Judas Unchained

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mark!”

“Huh?” Mark snapped his eyes open. He hadn’t been sleeping on the job. No. Just quietly resting while the engineeringbot ran its new program cycle. He blinked some focus into his eyes, and concentrated on the junction between the force field generator and its secondary phase alignment module. The bot’s instrument arms had withdrawn after establishing a seal. “Yeah, looks good. Run the power test.”

“Okay, activating main circuitry now,” Thame said. He was the Charybdis technical officer, another Sheldon, a ninth-generation grandson of Nigel. It had always been difficult for Mark to work out the hierarchy the Sheldons employed. Basically, the lower the number in your connection the more important you were. Or thought you were. Though Mark had to admit, everyone involved in the lifeboat project was certainly competent. It was that little nuance of superiority they had whenever they said their name that irritated him.

A row of red LEDs set into the module’s casing came on, flashing in sequence before steadying to a permanent glow. Corresponding schematics slid across Mark’s virtual vision, complete with green icons. “Okay, we have functionality,” he said. A yawn made him pause for a moment, then he confirmed the engineeringbot’s new sequence, the fifth they’d tried, as valid to the assembly bay’s RI.

Despite every misgiving, transplanting the frigate assembly bay to the Searcher had worked. Locked up inside the mechanical labyrinth, working constantly, he hadn’t even been aware of the flight. Now they were holding station in the Wessex system’s cometary belt, waiting for Mark and his team to complete the Charybdis. None of them had slept for the last twenty-four hours, and most of them had worked their full shift before that.

The engineeringbot slid away from the generator. Mark let himself drift back behind it, watching out for girders and struts. He knew he was starting to make mistakes; his bruised face was only one reminder, result of a simple collision with a gantry junction that should never have happened. Wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t so exhausted. “What’s next?”

“Thermal coupling to the backup quantum fold initiator, portside.”

“On my way.” Mark didn’t have a clue what the initiator was, nor what it did. Frankly he didn’t care. He just concentrated on plugging the damn components into their power and support services. A schematic appeared in his virtual vision, showing him the initiator’s location. He started to crawl over the hull. Two-thirds of the active-stealth covering was now in place around the frigate. Even in its powered-down state it was eerily black, a pool of darkness rather than a surface that was simply nonreflective. The gaps waiting to be filled allowed access to systems that weren’t yet operational and needed human supervision. Bots and manipulator arms were clustered over them, along with technicians from Mark’s team. The Charybdis crew—Otis, Thame, and Luke—had taken up permanent residence in the frigate’s cabin to run diagnostics from there.

As he hauled himself along he passed the weapons scientists. He couldn’t help glancing at them, eleven ordinary-looking people in padded freefall overalls and helmets, floating around the missile. There had been quiet rumors about what the frigates would be armed with back at the assembly platform and down on Gaczyna. Superweapons capable of protecting the fleet from any threat. Mark hadn’t paid a lot of attention, even with Liz hungry for gossip each evening. Since the Searcher left, his team had talked of little else. Every time one of them had drifted by him on their way to another job they’d shared a few words; to his surprise, Mark had even joined in with the speculation, passing on what he’d heard in turn.

The assembly bay didn’t have a mechanism for loading missiles into the frigate. That was supposed to happen in another facility. So the scientists were having to improvise. The missile was strapped to a medium-mass manipulator arm, which was inching it slowly down into the magazine chamber. It looked ordinary enough, a smooth, steel-silver cylinder five meters long, with a thick central bulge. The extremely nervous respect that the scientists treated it with made the hairs along his spine creep. He no longer believed the rumors of mere planetsmashers and warped-quark bullets; whatever they’d built was insanely lethal. You only had to see their faces to know that.

That warhead was going to make genocide possible. Back on Elan when they were running from the aliens he would have happily pressed the button. Now he wasn’t so sure. It was the kind of thing that people like him never, ever, got involved with.

He arrived at the open section of hull his schematic indicated, from which an access interstice led deep inside the guts of the frigate. The initiator sat halfway along the narrow gap, a golden sphere with peculiar green triangles jutting up from it. There was a nest of unconnected thermal conductor filaments wrapped around it, with their manufacturer tags still attached. “Okay,” he told Thame. “I’m here. What have the bots tried so far?”

***

Oscar’s starship, the Dublin, was orbiting a thousand kilometers above the Finnish world Hanko when the alert came through. It had been a miserable duty so far, five people spending ten days crammed into a single circular cabin. In theory the cabin wasn’t too bad; it was a good eight meters wide, with three meters between the flat bulkheads. Then you took out the partitioned-off sleeping section, and the laughably titled bathroom facility, and the remaining available volume was considerably reduced. In zero gee such a space was a little less cramped, but that was a relative thing. The five flight couches—bulky padded shelves that had plyplastic secured i-pads, built-in human waste management tubes, and fluid food dispensers—were lined up along the rear bulkhead. Once you’d strapped yourself in, while trying not to jam knees and elbows into the person next to you, the couch slid back neatly into the operations segment. Oscar likened it to lying on the tongue of a dinosaur as it pulled you into its mouth.

Once in place inside the operations section, there was a half-meter space between your nose and the matte-black curving control console with its high-rez display portals that filled the gap with projections of the tactical display and ship-status schematics. Oscar’s first officer, Lieutenant Commander Hywel, claimed that coffins were a lot less claustrophobic, although admittedly not as colorful.

Hywel on Oscar’s left, where he monitored the sensor feeds, left the other three couches for Teague, the engineering officer; Dervla, who had recently qualified as their FTL drive technician; and Reuben, who had been seconded from the Seattle Project in charge of weapons.

Dervla was in the sleep section, and Hywel was eating his meal of microwaved stroganoff goo out in the main cabin as red icons flashed up in Oscar’s virtual vision. Detector stations down on Hanko and in high orbit had detected seventy-two wormholes opening, forming a loose sphere at three AUs distance from the star.

An adrenaline surge quickly banished Oscar’s lethargy and mild depression. “What the hell are they doing out there?” he demanded. Data from their secure link to Base One through Hanko’s unisphere showed that several Commonwealth worlds were now under a similar pattern of invasion. “Dervla, Hywel, get in here now.”

“Ships coming through,” Teague said. “God, they’re fast. The wormholes aren’t switching location like last time.”

“Right.” Oscar watched the graphics unfolding around him, then concentrated on one wormhole. The Prime ships were coming through nose to tail. Ten in the first minute. It was a quantity duplicated at each of the other seventy-one openings.

“Ships identified as space combat type three,” Teague said. “They’re accelerating at eight gees, broad dispersal pattern. Damnit, we’re never going to intercept those wormholes with our Douvoir missiles.”

“Clever,” Oscar muttered. He watched the graphic showing him Douvoir missiles leaping out of Hanko’s ten orbital defense stations, neon-green lines streaking straight out from the planet, aligned on the Prime wormholes. It was going to take them a good eight minutes to reach their targets. “They’ll just switch locations before impact. Damnit!” His virtual hands were racing over icons and speed-control activators, synchronizing with Reuben as they brought the Dublin up to combat readiness. “What’s the planet status?”

“City force fields powering up,” Teague said. “Combat aerobots launching. We have command of orbital defense stations.”

“Much good it’ll do us,” Oscar grumbled.

“The Douvoirs can take out the ships,” Reuben said. “They can’t dodge.”

“Check the dispersal,” Oscar told him. “One Douvoir missile per ship is not good. This deployment is designed to flood the system with their ships, and we don’t have anything like the capacity to knock them out. The Douvoirs were designed to hit strategic targets.”

“The planetary defenses can cope with any approaching hostile,” Teague said.

“Not an armada. They can send ten thousand an hour at us.”

“We can’t evacuate,” Hywel said. “Not again. There’s got to be a way of keeping them back.”

Oscar said nothing. He couldn’t think of any way to repel the bulk of the Prime ships. Dublin could probably take out a hundred or so, but there were already more than that in-system. When he summoned the navy’s overview, he saw that forty-eight Commonwealth worlds were under attack. The Primes were using the same long-range injection strategy in all of them.

As the Douvoir missiles launched from Hanko’s defense stations closed in on the Prime wormholes, they began to switch location.

“Do we send the Douvoirs chasing wormholes?” Reuben asked. “Or are we going to knock out some ships?”

When Oscar checked the tactical display, he saw there were already more than two thousand Prime ships in-system. “Keep harrying the wormholes for now. Fleet command will let us know if they want us to switch tactics.”

“Captain,” Hywel said. “More wormhole activity.”

“Where?”

“Our hysradar is picking up an emergence…four hundred and eighty thousand kilometers out from the star’s corona.”

“Where?” Oscar thought he’d misheard.

“Directly above the sun.”

Oscar focused on the tactical display that was reconfiguring to show the latest development. Sure enough, a wormhole had opened close to Hanko’s G-class star. As he watched, ships started to slide through. “Fire a pair of Douvoirs at it,” he ordered, even though he knew it was pointless; it would take the Douvoirs a couple of minutes to reach the new invasion point. “What the hell are they doing there?”

“I don’t know,” Hywel said.

The level of tension in Wilson’s office was actually higher than it had reached during the first Prime invasion. Five minutes in, and Wilson was already contemplating doing his deep breathing exercise routine.

All of the Big15, as well as the fully developed worlds, had been mass-producing components for the missiles ever since the first invasion. The cost had been phenomenal, as much as the entire Moscow-class fleet. Even Dimitri had been satisfied about the level of protection they’d wrapped around Commonwealth planets over the last few weeks. Now it looked as though once again they had seriously underestimated the Primes.

The Douvoirs were taking too long to get out to the wormholes. Fleet Command, operating from a center several floors below his office in Pentagon II, was working on eventual scenarios the Primes would use to attack the planets, massed waves or an all-in-one blitz. With the ships still flooding through, they were reserving judgment; but either way there were serious limits on how many the planetary defenses could fend off, even when assisted by navy ships.

Evacuation had already been proposed several times. Wilson hated having to suggest that to the planetary governments and CST, but he was fatalistic enough to see that was the way the invasion was shaping up.

Physically, Wilson had been joined by Anna, of course, and Rafael. Dimitri had also been on standby in Pentagon II, and was slouched in one of the chairs, watching the holographic specks of light whirl around him. So far he’d said very little, occasionally contacting his team in StPetersburg to discuss the pattern of the attack. From the Seattle Project, Tunde Sutton and Natasha Kersley were attending via an ultra-secure link. Holographic images of President Doi and Nigel Sheldon had also materialized on either side of Wilson. So far the President had said very little; Nigel’s worried expression was almost accusatory.

“Confirmed forty-eight points of attack,” Anna said. “They’re all in phase two space except for Omoloy, Vyborg, Ilichio, and Lowick.”

“Roughly the distribution we expected,” Dimitri said. He didn’t press the point. It was his team that had been instrumental in deciding the distribution of the planetary defenses and allocating starships to complement them, choices that had so far proved remarkably accurate. Only nine of the worlds under attack were without starship coverage.

Wilson took a moment to study the strategic display. The office projectors were showing Commonwealth space as a rough sphere just over two hundred light-years across with a very erratic boundary. The Prime invasion was a hemispherical scarlet stain, centered around the Lost23, and intruding nearly ninety light-years inward.

“They’re trying to gain Wessex again,” Nigel said.

“Can you use CST wormholes to deflect them?” Rafael asked.

“I’ll look into it,” Nigel said. His image froze.

When Wilson flicked his attention to Wessex, the display expanded, showing him the Tokyo above the Big15 world, and Douvoir missiles chasing after Prime wormholes, never to catch them. Over four thousand ships were already in-system. There at least they would meet a formidable resistance. The industrial facilities in orbit around Wessex were all heavily protected with force fields, atom lasers, and their own close-range interceptor missiles. Multilayered force fields had roofed over Narrabri. Big aerobots patrolled at high altitude. It had more orbital defense stations than any other planet.

“When are you going to use the quantumbusters?” the President asked petulantly.

“When the tactical situation allows for it,” Wilson told her. “It’s designed to use against primary targets or close-clustered ships. Neither of which we have at the moment. The Prime ships are all flying away from each other. They’ll regroup eventually, as they close on our planets.”

“You mean it’s useless?”

“In these circumstances it is of limited effectiveness,” Natasha said.

“Somebody tell me we will be able to use it effectively.”

“When their ships begin to congregate again, then we’ll be able to deploy them with some success,” Dimitri said.

Doi gave him a vicious look.

“I’d emphasize that even switched to a minimal effect radius, we shouldn’t activate a quantumbuster within a million kilometers of any inhabited world,” Natasha Kersley said. “That’s the absolute minimum safe distance. Even if it only has the mass of a single Prime ship to work with, the radiation output would be seriously detrimental to the biosphere. They are doomsday weapons, Madam President. They were never intended to be used in dogfights.”

“You think we shouldn’t have issued them to the navy starships for this?” Doi asked.

“I designed them, I advise on their use,” the physicist said. “Ultimately, the situations in which they are deployed are a political decision.”

“Thank you, Natasha,” Wilson said before the argument and recriminations got out of hand.

“Additional wormhole activity,” Anna said. “Prime wormholes opening near the stars of the planets they’re invading. Damn, they’re emerging close; approximately half a million kilometers above the corona. Seventeen of them have appeared so far.”

“Above the stars?” Tunde asked, frowning. “I don’t understand. What’s coming through?” The faint waves of color surrounding him rearranged themselves quickly, displaying the hysradar returns of starships scanning the new development.

“Plenty of ships,” Anna said. “Everyone is launching Douvoir missiles; the wormholes will be closed down in minutes.”

“Moved,” Dimitri said. “They’ll be moved in a few minutes.”

Tunde and Natasha exchanged a few words. “I don’t like the positioning,” Tunde said. “It’s constant, look. The wormholes are all opening above the equator of the star, and they are directly in line with the habitable planet of the system. In other words, it’s the closest part of the star to the planet.”

“Meaning?” Rafael asked.

“I don’t know, but it cannot be coincidence. Admiral, we really need to know what’s being sent through.”

“Could it be something like a quantumbuster?” Wilson asked. The question generated a few moments of complete silence in the office. Wilson glanced at Nigel’s frozen image; the Dynasty chief was still dealing with Wessex. Wilson wondered what the hell he was doing there that was more important than this.

“I can’t answer that,” Tunde said. “Obviously it is a possibility.”

“What could a quantumbuster do to a star?”

The physicists looked at each other, neither of them willing to take the lead. “It would cause quite a disturbance to the photosphere,” Tunde said. “There might even be some impact on the top of the convective zone. But the overall damage would be minimal.”

“Radiation emission wouldn’t be minimal,” Natasha said. “That would be extremely dangerous.”

“It’s hardly an efficient use of a quantumbuster.”

“What else could it be?” Wilson tried to keep his voice level and calm.

Tunde raised his hands in an awkward gesture of doubt.

“We have diverted-energy-function nukes,” Natasha said quickly. “As do the Primes. This could well be a large-scale application of that process, powered by the star itself.”

“Those planets are an AU from their primaries,” Rafael protested. “More in some cases. And you’re saying this could be a beam weapon?”

“You wanted alternatives,” Natasha said in an accusing tone.

“Our detector network has now found thirty-eight wormholes close to the target stars,” Anna said.

Wilson’s virtual finger reached for the Tokyo’s icon. He stopped. He hated, absolutely hated, himself for doing this. But this whole attack was pivotal. Any and every action he took today could decide the fate of the Commonwealth. He had to have information he could trust implicitly. That meant the source must be someone he knew he could trust. He touched the Dublin’s icon. “Oscar?”

“Hello, Admiral.”

“We need to know what’s coming through that wormhole close to the star.”

“Hysradar is picking up returns consistent with class-four and class-seven Prime ships. We launched a pair of Douvoir missiles to close it down.”

“I know, but we need confirmation. Take a flyby. Stay in hyperspace, but get us a high-definition picture of what the bastards are up to.”

“You want us to leave Hanko orbit?”

“Yes, the planetary defenses can insure no wormholes open close by. If the invasion pattern changes you can return immediately.”

“Acknowledged, leaving orbit now.”

“Boongate reports a wormhole near its star,” Anna said. “That’s completion, all forty-eight stars. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it to each star system they’re invading. Large numbers of ships coming through.”

“The Prime ships must have damn good force fields to operate at that distance from a star,” Rafael said. “It’s hellish close.”

“Can the Moscow-class fly in that close?” Wilson asked. He’d automatically assumed the Dublin would be in trouble if they were in real space a mere half-million kilometers from a G-class star.

“Yes,” Tunde said. “But I wouldn’t recommend an extended combat time in such an environment. The stress level on the force field would undoubtedly lead to overload.”

“Same for the Prime ships, then,” Rafael said.

“Undoubtedly.”

“What are they up to?” Wilson whispered. His virtual hands rearranged the imagery icons, and the office’s tactical display shrank slightly to accommodate the hysradar return from the Dublin. Four hundred eighty thousand kilometers above Hanko’s star, the Prime wormhole was holding steady. Over fifty ships were through now. The pair of Douvoir missiles Oscar had launched were closing fast. Ten seconds from impact, the wormhole closed.

“It’s opening again,” Tunde said, scanning the projection. “Twenty million kilometers away.”

“Douvoir missiles locking on,” Anna said. “Nothing’s coming through yet.”

The Dublin’s hysradar return was showing sixty-three Prime ships accelerating hard from the point where they’d emerged. Each of them was firing a flock of high-acceleration missiles. The expanding globe of hardware was already five thousand kilometers across. Nuclear explosions began to blink around the periphery. The hysradar image immediately broke up into an uneven hash.

“What’s happening?” Wilson asked.

“Interference,” Oscar reported. “The nukes are somehow pumping out exotic energy pulses. It’s screwing with our hysradar.”

“That’s certainly one diverted-energy-function we haven’t got,” Tunde said. “A direct inversion to an exotic state. Natasha?”

“Well, it’s obviously possible,” Natasha said; she sounded more intrigued than alarmed. “I don’t understand how the mechanism holds together under those conditions.”

“You’re missing the point,” Dimitri said.

“Which is?” Natasha asked with cool politeness.

“They’re going to a great deal of effort to hide something from us above those stars.” He indicated the image from the Dublin, which showed the star’s vast curvature. The uniformity of the image was broken by a shimmering patch of silver and yellow particles that obscured over half of the surface. “This is the only sensor blind spot in the star system. Something is going on behind that interference, something they clearly consider extremely important to their attack.”

“The Primes are generating identical interference patterns in the other systems,” Anna said. “It’s a constant pattern.”

“Oscar,” Wilson said, “we have to know what they’re covering up.” He hoped the tension wasn’t showing in his voice. But if the Primes did have something equal or even superior to quantumbusters this war was already over. A lot of his family would leave on the lifeboats that were in the last stages of assembly above Los Vada. If they have time to reach them. He assumed he’d be relatively safe on the High Angel, though God alone knew where it would fly away to.

“Roger that,” Oscar said. “Standard sensors are useless this close to a star. We’re going in closer.”

“Good luck,” Wilson told him.

The first tremor caught Oscar by surprise. His heart jumped in response. “What the hell was that?”

The others were all lifting their heads from the flight couches, checking around the cabin. For what, Oscar couldn’t imagine. A crack in the hull that was letting in solar wind? Crap. He’d always known and accepted that any attack powerful enough to have a physical impact on the starship would simply destroy it. Now another judder ran through the vessel, stronger this time—and they were still intact and alive. “Somebody talk to me.”

“I think the exotic energy blasts from their diverted-energy-function nukes just hit our wormhole,” Dervla said. “I’m certainly seeing a lot of unusual fluctuations around our compression dynamic wavefront.”

“Oh, great,” Oscar said. “A new threat. How badly can that hurt us?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “We never covered anything like this in training. It don’t think it can break our boundary.”

A shudder made Oscar tense his whole body as the couch straps vibrated against him. It was like riding a white-water raft. The hologram display wobbled as his eyes tried to focus. He switched to virtual vision for primary information. Just in time, as the next judder shook his body. Curses were mumbled through the narrow operations segment.

“Ten seconds to the missile formation,” Hywel said.

Oscar consulted the navigational grid. They were flying toward a star at nearly four times the speed of light. He wanted to say something to Dervla about making sure their course was correct, but harassing people at inappropriate moments wasn’t the sign of good captaincy. So he trusted her with his life.

She was taking the Dublin in a long curve to solar south of the Prime incursion, heading past them to an altitude of four hundred thousand kilometers above the star. The shaking began to reduce as they left the explosive umbrella behind.

Their hysradar image began to sharpen as Hywel and the RI brought filter programs on-line. Now the exotic energy pulses were displayed as black circular wavefronts, fading as they expanded. “The ships are still in there,” Hywel said. “And they’re expending missiles at a phenomenal rate even by Prime standards. Oh. Wait—” The image shifted drastically as he instructed the RI to shift the main focus a hundred eighty degrees. “What’s that?”

In the middle of the projection, a lone dot was rushing headlong into the star.

Oscar read the associated figures. “Dear God, that’s a hundred-gee acceleration.”

“Two minutes until it reaches the corona,” Hywel said. “What is that?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it at all. Wilson, are you receiving our hysradar data?”

“Yes,” the answer came back. “Can you hit it with a Douvoir missile?”

“Not that close to a solar mass,” Reuben said. “The gravity curvature is too strong.”

“He’s right,” Dervla said. “Our wormhole generator is having trouble maintaining boundary integrity this close. There’s a lot of gravitonic distortion.”

“Oscar, we have got to know what that device is going to do,” Wilson said. “Can you drop out of FTL and observe with standard sensors, please.”

Oscar heard at least two sharp pulls of breath inside the operations section. “Roger that, stand by for full sensor observation.”

“Just how good is our force field?” Hywel muttered.

“It can stand this proximity,” Teague said. “But we need to avoid combat with the Prime ships.”

“I’ll try and remember that,” Oscar said dryly. “Okay, Dervla, take us out of the wormhole. Hywel, full sensor scan as soon as we’re in real space.”

“Aye, sir.”

Oscar couldn’t help himself; his body braced as the FTL drive opened the wormhole and the Dublin slid out into real space. Nothing happened. No blinding white light and intolerable heat flooding through the cabin. Damn, I’m twitchy. He blinked, and started to study the sensor imagery.

Visual sensors showed a universe of two halves. One white, one black. For an instant he was back above the Dyson Alpha barrier in the Second Chance, where space was divided into two distinct sections. This time, there was nothing passive about the sheer white surface four hundred thousand kilometers away. The star’s corona was in constant turbulent motion with waves and surges radiating a gale of particles outward; ghostly prominences danced above the seething gas, flexing and twisting in the intense magnetic field. Space above them was dotted with the neon graphics tagging Prime ships and missiles.

“They’ve seen us,” Hywel said. “Missile flight changing course. Accelerating at twenty gees.”

“How long have we got?” Oscar asked.

“Five minutes until they reach nominal engagement distance.”

“Okay. What about the device they’ve fired into the star?”

The imagery expanded as Hywel tracked the device with as many sensors as he could. It was still accelerating into the corona at a hundred gees. A long wake of swirling plasma stretched out for thousands of kilometers behind it. Shock waves rippled away from its protective force field, creating violet circles that were immediately torn apart by the raging solar wind.

“That is a very powerful force field,” Teague said. “I’m not sure we could withstand that kind of environment. It had to be built specifically for this flight.”

“So what kind of device do you send into a star?” Hywel asked, his voice edgy.

“A bad one,” Reuben said. “And I don’t care how good its force field is, it won’t survive much longer. The coronal density is picking up, and that speed will generate impacts that could puncture anything.”

“But there’s no kind of—” Hywel began. “Oh, the fusion drive has switched off.”

Oscar watched the dark speck as it drilled through the super-velocity plasma. He realized he was holding his breath. “If it’s a quantumbuster?” he asked.

“Then we’re probably dead,” Reuben said. “But even if its force field holds out until it’s within range of the chromosphere, the effect of the blast will be minimal as far as Hanko is concerned. If you’ve got them, use them against the planet directly. Don’t screw around letting them off an AU away like this.”

Oscar waited as the device streaked downward. He wondered if he had time to update his secure store. Probably not. He’d done it this morning, and decided that he probably didn’t want to remember this time in the Dublin anyway. Although…should he leave his future incarnation a message from now saying he didn’t want to remember? Stupid idea.

“Here we go,” Hywel said tersely.

Oscar was surprised to see it was the quantum signature scan that was changing. It was as if petals were unfurling from the device, giant thousand-kilometer-long ovals of altered quantum fields, overlapping and twisted. They began to rotate.

“Magnetic effect picking up,” Hywel warned.

The star’s massive flux lines were curving around the ephemeral quantum wings. Plasma followed, dragged into an elongated eddy curving around the device’s rigid wake.

“What the hell is that?” Dervla asked with quiet unease.

“Wilson?” Oscar asked. “Anyone from the Seattle Project got an opinion?” The quantum effect radiating out from the device was now five thousand kilometers in diameter. It began to speed up. The knot it was stirring up in the corona was visible to the Dublin’s heavily filtered optical sensors.

“Not yet,” Wilson replied.

“Captain,” Reuben called, “the Prime missiles are getting close. If we have to ward off some kind of energy strike from the device as well as dealing with them, we’re going to be in serious trouble.”

“Launch a countermissile salvo,” Oscar ordered. “We have to stay here and report on this.” He knew it was critical.

“One minute until it hits the upper corona,” Hywel said. “It’s having a hell of an impact on the solar wind.”

“Are you sure it can’t survive impact?”

“I don’t know. It’s changed so much, the quantum fluctuations at the core are significantly altered. I’m not sure what it is anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might not qualify as pure matter anymore. That distortion is very weird. It seems to be incorporating the force field, and that quantum signature—I’ve never seen anything like it.”

When Oscar consulted the sensor projection, the device’s rotating wings were now close to seven thousand kilometers wide. The operation section’s display superimposed them on the corona as black ellipses. Plasma writhed around them, hurling off dense vortices that leaped up into space, dissipating as they rose. The scale of the effect was unnerving. “If it’s not matter, then what is it?”

“Some kind of energy nexus, I think. I’m not sure. It’s having an unusual effect on the surrounding mass properties.”

The Prime device spun down into the corona. It was like watching a comet striking the atmosphere of an H-congruous planet. The star’s million-degree outer layer ruptured in a crowned plume that rose higher than any of the prominences. Continent-sized cataracts of plasma curved back down only to be warped by the twisted magnetic flux. A secondary plume rose inside the core of the first, the cooler chromosphere matter streaking up to escape from the astonishing deformation produced by the device’s impact.

“Holy shit,” Oscar grunted.

“So what good did that do them?” Dervla complained.

“That quantum effect is still functional, and growing,” Hywel reported. “The device is agitating the corona, probably the photosphere, too. It’s big enough.”

“Holding the wound open,” Oscar muttered. The blemish on the star’s surface was apparent in just about every spectrum: quantum, magnetic, visible. “Radiation,” he said sharply. “Hywel, what’s the radiation emission like?”

“Rising, and fast. Christ. Captain, we’ve got to move, we’re directly above it.”

“I second that,” Reuben said. “One minute until missile engagement.”

“Dervla, take us a quarter of a million kilometers, up and out.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Dublin dropped into FTL for thirty seconds, time mostly taken up by Dervla confirming their relative position before emerging from the wormhole again.

When the ship’s sensors lined up on the strike zone, the turbulence in the corona was a tight-packed cone spewing streamers from its open crest. They could see it growing.

“The device is still active in there,” Hywel said. “Quantum fluctuations are registering at the same level as before. Magnetic activity is increasing. The damn thing is tightening the flux lines like a tourniquet.”

“Oscar,” Wilson called. “Tunde and Natasha believe we’re seeing a flare bomb at work.”

“A what?” he asked, startled. “You mean something like the one used at Far Away?”

“Could be.” Wilson’s voice was perfectly level. “The disturbance in the corona is producing a huge particle discharge, and it’s still building. The radiation is going to saturate Hanko, and we have no idea how long it will go on for. The Far Away flare lasted over a week. Oscar, the biosphere won’t survive that.”

“Oh, shit.” Despite the catastrophe facing the planet he was supposed to be defending, Oscar was trying to think how the Primes had wound up with a flare bomb. Somehow, the Starflyer must have given them the information how to build one. Was that what the Second Chance dish was transmitting?

“They’re going to sterilize each of the new star systems they’re invading,” Wilson said. “We’ll be forced to evacuate forty-eight worlds.”

“And that’s just so far today,” Reuben grunted.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked. “Do Tunde and Natasha think a quantumbuster will work against the flare bomb?”

“We don’t know. But we’re going to have to find out. We want you to take the Dublin as close as you can to the star and fire a quantumbuster into the flare. Switch it to maximum effect radius.”

“Understood.”

“Admiral, if you use a quantumbuster against a star at that rating, you’ll just be adding to the quantity of energy it’s pumping out,” Reuben said. “It’ll make the radiation deluge even worse.”

“We understand that, Reuben,” Natasha said. “But even on maximum effect radius a quantumbuster mass to energy conversion is very short-lived, and if it knocks out the flare bomb, then only half of the planet will be subject to the radiation. We have no choice. We have to pray that this works.”

“Acknowledged.”

“All right,” Oscar said. “Reuben, arm a quantumbuster, and set it to maximum effect radius. I’m loading my authorization code now. Hywel.”

“Entered,” the first officer said.

Oscar’s virtual vision showed him a quantumbuster was now active. “Thank you. Dervla, take us in as close as you can. We don’t have much time.”

“Aye, sir.”

“We can survive for five seconds at a hundred thousand kilometers,” Teague said.

“Then that’s the distance. Let’s go, people.”

“Mark, we really need those flux shunt regulators integrated.” Thame was trying to keep his voice level and calm, but there was too much stress creeping in; the croak of a man who’d survived the last forty hours on no sleep and way too much caffeine. A man who was getting desperate. Not far from the Searcher, Prime warships were massing. A flare bomb was descending into Wessex’s star. The beginning of the end of the human race was happening right outside.

No pressure.

Mark didn’t bother answering. Didn’t dare concentrate on anything but the job. His sight was half bloodred blotches. Hands were trembling. Not that the shakes were obvious; he was in a space suit, with thick gauntlets tipped by micro-sensitive patches. The frigate assembly bay was in a vacuum. Ready to go, to send the warship out into the void where battle could be joined. Except the regulators still wouldn’t function properly. Mark was actually working on the power feed on the frame next to one of the nine units. All the high-capacity cables were locked into place on the power feed; now he was working his way down the management program registry. Lines of faint emerald text stretching higher than a skyscraper flowed through his virtual vision. He altered and modified the lines as they passed by. It was instinct only now, the echoing memory of power supply systems he’d handled in the past, simple fixes and patches stored in old insert files that he edited into the new instructions, reformatting, molding the software into something he simply felt might work.

“I’m sorry to ask, Mark, but can you give us any kind of timescale?” Nigel Sheldon asked. His voice was a lot more controlled than Thame’s, but there was a real need burning in there.

“I’m trying,” Mark whimpered. “I’M TRYING!” His vision blurred completely as tears swelled across his eyes. He blinked them away. The last few luminous green lines were running across his virtual vision. A patch he’d written to monitor feedback anticycle safety directives in Ulon Valley auto-pickers was slipped in. He could smell the moist air, the sugar scent of the vines as he told the program to run.

Something turned from red to green.

“It’s working!” Thame screamed. “Power initiation sequence enabled. Mark, you fucking did it.”

In front of Mark’s visor, red lights on the power feed casing were turning to green. A judder of relief ran down his body. His e-butler routed copies of the program into every regulator power feed on the frigate.

“Fantastic job.” Dutton-Smith patted Mark on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Mark didn’t move. Couldn’t. His muscles had packed up. He was curling into fetal position.

“Okay, Mark,” Dutton-Smith said kindly. He tugged his boss out of the tiny crawl space. They only just got clear as a heavy manipulator arm slid the hull section into place. Eight identical sections were being fixed by the assembly bay RI over the frigate’s other flux regulators.

Dutton-Smith clung to the gridwork as it slowly retracted from the Charybdis, holding Mark’s inert form away from the umbilical bridges as they telescoped back. The frigate slid past them in a smooth, aquatic motion out into open space. There was no exhaust, no crude rockets roaring flame from bell-shaped nozzles; the Charybdis moved by direct gravospacial manipulation. Its perfectly black bulk blotted out a few dim stars. Then it vanished.

The response of the human navy class to the start of the second incursion matched MorningLightMountain’s predictions. Their missiles and beam weapons were more than adequate to protect the planets in the star systems had it opened its wormholes in close orbit again. Instead, it sent its fleets of ships into the star systems a long way clear of the human-colonized worlds. They launched their superluminal missiles at once, but the flight time enabled MorningLightMountain to send hundreds of ships through before there was any danger of interception. When the missiles did get close, it switched the wormhole locations and sent more ships through.

With the fleet dispersal proceeding as planned, MorningLightMountain began stage two.

Wormholes opened as close as possible to the stars of each new incursion system. Strong beams of light shone back through, brightening the asteroids and equipment that orbited the interstellar wormhole at the staging post. Ships were dispatched through to the dangerous environment, forming a protective perimeter. As predicted, the humans had not thought to station any defenses around their stars.

MorningLightMountain began firing its corona-rupture machine at the forty-eight new stars. The covering ships began their interference strategy.

Only at one star, Hanko, did the humans dispatch a starship to investigate. MorningLightMountain could do nothing more now but watch and wait. The corona-rupture machines were the most heavily automated apparatus it had ever built. It would never be able to place an immotile cluster in one of the small vessels, so it had to rely on electronics, which was a point of concern.

Several rival immotiles had developed their own versions of the corona-rupture technique during the centuries before the barrier imprisoned them. None could ever test it; to do so would be to kill all Prime life on the homeworld. It had remained a theory for over a thousand years, until the imprisonment ended.

When it wiped out the other immotile groups, MorningLightMountain was surprised that several of them had actually built and maintained corona-rupture machines. Investigation of their dwindling thoughts showed they were concerned about its own dominance, and believed the machines to be the last deterrent. With wormholes open to other star systems, MorningLightMountain had begun a comprehensive research project, firing the different kinds of corona-rupture machines at its disposal, and observing the results, using them to refine the design. It was gratifying to discover its own design was among the best.

Now it watched as the ruptures began, evolving into solar flares that jetted out vast clouds of particle radiation that would soon envelop the Commonwealth worlds. All the non-Prime life dwelling on the planets would sicken and die. It was the simplest, most effective solution to the problems it was facing. MorningLightMountain had suffered unexpected setbacks as it began to grow its crops on the new twenty-three worlds. Often it would see the seeds germinate, only for the young shoots to suffer some unknown malaise and wither away. The malady was different on every planet, and often varied from continent to continent.

Strangely, it was data that it mined from human sources that gave it the reason. Soil bacteria was different everywhere: non-Prime. Something it hadn’t realized, but it was obvious with hindsight. In addition, there were a myriad of spores and viruses, micro-organisms, and insects that would consume or clash with Prime-life plants. Humans countered this problem with genetically modified terrestrial crops that could grow on their newly acquired worlds. They twisted their food symbiosis plants into nonterrestrial versions; crops looked the same but their cellular biochemical functions were subtly different. Nothing humans did surprised MorningLightMountain anymore; but it was unable to understand how they could betray their biological heritage so casually. Did the integrity of their evolution mean nothing to them? Apparently not.

The human starship at Hanko had jumped away from the growing flare, but now it returned, emerging so close to the star that MorningLightMountain had trouble tracking it. A sensor on one of its covering ships detected a pulse of electromagnetic energy that might have been the starship firing something with a fusion drive. Then the ship jumped clear again. MorningLightMountain waited to see what would happen. It could not envisage a weapon capable of destroying a corona-rupture machine.

After the flare radiation had scoured each of the new forty-eight planets clean of its antagonistic alien life, MorningLightMountain would introduce Prime life onto all of them. It would be the true beginning of Primeforming the galaxy. With their food dead and rotting, the humans would be forced to abandon their worlds, leaving their valuable industrial equipment behind them. Should they choose to stay and fight for possession of their dead planets, the fleets were ready to overwhelm their defenses without any risk to itself. This was an economic method of incursion. MorningLightMountain had expended an inordinate amount of resources to rebuild and salvage from the wreckage of conflict on the new twenty-three, as well as countering all the guerrilla sabotage. Human equipment and technology were useful, but it was paying too high a price for acquiring it. And this second incursion included the Big15 world, Wessex, with its expansive industrial facilities. This time, MorningLightMountain would not be beaten back.

The violence of the explosion was extraordinary. MorningLightMountain thought the sensors on its ships were simultaneously malfunctioning. The surface of Hanko’s sun heaved. A titanic crater bulged downward into the photosphere, overwhelming the still-rising flare. From the center, a gigantic sphere of plasma leaped upward, as if the star were giving birth to an infant of its own kind. Hard radiation from the middle of the explosion sliced clean through the force fields on every ship MorningLightMountain had sent through to provide cover, vaporizing them instantly.

For a moment MorningLightMountain had no way of knowing what was happening to Hanko’s star. When it reopened the wormhole five million kilometers away and cautiously extended sensors through, it saw the photosphere crater wall collapsing, sending a circular wave racing out across the star’s surface. The plasma sphere had separated from the corona, racing into space at near-relativistic speed and expanding fast. MorningLightMountain could no longer detect the flare amid the conflagration raging within the corona. Nor was their any indication of the quantum effect that its machine produced.

MorningLightMountain was shocked by the scale of the event. It had no idea that humans had such a powerful weapon available. They were far more dangerous than it had ever suspected. For the first time since the barrier came down, it began to question the advisability of its actions.

“It works,” Tunde said, a cautious grin on his face. “The flare’s been wiped out.”

“Lost under a much greater radiation discharge,” Rafael said.

Everyone in the office was riveted on the sensor imagery provided by the Dublin, which was now standing off ten million kilometers from Hanko’s star. Wilson watched sluggish waves spreading out across the corona from the quantumbuster detonation, then the size registered, and he realized they weren’t sluggish at all. The star’s prominences were writhing wildly as the magnetic field oscillated. Two million kilometers above the dissipating depression, the sphere of plasma had now reached the same diameter as Saturn, and was cooling rapidly. Its cohesion was breaking down, allowing it to spew off ephemeral rivers of waning ions as bright as a comet’s tail. The hard radiation emission from the center of the explosion was also reducing. Even at ten million kilometers, the Dublin’s force field had been badly strained to maintain cohesion under the impact.

“But a shorter one,” Tunde countered immediately. “And the inverse square law works to our advantage here. Hanko is an AU away, after all.”

“There was no alternative,” Natasha said. “This way the planets get a chance at overall biological survival.”

“I know,” Rafael said grimly. “I’m sorry, I wanted a solution that was less damaging for us.”

“But it is a solution,” Wilson said. “And the only one we’ve got. Anna, I want the starships to launch quantumbusters at every flare. Snuff them out.”

“Yes, sir. There are nine star systems out of the forty-eight which don’t have starship coverage.” She sounded upset at having to remind him.

“Damnit. Send ships in from wherever you can.”

“Fleet Command is working out the quickest flight patterns now.”

The office tactical display showed starships going FTL to leave their planetary orbits. Wilson allowed himself to believe they would all be in time, that the flare radiation damage would be minimal. He knew that even if it was, even if the majority of the biosphere on each world survived, the inhabitants would want to leave. People would be terrified. Quite rightly. There would be a flood of refugees to the other side of the Commonwealth. Planetary governments would be unable to cope. There were still huge problems housing and supporting the existing refugees from the Lost23.

“Can we shut down the CST network?” he asked the President. Nigel Sheldon still hadn’t returned. His stationary image lurked in the office like a ghost at the proceedings. Wilson was starting to wonder if the Dynasty chief was running for his lifeboat.

“Excuse me?” Doi asked.

“We have to block any kind of mass panic escape from the worlds under attack. The rest of the Commonwealth won’t be able to deal with the population of forty-eight planets on the move. I doubt even CST can transport that many people.”

“If they stay they’ll suffer radiation sickness. You can’t make them endure that, and I’m certainly not going to enforce it.”

“Nobody inside a force field will come to any harm.”

“And what about people outside?”

“We’re getting reports that the CST stations have closed on most of the worlds under attack,” Rafael said.

“What?”

“It looks like Wessex has cut off all its links to phase two space.”

Both Wilson and Doi turned to Nigel Sheldon’s image. Wilson tried to send a message to the Dynasty chief’s unisphere level two private address, which was rejected. “Damn you. What are you doing?”

“Using CST wormholes to interfere with the Prime ones, I expect,” Rafael said.

“Have we got any information on that?” Wilson asked Anna.

“Admiral,” Dimitri said, “with respect, this is not relevant right now. You have to focus on Hell’s Gateway and how it can be disabled. While the Primes retain the ability to open wormholes into Commonwealth space, they can drop flare bomb after flare bomb into any of our stars. We have just shown them we possess doomsday weapons; and we have enough evidence that they are conducting a pogrom against us. Their retaliatory strike will be swift and utterly lethal. You must stop them. The next hour will decide whether there will even be a Commonwealth for people to move through.”

Wilson nodded slowly as he began his feedback breathing exercise. He could feel his hands shaking in the unnatural silence. The refugees had been a classic displacement diversion. Truth was, he didn’t want to make the next round of decisions. This is too much to ask one person. I’m not ready. A little self-derisive guffaw slipped out of his lips, bringing him strange looks. Exactly how long does it take to prepare? I’ve had three hundred years, goddamnit.

“Anna, tell the Cairo and the Baghdad to fly directly to Hell’s Gateway. They are to use quantumbusters against the Prime facilities they find there. I want those force fields broken, and the gateway generators destroyed.”

“Yes, sir.” She began to relay instructions to Fleet Command.

He studied the tactical display. Now he’d gone and done it, committed himself to accepting the responsibility, the decisions and orders were actually quite logical and easy. His heart was beating away normally inside his chest again.

“How long?” Doi asked.

“It’ll take them three days to get there, which might be too long, but then again it might not. And if they can’t get close to Hell’s Gateway they can kick the shit out of that star with quantumbusters. That should cause some damage to the Primes stationed there.”

“I understand,” Doi said. She sounded defeated, as if it were all over.

Wilson didn’t want to look at her. If the Primes started firing flare bombs at other stars, then the Commonwealth was as good as dead already. They had three days to implement such an action. I’ve given them three days.

The tactical display was showing him quantumbusters detonating to extinguish the flare bombs already active. The flares and the explosions combined were sending lethal torrents of radiation toward the hapless Commonwealth planets.

“Warn the planetary authorities,” Wilson said. “Tell people to get under cover.”

“They’re already doing that,” Rafael said. “Wilson, I’m sorry, but this has to be done.”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath, reviewing the tactical display as it showed him the radiation gushing out from the quantumbuster explosions that would ultimately result in the deaths of millions of people. On his order.

“Bad day,” Nigel Sheldon murmured. “And getting worse.”

His expanded mentality slipped into the arrays governing CST wormhole generators on Wessex. Traffic in and out of the station had already shut down on his earlier order, leaving the wormholes empty. He disconnected eight of them from their remote gateways, and pulled their exits back into the Wessex system. Sensors above the Big15 world located the Prime wormholes for him. Over three thousand ships had already come through. The Primes had also fired a flare bomb into the local star. Tokyo had launched a quantumbuster to knock it out.

“We’re going to lose the planet’s entire bloody harvest,” Alan Hutchinson groaned. “The force fields will protect Narrabri, but the continents are completely exposed.”

“I know.”

The quantumbuster detonated.

“Jesus fucking wept.” Alan Hutchinson spat. Sensors revealed the full damage that Prime and human weapons inflicted on the tormented star. “That’s more than quadrupled the radiation emission. All they have to do is keep on firing flare bombs at us. The cure is as bad as the problem.”

“Hang on, Alan. I might be able to stop this.” Nigel was tracking the Charybdis through a directional TD channel created by the ship’s drive. The frigate was closing fast on one of the Prime wormholes, and there was no sign of it on any hysradar in the system. So let’s hope the Primes can’t see it, either. “Are you ready?” he asked Otis.

“Yes, Dad.”

“Here we go.” Nigel issued a stream of instructions into the wormhole generators he commanded. This time he didn’t need help from the SI. CST had upgraded the Wessex RIs to manipulate the open-ended wormholes in an aggressive mode.

MorningLightMountain watched the human starships launch their superbombs into the stars where it had planted corona-rupture machines. In every case, the massive explosion eliminated its machines. It had not expected such retaliation. If they had such weapons, why hadn’t they used them against the staging post or its own homeworld? Surely their ethics wouldn’t prevent them?

One of its wormholes in the Wessex system was abruptly subjected to exotic interference as eight human wormholes transected it. MorningLightMountain was expecting that; it diverted power from reserve magflux extractors to help stabilize its wormhole. After analyzing the nature of the attack humans had used last time, it believed it could now counter them effectively. Certainly, it had modified its generator mechanisms to make them less susceptible to the instability overloads. Thousands of immotile clusters focused their attention on the wormhole, ready to counter whatever interference pattern was inflicted on the exotic fabric.

There was none. This was different. The human wormholes were somehow merging with its own, their energy input helping to maintain the fissure through spacetime. For a moment, MorningLightMountain didn’t understand at all. Then it realized it was now unable to close the wormhole. The humans were injecting so much energy into it they were stabilizing the fabric; they were also locking the exit in place within the Wessex system. There was a hole open directly into its staging post that it didn’t control.

MorningLightMountain tried to introduce instabilities, inducing resonances, modifying power frequency. The humans countered it all with ease. Sensors located a relativistic missile racing for the wormhole exit. MorningLightMountain strengthened the force field that covered the exit, and started pulling back the ships that had just gone through, clustering them in a defensive formation. Force fields inside the staging post area were strengthened. It had prepared for a relativistic explosion like last time in case the humans managed to engineer a strike. The damage should be minimal.

A starship materialized inside the force field covering the wormhole exit. It was difficult to detect: the hull was completely black, absorbing all electromagnetic radiation. MorningLightMountain knew it was there only because it partially eclipsed the drive contrails of its own ships outside. There had been no warning of its existence, no detectable superluminal quantum distortion waves that were the signature of human ships and missiles. They had built something new.

The ship moved swiftly into the wormhole exit. MorningLightMountain switched every available power source it had into the generator in one last frantic attempt to destabilize the wormhole. Nothing happened; the wormhole fabric remained perfectly constant as the humans countered every power surge. MorningLightMountain gathered its own ships around the generator, ready to fire. Sensors were also aligned in an attempt to learn something about the nature of the new drive.

The human ship emerged from the wormhole. MorningLightMountain’s ships fired every beam weapon they had at the intruder. It vanished.

“Second batch of flare bombs coming through,” Anna reported.

“Oh, Jesus,” Wilson exclaimed. The display showed him over thirty new devices had emerged, accelerating at a hundred gees toward their target stars. “Natasha?”

“If you can’t intercept the devices with Douvoir missiles, hit them with quantumbusters.”

“Son of a bitch.” Wilson nodded at Anna. “All right, authorize that; divert every Douvoir we have in proximity. Some of them must be able to hit a flare bomb.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of us will run out of superweapons before the other,” Dimitri said. “That will decide who wins today.”

“That decides who wins, period,” Rafael said.

“Yes, Admiral.”

Nigel’s image flickered back into life. “I’ve done what I can,” he said. “We should see a result in the next quarter of an hour.”

Wilson quickly checked the Wessex section of the tactical display. One of the Prime wormholes had vanished. One? “What did you do?”

“Sent a ship through to Hell’s Gateway.”

Wilson looked at Anna and then Rafael, both of whom looked equally perplexed.

“What sort of ship?” a fascinated Dimitri asked.

“Warship,” Nigel said. “Heavily armed.”

“With what?” Natasha asked.

“Advanced quantumbuster.”

“Advanced?”

“You’ll see.” He paused. “If it works.”

***

MorningLightMountain could not detect the human ship anywhere within the staging post system. Most of its sensors had recorded nothing as it emerged from the wormhole. The visual images were strongest, and most informative, showing a black ovoid sucking in light. There was no quantum signature, nothing on the mass detector. Most puzzling and alarming, there was no detectable wormhole. Whatever the human scientist class had come up with, it was radically different from anything they employed before.

Now MorningLightMountain was left wondering what the ship would do. Some kind of attack was surely imminent. It couldn’t understand why the humans hadn’t simply set off a superbomb as soon as the ship was through. What could be more damaging than that? Certainly a large proportion of the equipment and ships at the staging post would have been destroyed. Even the interstellar wormhole would have been threatened.

Why did it never truly understand humans?

Sensors on several of the star-orbiting missile platforms spotted a strong magnetic source emerging from nowhere a hundred thousand kilometers above the corona. MorningLightMountain had placed four thousand such platforms around the star to protect its magflux extractors. Without them, it couldn’t power the wormhole generators into the Commonwealth. But this missile wasn’t fired at any of the magflux extractors, it was heading straight down into the star, and its position had already put it beyond any feasible interception. Given its location and course, there were only two possibilities: either humans had developed corona-rupture devices, or it was one of their superbombs. There was no way to tell until the impact.

MorningLightMountain calculated what damage a flare would inflict on the magflux extractors as they passed above it. With adequate warning, it should be able to use the attitude thrusters to alter their orbital inclination, and steer them clear of the radiation stream. Surely humans would know that. A superbomb would do a lot more damage, though even an explosion of that magnitude could only destroy a small percentage of its magflux extractors. Perhaps the ship was going to launch a series of superbombs. That would seriously degrade its immediate ability to continue expanding into Commonwealth space. Considering this from a tactical angle, MorningLightMountain launched another batch of its own corona-rupture devices at the forty-eight systems it was invading. It also began reviewing the location of the remaining Commonwealth stars. A gradual, measured absorption of human planets was preferable, weakening them and utilizing their discarded industrial infrastructure, but they were now forcing its responses.

The tens of thousands of group clusters managing the staging post wormhole generators began to compute new exit coordinates. Towers loaded with corona-rupture devices were prepared; immotile group clusters analyzed and prepared guidance electronics on all the remaining devices. MorningLightMountain didn’t have as many as it would like. They were extremely difficult to build, even with its technological ability and resources.

Sensors in the star-orbiting missile platforms closest to the human missile caught a sudden burst of quantum field activity just as it reached the chromosphere. Then their communications links ended. Power from all the magflux extractors around the impact zone failed simultaneously, forcing MorningLightMountain to switch to emergency power reserves to maintain over a hundred fifty wormholes into the Commonwealth. Platforms farther away showed the distinctive blast crater of a superbomb starting to form within the corona. Then something else happened. Quantum signature detectors recorded activity leaping off their scale. The star’s magnetic field multiplied in strength by orders of magnitude, producing a pulse effect strong enough to shove a fifth of MorningLightMountain’s magflux extractors and missile platforms out of their orbital track. As they tumbled away with every electronic system burnt out, MorningLightMountain switched to platforms still farther away from the missile impact point to try to understand what was happening. Around the crater zone, a solid plane of brightness was swelling up and out across the chromosphere. Ultra-hard radiation poured away from it, a wavefront powerful enough to slice through the strongest force field.

More missile platforms and magflux extractors failed. MorningLightMountain didn’t have anything left that could scan the impact zone directly; its only remaining platforms were on the other side of the star. Sensors at the staging post still showed the star as it was six minutes ago, passively normal. Power reserves were now insufficient to provide an alternative supply for all the magflux extractors it had lost. It concentrated on maintaining two wormholes to each of its captured Commonwealth planets.

The first flotilla of missile platforms to slide out of the initial blast umbra showed what looked like the crescent of a blue-white giant appearing behind the staging post star. And MorningLightMountain finally realized what the humans had done.

The star was going nova.

***

Ozzie woke up as slim beams of bright sunlight slid across his face. He lay motionless for a while, eyes shut, a smile playing across his face. Let’s see. He opened his eyes and brought his hand around in front of his face. His antique wristwatch told him he’d spent nine hours asleep. “Oh, yeah?” His voice was a contented challenge to the universe.

He unzipped the sleeping bag and stretched. The cool air gusted over him, and he reached for his cord pants. Once he’d fastened the belt around his waist, he picked up his checked shirt and grinned knowingly. Very carefully, he slipped his arms into the sleeves. There was no ripping sound from any of the stitches. “Man, some progress!” Both of his large toes stuck up through holes in his socks as he shoved his feet into his boots. “Ah well, then again, maybe not.” They definitely still needed darning. He patted the pocket on his old dark gray fleece where his small needle and thread packet was stashed. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He was pressing down on a giggle as he pushed the curtain aside and stepped out of the crude shelter. “Morning,” he called out cheerfully to Orion, who was sitting beside the fire he’d just rekindled. Their metal mugs were standing on a shard of polyp above the flames, wisps of steam rising from the water inside.

“Five teacubes left,” Orion said. “Two chocolate. Which do you want?”

“Variety is the spice of life, man, so let’s go for tea today, shall we?”

“Okay.” Orion gave the little gold cubes of chocolate a wistful look.

“Fine, thanks,” Ozzie said. He sat down on one of the ebony and maroon polyp protrusions, wincing as he straightened his leg.

“Excuse me?” Orion said.

“The knee, thank you, it’s a lot better, but I’m gonna have to keep up with the exercises to loosen it up. It’s still plenty stiff after yesterday.” He gave the perplexed boy a happy look. “You remember yesterday, right? The walk down to the end spire.”

“Yes.” Orion was becoming petulant. He couldn’t figure what the joke was.

Tochee emerged from the jungle, its manipulator flesh coiled around various containers it had filled with water.

“Good morning to you, friend Ozzie,” it said through the handheld array.

“Morning.” Ozzie took the mug that Orion proffered, ignoring the boy’s scowl. “Did you find anything interesting?” he asked the big alien.

“I have detected no electrical power circuit activity with my equipment.” Tochee held up a couple of sensors. “The machinery must be very deep inside the reef.”

“Yeah, if there is any.”

“I thought you said there was,” Orion protested.

“Something generates gravity. My guess is, it’s too sophisticated to be anything like a machine. Specific quark lattice, folded quantum fields, gravitonic-molecular intersection assembled at a subatomic level, something like that. Who knows, who cares. It’s not why we’re here.”

“What are we here for, then?” Orion asked in exasperation.

“The Silfen community.”

“Well, they’re not here, are they.” The boy waved his arm around in a broad half circle to illustrate the absence of the humanoid aliens. Tea sloshed out of his mug.

“Not yet.” Ozzie picked up one of the bluish gray fruits they’d gathered and started peeling it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, think on this. Nobody here believes we crashed here on Island Two by accident, right? I mean, what are the odds, man? The gas halo is big in anyone’s language. And the old Pathfinder, face it, we’re not talking Titanic here.”

“A natural collision was unlikely,” Tochee said.

“So we’re not here by accident. And what did we find yesterday? What’s at the end of the reef?”

“Spires,” Orion said doubtfully.

“Which we all decided would make excellent landing areas for flying Silfen.” Ozzie bit into the coarse fruit, grinning at his companions.

“They’ll come to us!” Orion smiled brightly.

“That is an excellent deduction, friend Ozzie.”

“Many thanks.” Ozzie wiped some of the juice from his beard. “It’s worth a try, anyway. I can’t think of any other reason for today.”

The tiniest of frowns flickered over Orion’s face, but he let the comment go. Ozzie couldn’t quite work out if the boy and Tochee were real or not. Temporal reset was not something he believed in. There were many ways of manipulating spacetime within a wormhole so that time appeared to flow faster around the observer, but traveling back in time was a fundamental impossibility. So if this day on the reef was an artificially generated reality, it was a perfect one, which logically meant his companions would replicate their real selves down to the last nuance. Then again, they might be sharing the dream—in which case why didn’t they remember the yesterdays? Of course, maybe there was some kind of closed temporal loop subsect operating inside the gas halo, a microcontinuum operating in parallel to the universe but with different time flow laws. He wasn’t sure if such a thing was possible. Intriguing idea to try to analyze, though it was a very long time since he’d attempted math that complicated. And today, he decided, wasn’t the day to begin again.

After breakfast he made sure Orion and Tochee gathered their belongings to carry with them on the trek through the reef’s forest. Without understanding if what was happening was real or not, he couldn’t risk them losing the few essential items they still possessed if they did find a path and move on to somewhere else. So the tent and water filter pump, the few tools remaining, all came with them.

“Should we be picking fruit?” Orion asked as they wound through a section of trees that were nearly all laden with grapelike clusters of scarlet berries. “We normally pick fruit.”

“If you want to,” Ozzie said. He was concentrating on keeping his head clear of the ceiling formed by the lowest branches as he bounce-walked his way forward. The trees were large and old, producing a wide interlocking lacework of branches and twigs. Sunlight around the trunks was a gentle twilight glimmer, complemented by dry air smelling faintly of spice.

Orion gave a victorious whoop, and immediately shinned up the closest trunk. Ozzie could see him walking along the branches overhead as twigs snapped, and the occasional leaf fluttered down.

“Are you not using your sensors, friend Ozzie?” Tochee asked.

“I’ve got a few running,” Ozzie said defensively. He didn’t fancy trying to explain to Tochee that right now they might both be nothing other than figments in the Silfen Community’s dream. If they weren’t, he’d be facing a serious credibility crisis. “We’ll save the complex ones for something interesting.”

“I understand. I will continue to record the general background, it may help us determine—”

“Hey!” Orion yelped.

Ozzie couldn’t quite tell if the boy was in pain or just startled. There was a flurry of motion in the forest’s lower ceiling five meters away from him. Broken twigs and a small crowd of leaves plummeted down. Orion’s legs appeared in the rent. They swung from side to side a couple of times, and he let go, falling slowly to the thin layer of sandy soil covering the polyp. Several clusters of the red berries fell with him. He looked directly back up, a flustered expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?” Ozzie went toward the boy with an easy bounding motion. Tochee speeded up to match him, its locomotion ridges spreading out for better traction.

Orion was scrabbling backward, his eyes fixed on the tear he’d created. Stronger slivers of sunlight shone straight down through it. “There’s something up there,” the panicked boy gasped. “Something big, I swear it.”

The front of Tochee’s body lifted off the ground as the alien aligned its pyramid eye on the gap. “I see nothing, friend Orion.”

“Not right up there, more off this way.” Orion pointed.

“What sort of size are you talking about?” Ozzie asked nervously. The boy’s behavior was making him jittery. Was that intentional? Or were they out of the illusion now? If so…His hand slipped down toward the sheath where his knife hung.

“I don’t know.” Orion clambered to his feet. “It was this shape moving, that’s all. A dark shape. My size, maybe bigger.”

Tochee had begun sliding in the direction Orion indicated, winding slightly from side to side in short economic movements. Its colorful fronds were standing proud from its hide, waving slightly in sympathy with its body motion. Something about the alien’s intent and confidence reminded Ozzie of native American hunters. When he looked up again at the ragged ceiling of branches and leaves there was nothing to see, just the occasional flutter of the leaves, the chiaroscuro dapple in perpetual random motion.

“What’s—” Orion began.

Ozzie closed a hand about the curious boy’s pointing hand, lowering it. “Why don’t we just keep on going to the spire?” he said, trying to be casual as he put a finger to his lips. Orion’s eyes bugged.

Tochee reared up, an impressive action even in the reef’s low gravity. The front edges of its locomotion ridges curled into hooks that fastened around a branch, holding it vertical. The manipulator flesh on its flanks lunged out, flattening into two tentacles that shot up into the forest’s vegetation. For a moment nothing happened. Then Tochee let go of the branches, and tugged with its tentacles. Its heavy body fell smoothly. A humanoid form came crashing down through the forest’s low ceiling.

Ozzie was already leaping forward. He landed right on top of the figure struggling on the ground next to Tochee. The pair of them rolled over and over as Ozzie tried to get his opponent in a wrestling lock. Whoever he was holding writhed like an electrocuted octopus. Every time Ozzie grabbed a limb, it was torn from his grasp with above-human strength. Something like a thick leather cloak kept batting against his face. They wound up rolling into the bottom of a tree, with Ozzie on top. The tough dark fabric was slapping into his face again. So he just lashed out with both feet. He was no street-fighter, never had been, so the toes of his boots just connected with the polyp; the follow-up bounce meant his knees landed hard.

“Ow. Sheesh, that hurts.”

“Then stop fucking kicking, you moron,” a harsh voice said in heavily accented English.

Ozzie froze. The leathery wing fell away from his face, and he was looking right at a male Silfen, whose narrow feline eyes stared back with impatience.

“Huh?” Ozzie blurted.

“I said, cool it with the hardass routine. You’re crap at it anyway.”

Ozzie let go as if the Silfen burned. “You can talk.”

“You can think.”

Surprise battled with resentment. “Sorry, man,” he said meekly. “You startled us, you know, creeping around up there.”

Orion had come over to stare down in amazement. He slowly pulled the pendant out of his shirt, blinking at the intense green light. He looked at it, and back at the Silfen who was now gracefully climbing to his feet. There was a rustle as he flapped his wings, sending out little puffs of the dusty sand, before folding them back so they formed neat creases below his arms. His tail did a quick whiplike flick before settling into a shallow U-curve that kept it off the ground.

Ozzie patted at his own clothes, mildly embarrassed.

Tochee slid up beside Ozzie and Orion to look at the Silfen. “I believe you said these creatures would not speak your language?” the array voice said.

The Silfen turned to look at Tochee. Ozzie’s inserts caught it, but only just: the humanoid’s eyes flashed with ultraviolet light. A ripple ran along Tochee’s manipulator flesh ridges as it began to project its speech images in reply. They began to speed up, the two of them conversing very fast. If this is a simulation or a dream, why does it need to talk with Tochee?

“I didn’t know they could speak English,” Orion whispered breathlessly to Ozzie.

“Me neither.”

The Silfen finished communicating with Tochee, and bowed slightly, blinking. The ultraviolet faded from his eyes.

“Who are you?” Ozzie asked.

The Silfen’s circular mouth opened wide, allowing the long slender tongue to vibrate between his rows of teeth. “I am the one who dances in the endless wind streams which flow along the tumbling white clouds as they circle in eternal orbit within the star of life.” He gave a sharp whistle. “But you may call me Clouddancer. I know how you humans have to be so quick and shallow.”

“Thanks.” Ozzie tipped his head to one side. “Why the German accent?”

Clouddancer’s tongue quivered. “Authority. I look like one of your legendary demons. If I start talking like some stoner hippy then I’ve got a serious credibility problem, right?”

“Absolutely, man. So are you here to tell me what I want to know?”

“I don’t know, Ozzie. What do you want to know?”

“Who threw the barriers around the Dyson Pair, and why?”

“Long story.”

Ozzie gestured at the dusky forest with both arms. “Do I look like I’m going somewhere?”

They walked back through the forest to a clearing half a kilometer away that they’d passed through earlier. Ozzie wanted a less oppressive environment to concentrate on the details. Orion was totally fascinated by a winged Silfen who could speak English.

“Where did you learn it?” the boy asked.

“Common knowledge where I come from, kid.”

“Where’s that?”

“Here. Where the hell else do you think someone my weight can flap their way around? Jeez, what is it with neurons and your species? Is it a natural shortage or do you molt them as you grow up?”

“Here? The gas halo?”

“Is that what you’ve named this?”

“Yeah. We were on one of the water islands.” Orion grimaced with the memory. “We fell off.”

Clouddancer’s tongue quivered as he whistled.

Ozzie had heard Silfen laugh before; he put this down to something equivalent to a derisive snort. “You need to put a few warning signs up, man,” he said sharply.

“You fell off because you were hasty, you schmuck,” Clouddancer said. “You should take time off, observe your environment, work out any problems in advance. That’s the smart thing to do.”

“Bullshit. You dumped us there. You have a responsibility.”

Clouddancer stopped. His wings rustled, the tail snaking from side to side. “No we don’t. We are not responsible for anyone but ourselves. You chose to walk our paths, Ozzie, you decided where they would end. Take responsibility for your own actions. Don’t blame everyone else; you’ll turn into a lawyer. You want that?”

Ozzie glared back at him.

“How could we decide where the paths take us?” Orion asked. “How do they work?”

“The paths are old, very old. They have grown apart from us of late. How they work is up to them. They try to help as much as they can, they listen to those who walk them. Some of the time, anyway.”

“You mean they deliver you to where you want to go?”

“Oh, no. They rarely change; they don’t like change. Most simply remain closed. It’s kinda sad when they do that, but there are always new ones opening. You’ve always got to go forward, right? That’s something we’ve all got in common.”

“Do you mean…” Orion shot a glance at Ozzie for reassurance. “If I wanted to find Mom and Dad, they’d take me there eventually?”

“They might. That’s kind of an elusive goal you’ve got there, kid.”

“Do you know where my mom and dad are?”

“Long way from here, that’s for sure.”

“They’re alive!” the incredulous boy cried.

“Yeah yeah, they’re still knocking around.”

Orion started crying, tears smearing the dirt on his cheeks.

“Friend Orion,” Tochee said, “I am pleased for you.” It reached out with a tentacle and touched Orion’s shoulder. Orion gave the manipulator flesh a quick grateful squeeze.

“Good news, man. The greatest.” Ozzie put his arm around the boy’s shoulders, hugging him. “I hope you’re right,” he said in a warning tone to Clouddancer.

The Silfen shrugged, ruffling his wings.

“When this is over, I’m going to set out again and find them,” Orion announced. “I know what I’m doing now. I can survive out here. I’ll get myself some decent equipment first, though.” He looked down at his feet. “And boots.”

“I’ll buy you the best,” Ozzie said. “Promise, man.”

The clearing had a covering of thick mossy grass. Strong sunlight from the overhead star shone down, dappling the edges. Ozzie slung his pack to the ground, and sat with his back against it. Orion was too excited to sit; he paced about, grinning every time he looked up at the vast sky.

Ozzie held his water bottle out to Clouddancer. “Drink?”

“Water? Shit, no. You got any decent booze?” The winged Silfen crouched on the spongy ground opposite Ozzie. His tongue flicked out with reptilian speed.

“I didn’t bring any. I figured I needed to stay sober for this.”

“Okay, good call. You want to start the twenty questions routine now?”

“Sure. I’ve earned that right.”

Clouddancer managed a very human-sounding snort without using his tongue.

“Did you put the barriers around the Dyson Pair?” Ozzie asked. This wasn’t quite how he’d envisaged the end to his journey, the historic moment of contact with the real Silfen. There was a certain daydream that had him in an ancient cathedrallike alien library, maybe an abandoned one, where he roamed the aisles, reactivating computers with huge banks of flashing lights. Now that would have been cool, rather than getting his ass damp on the grass while he chatted away to a demon as if they were a pair of old barflies. Yep, definitely didn’t see that coming.

“No, it wasn’t us,” Clouddancer said. “We don’t go around judging other species like that. We don’t have the ego some people in this universe have.”

Ozzie ignored the slight. “What do you mean: judge?”

“The barrier makers were a race younger than us, with a technological proficiency approaching us at our peak. The dickbrains believed that gave them responsibility. In that, they were very like humans.”

“So who were they?”

“We called their star Anomine—a short version of the true name, but accurate.”

“You’re speaking of them in the past tense.”

“So I am; glad someone’s paying attention. As they were then, they no longer exist. They were always faster, always hungry to advance. Again, just like you guys. They evolved from that stage and went off down a whole new route away from the directly physical; they fused with their machines, which in turn transcended. Not universally, mind you; some of them disagreed with the direction their techheads were headed. Those are the ones who still exist in their old physical form. Now they’ve calmed down some and rejected their technological culture and its outcome, they farm their original homeworld like regular folks, they rejoice in their young, they ignore the stars—though they welcome visitors from across the galaxy. I know you, Ozzie, I can see that hunger in you; you’d like them. We did.”

Just for an instant, Ozzie saw them, or at least their planet, the way to walk there. His mind had lulled itself into the pleasant warm reverie amid dreams and awakening. Ahead of him, a long road took him down many glittering paths like gold strands stretched between the stars.

Dream inside a dream. “Groovy,” he said contentedly. “So why the barriers?”

“The sentient species that evolved on Dyson Alpha lust after individual empires and dominance. Think of them as the ultimate self-obsessed power freaks. Real bastards, from your cultural perspective, I guess. In their basic state they would think nothing of obliterating every other life-form in the galaxy and beyond to guarantee their own immortality.

“When the Anomines found them, they were rapidly approaching the kind of technology level where they could have carried that particular mal-adapted evolutionary route across the galaxy at the point of a gun. So the Anomines, being the kind of bleeding heart liberals they were, decided to isolate them. They feared genocide would be committed if the Dysons were ever to reach another star system. Not exactly a difficult prediction, that one. Turns out they were right. The Dyson slower than light starships did reach a neighboring star while the Anomines were busy building the barrier generators. They all but wiped out its indigenous sentient species, enslaved the survivors, and absorbed their knowledge, exploiting it to further their own military strength. That is why barriers were established around two systems.”

“Ah ha!” Ozzie chortled delightedly. “Everyone was wondering about the motivation behind the barriers. Damnit, man, you’re right, I would have liked to have met the Anomines when they were at their height. Sort of like the old Greenpeace movement on Earth, but with teeth. They must have helped save a lot of species. Hell, we would probably have been in the front line by now.”

“So the Dyson people were, like, put in prison?” Orion asked.

“That’s right,” Clouddancer said. “They were in prison. The Anomines had hoped that if they couldn’t expand they would be forced to evolve away from their imperial mindset. For your information, they haven’t.”

“What do you mean, were?” Ozzie asked. The feelings of unease that accompanied those recent bad dreams of his suddenly came rushing to the front of his conscious thoughts. He closed his eyes.

“Well, guess what happened when somebody’s starship went poking around? The goddamn thing was packed full of scientists desperate to see what was inside. I mean, why you dumbasses see curiosity as one of your overriding virtues is anyone’s guess. Ever heard of caution?”

“Oh, shit. What did we do?”

“Your starship interfered with the barrier generator around the original Dyson world. The barrier fell.”

“I don’t believe it. You have to be wrong.”

“You calling me a liar? You want to make something of it?”

“There is no way humans would attempt to switch off a barrier. I know the way our governments work. They would have had to fill out eight million forms in triplicate and have the request reviewed by a hundred subcommittees before they were even allowed to read the generator’s instruction manual.”

“They disabled some of the generator functions. I don’t know how. We weren’t paying close attention, and we don’t go whizzing around the galaxy in fancy rocketships to find these things out. But it wasn’t an accident, no fucking way. Those generators should have lasted as long as the stars they closed off, probably longer.”

“What happened after the barrier fell?”

“The Dysons used knowledge captured from you to establish wormholes of their own. Twenty-three Commonwealth planets were invaded in the first stage of their expansion.”

“Son of a bitch!” Ozzie shouted. “Nigel, you total asshole, how stupid are you? I told you this space cadet crap was gonna wind up busting everyone’s balls. I goddamn told you!”

“Did they invade Silvergalde?” Orion asked fearfully.

“No, our world remains untouched.”

“And the rest?” Ozzie asked. He knew it was going to be bad, just needed it confirmed.

“The Commonwealth abandoned them. They suffered enormous ecological damage, and they are still subject to acts of violence between humans and Dysons.”

“Goddamnit. So the Anomines were right?”

“Yes.”

“Are they going to help?”

“Help what?”

“Humans. You said the generator was disabled. Can it be restarted? Can we push the Dysons back inside?”

“Haven’t you listened to a fucking thing I’ve been telling you? We don’t intervene. Never have, never will. And the technologically advanced Anomines are past the time when they interfere in the events of other species. Like us, they now let evolution flow where it may. If you want to restart the generator and shut the Dysons back inside the barrier, do it yourself.”

“You mean you’re just going to let the Dysons attack humans?”

“You’ve already seen the answer to that, Ozzie.” Clouddancer lifted his arms briefly, allowing the thick membrane of his wings to flutter in the gentle breeze. “The death of any species is to be regretted, but we have experienced many. I’ve embarked on pilgrimages to the memory of them myself, and I feel a great sorrow when I know them. We will remember you, should you fall.”

“Well, that makes me feel one whole hell of a lot better, thanks. For a minute there I thought our friendship meant nothing at all.”

Clouddancer peeled back his lips to expose all three rings of teeth. “This is an argument that we ended millennia ago. You let the Dysons out. You are responsible. This is macro-evolution at its worst. Watching it is always painful for us.”

“What about the Anomines, the advanced ones; can I appeal to them directly? Do any of the paths lead to them?”

“Not a path, no. We can talk to them when they wish it. That has not happened for over three centuries now. We thought the fall of their old barrier might stir them. But it hasn’t. We’re not even certain they exist in their primary transcendent state anymore. We have known species such as theirs which have kept on evolving into entities which simply cannot connect with those of us who remain rooted in the physical.”

“All right, instead of a few battalions of Silfen storm troopers, how about giving us information?” Ozzie asked. “Is there something, some weapon, you once built that could defeat the Dysons? Just the blueprints would do.”

“I’m kind of surprised that you of all people ask that, Ozzie. In fact, I’m quite hurt by the implication we’d ever waste our time on crap like weapons.”

“Oh, really? I’d be interested to hear what you say if your species ever gets threatened with extinction. Of course, you wouldn’t go alone. We’d help if you asked, we’d stand beside you.”

“I know. We admire you for that, for what you are. We don’t expect you to change. Do you expect that of us?”

“No. I just thought you were different, that’s all.”

“Different, how? More human? You built legends around us. They were not entirely correct. It’s too late to come blaming us for your mistakes.”

“Screw you.”

“But I’m your friend,” Orion insisted. He held up his pendant. “Look. Other humans are, too. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does, kid. If you stay here with us, we will keep you safe.”

“I want all of us to be safe.”

“That is a wish to be proud of, but it is only a wish. You’re going to make a grand human when you’re all grown up. Best of the species.”

Orion dangled the pendant in front of him, giving it a wretched stare. “Then what’s the point?”

“Life is the point. To have joined with others and to have known them. We know you, Silfen friend Orion. That makes us glad.”

“I used to be glad to know you.”

“Yeah, sorry, kid. We had fun playing in those woods, back then, didn’t we? I hope that one day you will be glad to know us again.”

“Am I right about you?” Ozzie asked. “Is there some SI equivalent you all download into? Is that what I’m really speaking to?”

Clouddancer laughed. “Almost, Ozzie, almost.”

“How do I know you speak with authority?”

“You don’t. But I name you a Silfen friend, Ozzie Fernandez Isaac.” He held up a pendant identical to Orion’s. “You have the freedom of the paths. Go where you will with our blessing. If you think I’m just a lying son of a bitch, seek those who you know will speak the truth.”

Ozzie stared at the pendant, almost ready to throw it back at Clouddancer. That’s what Orion would have done with all his magnificent teenage fury. But then this whole event was being staged for his benefit, not Orion’s; telling him what he wanted to know even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. The pendant was obviously the culmination of that; it was significant in some way even if he couldn’t see how yet. “Thank you, Clouddancer,” he said formally, and accepted the pendant with a small bow.

When he put the chain around his neck, his vision was momentarily wiped out by a foggy emerald sparkle. It was as if every sense were stretched raw. The feel of the air blowing on his exposed skin scraping hard enough to bruise, the heat of the sun threatening to singe his raggedy hair, sound of rustling leaves the cacophony of an orchestra. He could smell the scent of every berry and flower on the reef combining together like volcanic sulphur. And in his mind he sensed the thoughts of the Silfen Motherholme all around him, an immense realm of life whose size alone brought complete comfort to any entity it touched. A size that surely made it invincible. It pervaded the gas halo, twisting through the physical and biological elements like a nuclear spiritual force. Intangible connections slipped away through the smallest interstices of spacetime binding the Silfen wherever they roamed through the universe. A family that surpassed any possible human dream of connectivity and love.

Ozzie envied them for that. But for all the sense of belonging the Motherholme exuded, it was alien. The Silfen really wouldn’t help humans in their struggle against the Dysons. They didn’t see that as a flaw in their character. It was correct, essential, because that was how the universe functioned.

“Wow.” Ozzie was glad he was sitting. The emotional impact wasn’t quite as great as when he’d looked into the memory of the world that had died. Even so, it was a glimpse into a heaven that was achingly beautiful despite its imperfections.

The moment passed, though he would know it forever.

Clouddancer was staring at him, slim face held straight with cheek muscles slightly dimpled, mouth half widened, tongue stilled, an expression Ozzie knew was one of compassion and sadness. “One day,” he promised the alien, “we will forge a bridge across that gulf between our hearts.”

“I will embrace you that day, friend Ozzie.” Clouddancer turned to Orion, who had slipped back into his usual petulance. “So long, kid. I hope you find your mom and dad.”

Ozzie could just see the insolence about to find its way through the boy’s mouth. “Be big, man,” he told the boy. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“Sure,” Orion grunted with a textbook teenage shrug. “Thanks for letting me know about my parents, anyway.”

“Easy.” Clouddancer turned to Tochee. His eyes sparkled with ultraviolet light. The big alien answered in kind.

“I have to go,” Clouddancer said. “There’s a long wind coming. I need to stretch my wings.”

“Have fun, dude,” Ozzie said.

The Silfen walked back to the forest.

Ozzie looked at Tochee, who had aligned its eye on the forest where Clouddancer had gone. “You okay?”

“It had the same shape as you. But it was very different.”

“Yeah. I’m just beginning to realize that myself.”

“So now what do we do?” Orion asked.

“Get back to the shelter, gather some food, and darn my socks.”

“Why?”

“Because tomorrow we’re out of here.”

***

Morton was scouting on the lower ridges that made up the eastern edge of the Regents, high above the Trine’ba. It was drizzling again, icy droplets making the moldering boltgrass treacherous underfoot even for his armor suit with its terrain-adaptive boot soles. His sneekbot swarm scuttled around him in a wide perimeter line, searching for any traces of the Primes. They’d seen increased activity in this area recently, more overflights, and several troop patrols. Not even the Bose motile was sure why. There was nothing here. Nothing could be built on the sharp ridges and long talus falls. No crops would grow on the poor, saturated soil.

“Can’t find a bloody thing,” he said. “If they’ve planted any sensors around here they’re too advanced for us to find.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Rob answered. “Their electronics are still back in the stone age. I’m just about finished myself. I’ll meet you back at the rendezvous point.”

“Gotcha.” Morton’s virtual vision map showed him Rob’s icon positioned on the high ground above the fused-glass crater where Randtown used to be. Not far, in fact, from the clapboard house where they’d found the Bose motile.

The small green glow that indicated the Cat’s position was coming from the back of the valley along the side of Blackwater Crag. MorningLightMountain was still using it as its main transport route back into the wider valleys. Motiles were preparing a lot of ground for cultivation, plowing up the sodden human fields and acres of virgin boltgrass on the foothills. There weren’t many Prime-life plants that grew in such a climate, so the Bose motile claimed. The fields that had been sown earlier in the invasion had produced the most feeble-looking shoots. A big percentage had drowned in the waterlogged furrows. A plague of Elan native tal-fungi had spread over the remaining shoots, furry milk-white blooms erupting along the limp leaves.

The Cat was supposed to be cataloguing the tractor-vehicles that MorningLightMountain was using to spray the newly prepared land with fungicide. Over the last few weeks, a vast pharmacy of venomous chemicals had been spread across the land by an army of Prime agricultural machinery. Simon Rand had analyzed the samples they’d collected, and announced that the fungicide would be of limited use against tal-fungi. The pesticides, also, would have little effect on Elan’s insects.

“I can see foundations going in at the end of the Highmarsh,” the Cat announced. “From the look of the equipment they’ve got piled up waiting, I’d say some kind of chemical plant. Makes sense; they’re importing a hell of a lot of chemicals. Cheaper to produce them on-site.”

Cat’s Claws had watched through sensors and sneekbots as the big tanks full of toxic agricultural chemicals arrived through the gateway that MorningLightMountain had established in its new settlement a mere two kilometers along the shoreline from the radioactive hollow where their nuke had detonated. The construction had begun while they were still celebrating their success. Fusion drive ships had descended out of the sky once again, bringing a huge number of soldier motiles and their flyers. MorningLightMountain simply repeated its initial landing operation, establishing an armed camp, then putting up a force field. Inside that a wormhole gateway was constructed, industrial machinery was assembled, big power generators brought through. Roads were bulldozed between the new hub and the route around Blackwater Crag. Inside a week, its operation was the same size as before, with the one difference: its garrison of soldier motiles was four times greater. Congregation pens were built out into the waters of the Trine’ba, and a replacement refinery once more began pumping out the thick black liquid that was saturated with base cells. At which point, the Prime resumed its agricultural operations.

That was what MorningLightMountain did, the Bose motile explained. That was all it did: expand.

“How far?” Morton had asked.

“Infinite,” the Bose motile said. “Think of it as a sentient virus. It has a continuity which goes back to its evolutionary origins, possibly even before. All the Primes ever did was grow and compete against each other. Now this one has achieved total dominance, eradicating the rest of its kind, though in truth there was never much difference between them. You ask why it does this, it wouldn’t even understand the question. It is growth.”

After the beautiful success of wiping out Randtown, the truth had brought them down hard. Ever since, they’d performed low-level acts of sabotage, kept the survivors alive, and kept quiet about the Bose motile in their reports to the navy. Mellanie’s messages kept promising she was trying to get them off, but so far she hadn’t managed to give them a time frame. Rob was getting very antsy about that.

“Is there a force field around the foundations?” Morton asked the Cat.

“No. But there are a lot of soldier motiles stationed down there. I count sixteen flyers patrolling above it. Wait…that’s strange.”

“What’s happening?” Morton asked.

“The flyers. They’re stationary. They’re just hovering.”

“I’ve got that, too,” Rob said. “The bastards came to a full stop. Why would they do that?”

Morton looked along the shore of the Trine’ba toward the new Prime settlement. The cloud base was scudding low over the water as it always did these days. Sheet lightning flickered through the bulbous underbelly over toward the invisible southern shore, with the odd rumble of accompanying thunder echoing around the surrounding mountains. The lake itself was dying. Fusion fire from the ships and the base cell pollution had finally killed off the delicate unique ecology. Dead fish floated on the surface, their rotting bodies sticking together to form large mats of putrefying gray flesh. Underneath them, the lifeless coral was slowly decaying, producing a dank scum that washed up on the shore to form fizzing dunes of thick umber bubbles.

Flyers were constantly in the air above the desolate lake, circling around the shore in search of any hostile activity, and keeping the land around the force field under constant observation. MorningLightMountain usually had at least sixteen on patrol at any one time. This morning, there were twenty. Now, Morton couldn’t see one of them moving. Their force fields were on, their engine exhausts rotated to the vertical position.

“Motiles are stationary as well,” Rob said. There was a worried edge to his voice. “Shit, that’s spooky. They’re just standing there. Even the soldiers.”

Morton’s virtual hand touched a communications icon. “Simon, what’s the Bose motile doing?”

“Dudley is fine. Nothing wrong.”

Morton manipulated his communications icons to give him a direct link to the Bose motile. “Something is happening out here. All the motiles have frozen.”

“I don’t know why. The only reason they have for doing anything is that’s what they’ve been ordered to do.”

Morton used his suit’s electromagnetic sensors to sweep the bands that MorningLightMountain employed. The alien’s signal traffic had dropped to about ten percent of normal. “Hang on, I’m going to patch you in to what it’s saying. Tell me what you can.” His virtual hands routed the sensor reception into the link. He didn’t like exposing the Bose motile to the Prime communications. None of them were sure if MorningLightMountain would be able to move the motile around as if it were just another of its puppets. There was absolutely no way they could ever confirm the story that the Bose motile was telling them, either, though Morton suspected it was true. As a precaution, they’d agreed it should be isolated from all Prime communications. This was a justifiable exception, he felt.

“Oh, Christ,” the Bose motile said.

“What?” the Cat asked.

“MorningLightMountain has launched another invasion into the Commonwealth. It’s using something called corona-rupture bombs against our stars. We’ve got a superbomb of our own, which can knock them out, but that only makes the radiation spillage even worse.”

“Is that why they’ve all stopped? Is it concentrating on the invasion?”

“No. One of our ships has got through to the staging post star. It fired something into the star which…Oh. The destruction is enormous. MorningLightMountain is losing all its magflux extractors. Wormholes shutting down. The one into the Trine’ba settlement is gone. Its local group clusters are having to maintain contact through a wormhole in orbit. I don’t understand what we did to the staging post star. Surely—My God, it’s going nova. We triggered a nova! Nothing will survive. It only has minutes left.”

“Ye-hay! We killed it?” the Cat asked.

“The staging post, yes,” the Bose motile replied. “All the wormhole generators leading into the Commonwealth will vanish.”

“So we’ve won?”

“The invasion has been halted. MorningLightMountain still exists. As does the generator for the interstellar wormhole. This is not good. It now sees humans as a very real and immediate danger to its continued existence.”

“But it’s got to realize that if it attacks us again, we can wipe it out completely,” Rob said. “It’s not stupid.”

“No, it isn’t,” the Bose motile said. “Nor is it reasonable and open to negotiation as a human would be at this point. I’m not sure we did the right thing, though I admit I don’t see an alternative.”

“We can turn stars nova.” There was a trill of admiration in the Cat’s voice. “How wonderful.”

“The navy will need to do it to Dyson Alpha now,” Morton said. “That’s the only solution left to us.”

“Go, Navy!” Rob shouted.

“Here it comes,” the Bose motile said. “I can see the light growing. The radiation is reaching the staging post itself. MorningLightMountain is withdrawing the interstellar wormhole. All remaining wormholes are gone.”

Morton turned his attention back to the flyers hovering above the Trine’ba. They were holding steady. Prime signal traffic was almost nonexistent. “What are the immotiles it left behind going to do?”

“I’m not sure,” the Bose motile said. “All the immotiles are independent again. For the moment they’re unified copies of MorningLightMountain, but that won’t last. They’ll revert to autonomy, and try to carve themselves territories. Those on the ground will make alliances with the groups that control the big lander ships.”

“Will they fight among themselves?” Simon asked hopefully.

“Not for centuries,” the Bose motile said. “They occupy a lot of territory; there is no need to compete for a long time. But this is assuming the Commonwealth allows them to grow in the Lost23 systems.”

“That won’t happen,” Morton said. “We’ll probably be withdrawn, and they’ll nova the stars.”

“That is inadvisable,” the Bose motile said. “The radiation which novas release can quite easily sterilize all life on neighboring star systems. You’d wipe out this whole section of the Commonwealth.”

“Who gives a shit about details?” Rob said. “We can win. The immotiles left behind can be wiped out one at a time while we whack MorningLightMountain on its home star.”

“The remaining immotiles still present a formidable force,” the Bose motile said. “They have thousands of ships and several wormhole generators remaining in the Lost23 systems. They will probably seek to move beyond human reach.”

“None of this affects us,” Morton said. “All we have to worry about for now is how the local boys react. Any clues on that yet?” As he spoke, he saw the flyers moving again. They were all heading back toward the force field.

“The local immotiles are agreeing to cooperate, and remain linked into a group cluster. Without the supply route to Dyson Alpha, all expansion of existing operations will cease. They will concentrate their resources on strengthening their border against any assaults you make, and from any navy bombardment. Communications will be resumed with the other groups and clusters on Elan to decide what to do. It will mainly depend on what action the Commonwealth takes against them.”

“We should find that out soon enough. The next wormhole communication is scheduled for seven hours’ time.”

“They’ll take us home,” Rob declared. “There’s no point to all this sabotage bull when you can wipe out entire stars. How about that? Home free. And we didn’t spend half the time they threatened us with.”

“Home free?” the Cat asked sweetly. “So how exactly were you thinking of explaining why we’ve held on to our version of Dudley?”

“Shit!”

Morton watched Rob’s blue icon change to amber as he switched to a secure encrypted channel.

“Morton, you’ve got to think of some way to square that with the navy. Maybe just leave it here and pretend nothing happened. The survivors owe us big time, they won’t rat us out.”

“Could be. I want to hear what Mellanie says in the next message.”

“Goddamn,” Rob swore. “You are so pussy-whipped. Well, you make it clear to that little witch I’m not going to let her and her conspiracy theories stand between me and my clean record. That applies to you and the psycho bitch as well. When the navy lifts us, I want my release. I’ve fucking earned it.”