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.The magic of the perceptual reality made him seem as though he was also standing right next to Martin himself.And what is the point of buying the best seats in the house, he asked himself, if a perceptual reality can make it seem as though you’re in the front row, or singing with the band?“Citizens of the Solar Union,” the President said.“A major crisis has arisen in our affairs.”There was a long pause.Martin’s implants reported files suddenly making themselves available to him.Side notes indicated that literally billions of downloads had been made within the first twenty seconds of availability.He copied the files to his implants, then pushed them to the rear of his awareness.They could wait until the President had finished speaking.“Ever since the Foundation, we have known about the Tokomak – and the threat they might one day pose to us,” the President continued.“The day we feared has come.They intend to wage war on us, until the human race is crushed into submission or destroyed.We have no choice, but to take the offensive and meet them in deep space.”He paused.Martin wondered if he was waiting for them to read the files.“We have a plan, but we must act fast,” the President concluded.“This is no time for half measures.We must gird our loins and commit ourselves to war.“There are details I cannot share,” he added.“They must not become known to the enemy ahead of time.And they will, if they are discussed in public.I ask for your trust and your confidence that we can win the war, that we can and should fight.I thank you.”He stepped down and waited.After a moment, another figure appeared in the centre of the room.An ID stream identified him as Senator Bin Elliot, a combination of names that could only have occurred in the Solar Union.The profile that popped into Martin’s implants told him that the Senator was only a third of the way into his sole term, but already known for being a strict Isolationist.He didn't want any further involvement with Earth, let alone the Galactics.“The universe is a big place, Mr.President,” he said.“I will not deny that the Tokomak have built themselves an impressive empire.I will not deny that they may pose a threat to us.But I do question the value of having us start a war with them, when there is plenty of room in the galaxy for hundreds of separate races.Let us withdraw our mercenaries from the Coalition and allow them to continue their war, as they have done for hundreds of years.We do not need to involve ourselves in their war.”There was a pause.“The fact remains,” the President said, “that it takes two to make a peace, but only one to make a war.They have decided to make war on us.We do not get to tell them to piss off and go home” – a handful of chuckles ran through the chamber – “unless we give them enough of a black eye to make them think twice.They are unlikely to accept anything from us, unless it is unconditional surrender.“We do not know what they would do to us, if we did surrender.They might treat us, to all intents and purposes, as a spacefaring race like the Varnar.We would be their servants, their slaves, but we would be alive.Or we might be ordered to return to the hellhole called Earth and shut down our space program.Or we might simply be destroyed.“We are a disruptive race, Senator.Within fifty years of discovering the technology to venture out into the galaxy, we have upset quite a few apple carts.The endless Varnar-Coalition War may be coming to an end, because of us.The trading unions may be being undercut, because of us.And some of our technological improvements, based on their technology, may upset the whole galaxy.I am not sanguine about their treatment of us, once we surrender to them.They may simply destroy us, root and branch, breaking their own laws to get rid of a potentially fatal threat.“Perhaps, if we had chosen isolation fifty years ago, and contented ourselves with destroying every Horde starship that visited Earth, this could have been avoided,” he concluded.“But instead we chose to spread into the galaxy
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