The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian (19 page)

“But there has to be a diversion to distract us when we’re near that jump point. What would work? Stealth shuttles aren’t cheap or available in large numbers, and we put a decent dent in how many of them the Syndics must have in this region of space. And that boarding operation only succeeded as much as it did because we were already distracted by another attack.”

“Something different,” Geary said. “They’ll know we’re watching for the same things coming at us. They’ll want to do something we’re not watching for. Whatever that is. All right. I’m calling a fleet conference.”

—

HE
never looked forward to conferences like this, even when there was nothing but good news or routine events to discuss. So far, Sobek had provided nothing good or routine, so this virtual gathering of the fleet’s ship captains promised to be the same.

Geary stood in the fleet conference room, looking across the assembled images of his ships’ commanding officers. A rather small compartment in reality, the meeting software made it seem vast enough to hold everyone, the table in front of Geary virtually expanded to seat hundreds of men and women. The most senior officers, the captains and commanders in charge of battleships and battle cruisers, General Carabali of the Marines and the senior fleet engineers, were “seated” closest to Geary, with the others farther way in descending order of seniority and the size of their command. He could look at any one of them, though, and the software would automatically zoom in on that individual, displaying name, rank, and command.

It all made meetings very easy to hold. For the most part, Geary considered that a negative aspect of the software. As a rule, he thought that meetings should be hard to hold and hard to get to, crowded into stuffy, uncomfortable rooms where everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible.

But sometimes even he had to hold meetings like this, and at those times the software was a very nice thing to have.

“You’re all familiar with the situation,” Geary said. “The loss of
Orion
was a terrible blow, but her crew died with honor, doing their duty, and will surely be welcomed by the living stars.”

“A terrible loss,” Captain Duellos of the battle cruiser
Inspire
commented with unusual harshness. “We have lost too many comrades in battle. I wish
Orion
had been able to take more of the enemy with her and that we had more means of making pay those who ordered that attack. What a shame that the hypernet gate here was so badly damaged as well in that action.”

“Yes,” Captain Badaya of
Illustrious
agreed, his face reddened with anger. “But not enough of a shame. It’s too bad a few stray bombardment projectiles didn’t put craters into a lot of important Syndic facilities here.”

A low rumble of concurrence sounded around the huge, virtual table.

“Why not?” Commander Neeson of
Implacable
asked. “Why not make them pay a higher price? They attacked us. They destroyed
Orion
. Why not retaliate?”

Geary waited for another burst of agreement to subside instead of quelling it using the meeting software.
Let them blow off a little steam. We all need to.
“I haven’t ordered that kind of retaliation because that’s exactly what the leaders of the Syndics want us to do. They want us to break the peace agreement in such a way that they can claim we attacked them first.”

That statement brought silence, finally broken by Captain Tulev of
Leviathan
. “Why would the Syndics seek war with the Alliance again when the Syndics do not even have the military means left to force all of their own star systems to remain loyal to them?” Tulev sounded questioning, not challenging.

“Because they want an external enemy again,” Geary said. “The Syndic leaders know they can’t hold what’s left of the Syndicate Worlds together by using the force available to them, but they also know that fear of the Alliance provided a powerful reason for star systems not to revolt during the war. They think if we attack them, if the Alliance can be painted as an aggressive enemy that everyone must fear, it will again give the Syndic leaders a strong tool for keeping star systems loyal to them.”

Badaya shook his head. “That genie is out of the bottle. Even if we came rampaging through Syndic space bombarding right and left, the Syndic empire isn’t going to reconstitute itself.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” General Carabali said, her words coming slowly and carefully. “As weak as they are in the wake of the war, the Syndicate Worlds can still offer a greater degree of security to individual star systems than those star systems can muster on their own. That greater security against external threats and the promise of internal stability are the only things the Syndics
can
offer those star systems now.”

“It creates a choice of enemies again,” Duellos said. “At this time, with the Alliance at peace, the only enemies those star systems see are the rulers of the Syndicate Worlds. Their own rulers. Start the war again, and there are other enemies to worry about. It might work.”

“It might,” Tulev agreed. “If only a little. But from small advantages, large changes can grow over time. I see your logic, Admiral.”

Badaya was still angry, but he was thinking. “They are goading us to attack. Why would they do that unless they
want
us to attack? I see your point as well, Admiral. But it is still a very bitter thing to leave this star system with only the loss of their hypernet gate to avenge the loss of
Orion
.”

“I agree,” said Geary. “It feels like far too little. Yet the loss of the hypernet gate here will have a serious impact on the local economy, as well as on the ability of the Syndics to move military forces quickly.”

“As far as we know, this was their last functioning hypernet gate, except for Midway’s, which they no longer control,” Neeson pointed out.

“Yes, that’s why the Syndics here are so upset about—” Geary stopped speaking as he realized that something major didn’t fit.

Captain Hiyen grasped just what that was before anyone else. “Why are the Syndics here so upset about losing their hypernet gate if the only other gate they could access was Midway’s? The gate was already effectively almost useless.”

Emissary Charban had his eyes on the star display positioned above the conference table. “If they are that upset, it argues that the gate was still useful to them, that there were other places they could access through it.”

“We ran the checks,” Desjani insisted. “The only gate accessible was Sobek.”

Hiyen shook his head. “The only gate accessible from
Midway
when
we
tried to access the Syndic hypernet was Sobek,” he said, carefully emphasizing certain words. “We know that is true.”

Commander Neeson was staring at Hiyen. “Have the Syndics developed some means of selectively blocking access to gates within their hypernet? Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know,” Hiyen admitted. “I don’t know that anyone has ever looked into it. Why would we?”

“Why would the Syndics have done that? Tried to develop something like that?” Badaya demanded.

“Oh, hell,” Desjani said with disgust. “The answer to that is aboard
Dauntless
, and has been ever since we got the Syndic hypernet key from that damned supposed Syndic traitor.”

Duellos looked pained. “Of course. As soon as we escaped the trap intended for us at Prime, the Syndics knew the Alliance fleet was loose with a key to their hypernet. We assumed they were trying to counter that by catching and destroying this fleet. But why would they stop at that? Why wouldn’t they also start trying to figure out how to limit the usefulness of the key to keep us from going anywhere we wanted within their hypernet?”

“They’ve been working on it ever since we escaped Prime,” Neeson said angrily. “And it never even occurred to us.”

“We won,” Charban said. “Why should we have looked for new capabilities?”

“We do not know the Syndics have done this,” Tulev cautioned. “It is a reasonable guess, I agree. But it is not confirmed.”

Geary looked toward Rione. She nodded, so he turned to face the whole table again. “We do know the Syndics conducted some new research into the hypernet. They developed a means to block the collapse of hypernet gates by remote signals, the sort of thing that destroyed Kalixa. I don’t know whether or not the Alliance has engaged in similar research.”

“We didn’t have the same incentive, did we?” Duellos asked. “We didn’t have a star system turned into a charnel house like the Syndics did at Kalixa.”

“The enigmas tried to do the same thing to Petit Star System in the Alliance,” Desjani pointed out.

“But they did not succeed thanks to the anticollapse device created by our late and very lamented colleague Jaylen Cresida. A star system without a hypernet gate is a far cry from a star system destroyed by its hypernet gate.”

Geary glanced around, but no one else seemed to have any suggestions.
Is this somehow related to fleet headquarters’ attempt to pull anyone with hypernet expertise from this fleet prior to our departure from Varandal? I thought it might be to keep us from learning about the possibility of the entire Syndic hypernet being collapsed by remote signal, but was it about more than that?

Jane Geary looked up with a stunned expression. “Lakota. Didn’t you tell me, Admiral, that Syndic reinforcements showed up at Lakota and were surprised to be there because they had entered a different destination into their controls?”

“Yes,” Geary said.

“How much do the Syndics know about that? The Syndics at Lakota had time to report it, didn’t they, between the time our fleet left Lakota and returned to fight the second battle there? The Syndics would have learned then that there was some means of altering the destination of ships that had already entered the hypernet. What if they’ve been trying to learn how to do that as well?”

“This just keeps getting better,” Badaya said in disgust. “Our trump card, the ability to use the Syndic hypernet while they can’t use ours, is turning into a wild card.”

“Maybe the Alliance government is researching the same things,” Charban suggested. “Perhaps when we return to Varandal, we will find that countermeasures have already been prepared.”

There was a slight pause, then scornful mirth rippled around the vast, virtual table.

“With all due respect to your record as a ground forces officer,” Duellos said, “are you proposing that we should trust that our government has anticipated a problem and worked to correct it before it went nova?”

Charban had the good grace to smile slightly. “That does sound like a reach, doesn’t it? But don’t forget that the Syndic system is plagued by many problems, not the least being its own leaders, and still has apparently managed to produce some results.”

“We’ll find out some of the answers when we go through other Syndic star systems,” Geary said, “and when we get back to Varandal. Whatever state the Syndic hypernet is in, whatever the Syndics can do with it, doesn’t matter for us now that we’re this close to Alliance space. We’ll be using jump the rest of the way home, and it’s not that far. We don’t know what else the Syndics might try along the way, but they lost a lot of courier ships in the suicide attack, and a lot of elite special forces and stealth equipment in the attack on
Invincible
. They won’t be able to replace those easily, and they won’t be able to use them against us again or against their own people.”

“That’s not enough,” Captain Vitali of
Dragon
said. “We lost a battleship and her entire crew. To an unprovoked attack conducted without warning. We can’t lose sight of that just because of our speculations about the Syndic hypernet.”

The murmur around the table this time was more of a growl as the reminder of the circumstances of
Orion
’s loss generated renewed rage.

How do I respond to that?
Geary looked over toward where Tanya Desjani sat. She was looking back at him with an aggravated expression, as if the reply was obvious, and he was taking far too long to come up with it.

Oh.

“It’s not the first time I have dealt with an unprovoked attack, conducted without warning,” Geary said. The reminder that he had faced the first attack of the war, a surprise assault that he had led a last-ditch defense against at Grendel a century ago, brought everyone up short. “The question is, do we do what they want us to do or what we want to do? Do we let them win, even though we beat them both times they attacked us here?”

The argument was logical but was warring against emotions. He could tell that his commanders, for the most part, wanted to buy into it but were reluctant to.

While he was trying to come up with points to reinforce his position, Captain Jane Geary spoke up. She had been quieter since the desperate fight at Honor, usually watching and listening instead of commenting, but now she spoke with an intensity that held everyone. “As long as the peace agreement stands, the Syndics are required to return all prisoners of war to us. They are required to allow us to enter their space in order to recover prisoners of war. Consider the cost to those men and women still trapped in Syndic labor camps if we play the Syndics’ game now.”

It was the emotional counterpoint he had sought, and Geary could tell it had hit home.

Badaya nodded firmly. “Captain Geary is right. We could kill every Syndic in this star system, and it wouldn’t free a single Alliance prisoner held elsewhere. Hell, we tried killing every single Syndic, and all we got for it was a hundred years of war. Let’s honor the sacrifice of
Orion
’s crew by vowing to recover every Alliance prisoner no matter how the Syndics try to provoke us. We’ll kill anyone they send against us
and
get our people back!”

This time, those around the table shouted approval, while Desjani stared at Badaya with the same expression of shock she would have worn if a rock had begun debating philosophy with her.

Geary himself barely managed to hide his own amazement at Badaya’s speech. “I could not have said it better. That will be our policy. We’ll get this fleet home, we’ll get
Invincible
home, we’ll get the Dancers to our home, and we won’t stop until we get all of those Alliance men and women held by the Syndics home as well.”