She’d seen it before, but Yirella still watched in appalled awe as the power ring shattered and died, flinging out its uncountable multitudes of fragments, tumbling radiant daggers the size of Earth’s moon.
All across the gateway system, the Olyix wormholes died, cutting them off from their galaxy-wide empire of sensor stations.
‘We did it!’ she exclaimed in delight. ‘It will take them centuries to build another power ring, and they’re locked into this system until they do!’
Kenelm nodded cautiously. ‘Safer,’ sie said. ‘There are still thousands of Olyix stations out there, and look what we built with just the resources available on the Morgan.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘We’ve broken their grip. They’ll diverge now, just like we did. The monoculture is broken.’ And I’m going to make sure their god can’t restart it with another message.
‘The gateway is still intact.’
She pulled the latest sensor data out of the tactical network. The gateway sphere was unaffected by the loss of the power ring. ‘We were pretty sure killing the power ring wouldn’t affect the gateway; it has to be powered from inside. So the corpus conjecture was right. There has to be another star in there.’
‘Which means this was a binary star?’
‘Yes. That . . . may be a problem.’
‘The nova?’
‘If we hit the enclave star with our neutron star, then the enclave boundary itself will fail. You’ll revert to a binary star system with one star going nova. That will probably trigger the second, too.’
‘So we’ll wind up with a supernova.’
‘High possibility, yes. And if it does, the radiation will kill everything for fifty lightyears. So we really have got to safeguard the wormhole terminus. It’s the only way any of us are getting out of this alive now.’
‘So let’s hope we can get into the enclave.’
Now that the Olyix had learned how Calmissiles could be Trojans, allowing the armada ships access through them, their tactics changed. Deliverance and Resolution ships that had been racing to intercept Calmissiles heading for the ring abruptly diverted to head for the Calmissiles flying to the gateway, while thousands of the ships assigned to guard the gateway left their passive englobement formation to join the attack against the incoming forces.
Calmissiles began to vanish from the tactical display at an increasing rate.
Yirella frowned at the data. ‘How are they doing that?’ she asked.
‘Collision,’ Immanueel replied. ‘The ship oneminds are sacrificing themselves. The Resolution ships are aligning directly on the Calmissiles. That way, the suppression effect will definitely reach the Calmissile even though there will be no time for the Resolution ship to move out of the way.’
‘But we have a hundred and twenty thousand Calmissiles heading for the gateway. And us! They have . . .’
‘Twenty-eight thousand ships within reach,’ Immanueel said.
‘Saints! And they’re all going to suicide? They really are fanatics, aren’t they?’
‘Our Calmissiles will have to decelerate. Reduced closing velocity will give the Olyix forces a tactical advantage.’
‘But we still have a numerical advantage, right?’
‘For the gateway assault, yes. We can deploy another two multiple salvos, but ultimately they have more ships. We need to get inside the enclave before they arrive.’
The armada used the remaining salvos when the Calmissiles closed to within twenty million kilometres of the gateway. That distance had become the Resolution ships’ killing field. At reduced velocity, the Calmissiles were far more susceptible to the suppression effect. Hundreds, then thousands, started to vanish from the tactical feeds. The remainder expanded their portals, and thousands more Calmissiles came flashing through. There were far too many for the Olyix to stop.
Just before phase four was due to begin, Yirella opened Dellian’s icon. ‘How’s it going down there?’
‘It’s boring, and the armour itches.’
‘Oh, poor you. But at least everything’s going according to plan.’
‘If it’s going according to plan, why did I have to be in armour for a day before we reach the gateway?’
‘Wow, peak miserable. If things hadn’t gone according to plan, the wormhole would’ve collapsed, the Morgan would’ve been dumped back into spacetime somewhere close to the gateway star, and ten thousand Resolution ships would be hunting us down. So suck it up, you in your luxury comfort blanket, mister.’
‘You have a very weird concept of luxury.’
She grinned. ‘Not at all. The croissants this morning were the wrong shade of golden; so there you are: I share your suffering.’
‘Oh, great Saints!’
‘The battle cruisers are portalling to the gateway in two minutes.’
‘Yeah, I’m watching the tacticals. It’s looking good.’
‘Loss numbers are top end of the projection, which I don’t like, but yes. So far we’re holding it together.’
‘You’re going to monitor the squad, aren’t you? When we go in, I mean.’
‘Monitor, yes. But that’s it.’
‘I know. Tilliana and Ellici are the best. It’s just, you’re my guardian angel, that’s all. You know that.’
‘I’ll be watching.’
Thousands of Calmissiles were decelerating to rendezvous around the ephemeral gateway. Seven Olyix fortress stations were orbiting above it, along with a final defensive shell of nine thousand Resolution ships. Every Calmissile expanded its portal, and armada battle cruisers started to fly through.
The fight lasted for two hours. Debris and energy eruptions saturated the space around the gateway, which at times glimmered as bright as the star as it refracted the actinic explosions in short-lived unsymmetrical waves. But by the time the wormhole terminus and Ainsley matched orbit, there were no Olyix left within ten million kilometres of the gateway. Tens of thousands of Resolution ships were en route from across the entire system.
‘They’re abandoning everything,’ Yirella said. ‘Most of their stations in the ring have only got a few dozen defenders left.’
‘It’s going to be tough protecting the gateway once we’re through,’ Kenelm conceded. ‘If we can get through.’
‘The defenders only have to cover us for a while – just enough for us to put phase four in motion.’
‘Our sensor probes report the boundary to be open,’ Immanueel said. ‘The interface is a simple pattern of negative energy that does not appear
