Bilin stood up and whooped. “Nice work, Service Corps!”

Pirius snapped, “Get down, you idiot!”

Bilin grinned, and the out-of-control Xeelee starbreaker severed his head, clean at the neck.

The bombardment curtain was now far away, and Pirius could see no starbreaker light. But still the ground shook, still that deep shuddering worked into his nerves. It took a lot of courage to cross the last bit of open ground to the Xeelee emplacement.

Cohl and her people were already here. They had taken shelter beneath a wall that seemed to have melted and curled over on itself. On the far side of the wall, away from the huddling humans, the ruined alien machines slumped, as if sleeping.

Of Pirius’s team, only he had survived, but three of Cohl’s team lived: Cohl herself and the two Tilis. So four of the seven who had come to the trench of corpses were left; in the last couple of minutes another three had died.

Cohl had taken a shot to her leg. Her suit had turned rigid and glowed orange as its rudimentary medical facilities tried to stabilize her. There was nothing Pirius could do for her.

Tili One was worse. She had some kind of chest wound. Tili Three cradled her sister’s head on her lap, her mouth round with shock. Pirius saw that to be left alone, to lose both her sisters, was literally unimaginable for this triplet.

Pirius took his last comm post from his back, stuck it in the ground, and set up a repeater signal. He said to Cohl, “If anybody’s left, they’ll come here. Make the others wait in the shelter.” Then he stood up, hefting a starbreaker, and peered out of the ruins of the emplacement.

Cohl asked, “Where are you going?”

“To the factory. It’s only two, three hundred meters from here. It’s the pickup point, remember. I’ll leave a marker to lead the stretcher crews here.”

Cohl clearly didn’t want him to go, but just as clearly she saw the necessity. “Be careful.”

He crawled out of the ruins of the emplacement, out into the open. He moved cautiously, as he had been taught. He ducked from ridge to crater to trench to foxhole, no more than ten, twenty meters at a time. It was slow going, and exhausting. The condition of his skinsuit got worse quickly; perhaps it was damaged. The air grew increasingly foul, his faceplate so enclosing he felt as if he was choking, and his mouth and throat grew so dry they were painful.

It took him half an hour to cross two hundred meters.

Maybe such caution wasn’t necessary; he hadn’t seen the glow of a starbreaker since the emplacement mount had finally been shut down. But after what had happened to Bilin he wasn’t about to take a chance now.