"Are you ready for this?" Vala asked.

"Aye," said Ramses.

"You don't look ready."

In the CIC of their ship, some looked ready, some didn't. Ramses, ever the skeptic, didn't surprise her with his fidgety scowl.

He shrugged. "We're landing in a hot zone. Nothing new. But the enemy is."

"We fought the forces of Ulro before," said Paragas, who, in his smooth, sky blue armor with a skullfort that was almost entirely visor, was most definitely ready.

"And they devastated the galaxy," Ramses retorted.

"He's right Paragas," said Vala. "The Milky Way had six times the population before the first breach. Our fight was desperate."

"We're not desperate now, Vala," came his reply, calmy determined and utterly reassured.

She looked at her champion, his armor a cluster of golden scales, his harness gilded with black osmium conduits. Three skullforts looked at the holomap Harbingers One and Five sent. Of all the Harbingers, she did not expect him to seem pensive.

His middle head turned slightly her way. His visor, a small red eye, gleamed.

"The Milky Way..."

"Yes, Fountain, the Milky Way. That's what we humans call it."

"What do your people call our galaxy?" Paragas asked him.

"The Waking Child."

"Til the first breach," said Ramses, "when Ulro put the baby down for a nap. The first breach... has a ring. I think we have a name for our cataclysm now."

"The Second breach," said Paragas, his voice trailing off.

"Nah. it's more of a squeeze."

Black Fountain lifted his lower hands and clenched them into fists. "We need to squeeze them back."

"I assume that's the plan," said Ramses, looking expectantly at Vala.

Do I tell them?

"Gentleman," she announced, "Catalyst had no plan."

"I figured," Ramses grumbled. "What did he do then? Disobey a direct order to get your attention?"

"More or less. But I have a plan, and while he never communicated any strategy to me, I can only assume Harbinger One knows what they're doing. As for us, our job is clear."

"Violence of action," Paragus said, guessing correctly.

She looked again at her champion. If her instincts proved true, Albion would emerge from this a military society, with Sensus in command as its ruler. Were he to make her general in his place, she would put Black Fountain in command of entire legions of Harbingers.

After we recover those we lost.

Black Fountain stirred, then turned toward her. She could feel the displacement caused by his moving bulk. His hunting head growled low.

"Speak, friend."

His words came slow. "Violence. For now, violence is all we have. That is why, while we will we can win, Orak may still succeed."

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"Then what do you suggest we do?" Paragas asked, his voice urgent.

All three heads seethed. "We play into his hands, and rip them from his arms."

"What worries you, my brother?" asked Ramses.

Yes. What could worry this mighty man?

"Haleon."

It was as if long ago a stone was thrown into a well, and after days of waiting all who saw it stepped away, forgetting that the stone was thrown, and when Black Fountain spoke that terrible, awesome name, they heard the stone plunk into the water, impossibly deep, suddenly very present.

"We can't prepare for everything at once," Vala said. "Let's deal with today."

"I will heed his words, Vala," Ramses cautioned. "Let's fight today, yeah, but we need to stop being ready for the last war. Know what I mean?"

"I do. I think ahead every waking moment."

Paragas raised a hand. "Yes, Vala. But what do our enemies think of? They're so different from us, Vala. We are nothing alike, though we be both made of light. And yet, while our physiology is different, our interacting with ohr different, our perception of radiance different, certain things are the same. A father's love, for instance. We all heard his voice."

She paused for a moment, digesting that wise man's words. "I understand, Paragas. And I agree. But we have a hard fight ahead of us, and we'll be engaging soon. I need all of you focused on the moment. On the fight."

Then he came alive, came into his self, raising and clenching all four fists. "Violence."

They emerged from their wormholes, all that remained of the forces Sensus left her. Each ship emitted a final comm pulse in case any friendly forces might be in range, then the jumpships swarmed like raptors over a sparrow's nest and dove, like missiles, jerking their cones upward at the last moment and letting loose with all their guns while the insertion pods pounded into the dirt, releasing their most devastating weapons.

The teams rose from the craters they made and hurled whirlwinds at the enemy.

Ulro, that hidden land beyond... beyond what? Ulro sent its hounds, Briah sent its angels. The ifreet swarmed, the Harbingers slaughtered. The teams moved as one, ora fanned out like wings, and they dispersed and converged and flanked and surrounded, all the while spewing powerful munitions and blasting their essence in brutal waves.

Vala moved like wind. Everywhere she went she let out the anger that had been growing steadily since she saw Harbinger souls drawn and riven and enslaved, long ago during the First Breach. One poor ifreet put its hands on her, and she held it above ground with forces science could not explain, then she pressed him to the ground and with her boot she pulverized it.

Black Fountain consumed his opponents, grinding them to past and rolling over them, his famed team at his side wreaking absolute havoc.

And had he been anxious before, Ramses now revelled in war, grateful it seemed for the threat Orak's forces posed. And Paragas, she had never thought him to be the martial sort, but the scholar had studied well the philosophies of war, choosing each move with purpose, connecting every strike, aiming every shot, guiding his team to weak points with the decisive care of a surgeon.

The ifreet fell back, tightening their lines, and for an hour or more Vala found it difficult to break them. But they did, eventually, cutting their tight line in two and pressing in. She ordered her army to keep in close formations, moving as super teams of thirty two, coordinating their use of radiance in successive blasts. They pressed the ifreet back into one unit, and whittled them down to a small amount.

Then the ground opened beneath them. Tanks, for lack of a better word, rose. Segmented, semi solid undulations of scintillating forces, almost alive, their canons screamed when they opened fire.

"Now!" Vala commanded over the general channel.

The jumpships dove, bringing with them a red rain.

...that did nothing.

Vala sighed. She was beginning to feel a small amount of fatigue.

I can't let that bother me. I aim to be exhausted at the end of this.

"Pilots," she said, "focus your fire on the smaller ground units. The ifreet, and these

slinking creatures sniping from the mountains. We'll assault their armor. Harbingers, use radiance only."

They lit up the darkening sky, which without them would have faded into a violet night.

The first tank to fall wept, then burst in a blast of light so hot it melted the bodies of half a team.

The tanks had faces, with seven eyes, the seventh one blinded and clouded over on each. The largest tank, its seventh eye oozed.

It was the last, and took all their power, and they fled when it exploded. When its ashes met the ground the soil grew agitated, then Vala heard a deep crack. Black Fountain wrestled the first of the Archeus to come out of the opening. Orak's fortifications were opening, a hungry mouth, the Archeus its breath and the Anunnaki its bile.

They moved together, keeping the Archeus flanked, whose weapons could kill them. Each Harbinger fought their best, but more than Vala could stand fell. She rose above the ground and let loose a shriek, turning all the enemy heads towards her.

I tread new ground.

She felt it, the mind beneath them in the dark, and it frightened her. So she determined herself to frighten it, releasing in its full measure what Immogen had awakened from a font of echoes, a cosmic tomb.

The mind beneath them emanated power, power she could feel. She let it in, her own power mingling, and she heard voices: Catalyst, Solomon, many others she hadn't heard in a long time...

Immogen?

She heard his voice then, and it caused her pain.

She felt the power trying to crush her, a light inside her thoughts dimming. Her own power, more brilliant than what her foe projected, pounded at the seams of her flesh, and she saw a star in the blackness of space; only one.

Her flesh split. She ripped her harness apart, hurried through her buckles and shed her plates. She was naked, a beautiful figure, now risen to the clouds. Her radiance howled, burning and searing her organic cage. The pain was indescribable. She screamed until her throat burst, then her heart, her spleen, she was no longer a Harbinger, but an orb of blood, and yet she was still an identity. She left her orb behind and moved in writhing pillars over the Archeus. Then she touched the Anunnaki. She looked down at them with static eyes, and they looked at her with eyes made from decay, worms and maggots pulsing through excrement.

She screamed, retreating to her orb, and her naked body fell from within that orb, leaving her light behind.