It is not disabled, certainly not destroyed. Its logic chains have simply returned a null set upon evaluating the possible success of further resistance.

Koda pushes herself up from the steel caracass, suddenly weary beyond telling, and makes her way toward Reese, still slumped across the disabled machine gun. She knows there is no hope of life, yet she kneels and turns him over onto his back gently, not to hurt him further. His blood smears the white of her winter camo, already stained from tending Larke’s wounds. Marked, too, by Reese’s own torn flesh. She feels a void open inside her, black and deep as space beyond the stars. Her fingers clench in the folds of Reese’s clothing, almost as if somehow she could hold him back from this last journey. But his eyes are fixed and vacant. The blood trickling from his mouth has already begun to congeal.

Maggie kneels softly beside her, setting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s tough, leading men to their deaths. Especially the first one.”

Almost as if in a dream, Koda turns toward the other woman. The warrior of only minutes past is gone. Allen’s eyes are huge and sad in the brown face of a grieving Madonna, the face almost of Ina Maka herself. As if from a distance, Koda hears her own voice. “Does it get any easier? Ever?”

“No.” Maggie shakes her head slightly. “It never does.”

A moment of silence stretches out, then Allen squeezes her shoulder gently and asks, “Larke? Martinez?”

“Larke’s hurt. Martinez is taking care of him in the kitchen.”

“Good,” she says. “Very good. Let’s start clearing this place out.”

The chanting of the prisoners has fallen silent. Laying Reese gently down, Koda gets to her feet beside Maggie. “I’ll go check on Larke.”

The Colonel nods. “Make it quick. I’m going to need you when we get these cells open.” Then, more loudly, “Anybody got any idea where they keep the freaking keys?”

Koda sprints down the corridor toward the kitchen. She finds Larke pale as his camouflage but conscious and not in shock. On the floor at Martinez’ feet is a small mountain of bloody and discarded dishtowels. Koda is pleased, though, to see that the compress that he has bound tightly into place is not soaked through. When she lifts it up to check the wound, she can see that the blood that still oozes slowly from the wound is dark, with no evidence of arterial spurting. Larke’s pulse is shallow and faster than she would like, but steady nonetheless. “So how am I doin’ Doc?” he asks with a faint attempt at a smile. “Gonna live?”

Koda tightens the cotton strips that hold the compress in place. “Going to live; going to walk. And you’re going to get to keep everything you were born with, which is more than I can say for a lot of my male patients.”

Martinez starts to snicker, but apparently thinks better of it. “Hey, buddy.” Larke lifts his head slightly to stare at his fellow trooper with mock indignation. “You just remember it could be you lying here next time.” He makes a snipping motion with two fingers of his right hand.

Koda flashes a grin at the Pfc.. “He been giving you a hard time, Martinez?”

“Ma’am, he’s a rotten patient. If he hadn’t made himself dizzy just trying to sit up, he’d have taken off after you and Andrews.”

“Oh, yeah? Ma’am, Leo was gonna help me get up. He wanted to go himself. Told him to go on, but he wouldn’t.”

“And good for you that he didn’t.” She turns to Martinez. “We’re starting to mop up. He stays here.” Koda jabs a long finger at Larke, then at Martinez. “You stay with him and keep an eye on the bleeding. If anything changes, come get me. Otherwise just wait here till we call the choppers in. We’ll take him out to the Medevac on a litter.”

She turns to go, but Martinez touches her sleeve lightly. “”Ma’am . . .?”

Koda can see the question in his hazel eyes, pleading with her. She does not want to answer it, but she says, “We lost two. Johnson and Reese. Otherwise, Larke here’s the worst hurt.”

“The droids?”

“All destroyed but one. We’re taking it back to Dr. King to see if she can get any information out of it.”

Martinez’ fists clench once and unclench. “You know, Ma’am, sometimes I wish they were human. It just doesn’t seem fair that they can’t feel anything.”

“I know,” she says quietly. Images of the last week tumble through her mind: the dead Hurley boys; the women from the Mandan jail; the quiet desperation she has sensed in Kirsten King. “We’ll find out who’s behind this. And they will pay.”

“I wanna help collect Ma’am.” Larke adds, just as quietly, and Martinez nods.

“Me, too.”

“There will come a time, I promise you.” Then, more sharply, “For now -- Stay. Put. It’ll be maybe half an hour.”

As Koda sprints once again for the central hub of the prison, a speaker over her head crackles a couple times, then sputters fully to life. “It’s on? Yeah, that’s got it. Good.”

Then Allen’s voice comes through, clear and strong. “Attention. Attention, please. This is Colonel Margaret Allen, United States Air Force. A combined services tactical force has destroyed the prison’s android guard contingent and is now in command of this facility. Evacuation of prisoners will begin immediately on a corridor by corridor basis. If you have immediate medical needs, please inform the soldiers who will escort you from your cells to the dining area to await pickup.”

The microphone clicks off, and there is perhaps a second’s silence. Then the prison erupts in sound once again. This time, though, the roar is a cheer, starting deep and sliding up the scale until it pierces the air with the sharpness of a hawk’s cry, the scream of a hunting eagle.

Koda finds the Colonel in what appears to be the central guard station. The intercom equipment occupies one long counter, together with a couple computers and a bank of monitor screens that placidly record the undisturbed snow in most of the prison yards. It is still, strangely, only twilight. The entire operation has taken perhaps an hour. Allen looks up as Koda enters. “Larke?”

“Holding on.” she reports. “Tried to get up, with Martinez aiding and abetting. He’ll be fine, once we get him into a real hospital.”

“Good. The locks here are electronic, and while we don’t have the codes, we do have the emergency switches. I want you to be there as each group comes out, in case we’ve got anything medically urgent on our hands.” Allen pauses a moment, and her voice softens. “You did pretty damn good today, you know. You’re a natural at this.”

“I know,” Koda answers in a voice so low that it is almost a whisper. “It’s something that’s just been—there—all my life. Like a memory, almost.”

“We’ll talk when we get back to base and can have a little quiet,” Allen mumurs. “Meantime—“ Her voice sharpens, and she is once again a line officer. “Andrews. Take a couple more troops and accompany Dr. Rivers to A Wing. Give her a hand with anything medical if she needs it. I’m going to go ahead and call that other, overly creative, Rivers of ours to have those birds here in another half hour.”

Koda extracts her emergency kit from her pack and follows Andrews, Ramirez and Hanson as they make their way down Corridor A. The women who come streaming out into the hallway here have little about them of the beaten and terrified prisoners of the Mandan jail. It may be only that they have known for an hour that their rescue is underway and have done what they can both to defy the enemy and to put heart into the soldiers facing the actual battle. One woman, her skin pink with excitement, grabs Andrews by the arms and kisses him soundly, then proceeds to reward Ramirez, Hanson and Koda with equal enthusiasm. When a second makes for the startled Lieutenant, he fends her off gently but firmly as he shepherds her toward the dining room with the rest. “Ma’am, please, time is limited. We appreciate your—ahm, we appreciate your appreciation—but we need to get you the hell out of this place. If you’ll pardon my language. Uh, Ma’am.”

Koda is pleased to see that the women are, superficially, largely uninjured. Most have bruises, some yellow-green with age, others newly crimson. One prisoner has a long but shallow cut down her forearm, and Koda takes a moment to wrap it in Kurlix to await stitching when they reach base. “It’s mah own fault, Doctah,” she says, in a delicate voice that sounds of the Georgia peaches and cream that match her red-blonde hair and ivory skin. “Ah broke the leg off mah stool bangin’ it against the doah. Ah wish it had been ovah one of those bastahdly thing’s heahds.”

Despite herself, a thread of amusement winds its way through Koda’s anger. Move over, Miz Scarlett. Like her own people, the South has always bred its women tough. It is a breeding that will help this woman survive, as it has kept the winan Lakota alive through a century and a half of attempted extermination.

She leaves the latter-day Scarlett with the Colonel and the rest of the troop in the cafeteria, where the soldiers have located clean cups and are passing out water and juice. Allen makes the rounds, speaking with each woman in turn, reassuring, comforting those with haunted eyes, answering what questions she can. One woman, pale and agitated, asks over and over again, “Where are the children? What have they done with the children?”

Koda pauses on her way out to evacuate D Wing as Allen answers, “Ma’am, I’m sorry. As far as we can tell, the droids have killed all the boys they found and kept only the girls past puberty. Were your children with you when you were taken?”

The woman is close to hyperventilating, and Koda kneels down in front of her with the Colonel, capturing her wrist to check her pulse. “Yes! Christ, why is so hard to make you understand!” She chokes for a moment, gasping for breath. “They took my kids with me! Why haven’t you found them? Where are they, damn you?” Her voice rises to a shriek. “Where are they?”

One of the other prisoners comes to sit beside her, putting her arms around the now- weeping woman. “It’s true, Colonel. Deb’s kids were with her when we were caught at the K-Mart. I haven’t seen them since that first day, though.”

“Deb?” Koda asks softly. “We’ll look for your children. We won’t leave, I promise, until we’ve found them or know for sure they’re not here. Can you tell us how old they are? Boys? Girls?”

“Two boys,” the second woman answers. “They were about four, five.”

“Right,” The Colonel rises, motioning to two of her troops who are foraging behind the serving counter. “O’Donnell! Markovic!” she shouts. “Start searching the place for kids. Not the cells, we’ll get all of those—try the garages and offices and tool sheds! Move it out! On the double!”

Koda returns to her task of evaluating the women as they exit the cells. On Wing D, they find a woman together with her young daughter, thirteen at most. The woman’s clothes have obviously not seen the inside of a washing machine in days, perhaps more, but they are intact—no rips, no bloodstains, and her arms and face are equally unmarked. Unlike the others, they seem almost diffident, with none of the lava-hot undercurrent of anger Koda has sensed running thick and murderous below the bravado of the rest of the prisoners. Fear and bewilderment, yes, but no hatred. “I’m Millie Buxton,” the woman introduces herself hesitantly . “My husband is here, too. Have you found him, yet?”

“They never touched you, did they,” a dark-haired woman sneers in passing, before Koda can answer. “Bitch! ‘Droid lover!”

Andrews blocks the speaker as she moves to spit at the other woman and hustles her along the hallway. Koda says slowly, “No, we haven’t. Was he an employee?”

“A prisoner. Erin and I were visiting when—when—it happened.”

“And you haven’t been harmed?”

“No. Not—I know what she meant, you see. I’ve heard when—“ Millie glances back at her daughter—“things happened to the other women. But they left us alone. I don’t know why. I’m just glad because—because of Erin, you see.”

Koda does not see, not quite, but an idea has begun to form. “We’ll find your husband if he’s here, Ms. Buxton.” And to Andrews, more quietly, as the woman falls into step with the rest, “That last wing’s been pretty near silent. All along.”

Andrews nods. “Gotcha. We’ll pick up a couple more guys before we go over there. That’s where we dropped down, isn’t it?”

“That’s where I saw what I’m pretty sure was a man, one time when I lifted up a tile to see where we were. We’d better go cell by cell, there, not spring them all at once.”

“Better see how the Colonel wants to handle them. I’m all for leaving them to starve, but she may have other ideas.”

In the end, there are four. Three are much like their counterparts from Mandan, foul-mouthed and full of bluster. The fourth, though, will not answer them when his cell is opened, remaining curled tightly on top of the blanket with his knees drawn up to his chest. Only the rise and fall of his ribs shows that he is still alive.

”All right,” says Andrews after the prisoner has ignored him three times. “Let’s haul him out.”

“Wait a minute.” Koda walks silently up to the bunk where the man remains unresponsive. “Mr. Buxton?”

Nothing.

“Mr Buxton?” she tries again. “Millie and Erin are worried about you. They’re safe. Whatever deal you made, the droids kept it that far.”

A sound that is not quite a sob, not quite a groan comes from the huddled form on the cot. “Just leave me, please. Or shoot me. Just don’t tell them—please, I don’t want them to know— Tell them I’m dead, please?”

Andrews reaches forward and hauls the man into a sitting position. Unkempt hair falls over a forehead pale with lack of sun and eyes that water with the dim light enters through the half-open door. “Look here, Buxton. You just might get your wish. I don’t know what the Colonel’s going to want to do with you—maybe shoot you on spot, maybe not. If I were you, I’d still want to see my wife and kid one last time. And I sure as hell know they want to see you.”

“Mr. Buxton. Millie and Erin will find out exactly what you’ve done from the other women.” Koda takes a deep breath and forces her voice to remain neutral. “Now, I don’t know whether they’ll forgive you; God knows the rest of these women won’t, and shouldn’t. But it should count for something that you bought your family’s lives. Whatever happens, you can take that with you.”

In the end, he comes with them, still half-unwillingly, his head down. Allen meets them just outside the entrance to the cafeteria and rakes the four men over with fury in her dark eyes. “Just like the other jail. Hold them in that office over there for now.” She points to a small cubicle with a desk and computer and what seem to be endless piles of invoices. “Hanson, if one of these motherfuckers turns a hair wrong, shoot him.”

Buxton raises his head and holds her withering gaze for a moment. “Ma’am, they tell me my wife and daughter are here. Whatever goes down, I’d like to know they’re safe.”

“Hostages for his performance,” Koda says quietly.

“I see.” There is what may be a minuscule softening in Allen’s expression. “We’re taking them back to Base. They’ll have a trial. Andrews, Rivers, come with me. Hanson, you sit on ’em, and sit on ’em tight. They go out on the last chopper where these women won’t have to see their lousy faces.”

“Ma’am.”

Koda and Andrews follow the Colonel back into the cafeteria. From overhead comes the steady whup-whup-whup of approaching helicopters, the noise intensifying until it becomes an unholy clatter as the great blades beat the air. From the doorway, Koda can see their noselights growing larger and larger, finally sweeping the snow before her as the pilots check for obstructions before easing in to a landing. There are at least a dozen; most are Black Hawk and Apache gunships; one is a carrier. The lead bird is another Black Hawk, a red cross painted prominently on its side. The rotor wash kicks up little eddies of snow, sending it spraying outward as the great, grasshopper-like hulks settle, wobbling, into the snow. Just as the high-pitched whine of the engines becomes an almost physical pain, it stops.

“Load up,” yells Allen, and with that the former prisoners are running for the helicopters, clambering in with the help of their crews and the rescue unit. Two corpsmen from the Medevac fetch Larke from the kitchen, Martinez trotting alongside the litter. They load the remains of Johnson and Reese, too, decently wrapped in blankets for their last journey. The captive droid goes with the living prisoners, trussed and hauled along by the manacles that bind him hand and foot.

When all the rest are loaded, Allen hops aboard the Medvac chopper, Koda inches behind her. “Get us in the air, Rivers,” she shouts as the engines once again begin tow whine. “And give me the mike.”

Manny complies, with a wave and a mouthed “Makshké” at Koda.

“Schic’shi,” she answers, too weary to do more than lift a hand as she settles her back against the hull of the chopper. She can feel the vibration of the rotors as they begin to turn, then pick up speed, in every cell of her body. She should move, she tells herself, but her muscles refuse to obey her. The Black Hawk rocks slightly on its wheels, then lifts off with its tail high and its nose low. It is the nature of this peculiar airborne beast that there is nowhere more comfortable than the spot where Koda half-slouches on the deck, unless it is one of the litters suspended on heavy straps from the opposite side of the craft, or the pilots’ seats.

Just audible above the chopper’s racket, she can hear Allen shouting into the mike.

“We’re clear! Send ‘em in!”

Koda closes her eyes as the chopper begins its ascent, banking to the north and west. When she opens them after a moment, she can see the half moon riding high, glinting off the snowscape as it falls away beneath them. The winter stars spangle the night, Orion and his dog, the Bull and the Ram. As she watches, two of the stars seem to move toward them at tremendous speed, and it is only when she sees the green and red lights winking at their wingtips that she recognizes them for what they are.

Then she sees them dip and streak in low above the prison compound they have just left, their afterburners glowing like small suns in the enveloping dark. As they pass, fire blooms behind them, reaching into the night sky in unfolding petals of flame. She nods at Maggie in acknowledgment. Her mind tells her that they have denied a tactical advantage to the enemy, but deep in her soul she knows that the fire is necessary to cleanse the evil of the place. She leans back once more against the vibrating hull of the aircraft and lets the darkness take her.

CHAPTER TEN

AS SHE STANDS off to one side with the others, holding her hair back out of her eyes as the beating rotors of the approaching helicopters stir the air into a mini hurricane, Kirsten tells herself that her reasons for being on the landing field are purely scientific. If her heartbeat is slightly faster than normal, it is because she will soon have a working android to examine. The sense of anticipation warming her from within is surely only a scientist’s eagerness when given the experimental opportunity of a lifetime.

And if she finds herself looking for a particular glossy black head that towers above the sea of mostly red and gold, and if she imagines she can see, even from this distance, a pair of piercing eyes that rival the winter sky, well, those things are inconsequential. She is a scientist, and scientists are trained to notice things.

Or so she makes herself believe.

The injured come off the helicopters first, young men and women bleeding their lives away on litters borne up by strong, resolute soldiers who run toward the bright red cross of the hospital double time. The dead follow, pristine white sheets covering their faces. Their entrance onto the base is more stately, as befits their heroic sacrifice.

Three men follow, heavily guarded and chained at the belly, ankles and wrists. Two sport an unkempt jailhouse pallor that is a perfect accompaniment to their frightened, darting eyes and heavily tattooed flesh. The third wears his shame like a shroud. Shoulders slumped, head bowed, he shuffles along staring only at the slush-covered ground beneath his feet, all but cringing at every new sound he hears. Kirsten feels a tiny shard of pity for him, though it’s obvious what he’s done and why he’s chained and guarded so very heavily.

The victims disembark next, their faces displaying a wide range of emotions, from the hollow-eyed pallor of an Auschwitz camp survivor, to a kind of quiet joy, to everything and nothing mixed in between. Those with enough awareness looked around curiously, taking in their new surroundings with a distinct lack of surprise, but with, perhaps, a burgeoning hope that their lot might, indeed, be improving.

A group of ten women, most of them former captives themselves, approach these newly freed survivors, offering soft words, soft expressions, soft touches as they lead the group toward the base hospital and the first step on the road to eventual—much hoped for—recovery.

Last to come off the choppers is a small group of heavily armed men and women, Dakota and the Colonel included, who surround what Kirsten can easily recognize as a fully functioning android bound by titanium chains and cuffs.

Watching, she finds herself biting back a smirk. They might as well have bound the thing with construction paper chains made by first graders for all even titanium will hold against the unsurpassed strength of even a single determined android. The very fact that it has allowed itself to be captured, and chained, and is making no effort to escape to fulfill its obviously prime directive to kill them all gives Kirsten a moment’s pause, though she waves her concerns off for the moment, confident in her ability to have at least that one question answered by the droid itself. Eventually.

She meets the group halfway, nodding to Allen and Rivers and carefully examining the android as it approaches. Through the receiver in her ear, she can hear the almost desperate data streams it is sending out in an attempt to contact others of its kind. This alone is enough to tell her that it is “injured” in some way that is making it difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill its primary mission. Finding the source, and the cause, of the “injury” is, she knows, the first step toward learning how to disable them all.

For the first time since the disaster of Minot, Kirsten allows a shard of hope to enter into the darkened landscape of her thoughts.

“General Hart was kind enough to give me an interrogation room in the brig. If you’ll please follow me.”

Allen gives a quiet nod. Dakota and Manny continue to bracket the android, weapons at the ready, while the rest peel off, headed for some much deserved down time. The Colonel stays with the denuded group, falling into step beside Kirsten as they head for the brig.

2

“Don’t bother with those,” Kirsten orders, casually waving away the chains Dakota and Manny are preparing to use to strap the android to the chair directly behind the desk she has commandeered. A smile curls her lips as she looks directly into its optical sensors. “If it wanted to kill us, we’d be dead already.” A beat of silence. “Isn’t that right, RJ-252711-RTLL-2199-RC?”

Again, that look of near shock that she’d seen at Minot. Clue or red herring? Without enough evidence to structure a credible hypothesis, she lets the information sit at the back of her thoughts as she continues her visual inspection of the android. Standing, she rounds the desk, seeing the others back off in the periphery of her vision. She feels a little like a star player in a “good cop/bad cop” melodrama of her hardly misspent youth as she stalks the helpless droid, her lips curved in a shark’s feeding-time grin.

“I’m confusing you, aren’t I,” she remarks conversationally, touching it briefly on one shoulder as she circles. “I’m receiving all of your transmissions, but you’re receiving none of mine. What does that make me?” Her smile is almost seductive as she stands before it, one finger rubbing across her full lower lip, as if in serious contemplation. “One of you?” Her smile broadens. “One of them?” One rather elegant hand flips a careless gesture toward Dakota, who stares back, eyebrow perfectly arched, arms folded across her chest. “You can’t tell, can you. You don’t know what the truth is, and that makes things…difficult…for you, doesn’t it.”

The android doesn’t answer, though its fingers twitch on the arms of the chair, much like a nervous suspect who has been brought into the police station for questioning. It is sending out continuous pulses of data, an SOS beacon that Kirsten can read as clearly as if it were printed on a scrolling board in the middle of Times Square. She smiles and, temporarily turning down the heat, returns to her desk and sits down, spreading her hands against the rough wooden top.

“Tell me,” she resumes after a long moment of silence, “why are you breeding humans? What do you hope to gain from this venture?”

The fingers twitch again. “This unit is not programmed to respond in that area.”

“Ah. Just a drone, then. If you can’t tell me why, can you tell me who? Who gave you these orders?”

“This unit is not….”

“…programmed to respond in that area, yes, I understand that.” She sits back in the chair, eyeing the droid. “I can’t help you, RJ-252711, if you don’t help me. You have data circuits that need repairing. I need answers. So….”

The data pulses are almost frantic now, and Kirsten hides a wince as a high pitched squeal of feedback enters her implants and loops through her brain.

“I can help you, you know. You can feel it. You want to trust me, don’t you.” Her voice is soft, seductive.

A louder blast of feedback wings through her and her eyes close for a long moment, willing the pain away. There is something almost…compelling…in the messages traveling along her nerve bundles. She fights off a heaviness, a lethargy that seeps into the very marrow of her bones; a sweet siren’s song to an end she’s sure she’d be better off not knowing.

Dakota notices, and takes one step forward, only to be waved back by Kirsten who straightens and leans forward. “Answer my questions, RJ-252711. Answer my questions and I’ll give you the help you need.”

“I…am…not…programmed…to…to…to…to…to…”

“Answer me, RJ-252711.”

“…cannot….”

“Answer me.”

The android stiffens, all electronic joints locked as a whine emits from its vocal sensors. Subliminal at first, it grows in pitch until the humans present instinctively step back and raise desperate hands to their ears in a fruitless attempt to block out the sound.

Kirsten feels the code as it buzzes along her nerves like electric shock. She tries to raise her hands to snatch at her earpiece and dislodge the implants, but her muscles will not obey her. She cannot speak; only attend, helplessly, as the systems shutdown command speeds its way to her lungs, her heart, her brain. Koda has risen, leaning over the table to grasp her wrist, but she feels nothing, hears nothing as the other woman’s lips form urgent words. Absently, she notes that the improbable blue eyes have gone wide with—fear? Surely not. And surely not for her. That amuses her for some reason, but she cannot laugh, only stare, her own gaze fixed on the wide black pupils that spread and spread like ripples in a midnight pond, and she is drawn into their blackness, falling infinitely down and down, drawn into the deep, into the dark and the silence, falling, falling down the rabbit hole to lose herself in the infinite lightlessness of space beyond the stars.

How long she falls she does not know nor care. The blackness slips past her as she spirals downward, companied by wind that whispers with the voices of her dead. So precocious . . .. That’s my girl . . .. I worry sometimes . . .. Then there are the other sounds: the staccato rattle of machine gun fire; electronic devices speaking to each other in strange tongues, ditditDAHdit oddly musical as it speeds along the fiberoptics; the thrum of the blood in her veins as it slows, grows sluggish, stops. They ride along the rising wind that carries her spinning toward a point of light star light star bright, infinitesimally small, somehow above her now as she falls upward—and how did that happen, she wonders—with up so floating many bells down and voices are in the wind’s singing, singing its own song now. Its blast strips the flesh from her, whistles through the cage of her bones. Yet it cannot drown out the deep baying of the hunter who runs lithe beside her now along moonlit snow and is gone again in a glimpse of driving muscles rippling under grey fur that turns in upon itself, moebius-like, to become a small pointed face with eyes burning like molten gold out of a black mask. The narrow muzzle opens, and the creature speaks in a voice to silence thunder, one long-fingered hand raised to bar her passage.

Go back. The time is not yet.

But she hurtles past him as the pinprick of light suddenly bursts, brighter than a thousand suns. Pure thought now, with no crude matter to hold her back, she streaks toward its incandescent heart. Out of its center a woman leaps to meet her, brandishing a spear and an oval shield with a boss of bronze. Her naked body is painted with blue spirals and runes of power, and her hair streams behind her like flame. From somewhere behind her comes the slow rhythm of a drum. Her shout rises above its pounding.

Go back. The time is not yet.

The warrior fades, gives way to another woman, this one clothed in scarlet silk that flutters about her like tongues of fire. Her face is serene with age, though the deep furrows at brow and mouth tell of wisdom bought at cost. The drumming grows louder now, but her gentle voice carries easily above it.

Go back. The time is not yet.

Another warrior comes forward, clad in some sort of leather dress with intricate brass armor buckled to her chest. In one hand, she holds a thick, two-edged sword. In the other, a lethal circlet. Her eyes blaze and pierce, their beauty filled with urgency and another, almost overwhelming, emotion she can’t put a name to.

Go back. The time is not yet.

Still she moves forward, helpless to stop her steady advance into the sun.

And out of the heart of that sun a third woman comes striding, dressed in white buckskin with a hummingbird worked in shell beads and quills across her breast. Turquoise and white shell adorn her wrists and her slender neck, hang like stars amid the cloud of her hair. Her feet as she walks beat out the song of the drum, though her moccasins touch nothing more solid than air.

You are astray, my daughter, she says. You must turn back.

Mother, Kirsten wails soundlessly. I have failed.

You have suffered a setback, certainly, the woman acknowledges. Will you let it defeat you, and all my children with it?