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helm of the defense forces; if he’d been in this position earlier in his career, he would have made damn sure that anyone standing in the line of command knew what the hell they were supposed to do in an emergency.
    “And the freighters?” Marius asked.
    “The fighters are moving to intercept now,” Fallon’s operations officer confirmed. His nametag read CAFFERY. “The gunboats are moving up in pursuit. So far, there’s been no response from the freighters, but the enemy starfighters are moving away into deep space.”
    “Right,” Marius said, thinking hard. Were they heading towards cloaked carriers, or were they trying to mislead the defenders and planning to dog-leg around towards the bulk freighters once they were out of sensor range? If the latter, they were going to be disappointed. Earth’s sensor network was second to none and the fighters would burn through their life support before they could escape its grasp. “And the StarCom?”
    Fallon cleared his throat. “It was destroyed with EDS1,” he said carefully. Marius concealed a smile with an effort. Fallon clearly thought his superior had forgotten that little detail. “We don’t have any other link to Titan Base.”
    The Inheritance Wars had traumatized the Senate, what with the mutinies that had broken out on many Federation Navy starships, including the ships assigned to Home Fleet. The Senate had responded by forbidding the deployment of Federation Navy starships to the Earth-Luna Sphere—the area of space surrounding Earth and Luna—and insisted that Home Fleet be based at Titan Base, which had been Federation Navy territory since the Last King of Titan had led his people to the stars. It allowed Home Fleet to exercise without public oversight, but it also ensured that there was a time delay before reinforcements could arrive at Earth. And there would be even more of a time delay because the defenders would—in theory—be limited to radio waves or laser beams, both of which travelled at merely the speed of light.
    But there was a way around that.
    “Use Case Omega and get in touch with Federation Intelligence,” Drake said. “You’ll find a contact code in the database. They should have their own StarCom.”
    Fallon blinked. Marius understood his surprise. StarCom units cost upwards of twice the price of a new superdreadnaught, while they were limited in range and—once operational—alarmingly easy to target. The scientists kept promising they would find a way to reduce the price one day, but so far nothing had materialized. The fact that Federation Intelligence used StarCom units of their own was a closely-guarded secret. Marius had only found out about it because he’d needed to know.
    He hoped that whoever had planned the attack on Earth didn’t know, or his ace in the hole would be no such thing.
    “But sir—” Fallon started.
    “Trust me,” Marius told him. “Oh, and don’t take no for an answer. Once they admit they have it, tell them that I want to link to Titan Base and open contact with Home Fleet. I want them to prepare to move on my command.”
    He swung his chair around and tapped a control, resetting the display until it showed the entire Solar System. The grey sphere of the mass limit surrounding Sol, within which no stardrive could be used, shimmered into view, expanding out from the sun to a line just beyond Jupiter. The planets had their own mass limits, of course, yet Home Fleet could leave Titan Base and enter stardrive far quicker than if they had to depart from Earth. The planners had concluded it would speed up reaction times if there was an incident at any of the stars nearest Sol. Marius suspected they were being overly optimistic. The Blue Star War should have taught them the dangers of trying to coordinate operations over interstellar distances.
    “Launch a shell of recon drones,” he ordered without taking his eyes off the display. “I want a second shell launched ten minutes after the first