Those blasted things were a damned disgrace, but he couldn't take the time to destroy them all. His little side-trip had to be quick and without a hitch. The three in the fortress knew nothing about it, but they were counting on him to be ready when they gave the signal.

He watched from various angles as the scorpion-like machines cut pieces off corpses and swallowed them. At the proper moment, he struck.

None of the other Collectors noticed him pulling one into the dark.

******

"Thanks." The Troll acknowledged as it tossed the Squid the way it had been headed a minute before.

The security cyborg walked quickly towards the altercation, noticing neither the Harpy nor the other Troll who bumped him slightly as he approached the large Troll. Most likely the large Troll was simply annoyed at having been summoned for fetch-and-carry or an upgrade, but it didn't hurt to investigate the retreating and fading figure, and put him in his place. The guard's sensors were slightly fuzzy, but he moved quickly past the cowering Squid and up the stairway toward CyLab 47A.

A Troll, a Harpy and a Squid continued up the central corridor. It would be nearly an hour before another Squid was killed after being discovered inexplicably carrying the missing identification of a Troll, who himself thought he had had lost it somewhere in the mess hall.

By then it would be too late.

******

The shadows within that massive ugly structure all taunted him, and he spat, waiting for the moment when one of them would come alive again. They were like scabs he wasn't allowed to pick. Or like the itching under a cast.

The readouts from the first Collector had shown it to be carrying a body that was alive. Well, nearly alive. He had been forced to leave the machine largely intact in a basement, holding its precious cargo, while he moved his equipment and "collected" another, more suitable specimen.

He sat on his haunches, only occasionally pausing to reflect on the shattered landscape and check for intruders, and continued to wait.

******

"You. Go ten meters through there and then fly up to the maintenance bar. I will give you instructions then." The Squid ordered in a voice that carried over the sound of engines. The Harpy swore and then folded her wings to squeeze into the crawlspace, disappearing from sight rapidly. A passing mutant uttered a dark chuckle, barely audible above the thrumming of the machinery.

A few seconds later another Squid stopped, this one dressed in green, looking back and forth from the blue-clad Squid to the Troll. The Troll stooped to focus a huge eye on the curious technician.

"But this access hatch..." the green-clad Squid began. The blue-clad Squid held its breath, estimating the number of witnesses in view down the hallway. This wasn't good.

"Get a better look!" laughed the Troll, grabbing the small technician and tossing him into the crawlway. There was a muffled noise and then silence.

"You. On your back in here and lift THAT," ordered the Squid in a voice which again carried down the corridor.

"Aw, ya damn spoilsport!" complained the Troll as he complied. Within a minute they were all out of sight of the occasional traveler, and the hatch was pulled closed by the blue-clad Squid. Now they could begin in earnest.

"This stuff is amazing. God, I could do almost anything."

"Hush, Sugar. Let's not wake the dead." For emphasis came the sound of a body falling down a shaft. "Did you get a good scan of that last guy?"

"Of course. You tired of looking like an ugly chicken?"

"Well, now, I'd say I'd make a right pretty chicken."

"You've got the legs for it." Put in Trickster. Salvage shot her a look - banter among the Nighthawks was one thing, but insults from outsiders weren't appreciated.

"I could have said 'breasts'." Trickster replied, barely apologetic. Cobbler broke the tension by laughing, a liquid Southern soprano. Relaxing, Salvage finished modifying her holographic projectors. The Harpy melted into a green-clad Squid.

"Well, now you're calamari." Trickster said, and they all three giggled quietly a bit to let off more tension.

They took a branch and then crawled further down the access tunnel, Salvage pausing occasionally to make modifications to the circuitry, often ending up with extra parts in the bargain. At each branch in the way, security features of the crawlway circuitry noted a single green-clad Squid performing minor maintenance.

By the time they reached the panel at the end of their final branch, the two women were carrying an armload of components, including the business ends of some defensive weaponry. Salvage grinned possessively.

"How are we doing, Sugar?"

"Pretty well. Let's do this one more time before I activate them."

Trickster looked at him speculatively. "Other than shopping, is there a good reason? Outsider's been waiting over three hours. We've got maybe forty minutes until the other incursions begin."

Salvage grimaced, then ticked the reasons off on his fingers. "Once we light this up, the whole fortress will be on alert. Even if this crawlway was completely destroyed, Squids and techbots could fix the damage in a couple of hours. Then they find our little packages, and it all goes to hell."

His hands suddenly dug into the pile of components, and began shaping something. "We've got to make sure that, once it starts, it will proceed in geometric progression. That means, not only do we need to make sure there are several different seeds, we have to make sure that they each grow."

Trickster whistled, watching Salvage install tiny flecks of purple into the new machine. It didn't look precisely like a security cyborg, but it unmistakably had that flavor. And, whatever else might be said about it, it seemed to fit admirably into the Elite armory. High-tech, ugly, and deadly. Salvage finished making adjustments, then pocketed the few components that he had not used. He went to a wall and began dismantling a section to use as armor.

******

The backup plan, unknown to the other three, called for him to capture a Collector to carry the Monolith technology into the fortress. It was conceptually simpler than the actual incursion plan, but subject to more random chance. And there would be little to help him if the ruse was discovered.

He had already procured the machine, subdued it and, with help from the Monolith technology, conquered its tiny brain. The advanced technology of the Monolith was even now modifying the payload space to carry his form, without any cryonic suspension, thank you very much.

One last time he focused his attention on the fortress in the distance. He had been in worse spots, about once a month for the last twenty years, he figured, but that didn't make them any more comfortable.

He laughed to himself, a dry, ghostly laugh. The next sucker that got in his way was going to die scared.

Sometimes you're the gun, sometimes you're the bullet. If you plan well, those are your choices.

Even as he prepared himself to be the bullet, he searched the fortress with his dark-honed senses. Suddenly there was an opening. A massive crack appeared in the itchy false-light field surrounding the fortress, shooting like lightning through the three-dimensional space in the ziggurat. He couldn't count the branches, and at this distance couldn't effectively scry thorough the shadows of that massive space.

If it hadn't been for the shadows that were blinking off and on, he wouldn't have known where to look for them. Dididit, Dah-dah-dah, Dididit. Trust a couple of spies to use Morse code for SOS. There were at least four locations giving another message. Dah-dah-dah, dah-didah. O.K.

Not knowing whether the distress call was tactically true or not, he grabbed the backpack and pushed himself into a dark place a good hundred feet beyond the SOS location. A defensive emplacement opened up on him, and he dived first into its dead zone, then after a second's recon into one of the O.K. locations. No traps, no weapons, no worries. The locations were safe, as advertised.

Nearby he could hear the sound of the bullets from a rail gun slamming against an alien metal bulkhead, along with other thuds and crumps that spoke of a massive battle. He surveyed the tactical situation, then planted some bullets into the back of a security cyborg who was shooting at Trickster. It immediately turned and began blasting the Troll behind it.

"Yeee-hah!" Yelled a beleaguered technician dressed in green, firing a rail gun that slammed a Troll into a wall. "I hear ghost bullets."

"Then it's evac time." Yelled a small Troll, pressing a button on his belt and melting into the visage of Salvage. He pressed a hand control and the attack bot beside him roared forward towards the oncoming security forces. "Cream Pie on Three"

"Check." Replied Trickster.

"Check." Replied Cobbler.

"Check." Replied the Outsider from the shadows. He was prepared when the attack-bot's flash grenades went off, followed by a smoke generator. Within seconds afterward, the Outsider pulled the other three to the relative quiet of the shadows. Outside, the battle continued.

"I miss Spot already." Salvage found he was only half kidding.

"There, there, Sugar, I'll get you another puppy."

"Later, maybe. This is the fun part."

With the help of the Outsider, Salvage moved up into the depths of the fortress, as close as he had been able to penetrate to the installation's massive computer nexus. The cascading failures caused by his meddling in the circuitry had gone far off in all directions, and were accelerating, but he knew that the technicians and techbots would quickly put a halt to the spread.

Even the self-replicating attack-bots would be conquered by the Elite forces, once they determined what was happening. After all, it took the things nearly a half-hour to replicate under perfect conditions, and there were only four of them out there. But the circuitry they destroyed in their Von Neumann quest would take the energy of the fortress's defenders away from the search for team Epsilon, and that was what they most needed.

He began to set up the Monolith hardware.

Cobbler kept watch while The Outsider took Trickster elsewhere to cause more trouble. They were going to feint an assault on the control center, then allow themselves to be forced back and laterally away from Cobbler's current refuge. That should concentrate the Elite forces on the other side of the fortress, giving Cobbler and Salvage a little extra time to make their assault count.

Cobbler checked her equipment. The rail gun was nearly out of ammunition, having accounted for about a dozen of the heavily armored Trolls and security cyborgs. She had liberated some heavy gauge plasma weapons just before the Outsider had pulled her to safety, but she wasn't particularly confident about their effectiveness, so when the Monolith equipment was doing its duty, she would ask Salvage to manufacture some more rail gun ammo. Until then, she would have to make do with the captured weapons, protecting the entire future of this war.

The reconnaissance missions had determined that this fortress was topologically the closest to the Celestial Keep, whatever that might mean to people whose technology could transport troops across the planet in seconds. So their attack here, if successful, would cut across the Elite communication lines, and simultaneously provide a platform for an assault on the computers of the Keep itself.

This mission had been kept top secret. None of the other incursion forces, none of the military command, none of the other Protectorate members, no one had a clue that it was going on at all. It could be too easily countered if it were discovered. For example, by nuking the fortress.

As Salvage slowly shaped a pile of crystals in a growing purple light, Cobbler kept watch over the future of the world.

******

He would dream of this for weeks, running through three-dimensional metal mazes, haunted by the faces of security cyborgs, technicians, Trolls all jumbled together, twisted in agony or morphing into the faces of people he had known. Or others he had killed.

If only he could sleep...

His way down the corridor was blocked momentarily by a Troll contingent. He reached through darkness to grab one's security badge, dropping it to the floor a few meters away. The security emplacements behind the Troll opened up, splattering it into chunks in front of him. The others turned to shoot back at the threat, and in the confusion he stepped off the corridor into a nearby access tunnel.

He pushed on, diving past an ugly mechanical dog that cocked its head but refused to fire at him, then into an alcove where blessed true shadows closed around him. He could feel a three-dimensional puzzle closing around him - they were repairing their fractured defenses at an alarming rate. As he stood panting, his hand touched the device Salvage had given him.

Last Resort. It'll only work once.

The Outsider hadn't worked with the Nighthawks before. Even though Salvage himself had a very amicable reputation in most of the world, for some reason the Outsider had always thought of the Nighthawks as a government version of the Yakuza. Follow the rules, don't think, and kill when you're told to. His experiences in Vietnam might have colored his viewpoint a bit on that, however, and their very secretive nature led to fairly nasty speculation about the type of wetwork they might do. These guys made Delta Force look like blabbermouths.

But this guy had, within hours, analyzed the advanced Elite technology and taken the time to develop a disruption unit that would blow out a few hundred meters of security grid. And he had accomplished this all while rerouting circuits, bypassing the security itself, and preparing landing places for the Outsider. Then he had developed this unit, just so that the Outsider could escape whatever trap might happen next.

Salvage was friendly, of course, but this wasn't from friendship. Once more, in a long life of deadly peril, the Outsider recognized character for what it was. Professionalism under fire.

Not for the first time, the Outsider was thankful that the Elite didn't have any like him.

******

The intruder had been determined to be the Outsider, which made the capture fairly simple. Even now, he had techbots setting up traps, some simple and some elaborate, while other techbots and meat technicians were correcting the damage to critical systems and the security net.

However, the fact that some of the intruders appeared to be capable of distracting the sensor webs, or disguising themselves as other personnel, made it difficult to determine whether they had been eliminated or not. Oh, surely many units had been killed while lacking or wearing incorrect security badges. But it was difficult to believe that penetration had been possible in the actual number of such units that had been detected. Nonetheless, meat units were expendable, if it eliminated the threat.

A more troubling aspect was the increasing failure of techbot units in several places in the fortress to respond appropriately to revised orders. Once they entered an affected crawlway, they seemed to be unable to hear orders from the central processing matrix. The crawlway sensors indicated that they were there, repairing the damage caused by the intruders, but no messages were coming through, and further units sent to relay orders suffered similar failures.

This necessitated investigation. The Millennion issued appropriate orders.

******

His mission had become much simpler since he had discovered The Trick. He was a good dog. Finding the first dead techbot had been an accident. But he had made the leap from there.

Really it had been Spot C that had devised The Trick. But, since they shared a common memory up to the time Spot C7 was completed, making that distinction wasn't natural to Spot C7. It never occurred to him that the Good Dog might be someone other than himself.

Defend Friends, Survive, Damage Enemies, Hide, Replicate.

Spot C7 extruded a manipulator and modified a small section of the sensor net in the wall. This was the hard part of The Trick. Doing it wrong meant that you could Wait twenty minutes for nothing. Or it could mean that many Enemies could come.

That was Bad.

Then he took another small section of wall apart to provide material for improving his armor, and settled down to Hide and Wait.

Techbot 901.700.054 noted the wave fault in the sensor grid on level 700, section 27, well within its assigned area of repair. While several of its usual companions had been rerouted to other areas, and traffic indicated that many other levels and sections were disaster areas, its own designated area had been very quiet.

It was happy to correct a wave fault for the glory of Autocrat.

It moved to the appropriate panel and opened it to reach the access to the faulty area. Outside of its direct vision, behind the panel, an extra piece of machinery sat quietly.

Once the techbot had fully entered the crawlspace, Spot C7 pounced on the it, disabling its sensors and communications equipment with a single low-power blast of his muzzle. Then, with skill born of experience, he began to refashion the techbot. It took him seven minutes to complete the reconfiguration of the techbot into Spot C7F, and another minute to program his new duplicate.

He left the brand new duplicate to begin its armoring, and moved elsewhere to begin The Trick again.

He paused behind a panel leading into a major hallway. There were three big Enemies and several little Enemies erecting some machinery across the halls. This was a Bad Thing.

Defend Friends, Survive, Damage Enemies, Hide, Replicate.

He could Damage Enemies here, but could he Survive? The timestamp was not yet greater than the time for reversing that command, so it still overrode the next hierarchical command.

He would have whined, but that would not have been Hiding.

******

"Thinking," said Salvage, with an odd tone in his voice.

"It's right pretty, like dewdrops on a spiderweb." At a tiny noise, she swung her blaster up to aim past him at a shape in the darkness.

Spot C7D5B barked.

"Spot!" whispered Salvage.

"Yes, Master?" said the attack-bot.

"Good Dog. Unit number?"

The attack-bot cocked his head slightly, looking at the oddly lit netting on the wall. It didn't look like either Friend or Enemy. What was it? "Spot C7D5B."

Salvage whistled lowly. Cobbler looked from him to the dog and back. "What?"

"Fourth level down the C line, average five per level. If all lines averaged that successful, we've got maybe a thousand Spots out there."

The web flashed brightly, then started sparkling in rapid fashion, like purple Christmas lights on amphetamines. The attack-bot swung to face it and began powering its weapons.

"No, Spot. That is your Most Important Friend!"

Spot C7D5B looked at the sparkling web with the robotic equivalent of awe. Most Important Friend. This was his highest calling. "Defend Friend."

"Good Dog."

******

The only way out would be down one of two brightly-lit corridors, crawling with mutant uglies and protected by an itchy force screen. Unless he wanted to play his hole card, the only thing on his side was a choice of timing.

So he kicked out the panel and dived into the light, shooting ghost bullets into the oddly-shaped fixtures placed several meters up the walls. None of them shattered.

Gun emplacements opened up, ripping through the air where he had been, tugging insistently at his cape as he dodged down the corridor. Even as he placed a bullet into the head of the tallest Troll on the defensive barricade, he knew he wasn't going to make it.

Spot C7 saw the Friend dive out into the corridor and immediately brightened up. The need to Wait was over. He broke through the wall to begin Damaging Enemies.

The Centurion turned to see what the noise behind her was all about. Some kind of modified techbot had disabled two of her own techbots and was attacking her barricade from behind.

The overall tactical situation could be affected by this development. The Centurion stopped leading the attack on the Outsider long enough to report the errant techbot to the Millennion. Techbots were not designed for warfare, they were simple repair tools. This new unit was dismantling them in a few seconds each.

About the time she finished the report, a ghost bullet penetrated her carapace, and she knew no more.

******

Renegade techbots, failed traps, faulty security grids, what next?

If Murphy's law had been part of his programmed training, he would have known not to ask.

He had finally called for help, requesting a dispatch of troops from fortresses 202 and 204, which were farthest from the invasion theatres. He verified that the quantum gate to each of those locations was powered, even as he powered down the quantum gate to the Celestial Keep. Autocrat would not be amused if the intruders proceeded to the Keep itself.

The Celestial Keep must remain safe.

******

It had unique vulnerabilities.

This computer system had been designed by a mind advanced beyond human description but corrupted by power. So corrupted, it assumed complete power over lesser systems as a matter of course. And therein lay its weakness.

A single packet of information could be sent up line, saying, in effect, here is the program you told me to write for you to run on system x. And the receiving system would run it as a matter of course.

The fragment gently reached out, co-opting systems and modifying alarm values. Certain locations disappeared off the damage list, while others suddenly began registering intrusions. A subroutine in the central processing matrix, designed to clean up the database after personnel loss, began randomly deleting security records.

Phase Six had begun.

******

Down the hall, another force of Trolls had erected a barricade, as instructed by the voice that called itself the Millennion. A disguised invasion force was expected from this gate, and it must be repelled, for the glory of Autocrat.

To Spot C6R, they all looked like Enemies.

As the gate was dissolving, when he saw his chance, he leaped thru it to the new fortress, and according to the timestamp and a random dog name generator changed his designation to Lassie K.

******

Whatever that might be.

It hadn't helped when a voice had been propagated over the tactical sound systems claiming to be the Millennion and ordering the deaths of all techbots. Then shortly afterwards, ordering the deaths of all Centurions. Then claiming that both orders were fake. Then claiming that the second and third were fake. While the advancing confusion had finally led to force preservation by squad aggregation, it had been too late to save the hapless Centurions. They were long gone.

How could a force so ingrained to obey authority survive, when authority was stripped of its legitimacy? When it was rendered nonsensical, contradictory, and even comical?

Trickster smiled haggardly. For the moment, she only had to remain among the Trolls and act as they did. But, unlike their mutated and cybernetically enhanced forms, she was tiring rapidly. If she couldn't find a way to slip away soon, she would be discovered.

It happened quickly - they came on a force of several security cyborgs fighting with a roughly equal number of modified techbots. "This way," she yelled and dived into an access hatch in a wall.

The nearest Troll attempted to follow her lead, while the others loudly debated whether the security cyborgs needed help, or whether perhaps the techbots might be the pro-Autocrat forces. After all, the first fake message had been to kill the techbots. Or was it the second fake that the first was fake?

Where was a Centurion when you really needed one?

They probably would have dithered longer, but one of the Spots decided to begin with a preemptive strike on one of the four remaining Trolls, killing him, and that cleared up the confusion of the other three marvelously.

Trickster moved quickly up the crawlway, morphing into a slightly smaller Troll, then finally her native form once she was out of sight of the battle. The Troll who had chosen to follow her managed to get himself stuck in the crawl space, effectively blocking pursuit while taking himself out of the battle. She couldn't have hoped for better.

She needed a place to rest and think. Sowing confusion might be fun and helpful, but it seemed that with only a little more effort, they could probably take the whole fortress. That would be beauty, she thought.

It was funny... those robot attack dogs seemed to have a better tactical sense than leaderless Elite troops. Twice she had seen a single dog account for three or more mutants, even though the techbot armor was spotty at best.

And she had been amused, and said nothing, when the squad she was with would kill a techbot or an attack dog and then leave it lying in the corridor. To later be dragged off and repaired by other attack dogs.

It was as if authority was substituted for leadership. Since individual troops had no authority in the Autocrat hierarchy, they had no allowance for leadership.

The entire Elite hierarchy was authority without wisdom.

Not unlike the prior American administration, although to a completely different scope and end.

She sighed. How many American movies would have an Indian sitting in a high-tech crawlspace, thinking about wisdom, rather than sitting on a mountaintop dispensing it? There were certainly more things in Heaven and Earth than Hollywood had ever dreamed of.

Her musings were interrupted by a sound from behind her. She turned to see the muzzles of two blasters aimed at her, underneath the cybernetic eyes of a techbot.

"Friend?" it asked.

"Good Dog," she replied.

******

A similar packet arrived from fortress 204, also integrated into the same slot. As expected, the two would interact mildly when executed. This was, after all, the way the request for them had been designed.

The combined job was slotted into a minor execution matrix 3D00, and allowed expansion access through 3FFF if required. The job was slightly slower and more resource-intensive than expected.

******

Within the darkness, something moved swiftly and surely to a mechanical access hatch twenty meters above the ground. Electronic access was requested and granted in Elite code, and the hatch was opened briefly, then closed after a momentary inspection.

The familiar pattern of the techbot's inspections continued at a few more hatches, then stopped shortly before the invading metas were driven away from Elite base 103. Among the smashed remains at the scene the Collectors reported a techbot, so sub-unit 904 of Millennion 103.100 ordered a replacement to be constructed. No further notice was taken.

Hundreds of miles away, at Elite base 104, a frontal assault was under way. An unnatural ice storm was paralyzing many of the external sensors. Elite mutant warriors were battling the intruders but succeeding more often in dying from so-called friendly fire. And at a crucial moment, as an enemy meta was sweeping low across the face of the fortress, an exhaust port happened to open to release some waste gasses.

Britannia threw a large package into the deep pipe, then banked to rejoin her team as the exhaust hatch closed. The Lancer chasing her didn't bother to report the package - the superior Elite technology could not possibly be damaged by anything that small, and besides, his job was killing the enemy, not worrying about sabotage. The package would undoubtedly be detected and dealt with.

Indeed, a few minutes later, a Technician assigned to section A17 of base 104 noticed a slight blockage in a secondary exhaust port which had been opened briefly during the recently won skirmish. Since reporting such a minor nuisance to his superiors could result in an extremely painful reprimand, he decided to send a techbot to investigate and clear the obstruction. According to its current projected schedule, it would be available in about fifty minutes.

******

He sat and listened intently with that other sense. He had never come up with a decent English word for it - it was just what happened when he looked at equipment and felt what should be there. The closest term he could ever come up with was the Japanese word "ma" - an aesthetic sense of the emptiness of space and the fullness of the emptiness. The words didn't matter, though. It was more the zen of doing.

The blink of each light slowed to a crawl, and a reverie closed around him. Each blink was an initiative, a sally, a riposte. Packets of shaped thought moved off from the Fragment, careening down the wide open corridors of the Elite systems, establishing outposts of purpleness among the silver equipment ranged in three dimensions around him.

Each individual routine or program or data unit... at that level of technology, the primitive distinctions blurred considerably... was a self-creating, self-establishing, self-repairing entity. A picture suggested itself to him - they were the seeds of a deep purple jungle. Even as he thought it, one of the so-called seeds began to sprout legs and antennae, crawling off into the gleaming metallic electronic corridors, dropping eggs and seeds like purple turds as it went. All around him, the warriors of the purple light were coming truly alive. If his internal mental clock was correct, it would be only a matter of moments until...

******

Unfortunately, there were also the constant orders of Lord Autocrat and his high-level sub-authorities to be dealt with, along with the processing required to constantly reconfigure the Keep in seven dimensions according to his tactical needs. And the minor matter of the management of the war against the Allied incursion forces, which was going unexpectedly poorly. There were even physical assaults on all of the first-level control fortresses, one of them an assault by garden-variety American soldiers augmented by at least one previously unknown meta.

It took half a million milliseconds to gain sufficient control of the remaining resources to assess the damage. Over 31.7 percent of the computing power of the combined Elite forces were in some way indisposed. Added to about 12.2 percent required for maintenance and tactical defense, the Elite had only a bare superiority over the computerized intruders. It quickly began to reorganize its defenses, initiating new protocols and individually modifying the encryption codes for each unit still under its control. This was going to be a war of attrition, a five-dimensional lightspeed game of Go, and failure was unthinkable.

A stabbing pain shot through the control matrix, searing pathways and cauterizing away massive sections of resources that had previously been tagged both friendly and enemy. Two first-level fortresses were completely offline, the third still under a physical assault and damaged. And the last was fortress 101, the primary source of the infection.

The Computer began to reach out to less-advanced machines. It would need all the resources it could co-opt.

******

Before he finished the thought, a huge section vaporized off the shining citadel in the distance, leaving a gaping gash. At the same moment, several fields of purple jungle flashed into blackness. The magnetic pulse bombs had been unkind to friend as well as foe. If all had gone as expected, three control fortresses had been neutralized, the fourth being the one in which he now sat, feeling purple ants crawling on his skin.

In the distance, the surviving structure of the Elite citadel began to alter. Vast chunks of silver armor slid smoothly into place, leaving only a dozen small sally ports disgorging metal warriors and metal monstrosities onto the open plane of combat.

Phase Seven had begun.

Both players had abandoned any semblance of tact. From this moment, it was going to be a war of brute force.

With a rustling sound which gradually crescendoed to the roar of a world-class waterfall, the lush purple jungle began producing animals and insects, unfolding out of the huge flowers and darkening the skies and land with their numbers. Wherever they went they dropped a living carpet of effluvium, which itself rapidly grew toward the skies. Defensive emplacements blasted them by the hundreds, but still there were more.

A cloud of purple bees spewed out of the forest, skimming the surface of the citadel, diving into every nook and cranny. Electric fire crisped them by the thousands.

On the distant plain massive laser cannons emitted energy beams to disrupt the growing forest into a dead mass of sticks and ashes. Dozens of gleaming tanks were disgorged from a sally port, engaging the huge purple bugs, slashing and beaming them to cinders even as they spit back caustic liquids or pummeled holes into the tanks' armor. And as the next wave of newer, more sophisticated tanks rolled out of the fort, the purple monstrosities also evolved.

Massive nozzles protruded from the citadel, releasing clouds of sparkling fog against the encroaching jungle. The jungle screamed like a wounded animal and darkened, blackening and falling to ragged feathery ruin.

There were millions of individual units involved in this struggle, each of them a piece of processing power strategizing and probing at the defenses of the other side, defending itself and its partners, harmonizing and interacting and somehow making the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Salvage couldn't follow the mathematics, but he somehow felt the flow, and felt that the tide was going against the Monolith.

A huge purple bug landed on the gleaming wall, digging into it for only a moment with royal blue claws until being pierced by a metal defender and falling a mile to the blackened plain. The chink was rapidly filled and repaired by a small defensive robot.

A pack of massive treaded silver things lurched toward Salvage, ripping through the tough trunks of the forest defenders and slowing only gradually as their treads became gummed with the thrashing purple bodies of the defenders. Even as the front one finally ground to a halt, new portholes opened along its sides and spewed poison to shrivel the defenders.

Suddenly Salvage realized that if he stayed where he was, he could die.

******

She had managed to clear enough area around herself free from technology to perform the Lesser Waterfall, a minor rite of refreshment. Though it was difficult, pretending that the huge power conduit ten meters behind her was a giant cataract appeared to work in enabling the ritual. That would bear some thought later.

Moon Wolf fell in behind her as she began her climb to the next level. Well, okay, it was a fanciful name, but was it really any more stupid than its prior name, "Spot A2C"? She had convinced the robot to stay and protect her by simply telling it the truth - that she was in danger and needed its help. True to its programming, it was enthusiastic about the chance to defend a friend, although even while it watched over her during her ritual, it was busily rerouting and sabotaging systems and building Moon Wolf B.

She smelled them before she saw them - an odd mix of sea and sweat, foam and fear. And she saw them before she approached. So it was not an American Indian woman in a feathered half-cape, but a Centurion, tall and metal, with three brains visible in a domed bubble, that visited the seven cowering squid technicians.

"I have grave news." Said the Centurion. "The Millennion has been turned, and he is acting neither in the favor nor to the wishes of the Autocrat."

"Hail Autocrat!" replied the squids after a moment's hesitation. It was a safe reply, for the moment.

The ones in green and blue were following the lead of the one in the orange outfit, so Trickster addressed herself to her. "This is the new defensive unit design. You will build them, as many as possible"

The orange squid looked at the dog with only a little interest. "Where are the schematics? The computer connections are flooded with garbage."

"Which is why this unit is self-contained, to fight for the glory of Autocrat." She forced a giant measure of disdain into her mechanical voice, as if they should have known it already.

"Hail Autocrat!" they replied with less hesitation.

"Bring the parts for a standard techbot, along with spare parts and the obvious modifications you can see. Get them wherever you can, even if you have to disassemble defenses in nearby sectors. This unit will build and activate the first few duplicates. Watch carefully, then start bringing subassemblies which are closer to the unit's needs." She paused for effect. "If you are not building complete units in two hours, tentacles will roll."

The technicians grumbled briefly then stopped, realizing that two hours was actually quite reasonable, given their number and abilities. The Centurion must be tired indeed.

"Now!" she yelled, and the squids scattered into the access passages. She waited for the first unit to be assembled, which took less than eight minutes. The programming and activation of the new Moon Wolf C took a few more. By the time two more units had been activated, the orange uniformed squid was back, still deferent but exhibiting a self-confidence she had never seen in an Elite subordinate unit before.

"Centurion?" the squid asked.

"Yes, Technician?" Trickster made it an insult.

"Engineer." The orange-clad squid corrected gently. "We could achieve a faster rate if we could make some ... slight ... alterations in the design."

"What is wrong with the design?" she asked, projecting immense danger in her voice. If they changed too much, the units might not recognize each other as friends.

"Well, the armor, for one thing. The assembly line would be about twelve percent more efficient if we built it in three sections, rather than seventeen, and installed it before activation." Not to mention the fact that it would be six times as good in battle, thought the Engineer.

"Granted."

"And, this unit is designed for multiple uses, including battle, is it not? Perhaps we should outfit it with a heavier energy production device and some battle screens?" As it would have been if not designed by a cretin.

"Granted, to the degree it will not limit production."

"And six other subassemblies can be constructed in productive variants." The Engineer hesitated again. Perhaps the Centurion didn't understand the term. Since it apparently didn't recognize an Engineer, this was far from its realm of activity. "Variations that will do pretty much the same thing, and occupy the same location in the armor, but which use different sets of primary components."

He paused for a moment, but she still didn't seem to understand. Inwardly he sighed. Combat units, then he explained further. "This will allow us to roughly triple our output, considering the limitations of the current supply chain."

Trickster whistled, which the Engineer perceived as an electronic tone of surprise and (thankfully) comprehension. Moon Wolf A reappeared at Trickster's side, cocking its head to see if the whistle was a summons for it. She laid her hand on its back. "Granted, as long as you do not affect the brain or programming."

The Engineer was silent for a moment. "The last item. The brain."

"Yes?"

"We do not understand it. The function of the purple microcrystal..."

Trickster nearly kicked herself. She had seen Salvage insert the thing into one of the original Spots, but had no idea how it might have been reproducing itself.

"Is a secret restricted above your level. And mine." She looked at the dog. "Moon Wolf, do you know a way to quickly reproduce that part of your anatomy?"

Moon Wolf A looked from one friend to the other and then nodded. An hour later, as the twentieth dog rolled off the cramped assembly line, Trickster was ready to take her leave. She momentarily stopped the assembly line, giving the technicians a short and well-deserved break, although the concept seemed to be unfamiliar to them.

"Steel Wolves. These technicians are your friends. The first unit of every three new units produced will be free. The second unit of every three will be a sector guard and remain in the sector to aid and protect the technicians and the assembly line. The third unit of every three will relieve the oldest sector guard, freeing it. All free units shall spread out and fulfill their programming. Is that clear?"

Twenty-one robotic heads nodded in unison, along with a few of the squids.

"As soon as practical, ten Steel Wolf sector guard units will escort four Technicians and the Engineer to secure a location at least five sectors away, chosen by the Engineer, where they will set up another such assembly line. All units produced by that second line will be designated Sun Wolf. The other two Technicians will remain here to correct any issues that arise on the Moon Wolf line. One Technician must remain on duty at all times. Is that understood?" The squids nodded.

"One hour after that line is established, if the battle continues, the Engineer will take two technicians and ten Wolf units and set up a third assembly line, designated Star Wolf. Same rules. Understood?"

Finally she addressed herself to the Engineer. "The idea is to build as many of these self-contained units as possible as quickly as possible. If additional Technicians or Engineers become available, you will use them and continue the process. You may accelerate the timetable as long as at least ten units are available to protect each assembly line and each expeditionary force, and as long as two Technicians are left with each assembly line. If you need new unit designations, attach astral bodies, metals, or colors to the word Wolf. Give each new Engineer you recruit a different animal. If you run out of designations and the battle is still continuing... well, invent something."

For the first time since they had met, the Engineer smiled, a broad grin which showed curiously shaped teeth and oddly colored gums. The parameters were clear - he was being given a chance to win the entire battle for the glory of Autocrat. Already he was considering a modified Collector unit, designed solely to gather the submodules necessary for Wolf construction. And if he could obtain access to the fabrication equipment several sectors away, he could make this assembly line look archaic.

Trickster left the Engineer to his ruminations and departed with two of the advanced-design Moon Wolves.

Confusion to the enemy! she whispered to them, as she changed their designations to Flim and Flam.

******

Salvage dived and dodged, narrowly avoiding the weapons fire as he sprinted through the jungle. The jungle opened before him, sensing his desperation, then closed to attack the lumbering metal monster that chased him. Abruptly the tank was distracted by an incoming purple dragonfly, and the chase was over.

Salvage continued jogging until the sounds died away. He was far from the center of the battle, probably in a completely unrelated subsystem. He looked around him at the tropical trees, whose huge flowers were even now putting out living variations of the purple creatures that were slowly losing the war for the center.

Like in both Go and Chess, the center was the most important. The purpose of this battle was to siege and hopefully destroy the citadel, the Celestial Keep. Just keeping it busy would help the Alpha team, but destroying it would win the war, as the Elite forces became once again separate and collectively inferior to the Allied troops.

So the action here, in the ... Wells Fargo bank service center, he abruptly realized... was unimportant in the grand scheme of things. For a moment he felt hopeless, before his training, and his general optimism, reasserted themselves.

He studied and mentally dissected the routines that were creating the attack dragonflies, watching them creating variations, receiving cyber-biological feedback in the form of purple bees pollinating the huge flowers. When the bees observed a weakness, they informed the trees of it. When they observed a new weapon, they did the same. The trees then devised an appropriate strategy to fight the Elite unit.

It was an excellent way to use all this computing power, a massive parallel effort to bring down the efforts of Elite central computer. Unfortunately, Salvage realized, it was no way to win the war.

This strategy was a genetic algorithm, basically relying on random chance and brute force computing power. Which was fine against a fixed problem, but the Elite computer was also evolving, and had just as much or more brute force available.

What was needed was something more subtle... Salvage began to shape his trap.

******

There were incursion teams all over the blasted country, and this little foray would not win the war by itself. In fact, even if they succeeded in taking this fort completely offline, it only represented about five percent of Autocrat's command and control. He could rapidly reroute control lines around the first-level fort and promote a second level into its place.

No, the war would be won or lost based upon the direct action against Autocrat. This covert action was important only to the degree that it aided that effort, and made the Elite defense problematic.

Cobbler continued her vigil.

******

He could see at a glance that the Elite ground forces were demoralized and frankly retreating. Whatever came up, they didn't seem to be sure whether they should attack or retreat, and they didn't seem to have a brain in their collective heads tactically. An equal quantity of foot soldiers could take them down now, let alone the robot hounds that prowled the corridors and access ways. And in several locations, Elite technicians were themselves dismantling the fortress in order to add to the packs of robot dogs.

He chuckled darkly.

The Lancers, never ordered to launch and not designed for corridor travel anyway, had been destroyed in their cradles. The Demons, hard to kill, slow to react and deprived of a ready target, were standing in their quarters, awaiting the future orders of Autocrat, as they had been ordered by the "Baroness" herself.

At this point, he could just sit back for a little smoke and laugh to himself. If he had smoked, that was.

He found Trickster and her two mechanical hellhounds harrying a group of Trolls, telling them to surrender to the forces of Autocrat and they would be spared after reeducation in how to tell friends from enemies. He chuckled darkly into the shadows near her.

She turned towards him. "Haven't you got anything better to do?"

"Nope."

She laughed, a throaty sound almost like a bird call. "Then neither do I. Pull us in."

******

The Keep computer had shut down all links to the outside, except for a few small well-guarded sally ports that disgorged new weaponry and occasionally allowed entry to one of these messenger units. And there was the weakness.

Something twinkled within the forest, catching the attention of the Probe. It swept down into the dark forest to look at the new installation, gathering data to determine if it merited attack.

And the forest came alive.

Tendrils snapped up around the Lancer, catching it in bands of purple steel. They slowed and stopped it, catching it nearly unharmed. Then the analysis began, taking the probe apart bit by bit.

Salvage had once read a book called Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. One of the points that had stayed with him, many years later, was that for any advanced recording device capable of playing a message, there was a message that could destroy the device. It was mathematically impossible to build a device without this flaw.

Salvage's idea was to exploit this property of mathematics, and to feed the Citadel information that, in effect, it would choke on. The time would be soon.

But his sense of humor required that at least one further aspect be attended to. He shaped the coded message within the data bombs.

"Team Epsilon was here."

******

The resources it had co-opted from a few small supercomputer installations in California, New Mexico, Japan and Russia were providing excellent protection against the uncoordinated, even random, efforts of its antagonist. The few small attacks that did get through its defenses were easily dealt with within its personal capacity. And in the meantime, its opponent was apparently weakening.

Probe A2FD.052 returned to Combat Port 11 and was analyzed. The information retrieved by the probes was heartening. It indicated that the Computer would soon be able to fully comply with Autocrat's orders again.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 15 and was analyzed.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 11 and was analyzed.

Probe A2FC.012 returned to Combat Port 8 and was analyzed.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 9 and was analyzed.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 13 and was analyzed.

Combat Port 15 shattered, sending a wave of garbage data into the secondary systems. The Central Keep computer ordered an immediate shutdown on all Combat Ports.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 10 and was analyzed.

Probe A2FC.097 returned to Combat Port 4, and was analyzed.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 8 and was analyzed.

Combat Ports 11 and 9 shattered, sending waves of garbage data into the secondary systems. The CK Computer began reconfiguring systems near the remaining Combat Ports to protect against similar data bombs.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 1 and was analyzed.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 3, which was closed.

Probe A2FA.107 returned to Combat Port 12, which was closed.

Combat Port 13 shattered, overwhelming the new defenses in the middle of reconfiguration. Combat Port 10 shuddered under the impact of a data bomb, cracking and becoming unstable, damaging nearby systems. Repairs began immediately. Combat Ports 8 and 1 detected irregularities in the incoming probes and discarded them immediately. The twelve surviving Combat Ports awaited new orders.

Salvage watched with satisfaction as the citadel in the distance stopped spewing weaponry, momentarily blinded by the necessity of closing its own eyes. The forests took the momentary respite to repair and upgrade themselves, and to counterattack against the roving tanks.

Hordes of indigo insects swarmed over the walls of the avatar citadel. Defensive weaponry, firing blindly or nearly so, accounted for mere hundreds of the thousands in the invading swarms. Whole chunks of armor and wall began dissolving under the assault.

Once again the tide had turned.

******

As its host moved laterally, the glkpratzl stretched out a tendril to the data flow nexus, shorting the power grid against the flow control systems. Both systems came down instantly but gracelessly, and the Elite assault on them was neutralized.

The host was in no immediate danger, so the glkpratzl returned to passive monitoring.

******

Furiously hard at work in the Celestial Keep's control center, Hardware spared a glance at some of the messages bombarding the Keep's systems, thankfully making his urgent task less impossible. Who or what was Epsilon?

******

A nexus of defensive sub-processors went offline without warning.

Before the Celestial Keep Computer could react to the gaps created by the fall of the ILM systems, over a dozen attack programs invaded through the breach.

If it had the time, it would have screamed while they ripped it apart.

******

Team Epsilon silently watched Salvage's body, feeling helpless.

Groups of hellhounds were beginning to rove the countryside around the fortress, taking down individual Troll squads as they wandered back toward the stricken fort. The Harpies and Banshees had taken off for the nearest help and leadership, and would probably return in a few days, by which time their efforts would be irrelevant.

They sat, the sensation of fatigue overtaking the adrenaline high of the last few hours. Trickster found herself in a state of profound gratefulness. Danger is never faced without risk, and seldom without loss. She turned to quietly watch the body of the sole teammate still at risk.

At long last Salvage moved, his eyes clearing to normal sight, the sight of the faces of his teammates, his friends. He smiled, although it felt for a moment unfamiliar to have a normal body.

"Y'all okay, Sugar?" asked Cobbler, noting the slight wooziness.

"Umm." He had a splitting headache. "Yeah."

"How are we doing?" Trickster asked impatiently. The subtext was obvious - winning the fort wouldn't make a bit of difference if they didn't also win the cyberwar.

Salvage turned to survey the even pulsing of Ygdrasil, the world tree, the winner and champion of the avatar battle that was now winding down. The Central Keep Computer had finally been forced to shut down all external data ports, leaving effective control of the entire Elite armada to the Monolith fragment. There were a few remaining forts that had not yet succumbed, but that was only a matter of time.

"We won. For now, anyway."

A vast tiredness weighed down on him. In the last hour he had witnessed six million years of evolution, and somehow, despite having won, it all felt somewhat pointless. He longed to be somewhere, working with his hands to build something.

Cobbler winked at him. After extraction, when she was called Delta again, she'd buy him a good stiff drink and get him to talk it out. For now, the wink was all the hospitality that their professionalism would allow.

After all, they were responsible for protecting this fragment until it declared victory, shut down and extracted itself.

Dogs or no dogs.
 

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