Comes The Destroyer by David VanDyke

Author:David VanDyke [VanDyke, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BluA
Published: 2014-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 43

Year Eight

Admiral Absen was sleeping as soundly as he ever did when his door intercom beeped at 0417. “Yes?” he called into the air, reaching up to turn on the reading lamp over the head of his bunk.

“Flash traffic for you, sir.”

“From who?” he asked as he pulled on his trousers.

“Header says EarthGov Intel, passed through Fleet. The rest is Eyes Only.”

“Right.” He opened his door, taking the tablet from the steward on the other side and closing it again. Setting the thing down on his smart desk linked it and brought up a prompt to sample DNA, scan retina and input codes. They’d never yet caught a Blend trying to break in to a secure system; there was no guarantee those theoretical leftover entities even knew what they were, much less worked for the Meme Empire, but counterintelligence organizations were paid to be paranoid.

Whether those measures would be effective was another story.

The message unlocked and presented itself. Ten minutes later, Absen put out the word to wake up and gather his senior staff in his command conference room, along with Red Team, at 0700, and he went back to bed. Flash traffic it may be, but its subject would not manifest for at least six months, perhaps a year. He could afford to give his people their sleep.

He, on the other hand, lay awake the rest of the early morning thinking, and then took a good hot shower and ate a leisurely breakfast, telling his stewards to make sure they brought in enough strong coffee for everyone in the meeting.

“Received this flash message last night,” he said loud enough to carry to the fifty or so people packed inside. “Several large Earthside radio telescopes just picked up fusion emanations along the same track the scout ship’s escape pod took. They retasked orbital and deep-space opticals to take a look and have confirmed the presence of a Meme ship half a light year out, in the Hills Cloud, the closer and denser piece of the Oort Cloud. Johnstone?”

Rick Johnstone had held up a hand and now said, “Sir, that must mean they decelerated, or we probably wouldn’t be seeing them. They must be intending to make use of the bodies there.”

“I concur, but we’ll just have to keep watching to see whether they are merely refueling, or are going to send something our way.” Absen paused. “Any word from the stealth probes?”

Colonel Myrna Zolen, his chief of intelligence, cleared her throat and lifted a tablet of her own. “We’re processing some reports now, but remember, the light from the enemy itself is getting here soonest. I’ve got a bit more info since the first ExecSum, sir. The emanations are interesting in that they varied a lot, as if the source was spinning, and they seem far too weak to represent a Destroyer-sized spacecraft. Doppler shift shows it decelerating at usual Meme noncombat rates. Collating all data, TECHINT says whatever it is masses no more than a tenth of what we expected.

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