Admiral Hussein turned the comm back to the Paralian’s channel. “I have to go now,” he told it.
“Is there a problem?”
“No,” he lied.
In less than an hour, Alexander had confirmation that the last of the militia aircraft was safely out of the red zone. He ordered the drone aircraft bearing the nuke to head for the target. In ten minutes, the low altitude airburst would vaporize everything at the impact site. On the security footage, the two offworlders still stood with Flynn.
“Mr. Shane,” one of the militia officers said shortly after he ordered the nuke into position.
“What?”
“We have developments in orbit. I’m putting the feed on holo one.”
The main display in front of Alexander shifted to show the schematic of the space around Salmagundi. It had changed since he had left the rest of the Grand Triad to their debate. When he’d left the meeting room, there had been a dozen unidentified spacecraft, one identified as the source of the lifeboats and of the offworlders standing in the security footage showing on holo five.
The red-highlighted spacecraft was no longer shown on the schematic. Now on the fringes of the image, Alexander saw thirty or forty blue icons pushing in from the edge. As he watched, three more appeared in range.
Closer in, in orbit above them, there were suddenly dozens of vessels.
“What the hell?”
“Our observatories are picking up dozens of spacecraft just now taking up positions in orbit.”
“How many?”
“At least sixty.”
Alexander settled back into his seat, staring at the screen. He had moved, but not quickly enough. He watched the icons maneuver in discreet jumps as observations were made and fed again into the model he was watching.
The militia officer spoke again, “We have sixty-three confirmed contacts. Sixty-five. Sixty-eight.”
“Stop counting,” Alexander whispered. Salmagundi had, maybe, a dozen craft capable of orbit. All dated from the original colonization. The Confederacy was about to descend upon them, and there was nothing they could do about it.
“Mr. Shane? We need confirmation to detonate the nuke.”
Alexander looked at the security monitor. Flynn and the offworlders were looking up.
“Mr. Shane, sir?”
Tetsami faced the newcomers and said, “Forgive me if I’m a little incredulous that my long-lost sister from Dakota just walked into our little no-man’s land. You got some convincing to do, chicky, starting with what in the name of Jesus Christ on a unicycle you’re doing a hundred light-years from what’s left of the ass-end of the Confederacy.”
She looked from the tall woman to the taller moreau. Her own genes, at least the genes for the last body that had been exclusively her own, had come from Dakota. However, unlike the three-meter-tall furry tiger-man, just by looking, there was usually no way to tell someone from Dakota from a human whose genetic history didn’t include a couple of genetic engineers trying to “improve” something a few centuries ago. A century or two of mixing bloodlines and the more-or-less “normal” human morphology dominated.
One thing was clear, the presence of tiger-boy proved that this couple was as definitively from off-planet as their nameless Protean.
But from
