gestate.”

“Did you give them sentience as well?”

“Of course. How could you marry an entity devoid of thought?”

“Good point,” Lawrence retorted sarcastically. “Surely you’ve made yourselves overdependent on these constructs? Do they grow your food for you as well? Our satellites didn’t see any working protein cell refineries.”

Calandrinia reached up and pulled a cluster of small red berries from the tree. “Modifying Santa Chico’s plants to fruit terrestrial food was the first and hardest task facing our ancestors. Once they understood how to merge the two different genetic molecules in a successful union, then everything we are today became possible. It took decades of effort before anything so complex was achieved, which is why we had to involve ourselves with commerce. So much of our respective biochemistries was incompatible, as it is on every world humans colonize. The old ways of life, your markets and machines, had to be sustained for that whole time while the problems were solved. Now, as you can see, we have left them far behind.”

“And left yourself in debt,” Ntoko said.

“Only on your planet, Earthman. Here there is no such thing. Here we are one.”

“Claiming you are above such things as money is a very convenient way to duck the issue,” Lawrence said. “But I know you understand economics and technology. You still have spaceplanes and orbital systems. They have to be maintained, spare parts manufactured, fuel produced. Housewombs can’t do that for you.”

“We had such machines until you arrived and destroyed them,” Calandrinia said. “Some among us have the kind of dream you have, Lawrence Newton, that of spreading out through space. They are involved with ideas of modifying our cells to live up there in the desert beyond the sky. Our space enthusiasts want what we are to blossom on the comets and moons that share our star. It is a pleasant dream, I think. But they are a minority. And your arrival has put an end to their aspirations. They have agreed to turn their minds back toward Santa Chico. They will help to seal the sky and prevent you from returning.”

“How did you know my name?”

“I’m sorry,” Calandrinia said. “I didn’t know it was a secret.” Lawrence didn’t like how casual she was being. If they’d decrypted the communication links, which he acknowledged as a strong possibility, then they might have heard his name being used, as well as his conversation with Nic. But to identify individual Skin suits would be difficult. There were too many things here that the new-natives made light of. He still didn’t even know how they communicated over long distances.

“What do you mean seal the sky?” Ntoko asked.

“You said you are leaving, which is what we want,” Calandrinia said. “What we need to do after that is to make sure you do not return. At least, not while your present society is the dominant culture on Earth. To do that we must seal the sky.” She exposed her tusks again.

“Come on,” Ntoko said to Lawrence on the secure communication link. “This is wasting our time. We’re outta here. If they had anything that could knock us down they would have used it by now. We just gotta watch our backs, and kill anything that moves out there.”

“Right.”

“Okay, we’re going now,” Ntoko told the new-natives. “You-all make sure you don’t follow us. That way there’s no misunderstandings, and nobody gets hurt.”

“Such wise advice, Sergeant,” Calandrinia said. “We will try to make use of it.”

“Motherfucking smartmouths,” Ntoko grumbled. “I wish we could nuke every fucking one of them.”

The platoon tramped away, the soles of their Skin kicking up huge clouds of powdered ash. They crossed over from the island of tigergrass and trees around the village onto the black wasteland scoured by the wild-fires. The ash rain had stopped falling around them, allowing them to see out across the countryside. Flames were still burning in the distance ahead of them, sending thick columns of smoke and ash soaring hundreds of meters into the deep-indigo sky. But it was no longer a solid wall; the wildfire had split around rivers and gullies, breaking into dozens of small blazes that raced onward.

“What the hell did you make of all that?” Ntoko asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lawrence admitted. “It could just be a whole load of bullshit she made up to scare us. Or it could be true, in which case it’s even scarier. There’s a lot of things around here that don’t add up.”

“Jesus, smart animals for one. Maybe that part’s true.”

“Some of it has to be wrong. They used everything they’ve got to strike the starships when we were on our way in. They can’t close off this planet from space.”

“Damn, I wish we had some kind of contact with the captain. We should be telling people this.”

“Satellite relay’s still down.”

“Yeah, I know. Let’s hope the governor is still holding on at Roseport.”

Lawrence was on edge for the rest of the march. If Calandrinia had been telling the truth, there was no way of telling what represented a danger to them.

By late afternoon the wildfires seemed to have died down. Smoke and ash hazed the air, darkening the sky to a sullen gray blue. They didn’t see any more animals, large or small. Several times Lawrence thought he caught sight of windshrikes in the distance. But it could have just been dense swirls amid the lingering smoke. Underfoot, the tigergrass clumps started to weep, gooey sap leaking out of the burned blades. Their roots had obviously survived the fire, but then it had been so quick that it probably didn’t heat the soil below a few centimeters. It wouldn’t be long before the first new shoots were poking up through the mantle of ash.

The burnout zone ended along a narrow, deep gully with a brook of reddish water gurgling along its rocky floor. The land on both sides was covered in stones and boulders; there was little vegetation growing out of the cracks between them, which had reduced the fire’s intensity. As he walked up to the gully, Lawrence realized it wasn’t actually stone he was walking on. None of them moved under his feet, not even the pebbles. It was actually a vast bed of fastrock.

As the platoon crossed the gully a Xianti 5005 swept overhead, less than a kilometer in altitude. It was losing height.

“We’ve still got the spaceport,” Nic said. “Thank Christ for that.”

Half an hour later they topped a ridge that gave them a view of Roseport a couple of kilometers away. The lakeside city was in a bad way, with many of its houses smashed open. Lawrence’s sensors zoomed in. Dark, glutinous fluid was oozing out of the broken shells, slithering slowly along the streets like molten tar. Internal organs lay exposed, reduced to a mass of pulped ginger jelly. Nobody was moving down any streets.

When he pulled the focus back he saw autosentinel guns had been set up in a broad perimeter around the outskirts—olive-green spheres on thick metal legs that were anchored into the ground, each with a trio of magnetic Gatling rifles protruding from its midsection, swiveling slowly from side to side as they tracked across the smashed houses. If anybody emerged from the city, they’d be cut apart in milliseconds.

Lawrence knew the autosentinels were part of the fleet’s equipment, but he’d never seen them deployed before. Like land mines and laserfencing they were last-resort weapons.

Now that the platoon had line of sight, their communications link to the governor’s field headquarters came back online. Ntoko reported in, telling the staff that they’d lost contact with Captain Lyaute hours ago.

With access to fleet tactical data restored, Lawrence requested a situation update from the headquarters AS. It was even worse than he’d been expecting. There had been a near-constant battle around Roseport. Skins entering the city had been killed by a variety of chemical and biological weapons. Each time they learned how to protect themselves from one, something new would hit them. In the end the governor ordered the autosentinel deployment in the hope they could confine the new-natives until the evacuation was complete. Even that was going to be touch and go. Macrorex herds had charged the spaceport three times. The Skins had to use armor-piercing smart missiles against them before the huge beasts reached the runway: nothing else could bring them down. Windshrikes were harassing the Xiantis when they lined up on final approach. The spaceplanes were having to fire antimissile airmine clusters from their countermeasure pods to kill them.

Of the eleven companies dispatched on scouting missions to factories and industrial facilities, only four had returned. Three more (including Lyaute) had reported in that they were under attack before communication was lost. The remaining four were currently classified as missing in action.

Events in orbit were equally hostile. The software assault on the starships was relentless. Communications bandwidth was reduced to a minimum to enable the onboard AS to examine every byte entering the ship’s network. Kinetic slugs in a retrograde orbit had taken out several satellites. One swarm had got through the Mahonia’s defenses, damaging a life support wheel and one of the compression drive’s tokamaks.

In view of the unfolding catastrophe, the admiral had ordered a complete evacuation. Plans to capture Santa Chico’s orbital industry stations weren’t even on the agenda anymore.

Lawrence couldn’t find out how many spaceplanes were operational. The data was classified. Estimates on how long the evacuation would take were also restricted. As was the number of surviving Skins.

Ntoko managed a few terse words of encouragement to the platoon and started to lead them toward the spaceport in a wide semicircle around Roseport. They jogged toward the runway, saying little. Lawrence knew they all shared the same anxiety. They were close to making it now. All they had to do was reach the runway. Someone else would take care of the rest—the admiral, the Xianti pilots. That just left the ground between here and there. Halfway around they stumbled into a wide patch of burned ground. Tigergrass was still smoldering round the edges. In the middle was the mangled wreckage of a TVL88 helicopter.

Ntoko decided they would be too exposed crossing the open space and took them around the side. Another couple of minutes added to the journey. It didn’t help that they heard an autosentinel firing.

The last three hundred meters was a straight sprint. Discipline went all to hell, and the whole platoon charged over the tigergrass, dodging around trees, jumping low rocks, heedless of the target they presented. They made it past the perimeter, where Skins were lying in shallow trenches, armed with the heaviest portable weaponry in their armory.

Ntoko reported to the local lieutenant, who allowed them an hour’s rest. They were issued with a ration pack of paste food, which they could eat with their helmets on. Headquarters also gave them a flight number. If the spaceplanes kept up their current schedule, they’d take off in another six hours.

The lieutenant gave them guard duty around the maintenance hangar. They took up position just as the sun sank below the horizon, integrating the new weaponry they’d drawn from the armory. Lawrence had taken a smart missile rack. So far the new-natives hadn’t managed to glitch them.

He settled down to walk a regular route, making sure to keep his times random. His visual spectrum sensors provided him with a fuzzy blue-and-white image of the nighttime countryside, with the infrared bleed painting in small vermilion patches as rocks slowly radiated away the heat they’d absorbed during the day. Nothing moved among the tigergrass, not even small animals. He was thankful for that.

When he scoped Roseport, it glowed strongly in infrared, throwing off a coral-pink aura. There were no lights in any of the buildings. The autosentinels were taking shots at something every few minutes. Gossip on the general communication band centered on how much ammunition the robots had left and how long it would last.

Spaceplanes continued to arrive, thumping down out of the night sky amid the strident bellow of their Rolls-Royce turbojets on full reverse thrust. Sometimes they were preceded by the spectacular green-and-crimson magnesium firework display of their countermeasures clearing a path through the air.

An hour after nightfall one of the lost companies made contact. According to their report they’d suffered from a macrorex charge, losing most of their vehicles. On their way back they’d endured near-constant sniping and harassment from new-natives. Then they’d joined up with another company, which had a 30 percent casualty rate. Between them they had enough firepower to keep the new-natives back. It had been slow going with all the injured to care for, but they estimated they’d be arriving at the spaceport in another ninety minutes. Altogether there were over 120 of them.

Lawrence had a flush of guilty relief that it wasn’t Lyaute, who would have wanted a damn good explanation about where 435NK9 had got to and what had happened. Everyone else was cheered by the news. It would mean at least one extra spaceplane flight, delaying the final departure by another twenty minutes.

The autosentinels’ rate of fire slowed considerably after the first couple of hours, but Lawrence was convinced the new-natives would try to infiltrate the spaceport. It gave him a brittle edge that his Skin pharmacy couldn’t dampen. Standing by himself on the edge of the spaceport facing the unknowable threats creeping through the tigergrass was using up a lot of his resolve. The area directly outside had been seeded with hundreds of remote sensors that had secure links to his display grid. He didn’t entirely trust them: his thoughts were bent toward Calandrinia and how she had quietly mocked them.

Two hours before their scheduled departure time he learned why she had been so confident. Everything she’d said had been true. To start with he thought another Xianti was on its way down and dispensing countermeasures. Several streaks of flame shot across the sky, fading almost immediately. He scanned around, but couldn’t locate the intense thermal signature of a spaceplane. More streaks blossomed, stretching out across the stars. As far as the flightpath was concerned, they were in the wrong section of sky. He realized it was a meteor shower and grinned briefly. Before they died away a third batch had begun to fizzle their way down. These were slightly larger particles, with a bulbous head stretching out a sparkling tail as they tore down through the upper atmosphere. There seemed no end to them streaking out of one section of sky. Lawrence’s grin faded. The patch was elongated, extending north-south and still growing.

“Oh, bloody Fate,” Lawrence groaned. He understood then. We will seal the sky.

A Skin was running toward him from the hangar.

“Lawrence?” It was Ntoko, using his Skin’s speaker on low volume.

“Yeah,” Lawrence replied, using his own speaker.

“They’ve done it, haven’t they? This is what Calandrinia was talking about.”

“Yeah. They must have nuked the polar-orbit asteroid, pulverized the fucker. This shower’s just the edge of the debris swarm.”

“Goddamn it! You know all about this orbital-mechanics shit. Can the starships get away through it?”

“Yeah, but they’ll have to leave soon, if they haven’t already. The debris won’t have started to cascade yet. All we have for the moment is just an expanding cloud of rock in polar orbit.”

“What’s a cascade?”

“Look, the nukes will have shattered the asteroid into a million pieces, okay? Some of them will just fly straight down and burn up in the atmosphere. We’re seeing that start now. But if the new-natives set the charges right, then there’s a shitload of mountains and boulders and pebbles still in orbit. Right now they’re separating, flying apart into their own irregular orbit, but once they’ve spread out enough, then they’re going to start colliding. Each boulder that crashes another releases another cascade of smaller rocks, which are going to smash into another batch of rocks and so on. It’s a chain reaction that is never going to stop. In a year’s time, this planet is going to be surrounded by a shield of rock splinters ten thousand kilometers thick. It’ll be like Saturn’s rings, only spherical. She was right, that Calandrinia. Nothing will be able to get through this. They have sealed themselves away from the universe. It will take millennia for the shield particles to decay and burn up in the atmosphere. Maybe they never will. Fate, I don’t know. Nobody’s ever seen a cascade before.”

“Okay, grab the guys. Head for that spaceplane.” He pointed. “It’s fueled.”

“But—”

“You said it, man, the starships have got to leave. There aren’t going to be any more spaceplane flights after these. Now get your ass in gear, Corporal.”

Lawrence pumped his speaker volume up. “To me, people, come on, let’s go.” He started jogging, then broke into a sprint. Ntoko was shouting as well. The survivors of 435NK9 began running toward them.

High above them, larger debris particles had reached the atmosphere. They screamed down in a sheath of plasma until the pressure shock detonated them into a dazzling halo shoal that expanded and brightened as it sank ever downward. Sometimes the shoal particles would explode again and again as the rocks were broken into smaller and smaller fragments by the superheated ions, sending pyrotechnic shock waves radiating outward. A hundred conical plumes of incandescence flowered against the night, flaring through the spectrum as they slowly withered away to violet specters.

Half of the continent was drenched in a light greater than that of the sun. Lawrence could see the entire spaceport on the move. Skins were running about in chaos, not knowing what was happening. There was no chain of command. No orders. No information. No discipline. Not even new-natives with their hyperoxygenated muscles could match the turbocharged speed of the Skins. Everything was happening in accelerated time.

A hundred meters ahead of Lawrence the Xianti was parked in its flight preparation bay. Its turbofans were already starting up. Fueling arms had disengaged. They began to sink back down into the concrete.

The airstairs were still in place. Skins were surging up them, desperate for a place. Lawrence had no idea how many were already inside. He reached the bottom of the airstairs in five seconds. Twenty Skins were clustered there, funneling onto the aluminum steps. More Skins were heading their way.

Out on the runway a Xianti began its takeoff run.

“Lawrence,” Ntoko called. “Give me your rack.”

Lawrence handed over the weapon as he shoved and wriggled his way toward the bottom of the stairs. Apart from Ntoko, who already held an identical rack, he couldn’t tell who was who. His AS wasn’t tagging individual suits. The entire communications band had crashed.

“What do you want it for?”

“You take care, Lawrence. You look after my guys for me.”

“Sarge? Ntoko!”

“I’ll be watching.” Ntoko was already slipping free from the throng of Skins. He opened the bottom of the rack that Lawrence had given him and pulled out a data cable, which he plugged into his Skin’s interface port. The tubes at the top of the rack spat hazy orange flames that pulsed for several seconds.

Explosions bloomed across the taxiway. The swarm of Skins sprinting for the remaining spaceplanes dived for cover. More explosions rippled down the side of a hangar as Ntoko tried to deflect the onrush that threatened to overwhelm the last two spaceplanes. Composite panels and steel girders crashed over the tarmac. Smoke and dust billowed out. Skins started firing. Armor-piercing rounds pummeled the control tower. Carbines opened up.

“Ntoko! For fuck’s sake, you can’t!” Lawrence was at the foot of the stairs. His sensors showed him Ntoko walking calmly away from the rear of the melee, a rack held in each arm. Flames stabbed out as more smart missiles leaped from their tubes. The sergeant raised one of the racks in salute and kept on walking.

For an instant, Lawrence hesitated. But the Skins behind were pressing him on. And his own sense of self-preservation was just too strong. He clambered up the airstairs and into the cabin. The spaceplane began to move, pulling free from the airstairs. Lawrence grabbed at the Skin on top, helping to drag him in. Another Skin leaped across the widening gap, crashing into everyone crammed into the airlock. Another jumped and just managed to grab the rim of the hatch. He hung there, dangling as the space-plane accelerated onto the taxiway. Lawrence was looking at the abandoned airstair as it wobbled about. The Skins on it were using their speakers at full volume, shouting at the Xianti to come back. One of them deployed his carbine and started firing. A couple of bullets ricocheted inside the airlock. Lawrence ducked automatically. Then an explosion went off at the base of the airstair. The whole structure collapsed, taking the Skins with it.

“Thanks, Sarge,” Lawrence whispered.

He moved back into the Xianti as the hatch swung shut. The cabin was badly overcrowded, with Skins crammed along the aisle. He didn’t even consider the extra weight. The sarge was out there, covering their asses like he always did. They’d make it.

Inside the sealed cabin, his Skin could link into the spaceplane’s internal network. He called up the external cameras.

Outside, the asteroid fragments were still sleeting down in a blaze of light. On the ground, Skins were racing about in their distinct fast motion. All of them seemed to be shooting at something. Explosions erupted from the shattered buildings. Wild clouds of smoke writhed across the ground as vigorous blue-white flames swirled out of wrecked equipment blocks. The Xianti turned sharply onto the runway. The pilot didn’t waste any time; Lawrence could feel the vibration building as the turbojets wound up to full power before the nose was lined up. Then they were racing forward, lifting from the ground.

They flew up steeply, the giant turbojets pushed to their redline. The spaceplane’s cameras showed the calm upper cloud bands fluorescing a lambent silver in the lurid radiance thrown out from hundreds of descending fireballs. As they passed through the thin layer the perspective shifted until it looked as if they’d climbed above a frosted desert gleaming in winter moonlight.

Their scramjet ignited, thrusting them higher. The swaths of cloud shrank away to a shimmering haze that veiled the world. Scintillating rose-gold contrails scored their way through the empty darkness toward it, plunging underneath to dwindle and vanish.

Ahead of the spaceplane’s nose, stars glittered coldly in welcome.