Star Strike. Ian Douglas

each capable of carrying tens of thousands of refugees and which could accelerate to nearly the speed of light using the reactionless N’mah space drive.

      From Alexander’s point of view, the decision to flee the Galaxy entirely, to travel over two million light-years to reach another galaxy, seemed to be a bit of overkill. Still, he had to admit that, judging by the interstellar vistas recorded at Night’s Edge and elsewhere, the Xul did appear to have a presence embracing much of the Galaxy. Two of their known bases—Night’s Edge and a Stargate nexus known only as Cluster Space—were actually located well outside of the Galactic plane, where the Galaxy’s spiral arms curved across the sky much as they did in Alexander’s noumenal simulation. Their empire, if that’s what it could be called, might well extend across the entire Milky Way—four hundred billion suns, and an unknown hundreds of billions of worlds.

      The refugees of the twenty-fourth century had desperately hoped to find a new home well beyond even the Xul’s immensely long reach through space and time. It would take over two million years to make the trip, but relativistic time dilation would reduce that to something like thirty years; with the prospective colonists in cybe-hibe stasis, even that brief subjective time would vanish as they fled into the remote future.

      The only question had been whether or not the refugee ships could slip out of the Galaxy without being spotted by the Xul. That hope, unfortunately, had failed.

      “Our problem, of course,” Alexander went on, “is that we must assume that the Xul now know exactly where we are, and who we are. Most of the people on board probably didn’t have useful information that would lead the Xul back to Earth. A few would have, however, though I’m actually more concerned about the data Perseus might have been carrying. He probably had a complete record of the 2314 attack, for instance, and would have had the galactic coordinate system we use for navigation.

      “The Xul are smart. They’ll put that data together with the elimination of their base at Night’s Edge, and know we were responsible. They might also be able to see enough of the stellar background in any visual records to positively locate Sol. And … there’s also Argo’s path. The refugee ships were supposed to make a course correction or two on the way out, so they didn’t draw a line straight back to Earth, but doing that sort of thing at relativistic speeds is time consuming and wastes energy. I doubt the changes were enough to throw the Xul off by very much. At the very least, they’ll figure the Argo set out from someplace close to the Sirius Stargate. That bit of data alone might be enough. It’s only eight and a half light-years from Earth.”

      In fact there was so much Humankind didn’t know about the Xul or how they might reason things through. No one could explain why, for instance, they didn’t share data more freely among themselves. The only reason the Xul hadn’t identified Humankind as a serious threat centuries ago was the fact that the Night’s Edge raid did appear to have obliterated any record of the Xul operation against Earth nine years earlier.

      “What about the other three refugee ships?” Navin Bergenhal, one of the Intelligence Advisory Group members, asked. “They’re all in danger now.”

      “We’ll need to send out QCC flashes to them, of course,” Alexander said. “I doubt there’s anything they can do, though, since it’ll take a year of deceleration for them to slow down, and another year to build back up to near-c for the return trip. If they wanted to return.” He shrugged. “Their escapist philosophy may prove to be the best after all. If the Xul find Earth and the rest of our worlds, the only hope for Man’s survival might well rest in one or more of those surviving colony ships making it to M-31.”

      “The destruction of the Argo is tragic, yes,” Devereaux said. “But I still don’t see an immediate threat. This all took place five hundred light-years away, after all. And the Xul have always been glacially slow in their military responses.”

      Alexander nodded. “Agreed. If they behave as they have in the past, it might be some time before that information disseminates across all of Xul-controlled space. But, Madam Devereaux, we would be foolish to assume they won’t disseminate it, or that they won’t act upon it eventually. Our best xenopsych profiles so far suggest that the Xul are extreme xenophobes, that they destroy other technic races as a kind of instinctive defense mechanism. We’ve bloodied them a couple of times now, at Sirius, at Night’s Edge, and at Sol, so you can bet that they’re going to sit up and take notice.”

      “We’re going to need to … consider this,” Devereaux said. “In light of the current difficulties with the Islamic Theocracy, we must proceed … circumspectly. Perhaps Intelligence can run some simulations plots, and come up with some realistic probabilities.”

      Damn. He was going to have to turn up the heat. “With all due respect, Madam Devereaux,” he said, “that is fucking irresponsible. It’s also stupid, playing politics with the whole of Humankind at stake!”

      There was a long pause. Devereaux’s head cocked to one side. “With all due respect what, General Alexander?”

      “Eh?”

      “Your filter blocked you,” Cara whispered in his mind.

      “Oh, for the love of …” Angrily, he cleared part of the filter program, dropping it to a lower level. The software had decided that his choice of language left a lot to be desired, and had edited it.

      “Excuse me, Ms. Devereaux,” he said as the program shifted to a lower level. He glanced down at himself. At least he was still in uniform. “Social convention required that I have my e-filters in place, lest I … give offense. But we don’t have time for that nonsense now. What I said, ma’am, was that delay, any delay—giving the matter further study, running numbers, whatever you wish to call it—is irresponsible and stupid. I believe the term my e-filter didn’t like was ‘fucking irresponsible.’”

      “I see.” Her own e-filters were in place of course, but they didn’t stop a certain amount of disapproval from slipping through in those two short words. “And just what do you expect us to do about this, General Alexander?”

      “A raid, Madam Devereaux.” At a thought, the frozen view from the Argo at the moment of the ship’s destruction vanished, and was replaced by the galactic map he’d been studying before the delegates had arrived. The viewpoint zoomed in on the irregular green glow of human space, on the path of the Argo, and on a tight scattering of red pinpoints marking the nearby systems from which the huntership might have emerged—Nu Andromeda, Epsilon Trianguli, and a few others. “What the Marines call a sneak-and-peek.”

      The display continued to animate as he spoke, the viewpoint zooming in until Epsilon Trianguli showed as a hot, white sphere rather than as another star. An A2 type star, Epsilon Trianguli appeared imbedded in a far-flung corona of luminous gas, and even in simulation was almost too brilliant to look at directly.

      A hypothetical planet swung into view, a sharp-edged crescent bowed away from the star, attended by a clutter of sickle-shaped moons. A swarm of dark gray and metallic slivers materialized out of emptiness and scattered across the system. Other planets appeared in the distance, along with the gleaming, wedding-band hoop of a stargate.

      “First in are AI scouts, to show us the terrain. We also need to know if there’s a stargate in the target system. The scouts will find out if there is a Xul presence in the system, and map it out so we’re not going in blind.”

      Obedient to his lecture, a Xul station revealed itself, menacing and black, positioned to guard the stargate. A swarm of new objects entered the scene, dull-black ovoids, descending toward the Xul structure in waves. Pinpoints of white light flickered and strobed against the surface in a silent representation of space combat.

      “The Marines go in hot, wearing marauder armor and accompanied by highly specialized penetrator AIs,” Alexander went on. “Details depend on what the scouts turn up, of course, but the idea will be to insert a Marine raiding party into the Xul, grab as much information as we can, and blow the thing to hell.”

      On cue, the camera