Reports from every unit in the field were routing through her system, and she was trying like hell to get them the information they needed to do their jobs. But sometimes it felt like fighting ants at a picnic. The enemy barely seemed to react to the deployment of forces. Even nuclear weapons were of limited value. The aliens just rallied and seemed to redouble elsewhere.

She may as well be holding back the tide with a spoon.

She felt a shiver run down her back and looked around, but there was no one close enough to spook her.

Weird.

She turned back to the job, eyes on the map, and prepared to issue orders to authorize the next nuclear delivery. The fact that she’d been entrusted with this kind of insanity was enough to boggle her mind, but someone had to handle the reports from the field to ensure that as many people were clear of the blast zones as possible.

“Roger that, Shiva One Two. You are clear to . . .” She trailed off, blinking. She shook her head, her eyes being dragged away from the target, the city of Cincinnati, and to a blank spot on the map. She shook her head, looking back to the city, “Say again, you are clear . . . uh . . .”

“Say again, Control. Are the friendlies clear of the target area?” the pilot in the orbiting bomber called back.

“Say again, you’re . . .” She blinked again, glaring at the screen. “Hold one. Say again, Shiva One Two, hold one.”

“Roger that, Control. Holding.”

Lyssa scowled at the screen and called up the empty space on the map that had drawn her attention, swapping over to the satellite imagery. She didn’t see much on it, but that didn’t mean anything. It was an older image from before the satellite array took such a beating.

Lyssa scowled at the screen for a bit, then blew out a breath and opened up the comm again. “Shiva One Two, Control.”

“Go for Shiva, Control.”

“Need to know, do you have a real-time intel package?” she asked.

“Roger that, Control. This baby is fully equipped. Even has AC.”

“Redirect to fifteen degrees north by northwest. I need a high-detail surveillance shot, pronto.”

There was a pause, then the pilot came back. “Roger, Control. Redirecting, north by northwest. Surveillance package is armed and broadcasting.”

“Thank you, Shiva. Stand by for orders,” she said, flipping over to the surveillance frequency, easily logging into the new signal.

The recon package on the bird was pretty standard, and actually existed on most aircraft fielded by the Confederation. It included extremely high-resolution imagery that was often sold to corporations in degraded format to help offset fuel costs for the airlines. The military and government had access to the full quality imagery as well, of course.