the country, and was titular head of the territory now. There were rumors that she was going to be drafted as one of the D.C. representatives to Congress in next year’s general elections, though she’d not formally announced her candidacy.
He smiled. “Madam Governor! It’s good to see you again.”
Two of the security ’bots were giving her a very close scan, checking for weapons, explosives imbedded inside her body, anything at all that might be a threat. It was hard to see how she could be hiding much; she was wearing a holographic sheath of rippling light in greens and blues, with the image of the Freedom’s Star ribbon glowing above her left breast. An animated tattoo of a bright green butterfly opened and closed its wings on her right cheek.
She smiled sweetly at one of the machines. “See anything you like?”
“That will do,” Koenig told the machines. “I’ve known Ms. Ashton for a long time, and if she’s a threat, it’s definitely to the other guys.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” one said … but, as with the ’botender, they completed their scans.
“Machines,” she said. “I still can’t get used to them.”
“I know what you mean.” Actually, Koenig thought, he didn’t know what she meant … he couldn’t. Shay had been born and raised outside of the USNA’s comfortable high-tech envelope, where the locals had to farm and fish just to survive. She’d been exposed to advanced technologies, certainly—from robots to genetic prostheses to AIs to nano-grown cerebral implants during her tour in the Navy—but you really needed to have grown up with that sort of technology to get the most out of it. Even now, millions of people all over the country were Prims—Primitives—people brought up in the Peripheries, who didn’t have access to high tech, or who’d come to it later in life.
The expression on her face told him she’d caught him out, and he shrugged. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Mr. President.” Her right forefinger touched her forehead, her left the center of her sternum. “You’re almost there … thirty centimeters.”
He chuckled and nodded. Thirty centimeters—the distance between brain and heart. Knowing a fact was different from feeling it.
Koenig lightly squeezed the silver jovian in his hand, and the upper surface slid open, releasing a small, thick puff of greenish vapor. He inhaled, savoring the tingling rush channeling directly to his brain.
He smiled at Ashton. “Can I get you one of these? They’re good …”
“Thank you, no, sir. Prims have trouble with brainstimming, sometimes. I can’t handle the stuff.”
The green vapor consisted of clouds of nanotechnic units programmed to send waves of pleasurable sensations directly into the brain via the olfactory bulb. The sense of smell was the only one hardwired directly into the brain rather than through a long chain of nerves, and brainstimming gave a socially acceptable euphoric buzz without impairment or hangover. People who’d received their cerebral implants later in life, however, rather than as small children, could have trouble handling the storm of sensations, could become disoriented and might even pass out. Such, apparently, was the case with Ashton.
“Of course.”
“So we’re really going to go through with this, Mr. President? The new alliance, I mean?”
“It seems to be the best course for us. For Earth, I mean.”
“That’s assuming we can trust them.” She nodded toward General Kurz, now deep in conversation with Armitage.
“Well … yes.”
“Some of them wanted to sell out to the Sh’daar.”
“I know, Ms. Ashton. And to a certain extent I agree with you. But Konstantin says that we won’t survive another encounter with the Sh’daar if we don’t work with the Confederation … to say nothing of the Rosette Aliens. We unite, or we die. There is no middle ground.”
“Konstantin.” She made a face. “Another machine.”
“A machine some thousands of times smarter—and millions of times faster—than any organic brain we’ve encountered.”
“That’s right. Smarter … so smart we don’t know what it’s really thinking. Or what it’s planning for the future.”
He smiled. “Perhaps you’d like to sit in on the next meeting of my cabinet.”
She looked shocked. “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to suggest—”
He waved her down with a gentle motion of his hand. “No, no. That’s okay. I was just picturing you tearing into Sarah Taylor, the secretary of Alien Affairs. Or Phil Caldwell. It might be fun.”
A USNA admiral in full dress approached them. “Do you need rescuing, Mr. President?”
“Not at all, Vince. The governor was just … questioning certain affairs of state.”
Admiral Vincent Lodge smiled at Ashton. “Maybe you need rescuing from him.”
“I think I can watch out for myself, Admiral.”
“Good.” He looked at Koenig, and some of the humor drained from his eyes. “Mr. President? A word, if I could?”
“Excuse us, Ms. Ashton?”
“Of course.”
They stepped aside. “What’s the word?”
“Mr. President … we’ve received a Konstantin intercept.”
Konstantin had intelligence connections imbedded all over Earth, and well beyond. Admiral Lodge was the head of Naval Intelligence … the human head, rather, since in many ways Konstantin was the true director of cyberintelligence. A Konstantin intercept meant that the AI had picked up a transmission of some sort, probably classified and definitely important, if Lodge was interrupting him at a party about it.
“Tell me.”
“A courier just dropped into normal space outside Neptune’s orbit and began transmitting. It’s from Kapteyn’s Star … from the Pan-European monitor they sent out there.”
“Go on …” Couriers were high-speed interstellar vessels, usually unmanned, that could make the Alcubierre passage between the stars much more quickly than larger, more cumbersome star-faring vessels. They wouldn’t have sent one if things weren’t critical.
“We know what the Rosettes are doing at Heimdall, sir. They’re waking up the Kapteyns. They may be assimilating them.”
“The Kapteyns!”
“Yes, sir. And for the first time, we just may have gotten a glimpse of what the Rosette Aliens are after.”
“You have my full attention,” Koenig told him.
29 October 2425
TC/USNA CVS America
Admiral’s Quarters
0425 hours, TFT
Admiral Trevor “Sandy” Gray came awake in a darkened and empty room. Still half asleep, he clawed at the loneliness of the bed next to him. Where was she? It took him several moments to figure out where he was … his quarters on board the star carrier America.
Damn … it had seemed so real.
But then, it always did.
His partner in the erotincounter had been named Marie; for once she had not been Angela, his