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time.
    â€œI don’t want to talk to your foreign minister,” he said, standing with his back to his desk. “I want your president. And no, I’m not prepared to wait.”
    He turned around to look at the conference screen, hands in pockets, hoping he didn’t appear as agitated as he was. Agitated. Nothing more than that. He wasn’t afraid, and he’d do what he had to. Out of range of the desk cam, his own defense minister and foreign secretary—Andreaou and Nairn—stood listening like a couple of bookends, identically posed but mirrored, with one arm across the chest cupping the other elbow, knuckles of one hand resting against their lips. Whatever responses they were going to give him today, they’d be the bloody same.
    I could have predicted this to the day. It’s not like the Eqbas didn’t give us plenty of notice. I just had no idea how exact they were.
    â€œI’ll get right back to you,” said the FEU liaison.
    Bari killed the link and looked to his ministers. “What does Europe think they’re going to get out of this?”
    Jan Nairn turned and studied the wraparound plot of the Australian Antarctic waters, now studded with real-time projections of naval and air activity. Mawson, the largest settlement in their Antarctic territory, was facing a FEU carrier group sitting just a few hundred provocative meters outside territorial waters.
    â€œI don’t think they fully understand the Eqbas capability,” Nairn said. “Maybe this is just an excuse to expand east across the AAD border.”
    â€œI’d agree with that,” said Andreaou. “It’s pretty transparent—if they wanted to lean on us to do anything, they’d go for a mainland city. I thought they’d given up on the AAD claim, though.”
    â€œWe’ll see.” Bari was trying to keep all the status screens in sight at once, and it was hard. The Eqbas ship had returned to a high orbit after checking out the Westside, the western landmass of an Australia looking ever more likely to split into two landmasses, and now it was just waiting, silent, while more ships appeared on the satellite image as if they were falling out of nowhere. “How the hell do they do that? How come we didn’t detect them until the last minute, Annie?”
    Andreaou folded her arms. “Because they’re bloody aliens, Den, advanced aliens…they do that, you know. This isn’t the time to piss off the defense staff.”
    â€œOkay, let me try to get some sense out of Zammett, and then we shift to the EM center for the duration.” Bari turned to the doorway and called to his PA. “Sal? Sal, warn the FEU ambassador we’ll want to see him today, will you? And tell the Uni to bugger off if they’re still bleating about access to the Eqbas, because this isn’t some academic thesis for their benefit. None of that international scientific cooperation crapola. We process this like any migration and resettlement issue.”
    They’re our damn aliens. We invited them here. They’re going to help us. Get your own.
    There was still no response from the FEU. Bari was running out of patience. Andreaou switched to her earpiece.
    â€œChief of Staff,” she mouthed at him. “She says there’s more FEU navy heading our way…”
    Bari ran out of patience and tapped the desk to call up the FEU link again, waiting for the image of the European portal to appear. “I really think it’s time I spoke to your president, please.”
    He counted to eight before the screen turned into Michael Zammett’s office in Brussels. Bari didn’t have the same long history with Zammett as his predecessor, although that hadn’t been a happy relationship anyway; so maybe a clean sheet augured better. But it was hard to see how it could be more cordial with a carrier off the ADD coast.
    â€œPrime Minister,” said Zammett,