Star Marines. Ian Douglas

      “There are two XELs in Mars orbit,” Garroway pointed out. “You could fire them as well. I suggest you order all three to fire. We don’t know what the effect on the Intruder is going to be.”

      “Agreed.” He sounded glum. “You know, Clint, this is not a career-enhancing situation.”

      “Fuck that,” Garroway said with a bluntness calculated to shock, to startle. “You and I are both at the apex of our careers, anyway. Where else can we go? Except retirement.”

      “Speak for yourself. Anyway, I was thinking of the court-martial.”

      Garroway sighed. “Ken, they’ll only court-martial us if this doesn’t work. And if it doesn’t, who’s going to be left to head up the court?”

      “You’ve got a point. Of course. Very well. Do you know what you’re doing with your Marines?”

      Garroway thought for a moment. “We’re still two hours away from rendezvous with the Cunningham. We’re going to have to give up on that … send them in straight up. I don’t like that …”

      “Too many unknowns, anyway,” Jollett put in. “Like whether an IMAC pod could cut through whatever the Intruder is made of.”

      “Agreed. Anyway … call it another hour to launch, and maybe another hour … no, call it two hours to intercept and boarding.”

      “And we have to hope that HELGA and the XELs will make that thing stand still for it.”

      “Exactly.”

      He felt Jollett shaking his head, and at first thought the admiral was refusing him. “It’s a gamble, General,” Jollett said. “But the stakes are a damned sight higher than our careers. You have my backing. I’ll transmit the orders for the targeting change.”

      “Thanks, Ken.”

      He felt a rush of relief.

      But he also had to stifle the sense of dread that rose, knowing the probable result of the orders he was about to give.

       High Guard HEL Facility 3

       Solar Orbit

       1231 hrs, GMT

      Captain Gupta Narayanan looked up at the big time readout in the HELGA Three control room. Time was an interesting concept when a control system was spread across an area measured in light-minutes. Deliberations in the virtual conferencing taking place in Earth space, as well as the clocks of all Earth spacecraft, were set to the common denominator of Zulu time—also known as GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, back on Earth.

      Damn politics! Damn the confusion binding the current chain of command! And, above all, damn the laws of physics!

      His situation, he reflected, was not an enviable one.

      Narayanan stared again at the words, translated into his native Urdu Hindi, glowing in empty space in the air next to his chair. This new set of orders had just arrived from the general vicinity of Mars, which at the moment was a full light-minute closer than Earth, given with the current configuration of the planets in relation to HELGA. He glanced at another screen, showing a plot-chart schematic. If the Sun was at six o’clock from HELGA’s current position, Earth lay at nine o’clock, four and a half light-minutes away, while Mars was at one o’clock, and only three and a half light-minutes away.

      Narayanan’s take on the politics of the situation was that, by rights, the World Union controlled the military of the lesser NAU and U.S., and he served the World Union. Orders should then, by rights, come to him from Stockholm and the WU.

      He was currently in command, however, of a High Guard installation which was under the direct control of the North American Union and the NAU fleet. Under that TO&E, Rear Admiral Jollett was his commanding officer.

      Gupta Narayanan was devoted to World Unionism … Earth’s only hope, as he saw it, to end the so-far endless cycle of national rivalries, militant pride, and warfare. The World Union must take precedence over the various assemblies of nation-states that dominated the planet now—the European Union, the Russian Federation, and most especially the North American Union, which dominated world politics now purely on the strength of its military.

      His avowed World-Unionist feeling was in fact the reason he’d been chosen for the rotating command roster for HELGA Three in the first place.

      But if Narayana was a devoted planetary Unionist, he was also a Material Rationatext. Though Andhra Pradesh was officially a Reformed Neo-Hindu state, and his family had been Vaishnava for uncounted generations, Narayanan, at least, took pride in thinking for himself. The excavations, two centuries earlier, of vast undersea ruins off the coasts of Sri Lanka and in the shallow Gulf of Khambhat had proven—to him, at least, if not to his father—that the hero tales, myths, and legends of most world religions rested in the colonization efforts of several extraterrestrial spacefaring species arriving on Earth eight to ten thousand years ago.

      It was now known definitely that the Ahannu had established colonies at several points on the Earth, that those colonies had been annihilated by the Hunters of the Dawn, and that the Oannan/N’mah had at least visited the planet after the Hunter attack, helping scattered and disorganized tribes of primitive humans to reacquire the rudiments of civilization. There was no need to assume the intervention of deities when it was clear that star-traveling aliens had interacted with humans in the remote past.

      Nor was it necessary, as so many of the newer world religions did nowadays, to grant those aliens divine status—either as gods, or as demons.

      The point was that Narayanan thought for himself. What was happening now in near-Arean space transcended world politics or the philosophies of government and power.

      His operational orders from Stockholm emphasized the need to keep the World Union tightly in the loop when it came to conflicts of orders or authority, and to consult with them closely if there were any conflicts. They would expect him to link through to the Senate in Stockholm and to General Linden at the Bureau of the Military and ask their opinion.

      But the clock was running. It was now 1231 hours, GMT. If he put a call through immediately, it would be 1235 before they received the message on Earth, and 1240 at the earliest before he would have an answer.

      And he knew General Linden, and he knew the WU Senate. It might be hours before they decided to get back to him with a yes-no decision.

      The HELGA array would be ready to fire at 1243. In fact, he could fire the weapon now, though the capacitors would not be up to full power for another fourteen minutes.

      The Preble was seven light-minutes away, which meant that a request for a clarification of those orders would not be answered before 1245 hours. And any delay was serious.

      It is of the utmost importance that HELGA Three take the Intruder under fire at the earliest possible opportunity, as it may move from its new location at any moment. So read the orders just downloaded to Kali from Admiral Jollett.

      It was, he thought, what the Americans liked to call a “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” situation. If he obeyed Jollett’s direct order, he could be court-martialed by the Bureau. At the very least, he would lose his command, and his future career with the nascent WU military organization would be questionable at best. If he waited to consult with Stockholm, he would never be trusted by New York again, or by the military arms of the United States.

      But worse by far—and the deciding factor—was the tactical situation. The Intruder would be in an ideal position for only a few moments, at best, and might leave at any instant. The sooner he targeted the Hunter vessel, the better Humankind’s chances in this fight.

      “Kali?”

      “Yes, Captain Narayanan?”

      “Retarget and reconfigure targeting schedule. We are taking the Intruder under fire.”

      “That is in