"I understand," I said. "Do I need to find some sort of lodging?"

"I don't expect it will take that long," Butcher said.

"Understand that everything I've heard is off the record," Trujillo said.

"At this point, I don't know that I would trust information that is on the record," I said.

Trujillo nodded. "Amen to that," he said.

"What have you heard?" I said.

"It's bad," he said. "And it's getting worse."

Trujillo, Kranjic, Beata and I sat in my favorite commissary at Phoenix, the one with the truly spectacular burgers. We had all ordered one; the burgers cooled, neglected, as we talked in as secluded a corner as we could find.

"Define bad," I said.

"There was a missile attack on Phoenix the other night," Tru-jillo said.

"That's not bad, that's stupid," I said. "Phoenix has the most advanced planetary defense grid of any of the human planets. You couldn't get a missile larger than a marble past it."

"Right," Trujillo said. "And everyone knows it. There hasn't been an attack of any size against Phoenix in over a hundred years. The attack wasn't meant to be successful. It was meant to send a message thai no human planet should be considered safe from retaliation. That's a pretty big statement."

I thought about this while I took a bite of my burger. "Presumably Phoenix wasn't the only planet to get a missile attack," I said.

"No," Trujillo said. "My people tell me that all the colonies have been attacked.''

I nearly choked. "All of them," I repeated.

"All of them," Trujillo said. "The established colonies were never in any danger; their planetary defense grids picked off the attacks. Some of the smaller colonies saw some damage. Sedona colony had an entire settlement wiped off the map. Ten thousand people dead."

"You're sure about that," I said.

"Secondhand," Trujillo said. "But from a source I trust, whq spoke to the Sedonan representative. I trust my source as much as I trust anyone."

I turned to Kranjic and Beata. "This fits in with what you've heard?"

"It does," Kranjic said. "Manfred and I have different sources, but what I'm hearing is the same." Beata nodded as well.

"But none of this is on the news feeds," I said, glancing down at my PDA, which lay on the table. I had it open and active, awaiting the determination of the inquiry.

"No," Trujillo said. "The Colonial Union has slapped a blanket prohibition on information about the attacks. They're using the State Secrecy Act. You'll remember that one."

"Yeah," I winced at the memory of the werewolves and Gutierrez. "Didn't do me a whole lot of good. I doubt it'll do the CU much better."

"The attacks explain the chaos we're seeing here," Trujillo said. "I don't have any sources from the CDF—they're clammed up tight—but I know that every single colony representative is screaming their head off for direct CDF protection. Ships are being recalled and reassigned, but there's not enough for every colony. From what I hear, the CDF is doing triage—deciding which colonies it can protect and which colonies it can afford to lose."

"Where does Roanoke fit into that triage?" I asked.

Trujillo shrugged. "When it comes down to it, everyone wants defense priority," he said. "I sounded out the legislators I know about increasing Roanoke's defenses. They all said they'd be happy to—once their own planets were taken care of."

"No one's talking about Roanoke anymore," Beata said. "Everyone is focused on what's happening at their own homes. They can't report it, but they're sure as hell following it."

We focused on our burgers after that, lost in our own thoughts. I was preoccupied enough that I didn't notice someone standing behind me until Trujillo looked up and stopped chewing. "Perry," he said, and glanced meaningfully over my shoulder. I turned to see General Szilard.

"I like the burgers here, too," he said. "I'd join you, but given your wife's experience, I doubt you'd be willing to eat at the same table as me."

"Now that you mention it, General," I said, "you'd be entirely correct about that."

"Then walk with me please, Administrator Perry," Szilard said. "We have a lot to discuss, and time is short."

"All right," I said. I aicked up my tray, giving a glance over at my lunch mates. Their expressions were carefully blank. I dropped the contents of my tray into the nearest receptacle and faced the general. "Where to?" I asked.

"Come on," Szilard said. "Let's go for a ride."

"There," Szilard said. His personal shuttle hung in space, with Phoenix visible to port and Phoenix Station off to starboard. He motioned to indicate both. "Nice view, isn't it?"

"Very nice," I said, wondering why the hell Szilard had taken me here. Some paranoid part of me wondered if he were planning to pop the shuttle s access hatch and toss me into space, but he didn't have a space suit, so this seemed somewhat unlikely. Then again, he was Special Forces. Maybe he didn't need a space suit.

"I'm not planning to kill you," Szilard said.

I smiled in spite of myself. "Apparently you can read minds," I said.

"Not yours," Szilard said. "But I can guess what you're thinking well enough. Relax, I'm not going to kill you, if for no othec reason because then Sagan would track me down and kill me."

"You're already on her shit list," I said.

"Of that I have no doubt," Szilard said. "But it was necessary, and I don't plan to apologize for it."

"General," I said, "why are we here?"

"We're here because I like the view, and because I want to speak frankly to you, and because this shuttle is the one place I'm entirely sure where anything I say to you is not going to be overheard by anyone else in any way." The general reached over to the control dash of the shuttle and pressed a button; the view of Phoenix and Phoenix Station disappeared and was replaced with a depthless black.

"Nanomesh," I said.

"Indeed," Szilard said. "No signals in, no signals out. You should know that being cut off is unspeakably claustrophobic for Special Forces; we're so used to being in constant contact with each other through our BrainPals that dropping the signal is like losing any three of our senses."

"I knew that," I said. Jane had recounted to me the mission in which she and other Special Forces hunted Charles Boutin; Boutin had devised a way to cut off the BrainPal signal of the Special Forces, killing most of them and driving some of those who survived completely insane.

Szilard nodded. "Then you'll understand how difficult something like this is, even for me. Honestly I have no idea how Sagan was able leave it behind when she married you."

"There are other ways to connect with someone," I said.

"If you say so," Szilard said. "The fact I'm willing to do this should also communicate to you the seriousness of what I'm going to say to you."

"All right," I said. "I'm ready."

"Roanoke is in serious trouble," Szilard said. "We all are. The Colonial Union had anticipated that destroying the Conclave fleet would throw the Conclave into a civil war. That much was correct. Right now the Conclave is tearing itself apart. The races loyal to General Gau are squaring off against another faction who has found a leader in a member of the Arris race named Nerbros Eser.

As it stands there's only one thing that has kept these two factions of the Conclave from destroying each other entirely."

"What's that?" I said.

"The thing the Colonial Union didn't anticipate," Szilard said. "And that is that every single member race of the Conclave is now bent on destroying the Colonial Union. Not just containing the Colonial Union, as General Gau was content to do. They want to eradicate it completely."

"Because we wiped out the fleet," I said.