The image floating over the desk sensors was a thing of beauty as it rotated slowly in place. It didn't seem very different from a normal supermonitor, until the view expanded and included an SM—the TRN Alligator—in the field of view. Then the size of the ship snapped into perspective and you could see how much larger it was, in orbit around Seuss, one of the Beaufort system's gas giants. It gleamed silvery, hard to see against the misty blue and cream bands of atmosphere, but shone stark as the camera rotated to show the ship against star-spangled blackness.
Li Han's office was well lit, but wasn't quite as tidy as usual, with Li Magda's brief-pad and half-empty cup of tea on the small table next the window, along with a stack of flimsies. The owner of that office allowed herself a small internal sigh as she looked around and wondered that even after all her years, her daughter could still make a room messy with very little "stuff," then she shook herself and turned back to the ship they were evaluating.
As they watched the recording again, the massive "devastator" type ship moving through the test, Li Magda—Mags to her friends, but never in front of her mother—wondered at how calm Li Han looked. She seemed almost indifferent to what this class of ship could do, but that serenity had fooled a lot of people. Li Han almost seemed not to watch, her hands slowly folding yet another in a long succession of paper cranes but both of the Magdas—Rear Admiral Li Magda, TRN, and Fleet Admiral Magda Petrovna Windrider, TRN (ret.)—knew that her attention was riveted on the performance of the test ship.
Li Han set the bright red crane, no bigger than the end of one of her fingers, gently on the desk. "Point six seven percent larger, you say?"
Magda nodded. "Yes, around two million tonnes. Which means that she can carry a lot more, just in terms of magazine capacity. There's room for ECM and stealth ECM."
Mags was nodding, already itching to try one of the new ships. "But I did notice," she said, "even though it's fast, as you said, it's not nearly as maneuverable."
"There are always some tradeoffs." Magda shrugged and leaned back again, crossing her legs. "We'd all like infinite hull capacity, infinite speed, the ability to turn on a half credit with change and go anywhere." Mags snorted.
Li Han pulled a flimsy out of the stack, straightening the remainder of the pile. "It's very nice. Very good. And I did notice you included the 'go anywhere' part."
Magda sighed. "Yes. It will have to be used in systems where the warp points can handle them. For all others . . . well, that's what we still have smaller ships for. And you know that timing is often more important than size." She set her cup down. "But we know we'll need the firepower if the Tangri keep up the pressure. I'll recommend we stack this beauty with laser and shaped-charge warheads." With that she nodded to Li Magda who had long been a proponent of the laser torpedoes, as well as gee beams, as major components in the modern fleet.
Shaped-charge warheads were either nukes or antimatter charges in front of a mag bottle generator. That generator was the key to the whole idea. Just before detonation, it projected a venturi-shaped magnetic field to channel and focus the blast effect even as it was destroyed.
"I shall say, Magda," Li Han said, as she turned another piece of origami paper, white this time, on the desk with the tips of her fingers, considering. "Sienfeld Starship has out-done itself." She looked up and smiled slightly. The room brightened slowly as Beaufort rose, the cool planet glow competing with the yellowish lights in the office. "But then, you knew that."
"As the First Space Lord says," Mags chimed in as she stood and stretched. "Sienfeld does good work and though I'd much rather be off on my own doing 'tedious Survey stuff,' as a certain mother of mine has been heard to say, I'm looking forward to putting that ship through its paces myself." She struck a dramatic pose. "The TRN commands! Who are we mortals to disobey?"
Li Han looked over at Magda and sighed. "Please excuse the excess. The daughter was ever under the tutelage of her esteemed father and doting godparents and has picked up unfortunate habits."
They all three smiled at the old joke. "Ma," Mags said and caught Li Han's raised eyebrow. "Mother."
"Yes, daughter."
Mags nodded at the tiny crane on the desk and the half-formed one in Li Han's hands. "I never asked . . . when did you start folding cranes?"
Li Han ran a careful thumbnail along a crease before pausing and looking up. "About eighty years ago, when I was a POW."
That had been when she had been forced to surrender to Ian Trevayne. Her voice and face were serene and time had eased the ancient sting of that defeat. After all, they had won.
"Yes," she continued and took up the slow, careful folding again. "One hundred eighteen years ago, my grandmother taught me . . . and my mother approved because she thought I did not have enough 'ladylike' qualities." She set the new-made crane down next to its brother. "I refused to fold for years."
They had been allowed more access to hard copy than to electronic, and the first crane she'd folded had been a larger gray one, in the middle of the night when she hadn't been able to sleep. "Then it became important."
Li Magda nodded, as her mother's careful voice continued. Magda's silent presence was somehow reassuring as part of the past she hadn't thought to question was made real for her. "I folded the first thousand during that time." She took up her tea and looked from her daughter to her friend and colleague. "Of course I folded a thousand for you and a thousand for your brother." That had been when she had thought she would never have children.
She and Robert Tomanaga had decided to attempt it, having her ovaries removed and the ova scanned for genetic damage before having them fertilized and reimplanted in her own womb. Though it had taken an enormous amount of trouble, though thankfully less pain due to modern surgical techniques, it had worked not just once, but twice. "Since then, I have lost count."
A moment of stillness in the room, the image of the new DT floating silently in Beaufort's light, before Windrider began leafing through flimsies. "We need to settle—" The chime of the com cut off what she was about to say.
"Yes?" Li Han answered.
"First Lord," the secretary's voice came through, crisp and efficient. "I have a priority flash for you. From the RFN."
"Thank you. Send it to my desk." Both of the others had security clearance necessary, so Li Han called it up directly, replacing the image of the DT with the Message Start icon with the flashing symbol that indicated it was a multiple send.
Cyrus Waldeck's bulldog features snapped into view and Mags was shocked at how haggard he looked. It was impossible that he could have lost weight in the short time since she'd seen his image last, but it looked as though he had. His eyes seemed hollow, in a face that for the first time she could remember, looked old.
"President, President Emeritus, First Space Lord." He paused as if the simple salutation were almost too much, then plowed on resolutely as he always had; facing each problem head down, full on. "We have been forced to concede the Bellerophon System. Our losses are, I regret to say, are fifty-eight percent."
"Oh shit." That was Magda. Li Han nodded and Mags said nothing but started pacing as the message continued.
"I have withdrawn, to Astria, and will hold the line as best I can. Recording of the battle is attached."
Mags sat down and the three of them watched in deadly silence, as the Battle of Bellerophon unfolded in front of them. Halfway through Li Magda turned to her own brief-pad and called up a three-dimensional depiction of the Bellerophon Arm.
At the Message End icon, she spoke up. "They've cut off a huge chunk of the Rim Federation."
Han nodded and pulled up the same map on her desk where they could see it more clearly. "We are talking about an invasion force that we've only knocked down by 31 percent and they hold the system. They have what is left of the shipyards, and they've shown that even though they do not –yet—use warp points, they are aware of their existence and their importance to us."
Magda fanned her hand through the display. "All this . . . we're talking about the isolation of over four billion beings."
At that point, Li Magda's brief-pad beeped. "I hate to say it, but I have a bad idea, here."
The other two just looked at her, waiting. They knew each other so well that they didn't need to throw out a great many questions.
"We've gotten all the information from the astronomers. Their best guess is that the aliens are from the Bufo Nebula area . . . if not further, but Bufo is still the most likely. Why do we think that the aliens sent out only one fleet? Look."
She pulled up a star chart that no one could immediately understand. It wasn't a nice, orderly warp tree, with lines connecting neatly one to the next, but a convoluted wad of light as orderly as a tangled ball of wool.
"If I take away the warp connections . . ." She had to fight her machine for a moment or two to make it do just that. "This is real space. I'm just not used to thinking this way, but look." She highlighted Rim Federation territory, weirdly smeared through and around Republic Zones and Ophiuchi space and . . . it was too confusing to follow. But the blinking stars were obvious.
"There are a number of Rim Federation stars in the forty-light-year radius from that nebula. Now if I were planning to evacuate a system from a . . . what did they call it? A 'novalike incident' or a flare, I'd pick target stars wherever I could . . . and the most likely are all clustered in that direction, along the spiral arm." The globe of space that she had outlined began a slow blink. "We can't assume that this is the only fleet."
"Can you highlight all human and allied stars inside that target area?" Li Han leaned forward on both elbows, her cheek resting on her laced-together fingers, intent as a cat at a mousehole.
"I'm not sure my brief-pad has enough memory," Li Magda said.
"My desk unit certainly does." Li Han sat back and let her daughter struggle to make the tank spit out the odd images, her eyes still on the display. Then she punched in numbers on her desk pad, pulling up identifiers on this reconfigured star map, along with actual light-year distances, again having some trouble doing so.
"Got it!" She stood up as the desk tank image settled into its new configuration. "I've marked all our stars in blue, green, or gold." The three of them took in the chaotic mess of stars and considered the implications.
An Orion star hung between three RFN star systems; the PSU flung in a wild spray of stars along the spiral; the TFN was scattered, ironically through an area of space that was interspersed with Tangri, Rigelian, and Ophiuchi star systems, with Sol itself off to one side in an area of the galaxy surprisingly barren. It was a way of looking at space that no one but the old-fashioned astronomers ever used anymore.
"There are some of our systems in the same target area," Magda pointed out quietly. "The best-case scenario is that they only have the one invasion . . . but worst case—" She stared at the display over Han's desk. "We could have as many as a dozen of these alien fleets bearing down on not only the RFN, but us too."
They stared at it a long moment, trying to resolve the image into something they could recognize. It was difficult to think of space as actually being structured this way, rather than a neat grid of warp connections.
"You see," Han said and pointed to Bellerophon before her finger shifted to indicate a nearby star system, about six light-years away. It was affiliated with the PSU, a small G1/K2. She accepted the data from her daughter that extrapolated possible flights from the nebula. For a long moment the three studied the scrambled star map before Li Han clapped her hands together decisively. "I need to cut this meeting short, Li Magda, Magda. Seinfeld has its approvals; my secretary will forward all the information and signatures."
"Of course." The other two women were already gathering their things. "I hope we're wrong," Li Magda said quietly. "But we do have to plan as though we're not."
"That's for sure." Magda was clipped as she sealed her brief. She stopped as Li Magda impulsively hugged her godmother, hugging her back hard. "Impulsive child," she said with a slightly distracted grin. "Just as your mother says."
Mags straightened her collar as she scooped up her own flimsies. "Unfortunately not a child and not nearly as impulsive as I was twenty years ago."
"Ladies." Li Han nodded at her daughter and best friend, reaching for the intercom switch. "I will call you both tonight.—David, call the second and third space lords for an emergency meeting."
"Yes, First Lord."