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be so for much longer.”

      Koenig nodded. Valcourt represented an uneasy alliance within the House—Unionists, Progressives, and a half dozen smaller parties, including the Reclamationists, the New Order Socialists, and the Popular Neodemocrats—and as such she’d been the face and the voice of the loyal opposition throughout most of his first term as president.

      The term loyal opposition had just taken on a new, stronger meaning for Koenig. Valcourt had come to him with the warning, rather than seeking political advantage for herself or her party through some kind of alliance with Geneva. He was impressed. He’d not known Julie Valcourt was capable of passing up a political opportunity.

      “I don’t know about that, Madam Speaker,” he told her. “There’s nothing like a threat from outside to pull a people together, and let them know they’re all working for the same goal.”

      “We’ll have to see about that, Mr. President. For now, though … I must ask you. What are you going to do about this … this power grab? Will you risk a civil war?”

      “I don’t know, Madam Speaker. Like I said, I only heard about it a few hours ago.”

      “A delicate situation, sir.”

      “Delicate doesn’t tell the half of it. If I give in, I set a precedent, and it’ll be all but impossible to reverse it. If I refuse, even if we don’t end up in a civil war, Earth will end up divided and scattered, unable to agree on a common front against the Sh’daar.”

      “‘Who speaks for Earth?’” Valcourt quoted.

      “You mentioned the Europeans. Do you think there’s a faction within the Confederation? A split we could use?”

      “I’m not sure. I think Brazil has sided with the EU. Russia may be undecided. Ukraine is with the Europeans. I think North India and the EAS are sitting on the fence, waiting to see how it all shakes out.”

      “Pretty much business as usual,” Koenig said. “China and the Theocracy will be watching closely too, but I suspect they’ll be siding with us.”

      Neither China nor the Islamist Theocracy were members of the Confederation … the gulfs left by several world wars continued to exclude them from a world government.

      Which, of course, meant that the Confederation wasn’t truly a world government, did not, in fact, represent a united Earth.

      “I’m terrified, Mr. President, that this is going to end in world war. Humankind may not survive. If it does, it will not be able to resist the Sh’daar when they finally come.”

      “On that, Madam Speaker, you and I are in complete agreement,” Koenig told her. “I just wish I could see a third alternative …”

      TC/USNA CVS America

       USNA Naval Base

       Quito Synchorbital

       1315 hours, TFT

      “Here they come, Captain,” Connie Fletcher told him. “They’re making the most of it, aren’t they?”

      “You think that display is just to impress us?” Gray replied.

      “Maybe they just want to impress themselves,” Admiral Steiger observed. “Kind of like team spirit, y’know?”

      The Confederation flotilla was decelerating into synchronous orbit, inbound from Mars after a two-hour passage. Those warships, Gray knew, had been assembled from all across the Sol System, and several had arrived over the past few days from the nearer extrasolar colonies—Chiron, Hel, New Earth, Bifrost Orbital, Santo Iago, and Thoth.

      In the van were four star carriers—the British Illustrious, the North Indian Kali, the European Union’s Klemens von Metternich, and the EAS Simon Bolivar—light carriers measuring from 600 to 850 meters from their mushroom caps to the ends of their drive stems.

      In a loose swarm of vessels moving astern and on the flanks were fifty-one additional Confederation warships, from fleet gunboats and light bombardment vessels to Admiral Delattre’s flagship, the massive railgun cruiser Napoleon. With tightly controlled bursts from their plasma maneuvering thrusters, the Confederation fleet began edging toward the open gantries of the synchorbital military docking complex.

      “Fifty-five warships,” Gray observed. “That’s a hell of a lot of team spirit. They outnumber us, that’s for sure.”

      The America battlegroup currently numbered just twenty-four vessels, though eight more USNA warships were docked at the Quito Synchorbital, undergoing repairs or refits. The Confederation fleet was trying deliberately to overawe the North-American squadron, of that Gray was certain. He wondered if Steiger was going to roll over and play dead on this one. Steiger had commanded a number of vessels before his appointment as CO CBG-40, but it had been a long time since he’d seen combat. Word was he’d been a lieutenant commander in the CAG office on board America during Crown Arrow twenty years ago. He might be pretty rusty.

      But then, it had been twenty years since Gray had seen combat, and he was rusty as well. The Sh’daar Truce had been two decades of quiet … no raids, no planetary assaults, and even potential human enemies—the Islamists and the Chinese Hegemony, for instance—had been keeping a non-confrontational profile.

      Training sims helped maintain basic skills, but they were no substitute for the real thing.

      The big question about Steiger was how aggressive he might be. Where Gray had been wearing a Starhawk at Alphekka and Omega Cent, Steiger had been driving a console in PriFly—not at all the same thing.

      Gray frowned at the thought as soon as it arose and pushed it aside. Steiger was the CO, and that meant he required the loyalty and the full support of every officer in the battlegroup. His normally laid-back attitude didn’t mean he wasn’t a fighter; look at Koenig, the CO of CBG-18. The man certainly wasn’t a coward, not with something like twenty-five years in the service.

      But would the man be able to stand up to what amounted to a naked Confederation power play?

      Gray didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he would be able to refuse direct orders from Geneva, not when doing so might well result in civil war.

      What he did know was that the parade of Confederation warships sidling up to the docking gantries out there was nothing less than a cold-blooded threat.

      Chapter Six

       10 November 2424

       Intermundi

       Civilian Sector Green 7,

       Quito Synchorbital

       1915 hours, TFT

      Lieutenant Donald Gregory leaned back in his seat, taking another deep inhale of firedust from the golden sphere in his left hand. The nanometer-sized particles were absorbed directly through his sinus cavities and into his bloodstream, triggering a release of dopamine in his brain and a sharp, rippling wave of pleasure surging through his body. He gasped, then went rigid for a moment as the wave peaked, then ebbed. “Oh, yeah …”

      His right hand was clasped tight around the bare waist of Lieutenant Jodi Vaughn, who giggled as he started to come down from the hit. “Good stuff, huh?”

      “Babe, right now I’m flying! Wrapped up in metaspace and ’cubing at max!”

      They were in the Intermundi, a club located just outside the synchorbital naval base catering mostly to military personnel. Gregory had had the duty tonight, but Teddy Nichols had been willing to swap with him, allowing him to keep his date with Jodi. Located within a huge, rotating wheel, the club featured numerous small rooms heavily draped and cushioned, providing privacy and comfort, and with hidden arrays of netlink connections to cater to every pleasure

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