“So we’re just supposed to let enemy…excuse me…Caliphate and CAC forces free access through our space?” Cain was the first to speak up, and he made his doubts clear. “The last thing we need is having to worry about untrustworthy forces in our rear.”
“General Cain…” Vance knew he would have to combat this type of feeling among the Alliance officers, and he thought addressing Cain formally would lend gravity to the point. “…you better than anyone know what we are facing. Your forces will not be able to defeat this enemy without help.” He paused, staring at Cain, but trying to gauge Holm’s and Garret’s expressions in his peripheral vision. “You need more allies, general, and the only ones available are former enemies.”
Cain was silent, but he didn’t look convinced. Intellectually he knew Vance was right. But he still couldn’t reconcile himself with the whole idea. How was he going to make peace with all the ghosts…brothers and sisters who were killed by the very people he was now supposed to welcome as allies?
Vance sighed softly. He was frustrated, but he also knew he couldn’t understand the difficulty of what he was asking…not like these men and women. Vance was a manipulator and the head of an intelligence agency. He was accustomed to bartering with enemies and using whatever resources he could put to his advantage. Besides, the Martian Confederation had managed to remain mostly neutral in the wars between the Powers. They had better relations with some nations, certainly. But the deep hatreds weren’t there.
He looked at Holm…then at Cain. The Alliance had fought the Caliphate in space for over a century…and before that the precursor powers had battled on Earth for almost 100 years. Holm and Cain had watched friends blown apart…they’d held comrades in their arms as they drew their last breaths. And many of those friends had died at the hands of Caliphate forces. Now they were supposed overcome two centuries of hatred to welcome the detested Janissaries into their ranks. The logic of the plan was unassailable, but men’s minds work on more than pure analytics. Vance knew his Alliance friends would have a hard time accepting the Pact…but he was confident they would recognize the necessity and learn to work with their old enemies. Reasonably confident, at least.
Garret cleared his throat…loudly enough to get the attention of the room. “In any event, other than Mr. Vance’s Martian forces, it will be some time before the rest of the Powers can get any substantial units to the frontlines.” He paused, looking first at Holm and Cain and then at Vance. “I suggest we focus first on matters with relevancy in the immediate future.” Garret was trying to sidestep the issue for now, but he knew it wouldn’t be that long before they had to deal with it. The other Powers were already mobilized, with substantial forces positioned on the borders. Any day now, Garret might have to allow a CAC or Caliphate battlefleet to sail right past his defenses. That wasn’t going to be an easy day.
Holm took his cue from Garret. “I’d like to hear from Dr. Hofstader and Colonel Sparks now.” He glanced at Garret briefly then at the two scientists. “I think it would help us all to be up to speed on the technology aspects of this fight.” His eyes fixed on the German physicist. “Dr. Hofstader, would you be kind enough to bring us up to date on your research?”
Hofstader took a deep breath and slid his chair back. He stood up and looked around the table. “Certainly, General Holm.” He paused, thinking for a moment about where to start. His mind was always active, darting wildly from one topic to another. But these people were depending on him to give them clear guidance, not an outpouring of disorganized thoughts. He wasn’t in a lab now…he knew his insight was a key component in learning to defeat this enemy. In determining if humankind would survive.
“Thank you, Admiral Garret.” Hofstader looked haggard. He’d been working almost around the clock for months now, and the exhaustion was beginning to show. “I would like to begin with the energy we detected in the transmissions from Epsilon Eridani IV. Although I cannot confirm this with absolute certainty, I now am totally convinced we are dealing with a form of dark energy.” He paused, trying to decide how much detail to offer. He tried to remember he wasn’t talking to a panel of theoretical physicists. “This energy is undetectable to our normal scanning devices. In fact, we originally picked up the signal by accident when my colleague Dr. Travers was attempting to detect signs of life.”
Vance was looking at Hofstader as the scientist spoke. Travers, he thought, had been doing a lot more than Hofstader knew. But that wasn’t something they needed to discuss, at least not yet.
“We hypothesized that there may have been numerous prior transmissions that our detection devices were simply unable to intercept. Indeed, I just received a Commnet transmission from Dr. Travers. It was extremely cryptic…I’m sure he didn’t want to say too much on Commnet, but I believe he has been able to detect further signals.”
“He has.” Vance had to fight the instinct to keep his mouth shut. Travers was one of his people as well as a gifted scientist. Normally, Vance would be cautious about flaunting that connection. But he’d just lectured everyone on the need for cooperation, and he figured it should start with him. That Commnet transmission to Hofstader had also included a heavily coded message, one intended for Roderick Vance. “I have received a communication from him as well. He has detected four additional transmissions, though he has been unable to locate the source.”
“The transmitter could be anywhere…even the core of the planet.” Hofstader’s eyes had widened when Vance mentioned the additional signals. “I believe that the type of signal we are dealing with would move through the rocky mantle of the planet as easily as through deep space.” He looked from Vance toward Garret and Compton. “I also theorize that this energy can be used to send a signal directly through a warp gate.”
There was a stir in the room. No energy form yet detected could pass through a warp gate. The Commnet system was the fastest way to send a message, with transmissions traveling at lightspeed across each system before being downloaded into drones and sent through the warp gates.
Hofstader took a breath and continued. “I am sure you can see the implications of faster transmission.” He paused and swallowed. “Perhaps less immediately obvious is the enormous amount of power required to send a message through multiple solar systems without retransmission. Once again, we are dealing with a technology that is likely centuries ahead of us…if not millennia.
The German physicist paused and looked around the room again. He’d always been a maverick scientist, willing to go with his hunches rather than spend months or years endlessly running proofs, but now he was speculating wildly, and even he was uncomfortable with the level of pure guesswork in what he was reporting. But he knew there was no choice…if the men and women fighting and dying on the frontier couldn’t stop these things, this enemy would cut through the heavily populated areas of human-occupied space. They would attack Earth and spread death through the great cities of the Powers. He imagined neatly-arrayed columns of Reapers marching down the Kurfürstendamm and laying waste to the Institute. Human civilization – if not the entire human race – would cease to exist.
“Dr. Hofstader?” It was Admiral Garret who pulled Hofstader from his haunted daydream.
“Yes, admiral. Please excuse my distraction.” Hofstader was startled, and he pushed aside the nightmarish thoughts. “I…ah…would also like to review the strange metal used in the exoskeletons of the larger battle robots… the ones we have been calling Reapers.” The name, initially used by Teller’s exhausted troops to refer to the largest of the enemy combatants, had stuck. The smaller units were called simply battle robots…or just ‘bots. “As I stated at our last meeting, I noted that this same alloy was found in several areas of the Epsilon Eridani IV complex. I have now completed a deeper examination of the material, and I have some insights…some highly speculative ones…which I would like to share.”