BASSANDER WENT AHEAD WITH two hoplites. I followed, keeping Valka in front of me so I knew where she was at all times. Behind came several others, Udax and the bird who had carried me among them. Still more remained on the platforms outside, fighting to clear them. The thin light of the false night shone in, illuminating halls like the inside of huge intestines wrought of metal and dark stone. As with so many of the Cielcin constructs I have seen, that machine must once have been some hollowed asteroid converted to foul purpose by the Pale. The walls sweat on either side, and our little party drew close together.

“This isn’t any kind of plasma bore,” I said, looking at the walls. Machinery ran along the inner wall and along the ceiling above, rippling pipes and lengths of conduit. Dials and blinking indicators shone there, though what they portended I could not guess.

Valka lingered by one of these, head cocked. “Pressure gauges?” she asked, prodding one with a finger.

“Hydraulics?” I asked. “They don’t mean to cut through the wall with water, surely?” It was so primitive.

“Could be,” she said. “This thing . . . ’tis big enough to carry a reservoir.”

A shot sounded ahead, and something sparked against the wall. It sounded like a nerve disruptor. That shouldn’t be. The Cielcin did not use nerve disruptors. They did not have them. One of the men beside Bassander raised his lance to fire back, but the captain threw an arm out to stop him. “No beams. There’s no telling what you’d hit.”

“It went around the bend,” Valka said. Her eyes were better than ours.

“We’ll split up,” Lin said. “I’ll take five and go after our friend. Marlowe, you take the bridge.”

I gripped one of the conduits on the wall to steady myself. The shaking I’d felt on the decks outside was more pronounced within. The whole thing reminded me of nothing so much as the uranium mining crawlers on whose backs my family made their fortune.

“We stay together,” I said, not willing to have a repeat of the tragedy on Iubalu’s ship. “I’ll not have any of us getting lost in here. Forget them.” The whole crawler shook again as sounds of fighting from the outside filtered through the walls.

I wished we had mapping drones.

“That’s Barda,” Udax said, shoulders hunched, head cocked as it listened to the Irchtani unit’s channel. “They’re trying to disable the wheels.”

“There must be something like a lift in here,” Valka said. “We need to get to the bottom.”

“Won’t the bridge be high?” Lin asked.

“You’re thinking like a human,” I said in answer.

No lift, but we did find the ladder not long after, bracketed to the outer wall. Two hoplites went first, securing the space below. We followed this level around. Like the level above, it described a U-shape or semi-circle, floors enclosing some larger space—possibly the very reservoir Valka guessed would be there. We moved swiftly, but with caution, so that when two scahari fighters leaped at us from an outer room, they fell quickly. The light from our suit lamps blazed in that dim place, walls so black they were almost green.

“Something’s wrong,” Lin said when we had descended to a third level. “This place should be teeming with soldiers.”

Memory of our first push to board Iubalu’s ship played over and over in my mind, and I found myself watching the walls, expecting false panels to fold back and reveal black-suited foes. None did.

“We know we’re not alone in here,” I said dryly, shifting my unkindled sword in my hand. I’d had enough of crawling round in tunnels to last a lifetime.

The next level down we found what we’d been searching for: a hatch on the inner wall. The crawler had been built like one of those antique nesting dolls, with the encircling halls, hull, and outer fortifications wrapped around a nucleus that doubtless housed the thing’s engines and whatever nasty surprise it held for the Storm Wall and the men and women inside it. This too opened on a wheel-lock, one which took three men to turn. It swung inward, admitting a rush of cool, damp air. The chamber inside stank of ozone and spent gunpowder, electonics and burning stone. I should not have smelled it through my suit, but the seals had taken damage somewhere in all the fighting.

The room stretched the full space of the crawler, levels of catwalks rising in a dense tangle beneath braided cables and bits of machinery bracketed to the convex dome of the ceiling.

Reservoir indeed.

Along the far wall—which was the front of the crawler—I could see a red-lit line of windows, and through them the horned shapes of Cielcin at work operating the great machine. How strange it was, seeing them at a task so mundane, so human. Beneath those windows was a flat expanse of wall that I guessed must be some kind of ramp or outer doors. And dead ahead? The snarling cylinder of a mining drill a hundred feet in diameter stood bracketed to floor and ceiling and hung in the air between like the egg sac of some evil iron spider.

A drill. They meant to drill through the Storm Wall.

Stepping out onto the catwalk near the end of the mining rig, I almost laughed. It was easy to forget how primitive the Pale were, how antiquely industrial. But it was no laughing matter. Primitive or no, it would breach the Wall if we did not stop it.

A disruptor bolt struck my shield.

“That is far enough, my lord!”

I froze.

The voice was high and nasal—and unmistakably human.

Looking up, I saw a man standing on a higher catwalk, looking down on us. He was hairless, and pale almost as a Cielcin, but he was human all the same. He had no horns, and though his eyes were black even at this distance, they were the ordinary eyes of mankind. He had a nose, too: hooked and wicked above thin and pallid lips. Human indeed. Still, there was something wrong about him, as though the god who crafted him had blurred his initial sketch. Everything seemed a little too short, too thin. In a certain light, he might have reminded me of Aristedes. As it was, he only reminded me of an overlarge and emaciated infant, still wet from the birthing vat.

A rush of understanding overtook me, and I said, “You’re with MINOS, aren’t you?” The Extrasolarian company had designed the chimeras for Prince Syriani. It made sense one of their representatives would be present. It explained the Prophet’s willingness and ability to adapt human technologies—like the captured body shields—to its efforts. It had allies.

The man made no expression. “I serve the Prince of Princes.” He took a step to one side, surveying the crowd behind me. “I saw you. At Arae. It’s Lord Marlowe, is it not?”

I thought back to that battle, to the room of dead men we’d found. The bodies the MINOS workers had left behind when they broadcast their minds into space. “Who are you to ask for my name?”

“I am called Urbaine. You met my colleague, Doctor Severine.”

“Severine?” Had that been the name of the doctor on Arae?

“You don’t remember?” Urbaine asked. “She nearly killed you. Or . . . our creations nearly did. No matter.” He turned his back, looking up at the orb behind him. “It was good of you to come in person. The Shiomu will be so pleased. He has looked forward to this meeting for quite some time.”

Bassander Lin fired, but his shot broke on the doctor’s shield. Urbaine did not even notice. Remembering my previous encounter with one of the doctors of MINOS, I switched off my suit’s communications completely and signaled for the others to do the same. Urbaine was an Extrasolarian. There would be machines in his head—like Valka—that could access and control our suits if the villain had a mind. Bassander flashed a hand sign, ordering triases of men along the perimeter catwalks in a search of a stair.

Pushing the familiar horror at the thought the Cielcin wanted me aside, I said, “You should surrender.”

“Surrender? When victory is at hand?” The Extrasolarian turned to look back at me. “Your theatrics are as redundant as your heroics, my lord. All this violence, all this sacrifice . . . and for what? You cannot win. Against what is coming no one can.” He sounded almost like Bartosz, if Bartosz had been triumphant and not teetering on the last abyss of despair.

“What is coming?” I asked.

Urbaine laughed, a high, quiet sound. “You think you are fighting a war?” he said. “You are fighting the end. Your end. There are powers in play you do not understand.”

“The Watchers, do you mean?” I said, and felt a thrill as the man took a step back, stunned.

“So you have some knowledge.” The doctor smiled, though I think he only hid his surprise. “But knowledge is not power, and even if it was there is no power that can avail against Them. We have flourished for twenty thousand years because They had not deigned to notice us. They have noticed now.”

I matched his smile.

“Enough talk, doctor,” came a voice deep as the sea.

What I had taken for part of the machinery shifted, stooped, and became Bahudde. The metal giant loomed out of the dark above, its lone remaining eye red as dying coals.

“Are we in position?” the Extrasolarian asked.

“Nearly.” The crawler shook again. Bahudde looked toward the ceiling. “The yukajjimn and their slaves mean to halt our advance.” I thought that a remarkably bland statement, and wondered if the giant was slow, or if the heavy abstraction MINOS had visited upon its body had warped its mind and made it dumb.

“Eilatono de wo!” Urbaine laughed again. “Let them try! Kill them, general!”

Enough of this, I thought. Before the giant could so much as move, I raised my voice and spoke one short, simple command. “Now, Udax!”

The winged centurion understood me all too well. Udax spread his wings and vaulted into the air, moving faster than the lumbering Bahudde could track. He alighted on the rail above Doctor Urbaine, his cutlass shining in one taloned hand. The zitraa flashed, freeing the Extrasolarian scientist’s head from his shoulders. The headless body stood there a moment as mine had once done, teetered, and fell.

In the instant that followed, Bahudde slammed one man-sized fist down through the catwalk. Udax would have fallen into the giant’s grasp had the centurion not leaped away, winging to the level above and nearer the massive drill. Urbaine’s headless body slid down the ramp and tumbled to the floor fifty feet below.

“Run!” I shouted, spurring Valka on ahead of me. “We have to get above it!”

Our little unit scattered. The few other Irchtani leaped into the air, following the lead of their centurion. Bassander and his men scattered to either side while Valka and I led a small knot of men straight forward. The crawler shook beneath the assault from outside, making us stumble. “Move!” I shouted, praying the metal monster was not on our heels. I had barely survived my battle with Iubalu, had barely survived my first brush with this member of the Iedyr Yemani. If we were to survive this one, we were going to have to be clever.

A man screamed, and I knew Bahudde had seized its first victim. Shots rained down from the Irchtani in the gantry above, peppering the catwalks and the armored goliath below. Bahudde roared, the horrific sound of it scraping at the walls and the inverse dome of the reservoir above our heads. The giant did not dare use its missiles in that enclosed space, could not risk harm to its siege engine. It was an advantage—small though it was.

“Can we destroy the drill?” I asked. I had half a mind to shoot the tank above, but refrained on the off chance the Cielcin planned to cool the drill with something other than water.

Valka shook her head. “Maybe! Or maybe Barda can destroy the wheels!”

We were running out of time, for we were surely within half a mile of the Wall.

A stair rose ahead of us and left. Valka leaped onto its lower rungs just ahead of me, pulling herself up toward the level Urbaine had occupied. We were nearly above the rear of the giant’s arms by then, and the red light of the bridge rose in front of us. Glancing back, I saw Bahudde with one of our men in its huge fingers. As I watched, the vayadan-general slapped the man against the wall. He went limp as a boned fish. Dead, unconscious, paralyzed—none could say. The giant tossed the soldier aside and ripped the catwalk we’d just crossed out with a contemptuous swipe of its hand. The size of those arms! Each must have been three times the height of a man and big around as wine barrels.

It swept the room with its solitary red eye. The damaged linkages in its one shoulder spat sparks into the air as it pointed up at me. “Okun-kih!” it said. “You damaged me!”

A single shot rang out and broke against my shield. Too late, I threw an arm across my face.

“Hadrian!” Valka called from the level above. “Come on!”

I turned to follow. “To the bridge!” I cried. “We have to stop them!” If we could get inside, we could stop the crawler in its tracks, stop the drill and the Cielcin effort to breach the Wall. They might still win a way inside—push through the tunnels in the starport, or overwhelm the defenses on the city side—but if all we did was buy time for the fleet to arrive, it would be worth it. “Go!”

I was halfway up the stairs when the ground vanished beneath me. The catwalk below and the flowing metal of the steps fell away. Valka screamed, and I seized the rail with my left hand. The stair swung, half-pulled free from the structure above. I saw Valka above me. She fired past me at the giant far below. I cast about for some handhold. There was nothing. The level above was out of reach. The staircase clanged as another of the bolts released. I knew I had seconds. There! I leaped out through open air, back toward the drill and the catwalk that ran alongside it for maintenance. The rail caught me about the midsection, and I groaned.

“Hadrian!” Valka cried again. Her voice could not have sounded farther away.

Before I could mount the rail and regain my feet, the catwalk was torn from beneath me. How far I fell was any man’s guess. Sixty feet? Seventy? I landed on my shoulder, suit’s gel layer cushioning my fall. I lay there stunned, stars dancing across the inside of my mask.

Before I could rise—before I could even see straight—iron fingers each big around as the arms of a full-grown man seized about my waist. The lonely red eye descended like a falling star, its twin guttering in the gloom beside it.

“Is this . . . all there is?” the deep voice asked. “No fight? No . . . resistance?” The vayadan-general lifted me bodily from the floor, fingers clamping tighter. “I expected more.”

My arms were still free, and I pounded on the huge hand with my fists and tried to pry the first finger loose. It was useless. I was trapped. Hysteric, my mind raced to the memory of that legionnaire doll I’d seen on the floor of the tramway, for I was as powerless in the giant’s grip as any toy in the hand of its child. I balled up my fists in impotent fury and realized incredibly—impossibly—that my sword was still in my hand.

Against all odds . . . I hadn’t dropped it.

I would have laughed, but the breath had fled my lungs.

“The prince will thank me for this,” Bahudde said, speaking its native tongue. Steel fingers tightened, and I felt my suit straining to protect the flesh within. “I will deliver you to him myself.”

Teeth clenched, I squeezed the hilt of Olorin’s sword. The blade appeared, flashing in the dim. I hewed at Bahudde’s wrist with all my strength. No good. The creature’s hand was adamant, and the highmatter would not bite. Sparks hissed from the damaged linkages in the chimera’s shoulder. I struck again, and the adamant jarred my hand. I almost lost my grip, and winced as Bahudde’s hand tightened further still.

“Iubalu-kih rakunyu ba-okun biqari,” it said, voice deep as the Dark of space. Iubalu was not yours to kill. “She belonged to the prince.” My vision grayed about the edge, and the beating of my heart was ragged in my ears. My limbs felt heavy. Heavy and uncharacteristically warm. “I should kill you,” Bahudde rumbled, ignoring the impact of weapons fire from the Irchtani and Bassander’s men. Where was Bassander? Where was Valka?

The grayness in my eyes went to black, and I sensed that deeper Dark beneath, howling up to greet me.

I was going to die again.

The pressure vanished, and air and blood rushed back, driving back that final darkness. “But you belong to the prince. Just like me.” It squeezed again, grip shifted higher, and I felt my ribs groan, threatening to form those greenstick fractures that heralded the final breaks. My vision blurred again, and I screamed out all the air in me, praying that my suit would save me from the bone-crushing weight.

It would be easy to let go, to let everything go.

So easy to die. Again.

A white blur fell from on high and struck the giant, clinging to its neck like the apes I’d read about in storybooks as a boy. I saw a flash of blue.

The weight of iron fingers vanished, and I was falling again.

Something heavy crashed to the earth beneath me as I landed, the wind all knocked out of me. My suit worked to force air back into my lungs. My vision cleared steadily. Bahudde’s fingers curled loose around me, the palm—large almost as I was tall—beneath me. Wheezing, I looked up and understood. Bassander Lin stood upon the shoulder of the giant above me, his highmatter sword in hand, its point buried deep in the linkages of the chimera’s damaged shoulder.

He had cut off the giant’s arm.

For a single, beautiful moment he stood like a conqueror atop the statue of a deposed tyrant. Then he was gone, leaping away before Bahudde could seize him with its one remaining hand. He dove wildly through the air, careening toward the floor without any net or hope of salvation—and was caught by two Irchtani who bore him safely to ground.

I might have cheered.

Still breathing hard, I tried to sit up. Where was my sword? I’d lost it at last in the fall. It must have rolled away. I twisted round, trying to locate it on the floor.

But the vayadan had not forgotten about me.

Even severed, the machine body of the giant obeyed its animal brain.

The iron fist slammed shut once more, trapping me in its grip. I groaned, tried once more to wrestle free while the chimera went after Bassander and his men. I had one arm still free, and cast about for my weapon. There! The deck plates were uneven, ridged and folded like the insides of a living thing, and my sword had rolled against one of these. It took every ounce of effort to strain toward it with my free hand. The fingertips just scraped the pommel, and I groaned.

No good.

I dug my heels into the floor and pushed, trying to scrape the huge hand and the severed arm across the floor, but it must have weighed more than a ton. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Unless . . .

Relaxing, I shut my eyes and tried to master my breathing, to call to mind a number of Tor Gibson’s old aphorisms against fear and panic, to reach that quiet place where my mind could see with eyes unclouded. Surely there was a way, a place in time where some errant bump or motion of the ship slid the weapon into my waiting fingers. I could just see it, I only had to reach out and choose.

Bahudde’s massive, clawed foot smashed the ground not three yards from my head. The vision shattered. Above me, the giant tore another catwalk from the gantry above, tumbling three men to their doom. Abandoning my previous plan, I strained once more, willing myself to stretch just that little bit more. Then something impossible happened.

I squirmed free.

The hideous strength of the giant’s hand just disappeared. I seized my blade and stumbled to my feet, wheeling to face the severed limb with highmatter kindling in my fist. The fingers twitched. Spasmed. Went still. Red lights along hatches on the inside of the wrist went dead.

“ ’Tis well I was not left on the Tamerlane, mm?” came a cutting voice from on high. I looked up. Valka was leaning against the rail of one of the highest catwalks, peering down at me.

I raised my sword in salute.

“ ’Tis thrice now I’ve saved you,” she said, calling down since my suit’s communications were still closed.

“Yes, yes.” I shook myself. “Noyn jitat.”

At the other end of the hold, Bahudde snatched one of the Irchtani from the air and slammed it headfirst into the wall, denting steel and spattering dark blood across the metal.

“Are you all right?” Valka asked.

I’d taken a few steps toward the general, meaning to rejoin the fight.

“I’ve had worse.” I stopped sharp. “What about the bridge?”

I could practically hear her eyes narrow. “You’re welcome.”

Half a dozen retorts flew to my lips, but I bit them all back. She’d come back for me, just as I would have done. I opened my mouth to respond—though whether it would have been in thanks or a smart riposte I never learned.

Valka screamed.

No shout of surprise this, no shocked curse. Hers was the sound of deepest, purest agony, a sound older than human reason, an animal’s terror and pain. Cold fingers seized my heart as surely as Bahudde’s had. Looking up, I saw her arch backward and fall convulsing on the catwalk above, limbs tearing, scrabbling at rails and floor.

“Valka!”

Where was the nearest ladder? I looked round, the drill, the giant, the war itself forgotten in that instant. Nothing mattered. Nothing but her. I started running.

“That will teach you to meddle!” came a high, nasal voice, ringing off the walls. “Rob the prince of his prize, will you? Oh no-no no-no no . . .”

I froze where I stood.

It was the voice of Doctor Urbaine.

The Extrasolarian had survived.

At once I understood what was happening. Valka had opened her mind to comms channels to use her praxis on Bahudde—to save me—thinking the MINOS doctor dead. In doing so, she had only exposed herself to the predations of the doctor himself.

Even as I stood there reeling, a silent alarm began. Red lights flashed about the chamber, and the hatchway at the fore began to open, revealing the white face of the Storm Wall not two thousand feet away.

But I had other things to occupy me. Valka was still screaming, still writhing a hundred feet above my head. One of the men nearest her seized her arms, trying to still her.

Where had the doctor’s body fallen? There was the catwalk he’d been standing on when Udax struck him down, fallen like a ramp to the floor. Ignoring the giant and the fight raging around us, I hurried toward it, ducking round the struts that supported the massive body of the drill.

“Time is short, general!” Urbaine was shouting. “Biqqa totajun! Kill them and have done!”

Above our heads the huge drill began turning slowly in its housing, the titanic bit extending, sliding forward toward the open front of the crawler platform. The Wall was closing in.

I saw the doctor’s body then, one arm broken beneath the narrow chest. Metal bones protruded from the ruined neck, and with growing horror I realized that Doctor Urbaine was no man at all. He was a SOM. I knew then what I had already suspected, knew what I must find.

“Biqqa totajun, vayadan-do!” Urbaine shrieked. “I cannot hold her!”

Hearing that, I could not help but grin savagely behind my helmet. Whatever the doctor was doing to Valka, she was still fighting. Her screaming rebounded off the reservoir dome above, and I shoved a packing crate aside and found it.

The Extrasolarian’s head lay against the heavy base of some alien mining implement. He was upside-down, and so I had a clear view of the severed neck and the machine lights blinking in it, the torn wires beside torn arteries and the silver shine of bone. Udax must have sheared clear between the vertebrae, and I marveled at the skill and chance of that blow.

Aiming the point of my sword directly above the doctor’s eye, I said, “Let her go.”

Urbaine leered up at me, mouth open. The lips did not move as he said, “It is too late. The ram has touched the wall!”

“Not yet!” I looked up at the drill telescoping fifty feet above my head. We still had a thousand feet or more of empty tarmac separating us from the Wall.

“There’s nothing you can do,” came the voice from the severed head at my feet. Snarling, I stooped and seized the creature by the ear, holding it sideways with my blade whispering just below it. “Even if you stop this wave,” Urbaine’s jaw hung slack, “we are only the vanguard. I said your heroics were redundant. Succeed, and the Prince will but land his fleet.”

Beneath my mask, I bared my teeth. The doctor was right.

“It is inevitable,” he said smoothly. “You would do as well to fight entropy.”

On the walk above, Valka screamed again.

I crushed his ear in my fist. “Let her go.” Urbaine’s leer only widened, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. Blood dripped from the ruin of his neck. “Let her go, damn you!”

“Never,” he said.

I let him go. The head fell and met the edge of my sword. Highmatter cut without resistance and sliced the head in two. I brought it down on the cranium for good measure and stamped on the pieces. My hand was halfway to my much-neglected sidearm before I realized . . . the screaming had stopped.

An explosion rocked the chamber the moment after, and turning I saw the giant reel and crash into the wall. One of its ankles was smoking, tossing sparks. Someone had gotten a grenade wedged in a flange of its armor and blown the adamantine plates apart. In retaliation, the giant pointed its remaining arm at a trias of men on the ground. Flares fired from the wrist, followed by the silent whistle of darts. Evidently the giant had recalled it had some weapons it could fire without damaging the crawler at large.

I saw Bassander Lin running on an upper balcony, location betrayed by the gleam of his sword. The Irchtani flitted about him, firing down at the giant. Even as I watched, Bahudde shot one of them full of holes, and he tumbled from domed ceiling to ridged floor in instants. The whole crawler rattled, and high above those of Valka’s little team not watching over her quiescent form were still trying to cut their way onto the bridge, but the doors were of titanium, or of some alloy of it that would not easily burn.

“Valka?” I opened my suit’s communications. “Valka, are you all right?” I was close to tears. Close to shouting. “Valka, it’s Hadrian. Are you all right?”

No answer came. Aside from Valka, no one on the crawler had their comms open for fear of Urbaine’s sorcery, and no signal could penetrate the crawler’s metal shell. There was nothing but silence.

I found a ladder and started to climb, heedless of the drill and the giant and the battle around me. Damn the Wall, damn the war, damn it all if she was not all right. I skirted a torn spot in one catwalk. The crawler shook again beneath my feet, and a horrific grinding filled all the air. Without warning, the entire crawler tipped and fell to one side, shifting everything not secured on the floor below. I gripped the rail to steady myself, unsure of what had happened for just a moment . . . until I realized.

The crawler had stopped.

It was Barda, I realized, Barda and the Irchtani wing that had carried us to the crawler in the first place. They had remained outside, keeping the enemy soldiers distracted. They must have succeeded in destroying one set of the mighty treads that pulled the impossibly huge vehicle forward.

“Earth!” came the expected cry from ragged throats above and below me. “Earth! Earth!”

I did not join them, but found a way up to that highest level and went to my knees beside Valka, tearing at the hard switch on my neck that released and collapsed my black helm.

“Valka!” I cradled her head in my hands, numb fingers fumbling for the catch on her own armor. The helmet hinged open, folding back to reveal her face. Never had I seen her so pale and lifeless. The elastic coif beneath the helmet was sticky with sweat. “Can you hear me?” I whispered. “No no no, don’t be dead.”

“Sir . . .” One of the legionnaires stepped in. I realized I’d been saying all this aloud.

“Don’t touch me!” I snarled, and the man backed away.

“Quiet, anaryan,” she said, lips barely moving.

Gold eyes fluttered open, and the hand I held tightened.

A strangled sound, half-laughter and half-sob, escaped me.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

I felt her arm spasm. She shook her head. “Hadrian?”

“It’s me,” I said.

Her eyes could not seem to find focus. My own vision blurred with tears. One of her eyes drifted, the pupil contracting, dilating randomly, giving her a deranged appearance. I felt a leaden weight forming in the pit of my stomach.

“ ’Tis something in my head,” she said.

The weight only grew heavier. I know little of machines, knew less then. “Can we fix it?”

A tremor ran through her. “Maybe. I think. Not here.” She clenched her teeth. “I can stand.” Before I could stop her, she was moving. I rose with her, and caught her when one of her legs convulsed and went out from under her. I tried not to think about the fighting below, about what the men around us thought of the witch at my side and the price she had paid for her magic. One arm hung limp at her side, and the hand that still held mine opened and closed spasmodically. Her whole body shook. “I can’t control my hands . . .” she said.

“Demons above and below . . .” I breathed. “What did he do to you?”

“Virus,” she said, as if that explained anything. “What happened?”

“We stopped them,” I said. “Barda and his men took out the wheels.”

Beneath us, Bahudde pounded another of our men to death beneath his feet.

“Not yet,” Valka said, looking down at it with her one still-functioning eye. I followed her gaze to the metal giant below. As I watched, she whispered in my ear, and for a moment I did not recognize the words, for it took me a moment to realize she was speaking the tongue of the enemy. “Weme uja,” she said. But I’ll die.

Looking round, I raised inquiring eyebrows at her. “What?”

Her lips moved, and breathlessly she spoke, another voice answering the first. “There is no other way, ushan belu.”

Ushan belu. Beloved. Prized one.

“I have failed you, master,” she murmured, and I realized she was speaking for the giant crouched below. Turning, I saw Bahudde crouched in the rear of the hold, arm across its face, shielding itself from the Irchtani and Bassander’s men. Somehow, some part of Valka’s mind—of the machines that dwelled within her mind—had reached out and touched the mind of the vayadan.

Her damaged eye twitched, pupil expanding more than any ordinary human’s should. The other voice answered, pulling Valka’s vocal chords high and tight. “For which you must pay. You must light the fire.”

Valka was silent a long moment, and I thought that whatever fey connection there was between her and the great chimera had broken. But she spoke again, still in that high and breathless way. “For thus were you made.”

Silence again for a great moment. Silence, then, “Your will is, Aeta ba-Aetane, and I obey it.”

Even as Valka spoke, the giant in the hold below stood, great arm sweeping aside four Irchtani as easily as though they were a flock of sparrows. It shambled forward, slowed by its damaged ankle. Shots fired by Bassander and his men nipped at its heels, but still the chimera seemed not to heed them and it limped forward with the inexorable gravity of a funeral march.

Aeta ba-Aetane.

Prince of Princes.

The other voice that Valka’s praxis had channeled was no less than the Scourge of Earth itself. Syriani Dorayaica. And the Prophet had given its deadly orders.

“Destroy it!” I shouted. “Bassander, take it down!” As if the soldiers needed any encouragement. Deep in the heart of the metal giant there was doubtless an energy source great enough to put a hole in the Storm Wall, a grain of antimatter, or a microfusion reactor no larger than a wine barrel.

It would be enough.

A horrid premonition gripped me. With the drill compromised, the crawler would be of no use to that dark power above, and though Dorayaica desired me for a captive I little imagined that desire would outweigh the benefits of removing the only threat on the field to his general’s last, suicidal mission.

“Lin! Udax!” I shouted at the Irchtani below. “Don’t let the chimera off the crawler!” Turning to the men about me, I said, “We have to move.” Not slowing, I scooped Valka up in my arms, held her tight to stop her spasming, and made for the stairs. Below Bahudde struggled with a knot of men near the ramp. The drill still turned uselessly above as we hurried down the uneven alien steps. Twice I nearly fell, nearly crushed the injured Valka beneath me. We reached the ground level even as the giant flattened another of our men beneath its fist.

Blood dripped from iron fingers, and Bahudde’s deep voice filled the hold. “Why won’t you die?”

Still carrying Valka, we retreated down the ramp, gunfire and the flash of grenades halting the advance of the limping chimera. Bahudde opened fire, letting forth a rain of heavy darts that peppered the tarmac about our feet. One of them slammed through the breastplate of an unshielded peltast and left a hole big around as my thumb. He lumbered on a moment, blood rushing down over his white armor before he fell. Turning back, I saw Barda’s troopers wheeling over the black tower of the crawler like vultures above the carcass of some stranded whale. And there was Bahudde, framed by the door of the ramp, the snarling teeth of the drill above its head.

Even absent an arm and limping on one damaged leg, the giant was terrifying. Its white carapace shone sickly in the thin light of the occulted sun, and the flame of its lone remaining eye was like the sun going down in wrath. As it advanced down the ramp, one clawed foot opened and released a mangled shape that once had been a man.

It was not alone. Two dozen of the Cielcin came with it, the pilots and their guards. Dorayaica had surprised me, not calling down its weapon on the ruined crawler. I ground my teeth. This was about to get harder.

Lin retreated ahead of the enemy, his men about him. Udax and his Irchtani flew between us and closed ranks. Unsteadily, I set Valka on her feet. She sagged against me, whole body still shaking.

“You two.” I gestured toward two of the Irchtani who alighted around us. “Carry Doctor Onderra back to the Wall.”

Before they could hop forward to take her, Valka seized me with one half-working arm. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “You need me.”

“You can’t even stand!”

Her eyes—unfocused—drifted to a point over my shoulder, back toward the wreck of the crawler and the monster emerging from it. “I don’t need to stand,” she said. “I can still fight.”

I had no mask then to hide my tears. “I can’t lose you,” I said.

“You won’t,” she answered, fingers twitching against my cheek. “Not ever.” She leaned forward and in the sight of men and xenobites alike pressed her lips to mine. “Go!” She pushed me away and stumbled, hissing with the pain as one of the Irchtani caught her. “I am with you to the . . . to the end,” she said. “Finish this.”