The Commissary made to answer, but Kard cut across her. ‘Skip the science. You know the setup here. The Expansion reached this region five hundred years ago. When our people down there called for help, the Navy responded. That’s our job.’ He had cold artificial Eyes, and I sensed he was testing me. ‘And those Xeelee units are swarming like flies. We don’t know why the Xeelee are here. But we do know what they are doing to this human world.’

‘That’s not proven,’ Xera snapped.

Of course she was right. One of our objectives, in fact, was to pick up proof that the Xeelee were responsible for the calamities befalling the colonists on this battered world, Shade. But even so I could see my people stir at the Admiral’s words. There had been tension between humanity and Xeelee for centuries, but none of us had ever heard of a direct attack by the Xeelee on human positions.

Lian said boldly, ‘Admiral, sir.’

‘Yes, rating?’

‘Does that mean we are at war?’

Admiral Kard sniffed up a lungful of ozone-laden air. ‘After today, perhaps we will be, at long last. How does that make you feel, rating?’

Lian, and the others, looked to me for guidance. I looked into my heart.

Across seven thousand years of the Third Expansion humans had spread out in a great swarm through the Galaxy, even reaching the halo beyond the main disc, overwhelming other life forms as we encountered them. We had faced no opponent capable of systematic resistance since the collapse of the Silver Ghosts - none but the Xeelee, the Galaxy’s other great power, who sat in their great concentrations at the Core, silent, aloof.

This had been the situation for five thousand years. In my officer training I’d been taught the meaning of such numbers - for instance, that was an interval as long as that between the invention of writing and the launch of the first spaceships from Earth. It was a long time. But the Coalition was older yet, and its collective memory and clarity of purpose, all held together by the Druz Doctrines, even across such inhuman spans of time, was flawless. Marvellous when you thought about it.

And now - perhaps - here I was at the start of the final war, the war for the Galaxy. What I felt was awe. Also fear, maybe. But that wasn’t what the moment required.

‘I’ll tell you what I feel, sir. Relief. Bring it on! ’

That won me a predictable hollering, and a slap on the back from Kard. Xera studied me blankly, her face unreadable.

Then there was a flare of plasma around the blister, and the ride got a lot bumpier. The Spline was entering the planet’s atmosphere. I sat before I was thrown down, and the loadmaster at last hustled away the brass.

‘Going in hard,’ called the loadmaster. ‘Barf bags at the ready. Ten minutes.’