Argue. Tell her to fuck off. Nobody could have done better. “As you wish,” he said coolly.

Rafael came up to him. “Admiral, your navy authorization codes have now been revoked. You will be placed on our inactive list, effective immediately.”

Wilson clenched his teeth. “Right.”

“Thank you for what you did, Wilson. The navy staff appreciate it,” Rafael said with emphasis.

Wilson turned to face the navy’s new chief admiral-in-waiting. “I want you and everyone else in here to know something.”

“If you have anything to say, please place it in your debrief report,” Doi said formally.

He smiled at her, enjoying the way she wanted him out of the room with a minimum of fuss. She didn’t yet have the confidence to try to snap an order at him. “The Starflyer is real.” He made sure he was looking directly at Rafael, seeing the small start of surprise in the man’s otherwise composed features. “It’s been manipulating us for a long while.”

“Enough! Mr. Kime,” Doi said.

“Its agents were on board the Second Chance. They switched off the barrier generator.”

Rafael was looking embarrassed now. Wilson glanced around the table. The only person who held his attention was Justine Burnelli. She appeared guilty rather than surprised. Interesting.

He shrugged at the War Cabinet, as if he wasn’t bothered anymore. “Check it out,” he told Rafael as he turned to leave.

Nigel watched Wilson’s back as he left the committee room. The man’s outburst was fascinating. He was amused by the reaction of the others around the table. Doi, predictably, was mortified at Wilson’s claim. Heather seemed bemused, Rafael concerned, while Justine was doing the same as him, checking around. He met her gaze and gave her a smile. She deliberately returned a blank expression.

He could hardly forget Campbell’s urgent call less than twenty-four hours ago, asking on her behalf what the Dynasty policy was toward Myo. After the Prime attack, Campbell had also told him the Senator and the Investigator were requesting an urgent personal meeting. He wasn’t sure what it was about, but given what Nelson’s observation team had told him about Mellanie’s activities on Illuminatus, it wasn’t a request he was about to refuse. Only now was he starting to wonder what sort of connections Justine had with Wilson. One thing was for sure, that meeting was going to be a lot more interesting than this one.

“I think we can move forward now,” Doi said once the doors were shut and the screening back around the conference room. “I would like to propose Admiral Columbia to assume overall command of the navy, effective immediately.”

“I second that,” Toniea Gall said.

You would, Nigel thought. He caught Heather’s smile of approval.

“All in favor?” Doi asked.

Nigel languidly raised his arm along with everyone else. Alan Hutchinson gave him a fierce, sympathetic grin, which he ignored. If Heather was surprised, she didn’t show it. The argument that the Dynasties had engaged in three hours ago via ultra-secure links had been ferocious. Only a small part of the bad feeling had spilled into the first part of the War Cabinet meeting. Even the intensity of that had mildly scandalized the likes of Crispin Goldreich and Toniea Gall. But then, behind strong seals, Heather always did swear like a construction worker.

“I would like to thank you for your confidence,” Rafael said. He sounded most sincere. “I want to assure you that I am determined to end the Prime threat once and for all. Mr. Sheldon, you said you will make your weapon available.”

They all turned to Nigel. Even now, he thought wearily. For a moment he felt like storming out, catching up with Wilson, putting his arm around the man’s shoulder and the two of them heading off to a bar together.

The Commonwealth he’d created and led for so long now wanted his weapons. That’s not how it was supposed to be. The day he’d stepped out on Mars to laugh at Wilson and the other astronauts was the day he broke the old system: he and Ozzie had set everyone free. And now, I’ve helped build the most revolting weapon anyone has ever dreamed up. I wanted us to live among the stars themselves, not snuff them out. “Yeah,” he said contemptuously. How very like the old military officers Rafael was, audacious in their smart uniforms, sounding positive as they gave their briefings on precision attacks and minimal collateral damage. “Unless the Primes agree to negotiate a cessation of hostilities, I will use our weapon against their homeworld.”

“Will that guarantee their eradication?” Hans Braunt inquired.

“The weapon when fired into a star releases a nova-level energy burst, and destroys the star in the process. Such an event will envelop the entire Dyson Alpha civilization. As they have undoubtedly spread beyond their original star by now, my Dynasty tacticians have proposed a firewall strategy. We will run scout missions centered around Dyson Alpha, and nova every star where we detect their presence. It will, of course, sterilize all life on neighboring star systems.”

There was complete silence around the table.

“You wanted to win,” Nigel told them uncompromisingly.

“We have been reticent about genocide in the past, and rightly so,” Rafael said. “For that is what makes us human. But we can no longer indulge ourselves in this case. If the Primes are allowed to survive, they will forever be a threat to our existence. They have flare bombs, and no reluctance to use them. They have wormholes, and from that will be able to develop FTL ships. If that happens, they will spread through this galaxy like a virus, and endanger even more species than ourselves. We cannot allow that to happen. It boils down to a very simple equation: them or us.”

“Very well,” Doi said. “It is the recommendation of this War Cabinet that every means possible is used to rid ourselves of the Prime threat, up to and including their complete extermination. I propose this motion.”

“Seconded,” Rafael said.

“Please vote, ladies and gentlemen,” Doi said.

It was unanimous.

“Thank you,” Rafael said.

“How are you going to deal with the Primes left in Commonwealth space?” Crispin asked.

“The Lost23 will be the easiest,” Rafael said. “They have very few ships in those systems. We will simply pull our insurgency troops out, and use a quantumbuster against each planet. They will not survive that. The New48 are more problematical.”

“You reckon?” Alan Hutchinson snapped. “For a start, you’re not classing Wessex along with the rest of the invasion. Drop a quantumbuster on my world, and I’ll fucking nuke your Dynasty back into the stone age.”

“Nobody’s going to wipe out Wessex,” Heather said. “Calm down, Alan. It’s a Big15, it can recover from the flare radiation. Narrabri is protected under force fields, and the farmland can be replanted easily enough. The rest of it, the land you’ve left uncultivated, doesn’t count; it has no economic value, and no one living there.”

“You still need a functioning biosphere,” Justine said.

“Half of the land mass will be completely unaffected,” Hans said. “The flare activity lasted for less than an hour in total. And the impact the radiation will have on the ocean is completely minimal. The biosphere remains essentially intact on Wessex as it does on the other New48.”

“It’s not that simple,” Justine said. “The particle swarm will spread around the planet. You’ll get fallout everywhere.”

“By far the worst impact is the hemisphere facing the star during flare time. The rest is manageable. Look at Far Away; the flare lasted for weeks there, and we managed to regenerate the continents. That whole planet is alive again. You’re not going to have people running out of oxygen. The time it’ll take to restore the carbon cycle is insignificant on a planetary scale.”