“I’m sorry, Colonel. I don’t have access to that. You were added to the attendees by Admiral Milan.”
The party was over.
When she reached the State Building, a light rain was falling. Tiny droplets turned the paving dark and shiny at the same time. The low mountain at the edge of the grounds looked like something from an ancient ukiyo-e print. Yoshitoshi or Hiroshige. An attaché from the Science Directorate was waiting to meet her with a cup of coffee and an umbrella. She waved both away.
Tanaka knew her way around the State Building. Most of her assignments were in the field, but she’d made enough friends and professional connections in the highest ranks of power that when she was on Laconia, she was often here. She hadn’t been back since the siege of Laconia, the destruction of the construction platform, and the maybe-kidnapping, maybe-autoemancipation of Teresa Duarte. There weren’t any physical changes to the building. The poured concrete was as solid as ever, the cut flowers in the vases as fresh. The guards in their razor-pressed uniforms were as stolid and calm. And everything felt fragile.
The attaché guided her to an office she’d been in before. Yellow walls of domestic wood with the blue seal of Laconia worked into them, and two austere sofas. Admiral Milan—acting commander in chief while the high consul was in seclusion and Admiral Trejo was in Sol system—sat at a wide desk. He was a broad man, with a heavy face and salt-and-pepper hair shaved tight. And a crusty old sailor from the Mars days, impatient with bullshit and quick-tempered as a badger. Tanaka liked him immensely.
At one sofa, a lieutenant with a signal intelligence insignia on the standard Laconian blue naval uniform stood. Beside him, Dr. Ochida of the Science Directorate sat with his hands on his knee, fingers laced together. The silence had the awkwardness of an interruption.
Admiral Milan was the first to speak. “We’re running a little long here, Colonel. Have a seat. We’ll be done soon.”
“Yes, sir,” Tanaka said, and took the other sofa for herself. Admiral Milan looked to the standing lieutenant—Rossif, to judge by his nametag—and drew a circle in the air with his fingertip. Get on with it.
“Gedara system. Population just shy of two hundred thousand. High concentration of fissionables in the upper crust, so they’ve been trying to get deep-crust mining operations going for the last several years. Agriculture exists but it’s a decade away from self-sustaining.”
“And the incursion?” Admiral Milan said.
“Twenty-three minutes, eleven seconds,” Rossif answered. “Total loss of consciousness. Some accidental fatalities, some damage to infrastructure. Mostly people crashing vehicles or falling off of things. And logs show that just seconds before the incursion, two unscheduled heavy freighters passed through the ring and went dutchman.”
Dr. Ochida cleared his throat. “There was something strange this time.”
“Something stranger than everyone’s brain shutting off for twenty minutes?” Admiral Milan said.
“Yes, Admiral,” Ochida answered. “A review of instrumentation during the event shows a different kind of time loss as well.”
“Explain.”
“Short version,” Ochida said, “light went faster.”
Admiral Milan scratched his neck. “Did the word explain change meanings and no one told me?” Tanaka suppressed a smile.
“Simply put, the speed of light is a function of basic properties of the universe. Call it . . . the fastest causality can propagate in vacuum,” Ochida said. “For twenty-some minutes in the Gedara system, the nature of space-time shifted in a way that altered the speed of light. Made it faster. The light delay from the ships at the Gedara ring to the planet at the time was slightly less than forty minutes. Logs of the event show that during the incursion, it decreased by nearly four thousand nanoseconds.”
“Four thousand nanoseconds,” Milan said.
“The nature of space-time changed in that system for twenty minutes,” Ochida intoned, then waited for a reaction he wasn’t getting. He looked crestfallen.
“Well,” Milan said. “I will certainly have to think about this. Thank you for the briefing, Lieutenant. Doctor. You’re both dismissed. You stay, Colonel.”
“Yes, sir,” Tanaka replied.
Once the room was empty, Milan leaned back. “Drink? I’ve got water, coffee, bourbon, and some herbal tea shit my husbands both drink, tastes like grass clippings.”
“Am I on active duty?”