Author's Notes: This story is rated R for language. Danny Wolfe and the Wolfe Pack first appeared in "An Echo of Yesterday." It would be best to read that story first. It is available at the web sites listed below, or contact the author via e-mail for a copy.

Quotation from "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars", by Richard Lovelace, 17th century English poet, used without permission.




Part Two

The high-pitched screams of a terrified child sent both men running for the back porch. It was coming from the barn -- and McQueen saw smoke coming out of the hay lift! He vaulted the porch railing and took off for the barn at a flat out run, by the time he got there the whole loft was in flames. He could hear Ephraim and little Abigail up there, screaming in terror. The ladder to the loft was burning, McQueen looked around for another way up and saw that the open framework of the barn wall offered just enough handgrips to get up to the loft. By then, the children were nowhere in sight. The hay stored up here was burning and the flames were spreading in the rafters.

"EPHRAIM! ABBY!" He spotted a flash of white cloth -- the little boy's shirt -- they were huddled in the corner behind some barrels, sobbing hysterically.

There was a rush of flames from overhead and a creaking, tearing sound. McQueen looked up -- the rafters were starting to fall, it looked like the whole building was going to come in. He threw himself over the children, knowing that would be a futile gesture if the barn roof caved in on all of them. It wasn't the whole roof, though, just a tangle of blazing rafters that blocked them from the edge of the loft -- so much for the idea to jump to the ground floor.

He looked around desperately for some other way out. The roaring flames and blinding smoke were confusing, nothing looked the same as it had before the rafters had fallen. He got his bearings from the corner. The hay lift was the only other chance, but it was engulfed in flames. He stripped off his jacket and bundled the kids up in it, not an easy job since they were all coughing violently from the smoke. He stayed near the barn wall, hoping the floor would be stronger there -- less likely to plunge them through into the inferno below. There was a searing pain when his clothes caught fire, then he leapt out from the edge of the haylift and twisted as he fell, to make sure he hit the ground first to break the kids' fall.

He hit hard and knocked all the wind out of himself. He knew he had to roll to put the flames out but he was too stunned to move. Seconds later, though, someone grabbed the children out of the way and smothered the flames with his jacket. It was Danny, of all people. Elizabeth Garrett gathered her children up in her arms.

Danny tried to pull his shirt off, they realized at the same time that he was burned badly enough for it to be stuck. At that, Danny stopped messing with it and yelled "Hey, medic over here!"

McQueen was struggling to stay conscious, but he was dimly aware of Benjamin Garrett shaking Ephraim. "You son of the Devil! How did you start that fire?"

"I didn't!" Ephraim protested. "I was looking for Sister--"

"Never lie to me, boy!" Garrett flung the boy to the ground and raised his walking stick. Elizabeth screamed, knowing he could easily beat the boy to death, but the blow never descended. Danny had crossed the space between them in two steps and grabbed Benjamin's wrist in a steel grip. His fist slammed into the big farmer's jaw, knocking him sprawling.

"Get up, you son of a bitch," Wolfe challenged in a low, deadly growl. "If you want to beat someone up, why don't you try it with a grown man instead of a six-year-old kid."

Garrett got up, Elizabeth grabbed at his arm and he backhanded her away from him. Those were both stupid moves, Danny Wolfe waited for Garrett to come at him and then quickly and thoroughly beat the living hell out of him. Elder Elisha knelt by his daughter, she was dazed but relatively unhurt. Both of them, kids in tow, scrambled over to McQueen's side. Elizabeth was crying hysterically and thanking him incoherently over and over again for saving her children's lives.

The fire brought dozens of people -- settlers, Wild Cards and Wolfe Pack alike -- running from all directions. There was no way to stop the fire, but fortunately the barnyard was clear, hard-packed ground.

After an initial examination, Christy decided it would be better to take him up to the house, rather than treat a serious burn in a dirty barnyard. He shook her off for a moment. "Damphousse!"

"Here, sir!"

"See if you can rig one of those big water tanks to the ISSCV engine unit, get this cooled down before it gets dark enough for the chigs to start IR flyovers. There's no way we'll stop their recon flights from picking up heat traces ... but if it's still this hot, we'd might as well radio them to start carpet bombing this location."

"Yes, sir!"

"West, get these people moving. I want the evacuation underway immediately."

"Sir!" West replied.

"Vansen. You and Wolfe put a couple of squads together and search this area. If someone set that fire I want to know who and why before it gets dark...something like this would have been a perfect signal to the chigs. If there's a traitor we need him alive."

Danny nodded, not exactly acknowledging the order, more like agreeing it was a good plan. McQueen wasn't going to push the point as long as he got the job done. Vansen answered with an automatic "yes, sir", which got them both a teasing look from Cooper. He didn't say a smartass word out loud -- he didn't have to. He knew how well Shane understood the silent In Vitro informal "language" of looks and subtle gestures. All he said was, "Can you make it to the house okay, sir, or should I go with the Major?"

"Go, I can make it." If someone had set that fire, McQueen wanted their best sharpshooter with Vansen, not baby-sitting him.

Christy said, "Be careful", and gave Cooper an "I mean it" look. He grinned and put his hand on top of her head, he knew she didn't like being reminded of how short she was .. especially relatively to him!

It was only when they started back up the hill to the house that McQueen realized how far it was down here ... wings of fear had carried him when he'd realized there were children trapped in a burning barn, it hadn't seemed nearly so far then. He told himself that he had landed a burning SA-43 with worse injuries than these and he was damn well going to walk up there under his own power. Some rebellious part of his mind piped up that less severe burns hurt worse because the nerve endings weren't damaged as badly ... very severe burns stopped hurting after a time. He told that little voice to shut the hell up.

Elizabeth looked around. "Where did Benjamin go?"

Elder Elisha said, "Straight to the Devil, I would hope!"

She stared at him. "Father!"

The old man's voice shook with emotion. "I've been so blind, Lissie. I should have protected you ... and the children .... I trusted Benjamin."

"I know, Papa, I know. It's all right now...."

By the time they got up to the house, McQueen was glad to lie down in the spare bedroom. His pants, like the jacket he'd wrapped around Ephraim, were fireproof, so the only really bad burns had come from the cotton shirt he'd been wearing. Christy soaked it off with water freshly drawn from the well. It was cold enough to numb the pain considerably, by the time she was done with that the worst of it had receded. Christy said, "God, you've had some burns here a few times before."

"Twice," he replied without elaboration. The worst ones had come from his injuries on the Jupiter Line, but the acid burns from Marged had been almost as bad.

Christy said, "These aren't as deep."

"Don't use a gelskin unless you have to, how many do we have?"

"Not a lot."

"Then save them, we might need them worse later before this is over with."

Christy nodded. She carefully patted the area dry and put burn gel on the worst of it, to protect it and help it heal faster. That was all she had ever done for the relatively nasty burns she'd gotten a few times while fighting forest fires.

Before she had finished, the door creaked open. Elder Elisha stepped inside. "Colonel, Lissie found you some clean clothes when you--" He stopped, suddenly realizing that McQueen ... and Ames, now that he was looking ... were In Vitroes. Ames turned, her first duty was to protect a patient under her care -- and Elder Elisha realized she had every reason in the world to think there might be a threat.

Everything he had believed for all of his life came into direct conflict with what he had just seen this afternoon. This man had put his life on the line to rescue Ephraim and Abby from the fire. In a very shaken voice, he said, "Colonel McQueen, I've said and done some terrible things since you came here, and you have never shown yourself to be anything other than a good and just man. You saved the lives of my grandchildren at the risk of your own, that kind of selfless courage comes from nowhere except our Lord. I owe you more than I can ever hope to repay. Before God, I repent of the sins I have committed against you ... and your people ... and of those I have led others to commit."

McQueen turned and looked him in the eyes, all he saw there was honesty. He had thought of "the bigots" as a faceless enemy. But despite his prejudice ... whatever its roots ... Elder Elisha was a good man. After a moment, McQueen held out his hand, and the old man shook it firmly.

The Elder said, "I'll leave these things here." He closed the door quietly behind him.

Christy stared after him for a moment, then she got back to business. "You should rest. And there isn't any reason not to, until Shane and Danny get back to tell us something."

"All right, but wake me as soon as they get back."

Christy must have given him something to make sure he would rest, because although he was dimly aware when 'Phousse came in to sit with him, he couldn't bring himself around enough to talk. He realized that she wouldn't be there if she hadn't got the barn fire put out, and the ashes cooled down enough that there wouldn't be an obvious heat signature on infrared. He wasn't aware of anything else until she woke him by calling his name.

"What the hell did she give me?" He winced and shook his head to clear it.

She gave him her best "don't be silly" look, and knew that was plenty to get her point across. "Shane's back. They couldn't find any evidence of who started the fire, but someone did start it. Danny found a jerry can that someone had gasoline in. We're ready to make for the cave, if you can walk that far. Otherwise we need to find somewhere closer by to hide out tonight."

"What about Wolfe?"

"They're busy with the evacuation."

"Give me a minute, I think I can make it." Movement hurt, but not as much as it had before, with the gel and the pain shot still working. But the drug skewed his perception somehow, everything seemed muffled and distant. His jacket was thrown over a chair, there was the homespun shirt that Elder Elisha had laid out for him. Lissie had the foresight to choose an old one, which had already been washed out soft.

Elisha had remained behind, he said that he had already sent Lissie and the children ahead to the cave. Shane was waiting in the kitchen, she had kept only Cooper and 'Phousse with her and sent everyone else ahead with the colonists. McQueen asked, "Are we the last?"

"Yes, everyone's accounted for except Benjamin. No one paid any attention where he went after Danny kicked his butt, and no one's seen him since. But the reverend said Benjamin's shotgun and a box of shells are missing."

Cooper said, "Whatever trail he would have left was wiped out by all the people milling around the fire."

Elisha worried, "If he's captured, he'll be able to tell the chigs where we're hiding."

McQueen was concerned about that himself, but it was too close to dark to go out looking for him. It would be more likely that the search party would be spotted.

Most of his gear had already been sent on ahead, but Shane had left him his rifle and reloads, as well as a camo tarp, some ration bars and his canteen. If something happened that he got separated from the others, that gear and the things he already had in his pockets would get him through the night in relative comfort, and still kept the weight he had to carry to a minimum.

Now that he had been moving around for a while, he didn't feel quite so drugged as he had at first, and the fresh air helped too. Elisha led the way, and the pace the old man set wasn't too difficult for him to keep up. The colonists had taken different routes to the cave and entered by different ways, doing their best to hide their tracks. The path Elisha chose led along the river much of the way, and then through the forest, until they came to a small stream.

McQueen asked Elder Elisha, "You're sure you don't have any idea who would have burned your barn? As a leader here, have you done anything to anger anyone?"

He shook his head, but answered thoughtfully. "I can't imagine. It was such a foolish thing for anyone to do, considering it will be a miracle if the chigs don't burn the whole town anyway. There was only one incident in the last couple of months. I would not allow Timothy to give his son Jonathan in marriage with Susannah the daughter of Samuel and Keturah. Wait and see, I thought, if there is more to the match than the lands by the river that she stands to inherit. Jonathan is only fourteen, while Susannah is nearly seventeen. That makes all the difference in the world now, but in five years -- hardly any! I told the young people to wait six months or a year, and see how things are then. Timothy was less than happy with me for that, he's a proud man and he's used to getting his way. But I think if he had a quarrel with me, he would confront me face to face, not try to burn me out."

"Timothy? That would be the big man with black hair who stood by the window at the meeting this morning?"

"Yes, that was Timothy."

Off-hand, McQueen had to agree that the man didn't seem the type for a cowardly act like setting that fire. It was looking more and more like the fire had been set as a signal to the chigs. "You must have had a reason for hiring the Wolfe Pack."

Elisha said, "We barter with independent traders for goods we can't produce here. Extra meat and leather goods especially are valuable back on Earth. Also, we pan for gold in the hills up around here. God has provided abundantly for us. But early this year, after one group of traders left, we found a young woman murdered. We can't deal with honest merchants without the pirates knowing about us as well, so we hired these people."

The stream-bank grew steeper, and soon they came to a place where the stream flowed out of a small opening in the side of the hill.

Elisha said, "You can get in that way, but it's narrow and in water all the way."

Cooper grinned, and McQueen guessed what he was thinking -- that sounded like a great place to set an ambush for chigs.

Further up the hill, there was a narrow entrance into the cave. It was pitch black just a little ways inside the cave mouth. Shane let Cooper go ahead of her so that she could drop back with Ty, he gave her arm a little squeeze as they stepped inside. Vanessa brought up the rear. Cooper was as claustrophobic as she was afraid of the dark. He could barely handle it if he was either in the front or the rear ... but the last place he wanted to be was trapped in the middle of the group.

They paused while Elisha lit the lantern he had brought with him. Shane turned on her light. They revealed a weird underground architecture like nothing to be found on the surface. Shane had gone through a tourist cave once, rather than chicken out in front of her friends ... but that cave had been furnished with electric lights and well-marked walkways. This place was just as nature had made it. The cave floor was rough and stony in places where a trickle of a stream had worn a groove into the floor, and slippery in others where the rock was more resistant and the water spread out across the tunnel.

Cooper ducked to avoid a low place, and judged the height of the passage. He said, "If it's all this low, the chigs aren't going to like it any better than I do."

Elisha said, "There are places like this all through the caves, but a lot of it is easier going. We're coming to the first big gallery now, we call it the Sanctuary because this is where we used to hold our worship services when we lived down here."

Shane asked, "How long have you been here?"

"The first of us came back in '38, there were only twelve families then. More of our brothers and sisters have joined us every year since then."

Vanessa asked, "What if someone wants to leave?"

"A few go back, now and then. They miss their families, or the homes they left behind. My sister went back when her husband died. Now and then, one of the young people will sign on with the traders. But, for most of us, this is our home. The last thing we want to do is go back where they call practicing our faith sedition."

McQueen said, "The government isn't in the business of religious persecution, Elder, there's nothing to be gained by it."

"Not directly, no, but we don't believe in pledging our loyalty to the government. Our loyalty belongs only to God, we believe that it's sinful to put the works of man above that. Many of us have been arrested because we tell our children not to make that pledge, that's considered spreading sedition. Teaching our faith to our children is sedition? Refusing to make a pledge that we can't in conscience expect to keep is against the law?"

The Marines looked at each other, no one had a good answer for that. They had any number of disagreements with the Salemites, but the right of people to worship according to their conscience wasn't one of them. McQueen said, "I'm no lawyer, but it sounds to me like you could fight that in court."

"That's what some of us back on Earth think we should do, even though the Bible commands us not to sue one another. But those of us who came here felt led of God to shake the dust off our feet. I believe He has a purpose for us here, at New Jerusalem."

The Sanctuary was a large gallery, Elder Elisha told Shane to aim her flashlight up at the ceiling. Aside from scaring a flock of bats -- or whatever similar animal lived on New Jerusalem -- this revealed a wide ledge, mostly obscured by rocks and stalactites, about a meter down one wall. "We called that the Choir Loft. At the other end of the gallery, it's only six or eight feet up from the cave floor, it's easy to get up there."

They looked from the Choir Loft to the narrow, low passage they had just left, and immediately took the Elder's meaning. That would be a perfect sniper's nest.

They took a break there to rest a while, Elder Elisha was tired and out of breath and he said there was a steep downhill section after this. McQueen was just as glad for a break, although he wouldn't have been the first one to speak up and ask for one.

Cooper got restless and decided to check out the Choir Loft. He switched on his light and poked around the other end of the gallery until he found a place where he could swing himself up to the ledge. There were just enough openings out into the Sanctuary that he didn't feel too closed in up there, but there was still plenty of cover. The chigs wouldn't see him up here until he took his shot, he was well satisfied that the first chig through that hole would be a dead chig if they had someone on watch up here.

Cooper's light caught a flash of white just on the edge of his peripheral vision. He directed the beam over there.

Back in a shallow recess was a grinning skull. Suddenly one of the flying creatures that Shane had stirred up came darting out of the skeleton's rib cage and sailed right at his face. He let out a startled yelp and swatted at it, nearly fell off the ledge. That started his friends laughing. Vanessa teased, "Watch out, Coop, they'll get in your hair!"

"Aw, they will not! There's a dead guy up here! That thing was in the skeleton!"

Shane repeated, "A dead guy?! Vanessa, hold your light over here." She took the short way up, there were plenty of handholds up the side of the cave wall for an experienced climber.

Coop helped her up onto the ledge. Shane had to admit, finding that skeleton and having a bat fly out at her would probably have given her a pretty good scare too. "Yeah, it's a dead guy all right!" She poked around with her Ka-bar to be sure there weren't any more bats in there. These "bats" might well be poisonous or carry some alien disease.

The skeleton was unclothed, but around its neck were two items -- a gold cross pendant on a thin chain, and a length of twisted vine. Shane took both items, without disturbing the bones themselves.

They climbed back down to join the others. She gave the necklace to Elder Elisha. "Do you recognize this?"

His eyes widened in shock as he looked down at the pendant. "Yes, I do. It belonged to Lydia. She disappeared the second year we were here while she was out gathering firewood, we believed she'd been killed in an accident or caught by a shambler when she didn't come home and we couldn't find any trace of her."

Shane produced the dried vine. "No accident. This was around her neck."

"That's how we found Sister Charity!" He exclaimed. "We blamed her murder on pirates ... but the killer must be one of us."

McQueen said, "Let's keep that observation to ourselves unless we can prove who's responsible, it will just create a panic down here otherwise."

Elder Elisha stared at the cross pendant lying in his weather-beaten palm, and finally slipped it into his pocket. "You're right, of course. I don't like the idea of leaving Sister Lydia up there ... but after all these years, I don't suppose she'll mind waiting a little while longer for a Christian burial."

Vanessa said, "What I don't like is the idea of sharing this cave with some kind of a maniac. He probably knows it like the back of his hand."

The Elder said, "I shouldn't think so, daughter. Otherwise, he could have found some out-of-the-way place to put Sister Lydia. This trail is one of the most commonly used -- and the Choir Loft is the first place you'd come to where a body could be hidden."

McQueen said, "You could handle the average mad strangler, couldn't you, Damphousse?"

She realized she was being teased and felt her face go hot. "Yes, sir!"

Hawkes grinned, that was a little bit of payback for the bats-in-your-hair crack. After that, they moved on.

The other end of the gallery soon narrowed and split two ways. Elder Elisha said, "That's where the stream entrance comes up. Most of that way is under two or three feet of cold water! We go down this way."

It was a hard climb, the water flowed in a quarter-inch-deep sheet across smooth, slick rock that slanted down at a steep angle. The tunnel was just low enough for Hawkes to crack his head a couple of times, and too wide to brace against both sides. Elder Elisha was careful with his lantern.



It was a long hike into the cave, they passed through several narrow tunnels and more open chambers. After a while they came to an underground river. Jimmy Avery was waiting in hiding there, when he was sure who they were he pulled out an inflatable raft. Shane waded out into the cold water to hold it steady while the rest of them climbed in, then pulled herself easily into the bow. Jimmy passed her a towel forward and said, "I think we can paddle most of the way going back upstream, the current's strong in the channel but not too bad near the walls."

"Okay, let's save the batteries then."

Elisha held up his lantern. "Watch the banks, there are sharp rocks."

Avery pushed them off and passed the other paddle forward to Hawkes. McQueen asked, "How deep is this?"

Elisha wasn't sure, but he knew it was over his head in the middle. "I take it the enemy can't swim?"

Vanessa explained about chigs and water.

The underground river had created a fairyland of rock formations, their colors glistened in the unfamiliar light. At one point, an underground waterfall poured down from the ceiling along a wide column. In another place, Elisha pointed out the existence of a couple of water-filled tunnels going down. "I swam down there a few times to explore, there's a whole flooded level under this one. It's an amazing place, but I've never had more than a twenty-minute oxygen pack. Even with insulated gear, it's too cold to stay down there much longer than that anyway."

Vanessa said, "It sounds like Mammoth Cave back home."

After a time, he directed them into a side passage, and after a few minutes they saw lights ahead on the shore. The river flowed by a gallery that sloped steeply upwards, its highest reaches were above the high-water mark. Lanterns lit camps and walkways. They came ashore at a wooden dock, their other raft and a black one that must have come from the Wolfe Pack's transport were tied up there, along with a canoe and a few johnboats. Baker, Yamauchi and three of the colonists were guarding the dock.

Baker reported, "There are guard posts at all the other entrances to this area."

The sound of shouting from up ahead guided them to the camp and hurried their pace. West was squared off with Elder Joshua, he and Mark Miller were standing in front of Christy in an obviously protective manner. They were surrounded by a crowd which consisted of representatives of all three groups. Most of the shouting was coming from Elder Joshua's backers, and the Wild Cards and the Wolfe Pack were among the people agreeing with Nathan. Sister Elizabeth was first among the settlers who had lined up with them, but she wasn't alone by a long shot. A smaller but still sizable faction of mostly older individuals stood off to one side, listening to both sides of the altercation without getting involved yet.

Elisha marched up the ragged aisle which had formed between the two warring sides. "Would someone care to explain all this shouting?"

Joshua said, "We are not going to share our camp and our supplies with these children of the devil!"

Lissie shouted, "My children would have died in that fire if it wasn't for one of those 'children of the devil'! We were just plain wrong about that!"

Elisha tried to placate both sides. "We're all in this together one way or another! Either we find a way to live in peace with one another, or we can all die together at the hands of the enemy!"

Joshua replied, "We can't expect God to fight on our side if we harbor demons among us."

At last, Eldress Hepzibah spoke up. " 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand?' I don't know if these people are the devil's children, and I don't care! They're doing the Lord's work in protecting the colony, let Him decide whose children they are. Whatever son of the devil burned Elisha's barn had to come from a lot closer to home than these folks ever did!"

Most of Elder Joshua's supporters allowed themselves to be persuaded by that argument ... at least for the time being. People were tired, and that bit of scripture gave them a good reason to table the argument and go to bed. Hepzibah muttered something about a gaggle of silly geese, and she and Joshua exchanged glares. Then he and his diehards took off by themselves. "Stubborn old fool!"

Her gaze fell on McQueen, and after a long moment, her measuring stare turned to a grin and a wink. She turned around without another word and hobbled off across the rocky cave floor to her own campsite.

Shane barely kept her jaw from dropping. "Christ, if I had fifty of her I could have the chigs surrendering in a week and we could all go home!"

McQueen allowed himself the bare outline of a smile. "You can say that again."

"Ty, you're about to fall over --" She looked for her XO. "Hey, West, where's our camp?"

"Up here!"

The last hundred yards were the hardest. The living accommodations were located in a number of small holes and overhangs that faced on the river. The Wildcards had picked one of the more open ones and already had a relatively comfortable camp set up.

McQueen wanted nothing more than to find his rack and get some rest, but Shane wanted Christy to have a look at him first. He was going to blow that off, but then he saw the look of worry in her eyes and decided a few more minutes weren't worth scaring her.

The medical team had set up their shelter on a wide ledge. It was warm and dry in there, as opposed to the cavern outside. Mark got the hatch. Gloria was inside fiddling with the power supply when they got there. Only Mark and the two nurses had come along, ordinarily they would have had a doctor and another pilot. Their mission, however, had been only to set up for triage and determine if any of the colonists had health problems that would have required special consideration in moving them to the Sara. They hadn't expected to need to set up the first aid shack, but in this cold cave they were glad to have it since it doubled as their quarters.

Gloria moved a couple of boxes off the exam table. He saw Christy reaching for something off the shelf and said, "If that's more of what you gave me before, forget it!"

Christy shook her head and exchanged a "Men!" look with Gloria. Mark wisely kept his mouth shut. McQueen took off his shirt and waited while Gloria checked the burn. He said, "All right, I've been here, you've seen it, are we finished now?"

Gloria ran a quick scan, and said, "I guess. I'll warn you, I've got square needles for people who change their minds about pain shots at 0200."

He smiled a little at her teasing tone, not many people had the nerve to joke around with him. Gloria was as honest as she was acidic, and she didn't cut anyone any slack for foolishness. He said truthfully, "I really don't need it, my rack is looking too good already."

"Okay. The only things you really have to look out for now are infection and losing too much fluids. Burn treatment doesn't help with that as much as a gelskin would, so make sure you get plenty of liquids. If you wake up feverish or chilling, you need to let us know right then. Other than that, it's just common sense."

When he got back to camp, it seemed things had settled down, as far as the Salemites were concerned. Shane tried to get him to eat something, but all he wanted was some juice or something. She got it for him and reported that guards had been set at all the known entrances to the caverns. That was all they could do, although it was always a possibility that the enemy could find a way in that they didn't know about. Also, Vanessa had taken first radio watch at the transport, and she had taken along a couple of volunteers who wanted to learn to do that.

McQueen could see that Vansen was troubled. "What's the matter?"

"I don't like using the kids, but they call them adults at thirteen here."

"I don't like it either. But they get married and have kids that young, and I don't see any indication that they aren't accepted as full members of the community at thirteen. You can't tell them they can't defend their families. They have a different culture, I think we have to respect that. We'll just try to keep the youngest ones in the safest positions, that's the best we can do."

She nodded.

"Shane, we didn't make the situation. We're not responsible that these civilians got caught up in it. We are doing our best to keep them safe, that's what you have to think about."

She looked up and smiled. "Yeah."

"You're the one who's always talking about crossing bridges when you come to them. I think there's something else about not borrowing trouble. I'd like to get this thing a little better organized, but I doubt we'll get much more out of the colonists until morning."

Shane nodded. West had things in hand for the time being, she told him to wake her for the next watch.

(USS Saratoga)
Glen Ross paced the dark expanse of the main observation bay. This late at night, it was deserted. Sleep eluded him. Although everyone involved had understood it was unavoidable, he couldn't rest knowing that he had abandoned the 58th on New Jerusalem.

The Sara and her battle group had apparently escaped from the system's inner worlds without being noticed. They were lurking in the outermost reaches of the system, beyond its comet cloud, on the fringes of the gravity well where nothing would prevent quickly raising anchor and jumping to safety if they should be spotted by an overwhelming force.

Until reinforcements arrived, their duty was simply to watch, unseen. It was the job of Lt. Commander Ellison's recon squadron to sneak in under the enemy's noses and position the spy satellites, now dormant, that would provide the fleet with vital data, as well as to spot the operations of their enemy counterparts so that the Sara could evade detection. Once the George Washington and the Princess Beatrice arrived, the chigs would be in for a fight.

The hatch whispered open and then closed. Unaware of him, a woman crossed to one of the viewports and sank to the bench there. After a while, she put her face in her hands, and Ross realized she was crying.

He didn't want to intrude on her privacy, she wouldn't be the first sailor to find somewhere solitary to have a good cry. But he felt like worse than an eavesdropper standing there in the shadows, and there was no way she wouldn't hear him if he walked across to the hatch. It sounded like her heart was breaking. He came over to her. "Are you all right?"

To his shock, it was that AI of McQueen's. She tried to compose herself, said that she was, but the look on her face gave the lie to her words.

"What happened?" He finally asked.

"General Jeffords ... Colonel Penderson just told me when I made my report ... she's been put in the hospital."

"It's serious, isn't it?"

"She made me promise not to tell. But the Colonel says he's going to be in charge of the project for a while, so I don't know if that counts anymore."

Ross could guess, there were only a few things that could happen to create a situation like that. "Do you know what hospital she's in?"

Marcy shook her head. "I couldn't ask Colonel Penderson. He just wants my reports and that's all. If I hadn't asked him where the General was, I don't think he would have even told me she was in the hospital."

It dawned on Ross that anyone she could have gone to was on New Jerusalem. In spite of himself, he started looking at things from her point of view, and he didn't like what he saw. He'd made his decision before he was consciously aware of it. "Let's do something about that," he said. "Come on, it's still the middle of the day in Washington, we ought to be able to get an e-mail address."

She followed him back to his office and stood with her hands behind her back. Ross realized she was scared to death of him. Well, wasn't that what he'd wanted? He logged into the net and got his netspider started visiting the patient information pages of all the Washington area hospitals. This was the kind of simple thing Marcy should have done herself ... if she hadn't just found out the first person she'd ever really learned to care about was in the hospital.

It didn't take the 'spider long to finish its search. Room 1412 of Saint Anthony's Cancer Center. He put Marcy in the queue for a vidphone call, the General's condition gave Marcy's call a high priority but it still didn't look like she'd get through until sometime tomorrow. He gave her the e-mail address.

Marcy said, "Thank you, Commodore Ross."

Ross dismissed her to go send her e-mail. Ty had been right all along about that AI, he realized. Well, the least he could do was look out for his friend's little shadow while all of this was going on.

Breaking the bad news about a death back home was a duty he'd had to carry out all too often, with a crew the size of a small town. He didn't want to try to generalize from his human crew to an AI civilian, but if she had been one of his sailors with a friend dying of cancer back home, he would have been very concerned about the situation if the worst should happen. "Marcy -- look, if you need any help with anything, just ask."

That sounded lame to him, but Marcy looked back at him from the hatch, surprised. "Thank you, sir!"

Ross nodded and watched the hatch close behind her. He logged off the terminal and headed for his quarters. If anyone could keep those colonists safe from the chigs until help could arrive, it was McQueen. In the meanwhile, Ross had his job to do here.

(On New Jerusalem, October 2064)
McQueen unzipped his sleeping bag to crawl out and regretted the movement. It was a toss-up which was worse, his back or his leg from sleeping on cold stone. Either way, moving around was the solution for it. He set his jaw and got to his feet, get it the hell over with.

Vansen was out near the overhang, looking out over the river and the still-sleeping camp. He joined her. She said, "I sent Hawkes and West out scouting, told them to bring Benjamin in as soon as it gets light."

"Good," McQueen replied. "All we need is for him to go loose cannon and get himself captured by the chigs. The AIs would have our location out of him in no time."

Vansen nodded, that had been her assessment of Benjamin as well. "He's armed and dangerous. I told them to bring him in if they could, take him down if they have to."

McQueen agreed. It was 0600, it would be light soon. Hawkes and West were probably already in position at the cave entrance.

Vansen asked, "How are you this morning?"

"I'm all right. What's our situation, anything new during the night?"

"Hepzibah seems to have the colonists in line ... for now. I heard her reading a bunch of them the riot act a while ago. Danny went up to the crow's nest last night, it's a small entrance some of the kids found way up on the mountain. He says it makes a great lookout. He saw a lot of flyover, he thinks the chigs are establishing a base of some kind up north of here."

"That means regular patrols in this area. Damn."

Vansen said, "They're not going to make our job any easier."

McQueen knelt by their fire and poured himself a cup of coffee, Vansen was relieved to see that he was moving a lot easier than he had the night before.

Hawkes and West had waited for first light to head out into the bush. They had gone to the town first, figuring that Garrett had probably headed back to get supplies after the colonists had fled. Hawkes had picked up a fresh trail outside town, and they had followed it through the trees along the river. At least Benjamin had had the sense to lie low overnight, Hawkes estimated that they were about two hours behind him. It was by now nearing midday.

West asked, "Do you think we're gaining on him, Coop?"

Hawkes shook his head. "He moves pretty good for a civilian."

"We're pushing our turnaround time. If we don't find him pretty soon we're not going to make it back to camp tonight."

"Better be on the lookout for a good place to hole up then, because we're still a good hour and a half behind him. Look where he's stepped in this mud, it's drying."

West nodded, and kept his eyes moving as they continued on.

A scream that had definitely not come from a human throat sent both of them scurrying for cover. When nothing showed itself, they continued on, covering each other. They heard something thrashing heavily in the underbrush up ahead. Hawkes said, "Could be one of those shamblers the colonists were talking about."

West said, "I don't think so ... I don't think it's an animal. Cover me, I'm going in." Rifle at the ready, West crossed several meters of open ground and poked into the underbrush.

The first evidence of trouble he found were two dead chigs, they had tripped a wire and got caught in a spear trap. He nearly slipped in spooge and stepped around. It wasn't the dead chigs he was worried about.

He heard the thrashing again and raised his weapon. He advanced cautiously, on the alert for more booby-traps.

He found another chig that hadn't been as careful. It has stepped into a snare attached to a bent tree, the tree had straightened and whipped the hapless chig back onto a sharpened stake with enough force to run it through. West felt his stomach lurch into his throat as he realized the jade-green liquid flowing around the stake was still pulsing weakly -- that was blood, or whatever the chigs had instead of blood -- and the alien was still alive.

Someone had looped a length of vine around its wrists so it couldn't set off its suicide device. West wasn't sure why that hadn't happened automatically, but the important thing was it hadn't. The alien convulsed again, and made a weird moaning sound that West couldn't mistake for anything other than pure agony. Hoping someone would have the decency to do the same for him if he ever had the misfortune to find himself in a similar state, West drew his Ka-bar and ended the alien's suffering.

"Hawkes, you can move up, but watch out. This place is booby-trapped."

Rifle at the ready, Hawkes moved up to join him. "What in the hell --?"

West said grimly, "He's been having some fun. This one was still alive when I found it."

Hawkes gulped hard. He'd killed plenty of chigs, but he'd never deliberately tortured one. "That's what screamed?"

West nodded. "Yeah."

Hawkes said, "If the chigs find their buddies like this--"

"You're not kidding! We've got to find this guy before he pokes a stick in a hornet's nest."

Hawkes swallowed again. "Or has the chance to do this to any more of them. I don't care if they are chigs, Nathan--"

"I know, Coop. I know. We'll get him. But we can't let any more chigs find these ones, either. See if you can pick up his trail again. I'm going to cut this one down and try to hide the bodies ... somehow ...."

Hawkes said, "Throw them over the hill and cover them up with leaves, that's all we can do now. I'll take care of their trail in here." He was staring at the dead chig, he cut off the vine around its wrists. "This looks like the stuff that skeleton in the cave had around its neck."

"Are you sure?"

"No, not completely. That stuff was dry as paper ... but I think it's the same."

West got his stomach under control and found where the rope around the chig's ankles was tied off, cut it down. Angrier by the minute, he set about covering up for a homicidal maniac so the innocent colonists wouldn't catch hell for what he'd done. He carefully scattered leaves over the patches of spooge.

Hawkes, meanwhile, had found Benjamin's trail. It led down by the stream, apparently he had stopped there to wash the chig's body fluids off his hands. Hawkes knew from experience that the substance was acidic, it had probably taken about that long for Garrett to start noticing the irritation.

Hawkes spotted something from where he was kneeling by the stream ... it was a footprint ... slowly filling with water. His eyes widened and he started to get up. Suddenly something dropped around his head and pulled tight around his neck, cutting off his air. He flashed back on the time the bigots had tried to hang him, and panicked, clawing at the rope with all his strength. He did manage to loosen it enough for one strangled breath, but then a knee in his back forced him face down in the grass and the noose drew tight again. He couldn't get at his weapons, or get his hands on his attacker.

Just as he started to black out, a heavy weight fell across his body and somehow he could breathe again, in harsh ragged gasps. After a moment, the weight came off him and he rolled over, to look up into Nathan's scared gray eyes. "Coop, are you okay?"

It was a long time before he could do anything but nod. Finally he focused on Benjamin Garrett's corpse. Nathan had stabbed him.

Hawkes coughed a couple of times. "We'd better hide him too, and get the hell out of here!"

"You're gonna have to take his feet, he weighs a ton. I like to never got him off you."

"Down there in that thicket, nobody'll ever find him in there."

After that, they made a careful search of the area for more traps, and didn't find any. They headed back towards the caverns as quickly as they dared. It soon became obvious that they weren't going to make it back before dark, however. They spent a sleepless night huddled under a camo tarp, their situation made even more miserable when it started raining about midnight.

West said, "I'm just as glad I can't sleep. I'd dream about that damn chig."

Cooper pulled the tarp further up over his head so the rain would run off somewhere other than down into his boot. "Nathan ... you saved my life back there and I don't think I even thanked you."

West couldn't remember whether he had or not. They'd been reacting to the situation, neither of them had wasted a hell of a lot of time on etiquette. "Makes us even for Vesta, when you got the hell beat out of you rescuing me from Bad John. You know, that is one big bastard! All I was thinking about today was getting out of there. I was afraid another patrol would come along, and catch us, and find those first ones. I was afraid they'd think we did it, and --!"

"Yeah. McQueen told me once -- if it looked like I was gonna get caught -- to save a bullet."

West nodded slowly. "I think that's what I'd do, Coop. I couldn't go through what they did on Marged ... I don't think I could handle it."

Coop agreed, "Me either. Nate ... if it ever looks like .... Swear to God you won't let 'em take me alive."

Nathan held out his hand. "You've got to make me the same promise, Coop. I don't ever want to get strung up like that chig today --!"

It was too dark to see each other's faces, but each could hear the echo of his own fear in the other's voice. They shook hands on their agreement. After a time, Nathan said, "I wish it'd quit raining."

Coop shook his head. "No, let it pour. It'll wash out all the tracks. Less chance the chigs will ever find out what happened down there."

West nodded. "You're right."

Previous : Part One
Next : Part Three


© Becky Ratliff 12/96