“HOW LONG WILL THE door hold?” I asked the room at large, surveying the control chamber and the dozen or so inhuman bodies we’d left slumped in chairs or over consoles. Despite the size of the Cielcin fleet in orbit about Eikana, they had left remarkably few defenders in the refinery station itself. I supposed they must have concentrated their efforts on the fuel silos, preparing to offload the valuable material up the gravity well.

I didn’t know the man who answered, voice flattened by his helmet in the stale air of the control room. “Long enough, unless they brought something bigger than that giant.”

“They might blast their way in,” suggested another.

“Not this close to the collider!” Crim objected. “They’re not suicidal.”

But I had seen the Cielcin throw themselves to their deaths on foot and in space, and I wasn’t so sure. Eyes locked on the tangle of magnetic coils that spiderwebbed the chamber below. “Can you shut it all down?”

The man hunched over the central console paused and looked back at me. “I think so, lord. It’s more complicated than the fuel shunt on the Tamerlane, but I’ve nearly got the collider down. It should be a simple matter of letting the siphons funnel the AM out to storage.” He was a junior engineer—one of Ilex’s men.

“Should be?” Pallino asked. The chiliarch glanced up at me from his place by the central console. I did not need to see his face to feel the disbelief and exasperation wafting off him. I raised a hand for quiet, locked eyes with my thin reflection in the alumglass. My reflection peered back, black mask fashioned in the shape of an impassive human face touched with labyrinth tracery about the eyes. The armor still fit after so long, breastplate shaped in Roman fashion after a muscled human torso, the pitchfork-and-pentacle cartouche of my house set amidst eight mighty wings resplendent in enameled crimson in the center of my chest. This over a tunic of matching red, strapped pteruges at shoulder and waist, leather intricately embossed. The gauntlets and greaves were richly shaped, decorated with sculpted ceramic vines and faces. And above it all the cape: black above, red below; fastened at the right shoulder.

Lord Hadrian Marlowe stared at me from my reflection, not really seeing.

In the momentary calm I saw—he saw, we saw—the infinite manifold us. A thousand Hadrians stared back me from that glass. A thousand thousand eyes, ten thousand thousand black masks . . . all the infinite versions of myself spread out across the infinite versions of that instant, each one slightly different, and more different the further those reflections stretched from me. As I watched, I saw countless versions of myself vanish, wiped out in a flash of light as the tech at the console failed. Whole parallel worlds vanished from my sight as his mistakes killed us. I did not understand the choices the fellow was making, do not understand the mechanics of particle accelerators or electromagnetic siphons, but I understood their consequences well enough.

It is said that in the presence of an observer, the particles of light collapse from waves of energy into the beams our eyes understand, that the presence of consciousness alters reality itself. The Quiet changed something in me upon their mountain. I felt then as I imagine a blind man must feel, opening his eyes for the first time—as if I’d been blind all my life. As our eyes make straight the waves of light, my new vision straightened time. I had only to look. To concentrate. To choose.

I chose for us to live, focused on a path through time where containment did not fail.

“I’ve done it,” the technician said, unaware of my influence.

The vision faded, reflections dripping back together, infinity collapsing until I stared at my solitary reflection once again, eye to eye.

“Very good, soldier,” I said, screwing my eyes shut inside the helmet. Calling on the vision was never easy. “How long until the fleet arrives?”

Crim had removed his helmet and ran a hand through his shaggy mane of curling dark hair. “One hour. Thirty-seven minutes. We can hold here.” He squinted, peering through the windows back toward the gallery whence we’d come. I followed his gaze to the gallery we’d so recently vacated. Cielcin soldiers moved hurriedly along it, back and forth, relaying orders or else carrying equipment. “They won’t dare blast their way in. They’ll use plasma cutters.”

“Most like,” I agreed. Still more of the creatures were moving on the floor of the refinery below. Evidently the bulk of the force remaining on the station had found us. There must have been two . . . perhaps three hundred of them. Not for the first time, I wished I were a scholiast, able to subitize their precise number at a glance.

As we spoke, a faint mechanical whining—almost unnoticeable from the moment we’d passed through the airlock to the command center—began to slow. Below us, the great engine that wrapped about the planet began to shut down. With the collider stopped it would not be long before the siphons emptied the refinery of its volatile product and funneled it to the storage silos miles off. It was possible the Pale would not notice, standing in vacuum as they were. If they did, they might opt to blow the control center entire and abscond with the fuel already in the outlying silos. They had no notion that the fleet was coming or when it might arrive.

But I thought not. It was not like Syriani Dorayaica to waste an asset, and the Yamato Fuelworks was an asset. No, the Pale Prince of Princes would try to squeeze it for all its worth. The Cielcin would not risk trying to destroy the refinery until they were sure they could not hold it. That was why it was imperative the collider be powered down. Active, a single shot might trigger a runaway annihilation. Inactive, it might sustain damage, but damaged was not destroyed.

Stalemate. For the moment.

“I don’t like this,” Pallino grumbled. “Not having a way out.”

“We have a way out,” Crim said, removing something from a pouch on his belt. Despite decades in Imperial service, the former Norman mercenary still wore his striped red-and-white Jaddian kaftan over his armor.

The old soldier rounded on Crim. “Sitting on our ass is not a way out.”

Crim leaned against a console with the ease of one lingering in a city park. He peeled the wax paper off the candy he’d taken from his belt and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “They’ll be here.” He tossed the paper on the floor. “Want one?”

Pallino shook his head and turned away, letting the silence stretch awkward between them. I did not intervene. The other soldiers all stood in knots in the doors, one man bent over the security terminal that monitored the airlock and the gallery doors. Presently, one of the junior men—another who’d removed his helmet—cleared his throat and said, “Can I . . . can I have one, sir?”

Wordless, Crim reached into his belt pocket once more and tossed the fellow a candy. No one else asked.

“Collider should be fully powered down in another nine minutes,” the tech said. “Magnetic siphons cleared in thirteen.”

I allowed the man the barest nod and touched him on the shoulder as I passed toward the door. “What are they doing?” I asked the man at the console.

He flinched as if struck. “I’m not sure, my lord. They’ve run a cable from downstairs, but the cameras are out all along the gallery. Didn’t want us watching . . .” He glanced up at me and away. “I think they’re gone for some kind of plasma bore. Cut their way in like the commander was saying. It’s hard to tell at this angle.” I peered over his shoulder at the holograph plate. It showed the feeds from four different cameras within the airlock, only one of which peered out through one alumglass panel toward the outer door. The massive chimera stood stolidly outside the door, blank face staring fixedly at the command center, unmoving. It must have tried its luck on the airlock door and been defeated by the cubit-thick steel. Its comrades busied themselves with a heavy black crate, its surface ribbed and gnarled, as thought it were the rotting carcass of a box.

It was definitely some sort of weapon. Plasma cutter, possibly. Some kind of drill.

“It’s a pity we can’t talk to them,” I said, wincing inwardly. Seldom had I spoken truer words. Without air in the outer hall, I could not speak to our attackers in the gallery, unless . . . “Can you access the public address system?”

The soldier fumbled on the controls. “I think so. Yes.”

“You’re one of the new ones, aren’t you?” I asked. We’d taken on new men for the expedition. So many of the Red Company’s technical and support staff had been stripped from the Tamerlane after my trial on Thermon. Ship technicians and engineers were always in short supply, and with the Tamerlane in mothballs with its crew for almost a century while I languished in a gilded cage on Nessus, they had been needed elsewhere. I’d been given new men when the crisis on Eikana had ended my seventy years in purgatory.

The man stopped fussing with the security terminal. “Yes, Lord Marlowe. First tour.”

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Leon.”

“Leon,” I said, studying the fellow’s rank insignia. He wore a hoplite’s heavy plate, but his shoulder panels bore the red circles of an ensign. “That’s a very old name.”

“Aye, my lord. It’s been in my family for a very long time.”

“You’ve never seen the Cielcin before, have you, Leon?”

“Only in the holos.” I could hear the pained expression he wore in the stain in his voice. “I didn’t think they’d be so big.” He turned his masked face to look at mine. “Is it true they . . . eat people?”

Beneath the mask, I smiled, thinking of a dinner conversation more than three hundred years gone, and of my brother, Crispin. “Do you doubt it?” I asked.

“No.”

“I did,” I said. “When I was a boy. I believed it was a story the Chantry told to frighten us into war.” Why was I unburdening myself on this young man so? Had I been so long out of the world of battle? Was it nerves? Or had I become an old man in truth beneath my body’s still-youthful appearance? “But some stories are true. That’s a terrible thing. Better to believe nothing is true, then you’re free to make what you want of the world.”

“My lord?” Leon’s frown was as audible as his pain had been.

“I won’t lie to you,” I said. “It doesn’t get any easier. Fighting.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “But we’ll fight together, eh?”

The junior man stood a little straighter. “Aye, sir.”

“Put me through public address and step aside,” I said.

Leon did as I asked, and I marked how much surer were his fingers on the controls, though privately I was glad it had not been him in charge of depowering the matrix of hadron colliders.

A blue light pulsed in the corner of the holograph plate, indicating the feed was live. Most of the refinery was airless, but there were pockets like the control room that were conditioned for the comfort of the work crew. Though most of the address system would wind silently in vacuum, I was sure to be heard somewhere, and I was doubly sure the chimera would hear with its internal radio—along with any more of its kind on the base.

“Bayarunbemn o-ajun!” I said, speaking the xenobites’ own tongue. You have us surrounded. “I would speak to your leader.” My likeness was sure to be displayed on every holograph plate in the refinery, black and red. Even in places where my message would not be heard, my face—my mask—would be seen. I had fought the Cielcin for hundreds of years on dozens of worlds, battled them from the far Expanse of Norma and up and down the Centaurine provinces: Aptucca and Oxiana, Berenike and Mettina, Comum and Senuessa.

My face and mask were known.

The inhuman reply came slowly, as if our foe were waking from long sleep or deep focus. No image appeared on the plate. The voice that spoke was higher and colder than any human tone, and flat of all affect. “You are the Devil,” it said.

“In the flesh,” I answered it. “You have the command here?”

“Daratolo ne?” the creature said, strange flat voice crackling as the signal faltered. “You live? After all this time . . . I had almost lost hope of meeting you.”

I stood stock still, glad of my suit’s mask for fear the xenobite would have understood the look of surprise that colored my face. It was not the greeting I’d expected. After a moment’s hesitation, I managed to say, “Who are you?” I did not know the voice.

“You killed two of my sister-brothers,” it said. “Raka’ta ude ti-wetidiu.”

We are four now. The answer clicked into place like the mystagogue’s last fortune card.

“Iubalu,” I said. “Bahudde.” A wordless snarl answered me, grinding like the noise of sawblades. It was no natural sound, as though the voice were generated on some sound board and not the product of any throat. Those names had riled it. “You are one of the Iedyr.” The Iedyr Yemani—the White Hand—were Syriani Dorayaica’s generals, its concubines and sworn servants. Each one had been given a machine body by its master, no two of them alike. I had killed one fighting on the road to Nemavand, and with the help of the Irchtani, we had slain another on Berenike.

“You dare speak their names!” the creature said.

“They’re moving in the gallery!” Pallino’s voice cut across my attention, and I spared a glance through the window to where the Cielcin massed by the outer door of the airlock. They’d removed the lid of their box, though what lay within I could not tell from my vantage point.

The flat, cold voice was not finished. “I will bring you to my master,” it said.

“You may try.” A taut smile pulled one corner of my mouth. “Might I know the name of my destroyer?” I asked.

The creature made a high keening sound, like a woman wailing. It was a Cielcin laugh. “I am Hushansa the Many-Handed, vayadan ba-Shiomu, and I will enjoy watching him break you. My master has . . . desired you for so long.”

It took every effort to stop my stomach turning over. I knew all too well what the Cielcin were capable of, but I said, “You haven’t won yet.”

“Siajenu ti-saem yu kianuri!” Hushansa exclaimed. You have nowhere to run. “You cannot escape. You will be ours.”

“That is what your brothers thought,” I said, matching the alien coldness, and cut the transmission.

Turning, I found Pallino watching me through his helmet. “What was that for?”

“I wanted to know who we were fighting,” I answered him. “And I wanted it to see me.”

“Why?” my old friend asked. No other soldier would have dared question me in front of the others.

“Because now it wants me alive,” I replied. “They won’t try anything that’s sure to kill us all.”

Pallino fell silent, seeing the logic in this. I could almost hear the man’s teeth grinding like gears beneath his helmet. “We’re still stuck here.”

“No, we’re not,” I said, moving to the window and looking down on the refinery floor. Groups of Cielcin still hurried about or else stared up at us with their hideous white masks. They had no firearms, and I took the fact that none had trained explosives on us as evidence that my hypothesis was correct. I checked my wrist-terminal for the time. “Seventy-nine minutes ’til our fleet arrives. We’ll drag this out so long as we can.”

In the gallery beyond the airlock, the Cielcin had readied their machine. Hoses and cables ran from the stair and the lower halls, and the machine itself rose on three spindly legs. It was some manner of plasma bore, a bit of repurposed mining equipment retrofitted to melt through the reinforced metal of the door. That the machine’s alien makers had built it for hollowing out the asteroid warrens they made their home, I did not doubt.

“How much time do we have?” I asked, watching them clamp the device to the airlock door.

To my surprise, it was Leon who answered. “Those doors are eighteen inches thick. If that burner of theirs is close to one of ours? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?”

“For each door . . .” I mused. It wasn’t enough time. It was barely half the time we needed. “Remind me: how much longer until we’re sure the siphons are clear?”

The tech who’d powered down the collider cleared his throat. “They’re clear already.”

“Good,” I said. They must have cleared while I was speaking with Leon or with Hushansa. “Mine the door. Use the biggest charges you have.”

This order was met with dumb silence. The men all looked at me. None dared speak. I knew what they must be thinking. Even with the refinery cleared of antimatter, setting off high-powered explosives in so confined a space was a death sentence. I ignored them.

“Lord?”

“Move!”

The end came in time. The Cielcin succeeded in melting through the outer airlock door, and after a few minutes’ careful fumbling transported their plasma drill through the glowing hole they’d made. The chimera followed, leading ranks of Cielcin troopers as they set to work on the inner door.

It was going to be close.

I explained my plan and stood waiting, watching as the doors began to glow dull red, then golden.

“Fifty minutes ’til the fleet arrives,” Crim said. He’d been counting off the time in five-minute intervals. “We should move.” The Norman had donned his helmet once again and stood with one hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Almost there,” I said. Every second was a gift. The moment I made my move the Cielcin below would be all over us. I did not think the chimera from the stair was this Hushansa. There would be others where the first chimera had come from, and worse. “Get ready,” I said, watching the steel begin to flow like melting ice.

It was time.

I drew my sword and cut my circle.

The floor fell away beneath me, and I rode it down. Forty feet straight down to the level of the refinery floor. My suit’s gel-layer took the impact, protected my bones and delicate joints. Still, I winced as I rolled clear, shield up, sword in hand but unkindled to protect myself from the fall. Men fell after me like a heavy rain until all forty-two who remained of the three score we’d brought were down.

I gave the signal, and the control room above erupted in oily scarlet flames. A secondary explosion followed as the plasma bore detonated. I pictured the chimera and the scores of inhuman soldiers packed into the airlock turned to cinders and winced, imagining the whole factory erupting from some overlooked sample of the precious fuel.

No annihilation came.

Only the enemy, circling like sharks.