The Shrike slashed and cut through Kassad’s skinsuit to find flesh and muscle. Blood spattered the walls. Kassad forced the muzzle of his rifle into the creature’s mouth and fired. A cloud of two thousand high-velocity flechettes snapped the Shrike’s head back as if on a spring and slammed the thing’s body into a far wall. But even as it fell away, leg spikes caught Kassad in the thigh and sent a rising spiral of blood splashing the windows and walls of the windwagon’s cabin.

The Shrike shifted.

Teeth clenched, feeling the skinsuit automatically compress and suture the wounds, Kassad glanced at Moneta, nodded once, and followed the thing through time and space.

Sol Weintraub and Brawne Lamia looked behind them as a terrible cyclone of heat and light seemed to swirl and die there. Sol shielded the young woman with his body as molten glass spattered around them, landing hissing and sizzling on the cold sand. Then the noise was gone, the dust storm obscured the bubbling pool where the violence had occurred, and the wind whipped Sol’s cape around them both.

“What was that?” gasped Brawne.

Sol shook his head, helping her to her feet in the roaring wind. “The Tombs are opening!” yelled Sol. “Some sort of explosion, maybe.”

Brawne staggered, found her balance, and touched Sol’s arm.

“Rachel?” she called above the storm.

Sol clenched his fists. His beard was already caked with sand. “The Shrike… took her… can’t get in the Sphinx. Waiting!”

Brawne nodded and squinted toward the Sphinx, visible only as a glowing outline in the fierce swirl of dust.

“Are you all right?” called Sol.

“What?”

“Are you… all right?”

Brawne nodded absently and touched her head. The neural shunt was gone. Not merely the Shrike’s obscene attachment, but the shunt which Johnny had surgically applied when they were hiding out in Dregs’ Hive so very, very long ago. With the shunt and Schrön loop gone forever, there was no way she could get in touch with Johnny.

Brawne remembered Ummon destroying Johnny’s persona, crushing and absorbing it with no more effort than she would use to swat an insect.

Brawne said, “I’m all right,” but she sagged so that Sol had to keep her from falling.

He was shouting something. Brawne tried to concentrate, tried to focus on here and now. After the megasphere, reality seemed narrow and constricted.

“…can’t talk here,” Sol was shouting. “…back to the Sphinx.”

Brawne shook her head. She pointed to the cliffs on the north side of the valley where the immense Shrike tree became visible between passing clouds of dust. “The poet… Silenus… is there. Saw him!”

“We can’t do anything about that!” cried Sol, shielding them with his cape. The vermilion sand rattled against the fiberplastic like flechettes on armor.

“Maybe we can,” called Brawne, feeling his warmth as she sheltered within his arms. For a second, she imagined that she could curl up next to him as easily as Rachel had and sleep, sleep. “I saw… connections… when I was coming out of the megasphere!” she called above the wind roar. “The thorn tree’s connected to the Shrike Palace in some way! If we can get there, try to find a way to free Silenus…”

Sol shook his head. “Can’t leave the Sphinx. Rachel…”

Brawne understood. She touched the scholar’s cheek with her hand and then leaned closer, feeling his beard against her own cheek. “The Tombs are opening,” she said. “I don’t know when we’ll get another chance.”

There were tears in Sol’s eyes. “I know. I want to help. But I can’t leave the Sphinx, in case… in case she…”

“I understand,” said Brawne. “Go back there. I’m going to the Shrike Palace to see if I can see how it relates to that thorn tree.”

Sol nodded unhappily. “You say you were in the megasphere,” he called. “What did you see? What did you learn? Your Keats persona… is it—”

“We’ll talk when I come back,” called Brawne, moving away a step so she could see him more clearly. Sol’s face was a mask of pain: the face of a parent who had lost his child.

“Go back,” she said firmly. “I’ll meet you at the Sphinx in an hour or less.”

Sol rubbed his beard. “Everyone’s gone but you and me, Brawne. We shouldn’t separate…”

“We have to for a while,” called Brawne, stepping away from him so that the wind whipped the fabric of her pants and jacket. “See you in an hour or less.” She walked away quickly, before she gave in to the urge to move into the warmth of his arms again. The wind was much stronger here, blowing straight down from the head of the valley now so that sand struck at her eyes and pelted her cheeks. Only by keeping her head down could Brawne stay close to the trail, much less on it.

Only the bright, pulsing glow of the Tombs lighted her way. Brawne felt time tides tug at her like a physical assault.

Minutes later, she was vaguely aware that she had passed the Obelisk and was on the debris-littered trail near the Crystal Monolith. Sol and the Sphinx were already lost to sight behind her, the Jade Tomb only a pale green glow in the nightmare of dust and wind.

Brawne stopped, weaving slightly as the gales and time tides pulled at her. It was more than half a kilometer down the valley to the Shrike Palace. Despite her sudden understanding when leaving the megasphere of the connection between tree and tomb, what good could she possibly do when she got there? And what had the damn poet ever done for her except curse her and drive her crazy? Why should she die for him?

The wind screamed in the valley, but above that noise Brawne thought she could hear cries more shrill, more human. She looked toward the northern cliffs, but the dust obscured all.

Brawne Lamia leaned forward, tugged her jacket collar high around her, and kept moving into the wind.

Before Meina Gladstone stepped out of the fatline booth, an incoming call chimed, and she settled back in place, staring into the holo tank with great intensity. The Consul’s ship had acknowledged her message, but no transmission had followed. Perhaps he had changed his mind.

No. The data columns floating in the rectangular prism in front of her showed that the squirt had originated in the Mare Infinitus System.

Admiral William Ajunta Lee was calling her, using the private code she had given him.

FORCE:space had been incensed when Gladstone had insisted on the naval commander’s promotion and had assigned him as “Government Liaison” for the strike mission originally scheduled for Hebron.

After the massacres on Heaven’s Gate and God’s Grove, the strike force had been translated to the Mare Infinitus system: seventy-four ships of the line, capital ships heavily protected by torchships and defense-shield pickets, the entire task force ordered to strike through the advancing Swarm warships as quickly as possible to hit the Swarm center.

Lee was the CEO’s spy and contact. While his new rank and orders allowed him to be privy to command decisions, four FORCE:space commanders on the scene outranked him.

That was all right. Gladstone wanted him on the scene to report.

The tank misted and the determined face of William Ajunta Lee filled the space. “CEO, reporting as ordered. Task Force 181.2 has successfully translated to System 298.12.22…”

Gladstone blinked in surprise before remembering that this was the official code for the G-star system that held Mare Infinitus. One rarely thought of geography beyond the Web world itself.

“…Swarm attack ships remain a hundred and twenty minutes from target world lethal radius,” Lee was saying. Gladstone knew that the lethal radius was the roughly 13 AU distance at which standard ship weapons became effective despite ground field defenses. Mare Infinitus had no field defenses. The new Admiral continued. “Contact with forward elements estimated at 1732:26 Web standard, approximately twenty-five minutes from now. The task force is configured for maximum penetration. Two JumpShips will allow introduction of new personnel or weapons until the farcasters are sealed during combat. The cruiser on which I carry my flag—HS Garden Odyssey—will carry out your special directive at the earliest possible opportunity. William Lee, out.”