So over the past five months since they’d decided how and when to do this, Daeman had referred to those stored images and names. He hadn’t memorized all 9,113 of them—he, like all the survivors, had been far too busy for that—but he was not surprised when he recognized the first man and woman to come stumbling out of that black-rectangle door from the neutrino-tachyon beam reassembler.

“Petra,” said Daeman. “Pinchas. Welcome back.” He grabbed the slim man and woman before they could fall. Everyone emerging from the black door, two by two like the animals from Noah’s ark Daeman had time to notice, looked more stunned than sensible.

The dark-haired woman named Petra—a friend of Savi’s, Daeman knew—looked around in a drugged way and said, “How long?”

“Too long,” said Daeman. “Right this way. Toward that ship, please.”

The first hornet had landed, carrying another thirty old-styles whose job was just to accompany and help load the long lines of returning human beings. Daeman watched as Stefe came up and led Petra and Pinchas across the ancient stones toward the hornet ramp.

Daeman greeted everyone coming down the ramp from the beam building, recognizing many on sight—third was the man named Graf, his partner who was also named Hannah, one of Savi’s friends named Stephen, Abe, Kile, Sarah, Caleb, William… Daeman greeted them all by name and helped them the few steps to those others waiting to help them to the hornets.

The voynix and calibani kept attacking. The humans kept killing them. In the rehearsals, it had taken them more than forty-five minutes—on a good evening—to load 9,113 people onto hornets, even given only seconds between one hornet being loaded and leaving and the next arriving—but this evening, while under attack, they did it in thirty-three minutes.

“All right,” said Daeman on all channels. “Everyone off the Temple Mount.”

The heavy-weapons teams lugged their equipment into the last two hornets where they hovered near the east edge of the Mount. Then those hornets were gone—following the dozens of others to the west—and it was just Daeman and his original squads.

“Three or four thousand fresh voynix coming from the direction of the Church of the Sepulchre,” reported Elian.

Daeman pulled his cowl on and chewed his lip. It would be harder to kill the things with the heavy weapons gone. “All right,” he said over the command channel. “This is Daeman. Fax out… now. Squad leaders, report when your squads have freefaxed away.”

Greogi reported his squad gone and faxed away.

Edide reported and faxed away from her position on Bab al-Hadid Street.

Boman reported his squad gone from their position on Bab al-Ghawanima and then Boman was gone.

Loes reported from near the Lions Gate and flicked out.

Elle reported from the Garden Gate and was gone.

Kaman reported his squad successfully faxed away—Kaman seemed to be enjoying this military stuff too much, Daeman thought—and then Kaman redundantly requested permission to freefax home.

“Get your ass out of here,” radioed Daeman.

Oko reported her squad gone and followed them.

Caul reported in from below the Al-Aksa Mosque and flicked out.

Elian reported in, squad freefaxed home, and faxed himself away.

Daeman got his squad together, Hannah included, and watched as they flicked away, one at a time, from the growing shadows of the Western Wall Plaza.

He knew that everyone was gone, that the beam building had been emptied, but he had to check.

Tapping the repellor-pack’s controls on his palm with his middle finger, Daeman flew up, circled the beam building, looked in the empty beam building’s doorway to emptiness beyond, circled the empty Dome of the Rock and empty plaza, and then flew lower, wider circles, checking all the points in all four quarters of the Old City where his squads had held the perimeter while not losing a single human to the voynix and calibani attacks.

He knew he should go—the voynix and calibani were rushing in through the ancient, narrow streets like water into a holed ship—but he also knew why he was staying.

The thrown rock almost took his head off. The combat suit’s radar saved him—picking up the hurled object, invisible in the twilight gloom, and overriding the backpack’s controls, sending Daeman dipping legs and feet over ass, righting him just yards above the pavement of the Temple Mount.

He landed, activating all of his impact armor and raising his energy rifle. All of his suit senses and all of his human senses told him that the large, not-quite-human shape standing in the black doorway of the Dome of the Rock was no mere calibani.

“Daemannnnnn,” moaned the thing.

Daeman walked closer, rifle raised, ignoring the suit’s targeting system’s imperative to fire, trying to control his own breathing and thoughts.

“Daemannnnn,” the oversized amphibious shape in the doorway sighed. “Thinketh, even so, thou wouldst have Him misconceive, suppose this Caliban strives hard and ails no less, would you have him hurt?”

“I would have him dead,” shouted Daeman. His body was quivering with old rage. He could hear the rasp and scrape of thousands of voynix and calibani scuttling and scurrying beneath the Mount. “Come out and fight, Caliban.”

The shadow laughed. “Thinketh, human hopes the while that evil sometimes must mend as warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, yessssss?”

“Come out and fight me, Caliban.”

“Conceiveth, will he put his little rifle down and meet the acolyte of Him in fair fight, hand and claw to hand and claw?”

Daeman hesitated. He knew there would be no fair fight. A thousand voynix and calibani would be up here on the Temple Mount in ten seconds. He could hear the scrabbling and scratching in the Western Wall Plaza and on the steps already. He raised the rifle and clicked the targeting to Auto, hearing the target-confirmed tone in his earphones.

“Thinketh, Daemannnnnn will not shoot, noo,” moaned Caliban in the Dome of the Rocks’ doorshadows. “He loveth Caliban and his lord Setebos as enemies too much to draw—O! O!—a curtain o’er their world at once, yesss? Nooo? Daeman must wait for another day to let the wind shoulder the pillared dust, to meet death’s house o’ the move and…”

Daeman fired. He fired again.

Voynix leaped to the walls of the Temple Mount in front of him. Calibani scrambled up the steps of the Temple Mount behind him. It was dark now in Jerusalem, even the blue beam’s glow—constant for one thousand four hundred and twenty-one years—had gone out. The monsters owned the city once again.

Daeman didn’t have to look through the rifle’s thermal sites to know that he had missed—that Caliban had quantum teleported away. He would have to face the thing some other day or night, in a situation much less advantageous to him than today’s.

Strangely, secretly, in his heart of hearts, Daeman was happy at this thought.

Voynix and calibani both leaped across the ancient stones of the Temple Mount at him.

A second before their claws could reach him, Daeman freefaxed home to Ardis.