Zephyr, Tau Ceti, 16.27.775−01.02.776 CW

23.7−26.2 megaseconds since the catastrophe

It had taken Karenski several local days to wrap his arms around the responsibility Donato had thrust into his lap. He had in fact come very close to telling Donato to stuff it.

He had spent the last couple dozen megaseconds until now unsure of either his qualifications or authority to be Fleet Admiral, even on an emergency basis, let alone...this.

No one had shown up to relieve him of the duty, however, or tell him definitively that the Tau Ceti Treaty was null and void. He had refused to declare that on his own authority, either. So, the TCTO still existed because Cherryh's World, Robinson Station, and the rock-habitats at Gliese 581 existed. The Fleet, in turn, of which he was nominally admiral, existed because Zephyr and now Mifune Gō existed, along with the shipyards at 581.

Now, though, Karenski had been handed the hottest of potatoes. The Diaspora Treaty did not exactly set up martial law for its signatories, but it did pledge them to mutual aid in terms that called upon quasi-military organization to manage. Dozens of cultures who had not really known war, at least not in space, until now were forced to contemplate a war footing.

He had the clear endorsement of four of those signatories already. David's Star Republic had, through Donato, invoked the treaty in the first place, and he wouldn't have done that without Silverman and Erasmus' say-so. Silverman, in turn, would not have gone that far without the Knesset's approval.

Separately, Revi'i's president had transmitted her own endorsement, both of the invocation and the appointment of Karenski. Bold as Robina Thirteen was, she was no more likely to do so without her knesset's approval than Silverman.

Kolonelo Josefilo had made it clear already that he had been sent with instructions to accede to any invocation of the treaty. At the moment, Thessaly still had no actual time-compression relay node, but the circular packet-boat traffic with David's Star had already relayed news back to the Most High. Until contrary orders were received through that path, the assumption remained that Thessaly was on board.

Finally, Cherryh's World's prime minister had responded, "Oh, fuck yes!" almost before Karenski had finished telling her what had happened. He had often been at odds with her during the recovery phase, and he had never heard her swear, so he was surprised not only by her alacrity, but the terms of it.

So Karenski had, perforce, accepted his fate, at least for the time being. The word had gone out through the still-fractured relay networks. So far, all the answers had been positive, although not necessarily as emphatic. It would take some time for the word to reach the fringes of the diaspora, a blob roughly five light-gigaseconds across at its widest extent.

A few things had been set in motion to try to get things organized. Haraldsdottir was on her way in the barely-finished Mifune Gō, for example. At this point she should be here any kilosecond. She could have been here sooner, but was probably choosing not to push her engines too hard fresh out of dock.

Space was big. Things took time. Which didn't change the fact that everyone involved was on edge, knowing there was an Unknown Enemy whose plans were still advancing.

Cherryh's World had enjoyed its New Year holiday and there had been some small amount of celebration upwell as well, everyone needing the morale boost. The cheer had felt a little forced to Singer's senses, but at the end of the celebration, people also seemed to be a bit more relaxed.

While the war council had been meeting semi-regularly, for the most they seemed to Singer to have been waiting for things to happen. Waiting for more answers from the diaspora, hopefully with pledges of material support. Waiting with some small hope on the next report from Baldursdottir. Waiting for...well, Singer wasn't sure what. Karenski wasn't telling her everything. Possibly he was simply waiting for a hunch to play out that something else, advantageous or not, would happen that would clarify his next step.

So, she and her crew and the crews of the other ships had all just taken the local holiday off, as much as they could.

After the festivities, and possibly a bit more alcohol than a commanding officer ought to have while not actually on leave, Singer once again found herself tangled up with O'Halloran. This had rapidly become her preferred way to end one shift-cycle and begin the next one. At another time, she might well have silenced her alarm and remained so entangled, but alas, they were both needed at the briefing in a few kilos. So they reluctantly pried themselves apart, and O'Halloran left for her own cabin to shower separately to avoid temptation to further dalliance.

Singer still made a point to eat in Main Dining when she could, and felt she should at least put in an appearance on the bridge. She had found Josefilo and his aides, Abernato and Verdo, in Main Dining, an occurrence which was no longer a surprise, but not quite every-day either.

Josefilo was determined to set an example for his skittish people. Twice before now he had brought his aides with him, since they were also needed for those days' meetings. Both had also accepted a nanoimmune system and shed their encounter suits. They were still not as relaxed about mingling as he was, but Verdo, in particular, was loosening up. Knowing they not only had the Most High's permission, but overt instruction to break down the long-standing barriers between Thessaly and everyone else meant they were making the effort. Singer had joined them, successfully getting more than three syllables out of Abernato and calling that victory.

So it was that the Thessalians accompanied her to her quick visit to the bridge, at her invitation. She'd had a hunch, which proved correct, that this would help Abernato feel a little more welcome and drop his shoulders down from around his gills. Verdo unabashedly gawked like a tourist. Abernato was more restrained, but said in Thessalian, knowing Singer would understand, "Would it offend you if I admitted to envy, estro?"

"Not even a little bit. I promise you a more complete tour another time."

Having done her bit for harmony with her allies, they proceeded down to the war room.

Donato and Karenski were both there ahead of them. Unless he was sleeping or needed a private meeting while other work was in progress, Karenski pretty much lived in the war room, now, and Donato was often down early as well, choosing to eat from the war room's own replicator for breakfast. Unlike Josefilo, he seemed a bit shy about joining her crew in Main Dining.

They both seemed openly pleased. Singer also sensed that Karenski had reached some key decision about how to proceed. Before she could inquire, however, Karenski said, "Singer, could you ask your Ops officer to join us this morning?"

Singer blinked. Terranova had not been much involved with the larger effort. In fact, he was the only officer who hadn't been. This had been useful—he'd been available to take the hot seat, and generally kept the logistics ticking over, which was his job. But she was also conscious that he was a bit isolated from the rest of her "official family" as a result. He hadn't demonstrated any grievance about it, but then she didn't really know him well. She hadn't had much time to feel guilty about that, but right now it hit her.

Still, that was a separate issue. "I'm sure I could. I gather we have a job for him?"

Karenski and Donato both were practically beaming, now, "Oh, yes," Donato said. "Although it means we're going to be borrowing him for a bit."

"Borrowing?" she said, allowing irony to be heard.

Karenski heard it. "Borrowing, honest. At least, I think so. You understand a lot of things are fluid right now."

Singer nodded, "I do. And I trust you gentlemen enough to know you wouldn't steal him from me if you didn't feel a compelling reason."

Donato countered, "Borrow."

"Mmhm. Sure. Let me call him."

She did, and gradually the other usual members of the informal war council began to arrive. Cadotte showed signs of having celebrated a little too hard, while Espinoza looked almost chipper, possibly a deliberate pose to tweak Cadotte. Singer still actually didn't know what there was between them, and had chosen not to pry. She was pretty sure Espinoza was one of the few things anchoring Cadotte to their humanity right now. O'Halloran followed, and finally Terranova, looking a little confused.

"Captain?" he asked, a long question in an efficient but eloquent word.

"The admirals asked after you. They've got a job for you, apparently."

"We do indeed, Lieutenant. Let's all get settled and then we'll share our news."

Alexander was the last to join them. "Sorry I'm late. Fusion Two was having a hiccup and needed some attention. Should be good, now, though."

Everyone sat down, and Karenski opened, "Since we met last a couple shift-cycles ago, we've gotten a fat packet of news in from David's Star, which I'll let Admiral Donato fill us in on. We've also started to get answers from some of the other Diaspora Treaty signatories. This has led to some organizational decisions for how we're actually going to pull all this together. Let's start with Donato's tale. Jonathan?"

"The first bit of news had me actually cackling with glee, I don't mind telling you. It turns out that the royal family of New Victoria have been preserving the memory of their origins, along with a secret island base right out of a spy novel. That base housed six of the Skipships that relayed colonists to the planet, a lightweight AI, and dreamlearners. The Crown Prince, his retinue, our ambassador, and a crew of what Ambassador Sigurdson describes as 'colorful entrepreneurs' commandeered three of those Skipships and made starfall at David's Star about 100 kilos ago. I'll be distributing Sigurdson's report to you all in a bit. You'll find it entertaining reading. If Lars decides to quit being an ambassador, he has a career ahead of him as a writer!

"So one question I've got for Espinoza—in a moment, because there's other things to cover first—is how convertible those ships might be, but honestly, even if they're confined to Skip capability, I'm pretty sure we can find ongoing uses for them. I'm not going to look that gift horse in the mouth."

Espinoza was busy at his keyboard, Cadotte looking over his shoulder. The New Victoria expedition was a known quantity, so he didn't really need to ask for schematics or other details; he could look them up, and was.

Karenski picked it up from there. "That in turn led me in an indirect sort of way to the next decision. We're too far downwell. It takes thirty kilos to find out if somebody in Gliese sneezed, and that's no way to run a railroad. As soon as we're done with today's briefing, we're moving the whole flotilla upwell closer to the system's relay. If I'm going to be coordinating across all these disparate systems, I can't do it from down here."

Singer raised her hand, but Karenski said, "I know what you're going to say, Elyah. Give me a second. Also, let me be clear that we weren't keeping secrets; just making sure we had solid answers before we delivered the news. After I made that decision, I asked Donato if the DSR could spare a pair of Kujira class Jump freighters."

Everyone else around the table looked confused at the seeming non sequitur, but Alexander beat Singer to a memory out of Karenski's class, years ago, and said, "The only difference between a ship and a station is whether it's planning to go anywhere."

Karenski beamed at zir. "Very good, Commander. Glad someone was listening in class. The catastrophe deprived us of the anchorage, which I believe Singer was about to point out?"

"Guilty as charged."

"Right. So, two Kujiras jump here with New Victoria's three strays grappled as exterior cargo, which gets them here faster than they can on their own. So here is where Lieutenant Terranova comes in."

He threw a wireframe and datasheet of a Kujira onto the holodisplays, where the model ship spun slowly. Perhaps inspired by Newer York itself, the basic shape of the ship was a long, fat barrel. Forward and aft, the design flared out into a ring with indicated docking hatches. Both ends appeared to have identical clusters of engines, so the ship would not need to flip to reverse thrust. Amidships was a fatter cylinder around the main body, which on the schematic was visibly rotating—a personnel section with spin gravity.

Donato picked up the narrative again. "This has been the basic design of almost all our large-scale Jumpships since the advent of Jump made large ships make any sense. They were deliberately designed to be modular, versatile, capable of carrying a wide variety of cargoes, and adaptable as people-movers as well. All our colony ships today are variations on this design as well. And—here's the key point—we rarely scrap them. We refit them, mothball them, use them for temporary habitats—like Bellerophon is doing right now back in G-581. But it takes a major failure before we consign one to the breakers. The upshot of which is, we've got a bunch we can spare."

Karenski took the ball again. "So, Terranova, let's say I gave you carte blanche to use two of them to replace Tau Ceti's anchorage. How would you do it?"

Terranova stared raptly at the holo for a few minutes, then said, "I'd need to familiarize myself more with the specifics of the design, but I already see a number of possibilities. I think I'd keep the two ships separate, although I note from the image that there's some consideration of daisy-chaining them together—detach the thrusters from one end of each and bolt them together."

He looked at Donato, who nodded and said, "Exactly. At the cost of Jump efficiency, you can basically make short trains out of them."

Terranova nodded and went on. "I'd set one aside solely as a depot—reaction and replication mass bunkering, things like that. I think it'd be up to you, Admiral, whether it would be open to all comers like an ordinary anchorage would be, but my recommendation right at first would be to limit it to crisis-related business and send routine traffic downwell to Robinson still."

He paused then, staring at the schematic some more, then pointed at the bulging personnel section. "Can that be expanded in any way?"

Donato nodded, saying, "Same way as Newer York. Build spokes out to a wheel. That's the configuration we use for colony ships. Expands human carrying capacity and gives them more options for gravity. We try to approximate their destination as closely as we can. What's more, we can fit out parts of the interior volume of the spindle as industrial plants to actually process ore into the necessary pieces, so it could be retrofit in place. You'll understand we don't usually get the colony ship variants back, so we don't have any of those to send you."

"Of course, Admiral. But I'm curious about that capability—surely you don't usually expect to have to retrofit a colony ship on the fly?"

"Not as such, no. But it's part of the colonial bootstrap, a lesson learned directly from the founding of Newer York. Mine, smelt, build more processing facilities, mine more, smelt more...pretty soon you're building more stations, replacing worn out facilities, and so on."

Terranova got an almost beatific smile on his face. "So it's already part of the design that a Kujira might become a city-station in time."

Donato smiled back, "Consider the source!"

Terranova tore his eyes away from the image and looked at Karenski directly. "I can do at least some of this, Admiral, but I'll need at least one shipwright who knows his craft."

"You're in luck," Karenski said. "Haraldsdottir's on her way, and her exec for the trip is your old boss Silverman."

Terranova's grin got so wide it was almost creepy. "Oh, we've got this, Admiral."

"I'm glad to hear it! Espinoza, I see you squirreling away over there. Got an answer for me?"

"Sir, I do! The answer is: easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. And yes, that is is my technical assessment. See, the difference between a Skip, Jump, or Time Compression drive is just not that great. A few modifications and even the original Skip drive could be made good for Time Compression. There's nothing specific about the shape of the ship or anything like that. It's a reconfiguration of the field generators. The biggest change we'll need to make is to replace their fusion plants with something more modern and efficient, so they can sustain a continuous field instead of the episodic mode of Skip. But I'll lay good odds we can make three TC ships out of those old fossils in short order. I probably can't make them as fast as Zephyr, but they'll be a lot faster than they are now!"

"Better and better. Now, here's the best news of all. It's not the last item for the agenda, but it's the best by far." Karenski once again gestured to Donato.

"After Baldursdottir hit New Victoria and witnessed that portable hole event, she retreated to the last system she'd dropped a relay—TOI 4527. Nothing much there, just one planet that could be a useful anchor for something some day, but nobody's really been interested in it. But it was an old TCTO network node, so we replaced it as part of our aid-and-comfort agreement.

"After that, though, I told them to go on with the rest of their itinerary, and their next stop was 51 Pegasi."

All the Tau Ceti Treaty personnel at the table sat up a little straighter. Singer could sense Cadotte practically vibrating. Karenski picked it up. Singer was starting to wonder if they'd rehearsed this. "For our Thessalian friends' edification, 51 Pegasi was the inverse of Gliese 581. The latter hosted a large artificial city-station, New Norfolk, which was destroyed in the catastrophe, and a host of small rock-stations that were mostly industrial facilities, which survived.

"51 Pegasi, however, hosted a large community burrowed into a natural rock that lies somewhere between 'big asteroid' and 'dwarf planet', and a host of smaller artificials as its outstations. And none of those artificials was large enough to need AI to function.

"A few stations were destroyed or damaged by ships whose AIs went mad, but the rest are fully intact. The relay blew, of course, and they didn't replace it. They weren't sure they had a safe AI template for it.

"Like 581, though, they lost almost all their mobility, and what they had they used to prioritize mutual aid in-system, much as we'd been doing here. They had just decided to fit something out with a TC radio and poke its head out of their astropause when Baldursdottir dropped in and saved them the trouble."

Singer was almost overwhelmed, for the first time in ages, by a wave of positive emotion. She focused particularly on Cadotte, though. She was concerned momentarily that the science officer might feel jealousy that another system had survived where their own home system, Ross 508, had not.

She needn't have worried. Even without her empathic senses, she could see Cadotte was beaming and crying. They were not the only one at the table doing both at the same time.

Karenski stood, then, and said, "My friends, I won't tell you we don't have a serious challenge ahead. Terranova gets to think about bootstrapping a new anchorage, but we all are bootstrapping an entire recovery effort and war effort at the same time. And let's not fool ourselves, no matter what maxims we've used to comfort us in the past: this will be a war. I still don't know what shape it will take. We still don't know who the enemy even is. But right now, I believe, truly believe, we can face this together, on every level.

"It's no secret in this room that the biggest doubts I've had are in myself. I have never doubted any of you, but I let myself forget that very fact is my own greatest strength, as it is for each of us. So now, let me close with what I thought was going to be the best news, before the news out of 51 Peg reached us: ten more non-TCTO signatories to the Diaspora treaty have responded. So far, they've all reported some kind of attack coinciding with the catastrophe, and now that they know it's not an accident or coincidence, they are all correspondingly pissed off. Which means they're in. All in, so far, including one I didn't even expect to hear from. Right on the edge, far enough away they could just ignore it all: HD 113337. New Canberra.

"This is how we win, my friends. Together."