"Why would Dad want to talk to you?" I asked Hickory.

"We don't know," Hickory said. "The last time he and I spoke of anything of any importance was the day—I am sorry—that your friend Enzo died. Some time ago, before we left Huckleberry, I had mentioned to Major Perry that the Obin government and the Obin people stood ready to assist you and your family here on Roanoke should you need our assistance. Major Perry reminded me of that conversation and asked me if the offer still stood. I told him that at the time I believed it did."

"You think Dad is going to ask for your help?" I asked.

"I do not know," Hickory said. "And since I last spoke to Major Perry circumstances have changed."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Dickory and I have finally received detailed updated information from our government, up to and including its analysis of the Colonial Union's attack on the Conclave fleet," Hickory said. "The most important piece of news is that we have been informed that shortly after the Magellan disappeared, the Colonial Union came to the Obin government and asked it not to search for the Roanoke colony, nor to offer it assistance if it were to be located by the Conclave or any other race."

"They knew you would come looking for me," I said.

"Yes," Hickory said.

"But why would they tell you not to help us?" I asked.

"Because it would interfere with the Colonial Union's own plans to lure the Conclave fleet to Roanoke," Hickory said.

"That's happened," I said. "That's done. The Obin can help us now," I said.

"The Colonial Union has asked us to continue not to offer aid or assistance to Roanoke," Hickory said.

"That makes no sense," I said.

"We are inclined to agree," Hickory said.

"But that means that you can't even help me," I said.

"There is a difference between you and the colony of Roanoke," Hickory said. "The Colonial Union cannot ask us not to protect or assist you. It would violate the treaty between our peoples, and the Colonial Union would not want to do that, especially now. But the Colonial Union may choose to interpret the treaty narrowly and has. Our treaty concerns you, Zoë. To a much lesser extent it concerns your family, meaning Major Perry and Lieutenant Sagan. It does not concern Roanoke colony at all."

"It does when I live here," I said. "This colony is of a great deal of concern to me. Its people are of a great deal of concern to me. Everybody I care about in the whole universe is here. Roanoke matters to me. It should matter to you."

"We did not say it did not matter to us," Hickory said, and I heard something in its voice I had never heard before: reproach. "Nor do we suggest it does not matter to you, for many reasons. We are telling you how the Colonial Union is asking the Obin government to view its rights under treaty. And we are telling you that our government, for its own reasons, has agreed."

"So if my dad asks for your help, you will tell him no," I said.

"We will tell him that so long as Roanoke is a Colonial Union world, we are unable to offer help."

"So, no," I said.

"Yes," Hickory said. "We are sorry, Zoë."

"I want you to give me the information your government has given you," I said.

"We will do so," Hickory said. "But it is in our native language and file formatting, and will take a considerable amount of time for your PDA to translate."

"I don't care," I said.

"As you wish," Hickory said.

Not too long after that I stared at the screen of my PDA and ground my teeth together as it slowly plodded through file transformations and translations. I realized it would be easier just to ask Hickory and Dickory about it all, but I wanted to see it all with my own eyes. However long it took.

It took long enough that I had hardly read any of it by the time Dad and the others had made it home.

"This all looks like gibberish to me," Gretchen said, looking at the documents I was showing her on my PDA. "It's like it was translated from monkey or something."

"Look," I said. I pulled up a different document. "According to this, blowing up the Conclave fleet backfired. It was supposed to make the Conclave collapse and all the races start shooting at each other. Well, the Conclave is starting to collapse, but hardly any of them are actually fighting each other. They're attacking Colonial Union worlds instead. They really messed this up."

"If you say this is what it says, I'm going to believe you," Gretchen said. "I'm not actually finding verbs here."

I pulled up another document. "Here, this is about a Conclave leader named Nerbros Eser. He's General Gau's main competition for leadership of the Conclave now. Gau still doesn't want to attack the Colonial Union directly, even though we just destroyed his fleet. He still thinks the Conclave is strong enough to keep doing what it's been doing. But this Eser guy thinks the Conclave should just wipe us out. The Colonial Union. And especially us here on Roanoke. Just to make the point that you don't mess with the Conclave. The two of them are fighting over control of the Conclave right now."

"Okay," Gretchen said. "But I still don't know what any of this means, Zoë. Speak not-hyper-ese to me. You're losing me."

I stopped and took a breath. Gretchen was right. I'd spent most of the last day reading these documents, drinking coffee, and not sleeping; I was not at the peak of my communication skills. So I tried again.

"The whole point of founding Roanoke colony was to start a war," I said.

"It looks like it worked," Gretchen said.

"No," I said. "It was supposed to start a war within the Conclave. Blowing up their fleet was supposed to tear the Conclave apart from the inside. It would end the threat of this huge coalition of alien races and bring things back to the way it was before, when every race was fighting every other race. We trigger a civil war, and then we sweep in while they're all fighting and scoop up the worlds we want and come out of it all stronger than before—maybe too strong for any one race or even a small group of races to square off against. That was the plan."

"But you're telling me it didn't work that way," Gretchen said.

"Right," I said. "We blew up the fleet and got the Conclave members fighting, but who they're fighting is us. The reason we didn't like the Conclave is that it was four hundred against one, the one being us. Well, now it's still four hundred against one, except now no one's listening to the one guy who was keeping them from engaging in total war against us."

"Us here on Roanoke," Gretchen said.

"Us everywhere," I said. "The Colonial Union. Humans. Us. This is happening now," I said. "Colonial Union worlds are being attacked. Not just the new colony worlds, the ones that usually get attacked. Even the established colonies—the ones that haven't been attacked in decades—are getting hit. And unless General Gau gets them all back in line, these attacks are going to keep happening. They're going to get worse."

"I think you need a new hobby," Gretchen said, handing me back my PDA. "Your new one here is really depressing."

"I'm not trying to scare you," I said. "I thought you would want to know about all this."

"You don't have to tell me," Gretchen said. "You need to tell your parents. Or my dad. Someone who actually knows what to do about all this."

"They already know," I said. "I heard John and Jane talking about it last night after he got back from Phoenix Station. Everyone there knows the colonies are under attack. No one's reporting it—the Colonial Union has a lockdown on the news—but everyone's talking about it."

"What does that leave for Roanoke?" Gretchen said.

"I don't know," I said. "But I know we don't have a lot of pull right now."

"So we're all going to die," Gretchen said. "Well. Gee. Thanks, Zoë. I'm really glad to know it."