ssed quickly, took out of its locked drawer the remaining
microvideo, and made his way impatiently to the InterCommunications
Studio, where he spent the rest of the night alone, cutting and
editing, then in a late flurry, recording and polishing his own
address. Age and fatigue tried to rankle, but he was not let them.
The Gate was nearly completed and the Russian threat, unseen but
strongly felt, grew nearer each day. Surely by now they had secured a
lock on his position, and dispatched their Armada.....

There was no time to lose.

IV

The Coalition had decided to attack the Belgians and Swiss at the place
they were now weakest---the occupied Dutch holdings at Larkspur. There
were several other considerations behind this choice.

For one thing, it was unexpected. For another, it placed the field of
battle on neutral ground, where if the assault was beaten back, or the
fighting became intense, there could be no reprisals, or increased
danger to the civilian populations. Lastly, and of no small
importance, the Soviets insisted upon it. Apparently something had
developed in their search for Hayes and they could not, so they said,
spare sufficient force to insure victory at the tri-colonies of Athena.
At least not yet.

After their most recent assault against Joint Africa, at the heart of
the Kurtz quadrant---the one that had triggered, or at least
legitimized the Soviet response---the Alliance had drawn themselves
into a more defensive posture. But they were still, by all
reconnaissance, overextended. Their expected help from the German
States, both in weapons systems and personnel, had not materialized,
and upon last contact with Hayes, himself now a renegade, he had told
them flatly to, "Go play soldier in a barn."

At the outset of the conflict, the relative strengths of the Alliance
and the Coalition had been approximately equal. After the Schiller
debacle and concurrent destruction of the Coalition First Combat Fleet,
the scales had for a time been heavily tipped in favor of the Belgians
and Swiss. But with Soviet Space now backing their rival, the
(legitimate) American forces now hostile because of Hayes' earlier
complicity with them, and the German States coolly indifferent, they
found themselves in a position where not only was offense impossible,
but defense became equally precarious. The overall anarchy which they
had counted on to cover their tracks, was now on the wane, as United
N