“Good lord, Hart,” Harry said. “I’m the only person on the Clarke who doesn’t know what’s going on.” Harry reached over and took the PDA. On its screen was the image of a battle cruiser of some sort, floating near a skyscraper. Or more accurately, what was left of a skyscraper; it had been substantially destroyed, likely by the battle cruiser. In the foreground of the picture, small, vaguely-humanoid blotches seemed to be running from the ruined skyscraper. “Nice picture,” Harry said.

“What do you think you’re seeing there?” Schmidt said.

“A strong case for not letting trainees drive a battle cruiser,” Harry said.

“It’s an image taken during the recent Korban coup,” Schmidt said. “There was a disagreement between the head of the military and the Korban civilian leadership. That skyscraper is—well, was—the Korban administrative headquarters.”

“So the civilians lost that particular argument,” Harry said.

“Pretty much,” Schmidt said.

“Where do we come in?” Harry asked, handing back the PDA. “Are we trying to restore the civilian government? Because, to be honest about it, that doesn’t really sound like something the CU would care about.”

“We don’t,” Schmidt said, taking back the PDA. “Before the coup, the Korba were barely on our radar at all. They had a non-expansionist policy. They had their few worlds and they’d stood pat on them for centuries. We had no conflict with them, so we didn’t care about them. After the coup, the Korba are very interested in expanding again.”

“This worries us,” Harry said.

“Not if we can point them toward expanding in the direction of some of our enemies,” Schmidt said. “There are some races in this area who are pushing in on us. If they had to worry about someone else, they’d have fewer resources to hit us with.”