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Chapter Forty-Two: Drummer

“… and if you fail to turn back,” Secretary-General Li said, “ill be forced to respond with force There will be no further warnings”

“He looks good,” Lafflin said “Statesman-like”

Druht he looked sad, which actually cas considered Itloss of life that had dragged his spirits down She was fairly certain that if she’d done the announceer Or fear Or a near-psychosis-inducing lack of sleep

She went back in the spooled ain The line had been drahere everyone had known it would Point Leuctra, 21 AU fro law and centuries of precedent, that placed the Heart of the Tempest inside the asteroid belt An invisible line in space, un h

The combined fleet of the EMC and her union hadn’t played coy They had burned and braked to reach this position Two hundred and thirty-seven ships, ranging froun was spread across the surface of a ht path The ships on her side eneral had said was for the newsfeeds and posterity Anyone with a map and half a semester of military history could have drawn accurate conclusions without him

She wondered if Saba would see it, back on Medina She wondered if he was still alive There hadn’t been a reply to her desperate question about the ti the EMC’s warning Druht—that the Laconians wouldn’t dare use theirbea time to stutter, stop, and come back with the fleet already in ruins

If she died here, would Saba see it? Would the official Laconian newsfeeds be how they said goodbye?

Lafflin changed the display to the tacticalthe one that was People’s Hoe blip that was their doo a student would have coht to put together a visual display that said destined to fail, it would have been that se

But still …

So security contracts, she’d seen an intervieith an old, s he’d said that stuck with her was, I as could happen to me One time and another in the years since, she’d taken co People fall in love, so et jobs, so et sick People have accidents And now, she supposed, people are divided from their families by war and history And so that could happen to me too Even when they ould it ain? There were so many variations of victory and loss

“They’re confident, aren’t they?” Lafflin said, leaning back in his chair “It’s astounding”

“I suppose it is,” she said She didn’t knohere his mind had been, but it had clearly been soet to the transport”

Lafflin’s s you’d like me to pass on?”

“No,” Dru, I’ll say after”