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 Four

McQueen and Lucas had the stragglers who had escaped into the woods to deal with before they could come to Moore and Avery's assistance, but that didn't take too long. The Chigs' armor made it nearly impossible for them to move with any kind of stealth.

Moore climbed up into a crevice and held as still as she could, the jagged rock bit into her palms as she watched the chigs pass below her. Twelve of them left. She waited a while longer to make sure it wasn't thirteen or fourteen, then dropped down. She pulled the pin of a grenade and rolled it down the tunnel after the chigs, then turned tail and ran like hell back the way she'd come. She almost got herself shot by Kenny when she came hauling ass up the tunnel, McQueen knocked his rifle aside at the last second. None of them had time to get upset about that little misadventure, because that was when the grenade went off.

The explosive itself might or might not have done for a few of the chigs, but it didn't matter. The mountain groaned, then there was a sharp crack of breaking stone and then another. McQueen and Moore dragged Lucas down with them as a low rolling boom sounded, and a blast of air heavy with dust boiled up the tunnel and out into the open air.

After a time, everything settled. Cautiously, they headed down there to check out the situation.

A sheet of rock a meter thick in places had dropped down out of the ceiling as neat as could be, most of the chigs had been crushed under it. They got into a brief firefight with the few who remained.

McQueen said, "Good work, Moore."

"Thank you, sir."

Further down in the tunnels, Avery heard the rock fall, and his eyes widened in shock. He had a mental image of Nita trapped in a rock slide, and hesitated, torn between his concern for her and his duty to warn the rest about the chigs. He didn't want to think about Nita maybe hurt and captured by the chigs, he knew what they did to wounded prisoners. In the end, he didn't have a choice, but he looked back more than once as he hurried onward.

Vansen was talking to Elder Elisha when John Waite arrived with news of the chigs. They alerted the colonists of the danger, and people scrambled for their weapons. A lookout reported that a major force of the chigs was coming up the main entrance.

Avery came running up to tell what had happened up at the Crow's Nest. Vansen demanded, "Where's McQueen?"

"He took those kids down to the next tunnel, he didn't want them coming through that bad section again --"

Vansen said, "You and John put a squad together and find out what the hell's going on up there. I don't want a bunch of them coming up on our six while we're taking care of the ones in the main entrance! Lisa, you're with me."

The fiercest fighting took place in the galleries on the lower levels. Vansen kept the defenders falling back, luring the chigs deeper into the caverns. She outlined her plan to the big rancher named Timothy, who'd had the run-in with Elder Elisha over the marriage he had arranged for his son. He was now leading the colonists in the defense of the cave. "I'm going to take some people downstream along that secondary passage, we'll come up behind them just this side of the Sanctuary. We ought to have most of them trapped between us that way. I want you to position your people up on those ledges and keep the chigs pinned in the tunnel until we can close the pincers."

He nodded, understanding her strategy. Letting the chigs past them here would be allowing them to get to the camp, so the colonists were determined to stop them here.

Vansen had Gordy Crae and Richard Pennman with her, as well as Yamauchi and three of the Salemites. Except for a little good-natured bitching from Pennman about the cold water, no one said anything as they made the difficult descent through the stream in the dark. Vansen nearly screamed from the old terror when she once almost lost her footing and got pulled on downstream by the current. She felt like choking at the thought of being swept under that icy water into the blackness. She caught herself along the side of the tunnel and kept going.

Avery caught up with McQueen near the rope ladder, he nearly yelled when he saw Nita in one piece but he controlled that impulse. He outlined what was going on, and they got down to the camp as quickly as they could.

The older people were herding the children into a couple of side corridors, while a few stayed behind to fight a delaying action in case the chigs got this far. They could hear distant firing echoing along the stream.

A few chigs threw something large and heavy into the water, it turned out to be an inflatable boat. A canopy popped up, they wasted no time scrambling inside and the defenders found out the canopy was bullet-proof. The colonists couldn't do anything to stop them from sailing down-river.

McQueen saw the craft's searchlight approaching and heard the ricochets bouncing off the top of the chig boat. Timothy said, "The only way to take them out is going to be drop a grenade over the side -- do you have one that I can use?"

McQueen gave him one and called up to the nearest colonist, "Pass it down -- Timothy's in the water, aim high!"

Stray shots stopped hitting the water as the word went down the line. The big rancher stayed low in the water until he got near the boat, then climbed half aboard and poked the grenade through a gun slit. One of the chigs fired a shot that spun him back, away from the boat into the black depths. An instant later the grenade went off, igniting the craft's fuel tank.

Vansen and her patrol came upon the chigs' rear guard by surprise, a firefight broke out. Her hands were so cold from the water that it was an effort to close her fingers around her rifle's grip. She could hear shooting from the river.

Lisa cried out and grabbed her leg, Vansen moved up to cover her -- just as a chig popped up around a rock with his gun pointed right at her. Lisa was going to take him, but Vansen could see the injured Marine wasn't going to be fast enough. *Ty, I love you -- !*

There was a shattering explosion of sound and light, but no pain, and she wondered why it didn't hurt. Then she saw the chig falling over and turned around, to stare into Danny Wolfe's grinning face. "Let me off the hook for Vesta now, sweetheart?" He asked irreverently.

She laughed, and she was surprised that it didn't come out as nervous laughter. "Sure thing, Danny, I'll let bygones be bygones." She knelt to get pressure on Yamauchi's wound, Danny and most of the patrol went by.

O'Donnell offered, "I'll take care of her."

Yamauchi nodded. "I'll be okay now, ma'am."

Vansen gave her a thumbs-up and then caught up with the rest. It wasn't a couple of mikes until they were making things real difficult for the chigs caught on the riverbank.

After that, it was more or less over, except for some mopping-up. They ended up chasing some of the chigs all the way back through the Sanctuary and out along the stream, from there they could see the town on the hilltop.

It was in flames. The colonists watched in grief as the church blazed for a moment, then collapsed in on itself. It was a silent group that went back into the cave.

Besides Yamauchi, several of the colonists had been injured. John Waite had gotten himself burned pretty badly by a near miss. There were eighteen dead that they knew of, including Timothy and the two men who had been guarding the main entrance. McQueen, Vansen and Wolfe met near the medical shack and went back to the 5-8's camp to figure out their next move. They were joined there shortly by the Salemite elders.

Elder Joshua said, "We can't stay here, they know we're in here now! There'll be more."

McQueen replied, "There's no way we can take this many people out of here overland without being spotted. You say these caverns extend for several kilometers?"

Elder Elisha said, "Yes, there's a narrow passageway that connects with another cavern system, it eventually goes all the way to the sea."

One of the little fellows that Vanessa had put on radio watch stuck his head in and hesitated. McQueen asked, "What is it?"

"I -- uh -- there was a lot of weird stuff on that one channel. The one Sister Vanessa said was a secure channel. I don't know what it means but I recorded some of it. I think it's important. My brother's listening in case there's any more." The boy held out the recorder and McQueen hit the play button. He and Vansen shared a disbelieving smile as they listened to the coded transmissions. Vansen said, "That's got to be the Princess Bea and the George Washington preparing to rendezvous with the Sara! There's nothing else it could be! It looks like the cavalry is coming over the hill!"

Wolfe wasn't smiling. He said, "Yeah, only we're at Little Big Horn," he replied. He told them what the recon team had found at the chig base. "Those guns could wipe out the fleet."

McQueen said, "Not if we take out that gun."

Danny objected, "There's no way we have enough people to do that."

Elisha put his hand on Danny's shoulder. " 'Who knoweth whether thou art come unto the kingdom for such a time as this?' I've always believed that God had a purpose for bringing us here to New Jerusalem. Now He reveals that purpose to us. The chigs attacked us without provocation, killed many of our brothers and sisters, and injured many more. But now God will give us the victory!"

Joshua said, "Elisha, I don't doubt God. But I don't see how He could intend for a hundred and fifty of us, armed with nothing more than shotguns and hunting rifles, to take on that chig army!"

McQueen leaned forward. "Begging your pardon, Elder Joshua, but I'm sure it's the same way He meant for three hundred of the children of Israel to take on the Midianite army."

Vansen and Wolfe stared at him in confusion. Hepzibah and Elisha exchanged a knowing look. Comprehension slowly flooded across Joshua's face, and he grinned. " 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!' "

Wolfe demanded, "TC, what the hell you talking about?"

McQueen said, "The Israelites were being invaded by a people called the Midianites. They were outnumbered, but a force of three hundred Israelite soldiers created a diversion and panicked the Midianite army into thinking they were a much larger army. The Midianites routed, and the Israelites were able to wipe them out as they retreated."

"Now I don't expect the chigs to panic and run for it, but if we can make them think a large force is attacking the airfield, they'll concentrate their forces at that end of the complex to repel the attack. That should allow a team to get in and blow one of those cooling pumps."

Hepzibah said, "It should also keep them too busy to hunt our children. If we collapse the tunnel behind them, they should be able to continue on to the sea caves. With God's blessing, the chigs won't have time to look for them before the fleet arrives."

Vansen asked, "How long do you think we can hold air superiority over the area? Ten ... fifteen mikes, maybe, if we can take out those fighters on the ground?"

McQueen nodded. "If they follow the pattern of surface-to-space emplacements that we saw on Ixion, it should take that long for reinforcements to get here from the next nearest base. We don't want to be in the area that long, though. The objective is to hit them hard, eliminate the target, and get out. We should be back over the ridge in no less than five mikes. Our only two advantages here are going to be surprise and confusion, we have to make the most of them.

As soon as the gun blows, our fighters need to get upstairs and rendezvous with the fleet. They have to be warned of the danger, that they can only approach this sector of the planet until more of the plasma cannons are taken out."

She nodded once, understanding her part of the mission. The Hammerheads would come in first, destroy the chig craft on the ground, then engage and destroy the base's patrol squadron. Then she would have to get them safely out of the gravity well. Once the chig fighters were out of the picture, the ground troops and the covert team would begin their operation, but that part of it was up to Ty. "Without the ISSCVs to slow us down, I don't see a problem," she replied confidently.

McQueen told the Salemite elders, "Talk to your people. Set aside a guard to evacuate the non-combatants out of the people who volunteer to fight. I'd prefer that you used the younger teenagers and anyone else who can't keep up on those slopes above the chig base. Then I'll need to know how many you've got and how well they can shoot."

Danny said, "You don't got to worry about that, TC, I've been poppin' cans with some of these fine folks. I wouldn't say they've got a poor shot in the bunch, and a lot of them could qualify as experts tomorrow if you dropped them on a firing range and gave them an M-590. They'd laugh at it, though, they call anything less than five or six hundred meters short range."

"What would they call long range?"

"Traded bulls-eyes with a good twenty or thirty of them all afternoon one time at 1000 meters."

McQueen nodded. The ability to shoot straight was a survival skill for these people, they depended on hunting for a lot of their meat and they had to be able to defend themselves from wild animals. He suspected that the poorer shots would be the ones who preferred the shotguns, which might not be as impressive, but got the job done with a great deal of reliability. Something hit with both barrels from a twelve-gauge rarely got up to bother you again. "All right. I'll need to know how well supplied you are with ammunition, too."

Elder Elisha said, "We'll speak to the congregation now."

Danny said, "Richie already said he'd set the charge for you, if you don't have someone who can do it. He used to work for a construction company."

"Okay, he's with me on that." McQueen had been thinking he would need Moore to back him up for that, but if Pennman knew his way around explosives and he was willing to volunteer for a dangerous assignment, that was all to the good. McQueen was heading up that operation himself, because when things started going wrong with the original plan, he had the best chance of being able to get the explosive into place. West had piloted the transport, which worked out fine because McQueen wanted him to command one unit of the diversionary force. Wolfe would take another, and Mark Miller the third unit. Yamauchi was out of action, but she'd co-piloted the ISSCV in, so they weren't down a pilot.

As for the Wolfe Pack, Bad John was wounded too badly to be any help. Danny sent O'Donnell to help guard the kids, he knew if they all got wiped out he could depend on Waite and O'Donnell to keep the chigs away from those kids by whatever means necessary. Gordy Crae was going with Danny. McQueen saw no reason to second-guess any of that.

Two hours later, sixty volunteers gathered in the wide clearing near the dock. They'd had more volunteers than that, but McQueen had decided that trying to get more than twenty untrained people on and off an ISSCV in a hurry would turn into a three-ring circus. They weren't going to have time to screw around when it came time to pull out, once the fight started backup from the next nearest chig LZ would be on the way. He'd picked the ones who'd had some military experience during the AI or the CC wars, there were ten vets who'd actually seen some action and they were going to be the NCOs. That worked out pretty well, two teams each for Mark, Danny and Nathan. Other than that, the volunteers had been chosen on basis of their marksmanship, and their familiarity with weapons that were accurate at the ranges involved.

Actually, the tactics they had to use were probably going to work to their advantage, if things went anywhere nearly according to plan. The chigs were used to an enemy that preferred close combat with the relatively short-range weapons. They weren't used to fighting snipers at that kind of range.

McQueen saw callused, workworn hands holding newly cleaned and polished rifles. The frontiersmen who had gone down to New Orleans with Andy Jackson had probably looked a lot like these people, dressed in homespun and leather. During the AI war, he'd seen an Alabama farmer kill three or four AIs with a pitchfork once. That man had the same flinty look in his eyes. These were people who would rather be tending their crops and working at their crafts, but they'd been backed to the wall and now they were fighting for their families and their way of life. Live or die, they believed they'd already won because they were doing God's will. McQueen thought the chigs were about to learn a costly lesson about that.

After the Salemites held a short prayer service, McQueen outlined the tactics they would use. "We'll fly in low to the ground, under their sensor net, and hang back on the transports until the 5-8 takes out the chig fighters. Then we'll move in. If you run across their scouts on the ground, take them out fast, don't give them time to report anything. Once you get over the ridge, space yourselves out widely. Find several good vantage points in your area. Shoot and move. The more places you shoot from, the more of you the chigs will think there are. Your sectors are marked on this picture, make sure you pick your first target in your own area. I want them watching the fight upstairs when they start dropping like flies. They're not just going to stand there, but if they don't know you're there before you open up on them, you ought to be able to get at least a couple shots off before they know what's happening. After that, they'll be moving up, and you want to concentrate most of your fire on the area up by the airstrip. When you get the order to move out, don't hang around to kill just one more chig, get yourself back to the transport! You won't believe how fast things are going to happen once it starts. Those transports have got to be clear of the area before reinforcements can get there! An ISSCV anywhere near the ground is no match for a chig squadron in the air."

"If anyone does miss the boat, get over the ridge as fast as you can go, then find somewhere to hole up. As soon as the 58th catches up with the fleet, there'll be an army on its way in to secure that area and that whole valley will be a live-fire zone. You won't want to be anywhere near it, trust me. Get clear, hide out, and wait for the fireworks to stop."

Shane asked quietly, "Ty, can you do this? Your back--"

"I don't intend to be in there long enough to get in any hand-to-hand fights, Shane, we won't have time for anything like that anyway. I can do what I have to -- set the charge and get the hell out."

She nodded.

"You keep your mind on what you're doing, don't waste time worrying about me. Once that plasma cannon goes, I want you on your way upstairs before company arrives."

"Yes, sir," she said -- with a very un-Marinelike twinkle in her eye. She would worry about him every second until they were safely reunited, just as he would about her ... but they would also push that to the back of their minds and do their jobs. The last few months had given them plenty of practice at that skill.

Christy and Gloria were going with the wounded. Christy saw Cooper and ran over to him. "Are you going?"

"Yeah, we've got to move. Are you all set?"

She nodded. "We can transport everyone who's hurt too badly to walk. We're good to go as soon as we get the word. Cooper--" She blinked a few times, then her expression turned determined. "Give 'em hell."

He grinned. "They'll never know what hit 'em." The two young people kissed hard, then they took off in separate directions to get to their stations. When Cooper caught up with the rest of the 'Cards, he still had a grin on his face.


West set the transport down carefully in the only bare spot within a kilometer of the LZ they had chosen, about eight klicks from the airstrip. A couple of pings over his headset informed him that Miller and Crae had the medical transport and the _Lucky Lady_ in place. McQueen was in his usual place at the navigator's station, West released his harness and turned around. "Baker and Charlie Teams are in position, sir."

"Then we're good for go. Good luck."

Nathan saluted sharply, McQueen returned it. The younger man said, "Good luck to you too, sir."

Pennman grabbed his sawed-off and bush hat from the locker where he'd stowed them, and slung a bandolier holding his reloads and some other gear over his shoulder. Richie Pennman's specialty was cat-burglary, he'd disparaged this operation as a kick-it-in job that was beneath his dignity. Under usual circumstances, he never used a gun -- the only firearm he owned was a recently acquired sawed-off shotgun, the small-time trader's usual response to uninvited boarders.

McQueen seriously missed the intel they usually had from recon in planning something like this, but they ran into no opposition from chig patrols on their way in. They made good time to the target, but slowed down to a much more careful pace as they crossed the ridge overlooking the airstrip and worked their way down through the rocks and thickets of brush on the other side.

The Wild Cards' Hammerheads came roaring out of the afternoon sun and made a low strafing pass over the airfield. One by one the fighters and transports on the ground exploded in flames. The chig air raid siren wailed and the troops started running for their battle stations. The anti-aircraft gun lit up, Lucas stayed just ahead of the tracers and blew the gun to hell. Seconds later they disappeared over the opposite ridge. Pennman said, "That was fast!"

McQueen replied, "That was near stall velocity."

A moment later, the chig squadron came in from the east, Vansen engaged them right over the base as he had hoped. So far, so good. He and Pennman continued on to the bottom of the hill.

McQueen watched Vansen take out a chig fighter that was proving troublesome for Damphousse. The two of them came about for another pass on the airstrip, to take care of some transports they'd missed the first time. One of the damaged chig fighters on the runway unexpectedly got into the air about 100 meters and fired a burst at Vansen. Damphousse made easy work of him, but Shane yelled an angry curse as flames broke out in her port engine. There was no way to save her plane now. And she was too low to bail out! Her plane disappeared over the ridge again, he could tell she was fighting for control.

The problem immediately dawned on McQueen. Nearly all of Vansen's training and experience was with exo-atmospheric operations. She was in a whole world of trouble. He switched his radio to the 'Cards usual combat frequency. "Queen of Diamonds, this is Queen-6, get the stick back and climb."

Her reply was short and to the point, but not panicked. "I got a small problem with a fire here. The extinguisher isn't working."

"The slipstream will pull the flames away from your 'pit! Do it!"

There was no reply, she was too busy flying the crippled plane. McQueen counted off the seconds. That fire could spread to the fuel reserves any second. "Shane, what the hell are you waiting for, get out of there!"

"That's a roger, Queen-6." There was all manner of reassurance in her voice.

Then, the world froze in place. Her flaming plane came back into sight, then went into a dive. Halfway down, the portside fuel reserve ruptured and engulfed the wreck in flames -- and it crashed into the chigs' fuel dump. The resulting explosion was nothing short of spectacular.

A chaotic flood of images ran through his mind -- Shane laughing at Tun's -- Shane's eyes veiled with passion as they made love in his quarters -- and one thought went through his mind, oh God, if there is a God, take me instead.

Then, his radio crackled to life and he heard Vansen's voice. "I'm clear, I'm fine! Jack, you're honcho, I'll see you in a few!" In that instant, if the Salemites' God had held him to his bargain, he would have kept his end of it without a second's hesitation.

Hawkes' startled voice replied, "Roger that! Ace, where's her chute?"

"I see it, Jack. I'll cover her." Damphousse made sure none of the chig fighters went after her chute, but the remaining ones were catching too much hell from the rest of the 'Cards to do anything about it. It was Nita who got the last one.

Pennman asked, "Is she okay?"

McQueen remembered he didn't have a radio. "Yeah, she's fine. Let's do it." The chig facility was surrounded by a high electric fence, rather than get fancy he took it out with a grenade. They ran through the hole hell-for-leather and made directly for the cooling pump.

Most of the chigs had headed to battle stations at the other end of the complex. The attack, so far, had gone exactly as the chigs had expected it to -- take out the planes on the ground and then strafe other valuable targets. A lot of the enemy that they would have met had traveled that way to confront the threat they knew about. He and Pennman ran across a few sentries and foot patrols, but no more opposition than he had expected ... until they got to the cooling station itself. There must have been a whole platoon of chigs there, listening to the string of orders some officer was giving.

Pennman thumbed new shells into the magazine of his shotgun as they looked over the cooling station from the shelter of a big flatbed cargo truck. "Hot damn, it's a chig convention," he commented.

McQueen looked around for a way to get over there, then he looked at the cargo truck. It had an open cab, just some posts in the back to keep loose cargo from flying forward and hitting the driver. There were no wheels or tracks, just some skids for the vehicle to sit on while it was parked -- it was a hovercraft. He couldn't make head or tails of the controls. Hell, hot-wiring a human-built vehicle wasn't a skill he'd ever acquired -- military vehicles rarely had keys. "Hey, Richie, were you telling the truth about being able to hot-wire *anything*?"

"You mean this thing...? Let me see it." Pennman crawled across the passenger seat and looked at it. "I don't know if they built this mess or grew it ... but this has got to be the ignition right here ...." He yanked a wire and poked it into a soft mass of something under the dashboard panel. The truck's engine sputtered to life. "Yes, Colonel, I believe I was perfectly honest about that statement," he grinned.

McQueen replied, "Keep your head down and hang on!" Pennman crouched in the passenger seat and got his head *way* down. McQueen got into the driver's side and yanked his gloves off, stuffed them in his pocket. There was one hand-hole, it was just as slimy as he'd expected but the truck did what he wanted as soon as he had a good solid contact with the terminals inside. It shot forward, right over the chigs' heads and clipped the electric fence in a shower of sparks.

The chigs had done exactly what anyone would have done with a big truck coming at them -- they'd got the hell out of the way. By the time they figured out what was going on, McQueen had brought the truck to a stop. Using it for cover, they headed for the door. Pennman raised his shotgun. "Ready?"

"Go!" As soon as Pennman blew the door open, McQueen hosed the corridor inside with a burst from his M-590. Pennman stepped over a dead chig and fired through a glass window just inside, the chig inside fell forward across the machinery he'd been standing by.

Pennman asked, "What the hell is this stuff? Where are we supposed to put the charge?" He looked over his shoulder -- they didn't have time to argue about it.

McQueen looked around, and found the pump itself. He put the charge in place and set the detonator, allowing them sixty seconds to get clear. They headed back to the truck, to find the chigs pouring through the gate.

McQueen dived in the driver's seat. Pennman threw himself prone on the flatbed, holding on for dear life as the chigs opened fire. The truck lurched forward, then took off at full acceleration. It skidded across the gravel for about twenty-five or thirty feet, then got some altitude and crashed through the fence. McQueen knocked the front stoop off a building across the street learning how to steer the truck. Then he got the hang of it and they headed back for the perimeter as fast as they could go, and to hell with the risk of crashing the truck. Their lives depended on getting somewhere else in a big hurry.

The charge he'd set went off, all the windows blew out of the pump building. By the time they got to the fence, a piercing whistle went off in the power station.

They ditched the truck at the bottom of the hill and headed for the ridge. They'd got about halfway up when the power station went up. Pennman looked through his binoculars. "I can't tell if it knocked out the cannon or not!"

McQueen shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun. "There's a lot of damage -- wait a minute. The explosion must have damaged their fire control --" He ordered the 5-8 to get clear, planes scrambled out of the cannon's vicinity.

Deep within the cannon, a bottle of magnetic energy formed, containing a plasma field the temperature of a small sun. But the remaining generators, overloaded after the explosion, couldn't meet the strain and the magnetic bottle weakened, letting the hellfire within start to leak through. Within seconds, the bottom third of the plasma cannon glowed cherry-red. Chigs were running away from it as fast as they could go, the ones on the western edge were running right into the sights of the snipers on the hilltops. It was complete confusion down there, from that vantage point McQueen could see where the old expression about setting a fox among the hens had come from.

Everything flammable around the base of the cannon began to reach its combustion point. And then the magnetic bottle failed entirely, releasing its contents in a fireball that immediately vaporized everything it contacted. Anything within a couple hundred meters of the cannon's base met the same fate. Further out, buildings incinerated so quickly they seemed to disappear in a flash of light. A firestorm boiled out another thousand meters or so, igniting everything in its path. McQueen and Pennman dived for cover, expecting a pressure wave. There was one, but not as bad as they had expected at that distance ... one blistering hot blast of wind, like a breath out of hell that passed over them in only a moment's time. McQueen ordered the snipers to pull out at that, and watched the squadron head for black sky.

He put his radio on scramble mode and sent a ping to Vansen, it was immediately answered. "Queen of Diamonds, what's your situation?"

"Pretty good, Queen-6, but I can't make it back to the LZ in time. I'm too far away. You'd better get the transports out of here, I'll hole up and wait it out."

"Roger," he acknowledged after only a moment's hesitation. Delaying the transport's evacuation would endanger everyone on it, and Vansen as well.

The problems with getting the colonists all back on the transports in the time frame they had were just as bad as he had expected. They were cutting it close to the wire as it was ... but there was no need for him and West to both go back.

Nathan volunteered to stay with Shane, as a matter of course. They both knew there was no way McQueen was going to take him up on the offer. And they both knew that if situations had been reversed, and it had been Kylen out there, Nathan would have made the same call.

Where McQueen really needed to be right now was on the bridge of the _Sara_. He knew Roberta Carey, the _Saratoga's_ CAG, would cover both stations. He knew also that wouldn't be the same for Cooper, in command of the 5-8 for the first time. And, he found himself thinking about the CO's of the _Sara's_ other Marine squadrons, there wasn't a one of them who hadn't come to respect him at least on a professional level. Somehow while he hadn't been looking, he'd come to consider most of them friends as well. Somewhere in the last couple of months, the differences between them caused by accident of birth had ceased to matter.

It wasn't the same as the sense of family that he shared with Commodore Ross and the 58th. Those were bonds forged under fire, nothing could come close to that. All the same, these were people who respected him and counted on him to be there at the other end of a radio connection when they went into harm's way. It felt all wrong that he was trapped on-world when they needed him. By the time he located Shane, he realized that he'd made his decision, if he were offered the job of Honcho he was going to take it. That was what Shane had understood all along.

When he found her, for a long moment he just held her close, reassuring himself that she really was alive. "Shane, you scared the hell out of me! When I saw your plane go in--!"

Her arms tightened around him. "Oh, God, what you must have thought. I'm sorry, Ty, there just wasn't time to tell you what I was planning. I just wanted to get *out* of there--!"

"Damn straight about that!" Her breath hissed between her teeth as he held her a little too tightly. Bad luck had landed her in rough territory and she had reinjured her shoulder. He let go ... remembered he wasn't supposed to be holding her at all ... and took a reluctant step away. "Why didn't you tell me you were hurt?"

She replied with the hard-headed practicality that was one of the things he most admired about her, "Same reason I didn't tell you not to come after me. What difference would it make? I knew you'd find me if you could. Otherwise, I didn't want you worrying."

She'd made herself a good place to hide out, in the middle of a heavy thicket of bushes, with some brush thrown on top of her camo tarp it blended right into the undergrowth. McQueen had to admit he could have walked right by it and never known it was there. Her injury didn't seem to be that serious, a bad bruise that would be fine in a couple of days. If you got a plane shot out from under you and walked away with nothing worse than that, you counted yourself lucky.


The Battle of New Jerusalem was later to be considered by historians to be one of the major engagements of the war. All Cooper knew about it at the time was that he had been unexpectedly singled out as honcho of the 5-8 during one of the hardest-fought battles of the war. They barely had time to land on the _Sara's_ flight deck and report the existence of the plasma cannon on New Jerusalem, before the Earth fleet engaged the chigs.

The new kids had fought a few skirmishes with chig patrols, but they always considered the Battle of New Jerusalem to be their baptism of fire. By the time the fighting ended, it wasn't Hawkes and Damphousse on one side of a line, and the three rookies on the other. They were all Wild Cards. And half their squadron was still stuck on New Jerusalem.

McQueen and Vansen had been unable to do anything except listen to the battle on the other side of the ridge and to radio skipchatter as they tried to piece together what was going on. Right before dusk, they were found by an S.A.R. team from the _Princess Bea_. They found out the high command had declared air superiority over the planet forty-five minutes ago, and that all the known chig installations had been overrun. They finally caught up with West and Yamauchi a little before midnight.

West reported, "I think the Wolfe Pack made it out okay. They raised the _Lucky Lady_ while there was still enough confusion to cover their escape."

"Have you been in contact with the _Sara_?"

"Yes, sir. The Commodore is sending supplies and guards down for the colony, we'll be able to pull out as soon as they get here." That wasn't more than an hour later.

Elder Elisha and his family came to say goodbye just as they were preparing to leave. With everything the colony had lost, most of them were alive, and with supplies and help from the _Sara_ they would be able to rebuild. "We can't thank you enough."

"We were just doing our job," McQueen replied.

"That's all the more reason."

Lissie smiled, "I hope you'll come back after the war, when everything's settled. I won't say everything's changed here or anywhere else, but you'll always have a place at our table."

"Thank you," he said simply.

Elisha said, "Godspeed, Colonel."

"Good luck." They shook hands, then Elisha ushered his family down the ramp.

Their last sight of New Jerusalem was Eldress Hepzibah and a crowd of children standing on the heights overlooking the ocean, waving lanterns to see them off. Nathan and Mark dipped the transports' wings in salute, then the engines flared as they made the long climb out of the gravity well into familiar open space.

The next morning, things had settled out enough that Ross, McQueen and Carey had a chance to get a cup of coffee. Ross said, "As for Danny, I guess he got lucky. What with all the priority radio traffic, the report that he was here didn't go out until about an hour ago. And if he expects any more favors than that out of me, he's got another think coming."

McQueen replied, "Well, Danny and I are even as far as I'm concerned. Vansen said he saved her life down there. I still don't care if I ever see him again, though."

Carey asked, "What about those religious separatists down there? That was an unsanctioned colony, they could be in a lot of trouble."

Ross said, "I pulled a few strings. It was the least we could do. Their colony is eventually going to be legally recognized, although it might take a little while to work it through the bureaucracy. In the meanwhile, I've got it from higher up that any attempts to enforce the colonization regs will get pigeonholed. We had plenty of volunteers to go down there and help them rebuild their town. They'll be all right."

McQueen nodded. All the Salemites had ever wanted was the opportunity to live according to their beliefs, and now they would have that right. They had paid a high enough price for it.

After a short break, he went down to the office to get caught up on the mountain of paperwork that had accumulated in his absence.

Marcy was at her desk, staring thoughtfully at the screen as she tried to compose an e-mail. Every little while, she backspaced and started over. Finally, she turned to him and asked, "Colonel, what do you say to someone who's in the hospital?"

"What do you mean?" He looked over that way, and saw the address on the e-mail: 1412@anthonys.com. St. Anthony's was a cancer hospital, he remembered.

"General Jeffords is in the hospital. She's doing a little better, they think she can go home in a few days. But she can't go back on duty ... not yet anyway. She needs to take a few weeks of treatments that make her sick. They say when that's over she should feel better for a few months." Marcy was glad that the General had released her from her promise to keep the illness a secret, now that everyone knew.

McQueen said, "Well ... there isn't a lot to do on medical leave, Marcy. The best thing you can probably do is to keep her up on the news. Anything that isn't classified."

"Colonel Penderson said not to upset her," she said doubtfully.

"When I was laid up at Bethesda, the mail I got from the people back here on the _Sara_ helped a lot. Even when it wasn't the best news, it was a connection to where I belonged. A hospital is its own little world, mail and calls from outside keep you in the real world. That's what the General needs you to do, Marcy, to keep reminding her that she still has a real world to come home to."

Marcy looked at him, processing a new concept in whatever mysterious way she did that. She smiled as she made sense of it. "I think I know what to say now, sir." She turned back to the screen and started to type.

McQueen watched for a moment longer before he went on into the office. In a little while, Shane came in with some work of her own to do. But she paused to lay his music player and a few albums on his desk. "I thought it might pass the time," she smiled.

Her hand barely brushed his -- it could have been an accident, but he knew better -- then she turned to her own duties. After a moment, he chose an album, and they listened, working in a quiet, comfortable familiarity. Wherever the path led, they walked it together, and that was enough.

The End



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Next : A Very Merry Christmas Miles To Go ... Book 8


© Becky Ratliff 12/96