The Japanese Fleet had begun its mission in 2514, right after the aliens were turned back on New Copenhagen. At the time they embarked, it looked like the war for the Milky Way had ended and the Unified Authority had won.
Yamashiro Yoshi recognized the decrepit state of the Unified Authority and saw it as dangerous. The Unified Authority was an empire in collapse. One more attack, be it from renegades like the Morgan Atkins Believers or aliens, and the empire would fall—it was teetering that close to the edge; but an empire teetering on the brink of extinction is also an empire on alert. Fearing that the U.A. Navy might start shooting before the crew of the
The
Takahashi, Yamashiro, and Commander Suzuki Hideki stood around the map table staring into a three- dimensional holographic map looking for signs of ships patrolling the area. They saw no movement, but their radar found several wrecks orbiting the planet. They tried to signal the planet but received no response.
“Perhaps they have abandoned the planet,” suggested Commander Suzuki.
Yamashiro grunted his agreement. “Maybe so,” he said. “As I understand it, the cities were destroyed during the war with the aliens.”
“Should we proceed to Earth?” asked Takahashi.
“No,” said Yamashiro. “Send down a transport. There may yet be people on this planet.”
“If there are people on New Copenhagen, then they are hiding. We’ve tried to signal them on every frequency, military and civilian,” said Takahashi. “They should have a robot transponder on this planet at the very least.”
“New Copenhagen was the Unified Authority’s final colony. The Linear Committee would not abandon its final colony without a fight,” said Yamashiro. “If they have abandoned the planet, I want to know why.” And then he said the words he wished did not need saying, “We may be defending a people who are already extinct.”
He gave his son-in-law a sympathetic gaze as he said this, but Takahashi looked away.
“Admiral, do you think the aliens have attacked Earth?” asked Suzuki. The conversation did not weigh as heavily on the commander as it did on Yamashiro and Takahashi. He was a bachelor.
Takahashi answered. “It’s been three years since we have had contact with Earth. Any one of a million fates may have befallen it during our absence. History may have left us behind. Perhaps the known laws of time do not apply in Bode’s Galaxy. By our clock, we have been absent for three years, but one thousand centuries may have passed on Earth.”
“Do you really think that is possible?” asked Suzuki.
“Possible? Anything is possible,” said Yamashiro. Then he spoke in a hollow whisper as he added, “Perhaps we only saw the first wave of a more massive assault before we set off for their galaxy.”
Time passed as the
“Our transports will cover more territory from the sky,” said Yamashiro.
“Satellites are even faster,” said Takahashi.
Yamashiro began to brush off the suggestion as cowardice, then realized that what Takahashi had said was true. “Ah, satellites, they would be faster still.”
The transport deployed three satellites and returned to the ship. Fearing the worst, Yamashiro had the satellite feed sent directly to him. He sat alone in his office, reviewing a live video that confirmed the worst of his fears.
When the Joint Chiefs had briefed him about his mission, they told Yamashiro that the aliens destroyed cities and left them in ruins. He had seen footage of soldiers and Marines fighting battles in forests. General Alexander Smith, the head of the Joint Chiefs, complained that the aliens had “knocked us back to the Stone Age.”
The New Copenhagen Yamashiro saw in the video feed was not in the Stone Age; it looked like a planet that would not support life. Where there had once been forests on this planet, the trees had all burned away leaving fields of charred stumps and scorched earth. Yamashiro searched for leaves, moss, ferns, grass, and animals. He found no signs of life, not even around the rivers and lakes.
He studied the ruined landscape for fifteen minutes, then he shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. He thought about the
The feed showed a city in which few buildings stood. He saw the frame of a skyscraper. The glass and skin of the building had fallen away from the frame. He saw an old-fashioned brick tower that leaned as if it had melted. The tower reminded him of an ice sculpture left in the sun.
Scanning the remains of the city, Yamashiro did not see flagpoles, steel roofs, glass, or bridges. The ground sparkled like broken crystals. The deserts he saw might once have been pasturelands. Where there once had been deserts and beaches, the sand had melted into glass.
Yamashiro winced when the feed identified Valhalla, the capital city of New Copenhagen. A few buildings still stood in downtown Valhalla, but most had been crushed. The streets had melted. The remaining cars, mostly melted hulks without paint, tires, or windows, sat mired in the street, sunk down to their axles.
That was Yamashiro’s strategy before the attack. After the attack, he changed his mind.
Three ships broadcasted into New Copenhagen space less than one million miles from the
The ships were long and narrow. The only naval ships Takahashi had ever seen were wide and wedge- shaped.
“Can you hail them?” asked Takahashi.
His communications officer said, “No.”
His helmsman reported that the ships were closing in at thirty-nine million miles per hour. The fastest Unified Authority ships Takahashi had ever seen had a maximum speed of thirty million miles per hour.
With the ships only one minute away, Takahashi gave the order to broadcast out, and the
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
