Earth Strike Read Free

above Koenig’s workstation for a moment longer, then grunted, pushed himself off from the couch, and drifted toward the CIC entrance behind the command dais.
    Located beneath Koenig’s station was the section of the CIC known as “the orchestra pit” and, more usually, simply as “the pit.” Twelve workstations nestled within the pit, where America ’s CIC officers stood their watches. One of them, Commander Janis Olmstead, the primary weapons control officer, caught Koenig’s eye and arched an eyebrow. “Since when did micromanagement become Navy SOP, sir?” she asked.
    “Mind on your links, Weps,” Captain Randolph Buchanan’s electronic avatar said. He was America ’s commanding officer, and Koenig’s flag captain. Physically, he was on the bridge next door to CIC, but the compartment’s electronics projected his image to the command dais next to Koenig’s couch.
    “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
    “She’s right, you know,” Koenig told Buchanan, but he texted the words to Buchanan’s screen, rather than speaking them aloud. He would not criticize Buchanan’s running of his ship and crew, not publicly. “It’s not going to be the Sh’daar that defeat us. Or their client races. It’s going to be the damned Confed politics.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Buchanan’s image scowl as the captain read the words on a screen.
    “Agreed, Admiral.” The words appeared silently on one of Koenig’s screens a moment later. “I have to tell you, sir, I don’t like this.”
    “No,” Koenig typed back. “But we play by the rules we’re given.”
    Buchanan seemed to hesitate, and then the avatar looked at Koenig. “How the hell do we fight a galactic empire, Admiral?” he asked aloud.
    Damn. Buchanan should have kept the conversation private, exchanging text messagers. Glancing down into the pit, Koenig could see that Olmstead and the others were carefully watching their own link channels and displays, but they’d obviously heard. The conversation would spread throughout the America before the end of the next watch.
    “I don’t believe in ‘galactic empires,’” Koenig said. He snorted. “The whole idea is silly, given the size of the galaxy.”
    “Well, the Sh’daar appear to believe in the concept, Admiral,” Buchanan’s image said. “And I doubt very much that it matters whether they agree with you on the point or not.”
    “When the Sh’daar show themselves,” Koenig replied carefully, “ if they show themselves, we’ll worry about galactic empires. Right now, our concern is with the Turusch.”
    It had been ninety-two years since humankind had made contact with the Sh’daar, or, more precisely, since they’d made first contact with the Aglestch va Sh’daar, one of an unknown but very large number of technic alien species within what was somewhat melodramatically called the Sh’daar Galactic Empire. Quite early on, the Aglestch—some humans still referred to them as “Canopians,” even though that brilliant, hot F0-class supergiant could not possibly be their home star—had explained that they served the “Galactic Masters,” the Sh’daar.
    Then, fifty-five years later, an Aglestch delegation had tentacle-delivered a message to Earth, inscribed in English, Spanish, Russian, and transliterated Lingua Galactica, purportedly from the Sh’daar themselves.
    They claimed to be the overlords of a galaxy-spanning civilization. After five and a half decades of peaceful trade between the Confederation and the Agletstch Collective, the Sh’daar now stepped in and “suggested,” with just a hint of velvet-shrouded-mail fist, that the human Confederation submit to them and take their rightful places as a star-faring species—under the hegemony of the Sh’daar Masters.
    And until that happened, humans were forbidden to have any contact whatsoever with the Aglestch.
    The problem was, in fifty-five years an active and spirited trade had sprung up between the Aglestch worlds