There was silence again in the OC. The Communicator looked at Fasolini. The skin at the corners of her eyes was tracked with sudden crow's feet. She did not speak.

"If it's the contract you're worried about," ben Mehdi went on, "theforce majeure provision clearly-"

"Shut up!"the Colonel snapped. His subordinates froze. "Sorry, Hussein," Fasolini went on in a tired voice. He rubbed his face with his palms. "You see, I tried that before I called you in, bounced a signal to the Rube CinC, Yorck, on his internal push." The stocky man managed a smile and squeezed Foyle's shoulder. The Communicator beamed.

"They won't deal," Fasolini went on, "not on any terms we can take. They don't like meres, they don't use them themselves… and they like us even less than most."

"They wouldn't deal onany terms?" ben Mehdi pressed with a frown.

Colonel Fasolini looked up. After a moment, he said, "No terms we can take. They're real unhappy about their starship this morning." The only sound in the OC was the sigh of the fan in the communications terminal. "They know it was us that did it. They want the whole gun crew-" Fasolini neither raised his voice nor looked at Sergeant Jensen- "and every tenth man at random from the rest of the Company. The others they'll give passage off-planet without guns or equipment." He shrugged. "I told Yorck if he showed himself within a klick of the compound, I'd personally blow him a new asshole."

"O-kay," said Sergeant Hummel. She appeared to be looking at nothing in particular, certainly not the Sergeant-Gunner beside her. "Let's don't wait around. Two trucks'll hold the personnel, the equipment we ditch and put in a claim for it at Praha."

"Lichtenstein's got a guard on the trucks," objected Sergeant Mboko. The sheen of his smooth, black face stood out above the absorptive cloth of his uniform.

"So he's got a bloody guard!" Hummel snapped. "They're the least of our problems. We grease themquiet, load the trucks, andbam! we're out of the compound and heading west before the indigs know what hit them. They can't shut off the power, because the pylons are energized from both ends of the line."