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the force field became porous. Marek took it at a run, jumping through onto the grainy sand beyond.
    “Clear!”
    Laura shifted the terminus to spaceship two. This time the ground was covered in scrub bushes, but all of them had wilted. Some were smoldering. Then the terminus jittered, shifting up several meters then sliding sideways. Laura sent a flurry of corrections through her u-shadow, and it stabilized again. She checked her exovision schematics.
    “It’s holding,” she said.
    Fergus sprinted through. He ducked behind some boulders as the terminus shifted away, but not before they all saw his coverall transform to the same color as the rocks. It would be stealthed, too, Laura knew, keeping him hidden from any sensors the invaders could deploy.
    “Then there was one,” Kysandra said quietly as the terminus settled a kilometer from number eight.
    “Good luck,” Javier said.
    She turned to Slvasta, her red hair flowing over her shoulders, and took her time placing a wide-brimmed leather hat on her head. “I won’t abandon these people you oppress,” she said. “I will always be here to help them. But never you.” With that she walked calmly through the gateway, taking the cylinder off her shoulder as she went.
    “Arrogant bitch,” Slvasta grunted. But not before Laura had shifted the wormhole terminus once again.
    “Don’t underestimate her,” Laura said without looking at him. “And remember, I have exactly the same opinion of you.”
    Nobody said anything; all the officers were suddenly busy studying their maps or clipboards.
    “How are we doing with the second invasion fleet?” Laura asked.
    “Estimated eleven minutes until landing,” the Space Vigilance Office liaison officer said. “They’re entering the chemosphere.”
    Laura reconfigured the wormhole, opening the terminus above Tothland—an island in the Sibal Ocean not big enough to qualify as a continent. Seven crimson patches of light shone bright above the nighttime landmass as the spaceships aerobraked. Her u-shadow analyzed the positions and trajectories. Their rocket exhausts started to fire, sending pale splinters of luminescence shimmering across the hidden mountains far below.
    “Weapons Master,” Laura said. “Please prepare the bombs.” Three keys were hanging on slim chains around her neck. She passed them to him.
    Slvasta handed over his three keys as well. The weapons master opened the control hatch on the first of the three atomic bombs and put the keys in their twin sockets. Laura was almost tempted to activate her biononic force field function, but if the damn thing did go off, a force field wouldn’t protect her—not at this distance. The keys were turned simultaneously.
    “Bomb one activated,” the weapons master announced solemnly.
    Laura’s u-shadow performed a quick calculation as she walked over to the crude metal cylinder, and she set the timer for a hundred seconds. She flicked the red switch, trying not to flinch. Three lights shone red, and she closed the little hatch.
    Five Manhattan Project technicians wheeled the bomb into the middle of the crypt, directly in front of the gateway.
    “Stand by,” she told them. The terminus shifted again, down into the stratosphere, close to the trajectories of three invaders. Silver light shone through, coming from somewhere above the opening. “Go!”
    The technicians were all young and fit, chosen for their strength. They pushed hard, building speed quickly across the ancient stone-paved floor. The bomb weighed nearly half a ton, but it was moving fast when the trolley reached the gateway, and they gave it a final shove. Laura’s u-shadow immediately moved the terminus away.
    Theoretically, the bomb had a yield of forty-three kilotons. It would have been useless deployed in space against the invaders. For one thing, she couldn’t hope to open the gateway terminus close to an accelerating spaceship and match velocity accurately enough. And for another, even if