Silverfleet and Claypool

“We’ll do whatever you say,” the secretary of the White Hand Council of Midday told Halyn Silverfleet, Fiona Rigan, Elan Klee and Julie Dalsandro. The four women were tiny in this huge building with this huge meeting room full of a huge table and huge chairs occupied by huge men, with vast spaces all around. But it was a singularly nonthreatening environment. “You tell us what to do,” the secretary went on. The six other men around the table nodded readily. Admiral Thespus and his adjutant looked on, expressionless. The local council was much different from the ones at Talis or Marelon, even if the local starfleet looked exactly the same.

“You have our outline,” said Dalsandro, Midday’s child. “We’ll have to do some work with your ministerial officials to hammer out the details.”

“They will be at your disposal.”

“And the capacity of your lunar mines?”

“We could put nearly five million there,” said another council member. “Three million and a half on Alpha, another million and a quarter on Beta. Most of the people are going to have to shelter here on the planet. You say the ocean trenches will be all right?”

“From your undersea maps, they look perfect,” said Silverfleet. “We only saved a few thousand there on Marelon, because they weren’t warned. On M-4’s moon, there weren’t that many ships. What’s your ship capacity?”

The mine expert on the council looked over at the man across from him. It was refreshing just to think that there were actual experts on the council. “We do quite a bit of shipping,” said the ocean expert. “Our oceans cover 99% of the surface. We have over three thousand ships of significant size, most of them in mothballs but seaworthy, and I have our total shipboard capacity at six million. They won’t attract its attention?”

“We don’t know,” said Silverfleet. “But it didn’t grab any ships we’re aware of on Marelon. How about mineshafts on the planet?”

“We’ll be crowding it,” said the mineshaft expert, “but yes, with deep train lines and underground storage and all counted in, we can fit fifteen million. The problem will be filtration.”

“That means we can actually hold everyone,” said the secretary. “But we need to raise the air processing capacity on the planet and on the moons. And we need to get people out to the moons. Admiral Thespus?”

“Mr. Secretary?”

“What is our capacity for delivering personnel to the moons?”

“Well, Mr. Secretary, it’s a twelve-hour round trip to Alpha and a fourteen-hour round trip to Beta. We have eighty-odd freighters with an average capacity, without freight, of two hundred persons. In addition, there is our shuttle fleet—but they have direct military application, and I cannot discuss them in the presence of these individuals.”

“Admiral Thespus,” said the mineshaft expert, rolling his eyes, “Commanders Rigan and Silverfleet and Wing Seconds Dalsandro and Klee have our full confidence. They are all Starfleet fighter pilots, hiatus or no hiatus. And they have a thousand times more information on the matter at hand than you do. You are under explicit orders to cooperate with them in the defense of the people of Midday.”

“Yes, sir,” said Admiral Thespus. “Understand that the people of Midday and the members of Starfleet that have the honor to be based here may not share your confidence.” He smiled peaceably at Silverfleet. “But be that as it may, we have at least two hundred and fifty shuttles which can carry sixty persons each, again not including freight, luggage and so on. People may not want to go, of course, leaving everything behind.”

“Well,” said the secretary, “that puts us at fourteen thousand each twelve to fourteen hours, plus sixteen thousand on the freighters, or almost sixty thousand a day. So to reach a goal of moving five million to the moons, we would need about ninety days. How long do we have, Commanders?”

“We left Talis on 8/9,” said Fiona, “and it was just beginning to attack the planet’s soils. It’s now 17/9. Uh, Commander Silverfleet’s experience at Marelon leads us to think it’ll be about done by now, but it takes three or four weeks to travel the distance of a typical jump. Talis to Midday is only a medium-length jump, so it may be here in three weeks.”

“It’ll be another week before it’s in position to attack the planet,” said Silverfleet. “And it’s possible our fighters and the Starfleet might be able to distract it for a few more days.”

“Does Commander Silverfleet suggest attacking the thing?” asked Admiral Thespus. “Because if so, we would be happy to have her wing join our fleet, though I’m led to believe she was against the Talians attacking it.”

“I was, and I’m against you attacking it, until we have some improvement in our armory. I suggested that we could distract it. In the past, when starships attacked it, it went after them, although those ones were within its reach. By the way, not one of the cruisers and battlecruisers at either Talis or Marelon lived through those attacks.”

“Interesting,” said Admiral Thespus.

“So,” said the secretary, “we’ll need to delay it for a long spell, or snap it up with the transport. Or we could just crowd the mines.”

“My figure of fifteen million,” said the mine expert, “is an absolute upper limit. We would be at the edge of our ability to process the air. We’d better work on getting people to the moon faster.”

“Or,” said another council member, “we will be in the position of deciding who gets to live.” Silverfleet looked at this man, a drab and colorless person on the surface. He was White Hand through and through, as well—but to him this meant an unswerving devotion to the human race, and it killed him to think of choosing one person out of every ten to die.

“Perhaps your cruisers and your fine battlecruiser could help out, Admiral Thespus,” the secretary suggested.

“May I point out,” the Admiral replied, “that would only add five ships to the total, with a capacity of, oh, sixty persons per twelve to fourteen hours.”

“Nonetheless,” said the secretary, “it would mean thirty-six hundred people in thirty days, which would be thirty-six hundred that would have died.”

“Those people,” said the Admiral, “might be happier in their own homes, and especially so if we do manage to defend the planet from the attack.”

“Do you have any hope of doing so?” asked another council member. “Because we’d very much like to hear of it, if you have.”

“We’re working on a few things. And if Commander Silverfleet would share her data—”

“Of course we’ll share our data,” said Silverfleet. “I don’t suppose you’ll share yours.”

“Well,” said the secretary, looking around the council, “I think we have spent enough time talking. We have a plan. Commanders, Admiral, we will leave it to you to develop the logistics and to work on a possible defense. But since there is not as yet such a defense—”

“We must proceed with a full evacuation,” said the mine expert.

“Hear, hear,” said several others.

“Is anyone here opposed to our consensus?” asked the secretary. Admiral Thespus twitched, but the council were in agreement. “Then,” said the secretary, “may Midday be the first of the colonies to successfully resist this ship, or thing, or whatever it is.” He smiled at Silverfleet. “You have the run of the planet, Commander, all four of you do. We understand there are nine more still in space?”

“They’re on lookout,” said Silverfleet. “They’ll be the first to tell us when it arrives.”

The Admiral and his adjutant looked suspicious, but the council seemed comforted with the news. “Very good,” said the secretary. “We’re adjourned.”

“Well,” said Fiona to the Admiral, “shall we have a look at your plans?”

“Carl will show you,” he replied, hurrying away to the side door of the council chamber.

“We’ve got the okay to help out,” Silverfleet sent to Claypool on a private channel from Vanessa, sitting in the courtyard of the council hall. “They’re cooperating completely, which of course is in their interest, but I’ve gotten used to people not doing what’s in their interest. Anyway, I have to go check out what they’ve got done so far, and what they’ve got to work with, but we might just save everyone this time. The question is whether there’ll be time to transport enough refugees to the moon. But it’s just a matter of a few million out of twenty-four million, not ninety-nine percent of ninety-some million, so that’s better, right? We can save everyone if we can only distract the thing for a week or so. Let us know as soon as you see something. Take care, Suz, tell everyone else to take care too. Halyn, out.”

“Love note?” asked Fiona.

“Communication with my subcommander. Problem with that?”

“No, no. Let’s go—Carl’s waiting in the crisis center, and he wants to show us the boarding area, and then maybe we get to go out to Alpha to see how that side of it’s going.”

“So what do you think so far?” Silverfleet asked, as they passed through a sliding door into the administration building across from the council hall. “Are they going to be able to get the population to evacuate?”

“Well, the ones who get to stay on the planet, and that’s most of the population, they really could do it in a day or two without too much problem. The hard part is getting people to the moons in time, and I’m sure there’s some reluctance. I mean, suppose you’ve spent your life building your house, raising your kids, living in your town, and now you have to get on a ship or go underground and when you come back it’ll all be gone.”

“I can’t imagine living on one planet,” replied Silverfleet, following Fiona down a long hallway.

“Well, me either. But I think their plans are fine, and they have just enough capacity that they ought to be able to squeeze it out.”

“Ought to. But you don’t trust them.”

“Oh, no. Of course not. Not the starfleet guys, at least.”

“The council?”

“Oh, you can always trust the White Hand Council, to do pretty much what they say, whether that’s good or bad.”

They were crossing an empty lobby outside a room full of terminals, and Silverfleet grabbed Fiona’s arm. “Fiona,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“Back on Taraadya, when you interrupted our breakfast, you said something about Suzane. Something about why they want her. You said something like, ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Or, ‘Maybe you don’t know everything about Suzane,’ or something like that.” Fiona looked away, a nervous smile on her face. “So,” Silverfleet went on, “do you know something, or were you just trying to make us nervous? Tell me, won’t you? One way or the other?”

Fiona smiled. “No, Halyn,” she said, “I was just trying to shake you. Did it work?”

“Sure,” said Silverfleet.

They spent an hour trailing around after Admiral Thespus’s enormous adjutant, Lieutenant Carl Langrum, asking questions and making suggestions and being answered with grunts. Their data on the crystalline entity was poured into the computer and left not a ripple. Somewhere there were scientists, maybe, who might spend some of the next few weeks studying the data with an eye to weapons, but Silverfleet never met any of them.

“You could speed things up,” Fiona suggested, “if you picked up simultaneously from City Center and also from Heights and River End.”

“That won’t fly,” said Carl, the third time he’d said exactly that about one of their ideas.

“All right, Carl,” Fiona replied, “tell me just what won’t fly about it. You save on crowds of people and lines and—”

“It won’t fly,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Silverfleet.

He glared at her, then said over his shoulder to Fiona as he turned to walk away, “People in River End won’t want to leave their homes. What’s the other one you said? Heights? They aren’t going to put up with this shit in Heights.” Over his other shoulder, he added, “You want to see a take-off?”

“What?” they asked each other as he walked out of the building. He was already standing by a car, glowering at them. They climbed in and sat behind him, and he punched in coordinates and soon the car had followed a series of tracks to the plaza before the exhibition hall. In the middle of the plaza, a freighter was loading up. Nearby, a small crowd of people stood around waiting to board, and around them on the streets more people stood around watching. Presently, the people waiting boarded and the freighter hovered upwards and then engaged its engines and was gone. A pair of shuttles coasted in from the side and replaced it on the ground, and another little crowd began to gather, deposited by train cars from various directions.

“It’s not going very fast,” Silverfleet observed.

“Just got started,” said Carl. “Seen enough?”

“Of this,” said Fiona. “Listen, Carl, we’re a burden on you. Why don’t you let one of your fighter pilots usher us around the planet?”

“They’re busy,” he replied. “They have work to do.”

“Carl,” said Fiona, “pardon me, but that’s bullshit. Our people are scouting the system, and the fighters certainly can’t be helping carry folks. What’s the deal?”

“Deal’s this. You’re going over to the Crisis Center and help with the plan. Then you get dinner over there. When you need to see something else, I’ll come and get you. So get in.”

They looked up at him, and they both suppressed an urge to kick him in the shin. Then they got back in the car and hung on while it careened around a few more tracks before stopping deep inside a military headquarters. There, Carl handed them over to a group of elderly intelligence experts, and the two fighter pilots were indeed put to work with the logistics of moving the entire planet’s population to its mines and moons and oceangoing ships.

Six hours later they were totally exhausted and very hungry, and they were shown to a small dining room where they found Dalsandro and Klee just finishing.

“Stay around and talk to us while we stuff our faces,” Fiona ordered. “How’s your day been?”

“Well,” said Elan Klee, “the mines are quite something.”

“Is that all you did?” asked Silverfleet. “Look at the mines?”

“It’s all they’d let us do,” said Julie Dalsandro.

“It was actually kind of interesting,” said Klee. “You’d think I’d seen enough mines to last me a couple hundred years, but I’ve never been in a mine on a planet where there was much gravity. It creates some interesting engineering problems.”

“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” said Dalsandro.

“Julie, such language,” Fiona commented.

“She’s absolutely right,” said Klee. “What do they think, we’ve got nothing better to do? I’ll tell you something else, people here have no sense that something awful is about to happen. Halyn, this could be a real problem. Average just plain folks haven’t been sold on this, not one little bit. They don’t understand why they’re suddenly supposed to leave everything they own behind and haul the kids and a few possessions down to the bottom of a mine.”

“They’ve been told,” said Fiona. “I mean, they can’t not know. It’s all over the news, the bulletin boards, the council’s been announcing it—”

“Ordinary folk aren’t the only ones who don’t get it,” said Silverfleet. “All the starfleet types we’ve been around all day, they don’t seem to get it either. Now that I don’t understand. I can see how Ma and Pa up in Rosebush Park don’t get it. But they’ll go, if the government tells them, they’ll grumble but they’ll go, and when they come out and the place is an airless waste, they’ll be somewhat grateful that we talked them into taking to the mines.”

“But you’d think the starfleet people would know better,” Fiona finished for her. “And that Carl guy got really weird when I asked if we could meet some of the fighter pilots.”

“Remember,” said Dalsandro, “how we were told, when we took over Marelon, how we should be suspicious of all the folks Silverfleet left behind? Well, we’re on the other side now. They know we walked out on the Talis starfleet.”

“And they’re trying to keep us from spreading the word, obviously,” said Fiona.

“Say,” Silverfleet asked, “what ever happened to David Milton, anyway?”

“After you shot him up in Black Rock? He quit starfleet. I think sitting in that dead ship was too much for him. He was a section chief for the White Hand on Marelon last I knew. Odds are he’s dead.”

“How sad.”

“It is, kind of,” said Elan Klee. “He could have turned out different. You know Trull is having a baby on New Home about now?”

“Who?” asked Fiona.

“Tamra Trull,” said Silverfleet. “Milton’s comrade at the Battle of Black Rock.”

“Oh. Little brunette. Kind of a klutz?”

“Yeah,” said Silverfleet. “I guess she’s got a long-term gig fixing fishing nets and, um, what do you call it, changing diapers.”

“So,” asked Dalsandro, “what are we doing tonight?”

“Tonight?” Fiona repeated. “Oh, night. I’m not used to sidereal time. Well, we could go downtown, get drunk, just like back on Central when I was at the Academy.”

“I think downtown isn’t happening,” said Silverfleet. “Let’s just party at my place.”

“Your whisky?”

“No, I managed to get Carl’s secretary to buy us some on the government tab.”

For a couple of days—the day length on Midday-3 was 26.5 hours—they continued doing whatever they were told to, and eating together, and each night getting drunk and having mindless conversations and possibly mindless sex, all isolated from anyone but Carl Langrum and a few other starfleet officers and engineers. By the fourth day of their residence on Midday-3, they were ready to jump at the chance to fly out to Alpha and check progress with the mines.

When their escort came for them, Fiona and Silverfleet had just gotten their vac suits on. Silverfleet turned to look at the room they all were sharing, the pillows and sheets strewn about, the whole thing smelling of sweaty women. Elan and Julie were already gone to look at another mine, gone before Fiona and Silverfleet were awake.

They went out into a brilliantly sunny day, and Carl took them to the plaza where their fighters now waited beside four freighters and ten shuttles and a host of Midday citizens. Thousands of people stared at the two women as they saluted four Midday fighter pilots—the first they had seen—and climbed into fighters. In a few minutes, Silverfleet was out of the planet’s slightly heavy gravity for the first time in four days.

The six fighters—Rigan and Silverfleet and the four Midday pilots—waited as the freighters took off and were joined by two cruisers and the battlecruiser. “Okay,” she asked her comm, “where to?”

“Follow the flight plan you’re now receiving,” the captain of the battlecruiser replied. And there it was, a half-orbit as they went to meet the oncoming alpha moon, then a tight curve in and a landing in a crater whose walls were full of mine entrances.

Silverfleet and Fiona deviated by at most a few dozen meters on their way out, until they were coming in and the gravity of the moon required them to take over manual control. The four fighters behind them followed closely, the cruisers behind them, while the freighters took a gentler landing curve.

A hundred meters from the floor of the crater, the four Midday fighters separated and opened fire, and the cruisers laid down channeling fire, and the battlecruiser and freighters let loose a cloud of missiles upon the two fighters in front of them.

But Silverfleet and Rigan were already turning sideways and accelerating five meters above the crater floor. They turned up and found the fighters trying to maneuver into their way, firing on them while they were exposed. But hitting either one proved more than the Midday fighters could manage. In three more seconds, Silverfleet took out one and then damaged a cruiser, while Fiona hit another fighter and forgot it as it spun, its controls fried, and crashed into the moon. In two more seconds, Fiona and Silverfleet met the other two fighters and left them dead in space. Now the battlecruiser backed away, letting loose wave upon wave of tiny missiles, while the cruisers tried to shoot down the two fighters. Fiona settled for hitting one of them a couple of times, and then turned to get the moon between her and her assassins. Silverfleet went straight at her cruiser and fired until it was dead in space, and then followed Fiona while it fell from the sky into the moon with a silent explosion.

“Dalsandro, where are you?” Fiona called on a quiet channel.

“Here, Commander,” said Dalsandro. Two fighters came up from an island on the night side of the planet. “We had an interesting time getting to our ships,” she explained, “but it looks like you had an interesting time on your own.” A window opened on Silverfleet’s screen and Elan Klee gave her a thumbs up.

In another minute, four fighters were streaking out ahead of any possibility of pursuit, headed for the chilly moon of the outermost planet where nine other fighters waited for them. As they flew, they told each other exactly how their days had been—and they analyzed a broadcast from the Midday starfleet, in the voice of Admiral Thespus, that announced the replacement of the council government with a military regime under his control, with full powers to deal with the present crisis.

“They’re canceling the evacuations,” said Dalsandro. “Even to the mines. They’re going to do a Talis. They want to fight the thing, and they think that getting everyone to safety will make them less courageous.”

“I knew something was up,” said Fiona. “I knew that Carl was covering something up. I’ll bet Thespus decided to do it the moment the council agreed with us.”

“The moment someone in the White Hand did something reasonable, and brave,” Silverfleet added. “Oh, no. Can’t have that.”

“Well, I hope,” said Dalsandro after a moment, “I hope you, I mean, I hope we aren’t going to let it happen like it did on Talis.”

Silverfleet sighed. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Go back and strafe the cities if people don’t evacuate? I mean, they tried to kill us. And it’s not as if evacuation was popular.”

“It’ll get real popular,” said Fiona, “just about the time that the thing sidles up to Midday-3 and starts eating all the air.”

“We can’t let it happen,” said Dalsandro. “My mom’s one of those people. My brother, and his kids. I went and saw them and—and they have no idea what’s coming. Why should they die for that? We have to save them.”

“We’ll do something,” said Elan Klee. They let that thought hang in the vacuum around their four fighters as they sped across the orbits of Midday’s six gas giants toward a distant rock.

A few minutes later, they intercepted a message from that rock, aimed at Midday-3. It was Claypool. “Halyn, Fiona,” she said, “it’s 21/9, 0408, and guess what, there’s something big just on the edge of hyperspace.”

The hulking arrival from the direction of Talis wasn’t the only thing they saw entering the Midday system on their outward trip. Two fighters appeared from the opposite direction, the direction of Alcen. As they passed the orbits of the Jovian planets, six fighters scrambled from Midday-3 and headed out to meet them. Just ahead of the light that bore news of their meeting came photons bearing the two fighters’ communications: a standard greeting between pilots of the Central Starfleet. Then while Silverfleet and Fiona and Dalsandro and Elan Klee watched, the six from Midday met the two from Alcen and then turned back, leaving the two as dust in space.

“What was that all about?” asked Elan Klee.

“Word of the crystalline thing has gotten to Central,” said Fiona. “They’ve sent out orders to the colonies along the route of the thing—probably sent orders to all the Central systems. But Midday doesn’t want to hear any orders from Central.”

“I saw your video,” said Claypool, after she had hugged Silverfleet. “Just the usual mind reading. Were you and Fiona playing chess by any chance?”

“You know, I’ve gotten so used to reading Fiona’s mind that I didn’t have to read those bastards’ minds.”

“I’m afraid I know their tiny little raisin-like brains a little too well,” said Fiona. “Starfleet types. Nothing if not predictable. Especially those based in system defense.”

“Well,” said Cloutier, “one of these days you’re going to misjudge by a tenth of a second—!”

“Del,” said Silverfleet, “you know you can’t think about things like that.” She strode over to where Klee had projected her fighter’s main screen on the stabilized ice wall. The blob from Talis had resolved itself—into not one humongous but many merely large objects. “So, it’s not the Crystalline Thing. What is it?”

“It looks a lot like thirty-five troopships,” said Cloutier. “And a cruiser. We should’ve known. The Crystalline Thing isn’t that fast coming from lightspeed. I don’t even think it gets to lightspeed.”

“So when’s it due?” asked Fiona.

“Not for another two weeks. This, this is Admiral Kenney and his marines, and a cruiser and five fighters as escort, and behind them a few dozen freighters.”

“Great,” said Fiona. “Just what this situation needs. One asshole with admiral’s stars isn’t enough, we have to have a backup asshole with admiral’s stars. And four thousand under-assholes in troopships.”

“It’s nothing,” said Silverfleet. “We could easily do away with five fighters and a cruiser, and then those troopships would be helpless. But the locals won’t like the bearers of bad news from Talis any more than they liked the bearers of orders from Central. Did you see those two fighters blown up?”

“We sure did,” said Claypool. “Blowing up messengers. It’s an easy step, but serious.”

“And it makes for some new possibilities with Admiral Kenney’s troopships.”

When the flotilla of troopships arrived in the vicinity of Midday-3, they had a much-enlarged fighter escort: their five had been augmented with the likes of Vya de Har and Cera Celaren, not to mention Fiona Rigan, Suz Claypool and Halyn Silverfleet. They were not hailed by the authorities on the surface. When they requested landing instructions, they were ignored. After half an hour of delay, Admiral Kenney got on the comm himself.

“Let me speak to Admiral Thespus,” he demanded. There was still no response. After a few moments of eye-rolling, he opened up the comm to all channels. “This is Admiral Kenney, commander, Central forces, Talis sector,” he announced. “Those in rebellion against the government recognized by Central are required to lay down their arms. You have thirty minutes before we land and take control.”

The ground easily met the deadline. A dozen fighters and two cruisers shot up from the plaza at City Center and assumed an attack formation as the atmosphere thinned around them. They met thirty-five troopships’ worth of missiles and channeling fire, and eighteen fighters flown by the best pilots in the known universe. Just as her sensors cleared for the black of space, the Midday fighter leader found herself in the sights of Elan Klee, and her wing second and third came up right behind her, taking out Klee’s shell before they followed their leader into fiery death. Suzane Claypool similarly met four fighters emerging from a high cloud—perhaps they thought it offered them concealment. Fiona, Dalsandro and Cera Celaren took apart another wing of four, and the last fighter stumbled in amongst Jana Crown, Conna Marais and Vya de Har. The cruisers did not even clear the atmosphere before each had a fighter in its face, and then, their controls dead, their shells gone, they fell back and burned up in descent. Silverfleet and Cloutier followed them down and strafed the plaza clean of defending soldiers. Ten minutes later, Admiral Kenney was on the ground and his marines were fanning out into the city.

“I didn’t know that was in your repertoire, Silverfleet,” he said as they stood in the plaza waiting for the council hall to be declared under control.

“What? Strafing? What do you think we practiced most in the Academy? Not officially, of course.”

“So do you think the coup plotters will actually give up?”

“We’ll see. Did you want to evacuate, when we came to Talis?”

“No. No. I was wrong, Commander. I have a lot on my conscience. I was only doing what I thought was right. I hope I can make up for it here.”

“Then let’s get the communications going and see if we can’t sway the locals. And then your troopships can start ferrying people to the moons.”

“Admiral,” said a marine, “the hall is secure. We have a message from the battlecruiser.”

“What? There’s still a battlecruiser out there?”

They hurried into the council hall, passing a little knot of officers being held at gunpoint. “In here, sir,” said a marine.

Admiral Kenney went into the communications center and took the headset he was offered. “Kenney here... Yes. What are my orders? Get your big ass down here and start picking up evacuees, you dolt... No, no, do as I say and there’ll be no charges. Don’t, and I’ll see if Commander Silverfleet has something to say to you.” He returned the headset and turned to smile down on her. “The captain said he’s landing right away, and not to bother you.”

“Admiral,” said yet another marine, “we’ve found Admiral Thespus.”

They went back outside. There he was, lying on the paved court, looking very relaxed after a fall from the fifteenth floor of the council hall.

The White Hand Council came out of the cells under their hall, and their places were taken by the several dozen highest ranking officers of the local starfleet, excepting only the crew of the battlecruiser. Carl Langrum, going into confinement where he would still be when the air was sucked out, hadn’t changed his expression. By now, a large and suspicious crowd had formed in the plaza, and Admiral Kenney’s adjutant was trying to calm them.

“Central is in control,” he told them. Those comforting words did not buy him any of the crowd’s patience. “We still have ten days or so to prepare for the arrival of the crystalline attacker.” They had no idea what he was talking about, and told him so. “You’ll be given evacuation orders within a few hours, and when—” But whatever else he was going to say was lost in a surge of angry retorts. Tiny Silverfleet spent a few moments gazing at the trees and the clouds and thinking of those long necks hanging down to drink the planet’s life away, then she took over for the adjutant.

“Okay, listen up,” she shouted, grabbing the microphone and punching it to its highest setting. “Listen up. You have no idea what’s coming, do you? Do you?” There were more angry shouts and a few things thrown. “Of course you don’t,” she said. “There’s a monster that eats whole planets, air and water and earth, and it’s on its way here—why would you want to hear about that? You want your house and your garden and your pretty blue sky, and who cares what anybody says.” The wave of hostile emotion surging from the crowd was accompanied by a black silence, which Silverfleet used. “Okay, let’s suppose it’s not any danger at all. Then you have time to listen, don’t you? What could it possibly cost you to listen, to someone who actually knows something about this thing that’s coming?” She handed off the mike.

“Uh, hello,” said Conna. She stood there in her vac suit, Helga in her arms glaring out at the returning noise. The front of the crowd quieted just out of curiosity, and meanwhile, marines in the hall were punching her up on planet-wide broadcast. “I’m, uh, Conna Marais, and I grew up and raised a family on Marelon-3,” she began, as video from Silverfleet’s flight through the capital city of the Talis system went up on the big screen on the side of the building.

There was the Thing, and there were the piles of dead, as Conna tried to talk about her family and her planet. And then there was the red-haired girl on the twentieth floor. Zoom in: bluish face, bulging eyes, patchwork of frost on her cheek. Conna looked up and was struck dumb for a moment. Then she said quietly, in the blank silence over that crowd, “That could have been my niece, or my granddaughter.” Many in the mass before her were suddenly thinking the same thing.

The thing arrived in the system nine days after the landing of the marines, and five days after that, it could be seen glowing in the night, closer and closer until it took up half the sky. By then, the weapons experts had got nowhere—but the troopships had made up for lost time, ferrying three hundred people per ship, per trip to the moons, and fifteen million people had moved everything they could carry into the mines on the planet. Finally, the troopships returned to Midday-3 to pick up the marines, and they and a flock of freighters and the fighters and the battlecruiser and one rebuilt cruiser took off just ahead of the beast’s attack. The troopships and freighters turned toward Veldar, out of the Thing’s apparent path, while the fighting ships headed for Alcen.

“You don’t have to come, Commander,” Admiral Kenney told Silverfleet over the comm. “Even Commander Rigan doesn’t have to come—I’ll honor her resignation from Starfleet.”

“No,” said Silverfleet, “we’ll be there.” She flipped her comm over to her channel to her comrades. “Let’s head for Alcen,” she said. “But this time we won’t be able to hide them all in mines—not eight billion, I think.”

“We’ll have to think of something else,” replied Cloutier. “You have anything in mind?”

“Oh, sure. Well, like I always say, give me a week to think about it.”

“We have a month,” put in Fiona. “It’s only halfway through its, uh, Midday meal. Then it has to fly to Alcen. Think we can come up with a plan in a month?”

“Maybe Tilla and Ginger will come up with something,” suggested Jana Crown.

“I’m banking on Halyn,” said Elan Klee.

“Well,” said Silverfleet, “we have thirty percent of the human population of the universe depending on us, and forty percent more a short jump away on Central.”

That thought was met with a general silence, and soon the buzz on the comms changed to private conversations, simulations and games of chess. Silverfleet punched up her private channel to Claypool. “Hey, Suz,” she said, “game of chess?”

“Sure,” replied Claypool, shuffling the dark cloud from her face.