Stevan crouched like a cornered animal, shaking his head slowly. "No," he told the thing, the presence. "Not again."

He had no way of telling how long he had been unconscious after finding the destroyed Rev Raptor. He guessed it was several hours. When he woke he was drained, spent, no longer capable of feeling. Though robbed of its best weapon, his guilt had continued its assault.

At first he had tried to convince himself that what he had done was not really so bad, that the Zoids he had destroyed were unpiloted like the ones he had fought at the dustbowl days before. But it was no use. His remorse crushed the feeble defense. These Raptors had performed much better than the others, and unless the Backdraft's R&D department worked more quickly than any he had ever heard of, the Raptors superior performance couldn't just be attributed to better droid pilots.

There was no denying it. The Rev Raptors on the moutainside had contained living, breathing humans.

And even if they had not, he was still guilty of destroying the Zoids themselves. Leave the scientists to debate whether or not Zoids were truly alive. Seeing them dead gave Stevan a unique perspective on the issue, and there was no doubt about it in his mind.

When that failed, he had tried to make himself believe that he had not murdered the Zoids and their pilots after all. It was the Command Wolf that had gone berserk and attacked that way, he told told himself. It wasn't his fault. He was just along for the ride.

But that was a lie, too, and he knew it. He couldn't delude himself into thinking those things any more than he had been able to delude himself into thinking that he was alone after he had seen the shape on the creek bank.

He had searched for more rationalizations, more justifications, but had failed to find any. He was forced to admit to himself what he had done.

Unable to deny the act, he moved on to analyzing it, and after some time had reached the conclusion that he was being punished. Something he had done in his past had angered a higher power, who in retribution had made him go mad.

Part of him wondered if that explanation was crazy in and of itself, but he didn't haver any others, so he had stuck with it and moved on to trying to figure out what sin he had committed. He remembered many, but none so grevious and outstanding as to bring down such sudden, terrible vengeance, at least not in his mind.

It had all started when he had met Rebecca.

And that was it. Everything that had happened was because he had talked to Rebecca at that diner in Sol. The the face from his dream that had already haunted him uncounted times had welled up once more in his consciousness, and this time he thought he saw accusation in the blue-eyed gaze. Lashing out was no use. He knew that from experience.

I won't leave you, she had said in the dream.

I know, he had answered.

So why did you before?

All of this replayed now at high speed as he sat crouched on the hillside, meeting the stare of the thing before him and wishing he could do the same with the presence. He knew they were aware of what he was feeling, could sense their reaction, a mixture of incomprehension, disgust, and amusement.

The mist was gone now. Not even wispy vestiges remained. The sunlight of mid-morning fell full on the hillside. It was behind the strange Zoid, outlining its shape in silhouette, leaving it dark and shadowy except for the glowing eyes that matched Stevan's stare.

The Zoid was a wolf-form, but far larger than the Command Wolf, sheathed in angular armor, which was true white in color rather than bone. Like Stevan, it was crouched down, but its posture was curious rather than defensive. It moved its head close to him and growled, softly and questioningly.

"No!" he said, with passion this time. "Go away. I'm not killing anyone else." He stood up and turned his back on the Zoid, wishing his knees would stop wobbling. "I'm not going to change my mind."

He heard a sound and looked over his shoulder to see what it was. The Zoid cocked its head to one side, and a hatch in the top of its skull swung open in invitation.

"I'll stay here and die on this mountainside first!" he screamed.

But what about Calypso and Leah?

The unwelcome thought hit him like a blow, driving him to his hands and knees. You might not care if you live or die, but what about them? The presence had never spoken to him. He was displeased to realize that it was he himself, and not the Zoid or the presence, who was asking this question.

He was even more displeased to realize that he had no good answer. "What if they're dead?" he countered, unable to make himself phrase the statement in any more definite way and not caring if his argument was weaker because of it.

What if they're not?

He tried to evade the issue by bringing the debate back to his main point. "I'm not going to do any more killing."

Fine. Don't. His opposition was just as determined. What about Calypso and Leah?

"I'm not going to kill any more."

Is that all you can say? One of his warring halves was vaguely exasperated with the other. What is your problem? It was survival of the fittest. If you hadn't killed them, they would have killed you.

"Maybe they would have, maybe not."

What do you mean, "maybe not?"

"They might have only destroyed my Command Wolf."

"Only"?

Suddenly filled with an entirely new kind of self-recrimination, he cast a fleeting glance at the Zoid. It registered no reaction.

You're wasting time. Are you going to go and see if your friends are still alive or stay here feeling sorry for yourself?

He didn't answer. Do you really want to stay here until you waste away? his opponent persisted.

He was so hungry he was almost sick. He guessed it had been two days or more since he had eaten. "That's a low blow."

But it's true, just the same.

Slowly, he turned back to the Zoid and began to walk towards it. The unidentified presence and the one that seemed to be the Zoid itself welcomed him.

Weakly, he climbed on to the head. Just as he was about to lower himself through the open hatch into the cockpit, he could feel the two entitie's attitudes change. He could feel them getting ready to hunt. He recoiled and almost fell to the ground. Strangely, the act of catching himself used up all of the resistance he had left.

He eased himself down into the cockpit chair and the hatch closed above him.

--------

Calypso's posture in her rockpit chair was an interesting study in contradiction. Though overall she was slumped back from a mixture of fatigue and depression, her individual muscles were uncomfortably tensed, the result of the unpleasant thoughts and emotions still at war within her.

She had to tell herself she was doing the right thing, even if she couldn't quite make herself believe it. The decision has essentially been made for her. They simply couldn't afford to wait any longer. That no Backdraft Zoids had arrived to finish her and Leah off had about used up whatever was left in their allotment of luck, she figured. Their only option was to escape while they still had the chance and tell the ZBC what had happened. If Stevan was still alive, that would be the best way to help him.

A low groan escaped her lips as she scanned her sensor displays. At the moment, the only thing her mind would allow her to know for certain was that she was desperate for a good night's sleep. She had slept on the Spirit Cats' WhaleKing out of exhaustion, and that kind of sleep brought little true rest. Much less the few hours she had managed to snatch while she and Leah took turns keeping watch during their wait in the mountains.

She would have thought that it would have been harder to cope with the consequences of her decision early on, just after they had left the campsite. Instead, the opposite was true. Then, the emotional lift of doing something, of taking action, of simply having made decision, had carried her through her doubts. But now, as they neared their goal, she was second-guessing herself again.

But they were getting closer, and that sealed the deal. Based on data from her nav computer and what she remembered from the trip the other way, and estimated they couldn't be more than ten or fifteen klicks from the valley where they had left the Spirit Cats WhaleKing. The terrain they had already covered was difficult, making the narrow but relatively flat-floored canyon she was now walking through a welcome change. It would take more effort to turn around and go back than it would to simply continue on. After so much fighting, Calypso was content – as content as she could be, anyway – with the path of least resistance.

Path.

The other way.

Calypso's doubt was suddenly replaced by concern. Nebulous, unspecific, ill-defined concern. There was something wrong, something she was forgetting.

"Leah," she radioed, "any sign of the Backdraft?" The question was foolish and she knew it. Leah was experienced in flying recon from dozens of ZBC-sanctioned matches, and had never failed to relay any pertinent information, let alone the possible presence of enemy Zoids. But Calypso's inexplicable, nagging worry, pouring salt into the wounds of an already exhausted mind, forced her to ask anyway.

"Nothing," Leah responded. Her voice as as tired as Calypso's, strained by a weariness that had overmatched the Leah's usual energetic disposition. That energy was partly a product of her personality and partly simple youthful exuberance. Stevan had sometimes jokes about being the "old man" of the team, both because he was older and because he was – ostensibly, as he usually qualified – the team's leader. Calypso realized once again that she was now the "old woman." Or something like that. Whatever. She didn't like it, in any case.

In retrospect, that she actually noticed the tiny flash of movement on her rear view screen while lost in such brooding thoughts was an other of the minor miracles that she had so recently almost despised. Her mind cleared instantaneously as she and her Zoid became aware of the threat in the same moment. Even so, they were almost too late.

The GunSniper sprang sideways, avoiding the energy blast from one of the attacking Rev Raptor's arm guns but not the other. It scored a hit on the GunSniper's own left arm, found its way through the armor protection, and destroyed a joint actuator. The limb abruptly swung down towards the ground, its three-barrel laser cannon now useless. Incapable of feeling pain, the GunSniper nonetheless screamed out in surprise and anger.

"Never mind, Leah," Calypso called as she spun her Zoid around to face the pair of Rev Raptors that were leaping down from their hiding places in clefts in the rocky canyon walls. "They're back here."

--------

The Zoid had been sprinting across the vast expanse of foothills for a couple of minutes before Stevan realized that they were the same ones he had passed through while fleeing (what he guessed was) the day before. He was struck by how different the terrain seemed. They looked the same no matter what direction one traveled through them in, but the new wolf Zoid, with its larger size, could handle them better than the Command Wolf had. Sometimes it could simply leap from hilltop to hilltop with single huge bounds, lessing the hemmed-in feeling Stevan had experienced before.

But for the most part, the difference had nothing to do with such purely physical matters. Before, Stevan had been running for his life, concerned with nothing more than escaping his pursuers and thinking no further than the next few minutes or even seconds. This was different.

He was not running away any more.

The recklessness filled him, infused him with strength to drive away his exhuaustion, at least temporarily. His fears, fears the madness would overcome him once again, were ebbing away with his weakness. He felt some part of the madness now, to be sure. Or something like it. But what he felt now seemed as different from the madness as this passge through the foothills did from the one the day before. There was the same battle-lust, the same raw, instinctive voice within him that cried out for the glory of the chase and the hunt and the kill. But it was controlled now. Instead of pulling him along with it, it drove him forward.

The Zoid pounded onward tirelessly, its pace mocking the undulating ground. Stevan's hands rested on the control column, but he moved it only rarely, and when he somehow felt almost as if the input had been unneccessary, a mere distraction to the Zoid as it continued a task it was easily capable of accomplishing better on its own. There was no annoyance in the feeling, though, no more than a gentle but firm admonishment from the Zoid and the presence, a reassurance that the time for his help would come.

Rationally, he knew that the Backdraft could attempt to use the cover of the foothills to stage another ambush the same way they had before, but he was not concerned about that. He was sure that the Zoid and the presence would be aware of any such threat well ahead of time and make him aware of it, and that they, together, were capable of handling it anyway.

Trust. It was one of the few coherent thoughts Stevan had as they grew ever closer to their goal. His mind was no longer fogged by anguish and weariness – conscious thought simply seemed superfluous now; indeed, he was only dimly aware of the goal itself. But when he thought about it later, and when he considered it other times after experiencing it in the future, trust was the best way he could come up with of describing and expressing it. He, the Zoid, and the presence thought as one, acted as one, were one.

They were the predator. Their enemies were prey. They would hunt, they would fight, and they would be victorious.

--------

Calypso's cry of fury and desperation matched the one emitted by her GunSniper as she slammed her control sticks up again their stops and the Zoid lunged forward, bowling over a charging Rev Raptor and knocking it onto its back. It rolled, displaying an admirable coordination of its own reflexes and its pilot's skill, but not fast enough. The tri-barrel gun on the GunSniper's wrist, its only remaining weapon, sprayed fire into the fallen Zoid. It managed to get halfway on its feet, then flopped to the canyon floor again in a heap, ringed by tiny pits and divots carved into the dusty rock floor by errant bolts of energy from Calypso's wild burst.

How could she have been so stupid? What kind of idiocy had possessed her to follow the exact same route to the WhaleKing that they had taken before? Of course the Backdraft would have sentries posted along the way in case they did exactly that. She would not blame her weariness for the mental fumble – that was only an excuse. No, it was her responsibility, her fault. She was the leader. She had known all along that she was not cut out for that role. She had failed, and now her failure would cost her everything.

No. No, not everything. She spun the GunSniper on its heel, her finger only momentarily letting up on the trigger before squeezing it again to hose a stream of laser fire at another Rev Raptor that leapt deftly sideways out of the way. She turned to hold off a third enemy Zoid, noting a blur of motion in her peripheral vision where the second had been even as she did so. If she could just help Leah get away.

But there was no way she could tell – order - her teammate to escape while she could. Their comms had dissolved into jammed static again as soon as the attack had begun. Go! she screamed at Leah in her mind, hoping some force she could not comprehend would carry the cry, like a prayer, to the younger warrior in time for it to do any good. Her tri-barrel gun continued to fire, catching the Rev Raptor under her crosshairs in a hail of golden darts. The Backdraft Zoid reeled in a kind of macabre, herky-jerky dance even as its partner completed its soaring leap, landing with deadly grace next to the GunSniper and lunging to strike with its reaper's blades. Calypso turned to meet the attack, knowing it would be too late. Go! she implored again. Fly!

Leah was flying, albeit just barely. The Redler screamed down into the canyon, its backwash hurling up a rooster-tail of dust and gravel from the floor. It passed Calypso in a barely-discernible flash of purple, its claws slashing across the Rev Raptor before its blades could tear into the GunSniper's flank, carrying it a few meters, and then dumping it back to the ground. The Raptor slid a short distance farther on the strength of the momentum imparted by its brief, wild ride and then stopped, its Command System and quite likely its pilot also knocked senseless.

Any joy Leah and Calypso might have felt about this momentary triumph was short-lived. The impact of the Redler's attack on the Rev Raptor and the Backdraft Zoid's weight during the split-second the Redler had carried it had, however slightly, thrown off the airborne Dragon Zoid's aerial balance. And at the altitude it was flying, perhaps ten meters at most above the canyon floor, there was no room for even such slight errors.

There was a chance, a good chance, that Leah would have been able to correct the momentary loss of control and save a crash, if she had been given the time and space to do so. But she had neither. The Redler smashed into the other Rev Raptor, which had somehow maintained its footing after Calypso's bombardment. The two Zoids became one tangled mass that hurtled across the canyon wall. Calypso watched helplessly as the unwillingly united adversaries had their progress abruptly halted by the sudden intervention of the canyon wall, then separated into their own two identities distinct to the human eye and came to rest.

The Rev Raptor had absorbed the main force of the impact and would not rise again without weeks of work in a repair bay. The Redler was better off – it began to thrash and struggle to get back on its feet and into the safety of the sky almost immediately – but it was still too badly damaged to accomplish the second objective and possibly the first as well.

Suddenly, Calypso had other concerns. Watching disaster almost befall her friend and teammate, she had forgotten to look out for her own well-being. A punishing salvo hit the GunSniper from behind. It lurched, made an abortive effort to stay upright, and then fell awkwardly forward, sprawled across the bottom of the cavern. Calypso wrenched the controls, demanding, pleading, that her Zoid respond and save them both. Ahead of her, the Redler tried again to rise and again failed. In her rear-view monitor, a quartet of Rev Raptors strode closer with casual purposefulness.

Then a white blur, gleaming in a ray of sunlight that had found its way into the shadow of the crevice, descended upon the Raptors like the wrath of an offended deity.

--------

Stevan's heart momentarily rose into his throat as the Zoid leaped off of the cliff and plummted down into the canyon, but the terror lasted no longer than that moment. Arcing into a diving posture, the Zoid was unconcerned with the difficulty of making a safe landing on the canyon floor a hundred meters below. It had no plans to attempt that.

The leading Rev Raptor, proverbially, never knew what hit it. The forepaws of Stevan's mount, with all the weight of Stevan's Zoid multiplied by the speed of the fall from the cliff, struck the Raptor like a pile-driver. The Backdraft Zoid had barely hit the ground before its attacker somersaulted off of it, landing perfectly on all fours in a ready crouch.

For a full second, the remaining trio of Rev Raptors stood still, shocked by the sudden, unexpected attack. That was at least a half-second too long. The Wolf Zoid sprang at them, seizing one's neck in its jaws, which now glowed and crackled with blue white energy. It bounded on, unceremoniously dropping its throttled prey after a couple of strides as its opponents, now reduced to two in number, finally came out of their shocked stupor.

They spun and opened fire with their arm-mounted guns, but were unable to score with a single shot. Stevan's Zoid made a circling turn, one enemy blast cutting into the canyon wall it had pushed off of in mid-air an instant before, a second passing beneath it an nansecond after it touched the ground and leaped again. It grabbed the third Rev Raptor in its mouth as it had the second, and the fourth's wild fire hit its helpless partner rather than the intended target.

The wolfish Zoid held the knocked-out Rev Raptor for a couple of seconds, almost tauntingly, then threw it down with a shake of its head. The last Backdraft Zoid started to slowly back slowly back away. Just as it turned to begin a full retreat, its adversary struck. Within a moment it joined its battered, defeated mates on the scarred, pock-marked bottom of the gorge.

The battle, in its entirety, had lasted less than half a minute. The three-in-one harmony that had sustained him suddenly slipping away, Stevan surveyed the scene with blurring vision. He swayed in his cockpit seat, only the harness preventing him from collapsing outright to one side or the other. The Zoid, having apparently finished its own survey of the battlefield, walked slowly forward.

Calypso unfastened her harness and yanked a handle on the side of her command couch headrest. The GunSniper's orange-tinted cockpit canopy swung open, and she jumped out onto the dusty canyon floor.

The white fury was no longer a blur; it has resolved itself into a discernible, detailed shape, a lean, angular, lupine Zoid. Calypso ran towards it, Leah not far behind.

The two slowed as the newcomer walked calmly closer to them. They and the unknown Zoid stopped and then regarded each other. Calypso and Leah fought the urge to take a step back as they felt the Zoid's imposing presence. After a few seconds, it lowered its head down to their level. At first they fought it was merely looking at them more closely. Then the hatch between its ears opened and it cocked its head expectantly.

Together, Calypso and Leah climbed up and peered into the Zoid's cockpit, and gasped as they saw Stevan's muddy, unconscious form in the command seat.