Dire Steps by Henry V. O'Neil Page A

spacedrome on top of Zone Quest’s mountain. The dull rumbling seemed to drive a pulse through the orange fire of the blastoff, and its reflection gave Ewing’s face a mournful look. “I miss that.”
    He patted Ayliss on the shoulder before walking off.
    â€œH ey Minister, come on up here!” Lola, the lead Banshee, called over a bare shoulder, and Ayliss responded by jogging up the file. At daybreak, the five Banshees had shaken her from the sleeping bag she’d shared with Selkirk. Dressed in form-­hugging running gear, they’d invited her to join them for morning PT. She’d enthusiastically accepted, and so far had found the running easy.
    The small file had shuffled past the collection of burned-­out fires and circles of bedrolls before heading toward the veterans’ settlement and Zone Quest’s facility. The open ground had quickly shifted to fields of dark rocks, the Go-­Three that the humans and the Sims both wanted so badly, and they now ran past knee-­high spikes of the stuff.
    â€œThat’s a good man you have there, Minister.” The dark-­haired Banshee’s name was Lola, and she’d been the group’s leader in the war. She nodded at a spot several hundred yards away, where Selkirk’s lone figure ran on a parallel course. He wore a small automatic weapon on a sling and kept it tight to his side as he loped along.
    â€œHe certainly is.”
    â€œOf course he’s a sitting duck, exposed like that. So I bet that old bodyguard of yours has got ­people covering you from the high ground.”
    Modest cliffs rose just beyond Selkirk’s jogging form, closer to the old Sim colony and the mining operation. Somewhere up there, Blocker was shifting the other bodyguards around to keep the runners covered.
    â€œHe’s not so old, and he’s a vet like you.” Ayliss glided along easily. “Two tours in the zone, got just about every medal you can think of.”
    â€œI can’t think of too many medals.” That came from Tin, a short, pretty Banshee in the middle of the file.
    â€œAnd why’s that?”
    â€œBecause Banshees don’t think much of medals!” The five veterans proclaimed, laughing as one for a moment. In the short time she’d spent with them Ayliss had heard several pet phrases like that one, many of them instilled during Banshee Basic.
    The ground started to rise, with more of the black spikes appearing on either side of a dirt road cleared straight through them. Ayliss knew that any obvious changes to the landscape had been the work of military engineers or Zone Quest, as the Sims who’d lived there originally had concentrated on not altering the landscape.
    Jogging over the rise, they now passed a field of jagged black rocks taller than a man. That was a sign of rich deposits, and one of the reasons the Sims had decided to live in this area.
    â€œDid Hemsley pick this route for you?” Ayliss felt the first runnel of sweat down her back, enjoying the exertion. The terrain to their front rose dramatically only a few thousand yards away, into a jagged black mountain insulated by low Zone Quest buildings.
    â€œHe did suggest we run by the headquarters, yes.” Lola flashed a challenging smirk at her. “Just showing Station Manager Rittle that we’re friends with the new minister.”
    â€œWhich of these mansions is mine?” The spiked slopes of the ore mountain had been cleared and leveled in numerous places, and the residences of the Zone Quest management team were easy to spot. White walls, broad balconies, and gun turrets.
    â€œYou didn’t expect them to let you live inside their wire, did you, Minister?” Deelia, the muscular blonde, called out from the rear. “That really nice house there, the big one with the walkway going all the way around the second floor, that one’s yours.”
    Ayliss looked more closely at the mining compound