“Understood,” Conner said tiredly. “Manufacturing facilities and stock are being secured as we speak. I’ll have a team with as many shells as we can scrounge in the air within twenty-four hours, and more coming off the lines as quickly as humanly possible. Just get those guns finished.”

“Yes sir, Mr. President.”

The screen flickered and went black, leaving a very tired man slumped in a very expensive office chair. He sat there in silence for a time before pushing himself up to head out of the conference room. He slowed by the door, glancing at his Secret Service guard.

“What’s next, Phil?”

“Dinner, Mr. President. You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“I just authorized the use of WMDs on Detroit and Windsor,” he said. “If I had an appetite, you’d be doing your duty if you shot me dead.”

The agent didn’t flinch, but he didn’t say anything either as they walked out of the room. He did, however, steer his primary toward the dining room.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ADMIRAL AMANDA GRACEN supposed that things could have gone better on Ranquil.

That wasn’t to say that they’d gone badly, to be honest, but they’d come away with a great deal less than they’d hoped. While the local government was more than willing to provide supplies, intelligence, and even the ships and crew they’d previously agreed to, they weren’t going to authorize any further support “at this time.”

They were scared.

She recognized that, but she also recognized that there was a time for caution, and this wasn’t it. The Drasin were a force that had to be met, had to be destroyed, and it was better to do it away from your own planet. She hoped that, if the positions were reversed, she’d have made very different decisions.

However, they weren’t, and the decisions weren’t hers to make.

Her planet was the one that the fighting would be centered on, and that was a reality she had to deal with.

Her squadron of seven ships, the Heroics and the Enterprise, were heading for the system’s heliopause—the point at which the solar winds were strong enough to completely cancel out the effect of the star’s gravity. It was the location generally considered “safe” to initiate a transition through tachyon space. From there, they’d be in Sol space in just instants, and that was when things were going to get hot.

The main concern at the moment was simply that they weren’t carrying enough munitions.

It seemed utterly silly, but with the long gun capability of the waveguide cannons, they should be able to engage the enemy from well outside the Drasins’ standoff range. So the biggest threat to the mission was simply running out of munitions before the job was done.

Whether that was how things were going to work . . . well, that was another thing, really.