Deep Space. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ probe’s consciousness. “Happy birthday!”

      It took Red Mike several seconds to decide what the officer on board the carrier was talking about. AI reconnaissance probes are not in the habit, after all, of thinking about birthdays.

      But he could reason, within certain parameters, and he did possess a simple outline of history within his files, designed to give him both context and a framework for his conversations with humans. The date—November 10—was the 694th anniversary of the creation of the original Continental Marines, at Tun Tavern, Philadelphia in 1775. The later United States Marines and, now, the USNA Marines, continued the tradition of observing this date with what amounted to a religious fervor, celebrating it with parades, speeches, cake cuttings, and formal balls wherever possible. The Nassau, a tiny microcosm of the Corps with several thousand Marines embarked on board, was no exception.

      Red Mike was as incurious about human traditions and customs as he was about anything else not specifically within his purview, but the birthday greeting did raise one question. If the Marines were busy cutting cakes and making speeches … were they ready for what appeared to be gathering just on the other side of the Sh’daar Node?

      TC/USNA CVS America

       USNA Naval Base

       Quito Synchorbital

       0840 hours, TFT

      Gray was in his office going through the daily briefings when Rear Admiral Steiger’s avatar entered Gray’s inward awareness. “Excuse me. Sandy?”

      “Yes, sir?”

      “I’ve been directed to link with Geneva for a strategic conference. I’d like my flag captain there with me.”

      “Yes, Admiral. That sounds promising. You think we’re getting our flight orders?”

      “I do. The question is, what’s our destination?”

      Gray gave a mental shrug. “Seems fairly obvious to me, sir. All of those simulations of a deployment to Omega Cent we’ve been running … and then we get word of the Endeavor.”

      “Maybe … maybe. Unless the Confed Senate decides we need to block the Slan at 36 Oph. But the real question may be when is our destination?”

      “Through the TRGA? Maybe so. But we’re going to need more than a carrier battlegroup to take on the Tee-sub minus Sh’daar. When is the linkup?”

      “Twenty minutes.”

      Gray checked his inner clock. Nine hundred, then. Barely time to download the latest intel feeds. “I’ll be there, Admiral.”

      There was a lot to go through. Nano reconnaissance probes returning from the 70 Ophiuchi star system suggested that the Turusch and Nungiirtok were preparing for something, bringing in more forces from elsewhere. Probes from 36 Ophiuchi seemed to show the Slan working on consolidating their conquest. More ships were arriving in-system, big ships. Likely they were digging in, preparing for a possibly human counterattack … but it was also possible that they were preparing a new assault of their own, one aimed, quite probably, at Earth.

      And there was more. Signals Intelligence satellites in the Kuiper Belt had picked up the whisper of high-velocity microprobes churning through the fabric of space on outbound vectors, and the likeliest explanation was that Sh’daar clients were already scouting the solar system in preparation for an attack.

      Gray was put rather forcibly in mind of the situation President Koenig—then Admiral Koenig, commander of CBG-18, had faced twenty years ago. Convinced that the only way to stop the expected Sh’daar assault on the Sol System was to take the war into Sh’daar space, Koenig had arranged to miss expected Confederation Naval Command orders to stay in Solar space by leaving before they arrived. Later, he’d fought a French squadron sent to bring the “rogue” battlegroup in.

      The decision, as it turned out, had been the right one. A renewed Sh’daar assault on Earth had not materialized, and Koenig had gone on to discover their spacetime and force a truce. Biographers had pointed out, however, that had he been wrong Koenig would have been reviled as the man who’d abandoned Earth to the Sh’daar forces.

      The Confederation might well want the battlegroup to stick close to the Sol System, just in case the Sh’daar struck out from Ophiuchus.

      It was time. Gray alerted his personal AI that he was not to be disturbed, then opened a channel through to Admiral Steiger. The Admiral’s AI routed the connection to Geneva, and Gray found himself in a virtual conference.

      The European Unionists tended to be conservative in their virtual backgrounds. The venue was a large conference room, with two walls and the ceiling set as windows, the other two walls showing gently shifting abstracts of pastel light. Twelve men and women were seated around the conference table—it had the appearance of mahogany—half in EU military uniforms, the others in civilian dress. Through the windows, Gray could see the labyrinth of the Plaza of Light outside, a hundred stories down … and beyond it, the glitter of late-afternoon sunlight on Lake Geneva.

      “Admiral Steiger,” a bearded EU admiral named Longuet said. “Captain Gray. Thank you for linking in. We need to discuss a change to your upcoming mission.”

      “We feel that a deployment to Omega Centauri is not … critical at this time,” one of the civilians added. Her name was Ilse Roettgen, and she was the president of the Confederation Senate.

      “Indeed, ma’am?” Steiger said. “Our operational plan has been set for some weeks, now. In light of the new reconnaissance information from Omega Centauri, it seems to me that the mission is, if anything, more critical than ever.”

      “Not in light of the information from 36 Ophiuchi,” Admiral Longuet said.

      “We are in the process of assembling a strike force,” another civilian said. Gilberto Lupi was the Brazilian imperial minister of Defense. “We intend to take back 36 Ophiuchi, before the enemy entrenches himself, before he becomes too strong for us to oust him.”

      “I see,” Steiger said. “And I take it you’ve consulted with my government on this?”

      “There is no need,” Longuet replied. “We are invoking Military First Right.”

      Gray felt an inner jolt at that, a kind of psychic shock. Military First Right? After almost three centuries, it was possible that the Pax Confeoderata was about to fail.

      And when it did, the USNA Star Navy would be smack at the heart of the storm.

      First Right had not been invoked before, not since it had been passed by the Confederation Senate twelve years earlier. The law was assumed to be unenforceable in America. It looked like that assumption was about to be tested.

      The Confederation had arisen from the ashes of the Second Sino-Western War, a sharp and brutal conflict fought in the first half of the twenty-second century. The Battle of Wormwood and the subsequent fall of a small asteroid into the Atlantic Ocean had seriously weakened the old United States politically, forcing the union, first, of several North American nations into the USNA, followed by the merging of the USNA with the newly founded Earth Confederation. Under the original terms of the amalgamation, each member state kept control of its own military—especially its spaceborne forces. For a state’s СКАЧАТЬ