As Kamakura stood abruptly, he smacked his head on the low ceiling. With a smothered curse, he felt his scalp for any traces of blood, but his hand came away clean and dry. "It is obvious, Oguchi-kun. We attack. Our ninja infantry will get there by four

in the morning and blow up the jump troop barracks. Others will slip into the main building and kill the officers. The rest will kill whatever MechWarriors they can find, and then our Pantherswill destroy any further resistance they offer."

* * *

Dan Allard held his autoloading shotgun by the pistol grip and walked over to the Comcenter window. He brushed back the blinds and laughed as he looked out. "Come see this, Cat. Half of O'Cieran's folks are drunk and the other half are asleep."

Cat levered himself up from the desk. "Three-thirty in the morning. They ought to be asleep." He tossed a rag down over the assault rifle he'd broken down and had just completed cleaning. Joining Allard at the window, the big black man laughed deeply. "Rick will have them going full steam momentarily, and will turn this into an exercise in preparedness."

Dan nodded and returned to his chair. He glanced at the seven monitors informing him about the various perimeter alarms around the base. He punched some information in on one keyboard and frowned as the computer spit more data at him. "Damn! It looks like we have a bad IR sensor out in the northern sector."

Cat frowned and started to reassemble the rifle. "The jumpers didn't head out that way? They might have fixed it just to get us out there in revenge for our plan to get Jones shipped out."

Dan shook his head. "No. O'Cieran's got them heading out south, away from Branson's Swamp. He said his men knew it so well that they were getting careless." Dan typed quickly. "Nuts. The wind coming in off the swamp must have knocked down the sensor or wrapped wet leaves around it again because I'm getting nothing."

Cat screwed the rifle barrel back on to complete the weapon. He slammed a clip home. "Want me to go check?"

Dan frowned. "Safety in numbers, remember? I'll call Salome and get her to take over for us here while we recon the sensor. Only take a couple of minutes for her to get down here."

Salome arrived by the time Cat and Dan had pulled on body armor suits from the security locker beside the door. After zipping up the front of his ablative jacket, Dan pointed at the monitor. "The number four north sensor got strange about fifteen minutes ago. Crosschecks with other scanners report nothing but.. ."

Salome nodded and set her SMG down on the table. "Go peel the leaves off it and I'll have some hot coffee waiting when you return."

"Yeah," Cat laughed as he patted the redhead on the shoulder. "Sounds good."

Something just doesn't feel right,Dan thought as he led the way down the corridor to the stairs. Cautiously, he leveled his shotgun and pointed it down the stairwell. He nodded to Cat and the larger man swung around to cover the stairway as Dan descended. Once Dan reached the base of the stairs, he covered the corridor and signalled Cat to come down behind him.

The two men worked down the corridor to the 'Mech hangar cautiously. They saw nothing, though Dan jumped at even the slightest sound. Cat, as always, maintained an outward air of calmness, but Dan noticed the darting glances that the black man flicked at every shadow.

Dan eased himself up to the door and peered through the narrow window. He ducked back quickly, then looked again. "Someone's in there. Over by my Val."

Cat sneaked a glance through the window and nodded confirmation. With his left hand, he pointed to Dan and made a circling motion to the left. Then he pointed to himself and made a circle right. Dan nodded, placed his hand on the doorknob, and slowly twisted it. He nodded at Cat again and shoved the door open.

Cat burst through the door and cut right. Dan cleared the door and cut left. Running blindly, he ducked between two crates of parts. Popping up suddenly, he leaned across the larger crate to steady his aim. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Abruptly, Dan eased off the trigger and pointed the gun toward the ceiling. "My God, Jonesy, what are you doing here?" Swallowing hard, Dan stared at the wide-eyed man standing before him.

Sergeant Jones looked even more surprised than he had earlier in the evening. "I'm sorry, sir, but I couldn't sleep. I came down here .. . Well, I came . . ." He looked sheepishly up at the 'Mechs towering silently above him.

Cat stepped from between the legs of his Marauder."You came to say goodbye." Though he kept his face expressionless, Cat's words carried an air of respect.

Jones nodded slowly. "Hell, you work on these things so long, you begin to think of them as friends." He smiled and pointed at the Jennerthat Eddie Baker piloted. "I used to call that one ' Widowmaker' because of the pilots it lost. Then you gave Eddie, a man I had trained, a shot in it. Now I call it the 'Invincible.' "

The two MechWarriors exchanged glances and smiled. "Hell, Jones, you almost said goodbye big-time." He pointed to Cat and himself. "We're out to check the north sensor. Wet leaves again."

Jones shook his head. "Can't be. I put a screen sphere around it to hold the leaves out."

Dan turned to Cat, but had no chance to speak. Outside the

'Mech bay, a fiery red explosion wreathed the jump troops barracks in flame and crushed it like a Poulsbo python. The shock-wave blasted through the same 'Mech bay windows that the explosion had filled with white light only seconds before. Glass fragments whirled through the bay and exploded into sparkling dust against 'Mech legs. The ground heaved and hurled the three men to the ferrocrete floor.

A roar thundered through the 'Mech bay and all but swallowed the secondary explosion that blasted a door from its hinges and sent it cartwheeling into the hangar. Quick figures dressed in black poured through the smoke and fire around the doorway and slipped into the jagged, wavering shadows rippling throughout the bay.

Cat rolled to his feet first. He triggered a long, murderous burst at the Draconians. One ninja, bracketed in the doorway, virtually exploded and flew back outside. Two others, both to the right of the door, smashed back into the bay wall. They slid to the ground like ragdolls, their blood streaking the wall as they dropped.

Jones drew a pistol, but Dan shook his head and gave him a shove toward the rear entrance. "Go to Comcen. Tell Ward." As the Sergeant crawled back along the route Dan had used to enter the 'Mech bay, Dan crawled toward his Valkyrie.As one ninja came around between the legs of Kell's Thunderbolt,he raised his submachine gun to shoot Cat. Before he could do that, Dan's shotgun blast cut him in two.

Bullets whistled and whined as they ricocheted from the 'Mechs. One slug smashed Dan in the stomach and spun him over to the left. He doubled over, then crashed back breathless into a wooden crate. Somehow he managed to get one knee under him before he hit the floor. Biting back a cry of pain, he saw his assailant run from cover. One-handed, Dan poked his shotgun at the man and triggered two clouds of pellets. The first hit the man in the right shoulder and knocked him sideways. The second cut his legs from beneath him and toppled him to the floor.

Dan probed the impact site with his left hand, and pried the shell loose from his body armor. He crossed quickly back to where Cat was snapping off several shots at the advancing ninjas. "Must be a dozen of them, and every one of them with those damned circle-vision visors."