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CHAPTER FOUR

Bellerophon System

Terran Federation

October 7, 2552


“Morning, Lloyd.” Achilleas Rodoulis lifted his coffee cup in salute to the comm display. “What can I do for you this fine day?”

“Nothing planet shaking,” Commander Marchant replied. “The Captain just asked me to give you a call about that exercise Admiral Adamovič was talking about day before yesterday. He says she’s planning on bringing it up at tomorrow’s CO’s brief, and he wanted you to see about getting a memo together covering the points you and I talked about. Right this minute, he and the Admiral are both headed planet-side for a meeting with President Xeneas, but he’ll be back in two or three hours—four, at the outside. You think you can get it all organized in that window?”

“Not a problem,” Rodoulis said. He sipped coffee, then smiled crookedly. “Not a problem.”

* * *

“Sublight in ninety minutes, Skip,” Antonia Michaels said.

Captain Tobias Echols looked up from the chess game on his smart pad and checked the astrogation display. The Devinger Lines freighter Lucille G. Anderman—known somewhat irreverently to her crew as the Lucy Anne—was twenty-five days objective and three-point-five days subjective outbound from the Espeadas System, approaching Bellerophon, where she would arrive in the aforesaid ninety minutes. Of course, that was ninety minutes by Lucy Anne’s clocks; by the standards of the rest of the universe, it was well over eleven hours. Not that it mattered particularly to Echols or his crew.

What did matter to them was that as too infrequently happened—far too infrequently, in Echols’s opinion—this time Devinger’s Bellerophon office knew Lucy Anne was coming. The system wasn’t on Lucy Anne’s regular route, but the Espeadas agent had known for at least two months that someone would be making the trip, and Echols and his crew had drawn the lucky number. At least the layover wouldn’t put them too far behind on their scheduled run to Centauri.

Unless, of course, the Bellerophon office had screwed up, which also happened more frequently than he could have preferred. In fact, he had a bet with the purser over just how FUBARed the paperwork would be this time. Which he would be learning sometime in the next fifteen hours or so. In the meantime, all he could do was wait for the inevitable, and he nodded acknowledgment of Michaels’s report, then looked back down at his pad.

Surely there had to be some way he could save his queen’s castle!

* * *

“Hi, Alaksiej,” Captain Viktor Nedergaard said as Alaksiej Litvak’s image appeared on his comm. “What do you need?”

“I’m afraid we’re running a little late, Vic,” Litvack said.

“Oh?” Nedergaard cocked his head with a merely inquisitive smile, but it wasn’t easy to smile naturally. As the head of Konstantinos Xeneas’s personal security detail, Nedergaard really disliked hiccups in the president’s schedule at any time, and especially today. “How late do you think?”

“Probably less than fifteen minutes,” Litvack replied, and unlike Nedergaard, he allowed an edge of disgust into his grimace. “The hangup’s at Admiral Adamovič’s end.”

“I see. Is it anything serious?” Nedergaard asked as casually as he could.

“No. Just between you and me, I think Adamovič’s dragging ass because she’s pissed the Governor is ‘dragging her down’ to Kórinthos. As a loyal member of the Federation Marines, I’ll deny that under oath, you understand.”

“Oh, I understand!” Nedergaard said with a chuckle that was only slightly forced.

Litvack might be a Marine, but he’d headed System Governor Mollie Ramsay’s security team for almost three years, and he and Nedergaard had established a solid, professional relationship that had segued into personal friendship. They understood one another well, and Nedergaard wasn’t at all happy about what was about to happen. On the other hand—

“Okay, I’ll advise the front gate that you’ll be a little late,” he said. “Just make sure you get here before the baklava gets cold!”

Cold baklava?!” Litvack shuddered. “Talk about a way to motivate somebody! See you in a few.”

* * *

“Don’t forget the Lucille Anderman is due in today, Angie,” Quincy Rogers said, and Angelica Lewis hid a smile.

She really liked Rogers, and for a Heart, he was easy to work with…usually. He was a worrywart, though, when normal shipping routes were disordered. A certain degree of that came with his job as Devinger Freight Lines’ VP for Freight Management, but he was one of those people who always had trouble delegating, and that could get out of hand when his routine was disturbed. As DFL’s Warehouse Manager, Lewis got a better look at that than a lot of their people did.

“I haven’t forgotten, Quincy,” she said. “In fact, Jordan pinged me about an hour ago.” Jordan Dupree was DFL’s chief communications officer in Bellerophon. “System Command just put out a routine notification that there’s an incoming wormhole signature. A little early for our girl, but I’m willing to bet it’s her.” She shrugged. “In fact, it’s just about got to be, since it’s the only signature out there at the moment. She should be dropping sublight in about another four and a half hours.

* * *

“Good morning, Mollie,” Konstantinos Xeneas said, rising along with everyone else in the briefing room buried under Ithaca House, to greet Governor Ramsay as Erasmia Samarili escorted her, Rear Admiral Adamovič, and Captain Aguayo into it. Major Litvak, the Marine commander of Ramsay’s protective detail, trailed along behind.

“Good morning,” Ramsay replied as she crossed to the table to shake Xeneas’s offered hand. Samarili waited till the president had waved for Ramsay and all the others to be seated, then poured a glass of ice water for the system governor, and Ramsay smiled at her.

“Don’t forget dinner Tuesday,” she said, and Samarili nodded with a smile of her own. Then she withdrew, and Ramsay turned back to the system president with a politely raised eyebrow.

“Your memo said it was urgent,” she said.

Ramsay was ten years younger than Xeneas, with the slenderness of someone who’d grown up on a low-grav planet, and her brown eyes were dark with obvious concern. Her family was well placed in the Five Hundred, but she was both a naturally compassionate woman and one willing to see what was before her own eyes, and she’d been the Bellerophon System’s governor for almost eleven years. She’d put down deep roots here, and she knew as well as any native Odyssian that even though Bellerophon was an atypical Fringe system in a lot of ways, it still had far too many bones to pick with the federal government and the Heart Worlds in general. She’d done her best to ameliorate the more egregious abuses, but she was only too well aware that the situation in the Fringe in general had grown steadily worse with each passing year.

“I’m afraid ‘urgent’ is probably putting it lightly,” Xeneas said heavily.

“Why, if I may ask, Mr. President?”Admiral Adamovič asked. She was twenty years older than Xeneas, silver-haired, with a stocky build that looked almost chunky beside the taller, slimmer Ramsay, and her blunt features reflected her bulldog attack mentality only too well. “There wasn’t a lot of detail in the memo Governor Ramsay shared with me,” she added.

“I didn’t want to put too many details into it, Admiral,” Xeneas said. “For a lot of reasons. Including the fact that I wasn’t too sure you’d believe me.”

“Believe you about what?”

Adamovič sounded more than a bit impatient, and Xeneas suppressed a grimace. The Admiral was unfortunately well aware of her own connections to the Five Hundred, and her attitude towards the Fringe was markedly different from Mollie Ramsay’s. She seemed to feel that spending her valuable time to grant a mere star system’s president the opportunity to address her was an enormous—and totally unwarranted—sacrifice.

Captain Aguayo, her solid, muscular flag captain, was as much a Heart Worlder as she was, but a flicker of distaste chased itself across his expression as his admiral’s tone registered.

“I’m sure President Xeneas is about to tell us that, Admiral.”

Ramsay’s tone was ever so slightly but unmistakably repressive. She held Adamovič’s gaze with her own for a moment, until the Admiral’s nostrils flared and she gave a curt nod. Then the governor turned back to Xeneas.

“You were saying, Konstantinos?”

“I was saying that I think this is going to be one of the unhappiest conversations we’ve ever had,” Xeneas replied. “I don’t know what messages you may have received from Sol, but we’ve recently had word from New Dublin, and it’s not good.”

“Meaning what?” Adamovič said sharply.

“Meaning, Admiral, that New Dublin’s gone ‘out of compliance,’” Xeneas said flatly.

The Admiral’s eyes flared wide, and Ramsay sat back in her chair in obvious surprise.

“I knew there were some…concerns about Governor Murphy,” she said after a moment, her tone as troubled as her expression. “I had no idea it might have gone that far, though!”

“I certainly understand that.” Xeneas tipped back his own chair and shook his head, his expression grim. “I don’t think anyone ever really ‘expects’ something like this. But I’m sure you can understand why I might be concerned about the repercussions beyond just New Dublin and Concordia.”

“Why should it have any implications for Cyclops?” Adamovič’s tone was barely short of peremptory as she threw out the question. It was an obvious challenge, and Xeneas didn’t try very hard to hide the contempt in his own expression as he gazed at her.

“Because New Dublin and Concordia aren’t the only parts of the Fringe that are more than a little unhappy with the status quo, Admiral.” His tone was that of an adult explaining something to a particularly slow child. “One may debate the reasons for that, but only a fool would try to pretend it’s not a fact.”

“Are you—” Adamovič began sharply.

“Admiral!” Ramsay said even more sharply, and Adamovič’s head snapped around towards her. From her congested expression, she hovered on the brink of a furious outburst, but Ramsay’s brown eyes nailed her.

“You will remember the courtesy due to President Xeneas’s office,” the governor continued coldly. “There may be sharp differences of opinion, but that doesn’t mean those differences aren’t legitimate, and the President has only stated the obvious. You’ve seen the same briefings I have, and probably purely military ones I haven’t. And that means you’re as aware as I am—or damned well should be—that what the President’s described as ‘unhappiness’ is rather stronger than that. And, frankly, for quite a few of the Fringe systems, that sentiment is completely justified!”

Adamovič’s outraged expression segued into one of shock.

“We’re both Heart Worlders,” Ramsay told her, “and all too many Heart Worlders never bother to listen to the Fringe at all. I’ve mentioned the…unwisdom of that attitude in my own reports, and I sometimes wonder if anyone’s bothered to review them at all. But if New Dublin’s gone out of compliance, I doubt it will be the last system to do so.”

“Then the Navy will just have to teach them the error of their ways, Governor!” Adamovič said harshly.

“That may be true,” Xeneas said. “For the moment, however, Governor Ramsay has a point. In fact, according to the information that’s reached me here in Kórinthos, other systems have gone out of compliance. In fact, by the time my informant left New Dublin, virtually the entire Concordia Sector had declared its secession from the Federation and the formation of something called the Free Worlds Alliance.” Adamovič looked as if he’d just punched her in the belly, and he continued coldly. “At least a handful of systems from the Acera Sector have announced their intention to join that alliance, and I strongly suspect more will follow.”

“And what were the sector pickets doing while all this fucking treason was going on?” Adamovič demanded.

“Mutinying,” Xeneas said flatly.

“What?!” Adamovič surged halfway out of her chair, and Aguayo looked as if Xeneas had just slapped him.

“I said they mutinied.” Xeneas regarded her coldly. “Apparently, the federal government ordered Admiral Terrence Murphy’s arrest shortly after he successfully defended New Dublin against an attack by at least a dozen League carriers. The New Dubliners were…less than pleased by that. They objected, and when they expressed their displeasure, an Inspectorate officer sent to arrest him shot and killed the system president in front of several hundred witnesses.”

Ramsay stared at him in horror, but he never took his eyes from Adamovič as alternating shock and fury chased themselves across her face.

“After that, it was a bloodbath. Only a handful of the Hoplons and marshals sent to arrest Murphy survived the fiasco—the cluster-fuck, to use my cousin Achilleas’s charming phrase—and New Dublin tried them for murder afterward. And hanged them.”

“They murdered Federation military and police officers?!”

“No, Admiral. They executed them.”

“Don’t you go splitting hairs with me!” Adamovič barked.

“I’m not splitting hairs at all,” Xeneas said. “I’m telling you exactly what happened. And that it’s spreading.”

“Well it’s fucking well not spreading here!”

“Really?”

Xeneas gazed at her, then tapped his armrest smart screen. Something in his tone caused her eyes to narrow, and Major Litvak’s head snapped around, right hand moving towards his hip, as the conference room door opened.

Don’t, Alaksiej!” Captain Nedergaard said sharply from behind him. The pistol in the Odyssian’s hand was very steady, and the uniformed troopers behind him carried assault rifles.

“I like you a lot,” Nedergaard continued. “I really do. But if your hand comes out from under the table with a gun in it, I will kill you.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” Adamovič demanded, surging to her feet. “I’ll have you—!”

“Sit down, Admiral!” Xeneas snapped. Her head whipped around towards him, and he slammed a hand on the conference tabletop. “Until this minute, I wouldn’t have believed you could be even stupider than I thought you were! If you can’t sit down and control yourself, then Captain Nedergaard and his people will drag your arrogant Heart ass out of this conference room and throw it in a fucking cell!”

Adamovič stared at him in sheer, stunned disbelief.

“Put your ass in that chair now!” he barked, and slowly, manifestly against her will, she settled back down.

“As of ninety seconds ago,” Xeneas continued then, tapping the earbud in his left ear, “a codeword was passed over the planetary datanet and the Navy’s communication channels. That codeword was ‘Thermopylae,’ and at this moment forces loyal to Bellerophon are disarming all federal personnel anywhere in the system. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on aboard your ships, Admiral Adamovič, but given the percentage of Fringers in your ships companies and how completely and utterly pissed off the Fringe is, I will be astonished if they, too, aren’t under Bellerophon control within the next hour or two.”

“You are insane,” Adamovič half whispered. “You have to know how the Oval will respond to this!”

“Konstantinos?” Ramsay’s voice was stronger than Adamovič’s, but her expression was drawn. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because we don’t have a choice, Mollie.” He looked at her, his own expression sad. “Because when those idiots killed President Tolmach, they lit a fuse that’s about to send the entire Fringe up in flames. There’s enough hatred for the Five Hundred and the Heart Worlds out here—enough well-deserved hatred—to fuel a hundred New Dublins, and when the rest of the Fringe hears about this, Fringers everywhere will know it’s all on the table now. This isn’t a top-down rebellion. This is driven from the bottom, and it’s only going to spread, and it’s only going to get worse. Whatever I might want, I can’t stop that, and you and I both know the Five Hundred will respond exactly the way she—” he jabbed an index finger at Adamovič “—would have. And this isn’t just another Gobelins. This will be entire sectors going ‘out of compliance,’ and the only answer the Heart will come up with is the iron boot. They’ll kill and terrorize anyone who gets in their way, and they’ll turn all the rest of us into examples. Tell me you don’t know that’s what they’ll do.”

She stared at him, lips trembling ever so slightly, and he shook his head.

“I don’t want to kill the Federation,” he said softly. “I don’t want to shatter its cohesion while we’re still at war with the League. But I know what’s coming for my star system and my people if I don’t stop it. It won’t matter what we’ve done or not done. What will matter is that the Five Hundred will make damned sure no one in the Fringe thinks any ‘uppity thoughts’ for at least the next two generations, and they will crush any semblance of self-rule or freedom we might have clung to.

“And if that’s the way it’s got to be, so be it. If they’re going to hammer us no matter what we do, then I am going to do my damnedest to protect my star system—my home—from the barbarians out to burn it to the fucking ground. From what I’m hearing, we aren’t the only star system and hers—” he jerked his head at Adamovič “—aren’t the only carriers who’ll be signing up for the same fight. It’s possible, maybe even likely, some or all of us will get smashed flat for the temerity of defending ourselves and our homes and our families. I’m sure quite a few of us will get killed, along the way. But if we do, we do, and there are a hell of a lot worse reasons for dying.”

His eyes bored into hers, and he drew a deep breath.

“I’m not going to ask you to do anything that would violate your own conscience,” he said. “But you know as well as I do what the balance of power between the local authorities and the federal organs here in Bellerophon really is. I’m asking you to ask your people to stand down. We don’t want anyone injured or killed if we can possibly avoid it. I promise you, on my personal word of honor, that none of your people will be mistreated if they do stand down. If they don’t, though, I’m afraid it will get even uglier than it has to. So, will you accept that we are going out of compliance and work with me to maintain domestic order here in Bellerophon, at least until we find out how Sol is going to react?”

* * *

Quincy Rogers frowned as his desk comm warbled a priority attention signal. The initial signal transmuted into a sharp, syncopated five-note chime, and his frown abruptly deepened. That was the personal comm tone of Senior Vice President Timothy Lattimore, the most senior man in the DFL’s Bellerophon hierarchy. That made Lattimore a very big fish in the sprawling transstellar’s upper echelons, but he seldom bothered himself with Devinger’s day-to-day routine. His background was more fiscal than operational, so he left most of that to Rogers. Besides, like too many other junior members of the Five Hundred, he preferred wining and dining the local bigwigs to anything remotely like work.

All of which meant Rogers could count the number of times he’d received a priority call from his boss on his thumbs.

He stabbed the acceptance, and his eyes widened abruptly as Lattimore appeared on the display. The one descriptor he’d always applied to Lattimore was “well groomed,” but today he was in a T-shirt and exercise shorts, and the hair that was normally perfectly coiffed looked like a hayrick. More to the point, his regular expression of genial arrogance looked more like a mask of terror.

“Rogers!” he snapped as soon as the image stabilized. “What have you heard from Traffic Control?!”

“Nothing.” Rogers shook his head, his own expression confused. “Why?”

“Jesus! Don’t any of you have a news channel running over there?!”

“No, of course not,” Rogers replied. That was a point Lattimore had made in his initial “I’m the new hardass in charge” memo to all hands when he first arrived in-system. Devinger Freight Lines wasn’t paying its people to sit around watching entertainment or newsfeeds on office time.

Rogers considered mentioning that, but only briefly.

“Why?” he asked instead. “What’s going on?”

“The entire goddamn system’s gone insane, that’s what!” Lattimore bared his teeth in a grimace no one would have called a smile. “The UPF and the SDF are taking over every federal office and agency in the system at gunpoint! And Xeneas’s gone on an all-feed cast and announced Bellerophon is seceding from the Federation!”

“What?” Rogers stared at him in disbelief for a heartbeat, then shook himself violently. “They have to be crazy! Admiral Adamovič and Governor Ramsay will never stand for that!”

“Adamovič’s in custody,” Lattimore grated. “And they may be crazy, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t think this shit through. It sounds like Xeneas invited her and Ramsay to an ‘emergency conference’ here in Kórinthos specifically to get Adamovič planet-side when her fucking ships mutinied. According to Xeneas, all of the carriers, at least, have gone over to the rebels!”

“That’s…that’s impossible,” Rogers stammered while his brain sought to grasp the enormity of what Lattimore had said.

“The fact that there are no K-strikes headed for any of the System Defense Force’s bases suggests it’s not!” Lattimore snapped.

“Wait. Wait. You said Xeneas had both Adamovič and the Governor? He’s got proof of that?”

“I don’t know about Adamovič, but he’s damn straight got Ramsay,” Lattimore snarled. “The traitorous bitch’s gone over to his side!”

“What?!”

“Listen for yourself!”

Lattimore tapped his own comm and a recorded newsfeed replaced his image. Mollie Ramsay looked out of the display, her expression taut and strained.

“I urge all citizens to remain calm,” she said. “As President Xeneas’s announcement indicates, events here in Bellerophon are moving far too quickly for anyone to be able to control or predict at this point. I fully understand that there are deep reservoirs of frustration and, yes, anger here in the Fringe. And, to be fair, many Fringers are fully justified in feeling both frustration and anger. But I ask all of you, those who might support the notion of secession and the many loyal citizens who might oppose it, to show restraint. I have no idea where this may all end, or whether or not some…negotiated solution can be reached. But this I do know: killing one another will solve nothing.

“In order to prevent any avoidable bloodshed, I am ordering all federal personnel in Bellerophon, military and civilian, to stand down. All any of you can accomplish at this point is to die for the Federation, and I would vastly prefer for you to live for it. Obviously, when Prime Minister Schleibaum’s government learns of events here, she will have to determine policy going forward, and I am as anxious as any of you could possibly be about where that will end. But I don’t intend to rush to meet that moment, either. So, I say again. Stand down. Somehow, someway, one way or the other, we will get through this, and I pray it can be accomplished without mass bloodshed.”

Her image disappeared, replaced by Lattimore’s, and Rogers rubbed his mouth numbly, trying to process what he’d just seen.

“Well?” Lattimore demanded. “What are we going to do about this?!”

“I don’t see anything we can do,” Rogers said after a moment. “We’ve got maybe sixty armed cops for warehouse security. That’s it. If the Governor’s ordering all of her people to lay down their guns, there’s not a damn thing our people can do!”

“But…but they’ll seize the company!”

Rogers stared at him in disbelief. Seize the company? That was what the idiot was worried about?!

“If they do, they do,” he said after a moment. “And, with all due respect, I’m a little more worried about the other places this could go. Have none of these people ever heard of Gobelins?!”

Lattimore’s face froze. Then he swallowed visibly, and Rogers shook his head. Jesus. The idiot hadn’t even thought about that!

“But—” Lattimore swallowed again. “But…surely there’s something we can do,” he said almost feebly.

Rogers glowered at him, but then his own eyes narrowed.

“I don’t see anything we can do here in Bellerophon,” he said. “But, maybe…”

He punched the screen, cavalierly dropping Lattimore’s call, and tapped another comm combination. A moment later, Angelica Lewis appeared on the display.

“Hello, Quincy,” she said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”

“Get on the news channels,” he said tersely. “Pull down a record of everything from the last…two hours. Then zip it and get it to Jordan. I’ve got a signal to send!”

* * *

“Skipper, I think you’d better hear this.”

Tobias Echols looked up sharply. He’d never heard quite that note in Trent Hollis’s voice before, and he spun his command chair towards the communications officer’s station.

“Hear what?”

“Hear this, Skip,” Hollis replied, and the main holo display flicked alive.

“This is Quincy Rogers,” the man on that display said. “I’m attaching critical news footage to this message. You are instructed to divert immediately—I repeat, immediately—and transit directly to the Sol System. The instant you arrive there, you will relay this message to the federal authorities. I cannot overstress the importance of this.”

He looked out of the display grimly, then closed his eyes.

“The Bellerophon System has gone out of compliance,” he said flatly. “A far as I know, all federal organs and agencies in the system have been taken over by the system government, and the picket task force has apparently mutinied in support of the Bellerophon government.”

Echols felt his own expression congeal like cold gravy. Rogers couldn’t have said what he’d just heard! He just…couldn’t have. But—

“You’re the only ship in a position to get out of here with the news. Don’t blow it!”

The screen blanked, and Echols shook himself, then looked back at Hollis.

“That was tight beam, right?” he demanded.

“There’s a limit to how ‘tight’ any transmission can be at this range, Skip.” Hollis shrugged. “It wasn’t omnidirectional, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Echols replied, and looked at Cordelia Turner, his first officer. She looked as stunned as he felt, but unlike Tobias Echols, she was also a Fringer, and he watched as emotions raced across her face. Then she closed her eyes. She sat that way for a moment, strapped into her bridge chair in Lucy Anne’s zero-gravity, then inhaled deeply and looked back at her skipper.

“I guess we have it to do,” she said heavily.

“Sorry, Cordy,” Echols said as gently as he could.

“Not your fault they’ve all gone crazy,” she sighed.

“No, but still.”

He shook his head and looked at Antonia Michaels.

“What do we have, Antonia?”

“Been crunching the numbers,” she said, “and I think we’re good.”

“Even if the carriers really have gone over and one of them tries to intercept?”

“Unless they’re way the hell and gone out-system and started the instant Bellerophon Astro picked up our footprint, there’s not much way they could,” Michaels pointed out, and Echols grunted.

Lucy Anne had gone sublight two and a half hours ago. Her commercial-grade Fasset drive’s normal acceleration rate outside a Powell Limit was 750 gravities, although she could hit 925 if he maxed the nodes. Because it was so low, she had to begin her deceleration run from farther out than a warship would have, and the Bellerophon Powell limit’s radius was a hefty 58.3 LM. So she’d come out of wormhole space 391.43 LM from the system primary, 333.13 LM from the Powell Limit and 378.43 LM from Odysseus. At the moment, she was down to a velocity of 230,805 KPS and still over three and a half light-hours from the limit, which meant Rogers’s message had been sent six hours before she went sublight. Outside a Powell Limit, a TFN carrier’s maximum acceleration was 1,800 gravities—more than that if she redlined her nodes—but at six and a half light-hours, a star system was a very big haystack. So Michaels was right. Unless they’d happened to have an FTLC right on top of them, relatively speaking, there was no way anyone could intercept Lucy Anne.

“Trent says it started out as a laser, not a general broadcast,” he said. “So unless someone strayed into its path, they don’t even know he sent it. Or they didn’t when he sent it, at least. If we go back to max accel, how short of the limit do we break back into wormhole space?”

“About two light-hours,” Michaels replied, and Echols nodded. It was remotely possible that an FTLC that had headed out to intercept them the moment their footprint was reported could generate an intercept, but the odds against it were astronomical. Of course, they’d be on completely the wrong heading for a least-time course to Sol. They’d have to decelerate back into n-space, find the right vector, and accelerate again, which would delay their arrival.

One the other hand, they would arrive, and he was willing to bet no one in Bellerophon had factored that into their planning when they set all this up. And that meant…

“Do it, Antonia,” he said flatly.



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