Eser stepped back, and turned to one of his guards. "Kill her," he said. "Then let's get to work."

The guard raised his weapon, sighted in on Savitri's torso, and tapped the trigger panel on his rifle.

The rifle exploded, shearing vertically in the plane perpendicular to the rifle's firing mechanism and sending a vertical planar array of energy directly upward. The guard's eyestalks intersected that plane and were severed; he fell screaming in pain, clutching what remained of his stalks.

Eser looked again at Savitri, confused.

"You should have left when you had the chance," Savitri said.

There was a bang as Jane kicked open the door of the administration building, the nanomesh suit that hid her body heat covered by standard Department of Colonization police armor, same as the others of us in our little squad. In her arms was something that was not standard Department of Colonization issue: A flamethrower.

Jane motioned Savitri back; Savitri didn't need to be told twice. From in front of Jane came the sound of Arrisian screams as panicked soldiers tried to shoot her, only to have their rifles shear and erupt violently in their arms. Jane walked right up to the soldiers, who had begun to wheel back in fear, and poured fire into their midst.

"What is this?' I asked Zoe, when she directed us into the shuttle to look at whatever it was she wanted us to look at. Whatever it was, it was the size of a baby elephant Hickory and Dickory stood next to it; Jane went to it and started to examine the control panel on one side.

"It's my present to the colony," Zoe said. "It's a sapper field."

"Zapper field," I said.

"No, sapper," Zoe said. "With a ssss."

"What does it do?" I asked.

Zoe turned to Hickory. "Tell him," she said.

"The sapper field channels kinetic energy," Hickory said. "Redirects the energv upward or any other direction the user chooses and uses the redirected energy to feed the field itself. The user can define at what level the energy is redirected, over a range of parameters."

"You need to explain this to me like I'm an idiot," I said. "Because clearly lam."

"It stops bullets," Jane said, still looking at the panel.

"Come again?" I said.

"This thing generates a field that will suck the energy out of any object that goes faster than a certain speed," Jane said. She looked at Hickory. "That's right, isn't it."

"Velocity is one of the parameters a user may define," Hickory said. "Other parameters can include energy output over a specified time or temperature."

"So we program it to stop bullets or grenades, and it will do it," I said.

"Yes," Hickory said. "Although it works better with physical objects than with energetic ones."

"Works better with bullets than with beams," I said.

"Yes," Hickory said.

"When we define the power levels, anything under that power level retains its energy," Jane said. "We could tune it to stop a bullet but let an arrow fly."

"If the energy of the arrow is below the threshold you define, yes," Hickory said.

"This has possibilities," I said.

"I told you you would like it," Zoe said.

"This is the best present you ever got me, sweetheart," I said. Zoe grinned.

"You should know that this field is of very limited duration," Hickory said. "The power source here is small and will only last a few minutes, depending on the size of the field you generate."

"If we use it to cover Croatoan, how long would it last?" I asked.

"About seven minutes," Jane said. She had figured out the control panel.

"Real possibilities," I said. I turned back to Zoe. "So how did you manage to get the Obin to give us this?" I asked.

"First I reasoned, then I bargained, then I pleaded," Zoe said. "And then I threw a tantrum."

"A tantrum, you say," I said.

"Don't look at me like that," Zoe' said. "The Obin are incredibly sensitive to my emotions. You know that. And the idea of every person I love and care about being killed is something I could get emotional about pretty easily. And on top of every other argument I made, it worked. So don't give me grief for it, ninety-year-old dad. While Hickory and Dickory and I were with General Gau, other Obin got this for us."

I glanced back at Hickory. "I thought you said you weren't allowed to help us, because of your treaty with the Colonial Union."

"I regret to say that Zoe has made a small error in her explanation," Hickory said. "The sapper field is not our technology. It is far too advanced for that. It is Consu."

Jane and I looked at each other. Consu technology was generally breathtakingly advanced over the technology of other species, including our own, and the Consu never parted lightly with any technology they possessed.

"The Consu gave this to you?" I asked.

"They gave it to you, in point of fact," Hickory said.

"And how did they know about us?" I asked.

"In an encounter with some of our fellow Obin, the topic came up in conversation, and the Consu were moved to spontaneously offer you this gift," Hickory said.

I remembered once, not long after I met Jane, that she and I needed to ask the Consu some questions. The cost of answering those questions was one dead Special Forces soldier and three mutilated ones. I had a hard time imagining the "conversation" that resulted in the Consu parting with a piece of technology like this one.

"So the Obin have nothing to do with this gift," I said.

"Other than transporting it here at the request of your daughter, no," Hickory said.

"We must thank the Consu at some point," I said. "I don't believe that they expect to be thanked," Hickory said. "Hickory, have you ever lied to me?" I asked. "I do not believe you are aware of me or any Obin ever lying to you," Hickory said.

"No," I said. "I don't believe I am."

At the rear of the Arrisian column, soldiers scrambled in retreat, back toward the gate of the colony, where Manfred Trujillo waited, sitting at the controls of a cargo lorry we'd stripped down and tinkered with for the purposes of acceleration. The lorry had sat at the side of a close field, quiet and with Trujillo hunkered down until the soldiers had completely entered into Croatoan. Then he powered the lorry's battery packs and slowly crept it along the road, waiting for the screams that would be his signal to put the pedal to the metal.

When Trujillo saw the plumes of Jane's flamethrower, he accelerated hard toward the gate opening of Croatoan. As he passed through the gates he threw on the lorry's floodlights, stunning a trio of fleeing Arrisian soldiers into immobility. These soldiers were the first to be knocked out of their mortality by the massive hurtling truck; more than a dozen others followed as Trujillo plowed through the ranks. Trujillo turned left at the road in front of the town square, sideswiping two more Arrisian soldiers, and prepared to make another run.

As Trujillo's lorry passed through Croatoan's gates, Hickory hit the button to close the gates shut and then it and Dickory both unsheathed a pair of wickedly long knives and prepared to meet the Arrisian soldiers who had the misfortune to run into them. The Arrisian soldiers were out of their wits with confusion as to how a milk run of a military mission could have turned into a massacre—of them—but unfortunately for them both Hickory and Dickory were in full possession of their wits, were good with knives and had turned off their emotional implants so that they could slaughter with efficiency.

By this time Jane had also started in with knives, having burned through her flamethrower fuel at the expense of nearly a platoon's worth of Arrisian soldiers. Jane dispatched some of the more grievously burnt soldiers and then turned her attention to those that were still standing, or, actually, running. They ran fast but Jane, modified as she was, ran faster. Jane had researched the Ar-risians, their armaments, their armor and their weaknesses. It happened that Arrisian military body armor was vulnerable at the side joins; a sufficiently thin knife could slip in and sever one of the major arteries that ran bilaterally down the Arrisian body. As I watched I saw Jane exploit that knowledge, reaching out to grab a fleeing Arrisian soldier, yanking him back, sinking her knife into his side armor and leaving him to sag away his life, and then reaching out to the next fleeing soldier, without breaking stride.