We’re at Ozark village now,she told the navy commander.

Are you all right?kelven solanki asked.

Yes.

What’s your situation?

Right now we’re on our hands and knees about a hundred metres from the fields around the village. There are several fires burning in the village, and a lot of people moving round for this time of night. There must be three or four hundred of them outside, can’t be many in the cabins. Apart from that it looks pretty ordinary.she wormed her way forward through the tangle of long grass and creepers, avoiding the bushes. Darcy was a metre to her left. It had been a long time since her last fieldcraft training session, she was moderately pleased by how little noise she was making.

Kelven, I want you to datavise a list of the sheriffs the BK133s landed at Ozark,darcy said. We’ll see if we can identify any of them.

Right away, here they come.

Lori pressed the twigs of a low-hanging branch to the ground, and slithered over them. There was the trunk of a large mayope four metres ahead, its roots sloping up out of the soil. Light from the fires fluoresced the bark to a lurid topaz.

The list of sheriffs streamed into her mind; facts, figures, and profiles, most importantly the holograms. Mirages of seventy men shimmered over the vapid low-light image of Ozark. Lori reached the mayope trunk and looked out over the lines of seedy cabins, trying to match the visual patterns in her mind with what she could see.

There’s one,darcy said. his mind indicated one of the men squatting in a circle of people around a fire. Some kind of animal carcass was roasting above the flames.

And another,lori indicated.

They swiftly located a further twelve sheriffs at various fires.

None of them look particularly concerned that their communications with Candace Elford have been cut off,she said.

Have they been sequestrated?kelven solanki asked.

There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my best guess is yes,darcy said. Given their current situation, their behaviour is abnormal. They should at least have posted a perimeter guard.

The bitek processor in Lori’s back-up communication block reported a power loss in the unit’s electron-matrix crystal. She automatically ordered the reserve crystal to be brought on line, the thought was virtually subconscious.

I concur,lori said. I think our original primary goal of verifying Laton’s presence is irrelevant in these circumstances.

Seconded. We’ll attempt to seize one of these people and bring them back to Durringham for examination.the mimetic governor circuitry on Darcy’s chameleon suit indicated a databus glitch in his right leg; alternative channels were brought on line by the master processor.

Our best bet will be that cabin there, it’s reasonably isolated, and I saw someone go in just now.lori evinced a five-room building standing apart from the others. It was a hundred and twenty metres from the edge of the jungle, but the intervening ground was mostly allotments, providing as much cover as the trees. She took an image enhancer out of a pouch on her waist, and brought it up to her eyes. Bloody thing’s broken. Try yours, we need to know how many are inside.

Darcy’s chemical/biological agent detector shut down. It hasn’t broken,he said in consternation. We’re in some kind of electronic warfare field!

Damn it!lori’s back-up communicator and target-laser-acquisition warning sensors dropped out. Kelven, did you hear that? They’re using highly sophisticated electronic warfare systems.

Your signal strength is fading,kelven said.

Darcy felt his affinity link with his maser carbine’s controlling processor vanish. When he looked at the gun its LCD display panel was dead. Come on, move it! Back to the Coogan.

Darcy!

He twisted round to see five people standing in a semicircle right-behind them. One woman, four men. All of them with strange placid smiles; dressed like settlers in denim trousers and cotton shirts, the men with thick beards. Even with shock paralysing his nerves he retained enough presence of mind to glance at his own arm. Infrared showed him a faint pink outline, but low-light simply revealed long blades of grass. The chameleon circuitry was still functional.

“Shit!” Kelven, they can see chameleon suits. Warn your people. Kelven?the hardware units he wore round his waist were all failing in rapid succession, affinity filling his mind with processor caution warnings. They started to wink out. There was no reply from Kelven Solanki.

“You must be the pair Laton called,” one of the men said. He looked from Lori to Darcy. “You can get up now.”

The power supply to Lori’s chameleon suit ebbed to nothing, and the fabric reverted to its natural dull grey. She rolled to one side and stood in one smooth motion. Implant glands were feeding a gutsy brew of hormones into her blood supply, hyping her muscles. She dropped both her maser carbine and the image enhancer, freeing her hands. Five wouldn’t be a problem. “Where do you come from?” she asked. “I’m talking to you that’s in charge of them. Is your origin in your memory?”

“You’re an atheist,” the woman replied. “It would be kinder to spare you the answer.”

Take them out,darcy said.

Lori stepped forwards, turning, arms and legs moving fast. Left ankle swinging into the man’s kneecap with her full bodyweight behind it—satisfying crackle of breaking bone; right hand chopping the woman’s larynx, slamming her Adam’s apple into her vertebrae. Darcy was wreaking similar mayhem on his targets. Lori spun round on one foot, left leg kicking out again, back arching supplely, and her boot’s toecap caught a man just below and behind his ear, splitting his skull.

Hands gripped at her arms from behind. Lori yelped in shock. Nobody should be there. But reflexes took over, a fast back-kick which connected with a thigh, and she completed the turn with her arms locking into a defensive posture in time to see the woman staggering back. She blinked in incomprehension. The woman had blood pouring out of her mouth, her throat was severely disfigured from the first blow. As she watched, the skin inflated out, Adam’s apple reappearing. The gush of blood stopped.

Sweet shit, what does it take to stop them?

The two men Darcy had knocked over were regaining their feet. One had a shattered shin bone, its jagged end protruding from the flesh just below his knee; he stood on it and walked forwards.

Electrodes,darcy ordered. the first of the men was reaching for him, the side of his face caved in where Darcy’s boot had impacted, eyeball mashed in its socket, shedding tears of syrupy yellow fluid, but still smiling. He deliberately stepped inside the groping embrace, bringing his hands up, fingers wide, and clamping his palms on either side of the man’s head. The long cords of eel-derived electroplaque cells buried in his forearms discharged through organic conductors that emerged from his fingertips in the form of tiny warts. The man’s head was crowned with a blinding flare of purple-white static accompanied by a gunshot crack as the full two-thousand-volt charge slammed into his brain.

A vicious tingling erupted across Darcy’s hands as some of the current leaked through the subcutaneous insulation. But the effect on the man was like nothing Darcy had ever seen before. The discharge should have felled him instantly, nothing living could withstand that much electricity. Instead he lurched backwards clutching at his mangled head, emitting a soprano keening. His skin began to glow, shining brighter and brighter. The shirt and jeans flamed briefly, falling away from the incandescent body as blackened petals. Darcy shielded his eyes with his hand. There was no heat, he realized, with a light so bright he ought to feel a scorch wave breaking across his chameleon suit. The man had become translucent now, so powerful was the surge of photons, revealing bones and veins and organs as deep scarlet and purple shadows. Their solidity dissolved, as if they were different coloured gases caught in a hurricane. He managed one last wretched wail as his body gave a massive epileptic spasm.