Kirsten is dressed a bit more conservatively, in jeans and a T-shirt with a Gore-Tex jacket rolled in her pack. “Hey, look what I found back there!” She grins as she holds up her prize: a fully loaded solar laptop with all the amenities. “Damn thing’s about five pounds lighter than my old one and damn, it’s fast!!”

“Only you,” Koda grins, shaking her head.

“Yeah, well, get used to it, Vet. You’re marrying a geek. Our toys come with the territory.”

“Just as long as you’re the one carrying ‘em,” Koda jokes.

“Don’t you worry about that. I always carry my weight.”

“We’ll see.”

*

Already dressed in her flight suit, Maggie runs out to greet Manny as he swings out of the copter, instinctively ducking low to avoid decapitation by the still slowly spinning blades, thought in this particular model, that really isn’t much of a danger. The roters are high above her head. “You get em down safe?” she shouts.

“And sound,” Manny returns, giving her shoulder a quick, calming pat. “For better or worse, they’re on their way.”

“Good. One less thing to worry about.” Turning, she begins to walk back toward the command post, Manny at her left heel like a well trained dog at a show.

“How are things on this end?”

“Ten minutes to the deadline. We still can’t read em on radar or GPS. Line of sight only, and it’s not good.”

“Has anyone figured out where the hell they came from?” he asks. “I mean, where the fuck were they when the rest of their little friends were getting shredded?”

“Don’t know, and at this point, I don’t care,” the General retorts, dragging a hand through her hair. “We’ve gotta take em down as fast as they put em up. It’s the only way.”

“Got a plan for that?” Manny asks slyly.

“Don’t I always? C’mon.”

*

“You hungry yet?”

“Is supper gonna be MRE’s?”

“’Fraid so. Unless you want to stop and fish. I haven’t seen a whole lot of small game around here, yet, and I’m not too keen on lugging around sixty pounds of venison from killing one of those big bucks you keep scaring.”

Kirsten’s face brightens for a moment. Then the smile fades. “It was a nice thought. We’d better keep going as long as we have light, though.”

‘That won’t be long. Better start looking for a place to camp.”

Around them the shadows of pine and aspen lie long upon the ground. The low sun strikes glints of gold and silver from the rippling current of the Little Medicine Bow, visible here and there through the trees where the river bends west. Asi runs alongside, snuffling happily at fox scrapes, occasionally pausing to inspect the tangled roots that hump their way across their path. They have been walking steadily for almost eight hours, pausing only to take compass readings and refer to the Ordinance map Manny had stowed among their gear. Their course angles south and west from the clearing where they set down an hour after leaving Ellsworth, past the historic town of Medicine Bow and the Medicine Bow Range beyond. Here the land lies in sharp folds, rising gradually toward the higher peaks of the Sierra Madre, interspersed with streams and alpine meadows. They have seen no sign of humans. The woods and the river are as they might have been a thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, when her people first moved west into the plains, following the buffalo.

“It all seems so far away,” Kirsten says quietly, echoing her thoughts. “Almost like none of it ever happened.”

“This is Ina Maka’s place. Her time, not ours.” Above them, a dark speck appears against the sky where the gold sheen of the westering sun meets the deepening blue of the east. It circles above them, growing larger as it spirals downward. A cry floats down to them, high and wild and triumphant.

Koda stops in her tracks, staring upward. As the speck comes nearer, it takes on the shape of wings, a bright copper tail fanned out to the beating light, its feathers sheened like hammered bronze. The cry comes again, and the broad wings cup the air to slow the hawk’s descent. “My God,” Kirsten breathes. “My God.”

Koda does not speak, only stretches out her arm. Wiyo lights delicately on her wrist, protected only by the thin fabric of her shirt, and walks sideways up her arm to rest on her shoulder. She ruffles her feathers once, gives a small, incongruous chirp of greeting, and settles, ducking her head to preen under a wing. Koda strokes her lightly under the throat, drawing a finger across the white breast feathers and the dark belly-band below. Around them dusk thickens as they move west, toward the mountains, the sea beyond, the crimson sky.

*

The midday sun beats down on the tarmac in front of the main gate, making rippling the air above it. From where she stands in the watchtower, Maggie can see metallic glints here and there that must be either droids or armed humans, but they are scattered among the tumbled buildings across the road and in the open fields beyond. She has not been able to get good instrument readings on their number or their placement. All she knows is that there are too goddammed many of the goddammed things for her depleted forces to hold off. All she can do is keep their attention on the Base and stall them for as long as she can.

And give Dakota and Kirsten as much time as she can, measured out now in minutes, in hours at best.

Next to her, Andrews settles the muzzle of his rifle against the edge of the wall slit, squinting for perhaps the dozenth time through the scope. “Nothing there, Ma’am.”

Maggie sets down her own binoculars. “I know. They’re keeping under cover until the last minute.”

“But Hart’ll have to show himself.”

“Oh, yeah. And when he does . . ..” Maggie lets the words trail off. They both know what will happen when he has outlived his usefulness. To both sides.

The early summer heat settles about them, a stillness in the air that has nothing to do with the impending conflict. It is not so much the calm before a storm as it is the earth settling into its season despite the human goings-on that scrabble along its surface. The planet, for the first time in decades, is no longer at risk from its inhabitants. Only one species stands to vanish now, eradicated by its own hand. A bee, drawn by the scent of soap, buzzes lazily in front of Maggie’s nose, and she bats it away gently. On the road, nothing moves.

Then, “Here he comes,” Andrews says quietly.

Hart moves out from between the remains of a McDonald’s and an auto parts store, his blue shirt open at the collar, head bare. He no longer carries a flag of truce, only the bullhorn swinging from one hand. A snap and whine of feedback breaks the silence as it powers up. “Colonel Allen,” says the flat, amplified voice. “Do you have an answer? Open the gates and surrender your so-called ‘President,’ and we will leave you in peace.”

“Cover me,” Maggie says, and steps out of the guardroom onto the catwalk that circles the tower. Below her, Hart stands alone in the middle of the road, the breeze ruffling his grey hair and the beginnings of a patriarchal beard. She stands in the sun, letting him see the stars on her shoulders and the one on her helmet. Letting him see, too, that her hand rests on the butt of the pistol at her waist. With five generations of gospel singers and twenty years in command of troops behind her, she has no need for a megaphone. “Hart!” she shouts. “I have a deal to make you!”

“No deals, Colonel. Meet our demand or not: that is the only choice you have.”

Maggie smiles grimly. It is no more than she expects. But she says, “It’s not the only choice you have, though. What do you think your little metalhead pals out there are going to do with you when you’ve outlived your usefulness to them? Which is—” she glances ostentatiously at her watch—“right about now.”

Hart shakes his head, a gesture meant to convey a response more in sorrow than in anger. “Wise humans have allied themselves with these good beings, Colonel. I am not alone, I assure you, nor am I in any danger. Nor are you or the troops under your command, if you surrender Dr. King. Your answer, if you please.”

Crunch time. “Then you have it, and it is this.” She pauses, letting the moments draw out, in case any other human collaborators are listening. “President King has authorized me to allow you, and any other human who has had second thoughts about cooperation with the enemy, to return to the Base to face charges of desertion in time of war and treason. If you give yourselves up, your lives will be spared. If you don’t, you will face the full penalty of the law when you are captured.”

The expression on Hart’s face might almost be a smile. “And I offer you and your people the same amnesty, Colonel, provided that you hand the good Doctor over. Now.”

The parley, Maggie knows, is essentially useless. The best she can do is buy a few minutes’ more time to prepare, give Koda and Kirsten a few more moments to get that much further away. Once, long ago, she had seen a film in which the hero, about to be hanged, requested time to make his confession. After half an hour, he was still owning up to affairs with “Maisie, and Gertrude, and Lollie, four times with Wilhelmina, and twice with Tom.” And of course, rescue had arrived just as his captors’ patience ran out. Her own list, alas, is not nearly long enough to inspire either patience or awe. And what time she has is running out, with no help in sight. “Withdraw your android troops as a sign of your good faith, General. Then we can talk seriously.”

“Bring Dr. King outside the gates where we can see her—as a sign of your good faith, Colonel—and we can talk seriously.”

And that time has just run out. Hart and his cohorts have to have seen the Cheyenne take off; they have to have seen it return. They must at least suspect that Kirsten is no longer on the Base. They hope for an easy conquest, no more. Maggie steps away from the slit in the wall behind her. “Now, Andrews.”