The Frontier Wars, Part 1: 2270 to 2271
The Interstellar Age, S02E08
The disappearance of Locke in 2248 barely registered in the human galaxy. Even the most successful of the wildcat colonies—Freedom in the Frontier system, and Horizon in the Dawn system—were untroubled by the colony’s loss, despite the fact that it occurred just twenty-three light years from Dawn, and thirty from Frontier. Colonial expeditions disappeared all the time.
Even the fact that no messages had been sent after the colonists confirmed their landing was not unusual. In the days before QEC and miniaturized Stardrives, interstellar communications could only be carried by ships, or by messenger skiffs: small, autonomous craft about the size of modern drone fighters or shuttles. Such messages were expensive and time consuming to send. It was difficult for underresourced colonists to send one in an emergency—as indeed was the case during the Kyran attack on Locke.
Frontier and Dawn were not even troubled enough to send an expedition to find out what happened. Such expeditions were also expensive, and there was little common feeling between the wildcatters in those days. Besides, it was assumed that, given the habitability rating of the planet, another colonist group would make an attempt for it at some point in the future. These would likely discover Locke’s fate, without any extra expense.
An increase in the rate of colonial disappearances over the 2260’s similarly raised few alarms. A few fringe theorists conspiracized about the return of the UACs, or a TIU black op to undermine wildcat efforts—or both—but few in the mainstream paid them any mind. It was only the disappearance of the Milliken’s Meadow colony in 2270 that finally began to shake the wildcatters out of their complacency.
Milliken’s Meadow was founded in 2265, mostly by emigrants from the corporate colonies. After a difficult start on the tidally locked world, the tenacious colonists found their footing, creating a small but well-established settlement in the habitable terminator zone. It grew from just fifty colonists in its founding year, to nearly four hundred by 2269. The colony had even begun a regular tri-monthly trade route between their world and Freedom, exchanging a rare and medicinally versatile flower that grew in Milliken’s unique climate for valuable Freedomite commodities and industrial metals.
Milliken had shown every indicator that it would one day join Freedom and Horizon as a large, self-sustaining colony—so it came as a surprise when the July, 2270 tradeship failed to arrive in Frontier. The Frontierites waited a week for the ship to arrive, then elected to dispatch their own trade vessel, with an additional party of security and medical personnel, to check in on the Milliken colony, just a week’s Stardrive away.
What they found was chilling. The entire colony had been destroyed, apparently by a nuclear explosion—and all the colony ships and messenger skiffs were missing.
Frontierite investigators initially concluded that the colony’s reactors must have suffered a catastrophic failure. However, the model of fusion reactor employed by the colony should not have been capable of failing so catastrophically—unless they had been sabotaged. That meant that someone—or something—had intentionally destroyed Milliken’s Meadow. Nor did a reactor malfunction, accidental or otherwise, explain where the colonists’ ships had gone. Investigators searched for message buoys or data packets, but found nothing.
When the team returned to Frontier, word quickly spread about what they had found, and not found. Most in the wildcat sector believed that the reactor explosion had been accidental, perhaps a result of incompetence. In that scenario, the surviving colonists would then have boarded their ships and made for another human world, likely Freedom, but become lost along the way or suffered some other accident.
The dominant opinion in the TIU supposed that some crazed wildcatters, possibly a group of religious zealots, had intentionally sabotaged the reactor, and possibly the ships as well, destroying their own colony for reasons unknown. However, a small but increasing number of people across human space feared that the mysterious UACs or their creators had finally struck, an attack that might presage the beginning of the end for humanity.
The Republic of Frontier called an emergency summit for September, 2270, asking all other wildcat colonies to send a delegation, if they were able, to discuss the situation and decide upon a joint course of action. An invitation was also extended to the Terran Interstellar Union, which politely declined.
Frontier was the oldest and best-established of the wildcat colonies, celebrating its 45th birthday in 2270. By then it boasted a massive population—by wildcat standards—of half a million. It was the most significant hub for trade and commerce in the region; despite its small size relative to the largest Terran and corporate colonies, Frontier saw as much traffic as systems like Hyperion and Venture, thanks to the large number of settlements within fifty light years.
Yet not even Frontier had a navy, as such; just a smattering of secondhand warships and armed merchantmen generously referred to as “frigates.” These were capable of little more than tangling with pirates and smugglers. Rather than a marine corps or an army, a volunteer militia, augmented by large numbers of autonomous weapons, kept the peace.
In those days, the TIU was the only real military power in human space. But while its navy traced its lineage back two centuries to the Allied sea and space forces of the Third World War, its considerable strength had never been tested in battle—and the TIU was not interested in chasing down a few missing wildcatters whose legitimacy they did not even recognize. The independent colonies were on their own.
The Frontier Summit was a predictably chaotic affair. The wildcat colonies had never cooperated with one another on much of anything, save a general agreement on freedom of trade, and the establishment of an ad-hoc communications relay system called the “Pegasus Express.” After a day or so of unproductive haggling, the Frontierite delegation managed to gain control of the proceedings, leveraging their position as hosts, and as the largest and most potentially powerful of the wildcat colonies. Though the Republic’s delegation was nominally headed by its foreign minister, one of the assistant delegates quickly drew most of the attention. He spoke little, but deliberately, and his words carried a weight out of all proportion to their volume.
This man was Rance Wolfe, founder and CEO of the system’s largest trading consortium, Starbird Interstellar. His mother and father, William and Alina Wolfe, had moved from Earth to Taranis in 2219, seeking opportunities they could not find on a crowded homeworld. The Wolfes took possession of a plot of land on the outskirts of the colony, where they would farm grain and mine copper with the help of a small fleet of drones. They had three children: Sarah, born in 2221, Lyman, in 2225, and Rance, in 2228.
Rance looked to the stars from a young age. His parents’ agricultural concern took off shortly after his birth, and they regularly transported their produce up to Taranis’s orbitals for shipping to the outer system asteroid mines. Rance would often sit in on these flights, and spent much of his childhood shuttling back and forth between space and the surface. He was fascinated by history—in particular military history—and pursued the subject in school as far as he could, and in his spare time thenceforth.
With his parents’ support, Rance learned a trade as an engineer, and secured a berth on an intrasystem cargo ship at age seventeen. He rose rapidly through the ranks thanks to his diligence and near-obsessive commitment to work, as well as his genius with the ships’ systems. In his spare hours, he designed in-depth virtual reality simulations of naval battles, allowing command of individual ships, squadrons, or entire fleets. These ranged from hyper-accurate reenactments of historical engagements like the Battles of Jutland (1916), Midway (1942), the East China Sea (2029), and Shionomisaki (2054), to theoretical engagements between space fleets using present-day technology. Some entertained his crewmates, while others were far too detailed for anyone but Wolfe to enjoy.
By age 21, he had command of his own cargo ship, the pinnacle of many a spacer’s career. Within a couple of years, Rance was already looking for new challenges. His father encouraged him to join the navy; despite his issues with the government on Earth, William remained a Terran patriot, and with Rance’s experience and talent, he could easily have risen to command his own warship before the age of thirty.
But, surprisingly, this prospect held little interest for him. At the time, he gave no explanation for his disinterest in a naval career. But later on, he would say: “I studied history; the Terran navy lived in it.”
At the age of 23, Rance sold his ship and used the money to buy passage to the young colony of Freedom. For while Taranis was not Earth, it was still the TIU—and the kind of opportunities that excited Rance’s imagination could not be had there. Though his mother understood and supported his decision, the move created a rift between him and his father that would not be healed for many years.
Arriving on Freedom, he quickly made a name for himself. The hard-edged wildcat spacers soon discovered that his meteoric rise through the Helvetios merchant marine had not been down to Terran softness. Wolfe worked even harder on the trade line between Freedom and Horizon than he had back home. By age 27, he had his own ship once again, a mixed cargo/passenger liner he renamed the Golden Hind, which he operated independently. Taking on increasingly longer and riskier runs, he soon became a wealthy man, reinvesting nearly everything into his business.
By age 32, he had a small fleet of cargo and passenger ships, operating under the corporate banner Starbird Interstellar. Ten years later, Starbird had a stable of more than twenty-five large vessels and a number of smaller skiffs, the largest single-operator fleet in the wildcat colonies, and one of the largest in human space. Several of these were heavily armed merchantmen, which he used to protect his own ships, and occasionally contracted out to the Republic to aid in anti-piracy operations.
The business also made Wolfe one of the wealthiest men in the colonies—though most would not have known it to look at him. Nearly all of his wealth was invested in Starbird and some subsidiary ventures. Wolfe himself lived simply, and largely in space, either on his ships, or on Starbird Station, an orbital transport hub he purchased from the government in 2265 and refitted at his own expense.
This lifetime of experience and success in space, and the wealth it had brought him, made him a natural choice for the Republic’s delegation at the Frontier Summit. It was also the reason that the few words he spoke carried such weight. From the start of the summit, Wolfe was unequivocal about the severity of the situation. In his mind, a hostile force had clearly been responsible for the disappearances—if not the UACs, then someone or something else. As such, he argued, an aggressive response was the only logical course of action.
Wolfe theorized that the hostiles might have the colonies they had raided under observation; he proposed sending a large armed force to several of them, starting with Locke, whose 2248 disappearance, he now believed, was the first of the attacks. These squadrons could determine what happened to the lost colonies, and potentially deter future attacks by a show of force.
Others favored restraint. The representatives of the smaller colonies feared that such a show of force might escalate a conflict rather than prevent one. Commodore Rodrigo Dahl, commanding officer of the Republic Navy—such as it was—proposed that the attack on Milliken might have been an isolated incident; the other disappearances, unrelated accidents. He suggested sending a single ship to each of the lost colonies to investigate more surreptitiously.
Given the paucity of the wildcatters’ military resources, the summit decided that while a hostile force was to blame for at least some of the disappearances, they preferred Dahl’s approach to Wolfe’s. The summit voted to send a single ship to four different colonies with which contact had been lost. Wolfe volunteered to lead the expedition to Locke in person, aboard the fastest of his armed merchantmen, the Peregrine.
The expeditions were set to launch later that year. In the meantime, Starbird Interstellar accelerated the process of arming its larger ships. Wolfe secured additional investments and personal financing for one of his subsidiary ventures, a weapons development corporation called Armada—including funds for secret weapons projects.
The results of the exploratory expeditions were mixed. One launched from Horizon to Return to Rest (lost contact 2268) discovered that the colonists were in fact alive, if not exactly well. A reactor containment failure on their colony ship several months after arrival destroyed the ship and all its skiffs, stranding the colonists—who had, fortunately, managed to establish an agricultural base before the accident.
Another colony, Hope and Faith (lost contact 2263) had simply vanished without a trace: no ship, no buildings, no bodies. If the Kyrans did attack, it is possible that the aggressive vegetation on the planet may have consumed whatever evidence they left behind. The third, A Deepness in the Sky (lost contact 2265), had clearly been destroyed by a hostile actor of some kind—but the Kyrans had covered their tracks well. There was no evidence of who or what might have been responsible.
It was at Locke that that evidence was recovered. The attack had occurred before Clan Lhanak developed a coherent strategy for the raids. Wolfe’s team quickly pieced together what must have happened: a hostile force attacked the colony, and their ship in orbit simultaneously, making use of plasma weapons to overwhelm the lightly armed colonists. They killed about half of the humans, and likely took the rest prisoner, before burning the colony structures and departing.
According to the data on a disk hidden by the colonists, the attackers were members of a technologically advanced alien race bearing a frightening resemblance to intelligent, carnivorous dinosaurs.
The evidence caused an earthquake when Wolfe returned it to Frontier. Many in the summit wanted to keep it secret—either because it was too shocking, or because they believed it must be fake. Despite these objections, Wolfe managed to convince the Republic to release the basic facts, while keeping the raw data—including some images of the ferocious aliens and their weapons—secret to avoid a panic.
The aliens clearly posed a threat—yet still, there was no unity on how the wildcatters should respond. Until more evidence could be discovered elsewhere, Locke remained an isolated incident. A small but vocal minority wanted to simply keep quiet and hope the aliens would not return. Others wanted to petition the TIU for military aid, but these were largely shouted down by the prideful wildcatters. Still others argued for hunting down the aliens and destroying their base of operations, even their homeworld—but when asked where these places were, or with what ships this military feat should be attempted, they tended to go quiet.
Wolfe became the de facto leader of a faction advocating for a prudent, but vigilant approach. Long range reconnaissance could be used to search for a possible base for these aliens—but manned missions should not be sent. Meanwhile, the colonies’ meagre military resources should be centralized in a single reserve force, and the newest, most vulnerable colonies should all be watched closely and placed on alert. If the aliens were to attack again, the reserve force could be dispatched to respond. He also suggested that a sting could be set up—a phony colony peopled by plainclothes military personnel, in the hopes of drawing the aliens in.
In the end, a version of Wolfe’s plan won out: vulnerable colonies would be closely monitored, and nearby systems would be furtively searched for potential alien presence. But the form a military buildup should take became the subject of a heated controversy. Wolfe advocated for a joint fleet plan, in which the summit would agree upon several new classes of ship with new armaments and standardized parts. Each power would build and arm as many such ships as possible given their specific economic and industrial capacity. Each colonial contingent would be independent, but operate under a joint commander elected by the summit.
While eminently practical, the proposal generated a considerable furor. Advocates for specific ship designs, weapons, and tactics were not interested in surrendering their pet methods to a single organizing principle. Further, Wolfe’s critics accused him of trying to secure ship and weapon contracts for his own companies, without considering the best interests of the colonies.
One of those critics was Wolfe’s supposed ally, Commodore Dahl. Wolfe’s proposal would have involved refitting much of the Republic fleet, and changing its existing combat doctrine. Dahl, a former TIDF naval captain, was an adherent of what critics called “the cult of the gun.” Essentially, this was a school of thought which held that railguns, coilguns, and other mass accelerator cannons (MACs) were the pinnacle of space weapons technology. Their projectiles were cheap, powerful, penetrating, and had effectively limitless range, able to strike targets millions of kilometers away. Unlike missiles—whose warheads and fuel sources could be detonated by lasers or other projectiles, or whose guidance systems could be interfered with by electronic and cyberwarfare—these solid rounds, conserving huge amounts of kinetic energy, were nearly impossible to deflect or intercept.
Conversely, while point defense lasers were the state of the art, ship-killing lasers had huge power requirements and dissipated rapidly over distances of thousands of kilometers. Similarly, particle beam weapons were not yet feasible to mass-produce. Missiles and drones, while useful for close-in defense and ground support, were far too easy to intercept in space. The latter opinion was informed in part by the effectiveness of modern point and area defense systems, and was in part a holdover from the Third World War, in which near-perfect missile defense played a crucial role in the Allied victory.
The combination of all-but-omniscient sensor pictures of inner system space, AI-assisted targeting, and massive volleys of un-interceptible projectiles theoretically meant that the only defense against a fleet armed with plentiful and powerful MACs was to have your own, and to shoot first—and more accurately. “The rounds will always get through,” as Dahl and other gun cultists were fond of saying.
TIDF-inspired crews drilled relentlessly with their cannons, emphasizing accuracy and rate of fire over long distances. The theory was that the next major naval action would be fought at extreme range, in excess of 100,000 kilometers. Two fleets would square off to pummel each other with long range gunfire until one side caved and attempted to flee, or else launched a desperate charge into close range. At this point, the other fleet could destroy them with superior gunnery, or allow them to escape if they were too damaged to pursue.
This was, of course, only a theory; the last major fleet action had occurred more than two hundred years ago, on the ocean. But the few space engagements which had occurred since the invention of Stardrive had done little to disabuse gun cultists of their favored notion. TIDF or militia warships armed with the latest MACs, point defenses, and targeting AIs easily defeated pirate, smuggler, and terrorist vessels armed with missiles, drones, or inferior MACs every time—often from long range, before they could even get off an accurate shot.
However, there were some trends which should have caused gun cultists to at least question their premises. While many of these smaller engagements did take place at very long range (50k/km plus), these were most often cases where military or police forces got the drop on their criminal quarry. Most firefights took place at medium range (25-49k/km). And, at least as many took place at close range (under 25k), or what would today be defined as knife fight range (under 1000 km), as pirates attempted to even the odds by ambushing their pursuers.
Gun cultists could easily dismiss these engagements as the skulking of criminals, not the tactics of a genuine military—but the mere fact that even low-tech pirates and terrorists could sometimes get the drop on high-end naval vessels should perhaps have given military theorists pause. What would happen if a peer adversary—perhaps one with weapons and doctrines that did not line up with TIDF expectations—could do the same thing?
That was one of the fundamental flaws of the cult of the gun, and other space warfare doctrines: until the late 23rd century, everyone assumed that the adversary would be human.
Wolfe’s theories, on the other hand, were based on his close study of Earth’s naval history, as well as the simulations he designed. He had always been particularly interested in four periods:
The 16th century, specifically the battles of Lepanto in 1571 and the Spanish Armada in 1588, in which brand new and untested technologies were used in large-scale combat for the first time, resulting in the dawn of a new era of gunnery-based naval warfare;
The First World War, in which many pre-war assumptions about new naval technology proved largely false—with special reference to the range of accurate and effective gunnery;
The Second World War, in which pre-war assumptions again proved false—this time, the primacy of big-gun battleships over aircraft carriers and submarines;
And the Sino-American War of 2029, which was the first large-scale naval conflict after nearly a century of relative peace on the world’s oceans, and in which the seemingly dominant but hide-bound United States Navy suffered a series of humiliating defeats.
Wolfe’s studies convinced him that at the end of the current age of peace, only one thing could be certain—any firm concepts about the next naval war would inevitably prove wrong. That held doubly true if it was to be fought against an alien opponent. Maximum tactical flexibility and adaptability would be key to survival. Marrying a fleet exclusively to any doctrine or weapons system would be suicide.
Another obsession of Wolfe’s had long been the weapons satellites of Project Nova Shield, the nuclear bomb-pumped lasers that had defended Earth in the late 21st century. These satellites had never been tested in battle, and most military observers had long believed that they were a technological dead end. Even so, the satellites were still orbiting Earth, and many colonies employed them, or versions of them, for last-ditch defense in the late 23rd century—almost as a genuflection, since few thought they would be effective.
But after the First Contact Crisis, in a little-publicized exchange, the virgonid ambassadors had said that, had they actually come into range, and had General Langworth managed to fire the satellites as planned, they most likely would have destroyed or disabled the Peacemaker. Wolfe, and a few like-minded military theorists, looked at this, and several tests of the weapons, and concluded they could be highly effective if the issues of range and targeting could be solved for.
Wolfe’s solution was deceptively simple: put the lasers on a missile.
This required a redesign of the warhead, using a more powerful and efficient fusion bomb, a more efficient lasing medium, better collimating rods, and so on. Marrying that warhead to next generation stealth and evasion technology would make it much harder to intercept—particularly as it would detonate thousands of kilometers from the target, well outside the range of most laser and kinetic point defense systems. Wolfe believed that if this design could be perfected, it would bridge the gap between guns and missiles, overcome the range limitations of existing laser technology, and strike targets at long and medium range just as quickly as a kinetic impactor, but with greater accuracy.
Of course, that did not mean that this new weapon, which he dubbed the Avenger, should be a fleet’s only armament; in Wolfe’s plan, ships should also be outfitted with guns, drones, and conventional missiles in varying combinations depending on class. But Dahl and the other gun cultists were unconvinced; they chose to continue relying upon their established doctrine and experience, however minimal. And given their long military service, most summit members, and the public, were more inclined to listen to them than some upstart merchant spacer, however well respected in his own field.
And so, even as Wolfe’s Armada Defensive Industries began putting Avengers into production, the Republic chose Dahl’s plan, and the other wildcatter fleets, such as they were, followed their lead.
Dahl’s initial strategy was to identify the most at-risk colonies, then position a small force of gunships at each of them under stealth, hiding behind a moon, if available, or at Lagrange points under minimal power if not. These defensive teams would be swapped out at regular intervals, and each one would be composed of ships from a single colony, to allow them to operate as they were most comfortable.
Months passed without incident; then, in December 2270, a two-ship raiding force from Clan Lhanak jumped into orbit of the planet Safe Harbor (founded 2261), a moderate colony of around five thousand people at the outer edge of explored space. The Kyran ships, well practiced, dove in to attack the colony and the colonists’ ship simultaneously—only this time, the colonists weren’t alone.
A squadron of one cruiser and three gunned-up merchant ships from Beacon were laying in ambush behind one of Safe Harbor’s moons. On receiving the warning signal from their surveillance buoys, the ships darted out on an intercept course. They opened fire almost immediately, and kept shooting as they came on.
The Kyrans were taken completely by surprise. Likely, they had grown complacent, and had not expected to encounter any resistance to their attacks. The Beaconite ships scored a few lucky hits with their first volleys, severely damaging the reactor on one Kyran ship, and knocking out one of the main guns on the other. Despite their surprise, the Kyrans turned to fight, accelerating toward their attackers and returning fire with their own railguns. Their other weapons were largely out of range—and unknown to the humans at that time.
Kyran return fire was desultory, and at long range the Beaconites were able to dodge most of it. One armed merchant ship took a single hit, causing major hull damage and several casualties, but no serious system damage. At the same time, Beaconite fire became less effective; head-on, the Kyran ships presented smaller target profiles, and their armored prows seemed to deflect or absorb a number of hits.
Even so, the damage they suffered in the initial volley—and the Beaconites’ superior numbers—put the Kyrans at a serious disadvantage. The second ship lost a second main gun, and the first ship’s reactor began to go critical. The reactor melted down, crippling the vessel; seeing this, the other Kyran turned and fled. Shortly afterward, the disabled ship exploded; possibly the result of a self-destruct to keep it out of human hands, or simply the typical low standard of Kyran safety practices.
The Battle of Safe Harbor was a major victory for the wildcatters. Minimal casualties were suffered by the colonial forces, with only two sailors killed and seven wounded on the damaged Beaconite ship, and a few dozen colonists wounded in the initial Kyran barrage. Commodore Dahl and his supporters saw it as a vindication of both his strategy, and the cult of the gun; the entire engagement took place at long range, and the superior accuracy and initiative of the colonial ships won the day. Elation over the victory prompted wild speculation that these two ships might have alone been responsible for the attacks on the colonies, perhaps a splinter faction, or alien pirates. Failing that, there was hope that with a bloody nose received, the aliens would lose interest and start looking for easier prey.
That excitement drowned out valid concerns about elements of the engagement. Most of the damage done to the Kyran ships had been dealt in the first few volleys, when the enemy were unprepared for an attack, and with their sensors focused on their quarry, literally did not see the rounds coming. Once the firefight began, both Kyran and Beaconite volleys were largely ineffective—the Kyrans’ due to damage and Beaconite maneuverability, and the Beaconites’ due to Kyran speed and prow armor.
The Beaconites were also unable to do enough damage to disable the second Kyran ship before it escaped, illustrating the difficulties in forcing a decisive engagement at long range. It also meant that the aliens had almost certainly carried word of the battle to their home base.
Finally, the mere fact that the Beaconites had successfully ambushed the Kyrans should have given Dahl and other gunners cause for concern. If they could do it to the aliens, the aliens might be able to do it to them.
But spirits remained high, and Dahl chose to double down on his strategy, reinforcing existing patrol squadrons with newly constructed ships, and preparing to defend more threatened colonies.
Several months passed without incident after the battle at Safe Harbor. Patrol forces grew strained with the tension of waiting for another blow to fall. Then, in July 2271, another Kyran raid hit New Columbia (founded 2256), a large, successful trading colony of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Once again, two Kyran ships appeared and launched an attack. The patrol squadron on station was from Horizon: one of the better equipped units, with three purpose-built warships and three well-armed merchant vessels. As at Safe Harbor, the squadron leapt from their stealth positions to attack the alien ships, landing a number of damaging hits in their first volley. It seemed at first that the colonials were on track for another easy victory.
Then, everything fell apart. A second squadron of six Kyran warships decelerated from Stardrive less than twenty thousand kilometers from the Horizonites and charged in at high speed, firing as they came. The Horizonites took several MAC hits before they could reorient to face the new threat; by then, the Kyrans had closed the range, and launched a swarm of manned and unmanned fighter craft on intercept vectors. The Horizonites’ point defenses were quickly overwhelmed by the unexpectedly ferocious and sophisticated assault.
Kyran fighters firing plasma bursts inflicted fatal damage on several of the ships within minutes. Horizon’s ships fought bravely, crippling one of the Kyran attackers by concentrating their gunfire—but by then, the battle was effectively over. In thirty minutes, five Horizonite ships were destroyed or disabled. The sixth attempted to run, but Kyran fighters knocked out its engines before it could activate Stardrive. It barely managed to launch a messenger skiff before it was boarded and captured.
The Battle of New Columbia was a slaughter. The optimism of the last few months was erased in an afternoon. Voices in the wildcat summit clamored for a retreat—but Dahl was undeterred, seeing an opportunity in the disaster. He quickly rallied the frightened delegates around his new plan. For this time, the alien raiders had not fled. Instead, they remained in orbit, bringing in more ships, landing ground forces. Clearly, they were intending not to raid New Columbia, but conquer it.
This marked a new and terrifying phase in the budding war between the Kyrans and humanity—one in which the aliens might be taking and seizing worlds, and their populations, permanently. Rodrigo Dahl had no intention of allowing this to go unchallenged. The commodore intended to muster the main battle force of the summit powers, lead it to New Columbia, and throw the aliens out.
But there was another possibility—one too frightening for most of the wildcatters to countenance. Only Rance Wolfe asked the question, during the last session before Dahl launched his attack:
What if they were flying into a trap?