It seems a lifetime but is perhaps five minutes later that Kirsten raises a hand to her earpiece. “They’re here.”

Koda turns to see the sky above the hilltop swarming with monstrous locusts, the shriek of their turbo engines like the whine of plagues sweeping over the hapless grasslands, the pylons hanging like legs beneath their foreshortened wings bristling with chainguns and Hellfire missiles. They go over in a clamor of blades and the sweep of rotor wash, rattling the branches of the bare tree that spreads above the command post. Straining to see, Koda waves as the lead bird sweeps

……………..over the last of the low hills, giving them their first sight of the battleground. From his side window, Manny picks out the three figures perched on the hillside, one of whom is waving at the mixed squadron of Black Hawks and Apaches as they descend on the enemy advancing toward the narrow bridge. He waves back, knowing she cannot see him, but feeling the tie of blood all the same. The green-lit screens on his console,--one for radar, one for the laser-targeting mechanism-- show the droids and the heavy armor strung out in formation. “Okay, Littleton,” he says to the gunner seated in the nose of the craft below and in front of him. “Start picking your targets. Get the SAM’s first.”

“Gotcha, bro.”

A small white cross, the target indicator, appears above the shape of a launcher truck on the left hand LED screen as the aiming laser locks on; half a second later he feels a whomp! as the Hellfire leaves its perch beneath the port wing. It streaks away above the fog, its contrail curving slightly as its fins maneuver to set a straight course. Suddenly one of the SAMS is away, a blip on the radar screen. Manny leans on the joystick, putting the Apache over hard so that his shoulders ache where they press against his harness, and the missile speeds harmlessly by. On the ground, fire blossoms gold and red where the Hellfire strikes its target, secondary explosions adding to the roiling cloud of flame and smoke as it rises out of the mist and into the clear air. Briefly he notes the blazes set by other hits as he pulls back on the controls, taking them up and over and behind the enemy, and momentarily out of the range of their guns. “Report,” he snaps into his mike. “Any casualties?”

One by one the squadron checks in. Only Andrews reports a hit. “Took a round to the fuselage, Apache One, but we’re good to go.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go back for seconds.”

They swoop down for a second pass over the column, which has almost reached the near end of the bridge. This time Littleton cuts loose with the chain guns, and Manny can see ordinary droids going down along the center of the line, but they seem to be doing very little damage to the military models on the perimeter. He dodges a couple rockets, swerving wildly, tipping the bird almost over on its side. Not for the first time, he wishes he had his Tomcat under him, laying down a long stick of five-hundred-pounders the length of the road and ending the whole fucking mess right then and there. He understands why the brass have decided to hold back on the jets, and he agrees, at least in principle. He just wishes he had that kind of firepower now.

Which does him no good whatsoever. If wishes were buffalo. . ..

The backsweep takes out the second missile launcher and a tank, as well as several armored personnel carrier. And, he notes with satisfaction, any personnel they might have been carrying. Littleton reads his mind. “’Spose we got some of the goddam metalheads with those APC’s, Manny?”

“Let’s hope—“ he breaks off abruptly as Koda’s voice crackles in his earpiece. “Washte, Manny. Ake.”

“Hau. Wikcemna-topa..”

“What’s that?” asks Littleton.

“She says do it again, bro. So--” he clicks the com through to the other choppers--“we do it again.”

Manny takes the squadron back over the command post hill to loop around for the third pass, waving again at the figures at their below him. There is no chance that they can spot him, but he can see them and know that they are secure, screened as they are by the lines of trees behind and in front of them. It makes a small warm spot in the chill of battle, of affection and pride both. Hell, he admits to himself, he’s even developing a soft spot for the little blonde ice cube.

Not, mind, that way. As far as he’s concerned, she has all the sex appeal of a circular saw. Run into her the wrong way and BZZZZZZZZZ. . . .

He swings the Apache about and comes in low for the third pass, the squadron in loose formation behind him. Off to his right, a Black Hawk takes a direct hit, its fuel tank exploding in billows of smoke and flame still in midair, its fuselage wheeling drunkenly out of the sky to plunge into a company of droids, incinerating them instantly. Littleton lets fly their last two Hellfires, then turns the chaingun and the small-gauge rockets onto the line of foot. One, with a LAAWS tube braced against its shoulder, goes sprawling satisfyingly on the tarmac under the hail of thirty-millimeter rounds. As they sweep up the rise of the piedmont behind, Manny can see another file of armed men and women moving into position down a dry creek bed: Tacoma and the front line of his force, preparing to close the trap they have so carefully set.

Last pass. “Give ‘em the works this time through,” he orders Littleton. “Whatever we’ve got left.”

Manny feels the thump as the rocket tubes discharge the last of the Hydras. “Okay, that’s it. We’re headed—“

The impact jars all his bones together, snapping his jaw shut and bloodying his tongue between his teeth. The Apache seems to hang suspended for a moment, hovering, and almost it feels normal. Then the bird begins to spin laterally, the tail and tail rotor no longer answering to the steering column. “Oh, shit,” Manny says, very softly, just as Littleton yells out, loud enough to hear even over the sudden grating noise of the engines, “We’re hit!”

“I know — damn well that’s not normal!” Kirsten exclaims, watching beside Koda as the Apache spins slowly, almost gracefully, on the axis of its mast. “Isn’t Manny in one of the Apaches?”

Koda feels the blood drain from her face, sinking to her heart with the weight of lead. “He’s in that Apache.” She points to the bundle of red-tipped arrows newly painted on the side of the fuselage. “That’s his sign.”

Maggie steps closer to her, gripping her other hand hard. “If anyone can get that bird down in one piece, Manny can.” Kirsten has moved up beside her, too, silently offering her presence. Koda can feel the fear in the other women, resonating with her own. Yet there is comfort there, too.

“I know. He always did manage to walk away from—goddam!” Her voice dies in her throat as the chopper begins to cartwheel, heeling over half onto its side and spinning counterrhythm to its rotor as it falls out of the sky, plunging toward the broad meadow between the bridge and the woods beyond. Koda watches as it descends, not breathing, not daring to breathe, knowing that he has about as much chance of survival as a goldfish in a shark tank, Manny reflects wryly as he loses control of the Apache altogether and can only fold himself up per procedure and brace for the impact.

It comes with a crash like thunder walking in the mountains, reverberating in his ears and along his bones. Manny opens his eyes to find the Apache’s nose buried in the snow and himself hanging suspended by his straps just over his control panel. Out the front port he can see two of the rotor blades broken off where they have sliced into the earth The buckle of his harness presses hard into his solar plexus, and he carefully eases himself off the end of his control stick, broken off just below the grip. If not for catching in the buckle, it would presently be jutting out his back ribs. The pressure and the thought both turn his stomach, and he pukes up his guts as he hangs there over the display panels, spattering them and the back of Littleton’s helmet liberally with his breakfast. When the nausea passes, it occurs to him that he needs to get the hell out of here, and he reaches for his boot knife to cut himself out of this witch’s cradle. His right arm does not move.

Shit.

It doesn’t hurt, particularly, but that doesn’t mean anything. More encouraging is the fact that he cannot see any blood on the sleeve of his flight suit, or any splinters of bone protruding. Okay. Let’s try this. . ..

Twisting his left shoulder and lifting his right leg, he manages to grasp the knife’s hilt and draw it. Carefully he saws himself loose, setting first one foot, then the other, down on the back of his gunner’s seat, gingerly straddling the shattered steering column. Littleton has not moved.

One hand on the altimeter, the other on the fuel gauge to avoid the slick of half-digested egg and cereal, he touches the other man’s shoulder. “Joe. Hey, Joe.”

No answer.

Shit. .

Pulling off his left glove with his teeth, Manny feels for the pulse where the great veins thrum in the neck, working his fingers down under Littleton’s collar. Nothing.

Shit, again. Sorry, bro.

The door, of course, is stuck.

Of course. Why get lucky now? With the butt of his handgun Manny hammers repeatedly at the lexan of the window until it gives and he can break the jagged pieces out of their steel frame. He slithers out through the too-small opening, pushing stubbornly with his feet and pulling with his good left arm. Somwhere around the halfway mark, the nerves in his dislocated right arm wake up, and he feels himself go light-headed with the pain. His mouth is dry as tinder. Shock.

He can’t afford it. He gives one last shove with all the strength of his back and legs behind it, and suddenly he is free, tumbling out into the snow. Up onto his feet then, and running for the line of the woods and the friendly forces he knows are there, stumbling, his right arm dangling uselessly at his side as a rocket lands less than five meters behind him, picks him up and tosses him over a hump in the ground , and he is sliding, tobogganing down the slope on his back and butt just like he used to do as a kid with Tacoma and Koda streaking along beside him.

He reaches the bottom with a thump and surely he is dreaming because a figure detaches itself from one of the century-old sycamores and comes running toward him, levering him up out of the snow and shoving him forward toward the woods, one foot after the other, head down, breath tearing at his throat and it suddenly comes to him that safety is ten feet in front of him and he’s going to make it! Koda, look!”

Dakota turns her head to follow Kirsten’s pointing finger. A man has fought his way out of the downed copter, bit by bit wriggling and pushing through one of the windows. Koda puts up her binoculars, desperately attempting to focus on his face. She cannot, but she knows the anatomy of an Apache, and she can see clearly that the broken window is the one above as the copter sits crazily tilted on its nose in the snow. The pilot’s seat.

Thank you, Ina Maka, she breathes silently. She watches, her heart still in her throat as her cousin makes his way drunkenly over the meadow to the woods beyond, then disappears from sight as another soldier emerges to help him to shelter. Aloud she says, “I knew he’d make it. Manny’s just too damn contrary to die.”

“Family trait?” Maggie asks with a cant of her eyebrow.

”Yeah, I guess it is.” Koda cannot stop her mouth from pulling into a grin. “Just got good Lakota genes, that’s all.”

Koda lets out a long, relieved breath and turns her attention back to the battlefield. Even without binoculars, it is evident that the droid army is reforming its column, shifting and eddying around the burned out shells of tanks and APC’s that stand in the roadway. A couple hundred meters from the bridge, one of the few remaining carriers has been pressed into service as a wrecker, nosing the shattered hulks off the tarmac to make way for what is left of the heavy weapons and armor. Fragments of bright titanium litter the shoulders of the road where chaingun and rocket have found their marks; elsewhere the snow is stained red, and the motionless figures torn and twisted into nightmare shapes by slug and shrapnel are of flesh, not metal. The half-melted frame of the downed Black Hawk rests on bare earth where ice and snow have melted away from it, a ring of motionless forms around it. From this distance it is impossible to tell whether they are droid or human. One of the howitzers crawls slowly back into line midway the column, behind the human troops and in front of the military droid contingent. Eerily, it seems to move on its own, its driver invisible behind the housing of the barrel.

Beside her, Maggie observes, “Damn good job, all things considered. That big gun is going to give us some trouble before the day’s over, but things are a lot more equal than they were half an hour ago.”

“We’re losing our cover, Colonel,” Kirsten observes. Except for the lowest elevations , in hollows of ridges and along the river’s surface, the fog has begun to burn away. The meadow between the bridge and the woods gleams in the sudden sun, the snow refracting the light like prisms.

“It’s okay. We’ve almost reached the point where it won’t matter.” Maggie glances over her shoulder at Kirsten, back at her com board, the fingers of one hand pressed behind her ear as if to strengthen the signals she is picking up. “Any change on the other side?”

“Negative, Colonel. They still don’t know we’re here; they think the choppers were a sortie flying out of the Base. No indication they know Manny survived, either.”

Maggie shakes her head, half in perplexity. “Much as I hate the things, there’s something to be said for an enemy that doesn’t think anything it’s not told to think..”

“What’s really interesting,” Koda adds, “is that none of the humans seem to have caught on, either.”

“You think?”

“I think some of them think. They’re just not telling.”

“That does seem likely, doesn’t it? We’ll know for sure where they stand real soon now,” Maggie says thoughtfully. After a long moment she adds, “Go ahead and pass the word to spare them if we can, but anyone or anything that shoots at us is a fair target.”

Koda repeats the order into her mike in Lakota, and is relieved to find that the new com officer with Jurgensen’s company is her scapegrace cousin. “That was fast,” she says, after he acknowledges the order and repeats it in English for Major Jurgensen.

He laughs. “Medics got my arm shot full of novocaine and strapped to my side. Mouth works fine, though. We got one happy CO over here now he doesn’t have to worry about his vocabulary list.”

“We’ve got a happy CO over here who’s relieved your worthless butt’s in one piece..”

“She ain’t the only one. Take care, cuz. Wikcemna-topa.”

“Wikcemna-topa,” she signs off.

On the flat ground below, the enemy column has fallen in and is beginning, slowly, to move toward the bridge. Koda catches herself clenching her teeth and deliberately relaxes her muscles as they advance. Come on, come on, come on, she chants silently to herself. When the first of the troops sets foot on the span she feels her spine unwind like an uncoiling spring.

“Okay, that’s it. They’re committed,” Maggie says softly. “Wait till they get that howitzer within ten or fifteen meters of the bridge, then give Tacoma the signal to blow it.”

Koda watches as the enemy troops make the crossing, humans to the fore, keeping to the straight line of unmined highway when they reach the eastern bank.. They are close enough now that Koda can hear the irregular tramp of their feet. Droids next, oddly matched as they are, metal feet ringing against the pavement, following the men and women in front.

The first of the remaining APC’s grinds onto the bridge, followed by the two surviving tanks. The big gun lumbers along, now twenty meters away from the riverbank.

“Almost,” Maggie murmurs. “Almost . . ..”

“Nothing untoward on their com, Colonel,” Kirsten reports. “Situation nominal.”

A long moment’s pause. Then, “Rivers, give the order.”

Koda clicks through to Tacoma. “Wana, thiblo. Ceyakto ihagyeye.”

“Washte,” comes his response, clipped and brief. “Wikcemna-topa.”

A few seconds stretches out, becomes an impossibly long minute, expands into infinity. When it comes, the explosion roars like thunder in the earth, a rumbling under their feet that shakes the rocks of the hill where they stand, sets the branches of the bare tree above them to thrashing. Underneath the moving army, the pylons begin to buckle. A jagged crack splits the asphalt and its concrete bed; the report is sharp as a rifle shot, magnified a thousand times. The span sags in the middle, tipping crazily down toward the water, spilling human and machine alike into the swift current of the Cheyenne. A cloud of dust and smoke boils up from the mist, a dirty grey pall that covers bridge and river, rolling along the meadow to overtake the soldiers who have just crossed, enveloping them, sending them blind and directionless into the minefields that bracket the road and riverbanks. Dulled by fog and distance, the muffled thump of explosions of the anti-personnel charges comes to her where she stands on the hill, interspersed with the screams of the enemy troops. She watches as others plunge toward the water, humans and human limbs and bright machine parts thrown out by the force of the blast. The wind carries the acrid smell of dynamite and plastique, the iron odor of blood. “Washte,” she whispers to herself, and raises her eyes to the foothills of the Paha Sapa where another storm pours down the lava slopes as Tacoma and his warriors, four hundred of them, swarm down the slope to cut off the enemy’s retreat and push them into their own rearguard and the river. He leaps from rock outcrop to ridge as easily as a mountain cat, half his troops following straight behind, the other half fanning out to block the churned and rutted road. His breath comes easily, his heart beating out the rhythm of the war chant and his blood singing in his veins. He struggles to keep the broad expanse of the field in his view, fighting the predator’s instinct that narrows his vision to the enemy and the clear path to it. From his high ground he can see that Jurgensen’s smaller contingent on the other side of the stream has broken cover from the woods and is charging down on the humans and domestic androids now trapped between them and the minefield laid along the bank. On the near side, the military droids and their vehicles have begun to lose formation and mill about without direction in tight knots whose mechanical drone reaches him even here.

Beneath him the earth shudders, and with a high, whining buzz like all the hornets of the world singing in harmony, an 81-mm mortar shell sails overhead to land with a roar just short of the last few APC’s in the armored column. Earth and spraying snow fountain up from the point of impact in the road, and Tacoma throws himself flat behind a low ridge of black rock, the rest of his contingent following suit as best they can. “You’re too high, man!” he yells into his com. “Just a degree or two shorter!”

The next round arcs down over his position just as the line of mechanical demons sorts itself out. These are not just artificial humans with weapons, tin men with a coder chip for a heart. These are the Pentagon’s best, or worst, only vaguely humanoid, self-propelled multiple weapons systems with real-time self-adapting programs and the resistance of tanks.. Their heads are multiple sensor arrays, optics that span the visible spectrum and beyond into the infrared and ultraviolet, able to locate and map an enemy force by their body heat as well as their shape against the landscape. Their arms and hands are chaingun barrels, the ammunition feed housed in the long rectangle of the titanium thorax.. Some are set on gearboxes with belt drives; others, in a parody of human shape, possess jointed lower extensions ending in smaller treads. They advance with the rhythmical slouching walk of antique zoot-suiters. With a slow grinding of metal limbs, they begin to bear down on the company crouching at the edge of the piedmont, clustered tubes at their arms’ ends spraying death. Tacoma can hear the rounds whining over his head, the sharp crack when one strikes the stone behind him.

Another mortar shell rises to meet them, and this time the shell strikes the margin of their advance. Tacoma yells, “Got ‘em! Mark your baseline!”

In his peripheral vision, he can see a second group moving off, their treads tearing up gouts of snow and earth, to meet the company now deployed across and to either side of the road. There is a certain terrible beauty to them as they begin to move inexorably toward the human lines, sun striking their titanium hides and splintering into sprays of light like shooting stars, even as the gunners hidden in a rock-cut gully figure their speed and the mortar rounds begin to hammer down on them. It is almost, he thinks, like a dance as the droids’ internal computers calculate the rate of fire and the big guns’ range, and they begin to dash forward at broken intervals to put themselves just behind or just in front of the steep arc cut by the artillery fire. Where it strikes them full on, it leaves a row of craters gouged into the earth, ringed in a fine fall of silver ash.

Tacoma watches them come on, inexorable and unthinking, counting off the seconds until they come within reach of smaller weapons. Gaps appear in their ranks, kill after kill, and still they come on. Softly Tacoma speaks into his com, “Almost, almost; all units hold your fire; remember not to waste bullets on these tin cans.”

Come on, you motherfuckers, come on. It is almost a prayer.

“Thiblo!” His com crackles to life. “Wana! Khuteye!”

“All right!” Tacoma bellows. “Give ‘em hell!” Twisting his neck to look behind, he can just see the blunt ends of the launchers as they empty their load straight into the line of oncoming droids, the LAAWS rockets and grenades striking their targets straight on, blasting off heads with their sensor arrays, tearing huge holes in the magazines where chest and abdomen should be. Koda cannot see individual droids fall, but she does see the sudden flares as the explosives strike their targets, the wavering of the line as they re-form and begin to advance more slowly on the ridge where her brother’s troops lie in wait. They do not waver. The rattle of gunfire and the deeper voice of the mortars comes to her sharply, refracted off the water’s surface and the lift of rock to the northwest.

“Kirsten, are you getting anything?”

Seated in the back of the truck, Kirsten adjusts controls on two of her units, listening intently. “Negative. There’s no pullback order yet.”

Beside her, Maggie lowers her own field glasses and remarks, “You know, this plan depends on those damned things working the way they’re supposed to. If their “save your own metal ass” code doesn’t kick in fairly soon, we’re fucked.”

Koda trains her own binoculars on the field below her. Remains of droids litter the field behind their line, their bright fragments taking the sunlight in among the mangled remains of APCs and troop transports. After what seems an eternity, the advance on her brother’s position seems to slow as the droids’ line shortens, begins to take longer and longer to straggle back into order after each wave of rocket fire. The mortars continue to hail destruction down on them.

“They’ve got to run out of ammo fairly soon,” says Koda.

Maggie’s mouth crooks up in a wry smile. “Them or us?” Then she says, “The good news is on the other bank. Have a look.”

Closer to, to the southeast of the river, Jurgensen’s men are pressing what remains of the enemy humans and household androids steadily back toward the water. Remains both metal and human lie scattered over the meadow, the latter identifiable by red stains spreading in the snow around them. Here and there a human form kneels with its hands tied behind its back; surrendered prisoners left behind the advancing line to await either death at their allies’ hands or judgement at their captors’. No one can be spared to escort them to the relative safety of the woods.

“There goes the Geneva Convention,” Koda observes.

Maggie pauses, sweeping the field with her binoculars. “I expected more would give themselves up. I don’t like it that we have this few. I don’t like it at all.”

“What the hell is in it for them? The bastards at the jail collaborated to save their lives, but these—“

“Threats. Promises.” Maggie interrupts her. “Hatred. Any of those –“

An exclamation from Kirsten interrupts her. “That’s it! There’s the code for retreat. They’re going to pull back toward the river and try to lure our forces out.”

Koda sees the faint hollowing of Maggie’s chest, even under layers of thermal insulation, as the Colonel breathes a relieved sigh. “Good. Thank god the son-of-a-bitch who programmed those damned things never had an original tactic to his name.”

Kirsten, though, shakes her head. “Somebody did. They’re not just going to pull back. They’re going to try to cross the river.”

“Shit,” Maggie says quietly. Following her gaze, Koda sees what the other woman dreads. Their own forces have pressed the enemy back up against the water and the minefields on the near bank. If the droids cross the remnants of the bridge, the best defense will be the guns hidden in the woods. They are not precision instruments. Their own troops may die, indiscriminately.

A movement above the treetops draws her eye. High up, no more than a shadow against the blue depths, a hawk rides a thermal, spiraling outward in widening circles. Her scream comes to them on the wind, high and piercing and Tacoma turns his head to see one of his men go down, a spatter of blood and brain where his head had been. A ripple seems to go through the ranks of the droids, and they turn without warning, beginning to make their way back toward the bridge at speed. A flurry of mortar rounds lands short, sending up a cloud of dirt and snow, but knocking over no more than a half dozen of the enemy. Two of them lever themselves up, their joints stiff , and begin to grind their way back toward the river, following the rest.”

“Goddam!” Tacoma springs to his own feet, yelling to the squads behind him. “They’re headed back toward the bridge! They’re going to try to cross!” Then into his com, “Recalibrate! They’re retreating!”

“Got it,” the gunner answers through a crackle of static. “I’m gonna put up a spotter. Give me some distance between you and them.”

“You keep firing as long as you have ammo! Never mind where anyone is!”

“Sarge—“

“Goddammit, you keep shooting, you hear me? They don’t have the ordnance to deal with those things on the other side! We gotta get ‘em before they make the crossing! You got that, goddammit?”

“Got,” says the gunner, meekly. A half second later, a mortar round comes flying over Tacoma’s head, landing in the rear rank of the now retreating droids. It leaves a quite satisfactory hole where a half dozen of them had been.

Tacoma’s world shrinks then to a small sphere of space where the only sound is a cacophony of explosions: mortars, grenades, shoulder-fired rockets going off all about him. His actions become mechanical, repeated by troops up and down the length of the line. There are fewer than there were before; as near as he can tell, he has lost a quarter of his troops. A straggle of men and women, some of them hobbling, others trailing bloody arms and legs, stumbles forward from the position they have held across the road. Load, raise the launcher, fire.

Load, raise the launcher, fire. Over and over again.

And always the retreating backs of the enemy, spattered with earth and snow as they go down one after the other onto the rutted ground. The advance of his men, step by step, leaves fresh blood in the snow.

Some of it is h is own. Something, he is not quite sure what, has struck him on the forehead. Without breaking stride, he raises his hand to swipe at the blood pouring into his eyes. And he keeps moving without thought.

Load.

Raise the launcher.

Fire.

Over and over again.

“What the hell’s that?”

Koda swings the M-16 riding her shoulder down into position and raises her binoculars. A plume of dust from the rutted and drying road appears halfway down the hill where the command post stands, curving and backswitching as the path makes its crooked way up the slope. “It’s a couple Jeeps, I think.”

Maggie turns her attention from the field of battle to scan the newcomers. “It’s a couple Jeeps full of idiot flyboys.”

As the small convoy comes into closer focus, Koda can make out the unmistakable freckled face of Andrews at the wheel of the first vehicle. He has not bothered to change out of his flight suit or helmet and handles the bucking Jeep with much the same offhand élan as his Black Hawk.; some of the other pilots have changed into standard ground combat head buckets, but not bothered with the rest of their gear. The vehicles bristle with armaments: an M-60 apiece, grenade launchers, LAAWS.

“Just can’t leave well enough alone,” Maggie remarks tartly, but there is pride in her voice as much as exasperation.

“You lead by example, Colonel,” Kirsten says quietly. Koda turns swiftly to look at her, but there is no irony in the other woman’s face. That pleases her, in a quiet way she cannot now take time to analyze.

Maggie, too, has taken it as the compliment intended. She grins. “Never did know when to quit.”

One more steep climb, and the Jeeps pull, brakes squealing, into the small flat space where the troop carrier cum com center sits. He climbs out and salutes smartly, somehow managing to cover Maggie, Koda and Kirsten all in the gesture. “The Third Damn Fools, reporting for duty, Ma’am.”

Maggie looks them up and down with a drill sergeant’s scowl. “You can’t leave well enough alone, huh? Just gotta get in there and mix it up mano a mano.”

“YES, MA’AM!”

“Goddam Hallelujah Chorus,” she says. “Okay, here’s the deal—“

“Colonel!” Kirsten’s voice cuts through the banter. “The droids are almost to the bridge head. Sergeant Rivers just came through on clear. He’s going to try to get in front of them but doesn’t think he can hold all of them.”