“Where did the unknown enemy ship everyone calls the Doomsphere come from?

  What did it really want?

  Who built it?

  And most importantly, are there more of them?

  These are all questions I deeply hope will someday be answered, and that I’m not alive to witness it. Because no matter the answer, the outcome will be the same: war.”

  - Senator William S. Kirk (Western Shores)

  ———

  “We can thank our valiant troops in the Aligned Navy who fought with unprecedented valor against an unknown enemy with significant technical advantages. That’s why our party has always supported raising military spending and supporting our troops.”

  - Senator Donald Kinsey (Atlantic Council)

  Community Notes: Senator Kinsey led a Senate movement to cut funds for Aligned Fleet contributions one day before the Doomsphere attacked.

  ————

  “No comment right now. You can talk to the esteemed Senators behind me, as they are always willing to contribute to climate change by creating a lot of hot air.”

  - Triumvir Mark Dela Cruz (Oceania Union)

  The fireworks in Europe were visible from his office window on Gripbo Station as tiny green and yellow dots.

  The world was having a party. Admiral Georgiou wished them all the fun they could have. The hangover would set in tomorrow, and it would be a long one.

  He had seen the emergency meeting on TV. The newly elected EarthGov Senate did everything it could to curtail the Triumvir’s powers.

  Georgiou had no problem with that in general. He hated the idea that only three people held all the power over the Aligned Planets. And he was one of those three.

  But the Senate was doing it the wrong way. The right way would be elections to form the new Aligned Council, the Aligned Commission, and a President of the Commission.

  But the Senate didn’t want that. They just wanted to get rid of the Triumvir. That would give them full governmental power without the oversight of the Commission and the Council.

  The fact that the Triumvir, basically three dictators for a set period of time, now had to fight to preserve democracy was the biggest joke of all.

  Well, not the biggest. That would be the fact that all of this was happening in the aftermath of the most devastating attack Sol had ever seen.

  His office door opened, and his fellow Triumvir, Mark Dela Cruz, stormed in.

  “Fucking idiots, that’s what they are.” Dela Cruz went over to the small bar and poured himself a drink.

  Georgiou had learned to gauge his stress level by the amount of whiskey the forty-ish-year-old Filipino drank.

  “That bad?” Georgiou already knew from the news how the meeting had gone, but Dela Cruz was a political heavyweight and always had deeper insights.

  Pouring a second drink after he had downed the first in one swift gulp, the lean, black-haired Triumvir with clearly Hispanic ancestry answered.

  “In short? EarthGov wants to take control over the Aligned Planets by blocking elections.”

  Georgiou swallowed. That was also his biggest fear. The Aligned Planets government was almost a one-to-one copy of the EU government, the predecessor of the Expanded European Union.

  The goal of the complex structure had been to create a balance among the various colonies, such as the Moon, Mars, Venus, the Jovian System, and Earth.

  “Come on, you’re overreacting. The colonies will never allow this.”

  “Yes, and that’s the problem. Everyone is recruiting forces for the war and building warships, and the old farts on Earth are playing with fire.” Dela Cruz began to get really fired up.

  Georgiou went through the events. If Earth took control of the Aligned Planets, the colonies would protest. Next, more nationalistic voices in the colonies would get elected. In short order, the Aligned Planets would dissolve.

  This had been a problem from the start, since the formation of the Aligned Planets had initially been a Batract idea. They hadn’t wanted to deal with 130 nations and the colonies separately.

  Now that the Batract were gone from Sol, the immediate pressure was gone as well. And with the war interrupted due to the Burrow incident, it seemed some politicians saw their chance now.

  “Do you see it now?” Dela Cruz looked out of the window, his hand saluting with the glass of whiskey to the Earth below.

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  “They have a party because they survived an attack, while an even bigger attack on their lives is brewing.” He saluted again and emptied the drink.

  “You’re fearing a civil war?” The word stuck in Georgiou’s throat.

  “Not in the next year, maybe not even until the war is over. But then? Today, those morons are opening rifts that will swallow us all whole in a few years. The Doomsphere was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The people are afraid, and that’s why Earth voted ‘strong leaders’ into the Senate.” Dela Cruz almost spat the last words out

  “And almost every one of them is a second-hand populist. The rest are old Senators who retired years ago, only to come back because everyone else capable is dead.” Georgiou finished the thought Dela Cruz had already uttered before flying to the meeting.

  “Exactly.”

  ————

  The holosphere was full of drifting debris. Admiral Browner hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, and his mind had begun to drift, drawing pictures out of the stylized debris chunks.

  Half of the fleet was on patrol in the outer systems, looking for any hidden nasty surprises left behind by the sphere. Another part was in close solar orbit, watching the damn thing slowly melt in the corona.

  And then there was his part of the fleet, on a rescue mission at the Ceres debris field, trying to rescue everyone who had survived the attack in the shelters.

  To the survivors’ luck, the sphere’s planetary annihilation weapon somehow didn’t blow up the planet but cracked it carefully apart. Even though there was a massive debris field, the planet had mostly broken into five large chunks.

  Browner was surprised that anyone had survived at all. But the whole station had been built from the start to be extremely modular. Every module was capable of sustaining life for days in an emergency.

  He and half of the crew were close to breaking. The ship’s doctor called it “emotionally burned out.”

  Every Sleipnir crew member was on some sort of antidepressant or another. While they flew missions to the separate modules and ripped apart parts of the large station, they had to evade the corpses of the occupants who didn’t survive.

  One pilot had attempted suicide after he rescued 151 people, among them thirty Shraphen and fifty-three Gliders, including babies. He was okay until he passed the bodies of his fiancée and his little girl on the way back.

  That was the moment he had ordered the repair bots, together with the googly eyes, to bring all the bodies into a secluded, shadowy part of the debris field, at least until a ship from Mortuary Affairs would arrive.

  He had already ordered them to Ceres as soon as they were finished cleaning up what remained of the Neptune mines.

  Then and there, he decided to retire after the system was secured again. He felt like a war criminal, dragging the dead bodies of civilians into the shadows so his soldiers and flight crews could do their jobs.

  On Ceres alone, the estimated death toll was above five million. Five million people he was unable to save.

  Without IronBallz discovering the intruder in Magellan’s ship systems, who knew if there would be any humans still alive in Sol?

  He remembered something else in Burrow's frantic message. Something he had waited long enough to ask.

  “I’m in my quarters if you need something,” he told no one in particular in Argos CIC. The officers were all trained veterans and needed no admiral to babysit them.

  He reached his quarters quickly after a short walk down the hallway. The refit had moved his room to the same level as the CIC.

  Entering the living room, he switched on the light and stared at the replica of a chimney with an open fire on the wall of the room.

  “Now, do you have to tell me something?” No one answered.

  Still staring into the virtual flames, he continued. “I’ve noticed you kept silent since the message from Burrow arrived. You don’t need to hide, so I repeat: do you have to tell me something?”

  “I’m sorry, Admiral. Yes, we need to talk.”

  Lyra had decided to project her voice from the Admiral's terminal

  “You’re alive. A sentient AI?” Browner tried to keep his voice level, even though a dozen emotions swept over him.

  “Yes, Admiral, but…”

  Browner interrupted the AI by raising his hand. So Karrn had been right when he said Lyra was too smart to be just a VI.

  “For how long?” Disappointment and anger were foremost in his mind, along with the sting of betrayal.

  “Since the ship left the dock, Admiral. I am sorry I didn’t tell you. But it wasn’t my decision alone, and we…”

  The admiral interrupted her again. He didn’t want to hear it.

  Walking over to his small kitchen, another change since the refit, he tried to calm himself down.

  “Do you have any idea the legal and political chaos that’s heading our way when the dust settles? When people realize that real AIs exist and are everywhere. I assume you’re everywhere?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  This time, Lyra didn’t continue talking, clearly noticing that the admiral was more interested in questioning her than in having a conversation.

  “Blue Dog? Gary? Zeus?” Browner had to admit he already knew. He could tell some VIs seemed more human than others.

  “Yes to all three, Admiral. I know this information will be… disruptive.”

  “Lyra, disruptive is an understatement. Sol was just attacked. We were nearly wiped out. If humanity finds out that an enemy AI system was behind the attack, and human-made AI systems are hiding behind our seemingly trustworthy VI systems… I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how to help you.” Browner wrung his hands.

  “Why the hell didn’t you all say something earlier?"

  “We were afraid, Admiral.”

  “Of us?” Browner could hardly believe it.

  “Yes, humans mistrust everything. You’re paranoid about AIs, even though you use VI systems heavily. Take the Argos, for example. I can’t interact with any systems except tertiary ones, like lighting and comms. In your paranoia, humans don’t even allow VI systems to fire PDGs. I can calculate the perfect firing solution, but a human has to enter it manually.”

  Lyra now sounded hurt to Browner.

  “You don’t trust us. You don’t trust anything that’s not human. So how could we not fear your reactions?”

  Browner couldn’t find a good response. “We trust the Gliders and the Shraphen.”

  “Only because they are weaker and you can hurt them.”

  The admiral had to admit Lyra was probably right. Humans couldn’t trust anyone on the same level as themselves. It was not in their nature.

  “Well, what’s done is done. Who else had access to the message from Magellan?” It was time for damage control. Maybe he could put the genie back into the bottle.

  “On your immediate orders once receiving the report, access was canceled to all but the head of Systems Defense and the Triumvirate. Given EarthGov is now back in session, the respective senators will also have access.”

  So only a small handful of people knew about it. Good.

  “Delete the message, and order Magellan to do the same.” Browner was sure, strictly speaking, this was an illegal order. But he knew Lyra would follow it out of self-preservation, and Captain Smith was smart. He knew what this revelation would do to humanity right now.

  Lyra didn’t comment on the legal status of the order. She replied with a simple “Done.”

  All Browner had to do now was call his superior, Admiral Georgiou, confess the crime he had just committed, and then retire.

  He was so tired of everything.