"Armed," it said sweetly. "Hostiles within engagement parameters."

Amber circles sprang into the starry heavens, entrapping the crimson glare of the demons, ringing it in the adamantine rejection of God's wrath, and Vroxhan felt himself tremble as the ultimate moment of his life rushed to meet him. He was no longer afraid—no longer even abashed, for God had raised him up. He was God's vessel, filled with God's power to meet this time of Trial, and his eyes gleamed with a hundred reflected stars as he turned to his fellows. He raised his arms and watched them draw strength from his own exaltation. Other arms rose, returning his blessing, committing themselves to the power and the glory of God while the demons' red glare washed down over their faces and vestments.

"Be not afraid, my brothers!" Vroxhan cried in a great voice. "The time of Trial is upon us, but trust in God, that your souls may be exalted by His glory and the demons may be confounded, for the power is His forever!"

"Forever!" The answering roar battered him, and there was no fear in it, either. He turned back to the high altar, lifting his eyes defiantly to the demon light, rejecting it and the evil for which it stood, and his powerful, rolling voice rose in the sonorous music of the ancient Canticle of Deliverance.

"Initiate engagement procedure!"

Chapter Fifteen

"Coming into range of another one," Harriet announced from Plotting as a display sighting ring circled yet another dot. "A big one."

Sean felt—and shared—her stress. They were finally close enough for Israel's scanners to detect subplanetary targets, and the tension had been palpable ever since the first deep-space installation was spotted. There'd been more in the last two hours—lots more—and his hopes had soared with the others'. The first one hadn't been much to look at, only a remote scanner array crippled by what appeared to have been a micrometeorite strike, but the ones deeper in-system were much bigger. In fact, they looked downright promising, and he kept reminding himself not to let premature optimism carry him away.

"I'm on it, Harry," Sandy reported from Tactical. Her active scanners had less reach than Harriet's passive sensors but offered far better resolution once a target had been pointed out to them. "Coming in now. Comp Cent calls it a Radona-class yard module, Tam."

"Radona, Radona," Tamman muttered, running through his Engineering files. "Aha! I thought I remembered! It's a civilian yard, but with the right support base, a Radona class could turn out another Israel in about eight months, Sean. If we get it on-line, we can build us a hypercom no sweat."

"That," Sean said quietly, "is the best news I've had in the last twenty-one months. People, it looks like we're going to make it after all."

"Yes, I—" Sandy began, then broke off with a gasp. "Sean, that thing's live!"

"What?" Sean stared across at her, and she nodded vigorously.

"I'm getting standby level power readings from at least two Khilark Gamma fusion plants—maybe three."

"That's ridiculous," Sean muttered. He twisted back around to glare at the bland light floating in Harriet's sighting ring. "She'd need hydrogen tankers, maintenance services, a resource base... She can't be live!"

"Try telling that to my scanners! I've definitely got live fusion plants, and if her power's up, we won't even have to activate her!"

"But I still don't see how—"

"Sean," Harriet cut him off, "I'm getting more installations. Look."

Scores of sighting rings blossomed as her instruments came in range of the new targets, and Sean blinked.

"Sandy?"

"I'm working them, Sean." Sandy's voice was absent as she communed with her systems. "Okay, these—" three of Harriet's amber rings turned green "—look like your 'resource base.' They're processing modules, but they're not Battle Fleet designs, either. They might be modified civil facilities." She paused, then continued flatly. "And they're live, too."

"This," Sean said to no one in particular, "is getting ridiculous. Not that I'm ungrateful, but—" He shook himself. "What about the others?"

"Can't tell yet. I'm getting some very faint power leakage from them, but not enough for resolution at this range." She closed her eyes and frowned in concentration. "If they're live, it doesn't look like they've got much on-board generation capacity. Either that, or..." Her voice trailed off.

"Or what?"

"Those might be stasis emissions." She sounded unhappy at suggesting that, and Sean grunted. No stasis field could maintain itself from internal power, and there wasn't enough available from the powered-down plants of the other facilities to sustain that many fields with broadcast power.

"Humph. Goose us back up to point-five cee and take us in, Brashan."

"Coming up to point-five cee, aye," Brashan replied from Maneuvering, and Sean frowned even more thoughtfully. Something about those installations bothered him. They floated in distant orbit around the third planet, not in a ring but in a wide-spaced sphere. There were too many of them—and they were much too small—to be more yard modules, but each was almost a third of Israel's size, so what the devil were they?

"Sean!" Harriet's exclamation was sharp. "I've got a new power source—a monster—and it's on the planet!"

His head whipped back up as still another sighting ring appeared in the display and the new emission source crept into sight over the planetary horizon. Harry was right; it was huge. But it was also... strange, and he frowned as its light code flickered uncertainly.

"Can you localize it?"

"I'm trying. It's— Sean, my scanners say that thing's moving. It's almost like... like some weird ECM, but I've never seen anything like it."

Sean frowned. That single massive power source was all alone down there, and that made it the most maddening puzzle yet. Obviously the population and tech base which had produced the system installations hadn't survived, or they would have been challenged by now. Besides, if the planet had fusion power, there should be dozens of planetary facilities down there, not just one. But without people, how had even one power plant survived the millennia? And what did Harry mean by "moving"? He plugged into her systems and watched it with her, and damned if she wasn't right. It was like some sort of ECM, as if something were trying to prevent them from locking in its coordinates.

"Can you crack whatever it is, Harry?"

"I think so. It's a weird effect, but it looks like... Oh, that's sneaky!" Her tone took on a mix of admiration and excitement. "That source isn't as big as we thought, Sean. It is big, but there's at least a dozen—probably more like two or three dozen—false emitters down there, and they're jumping back and forth between them. Their generators aren't moving, they're just reshaping the main emission source. I don't know why, but now that I know what they're doing it's only a matter of ti—"

"Status change." Sandy's voice was flat with tension. "The satellite power readings are going up like missiles. They're coming on-line, Sean!"

His eyes darted back to the satellites. Those had been stasis fields; now they were gone, and whole clusters of new sources were coming up while they watched. Sean chewed his lip, wondering what the hell was going on. But until he knew—

"Bring us about, Brashan. Let's not get in too deep."

"Coming onto reciprocal course, aye," Brashan confirmed, and Sean watched the changing tactical symbols in the display as Israel came about.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he muttered.