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Chapter One

10 April 2405

In Alcubierre Space

Approaching HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

0840 hours, TFT

The star carrier America fell through darkness absolute.

Intense, artificially generated gravitational fields warped space tightly around the America, and no light could enter from the universe outside. While material objects like a spacecraft could not travel faster than light, there was no such prohibition about space. Indeed, in the earliest moments of the big bang, over 13 billion years before, newly born space had expanded with that initial burst of energy from two colliding branes considerably in excess of c.

And a ship embedded within that swiftly moving space could be carried along inside the gravitationally closed bubble at a pseudovelocity of nearly two light years per day.

America and her battlegroup had been traveling through the darkness within their separate bubbles for sixty-three days, now. And they were very nearly at the end of the first leg of their voyage.

Rear Admiral Alexander Koenig, the battlegroup’s CO, was seated in America’s command lounge. The room, broad and circular, projected the surrounding vista across the gently curved overhead when the ship was in normal space, showing the unmoving panorama of stars outside. Within the confines of metaspace, however, the interior of the fast-moving bubble of enclosed space-time, the lightless Void was at arm’s length. Currently, it was displaying the blue, cloud-scattered skies of Earth.

Two men appeared in the lounge entryway. “You wanted to see us, Admiral?”

Captain Randolph Buchanan was America’s commanding officer, tall, long-faced, with perpetual worry lines. Captain Barry Wizewski was the CO of the star carrier’s space-fighter wing commander, her CAG—an ancient acronym derived from “Commander, Air Group.”

“I did. C’mon in.”

“Staying off the record, sir?” Wizewski said, smiling.

“Yes, actually. I don’t expect to salvage my career after this, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give them the rope to hang me … or anything on the record to drag you into this.”

Anything discussed on either America’s main bridge or her flag bridge was recorded, as were conversations in the Admiral’s Office and all other working compartments on board ship. Virtual meetings held in-head were recorded as well by the ship AIs responsible for moderating all electronic communications.

“You’re doing the right thing, Admiral,” Buchanan told him, taking one of the low, round seats opposite Koenig.

“Thanks, Randy. But we both know the Senate’s never going to stand for this kind of insubordination. They can’t, not without looking like they’re not in control.”

“The Confederation Senate, no,” Buchanan replied. “Things may be different in Columbus, D.C.”

“Maybe. But it’s Geneva that’s calling the shots, and Columbus will have to go along.”

Koenig had never been entirely comfortable with his position as commanding officer of a Confederation Star Navy battlegroup. The star carrier America and her crew were USNA—the United States of North America—but they’d been reassigned along with most of the other ships of CBG-18 to the service of the Terran Confederation.

The problem, Koenig thought wryly, was that while the majority of Confederation naval officers—including the Joint Chiefs of Staff—were USNA citizens, the majority of the Confederation’s politicians were not. It was the Pan-Europeans, the Empire of Brazil, the South American EAS, the North India Federation, and others who were determining Confed policy in Geneva. Those nation-states that tended to support the USNA’s initiatives in the war with the Sh’daar were badly outnumbered—Russia, the off-world colonies, and Japan.

There were times when he was forced to walk an extremely narrow path between his oath to the Confederation … and his allegiance to the USNA.

“We’re … what?” he said. “Ten hours out from Emergence?”

“Yes, sir,” Buchanan replied.

“We don’t know if Giraurd followed us.”

“We don’t need him,” Wizewski said. “The USNA reinforcements are solidly with us. I think the Chinese are too.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Koenig said. “If the Pan-Europeans followed us from Alphekka, they might try to force the issue when we emerge.”

Buchanan nodded. “Giraurd didn’t seem all that happy when you told him off.”

“No. And his orders are to bring us back. But … I’m not ready to do that yet. We haven’t finished what we’ve started.”

“Do you expect a fight, Admiral?” Wizewski asked.

“It’s at least a possibility. And we need to be ready, just in case. No matter what Giraurd decides to do.”

“If he was smart,” Buchanan said, “he turned around and headed back to Earth to report. Tell them that we weren’t playing nice.”

“His orders might not allow that,” Koenig replied. “In fact, he may be under orders to take us under fire if we refuse to go back. He was certainly threatening as much when we started accelerating out-system from Alphekka.”

“Threats,” Wizewski said. “Blusters and bluff.”

“Maybe. But, as I said, I want to be prepared for anything. CAG, I’m going to have you put everything we have into space as soon as we emerge. We’ll pass the word to the other carriers to do the same as soon as we’ve re-established contact. Randy? I want you to make sure America stays well clear of the Pan-Europeans if and when they emerge. Don’t let them sidle up close for a conference. Don’t allow them to send over small craft to discuss things. And be ready to put out a warning shot if they do try to force their way inside our primary defensive zone.”

“Yes, sir.”

Koenig looked at Wizewski. “CAG? How are the reorganized squadrons shaping up?”

“Not as good as I’d like, Admiral. The new recruits have been training hard on the sims, but that won’t haul much mass when they hit the real thing.”

Koenig nodded. America’s squadrons had taken fearsome losses at Alphekka; one had been reduced to just three fighters.

“I hope to God they don’t get their baptism of fire against humans,” he said. “But if it’s a matter of guaranteeing the safety of this carrier …”

“They’ll do what they have to, Admiral. They all will. I don’t think any of them care all that much for the Confederation, when it comes to that. Their loyalty is to the USNA, to America, to you and me, to their buddies. … Hell, I think Geneva comes in somewhere way down on the list. Fiftieth or sixtieth, maybe.”

“I want you to impress on the squadron leaders, CAG, that their squadrons will not open fire on human ships unless they receive a direct and confirmed order from you. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If there’s a diplomatic way to resolve this, I’m going to take it. The last thing I want is to add a civil war to the war we already have.”

“I understand, Admiral.”

“I know you do. See to it that they understand as well.”

There was little more that could be said.

Koenig dismissed the two of them, and returned to his brooding thoughts.

Star Chamber

Ad Astra Confederation Government Complex

Geneva, European Union

0950 hours, TFT

President Regis DuPont hated the place. It felt so exposed … so empty.

Well … it was filled with stars, of course, but somehow that made it even worse.

The star chamber was a planetarium and more, much more—an immense sphere a hundred meters across, the inner surface designed to project imagery relayed from the big astrogational complex at Bern. Near stars were shown scattered across the interior space, scattered through three dimensions; more distant stars and the glowing, ragged lace-work of the Milky Way were projected against the curving inner surfaces.

Followed closely by a small knot of people, his personal security detachment and presidential aides, DuPont walked out onto 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 help smiling at that. “That does sound like Alexander Koenig.”

Months ago, before the battlegroup had left Earth, members of the Senate Military Directorate had approached DuPont with the suggestion—the order, actually—that he retire from the presidency of the Confederation Senate so that Koenig, the Hero of the Defense of Earth, could be voted into the office instead.

The political union known as the Terran Confederation was not a simple or straightforward democracy, despite what the media and the history downloads would have you believe. More than six hundred senators represented much of Humankind—though the Chinese Hegemony, the Muslim Theocracy, the Peripheries, and a few other smaller groups were not yet represented out of the turbulent, squalling billions of Earth’s population. Perhaps two hundred represented off-world colonies, near worlds like Luna and Mars, more distant out-solar ones like Chiron and Osiris. The president of the Confederation Senate generally was chosen from among the Senate proper by his or her peers, and held the position for six years … but a constitutional crisis, a vote of no confidence, even just the threat of impeachment could recall a Senate president and have him replaced by another. Beneath the democratic exterior, the Confederation government was a dense and labyrinthine tangle of alliances, promises, secret agreements, mutual back scratchings, and outright vote buying, to the point where very few bills actually reached the Senate floor without the vote’s outcome already being known.

DuPont was nearing the end of his term, and frankly, he was going to be happy to step down.

He’d long been aware that certain power blocks within the Senate were planning on replacing him with Koenig. The only question had been whether it would be at the end of the year … or immediately.

The idea, he’d been told, was to put Koenig where the man could be watched and controlled. Koenig was dangerous politically, a loose cannon who could do untold damage to that labyrinth of political entanglements. His leadership at the Defense of Earth had saved the Earth from annihilation and the people loved him, which might make him ambitious. More problematic, there were also logistical considerations. The farther out from Earth Koenig voyaged, the tougher it was to maintain even a semblance of control over him and his force. Better to bring him home and make him president—a position where he could be effectively managed.

Koenig, however, seemed to be playing by an entirely different set of rules. He’d turned down the presidency, pushing instead his extended operations plan, which he called Crown Arrow, an extended carrier battlegroup raid deep into enemy space. Koenig, DuPont thought, just might be one of those utter rarities—a man of absolute integrity who simply could not be bought.

No wonder the Conciliationists within the Senate were in a state of panic.

“So why have you brought me down here?” DuPont asked. “I don’t know what Koenig is doing. No more than you do.”

“You can,” Noyer told him, “sign an executive order directing Koenig to immediately relinquish command to Giraurd, and to return home. CBG-18 is under the direct control of the Senate, not the Navy. When he disobeys the Senate Military Directorate, he’s guilty of dereliction of duty. If he disobeys you, your direct order, it’s treason.”