"It's all set up," Ken breathed nervously. "Nothing else we can do but give it a go."
Torra typed the brief command to open the plasma shutter, and poised a digit over the key that would commit it. His display-facing eye bent toward the temperature reading. "Sending engine heat to the Zero Drive in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . ." Its digit stabbed down on the Enter key.
Both Ken and Torra felt an instantaneous shock, like almost falling asleep and jerking into wakefulness — and then, everything was exactly the same as before. No freezing, no frying, not even any new sounds in the hum of the ship's working machinery. "Is it on?" Ken asked.
"Recording incoming broadcast," the SI Controller intoned. A message display console blipped on, showing the Human-Centauri Defense Force emblem while a voice announced, "From New France, this is HCDF News, July 27 . . ."
"Looks like radio isn't blue-shifted either," Torra mused.
News broadcasts from the last ten years rushed past their receiver antennae in quick succession, each one dutifully played and recorded in rapid succession, starting with the first HCDF broadcast beamed along their old course to UV Ceti when their mission began.
They saw the news of their own mission.
They saw the second full year of war. And the third. And fourth. And fifth, and sixth.
They watched in horror as New France and New Mars evaporated.
They worried as Yukariah Heap negotiated with Krammer, and shook their heads or craned their eye stalks in stunned disbelief when the Leonian Fanatic Brigade pulled into Human-Centauri's sacred Citizen Areas.
And then came a newscast from one year ago. . . .
The Pentagon War is continued in chapter
12.
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