Clara nodded, trying to be diplomatic. “I hear what you’re saying, Roland. They did a heroic job—for us, because they decided it was right. And that won’t be forgotten. But the part they wrote isn’t in the final script. Nobody was to know it would work out this way.”
“And it’s cleaner,” Di Milestro put in. “Fast. Surgical. Without depending on some other planet that nobody understands.”
“They’re in a nutcracker on both fronts,” Gerofsky said. “In the Pacific, and on the mainland. They have to know it’s over too. I’d bet even money we could get a peace offer from Washington before the end of today.”
Which made it all the more incomprehensible that they should take out the Hyadean mission, Cade told himself. What was there for Washington to gain? Downstairs, the Hyadeans had been just as mystified. “These politics are all double faces,” Hudro had said. Then his other words repeated again in Cade’s mind: “So who commands this?”
Who commands?!
It hit Cade then what was wrong. Of course it made no sense for Washington to have ordered the mission strike. The only explanation, then, was that Washington hadn’t ordered it. At least, not of their own initiation. They were no longer in charge!
“Oh, my God,” Cade breathed. He licked his lips and looked quickly around the three faces watching him. “You’re wrong,” he told them. “All of you—Sacramento, Beijing. You’re all wrong. It isn’t over. It hasn’t even started.”
Clara gave the others a puzzled look. Marie alone seemed to have registered the graveness of Cade’s expression. “What are you talking about, Roland?” Clara asked him.
He wiped a hand across his brow, still struggling to come to terms with the enormity of it. “The mission . . . that thing today. The Hyadean high command ordered it. It wasn’t anybody in the Washington government. Don’t you see what that means? They’ve taken over. And they’ve just cut the only independent link back to Chryse that could tell anyone there what happens next. What do you think that means?”
Gerofsky fingered his mustache and turned away to confront the shelves on the far wall. “No. . . . No, it can’t be,” he muttered.
“That’s merely a speculation,” Di Milestro said. “It’s obviously something that’s just occurred to you. You don’t know.” His tone accused Cade for even being capable of conceiving it.
“Then get the Hyadeans up here and see what they think,” Cade said. “Hudro as good as said it already. Only he’s still too shaken up to put together what it means.” He looked around at them again. Di Milestro and Gerofsky were unsure, not wanting to believe him, yet unable to fault what he had said. Marie was persuaded but needed a moment to absorb it. Clara had been around long enough to know that Cade didn’t let many things become serious enough to weigh down his life, and when he did, they were serious. But for now she had to consider her official position too.
“Suppose you’re right, Roland,” she said, standing behind her desk, her knuckles resting on the surface. “How can we change it? What are you suggesting we do? Just capitulate? Are you saying we should try to get Jeye to prevail on the Chinese to call it all off, then back down and accept whatever the Hyadeans choose to dictate?”
“Never!” Gerofsky wheeled back to face them. “And hand the world over as a colony state? I’d see it in flames from end to end first.”
Just what they needed, Cade groaned inwardly. Yet this was would probably be the kind of reaction at every level. He realized that he wasn’t sure himself exactly what he wanted them to do. Di Milestro talked direct to Jeye, but Cade didn’t know him, and right at this moment he was acutely conscious of not commanding Di Milestro’s confidence. Di Milestro confirmed it a moment later. “I think you’re overreacting, Mr. Cade,” he said. “Which is understandable. You’ve lost a lot of friends. But the way I see it, this attempt to set up a back-door PR link into Chryse was only a supplement to the military effort, anyway—in case we needed extra leverage.” He shrugged. “It seems to me we’re doing just fine without.”