There was little choice, however. They had to move with what they had and she knew well that it could have been so much worse.

“Aye ma’am, initiating tachyon ping. Single ping, wide angle.”

Strictly speaking, they could use their gear more like radar than sonar now, but that would give the enemy a real-time lock on their location, something she had no intention of doing even with their standoff capability. The bridge filled with the sound of the ping being sent, though it was just an announcement and notification sound than an actual result of the system being employed.

“Signal return, we’ve . . . four hundred Drasin ships and counting in NEO,” Jake said, his voice sounding more ill than Gracen felt. “They’re fully powered and just sitting there, ma’am.”

Gracen nodded. “What do we have on light-speed imagery for Earth?”

“Signals are almost seven hours old, but it’s still there,” Jake answered, sounding a bit better. “No sign of any gray goo.”

Gracen refrained from responding, though she understood the reference. The Drasin acted much like the nightmare scenario of nanotechnology, only at a macro scale.

“Transmit queued message to the President of the Confederation, and then send again on the channel provided by Captain Sun.”

“Aye ma’am,” Susan said. “Transmitting to Confederate and Block satellites.”

“Excellent. Then signal the squadron and tell them to go black,” Gracen ordered. “No more tachyon signals, no more wide-spectrum transmissions.”

“Aye aye, ma’am. Squadron going black.”

“Stand by to warp space,” she ordered. “We’re going home.”

“Mr. President, we have a situation.”

Conner blinked away the sleep in his eyes, blearily looking around. There was a time, he dimly recalled, when he could awake from sleep in an instant. That time was barely a memory now, it seemed, but intellectually he figured that it was probably just a couple of months ago.

“What is it?” he asked, throwing the covers back and getting out of the bed.

“Signal from past the heliopause, sir.”

That woke him up.

“Source?”

“The signal was tagged Odysseus, Mr. President. Admiral Gracen commanding.”

“Admiral?” Conner blinked, suddenly feeling that maybe he hadn’t completely woken up after all. “How did she get . . .? No, never mind. Get me the message.”

“Yes sir.”

Twenty minutes later he couldn’t decide if he was actually awake.

I knew they were working on a deal with the Priminae, but I didn’t think it would be ready this quickly.

He grabbed his suit pants and glanced over to the agent standing just inside his bedroom.

“I want the DARPA people in conference in ten minutes,” he ordered.

“Yes sir.”

“And you’d better get Captain Weston up too,” Connor said after a moment’s thought. “I’ll need to speak with him.”

“Yes sir.”

“You can tell him that his people are back through. I expect he’ll be happy to know that.”

“Signal from the President, Cap’n.”