Two weeks later, on October second, using the standard calendar of the Colonial Union, and at roughly three in the afternoon, the Colonial Union received official notice from nine of its colony worlds that they were declaring themselves independent from the union. Each of these planets was independent of the others but declared immediate diplomatic relations with each other and offered the same to the Colonial Union.
In times past the Colonial Union might have sent a single ship per planet to deal with the uprising; when a planet has no real defenses against you that you yourself did not create, you didn’t have to make that much of an effort. But since the Tubingen event over Khartoum, it was evident that there had to be a change in strategy, and in the Colonial Union’s response to rebellion. Especially to a rebellion that involved multiple planets simultaneously.
The skies above the rebellious worlds added new constellations as a flood of CDF ships flowed into their space. Each rebellious planet received no fewer than a hundred ships—a piece of psychological warfare designed to cow and intimidate those trying for their freedom.
They would not be cowed. They shouted their defiance and dared the Colonial Union to do its worst.
This went on in a seemingly intractable manner. There was no clear end to the stalemate. The planets demanded the Colonial Union and the CDF withdraw from their skies. The Colonial Union replied that they would not. The large majority of the human military fleet was now permanently stationed above the worlds that it used to protect.
On October 21, a ship appeared in the skies above Earth, a trading ship registered to a world of the Conclave. It was the Hooh Issa Tun, and it had disappeared almost a year before. In a moment, the Hooh Issa Tun was no longer alone as another ship of Conclave ancestry appeared, and another, and another. A student of recent history would recognize the staggered appearance as a bit of theater. The late General Tarsem Gau, when he was the head of the Conclave, would do the same thing when his grand fleet appeared over the sky of an unauthorized colony. The Conclave would then give the colony the choice of being evacuated or destroyed.
The Earth would not have the same choice. The fleet would follow the same dynamic as Gau’s fleet, waiting until the very last ship arrived, waiting until the audience below could register its immensity, before launching its weapons to destroy those watching below.
Which meant that timing was going to be a tricky thing indeed.
The satellites the Colonial Union placed in orbit around the Earth registered the Hooh Issa Tun the second it arrived in Earth space. The data was shot at the speed of light to a brace of very special skip drones located at the L4 Lagrangian point in the Earth-moon system, each carrying the prototype skip drive designed to work at those gravitationally flat spots in space.
Three of the drones skipped immediately. One of them arrived at its destination as a topographically interesting shower of metal shards. The other two arrived intact.
And in a space outside the solar system that housed Premier Hafte Sorvalh’s home world of Lalah, two fleets readied their final preparations for attack.
The first fleet was a small one: ten ships, specifically selected by Vnac Oi. The second one was substantially larger. Two hundred CDF ships waited—had waited—for battle.
Back at Earth, the influx of ships had stopped at one hundred eight, a number ever so slightly higher than either the Colonial Union’s or Conclave’s estimates of the fleet. Their first action would be to begin disabling the Earth’s network of satellites. This would take it several minutes.
The satellites marked the position of each of the fleet’s ships above the Earth and shot that information to the waiting skip drones. Three of them immediately skipped. This time all three made it.
Inside the CDF ships, each of them was receiving a list of their primary, secondary, and tertiary targets. This transfer of information, and the acknowledgment thereof, took on average ten seconds.
Twenty seconds after that, every single CDF ship simultaneously skipped into Earth space.
Including the Chandler. Who alone among the fleet did not have targets. Its job was to observe. On the Chandler were Ode Abumwe, Colonels Egan and Rigney, and Vnac Oi of the Conclave. And me.
From Nava Balla’s bridge we watched as CDF ships appeared less than a kilometer from their primary target ships and surgically attacked with particle beams and other relatively low-carnage armament, pinpointing propulsion, navigation, and weapons systems.
“Put the comms on speaker, please,” Abumwe asked Balla, who nodded and did Abumwe’s bidding.
The air was a cacophony of CDF ships reporting back, confirming their attacks were successful. In less than two minutes, the entire Equilibrium fleet had been disabled.
Disabled, not destroyed.
“Are you ready?” Abumwe asked Rafe Daquin.
“You know I am,” Daquin responded.