Cloud's voice in his ear was the most welcome thing he'd heard for days. "We're in the room beyond the wall," Cloud's voice came promptly in his ears. "Situation?"

"Pinned to right of first cross," Twister said, sensing Shadow and Watchman stir slightly as their comlinks came on and they picked up the news of the approaching reinforcements. "Enemy split: four-eight. Friendlies pinned with us to right."

"Acknowledged," Cloud said. "On our way."

"It's good to know the Glorious Majesty has such loyal supporters," the Lakran squad leader rumbled to Su-mil with only a hint of sarcasm. "You will put your weapons on the floor now."

"But we face very dangerous enemies," Su-mil protested, his weapon shifting to Twister's right eye. "We cannot know when it will be necessary to fire."

"The Lakra will do any firing that is necessary," the squad leader assured him, turning his blaster away from Twister and pressing the muzzle against the side of Su-mil's neck. "Now. Put down your weapons."

"You'll have no trouble on that score anyway," Twister said, lifting his right hand and pointing his forefinger straight at Su-mil's right eye. "When you see your friends falling in front of you, you'll know the time of death has arrived."

"Silence!" the squad leader spat, sending a baleful glare at the stormtroopers. From Twister's headset came a pair of acknowledging double-clicks as Shadow and Watchman confirmed his veiled order. "Very soon now, you will be begging for the time of death to be allowed you."

"Countdown: three," Cloud's voice murmured in Twister's ear.

"Oh, I don't know," Twister said proudly, raising his voice to fill the corridor and help cover any inadvertent footfalls. "Somehow, I don't think so."

And as the last word rang through the air, a group of white-armored men boiled into the corridor behind the Eickaries.

Twister didn't wait to see any more. Even as the reinforcements began firing at both ends of the split Lakran force, he and the rest of Aurek-Seven threw themselves flat onto the floor.

Leaving a direct line of fire between the mercenaries behind them and the Eickarie firing wall.

Su-mil had promised that his soldiers wouldn't freeze the next time. He was right. Twister hadn't even gotten a grip on his dropped weapon when the hodgepodge of Eickarie weapons opened up, laying down a blaze of fire at the Lakran squad. By the time he had scooped up the BlasTech and rolled over ready to use it, the battle was over.

He scrambled hastily to his feet. "Report," he called into his comlink.

"Clear," Cloud's voice came back. "No casualties."

The same, unfortunately, couldn't be said for the Eickaries. Of the twenty soldiers Su-mil had brought in with them, six were on the floor, four writhing silently in pain, the other two already dead. Even outnumbered as they'd been, the Lakran squad had given a good account of themselves.

At least, he hoped all the casualties had been caused by the Lakra. It would be very unfortunate if some of the rescuers had accidentally overshot their targets.

"This way, Twister," Cloud called. Twister looked up from the Eickarie casualties to find the rest of the stormtrooper squad moving back along the corridor toward the intersection where the newly dead Lakra were lying. "The company's meeting heavy resistance in the tunnels," he went on. "New orders are to attack from this end and try to break up their defenses."

Twister looked at Su-mil. The Eickarie was standing over the body of the Lakran squad leader, his eyes on Twister, his orange highlights gone dark again. "I'm sorry, but we can't do that," he told Cloud. "I made a deal with Su-mil to clear the dungeons first."

Cloud stopped short, turning around to look back at his unit leader. "Twister, this was a direct order," he warned.

"Understood," Twister said. "Good luck. We'll join you when we can."

One of the other stormtroopers had paused beside Cloud. "Yet you said you would not help us," Su-mil reminded Twister quietly.

"That was when I wasn't sure I could rely on your soldiers," Twister told him. "You've now proven that I can." A movement caught his eye: Cloud and the other stormtrooper had finished their conversation, and Cloud was jogging back down the corridor toward them as the rest of the stormtroopers resumed their march in the other direction. "I hope you're not here to argue," he warned as Cloud came to a halt in front of him.

"Hardly," Cloud assured him. "I decided that if they can manage without three of us, they can probably manage without four."

"And whole-unit court-martials are so much more efficient?" Shadow said dryly.

"Something like that," Cloud agreed. "Let's move."

Su-mil detailed three of his soldiers to take their dead and wounded back into the relative safety of the tunnel. Then, with Su-mil and Twister in the lead, the twelve remaining Eickaries and four stormtroopers set off for the dungeons.

They met no further resistance. Apparently, the squad that had burst in on them from this direction had been the last Lakra who hadn't already been summoned to either the tunnel defenses or to the surface. Alternating his attention between the distant battle reports, his helmet sensors, and the hallways themselves, Twister wondered if he dared hope that even the dungeon guards might have been called away to active service.

No such luck. At Su-mil's murmured warning, he and Shadow swung out around the last corner to find two armored Lakra standing at attention beside a massive metal door, blaster carbines slung over their shoulders.

A direct assault on the dungeons was apparently the last thing anyone in the Warlord's command structure was expecting. The two stormtroopers got off a solid volley before the guards had time to do more than scramble madly for their weapons. As the blaster bolts shredded the mercenaries' armor, Su-mil stepped out of concealment and finished the job with a pair of shots from his projectile weapon. "We must hurry," the Eickarie said as the two Lakra thudded to the floor.

"Wait a second," Cloud said as Watchman headed for the door. "We agreed to get you to the dungeons—"

"You agreed to assist in freeing the prisoners," Su-mil cut him off. "Come. Now."

"Twister?" Cloud asked, his mind clearly on their comrades fighting in the tunnels a quarter of the fortress away.

"You heard him," Twister said, suppressing his own impatience. "Come on."

The outer door opened onto a wide landing from which a dozen steps led down to a large, circular cavern with more locked doors spaced around its circumference. "How fast can you open them?" Su-mil asked, looking around.

"Very," Watchman assured him, stepping to a desk at one side of the landing and picking up a knife-blade-shaped data card. "All it takes is the key."

"Go," Twister told him, turning the muzzle of his BlasTech toward the door they'd entered through. "We'll watch for trouble here."

With the key in hand, the release did indeed go quickly. But as the imprisoned Eickaries began to emerge, blinking, into the brighter light of the cavern, Twister could sense that something was wrong. Many of them, not surprisingly, cringed back at the sight of Watchman's armor as he opened their doors, staring with the same fascinated suspicion at the other three stormtroopers grouped together on the landing. More baffling was the fact that they seemed to be avoiding not only their fellow prisoners but Su-mil and his soldiers as well.

It was Shadow who caught on first. "They're all from different tribes," he murmured.

"And they were captured before the United Tribes Agreements were put together," Twister said, a sour taste in his mouth as he understood. "Which means they're still fighting their petty little tribal disputes."

He thought he'd been speaking quietly. Apparently, not quietly enough. "Our disputes are not petty," Ha-ran insisted, glowering up at the stormtroopers from his position at the foot of the stairs.