Dark of the Woods

in and out of trees, hugging the sides of valleys and bucking crazily up over the ruggedest drifts they had ever seen. It was well before dawn that they found the mountain which housed their sanctuary and achieved the door in its base that led to a sled berth like the one they had departed from earlier in the night. It was structured much the same as the first stronghold, though it was far larger. When they had looked at only a small bit of it, they agreed that a full reconnaissance could wait until morning.

“One thing,” he said, wearily, as they tumbled into bed.

“What's that?” she asked, sounding even sleepier than he.

“We can't stay here more than another day or two.”

She sat up. “Why not?”

“Because, love, even though I tried to pull every trace of the other three fortresses from the library of the first, there is bound to be a reference hidden in one of the thousands of other spools of data. And you can be damn sure they're going to go over that library with a microscope — especially when they discover we've seen fit to deplete it of large sections of knowledge. They'll know, at once, that there is another place like the first, and they'll waste nothing to find it. It won't take them long at all. They can even use Fortress One's computer to scan Fortress One's library and save themselves a few thousand man hours.”

“But what can we do?”

“Only one thing,” he said. He yawned and rolled over.

“Wait just a damn minute!” she exploded, dragging him onto his back again. “What's the one thing?”

“It'll take a long time to explain. And it's going to require a very emotional and important decision on your part. Wait until you feel better, wait until you're rested.”

“Now,” she persisted.

He shrugged, sat up, scratched his head. “Now, eh? Well, you might not like this. You may even hate me for suggesting it. It's not going to be pretty, and we can't kid ourselves that it will be an easy thing to do. You still want to hear, now?”

“Go on,” she said.

He did…

XIV

the general sat in the passenger seat of his private helicopter as the pilot brought it around Needlepoint, the mountain which contained Fortress Two. In his lap was a book about ancient mythology, a subject he explored with great interest whenever the duties of his command would permit. He fingered the leather-bound volume now as he watched troop copters settling into position as they had been commanded. One touched down at the base of Needlepoint, blocking exit from the concealed sled door. A blunder like that which had been perpetrated at the first stronghold would not occur here. Two other copters jockeyed for position near the observation deck near the top of the mountain, that cunningly crafted platform of stone that seemed such a natural part of the land.

The general picked up the microphone. “Go in, Explosives.”

A team of three blue-suited Alliance soldiers jumped from the cargo bay side door of one of the copters, three feet to the ledge below. Two cases of tools were handed down, and in a moment, the trio was at work.

The general thought, sitting there above the night and watching the small drama being played out in the light of the copter lamps, that he was much like a god himself. The notion pleased him considerably. He picked up the mike and said, to the copter that had been carrying the explosives team, “Tell them to hurry it up!”

The three men, a moment later, responded to the order repeated to them by an unseen hand in the copter's cargo bay and stepped up the pace of their activities considerably. Within two minutes, they stepped back from the seemingly natural rock wall before them, looked at their watches, tensed a second before the explosion echoed and the stone flew inwards, away from them, and made an entrance into Fortress Two.

The general was about to issue orders to hold off until he could be landed to lead the party when a heavily armored protection robot, apparently part of the fortress's defense chain, opened fire through the blasted door.

The three men of the explosives team went down, rolled in agony, and fell from the ledge down the seven thousand feet to the first promontory that caught them with brutal finality.

The windowglass on the first cargo copter shattered, and the pilot inside screamed so loudly that the general could even hear him through his own pilot's headphones. The copter spiraled downward, bounced away from the mountain, burst into flame, and rolled through, the trees and the snow, setting a few branches afire.

There was no need to order a pullback. Everyone had done that the moment the three men had collected the first blast of fire.

“Fire a grenade in there!” the general ordered the pilot of the other copter. His own craft had minimal weaponry, nothing heavy enough for the task at hand.

The first pilot obliged.

A moment later, the mouth of the entrance flared into brilliance, and the protection robot there shattered under the heat and concussion. With nothing but rock and steel to feed on, the fire died.

“Advance infantry,” the general ordered.

Another copter hovering rather far out from the mountain sped toward the deck. Ten minutes later, a group of twenty Alliance soldiers dressed in power suits stood before the blackened entrance to Fortress Two.

“Take it,” the general said.

They went in.

The captain of the advance infantry followed behind his two experts in power suit manuevers. He was amazed, as he always was in action, at the docility of men, the manner in which they so readily agreed to rush forward into what might be certain death. He shook his head inside his thickly armored helmet and grinned. Dumb, green kids, even if they were thirty years old and older.

To the right, a battery of armor-piercing guns sprang to life, and one of the power suit experts went down with half a dozen steel spines stabbed through his body despite the toughness of his metal shell. The second man was faster: he turned and lobbed an implosion missile into the offending weaponry, wiping it out of existence before it could realign its sights on him or anyone else.

“Three, forward!” the captain bellowed.

And Three marched up to take the place of the man who had just been killed.

The captain marveled at the rhythm of it. The Alliance knew how to train its men.

Make them think of themselves as cogs, he mused. That's what keeps them in line. If they start to think or have opinions, boot the bastards out of the service!

“First floor secured,” he radioed back to the general a few minutes later. “One loss.”

The general wondered who had been taken out, whether it was anyone he might know. He doubted it. It was best to ignore the enlisted men, for they were nothing more than cogs in the great works of the army. The captain was a nice enough chap — but obviously an idiot. Often, the general marveled at the humility with which people like the captain obeyed their orders even when they knew death was likely. Brainless, the lot of them.

He debarked from his private copter and entered Fortress Two, prowled the battle-scarred first level while he waited for news that another floor had been cleared and designated peaceful

He carried the book of mythology in his hand.

He stopped over the body of the dead, power-suited soldier who had been speared by the antiarmor unit.

He kicked the helmet until the man's face appeared.

It wasn't anyone he knew.

He wondered what he would have done if it had been someone he recognized.

Nothing.

A man had to be an idiot to agree to a position in the advance infantry.

And how could you feel sorry about the death of an idiot?

The Demosians, the captain learned, had not expected their fortresses to be found and breached, for they had not used great imagination in the placement of the defense weapons. Much of it was drearily predictable. Of