“No,” Abumwe agreed. “In fact, Equilibrium’s true plan was to attack any CDF ship which responded—which it did with the Tubingen. The attack, whether it was seen by the Colonial Union as directed by Khartoum or by Equilibrium, would result in a massive response by the CDF—which it did. We sent twenty ships to Khartoum.
“Equilibrium did this for the specific purpose of massively militarizing the Colonial Union response to our planets declaring independence. The next planet or planets which declare will not receive a visit from a single CDF ship as they would have done before. Instead the CDF will send a fleet to any planet, with the specific intent of overwhelming any independence movement from the beginning.” Abumwe stopped for a second and looked at Egan and Rigney curiously. “Is this Equilibrium assessment accurate?”
The two colonels looked uncomfortable. “It might be,” Rigney said, eventually.
Abumwe nodded. “Equilibrium, through its own strategy of misdirection and false information—and its campaign to establish the Colonial Union as an unreliable source of truthful information, aided by the fact that the Colonial Union is, in fact, deeply censorious of news between colonies—plans to encourage the nine remaining planets in the original independence scheme to stick to their plan and jointly announce. It will promise logistical and defense support, which it has no real intention of providing except for its own purposes, as it did over Khartoum. This will happen as soon as practicably possible. And of course the CDF will respond.”
“And then what?” Egan asked.
“Once the Colonial Union is fully occupied with this independence movement and has committed a substantial amount of its military force and intelligence capabilities to quash it, Equilibrium attacks.”
“Attacks the fleets over the rebellious colony planets?” Rigney said. “That’s just stupid, Ambassador. Equilibrium can be effective with sneak attacks but their ships and armaments can’t stand up to a prolonged battle.”
“They won’t be attacking our fleets,” Abumwe said. “They will be attacking the Earth.”
“What?” Egan said. She pushed forward in her seat, now intensely interested.
Abumwe glanced over to me and nodded. I connected my BrainPal to the theater’s presentation system and popped up a visual of Earth, and above it, several dozen starships, not to scale.
“Equilibrium acquires ships by pirating them,” Abumwe said. “The Colonial Union has lost dozens over the years. The Conclave and its constituent states have lost even more.” She pointed into the graphic. “What you see here is a representation of all the Conclave-affiliated ships that we know have been taken and have not, as yet, been destroyed in battle. There are ninety-four shown here and we have to assume our estimate is low.
“According to Commander Tvann, the Equilibrium plan is to skip these ships into Earth space, destroy the planet’s defense, communication, and scientific satellites, and then target hundreds of major population areas with nuclear warheads.”
“Nuclear warheads,” Rigney said.
“Where the hell are they getting nukes?” Egan said. “Who still uses them?”
“Tvann indicated that many of them came from the stores of planets now aligned with the Conclave,” Abumwe said. “The Conclave doesn’t allow their use as weapons, so they’re supposed to be dismantled and the fissionable material disposed of. It was a trivial matter for Equilibrium to insert itself into that process and come away with warheads and fissionable material.”
“How many are we talking about?” Rigney said. “Warheads, I mean.”
Abumwe looked at me. “Tvann didn’t know all the specifics,” I said. “The ones he seemed to consider standard yield would be the equivalent to three hundred kilotons. He said there were several hundred of those.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“They could do the same damage without nuclear weapons,” Egan said. “At this point in weapons technology, using nuclear weapons is only a step up from using the longbow.”
“The point is to use the nuclear weapons,” Abumwe said. “Not just for the immediate devastation, but for everything else that follows.”
“When the Romans defeated Carthage, they salted the ground there so nothing could live or grow there anymore,” I said. “This is the same concept, writ large.”
“Equilibrium would be slitting their throat by doing this,” Rigney said.
“If you can find their throats to slit them,” I pointed out.
“I think we would be motivated, Lieutenant.”
“Colonel, you’re missing the important thing here,” Abumwe said.
“And what is that, Ambassador?” Egan asked.
Abumwe gestured up toward the image floating there. “That every one of the ships tasked to the attack is originally from the Conclave. We are meant to believe this is an attack not by Equilibrium, but by the Conclave. We’re meant to believe the Conclave has decided that the only way to deal with humanity—to deal with the Colonial Union—is to destroy the source of its soldiers and colonists once and for all, so we can never get it back, either by force or negotiation. This is meant to be the earnest of the Conclave’s intent to wipe us from the universe forever.”