Aaron sat down next to Oscar, holding a plate of waffles. Oscar leaned over and whispered. “Liatris says the replicator will be finished in eighteen minutes.”

“Maybe there’s something to be said for the Void’s time acceleration, after all,” Aaron muttered back.

“Have they been like this all the time?”

“Five days, nonstop. I encouraged them to explore options.”

“So what do you make of our big silent friend?” Oscar nodded gently at the hulking armor suit.

“Neutral for the moment. I can accept his concern about the Cat. If he keeps it on inside his own starship, then I’ll have to make some decisions.”

“Yeah. And you really don’t know what’s going to happen once we reach Makkathran?”

“No. But I like your optimism.”

Oscar gave him another look. He liked to think he could tell. But Aaron had this human shell wrapped over something very odd indeed-almost a void in itself. He mimicked personality rather than possessing one of his own. And Corrie-Lyn hadn’t been subtle about the near breakdowns.

“Individuality cannot stand as it has always done,” Ozzie protested. “The human race has to become collective. For fuck’s sake, we have novabombs, M-sinks, quantumbusters, enough weapons to smash the galaxy to shit without the Void even having to wake up. That power has to be restrained. Ask the Mutineer over there. Don’t you ever stop and think what’ll happen if someone like the Cat gets hold of them and goes on a rampage? For fun! There has to be an inbuilt protection mechanism in a society as technologically sophisticated as ours. And that is trust, man. It’s all it ever can be. Mindspace will make trust inevitable. You really will be able to love your neighbor.”

“Mindspace is exactly the same as giving a psychopath a Commonwealth Navy warship. There are aliens out there who have thought processes so utterly different from ours, they’ll think you’re trying to take them over or evangelize and alter their culture.”

“That is a serious bunch of crap. What do you know about-”

A red exovision tactical warning sprang up over Ozzie and Inigo; secondary thought routines supplied Oscar’s mind with a definition of the problem. A T-sphere was establishing itself all around Ozzie’s house. “Shit!”

His integral force field came on. As it did, he saw Troblum’s suit blacken to deepest night. Son of a bitch, that’s Sol barrier technology.

Full field function scan showed seventeen Chikoya teleporting onto the grassy slope just above the lakeshore. A quick follow-up scan revealed they were heavily armored, weapons active.

“Liatris, come get us. Now.”

“On my way,” Liatris replied.

Another twenty-three Chikoya teleported in, completing their encirclement of the house. A six-strong squad charged forward across the front lawn. Oscar was about to ask Tomansio what attack formation he wanted to use when his field scan reported something very odd happening to Ozzie’s quantum structure. Accelerant-flooded nerves reacted fast, spinning him around, and targeting graphics swept across the abnormality zone, focusing on Ozzie, who was already becoming transparent as his body’s molecules changed, attenuating. There was just enough of him left to reveal an apologetic expression on his spectral face. He raised a hand in a halfhearted wave.

“Wait!” Oscar yelled. “You’re leaving?” It came out as sheer disbelief.

“This kinda thing really isn’t me anymore,” Ozzie replied faintly.

“Yes, it is! You’re Ozzie. Help us.”

“You dudes have it pretty much covered. But hey, one day I might join in again. Don’t hold your breath.” And with that his outline vanished. Some kind of disturbance stirred the underlying quantum fields, something way beyond Oscar’s field function scan to analyze.

“Fuck me!” Beckia gasped. “Where’s he gone?”

“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. “Mutineer, you safeguard the Dreamers. Everyone else, let’s meet and greet. Compass point deployment, beat them back from the house.”

Oscar crunched his way straight through the kitchen wall and leaped from the veranda, flying a good fifteen meters over the dark grass. He landed on the lawn that sloped down to the lake. Tomansio was on his right, heading for the spinney that bordered the garden. Beckia was on his left, where the land started to curve upward before breaking into rough terrain. Oscar was gratified to see how well he fit into the team, knowing at an automatic level how to position himself.

He’d never seen a Chikoya before, never mind six at once. It was a shock, but all he was concerned about was a tactical analysis of the armor, weapons, and maneuverability. A small traitor section of his mind wondered what Dushiku or Jesaral would make of something that big in knobbly black armor rampaging toward them with husky weapons swinging around to shoot. All he saw was the exovision targeting structure, with secondary routines coordinating fire control for his enrichments. Electronic warfare emissions hammered the Chikoya suit circuits, hashing and confusing their sensors. Energy beams and distortion pulses blasted through the air. Two Chikoya went tumbling backward, their armor smoldering, spraying jets of dark purple blood from gaping wounds. The others went for cover, firing as they went.

Masers slashed across Oscar’s integral force field, which deflected them easily. Then his macrocellular clusters warned him of a targeting scan, and he jumped again as an electron laser detonated the ground where he’d been standing half a second before. He somersaulted at the top of his jump trajectory, twisting left, landing at a crouch and sending a massive distortion pulse at the Chikoya who was hefting the enormous beam gun.

On either side of him the Knights Guardian were hopping between cover points, their speed amplified by accelerants and biononic muscle reinforcement. A range of suppression fire lashed out, forcing the Chikoya back from the house.

Oscar was sprinting along the scorched grass as one of the aliens followed his movement with some kind of neutron beam that was gouging through the soil and stone, creating a fantail of lava and flame in his wake. He dispensed a hail of micromissiles at the origin. Something exploded. The shock wave buffeted him. There was no more neutron beam.

“Anyone know what they want?” Beckia asked as she rolled over a clump of boulders. A flight of smartmines arched out to bombard the Chikoya squad slithering through the boulders on the slope above her.

“The Dreamer,” Aaron told her.

“Why?” Oscar asked. Two Chikoya were charging right at him, masers and machine guns firing enhanced explosive grenades, pummeling the ground and air all around as he dodged along a narrow drainage gully that led down to the lake. He sprang up and got a clean electron laser shot at the magazine on an opponent’s underbelly. The explosion shredded most of the alien. Steaming lumps of gore and fragments of armor rained down.

“Never quite got that far into the conversation,” Aaron said.

A tactical display showed Oscar how the Knights Guardian were pressing the Chikoya away from the house in a rough expanding circle. However, some were still close to the other side of the house, creeping forward. Cheriton was having a hard time prizing them free from their cover on the steep forested slope. “Liatris, where are you?”

“Two minutes,” Liatris promised.

The Chikoya were starting to regroup along the shoreline ahead of Oscar. Several of them splashed through the shallows. Oscar began to designate targets for his smartseeker munitions. Then his field scan showed him Myraian dancing across the smoking remains of the lawn toward them. He risked sticking his head out from the gully to watch her. She was skipping and twirling as if she were in some elaborate ballet performance. Her gauzy blouse with its wing sleeves spun around her as she waved her arms, creating serpentine loops in the air. Chikoya targeting lasers converged on her.