Well, no drek, Sherlock, I managed not to say. "What about the spirits?" I demanded.

"I feel their presence." Her voice was calm, fragging near conversational.

"Well, bully for you!" I snapped. "Can you feel a way of getting rid of them?"

She shrugged her scrawny shoulders. "They stand guard," she pointed out.

"I'd kinda guessed that," I said dryly. "Can you persuade them to go guard somewhere else?"

"They guard the fabric," the kahuna shot back, her voice suddenly sharp. "They guard the pattern."

I blinked at that. What the frag was she talking about? Unless ... "They think we're part of that drek?" I pointed again at the ghostly plume of light on the FLIR display. "Is that it? Christ, then tell 'em we want to stop it, for frag's sake!"

Akaku'akanene shrugged again. "They don't believe me."

I ground my teeth together so hard that pain shot through my jaw muscle. "Then be more persuasive," I grated.

The Nene shaman nodded and closed her eyes. The Merlin still jolted and jostled, but somehow she kept her balance perfectly-almost as if she could anticipate every movement of the small craft and adapt to it.

I didn't know if it was my imagination, or whether the kahuna had somehow gotten her message through, but after a few moments it felt as though the buffeting had diminished. The airframe still vibrated, the engines still complained, but at least the camival-ride whoop-de-doos seemed to be under control.

"Better?" I asked the pilot.

He nodded. "Altitude thirty-one hundred. Airspeed, two-ten. Ground speed one hundred. Ten klicks out." He glanced back at me over his shoulder. "Any instructions for the approach?"

I gave him my best pirate's smile. "Whatever'll get us there in one piece."

"Echo that, bruddah. Nine klicks."

On the FLIR display the volcano was looming large. The periphery of the giant heat plume was still amorphous, fuzzy. But for the first time I thought I could make out some kind of internal structure to it. There seemed to be semicircular wave-fronts propagating through it, like ripples spreading across a smooth pond from a dropped stone. Something bizarre was going on down in the crater, that was for fragging sure.

I turned back to the door into the passenger compartment. "We're about eight klicks out," I told "my" fireteam. For an instant I felt like I was in the middle of some ancient flatfilm about Vietnam. "I think this is going to be what they call a 'hot LZ'," I added dryly.

The plane echoed with metallic castanet-clatter as the squad locked and loaded. I thought about my own weapon, that ever-so-wiz assault rifle, on the floor under my vacant seat. Having something lethal to cling to like a security blanket would have made me feel a touch better about the whole thing, but it would have meant sacrificing one of the two hand-holds that was keeping me from measuring my length on the cabin floor. All in all, on balance, I figured I'd pick up my playtoy later.

When I turned back to the control console, the pilot had killed the FLIR display to replace it with a complex hash-work of approach vectors, wind axes, and all that other pilot drek. I didn't begrudge it to him. On reflection, I'd much rather he knew what was going on than me.

Beside me Akaku'akanene was still doing her balancing act, maintaining her equilibrium better than I was despite the fact she wasn't holding onto anything. Her eyes were still closed, and in the instrument lights I could see a bead of sweat tracing its way down her temple. God, suddenly I wished I knew what she was doing ... so I could understand, of course, but also so I could help. Judging by the motions of the Merlin, she'd persuaded at least some of the storm spirits-or whatever the frag they were-than we weren't a threat to the "fabric" or "pattern." If the addition of my concentration could help her convince the rest-or stop the ones she'd already convinced from changing their insubstantial minds-then I'd gladly give it my all.

The blackness was still unbroken outside the rain-blasted canopy. We were still in the middle of the stormclouds I'd seen gathering a few hours earlier. Mentally, I thanked whatever gods there be that there wasn't any lightning.

I almost pitched backward as the Merlin took on a steep nose-up pitch. From behind and to both sides I heard the scream of the engines change pitch. A computer schematic on the control console confirmed what I'd already guessed: The wings were pivoting again, from forward flight to V/STOL mode. We were on our way in. I drew breath to yell word back to the troopers ...

And fragging near swallowed my own tongue. Without warning the Merlin cleared the clouds, popping down out of a ceiling of roiling blackness. For the first time I could see the peak and crater of Haleakala volcano with my own eyes, without the need for FLIR intermediaries.

First impression: Spirits, what a blasted hellhole of a wasteland. Nothing grew; nothing lived-nothing seemed to ever have lived here. Just barren rock-rough, scattered scree slopes. Cinder cones. Outwellings of solidified magma. Precipitous slopes, vertical cliffs ... klicks upon klicks of lunar landscape. For an instant I didn't know where the image of the lunar surface had come from, but then I remembered. Back almost a century ago, when NASA was trying out their Lunar Rover designs, they'd picked the Haleakala crater for the tests, because it was the closest to the rugged emptiness of the moon that could be found on this planet.

Second impression: Holy fragging drek, I could see those klicks upon klicks of lunar landscape ... and I shouldn't have been able to. We were on top of a fragging mountain, three thousand meters up, and the cloud deck was so solid there was no chance for a single photon of moonlight to make it through. Yet the whole blasted prospect was illuminated-not as bright as day, by any means, but about like twilight.

It was a strange illumination, too: cold, sourceless, shifting, ebbing and flowing. I could see the source, roughly ahead of us-an area of what looked like absolute chaos. Light bubbled and roiled in the depths of the crater as though it were a physical fluid. Spreading up into the sky, in an ethereal fan-shape, the air itself seemed to glow with a pearly radiance. This had to be the visual equivalent of the heat-plume the FLIR had shown me, I realized instantly.

In the midst of the rolling, churning light were motionless points of brilliance, much brighter than the shifting illumination surrounding them ... but somehow sterile, dead. It took me a moment to understand those points were artificial lights, arc lamps set out by the kahunas of Project Sunfire so they could prepare the process that now seemed well advanced.

Something flashed by the Merlin's canopy, going like a bat out of hell. A well-chosen simile, since it seemed to be a mass of pure liquid fire about the size of a man's head. It was past and gone before I could make out any details, leaving a blue-green streak of afterimage across my visual field. As if my vision had suddenly become attuned, I saw there were many ... things ... flitting and hurtling around the central mass of light. Balls of fire, sheets of heat lightning, unidentifiable shapes moving so fast my mind couldn't make sense of them. They seemed to be orbiting that central light, like chipped-up moths dancing around a porch light. And that, too, seemed to be a well-chosen simile. I couldn't be sure, but neither could I shake the feeling I was seeing a kind of approach-avoidance behavior going on. The things-whatever they were-were both repelled and attracted by the drek going down in the center of the crater.

The magic drek going down. Deep in my gut where the truth lives, I knew it was magic, seconds before my intellect caught up and figured it out logically. I could feel the magic, deep in what I laughingly call my soul-like I'd felt it when Scott's fetish had cut loose, the instant before he blew Tokudaiji-san's skull to fragments. It was like vertigo, like that flip-flop your stomach does when a super-express elevator momentarily goes into free fall. It was like that, except it wasn't my stomach doing flip-flops but . .. something else. It was like I'd suddenly, momentarily discovered new senses, and the information those senses were feeding me prompted a reaction from a part of my body I previously didn't know existed.

It was over in an instant as if it had never happened, as if I'd never recapture that sudden broadening of perspective ...

For me, it was over in an instant. Not so for Akaku'akanene.

Which made sense if you think about it. If the level of magical activity down in the crater was enough to twist the guts of a mundane like me, what would it do to somebody who actually savvied that mana drek? Beside me, Akaku'akanene's eyes snapped open in a face suddenly pasty white. She opened her mouth to groan, and then she was lurching across the flight deck, her extraordinary stability suddenly gone. I grabbed her shoulder and dragged her upright an instant before she would have pitched over into the pilot's lap. (Vehicle control rig or no, I couldn't help but think an unannounced visitation to his groin by a little old lady would have messed up his control of the plane, at least a little.) Akaku'akanene's wide eyes fixed on my face, and I could feel her fear and horror. She croaked something in Hawai'ian. I'd never heard the phrase before, but her tone of voice made the translation a no-brainer: "Oh, holy fragging crap ... !"

I knew we were in even deeper drek before it happened. If Akaku'akanene was talking to me, it meant she wasn't talking to the spirits or whatever that apparently wanted to geek us. The Merlin staggered in the air as something slammed into its right wing. The right engine screamed like a speared devil rat, and then something blew up. In my peripheral vision I saw the flash of flame to my right, then shrapnel tore into the fuselage. Aft, I heard someone shriek in agony.

The right wingtip dropped instantly, and this time I couldn't hold my balance. I slammed into the right wall of the flight deck, and I howled as something went gruntch in my right shoulder. The impact was enough to defocus my vision and knot my guts with nausea. I could have let consciousness slip away right then, but somehow I clung to it, holding back the darkness. Frag, if these were going to be my last moments alive, I wanted to be awake for them.

We were in serious drek, I knew that even through the throbbing disorientation in my head. The Merlin was going down, and it was going down fast. Somehow the pilot had managed to get the right wingtip back up, but there was no way he'd be able to keep the crippled bird in the air much longer.

For the last time the copilot glared at me with his glowing eyes, and ordered, "Get back there! Strap in!"

This time I didn't feel any urge to argue with him. I struggled to my feet, dragging the almost inconsequential weight of Akaku'akanene with me. Back through the door into the passenger compartment I lurched. I pushed the old woman down into my old seat, the one beside Alana Kono. "Strap her in," I told the gillette.

The Merlin lurched, and I knew I wasn't going to make it to a seat myself, not in time. The seat Akaku'akanene had vacated was way aft toward the rear of the fuselage. With the bird pitching and rolling the way it was, there was precisely zero chance I'd be able to negotiate the legs and gear blocking the way and strap myself into the four-point before we slammed down. Instinctively, I glanced back over my shoulder. Through the flight-deck canopy, I could see the broken, rocky ground rushing up toward us. Frag, I had even less time than I thought ...

Somebody else recognized it, too-one of the young, spit-and-polish troopers, the guy sitting next to Louis Pohaku. With a fist he pounded the quick-release on his four-point harness and was on his feet in an instant. "Sit!" he yelled at me, then reinforced the word by literally flinging me into the canvas sling chair. My fingers fumbled with the straps and buckles, trying to lock the harness closed across my shoulders and chest. Firm hands pushed mine away and finished the procedure much faster than I could ever have done it. In the dim light I looked up into the trooper's face. Just a kid, he was, maybe twenty at the outside. Keen and eager. He smiled as I tried to thank him.

And then we hit.

25.

I don't know how long I was unconscious. A couple of seconds, maybe as long as five. The back of my head felt pulped where it had slammed against the fuselage, and the four-point was applying agonizing pressure to my injured shoulder. Still, I was alive, that was what mattered. My benefactor, the fresh-faced trooper ...

Well, he wasn't alive. With nothing to brace him he'd been flung forward when we hit, smashing against the bulkhead. He lay like a broken doll, his back bent the wrong way, blood masking his face. I looked away, swallowing bile.

The pilot and copilot hadn't fared any better, I saw. The Merlin's nose had slammed into a house-sized boulder and crumpled on impact. The flight deck looked like a scene out of Splatterpunk VI, the crewmen splashed out of all human shape.

Toward the back of the fuselage one of the troopers seemed to have gotten himself under control. An older man, he looked, on his feet with weapon in hand, yelling at his charges. (A sergeant? Or did some other rank run squads in the Hawai'ian military?) "E hele!" he bellowed. "Go, go, go!"

Around me I could see military training kicking in. The young troopers must have been almost as shaken up as I was, but when a ranking officer yells at you, it doesn't take much intellectual skull-sweat to obey. Ingrained reflexes take over. Troopers were punching themselves free of their harnesses, leaping to their feet, and checking their weapons. Pohaku and Kono, too. The only people not responding were me, Akaku'akanene, and the dead trooper crumpled against the bunkhead. The sergeant bellowed again ...

And my own training kicked in, coming out of the past like a ghost. Not military, Lone Star, but the next best thing.

I popped my own harness and my reflexes fired me to my feet. I looked around for the exit. There was just the single door in the side of the fuselage, the one we'd boarded through. That didn't make a frag of a lot of sense, did it? How were you supposed to debark combat troops-possibly under fire-when all you had was one piddling little hatch?

A concussion I felt through my feet and in my chest answered that question. I hadn't paid much attention to the rear of the cabin. I'd noticed the metal floor angled up at about 45 degrees immediately behind the last seats, but I'd written that off as a consequence of the fuselage design and given it no more thought. Now I understood. The up-sloping metal wall had become a down-sloping metal ramp, blown free from the remainder of the fuselage by explosive bolts. Before the echoes had even faded, the troopers were doubletiming it down that ramp, boots pounding on the metal plate. Pohaku and Kono were on their heels, the woman stopping just long enough to shoot me a "today, today" look over the shoulder.

Across the fuselage Akaku'akanene was struggling to extricate herself from her four-point. With a sigh I crouched down and helped her unlock the harness and pull the straps clear of her narrow shoulders. "E hele, " I told her, and she nodded. As she hurried aft toward the ramp, I retrieved my Ares HVAR from under the seat. I started to follow her, but another thought struck me.

The troopers had loaded out with their own assault rifles, but many of them packed other weaponry as well. Considering that things had just gotten a little nastier up here in the House of the Sun, didn't it make sense to pack along anything that might even up the score for me?

It was tough to overcome my queasiness, but I managed to force myself close enough to the broken-backed trooper to see what he was packing. Lots of hand grenades, I noticed, but I left those well alone. (I'd never been trained in their use, and to tell the truth, "personal explosives" scared the living drek out of me. I found it much too easy to imagine pulling the pin and then panicking ... and throwing the pin instead of the grenade. Boom.) There was something that looked more my speed, however. In a specialized holster on his right side, he was packing something that looked like the world's biggest-bore pistol. I pulled it out and turned it over and over in my hands. It was a grenade-launcher pistol; what the frag else could it be? Behind the pistol grip was a magazine, and the digital display on the weapon's mainframe told me I had six rounds ready to fire. Wiz. I made damn sure the safety was on, before cramming it under a strap of my assault vest. I picked up another magazine of grenades and shoved that deep into a pocket. Then I jogged down the ramp after Akaku'akanene ...

And out into the middle of some beetle-head's worst chip-trip. Above me the black clouds roiled like liquid, churned by a hot, dry wind that tugged at my hair and clothing like invisible hands. Shattered rock shifted and rolled under my feet as I tried to keep my balance. The entire volcano seemed to thrum with a deep, almost subliminal vibration. My bowels cramped, and it was all I could do not to drek myself. Not from fear-frag, sure I was afraid, but that wasn't it; it was like the sound itself was churning my guts into a pit of diarrhea.

The Merlin had bellied in under the skirts of a hundred-meter-tall cinder cone. Boulders ranging from dishwasher-size to bigger than houses dotted the sloping ground. The shifting light that was Project Sunfire was down there-maybe half a klick away, down a steep scree slope, in the blackened and charred bottom of a secondary crater. The great fan of light-the nimbus of glowing air-towered up above me, reflecting off the underside of the rolling clouds. At its base amongst the lifeless points of arc light, I could see figures moving.

Half a klick-that's 500 meters, a long way to make out details. But maybe there was something in the air up here-magical or mundane, I couldn't know-that added clarity. The moving figures were tiny, but still I could make out some features. They were dancing, for one thing, an even dozen of them, stamping and gyrating, as they pranced in a great circle around the center of that unnatural, liquid light. They were fragging near naked, men and women alike wearing nothing but loincloths and headpieces of woven grass on their brows. The kahunas of Project Sunfire.

A dozen meters to my right, Pohaku and Kono were standing like statues, staring down at the spectacle in dumbstruck amazement. I started over toward them, picking up my pace when I saw the sergeant approach Pohaku. I made it over there in time to hear the sergeant ask, "What are our orders?"

"Stop that," I fragging near yelled, pointing down the slope toward the dance and the light. "I don't care how the frag you do it, but do it, karimasu-ka?"

The sergeant's face became a stone mask, and he turned toward Pohaku, as if I didn't even exist.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back to face me, using my left hand, the cyberarm with the enhanced strength. Hardened soldier or not, by God he turned. "Listen to me, slot!" I screamed in his face. "Your orders are to stop . .. that! Orders from the fucking Ali'i, do you hear me?" I fumbled in my pocket and hauled out the deputy's badge Ho had given me at our first meeting. "See this?" I bellowed, holding it up so close to his face that his eyes crossed. "From the fucking Ali'i, yah? Now, do it!"

The sergeant did what just about every military type ever does if someone screams at him loud enough and with enough confidence. He saluted me, right out of the textbook. He spun on his heel and dog-trotted off, yelling orders in Hawai'ian to his troops.

I could feel the hatred coming off Pohaku in fragging waves, but at the moment I couldn't have cared less about his bruised ego. I turned my back on him and ran over to where Akaku'akanene was staring down into the secondary crater. "What's happening down there?" I demanded. "What the hell are they doing?"

Under the weird witch-light in the air, her face looked like a corpse. "They're weakening the veil," she told me, her voice a ghastly whisper. ''Preparing to draw it back."

"How long? How far along are they?"

"Far," she answered simply.

"Then we'd better be fragging moving, hadn't we?" I started jogging down that scree slope, starting the 500-meter trek to where the Dance was going on. (What the frag are you going to do when you get there? part of my brain asked. Shut the frag up! another part explained politely.) Around me, I could see the troopers heading down the hill, too. Kono and Akaku'akanene were starting down after me. Pohaku was still standing in the shadow of the downed Merlin, frozen in indecision. Well, fuck him if he couldn't take a joke. I ran on, quickly losing ground to the trained and fit troopers.

That's when the spirits hit us again-maybe the same ones that had downed the Merlin, maybe a different bunch. They hurtled down on us from above, like Thor shots-fire, and wind, and water, and Christ-knows-what-else. They hit the troopers first, the young, hardened men and women who'd easily opened the distance between themselves and the wheezing, out-of-shape erstwhile PI who was trying to keep up with them. Some of the soldiers saw the spirits coming, had enough time to get their weapons up and fire them. Most didn't. Not that it made any difference at all. Bursts of tracer fire, grenades, whatever-everything just went straight through the attacking spirits as if they weren't even there. And then the spirits were among the troopers, and the carnage began.

I turned back and screamed over my shoulder, "Akaku'akanene! Stop them!"

The bird-boned shaman stopped in her tracks, closed her eyes and began to sing. But it was too late for the troopers. They were all dead, or the next worst thing to it, before she even got the first notes of her croaking song out of her throat. Below me some of the spirits were still disporting themselves with the bodies of their victims-rending them into little pieces, carrying them high into the air and dropping them onto the rocks below, or scouring them with fire and cooking off their ammunition. As I watched, frozen in horror, some of the spirits seemed to notice me and the others for the first time. Breaking off from their diversions with the corpses, they hurtled up the scree slope toward us.

I had my own assault rifle off my shoulder as they came, but I didn't even bother touching the trigger. I was dead when those spirits reached me.

They didn't reach me, of course. They broke off their direct trajectories, soaring up into the sky like planes pulling out of power dives at the last instant before slamming into a previously unseen obstacle. My ears were filled with inhuman screams and howls-the spirits' anger and frustration at being blocked from their prey. Behind me I saw that Kono and Pohaku were moving in nice and close to Akaku'akanene, and I figured that they had the right idea. Whatever the Nene shaman was doing, I didn't want to test its range.

Overhead, the spirits were plunging down from the sky again, but before they could reach us they pulled out of their dives once more. Within seconds, we had a dozen of more of the fragging things swirling and orbiting around us, filling the air with their shrieks. At no point did they come closer than about fifteen meters from Akaku'akanene, and I belatedly realized they were displaying the same sort of approach-avoidance reaction as the spirits I'd seen circling the distant Dance.

"What the frag are they?" I asked Akaku'akanene in a husky whisper.

If the kahuna hadn't answered me, I'd have understood. Hell, curiosity always took backseat to survival in my book. She didn't open her eyes, but she did stop her song long enough to tell me, "Guardian spirits."

"Storm spirits? Volcano spirits? What?" I pressed.

"Both. Neither. Guardian spirits." She went back to her song, and I left her to it.

Now what the frag was I supposed to do? Akaku'akanene was the only thing keeping the "guardian" spirits off our collective ass. Somehow, I couldn't see her extending that protection to me as I jogged the half klick across the volcanic wasteland to get to the Dancers. (And what the frag will you do when you get there? part of my mind asked. Shut the frag up! another part responded.) Likewise, I couldn't see her keeping the shield (or whatever it was) up while she jogged along with me. Maybe she could walk and still keep the spirits at bay . .. but would we be able to get to the Dancers in time?

"Frag!" I yelled in frustration. "They're gaurdians, right? Can't you just tell them to leave us alone?" I gestured wildly in the direction of the Dance. "We're trying to stop this thing. I thought that was what they wanted too. Don't they get that?"

Akaku'akanene nodded and broke off her song just long enough to say, "Yes. They want to preserve the pattern."

"Then why'd they want to scrag us?"

"I don't know." And again she returned to her harsh song. Great. The only thing that could make things worse would be if ...

And, as if in response to my thought, there he was. Quinn Harlech, appearing maybe fifteen meters downslope from me, materializing out of a prismatic shimmer of light. Even at that distance I could feel those lasers he called eyes burning holes in me. His lips twisted in a scornful grin, and he drew breath to make a (doubtless scathing) remark.

Before he could get a single word out, I saw his eyes go wide, and he looked up. He threw up his arms in a sweeping gesture, and the air directly above his head flickered as if with heat lightning.

Not an instant too soon. The guardian spirit that was making a high-speed pass at the elf's cranium slammed into Quinn's magical shield, deflecting off like a basketball hurled at a concrete wall. The elf made another, more casual gesture, and with a despairing shriek the spirit was torn apart as if by invisible claws.

It had taken him less than a second to dispatch the attacking spirit, but that was long enough for the other guardians-the ones swarming around Akaku'akanene's arcane shield-to notice his existence. And, to judge from their actions, to decide that he was more of a threat to their precious pattern than we were. Of the dozen or so spirits swirling around us, all but a couple broke off and bee-lined it for Quinn Harlech.

I heard the elf curse in some fluid, complex tongue. He reached out toward the approaching spirits with a hand twisted into a claw. Half of them burst asunder, spattering the rocks below with the spirit equivalent of guts and gore. (Ectoplasm, maybe ...?) The others, totally undismayed by the geekage of their colleagues, hurtled on, screaming like chipped-up banshees. Quinn frowned. He gestured again, and another half dozen spirits exploded.

That should have put paid to all of them, yet still the air around the elf was filled with ever more screaming, circling spirits. Where the frag were they coming from?

It took me a moment to understand. The elf's presence was siphoning off spirits from the vicinity of the Dance itself. As I watched, a constant stream of gibbering guardians was peeling away from the vicinity of the Dance, flooding over toward Quinn.

He fought well, that beleaguered elf. I don't know how many guardian spirits he blew to ectoplasmic tatters, or turned inside out, or transformed into clouds of ashes or drifting puffs of smoke or rains of frogs. Dozens. But for each one he geeked, two more joined the fray. Within half a minute the guardian spirits were so numerous I couldn't even see the elf anymore.

Finally, from within the tumult of spirits, I heard a sharp, "Frag!" Then came a brilliant flicker of prismatic light, partially occulted by the swarming guardians, and I knew Quinn had made his departure.

Once he was gone, I expected the spirits to turn their attentions back to us.

And, to be honest, I expected to die. There were so many of the fragging things-so many that even Quinn Harlech had decided discretion was the better part of valor. If the elf couldn't take them on, how could Akaku'akanene shield us from them?

But they didn't come. Still they churned through the air, swirling and hurtling around where the elf had stood, as if searching for some trace of him. I looked about me. There were no spirits paying any attention to us anymore-none at all. And frag it, there went my last excuse.

Suddenly, I laughed. On the runway back on Oahu, Quinn Harlech had told me he could do things I'd never be able to, hadn't he? Things I'd never succeed without? Well, he'd just proven it, hadn't he? He'd drawn away the spirits that were standing between me and my objective ...

Before I could have second thoughts, I gripped my assault rifle, and I started running down the scree slope toward the Dance below.

26.