“It’s history,” Mortimor said. He waved his hand, as if to brush away some lingering and awful memory. “The point is, when we—when they, the Underground, realized their attack had failed, they sealed the rifts, thinking that would be the end of it.”

“Obviously not,” said Cole.

“Yeah, well Ryke furthered his research from here and he realized these holes could be reopened from the other side—and with a normal hyperdrive, no less. To put it mildly, we got worried. Especially when we realized my wife, Parsona, had overhead enough in her fevered state to maybe put everything together—”

“When I found out about her,” Arthur interrupted, “I explained how my memory retrieval system worked. There’s the potential for total recall, even if it’s implemented in a manner to simulate forgetfulness.”

“And that’s when we figured out how the Prophecy was going to take place,” Mortimor said. “It explained the significance of Lok, at least. What we needed was our rift opened, the one near our headquarters, but Joshua and his men somehow beat us to it.”

“So now what?” Cole asked. “They’re invading Lok as we speak? That’s what those black ships were? And that’s where Molly is right now?”

“Yes. To all but the last, which I can’t know. I hope she’s a long way from whatever’s going on out there.”

“Well, why don’t we just fly through the rift and close it from the other side? You guys have ships, right?”

“Not really. Most of them don’t survive coming here, not if they aren’t adequately equipped beforehand. The ones that do usually end up in the snow, carried back into the cold and distant past. Besides, we wouldn’t last a second against that fleet. They probably don’t even see us as a threat. We’re just a bunch of freedom fighters camped out in the rains.”

“And Joshua’s men? What do they have to do with this?”

“Well, they’ve been here a long time,” Arthur said, “but their numbers really swelled when the war in Darrin popped up. Everyone jumping into that system met the asteroid fields and ended up here. Most of those characters fell in with Joshua’s men, being a better match for their sick philosophy.”

“Yeah, but why are they doing this?” Cole asked. “Why help the Bern invade our galaxy?”

“They’ve turned their anti-tech fanaticism into racism, even to the point of self-loathing,” Arthur said.

“They see the Bern as perfect examples of themselves,” Mortimor added. “They think by helping them, they’ll expunge whatever it is that makes us different. They want whatever universe the Bern are concocting. Homogeneity is their goal. They’ve gone from hating everything humanity makes to hating humanity itself.”