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said.
    “Khartoum is one of ten colonies who conspired to declare independence from the Colonial Union. The plan was to do it simultaneously and in doing so give the Colonial Union too many targets against which to effectively retaliate. The longer it took us to respond to the event, the more colonial worlds would be inspired to also declare independence. The idea here is that dissolution of the Colonial Union would succeed in part because the CU would lack the resources to deal with the mass exodus.
    “However, Colonel Tvann convinced the government of Khartoum to announce its independence early, arguing that it could act as the catalyst for the dissolution of the Colonial Union alone, and that Equilibrium would effectively serve as Khartoum’s defense forces. That would benefit both Khartoum and Equilibrium, which wanted to be seen as an ally to the newly independent colonies.”
    “That didn’t work out,” Rigney said, dryly.
    “No,” Abumwe agreed. “In fact, Equilibrium’s true plan was to attack any CDF ship which responded—which it did with the Tubingen . The attack, whether it was seen by the Colonial Union as directed by Khartoum or by Equilibrium, would result in a massive response by the CDF—which it did. We sent twenty ships to Khartoum.
    “Equilibrium did this for the specific purpose of massively militarizing the Colonial Union response to our planets declaring independence. The next planet or planets which declare will not receive a visit from a single CDF ship as they would have done before. Instead the CDF will send a fleet to any planet, with the specific intent of overwhelming any independence movement from the beginning.” Abumwe stopped for a second and looked at Egan and Rigney curiously. “Is this Equilibrium assessment accurate?”
    The two colonels looked uncomfortable. “It might be,” Rigney said, eventually.
    Abumwe nodded. “Equilibrium, through its own strategy of misdirection and false information—and its campaign to establish the Colonial Union as an unreliable source of truthful information, aided by the fact that the Colonial Union is, in fact, deeply censorious of news between colonies—plans to encourage the nine remaining planets in the original independence scheme to stick to their plan and jointly announce. It will promise logistical and defense support, which it has no real intention of providing except for its own purposes, as it did over Khartoum. This will happen as soon as practicably possible. And of course the CDF will respond.”
    “And then what?” Egan asked.
    “Once the Colonial Union is fully occupied with this independence movement and has committed a substantial amount of its military force and intelligence capabilities to quash it, Equilibrium attacks.”
    “Attacks the fleets over the rebellious colony planets?” Rigney said. “That’s just stupid, Ambassador. Equilibrium can be effective with sneak attacks but their ships and armaments can’t stand up to a prolonged battle.”
    “They won’t be attacking our fleets,” Abumwe said. “They will be attacking the Earth.”
    “What?” Egan said. She pushed forward in her seat, now intensely interested.
    Abumwe glanced over to me and nodded. I connected my BrainPal to the theater’s presentation system and popped up a visual of Earth, and above it, several dozen starships, not to scale.
    “Equilibrium acquires ships by pirating them,” Abumwe said. “The Colonial Union has lost dozens over the years. The Conclave and its constituent states have lost even more.” She pointed into the graphic. “What you see here is a representation of all the Conclave-affiliated ships that we know have been taken and have not, as yet, been destroyed in battle. There are ninety-four shown here and we have to assume our estimate is low.
    “According to Commander Tvann, the Equilibrium plan is to skip these ships into Earth space, destroy the planet’s defense, communication, and scientific satellites,