……………..over the last of the low hills, giving them their first sight of the battleground. From his side window, Manny picks out the three figures perched on the hillside, one of whom is waving at the mixed squadron of Black Hawks and Apaches as they descend on the enemy advancing toward the narrow bridge. He waves back, knowing she cannot see him, but feeling the tie of blood all the same. The green-lit screens on his console,—one for radar, one for the laser-targeting mechanism— show the droids and the heavy armor strung out in formation. “Okay, Littleton,” he says to the gunner seated in the nose of the craft below and in front of him. “Start picking your targets. Get the SAM’s first.”

“Gotcha, bro.”

A small white cross, the target indicator, appears above the shape of a launcher truck on the left hand LED screen as the aiming laser locks on; half a second later he feels a whomp! as the Hellfire leaves its perch beneath the port wing. It streaks away above the fog, its contrail curving slightly as its fins maneuver to set a straight course. Suddenly one of the SAMS is away, a blip on the radar screen. Manny leans on the joystick, putting the Apache over hard so that his shoulders ache where they press against his harness, and the missile speeds harmlessly by. On the ground, fire blossoms gold and red where the Hellfire strikes its target, secondary explosions adding to the roiling cloud of flame and smoke as it rises out of the mist and into the clear air. Briefly he notes the blazes set by other hits as he pulls back on the controls, taking them up and over and behind the enemy, and momentarily out of the range of their guns. “Report,” he snaps into his mike. “Any casualties?”

One by one the squadron checks in. Only Andrews reports a hit. “Took a round to the fuselage, Apache One, but we’re good to go.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go back for seconds.”

They swoop down for a second pass over the column, which has almost reached the near end of the bridge. This time Littleton cuts loose with the chain guns, and Manny can see ordinary droids going down along the center of the line, but they seem to be doing very little damage to the military models on the perimeter. He dodges a couple rockets, swerving wildly, tipping the bird almost over on its side. Not for the first time, he wishes he had his Tomcat under him, laying down a long stick of five-hundred-pounders the length of the road and ending the whole fucking mess right then and there. He understands why the brass have decided to hold back on the jets, and he agrees, at least in principle. He just wishes he had that kind of firepower now.

Which does him no good whatsoever. If wishes were buffalo. . ..

The backsweep takes out the second missile launcher and a tank, as well as several armored personnel carrier. And, he notes with satisfaction, any personnel they might have been carrying. Littleton reads his mind. “’Spose we got some of the goddam metalheads with those APC’s, Manny?”

“Let’s hope—“ he breaks off abruptly as Koda’s voice crackles in his earpiece. “Washte, Manny. Ake.”

“Hau. Wikcemna-topa..”

“What’s that?” asks Littleton.

“She says do it again, bro. So—” he clicks the com through to the other choppers—“we do it again.”

Manny takes the squadron back over the command post hill to loop around for the third pass, waving again at the figures at their below him. There is no chance that they can spot him, but he can see them and know that they are secure, screened as they are by the lines of trees behind and in front of them. It makes a small warm spot in the chill of battle, of affection and pride both. Hell, he admits to himself, he’s even developing a soft spot for the little blonde ice cube.

Not, mind, that way. As far as he’s concerned, she has all the sex appeal of a circular saw. Run into her the wrong way and BZZZZZZZZZ. . . .

He swings the Apache about and comes in low for the third pass, the squadron in loose formation behind him. Off to his right, a Black Hawk takes a direct hit, its fuel tank exploding in billows of smoke and flame still in midair, its fuselage wheeling drunkenly out of the sky to plunge into a company of droids, incinerating them instantly. Littleton lets fly their last two Hellfires, then turns the chaingun and the small-gauge rockets onto the line of foot. One, with a LAAWS tube braced against its shoulder, goes sprawling satisfyingly on the tarmac under the hail of thirty-millimeter rounds. As they sweep up the rise of the piedmont behind, Manny can see another file of armed men and women moving into position down a dry creek bed: Tacoma and the front line of his force, preparing to close the trap they have so carefully set.

Last pass. “Give ‘em the works this time through,” he orders Littleton. “Whatever we’ve got left.”

Manny feels the thump as the rocket tubes discharge the last of the Hydras. “Okay, that’s it. We’re headed—“

The impact jars all his bones together, snapping his jaw shut and bloodying his tongue between his teeth. The Apache seems to hang suspended for a moment, hovering, and almost it feels normal. Then the bird begins to spin laterally, the tail and tail rotor no longer answering to the steering column. “Oh, shit,” Manny says, very softly, just as Littleton yells out, loud enough to hear even over the sudden grating noise of the engines, “We’re hit!”

“I know — damn well that’s not normal!” Kirsten exclaims, watching beside Koda as the Apache spins slowly, almost gracefully, on the axis of its mast. “Isn’t Manny in one of the Apaches?”

Koda feels the blood drain from her face, sinking to her heart with the weight of lead. “He’s in that Apache.” She points to the bundle of red-tipped arrows newly painted on the side of the fuselage. “That’s his sign.”

Maggie steps closer to her, gripping her other hand hard. “If anyone can get that bird down in one piece, Manny can.” Kirsten has moved up beside her, too, silently offering her presence. Koda can feel the fear in the other women, resonating with her own. Yet there is comfort there, too.

“I know. He always did manage to walk away from—goddam!” Her voice dies in her throat as the chopper begins to cartwheel, heeling over half onto its side and spinning counterrhythm to its rotor as it falls out of the sky, plunging toward the broad meadow between the bridge and the woods beyond. Koda watches as it descends, not breathing, not daring to breathe, knowing that he has about as much chance of survival as a goldfish in a shark tank, Manny reflects wryly as he loses control of the Apache altogether and can only fold himself up per procedure and brace for the impact.

It comes with a crash like thunder walking in the mountains, reverberating in his ears and along his bones. Manny opens his eyes to find the Apache’s nose buried in the snow and himself hanging suspended by his straps just over his control panel. Out the front port he can see two of the rotor blades broken off where they have sliced into the earth The buckle of his harness presses hard into his solar plexus, and he carefully eases himself off the end of his control stick, broken off just below the grip. If not for catching in the buckle, it would presently be jutting out his back ribs. The pressure and the thought both turn his stomach, and he pukes up his guts as he hangs there over the display panels, spattering them and the back of Littleton’s helmet liberally with his breakfast. When the nausea passes, it occurs to him that he needs to get the hell out of here, and he reaches for his boot knife to cut himself out of this witch’s cradle. His right arm does not move.

Shit.

It doesn’t hurt, particularly, but that doesn’t mean anything. More encouraging is the fact that he cannot see any blood on the sleeve of his flight suit, or any splinters of bone protruding. Okay. Let’s try this. . ..

Twisting his left shoulder and lifting his right leg, he manages to grasp the knife’s hilt and draw it. Carefully he saws himself loose, setting first one foot, then the other, down on the back of his gunner’s seat, gingerly straddling the shattered steering column. Littleton has not moved.

One hand on the altimeter, the other on the fuel gauge to avoid the slick of half-digested egg and cereal, he touches the other man’s shoulder. “Joe. Hey, Joe.”

No answer.

Shit. .

Pulling off his left glove with his teeth, Manny feels for the pulse where the great veins thrum in the neck, working his fingers down under Littleton’s collar. Nothing.

Shit, again. Sorry, bro.

The door, of course, is stuck.

Of course. Why get lucky now? With the butt of his handgun Manny hammers repeatedly at the lexan of the window until it gives and he can break the jagged pieces out of their steel frame. He slithers out through the too-small opening, pushing stubbornly with his feet and pulling with his good left arm. Somwhere around the halfway mark, the nerves in his dislocated right arm wake up, and he feels himself go light-headed with the pain. His mouth is dry as tinder. Shock.

He can’t afford it. He gives one last shove with all the strength of his back and legs behind it, and suddenly he is free, tumbling out into the snow. Up onto his feet then, and running for the line of the woods and the friendly forces he knows are there, stumbling, his right arm dangling uselessly at his side as a rocket lands less than five meters behind him, picks him up and tosses him over a hump in the ground , and he is sliding, tobogganing down the slope on his back and butt just like he used to do as a kid with Tacoma and Koda streaking along beside him.

He reaches the bottom with a thump and surely he is dreaming because a figure detaches itself from one of the century-old sycamores and comes running toward him, levering him up out of the snow and shoving him forward toward the woods, one foot after the other, head down, breath tearing at his throat and it suddenly comes to him that safety is ten feet in front of him and he’s going to make it! Koda, look!”

Dakota turns her head to follow Kirsten’s pointing finger. A man has fought his way out of the downed copter, bit by bit wriggling and pushing through one of the windows. Koda puts up her binoculars, desperately attempting to focus on his face. She cannot, but she knows the anatomy of an Apache, and she can see clearly that the broken window is the one above as the copter sits crazily tilted on its nose in the snow. The pilot’s seat.

Thank you, Ina Maka, she breathes silently. She watches, her heart still in her throat as her cousin makes his way drunkenly over the meadow to the woods beyond, then disappears from sight as another soldier emerges to help him to shelter. Aloud she says, “I knew he’d make it. Manny’s just too damn contrary to die.”

“Family trait?” Maggie asks with a cant of her eyebrow.

”Yeah, I guess it is.” Koda cannot stop her mouth from pulling into a grin. “Just got good Lakota genes, that’s all.”

Koda lets out a long, relieved breath and turns her attention back to the battlefield. Even without binoculars, it is evident that the droid army is reforming its column, shifting and eddying around the burned out shells of tanks and APC’s that stand in the roadway. A couple hundred meters from the bridge, one of the few remaining carriers has been pressed into service as a wrecker, nosing the shattered hulks off the tarmac to make way for what is left of the heavy weapons and armor. Fragments of bright titanium litter the shoulders of the road where chaingun and rocket have found their marks; elsewhere the snow is stained red, and the motionless figures torn and twisted into nightmare shapes by slug and shrapnel are of flesh, not metal. The half-melted frame of the downed Black Hawk rests on bare earth where ice and snow have melted away from it, a ring of motionless forms around it. From this distance it is impossible to tell whether they are droid or human. One of the howitzers crawls slowly back into line midway the column, behind the human troops and in front of the military droid contingent. Eerily, it seems to move on its own, its driver invisible behind the housing of the barrel.

Beside her, Maggie observes, “Damn good job, all things considered. That big gun is going to give us some trouble before the day’s over, but things are a lot more equal than they were half an hour ago.”

“We’re losing our cover, Colonel,” Kirsten observes. Except for the lowest elevations , in hollows of ridges and along the river’s surface, the fog has begun to burn away. The meadow between the bridge and the woods gleams in the sudden sun, the snow refracting the light like prisms.

“It’s okay. We’ve almost reached the point where it won’t matter.” Maggie glances over her shoulder at Kirsten, back at her com board, the fingers of one hand pressed behind her ear as if to strengthen the signals she is picking up. “Any change on the other side?”