The Wolf Worlds by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

intelligence until the last minute.
    A piece of darkness moved slightly and suddenly became Sten, face darkened, wearing a black, tight-fitting coverall. Behind him slipped Alex.
    In front of them were the manned and the electronic perimeters. They'd passed the emplaced tracks easily—armor soldiers traditionally believe in the comforts of home. Which means when night comes they put on minimal security, electronic if possible, button up all the hatches, turn on the inside lights, and crack the synthalk.
    Sten and Alex had moved forward of the armor units walking openly, as if they belonged to the tax-collecting unit.
    The manned post to their left front was no problem. The two men behind the crew-served weapon were staring straight ahead. Of course there was no need to watch their rear.
    The problem was the electronics.
    Sten dropped flat as his probing eyes caught an electronic relay point. He moved his hand forward, closed his eyes, and finger-read the unit. Clot me, he thought in astonishment. This thing's so old it's still got transistors, I think!
    Alex passed him the Stealthbox. Sten touched it to the relay and the box clicked twice. Then a touchplate on the stealthbox warmed, signaling to Sten's hand that the relay would now send OK OK OK NEGATIVE INTRUSION even if a track ran over it.
    The two men crawled on.
    Sten and Alex were barely fifteen, meters in front of the manned position when, without warning, a flare blossomed in the night sky.
    Freeze… freeze… move your face slowly away… down in the dirt… wait… and hope those two troopies back in the hole aren't crosshairing on your back.
    Blackness as the flare died and crawl on.
    The second line of electronics was slightly more sophisticated.
    If Sten and Alex didn't need to crawl back out, it would have been simple to put a couple of "ghosts" into that circuitry, so that the perimeter warning board would suddenly show everything attacking, including Attila's Hordes.
    Instead Sten took a tiny powerdriver from his waistbelt and gently—one turn at a time—backed off a perimeter sensor's access plate. The stealthbox had already told him there were no antishutdown sensors inside.
    Sten set the access plate down on the sand and held one hand back. Alex gingerly fished a very dead desert rodent from his pouch and passed it to Sten. Sten shoved the tiny corpse nose-first into the sensor. That sensor flashed once and went defunct.
    Sten then carefully bent the access plate to appear as if the rodent had somehow wormed its way inside. He reinstalled the plate on the box and all looked normal again.
    As they crawled past the now-dead electronic line, Alex suddenly tugged at Sten's ankle.
    Sten froze, waiting.
    Alex slithered past him and sabotaged a second, independent-circuit alarm. Then he swept the area in front of it with his stealthbox. Finally he took a small plastic cup from his pouch and positioned it, open end down, over the pickups for a landmine trigger.
    Sten glanced at him. Alex yawned ostentatiously and waved Sten onward.
    "I agree, Major," Sten said politely. "You and your force would be a valuable addition. I've never had the chance to operate with three-man commando teams and I'd like to see them in action."
    Ffillips was a short, muscular woman with ramrod military posture. She was middle-aged, with silvery hair as immaculate as her uniform. She had cold, assessing eyes that warmed now as she boasted about her troops.
    "Trained 'em myself," Ffillips said proudly. "Took the best I could find from the planetary armies. Gave them pride in themselves. Taught 'em to look like soldiers. And, I tell you frankly, without bragging, they're very damned good. Think of
    'em like my own children, I do. I'm like a mother to them."
    Ffillips' people did look pretty good, Sten had to admit, even though he and Alex had been able to penetrate the canyon and infiltrate Ffillips' camp without being challenged. Sten's mild egotism was that there wasn't another soldier