The Battle for Terra Two by Stephen Ames Berry Page A

through the double-guarded entrance and down the floodlit driveway. Hands clasped behind his back, the Gray Admiral walked slowly past the sandbagged bunkers and razor wire, the mortar and machine-gun emplacements, nodding approvingly. This part of Maximus was all Security and Admin, halfway between the perimeter and the compact installation uphill from it. It was toward the distant gate, though, the one scouted by the now-dead Ian, that the trio went, walking briskly down the road. Arcflares burst overhead, lighting the area brighter than a July noon.
    Passing through the final line of bunkers, Hochmeister continued down hill. Zur Linde and Fwolkes slowed uncertainly.
    It was unnaturally still, no sound from the bunkers, armored vehicles or the forest. Only the occasional dull plop of an arcflare broke the silence.
    Fwolkes cleared his throat. "Where are we going, Admiral, if I may ask?"
    Hochmeister never broke stride. "Out into the night, Brigadier," he said, not looking back. "Zur Linde and I are going to join the gangers." Peering ahead, he thought he saw movement along the distant fence.
    The British officer halted. "Sir, with respect—are you crazy?"
    Brushing past him, zur Linde caught up with Hochmeister.
    Stopping, the admiral turned, facing the brigadier. "Cagey, yes, Charles. Crazy, no." Hands thrust deep into the pockets of his baggy, black fieldjacket, pants wrinkled, face in need of a shave and some sleep, Hochmeister looked every bit his age, there in the pitiless light from the flares. "I'm somewhat surprised, Charles," he said easily, "that you don't remember me. Not only did we serve together at the Armistice Conference, your cousin Reggie is married to my niece Gabriela. We had a grand time at the wedding, last June in Salzburg."
    Fwolkes was silent, face expressionless. The intelligence chief continued in the same light tone. "Equally distressing, though, was your HQ.
    "Erich, did you feel that steamy heat?"
    Zur Linde nodded. "Like the reptile house at the zoo," he said, eyes on the brigadier.
    "Thirty-five centigrade in there, Charles, at least. Those machines shouldn't work at that temperature. Yet all their lights were twinkling merrily, the equipment humming, everything the picture of brisk efficiency. Except, as Erich notes, the room had the climate of the reptile house. The smell of it, too.
    "You can't smell, can you?"
    "Obviously, the equipment isn't as sensitive as you believe, Hans," said Fwolkes.
    "Christian, Charles. You always called me Christian."
    "Please," Fwolkes implored, glancing nervously toward the gate, "we've got to get back ..."
    He broke off, starting as the gate blew up, briefly lighting the circling woods and the advancing gangers.
    "Quick! If we run, we can ..."
    "Imagine my great joy, though, Charles," Hochmeister continued as first ganger squads passed the gate, "to find you alive and well. This after Gabriela wrote only last week of your death in a car wreck—ashes to follow.
    "Doesn't Charles look remarkably well for a corpse, Erich?"
    "Indeed," said zur Linde, pulling his pistol.
    "And what do you make of all this?" Fwolkes asked, cold amusement in his voice.
    "That you—whoever or whatever you are—have taken control of Maximus; a control we know you're busy extending into vital areas of the American government. That your origins are probably the same as the—phenomenon— the Trojan horse around which we built the Troy of Maximus. That you mean this weary world ill."
    Fwolkes stood motionless as a sibilant whisper filled the admiral and zur Linde's minds.
    We mean no harm. We merely seek sanctuary. In our universe, we are a hunted race. We lost a war—we would have been exterminated had we stayed.
    "You are called . . . ?" asked Hochmeister after a moment.
    Shalan-Actal, servant to the S'Cotar. "That's not your true form, is it, Shalan-Actal of the S'Cotar?"
    Rippling, the Fwolkes-form shimmered away, replaced by six feet of mantislike insect, erect on four of its