kind of cargo they’d be bringing with them when they returned.
“EW aerobots going active,” Anna said.
The slim craft popped up over the horizon and began jamming the sensors of the perimeter weapons. Nothing shot at them. They flew closer, and began breaking into the multifarious Prime broadcasts.
“Son of a bitch,” Wilson said; it was the first time he’d smiled all day. The stealth sensors showed him armored Primes slowing down and moving about erratically, like clockwork soldiers that were winding down.
“Get the combat aerobots back in there,” Wilson told Rafael. “Hit the bastards.”
The EW aerobots widened their assault, targeting the communications links between the flyers and the landing ships out at sea. It was the same effect, with flyers soaring onward, or tumbling lazily out of the air.
A thousand kilometers above Anshun, eight Prime ships altered their descent trajectory so that they would overfly Scraptoft. The change flashed up in the tactical display.
“See if we can EW them as well,” Wilson said. “How many dedicated EW systems have we got?”
“I can only find another seventy-three listed in the governmental register,” Anna said.
“I want every one of them. Get them deployed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we might make a suggestion,” the SI said. “It may be possible to use the surviving elements of planetary cyberspheres to produce a similar effect. The Prime signals seem remarkably susceptible to interference. Even nonmilitary systems should be sufficient to create a reasonable degree of disturbance.”
“Will you do that for us?”
“Of course.”
“Admiral,” Anna called. “The starships have arrived.”
Anshun’s First Speaker, Gilda Princess Marden, and her cabinet were in the civil emergency center twenty meters beneath the Regency Palace, trying to coordinate the capital’s evacuation with the navy’s requirements to deploy troops and aerobots. Consequently they had no view of the sky. Not that it would have mattered; the dreadful corrupted vapor was still swirling around the city’s force field, censoring any sight of space above the planet. But other cities on Anshun were clear of obstruction, as were the millions of people caught outside the urban force fields and still struggling to reach them. Even on the sunward side of the planet, they could see the fusion contrails of the Prime ships slicing across space as they rose and fell from the wormholes. Now new lights appeared, the bright turquoise of Cherenkov radiation flaring down as if small stars had suddenly ignited in orbit. There were five of them, spaced equidistantly three thousand kilometers above the planet’s equator. The warshipsDauntless, Defiant , andDesperado slipped out into real space; along with the scoutshipsConway andGalibi .
After that, it became impossible to look directly into the sky. Fusion drives scratched huge lines of dazzling fire across the constellations as they accelerated ships and missiles at high gees. Nuclear explosions blossomed silently, swelling to merge into a nebula brighter than sunlight that bracketed the entire world. Occasionally, energy beams would penetrate the atmosphere, becoming intense sparkling pillars of violet light tens of kilometers high, lasting for a second or more. Where they touched the ground, lethal gouts of molten rock would spew upward, adding to the wildfire that raced outward from the touchpoint. Huge radiation bursts inflamed the ionosphere, sending borealis storms spinning around the globe.
The battle lasted for over an hour, then the nebula faded away, its ions gusting out toward interplanetary space, cooling and decaying as they dispersed. In its wake, more Prime ships ventured out of the wormholes, again filling low-orbit space with their slender vivid exhausts. For hours, vast shoals of flaming meteorites fell to earth, trailing long ribbons of black smoke behind them.
Anyone still out in the open kept one fearful eye on the sky above, dodging the debris as they redoubled their efforts to reach sanctuary.
The Ables pickup truck bounced wildly as Mark gunned it along the stone chip road that ran the length of the Highmarsh Valley. He was leading the little band of vehicles carrying the surviving members of Simon Rand’s rear guard. A couple of kilometers up ahead, the bus convoy was racing along. He couldn’t see the MG, though he knew it was up there, well in front of the buses. They had a clear communications link with Carys; the network along the Highmarsh had rebuilt itself to a good thirty percent of its original capacity.
“We’re about at the junction,” Carys told them. Her voice coming from the handheld array was thin and strained. “Barry says it’s the road that takes us to the Ulon.”
“What do they do?” Mark asked Liz. “Do they go home?”
“Christ knows.” She tapped one of the icons on the array. “Simon, have you actually got any idea where we should be going?”
“I believe the Turquino Valley should be our first choice,” Simon said. “It is relatively narrow, with high walls, which will make it difficult for the aliens to fly in there.”
“But it’s a dead end,” Yuri Conant protested.
“There’s a track out to the Sonchin,” Lydia Dunbavand said.
“A foot track,” Mark said. “For mountain goats. Not even a four-by-four could use it.”
“Nonetheless, that is where we should proceed,” Simon said. “We just have to hang on until the navy opens a wormhole to evacuate us.”
Liz thumped the dashboard. “Eight hundred and goddamn seventy-sixth place on the list,” she groaned. “The only thing left of us by then will be a few lumps of charcoal.”
The array flashed up a general call icon. “I’ve got a wormhole open inside the Turquino Valley,” Mellanie’s voice said. “It’s not a large one, I’m afraid, so it will take a long time to get everyone through. If we’re lucky we can pull it off before the Primes discover what’s happening. Simon?”
“Heaven bless you, Mellanie,” Simon said. “All right, people, you heard; convoy to proceed to the Turquino.”
“We left Mellanie behind us,” Mark said flatly. They’d barely reached Blackwater Crag when a huge, powerful explosion had flattened almost a third of the town. It appeared to be centered on the Ables Motors garage where they’d left Mellanie. When it happened he’d told himself that she would have found a way out, not that he had a clue how she’d do it. Now, rather than relief, he was getting more than a little apprehensive about Mellanie Rescorai and her abilities.
“She said she was getting help,” Liz said.
“Who the hell gives help on this scale?”
“It’s either someone like Sheldon, or possibly the SI itself. I can’t think of any other way she could pull this off.”
“God Almighty, why her?”
“Dunno, baby,” Liz said. “God has a sense of humor after all? But I’m glad she’s on our side.”
“Goddamn.” He clenched the steering wheel, staring sulkily through the cracked, grubby windshield. A long line of pickup trucks, four-by-fours, and buses were turning off the Highmarsh road just before the main junction, taking an even smaller track that threaded along the line of tall dark jade lupoplars that marked the edge of the Calsor homestead.
“Carys?” Liz asked.
“On the road to nowhere. I hope your little girlfriend knows what she’s doing.”
“Me, too.”
The Turquino Valley was narrow even by the standards of the Highmarsh’s northern ramparts. A near-symmetrical V-shape that began two hundred meters above the floor of the Highmarsh. Its walls had boltgrass scrabbling a little way up the lower slopes, but after fifty meters or so the vegetation and stony soil gave way to naked rock. Rivulets oozed down from the jagged heights, feeding into a fast-flowing stream that foamed along the bottom to spill out into the Highmarsh.
By the time the track reached the Turquino’s mouth, it was little more than a line of beaten down boltgrass. Only the most foolhardy sheep and goats strayed into this valley.
Yuri Conant was leading the convoy in his four-by-four. The road was already at a steep angle when it reached the ice-cold stream gushing out of the Turquino. Through the windshield he could see the mountains rising imposingly above him, guarding the entrance. Yuri’s vehicle was going to have trouble getting any farther. The buses certainly weren’t going to get past the stream. He went over the water and braked to a halt.
When he got out, he knew he’d never forget the sight of the convoy jostling its way up the slope. Broad sunbeams were prising their way through the battered clouds above to play over the filthy battered vehicles. Pickups were packed full. All the buses had their doors open to draw some air inside now the air conditioners had failed; people were standing down the aisles. The sound of frightened children and injured adults arrived long before the vehicles reached him. Most prominent of all was Carys’s beautiful metallic gray sports car, whose fat wheels had lowered themselves beneath the chassis on telescoping suspension struts, bounding along over the trough terrain with the ease of any four-by-four.
It drove through the stream without any difficulty and pulled up beside him. The side window came down.
“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
