But judging from all the available evidence, the antimatter had been resurrected as ordinary matter. It did not kill the bastards, Tam told herself, but it sure as hell gave them something to think about.

She took a deep breath and waited for the plasma window to reopen. Although shrapnel from the first attack had left her ship half blind, she hoped Anjin still had enough scopes left to see the next attack coming.

A happy thought.

As prime minister, Tam had learned and mastered all the political games, including how to evaluate an adversary, read his intentions—how to manipulate him with kindness or, when necessary, neutralize him with skilled, subtle economic sanctions and squads of journalists whose questions and stories would restrict him in what he could say or do—and here she was: stuck in a goddamned ceramic box under four kilometers of frozen rock, fighting an antimatter war inside the Sun, looking for subtleties in the opaque mind of an alien enemy.

Tam’s stalkers had much to think about. The comet’s jetting activity had looked natural enough at first, but had put it on a course that was suspiciously improbable. Nevertheless, once it was located, and a tunnel opened through the plasma, and a clear shot taken, its inhabitants should have been easy,, defenseless prey. But the projectiles which had intercepted the antimatter containers, detonating them and absorbing all their energy, did not fit into the original game plan. Now the comet was sweeping their ship with a bath of microwave radiation, pinging it with radar.

The stalkers absorbed all this information and were ready to use it against their prey—instantly.

From the use of radar the stalkers concluded that the first wave of attack had blinded the fleeing ship in some way, and the refugees were now relying on a backup system. Perhaps there was other damage as well. Their antimatter antidote, while extremely clever, was obviously part of their cooling system. In highest probability, they did not have many absorbic bombs to spare, and were therefore on the short side of a war of attrition. Cleverness would not forever overcome short supplies.

In a cavity between the wings, something silvery and crablike moved swiftly and purposefully. The plasma sea parted, and a second, larger wave of antimatter bombs accelerated down the tunnel.

The radar improved Anjin’s resolution enormously.

Wings.

The stalker definitely had wings. Something small and snakelike suddenly emerged through the dorsal surface. Its head, too, displayed wings, like the flaps in the hood of a cobra—to what purpose, Anjin could not venture a guess.

“This is amazing,” he said.

“You don’t seem frightened,” said Tam.

He chuckled to himself. “That, too, but mostly I’m fascinated. Think—if any antimatter gets through to us, at least it will be interesting … for all of two milliseconds.”

And then he saw the reflective orbs.

“High speed cluster dead astern,” he announced. “A hundred and twenty torpedoes in the window! Impact in about two minutes!”

“Fire one hundred and thirty,” Tam ordered.