LITMIR.BIZ

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the narrow catwalk leading to the viewing platform suspended at the sphere’s center. The others were waiting for him there already, a dozen Confederation senators in civilian dress, their shoulders and sleeves heavy with the gold and silver brocade, aiguillettes, medals, and intertwining decorations that declared their importance.

      There were no military officers present, though, and DuPont wondered why.

      For that matter, he didn’t see any senators with military experience—or any representing outworld colonies, like Andrews or Kristofferson.

      Sometimes it was possible to judge which way the political winds were blowing by noting who was present … or absent.

      “Mr. President,” Senator Eunice Noyer said, nodding. “Thank you for coming.”

      “Why here?” he asked. “Why not at ConGov?”

      “Because,” Noyer said, “the America Battlegroup could pose a problem. We’re trying to determine just where Koenig is going now.”

      “Surely that’s something the Confederation Military Directorate could advise you on,” DuPont said. “The Joint Chiefs, I gather, have been following Koenig’s campaign with great interest.”

      Noyer made a face. “They’re no help. Not to us.”

      “They may well be in collusion with one another,” Senator Sheehan added. “Carruthers wasn’t supposed to send Koenig reinforcements. He was supposed to order Koenig to return to Earth.”

      “The military,” Senator Galkin pointed out, “is no longer trustworthy. Carruthers and his cronies need to be reined in, reined in hard. Too much is riding on this. The safety of Earth, of all of Humankind, is at stake.”

      “So?” DuPont said with a Gallic shrug. “Where is the battlegroup now?”

      “We don’t know for sure.” Noyer told him. “CBG-18 has left Alphekka … but it’s not returning to Earth. According to Giraurd’s report, the CBG is heading for a nondescript star called HD 157950.” The red line drew itself from Alphekka across the sky to the right, touching another star, a dim one. “Ninety-eight light years from Earth. One hundred fourteen light years from Alphekka.”

      “That’s not on the Directory,” DuPont said. “What’s there?”

      “Nothing, so far as we know. It may be that he intends to take on reaction mass there. Likely it is a waypoint, with the final destination somewhere … farther out.”

      Senator Lloyd gestured, and a red beam of light drew itself out from the observation platform, connecting with one of the near stars—a golden-orange sun gleaming at the base of the constellation of Boötis. “On January seventh,” he said in a lecture-hall monotone, “the battlegroup leaves Fleet Rendezvous Percival—Pluto orbit—and does so apparently after learning from an incoming mail packet that the Sh’daar had taken Osiris, at Seventy Ophiuchi.” A fainter star well off to the group’s left flashed bright white. “The battlegroup proceeds to Arcturus, thirty-six light years from Earth, where it engages the ships of several of the Sh’daar client races and rescues a number of human prisoners of war, at Arcturus Station.”

      “The plan,” DuPont said, “was to raid deep into Sh’daar space, perhaps forcing the Sh’daar to pull back, at least to delay them.”

      “Indeed,” Senator Suvarov said. “There was talk of raiding Eta Boötis after Arcturus. The two are only a few light years apart.”

      “Instead,” Noyer said, “Koenig leads his fleet all the way across to here.” Another star, somewhat above and to the left of Arcturus and twice as far away, lit up as the red line connected them. “Alphekka. Seventy-two light years away. If the report is to be believed, he engaged a much larger Sh’daar client force and destroyed a moon-sized construction facility. At this point, he has a large percentage of our defensive fleet engaged seventy-two light years away … while the Sh’daar remain at Osiris, just sixteen light years from Sol. Sixteen light years! The enemy could be here at any moment!”

      “Well … it’s been … what? Six weeks since the Battle of Alphekka?” DuPont said. “And the Sh’daar have not materialized in Earth orbit yet. Perhaps Koenig’s plan to draw them off is working.”

      “Perhaps,” Noyer said. She gestured, and the star map around them vanished. “But this is what Admiral Koenig has been doing in the meantime. …”

      DuPont squeezed his eyes shut, then slowly opened them again. The three-dimensional representation was worse than an in-head download, because the brain accepted it as being out there, not within the visual cortex. Vertigo tugged at the president’s sense of balance, and he put a hand out to steady himself on the viewing platform’s safety railing.

      A brilliant double spark of a sun hung at the center of a vast and somewhat hazy disk with an interior void—a disk of protoplanetary debris orbiting the A0V/G5V double star of Alphekka. With a disconcertingly swift motion, the view shifted down and in, rushing toward a pinpoint that appeared near the inner edge of the debris field.

      Confederation Navy warships were passing a large alien structure—the roughly egg-shaped facility designated A1-01. DuPont watched an immense black mushroom shape with a slender, elongated stem drift past the far larger alien structure, beams of intolerably brilliant blue-white light stabbing out, striking the moon-sized artificial planetoid and plowing deep molten furrows into its outer shell. Thermonuclear explosions strobed and flashed and blossomed across the structure, dazzling multi-megaton pulses sparkling against and within A1-01 as fusion warheads homed and detonated in eerie and absolute silence.

      An alien warship, minute against the artificial planetoid, was struck by a beam and began to crumple and spin, its mass folding up unevenly into the black hole that powered it. A flash of hard radiation, and it was gone. …

      DuPont was sweating as the simulation played itself out. It was a simulation, of course, and not an actual visual record. He’d read transcripts of Koenig’s after-action report, and downloaded some of the visuals. The human fleet, in reality, had flashed past A1-01 in the blink of an eye, the weapons served entirely by AIs that could process incoming data far more rapidly than organic systems. The images Noyer was projecting had been concocted from the original after-action data by the AIs in Bern.

      But the realism and sharpness of the projection’s detail left DuPont’s heart pounding, his head swimming.

      He tightened his grip on the railing.

      “The battle at Alphekka,” Noyer said, “was a splendid success. Our intelligence services—the ONI in particular—are convinced that we have sent a powerful message to the Sh’daar. One that cannot possibly be misinterpreted. It is now time to bring the task force home.”

      “We dispatched Grand Admiral Giraurd to Alphekka with reinforcements,” Senator Lloyd said, “with orders that the fleet immediately return to Earth. Evidently he arrived shortly after … all of this.” Lloyd waved a hand, taking in the chaos of thermonuclear fury and high-energy-charged particle beams surrounding the group of senators and aides standing on the observation platform.

      “Seventy-two light years is a forty-day journey for our ships,” DuPont pointed out. “They would only now be approaching Sol, even if Koenig turned back immediately after the Battle of Alphekka. And he would have needed time to effect repairs on his fleet.”

      “But a mail packet can make the same voyage in two weeks,” Senator Galkin reminded him. “And one arrived in Earth orbit four weeks ago, delivering Koenig’s report on the Battle of Alphekka. A message from Giraurd announces that Koenig is continuing his original mission, that he is headed for HD 157950. No word of Giraurd’s plans. He may not have known himself at the time. No word of where Koenig is planning on taking the fleet beyond HD 157950. Mr. President, we are completely in the dark. A quarter of Earth’s fleet is somewhere out well beyond the farthest limits of human space, and we have no idea where it is or where it is going!”

      DuPont couldn’t

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