“Exactly,” Mae said. “Once a concept has been proved, the quickest way to develop it is give the results to several teams; the more people, the more fresh ideas focused on this, the faster we will have a useable weapon.”

“You’d have to assemble the teams, then bring them up to date on our results,” Captain Keaton said. “By the time you’ve done that, we will have moved on.”

“You hope,” she retorted.

“Do you have some reason to think the Navy researchers are incompetent?”

“None at all. I’m simply pointing out a method which insures our chances of success are significantly multiplied. A standard approach to R&D, in fact.”

“Who would you suggest assists us? I doubt astroengineering company weapons divisions have the necessary specialists.”

“The larger industrialized star systems would be able to assemble the requisite professionals. Kulu, New Washington, Oshanko, Nanjing, Petersburg, for starters, and I’m sure the Edenists would be able to provide considerable assistance; they know more about thought routines than any Adamist culture. Earth’s GISD has already offered to help.”

“I’ll bet they have,” Samual Aleksandrovich grunted. By virtue of his position he had an idea of just how widespread Earth’s security agency was across the Confederation stars. They had at least three times the assets of the ESA, though even Lalwani was uncertain just how far their networks actually reached. One of the reasons it was so difficult to discover their size was the network’s essentially passive nature. In the last ten years there had only been three active operations that CNIS had discovered, and all of those were mounted against black syndicates. Quite what they did with all the information their operatives gathered was a mystery, which made him cautious about trusting them. But they always cooperated with Lalwani’s official requests for information.

“It’s a reasonable suggestion,” the President said.

“It would also remove exclusivity from the Polity Council,” the First Admiral said. “If sovereign states acquire a viable anti-memory weapon they could well use it without consultation, especially if one of them was facing an incursion. After all, that kind of supra-racial genocide would not leave any bodies as evidence. Anti-memory is a doomsday weapon, our primary negotiating tactic. As I have always maintained, it is not a solution to this problem. We must face this collectively.”

The President gave a reluctant sigh. “Very well, Samual. Keep it confined to the Navy for now. But I shall review the situation in a fortnight. If your team isn’t making the kind of progress we need, I’ll act on Mae’s suggestion and bring in outside help.”

“Of course, Mr President.”

“That’s good then. Let’s go face the Polity Council and hear the real bad news, shall we.” Olton Haaker rose with a pleasant smile in place, content another problem had been smoothly dealt with in the traditional consensus compromise. Mae Ortlieb appeared equally sanguine. Her professional expression didn’t fool Samual Aleksandrovich for a second.

For its private sessions the Confederation’s Polity Council eschewed secure sensenvirons, and met in person in a discrete annex of the Assembly building. Given that this was where the most crucial decisions affecting the human race would be taken, the designers had seen fit to spend a great deal of taxpayer’s money on the interior. It was the amalgam of all government Cabinet rooms, infected with a quiet classicism. Twelve native granite pillars supported a domed roof painted in Renaissance style, with a gold and platinum chandelier hanging from the centre, while swan-white frescos of woodland mythology roamed across powder blue walls. The central round table was a single slice of ancient sequoia wood, taken from the last of the giant trees to fall before the Armada Storms. Its fifteen chairs were made from oak and leather to a Nineteenth-Century Plymouth design, and new (each delegate was allowed to take theirs home with them after their term was over). Glass-fronted marbled alcoves displayed exactly 862 sculptures and statuettes; one donated by each planet in the Confederation. The Tyrathca had contributed a crude hexagonal slab of slate with faint green scratches on the surface, a plaque of some kind from Tanjuntic-RI (worthless to them, but they knew how much humans valued antiquity). The Kiint had presented an enigmatic kinetic sculpture of silvery foil, composed of twenty-five concentric circular strips that rotated around each other without any bearings between them, each strip was suspended in air and apparently powered by perpetual motion (it was suspected they were pieces of metallic hydrogen).

Lalwani and Kolhammer joined the First Admiral outside the council chamber, and the three of them followed the President in. Twelve chairs were already filled by the ambassadors currently appointed to the Polity Council. Haaker and Samual took their places, leaving the fifteenth empty. Although Ambassador Roulor was entitled to take the seat vacated by Rittagu-FUH, the Assembly had delayed formally voting to confirm his appointment. The Kiint hadn’t complained.

Samual sat down with minimum fuss, acknowledging the other ambassadors. He didn’t enjoy the irony of being called here in the same way he’d called them to request the starflight quarantine. It indicated events were now controlling him.

The President called the meeting to order. “Admiral, if you could brief us on the Trafalgar situation, please.”

“The evacuation will be complete in another three days,” Samual told them. “Active Navy personnel were given priority and are being flown to their secondary locations. We should be back up to full operational capability in another two days. The civilian workers are being ferried down to Avon. All decisions about refurbishing the asteroid will be postponed until the crisis is over. We’ll have to wait until it’s physically cooled down anyway.”

“What about the ships?” the President enquired. “How many were damaged?”

“One hundred and seventy three Adamist ships were destroyed, a further eighty-six are damaged beyond repair. Fifty-two voidhawks were killed. Human deaths so far stand at nine thousand two hundred and thirty-two. Seven hundred and eighty-seven people have been hospitalised, most of them with radiation burns. We haven’t released those figures to the media yet. They just know it’s bad.”

The ambassadors were silent for a long moment.

“How many starships belonged to the First Fleet?” Earth’s ambassador asked.

“Ninety-seven front-line warships were lost.”

“Dear God.” Samual didn’t see who muttered that.

“Capone cannot be allowed to get away with an atrocity of this magnitude,” the President said. “He simply cannot.”

“It was an unusual set of circumstances,” Samual said. “Our new security procedures should prevent it happening again.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew how pathetic it sounded.

“Those circumstances, possibly,” Abeche’s ambassador said bitterly. “What if he dreams up some new course of action? We’ll be left with another bloody great disaster on our hands.”

“We’ll stop him.”

“You should have expected this, made some provision. We know Capone had antimatter, and he has nothing to lose. That combination was bound to result in a reckless strike of some kind. Jesus Christ, don’t your strategy planners consider these scenarios?”

“We’re aware of them, Mr Ambassador. And we do take them seriously.”

“Mortonridge hasn’t delivered anything like the victory we were expecting,” Miyag’s ambassador said. “Capone’s infiltration flights have got everybody petrified. Now this.”

“We have eliminated Capone’s source of antimatter,” the First Admiral said levelly. “The infiltration flights have stopped because of that. He does not have the resources to conquer another planet. Capone is a public relations problem, not the true threat.”