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northern third was completely gone. The buildings there had been turned to rubble, the ground beneath them gouged out at least three or four stories deep. The third of the city in the middle was in transition, many of the buildings already down and the excavation below them just starting.
    "They're trying to destroy the subcity," Jin murmured. "That's where their defeat came from the last time. They want to make sure that doesn't happen again."
    "Terrific," Croi said grimly. "What do we do now?"
    "We figure out something else," Lorne told him. "That's a big planet down there. There has to be some other place you can set up shop."
    Croi snorted. "Where? We need power. Cobra Broom, power and buildings and people. We can't just drop Isis in the middle of nowhere."
    Paul looked at Jin, a sudden thought stirring inside him. A bit of family history his wife and son seemed to have forgotten... "How many buildings would you need?" he asked.
    "I don't know," Croi said, turning puzzled eyes on him. "Someplace to set up the Isis machinery, plus a prep area, plus a postoperative recovery area. Three at least, or I suppose one really big building might do."
    "You have an idea?" Lorne asked.
    "I think so," Paul told him. "Remember, Jin, on your first visit to Qasama you saw a mine that Daulo Sammon's family was operating inside Milika. Do you know if it's still there?"
    "No, I don't." She looked at Zoshak. "Carsh Zoshak?"
    "Yes, it's there," the Qasaman said, his tone oddly hesitant. "It may work."
    "Except...?" Lorne prompted.
    Zoshak's lip twitched. "The people there are villagers," he said reluctantly "Not..."
    "Not city dwellers?" Jin asked.
    Zoshak's lip twitched again. "Not soldiers," he said. "It may be difficult to find the proper subjects for the Isis transformation."
    Paul looked at Jin. Over the years she'd talked about the political and philosophical divide between the Qasaman cities and villages, those conversations usually in the context of some policy the government geniuses at Dome were trying to inflict on Aventine's own rural and expansion regions.
    She'd always hoped the antagonism would fade with time. Apparently, it hadn't.
    "Don't worry, we'll find the right people," he told Zoshak. "I doubt the villagers are any less patriotic than the city dwellers. There'll be plenty of volunteers."
    "Perhaps we should call Siraj Akim," Jin suggested. "He's the senior here. He might have other ideas."
    [A response, the invaders await it,] Warrior spoke up. [Instruction, I await it.]
    Zoshak took a deep breath. "Ifrit Akim's presence is not required," he said. "The idea is sound. We'll use it."
    He turned to Warrior. "We go southwest of Sollas approximately twelve hundred kilometers," he said. "Follow the Great Arc to Azras. Milika is in the forest approximately thirty kilometers northwest of Azras."
    "You could tell them you're here looking for plants with possible pharmaceutical value," Jin suggested.
    "Isn't that the story you spun the Trofts at Caelian?" Lorne asked. "I seem to remember it not working out so great."
    [A reason, it is still a logical one,] Warrior assured him, gesturing to one of the other Trofts. [The response, you will give it.]
    [The order, I obey it.]
    The Troft murmured the story into his microphone, and for a moment the bridge was silent. Paul gazed at the image of the ruined city far below, feeling his leg throbbing with fatigue and sympathetic pain. How many Qasamans, he wondered, had been killed in the invaders' demolition? Was the destruction a genuine and reasoned reaction to the Qasamans' hidden subcity arsenal, and a military desire to eliminate that threat? Or was it driven by a desire for revenge over the invaders' earlier defeat?
    The Troft at the radio had made his request, and the conversation had now switched over to some kind of oddly poetic give-and-take bargaining or posturing that Paul had never heard before between Trofts. He continued to study the image of the devastated Qasaman capital,