“Excuse me,” said Meina Gladstone, her weathered voice in sharp contrast to the briefing officer’s syrupy flow, “but could you tell us how many of the Ouster ships are of military significance?”

“Ah…” said the colonel, and glanced toward his superiors.

General Morpurgo cleared his throat. “We think about six… seven hundred, tops,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

CEO Gladstone raised an eyebrow. “And the size of our battle groups?”

Morpurgo nodded toward the young colonel to stand at ease. Morpurgo answered. “Task Force 42 has about sixty ships, CEO. Task Force—”

“Task Force 42 is the evacuation group?” said Gladstone.

General Morpurgo nodded, and I thought I saw a hint of condescension in his smile. “Yes, ma’am. Task Force 87.2, the battle group, which translated in-system about an hour ago, will—”

“Were sixty ships adequate to face six or seven hundred?” asked Gladstone.

Morpurgo glanced toward one of his fellow officers as if asking for patience. “Yes,” he said, “More than adequate. You have to understand, CEO, that six hundred Hawking drives may sound like a lot, but they’re nothing to worry about when they’re pushing singleships, or scouts, or one of those little five-person attack craft they call lancers. Task Force 42 consisted of almost two dozen main line spinships, including the carriers Olympus Shadow and Neptune Station. Each of these can launch more than a hundred fighters or ALRs.” Morpurgo fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a recom smokestick the size of a cigar, appeared to remember that Gladstone disapproved of them, and struck it back in his coat. He frowned. “When Task Force 87.2 completes its deployment, we’ll have more than enough firepower to deal with a dozen Swarms.” Still frowning, he nodded toward Yani to continue.

The colonel cleared his throat and gestured with his pointer toward the callup display. “As you can see, Task Force 42 had no trouble clearing the necessary volume of space to initiate farcaster construction.

This construction was begun six weeks ago, WST, and completed yesterday at 1624 hours, standard. Initial Ouster harassing attacks were beaten off with no casualties for TF 42, and during the past forty-eight hours, a major battle has been waged between advance units of the task force and main Ouster forces. The focus of this skirmish has been here"—Yani gestured again, and a section of the callup pulsed with blue light beyond the tip of his pointer—"twenty-nine degrees above the plane of the ecliptic, thirty AU from Hyperion’s sun, approximately 0.35 AU from the hypothetical rim of the system’s Oort cloud.”

“Casualties?” said Leigh Hunt.

“Quite within acceptable limits for a firefight of this duration,” said the young colonel, who looked like he had never been within a light-year of hostile fire. His blond hair was carefully combed to the side and gleamed under the intense glow of the spots. “Twenty-six Hegemony fast attack fighters destroyed or missing, twelve torpedo-carrying ALRs, three torchships, the fuel transport Asquith’s Pride, and the cruiser Draconi 111.”

“How many people lost?” asked CEO Gladstone. Her voice was very quiet.

Yani glanced quickly at Morpurgo but answered the question himself.

“Around twenty-three hundred,” he said. “But rescue operations are currently being carried out, and there is some hope of finding survivors of the Draconi.” He smoothed his tunic and went on quickly. “This should be weighed against confirmed kills of at least a hundred and fifty Ouster warships. Our own raids into the migration clust–the Swarm have resulted in an additional thirty to sixty destroyed craft, including comet farms, ore-processing ships, and at least one command cluster.”

Meina Gladstone rubbed her gnarled fingers together. “Did the casualty estimate—our casualties—include the passengers and crew of the destroyed treeship Yggdrasill, which we had chartered for the evacuation?”

“No, ma’am,” Yani responded briskly. “Although there was an Ouster raid in progress at the time, our analysis shows that the Yggdrasill was not destroyed by enemy action.”

Gladstone again raised an eyebrow. “What then?”

“Sabotage, as far as we can tell at this time,” said the Colonel. He prompted another Hyperion System diagram onto the callup.

General Morpurgo glanced at his comlog and said, “Uh-uh, skip to the ground defenses, Yani. The CEO has to deliver her speech in thirty minutes.”

I completed the sketch of Gladstone and Morpurgo, stretched, and looked around for another subject. Leigh Hunt seemed a challenge, with his nondescript, almost pinched features. When I glanced back up, a holoed globe of Hyperion ceased spinning and unwound itself into a series of flattened projections: oblique equirectangular. Bonne, orthographic, rosette. Van der Grinten, Cores, interrupted Goode homolosine, gnomonic, sinusoidal, azimuthal equidistant, polyconic, hypercorrected Kuwatsi, computer-eschered, Briesemeister, Buckminster, Miller cylindrical, multicoligraphed, and satplot standard, before resolving into a standard Robinson-Baird map of Hyperion.

I smiled. That had been the most enjoyable thing I’d seen since the briefing began. Several of Gladstone’s people were shifting with impatience. They wanted at least ten minutes with the CEO before the broadcast began.

“As you know,” began the colonel, “Hyperion is Old Earth standard to nine point eight nine on the Thuron-Laumier Scale of—”

“Oh, for Chrissakes,” growled Morpurgo, “get to the troop dispositions and get it over with.”

“Yessir.” Yani swallowed and lifted his pointer. His voice was no longer confident. “As you know… I mean…” He pointed to the northernmost continent, floating like a poorly done sketch of a horse’s head and neck, terminating jaggedly where the beast’s chest and back muscles would begin. “This is Equus. It has a different official name, but everyone’s called it that since… this is Equus. The chain of islands running southeast… here and here… is called the Cat and Nine Tails. Actually, it’s an archipelago with more than a hundred… anyway, the second major continent is called Aquila, and perhaps you can see it’s shaped something like an Old Earth eagle, with the beak here… on the northwest coast… and the talons extended here, to the southwest… and at least one wing raised here, running to the northeast coast. This section is the so-called Pinion Plateau and is almost inaccessible due to the flame forests, but here… and here… to the southwest, are the main fiberplastic plantations…”

“The disposition of troops,” growled Morpurgo.

I sketched Yani. I discovered that it is impossible to convey the sheen of sweat with graphite.

“Yessir. The third continent is Ursus… looks a bit like a bear… but no FORCE troops landed there because it’s south polar, almost uninhabitable, although the Hyperion Self-defense Force keeps a listening post there…” Yani seemed to sense he was babbling. He drew himself up, wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, and continued in a more composed tone. “Primary FORCE:ground installations here… here… and here.” His pointer illuminated areas near the capital of Keats, high on the neck of Equus. “FORCE:space units have secured the primary spaceport at the capital as well as secondary fields here… and here.” He touched the cities of Endymion and Port Romance, both on the continent of Aquila. “FORCE:ground units have prepared defensive installations here…” Two dozen red lights winked on; most on the neck and mane areas of Equus, but several in Aquila’s Beak and Port Romance regions. “These include elements of the Marines, as well as ground defenses, ground-to-air and ground-to-space components.

High Command expects that, unlike Bressia, there will be no battles on the planet itself, but should they attempt an invasion, we will be ready for them.”

Meina Gladstone checked her comlog. Seventeen minutes remained until her live broadcast. “What about evacuation plans?”