Verikoff suddenly seemed apprehensive. "What is this talk of an assault?" he asked. "You are going in there?"

"We are going in there," Sobroskin told him.

Verikoff started to protest but stopped when he saw the menace in Sobroskin’s eyes. He licked his lips and nodded. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

An hour later a VTOL personnel carrier flew the whole party across the Potomac to the army base at Fort Myer. They were met by a Colonel Shearer, who commanded a Special Forces antiterrorist unit that had already been called to alert and was standing by. The planning and briefing session that followed went on until the early hours of the morning. The first gray light of dawn was showing in the east as an Air Force transport took off from Fort Myer and followed the coast toward New England. It landed with a whisper less than thirty minutes later at an out-of-the-way military supply depot situated among wooded hills twenty miles or so outside Stamford, Connecticut.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Jevlenese were still tapping into Earth’s communications net. Earth knew they were, and the Jevlenese knew that Earth knew. Therefore, Caldwell reasoned, the Jevlenese would expect any high-level communications between Earth’s governments, especially anything to do with an impending attack on Jevlen, to be encoded by methods that were generally thought to be unbreakable; anything else would not look authentic. But if the codes were indeed unbreakable, little purpose would be served by planting authentically encoded information in JEVEX since JEVEX wouldn’t be able to unravel what it said.

At Caldwell’s request the scientists at McClusky beamed details of the coding algorithms currently used for high-security terrestrial communications through to the perceptron. VISAR studied them and announced that JEVEX would have no problem. The scientists were skeptical. As a test VISAR invited them to compose an encoded message and send it over the beam, which they did. VISAR returned the plaintext translation less than a minute later. The stunned scientists decided that they still had a lot to learn about algorithms. But the implication was satisfactory: JEVEX could be led plausibly to believe that it was eavesdropping on Earth’s highest-level secure communications.

Since then VISAR had been busy manufacturing a revised history of the last few decades on Earth in which the superpowers had not disarmed but gone on to escalate their strategic forces to insane levels of overkill capability, concluding with an account of Earth’s leaders meeting secretly and agreeing to a hasty alliance to hurl their combined strength at Jevlen with the Thuriens transporting the force to within striking distance. Its latest creation, being previewed in the Government Center in Thurios, showed a conference hookup in which some of the senior officers engaged in the joint planning of the operation were delivering a preliminary briefing to their staffs. A General Gearvey, whom VISAR had already appointed as the American Supreme Commander, began speaking.

"We are about to engage an enemy who possesses a technology incalculably ahead of our own, and of unknown strength and retaliatory capability. But against that we have two factors in our favor that could redress the balance-time and preparedness. We are in a position to move now, while all our intelligence from the Thuriens leads us to believe that the enemy is not. Our strategy is therefore based on exploiting these factors to the fullest. We will forego detailed planning and rely heavily on the initiative of local commanders in order to move fast and aim at total devastation of the enemy in a single, surprise, all-out, lightning strike with no compromises. This is not a time to ponder about morality. We might not have a second chance."

A Russian general leaned forward and took it from there. "The opening phase of the assault is designated OXBOW. Fifteen long-range radiation projectors will commence area-obliteration of selected targets on Jevlen, firing from one million miles standoff behind screens of destroyers and close-support tactical units. Five more will be held in reserve at ten million miles. The bombardment is intended to draw and engage the defensive forces while the spearheads move in to commence operations around the planet itself."

A European Air Force chief continued, "Phase BANSHEE will begin with a high-level sweep of Jevlenese near-space to clear it of all enemy hardware. This will be followed immediately by rapid deployment of a mixed-strike orbital system to neutralize major military installations and observed ground concentrations. A secondary force will concentrate on population centers and administrative focal points to dislocate the defenses by creating panic and disrupting communications. Simultaneously, lower-altitude intercept units and killsats will contest Jevlenese air space, with carrier-based tactical groups operating in selective ground-strike and counterfire roles. Our objective here is to gain complete control above the surface within twelve hours of the spearheads going in. The codeword CLAYMORE will be issued upon the successful completion of this phase."

A Chinese general summed up the last part. "When CLAYMORE is declared, conditions will have been established to permit the seizure of bridgeheads on the surface. This phase is designated DRAGON. The first descents will be made by remote-controlled decoy landers to enable surviving defensive installations to be identified and destroyed by a portion of the orbital bombardment groups held in reserve for that purpose. The remaining orbiting groups will redeploy to provide close-support fire for the landings, and the carrier groups assigned to ground suppression will commence launching aircraft. When descent corridors have been cleared, the ground forces will be landed initially at twelve strategic points. Details of those operations are currently being finalized with the respective bridgehead commanders. Strategic bombardment from high level will continue throughout to prevent the defenses from concentrating on the landing areas."

"That concludes the overview," Gearvey said. "Individual unit assignments, timetabling, and call signs will follow immediately. Remain on standby."

"What do you think?" Caldwell asked as the image cut out.

"I’m impressed," Heller said. "It’d sure scare the hell out of me."

"Horrifying," Calazar pronounced numbly. "It is just as well that you did not go with the Shapieron. We would never have conceived anything like that."

Danchekker did not seem completely happy. "It still doesn’t contain the sense of urgency that we have to convey," he said. "It doesn’t mention any specific dates."

"I did that on purpose," Caldwell told him. "If we’re going to be credible, we’d have to allow Earth ships months to get out of the solar system. The best thing seemed to be to leave it uncertain. What other way is there?"

"I don’t know, but I still don’t like it," Danchekker said.

Nobody spoke for a few seconds, then Morizal said, "Well, we’ve already got the Thuriens providing the transfer ports outside the solar system. We could take it a step further and have the Terran vessels fitted with Thurien-supplied h-grid boosters. That way we could get them out of the solar system in a day."

"A whole fleet?" Heller said dubiously. "Could a whole fleet be fitted out that quickly?"

"Conceivably yes," Morizal replied. "It’s quite a simple job. With unlimited assistance from Ganymean engineers, it would be feasible."

"How does that sound?" Caldwell asked, looking at Danchekker.

"It sounds more like what we want," Danchekker agreed, nodding.

"Suppose I change the last part to this," VISAR offered. The image reappeared and showed General Gearvey again, just about to sum up.