re based on a combined series of shields and orbiting
Artillery Stations, similar to, but more highly integrated than those
of the East Germans, in that the shields themselves were wrapped about
the great mace-shapes of the Stations like nets of energy strung
between harbor mines.

But what made them effective was the source of their power. Not only
did they feed off the sun, but also used the very energy of assaulting
blasts to strengthen the fields, and channel the drawn-off power into a
reverse stroke by the corresponding station---like an aimed mirror of
aggression. The harder an opponent struck, the harder was the blow
returned.

Though much of the final figuring had been Tolstoy's, the inspiration
and early experiments all belonged to Dark. The idea had first come to
him during one of his many visits to the Taoist monastery near his home
in Manchuria, where he had been raised by his father, a stern U.C. Army
Captain stationed there. Of all the things he had learned (the
Shao-lin had let him ask all the questions he liked, though they seldom
answered directly or in full), one precept of the Kung Fu style of
fighting had always intrigued him most deeply:

If a man, in hand-to-hand combat with another, could turn the force of
his opponent's assault back upon him, adding to it the strength of his
own spirit, why couldn't a machine, or even a defense field, do the
same? He had carried this thought through all the years of his
scientific and worldly education, and while serving in the Commonwealth
Space Navy during the Manxsome conflict, had seen first-hand the need
for such a defense: a way for the week to hold off the strong.

He had also been severely wounded, and nearly died, when his ship's own
force-shields had been broken, and the exposed vessel riven with
agonizing heat. The next four years had been spent in hospitals and
operating rooms where, remarkably, he had slowly recovered with no
permanent (physical) damage.

In fact, though his life totaled only twenty-nine Earth years, they had
been lived with such intensity and trauma, through no conscious choice
of his own, that while he was considerably younger than most of the
officers under him, he was, in his way, more experience, time-wizened
(and weary of life) than nearly all of them. If hope, despair, and
nearness to death are the great teachers of this existence, then here
was a student who knew the lists by rote.

He stood now in the engineer