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.”
“And how do we get the order to him?” DuPont asked. “If we don’t know where the fleet is, or where it is going?”
“Through a small fleet of mail packets,” Suvarov told him. As he spoke, the 3-D star map returned, this time with bright blue points of light scattered among the stars. “AI piloted. We have the Alphekkan Directory, after all, as well as copies of his avatar. And we can guess what targets might be of particular interest to him.”
“Ah.”
The Alphekkan Directory had been included with Koenig’s after-action report. It was a list taken from the wreckage of the immense alien space-going factory designated A1-01, including more than two hundred star systems in the general vicinity of Sol that were of interest, in one way or another, to the Turusch, a major Sh’daar client race. Those systems were pinpointed
