revised scene: the Boardroom Group learns something horrific about the Exodus

== 2064: Boardroom Group Headquarters in Tunnel 1,288, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside

Albert stood at one end of the small room and addressed the group. “When the first wave of microships arrived we started trying to figure out how many more ships were going to arrive. So we started counting them.” He pointed to the wallscreen. “This image is twelve hours old.” Behind him was a black and white picture of a cargo container, shining brightly against the black of space.

Someone at the table asked “Our optics have the resolution to see that far?”

“We wouldn’t be able to see them if we didn’t know EXACTLY where to look. But since Darcy and her team wrote the ebook and software package, we know the launch windows and the we know the trajectories. So, yes, if we know where to look we can find them with synthetic aperature telescope.”

Albert coughed. “Once we found the ships, we needed to count them.” He advanced the wallscreen to the next slide, a stylized diagram with the Earth at the far left, the Moon at the far right, and small dots clumped into batches in between. “Each dot represents a microship. This big clump here is from the launch window as it rolled over equatorial Africa. This large cluster is ships from India. This next one is China and Vietnam. This one is Chileans, Alaskans, and others high latitude people who used cargo ships to get to tropical launch points kilo.”

From another corner of the table someone asked “So this emergency meeting – it’s because too many ships are arriving?”

Albert started to say something, then stopped and shooked his head. “I showed you a picture of a ship from the most recent Greenwich Plus Five launch window. That picture is twelve hours old.” He advanced the slide. “Here’s the same ship nine hours ago.”

Kurt Balcom furrowed his brow, then spoke up. “This image is a lot fuzzier than the last one.”

Albert nodded.

“Why is it blurry? A problem with the synthetic aperature telescope?”

“It’s not a problem in the instruments. Here’s a longer exposure.”

The wallscreen advanced a frame. It was the same ship, but this time the resolution was better. What had looked like a fuzziness around the ship was revealed to be a halo of wreckage, shredded metal, and spilled chairs – many of them with what looked to be people strapped into them.

Albert gestured and the screen turned off. “The PKs are burning the ships – they’re using their orbital energy weapons to shoot everything above High Earth Orbit. It started ten hours ago.”

A hush fell across the room. Mark Solder asked “How bad is it?” Before Albert could answer his question Karina Roth interrupted. “We have to get an alert out – we need to tell people to stop launching.”

Albert nodded. “We posted to the usual discussion boards fifteen minutes ago, when my people discovered this.” Albert turned to Mark. “If we assume that the PKs have a 90% kill rate, we’re looking at maybe 50,000 dead.”

Mark grew paler. “Oh my God. What have we done?”