Lessons Learned

Maria

"Tycho here," I said as a muffled beep came from my Basilisk's communicator. Muffled because my arm was blocking the speaker as I clenched my hands around the vehicle's control yoke. "Yes, ma'am?" I said, trying to keep my frustration out of my voice. Now don't get me wrong, keeping three thousand people safe and hidden away right under the glitches' noses is a hell of a job and I respect her for what she has done, but she pisses me off so bad!

"Fire a bit lower, and switch chains to the Vipers a quarter-second faster."

"What lower? I am firing precisely at the center of the sim enemy!"

"Cybrid vehicles have weaker legs. Firing at the vehicle's center will make the kill slower. And some of these vehicles carry heavier weapons and a second of delay can kill you."

"Tell me how to hit the legs with weapons that specifically track for the vehicle center!"

"Close with the enemy. Crouch and dumbfire."

"Dumbfiring makes missiles useless--"

My cockpit rocked under a simulated hit, bucked to the side under another, and then the whole Herc shut down. "An EMP volley to take out shields, no missiles used. EMPs used and Shrikes dumbfired to the left. The left one missed and the right one exploded on your reactor casing, rupturing it. EMPs again to explode the reactor. Three seconds and you die. It would have taken about ten to kill you allowing the Shrikes to lock, and they fire faster."

"I see."

"Do not see. Understand. Learn. Practice."

"Yes ma'am," I retorted.

"Cut the ma'am. It is irritating."

So are you, I wanted to say.

"Practice. Simulating three Adjudicators attacking you at thirty port four hundred relative you. Destroy them."

Three! I thought in a panic as the screen lit up with Cybrids...

-----

"Acceptable," Maria said coldly as the Executioner collapsed. She and I were out on a haunt, a Ghosts term for hiding behind crater rims and slowly creeping away from Fantasma colony, and as soon as we were far enough away, locating the nearest Cybrid patrol or facility and obliterating it. It was an entertaining pastime, if dangerous, and it certainly felt good to give back to the metal bastards after they drugged and reprogrammed my mind to serve them.

"Damned good, I think," I retorted.

"It took twenty seconds to destroy that Executioner after I engaged the communications jamming. In twenty seconds a smart Cybrid might be able to get a distress call though the static blanket."

"Well, you missed once. I was counting on your railgun shot to disrupt the leg servos so the bug wouldn't make that turn behind the boulder."

"I do miss now and then. Do not make me list the tactical errors you made."

I scowled. Yes, I had waited for the first missile volley to lock before firing, yes, I dodged a few degrees too far when the particle beams opened up on me and had to delay my next shot, yes the last missile I dumbfired hit too high on the leg... but damn!

"Of course, you have improved considerably. Your firing solutions leave a lot to be desired, but your piloting is excellent and your tactics are among the best I have seen. Even I would not have thought of firing a missile in front of a vehicle's foot to make a hole for it to stumble into. I shall have to add that to my strategies."

"I prefer a Paladin with two autocannon, I daresay tactics are rather important the way I work."

"Indeed."

"Have we destroyed enough yet on this haunt?"

"An Exec, two Adjudicators, two Seekers, sixteen cargo vehicles, three monitoring stations, a comm link, and a Cybrid construction center. Yes, we can return to Fantasma now. Set course to Crater Seven-seventy-three and follow the ridge around to Seven-seventy-nine. There is a cliff there that will shield us from the Cybrid patrols to the north, and we destroyed enough of them near the scarp they will be working to rebuild instead of patrolling..."

"How do you remember all this stuff? It's like you have a map in your head, down to the last crater."

"Organomech brain, and practice."

"Ah."

-----

"Argh!" Delithita, one of the other Ghosts who had been living in the Antipode since the first Cybrid attack, cried. "We have been discovered!"

Maria's face went white. "Certain?"

"Yes. Sixteen Adju incoming southeast four klicks full speed."

Maria slammed her fist on the board beside the shorter woman, snapped commands into the communicator. "Techs, ready Lobita, Tumor, Del's bug, Wolfe's, Dread Ring One, Tycho's Bas, Xeno's Emac, move it!" She flipped channels. "Icey, Xeno, John, Ros, Code Black." Another quick change of channels. "All residents please proceed to deeper locations at once."

"Icey."

"Xenogears." The young man and the woman with the brilliant blue eyes appeared in the doorways opposite each other simultaneously. Five seconds later, Maria's husband and sister appeared.

"Code Black. Sixteen Adjus."

"Ugh," Icey muttered, and left for the vehicle bay. Xenogears followed without a word, Rosalia shook her head, sighed, and followed a moment later.

"There will be more on the way," Maria said softly. "This is going to be a bad one, mi amor," she whispered as she took her husband's hand. They kissed.

"We don't have time for that--" I snapped. They did not respond, and when they separated, Maria turned to me with tears in her eyes. "You must remember," she said in the softest voice I had ever heard from her.

"We must remember what it is we are fighting for." They left together, and I could do nothing but follow them to the Herc bay.

Had we been defending this rathole with so little hope of surviving that we no longer valued those things so precious to us? Was merely ripping apart waves of Cybrids and staying hidden so time-consuming we had forgotten other, more important things? And if we had, what kind of life were we fighting to save?

I climbed into my Basilisk, powered up, and followed Icey who was the first one out. Stupid, I had always thought, for the governor of the colony to be a fighter. It would be better for someone who was not constantly risking his life to take the position, but he had been voted in, mostly by default. Maria had been first asked, and flatly refused. Del's time was spent keeping the gardens in order so the colony would have something other than processed mush to eat, and Xenogears was not particularly trusted, because of the way the Cybrids' drugs had altered her perceptions.

Fortunately the Ghost's defense center was located a kilometer away from the colony entrance, so our Hercs emerging from the crater wall would not alert the Cybrids to the colony location. The facility would probably be destroyed cleanly//efficiently as the glitches would put it, and the techs inside would evacuate via the tunnel system. This done, the tunnel would be collapsed by carefully-placed ultratherms that would detonate and melt the tunnel shut.

"In range," Xeno snapped. "Orders?"

"Bear seventy degrees. Parallel the colony and run four kilometers down the canyon wall."

Good idea. That would provide some cover for the colony if the glitches saw us running sideways instead of straight out at them.

"Adjus standard EMP/railgun," Icey said.

My Bas and Rosa's Gorgon had anticoncussive armor, so we could take quite a few hits from that. Maria, John, Icey, and Xeno all had aluminum armor that provided good protection against most situations including this one. Del's Exec, however, had a ceramic composite that was really designed to stop energy weapons. She's have to be careful and watch her shields...

My Basilisk rocked slightly. The battle was joined.

-----

Twenty minutes later, I was out of missiles despite my efforts at conserving them. Limited to EMPs I could do little damage. Maria and Icey were in similar positions. Delithita had run out of railgun slugs and John was out of blast cannon but their vehicles were sufficiently energy-based to continue dealing considerable damage.

"Cover my retreat, Icey, Tycho, follow," Maria snapped. I fired off an EMP burst at one of the remaining seven Adjus, lowering its shields enough for a particle beam blast from Del to sever its legs, then turned tail and ran back to the Herc bay, which, fortunately, the Cybrids had not yet reached.

Five minutes later, my Bas had two fresh missile packs slung from the shoulders, and I was ready to rejoin the battle. "Xeno!" Del cried over the comm suddenly, as I crested the ridge. I watched, horrified, as the leg on Xeno's stubby Emancipator was blown off by a railgun slug.

"I am undamaged," Xeno informed Del. Not that she would remain so for long, stuck in place.

Maria's white Apoc trotted over to the Emancipator and stood in front of it in a guard position.

I had an idea. "Icey, remain below the ridge. Del, turn toward Xeno and back off. Let some of them through."

"Crossfire," John said cheerfully.

"Yes sir." I crouched my Bas so I could just barely peek over the ridge.

Four of the Adjus attacked Maria and Xeno. Insanely, Xeno cracked the cockpit and stepped out onto the baked rock. "Xeno you idiot!"

She ignored me, and began running, or leaping more accurately in the low gravity, back toward the Herc bay. Maria stepped between her and the Cybrids and began cutting into the nearest. Her Apoc shuddered under multiple hits, and I shuddered as I thought of how long her weak shielding would last.

"Icey, charge!"

Icey's brown Gorgon rose over the ridge and Shrike missiles and ELFs sliced clean through an Adju's leg. One more ELF shot blew the vehicle to bits and damaged its neighbor in the explosion. Rosalia wheeled and fired a few bursts from those odd green weapons into the other Adju, blasting its reactor out the vehicle's nose, where it struck the rock and blew apart a moment later. I have no idea where those things came from or what they were, but they sure as hell had a kick to them.

Del made a nice dent in the Adju she was fighting, slamming a particle beam shot through the weakened armor over the cockpit, and destroyed the Cybrid pilotform. Even without railguns, her stolen Executioner packed a punch. The EMP ripped shields, the particle beam and the fusion cannon (and where had the Cybrids acquired those?) ripped armor.

Xeno had reached the Herc bay, and was returning to the battle in a Goad, the small, irritating Cybrid vehicle she had stolen. ELFs affixed to the top and bottom provided greater firepower than the small plasma globe launchers that had originally armed the thing. She danced over the ridge right in between an Adju's legs, and started cutting into the reactor casing.

Five minutes later, the last Adju fell to a pair of my Viper missiles.

"Report," Maria snapped.

"Icey. No Shrikes. Damaged left leg, not serious. Estimate twenty minutes repair."

"Xeno. No damage. Emancipator crippled. Best to retrieve the weapons and destroy the rest."

"Rosa. Cockpit breached slightly. Armor damage to right shoulder. One Shrike launcher lost. Other empty." I glanced at her Herc, and the irritating black, green, and white paint job was quite badly scorched. Someone needed to teach that woman the art of camouflage.

"Wolfe. No significant damage. Low ammunition."

Quickly I took stock of my battered Bas as Del gave her report. "Del. Significant armor damage. Railgun lost. Leg servos erratic. Not battle worthy."

"Tycho," I said. "Armor damage to shoulders and legs. Shield gen and sensors slightly damaged."

"Icey, Del, Rosa, return to Herc bay. We'll guard. When Icey gets back, you go, John."

No acknowledgement was given, but the two Gorgons and the Exec strode off to the west toward the Herc bay.

"Tycho, sensors?"

"Clear for the moment. I think we'll have a few minutes at least..."

She did not reply. She called the Herc bay and ordered them to send out a scavenger team to take some goodies from the Adjus. We already had more EMPs than we knew what to do with (wire them up along the top of the cliff and use them as perimeter defense?) but the remaining railguns, sensors, computer components, leg servos, and even engines would make nice additions to our stockpile.

I suggested stringing up the EMPs. "Good idea," she said. "But not on the cliff..."

"Where?"

"In the crater." I could hear a malicious grin in her voice.

"What? Why?"

"Ram them to knock them in, then leave them there trapped while the EMPs slowly chew them up."

"Ahh nice," I said.

My sensor display lit up. Oh no. "Incoming, ten kilometers..." I did not know how many or what kind, but if I could detect the energy signature of the force at that distance...

"Mierda," Maria whispered. I couldn't agree more.

-----

The incoming force turned out to be twenty-five Cybrid vehicles, including four Executioners (potato bugs as Del would say), and a pack of ten Goads. Needless to say, we were sort of in a bad situation.

We did quite well for awhile (stupid Goads ran off ahead and got their heads blown off by Del's fusion cannon, bless her aim), until the Execs and their companion Shepards began arriving. Del was the only one having any kind of luck against the Execs, and Icey and Rosa paired off and began chewing at the Shepards. Xenogears was severely limited in her little Goad, only able to strike the legs of an occasional Exec while Maria cut its shields with her EMPs.

My Basilisk was next to useless. Two small EMPs on top were hard-pressed to take out the shields of the Shepards, and the slow, dumb missiles were like lobbing rocks at the enemy.

It was Xenogears who fell first, her Goad legged by a stray particle beam shot. The vehicle tumbled end-over-end, bouncing over the sun-baked rock, finally coming to rest in a shallow crater.

Icey's Gorgon ran out its Shrikes busting up two of the Execs, and he switched to dogfighting mode. The ELFs mounted the vehicle's nose chewed into the Adjudicators behind the Shepards, and made quite a mess of them.

I cried out a warning as six of the Shepards turned as one and faced Icey.

"Pop it!" Maria cried, just as the Shepards began firing their electrically-charged autocannon pellets into the nose of Icey's vehicle.

He didn't need the order. He popped the cockpit, jumped, hit the ground in a five-meter fall that must have hurt even in Mercurian gravity, rolled between the Gorgon's legs.

The Shepards severed the Gorgon's head. Weakened, the frame crumpled. I watched in horror as the two legs caved inward, and the entire vehicle came crashing down.

Icey's white-suited form writhed but did not move forward. His legs were pinned, and I knew that even if he were rescued they would be lost.

The Cybrids did not kill him, amazingly, in the length of time it took Maria and her husband to go down the line of Shepards and shove Shrikes and blast cannon shells down their backs. "Turn your back on me, eh?" John muttered over the comm.

Rosa's Gorgon and Del's Exec both retreated a hundred meters as John began blasting two of the Sheps at close range. The three EMPs were sufficient to take the shields down after a few shots, and the blast cannon and autocannon shells ripped through the leg joints and blasted the hell out of the reactors.

Rosa began firing at one of the Adjudicators, her black-and-green vehicle trembling as railgun slugs smashed into the shoulders. Her odd green guns got the shields down, and I fired a pair of Vipers to blast a couple of the guns off the thing. Around this time one of the surviving Goads wheeled around and started chewing at my legs with autocannon.

I cursed; while my Bas was fast enough (barely) to keep up with the Goad, it did not have the firepower to deal it enough damage. "Maria," I called, and shot my Bas forward to ram the little bugger.

Immobilized briefly, the Goad could not dodge Maria's quad-EMP dual-Shrike shot and fell inward on itself as the shoulder joint was blasted to little slivers. "Thanks," I muttered. The word got stuck in my throat as my sensor display shrilled a warning. "Oh. Shit. Incoming, two kilometers, five Sheps three Adjus it looks-- seven Sheps, four Adjus. Shit!"

"Finish these guys off," Maria said, even as her white Apoc wheeled and crashed headlong into a Shepard. Del fired an offhand shot to the side and blasted the thing off her. Large chunks of Shepard bounced off the Apoc's shoulders and exploded under its feet as she stepped on them.

Maria and I got lucky and pinned a Goad between us as Del turned and started slugging it out with the last Exec. The Goad, obviously, did not survive, and the Exec was only able to take off Del's particle beam weapon and EMP before the railgun and fusion cannon recharged. Del crouched her Exec and fired the shots into the vehicle's underbelly. Boom-baby-boom.

I got a better view on the sensors of the incoming vehicles, swore. "Make that six Sheps, five Adjus, and an artillery tank!"

Del said a rather impolite word.

"Out of Shrikes," Maria said, and Rosa indicated agreement. The green guns were still fully operational though, and she fired off a shot as the Cybrids came within range. Another shot and the Adju's shields were down, and she fired two pairs of Shrikes at it. Crippled but not destroyed, the vehicle wobbled and plowed into its neighbor. The crippled one collapsed, the other one recovered and moved ahead of the formation slightly.

"If you're in formation stay in formation," Maria had drilled into my head time and again. I proved this to be true by blasting the crap out of the rogue Adjudicator. The practice at dumbfiring also came in handy, since it took a leg shot to do the job.

A massive fireball appeared just in front of me, making me blink, and my Bas rocked with the shock wave of the explosion.

The next shot from the artillery tank impacted squarely on Maria's Apoc, blasting its shoulders clean off.

Del, John, Rosa, and I formed a barrier in front of the crippled Apoc. "Maria, report," I snapped.

"Situation non-optimal," she retorted. She coughed, then, the bubbly kind of cough indicating internal injuries. "I'll survive."

I heard the "maybe" in her voice.

"Del. Status?"

"Out of slugs."

"Pick up Maria, Icey, and Xeno and get them out."

"Countermand," Maria said, her voice as commanding and harsh as ever despite the coughing that seized her immediately afterward."

"Shut up and suit up," Del said tiredly, and crouched her vehicle directly in front of the headless Apoc.

"Icey, Xeno, get over here..."

"Negative," Xenogears said. "Spinal column broken. Cannot move."

"Then I'll get you myself!" Del snapped, as the hatch in the bottom of the vehicle opened and her suited figure dropped to the rock below.

Del went to Maria's Apoc, and when the cockpit didn't open in response to her command at the keyboard, she leapt in a maneuver only possible in low gravity and kicked the thing, with both feet, in midair. It caved inward and she grabbed the bases and crawled in. A few seconds later she came out, carrying Maria over one shoulder, and put her on the cargo lift of the Exec. The cargo lift vanished into the vehicle as Del ran off to Xeno's Goad.

"Well that's that," I said dryly. "Engage the lead two Adjus, Rosa, and Wolfe you follow me."

"Si, si," Rosa responded. Wolfe snapped a curt "Yeah."

"Del, get them out quickly..." I muttered.

"Aye, I'm working on it," she said, as she carried Xeno the two hundred meters to the Exec. "Thank God for the low grav."

The Gorgon with the big green rings on it (Rosa never went on haunts, ha) ran ahead and began blasting green energy waves at the Adjus, and I turned left and put a few EMP shots into the closest Shepard. It turned toward me, not really paying attention to John, and when I charged right past the Shepard it didn't stop turning. John blew a large, gaping hole in its back just as I pulled out of my charge and turned to face the Cybrids again.

The artillery tank fell quickly, or rather its gun did, two shots with the EMPs knocked it clean off. I left the tank there, not wanting to waste firepower.

"Ghosts, pull off, head for crater three-forty-one," I said.

"The rim is too high, we can't take the battle in there--" John said.

"Yep," I agreed. "Rim's unstable too from what Maria said."

"What-- ahh..." John laughed. "Now you're talking."

We fought a running battle as we backed toward the crater, a kilometer backward. I lost both my EMPs and Rosa lost her (fortunately empty) Shrike launchers on the way, and all of us had our vehicles riddled with small holes from all the rock shards kicked up by the explosions. By the time we got to the crater rim and backed up against it, we were in a bad state.

The Shepards, close-combat vehicles they are, ran up to us and started shooting, now that we were backed against the wall.

"Curtain fall," I snapped, and we turned and opened up on the crater rim. "Now run!"

The ground beneath us started trembling and great cracks appeared. The rock was too weak to hold the shift in weight of the ejecta, and started to disintegrate before our eyes. I watched one particular Shepard suddenly get surrounded by crevasses, and the slab of rock it sat on tumbled down the slope of the crater. The Shepards that had chased us all fell down, banging and bumping into the crater wall as they fell the eight hundred meters to the unforgiving rock below.

We engaged the Adjus just as my accursed sensor beeped again. More reinforcements.

"Return to Fantasma," I said softly. "We're going to have to dig in..."

-----

Bolos. Goads. Irritating little Cybrid vehicles came over the ridge as we backed up at full speed toward the colony, two kilometers behind us. Harmless little buggers, but not en masse. Grimly we returned fire, our heavier weapons blasting the little brats with two hits while they chewed at our shields with a hail of autocannon pellets. Rosa made a lucky shot and her green-gun energy waves finished off one Goad, passed through the debris, and fried another Goad that John had half obliterated.

The battle, fortunately, was not very intense yet as the heavier vehicles had not yet got us in their line of sight. I knew that as soon as they did the little guys would slip by us and start attacking the colony. "Turn tail, head for Herc facility at top speed," I said, as I fired a pair of missiles at a Bolo and blasted it to fragments.

The Goads chewed at our legs as we ran toward the short, squat facility. As soon as the Goads were within range they began firing, their autocannon shells ripping into the rock much more easily than they did our shielded vehicles. I prayed the facility had been evacuated in time...

A Goad took the final shot, its autocannon slicing through a gap in the rock and blasting one of the facility's reactors. The place blew sky-high, rocking our vehicles even from a hundred meters away, sending Goads tumbling in all directions, melting Bolos into little heaps of slag.

Stupid Goad.

I blinked as I saw a vehicle coming out of the rubble. It was a little cargo truck, loaded down with Shrike and Viper missiles. How had that little thing survived that cataclysm? I watched, fascinated, as it approached me and the crane attached to the nose lifted a box-like Viper pack.

I immediately crouched my vehicle, shed my empty Viper packs, and heard the click as the fresh ones locked into position hanging from my Bas's shoulders. The cargo truck went and reloaded Rosa's Shrikes, and John shed his empty blast cannon and accepted a Viper pack.

A Goad came over the ridge and blasted the cargo truck. I bowed my head in respect for the brave pilot, then turned to the Goad and was about to cut it apart, but John beat me to it.

A Shepard lumbered out from behind the wreckage, and I was about to fire until I saw the red D and the mottled brown paint on it. Delithita had apparently got her shields up before the Herc bay had blown. Good, her scrappy little Shep would be valuable in this fight...

Even as I thought this, a cluster of Seekers (goddamned fodder-fighters) attacked. This nuisance was easily dealt with, and best quickly as I saw the top of an Adju peeking over the ridge sheltering us. I fired two EMPs at the closest Seeker, paused briefly to savor the moment, then let fly with a Viper. The Seeker (what was left of it) tumbled end-over-end through the air to splash against my Bas with a rain of sparks. Delithita dog-fought two of the things while John and Rosa pinned the rest between them and taught the glitches the art of crossfire.

Then the Adjus opened fire, splashing railgun against our shields, and we turned. Six of the things were standing at the top of the ridge, firing away, not wanting to get too close. Rosa's green guns clipped the head off one of them, even as all the vehicles fired at her. Her uranium armor served her well, and her Herc only lost a slab of armor off the nose in that first volley. John and Del charged the line of Adjus, then immediately backed off. "We got some company over the ridge. Fall back to the tunnel. We can't fight this many on open ground."

"Understood," I said, swiveling my Bas just after I fired a shot and watched one of the Adjus's weapons blow off.

Del and John in their close-combat vehicles had to back away slowly enough to keep their weapons trained on the glitches, Rosa was able to back off quickly and weave back and forth because of her weapons' slow recharge rate. We managed to get into the tunnel just before the Executioners got to us, thank God.

We ducked inside, faced the entrance, and waited for the Cybrids to come back into the line of fire. "It has been an honor fighting with you," I said softly. No one replied, no one needed to. We knew our lives would eventually come down to this. We couldn't hold a planetful of glitches back forever.

"How tall is this cliff?" Rosa asked suddenly.

"Nine hundred meters," Del replied. "Think we can pull it off?" I watched her weapons track upward, toward the ceiling.

? I thought, then it hit me. Quickly I judged our available firepower, shrugged. "It's a good possibility," I said. "But we need a weak spot."

Del dodged behind me and I felt a faint vibration. It was the sound of autocannon pinging against rock, and the vibration transmitting through the rock and up my Bas's legs. "I can cut up this fault here, but you will need to block the entrance to give me time. Tycho, John, I'll need Rosa's firepower to collapse it. You have to guard."

"Acknowledged," I said, not commenting. John's reply was also quiet and emotionless. Del had essentially asked us to sacrifice ourselves to buy time for the colony. And, being the guardians of the colony, we would do so without hesitation.

I don't know about John, probably thoughts of his wife, severely injured somewhere inside the colony, was his main motivation. Mine was the desire to beat the glitches in this. They had enslaved me, forced me to do their bidding, and I was not going to allow them to harm more people. I got angry then, angry at the stupid metalheads who thought they had the right to slaughter innocent people, as they would indeed be doing at this moment if I were not standing in their way. My Bas was a wall between them and their evil desires, and they were not getting through me!

I strode up to the entrance beside John's Apocalypse, fired a burst of EMPs at the nearest Adju, and fired my missiles afterward. A Bolo tried to get by me, and I took great pleasure in lifting my Bas's foot and squashing the little tank like a tin can. Sparks shot out from under my feet as its little joke of a reactor exploded.

"Tycho," John said suddenly. "Maria gave me an idea awhile back. You have Theta shields?"

"Ya."

"Drop them."

"Are you mad!" I demanded, even as my hand automatically moved to lower the shields. "It will take forever for these to get back--"

His Apoc's shields also dropped, then flashed back to life a moment later. My Bas rocked as the shield perimeter intersected my hull. "Raise yours."

I pressed the control. Blue-green sparks exploded from our vehicles.

I looked at the shield status display. "Impossible," I muttered. My shield energy factors were off the scale.

"Reinforcing shields. That'll help us." Somehow, he had used the interaction between our shields to meld their waveforms to form a more solid barrier.

"Del..."

"Getting there. Give me five."

"You have three."

"Ya."

Shepards paused before us, uncertain. John took advantage of the pause to knock their shields down and slice into their legs with autocannon, then I fired a Viper at each to sever the weakened metal. The survivors retreated, their weaker weapons useless against our shields.

"Execs incoming," John reported. It was unnecessary. A dozen particle beams slashed through the air and ripped at our shields, which, amazingly, held. We were going to survive for a little while, at least, but both John and I lacked the firepower to counterattack the Execs. We settled for slicing up the nearer Adjus who were contributing railguns to the mix of stuff being thrown at us.

"Del..."

"Done. Rosa."

"Firing."

I looked at my rear display. Waves of green energy and Shrike missiles lit up the tunnel, blasting into the ceiling. I could feel shifting rock through the Bas's hull, though it was silent in the vacuum.

A wave of kinetic energy suddenly rippled down the wall. I watched, awestruck and frozen, as the rock wall undulated back and forth as aeons of stable rock suddenly found its weight distribution disrupted.

"John, Tycho, get in here!"

"We have to hold them, if they get past us they'll have free access to the colony!"

"Get in here!" Del bellowed in the loudest voice I had ever heard from anyone.

I backed my Bas through the cloud of dust and flying rock chips, feeling resistance. The shields linked with John's Apoc were holding me back.

"John!"

"No! They are not going to get at my wife!"

I shook my head. The tunnel was starting to collapse before our very eyes and he was just standing there.

Brilliant, blue-violet-ultraviolet energy flashed as our shields ripped apart. The nexus was the shield generator on John's Apoc. The shock blasted the pod off the vehicle and knocked the Apoc backward, and it tipped my Bas backward nearly far enough to tip it over. I was relieved to see the Apoc start to back up but I doubted it would make it in time.

I looked up. It was not going to make it in time and neither was I. The entire ceiling, a slab of rock a kilometer tall and a kilometer wide, was slipping. The tunnel walls were crumbling like sand. The vibration rocked my Bas hard enough to damage the gyros but then of what importance would that be in a moment?

The glitches were following us into the tunnel. I grinned. There were a few metalheads that would not be plaguing Mercury.

Organomech brains, they function so quickly, I thought as the landslide inched down toward me. I amused myself by estimating the mass of the rock that would soon land on me. Seventy billion tons? Or did I forget a decimal or something? Oh well.

Would the colony be safe? Would the glitches tunnel? I knew they had the tools, but did they know there was a colony under the rock, several kilometers down? Had we died in vain, merely putting up a block the Cybrids would quickly and efficiently remove and proceed with their "purification//eradication"?

Would they be safe?

Oh let them be safe! I thought, as the rock touched the top of the Bas, and crumpled it beneath its weight--

-----

Consciousness? Where the hell did that come from?

Del was leaning over me, injecting me with something, a stimulant I guessed from the sudden fire in my veins.

"I'm alive?"

Del shrugged. "Looks like it," she said, trying to sound as if it was expected but I could tell she was quite relieved.

"The other Ghosts?"

"John's a bit banged up but he'll be fine. Rosa's fine. Maria, Icey, and Xeno are in stasis."

"Stasis?"

"I can't do anything for them here," she said sadly. "Their injuries are too severe. We'll have to wait until the Empire or the MWF send some decent equipment and an experienced doctor."

"That could be years!"

"Then it will take years!" she snapped. "I just had this conversation with John and Rosa and it was upsetting enough the first time. We'll just have to do without them until we can safely revive them."

"The Cybrids?"

"They were tunneling into the rock fall until yesterday."

"Why did they stop?"

Del gestured to a group of people sitting on a set of couches several meters away.

"What is wrong with them?" I demanded. They were just sitting and staring into space, rocking back and forth, not paying the slightest attention to their surroundings. They were muttering something, too low to hear.

"They were unfortunate enough to have radio links with the Cybrids as part of their implants. They were actually in some kind of contact with them, fortunately, it was only one-way. Yesterday the Cybrids sent out a mass message to every glitch on Mercury."

I strained my ears to hear what they were saying. "<First-Thought//Giver-of-Will> is offlined\\terminated."

"Prometheus is destroyed!"

Del smiled.

"Prometheus is destroyed..." I thought of my history lessons, of what had happened the last time the glitches were cut off from the Big Toaster. "This changes everything..."

/ < / << /