Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do at the moment, not without tripping off a second Block war that none of them could afford. If he went in without being invited, Block air defense would do its damnedest to chew up his boys and, if he were pressed hard enough, Corner would painfully admit that they’d actually do a pretty damned good job of it too.

That would trigger more fighting along every border, and that would just be a distraction no one could afford at the moment.

So he had to sit here, bobbing in the ocean like a toy ship in a bathtub, while the world began to go up in flames around them.

Corner looked away from the map, disgusted. “What’s the news from home?”

“New York is under heavy attack, as is Los Angeles, sir. We’ve got unconfirmed reports of landings in other major cities, but right now it’s all a mess,” the messenger said. “When the Liberty went up, it put a hole in our comm network you could drive the Clinton through, with room to spare for the rest of the group. Some stations are still dead. Some are just starting to come back online.”

“Fabulous.” Corner supposed he should have known better than to ask, but he had always been a glutton for punishment. “I don’t suppose you have any good news for me?”

“Not as such, Admiral. Right now there’s nothing but red coming through the pipeline.”

“If Beijing doesn’t get their heads out of their ass soon, there’ll be a lot more red in the pipeline, son,” Corner said heavily, “because we’re going to have to nuke the city if it looks like those things are successfully digging in.”

“Yes sir. We’ve not seen anything that bad come through yet, sir.”

“Small favors, son. Small favors.”

Gaia observed it all.

That was, in many ways, the only thing she normally ever did, though she wouldn’t exactly describe it as such. It was more accurate to say that she experienced everything than to imply that she was in some way a Peeping Tom, but the end result was much the same.

She felt the anxiety of the world leaders, their generals and admirals. She knew the fear and tension of the soldiers as they marched and rode to war against a foe that, for the first time in millennia, she knew to be truly unknown.

More importantly, she experienced the sheer terror of those on the streets as they faced creatures that triggered every deep-seated primal horror that seemed to exist in the human psyche. Some of those even existed in her psyche it seemed, because she felt that same terror again within herself as she watched the Drasin begin to reproduce within the cities they had targeted.

It was only a mere doubling for now, but she was well aware that would not last.