Klnn-dawan-a eased a stride forward. A dozen small smoldering fires and general haze of smoke could be seen throughout the area the third warrior was still sweeping laser fire across. "That question's going to be academic if you set the whole forest on fire," she warned.

"It'll also be academic if we let them get a straight shot in here," Tbv-ohnor retorted, throwing a glare at her over his shoulder. "Let us handle this, all right?"

Flicking her tongue, Klnn-dawan-a stepped back behind the warrior on the floor. As she did so, an Elder appeared just outside the outer doorway, almost invisible against the mottled light pattern of the forest. "Watch out, Warrior First," he warned. "Three of the enemy have reached firing position. The other twelve are still approaching, using what seems to be a modified closed-talon formation."

"What about the warcraft?" Tbv-ohnor asked.

"Commander Thrr-mezaz's scheme seems to have driven them from the area," the Elder said. "Only temporarily, though, I suspect. Our commander at the Battle of F'orshn on X'sin tried a very similar trick, and—"

"Then we need to break out now," Tbv-ohnor cut him off. "Give me targeting on those three warriors."

The Elder vanished, was back a few beats later. "The first is there," he said, pointing with his tongue. "Behind the large tree—he's looking around it to the left of the bole. The second and third are there"—he pointed again—"on either side of a half-buried boulder."

"Right," Tbv-ohnor said, hefting his laser rifle as the Elder vanished again. "Fhz-gelic, get up off the floor—we're going to want two shots on each target. All warriors: aim and fire on my command. Prepare—"

Abruptly, the Elder reappeared. "Warrior—wait. The enemy warriors have suddenly pressed themselves into the ground. They must know—"

"—now!" Tbv-ohnor barked, jerking his laser rifle into firing position. In perfect unison the other five warriors did the same—

And as they fired, the forest to their left seemed to vanish in a dazzling explosion.

Klnn-dawan-a staggered back with a scream, her midlight pupils stabbed with pain. A split beat later she was slammed hard onto the metal floor as the ground bucked like a wild animal beneath her feet and a roar of sound hammered across her body.

Her midlight pupils were still useless; cautiously widening her darklight pupils, she saw the remnants of what must have been a huge fireball rising above the nearest trees. "What happened?" her numbed ear slits heard her voice say.

But there was no answer. Cautiously lifting her head, she looked around her.

Her first horrible thought was that that single blast had raised all six of the warriors to Eldership. They lay on the floor at the front of the entrance chamber, unmoving, their laser rifles lying haphazardly across the floor or still held in limp grips. But even as she stared in rising panic, she saw Tbv-ohnor's left foot twitch and realized what had in fact happened. Standing at the outer door, mostly outside the limited protection of the entrance chamber, they'd been hit much harder by the light and shock wave of the explosion.

It wasn't as bad as she'd feared. But it was bad enough. Stunned warriors were no more capable of fighting than warriors who'd been raised to Eldership... and there were fifteen enemy warriors converging on them.

Which meant it was up to her. Pressing her tongue against the side of her mouth, fighting a sudden wave of nausea, she got to her knees and crawled across the floor toward the warriors.

Tbv-ohnor's tail had begun a sluggish undulation by the time she reached the nearest laser rifle. Getting a grip on the shoulder brace, she hauled it over to her, wondering uneasily whether her limited experience with handheld stingers would be any help in handling the vastly more powerful warrior weapon. Picking it up, she climbed to her feet and stumbled to the entrance.

And froze. There, not twenty strides away, a line of eight Human-Conquerors stood or knelt in their camouflage clothing. Their weapons pointing straight at her.

"Pull up, Vanbrugh!" Holloway barked into his comm as the laser beam raked across the Corvine's underside. "Pull up, damn it!"

"He can't," Takara bit out, waving a fist toward the display as the Corvine twisted violently to the right.

He was right, Holloway knew, watching helplessly as the Corvine slid even farther to the side. It was done for, with bare seconds left before either the enemy laser sliced it open or else it crashed onto the forest floor. He cringed in anticipation, wondering why Vanbrugh and Hodgson didn't eject; realized an instant later that they had neither the time nor the altitude left to do so. They were going to die out there. Violently, uselessly, they were going to die.

"Look!" Takara said suddenly, jolting Holloway out of his horrified fascination with the doomed Copperheads. "Bethmann's coming back."

Holloway swore. Bethmann was coming back, all right. The second Corvine had veered around in a tight curve and was blazing full throttle back toward Vanbrugh's crippled fighter and the laser attacking it. Recklessly flying back into danger— "Bethmann, get out of there," Holloway snapped into the comm. "You can't help them now."

There was no answer... but even as Holloway started to repeat the order, he saw it was too late. The heavy laser had flicked away from the crippled Corvine, relinquishing the chance for a direct kill in order to deal with this new threat bearing down on it. Helplessly, Holloway watched as the brilliant beam came on again, grazing the flank of Bethmann's approaching fighter.

And then, abruptly, the Corvine's nose pitched violently upward, the movement all but killing its forward momentum. The laser swung wide, its operators caught off guard by the maneuver. For a split second the aircraft seemed to stand on its tail in midair, its underside blatantly exposed to the enemy. The beam checked its movement, tracked back toward its target—

And in a burst of Icefire the Corvine vanished.

"What the hell?" Takara said, blinking. "Where did it go?"

"It went up, sir," Crane said, sounding more than a little stunned himself. "Just straight up."

"Track him," Holloway ordered.

Crane keyed his board, and the monitor view pulled back and swung upward. Sure enough, there was Bethmann's Corvine, halfway to the stratosphere and just starting to curve over the top of his arc. "Incredible," Takara said. "There's a solid year's worth of dumb luck shot all to hell."

"I don't think there was any luck to it at all," Holloway said, a sudden suspicion striking him. "Crane, see if you can locate Vanbrugh's Corvine."

"Yes, sir." The monitor screen split, bringing up a second image....

Takara whistled softly. "I'll be damned."

Holloway nodded silently. Vanbrugh's damaged Corvine, not looking nearly as crippled now as it had when Bethmann had come charging to the rescue, was flying low across the Dorcas landscape, racing back toward the relative safety of the mountains.

"It was a diversion," Takara said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Vanbrugh couldn't slide out of firing range fast enough, so Bethmann charged in to draw the heat away from him."

"And got the enemy to split his attention just long enough for both of them to get away," Holloway said, a shiver running up his back. A maneuver improvised on the spot, its details communicated between the two crews, its execution handled with exquisite timing and coordination. All of it accomplished in perhaps half a dozen seconds.

A few years back, when Lord Stewart Cavanagh and Commander Adam Quinn had raised the issue of improper Copperhead cadet screening, there had been long and heated debates throughout the Commonwealth as to whether the Copperheads were even worth all this effort and money. As a good Peacekeeper officer, Holloway had of course stood solidly behind the Copperheads in his own discussions with civilian friends and relatives. Privately, though, he would have had to admit that he really didn't understand why Peacekeeper Command was so adamant on keeping the unit.