“The wormholes to the Big15 worlds are collapsing,” ANA reported. “Something is cutting them off.”

Kazimir examined the exotic matter intrusions stretching out from Earth away to the stars, seeing them subjected to enormous interference that was causing them to constrict. Even though he knew the incursion must originate within the Swarm, his manifested sensor functions couldn’t track down its nature.

The Accelerator Faction ship carrying the inversion core went FTL, streaking across the solar system directly away from Kazimir at seventy-eight light-years an hour. His energy signature flashed after it. Enormously powerful exotic energy manipulation functions manifested, but he still couldn’t reach through its force field to disable the drive. He began to manifest some functions that would disrupt the quantum fields around the ship, which would force it out of hyperspace. The ship passed through the Swarm’s orbit. Kazimir was less than two seconds behind. It was too late. The force fields surrounding the Swarm components expanded at hyperluminal speed.

Kazimir’s energy signature struck an impermeable barrier that cut clean across spacetime and hyperspace. He couldn’t get through.

– -

The ship dropped out of hyperspace a light-minute beyond the force field. To the hyperspace sensors, a vast blank shield had sprung up behind them. Its curvature revealed a radius of forty AUs. There was no hint of stress or distortion anywhere on its surface. Whatever Kazimir was armed with was unable to cut through. Neskia brought the ship’s visual sensor data into her exovision, watching the image keenly as a timer counted down. After one minute, the high-magnitude star that was the Sun vanished, along with the stars across that half of space.

“No sign of it breaking through,” Neskia said. “I think we’re safe.”

“Very clever, that deterrence fleet,” Ilanthe said. “An interstitial energy signature that can extrude into spacetime. The ship wouldn’t have stood a chance in a straight firefight. ANA was more advanced than we’d realized.”

“Even more reason for us to leave it behind,” Neskia said dismissively. “It had so much potential and wasted it.”

“Quite.”

“Where are we going?”

“Ellezelin. I trust our agents are close to recovering Araminta.”

“They are.”

The ship slipped back into hyperspace, heading away at a modest fifty-five light-years an hour. Behind it, the somber sphere imprisoning the Sol system refracted the gentle starlight impinging on its boundary with a cold shimmer reminiscent of a deep forest lake, guarding its contents in perfect isolated darkness.

IT WAS THE FIFTH TIME Edeard had watched the militia forces close in on the hidden valley. There had been a lot of mistakes previously; ge-eagles had been spotted, fastfoxes mauled the first militiamen over the lip, the bandit forces had fought back with a secret cache of weapons, hothead officers didn’t quite follow orders, allowing the Gilmorn to rally his people. Each time there had been too many deaths. Each time Edeard reset the universe to the night before and attempted to mitigate the problem.

Last time he was sure he’d gotten it right, and then the bandit gang had produced rapid-fire guns from a cache that he hadn’t found the first three times. Even with third hands joined together to add extra strength to their shielding, the troopers had been cut to shreds before Edeard himself could reach them. So …

This time he had slipped unseen and unsensed through the valley for two hours just after midnight. He’d destroyed the second lot of rapid-fire guns the bandits had hidden and snatched away the ones belonging to guards after rendering them unconscious. It was politically important that the militias thought they alone had overcome the bandits; Edeard and Finitan wanted the rapid-fire guns to vanish into legend. Now he stood on a small rise half a mile from the valley as the predawn light slowly overwhelmed the nebulae. Buluku was the first to vanish, its undulating stream of pale indigo fading away just above the eastern horizon, as if the land had somehow opened to swallow it. Edeard could well believe that. The valley that the bandits had chosen as their last redoubt was a narrow crack in the undulating grasslands that made up the southernmost part of Rulan province, lapping against the low mountains of Gratham province, which rose in the distance. Not hard to imagine it as a fissure slicing through the whole world.

As the scarlet-spiked glory of Odin’s Sea began to diminish far above, he farsighted the troopers of the Pholas and Zelda regiment breaking cover from the spinneys beyond the valley where they’d gathered during the night. They were supported by provincial militiamen from Plax and Tives. The men moved silently, like a black stream winding around the soft knolls and hummocks of the grasslands, out of farsight from the sentries within the valley. Edeard concentrated on subverting the ge-eagles gliding high above, insinuating his own orders into their sharp, suspicious little minds. That left just the fastfoxes. He was too far away to help with them. Brawny ge-wolves and fast ge-hounds slunk forward, accompanying the marauder groups of sheriffs and Wellsop rangers whose control over their genistars was second to none.

“Go,” Edeard’s directed longtalk urged Dinlay.

The Lillylight and Cobara regiment, along with militias from Fandine, Nargol, and Obershire, emerged from their forward positions to the west of the valley. It was the Nargol troopers and their unfettered eagerness who had been the problem the second time around; since then Edeard had emphasized how important it was to keep them moving along the planned route. Colonel Larose had done a good job keeping the provincials in line ever since; ignoring their muttered resentment about city folk lording it over the countryside.

With the assault under way, Edeard mounted a ge-horse that the Eggshaper Guild had sculpted purely for speed. His ebony cloak swirled around him, flowing across the saddle before rippling above the beast’s hide. Felax and Marcol scrambled onto similar mounts on either side of him. He didn’t have to say anything to them; his mind urged the ge-horse forward at a gallop, and the young constables followed.

The three beasts thundering over the grassland in the cold silence of the ebbing night sounded incredibly loud to Edeard, yet he knew they were too far from the valley to be heard. Up in front of him the troopers were an unstoppable Swarm as they converged on the valley.

Finally, the alarm was raised by the bandits. Those sentries still awake shouted to their armed comrades for help, only to find them lying in a deep unnatural slumber, their weapons gone. More shouts and frantic longtalk roused the rest of the sleeping group.

So far, so exactly as before, and this time going according to plan.

Fastfoxes flittered silently along the valley with the speed of hurricane clouds. The invading militias urged their ge-wolves on ahead. Along the top of the valley, troopers fell to the ground, their pistols held over the edge. Shots were fired. Ge-wolves and fastfoxes clashed head on, powerful animal screams reverberating across the grasslands as gray light crept over the dew-soaked ground.

The Pholas and Zelda regiment reached the far end of the valley and began to follow their ge-wolves down into the deep narrow cleft. Dinlay and Argian were close to the front, using their farsight to expose anyone with the concealment ability. Most of the bandits could perform the trick. Edeard held his breath, the memory of another deep gully on another night stirring in his mind. This time would be different, he promised himself; this time he could guarantee there would be no surprises.