Eventually, Doug knew, the flank defenses of both lines would give way, and the centers of each would rupture, and then, until the hovering tab and evac planes gave the signal that the Phase Three limit had been reached, the battle would wage in a great undulating mass, without formation, without plan, without reason. He had to reach Mike and Terry before then, for once the lines disintegrated into Final Phase—deployment at will—they'd be lost to him for good.
And Phase Three lasted at best for three hours. Final Phase, when it begun, would last as many days.
Somehow, he had to jockey the hovering ship over the area where the map-estimate indicated that Mike and Terry would be fighting. And when he landed, he must somehow halt the carnage momentarily—just long enough for them to see him, to run....
Doug tilted the great ship at an angle of about seventy degrees, compensated it on the main drive and the single bank of bow belly-jets that automatically checked in as the ship left vertical balance. And the terrain below him moved slowly, canted oddly between horizon and sky.
Slowly, toward the area designated on the map—slowly, sinking slightly, so that he could see their faces now, watch as their maces shattered the glittering helmets into junk, smashed into living flesh, as their broadswords glistened red and swung, struck....
Momentarily hypnotized by the horror that screamed below him and by the sickening realization that what he saw was real even though his reason rebelled through force of habit from admission that such reality could exist, Doug watched the tilted battlefield as it stretched but hundreds of feet below him now, watched as a smoothly-oiled, carefully calculated device preserved the peace of a planet.
A small, sweating body was hewn in two.
A helmeted head fell; an arm dropped grotesquely beside it.
A boy's boot was bathed in blood as he kicked viciously at his opponent's chest to withdraw his sword from it.