“Legata, what are you . . .” Oakes was interrupted by a brilliant flash of light and a blast so close that the concussion popped his ears and took his breath away. Sensor images vanished from the big screen to be replaced by static flashes of light. Legata, thrown backward by the blast, steadied herself against a fixed control console. Lewis had sprawled on the floor and, as he climbed to his feet, they all heard screams and clattering feet in the passage outside the Command Center.

Oakes gestured to Legata. “Get that screen working!”

“We must’ve hit that cutter,” Lewis said.

Legata leaped to the screen controls, keyed an emergency search for active sensors, found a high one which looked out over the Redoubt to the distant cliff with its bank of hylighters. Panille still sat on the pinnacle, the plasteel cutter and its crew remained at their cliffbase. Nothing appeared to have changed.

They could all hear the sound of pounding against the Command Center’s hatch. Someone across the room opened it. Immediately, the Center filled with people, a menagerie of E-clones and Naturals, all crying and screaming: “Runners! Runners! Seal off!”

Lewis whirled to the nearest console, slapped the key for the Seal Off program. As hatches hissed shut, they saw on the screen the first wave of people shrieking in terror at the inner edge of the Redoubt. Legata turreted the high sensor to follow them and they all saw the smoking break in the Redoubt’s perimeter, the flood of people fleeing it and being brought up short at sealed hatches. Fists beat a muffled drumming on the hatches, the sound made all the more terrible by its distance from the sensor. It gave the whole scene a marionette quality.

Lewis suddenly darted across the room, grabbed the arm of one of the newcomers and returned to Oakes with the man. Legata recognized him as a crew supervisor, a Natural named Marco.

“What the hell happened out there?” Oakes demanded.

“I don’t know.” The man blinked in confusion, stared up at the screen rather than at Oakes. “We took one of the new cutters, the long-range ones, and we hit within a meter of them.”

“You missed them?” Oakes screamed it, his face red with rage.

“No! No, sir. A meter’s good enough. That close will melt bedrock for ten meters all around. It’s just . . .”

“That’s all right, Marco,” Lewis said. “Just describe what you saw.”

“It was that man up on the rocks.” Marco pointed at the screen.

“He didn’t do anything,” Oakes said. “We were looking at the screen the whole time and he . . .”

“Let Marco tell what he saw,” Lewis interrupted.