With the introductions and joking out of the way, General Smith suddenly turns serious. “About three weeks ago, Air Force intelligence intercepted the message, ‘Alterations complete. Will test in NGC three thousand six hundred and twelve.’
“Obviously, we had no way of knowing what the message meant then.”
“NGC,” Klyber calls out, “Norma Galactic Center?”
“Correct,” Smith says with a slight bow. “NGC did indeed refer to the inner curve of the Norma Arm, an unpopulated sector of the galaxy.” He walks to the edge of the dais, his eyes still focused on Admiral Klyber. “Care to venture a guess as to their usage of alterations or three thousand six hundred and twelve ?’” There is nothing confrontational in the way he does this. This is a friendly challenge between two fellow officers.
“It sounds like a date,” Klyber says, shaking his head and sitting back in his seat.
“You missed your calling, Bryce,” says Smith. “You should have been in intelligence. You would have really risen up the ranks.”
This comment gets scattered laughs as Klyber is the highest ranking officer in any branch.
“We do not have any outposts in the central part of the Norma Arm, it’s just too remote. We do, however, have an experimental radar station. This is what that radar readout looked like nine days ago—March 6, 2512.”
The screen turns flat black with concentric rings marking distances from the radar station. Except for the wand effect of the screen refreshing itself, the screen remains still and black for several seconds. When the radar wand finishes its third sweep, a litter of dots appear in one small section of the screen.
The wand sweeps by refreshing the radar reading every thirty seconds and the dots do not move. They stay in place for sixteen complete sweeps of the wand, a total of eight minutes. Eight minutes pass and the next pass of the wand reveals that the dots are gone. They vanished without a trace. The wand sweeps on, but the radar reading remains clear.
“Do we have a more detailed reading, sir?” asks Admiral Brocius. “I’d like to see an analysis of that.”
“This radar reading was taken over a four-million-mile distance. I’m afraid the ship designs and serial numbers were out of focus,” General Smith quips. “The best we could do was dots.”
The patch with the dots reappears, then grows until it fills the entire screen. The dots look like a clutch of glowing eggs laid across a black surface in no particular order.
“There are precisely five hundred and seventy-six dots in this picture,” Smith says. “There were five hundred eighty ships in the Galactic Central Fleet—”
“Admiral Thurston shot down four of the Galactic Central destroyers during the battle at Little Man,” Huang interrupts, standing up as he speaks. Sitting behind Huang, Leonid Johansson nods complacently, as if he has some ownership in that victory.
Once I notice Johansson, I turn my attention to the wall behind Klyber. Halverson is sitting behind Klyber taking careful notes. Beside him sits an officer I do not know …could be the ill-fated Major Burns for all I know. Each officer attending the summit has three aides. The last seat behind Klyber must have been Captain Johansson’s. It now sits empty.
“That would mean that every last ship was up and running,” an Air Force general I do not recognize calls out.
“Why not?” Huang shoots back, still standing, “they’ve had more than forty years to tune them up.”
“Admiral Huang makes a good point,” says Admiral Brocius.
As the inertia of this discussion builds up among the other officers, Admiral Klyber leans back in his chair and mumbles something to Halverson. The way Klyber leans back and the sly smile on his face suggest that he is telling the rear admiral a joke, but the startled look on Halverson’s face is anything but amused.
“Those ships are antiques. They belong in a museum,” the unidentified Air Force general responds.
“I wish I shared your confidence,” General Smith says in a raised voice, trying to arrest control of the floor.
“Come on, Alex …one sighting in two years …Before that it was forty years,” the unidentified Air Force general replies.
The board behind General Smith clears itself and turns into a map of the Scutum-Crux Arm. “There have been eighteen sightings of those ships in the last three days. They appeared here, here, and here …”
“That’s only a few million miles from the Scutum-Crux Fleet,” Huang says in astonishment. “Perhaps they plan to engage Admiral Thurston.”
“Yeah, too bad your boy missed them,” The unidentified Air Force general taunts Huang.
Rear Admiral Robert Thurston, sitting quietly in a corner in the back of the room, says nothing. He is a quiet, deliberate man. He has red spiky hair and the face of a high school student. His short waif ’s physique adds to the illusion that he is a boy just out of secondary school.
“Don,” General Smith says, turning toward his fellow Air Force man, “we have a radar record of three hundred ships appearing within six hundred thousand miles of your base. They come in, reprogram their broadcasting computers, and flash out. One theory is that they are testing our level of preparedness.”
“It looks like those old ships are flying circles around you boys,” says an Army officer. It is easy for him to talk. His forces aren’t expected to guard open space.
“You cannot possibly expect us to patrol every inch of space,” Don says, now sounding defensive.
“We’ve got a bigger problem than that,” says Smith. “Whatever fleet this is, it has an uncanny awareness of our movements.”
The last time I flew into Hawaii, I was a young sergeant in the Marines on leave. I played like a kid, swam in the ocean like a kid, and had a meaningless romance with a girl whom I could only describe as ornamental. Within a month of returning to duty, I landed on Little Man. After seeing the massacre on Little Man, I would never be a boy again. Looking back, I see my stay in Hawaii as the last chapter in my youth.
I did not fly directly from the Dry Docks to Earth. As a Liberator, I was not allowed to enter the Orion Arm and I did not want to take the chance of attracting attention.
Having a self-broadcasting ship allowed me to bypass the broadcast network and Mars security. I broadcasted myself to the “dark side” of the solar system, the spot exactly opposite Mars in its orbit. That left me with nearly one hundred million miles to fly to reach Earth—twenty hours of travel at the Starliner’s top non-atmospheric speed was five million miles per hour.
Even more hours of flying awaited me once I entered Earth’s atmosphere. The Starliner had a top speed of three thousand miles per hour in atmospheric conditions. The Mach 3 speed limit was a convention imposed throughout the Unified Authority.
“Harris, you there?” Ray Freeman’s voice sounded on my mediaLink.
“Yeah. I’m here,” I said. I had been watching the summit and was lost in the politics of it. Hearing Freeman’s voice brought me back to the real world. “Are you in Hawaii yet?”
“Not yet.”
“When you went to Little Man, were you hunting Mogats?” Freeman asked.