“I don’t care how difficult it is!” shouts Meina Gladstone. “I want all of the fleet in Vega System to defend Heaven’s Gate. Then shift the necessary elements to God’s Grove and the other threatened worlds. The only advantage we have right now is mobility!”

Admiral Singh’s face is dark with frustration. “Too dangerous, M. Executive! If we move the fleet directly to Vega space, it runs a terrible risk of being cut off there. They will certainly attempt to destroy the singularity sphere that connects that system to the Web.”

“Protect it!” snaps Gladstone. “That’s what all the expensive warships are for.”

Singh looks to Morpurgo or the other brass for help. No one speaks.

The group is in the executive complex War Room. The walls are heavy with holos and flowing columns of data. No one is watching the wall.

“It is taking all our resources to protect the singularity sphere in Hyperion space,” says Admiral Singh, his voice low, words carefully spaced. “Retreating under fire, especially under the onslaught of the entire Swarm there, is very difficult. Should that sphere be destroyed, our fleet would be eighteen months time-debt from the Web. The war would be lost before they could return.”

Gladstone nods tersely. “I’m not asking you to risk that singularity sphere until all elements of the fleet have translated, Admiral… I’ve already agreed to let them have Hyperion before we get all our ships out… but I insist that we do not surrender worlds of the Web without a fight.”

General Morpurgo stands. The Lusian looks exhausted already.

“CEO, we’re planning a fight. But it makes much more sense to begin our defense at Hebron or Renaissance Vector. Not only do we gain almost five days to prepare our defenses, but—”

“But we lose nine worlds!” interrupts Gladstone. “Billions of Hegemony citizens. Human beings. Heaven’s Gate would be a terrible loss, but God’s Grove is a cultural and ecological treasure. Irreplaceable.”

“CEO,” says Allan Imoto, Minister of Defense, “there is coming in that the Templars have been in collusion with the so-called Church of the Shrike for many years. Much of the funding for Shrike Cult programs has come from—”

Gladstone flicks her hand to silence the man. “I don’t care about that. The thought of losing God’s Grove is untenable. If we can’t defend Vega and Heaven’s Gate, we draw the line at the Templar planet. That’s final.”

Singh looks as if he has been weighted with invisible chains as he attempts an ironic smile. “That gains us less than an hour, CEO.”

“It’s final,” repeats Gladstone. “Leigh, what’s the status of the riots on Lusus?”

Hunt clears his throat. His demeanor is as hangdog and unhurried as ever. “M. Executive, at least five Hives are now involved. Hundreds of millions of marks in property have been destroyed. FORCE:ground troops have been translated from Freeholm and appear to have contained the worst of the looting and demonstrations, but there is no estimate of when farcaster service can be restored to those Hives. There is no doubt that the Church of the Shrike is responsible. The initial riot in Bergstrom Hive began with a demonstration of Cult fanatics, and the Bishop broke into HTV programming until he was cut off by—”

Gladstone lowers her head. “So he’s finally surfaced. Is he on Lusus now?”

“We don’t know, M. Executive,” replies Hunt. “Transit Authority people are trying to trace him and his top acolytes.”

Gladstone swivels toward a young man I do not recognize for a moment. It is Commander William Ajunta Lee, the hero of the battle for Maui-Covenant. When last heard of, the young man had been transferred to the Outback for daring to speak his mind in front of his superiors. Now the epaulettes of his FORCE:sea uniform carry the gold and emerald of a rear admiral’s insignia.

“What about fighting for each world?” Gladstone asks him, ignoring her own edict that the decision was final.

“I believe it’s a mistake, CEO,” says Lee. “All nine Swarms are committed to the attack. The only one we won’t have to worry about for three years—assuming we can extricate our forces—is the Swarm now attacking Hyperion. If we concentrate our fleet—even half our fleet—to meet the menace to God’s Grove, the odds are almost one hundred percent that we will not be able to shift those forces to defend the eight other first-wave worlds.”

Gladstone rubs her lower lip. “What do you recommend?”

Rear Admiral Lee takes a breath. “I recommend we cut our losses, blow the singularity spheres in those nine systems, and prepare to attack the second-wave Swarms before they reach inhabited star systems.”

Commotion erupts around the table. Senator Feldstein from Barnard’s World is on her feet, shouting something.

Gladstone waits for the storm to subside. “Carry the fight to them, you mean? Counterattack the Swarms themselves, not wait to fight a defensive battle?”

“Yes, M. Executive.”

Gladstone points at Admiral Singh. “Can it be done? Can we plan, prepare, and launch such offensive strikes by"—she consults the data-stream on the wall above her—"ninety-four standard hours from now?”

Singh pulls himself to attention. “Possible? Ah… perhaps, CEO, but the political repercussions of losing nine worlds from the Web… ah… the logistical difficulties of—”

“But it’s possible?” presses Gladstone.

“Ah… yes, M. Executive. But if—”

“Do it,” says Gladstone. She rises, and the others at the table hurry to get to their feet. “Senator Feldstein, I’ll see you and the other affected legislators in my chambers. Leigh, Allan, please keep me informed on the Lusus riots. The War Council will readjourn here in four hours. Good day, gentlemen and ladies.”

I walked the streets as in a daze, my mind tuned to echoes. Away from River Tethys, where canals were fewer and the pedestrian thoroughfares were wider, the crowds filled the avenues. I let my comlog lead me to different terminexes, but each time the throngs were thicker there. It took me a few minutes to realize that these were not merely inhabitants of Renaissance V seeking to get our, but sightseers from throughout the Web shoving to get in. I wondered if anyone on Gladstone’s evacuation task force had considered the problem of millions of the curious ’casting in to see the war begin.

I had no idea how I was dreaming conversations in Gladstone’s War Room, but I also had no doubt they were real. Thinking back now, I remembered details of my dreams during the long night past—not merely dreams of Hyperion, but the CEO’s world walk and details from high-level conferences.

Who was I?

A cybrid was a biological remote, an appendage of the AI… or in this case of an AI retrieval persona… safely ensconced somewhere in the Core. It made sense that the Core knew everything that went on in Government House, in the many halls of human leadership. Humanity had become as blase about sharing their lives with potential AI monitoring as pre-Civil War Old Earth USA-southern families had been about speaking in front of their human slaves. Nothing could be done about it—every human above the lowest Dregs’ Hive poverty class had a comlog with biomonitor, many had implants, and each of these was tuned to the music of the datasphere, monitored by elements of the datasphere, dependent upon functions of the datasphere—so humans accepted their lack of privacy. An artist on Esperance had once said to me, “Having sex or a domestic quarrel with the house monitors on is like undressing in front of a dog or cat… it gives you pause the first time, and then you forget about it.”

So was I tapping into some back channel known just to the Core?

There was a simple way to find out: leave my cybrid and travel the highways of the megasphere to the Core the way Brawne and my disembodied counterpart had been doing the last time I had shared their perceptions.