"It's probably enough. They were both small people. Clamp those ends—" He tossed her something glittering, which she snatched out of the air. They bent over the little body. "Into the chamber, then," said the medic. Quinn cradled the head, the medic took the torso and hips. The arms and legs dangled down. "He's light . . ." They swung their stripped burden hastily into the cryo-chamber, leaving the blood-soaked uniform on the floor in a sodden heap. Quinn left the medic to make the last connections and turned away blind-eyed, talking to her helmet. She did not look down at the long silver package at her feet.

Thorne appeared, crossing the chamber at a jog. Where had it been? Thorne caught Quinn's eye, and with a jerk of its head at the dead Bharaputrans reported, "They came up through the tunnels, all right. I have the exits secured, for now." Thorne glowered bleakly at the cryo-chamber. The hermaphrodite looked suddenly . . . middle-aged. Old.

Quinn acknowledge this with a nod. "Key to Channel 9-C. We got trouble outside."

A kind of dreary curiosity winkled through Mark's numb shock. He turned his own headset back on. He'd had it helplessly and hopelessly turned off for hours, ever since Thorne had snatched back its command. He followed the captains' transmissions.

The Blue and Orange Squad perimeter teams were under heavy pressure from beefed-up Bharaputran security forces. Quinn's delay in this building was drawing Bharaputrans like flies to carrion, with a buzzing excitement. With over two-thirds of the clones now packed aboard the shuttle, the enemy had stopped directing heavy fire toward it, but airborne reinforcements were gathering fast, hovering like vultures. Quinn and company were in imminent danger of being surrounded and cut off.

"Got to be another way," muttered Quinn. She switched channels. "Lieutenant Kimura, how's it going with you? Resistance still soft?"

"It's hardened up beautifully. I kinda got my hands full right now, Quinnie." Kimura's thin, weirdly cheerful voice came back cut by a wash of static indicating plasma fire and the activation of his plasma mirror field. "We've achieved our objective and are pulling out now. Trying to. Chat later, huh?" More static.

"Which objective? Take care of your damn shuttle, y'hear, boy? You may yet have to come for us. Report to me the second you're back in the air."

"Right." A slight pause. "Why isn't the Admiral on this channel, Quinnie?"

Quinn's eyes squeezed shut in pain. "He's . . . temporarily out of range. Move it, Kimura!"

Kimura's reply, whatever it was, broke up in another wash of static. No program regarding Kimura and his objective was loaded in Mark's helmet, but the lieutenant seemed to be transmitting from somewhere other than the medical complex. A feint? If so, Kimura wasn't drawing nearly enough enemy troops away from them. Sergeant Framingham's channel, from the drop shuttle, broke in urging Quinn to hurry, almost simultaneously with an Orange Squad perimeter team reporting themselves forced off another vantage point.