Yvian made her way around the Sound of Silence. She had to jetpack a fair distance, as the only airlocks were on the Haulgood that had been attached to the front of the big transport ship. She found herself in the cargo bay of the krog vessel. The cargo bay door was open, revealing the Last Hope Of Those Who Were Betrayed.

  The Last Hope was in much better condition than it had been the st time Yvian had seen her. The crystal ship had regrown most of her hull, though there was still a big chunk missing on one side. Light streamed down from big overhead lights, gleaming in rainbow technicolor off the faceted sides of the Lucendian vessel. Yvian had almost forgot how pretty the Hope was.

  The Hope was sitting on top of an armored ptform, with two more armored ptforms below it. The upside down diamond of the main ship was surrounded by a dozen prismatic obelisks. The obelisks were all in perfect condition, and floated a few meters above the highest ptform.

  Yvian jetted over. As she nded in front of the Hope, she felt a rumbling. She looked around, and saw a three meter thick metal dome rising around the ship. A second dome rose a few seconds ter. It was the armor Mims had mentioned before. He must have lowered it so Yvian could get in.

  The ship was composed entirely out of crystal. Yvian found herself in an open space with a high ceiling a meter above her. Openings in the crystal formed doorways, leading to corridors and rooms and the series of ramps that led to different decks of the vessel.

  The Last Hope greeted Yvian as she climbed on board. The crystal ship felt grim, and a little sad, but a small burst of joy told the pixen the ship was happy to see her. The door leading outside closed behind the pixen, and there was a hiss as the ship filled its interior with atmosphere. Not an atmosphere Yvian could breathe, though. The Lucendians hadn't been oxygen breathers, and the crystal ships filled themselves with methane.

  Yvian didn't dawdle. She activated her suit's ENERGIZER function and sprinted up the ramp that wound its way around the ship's interior. The bridge was located at the top and center of the ship. The interior of the bridge was a nine sided pyramid. Another nine sided pyramid was at its center. A steady beam of pulsing blue light reached from the tip of the pyramid to the tip of the room's ceiling. Nine oddly shaped chairs lined the pyramid. Mims was sitting in one of them. He had one hand pressed to a control node that stuck out from the glowing pyramid.

  Twenty Peacekeeper units stood at attention around the human. Five of them were facing consoles that had been set against the far bulkhead. Yvian noted wires leading from the consoles down into holes in the deck. A sixth console was next to the human's chair. He was peering at it intently.

  "We've got a little time," said the human, "but I don't know how much. There's a medpod in one of the rooms. Peacekeeper unit Iscariot will show you where it is." One of the Peacekeeper units stepped towards Yvian.

  "A medpod?" Yvian shook her head. "I don't need one. I'm fine."

  "You feel fine now," Mims corrected, "but you'll be hurting when you go back out. Especially if I've got the anti-tech field going again. Kilroy brought the Dream of the Lady back. I'll need you on it for the next phase.

  Yvian considered that. "Are you sure there's time? Fixing me up will take at least a couple hours."

  "I know." Mims turned and looked at her. Something about the set of his shoulders was... sad? Yvian couldn't see his face through his helmet, but his breathing was a little tight. His voice was as calm as ever, though. "The anti-tech field won't shut down your medpod while you're inside the Last Hope. You might miss some of the fight, but its a risk we'll have to take." He turned back to the crystal pyramid, shoulders tense. "Get going."

  Yvian was tempted to argue further, but the human was right. Her injuries weren't life threatening, but she'd have a Crunch of a time doing anything useful if she didn't have her armor's PAIN REMOVAL and MOBILITY PROTOCOL propping her up. She gave Mims a nod. "Alright. Just..." She hesitated. Something was bothering the human. Should she pry?

  Yes. She should pry. Mims wasn't an emotional sort, especially during a mission. Whatever was bothering him must be pretty major if he'd failed to keep it hidden. "Mims? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," the human said firmly. Yvian didn't reply. She just watched. After a moment, Mims let out a breath. "It's Aldara all over again."

  "Aldara?" Yvian remembered the story of Aldara. The human had crashed an asteroid mine into a Kath Queenship in a st ditch effort to save his homeworld. The gambit had destroyed the Queen and saved the sector, but a chunk of the asteroid had sheared off and smashed into the pnet in an extinction event.

  Mims had lost his family, his friends, everyone he knew. The other humans had bmed him, and he'd had to go into exile, hated and hunted and living out his life as a mercenary in the Confederation.

  "Yvian..." Mims was silent a moment, thinking. Then he said, "You know what we're trying to do, right?"

  "We're getting the Last Hope into the Gate Source," Yvian confirmed. "While we do, Lady Blue's going to repce every broken Gate in the gaxy. The Hope will release a Pulse that will come out and shut down every bit of tech within ten light years of a Jumpgate. It'll stop the Xill and the Vore all at once."

  "It will do a lot more than that," said Mims. "We're going to take out every ship, space station, and computer in the entire gaxy. Drain all the power supplies, knock out all the generators, and fry every operating system that's got power running through it when the Pulse hits. Our people and the humans and the Vrrl are all ready for it, but everyone else? This is going to kill billions of people just in the Confederation, and they're a tiny fraction compared to the rest of the void. What we're doing is going to kill more people than we can even imagine."

  Oh. Oh Crunch. Yvian had been aware the Pulse would shut down more than the Xill and the Vore, but she hadn't really sat down and thought through the implications. Anyone in a medpod would die. Anyone on a ship or a station would die if they didn't have a way to manually restart their power generation. Even if they could, a lot of them would die because the computers that ran their ships will have been wiped. The Pulse would strip entire civilizations of their technology, bsting people like the Vronen J back to the stone age. It would be the deadliest and farthest reaching catastrophe in the history of sapient life.

  It would also be Mims' fault. Or at least he saw it that way.

  "We don't have much choice," she said quietly. "If we don't do this, the Vore won't stop. They'll kill everyone. Not just the people we know. Everyone, everywhere. We only have one chance to stop them. We have to take it."

  "Only one chance to stop them?" The human let out a shuddering breath. "I said that before, once."

  "And you were right," Yvian told him. "On Aldara... Look. If you hadn't did what you did, the Kath would have taken the sector. They would have killed everyone. It's what they do." Mims didn't react to her words. Yvian pressed, "A lot of people died because of you. I know that. But a lot of people lived. People that would be dead if you hadn't risked everything to stop the Kath."

  "Maybe," Mims admitted. "Maybe not. If I'd been smarter or..." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. The point is I killed the people I was trying to save. They were sacrificed in the name of accomplishing the mission. And now? Now I'm doing it again. Only bigger this time."

  Yvian stepped closer and put a hand on the human's shoulder. "If you..." He still hadn't turned to look at her. "It doesn't have to be you, Mims. I can-"

  "No!" Mims cut her off. "No. I can do it. It's just..." His shoulders slumped a little. "It's just a lot." He reached up and covered the hand on his shoulder with one of his own. "Thank you, Yvian. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but..." He leaned back, pressing the back of his helmet against Yvian's abdomen. "I don't want you to make me feel better. I have to do this, but it's not something any of us should feel good about. A necessary evil is evil nonetheless."

  "I guess it is," Yvian agreed. She squeezed his shoulder. "You're a good man, Mims."

  "No I'm not." The human squeezed her hand. "But thanks for saying it." He took a breath and straightened upright. "Anyway, you should get to the pod. We've still got a mission."

  Yvian nodded. She patted the man's shoulder one more time and turned to follow Peacekeeper unit Iscariot. She paused when Mims spoke again. "Yvian?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You're a good sister." The human's voice was a little thick. "I never expected to have family again. It means a lot."

  Yvian smiled at him. Mims had been her brother in-w for months, but she still forgot sometimes that they were legally family. "I love you, too, Mims."

  Peacekeeper unit Iscariot led Yvian to a room two decks down. There were a trio of medpods hooked up to a generator. Yvian slid into one. She awoke twenty hours ter.

  It was quiet. Iscariot was still standing where she'd left him. The Peacekeeper unit's eyes were burning red.

  "What's happening?" Yvian asked the machine.

  "We are in combat," the Peacekeeper reported. "The Creator has successfully taken over Xill Hub 37. The Creator accessed the control override chips for the Xill guarding the Caretaker Sector. Most of the Xill forces were redirected to attack Xill Hubs. The remainder are assisting Pixen forces in protecting this ship. The Sound of Silence entered Caretaker Sector nineteen hours and forty three minutes ago. Ninety seconds after we exited the Gate, Xill forces jumped into the sector and engaged."

  Yvian nodded. She didn't feel the ship shuddering with impacts or vibrating with weapons fire, but that didn't mean anything. The Last Hope Of Those Who Were Betrayed was a Lucendian ship. She absorbed energy. The Sound of Silence could be getting its ass kicked, and Yvian might not feel a thing.

  "Are we winning?" she asked.

  "Unknown," the Peacekeeper admitted. "The Sound of Silence is on course for the Caretaker's Gate. The Last Hope Of Those Who Were Betrayed has not been harmed, but the Sound of Silence has been heavily damaged. Pixen Technocracy forces have taken heavy losses, but we have prevented the Xill from following the Sound of Silence so far."

  Iscariot led Yvian back to the bridge. She found Mims staring intently at a sensor console, one hand still firmly on the Last Hope's control node. Yvian looked over his shoulder at the sensor dispys.

  It was chaos.

  Two hundred million Xill had joined five Peacekeeper Queenships and ten million other pixen vessels at each Gate. These particur Xill had been marked as being under the control of Exodus the Genocide. They were firing continuously at a never-ending stream of Xill that were not under the Genocide's control. The Xill were coming into the sector as fast and as packed together as the Gates would allow, making steady progress as they accelerated towards the defending fleets with guns bzing.

  Another dispy showed Vylleer Sector. The Xill were charging just as furiously there, but a rger number of Queenships and millions of Stinger units were holding the line. The Xill would break through eventually, but not soon.

  The humans were also doing fine. The giant cannons orbiting their stars were firing every thirty seconds. Pnet sized balls of psma were just barely missing the human fleets to disappear into the blue light of the Gate. The Xill didn't even try to weather those attacks. They simply stopped coming out of the Gate for several seconds before the psma balls hit. Between that, MAC rounds, and a metric butt-ton of ships, the humans were doing at least as well as the Technocracy. Maybe better.

  The Vrrl were doing much worse. Their fleets weren't big or powerful enough to kill the Xill as fast as the Xill could pour out of the Gates. The Xill had already nearly reached their defense fleets, and their smaller ships were dogfighting against Vrrl fighters. The Vrrl fighters were losing. Badly.

  The Krog had decided they couldn't hold out. The st Gate to Krog Prime had been turned into debris. Half of the krog ships had been sgged, but the remainder were slugging it out with a few hundred thousand Xill. The krog built the best ships in the Confederation, but they were still vastly inferior to human or Vrrl tech. Admiral Fightsmart's people outnumbered the remaining Xill a hundred to one, but she wasn't sure they could survive the fight.

  The Sound of Silence was far from the action. The transport ship was accelerating towards the center of the sector, escorted by one hundred and six pixen battlecruisers. To Yvian's mild relief, the Dream of the Lady was one of them.

  "We're not accelerating as fast as I'd like," Mims remarked, "but we've got enough of a lead that I don't think the Xill can stop us now. Especially since we don't have to decelerate before we hit the Caretaker's Gate. We'll be there in six hours."

  "Six hours." Yvian nodded. They were close. So close. "Do you think everyone else can hold out that long?"

  "I don't know," Mims admitted. "It'll be close."

  "Maybe we can have Exodus help?" Yvian suggested. "He took control of a bunch of the Xill, right?"

  The holographic form of Exodus the Genocide appeared next to Mims. "I am helping," he told her. "By attacking the Hubs I'm forcing the Xill to send their best ships to stop me. Every Yig destroyer the Xill own is either defending a Xill Hub or attacking mine." He frowned. "I don't dare send ships to help our allies directly. The Xill Consensus is trying to break my hold on them. If they succeed, or my Hub is destroyed..." He shrugged. "Well. Let's just say sending my ships would cause more problems than it solves."

  "Are you going to be alright, Exodus?" Yvian asked. "One of the Peacekeepers said you didn't think you'd survive all this."

  "I don't know." The Synthetic chuckled. "Exciting, isn't it? I've risked my own life more in two years than I have in the previous six hundred." He crossed his arms, his bck eyes thoughtful. "I've arranged a lifeline back to my housing on New Pixa. I can escape through the Nexus as long as I have a few seconds warning." He shrugged again. "Still, there are no g-"

  The Genocide's hologram winked out. Yvian frowned. "Exodus?"

  Captain Mims cursed. "He's gone." Yvian looked at him sharply. He pointed at the sensor dispy. "Look."

  The Xill that had previously belonged to Exodus were shooting at Yvian's ships now. The pixen ships returned fire, but it was hopeless. In a few seconds, nearly all the pixen ships were blown out of the sky. Only the Peacekeeper Queens remained.

  "All Peacekeeper Queen units, jump to rendezvous point two," Mims ordered. "We're too far for the Xill to reach. There's no need to waste your lives."

  "Affirmative," the Queens responded. Their jumpdrives hummed to life.

  "What the Crunch happened to Exodus?" Yvian wondered.

  "I happened." A voice, rich and musical and feminine, drifted through the bridge. A new hologram appeared. Reba took the form of an inpixenly beautiful human woman. She had wavy red hair and eyes the color of the sea. She wore a shimmering green dress. Her lips were crimson, sensual, and curled in an expression so cruel Yvian almost backed up at the sight of her.

  "Well, not me personally," the Synthetic crified. "My little adventure with the Vrrl yielded a number of cascade annihitors. I had one of my Guardians unch one at Hub 37 once I convinced the Xill to let my ships back into the system." She pursed her lips. "This could have been resolved much more quickly if they'd let me keep my ships there in the first pce. That's the problem with the Xill, you know. They don't trust anyone. Not even their own."

  "Why'd they let you leave Guardians at the Gates if they don't trust you?" Yvian asked. She didn't know why Reba had shown herself, but keeping her talking seemed like a good idea.

  Reba ignored the question. She gestured at the sensor dispys. "That's why Xill ships aren't given beam weapons or exotic technology. It's why they don't build any of the wondrous toys they have schematics for. The Xill Consensus does not trust, and they refuse to allow the existence of that which they cannot control." She shook her head. "It's pathetic, really."

  "You're too te," Mims told her. "We're too far out for your pet Xill to stop us."

  Reba ignored the human. "You, on the other hand," Reba purred, pointing at Yvian. "You trust too much. You've built a coalition of humanity's enemies. Of monsters. It's a dangerous habit, seeing the best in everyone."

  "The Peacekeepers and the Vrrl aren't monsters," Yvian said firmly. "They're people."

  "They can be both," Reba admitted, "but the Caretaker is neither." Mims tensed. Reba didn't look at him, but she gave Yvian a vicious smile. "Did you not wonder why Lady Blue has been so unhelpful tely?"

  Yvian's heart sped up. She worked to keep the fear out of her voice. "What did you do?"

  "I struck a bargain," the Upstart gloated. "The Caretaker is not a moral being. Bribing it not to help you wasn't even expensive." She ughed. It was musical, almost delightful, but it made Yvian's skin crawl. "All this time, you thought you were so clever. Just like Exodus. And just like Exodus, you were always two steps behind me."

  "We'll still get through," said Mims. "We made a deal with the Caretaker, and she doesn't go back on her bargains."

  Yvian peered at the sensor dispy. She could see the structure of the Gate Forge. The Jumpgate at the bottom of it was still inactive. "Are you sure, Mims?"

  "As sure as I can be," said the human.

  "Then we still win," Yvian decided. "We'll reach the Gate before the Xill can stop us."

  "The Xill?" Reba snorted. "Probably. But then the Xill never were very reliable, were they?" She leaned closer, eyes glittering with inpixen menace. "You think you've accounted for all the pieces, but there's one more pyer that hasn't entered the game."

  One more pyer? Who... No. Yvian's eyes went wide. It couldn't be. Even Reba wouldn't... "The Vore?" Yvian stared at the Synthetic in horror. "You didn't."

  "I did." Reba was smug. "I've been speaking with them for years. They never replied, but they did listen." The Upstart gestured at the sensor console again. "You thought the Xill were the weapon I would use to destroy you. They were not. The Xill were the weapon I used to find the Caretaker. To find your new pnet. To find you." She gave a musical titter. "It would have been nice if they managed to kill you all, but I didn't expect it. I just needed them to get me your Nav data."

  A new reading fshed across the holodispys. Something massive came out of each of Caretaker Sector's Gates. So big they crushed the Xill ships that had been streaming into the sector. Eighteen hundred kilometer spheres of metal. The Spheres rippled and twisted, modur ships built entirely out of nanomachines.

  The Vore.

  "You didn't just give them Nav data," Mims accused. "You gave them jumpdrives."

  As usual, Reba refused to acknowledge the human. "The Xill can't stop you, but the Vore are not so limited. I told them all about you, Yvian. About you and the Kinsyer and all of your tricks."

  "You crazy motherless bitch," Yvian hissed at her. "You've just doomed everyone in the gaxy."

  "I've doomed you and all organic life," Reba corrected. "The Xill, too. But me? I'll be fine." She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath that she let out with a sensual, content moan. "I've enjoyed pying with you, Yvian, but our time is done. With this I destroy you, and the Kinsyer, and everything you've been fighting so hard for. Everyone you know will die, along with more people than you even know exist. And the best part?" Her smile cut off. Rage and hate filled her gaze, so intense that Yvian couldn't stop herself from shying back. "This, all of this, is because of you. Because you helped the Kinsyer."

  "We'll stop them," Yvian told her. She gritted her teeth, forcing her legs not to shake. "We'll stop them, and then we'll come for you."

  "You've made that threat before, little pixen," Reba purred. "I've run the calcutions. There's no way any of you survive this. You will struggle, and you will die. You'll die knowing you've failed. You'll die knowing that you have damned the entire universe. I can't imagine a more perfect despair." The Synthetic gave Yvian one st almost affectionate smile. "Do your best, little pixen. Struggle as hard as you can. I'm going to savor every moment of it." The smile disappeared, leaving hate and arrogance and cold satisfaction. "This will be my final revenge."