Reports coming into the command bunker from Varlan’s riverside were intermittent and confused. There were a dozen red flags on the city map table to mark the Faller incursion now, but Stonal still didn’t know what they actually represented, outside of panicked shouts over the radio claiming monsters and large guns. Three of the marine boats had been removed from the river Colbal, and there’d been no contact with the remainder for over a quarter of an hour. Davorky hadn’t yet ordered their emblems to be removed—foolishly optimistic, in Stonal’s view.
One of the communications staff had a fast shouted exchange, and two of the red flags by the river were moved farther into the city, progressing down Vownfol Street.
“Crud,” Davorky grunted. The column of reinforcements dispatched from the palace was almost at the waterfront, but three kilometers west of Vownfol Street.
A new red flag was added to the city, placed in the middle of Bromwell Park at the far end of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard.
“Where in Uracus did they come from?” Stonal demanded. “They’re inside the perimeter.”
“Size and ability?” Davorky demanded.
“Sir, scouts report several hundred, including large breeder types,” an aide reported. “All heavily armed. No vehicles.”
Stonal looked at the long straight line of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard, leading directly from the park to the palace. A knife to the heart. “They’re coming for us,” he said.
“Sir,” one of the communications staff called, “the gate guard is reporting a very large crowd massing outside the wall. He says they’re asking to come in.”
“Absolutely not,” Stonal said.
“Sir, they have children with them.”
Stonal strode over to the communications staffer. “Give that to me.” He grabbed the phone handset from the tense man. “This is Director Stonal. Who am I talking to?”
“Captain Fitzsand, sir. Assigned to the main palace gates.”
“Then listen to this very closely, Captain Fitzsand. Under no circumstances are any civilians to be allowed through the gates. Is that understood?”
“Uh, yes, sir. Sir, the crowd is claiming their children have been promised sanctuary inside the palace.”
“Let me be very clear, Captain: They have not. Do not let them in.”
“Sir, they said they’re here because the Warrior Angel told them to come. That she’s opening the wormhole under the palace. That she’s going to take us all to safety or something.”
Stonal stared at the phone in shock. “I’m coming up to the gate. Arrest whoever claims to be the leader of this rabble. I want to talk to them!”
“Yes, sir.”
He hurried back to Davorky. “Deploy some reserves into Bryan-Anthony Boulevard. Stop those Fallers getting closer to the palace.”
“I’ll do what I can,” the master general said, “but I’ve got the regiments positioned around the outskirts. Getting them back into the center will take time.”
“Just hold them off. I need to find out exactly what’s going on outside.”
Faustina was panting heavily by the time she got to the cells where Adolphus was incarcerated; even now she had trouble thinking of him as Joey. She looked along the corridor suspiciously, but there were no guards in sight. That wasn’t right, but she wasn’t about to complain. There were twenty identical metal doors set into the wall, all numbered. She told her u-shadow to ping Joey.
“Faustina?” came the answer.
“Yeah. Hang on.” Her u-shadow flipped a location map up into her exovision. She hurried along to cell eight and lifted the small flap on the door. Adolphus’s face stared back at her. “I’ve come to break you out,” she said. “Um, do you know where the guard keeps the keys?”
“What? No! Where are the guards?”
“I’m not sure. A lot of them are deserting.”
“Bollocks. Okay, stand back. I’m cutting through.”
She hurriedly took some steps back. There was a loud bang from inside the cell, then another. The lock mechanism began to smolder, and the metal sagged around it. Another bang, then Adolphus/Joey was shoving the door open.
Faustina couldn’t help it; she gave him a big hug. “I screwed up,” she said. “I moved the space machine out to the courtyard.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously. “Why is that screwing up?”
So she explained about the message from space, how Paula was ready to fight the Fallers somehow. “Can you operate the gateway?” she asked, almost fearing the answer.
Joey grinned widely. “Oh, yeah. Piece of cake. I’m actually a hyperspace theorist, you know.”
Faustina smiled back weakly; there was something not quite right about that oh-so-familiar face appearing so happy. “We have to get down there. I’m not sure about Chaing’s loyalties. I got word that he was on our side, but…”
“Right.” He turned to face the cell opposite and opened the hatch. “You catch all of that?”
“I did,” Roxwolf’s gurgling voice agreed.
“We might run into guards. I’m armed with this e-pulse, but we could do with some backup.”
“You got it. This is my only chance to get the crud out of here.”
“Joey!” Faustina breathed.
“It’s okay. We’ve been talking, and he’s with us.”
She gave him a very skeptical look, but he pushed his sleeve up and brought his arm around. There was a flash of light as a rigid thunderbolt stabbed out of his skin and struck the lock on Roxwolf’s cell door.
It only took one more shot and the lock was ruined. Joey pulled the door open. Faustina braced herself, but Roxwolf walked out nonchalantly.
“You crudding well watch him closely,” she sent to Joey through their link.
“Don’t worry. Remember, I got caught by Fallers once before—actually, a million times before.”
Making sure Joey was always between her and Roxwolf, Faustina led them through the maze of passages, then up two levels.
“This is it,” Faustina exclaimed as she hurried toward a huge pair of doors. She frowned at the abandoned desk. “The guard must have deserted.”
“Good,” Roxwolf grunted.
She turned the big iron handle, and pushed. The door didn’t move. She pushed harder. “It’s locked,” she exclaimed. “From the inside.”
“I’ll get it,” Joey told her, and raised his arm.
Chaing felt nothing as the bullet struck, only his good leg collapsing, sending him tumbling to the hard stone floor. Corilla was shrieking in terror. Then the pain hit, spiking through his thigh like an incandescent spear. He couldn’t even cry out it was so overwhelming. He gulped for air as he finally found the courage to look. The bullet had hit halfway between his hip and knee. A neat-ish wound at the front, a horrific crater of tattered flesh and trouser fabric at the back, with blood pouring out. He instinctively grabbed the wound with his good hand to try to stanch the bleeding. His fingers slithered about as the blood soaked them.
“What are you doing?” Corilla yelled. Her whole body was rigid with shock and fear.
“Remember,” Jenifa gloated. “One flash of red, and…pow!” She walked toward Chaing and stood over him, her eyes gleaming with joy. “He’s an Eliter. He was going to evacuate his kind off this world and leave the rest of us to the Fallers. Weren’t you, sir?”
Chaing clenched his teeth, shaking his head. “Call,” he grunted against the pain, took another breath. “Call Stonal.”
“Your little whore isn’t calling anyone,” Jenifa said. “You’re a crudding traitor, Captain. Admit it. I want to hear you say it. Say you’re an Eliter.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Chaing spat.
She smiled. And kicked the wound.
Chaing screamed. There was a moment when only pain existed. Then thin strings of bile were spewing out of his mouth and he twisted around in agony. Both hands clutched desperately at his leg as more blood pumped out.
Jenifa was laughing delightedly. “Tell me!” she demanded. “I want to hear it. Confess, Eliter!”
“Stop it,” Corilla yelled in shock. “You’re killing him. Can’t you see that?”
“I told you to shut up,” Jenifa pointed the pistol casually at Corilla. She nudged Chaing with her toe. “Come on, traitor. Say it.”
Chaing shrank away from her touch, whimpering softly. “Let her unlock the gateway. Paula can save us.”
“You. She can save you and your kind. Right?” Jenifa kicked him again. “I’m going to squeeze every drop of blood out of you,” she said contentedly. “I’m going to make you die in so much pain your mind will break first. Now admit it!”
Chaing could see she had dropped into that same strange zone she’d dropped into when they’d held a helpless Joffler ready for interrogation. Her rational thoughts were gone, engulfed by raw desire and frightening determination. She would not stop this until she heard him confess, no matter what the cost. “I…I…”
“Yes?” Jenifa bent over to catch his faltering words.
“Watch this.” He pressed his thumb against his knuckle. A rectangle of faint green lines shone through the blood.
“What is that?” a mesmerized Jenifa whispered.
“That, Corporal, is how non-Eliters call the Warrior Angel for help. You see, you were wrong about me. You were always wrong.” He started laughing at the fury that blazed across her face.
“You fucking traitor!” Jenifa screamed. She slammed her boot into his wound again. Chaing blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to, Jenifa was in a defensive crouch, her pistol pointing at the doors. There was a loud bang, and a bright flash searing out of the chunky iron lock.
It was very weird. If he could just concentrate, he was sure he could work out what was happening. Strangely the pain was diminishing, and he seemed rather pleasantly light-headed. His hands closed around the wound again to stanch the awful flow of blood.
It’s worked, he thought happily. I called for the Warrior Angel, and now here she is, just like she said she’d be. How wonderful.
Jenifa had grabbed Corilla and was holding the distraught girl in front of her like a shield. The door swung open.
Joey was first into the crypt. He took a couple of confident paces, making it look like he belonged there. Then what he was seeing registered. “Holy bollocks,” he grunted.
The semiconscious man on the floor had one leg in a cast, and the other leg bleeding heavily from a bullet wound. In front of him, a compact female PSR corporal was holding a frightened girl close to her chest. But her pistol was aimed unwaveringly at Joey’s head.
“What the crud is that doing in here?” she shouted. The muzzle jabbed toward Roxwolf.
“You brought him here,” Faustina said, coming up to stand beside Joey. “You should know, Roxwolf is helping us.”
“Bollocks,” the corporal spat. “The only person that creature ever helps is himself.”
Roxwolf opened his mouth wide, showing off a prodigious quantity of fangs. “Hello, Corporal Jenifa. Bad day, huh? Join the club.”
“Put your weapon down,” Jenifa said.
Joey reduced the power level in his OCtattoo e-pulse function; targeting brackets were jumping all over the profile of the crazy woman with the gun and her hostage shield, trying to get a decent lock. “What weapon?”
“The one that burned through metal,” Jenifa said. “The Commonwealth weapon. Where is it?”
“Oh, that? It’s part of my body.”
“How…?” She gritted her teeth. “You were the prime minister!”
I know. Listen to me, Jenifa, is it?” he said, using the best kindly patriarch voice this stolen body could muster. “The gateway has to be opened. We are going to defeat the Fallers.”
“Yes, you are,” she said, breathing hard. “Eliters, every one of you.”
Joey grinned. “That’s what you call us, but I’m more than that. A lot more. I’m from the Commonwealth itself. And we’re here to take you home.” He saw the uncertainty in her eyes, the way she shifted her grip on the pistol, making sure she was extra steady.
“No,” she grunted. “No, that’s a lie.”
Joey’s targeting program still couldn’t get a decent lock. Behind him Roxwolf took a step forward.
“Move again, freak monster, and I blow your crudding head off,” Jenifa said without taking her gaze off Joey.
“You need to calm down,” Joey told her.
“Yeah? You want to see what makes me calm?”
Targeting graphics finally framed her face perfectly. Joey linked to Roxwolf, to tell him to distract her for a moment so her pistol would waver and allow him a shot.
The green light on the little box she held turned red.
Jenifa tensed.
Joey tried to jump aside, forcing the body’s ancient flabby muscles to perform the impossible.
Jenifa shot Roxwolf.
Joey fired the e-pulse. It hit the shield girl on her neck. She spasmed wildly as she dropped to the floor.
Jenifa jerked the pistol’s trigger again.
Something punched Joey in the gut, sending him sprawling backward.
The next thing he knew, Jenifa was standing over him, her face eerily expressionless. Then she giggled. It was a sound that terrified Joey far more than the massive pistol, which was slowly descending toward his head.
“Traitors, all of you,” she said. “I was right. I was always right.”
The sound of the shot was thunderous.
Half of Jenifa’s skull exploded, sending tatters of brain splattering across the floor and Joey’s chest. He turned his head, to see the man with the wounded leg holding a pistol in a two-handed grip, a satisfied smile curling his bloodless lips. “No you weren’t, Corporal,” he grunted, and collapsed.
The world was placid for a long moment. Joey rather enjoyed that. Then he finally noticed all the red medical displays crawling through his exovision, so many and so bright he could barely see anything else.
“Giu’s bollocks,” Faustina wailed. “Joey? Joey, are you alive?” She took a couple of steps forward and hesitated, looking between him and Roxwolf.
“Unlock the gateway,” Joey said. “Quick. I don’t think I’ve got long.” He banished all the bad-news medical icons from his exovision—not that their absence made the world a whole lot clearer. “Hey! Hey, Roxwolf, how you doing, pal?”
The mutant Faller coughed and flopped over, clutching at his hip where the bullet had torn through. “Last time I jailbreak with you, my friend.”
“Keep pressure on the wound. Help is coming.”
“Help?”
“Yes. I think.”
“Got it,” Faustina cried incredulously.
Joey’s u-shadow told him access to the gateway’s smartnet was now open. He linked to it and pulled the operational routines into his exovision. The BC5800d2’s systems were all recognizable, though there were plenty of specialist functions he didn’t even consider. He started to load instructions in.
“It’s turning violet,” Faustina exclaimed.
Uncomfortably warm liquid was bubbling away in Joey’s throat, making it even harder to breathe. He scanned the displays that showed him the BC5800d2’s initialization process running. Then he had to work through the more complex terminus coordinate selection procedure. Hyperspatial resonance revealed planetary masses orbiting their solitary star. Only one had moons, though they were exceptionally small. He shifted the coordinate again, opening the terminus close to Trüb’s surface.
It must have been about right, for a lovely purple glow spilled through the open wormhole to shine across the crypt and its grisly contents. Trüb’s mauve surface was alive with subtly shifting patterns of color, like solid rainbows rippling gently around the smooth globe.
His body was trembling now, and growing cold. “Faustina, send a signal through. You have to contact them. Tell Paula she has to take charge of the gateway’s smartnet. Quickly. I’m losing it.”
“Joey?” The anguish in her voice was plaintive.
“Don’t worry. This is just a copy of me. I’ve bodylossed before. The worst bit is waking up in a clinic’s emaciated clone; they always fast-grow them. I think it’s ’coz it’s cheaper that way.”
“Don’t talk,” she told him.
He hadn’t known he was.
His u-shadow reported several new links opening. One connected directly with the BC5800d2’s smartnet. Faustina started crying.
Kysandra stepped through first, her nose wrinkling up at the carnage on the floor of the crypt. She was just about to embrace a sobbing Faustina when she froze in shock.
“What the crud is that?” she demanded.
“I’m Roxwolf. Good to finally meet you.”
She grunted in bemusement. “I guess it really is the end of the world.” The wound in his side looked bad, but his paw was pressed against the ripped flesh, slowing the ugly pulses of blue blood.
“Can you do it?” Faustina asked. “Can you stop the Fallers?”
“Paula thinks she can.” She saw Chaing lying on the ground, a nasty bullet wound in his thigh. “Hello again, Captain; you really need to learn how to duck faster.”
He nodded weakly. She didn’t like how pale he was; the blood loss was getting serious. Ry and Florian came through the wormhole behind her. “Ry, first-aid the captain, now.”
“I’m on it!” he exclaimed.
She stared at the mutant Faller.
“I warned you about the bombardment,” Roxwolf said. “I’ve been helping you. I had a deal with humans; you said you’d let me live.”
“That’s true,” Faustina said.
Kysandra found passing judgment was unusually difficult. So many years had been spent exterminating Fallers, her instinct was just to fry him with a disruptor pulse. “Florian, you take Roxwolf. Paula can decide what to do with him later.”
“Welcome to the reunion, my friend,” Roxwolf grunted at an uncertain Florian.
“But…he’s alien,” Florian said. “The medical kit won’t treat him.”
“Just apply basic first aid, stop the bleeding. Fallers are tough beasts.”
Florian dropped to his knees beside the mutant Faller and opened the kit. He took out a big dressing patch.
“Thank you,” Roxwolf said with a sigh.
Kysandra turned to the third victim. “Prime Minister?” she said in surprise.
“No, I stole his body. Don’t worry about this; everything is backed up. I’ll re-life later. Just get us back…Oh, bollocks, here we go again.” His chest juddered as blood gushed out of his mouth; then his body went limp.
“It was Joey,” Faustina explained.
“Okay. Brief me, please, and quickly.” Kysandra took a minute to study all the files Faustina sent over, along with listening to a fast summary. “Oh, crud,” she muttered at the end. “Paula, did you get all that?”
“Yes. It doesn’t matter. If I can crack Valatare, it’s all over.”
“How long?”
“Not sure. Soon, I hope.”
Paula not giving a specific has to be a first, Kysandra thought. At any other time she might have enjoyed it. “So,” she said to Faustina. “We’ve got a crowd of Eliter children outside thinking you’re going to protect them, and the Fallers are moving into the city?”
“Yes,” Faustina admitted miserably.
“Okay. Demitri, the gateway is all yours. Take it back to Trüb.”
“Inverting now,” the ANAdroid replied.
“Right, then. Ry, Florian: Let’s go and make sure those kids are going to be safe.”
Stonal heard the crowd as soon as he emerged from the palace. It was a low growl of voices, all merged into a continuous animal rumble, charged with fright and anger. Shrill individual cries pierced the clamor, anguished children venting their distress. He tightened his jaw against any instinctive urge to rush and help as he stalked across the wide, empty parade ground. Palace guards on the walkway at the top of the wall saw him coming and nudged their comrades.
A small group of guards was clustered at the back of the big reinforced gates. He saw a man in a splendid blue-and-gold captain’s uniform arguing with a furious woman in a smart charcoal-gray suit. She was holding the hand of a five-year-old boy who was on the verge of tears.
“Captain Fitzsand?” Stonal said as he joined the group.
The captain saluted. “Sir.”
“Are you in charge here?” the woman challenged.
“And you are?” Stonal asked.
“Maribeth. You have to let us in.”
“Why are you here? What message did you get?”
“We were told there’s sanctuary here. The Commonwealth is going to protect our children.” She gripped her son’s hand tighter, pulling him even closer.
“Who said that? What sort of sanctuary?”
“It was a signal in the general network, verified by people I know. It said there was a Commonwealth machine here with a force field.”
“Joey,” Stonal muttered disapprovingly under his breath.
“Then there was another message, a signal from space. All of us received that, and now we have the code to unlock the gateway.”
“From space?” Stonal asked disbelievingly. “Who sent a message from space?”
“That would be me,” a voice said behind him.
He turned to see the Warrior Angel walking across the parade ground, her coat tails flapping wide, brown suede hat at an angle, long glossy Titian hair flowing like a cloak down her back. She was smiling knowingly, which made her young face beguilingly lovely.
Two men were walking beside her. Stonal recognized them easily enough: Ry Evine and Florian. Both carried thick black cylinders on shoulder straps, and wore ribbed matte overalls that had to be Commonwealth-built. He was surprised to see Faustina walking with them. He regarded her with extreme suspicion; she seemed more nervous of him than of Kysandra. It appalled him to think she might have been sneaking information to the Eliters all along.
Up above him, the palace guards on the walkway were cheering the Warrior Angel.
She walked right up to him and gave him an impish grin of appraisal. “Director Stonal. Finally.”
“Kysandra. Did you tell these people to come here?” His hand waved toward the gate and the strident crowd outside.
“Partly, yes. But right now you need to get them through the gate and into the Rose Courtyard. Joey will throw a force field around them while we hold the Fallers off.”
“The space machine is in the Rose Courtyard?”
“Yes,” Faustina said. “I moved it there. I told the Eliters their children would be safe here.”
Stonal kept very still. “You’re part of this?”
“Since before you were born. Slvasta might have been your stepfather, but he was my husband.”
“Husband?”
“I’ve rejuvenated Bethaneve several times,” Kysandra said. “She knows her way around the capital and government departments like no one else.”
“No,” he said quietly. I cannot have been so unaware, so wrong. “You can’t be.” Somehow it seemed like a defeat every bit as grave as the Faller Apocalypse. And he hated himself for thinking like that. I’ve given my life to securing Bienvenido, and everything I’ve done has come to nothing.
“I was Bethaneve,” she said relentlessly. “The first of the Elites, their original leader. I planned the revolution. I watched Slvasta corrupt it with his paranoia. And I was there when Nigel flew into space. He was genuinely trying to save us, you know. His companions saved me and Slvasta—did he ever tell you that? I saw Uracus open and expel us from the Void. I have lived life in the Void and here. Neither is of any worth. We need to go home, back to the Commonwealth, and Paula can finally take us there.”
“You’ve opened the wormhole in the crypt, haven’t you?” he said. “Are you going to take the Eliters to Aqueous?”
“No. There are no factions on this world anymore, Stonal, only humans and Fallers. And now Paula’s found some allies. We just have to buy her time to contact them.”
He stared at the sweet old woman who had fooled him for decades, and knew he’d lost, that he was no longer in charge of anything. “I can’t risk Fallers getting into the palace.”
“Neither can I,” Kysandra said. “I’ll check the crowd as they come through. Don’t worry; my field function scans will spot a Faller easily.”
He wanted to say yes, but the word wouldn’t form.
“Paula is the one Nigel trusted to finish the job if he failed,” Faustina said. “The Apocalypse is starting, and she’s all that stands between us and extinction. Open the palace gates, Director Stonal.”
“Captain Fitzsand,” he said. “Please open the gates. The Warrior Angel will be vetting everyone who comes through.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and saluted.
He followed Kysandra as she hurried up the stairs to the walkway and stood almost directly above the gates. She hopped up on top of the wall so everyone thronging outside could see her. A massive cheer went up—people screamed, kids were jumping up and down waving excitedly.
“You’re coming in,” she told them. “Take it slow and easy, no pushing. When you get inside, you’ll be under a Commonwealth force field so the Fallers can’t harm you.”
Stonal raised his gaze over the heads of the volatile crowd and along Bryan-Anthony Boulevard. Such a neat, clean line on the map, but in reality a chaotic thoroughfare of people pressed together, fenced by tall government buildings streaked with a century of grime. Beyond the rear fringes of the Eliters was a long gap where nothing moved, the purple-gray cobbles cut by tramlines, perspective shrinking back a couple of kilometers to bulky vehicles that rumbled slowly forward.
“What are those?” Stonal asked as the gates opened below him. Naturally, the crowd surged forward.
“Stay calm,” Kysandra told them. It didn’t make much difference. People were agitated and close to panic.
Ry was peering forward, studying the approaching vehicles. “They’re troop carriers,” he said. “Yours?”
“I don’t think so,” Stonal said, wondering what had become of the troops the vehicles had taken to their staging post.
“Faller,” Kysandra announced levelly. She pointed and a green flash erupted around her hand. Two hundred meters away, a man collapsed. Screams rose around him as people pressed back from the corpse; blue blood was leaking from his nostrils. “Take it easy,” she commanded. “They will not get past us.” Her fieldscan swept over the crowd; targeting graphics closed around over a dozen figures, two of whom were children.
“Those troop carriers are picking up speed,” Stonal said. “They’re going to be here before everyone’s through.” As he watched them, he heard the sound of machine guns. Tiny sparks zipped out from the vehicles. He saw flames shoot from a big ten-story office block they were passing. More flames began to take hold on the other side of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard.
“I know,” Kysandra said. “Boys, we’re on.”
She decided there was no point in fancy tactics. Actually, no real point in any kind of tactics. Even she found the number of Fallers massing behind the troop carriers intimidating. They kept deliberately igniting the elaborate government buildings on either side of the wide road as they came, firing hundreds of dazzling magnesium incendiary rounds through the prominent windows and ornate doorways. Flames formed a solid wall, pumping out thick black smoke.
After the last of the anxious noisy refugees scurried through the palace gates, she started walking down the center of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard. Ry walked on one side of her, Florian on the other. Both of them had unslung their molecular severance cannons, holding them ready.
When the troop carriers reached the junction with Pointas Street, the giant human-Fallers walking alongside the vehicles opened fire with their pump-action bazookas. Cobbles exploded just in front of her, stone fragments erupting into the air. Tramlines were ripped up, blast waves twirling long chunks of steel rail about as if they were nothing more than twigs in a breeze. They slammed down, impaling walls and pavements.
Kysandra’s integral force field protected her from the furious chaos. She sent disruptor pulses cleaving into the lead troop carriers. They detonated into fatal shrapnel clouds that shredded the big Fallers. Their fuel tanks blew up, vivid energetic fireballs that engulfed the tall wirthwal trees lining the boulevard.
The second rank of troop carriers crunched over the flaming debris, and kept on coming. Behind them, the huge beast-Fallers started to spread out, disappearing into the alleys between the buildings.
“Crud,” Florian muttered. He dropped to one knee and fired his molecular severance cannon, chopping the hurrying Fallers apart. Very heavy-caliber projectiles pummeled his force field, knocking him back five meters.
Kysandra chuckled at his outburst of profanities. “Were you expecting the Apocalypse to be easy?” A bazooka round slammed into her force field. It wasn’t fully rooted in the ground, allowing the blast to send her staggering backward. She retaliated with another blast of disruptor pulses.
“No,” Florian replied. “They’re trying to outflank us.”
“Yes. You and Ry will have to take out the big brutes on each side. I’ll keep going for the main group.”
“The kids must be under Joey’s force field by now,” Ry said. “All we have to do is sit tight.”
“There are a lot of people in the palace that aren’t under the force field, as well as the rest of Varlan’s population. Right now, we’re what the Fallers are concentrating on. While they’re fighting us, they’re not killing anyone else.”
“Oh, great Giu! Okay.”
Paula waited while Demitri enacted the gateway’s location inversion, and watched as the circular machine extruded itself out of the wormhole to stand on Trüb’s copper-and-emerald surface.
“What state is it in?” she asked.
“There’s a degree of component degradation,” he said, “but it will do what we need.”
“Okay, let’s bring the other floater here.”
Demitri redirected the BC5800d2’s terminus coordinate to Ursell and pinged the floater. The response showed them it was drifting eighty kilometers above the surface, being pushed along at twenty-five kilometers an hour by one of the turbulent storms. He manipulated the terminus again, moving it closer and closer to the floater as it twirled about erratically in the conflicting winds.
Once again Paula was impressed by his control. It took less than ten minutes until the terminus had closed within twenty meters of the floater, and they established a link to the duplicate Laura personality in its smartnet. Demitri connected the wormhole to it, and brought it back to Trüb.
The three devices rested close together on the hard purple surface. Demitri stood in front of the BC5800d2 that had come from the palace. Fergus had the newly arrived floater, while Valeri linked to the gateway they’d brought from the Viscount.
“Are you ready?” Paula asked the Planter.
“We are.”
Her heartbeat started to increase, which she couldn’t entirely blame on teenage hormones. “Demitri, let’s have some power, please.”
Exovision graphics showed her the BC5800d2 opening a terminus 128 million kilometers away, just above the star’s corona. The terminus at the other end of its wormhole opened fifty million kilometers directly above the star’s north pole. Demitri increased the internal length to twenty kilometers, and modified the exotic matter’s internal structure to pull power directly from the plasma flow. “The induction efficiency is poor,” he murmured, “but we have an unlimited supply of plasma, so it really doesn’t matter.”
The terminus above the corona began to move down into the seething ionic storms thrown off by the prominences. Long powerful streamers curved around to streak into the dark throat.
Paula steeled herself, supremely conscious of how close she was standing to the wormhole generator—not that she’d ever know if there was a confinement breach. It would all be over too fast for human nerves to react, even nerves as enriched as hers.
Superhot plasma from the corona began to roar down the wormhole before venting into space like a god’s own firework rocket. Density, heat, and velocity increased as the terminus penetrated the chromosphere. The power level generated by the induction effect along the wormhole was phenomenal.
Fergus used the floater’s wormhole to form a channel between the energy generated by the BC5800d2’s wormhole and the connection between Trüb and the barrier generator.
“Is it enough?” Paula asked the Planter.
“Not yet.”
“Down we go, then,” Demitri said evenly.
The BC5800d2’s terminus sank deeper into the star’s interior; plasma at incredible temperature poured out through the wormhole, its velocity approaching half light speed.
“We are patterning the energy to override the generator’s warp effect,” the Planter said.
Paula was sure she somehow picked up a resonance of excitement from the enigmatic alien. She walked over to the arch of outlandish Planter substance that was protruding through the gateway and onto the barrier surface. There was a small gap between it and the edge of the wormhole, revealing the midnight-black crescent of the generator. Close enough to touch, had it not been shielded by the gateway’s force field.
“You’re going to have to be quick,” Demitri said. “There are instabilities building in the exotic matter. The wormhole won’t hold for long.”
“Applying now,” the Planter said.
Paula held her breath.
Abruptly, the blackness was gone. Paula could see a tangled knot of translucent energy bands, loops kilometers across, gyrating around and through one another as they glowed with the telltale violet of Cherenkov radiation. As she watched, stains of darkness sluiced through them, contaminating the intricate formation deeper and deeper until every band was shading down to obscurity. The negative energy they were composed from dissipated in a last burst of gamma radiation and exotic neutrinos.
The barrier collapsed.
Freed from the harsh pull of its artificial gravity, Valatare’s colossal gas envelope exploded both outward and inward. Vast surges of cooling hydrocarbon vapor slashed past the floater, which held steady amid the moon-sized hurricanes.
The fake gas giant was now the center of an expanding cloudstorm that would continue to grow over the weeks until it was thin enough for the solar wind to blow it out across the intergalactic night. Paula watched the start of the process, as the hot lower layers surged into the gulf exposed by the barrier disappearing. Nothing was visible through the ever-shifting ocher haze. Titanic energy swirls tried to equalize, flinging off oceanic-sized lightning discharges.
The Planter withdrew from the wormhole, allowing Paula to stand directly in the center of the gateway. Her u-shadow transmitted the message she’d composed what seemed an age ago now, sitting in Kysandra’s dining room the night she’d realized what Valatare was.
She waited with growing desperation, seeing only vast swirls of the drab gases rushing past her tiny window. I am not wrong. It has to be them. It has to be. Her hands clenched into fists so tight her nails were digging into her palms.
An answering signal came out of the billowing ionized mist. Then shapes began to emerge, serene and massive. Thousands of them.
Paula smiled beatifically at the glorious Raiel warships as they headed toward her.
Kysandra watched the Fallers abandon their troop carriers, finally realizing they were easy targets. Several of them were sneaking forward through the smoke, dodging between trees and statues in the neat gardens that moated the government offices. She used disruptor pulses to take out the corners and core of the People’s Transport Ministry. The entire nine-floor building tumbled down in a slow-motion cascade of stone and concrete and tortured girders. The Fallers creeping furtively along its sides ran frantically into the open road. Kysandra tugged her maser rifle off her shoulder as targeting graphics locked on, her secondary routines designating them for the rifle. It saved power; her biononics didn’t have unlimited reserves, and there were still more than two thousand Fallers closing on the palace.
She started jogging toward the Ministry of Agriculture. Sure enough, Fallers began to follow, which made her grin savagely; it was like a magnet drawing iron filings along. Huge swells of black smoke churned along the length of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard, forming a roiling ceiling above her. A sleet of incendiary bullets slammed into the Ministry of Agriculture. Fires bloomed behind shattered windows.
Kysandra’s secondary neural routines brought up light amplification imagery to compensate for the growing darkness. She ducked around the side of the building, where the smoke wasn’t so dense. The light kept dimming.
“Uh, Kysandra, what is that?” Florian asked.
An icy phantom ran slowly along Kysandra’s spine. She stopped jogging and looked up.
“Skylords,” Ry said. “The Skylords have returned.”
“That’s not a Skylord,” Kysandra said solemnly.
She remembered the Skylords from her childhood. Exquisitely alien crystalline mountains, shimmering in refracted sunlight, that floated nimbly through the sky as they collected the souls of humans beginning their journey to the welcoming heart of the Void. This dark thing descending on Varlan was so much larger—orders of magnitude greater than the city itself. Its umbra had already engulfed the surrounding countryside, pushing the sunlight away to a slender fringe clinging to the horizon. Clouds broke apart on its base, and a fierce wind began to blow across the rooftops as it displaced a monstrous amount of air.
It was all Kysandra could do to stay standing. The most primitive animal instinct she possessed was shouting at her to bow down, to run, to scream hysterically—
The only thing she could hear now was the crackling of the flames. Even the Fallers had stopped shooting. Like her they were silent and still, staring up blankly at their fate.
Paula stood beside Yathal in his command chamber as the Golakkoth lowered itself into Bienvenido’s atmosphere. The titanic warship moved with a sedate grace, ensuring that the air it deposed didn’t howl away in wayward hurricanes as it slid down toward Varlan.
“There are many conflicts under way in the city,” the Raiel captain said. “Which one involves your friends?”
Paula was using the warship’s phenomenal sensor suite to observe the city. She had to block most of it; the sheer quantity of information contained within a complete sweep could probably fry a human brain. The warrior Raiel, however, seemed quite capable of total engagement.
She moved her perception focus directly underneath the warship; there was a confrontation on a long road stretching out from the palace. Pinprick graphics bloomed emerald, revealing energy weapon discharges. The answering deluge of more primitive chemical weapons were designated a dull yellow. Her perception spiraled in on Kysandra and Florian and Ry. They’d stopped shooting to gape up in awe. “That’s them,” she said. “You’ve shocked everyone into stopping, but we need to end this, now.”
“Of course,” Yathal said. “The other ships are almost in position.”
Outside Golakkoth’s sensor image, Paula was aware of four other Raiel warships lowering themselves out of the sky above Lamaran. Their T-fields were already reaching out.
She shifted her focus again, zooming into the palace, identifying the overstretched force field covering a courtyard, then diving deeper, her augmented sight flowing through walls, seeing the crypt where the wormhole had spent so many centuries waiting—now home to bodies and the badly wounded. A deep bunker filled with frightened, defiant regiment officers organizing Varlan’s last stand. Cellars where the big building’s ordinary staff cowered awaiting the Apocalypse.
“It’s over,” she whispered, surprised how the omnipotent viewpoint made her feel so benign. “We’ve got you. You’re safe.”
The Golakkoth’s sensors classified humans and Fallers, tagging them. Within seconds, she was looking at every sentient entity in Varlan no matter where they were.
“Lift the humans out,” she said.
“The Faller species is undesirable,” Yathal said. “We removed them from our galaxy. We can do the same here for you.”
Paula canceled the warship’s perception and turned to face the warrior Raiel. He was different again from any she’d encountered in the Commonwealth galaxy, larger and with wings that evolution had long discarded in the Raiel of her time. For a moment that worried her, but Raiel nature was an absolute, of that she was sure. “I ask you not to. They will be perfectly harmless if we simply leave them behind. This world…it is as much a prison for humans as Valatare was for you. There is nothing here for us. We have to leave, now.”
A soft sigh escaped from the Raiel’s thick lips. “Very well, Paula Myo. We acknowledge our debt to you.”
“Thank you.”
Kysandra’s u-shadow reported a link opening. “Paula?” she asked in amazement.
“Yes.”
“You did it?” There had been so many years spent holding things together, fighting this wretched eternal rearguard battle, that somewhere along the line she’d stopped thinking it could ever end, that they might actually win. True belief had been extinguished that day Nigel had left her.
Inside she felt a hysterical laugh gestating—nothing could be more real than a multibillion-ton alien spacecraft hovering over your head.
“Yes, this is the Golakkoth, a Raiel warship.”
“So you were right, then?”
“Yes, I was right.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s what I do. It’s what I am.”
“Are the Raiel going to destroy the Fallers?”
“No. There’s no need. And I did promise the Planters.”
“But…”
“Stand by. We’re going to teleport you on board. We’re going to teleport everyone on board.”
Kysandra’s field function scan reported a weird quantum effect establishing itself around her. Then the flaming wreckage of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard vanished.
The habitation dome they’d been assigned on the Golakkoth was apparently small by Raiel standards—barely eight kilometers across. Its buildings were cubes and cylinders and hemispheres with narrow paths between, illuminated by colored strips set into the translucent surface. Walking along the gloomy alley, Florian could have sworn part of the darkness around him came from fog that lingered between the high blank walls, except when he waved his hand at the gray wisps they were never there.
His u-shadow guided him around a few more turns, and a doorway opened at the base of a cylinder. Bright white light shone out. The doorway put him in mind of a bussalore hole gnawed into a skirting board.
Three days ago, the inside of the cylinder had been a gloomy grotto with walls that seemed to flow as if they had a sheet of water constantly running down them. A typical Raiel dwelling, Paula told him. Now it was very different. Walls and floors had rearranged themselves—not just their layout, but their texture, too. The cylinder’s interior had grown itself into something that resembled a plush human hotel, except it had no windows. Which was why Florian spent as much time as possible standing beside the bottom of the crystal dome, staring at the wonders unfolding outside. The entire Raiel armada was orbiting Ursell, unleashing energies he didn’t understand to dismantle the benighted planet and use the debris to build five awesome new structures. DF spheres, Paula called them.
He went up the curving marble stairs to the second floor, where the big lounge had been established. Paula was already sitting at the head of the table, with Yathal standing beside her. Florian had been on board the Golakkoth for three days now, and he still felt intimidated by the Raiel. Yathal was as big as a seibear, but that was the only valid comparison to any creature Florian knew. All the crew were warrior Raiel, Paula explained. Presumably that explained why Yathal appeared to have a hide made of obsidian armor with inbuilt twinkling jewels. The Raiel’s various tentacles were woven with black threads, and the folds of loose flesh around the back of his head had been groomed out to form a mane of white fans. Oddest of all were the leathery wings folded along his flanks that seemed far too small to allow him to actually fly.
The one time Florian gathered up enough courage to ask the Golakkoth’s captain about them, Yathal told him they were vestigial, and the Raiel only kept them for tradition and decoration.
Kysandra was sitting beside Paula. She acknowledged Florian with a sly smile and a wink. When he sat beside her, he felt her hand close on his thigh, squeezing playfully. He blushed—as he supposed he always would when she was with him. Since they’d been teleported aboard the Golakkoth, they’d spent half their time in bed together, both of them devoted to re-creating the happy few days they’d enjoyed after she’d rescued him from Opole. He knew it wouldn’t last, that the voyage home was just another interlude before his life truly began, but that didn’t bother him anymore. The Commonwealth was in his future now. A dream made real.
There weren’t many others at the table; Ry, of course, and Demitri and Corilla. He’d been somewhat disconcerted by Paula’s insistence that Stonal and Captain Chaing be included in their small council, but she wanted alternative viewpoints included. “For a fair representation,” she claimed. Prime Minister Terese was also given a chair, though she’d said very little in their meetings. Florian thought she was still in a state of shock. He could relate to that; the decisions this small council had been making were momentous. That didn’t seem to perturb Paula. He was finally starting to realize why Nigel had chosen her to carry his plan forward if he failed.
“If we’re all ready,” Paula said.
Roxwolf materialized at the opposite end of the table. The mutant Faller glanced around, keeping his face expressionless. Florian noticed that a lot of his fur was rising, so maybe he wasn’t quite so unnerved as his posture was trying to promote. “Is this my trial?” he asked.
“Not at all,” Paula said. “We acknowledge you were genuine in your attempts to side with humans, despite your earlier activities. We will honor that arrangement. However, there is a slight problem.”
“Of course there is,” Roxwolf grunted.
“We exterminated your kind,” Yathal said.
“You did what?”
“Long ago, before this fleet was ever built, the Raiel determined your species was too aggressive. You conquered all the worlds you encountered whose civilizations were not technologically advanced enough to stop you, destroying all the biological life you found without mercy. So we stopped you the only possible way.”
Roxwolf nodded slowly. “But those of us captured by the Void survived your massacre.”
“Yes.”
“And now we’re all that’s left?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re going to finish the job?”
“No,” Paula told him. “I gave my word to the Planters that this situation would be resolved with minimal violence.”
“And in turn we acknowledge our debt to Paula,” Yathal said.
“The Vatni are coming with us,” Paula said, “as are the Macule Units with their precious gene banks. They are already in stasis along with Bienvenido’s population. The Raiel are using Ursell’s mass to construct colossal wormhole generators. Even so, the voyage home will take several years.”
“We will not permit your species to accompany us,” Yathal said. “We will not turn you loose on our galaxy again.”
“So Bienvenido is yours,” Paula said. “It’s far enough away to prevent you from ever posing a threat to us again.”
Roxwolf peeled his lips back. “I can’t live on Bienvenido.”
“I know,” Paula said. “So you have a decision to make.”
“What decision?”
“We can repair the distortion that afflicts you,” Yathal said. “We can make you whole again, and return you to Bienvenido. Your kind will never know who you were.”
“Or,” Paula said, “we can download your memories into secure storage. Then when we’re back in the Commonwealth, you will be given a human body, or you may transfer directly into ANA. The choice is yours.”
Roxwolf held up his arms, looking from one to the other, from fur to skin. “I am both and yet neither. I know too much, and I am curious; that alone condemns me to my kind, no matter how pure my physical body. Above all, I want to live without fear and without limits. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. So…I choose human.” He grinned his fearsome grin. “Until something better comes along.”