"We're going to have a little trouble dividing up the gear," Tom said thoughtfully. "Only got respirators for half of us. That's not good."

"Yeah. Better make sure it's the machine gunners who get them. Michael bought enough ammo for them to blow away most of Schwandorf. We've got to make sure they get the chance to use it all."

"We got lucky with the heavy stuff," Tom said. "Gun-ther and one of the others have handled assault cannon; Gunther knows about missile launchers from his army days, I guess. Ain't no one really trained with explosives, though. You want to play that one by ear?"

Serrin met the troll's grin with a laconic smile. He'd realized too late that they didn't have any physical details of Luther's place. All they knew was that it was a monastery. If it had something as simple as electrical fencing around it, blasting in with explosives might be the only way to enter before setting off the dozen alarms that any other kind of forced entry would trigger. Two things they didn't have much of were sublety and the ability to bypass surveillance. Sure, a high-explosive missile could do the job, but they only had two of them and couldn't afford the waste. Only/I Serrin stopped his train of thought. That was enough to blow up most of the damn building. Frag subtlety.

"We should arrive around three," Mathilde told him. "Plenty of time to scout the place before we go in. I take it you just want everything and everyone blown to drek?"

"That's the general idea," Serrin confirmed. "But don't we have to cross borders? I mean, isn't where we're going the, um, Marienbad Council? Aren't they going to check us out?"

"You kidding? Their security is a joke. They're a bunch of liberal-minded drekheads. If a tank convoy of armed terrorists turned up with nukes, they'd probably say it was an infringement of their civil liberties to refuse them entry. Just leave them to us."

Serrin looked at the huge array of armaments in the truck and realized they didn't even have a flask of coffee. He wondered whether they could risk stopping to pick some up. One of the orks cranked up a battered portable CD player and the dubious delights of lumpen ork rock filled the crowded interior. The samurai began to tap their feet, almost in unison.

Serrin had to work hard to keep from laughing. The gang of them looked like a cross between a ragged militia and a bunch of cheerleaders. But even a bunch of cheerleaders weren't to be sneezed at, with the weaponry they were carrying.

Then it occurred to him that had Michael still been with them, he could surely have disabled the monastery's security systems by decking into their control systems. That changed his mood. He no longer felt like laughing.

Martin sat back and waited for this last night to pass. Luther was wholly absorbed in his work now, the first batches being prepared, enough for the precious self-replicating samples to be flown out in the morning. Then he saw the elven figure outside the gates on the monitors.

He was about to activate the remote machine guns, then decided against it. That might solve a problem but attract the police, an irritation he could do without. He flicked on the audio monitor instead.

"Luther! Luther! They're coming to stop you. To stop your work. Listen to me! It cannot happen! You must be ready for them," the elf at the gate babbled. Martin let him ramble on for a moment, then gave security orders over the intercom. It worried him that the intruder was aware of their progress. Martin intended to empty his mind to find out exactly what he knew.

The planes were halfway across the English Channel by the time the orks had left the van in a forest clearing

outside Schwandorf, but they couldn't know that. They got into ragged formation and waited for their shaman to finish her assensing.

When she was done, she turned to Serrin and Tom with a look like thunder. Serrin had already sensed the power of the place. One touch was enough. He wasn't going to get close enough to get burned or to alert any magical defenses.

"The barrier is very, very strong," she said. "But he cannot hide the badness of the place. Now I believe you."

She turned to Gunther and began giving orders. The armor-jacketed samurai began a careful infiltration of the forest in small groups, each with a short-wave communicator.

"They're going to see us coming," Serrin fretted. "They must have IR and stuff. Not to mention watcher spirits."

"They're your job. I didn't see anything that wasn't obvious. You can deal with them, can't you?" Tom replied.

"I can, with the ones I saw," the mage replied. "What worries me is that there wasn't anything stronger. It must be hidden. That damn barrier could be concealing almost anything. This guy's a mage for sure, and if Julia's scoop was right, he could be as hot as hell. Frag it, I could use a spell lock right now."

"Couldn't we all," the troll said sarcastically.

"At least with the binox we'll be able to see what they've got from a way away," Serrin mused.

"Don't let you see through trees," Tom growled. "I think Gunther got it right. We don't get any closer than absolutely necessary, and just blow out the fence. Or the gates. I want to see one of them high explosives do its stuff."

"Should be fun," Serrin agreed.

"You got any doubts? I mean, about just frying everything in sight?"

"No. Not now that I've been here. Not with everything we know, and Michael in intensive. Not after the zombies. Not after what Magellan said. That's enough to make me want to destroy everything in sight."

"Yeah, me too," the troll said, though it was sad that he

should feel such a thing. "What say we shake on it, chummer."

They did, and Serrin regretted it. Tom was given to firm handshakes, which was fine if you were a troll. Otherwise, it felt like his hand was being squeezed by a metal clamp with infinite crushing potential. Then they shouldered their arms and headed into the darkness.

Niall was incredulous. The barrier was impossible to break. Even using everything he had, he couldn't invade Lutair's space. Trying to enter the building in astral form left him so drained that he'd fled, panicking. Once outside again, he felt his own power return to him. He re-entered his body and jerked into life, looking at the manifested spirit protecting his physical form.

"That isn't possible," he said. This was something he simply hadn't even considered.

"It is," the spirit replied. "If he knows your name. If he has something of you. If he has enchanted a barrier specifically against you. Then you cannot penetrate it."

"How could he possibly amp; " His voice trailed off. "The Family. They have given him something. They must be working with him, actively. That must be it."

He sat with his head in his hands, despairing. His masking was so powerful that Lutair could not have detected him, but he was utterly impotent.

"No spirit or elemental I raise can enter either," he said desperately.

"Quite so," Mathanas agreed.

"Then everything is lost. I can hardly walk up with a pistol in my hands and wave it at the gates."

The spirit, distracted from its protective duty, looked around and smiled at him.

"Niall, perhaps someone else has exactly that idea in mind. Let us wait and see what happens."

Luther was still unaware of anything around him, so totally absorbed was he in putting the finishing touches on his preparations, when the gates of the monastery simply evaporated into thin air. Incredulous, Martin sat and stared at the few monitor screens that were still giving

him anything more than static. He tried to activate the gateguns and realized they were useless. The elf had lied. He must have been a spy, an infiltrator. He'd babbled about three of them, an elf mage and a troll and some girl or other. But there was a whole damn army out there somewhere.