As I said, anything is possible, given the time and the will. We had the time. We had the will.

General Gau stared as his fleet blew itself apart silently but brilliantly. Behind us his soldiers squalled horribly, confused and terrified by what they were seeing.

"You knew," Gau said, in a whisper. He did not stop looking at the sky.

"I knew," I said. "And I tried to warn you, General. I asked you not to call your fleet."

"You did," Gau said. "I can't imagine why your masters let you."

"They didn't," I said.

Gau turned to me then, wearing a face whose map I could not read, but which I sensed expressed profound horror, and yet, even now, curiosity. "You warned me," Gau said. "On your own initiative."

"I did," I said.

"Why would you do that?" Gau asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," I admitted. "Why did you decide to try to remove colonists instead of killing them?"

"It's the moral thing to do," Gau said.

"Maybe that's why I did it," I said, looking up to where the explosions continued their brilliance. "Or maybe I just didn't want the blood of all those people on my hands."

"It wasn't your decision," Gau said. "I have to believe that."

"It wasn't," I said. "But that doesn't matter."

Eventually the explosions stopped.

"Your own ship was spared, General Gau," I said.

"Spared," he repeated. "Why?"

"Because that was the plan," I said. "Your ship, and yours alone. You have safe passage from Roanoke to skip distance, back to your own territory, but you must leave now. This guarantee of safe passage expires in an hour unless you are on your way. I'm sorry, but I don't know what your equivalent measure of time is. Suffice to say you should hurry, General."

Gau turned and bellowed at one of his soldiers, and then bellowed again when it became clear they weren't paying attention. One came over; he covered his translator and spoke something to him in their own language. The soldier sprinted back to the others, yelling as he went.

He turned back to me. "This will make things difficult," he said.

"With all due respect, General," I said. "I think that was the intent."

"No," Gau said. "You don't understand. I told you there are those in the Conclave who want to eradicate humanity. To annihilate all of you as you've just annihilated my fleet. It will be harder now to hold them back. They are part of the Conclave. But they still have their own ships and their own governments. I don't know what will happen now. I don't know if I can control them after this. I don't know if they will listen to me anymore."

A squad of soldiers approached the general to retrieve him, two of them training their weapons on me. The general barked something; the weapons came down. Gau took a step toward me. I fought the urge to take a step back and held my ground.

"Look to your colony, Administrator Perry," Gau said. "It is no longer hidden. From this moment forward, it will be infamous. People will want revenge for what has happened here. All of the Colonial Union will be a target. But this is where it happened."

"Will you take your revenge, General?" I asked.

"No," Gau said. "No Conclave ships or troops under my command will return here. This is my word to you. To you, Administrator Perry. You tried to warn me. I owe you this courtesy. But I can only control my own ships and my own troops." He motioned to his squad. "Right now, these are the troops I control. And I have only one ship under my command. I hope you understand what I am saying to you."

"I do," I said.

"Then fare you well, Administrator Perry," Gau said. "Look to your colony. Keep it safe. I hope for your sake that it will not be as difficult as I expect it will be." Gau turned and paced double-time to his shuttle to make his departure. I watched him go.

"The plan is simple," General Rybicki had told me. "We destroy his fleet, all of it, except for his ship. He returns to the Conclave and struggles to keep control of it all as it flies apart. That's why we keep him alive, you know. Even after this, some will still be loyal to him. The civil war the Conclave members will have with themselves in the aftermath will destroy the Conclave. The civil war will weaken the capabilities of its races of the Conclave far more effectively than if General Gau died and the Conclave disbanded. In a year, the Conclave will smash itself to bits, and the Colonial Union will be in a position to pick up most of the big pieces."

I watched Gau's shuttle launch, streaking up into the night.

I hoped General Rybicki was right.

I didn't think he would be.

Data from the defense satellite the Colonial Union parked above Roanoke would tell us that the missile cluster that attacked the colony popped into existence on the gasping edge of the planet's atmosphere and deployed its payload of five rockets almost instantly, blasting the weapons from a cold start into the ever-thickening atmosphere.

The heat shields on two of the rockets failed during the weapons' entry, collapsing against the white-hot bow wave of the atmosphere. They exploded violently, but not nearly as violently as they would have if their payloads had been armed. Failures at their task, they burned away harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.

The defense satellite tracked the three other rockets and beamed an attack warning to the colony. The message took over every one of the newly reactivated PDAs in the colony and broadcast the warning that an attack was imminent. Colonists dropped their dinner plates, grabbed their children and headed toward the community shelters in the village or family shelters out on the farms. Out among the Mennonite farms, recently installed sirens wailed on the edges of properties.

Closer to town, Jane remotely activated the colony's defense array, hastily installed once Roanoke was allowed to use modern machinery. Defense array was a grand term for what the defenses were; in this case a series of linked, automated land defenses and two beam turrets at opposite ends of Croatoan village. The beam turrets could theoretically destroy the rockets blasting their way toward us, provided we had the energy to power them fully. We didn't; our energy grid was powered by solar power. It was sufficient for the colony's day-to-day energy consumption but woefully inadequate for the intense power the beam weapons required. Each of the turret's internal power cells could provide five seconds of full use or fifteen seconds of low power use. The low power level might not destroy a missile entirely, but it could fry its navigation core, knocking the thing off-course.

Jane powered down the land guns. We wouldn't be needing those. She then made a direct connection to the defense satellite and dumped data into her BrainPal at full speed, the better to understand what she would need to do with the beam turrets.

While Jane powered up our defenses the defense satellite determined which of the rockets represented the most immediate threat to the colony and blasted it with its own energy beam. The satellite scored a direct hit and punched a hole into the missile; its sudden lack of aerodynamics tore the thing apart. The satellite retargeted and hit the second of the three remaining rockets, hitting its engine. The missile veered crazily into the sky, the navigation systems unable to compensate for the damage. The missile eventually came down somewhere, so far away from us that we gave it no further thought.

The defense satellite, its own power cells depleted, was unable to do anything about the final missile; it forwarded speed and trajectory data to Jane, who passed the data immediately to the beam turrets. They came online and started tracking.

Beam weapons are focused and coherent but lose energy with distance; Jane maximized the effectiveness of her turrets by allowing the missile to close distance before firing. Jane chose to fire full-throttle at the missile, opening up with both turrets. It was the right decision, because the missile proved incredibly tough. Even with both turrets firing Jane managed only to kill the missile's brain, knocking out its weapons, engines and navigation. The missile died just above the colony, but its inertia propelled it forward and down at incredible speed.