“No. Get back to High Angel.”

“We’ve still got seven missiles left.”

“Jean, another fifty ships have come through already. You did a superb job, you all did, but the evacuation’s almost complete.”

“You’re abandoning Anshun?”

“We have to. We’re evacuating all the assaulted worlds.”

“No. All of them? But we have to do something. They cannot be allowed a victory. Today it is twenty-three worlds, if we let them get away with that it will be a hundred tomorrow. We have to fight back.”

“We have been fighting, Jean, we’ve had our victories. You and the other starships bought Anshun valuable time. But you’re the only warship left, so fly back to base and we’ll refit you to fight another day.”

“Victories? I don’t think so. Dimitri was right, we had to get through the wormholes and block them from the other side.”

“You know we couldn’t do that; they’re too heavily defended. We’ll find the star they’re using as a staging post, Jean. We’ll hit them there. You’ll be commanding the whole task force.”

“And how long will it take to build that many ships, Admiral?”

“As long as it takes. Now head back to base.”

“Yes, sir.”

Douvoir ordered the plyplastic straps on his acceleration couch to ease off, and clenched his stomach muscles, forcing himself up into a sitting position. The rest of the bridge crew were all looking at him. “I am not prepared to accept defeat today,” he told them. “My secure memory store was updated before we left High Angel, and I will join our comrades in re-life. I am flying this ship back to Anshun, where it will live up to its name. If anyone wishes to leave now, then please use the escape pods, the navy will pick you up.”

All he saw were smiles and a few grim expressions. Nobody took up his offer to leave.

“Very well, gentlemen and ladies, it has been my pleasure and honor to serve with you. God willing we will serve together again after re-life. For now, we must reprogram the hyperdrive. There are a great many safety limiters to be removed.”

The clouds were finally lifting as the day ended, allowing a rosy twilight to infiltrate the Highmarsh. From his position, hunched down behind a clump of boulders thirty meters up the side of the Turquino Valley, Mark Vernon watched the land in front of him soak up the light, acquiring a faint ginger shading. He couldn’t quite see down the Ulon Valley from here, for which he was grateful. Actually being able to see his home as they waited to leave would have been unbearable.

“Not long now, baby,” Liz said.

He smiled over at her, amazed as always how she always knew his mood. She was taking a break, sitting with her back to the boulders, a thick fleece pulled around her shoulders against the chill air that the Dau’sings channeled along the Turquino.

“Guess not.” He could see the end of the queue below him, barely a thousand people left, shuffling along the side of the little stream with its icy water. Even the wormhole was visible from this vantage point, a small dark gray circle that was starting to be absorbed by the deep shadows that cloaked the base of the valley. The MG was parked to one side of it, the first of several vehicles that had been abandoned along the meager track. It wasn’t far away. Time and again in his mind, Mark had gone over how long it would take him to run down the rugged slope to get there. Not that running would be much use. Everyone else had to get through first. Even now, with only able-bodied adults left, they still seemed to be taking their own sweet time. Didn’t they realize the urgency?

“They’ve reached the Highmarsh,” Mellanie said.

Mark gave the handheld array a vexed glance. How the hell does she know that? Then the display on the array’s screen showed him a node at the far end of the Highmarsh go off-line. Oh.

Liz picked up her oversize alien weapon and moved to crouch beside Mark. “Twenty minutes,” she said, giving the line of people a quick glance. “That’s all. Maybe less.”

“Maybe.” He thought the queue was starting to speed up—a little. The screen on the handheld array showed another two nodes had dropped out along the Highmarsh. There was a faint sound that could have been an explosion.

“Are we all ready?” Simon asked. He was on the opposite side of the valley to Mark, with another of the big alien weapons. It hadn’t taken Mark long to rig the triggers so they could be used by human hands; they had a strange double button arrangement, which had to be pressed in a sequence that was difficult for fingers. One of them shot explosive micro-missiles, while the remaining three were very powerful beam weapons.

“Guess so,” Mark muttered sulkily.

Liz brought the handheld array up to her mouth. “Standing by.”

“Remember, as soon as you’ve fired the weapons, fall back.”

She rolled her eyes at Mark, grinning. “Yeah, we’ll remember that.”

Mark leaned forward and kissed her.

“I don’t think we’ve got time,” she said pertly.

“Just in case,” he said, almost sheepishly. “I want you to know in case anything happens, I do love you.”

“Oh, baby.” She kissed him. “When we get through that wormhole, your pants are coming straight off, mister.”

He grinned. Another node on the Highmarsh had vanished. By his reckoning that was the one near the Marly homestead. Maybe a kilometer from the entrance to the Turquino. “Are we going to come back here? To live, I mean?”

“I don’t know, baby. Simon thinks we will.”

“Do you want to, if we can?”

“Of course I do. I’ve had the best time of my lives here. We’re going to go on living like this.”

A further three nodes went down.

“Here they are,” Mark grunted.

After two hours spent modifying various systems, the Desperado slipped back into hyperspace. At top speed they were two minutes away from Anshun. Jean Douvoir was totally absorbed by the hysradar display, which showed him the wormholes encircling the planet as diamond-bright specks. He picked one, and aligned the warship directly on it.

When they were thirty seconds’ flight time away from the wormhole, he ordered the ship’s RI to formulate their breakout point. Normally, the emergence from hyperspace was safeguarded by the RI’s programming, restricting the opening’s relative velocity. If they were coming out into a planetary orbit, the opening’s trajectory would match the local escape velocity, ensuring a safe entrance to real space. With the limiters removed, Jean gave the opening a velocity of point two light speed.

Cherenkov radiation flooded out of the fracture in spacetime five hundred kilometers from the Prime wormhole. The Desperado flashed out from the center of the violet radiance, traveling at one-fifth the speed of light as it struck the force field that capped the wormhole. Detonation was instantaneous, converting a high percentage of its mass directly into energy in the form of ultra-hard radiation that punctured the force field as if it were nothing more than a bubble of brittle antique glass. The Prime wormhole was left open to the full power of the new and temporary sun that had risen above Anshun.

One of the cylindrical alien flyers shot across the end of the Turquino Valley. Mark tried to chase it with the muzzle of his weapon, but it zipped behind the steep slope on the other side before he was anywhere near. A long rumble of roiling air reverberated in from the Highmarsh.

Two more flyers appeared, traveling a lot slower than the first. Mark managed to get one centered in his sights, and pressed the trigger. The flyer’s force field burned in hazy turquoise light, with small slivers of static snapping repeatedly into the ground. Liz fired her beam gun, intensifying the corona. Over on the other side of the valley, Simon fired the projectile weapon. A plume of blue fire squirted horizontally from the endangered force field, sending glowing fireballs dripping around the shaking craft. It banked abruptly and swept away out of the line of sight. Its partner raced away.