The outlying colony where Rich was born and raised was once part of a civilization that controlled many dozens of star systems. Now she has been thrown hundreds of years into the past by a sudden war with the Swarm - an incomprehensible and cruel enemy who came from the depths of space. Fifty years before Rich was born, Roy launched an orbital strike on his planet and landed troops on the surface. The enemy was never able to capture the capital's metropolis, but this became the only success of the people. The remnants of the enemy's robotic detachments took refuge in the ruins of an industrial zone, very close to the ruins of the city, and are still making unexpected forays from there. True, the enemy himself sometimes becomes the object of the hunt. Squads of illegal miners are raiding the industrial zone, extracting high-tech artifacts that people have already forgotten how to make. Rich is a student at a boarding school for teenagers, whose childhood was spent in the underground levels of a destroyed metropolis.