"I am a destroyer!" he said aloud. "I am a sword, and I work havoc, wherever I go. Even the most subtle dagger is no worse than I."

And with those words, he awoke fully for the first time in two days.

He looked about, his vision a bit hazy but adequate. There was nobody in the tiny room, though the curtain over the door was still moving as if someone had gone through recently. A tray beside his bed held medications in applicators, waiting, Ardan supposed, to be used on him.

He focused his eyes with some difficulty. On the containers was the tiny green triangle, crossed with armored hand and blade, that was the mark of House Liao.

He was a captive.

The thought sent adrenalin through him. He stirred. His muscles responded.

He lay for a moment, astonished. He had been so weak for so long...how was it that he could move now? The MedTechs in charge must be masters of their craft

He squirmed and sat up very cautiously, letting the reeling in his head subside before trying for more. He glanced down to see that he was neady clad in a white smock, hospital garb that hadn't changed in millennia. Below the edge of the litter on which he lay was a pair of flat slippers.

He swung his feet about carefully. Not too bad...a bit of dizziness, but it seemed to be subsiding. The slippers fit his big feet

When he stood up, Ardan almost fell. His head began its interior rocking, like a vessel on a stormy sea. But he was determined to stand, to walk. To get away while his attendant was gone.

Even as he made his legs cooperate, Ardan wondered a-bout his situation. He was a captive. Surely the MedTechs knew what their medications could do. Why had they left him alone just when he would be regaining consciousness?

He shook his errant mind back into order. Whatever the reason, he had to get out. Find his unit again. See if his Tech could repair his Victoror scrounge parts to make a hybrid 'Mech of it. There was so much to do...and he had no idea how the attack had gone.

Beyond the curtain was an empty hallway. At the end of it, behind a closed door, he could hear voices. He crept into the corridor and turned in the opposite direction. Doors lined the way, some open into empty chambers like the one he had left, some closed. Pushing one open, Ardan found himself staring at a bandaged shape spreadeagled on an orthopedic rack.

He moved on, trying a door from time to time. At last, he found one that led into another passageway. This was dark, as if little used. Glass-windowed doors on either side let dim light into the corridor, and he stepped to the one on his left and peered through into the room beyond.

It was a big chamber, filled with unusual and somehow disturbing equipment. Glass-fronted cubicles lined the side wall, and there was the throb of motors, as if compressors were operating beneath the floor.

He leaned against a metal table in the middle of the room. His head...his head was whirling again. Pictures were forming behind his eyes. As disturbing scenes bubbled up from some hidden place inside him, he put his hands to his eyes and moaned.

The sound was echoed faintly from one of the cubicles. He turned awkwardly, frying to see through the faint frost that covered the glass.

Someone was inside. Someone...familiar...? He moved closer, pressed his hands to the glass, and set his face between them, peering hard at the dim shape. As if summoned by his attention, the light intensified around the body inside.

"Hanse!" he whimpered, scrabbling at the glass with his numbed fingers. "Hanse, what have they done to you?"

The familiar face was blank. The eyes were closed.

As he stared, he began to see subtle differences. The lines of thought and humor that marked Hanse's square face were lacking in this version of it. The unique expression that made of Hanse's features something special and precious had not set its seal upon these identical features.

This was a blank, waiting to be finished. Waiting to be used...for what?

His head throbbed, and his brain seemed to whirl, like water sloshing about in a bucket. Ardan moved away from the cubicle. He had discovered something of terrible importance. Someone, surely, could interpret it.

But first, he must get away. Find the forces of Davion, wherever they might be. He turned blindly, his tiny hoard of strength expended. In a daze, he staggered back to the room in which he had awakened.

* * * *

Lees Hamman took the assignment enthusiastically. "I'll get him out," he told Felsner. "If the spy's report was correct, I’ll find him and bring him back. But he must be in pretty bad shape, if your information is to be believed. We've done harder things than breaching the Liao base."

"According to our information, there's not much armor or staff left there," Felsner agreed. "I wonder why they took the trouble to capture Ardan, only to leave him with such a light guard? Seems strange."

"Let's be grateful for small favors," said Hamman. "I’ll take an infantry unit for backup. This calls for something more subtie than a straightforward 'Mech attack. They might kill him before we could find him."

"I agree. We have a scout available. He might come in handy." Felsner thrust out a hand to his subordinate. "Good luck, Lees. A lot is riding on this."

"I know. Let's get moving, eh?"

Hamman found the scout, a man named Rem, waiting for him with the other six men assigned to the operation. When he reached his own quarters, they knelt on the floor and spread the detailed map of the Liao headquarters compound on the floor.

"Your man is in bad physical shape. The informant saw him brought in. Delirious, dehydrated. Starved. Injured ...Broken arm, bad cuts, and bruises all over him. And the Meds think he ingested some sort of organism that is playing havoc with his body chemistry and digestion. He is not going to walk out of there under his own steam." Rem pointed to an L-shaped extension of the main building.

"That is the main hospital area. At least, that's what our commanders used it for, and it has all the necessary equipment, beds, everything. So that's what they use it for, too. Hell be somewhere along this corridor, I'm pretty certain."

Hamman measured the distance from their present position to that of the Liao base. "How long will it take us to get there? And can we slip into the area unseen?"

"Six hours, by hovercraft," Rem replied. "And we can set down in the middle of this strip of woodland... see?" He touched the map. "Right there. We can go into a drainage tunnel that ends in this stream. It is one that serves the reactors, so we'll need radiation-shielded suits and boots. They won't expect anyone to come that way—even if they know about the tunnel at all."

He grinned. "They haven't been in control all that long. I doubt they've found it, yet"

"Good," said Hamman. "Can you get the necessary equipment issued within the next two hours? That will put us in the area just about sundown. A good time for this kind of foray."

"Done," the scout said. "Oh-nine-hundred hours for set-down?"

"Just right," the subcommander said.

They didn't quite make it, but their timing was close enough. It was dark when they set their hovercraft in a clearing in the forest. They donned their rad suits, then began creeping through the trees, on the lookout for the stream. They found it gurgling between narrow banks that were half-filled with rank growths of ferns and other vegetation. The stream would hide the eight of them until they reached the point where it met the mouth of the tunnel.