“Any sign of the wormhole?” Carys asked. Barry and Sandy were squashed into the passenger seat beside her, with Panda lying along the back.

“Not from here, no.”

“Okay, I’ll keep going as far as I can.”

He waved languidly as she drove off down the valley, keeping parallel to the stream. Several four-by-fours followed her; then the first bus arrived and he joined in helping with the wounded.

By the time Mark drew up at the improvised parking lot, the scene had become a replay of the bus station. A lot of people were clambering over the boltgrass slope to get into the valley, hauling kids along. Dozens more were milling around the four buses that were carrying the injured, manhandling stretchers out of the doors.

“Found it,” Carys exclaimed jubilantly from the array. “We’re five hundred meters in from the start of the valley. Mellanie’s here waiting, and she wasn’t kidding, I’ve never seen a wormhole this small before.”

“Get them through!” Mark blurted. He felt Liz’s hand in his, gripping tight.

“Out of the car,” Carys said. “Five meters. Mellanie’s saying hello. Yeah, right, hi. Okay, Barry, go on, dear. That’s it. Hold my hand, Sandy. Mark, we’re safe—”

He let out a sob. Beside him, Liz was smiling despite her moist eyes. They looked at each other for a long moment. “Guess we’d better go and lend a hand,” she said.

Simon was gathering his little band of devotees along the side of the gushing stream. He held up a hand as Mark, Liz, and David went past. “Those of us with weapons should dig in here at the valley entrance and provide some cover for our friends and families. It will be some time before everyone is through, and the aliens will probably come after us.”

Mark gave Liz a despairing look. “I think he’s talking about us again,” he said under his breath.

“Yeah. Well at least we have some heavy-duty weapons, now.” Liz held up one of the big cylinders she’d taken from the Prime.

“We don’t know what they are, or how they work.”

She gave him a wolfish grin. “Lucky we’ve got the best technical man in Randtown with us then, huh, baby?”

It was silent in the tactical display for several minutes after the Desperado shot back into hyperdrive and withdrew from the battle above Anshun. Wilson moved his hands across icons, pulling down sensor displays. Anshun had few sensors left in working order, but the aerobots provided intermittent sweeps of space directly above the tempestuous ionosphere. Forty-eight wormholes held their position in an ephemeral necklace two thousand kilometers above the equator. As he watched, several types of Prime ships began to fly out of them, accelerating through the hellishly radioactive cloud of cosmic dust and debris that churned around the planet.

“They’re still there,” Elaine Doi said in an appalled murmur. “We didn’t close one of them. Not one!”

“You have to get through to the generators,” Dimitri Leopoldovich said. “Simply hitting them with crude energy assaults from this side is completely ineffectual, they are manifestations of ordered energy themselves.”

“Thank you, academician,” Rafael said. “We just watched four of our ships die trying to defend us, so unless you have something constructive to add, shut the fuck up.”

“Fifty-two alien ships either destroyed or disabled,” Anna said. “Our missiles outperform theirs every time. But they do have weight of numbers. That’s their advantage every time.”

“What are we going to do?” the President asked.

Wilson was disgusted with how whiny she sounded.

“Our aerobots managed to strike every landing site on Anshun while the starships were engaged above the planet,” Rafael said. “We wiped out ninety percent of them. They’ll have to start the occupation again.”

“Which I have no doubt they have the resources for,” the President said. “Weight of numbers, again.”

“Probably, but in the meantime we can complete the evacuation.”

“We now have eight extra wormholes open inside city force fields,” Nigel Sheldon said. “Another three hours should see Anshun evacuated.”

“And the other planets?” Doi asked coolly. She was rallying well after the loss of the starships.

“Our electronic warfare strategy is proving effective,” the SI said. “It is certainly slowing down the rate of advance once the aliens reach the planetary surface. They are having to physically eliminate cybersphere nodes one at a time as they expand outward. However, the latest landings give cause for concern.”

“In what way?” Wilson asked.

“We have been using stealthed sensors to scrutinize the cargo they are currently unloading on several worlds. It appears to be gateway machinery, which will allow them to anchor their wormholes on the planet surface.”

“If they deliver direct to the planet, we’ll never be able to stop their incursion,” Nigel said.

“Realistically, we’re never going to anyway,” Wilson said. “Not to a degree that we take them back for ourselves. Look at the state of the environment on the assaulted worlds.”

“You’re writing them off?” Doi asked.

“Basically, yes,” Wilson said.

“They’ll crucify us,” she said. “The Senate will fling every one of us out of office, and probably into jail.”

Wilson’s virtual vision printed: DON’T SHE’S NOT WORTH IT. The text’s origin code identified Anna as the sender. “We didn’t know it was going to be this bad,” he said mildly.

“Yes we did,” Dimitri said.

Wilson turned to the translucent planet representations. The cyberspheres of each of them were illustrated by livid golden threads. There were black areas surrounding each of the Prime landing zones, a darkness that was slowly eating farther and farther into the gold. “We’ve nothing else left to hit them with,” Wilson said. “All we can do is fall back and regroup.” He took the first of a series of deep breaths; but not even the rush of oxygen could hold back the black weariness. There hadn’t been a war in human history where so much had been lost in so little time. And I’m the one in charge. Dimitri is right, we did know, we just didn’t want to admit it.

Captain Jean Douvoir heard the fans whirring efficiently behind the grilles as they sucked acrid smoke from the Desperado’s bridge. The warship had been lucky; that last directed energy burst had almost penetrated the hull field, as it was there had been some localized breaches that had played hell with the power circuitry. The stabilizers had done their best, but not even superconductors could handle surges induced by megaton nuclear blasts. With their defenses dangerously weakened, he’d slammed the Desperado into hyperspace to escape the Prime projectiles hurtling toward them.

“Merde,” he grunted as they emerged outside the Anshun system’s cometry halo. His virtual vision showed him the ship’s electronic systems rebuilding themselves. There was very little redundancy left now. They’d never survive another sustained attack. And that’s what would happen if they went back. There was no end to the Prime ships and projectiles.

The communications icons representing the other four starships had red “invalid” signs flashing over them.

“What’s the status back there?” he asked Don Lantra, who was operating the sensor suite.

Don gave him a weary look. “Just lost track of the Dauntless. That’s all of them, boss.”

Jean wanted to punch his fist into the console, a useless and difficult gesture in freefall. He knew most of the crews. Back on the High Angel they’d hung out together, one big fraternity living in each other’s lives. Now the only way he’d see them again would be after their re-life procedures. Not even that softened the blow. It would take years. Assuming the Commonwealth lasted that long.

His virtual vision flashed up a communications icon from Admiral Kime. “What’s your status, Jean?” Wilson asked.

“Getting things stable out here. We can take another pass at them soon.”