Instead they waited till the barrage stopped, then started toward the fighting at a lope. Their camouflage fields hid them better than any fabric could. Again they paused, near the end of 1st Battalion's battle line, but still back within the woods. The line was anchored by a battery of antiarmor trashers, themselves well armored. They'd waited to fire till the barrage lifted, to avoid the special attention they'd otherwise have drawn. Now they were firing trasher pulses at Wyzhnyny tanks and APCs.

The bots stayed where they were. Sergeant Ali Al-Daiyeen was in touch with the battery CO, and with Division's G-2B, which monitored constantly the input from the surveillance buoys. The order to move would come from them.

And come it did. The battery had been flanked, with Wyzhnyny in the woods behind it. Now the bots moved, running smoothly. A dozen or more Wyzhnyny had sheltered behind standing and fallen trees, and were shooting at the battery, suppressing protective fire from its dug-in blastermen. Another twenty or more had begun moving along behind the Jerrie defense line, attacking foxholes with blasters and grenades.

"We'll handle them," Al-Daiyeen radioed back. "Tell your people to keep firing. We'll be fine." Then, to his squad, "Podelsky, you and I'll take the skirmish line. Vernon, you three take out the Wyz moving west. Go!"

Isaiah and his two loped off, eyes seeking. Seconds later they saw the other Wyzhnyny, kneeling behind trees, firing at the foxholes, forcing their occupants to keep their heads down while grenadiers moved in, crawling on their bellies like dogs.

"Get 'em!" Isaiah said. They moved in, firing both clamp-ons: the right-arm blaster, and the left-arm, short-barreled slammer. The Wyzhnyny who survived that first burst of fire responded sharply and violently. Isaiah felt pulses strike his armored body, and ignored them, striding along the line, pumping short bursts, unaimed but accurate. Shortly the Wyzhnyny were all dead or dying.

"Anyone damaged?" he called. None were. "Ali," he said, "we're done here. Where next?"

"Back where we were before. I'll let G-3 know we're available."

Running to rendezvous, Isaiah felt a sense of accomplishment. He'd killed half a dozen at least, and it felt right.

General Pak's HQC-1 had lifted to thirty miles. He'd asked Tech how high he'd need to be to keep from being spotted by Wyzhnyny on the ground. Assuming their fixed flak installations had been taken out by the Dragons. Fifteen miles ought to do it, Tech had answered, depending on how good Wyzhnyny field equipment was, and how much they had on their minds. It turned out that fifteen miles wasn't enough, but given the power of his viewing equipment, Pak could see well enough from thirty.

Watching had taught him a lot. The Wyzhnyny had impressed him with their relentlessness in the teeth of heavy fire, heavy casualties. The amount of armor they'd used also surprised him. He hadn't thought so much of it would escape the Dragons and wolf packs.

In the ground fighting, his own air squadrons, armor, and antiarmor batteries, had reduced it seriously, though at greater cost than he liked to see. But War House had established the opening strategy: draw the Wyzhnyny into battle-the Wyzhnyny had taken care of that for them-and destroy their capacity to make an air and armor war of it. Turn the campaign into an infantry war, and keep War House informed in detail.

The Wyzhnyny had been onworld long enough to make major inroads in the supplies they'd brought with them. Reports from Tagus had indicated they'd begun growing crops there almost at once. That fitted his observations here. They were concentrating on self-sufficiency.

One of the Dragons had destroyed two Wyzhnyny cargo ships parked above a range of forested hills, lightering down cargo. Thick smoke had risen from the wreckage, as if they'd held something like grain and it was burning. Where were their cargos being stashed? He'd seen no buildings. Caves, perhaps? He'd look into that. And surely there'd been more than two cargo ships. Perhaps the others were hiding in warpspace.

How many supplies had been stored in the buildings the Dragons had destroyed? Hopefully the Wyzhnyny were in poor shape to fight a long ground war. At any rate they were a lot of parsecs away from their supply source, the Armada, presumably with no way to communicate with it. As for his own supply ships-hopefully they were safe.

If not… He'd handle his assignments, and hope that others handled theirs. But there were no promises.

It seemed to Esau he was a different person than he'd been when he and Jael had finished their foxhole that morning. Since then they'd fought off four attacks, each one lasting what seemed like hours. The last had come at dusk, and it was different from the earlier attacks. This time the Wyzhnyny hadn't used tanks and APCs. It was as if they'd run out. But they obviously had plenty of howitzers. Shells had come raining down on the forest's mangled edge, tons and tons of them, and everyone stayed hunkered down. Captain Mulvaney would tell them what was happening.

Mulvaney got updates from his platoon officers, and from Battalion. Battalion was in constant touch with HQC-1's all-seeing, automated command surveillance system. Which had separate channels to all regimental, battalion, and wing commands on the ground.

Esau knew none of that. He knew only what Captain Mulvaney said in his ear. Wyzhnyny infantry were coming, lots of them, on foot. No tanks, no APCs, just troops at a trot. "Six hundred yards… " Mulvaney had said. "Five hundred… Four hundred… Their artillery's quit firing! Be ready!" The roar of shells arriving cut off just after Mulvaney said two hundred. Then Esau and Jael stepped onto the firing step, spare power slugs held in their teeth for quick reloading. He barely had time to think, My God! The Wyzhnyny were coming at a hard run, a solid rank of them, unthinned by aerial attack. Neither Wesley used aimed fire now, just shifted their shoulders from side to side, pouring out deadly streams of pulsed energy in the dusk.

The Wyzhnyny had fallen like wheat before a scythe. But behind that first wave was another, and even with spare power slugs in their teeth, it took a moment to seat one.

The Wyzhnyny broke through, really broke through, because even having had replacements, quite a few foxholes were down to one man, or none at all. There were enemies on all sides, and 1st Battalion clambered out of their holes to fight. When a power slug burned out, they fought with bayonets. But not that many Wyzhnyny got through, and reserves had come up. Then some of the oncoming Wyzhnyny turned and ran, and in minutes only humans were left.

Then the reserve battalion took over the foxholes. 1st Battalion pulled back and mustered, then marched an hour northward through the forest, to where their sleeping bags and shelter tents had been stacked. The company cooks had a hot meal ready. The survivors ate, set up their shelter tents, crawled exhausted into their sacks and went to sleep.

Esau stayed awake long enough to wonder how many in B Company had died and how many were wounded. 2nd Platoon hadn't come off too badly, and he'd lost only three of ten in his squad.

Only! Give us another couple days like this, he told himself, and there won't be any 1st Battalion.

He looked at Jael, curled up already asleep. She always looked so pretty, sleeping-pretty face, sweet lips-but in the dark he could only remember them.

For the first time since childhood Esau Wesley prayed outside of church. "Oh, blessed Lord," he murmured, "don't let her get killed. If it's got to be one of us, take me. She's twice as good a person as I am, and if I lose her, I'm afraid I won't be worth shit."