“When the Asianic Union and Warsaw Alliance broke off, they took a sizable chunk of the New European Commonwealth with them. For all intents and purposes call it the entire enclave, since the planets still loyal to the old Confederacy are astronomically located such that we would have to fly through ESA systems to reach them, which they are no longer allowing. Latest intelligence before the blackout indicated they were actually mining some of the more strategic jump points … that’s an unprecedented move in our history as a spacefaring people.”

“We’re all well aware of this, Mr. President. If there—”

“What isn’t widely known,” Wellington went on, steamrolling over the interruption without even raising his voice, “is that the Third, Fifth, and Eighth Fleets were largely left intact after the Phage War. That means that despite our technological superiority, the numbers favor them. And it gets better … Admiral?”

“Practically speaking, all of our fissile material came from the New European Commonwealth.” Admiral Marcum stood, having already been warned by the President that he would be required to provide technical background during the meeting. “Specifically, two planets that are controlled by the ESA.”

“Is this really a problem?” Nelson asked skeptically. “We still have over sixteen star systems, some with multiple habitable planets. Statistically some of those systems must have the material we need.”

Marcum shook his head slowly as if exhausted at having to explain something simple to someone so dense. “The material isn’t the issue,” he said. “We can get Uranium-235 almost anywhere … but the processing facilities to produce it in useable quantities are on those two planets. We need the enriched product they produce for our fission-fusion warheads. Thankfully, starship reactors are much more simple and don’t require such an exotic fuel or we’d be in an even worse place, but at our current rate of consumption we’ll lose our ability to produce Shrike warheads within the next year. In case anybody was wondering, the Shrike has become Fleet’s primary ship-to-ship weapon.”

“And the Bespitd munitions depot was just destroyed.” Former Senator Illoka from New America nodded his head in understanding. “Other than scaring us, why is this important?”

“Because the Ushin, as part of our tentative treaty agreement, have offered us technology that will allow us to no longer need fissionable material from the ESA worlds, at least not for weapons production,” Wellington said. “We’ll get into those details later, but the more significant offer from them is up to twenty-six new, human-habitable planets within practical range of our territory.”

This announcement set off a flurry of loud, shocked responses as each member of the new Parliament tried to wrap their head around the implications of so many new planets ready for colonization.