Survey Service Base Comm Center

The comm center had standing orders, but they were the sort of orders an ensign stuck with the lobster trick was hesitant to obey. But 0330 hours local or not, the admiral had said he wanted to be notified. Ensign Timility swallowed hard and picked up the phone. It rang twice, and then he heard the noise of curses as the admiral slapped at the answer button.

"What?"

"Ah, Admiral Thomas?"

"No, laddie, it's the Queen of Sheba. Who is this, and why the hell are you calling at this time of night?"

' Well, ah, sir, this is Timility in comm. We're—we're picking up something from a returning Search ship. Far Shore.'

"And?"

"It looks like they found it! We're getting a long text message now. I'll have a hard copy in five minutes."

"The devil you say. Jolly good! You did right to wake me, Timility. Let me jump into my pants and I'll be there straight away."

Sir George showed up in his pants, but not much else. He had thrown on a disreputable dressing gown, a long, threadbare thing of indeterminate color that might have looked smart twenty years ago. Sir George was bare-chested, and a sparse thatch of gray peeped through when the gown slipped a bit. Ensign Timility could smell the port on the admiral's breath, but Sir George seemed nothing if not sober and in control.

The admiral grabbed at the hard copy as it plopped out of the printer and riffled through the pages, growling to himself "By damn, they've got it. Dimity, I want everyone in tactics and planning roused out of bed and to work on this now. I want enough copies of this report to paper every wall in the base. My God, they actually found it. This calls for a bit of celebrating." Sir George stuck the report under one arm, dug an enormous black cigar out of his dressing gown pocket, and bit the end off it. "I've been saving this for the right moment. Imported it straight from old Cuba." He fussed about, trying to light it for a minute before it began drawing properly, and then stood, puffing smoke like a dragon, reading the Far Shores report. He looked up and noticed that Timility hadn't moved a muscle. "Well, get on it, Dimity. Rouse em! We've finally got some work to do."

Timility started working the intercom system, bringing the experts in. It was going to be a long night.

Second Lieutenant George Prigot, Royal Britannic Navy (Naval Intelligence) got one of the first calls. George had never been much good after a sudden awakening, and it took him a while to get his bearings. The call, a rather peremptory call to the comm center without explanation, didn't help. For that matter, his bearing had been a little off ever since Admiral Thomas had breezed into the Survey base.

As usual, no one had figured out what to do with George at Survey base, and he was apologetically packed into some broom closet they called guest quarters. Then Admiral Thomas had noticed George Prigot's card going past, somehow—and that was that. The admiral didn't like anomalies, and Mr. Prigot was one. Lieutenant Prigot would not be one. The Royal Navy permitted non-British persons to enlist, and Naval Intelligence was an odd barrel offish that wouldn't mind one more. Therefore . . . George had gone along with it. It would be nice to belong to something.

Intelligence. Why was it that every bureaucrat and brass hat in the League thought George Prigot belonged in Intelligence? He was an engineer, not a spy. Okay, so he was a native of Capital, and he knew which end of a Guardian screwdriver to hold. What good did that do them in Intelligence? George had used his brand-new clearance to peek at his own file, and the words there explained a lot about the cold shoulder he got from the rest of the Britannic Intelligence staff. All of them, right up and down, had urged that he was a bad security risk and should not be allowed to take up a commission. But Thomas had overruled them all. "There are times," the admiral's comment read, "when you have to have a little faith in people. Clearance approved."

George pulled on his brand-new uniform and staggered his way down the corridor to the head. He automatically went through the motions of trying to make himself look presentable and made his way to the comm center. Comm was crowded and confused, and getting more so by the minute. There must have been a couple of dozen people jammed into the tiny room and more coming all the time. A harried rating handed George a copy of the printout from Far Shore, and he found a quiet corner to sit down and start reading it.

Before he could get a fair start, the section chief of the comm center ordered everyone to get the hell out of her radio room and move into the auditorium on the next level down. The section chief then grabbed Timility's arm and gave him a royal chewing out for taking the admiral's order too literally and mobbing her command with a lot of unauthorized personnel.

George followed the rest of the herd down to the auditorium and took a seat in the back row. There were about fifty pages to get through. Like any good engineer, he wanted to read all the specs and have all the data before he reached any conclusions.

Others around him were of a different opinion. By now, there were thirty or forty standing around in the aisle or perched in chairs, yammering on, arguing over what it all meant and what should be done about it.

Finally, Driscoll jumped up on the small stage, grabbed a mike and shouted into it. "PIPE DOWN OUT THERE."

The hubbub slowly died out.

"All right," Driscoll went on in a quieter voice. "Everyone take a seat and we'll go over this together."

The murmur of voices rose up again for a moment as people sat down. George spotted Mac and Joslyn sitting near the front of the house. He waved, and Joslyn waved back. Mac was too busy reading to notice anything else.

"TEN-SHUN!" Everybody got to their feet as Admiral Thomas came in a side door and took the three steps up to the stage. He had gone back to his quarters and taken his time to get into his uniform and shave, but he was still smoking that big Cuban cigar, and looked more cheerful and alert than anyone had a right to be at this hour.

"At ease, all of you. Take your seats and let's get on with it. As you have all seen, Far Shore has found the little spot our Guardian friends call home. The big surprise is that planets of both star systems seem to be inhabited. At least Far Shore picked up radio traffic from both sources. One of the two planets was definitely identified as Capital, and the other planet seemed to be called Outpost. Far Shore picked up numerous radio calls in clear referring to the planet names. Captain Toshiro and his crew did an excellent job—not only did they find our quarry, but they also managed to sift through the radio traffic and come up with some rough figures on numbers of ships and how and where they are based. Most of their Navy seems to be stationed in omit about Outpost.

"Another bit of information. The anti-ship missile systems the Guards are so good at. There are no less than three of them in the system. One deployed around Nova Sol A, and so protecting Capital. A second deployed about Nova Sol B, shielding Outpost.

"And a third is being built around the barycenter. Toshiro's crew listened in on the chatter of the construction tugs, and Toshiro's best estimate is that the barycenter system is less than a third complete. Which sounds like an engraved invitation—though we haven't much time to exploit it.

"All this begs the question—what are we going to do? What is our plan? What are our war aims? Now we're all military here, and war aims are more properly a question for the politicians.

"So we drop the question of what to do in their laps. And when they come back with the answer we will be ready, because you lot here are going to break off into separate planning groups, each to plan for a different contingency. You will have your specific assignments within the hour, and some of you will stick with the jobs you have now and simply be expected to keep informed and assist.

"But we are going to plan for:

"A peaceful and open arrival—a show of strength that will scare the pants off the Central Guards and convince them to give up. Then I suppose we go around and hand out flowers to the people who attacked us without the barest hint of a provocation and then murdered our allies and friends using the most barbaric weapons imaginable, invaded our star systems and came bloody close to wiping out my fleet, and who have probably been kidnapping our kith and kin and enslaving them since before any of us were born. As you might have gathered, I rate the sweetness-and-light approach as not likely to work, and not bloody likely to be tried.

"Second, choosing among the various military options to find the one most likely to gain us a military victory with the greatest cost to the Guards and the least hurt to ourselves. In parallel with this, we will want to look at ways and means of rescuing any and all League-member citizens kidnapped by the Guards. I am certain that we can defeat the Guards, even in their home system, even against their loathsome bioweapons."

Admiral Thomas paused for a moment, and something in his ice-cold tone of voice horrified George Prigot before the new Intelligence officer understood what the admiral was saying. "The third option is simple. And since the Battle of Britannica, I must admit that it is more likely than it once was. Personally, I would oppose it strenuously. However: That third option is extermination. We wipe them out, down to the last. Bomb every city, every satellite, every ship, sterilize the planets of Nova Sol, and ensure that the damned worms are wiped out along with their masters.

"This, too, I am certain we could do."