Brilliance seemed to penetrate from behind, through his skull. Waves of déjà vu alternated with surges of nausea, and for a moment it felt as if a tide of anomalous gravity were trying to lift him from the forest loam. Then the concussion wave hit.

It was some time before anyone was able to look up again. When they did, they had to blink through clouds of drifting dust and grit, past toppled trees and scattered vines. A seared, flattened area told where the Gubru battle cruiser had hovered, only moments ago. A rain of red-hot debris still fell, setting off fires wherever the incandescent pieces landed.

Prathachulthorn grinned. He fired off a flare into the air — the signal to advance.

Several of the enemy’s grounded aircraft had been broken by the overpressure wave. Three, however, lifted off and made for the sites where the missiles had been fired, screaming for vengeance. But their pilots did not realize they were facing Terragens Marines now. It was amazing what a captured saber rifle could do in the right hands. Soon three more burning patches smoldered on the valley floor.

Down below grim-faced chims moved forward, and combat soon became much more personal, a bloody struggle fought with lasers and pellet guns, with crossbows and arbalests.

When it came down to hand-to-hand, Prathachulthorn knew that they had won.

I cannot leave all of the close-in stuff to these locals, he thought. That was how he came to join the chase through the forest, while the Gubru rear guard furiously tried to cover the survivors’ escape. And for as long as they lived thereafter, the chims who saw it talked about what they saw: a pale green figure in loin cloth and beard, swinging through the trees, meeting fully armed Talon Soldiers with knife and garrote. There seemed to be no stopping him, and indeed, nothing living withstood him.

It was a damaged battle drone, brought back into partial operation by self-repair circuitry — perhaps making a logical connection between the final collapse of the Gubru forces and this fearsome creature who seemed to take such joy in battle. Or maybe it was nothing more than a final burst of mechanical and electrical reflex.

He went as he would have wanted to, wearing a bitter grin, with his hands around a feathered throat, throttling one more hateful thing that did not belong in the world he thought ought to be.

So, she thought as the excited chim messenger gasped forth the joyous news of total victory. On any scale, this was the insurgents’ greatest coup.

In a sense, Garth herself became our greatest ally. Her injured but still subtly powerful web of life.

The Gubru had been lured by fragments of chim and human hemoglobin, carried to one site by the ubiquitous transfer vines. Frankly, Athaclena was surprised their makeshift plan had worked. Its success proved just how foolish had been the enemy’s overdependence on sophisticated hardware.

Now we must decide what to do next.

Lieutenant McCue looked up from the battle report the winded chim messenger had brought and met Athaclena’s eyes. The two women shared a moment’s silent communion. “I’d better get going,” Lydia said at last. “There’ll be reconsolidation to organize, captured equipment to disburse… and I am now in command.”

Athaclena nodded. She could not bring herself to mourn Major Prathachulthorn. But she acknowledged the man for what he had been. A warrior.

“Where do you think they will strike next?” she asked.

“I couldn’t begin to guess, now that their main method of tracking us has been blown. They act as if they haven’t much time.” Lydia frowned pensively. “Is it certain the Thennanin fleet is on its way here?” Lydia asked.

“The Uplift Institute officials speak about it openly on the airwaves. The Thennanin come to claim their new clients. And as part of their arrangement with my father and with Earth, they are bound to help expel the Gubru from this system.”

Athaclena was still quite in awe over the extent to which her father’s scheme had worked. When the crisis began, nearly one Garth year ago, it had been clear that neither Earth nor Tymbrim would be able to help this faraway colony. And most of the “moderate” Galactics were so slow and judicious that there was little hope of persuading one of those clans to intervene. Uthacalthing had hoped to fool the Thennanin into doing the job instead — pitting Earth’s enemies against each other.

The plan had worked beyond Uthacalthing’s expectations because of one factor her father had not know of. The gorillas. Had their mass migration to the Ceremonial Mound been triggered by the s’ustru’thoon exchange, as she had earlier thought? Or was the Institute’s Grand Examiner correct to declare that fate itself arranged for this new client race to be at the right time and place to choose? Somehow, Athaclena felt sure there was more to it than anyone knew, or perhaps ever would know.

“So the Thennanin are coming to chase out the Gubru.” Lydia seemed uncertain what to make of the situation. “Then we’ve won, haven’t we? I mean, the Gubru can’t hold them off indefinitely. Even if it were possible militarily, they’d lose so much face across the Five Galaxies that even the moderates would finally get upset and mobilize.”

The Earth woman’s perceptiveness was impressive. Athaclena nodded. “Their situation would seem to call for negotiation. But that assumes logic. The Gubru military, I’m afraid, is behaving irrationally.”

Lydia shivered. “Such an enemy is often far more dangerous than a rational opponent. He doesn’t act out of intelligent self-interest.”

“My father’s last call indicated that the Gubru are badly divided,” Athaclena said. The broadcasts from Institute Territory were now the guerrillas’ best source of information. Robert and Fiben and Uthacalthing had all taken turns, contributing powerfully to the mountain fighters’ morale and surely adding to the invader’s severe irritation.

“We’ll have to act under the assumption the gloves are off then.” The woman Marine sighed. “If Galactic opinion doesn’t matter to them, they may even turn to using space weaponry down here on the planet. We’d better disperse as widely as possible.”

“Hmm, yes.” Athaclena nodded. “But if they use burners or hell bombs, all is lost anyway. From such weapons we cannot hide.

“I cannot command your troops, lieutenant, but I would rather die in a bold gesture — one which might help stop this madness once and for all — than end my life burying my head in the sand, like one of your Earthly oysters.”

Despite the seriousness of the proposition, Lydia McCue smiled. And a touch of appreciative irony danced along the edges of her simple aura. “Ostriches,” the Earth woman corrected gently. “It’s big birds called ostriches that bury their heads.

“Now why don’t you tell me what you have in mind.”