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previous close encounter with a gas giant or other massive object. But magnetic, radio, infrared, and neutrinoscans swiftly identified the intruders as artificial, with quantum-tap power plants and modulations of their energy fieldssuggesting intelligent design.

Steregushchiy transmitted a warning to Mars and to Earth on laser-com frequencies three seconds before a plasma beam struck her amidships,vaporizing her in a silent flash of raw light.

 

The New White House

Washington, D.C.

0815 hours, EST

“This just came through a few minutes ago, Mr. President,” Hal Matloff, the senior presidential aide, said as he handed Walkeran animated printout.

“Just what am I supposed to be looking at here, Hal?” The sheet showed what appeared to be a three-second loop, set in deepspace, and focused on a line of enhanced-color objects made tiny by distance. They were moving, and numbers flashing and changingon either side of the page showed that they were distant . . . and therefore moving fast.

“A Russki patrol cruiser picked this up eighty-five light-minutes from Earth,” Matloff said. “The ship ceased transmissionafter just a few seconds.”

“What . . . it was destroyed?”

“We believe so, Mr. President,” Admiral Ronald Martinez, Chief of Naval Intelligence, said. “We have no hard data as yet,but we’ve deployed fighter squadrons from Mars and from Earth orbit to check it out.”

“If they are hostile, Mr. President, we need to deploy immediately! They are minutes away from Earth.”

“Are they the bastards who knocked down the space elevator?”

“Unlikely, sir,” Martinez said. “That may be an unfortunate coincidence.”

“Very unfortunate. So unfortunate I want you to investigate whether or not it was aliens who bombed the elevator.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dammit, it’s going to interfere with our naval deployment, big-time!”

“We have plenty of fleet assets at Mars, Mr. President,” Martinez said. “Some of the ships berthed at SupraQuito will be delayedwhile we find alternate means of getting their personnel on liberty up to the fleet, but we’re working on that now.”

“How many were in Port Ecuador when that blast went off?”

“We don’t know, sir. We’re working on that, too.”

“Well, dammit, work on finding out who these aliens are, and what they want!”

“Judging from what happened to the Steregushchiy, Mr. President, we’ll be able to ask them ourselves any minute now . . . when they kick down that door.” Matloff’s voicewas grim.

“Coordinate with the Russians. Their fleet assets at SupraSingapore will help. And talk to the Pan-Euros and the Chinese,too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do it!”

President Walker glowered at the door after the two men left. The world, he decided, was on its way to hell. Every new message,every new cerebral link brought more and bigger problems, until it seemed like civilization itself was tottering on the brink.

Messages to the Russians, the Pan-Euros, and the Chinese. Anything else?

Would it be enough?

 

Ashtongtok Tah

Deep Space, Sol System

0854 hours, FST

Ashtongtok Tah and its smaller consorts were now passing the orbit of Mars, though of course they didn’t know the planet’s name. In fact, the Nungiirtok knew very little about the humans or their homeworld at all, save the fact that they were sneaky, tenacious, and dangerous as foes.

Their sensors picked up concentrations of human ships, reading the neutrino radiation flooding from countless human quantum-tappower plants, both in space and on the ground. A sizeable number of ships were departing the fourth planet and appeared tobe moving to block the Tok fleet’s approach to the third.

That third planet out from this sun was the focus of the Tok attention. Blue and cloud-smeared, it clearly had an atmosphere,one containing nitrogen and oxygen, and there were large areas submerged in liquid water. The telltale signs of advanced technologywere everywhere, including three space elevators and massive facilities in synchronous orbit.

Interesting. One of the space elevators appeared to be disabled . . . severed at the base. Or was it an experiment in usingfree-orbiting tethers to lift cargo from a planetary surface? It scarcely mattered. The Tok fleet would bring all of the spaceelevators down in an orgy of white flame and destruction designed to wreck any human space capability. If that one elevatorwas disabled, it was a fortuitous bit of synchronicity that might hamper human efforts to defend their world.

The Shipmaster Tok Iad, wired into the data suite of the asteroid starship, tasted the flow of information cascading directlyinto its brain. Born of a species that biologically required the parasitization of another intelligent life form, it possesseda worldview that focused on the use of other beings for material purpose, for personal enrichment, for pleasure, for the verybasis of existence, of life itself.

How might the Iad use this species that called itself human?

As slaves, certainly. They appeared adaptable and reasonably tough, but experiments on human captives in the past had proventhat they could be broken with relative ease.

As military auxiliaries . . . possibly. Though Nungiirtok warriors filled this roll in Iad society so well it was difficult to imagine replacing them. Suitably conditioned human soldiers might serve as cannon fodder, certainly, as throwaways in planetary assaults in order to protect precious and dwindling Tok assets.

And, of course, the human planet would be stripped of resources. Tok Iad nanodisassemblers would convert everything on theplanet into useful machine and construction assets, right down to the bedrock.

First, however, they would sweep aside the ragtag battlefleet being assembled now in the Ashtongtok Tah’s path. A spacecraft of some sort drifted in stellar orbit a few thousand tuin ahead.

The asteroid ship reached out and swatted it from the sky.

 

Command Bunker

The New White House

Washington, D.C.

0912 hours, EST

“Number Three Mars Cycler has just been destroyed, Mr. President,” General Toland said. “Looks like an extremely powerfulplasma beam.”

Walker looked up at Donald Phillips, his Chief of Staff, with surprise. “That thing wasn’t even armed!”

“I doubt very much that the invaders care about that, sir.”

“Mr. President,” Admiral Martinez said, “we must bring the Tsiolkovsky AI back on-line.”

The President glowered at him. “That would put me in a rather difficult position. Politically, I mean—”

“Mr. President,” Martinez said, leaning forward and matching Walker’s glower, “politics is not going to stop these . . . people! We use our resources, or we face annihilation!”

Walker leaned back in his chair. Around him, dozens of men and women manned