The grime caked on the big man’s face made his eyeballs and teeth appear much whiter than they were, as if he was peering out from behind a mask. He wore filthy bib-front overalls, a holed-out khaki T-shirt and battered, unlaced boots. His blinding reek reminded Ryan of a bear pit in midsummer. In the past, Big Mike had proved himself a backstabbing con man, but the evidence of that fresh stump couldn’t be ignored. The cut at the wrist and the crust of scab looked far too neat for bladework. The only instrument Ryan had seen that could make such a precise cut—and simultaneously seal off the wound—was a laser. A technology lost in the wake of Armageddon, but perfected to a high degree by the invaders from Shadow Earth. The last time Ryan and the companions had crossed paths with the she-hes, the combination of advanced weapons and intelligent armor had been more than they could handle. Unable to return effective fire against the battlesuits’ EM shields, they had been captured, then marched out to the middle of the hundred-square-mile, Slake City massif—the remains of a once-great, predark city melted and fused into a glacier of thermoglass by a multiwarhead, airburst nuke strike.
