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“Well,” General Shepherd said to the room. The Commandant of the Marine Corps had been on hand to observe the event, and was chairing the meeting that had been called in the aftermath. “That was eye-opening. What are the Russian’s doing?”“Aristov is on the phone to their embassy, and I bet they’re talking about reinforcing whatever troops they have in the area.”Thomas nodded. He was one of the lowest ranked individuals in this meeting, and the lowest ranked officer actually sitting at the table, as opposed to standing back, waiting for a summons from his exalted superiors.“Don’t blame them,” Shepherd said. “They’ve got a land border to worry about, and one with unfriendlies at the other end. Christ.” He shook his head, looking at the quickly developed photos. So, comments?”“Digging in isn’t a good idea,” another general commented, holding up the picture showing where force leader Syla had created a 50 foot long, 10 foot high berm. “You can do that, you can fill in fox holes.”“Of course,” someone else commented. “Standing out in the open isn’t smart either.” Everyone nodded at that. Syla had somehow raised the earth, converting it into razor sharp ceramic disks, sending them scything out around the dummy soldiers. Then there were the damaged planes, airframes torn by the wind she’s summoned up, wheels buried in concrete that had been turned nearly liquid.“So how do we counter this?” Shepherd asked. “You can get that the first question we’re going to get is, whether we attack them, or they attack us, how do we fight them, without resorting to nukes?”Thomas filled in. He doubted any mage could stop a nuke, but then on the other hand, they were strictly limited in their use, especially if the mage was sitting on something you wanted to use later.“Firstly, it takes a lot longer to produce a mage than it does a soldier,” Thomas said. “You saw the fact that she looks older than her given age? According to Savastan, the methods used to train her could see her dying before her fortieth birthday. The Korva Empire doesn’t have a choice, but that still limits how many mages we’ll ever fight, and how quickly they can be replaced.”“But we’re outnumbered,” a voice said. “You’ve all seen the map.”“With respect,” Thomas said. “Hardly any of those worlds are. Even if we or the Russian’s do something to get them all attacking us, would you trust someone you didn’t know toarrange for you to take it on the chin?”“That’s not the level we need to be worrying about,” Shepherd said in a quelling voice. “Let’s stick with what we can do on the battlefield.”“Snipers,” an Army officer said. “They’re not any more immune to bullets then we are. Also, artillery— she didn’t show off anything that indicates they have a lot of experience with indirect fire.”“They wouldn’t, would they…” Shepherd murmured. “These mages never had to worry about not being able to go through a wall, so they never thought about having to go over it…”“Dispersal,” Thomas said. “We need to work on equipping our soldiers with long-range, powerful weapons so that we can afford to spread platoons out a lot more.”“What about our own mages?”Thomas shook his head. “Not for at least a decade, assuming you start tomorrow. We could hire some but…”“Yeah, political question,” Shepherd said. “But a pretty damned important one. We’ll have to leave that for Washington. Thomas, the President will be speaking with Savastan in the next few days, as soon as it can be set up. We want to have that talk before this army of traders gets dumped on us.”“Sir,” Thomas paused. “How longwe keep this secret? The Russians know, after all.”“So do the British, and some awful interesting comments were made by the French.” Shepherd said. “As in keeping secret from the people? Best guess is not more than a few weeks, but that should give us enough time to see how a bunch of traders work, instead of a small group that could have been telling us only what they want us to know. As for the other, we’ll be setting up working groups— By the end of this week, I want preliminary plans to handle a force using the kind of powers we just saw. I know you can’t plan for things we haven’t seen, but we’ll hopefully cross that bridge when we get to it. Once we getdone, we’ll also be working with Hoover and his people on putting together some preliminary guidelines for law enforcement in case of hostile mages in the general population. I expect that for the near future, that’s going to boil down to ‘yell for help from the military’, but that’s better than what we have now.”“You think they’d be hostile?” someone asked.Shephard’s eyes were cold. “I know we have someone who will be hostile to us—whoever the Korva Empire is fighting. For the rest, they could find another terminus; they could possibly have evaded the Russians; they could just know something even Savastan doesn’t know. I do know that I dointend to have to explain to the American people why we let ourselves get hit with another Pearl Harbor. Not on our watch.”“You frightened them,” Savastan said, his voice cool. “That was potentially unwise.”“Unwise, because you will not be able to sell your trinkets?” Syla asked, as she sipped some steaming tea. She had served Savastan a small pot of the bitter brew, which indicated that her annoyance was not personal. Not yet. Her bodyguards stood behind her, eyes calmly watching Savastan.“No, I am wealthier than you could estimate, Force Leader Syla. In this region of the silver lanes, there are probably fewer than a hundred traders who are wealthier than I am…” Savastan shrugged. “So selling trinkets is something I have not had to do for a long time. But these people fight warthan you are used to. They make war on civilization itself,if they are frightened, and they have the tools to do it.”“Why should we fear that?”“Why should a man fear when his neighbor’s house burns? Fires.”“And if they choose to aid the Empire against our enemies…” Syla smiled. “Why should we mind a spreading fire?”“Because after they destroy your enemies, they may not choose toSavastan leaned back. “I like the humans of Earth and originally I saw this world as something of a refuge for freed slaves. But understand this, Force Leader Syla, this is a very unstable situation. I had hoped to introduce them to the more dangerous aspects of sorcerythe trading ship had arrived and they had physical proof of just how much wealth they could attain viatrade.”“Your kind thinks too much about wealth.”“That is a flaw many traders suffer from,” Savastan said. “On to other affairs. Both the US and USSR are going to want access to the silver lanes, and I doubt they’ll trust us to be the sole provider of transport. How many ships can you provide?“We have less than thirty,” Syla said. “Else we would not be the defensive.”“Trader’s are discouraged from taking a direct role in conflicts, especially ones where the Trader’s Union has declared itself neutral. However, nothing says I cannot hire a skyship and then provide it to another.” Savastan held out a note. “Four mid-sized skyships, to use to help transport goods from earth to your world. I will summon them via link once the trader ship arrives and you will understand that they should only be used for transport.”Syla blinked at the golden sigils on the note.“I thought you disapproved.”“In tactical terms, yes. It would have been wiser to wait. Of course, we have no idea if the Americans and Russian’s would have let you wait. But now you have the right to control the skyships they will need for the short term— I suggest you use that advantage to bolster your own forces.”“And you think that would protect us from any possible…” Syla looked at the door. “Spreading fires?”“I think that both the Americans and Russians are more likely to be willing to deal fairly with a power that they feel can pull its own weight.”“Then we will have to work to show them that,” Syla said, looking thoughtful.