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bouncing, pitching the Wolfcub down straight on its nose. The Interceptor came apart, shredding aluminoid off its frame. The port wing crumpled and flew off. The pulse-jet, coughing flames, sheared off its mounts, crushed the already buckled cockpit, and detonated as it lifted clear. Liquid flame boiled out across the runway.
    High on its six, Darrow stared in disbelief. He’d just lowered his own undercart, and the added drag had dwindled his speed even more. There was no runway any more, just a lake of fire and a mass of tangled wreckage.
    “Abort, Hunt Four!”
    Darrow slammed on full emergency thrust and trimmed for maximum lift. His Cub shook and fought, tired of flying now. He hauled on the stick.
    Jet screaming, Hunt Four cleared the debris by scant metres and zoomed through the leaping fireball of the crash. Darrow’s canopy blackened with soot. There was smoke everywhere. As he came clear, he saw loose flame dancing along his wings.
    “Request secondary runway!” he yelled.
    “Runway is clear—” the vox sang. He came around, rising and turning as tightly as he dared. He wouldn’t stall. Not now. Not now. The stick was like lead. He came about onto the track, dropping fast but true. He had it now.
    Red lights fluttered across his instruments. He felt a lurch. The engine had flamed out. Zero fuel or nothing like enough airspeed, he couldn’t tell which. Didn’t have time. Didn’t care.
    The Wolfcub fell out of the air onto the ragged runway. The undercart survived the first hard bounce, but not the second. It disintegrated in a scatter of chrome struts and torn rubber. The machine made a third bounce on its belly, cascading sparks into the air. Body plating ripped away. The slide went wide, turning the dented nosecone right, folding a wing like paper. Darrow screamed, his arms over his face, shaken like a bead in a tin.
    They came running from all directions, from the silos, from the fitter barns, from the main hangar. Recovery trucks, their hooters blaring, kicked up dust and stones as they raced over the verge sides.
    Jagdea and Blansher were amongst the first of the aviators to reach the wreck.
    “Back! Get back!” a tender driver screamed at them.
    “Get him out then!” Jagdea yelled back, slamming past the barrier of the man’s outstretched arms.
    The canopy hood of the downed Cub wrenched backwards, and the pilot dragged himself out. His plane was almost on its side, pinning a broken wing under it, surrounded by debris. He staggered towards them, shaking his head dizzily as the crash-crews ran in towards the wreck with retardant sprays.
    The young man’s face was black with soot and oil. When he pulled off the breather mask, his lower face was pink and clean. He blinked at Jagdea and Blansher.
    “Shit,” he said.
    “Good landing,” Blansher said, offering an arm to support him. The pilot sagged heavily, shaking.
    “Good… landing…?” he coughed.
    Blansher smiled. “You walked away from it, didn’t you?”

DAY 253
      
    Interior Desert, 10.10
    The Fury of Pardua was dead. Its power plant had been running sore and hoarse for the last hundred kilometres, and the coolant needles had been buried in red for the last twenty. The driver had managed to get it just about off the main track before the engine uttered its death-rattle, and now the venerable Conqueror-type battle tank was slumped as if in repose.
    The fine, dry sand was slowly dimpling under its sixty-two tonnes and it was beginning to keel, submerged up to the axles on the port side.
    LeGuin walked around it once, feeling the heat radiating off its metal hull on his face. There was a clatter of tools and one of the regimental aux techs appeared out of the rear hatch, his face red and shiny from exertion.
    “Well?” asked LeGuin.
    “Coolant’s dry and the main cylinder block has just fused. Running too hard, too long. And there’s sand in everything.”
    LeGuin nodded. “Strip out anything portable or consumable. Munitions,