The outlying colony in which Rich was born and raised was once part of a civilization that controlled many dozens of star systems. Now she is thrown back hundreds of years in the past by a sudden outbreak of war with Roy - 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 could not capture the metropolitan metropolis, but this was the only success of the people. The remnants of the enemy's robotic detachments took refuge in the ruins of the industrial zone, close to the ruins of the city, and still make unexpected sorties from there. True, the enemy himself sometimes becomes an object of hunting. In the industrial zone, detachments of illegal prospectors are raiding, extracting high-tech artifacts, which people have already forgotten how to make. Rich is a pupil of a boarding school for teenagers whose childhood passed in the underground tiers of a destroyed metropolis.