The Viking grunted but didn’t argue with him anymore. Klein, engaged for once, rubbed his face with his hand.

“It looks like there are even more ships than there were yesterday,” the admiral said.

“There are, sir,” McSchmidt said, “but that’s the thing. There aren’t only more, they’re different ships.”

He zoomed in and started going through some of the data collected by the sensors, most of which Rogers didn’t understand. It all looked very technical, but McSchmidt seemed to have no problem picking through it. For a political scientist, he sure seemed comfortable with all this information.

“These Battle Spiders have different radiation signatures from the ones that were at this location yesterday. Unless they’ve all gone back to a maintenance facility and had their cores switched out, or they’ve been in combat and taken damage, that’s not possible.” He switched the image again. “It’s the same with a handful of these frigates. If the Thelicosans were preparing for a full-scale invasion, I would say that maybe they just brought in new ships. But they’re not new; they’re different. The ones that were here yesterday have disappeared.”

“That’s pretty sharp,” the Viking said. “And I can understand the words coming out of your mouth. You’re a natural, Lieutenant Lieutenant McSchmidt.”

This seemed to ruffle McSchmidt a bit. His face turned red and he began to sway back and forth uncomfortably where he was standing, creating the impression that he was either doing a very unenthusiastic slow dance or was a little drunk.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he muttered. He cleared his throat and pointed back at the diagram. “For this reason, I’m willing to say that there’s less evidence of an attack than we might have thought. It’s possible that the Thelicosans are doing change-out drills, practicing refitting and resupply. Despite the, uh, creative formation, there’s no reason to believe that they—”

“Admiral!” someone shouted from the corner of the bridge. Rogers hadn’t spent that much time on the bridge to know everyone, but he thought it was the defensive array tech. “Something’s wrong with my system.”

“What?” Klein said, standing up. “Have you tried rebooting?”

“I’ve rebooted four times,” the tech said. “I can’t get this little red light to go away.”

“What about turning it off and then back on again?”

“I’ve tried that, too!”

“A reset?”

“Twice!”

Rogers was moving across the bridge now, heading toward the tech and wishing that he could tell his fleet commander to shut his mouth in front of all these people.

“What is it?” Rogers asked. “What light? What’s the light?”

“This one here.” The tech pointed to the display. On it, there was a big red light blinking furiously underneath the words THEY’RE ATTACKING US.

“Oh shit,” Rogers said. “They’re attacking us!”

“But the intel briefing!” McSchmidt cried, pointing at the display. “It’s intel! Intel is never wrong!”

“But I have this light right here,” the technician said. “It’s telling me . . . it’s telling me that the intelligence is wrong!”