"Speaking of explosions," Hastings went on after a moment, "what's the latest estimate on their yields?"

"Something like five hundred megatons for the big one." She whistled silently, and he nodded in heartfelt agreement. "The little fellows were down in the multi-kiloton range, but I understand they were all a lot cleaner than they should've been."

"For which we can only be grateful," she said quietly, and he nodded again. A brief silence fell as they pondered the tremendous destructive power which had erupted out of nowhere. The biggest explosion had been so brilliant and high as to be visible from both sides of the Atlantic, and its EMP had knocked out the avionics on seven different civilian airliners-all of which had crashed at sea with no survivors-as well as wreaking general havoc on the satellite communications industry and the Global Positioning Satellites everyone had come to take so much for granted. There was a very large hole in the orbital electronic network which had once covered the Atlantic, and Morris hated to think what that burst of fury had been like at closer range. It must have been like a foresight of Hell.

"But what do you think of our tape?" he asked finally.

"Impressive. Very impressive." She nibbled thoughtfully on a bent knuckle. "Whatever they were, they weren't ours. Or anyone else's, for that matter. Of course, SPASUR's track already proved that-this is just icing on the cake."

"But the fact that an F-14 in full afterburner lost ground on them that fast has more immediacy than tracking station reports, no?"

"True. And visual confirmation of their size is impressive, too." She shook her head. "I still can't understand how they got clear down to the edge of atmosphere before they were picked up, though. Anyone who could build those things should certainly be capable of foxing our radar, of course, but if they can do that at all, why stop? And just what were they doing in atmosphere, anyway?"

"That, I should think, is pretty obvious," Morris said. "Admiral Carson got mixed up in somebody else's war."

"Granted, but why here?" She shook her head and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs and worrying an earlobe. "There's no way to prove it, but I think it's pretty damned obvious those things were designed for space, not atmosphere."

"Reasons?" he asked.

"Their size, for one, and then there's this... ." She restarted the tape and pushed the fast-forward button, then froze the image as the Tomcat pilot completed his roll and the picture stabilized. "See those bright hemispheres in front of them?" He nodded. "That has to be how they were able to pull that speed. Some sort of-well, call it a force field."

"That's what NASA figures," Morris agreed.

"Has to be," she said. "Their hulls would be white hot at that speed without them. But if they were meant primarily for atmosphere, the designers would have given more thought to what might happen if their shield failed, I think. Look here." She touched the image of the rearmost vessel. "See all those external bulges? And here and here-those look like aerials of some sort. There's no suggestion of any lifting surfaces, either. Add that blunt nose and these weird curved sections here, and they'd be in real trouble if they lost their shields at high Mach numbers. In fact, I'll bet that's how we managed to knock any of them down. A piddling little SAM wouldn't shoot one of those things out of the sky, but if it could screw up that force field ..."

"Don't underestimate our SAMs," Morris cautioned. "Depending on what hit them, you're talking up to a ninety pound warhead, and there were hundreds of the buggers flying around. Still, NASA and Point Mugu both tend to agree with you. According to them, it was losing whatever was protecting them that did them in-especially if they took enough battle damage to give the airflow something to shred."

"And that's why none of it makes any sense!" Hastings protested. "Why fight in a less than ideal environment? These were space ships, for God's sake! Even if you assume they just sort of wandered into our solar system from Out There, why fight in atmosphere?"

"Maybe we've been invaded," Morris suggested only half-humorously.

"It's a mighty strange invasion, then," Hastings snorted. "I've never had much patience with the notion that we're so important that mighty alien fleets are just lining up to conquer us, but even if they are, where is the fleet? And does the fact that there were obviously two sides mean one of them is friendly to us?" She shook her head.

"All excellent questions," Mordecai Morris agreed, standing and reaching for his jacket with a weary sigh. He draped it over his shoulder and grinned crookedly. "Do you have an opinion?"

"I don't know, yet," she said, nibbling her knuckle again. "At first glance, I'm inclined to think we were just more-or-less innocent bystanders who got caught in the crossfire, but there're too many unanswered questions for us to assume that. And at least one side's probably a bit ticked with us. Any better refinement on the kill data?"

"Nope," Morris said. "Turns out our 'nuclear hardening' isn't quite as effective as we'd hoped, especially when the task force didn't have time to implement doctrine for surviving a nuclear attack. Most of Admiral Carson's electronics had fits from the EMP when whoever the hell it was nailed the Kidd, and every radar and almost all the computers went to hell when the pulse from that big bastard hit. But it looks like Antietam and Champlain managed to guide most of their SAMs into the targets before the big one flat-out killed their target illumination aerials, and the RAMs and AMRAAMs were on internal seekers. Visual estimates are that we got two, possibly three, out of the first group, with possible hits on a couple more. Obviously we didn't get them all," he added with a crooked smile.

"Obviously," Hastings agreed. "So we don't know who they were, how many of them we got, who killed what after we engaged them, who won, or where the survivors-if any-went afterwards!"

"Except for one thing," Morris said softly, and she quirked an eyebrow at him. "One thing everyone's agreed on-nobody tracked any of them headed back out. I suppose it's possible they wiped each other out, but I tend to think one side or the other probably won. And if neither side blocked our radar on the way in, why do it on the way out?" He shook his head.

"You mean one side, or possibly both of them, is still around?"

"I think we have to assume they could be," he agreed, slipping into his jacket. "And if it's only one, we'd better hope it's the side we didn't get any of. In either case, it looks to me like we'd better find out where they wandered off to, don't you think?" He headed for the door, then paused and looked back with an exhausted smile.

"Thanks for volunteering to write the brief, Jayne," he said. "Try to tie up all the loose ends nice and pretty. If the boss likes it, I'll take the blame-otherwise, you get all the credit."

He vanished out the door before she produced a fitting reply. enemy n, pl. -mies. 1. One who evinces hostility or malice toward, or opposes the interest, desire, or purpose of, another; opponent; foe. 2. A hostile force or power, as a political unit, or an individual belonging to such a force or power. 3. Something destructive or injurious. [Middle English enemi, from Old French inimicus: in-, not + amicus, friend.]

-Webster-Wangchi Unabridged Dictionary of Standard English

Tomas y Hijos, Publishers

2465, Terran Standard Reckoning