General Lance moved to stand in front of the viewscreen on the small jump ship, looking down at this valley they called Dead End, thinking that name was appropriate. It wasn't very impressive - perhaps a dozen miles long, a mixture or rocks and scrubland, perhaps twenty houses with small cultivated parches around some of them.

''So, if they have a ship, where is it?'' she demanded of Caspar, turning towards the Time Master where he sat at one of the consoles.

''I don't know'' Caspar looked down at the controls, making another sweep of the valley. Even a ship cloaked from Earth's technology would show up as a faint trace on his scanners.

This was annoying. A major objective had been to capture whatever vessel their opponents were using, as a replacement for the two Savage, Tandy and co had lost to theft and destruction. She wanted to win this round - to show Savage that she was better than him and his.

So, she'd move to an alternate plan - capture someone, preferably two people - and make them tell her where it was.

She relayed that order to the officer in charge of her ground troops, then paused for a moment, looking down at the scene below her. It was a sparsely populated rural area and, if the occupants had something planned, she had twenty eight highly trained soldiers, Savage also had about forty people on the ground and - she glanced over her shoulder for a moment - we have him.

''Move in'' she relayed her order to both her man and to Savage. She'd been surprised when he said he was going in with his ground troops - he could be wounded even if he was immortal. She would be overseeing, directing, from the vantage point of the bridge.

X

On the ground, Savage signalled to his assembled forces to descend towards the valley. Since the small drop ship couldn't hold them all, they had been ferried in under cover of darkness, waiting out the night on the forested upper slopes - a mirror of what the attackers had done on Greenworld he reflected. He glanced to his right - Cassandra was there, something he'd reluctantly agreed to.

''I trained for combat'' she pointed out, reminding him that, in this reality, she'd reached the rank of Major in the US forces.

As he, together the rest of his troops, emerged from a section of forest, he looked down towards the valley. Breakfast there must have been over. In a distance a single car was heading down the valley towards the nearest road. He could see three - maybe four -people working in the area outside their houses. No one had seen what was coming yet. They soon would.

X

If he had been a betting man, that was one time Savage would have lost. Carter and Kendra, sitting on a bench outside Joanne's house, had been watching ever since the ground troops began to descend. When they passed a certain rock formation, Carter got almost lazily to his feet, stretching his arms above his head as if to ease the cramp out of them.

A couple of minutes later, Len and Sara came strolling almost casually out of the house, both carrying steaming mugs. Gradually, Rip, Eve, Martin, Jax, Ray and Nora drifted out to join them.

X

From her aerial vantage point, Lance called Savage ''The house at the top of the valley - it looks like they're all there!''

X

Savage had already seen and was angling his ground forces in that direction.

X

The group outside the house waited until the advancing troops were about five hundred yards away, then 'noticed' them. Rip, Eve, Len, Sara, Ray and Nora made what looked like a concerted rush back indoors.

Martin and Jax merged and, together, while Carter ad Kendra took to the air. F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. began to shoot fire down at the troops, Carter and Kendra had actual guns. Ray came out of the house, now suited up and flying, hurling his compressed light bolts downwards. It was distracting for those on the ground, but it wasn't all that affective - they were also having to dodge the bullets fired at them. Savage's people took cover in patches of scrub, while continuing to fire upwards.

X

Lance looked down at the chaos unfolding below her and her lip curled. She noticed that the five people now in the house were also firing, all having taken up position at windows to the front of the house. She opened a private line to one of her senior officers, telling her to take ten troops and work round to the back of the house.

''Go in and get me some prisoners'' she ordered. See how long that flying circus keeps going when their friends have become human shields. This wasn't going to take long, she thought - and if any of the other locals did intervene, it would be the worse for them.

X

She was wrong. The real battle for Dead End was just about to begin.