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Allic's escort surrounded Jose with the same field of light and rose to join their commander and his
prisoner. Within seconds they had crested the far ridge and were out of sight.
"Shit!" It was Walker, standing off to one side. He was trembling, a look of panic in his eyes.
Mark went over to him. "What is it?"
"Captain, you won't believe it. You just won't believe it!"
"Try me."
"Look, Captain, there was this damn wasp. It just kept flying at me and I got pissed off, waved my hand
at it, and Captain, I blew it to hell with my finger. Here's another one!"
Walker pointed towards a droning insect. There was a flicker of light from his fingertip. A thin shaft of
light snapped out with an electric crackle, and the wasp vaporized with a tiny puff of fire and smoke.
Incredulous, the men backed away from Walker, who stood in shocked bewilderment.
Pina looked at Mark and the others, then turned back to Walker. "So soon," he whispered.
China
The cowards hid out on the open slope, none of them daring to approach the entryway to the temple.
"Motherless dung-eating curs," he cursed, realizing that he'd have to go in alone and finish it.
Chang Shin, warlord of the Hing bandits, stepped into the narrow defile, breathing heavily, his face
soaked with the acrid sweat of fear.
His own men had come close to killing him as it was. If he did not go through with this, the survivors of
his band would turn on him and slaughter him out of fear and anger over what had just happened.
He crept forward, bent double under the hundred-pound satchel charge. Chang reached the right-angle
turn and crept past the 37mm gun, now a twisted pile of wreckage.
His throat was tight; his heart felt as if it would burst out of his chest. He pushed on. There was one of
them. He wanted to turn away but his morbid curiosity forced him to look again.
Truly it was a monster from the nether regions--a demon of night. As they had charged the temple,
expecting to slaughter the Japanese and white-skinned foreigners, these monsters of the night had greeted
them. They had killed his men by the dozens, tearing the hearts out of quivering bodies and burning others
with gouts of flame from their mouths.
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He prayed to his ancestors, begging for protection, as he crept up to the smoldering temple. The four
demons had died, cut down at last in a wild fusillade, but not before they had wiped out a quarter of his
command and melted down the precious gun so recently taken from the Japanese.
The Japanese and the foreigners. Where were they? Damn them to the realm of nightmares, he hoped
they suffered the anguish of a thousand cuts for all eternity.
Chang pulled the fuse, staggered to the temple door, and heaved the charge inside. Turning, he sprinted
away, leaping over the smoldering bodies and puddled remains of the artillery piece.
He paused in the corridor only long enough to pull the fuse on the other two satchel charges that he had
crammed into a fissure in one of the overhanging walls.
Just as he reached the entrance there was a roaring thunderclap, and another. A giant's hand of
concussion hurled him down the slope. Rolling to one side, he watched as the canyon walls trembled then
came dashing down, sealing the temple under a million tons of rubble.
"Curse them all," he whispered. "May they suffer in the nether regions forever."
Chapter 6
"Sir, time to awake. The first bell will soon strike."
"Damn." Mark rolled over, trying to hang on to the last vestiges of sleep. There had been that strange,
haunting dream again. It had come to him half a dozen times since their arrival on Haven over a month
before. The dream would start with a roiling thunderhead building in the distance, until it seemed to rush
across the landscape, filling the world before him with its elemental powers. It washed over him, covering
him as if he were floating in the air. And then within the raging torrent he would sense something else, a
presence that could almost be touched, if only he knew where to find it.
"Sir."
"All right, all right." He opened his eyes.
It was Yamir, his aged and balding body servant. What an ugly face to wake up to in the morning, Mark
thought, and he wanted to return to the dream, but Yamir stood silent, that annoying look of superior
reproach in his eyes. How Mark hated morning people, who happily awoke in the hour before dawn and
looked down their noses at anyone who was not bounding about when they were, as if late wakers were
morally corrupt, or at the very least, suspect.
"God, I wish you could get me some coffee."
"You've asked me that before, sir. You know I've never heard of such a thing called coffee."
Mark closed his eyes. It was beyond him how any civilization could survive without providing its citizens
with two scalding cups of Java before starting the day. It was yet another reminder of just how far from
home he really was. His mind filled with the memory of Alice, who always woke before him and brewed
a pot and set the steaming cup by his bedside before leaving for the hospital. English nurses, he thought
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longingly. She was most likely in France now, somewhere with the British Eighth Army, and he was...
"Sir, your robe."
It was best to start in. Yamir was not only a body servant, he was a trained observer. The men called
him a spy, but Mark preferred the other term, since Allic was only following good judgment by having his
new men closely watched to get a better understanding of how they acted.
Taking the robe Mark followed Yamir into the main corridor of the manor. Ikawa came out from the
opposite room and the two commanders exchanged nods. They then followed their servants to the
bathing hall in the guest estate in Allic's citadel which had become their home. Over the last month the
Japanese soldiers had started to lose the faceless anonymity of enemies and started to take on distinct
personalities. Mark knew that while his mood was bad in the morning, Ikawa's was downright fierce.
Turning into a side corridor, Mark could feel the warm moisture in the air and hear the sounds of running
water and muffled voices, punctuated occasionally by peals of laughter.
They stepped through a wide doorway and into a large circular room which was open to the garden
outside. Opposite the doorway a bubbling stream cascaded out of the wall and down a smooth stone
culvert into a round, steaming pool. Half a dozen Japanese and several Americans were sitting in the
pool, and they shouted a cheery round of greetings which they knew their grumbly commanders would
ignore.
Removing his robe, Mark braced himself and stepped beneath the cascade. It was always too damn hot
at first, and he gasped as the steamy water thundered over him. Mark found it fascinating that the city sat
above a geothermal spring which not only provided hot water for all its inhabitants, but was also used for
heating when cool weather came. As near as he could figure, the climate was like southern California:
almost perfect weather with a short, mild winter.
It had rained heavily the day before and as a result the derusa trees has flowered again during the night.
Dozens of bright red blossoms were scattered across the pool--the footwide blooms filling the room with
a scent like lavender. Mark had decided that the derusa trees were like huge gardenias, genetically
designed to bloom all year. Hell, according to the lectures he'd been attending, even their food crops
were like that, producing harvest after harvest all year long. This world was really something.
Servants appeared from a side alcove and began to scrub Mark and Ikawa with pumice stones that
always stung initially, but soon left them feeling loose and tingly. The public nature of all this, and the
casual acceptance of nudity in Allic's court, still left Mark uneasy. But to the Japanese it was almost like
the communal baths of home.
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