Omega

“For capital ships, by the end of the month to the Mediterranean and Baltic fleets. Before April for the Atlantic fleets.”

“Excellent. That should enable you to get your ships to where they need to be, yes, admiral?”

The admiral did not exactly look satisfied but he subsided into his seat, as did the thickset man.

“Ah,” said Coquelin, as if he had only just registered Owain’s arrival, “an appropriate time to take a break, wouldn’t you agree?”

A braided kepi sat on the desk in front of him, a relic of the old French army uniform. It was obvious to Owain that the discussion had centred on problems with fuel supplies that had arisen now that wells in the Mesopotamian oilfields were being tapped that contained high levels of gamma emitters. Every ship bigger than a minesweeper in the Alliance fleet would have to have its engine room modified so that it could use the radioactive fuel. No doubt the tanker crews would be expected to make their own safety arrangements.

Coquelin fell into muted conversation with Owain’s uncle, who was seated to his right. He was the head of the French military government and hence a member of the thirty-person Chiefs of State Committee that directed the Alliance’s military and political affairs. On his other side sat the elderly Reichmarschall Schmidt, one of his counterparts and the representative of the German General Staff. He looked half-asleep. Further down the table was Carl Legister.

Owain ventured only the occasional glance in his direction. He was convinced that Legister was watching him as he arranged crockery on the table. A slim, fastidious-looking man, he wore a black suit and a high-collared white shirt buttoned up but without a tie. It lent him an ascetic air. He sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead through contact lenses that accentuated his penetrating eyes.

I kept myself in the background. This was a high-level meeting, and I needed to be as discreet as Owain was being wary.

When Owain came to his uncle’s shoulder, Sir Gruffydd helped himself to three chocolate-coated biscuits from the tray. Another aide was dispensing tea and coffee.

“Sir,” Owain said with an unaccustomed degree of public boldness, speaking in English, “I was asked to remind you of your insulin levels.”

“Damn cheek,” Sir Gruffydd said, though not unkindly. He returned one of the biscuits to the tray and said, “Two sugars in my coffee.”

His uncle suffered from late-onset diabetes. Giselle had earlier supplied him with a little cylinder of sweeteners. He clicked two into the general’s cup.

“Impudence!” the old man said theatrically. “Generaloberst, this is my nephew. What do you make of his insubordination?”

He was talking to the tall man sitting opposite him. Owain saw that it was none other than Wilhelm Blaskowitz, the C-in-C of the armies in eastern Europe.

Blaskowitz was a lean man in his early sixties who sat as stiff-backed in his chair as Carl Legister. Owain nearly blurted out that he had served under him while on the eastern front and that he was esteemed by his men. But such gushing would have been inappropriate as well as foreign to his nature.

Owain moved slowly upble, picking up snatches of conversation. A Spanish general was speaking in broken German to a Czech colleague, discussing refugee problems. A Free French Canadian commander was doubting that the Australians would be able to maintain their neutrality in the face of American encroachments in the Pacific. A Swiss air marshal was complaining that his pilots had been reduced to flying thirty year-old Valkyries and Henschels because disruptions in satellite signalling made state-of-the-art warplanes vulnerable to crashing. Henry Knowlton was scoffing at suggestions that this breakdown had actually been initiated by AEGIS itself in order to destabilise the prevailing period of truce.

Owain lingered, intrigued but sometimes missing the subtleties of the discussion, which was in brisk French. For months there had been gossip that the strategic network had become self-governing and now sought to control the conduct of military operations for its own nefarious ends. The Swiss commander even considered it conceivable that AEGIS was actually working in concert with the American SENTINEL and Russian PHALANX systems, as well as those operated by the Chinese and lesser power blocs. G in AEGIS now meant Gestalt, a global artificial intelligence whose aims superseded those of the humans it had been structured to serve.

It wasn’t the first time Owain had encountered the suggestion that AEGIS might have evolved a directed sentience of its own, though he was surprised to hear it aired at such a high-level meeting. But Knowlton remained airily adamant there was no basis for such a claim.

Owain returned to the kitchen to fetch a fresh pot of coffee. As he came back through the door, Legister raised a finger and beckoned him over.

“Black coffee,” he said.

Owain filled his cup. His hands were surprisingly steady.

“Major Maredudd, isn’t it?” Legister said.