Callum gave him a puzzled look. ‘Well . . . all of them, of course. We’re not going to get a second chance.’
‘One,’ Kandara said. ‘We send one. And the instant it gets outside we send the others.’
‘We send them all,’ Yuri said, ignoring Callum’s mildly surprised expression. ‘Today is not the day for pussying around.’
‘Eggs,’ Kandara said. ‘Basket. One.’
‘I’m with Yuri on this,’ Alik said. ‘We need to get out there and shout. It’s why we’re here, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Fucking testosterone,’ Kandara grumbled.
‘Jessika, how far away are the ships?’ Yuri asked. In his mind he could see what the fullmind perceived: a vast swarm of intruders in a neat formation, flowing smoothly through the nebula. There were several different types, which the Olyix were slowly categorizing.
‘They’re in a big cone formation with that white ship, the one the fullmind is nervous of, at the front. It looks like they’re accelerating on a course towards the gas giant. They’re coming to us.’
‘Time to arrival?’
‘The fullmind estimates a couple of hours.’
‘Hours?’ Callum asked. ‘It took us days to get here after we arrived in the enclave.’
‘They’re warships,’ Jessika said. ‘I wasn’t kidding when I said they were fast.’
‘And they’ll be pointing a lot of sensors our way,’ Alik said.
‘Okay, then,’ Yuri said. ‘Let’s do this.’
‘Nexus first,’ Kandara said. ‘The fallback. You must always have a fallback.’
I know! ‘Yes,’ Yuri said. ‘Alik, could you pilot them, please?’
‘Sure.’ Alik settled onto his rock ledge and closed his eyes. Five of the creeperdrone spiders stood up and flexed their legs.
‘No server creature activity in the tunnel outside,’ Jessika said. ‘And Odd Quint is still blocking neuralstratum perception around the hangar. Clear to go.’
The creeperdrones lined up and scuttled out of the chamber.
‘How long?’ Yuri asked. The neuralstratum nexus Jessika had identified was along one of the other corridors leading from the hangar, so the creeperdrones would have to go back there first. In total, the chamber with the nexus was nearly two kilometres away.
‘As long as it takes,’ Alik said through gritted teeth, his eyes still shut.
Callum held a hand up towards Yuri. ‘Let’s just stay calm, shall we?’
He almost said: I am calm. But he made an effort to stay quiet. His one comfort was that the others would be equally stressed. Just a few hours now, and this is going to be over – one way or another.
‘The fullmind is doing something,’ Jessika announced.
‘What?’ Yuri and Kandara asked simultaneously.
‘Some kind of weapon.’ A frown creased Jessika’s forehead. ‘But not a weapon. No. The enclave is a weapon. I don’t understand. It thinks it can stop the fleet.’
‘We need to warn them,’ Callum said. The remaining three transmitter drones rose up.
‘Wait!’ Yuri said. ‘Nothing we can say will make any difference. If they get attacked, they’ll fucking know about it, okay? We need to concentrate on telling them where we are. And to stand any chance of that, we need to be able to take out the nexus. Alik, how long?’
‘Ask me that again, motherfucker, and I swear I will bring them back here and burn your ass to ash!’
Yuri shrugged at Callum, then he closed his eyes and got Boris to pull up a tactical map. The gossamer strands unwinding from the back of the creeperdrone spiders provided high-quality images from their eyes. They were already approaching the hangar.
A burst of shock emanating from the fullmind broke his concentration. He tried to focus on the thoughtstream, only to be overwhelmed by what looked like a . . . blob? It was moving through the enclave’s nebula. Instead of brushing aside the vast curlicues of multicoloured gas, it seemed to be sucking the strands in. ‘What the hell?’
‘Fuck me!’ Jessika exclaimed.
Yuri didn’t know which surprised him most – the fullmind’s alarm or hearing Jessika swear. ‘What is that thing?’
‘A star.’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s a neutron star! The invaders have brought a neutron star with them. It’s going to hit the enclave star.’
‘No way,’ Callum said. ‘That’ll . . . Bloody hell!’
‘That’ll what?’ Yuri asked in a tightly controlled voice.
‘Nova,’ Jessika said. ‘If we’re lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘Technically, it’s a smart move,’ Callum said. ‘It’ll destroy the power rings on its way into the star, which will kill the enclave. So we’ll be dumped back into spacetime.’
‘Oh, Mother Mary,’ Kandara said. ‘We’ll be right next to the gateway star.’
‘Next is a relative term,’ Callum said. ‘But yeah, it’s a binary system. And if a star this size is going nova . . .’
‘It’ll trigger the other one,’ Yuri realized.
‘We may wind up in the middle of a supernova.’
‘But these invaders must know that, right?’ Alik said. ‘They’ll have an escape route planed out.’
‘Of course they have,’ Jessika said. ‘The invasion ships are heading here, where all the arkships are. So they’ve got to have a strategy.’
‘All right,’ Yuri said. ‘So let’s help them. Alik?’
Alik glared at him, then immediately shut his eyes again, his hardened skin crunching up into a frown of concentration. When Yuri checked, he found the creeperdrone spiders were leaving the hangar now, heading up the corridor that would take them to the chamber where the nexus was. Two of them were scurrying along the floor while the rest were racing along the web of trunks that covered the walls and ceiling, travelling almost as fast. Yuri had to admit, Alik had quality piloting the things.
When he checked the sensor clusters in the hangar, they peered up the corridor where Odd Quint had gone – nothing moving there.
‘Do we go?’ Callum asked. His body was quivering, as if he were about to start a race.
‘This invasion is going to take hours to play out,’ Yuri said. ‘And Alik will have the creeperdrones in place in just a few minutes. So let’s not screw this up because we can’t wait, okay?’ He ignored Callum’s groan of disappointment.
‘The fullmind is rallying,’ Jessika warned.
When he tried to make sense of the thoughtstream, all Yuri could grasp was pressure. Somehow the fullmind was squeezing the enclave – a process that was absorbing a phenomenal amount of
