From the ditch come sounds of a brief struggle, then two shots, then more fire into the mist. Behind her, Manny alternately swears and shoots, swears and shoots again. “Don’t let ‘em get down into the pasture! Koda won’t be able to see the bastards coming—they’ll give away her position!”

Kirsten’s world shrinks to the small space before her, where the mist hides an enemy she cannot see. She fires until her magazine is empty, shoves another one home keeps firing.

There is only the enemy and her finger on the trigger.

She kills coldly, human and nonhuman alike. Without attachment.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

THE NIGHT SCOPE shows the mist that surrounds them as green wraiths, the uneven ground beneath their feet as an uncertain patchwork of black and green. Koda can see the man on either side of her and little else. From time to time she catches a glint off the gear of a troop a few feet further down the loose skirmish line, but none of them can spare much attention for anything but the jutting rocks and tussocks of thick grass that can send them tumbling, turn or break an ankle. The one good thing, Koda reflects wryly, is that they do not need to see where they are going. The sound of battle draws them steadily toward the highway, where they will attack the droid army on its vulnerable—and with luck, unsuspecting—flank.

They are perhaps halfway across when the minefield goes up. A collective gasp runs up the line, punctuated by one clear “Jesus god damn!” and a grunt as someone elbows her vocal compatriot in the ribs.

Except as a matter of discipline, the exclamation hardly matters. The roar as half a hundred claymores and as many Bouncing Betties go off in chorus will drown anything but the report of a big gun. In the red-lit chaos ahead of them, Koda can make out the vague shapes of bodies pitched into the air, their severed limbs arcing above them to rain down on their fellows and clatter against the barricade. Others, still apparently on their feet, make for the edge of the highway and relative safety, only to run into a solid line of rifle and small arms fire. The fog muffles their screams to vague cries out of nightmare, distant, contextless.

Without warning, a burst of white light cuts through the mist along the highway, etching the scene for a microsecond into her memory: scattered arms, legs, some human, some not; the asphalt slick with blood; craters gouged into the roadway. And it shows her two things more. Behind the ranks of cannon fodder, the military droids grind inexorably on toward the wall, the hard light from the phosphorus shell sheeting off their metallic hides. And along the edge of the road, a troop stands looking directly toward the gorge, raising his gun to his shoulder.

“Down!” she bellows. “Keep moving!”

Dropping to knees and elbows, she humps her way over the damp earth, crawling a space, then levering herself up to a crouching run. Behind her, where she had stood a handful of seconds before, an M-16 round kicks up the water in a small puddle. A second whistles over her head to land silently in the earth beyond. She jabs the man to her right, harder than she had meant because she cannot judge distance. “Hold fire. Don’t give ‘em our position till we have to. Pass it on.” She gives the same message to the sergeant on her left.

The shooter at the edge of the road has apparently been joined by others. Enemy fire quickens, becomes heavier, pelting down on the length of the line. Koda puts her head down and keeps on crawling.

*

The M-1’s and Bradleys run with their lights high now, lurching over the uneven ground at top speed, spraying dirt from under their treads. Tacoma’s Jeep bucks and yaws in their wake, throwing him alternately against the straps across his chest and the unyielding back of his seat. In the occasional beam of light that rakes over him, he can see the steering wheel spinning under Jackson’s left hand, his right taut-knuckled on the gear shift. It occurs to Tacoma that after this he will never need a chiropractor if he lives to be a hundred and ten. He might never need a dentist either, except for his helmet’s chinstrap. Pitching his voice just under a bellow to make himself heard above the din of the surrounding engines, he yells, “Did you”—thump!—“drive like this”—bang!—“when you went”—slam!—“with Kirsten to”—whump!—“Minot?”

“You kidding, man?” Darius favors him with a thousand-watt grin for a split second, then turns his eyes back to the road. “And have that sister of yours”—he pauses to steer around a large chunk of limestone—“hang me up by my heels and skin me?”

“The General’d—get you—first. Koda’d—just take—your hair!”

A shell from one of the droid tanks sails overhead, to gouge a crater in the field to their right. Turning to look behind, Tacoma can see their halogen lights where they punch through the fog. What he cannot see, and with luck the enemy cannot either, is the other half of his armored cavalry, running dark behind them, ready to cut them off once the lead units lure them onto the Interstate and into the trap that has been laid for them.

“Pull us off when we get to the road,” Tacoma shouts. “Get us in under the overpass!”

“You gonna lead from behind?”

“You got it!”

The tanks at the front of the column take a sudden hard left, ploughing their way over the soft shoulder to the highway access road. As they sweep up the on ramp, Jackson steers the Jeep out of the line and into the shelter of the huge struts and pylons holding up the highway above the Elk Creek interchange. The racket as the behemoths lumber up the slope is beyond deafening, and Tacoma hunkers down and covers his ears as they pass. The metal plates above him rattle against their bolts, and it seems to him that every bone in his body hangs loose, clattering against its neighbor. Then the last of them is up and racing west, the whine of their engines fading with their speed.

The silence lasts for perhaps a minute. Tacoma savors it, the first respite they have had since the droid howitzers began their siege. Then, “Here they come,” Jackson says quietly.

Bursting out of the fog with engines howling, the enemy armor follows their own forces up onto the highway. As the first of them commits to the ramp, Tacoma feels his shoulders go slack with relief. Bait taken.

Perhaps five minutes after the last of them has passed, Tacoma hears the growl of their second unit’s engines. “Here we go,” he says, and Jackson keys the engine and the lights, steering the Jeep out onto the access road and into the lead as the half dozen M-1’s speed for the ramp. “Gonna send all those good little droids home to cyber-Jeezus!”

*

When the smoke from the mines clears, Maggie looks down on a scene straight out of Hieronymus Bosch by Bill Gates. Mechanical body parts litter the highway below the wall: a leg with its struts and dangling wires jutting up out of an asphalt crater here; a head there, recognizably non-human only by the absence of blood; impaled on a spar of steel protruding from the barricade, a hand still clutching an automatic rifle. Fanned out on the margins lie the human casualties, most of them picked off by snipers as they tried to flee. To her right, from the north lip of the gorge which Dakota must cross, she can hear the pop and rattle of rifle fire. Not good. Even in the fog, even with enemy shooters they can pick off by sound, Koda and her troops are at a disadvantage, their whole traverse exposed. And the phosphorus shell would have shown them to their enemies, mercilessly trapped in its glare.

Mentally, Maggie reels through a catalogue of her troops. The worst of the attack is yet to come; the full-bore military droids have halted their advance, but the lull will not last, not beyond the few minutes required for them to assess their losses. She can, perhaps, spare a platoon.

Clambering down from her vantage point halfway up the wall, she snares one of the men crouched at its foot. His helmet shows three stripes; his shirt pocket proclaims him McGinnis, Ralph. “Corporal, I need you to carry a message to Dakota Rivers in the gorge. Can you do it?”

McGinnis’ face, pale beneath its black grease-paint, goes paler still. But he snaps off a salute. “Yes, Ma’am!”

“Good man. Ask her if she needs reinforcing. I can send her a dozen troops if she does.”

He salutes again and is gone.

Maggie takes advantage of the momentary calm to walk the length of the barricade again. Supply runners race past her, carrying ammunition and grenades. She is halfway back to her post when she hears the grinding of treads on pavement. Her heart bangs once against her rib cage, then steadies. They will hold because they must. A passing runner carries grenades; she snags a belt of them and a launcher, finds a gap in the wall big enough to admit its muzzle. She loads and waits.

*

There is no time. Koda has no idea how long she has been humping over the wet earth of the gorge. The new grass, slick with the mist, slides easily beneath her body. The musty scent of sodden vegetation mingles with the sharper smell of black powder and cordite drifting down from the battle. Direct fire from above has tapered off, become sporadic as the enemy has either given up wasting ammunition or has found more immediate matters to occupy them.

Or simply decided to pick them off later, when they come into visible range. They had been on the edge of the burst of light from the Willie Peter, but almost surely the enemy has marked their position. It is not a comforting thought.

From the highway comes the sound of small arms fire and the occasional concussion of a grenade. The mines have gone up in a roar, presumably taking out the first wave of droids. For a moment the fog had glowed red, then settled into its pervasive grey, hiding the road and what she hopes is the successful completion of the first phase of the battle plan.