A small green lizard scrambled up onto the shaper and sank against Slide's left thigh. The demon glared at it. "Get the fuck away from me. I didn't ask for reptile contact. If I wanted a frog, I'd lick it."

The lizard looked at Slide with reproachful and swivelling jewel eyes. "I was just trying to get warm."

"So get warm elsewhere. I'm not a heat source."

As he spoke, he noticed two spook-looking men hunched over a monitor table playing Shoot The Fat Elvis, with a concentration that either indicated that they were hazarding for real readies or faking it, and if they were faking it they were most probably spooks, Imperial Intelligence Agency or worse. They had that outside look of IIA. Pork pie hats and round indigo glasses as though dressing identically constituted a disguise. Maybe, later, they would require a quiet warning. Don't fuck with me, boys. I'm a genuine fucking demon from all the way back. On the other hand, for Yancey to do anything to draw attention to himself right then was probably a big mistake. He hadn't been lying or running a hardluck tale to the Skylar 5 about being posted as a three time deserter. He all too clearly remembered the exact thought that had encapsulated his improvised exit from the conflict.

Fuck this for a sense of adventure.

Enough had been enough. Turquoise phosphorous had streamed from the Delta Vulcan's undersides as they had made their strafing runs, igniting as it touched, turning at least quasi-human men into windmilling fiery special effects. And as if the chemical fire wasn't enough on its own, needleguns ripped fragment spirals and.70 caliber hollow point HE, like angry bees, chewed through the flames, and the lucky ones were cut to pieces before they fried. The Delta Vulcans would have blotted the sun from the sky, if we'd had the luxury of either, as they barreled across the hard deck with a howl that ended all other sound, while the grunts-of-the-thrall fell to attitudes of prayer and pleaded for the blessing of divine cover. Slide, demon that he was, grinned to himself even as he clung the reverberating ground.

Nothing divine round these parts, lads, just scorching destruction. The Darogad had become an abattoir of machine slaughter, a killing field, pure and simple. Even to one like Slide, who had an age-long experience of violence and horror, the level of slaughter was almost beyond comprehension. In the most literal terms, the battle plain was shambles in which the men and the others died where they stood. Of course, Slide couldn't die, but the body he currently occupied was taking a dreadful beating, and wouldn't hold out much longer. Had he been human, he'd have been dead ten times over. Even the predator gas bladders in from the way-beyond, drawn by the curiosity when the first TV images of Dachau hit their star system, were now no more than rotting shreds. Only one word for it. The old Marine Corp's epithet, cluster-fuck; an out of the time stream, multidimensional cluster-fuck. That said it all.

I should never have signed up for this cluster-fuck in the first place.

This was double fucking jeopardy, played out against a moonscape diorama of shell craters and sandbags, shattered and blighted trees, ruined foxholes, and shreds of men and uniforms hanging on rust-red razor wire. Trenches were choked with mud, corpses, and slime-green toxic water, while skulls were crushed under the tracks of armored vehicles from the recent past, and the distant Skynet future, and vampire butterflies, heavy from deep and unstinted drinking, lazily flapped and flew, seemingly unaware of the relentless flak and radiation. Only the Moderns and the Futures now remained to continue the futile fight. The Retros were long gone. Macedonian phalanxes, Zulu impis, and rifle companies from the Somme had been mown down in the first minutes of engagement like stands of wheat. The Redcoats had formed desperate squares, and the Prussian cavalry, black plumes tossing, had charged through plasma bursts with all the courage of the truly insane. The Red Fog had eaten away the mail and Damascus blades of the Saracens, scorched their lungs, and liquefied their screaming horses' eyes. Seeing what had come to pass, the Zouaves and Legionaries had taken to their heels, but all to late, dying with the final knowledge that they had been capriciously sacrificed to nothing more than a moment of spectacle, and a megalomaniac leader's vanity of pomp and circumstance. He could see a spectral Howdy trace above the ruin of a shell hole, and Slide stumbled painfully to his feet, tossing away the burned-out blaster, and limping towards what could just be his salvation.

It's time to cut your losses, boy, and get the fuck out of here.

In the cooch joint, the quasi-woman in white, having failed to entice Slide, was now homing in on two men playing Shoot The Fat Elvis. She made to do nothing more than put down a side-bet, but Slide was pretty damn certain he'd detected a communication pass. Did that mean she was IIA too? Probably not an agent, but almost certainly hard wired as a Data Collector. Every quasi in a place like this had to be playing one or more side-angles. Even with tips and hustles, they didn't make enough for it to be otherwise. With little or no doubt she'd been checking him out, sniffing what she could from the hooded stranger with a borrowed body as ragged as Swiss cheese. How could he expect otherwise? Slide couldn't see that she could have learned much. He'd told the Skylar 5 more about himself, but Skylars were famous for keeping what they knew to themselves. That's why they were Skylars in the first place. The quasi was probably looking to part up with what crumbs she'd gleaned for a spare change gratuity. If they were Imperials, he should have been up and gone. No way did he want to fall back into the hands of Hassan IX's people, especially the Ministry of Virtue. Had he been fit he would have already been on the move, not taking any chances, but pain and exhaustion were making him lazy, willing to risk all to sit and hurt for a while. Maybe he should have hijacked the lizard's body and slithered out of there unnoticed. Slide preferred to be bipedal, at the very least humanoid. He had tried a reptilian corpus a couple of times when nothing else had been available, and he really hadn't liked it.

Then the portal fluttered and all of Yancey Slide's speculations became redundant. A three-team of Pentecostal Fire Boys on the snatch came in; probably freelance skip-chasers but maybe GS-AS which was as good as freelance in this reality. That familiar watchful silence fell, proving better than any mission credentials that these newcomers had jurisdiction. The game engines whispered to a stop. Just to hone the edge of the tension, the three-team had a snitch in tow, his head swathed in the traditional Informer's Mask, so the canary could see and not be seen, identify but not be recognized. As the scary quartet made their slow, curious, and all seeing circuit, no one moved. This was a circumstance in which any sudden reaction could prove fatal.

If you were on their list, forget about it. With the Fire Boys actually in the room, to run would be death or worse. Finally they halted and all who breathed held their's. The snitch pointed with the Hand of Doom at the gilded boy in spandex, the one with tan who'd been dancing. The reductor flashed and, without a word, the kid was 2Ded into a null cookie in a sparkle of flux-flutter, leaving only the unmistakable whiff of ozone and antimatter.

The three-team turned and the snitch continued to scan the crowd. Slide didn't have to wait for the informer's theatrics. When his head stopped moving Slide knew the sonofabitch was looking at him. He pushed back the hood of his habit and slowly raised his rotting hands into plain sight. "You got me, boys. You've nabbed po' Yancey. I'll come quietly. You won't need the fire."