According to the scuttlebutt on Arches Base, in the training compounds and the vast open barracks, there were only three things you needed to know about the Xeelee.

First, their ships were better than ours. You only had to see a fly in action to realize that. Some said the Xeelee were their ships, which probably made them even tougher.

Second, they were smarter than us, and had a lot more resources. Xeelee operations were believed to be resourced and controlled from Chandra itself, the fat black hole at the Galaxy’s very center. In fact, military planners called Chandra, a supermassive black hole, the Prime Radiant of the Xeelee. How could anything we had compete with that?

And third, the Xeelee knew what we would do even before we decided ourselves.

This interstellar war was fought with faster-than-light technology, on both sides. But if you flew FTL you broke the bounds of causality: an FTL ship was a time machine. And so this was a time-travel war, in which information about the future constantly leaked into the past.

But the information was never perfect. And every now and again, one side or the other was able to spring a surprise. This new maneuver of the Xeelee had not been in the Commissaries’ careful projections.

Pirius felt his lips draw back in a fierce grin. The script had been abandoned. Today, everything really was up for grabs.

But now cherry-red light flared all around the Rock’s ragged horizon.

On the loops, orders chattered from the squadron leaders. “Hold your positions. This is a new tactic and we’re still trying to analyze it.” “Number eight, hold your place. Hold your place.”

Pirius gripped his controls so tight his fingers ached.

That red glare was spreading all around the Rock’s lumpy profile, a malevolent dawn. Most of the action was taking place on the far side of the Rock from his position—which was itself most unlike the Xeelee, who were usually apt to come swarming all over any Rock they attacked.

The Claw would be sheltered from the assault, for the first moments, anyhow. That meant Pirius was in the wrong place. He wasn’t here to hide, but to fight. But he had to hold his station, until ordered otherwise.

Pirius glimpsed a fly standing off from the target. It spread night-dark wings—said to be not material but flaws in the structure of space itself—and extended a cherry-red starbreaker beam. The clean geometry of these lethal lines had a certain cold beauty, Pirius thought, even though he knew what hell was being unleashed for those unlucky enough to be caught on the exposed surface of the Rock.

Now, though, the rectilinear perfection of the starbreaker beam was blurred, as a turbulent fog rose over the Rock’s horizon.

Cohl said, “What’s that mist? Air? Maybe the starbreakers are cutting through to the sealed caverns.”