the human race would be taken, the designers had seen fit to spend a great deal of taxpayer’s money on the interior. It was the amalgam of all government Cabinet rooms, infected with a quiet classicism. Twelve native granite pillars supported a domed roof painted in Renaissance style, with a gold and platinum chandelier hanging from the centre, while swan-white frescos of woodland mythology roamed across powder blue walls. The central round table was a single slice of ancient sequoia wood, taken from the last of the giant trees to fall before the Armada Storms. Its fifteen chairs were made from oak and leather to a Nineteenth-Century Plymouth design, and new (each delegate was allowed to take theirs home with them after their term was over). Glass-fronted marbled alcoves displayed exactly 862 sculptures and statuettes; one donated by each planet in the Confederation. The Tyrathca had contributed a crude hexagonal slab of slate with faint green scratches on the surface, a plaque of some kind from Tanjuntic-RI (worthless to them, but they knew how much humans valued antiquity). The Kiint had presented an enigmatic kinetic sculpture of silvery foil, composed of twenty-five concentric circular strips that rotated around each other without any bearings between them, each strip was suspended in air and apparently powered by perpetual motion (it was suspected they were pieces of metallic hydrogen).
Lalwani and Kolhammer joined the First Admiral outside the council chamber, and the three of them followed the President in. Twelve chairs were already filled by the ambassadors currently appointed to the Polity Council. Haaker and Samual took their places, leaving the fifteenth empty. Although Ambassador Roulor was entitled to take the seat vacated by Rittagu-FUH, the Assembly had delayed formally voting to confirm his appointment. The Kiint hadn’t complained.
Samual sat down with minimum fuss, acknowledging the other ambassadors. He didn’t enjoy the irony of being called here in the same way he’d called them to request the starflight quarantine. It indicated events were now controlling him.
The President called the meeting to order. “Admiral, if you could brief us on the Trafalgar situation, please.”
“The evacuation will be complete in another three days,” Samual told them. “Active Navy personnel were given priority and are being flown to their secondary locations. We should be back up to full operational capability in another two days. The civilian workers are being ferried down to Avon. All decisions about refurbishing the asteroid will be postponed until the crisis is over. We’ll have to wait until it’s physically cooled down anyway.”
“What about the ships?” the President enquired. “How many were damaged?”
“One hundred and seventy three Adamist ships were destroyed, a further eighty-six are damaged beyond repair. Fifty-two voidhawks were killed. Human deaths so far stand at nine thousand two hundred and thirty-two. Seven hundred and eighty-seven people have been hospitalised, most of them with radiation burns. We haven’t released those figures to the media yet. They just know it’s bad.”
The ambassadors were silent for a long moment.
“How many starships belonged to the First Fleet?” Earth’s ambassador asked.
“Ninety-seven front-line warships were lost.”
“Dear God.” Samual didn’t see who muttered that.
“Capone cannot be allowed to get away with an atrocity of this magnitude,” the President said. “He simply cannot.”
“It was an unusual set of circumstances,” Samual said. “Our new security procedures should prevent it happening again.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew how pathetic it sounded.
“Those circumstances, possibly,” Abeche’s ambassador said bitterly. “What if he dreams up some new course of action? We’ll be left with another bloody great disaster on our hands.”
“We’ll stop him.”
“You should have expected this, made some provision. We know Capone had antimatter, and he has nothing to lose. That combination was bound to result in a reckless strike of some kind. Jesus Christ, don’t your strategy planners consider these scenarios?”
“We’re aware of them, Mr Ambassador. And we do take them seriously.”
“Mortonridge hasn’t delivered anything like the victory we were expecting,” Miyag’s ambassador said. “Capone’s infiltration flights have got everybody petrified. Now this.”
“We have eliminated Capone’s source of antimatter,” the First Admiral said levelly. “The infiltration flights have stopped because of that. He does not have the resources to conquer another planet. Capone is a public relations problem, not the true threat.”
“Don’t tell me we should just ignore him,” Earth’s ambassador said. “There’s a difference between confining your enemy and not doing anything in the hope he’ll go away, and the Navy has done precious little to convince me it’s got Capone under control.”
The President held a hand up to prevent the First Admiral from replying. “What we’re saying, Samual, is that we have decided to change our current policy. We can no longer afford the holding tactics of the starflight quarantine.”
Samual looked around the hard, determined faces. It was almost a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Not quite, though. It would take another setback before that happened. “What do you propose to replace it with?”
“An active policy,” Abeche’s ambassador said hotly. “Something that will show people we’re using our military resources to protect them. Something positive.”
“Trafalgar should not be used as a
“It won’t be,” the President said. “I want the Navy to eliminate Capone’s fleet. A tactical mission, not a war. Wipe him out, Samual. Eliminate the antimatter threat completely. As long as he still has some, he can send one Pryor after another sneaking through our defences.”
“Capone’s fleet is all that keeps him in charge of the Organization. If you take that away, we’ll loose Arnstat and New California. The possessed will take them out of the universe.”
“We know. That’s the decision. We have to get rid of the possessed before we can start to deal with them properly.”
“An attack on the scale necessary to destroy his fleet, and New California’s SD network will also kill thousands of people. And I’d remind you that the majority of crews in the Organization ships are non- possessed.”
“Traitors, you mean,” Mendina’s ambassador said.
“No,” the First Admiral said steadily. “They are blackmail victims, working under the threat of torture to themselves and their families. Capone is quite ruthless in his application of terror.”
“This is exactly the problem we must address head on,” the President said. “We are in a war situation. We must retaliate, and swiftly or we will lose what little initiative we have. Capone must be shown we are not paralysed by this diabolical hostage scenario. We can still implement our decisions with force and resolution when required.”
“Killing people will not help us.”
“On the contrary, First Admiral,” Miyag’s ambassador said. “Although we must deeply regret the sacrifice, eradicating the Organization will give us a much needed breathing space. No other group of possessed has managed to command ships with the same proficiency as Capone. We will have returned to the small risk of the possessed spreading through quarantine-busting flights, which the Navy should be able to contain as you originally envisaged. Eventually, the possessed will simply remove themselves from this universe entirely. That is when we can begin our true fight back. And do so under a great deal less stress than our current conditions.”
“Is that the decision of this Council?” Samual asked formally.
“It is,” the President said. “With one abstention.” He glanced at Cayeaux. The Edenist ambassador returned the look unflinchingly. Edenism and Earth held the two other permanent seats on the Polity Council, awarded because of their population size and formed a powerful voting bloc; they were rarely in disagreement over general policy. Ethics, of course, nearly always set the Edenists apart.
“They’re inflicting too much damage on us,” Earth’s ambassador said, adopting a measured tone. “Physically and economically. Not to mention the disintegration of morale propagated by events like Trafalgar, and unfortunately our arcologies. It has to be stopped. We cannot show any weakness in dealing with this.”
“I understand,” the First Admiral said. “We still have the bulk of Admiral Kolhammer’s task force available in the Avon system. Motela, how long would it take to deploy them?”
“We can rendezvous the Adamist warships above Kotcho in eight hours,” Kolhammer replied. “It will take
