one of the more up-to-date pan-human

medical textbooks. He proudly showed this to Horza, including a few of the moving pages, one of which

showed in vivid color

the basic techniques for treating deep laser burns in the most common forms of digestive tracts. Lenipobra thought it

looked

like great fun. Horza made a mental note to try even harder not to get shot in the Temple of Light. Lenipobra had very long

and skinny

arms, and spent about a quarter of each day going about on all fours, though whether this was entirely natural

to his species or merely

affectation Horza could not discover.

Lamm was rather below average height, but very muscular and dense looking. He had double eyebrows and small horn grafts; the

latter

stuck out from his thinning but very dark hair above a face he usually did his best to make aggressive and threatening.

He did comparatively

little talking between operations, and when he did talk, it was usually about battles he had been in,

people he had killed, weapons he had used,

and so on. Lamm considered himself second-in-command on the ship, despite Kraiklyn’s

policy of treating everybody else as equals. Every

now and again Lamm would remind people not to give him any problems. He

was well armed and deadly, and his suit even had a nuclear

device in it which he said he would set off sooner than be captured.

The inference he seemed to hope people would make was that, if they

upset him, he might just set off this fabled nuke in a

fit of pique.

“What the hell are you looking at me for." Lamm’s voice said, in among the storm of static, as Horza sat in the shuttle, shaking

and rattling

inside his too-big suit. Horza realized he had been looking across at the other man, who was directly opposite.

He touched the mike button on

his neck and said:

“Thinking about something else."

“I don’t want you looking at me."

“Us all got to look somewhere," Horza said jokingly to the man in the matte-black suit and gray-visored helmet. The black

suit made a

gesture with the hand not holding a laser rifle.

“Well, don’t fucking look at me."

Horza let his hand drop from his neck. He shook his head inside the suit helmet. It fitted so badly it didn’t move on the

outside. He stared at

the section of fuselage above Lamm’s head.

They were going to attack the Temple of Light. Kraiklyn was at the controls of the shuttle, bringing it in low over the forests

of Marjoin, still

covered in night, heading for the line of dawn breaking over the packed and steaming greenery. The plan

was that the

CAT

would come back in

toward the planet with the sun very low behind it, using its effectors on any electronics the temple did

have, and making as much noise and as

many flashes as it could with its secondary lasers and a few blast bombs. While this

diversion was absorbing any defensive capacity the

priests might have, the shuttle would either head straight for the temple

and let everybody off, or, if there was any hostile reaction, land in the

forest on the night side of the temple and disgorge

its small force of suited troops there. The Company would then disperse and, if they had the

facility, use their AG to fly

to the temple, or—as in Horza’s case—just crawl, creep, walk or run as best they could for the collection of low, slope-

sided

buildings and short towers which made up the Temple of Light.

Horza couldn’t believe they were going in without some sort of reconnaissance; but Kraiklyn, when tackled on this point during

the pre-op

briefing in the hangar, had insisted that that might mean giving up the element of surprise. He had accurate maps

of the place and a good

battle plan. As long as everybody stuck to the plan, nothing would go wrong. The monks weren’t total

idiots, and the planet had been Contacted

and doubtless knew about the war going on around it. So, just in case the sect had

hired any overhead observation, it was wiser not to attempt

a look-see which might give the game away. Anyway, temples didn’t

change much.

Horza and several of the others hadn’t been very impressed with this reading of the situation, but there was nothing they

could do. So here

they all sat, sweating and nervous and being shaken up like the ingredients of a cocktail in this clapped-out

shuttle, slamming into a potentially

hostile atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. Horza sighed and checked his rifle again.

Like his antique armor, the rifle was old and unreliable; it had jammed twice when he tested it on the ship using dummy shells.

Its magnetic

propulsor seemed to work reasonably, but, judging by the erratic spread of the bullets, its rifling field was

next to useless. The shells were big—

at least seven-millimeter caliber and three times that long—and the gun could hold only

forty-eight at a time and fire them no faster than eight a

second. Incredibly, the huge bullets weren’t even explosive; they

were solid lumps of metal, nothing else. To top it all, the weapon’s sight was

out; a red haze filled the small screen when

it was turned on. Horza sighed.

“We’re about three hundred meters above the trees now," Kraiklyn’s voice said from the shuttle flight deck, “doing about one

and a half

sounds. The

CAT

’s just started its run-in. About another two minutes. I can see the dawn. Good luck, all." The voice crackled and died in

Horza’s helmet speaker. A few of the suited figures exchanged glances. Horza looked over at Yalson, sitting on the other side

of the shuttle

about three meters away, but her visor was mirrored. He couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or not. He

wanted to say something to her, but

didn’t want to bother her over the open circuit in case she was concentrating, preparing

herself. Beside Yalson, Dorolow sat, her gloved hand

making the Circle of Flame sign over the top of her helmet visor.

Horza tapped his hands on the old rifle and blew through his mouth at the mist of condensation forming on the top edge of

his visor. It made

it worse, just as he thought it might. Perhaps he should open his visor, now that they were inside the

planet’s atmosphere.

The shuttle shook suddenly as though it had clipped the top of a mountain. Everybody was thrown forward, straining their seat

harnesses,

and a couple of guns went sailing forward and up, to clatter off the shuttle ceiling before slamming back to the

deck. People grabbed for the

guns and Horza closed his eyes; he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if one of these enthusiasts

had left their safety catch off. However, the

guns were retrieved without mishap, and people sat cradling them and looking

about.

“What the hell was that." the old man, Aviger, said, and laughed nervously. The shuttle began some hard maneuvering, throwing

first one

half of the group on their backs while the people on the other side were suspended by their seat webbing, then flipping

in the other direction

and reversing the postures. Grunts and curses came over the open channel into Horza’s helmet. The shuttle

dipped, making Horza’s stomach

feel empty, floating, then the craft steadied again.

“Bit of hostile fire," Kraiklyn’s clipped tones announced, and all the suited heads started to look from side to side.

“What."

“Hostile fi

re.

"

“I knew it."

“Oh-oh."

“Fuck."

“

Why

did I think as soon as I

heard

those fateful words, ‘easy in, easy out,’ that this was going—" began Jandraligeli in a bored, knowing

drawl, only to be

cut off by Lamm.

“Hostile fucking fire. That’s all we need. Hostile fucking fire."

“They

are

gunned up," Lenipobra said.

“Shit, who isn’t these days." Yalson said.

“Chicel-Horhava, sweet lady; save us all," muttered Dorolow, speeding up the tracings of the Circle over her visor.

“Shut the fuck up," Lamm told her.