The alien swarm had divided into eight different segments, with two Guards battalions fighting each. One group of troops maintained the shield barrier while the other attacked. The station was filled with great billowing surges of Praetorian force and green lightning blasts and the shrieks of the remaining possessed. But their numbers were lessening, and another four battalions cornered them and squeezed them and then destroyed the remaining aliens.
The station was holed in several places, great gaping fissures through which the snow fell and the flanking maneuvers could be seen. The sky was lit with battle and the air filled with the shrieks of the dying enemy.
Only one position remained unguarded. One place where the aliens could go. Back into the portal. Back where they had first swarmed through. And it was toward this point that Sean headed.
Sean would never have defined himself as brave. At that moment, he was too scared to even spell courage. But he moved forward. Even when he could no longer remember why.
He had space for one coherent thought as he started forward, followed by Dillon and the Watcher.
Paradigm shift.
It was something from math class, his least favorite subject. The teacher had repeated those two words over and over. Paradigm shift. Moving outside the safety zone of logic and established rules. Ignoring the safe step-by-step procedure of whatever came next. Going off the rails. Changing the world in the process.
Sean hovered and searched for his target. Then Dillon shocked him into next week. His brother moved up and gripped Sean. Since Dillon had no arms, he used what was available—a warrior’s fierce emotions. Loyalty and determination and aggressive, hardened pride. And love.
Then Dillon released him and shifted back.
And Sean was ready.
When viewed in this bodiless state, the mass of aliens looked entirely different. Which was why Sean was here. He had known this the instant the cloud spoke to him. That was how he recalled it. The impossible gift of communication from a timeless state, shifted into images he could fathom in the here and now.
The enemy’s individual forms were much clearer now, like translucent jellyfish filled with venomous intent and the power to move at blinding speeds. The aliens were laced by violent shades of green and ochre, tight lines of force that shimmered and shifted with amazing swiftness. The alien portal was larger now, a great gaping hole laced in green fire, like it was intent upon eating its way into the core of the human world.
Then one of the battalion’s nets dissolved, and the aliens spilled out, a heaving body of surging fury. Aimed straight for the portal. Fleeing. And the Guards let them go. Sean assumed the net’s opening was intentional, to see if they would retreat. As soon as the Guards witnessed the blast of recoiling aliens, all the other nets revealed small holes on the side closest to the aliens’ portal.
Sean drifted forward, a disembodied witness to the salvation of a planet. Intent not upon this battle or this world. But rather helping his civilization prepare for the next time.
His civilization.
The thought was enough to commit.
A lone alien swam past, much closer than the others. Flying so fast Sean almost missed his chance. Almost, but not quite.
He dove forward.
Into the alien.
The suspicions that had come with the cloud’s images proved correct. The alien’s shield did not halt him. Sean’s bodiless state granted him the same ability to invade as the aliens.
Sean was overwhelmed by a myriad of impossible impressions. The energy he had witnessed coursing within the swarm was in fact their method of communication. And yet there was no leader. He knew this, just as he knew that the alien had sent out a panic alarm. Just as he knew the aliens had stopped their progress toward the portal. All of them. And turned toward him.
Sean saw the communication link did not begin with any of their number. Instead, it was emitted by the portal itself. A fierce awareness burned through now, hunting, hunting. Taking aim with a ferocity that left him utterly frozen. Incapable of thought, motion, response.
The electric communication between aliens burned away his host. The alien within which he had imbedded himself was gone. And still the lines coursed and lashed him, strong as razor whips. Tearing away his shield, his mind, his being.
He was lost.
Then the belt jerked him away.
As Sean was swept back, his vision cleared sufficiently to watch Dillon fashion a weapon of his own. He was glad for the chance to observe his brother come into his own. Dillon breached forty centuries of staid resistance to change and growth. He drew into himself all the lashing lines of communication and vengeance and force, turning them into one great, huge, massive . . .
Hammer.
Dillon turned their own force against them. He swung the great mallet of power and wrath in a huge arc, mowing through the aliens, stopping them in their tracks.
The last thing Sean saw was Josef and Carver leading a force of Guards, two flanking arms that rose up and surged forward, flaming the air with power of their own.
Then the darkness swept him up, and he was gone.