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Tescadji realized -once certain that he was alive- that it was only the barrier summoned by the his runes that had protected him from the full brunt of the blast Nevertheless, a dull pain persisted across his back

But one glis made him wonder as to whether or not he had been better off nu so uilt Death was so seenhis terms of service in the Android Task Force and Liberation War, but on such a full scale, this was so co into areas that held the afterhter in a manner similar to this But those masses ofas the sight of a killing ground of sohuman, he supposed that a s beings But this served as a contradiction In the force, he was close friends with more than a few androids, and would be crushed if they died in the manner of these poor souls: hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals of every race, all dead, in what used to be Lusea's legendary art-reen silk caked with debris and singed at the hems and lapels But compared to the totality of the losses about him, this was of little consequence

"By the Divine," he rimly, "did it have to happen here, of all places?"

Fla open air shops, whileand support columns lay charred and strewn about, little more than unidentifiable rubble now But the absolute worst was the gruesomely visible bodies of men, women, and children: some relatively whole, but maimed froe fro explosion

"Anyone else still alive?" He called out in the midst of the hellish silence, but the hiss of fla else? It would be only by the most stupendous miracle that anyone else could have survived And in this case, such a ood I did," he said aloud before his soot-filled lungs expelled their pollutants in a lengthy, spastic cough -the initial effects of smoke inhalation Aware that the runes he bore had no equations for filtering air, Tescadji removed the handkerchief from his pocket and draped it over his h the debris "Sending me, of all people down here for fire control … What could they have been thinking?"