Another rash of objects appeared on his screens, so many now that it was overloading his computer’s ability to track them. He zoomed out the resolution, shifting to a system-wide view, making a clearer picture. Merven could see that the things, whatever they might be, were not restricting themselves to entering the system from the safety of the hyperspace access zone. They were popping up everywhere, and some were getting awfully close to—

“Oh no,” Vel said.

“I see it, too,” Merven said. He didn’t even have to run a trajectory analysis.

The anomalies were headed sunward, and many of them were on intercept courses with the inhabited worlds and their orbital stations. The things weren’t slowing down, either. Not at all. At near-lightspeed, it didn’t matter whether they were asteroids, or ships, or frothy bubbles of fizz-candy. Whatever they hit would just…go.

As he watched, one of the objects smashed through an uncrewed communications satellite. Both the anomaly and the satellite vanished from his screen, and the galaxy got itself a little more space dust.

Hetzal Prime was big enough that it could endure a few impacts like that and survive as a planetary body. Even the two inhabited moons might be able to take a couple of hits. But anything living on them…

Sella was on the Rooted Moon right now.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. “We’re right in the target zone, and more of these things are appearing every second. We have to get to the shuttle.”

“I agree,” Vel said, some semblance of command returning to her voice. “But we need to send a system-wide alert first. We have to.”

Merven closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

“You’re right. Of course.”

“The computer needs authorization codes from both of us to activate the system-wide alarm,” Vel said. “We’ll do it on my signal.”

She tapped a few commands on her keypad. Merven did the same, then waited for her nod. She gave it, and he typed in his code.

A soft, chiming alarm rang through the operations deck as the message went out. Merven knew that a similar sound was now being heard across the Hetzal system, from the cockpits of garbage scows all the way to the minister’s palace on the primeworld. Forty billion people just looked up in fear. One of them was a lovely scarlet-skinned Twi’lek probably wondering whether her favorite Mirialan was going to come by the tavern that evening.

Merven stood up.

“We’ve done our job. Shuttle time. We can send a message explaining what’s happening on the way.”

Vel nodded and levered herself up out of her seat.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of—”

One of the objects leapt out of hyperspace, so near, and moving so fast, that in astronomical terms it was on them the moment it appeared.