'That's a ten.'
'This Beta Eleven person—Valkyrie—what is her problem?'
'That's not easy to answer, Tara. She's been through a lot.'
'So have I. But I'm still coherent and rational.'
'All right, she's a little strange. What do you want me to say?'
'Why is she your Number Two?'
'You'd better ask Beta One. It wasn't my choice.'
'Are we supposed to trust her, when things get hot? I've done a little probing—it's frightening!'
'Tara—I don't quite know how to say this, but I think she is just what we need, for where we're going.'
'Are you serious?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'You've changed a lot, Wester. You really have.'
'Yes—I suppose I have.'
'Three, One.' I cut the link with Tara immediately. It was Snow Leopard, on private to me. Now what?
'Yes, One?'
'Give me a readout of your tacnet power reserve.'
Sweety came through with the data. I asked her to repeat it before I relayed it to Snow Leopard.
'It's in the red, One. Twenty-four percent.'
'Thank you, Three. One out.'
Twenty-four percent. What the hell! It should have read a hundred. I knew I checked it before we left. That was strange—very strange.
'Sweety,' I asked. 'What happened to the tacnet power reserve?'
My Persist responded immediately. 'The power charge has dissipated itself, Thinker. It was at full power at last reading.'
'I know that, Sweety. But why has it done that? It's not supposed to do that. We've expended no power. The damned things are supposed to last for years! Why didn't you tell me when it was getting low?'
'The charge status indicator failed to register the true status of the charge until I investigated, Thinker. I have insufficient data to resolve the problem. It is possible that the power pack is defective.'
Defective? I had never heard of a defective power pack. Strange.
'Let's get moving, guys.' It was Snow Leopard. We were off again.
###
'Looks quiet, gang.' Snow Leopard lowered the spotters but kept contemplating the valley. The night sky was covered with undulating black clouds, flickering now and then with eerie silver lights. A distant thunder sounded, rumbling over the skies. We were peering out of the edge of the forest, perched on a sheer cliff overlooking the valley. We could barely make out a thin silver stream, meandering along the bottom of the valley. The rest of the valley was unreadable in our darksight—a great dark shifting gash in the mountains. The sky was full of deceptors, and it made everything hard to read.
'That's our river, right, One?' I asked.
'That's a ten. We'll walk it and catch some sleep and by then it will be daylight. We'll walk it all day, and should be in position to make our break tomorrow night.'
'Sounds good to me,' Dragon said. 'I'm ready to crash.' We had been walking for close to seven hours. Every muscle in my body ached.
'There it goes again, One!' Merlin exclaimed.
'Possible DefCorps presence,' Sweety reported, 'as marked. Very faint, masked by deceptors. Identification is tentative.'
Snow Leopard scrambled over to where Merlin was scanning the valley. He raised the spotter again. They were looking back up the valley behind us. There was something there, roughly southeast. The valley ran to the northwest and that was where we were going. Snow Leopard and Merlin kept scanning the valley.
'Nothing but chaff.'
'That was a Systie A-suit. That was a reasonably good reading.'
'Just like before—more or less.'
'Systie armor. Damn it!'
The sky flickered and flashed. More deceptors. The glare outlined Snow Leopard and Merlin clearly, cenite robots wrapped in camfax, caught in a frozen hail of rain suddenly filling the sky.
'What would Systies be doing out here?' Valkyrie asked.
'I'm damned if I know,' Snow Leopard replied. 'We're far in Omni territory, and there's nothing here anyone could want.'
'Could it be a Systie offensive?' Dragon asked.
'Here? No. The offensive is off to the east—not here.'
'Well, at least we know the deceptors are working.'
'That's something.'
'All right,' Snow Leopard said. 'We continue the mission. Let's get down into the valley.'
###
'Cover me,' Snow Leopard said calmly. 'I'm going in.' We were on one bank of the river, crawling around twisted drowned trees and great rounded boulders all covered with green slime. Snow Leopard was a glowing green lightman in my darksight, moving cautiously toward the river. It had been a long night. I was exhausted. Merlin was right next to me, I noted, his E up. Sweety was quiet. It did not appear there was anyone there except us. The whole squad was spread out behind us, but they were virtually invisible.
Snow Leopard waded into the river, his E up and ready to fire. Further, wading right in until the water covered his head. The opposite bank was quiet, a black forest rising up, covering rugged hills.
I went on private to Merlin. 'Four, Three. Did Snow Leopard ask you about your tacnet power reserve?'
'Tenners, Thinker. He sure did.'
'And?'
'It was down to less than twenty-five percent.'
'You too! So what's the story?'
'Everybody's is down. Everybody in the squad.'
'Deadman! How could it happen?'
'Well, that's a good question, Thinker. One I've been thinking about quite a bit.'
'Does it mean we can't contact Recon Control?'
'It means we can't contact them securely. And if we contact them insecurely, we die.'
'Come on in,' Snow Leopard called out, 'the water's fine!'
'Cover me,' Valkyrie said. She was next.
'How do you think it happened, Merlin?'
'I think it happened in the armor shop. They did the routine checks on all of us, and passed every A- suit.'
'How could they screw up that bad?'
'I don't think it was a screw-up. Let's go.'
We plodded across black sands and splashed into a cold, fast-running river. I walked in until I was fully under and the surface was a pale phosphorescent mass, rippling over my head. At first it was so dark it was like walking in ink, but as my darksight adjusted to the underwater world I saw the water was full of faintly sparkling silt, floating eerily past us. We walked against the current on a bed of rounded pebbles, through great fields of pale filmy weeds. I could vaguely see Eleven up ahead, but the tacmap was trash—complete trash. A massive, sunken tree appeared to one side, twisted limbs reaching out to me like a childhood nightmare. The darksight gave everything a faintly green tinge—a river of midnight green.
'This is great,' Merlin said. 'The mineral content is so heavy it's like walking through a deceptor field. Nobody's going to find us in here!'
'It's good news, Four,' Snow Leopard replied. 'Let's start walking. I want to put some distance between us and the insertion point. Then we'll break for the night.'
A school of phospho white fish darted past us. Liquid sheets of faintly glowing light flowed gently past.
