“An excellent point, Admiral. I will fight the war my government tells me to fight. Hell, I’ll even advocate for it given proper motivation, but I’m not an idealist and I’m certainly not a zealot. From afar the Federation cannot be distinguished from the Alliance in any meaningful way. The fact they’re on the wrong side of our battle doesn’t imply an alien species would choose to target them over us. It’s simply directional logistics. On that note, any news from Andromeda?”
In the wrong audience his unexpectedly frank words might have doomed his career. He was lucky this wasn’t the wrong audience—a fact she had to presume he knew.
“As a matter of fact, yes. I received word via ANNIE they were no longer reachable two hours ago, but another dramatic proclamation didn’t seem worthwhile until we gained a handle on Gaiae. Are you sure our colonies in the easternmost region are clear?”
“For the moment. I’ve set up a half-hourly monitoring ping to the local governments. If they go offline, we’ll know promptly. Not as if we’ll be able to do anything to help them….”
He fell silent, and she gave him the time and metaphorical space he appeared to need. Finally he looked back up at her, frustration lining his face. “Miriam, I don’t possess the capability to fight a war on two fronts. Not when one front is against aliens who can do what they did to Gaiae.”
“I realize you don’t. I’m working on the issue, though I fear it may be too little too late. For now I would advise you—to the extent my advice carries any weight—to manage your blockade as ordered but keep a sharp lookout on the eastern border. And if you have anything at all to keep in reserve, do so.”
“Thank you. For the record, your advice carries far more weight than anyone else in Vancouver.”
“I’m grateful to hear it, Christopher. Keep me informed.”
She cut the link, dropped an elbow on the desk and rested her chin back in her palm. She had always considered Rychen a good officer, better than most she had known. Like David he was a hero of the First Crux War, only he had lived to tell the tale. But she didn’t bear him ill will. He’d suffered plenty and borne the hero’s mantle grudgingly.
Still, she hadn’t expected to find an ally in him. She’d given up on finding allies beyond Richard and Alexis…and Alexis was gone. It broke her heart, when she hadn’t thought there remained any heart left to break. But she needed to fight for something. Without the fight she had nothing left.
You want to do something, Mom? Then goddamn do something.
She pulled the fleet distribution report back up, spread it out above her desk and studied the numbers for several minutes. Then she sent Rychen an encrypted message.
I’m sending you two stealth recon platoons and three light frigates from Sol/Central Command. They needn’t be part of the official blockade. Use them as you see fit, though the eastern border strikes me as a good posting for them.
— Admiral Miriam Solovy, EASC Director of Operations
SENECA
CAVARE, MILITARY HEADQUARTERS
Field Marshal Eleni Gianno stood in the center of the situation room. Though she was quiet, the air buzzed with noise. Voices. Hurried steps. The crackle of too many active screens in close proximity. Far more screens populated the room than people, grouped in clusters by region and purpose with a single person to staff each cluster.
Most of the data under review originated from the Alliance war, but a cluster had been set up to monitor the eastern colonies for anomalous activity.
They now knew what had happened on Gaiae and were soon to know what was happening on Andromeda. If the alien fleet was fanning out from Metis, four Federation colonies stood next in line. New Riga, Lycaon, Dair and Hadron each earned a display devoted to their status. If something happened on any of the worlds, she expected to know within minutes.
Until such occurred—and she held little doubt it would occur—she focused on the growing blockade the Alliance was in the process of implementing along the southern border.
A series of frigates and light cruisers patrolled fifty parsecs off the border, and any merchant vessels arriving in the vicinity from or heading to Federation space were approached and ordered to turn around or be boarded. Thus far the Alliance captains appeared to be going to great lengths to avoid shooting any civilian vessels, though several had been disabled after resisting.
Whoever was running the blockade was a clever strategist. The ships covered broad swaths of space and were always on the move, using electronic warfare scout ships to scan at maximum range so they picked up vessels in plenty of time to corral them before they slipped through the net. She expected the number of scout ships to increase over the coming days.
She could send a battalion to whittle the blockading ships down one by one. Except sporting advanced scanner capabilities, they’d realize her forces approached with ample time to clear out. And even if her forces were able to take out two or three ships, she felt certain when they arrived at the fourth one they would find an entire Alliance brigade waiting on them.
From a purely military strategic perspective, the blockade didn’t represent a significant obstacle for the time being. Her plan consisted primarily of targeting the already-weakened western Alliance colonies in any event, and the blockade did not stretch so far. She didn’t intend to assault the Alliance head-on where it was strongest. Not for a while yet, anyway.
But it wouldn’t take long for it to put a strain on commerce, then on supplies the military required. Seneca was self-sufficient in most respects, but given Romane’s convenient location it had been easy to become reliant on high-quality goods from the independent world for various needs.
The corps were guaranteed to grumble, then grumble louder, then pitch a fit. Pressure would increase on Romane and Pyxis and likely Pandora to join the Alliance, which would represent a significant problem.
She could assign escorts to the larger commercial vessels attempting to traverse the blockade, but it—
“Marshal, we’ve lost contact with the Andromeda scout ship.”
“They have their orders. Inform me the instant we reestablish contact.”
The GOI platoon had never returned from Metis. No drones had been launched to send updates—or if drones had been launched, they also did not make it out. The alien ships had not been sighted since the images the SpecOps agent captured at the portal. Yet if any doubt as to their existence remained in her mind, the loss of communications from the scout ship removed it. So there it was.
Analyses suggested the armada surrounded itself in a field which disrupted all communications in the same manner the nebula did. If the field extended as far as early data indicated, there existed no way to capture and transmit real-time images. A ship was going to have to get close enough to capture images then escape the field to reestablish contact. It remained to be seen whether that constituted a realistic feat.
She hoped like hell it was feasible, because they didn’t stand a chance of fighting these ships if they didn’t understand them.
Shortly after the Andromeda scout ship dropped offline, New Riga vanished from the grid.
So fast? How many ships did the aliens possess? Perhaps more importantly, how many ships did they need to destroy a single colony? How many colonies could they hit simultaneously?
The military base on New Riga had also received orders. They were to do everything possible to get a single stealth craft out with any data it successfully amassed in a few minutes’ time. She had contemplated ordering the base evacuated but doubted most of the soldiers would have obeyed. They would want to defend their colony.
“Commodore Suyen, order an evacuation of Lycaon and Dair and begin pre-evacuation procedures for Hadron.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lycaon and Dair were small colonies, supporting populations of around 60K each; Hadron was even smaller. The evacuations were a substantial undertaking, but doable.
She glanced back to the cluster of screens monitoring the southern border. Somehow
she suspected before long no one was likely to give a damn about a simple blockade.
“Alert me of any developments. I’m going to see the Chairman.”
14
MESSIUM
EARTH ALLIANCE COLONY
* * *
KENNEDY ROSSI WAS RUNNING LATE. She hurriedly composed a status report for the IS Design Board of Directors on her whisper while striding purposefully down one of Messium’s busier city streets.
Pewter and bronze towers rose above the sidewalks, though not so high as one saw on most worlds of equivalent development. Messium was a Third Wave world and had been colonized only sixty years earlier, but its level of maturation far exceeded other worlds from the same generation. No, its relatively recent colonization wasn’t the primary reason its largest city didn’t appear as grandiose as those on Erisen or Romane or Demeter.
Messium was industrial. Military fighters, frigates and a good percentage of cruisers were manufactured on the sprawling military base fifteen kilometers outside the city. Civilian transports and shuttles were produced at a nearly-as-sprawling Genyx complex on the northern edge of the city. Scuttlebutt around town was Magellan Aeronautics had begun building a capital ship for the business tycoon Ronaldo Espahn, though if true it must still be in the early stages, as it would need to be assembled in orbit and once that work began everyone would know. Downtown, smaller factories churned out CU hardware, personal interfaces, lighting and electric fixtures, water and air pleasure craft and dozens of other accessories to modern life.
The city wasn’t ugly as such. It was exceptionally clean in fact and the buildings did shine, if with a muted glimmer. The architectural décor complimented the planet’s topography in the region—champagne grasses coating flat plains lit by an amber sky.
But Messium was not a tourist destination. It was place where people worked, where people produced and damn well got things done. She respected their particular élan. If it weren’t days from Earth and so muted, she might consider a relocation for a few years. Alas.
She finished up the status report—which consisted entirely of ‘making progress’ plus flowery words added to fill the space and ease the directors’ minds—and sent it on its way. An exasperated breath blew itself out of her pursed lips as she approached the next intersection. Another eight blocks to go. She should have taken a levtram to the Palaimo offices.
Resigned to her fate, she reopened the report on the metal she had taken from the Siyane’s hull. She’d studied it for hours last night, but still could scarcely believe the data. The test results were nothing short of revolutionary—
Connection unable to be established. System is not connected to exanet infrastructure. Message will be queued until able to be delivered.
She stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk. That didn’t make any sense. Frowning, she sent the report to Nance; as the Board’s assistant the woman could get it to the directors.
Connection unable to be established. System is not connected to exanet infrastructure. Message will be queued until able to be delivered.
What the…? She tried sending a random message to her brother in Los Angeles and Gabe in New York on the off chance something had gone wrong with the exanet on Erisen, though it was an absurd notion.
Connection unable to be established. System is not connected to exanet infrastructure. Messages will be queued until able to be delivered.
Other people had begun stopping along the sidewalk near her as well as across the street. Not many, but an increasing number every passing second. What was going on? She pulled up her custom news feed…and found it empty.
They were cut off from the entire exanet.
A lead-up to an attack by the Federation? Impossible. Even if they were insane enough to attack an Alliance Regional Headquarters, they didn’t possess the technology to cut off the exanet to a planet. They couldn’t.
Suddenly she realized there was but one plausible explanation for the outage.
Metis.
“Oh, hell no.” She pivoted and took off running for her hotel.
Kennedy burst into her hotel room pulling her blouse over her head with one hand while she yanked her shoes off with the other. No way was she going to face an alien invasion in heels and silk.
After changing into workpants and boots and a lightweight tunic she retrieved the smaller of her two bags from the closet and dropped it on the bed. She tossed in one change of clothes and basic hygiene toiletries; the remainder of the space she used for her equipment. She made it a point to never travel for work without a set of tools. Better to take her own readings than rely on the assurances of a supplier eager to impress.
She raided the food cabinet for as many bottles of water as managed to fit in the bag and a stack of energy bars, then scanned the room. Did she have everything?
Not even close. But everything else was nearly four kiloparsecs away on Erisen. In a futile act she turned on the screen embedded in the wall. Nothing. She wound her hair back into a ponytail and slung the bag over her shoulder. It felt heavy but she couldn’t afford to leave any of the contents behind.
She’d try for the spaceport though she suspected it was far too late for anything so easy. The military base? It was an absurdly long walk and the levtrams would be overrun by now.
Much as she hated to admit it, in the short term the Palaimo offices likely constituted her best bet. They had basement labs where they did small prototype runs and testing—space which offered some protection and possibly makeshift weapons.
She laughed a bit wildly as she vacated the room and rushed down the hall. What did she imagine these aliens were that she’d have the opportunity to stab at one with a shard of metamat?
An alien invasion represented the only logical conclusion. The communications loss matched exactly Alex’s description of the conditions in the Metis Nebula. Her personal cybernetics continued to function, electronics and engines continued to function—or she assumed they did since no shuttles had plummeted from the sky during her sprint back to the hotel. There merely existed a pervasive, widespread and total interference with remote communications.
She wanted to study it; perhaps she could figure out how it worked. But she should probably concentrate on staying alive first.
In the few minutes she had taken upstairs the front desk area of the lobby had become jammed with angry guests demanding answers and failing those, heads on spikes. She jostled through them and out the door.
The street appeared marginally less chaotic than the lobby, as most people trod in short, erratic paths, doubtless banging away at their comms in confusion. No one was running and screaming.
She began to question her initial conclusion. Maybe it was simply a technical glitch or—
—then someone did scream. She looked in the direction of the noise, and found everyone looking up.
Nope, she was right.
The first plumes of flame in the distance—from the military base, she’d bet her life on it—rose into the sky as a series of ships gained shape and definition. Before their noses fully emerged from the clouds she knew these were the enormous dreadnoughts from Alex’s images. When framed against the landscape, they seemed so much larger.
This was not good.
The sonic booms of half a dozen fighter craft shook the ground as they streaked past overhead, pulse lasers firing at the approaching ships. A tiny spark of hope blossomed in her chest…if we were fighting back from the start, maybe we stood a chance….
A wide beam so deep red in hue it burned almost black shot out of the belly of the lead dreadnought and swept across the fighters, vaporizing four of them on contact. Two dodged the first shot and banked away in evasive maneuvers. The beam swung after each of them in turn, destroying both in seconds.
Or not. She resumed running for the Palaimo offices.
Chaos now descended in full on the streets, and it mimicked all the great disaster vids like a bad parody. People ran in every direction while exhibiting no clear
purpose or destination, stumbling over one another, pushing and shoving and creating havoc. A rare few helped others but most were deep in the throes of abject panic.
She made herself as unobtrusive as possible, slipping and shimmying and ducking as needed. Still, twice she got shoved into a building façade and narrowly missed being crushed to the ground by a passing stampede.
The mob now swelled so thick she no longer dared divert her attention upward to check the sky. That is, until the screams ramped up to a fever pitch and a vibration of new, more urgent terror shot through the crowd like an errant lightning bolt.
Above the cries of panic rose the screech of tearing metal, a sound she was intimately familiar with. All at once the press of bodies eased as people scattered in every direction.
She looked up just in time to see a thirty-meter chunk of one of the orbital arrays, its scaffolding twisted and mangled and possibly on fire, shear off a corner of the roof of a tower across the street on its way to crashing down on top of her.
PART II:
REQUITAL
“Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.”
— Publilius Syrus
15
EARTH
SAN FRANCISCO
* * *
ALEX FLOPPED DOWN IN A CHAIR at the kitchen table and tugged one of her feet up with her, letting her knee fall to rest along the bowed edge of the table. She snatched a blueberry muffin off the plate sitting in the center.
Dad glanced over his shoulder from the kitchen counter, where he was slicing up mangos. “So what’s your day look like, milaya?”
Her mouth was already full of steaming hot, deliciously moist muffin, but she nonetheless garbled an answer. “Mmmf mmhum fmmm.” She grabbed the glass of juice which had been waiting on her at the table and took a gulp, then tried again. “Physics exam today.”
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