"And what, if I may ask, Your Majesty," the Solarian said very quietly after a long, silent moment, "does the `Excalibur Alternative' consist of?"
"It consists of everything we have been able to accomplish in four and a half centuries. Of every warship, every weapon, every strategy and tactic and technological advantage we've been able to put together. We certainly can't guarantee victory, Admiral Mugabi, but we can guarantee, especially if the Solar System joins with us, that the Federation's unwavering belief in its own superiority won't survive what happens.
"In more specific terms, however," the Emperor continued in a more normal tone of voice, sitting back in his chair once again, "we've already placed certain forces in motion, and we intend to activate still more of them in the very near future.
"First, we are prepared to station Evelynn's Third Fleet here in the Solar System indefinitely. As currently constituted, Third Fleet's battleline consists of sixty Sword-class dreadnoughts like Excalibur and two hundred Pendragon-class battleships, each of them about two-thirds the size and power of a Sword. They're screened by three hundred and forty Gawain-class battlecruisers and supported by one hundred Nimue-class carriers, each of which carries a thousand phase-capable fighters with an individual combat power roughly equivalent to a Federation Harpy-class destroyer."
Mugabi knew his jaw had dropped, but right that moment he couldn't do anything about it. Sixty of these monster ships? Three times that many battleships? His mind reeled at the inconceivable firepower the Empire's Third Fleet represented, but the Emperor continued calmly.
"At the moment, Third Fleet is the largest and most powerful of our formations, although its margin of superiority over Home Fleet is relatively slight. The problem, of course, is that the Federation already knows where the Solar System is, whereas it doesn't even know where to begin looking for us. That may change, but in the worst possible case, it will take them decades to locate any of our star systems. Which means that we can anticipate that any attacks it launches will be directed here and mandates that this is the point at which we must place our strongest defense. Particularly since the Galactics will soon enough deduce approximately how the Empire must have come into existence. Once they've reached that point, they will also appreciate just how vast their advantage in numbers and star systems must be, and I don't doubt for a moment that their response will be to attempt to utterly destroy any of our star systems they can identify.
"At the same time, our intelligence sources within the Federation indicate that it will take them at least eight years to concentrate a fresh squadron as powerful as Lach'heranu's to attack here. It will take considerably longer than that for them to assemble a force stronger than hers was, and I expect that it's fairly safe to assume that the Federation won't commit to any follow-up attack until it can muster a substantially more powerful force than the one it's already lost.
"While the Council is trying to put that sort of force together, we are prepared to transfer to the Solar System automated shipyards and supporting industrial modules. Initially, those yards and modules would be dedicated to replicating themselves, and we would use the same time to begin the transfer of our general technology base to Earth in order to bring the entire system up to date as quickly as possible. Our current estimate is that the first Solarian-built Sword could be delivered within six and a half years; production of fighters for local defense could begin at least two years before that. Once the first capital ships began emerging from your shipyards here, we estimate that your maximum sustainable rate of construction would be a tonnage approximately equal to seventeen Sword-class dreadnoughts per month."
Mugabi could feel the eyes of everyone else in the cabin upon him, but he himself could not look away from the Emperor.
"In the meantime, we intend to make full use of certain other advantages to keep the Federation as thoroughly off-balance as possible for as long as possible. I feel quite confident that what happened to Lach'heranu and the implications of the Empire's existence will come as a tremendous shock to the Council, especially when it realizes that what it actually faces is the very thing it was prepared to commit genocide to avoid. Unfortunately for the Council," the Emperor's thin smile was a cold and frightening thing to see, "that's only the first of many shocks headed in its direction. One that it will find particularly unpalatable is the fact that the Empire has substantially improved upon the performance of the Federation's own phase drive. In fact, our starships are almost eleven times as fast as theirs are."
Mugabi would have felt a fresh spasm of shock at that little tidbit... if he hadn't already been anesthetized by the cumulative impact of all the other shocks these people had administered to his system. There was no way that they were going to really surprise him again, he thought.
He was wrong.
"In addition," the Emperor continued calmly, "we've made a few other improvements. In particular, we've developed what we call the singularity comm."
"Singularity comm?" Mugabi repeated cautiously.
"Yes." The Emperor's eye gleamed with something suspiciously like amusement. "At the moment its maximum range is limited to only sixty-two light-years, but its effective transmission speed is approximately seven hundred times the speed of light."
"Faster than light?!" Mugabi jerked upright in his chair so quickly that even it couldn't keep up. "You've got an FTL communications capability?!"
"Of course," the Emperor said mildly, and this time there was no question about his broad grin. "Doesn't everyone?"
"My God," Mugabi murmured while his mind raced over the incredible strategic advantages inherent in what he'd just heard. The superior speed of the Empire's warships would have been a huge boon by itself, but coupled with the ability of a high command to deploy and redeploy them using the sort of communications the Emperor had just described, that speed became truly priceless.
"And finally," the Emperor continued after giving him a few moments to digest the strategic implications, "the Federation's `civilized' races are about to discover that they have all manner of problems closer to home."
"Closer to home?" Mugabi cocked his head, half afraid of what he was going to hear next.
"Much closer," the Emperor said with an evil chuckle. "To be completely honest with you, Admiral, if Lach'heranu hadn't moved to attack Earth, you still wouldn't know that we existed. Our military potential is still climbing relative to that of the Federation. In fact, the curve of increase is still accelerating. Unfortunately, our potential still remains enormously short of the full power the Federation could concentrate against us if left to its own devices. Because of that, we would actually have preferred to wait another fifty to seventy-five years to contact you, but the Council's decision brought our preparations to a head sooner than we might have liked.
"Nonetheless, our projections of the Federation's probable actions had always suggested to us that we would find ourselves in precisely this position, and because of that we've taken certain additional precautions. One, although neither you nor the Federation were aware of it, was to maintain a powerful fleet presence within one month's transit time from Earth for the past sixty years, ready to intervene if Lach'heranu's orders had been issued sooner. Another, however, was to make very cautious contact with certain of the `protected' races. In fact, we've spent the past century or so creating resistance cells on scores of `protected' planets scattered throughout the Federation. It was a particularly risky strategy in many respects, especially given that the Federation would have assumed that Earth was behind it if any of their security forces had realized what was happening. That could very well have ended up accelerating their decision to move against you, but we felt that it was a risk we had to run.