Before the additional Wyzhnyny scouts lifted from Seaside Base, their pilots were briefed. Among other things, they were given Tech 2 Kroliss's description of the alien craft: green, and about the size of a corvette. Actually, at eighty-three feet in length, a Wyzhnyny corvette was seriously longer than the forty-six-foot Mei-Li, and proportionately broader. A corvette could hardly be maneuvered into the rainforest.

Stoorvol's two scooters had barely cleared the trees behind them when one of the marines shouted, "Bogies aft!" Both Stoorvol and Haynes accelerated, snapping heads back, then darted down into the pirate gorge, to careen south together below the rim. They were quickly past the burn, then slowing sharply, lifted again to rim level, curved into the rainforest and proceeded eastward among the great trunks and dangling lianas. The whole sequence took perhaps fifteen seconds.

"Captain," said Olavsdottir, "that was exciting!"

"I'm glad you liked it," he answered drily. "Now let's hope they don't find us with their sensors." He switched on his transmitter. "Menges," he said, "this is Stoorvol. What are your coordinates?"

He got no answer. The forest damps transmission at both ends, he told himself. Ten minutes later, in a glade, he lifted above the trees and tried again, using more power. The reply was brief and faint, but readable. He fed Menges' coordinates into his scooter's navcomp, acknowledged Menges' reply, then ducked into the trunk space again and continued eastward.

"I didn't see the bogies," Olavsdottir told him.

"Right. They probably continued east when they lost us. But they'd sure as hell have reported us, which must have stirred things up considerably." And they haven't found the Mei-Li yet. That's the hopeful part.

He pushed as fast as he dared. The sun had been low when they'd left the burn, and once it set, this near the equator, it would get dark quickly. He didn't lift above the trees for a peek around. Didn't see the Wyzhnyny scouts' ground support fighters and APCs posted above the big gorge, waiting for word from the surveillance buoys. He didn't need to. He assumed they'd be there, they and more.

"How's our cargo doing?" he asked.

"All right so far," Olavsdottir answered. "But after a few more hours in those traps, they'll start dying."

Shit! "How much good will they be to us dead?"

"The composition of body fluids will begin to break down, probably including the venom. How much useful information we'd get then is impossible to tell. Some, possibly."

Stoorvol grunted. So we'll push, he thought. He stopped to rearrange personnel and transfer cargo, all the civilians and the hornets going to Haynes' sled. Stoorvol would haul the other four marines, in case a rearguard action was needed, or a fighting decoy, or someone to run interference. "If we run into trouble," he told Haynes, "don't hesitate to ditch the scooter and proceed on foot. Meanwhile load your belt nav from the navcomp right now, and be sure you take it if you ditch. And for godsake don't abandon the hornets!"

The two scooters went on again, side by side now. If they were detected beneath the trees, hopefully they'd read as a single unit. In the trunk space-the forest gallery-the light grew dimmer, more dusky. They were half a mile from the Mei-Li when bolts from a trasher ripped into and through the forest canopy, exploding overhead and on the ground. Broken branches and wood thudded and pattered behind him. Stoorvol shouted as if he had no helmet transmitter. "Set her down and run!" Then he darted upward through a gap in the foliage, evading branches as if by magic. In the air above, his marines poured blaster fire at the nearest Wyzhnyny gunboat, targeting its sensor arrays. Then he dove through another gap, and zigzagged erratically away from the hornet scooter. An APC was firing into the jungle as if tracking him.

He landed skidding, 300 yards short of the Mei-Li's coordinates. "Off," he barked, then triggered the scooter's delayed destruction charge and sprinted sixty yards before it blew. For a few seconds he lay panting, then got to his feet. His commandos were unhurt. After orienting himself in the deep dusk, Stoorvol sent the others on to find the Mei-Li. Alone he paused, squatting by a fallen forest giant overgrown with lichens, moss, and toadstools. The firing had stopped when the scooter had blown. Now it began again, and he sprinted around the root disk to crouch behind the great log. More debris rained down.

Clicking his transmitter, he spoke. "Gunny, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear, sir."

"Boats, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear, sir."

"Good. Gunny, if you've got any men on board, get them off now, ready to fight.

"Boats, Haynes and the civilians should reach you with the hornets soon. On foot. As soon as they're secured, get the Mei-Li out of there, without lights if possible. Gunny's people will help you. Did you both hear that?"

"Loud and clear, sir."

"Loud and clear, sir."

"Good. And Boats, those hornets need to reach the Bering as fast as safely possible; otherwise they may die, and dead they won't be much good. Then we'll have come all this way for nothing. Do not wait for me; I'll be keeping the Wyzhnyny distracted."

It seemed to him he'd already done a pretty good job of that. Otherwise they'd probably have found the Mei-Li and pounded hell out of her.

Meanwhile the trasher fire had stopped again. He suspected what that might mean, and getting to his knees peered over the log toward where the scooter had been. A minute later he saw Wyzhnyny troopers lowering through the canopy in slings.

Crouching, he padded off into the gathering darkness.

With the help of his helmet's active night vision, Stoorvol found his way readily. Even with his belt nav, and knowing his own and the Mei-Li's coordinates to four decimals, it would be easy to miss the boat in the jungle. Abruptly, gunfire sounded from multiple locations overhead: the rapid thumping of trashers, and the sizzling cracks of trasher bolts burning vacuum trails through the air. But without the tearing crashes of detonations in the forest roof, or the dull earthy whumps as they exploded against the ground. This continued for perhaps five long seconds, then cut off. The sound and its cessation told him what the target had been: the Wyzhnyny had been firing at the Mei-Li as she accelerated outward. But there'd been no explosion as of the collection boat blowing up or crashing. Menges had gotten away into warpspace.

Which meant that Haynes and his civilians had run all the way, carrying their hornet traps… Either that or Menges hadn't waited. His fists curled at the thought.

At any rate the situation had changed. He was here until he either died or was picked up by the Mei-Li, when and if she returned for Wyzhnyny prisoners. Stoorvol had ridden from Terra in stasis, and barely knew Weygand. Some commanders might justify leaving the system with what they had-the hornets. But there were others who'd try for the jackpot, especially since it seemed not to endanger the Bering herself. Weygand, it seemed to him, might be one of them.

As for himself, Stoorvol intended to get at least one Wyzhnyny prisoner. Stash him somewhere, properly stunned, safe from rescue or escape. When they'd left Gabrovo Base in the Balkan Autonomy, every one of his commando carried a stunner, a gag, and a fifteen-foot roll of tape in his rucker.