The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian (5 page)

“I can’t argue with any of your points,” Geary said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the odds of encountering on our way home a force of warships capable of destroying the rest of the fleet and capturing
Invincible
are basically zero.”

“Again, that’s true. The Syndic shipyards have probably kept going to the best of their ability, so they might surprise us, but even if they do, we’re certain to have vastly superior numbers.”

“So,” Lagemann continued, “how would someone try to attack and capture
Invincible
?”

As Geary paused to think, Major Dietz provided the answer. “Boarding party.”

“Boarding party?” Geary repeated. “How?”

“With enough stealth suits, they could get a force aboard this ship,” Dietz explained. “Hit us while we’re transiting a star system.”

“They know where we have to go,” Lagemann pointed out. “They can plant stealth shuttles along the route from a hypernet gate to a jump point and just latch on as we pass.”

“There wouldn’t be much opportunity for that along the route from here to Varandal,” Geary began, then stopped as a memory came to him. “CEO Boyens strongly implied that obstacles would be established to keep us from getting back easily.”

“Any idea what or how?”

“No. What could a boarding party do?”

Major Dietz answered again. “Standard practice when boarding a ship is to head for the three vital control centers. The bridge, main engineering control, which also controls the power core on the ship, and weapons control.”

“There isn’t any main engineering control on this ship,” Geary said, reaching for another grip and pulling himself farther along the passageway, “unless you found one and didn’t tell me.”

He could hear Lagemann’s grin. “Nope. There are eight power cores, and eight control stations. Why? Our engineers say it’s not efficient. Two big cores would have worked better. But that’s what the Kicks did. All of the cores are fully shut down and none of the control stations are operational. At least, not by humans. Who knows what a Kick could do? And all main propulsion systems were blown to hell during the battle at Honor, so even with power,
Invincible
can’t do any serious movement under her own propulsion.”

“There are two operational weapons left,” Major Dietz offered. “Particle beam projectors similar to our hell lances. But both lack power. They’re useless even if someone could find the right control station for them.”

“And the bridge is also useless,” Geary said. “Right?”

“Right, sir. We still don’t understand that stadium seating in the back of it, but none of the controls are powered and working. It’s all dead.” Dietz made an annoyed sound, as if unhappy that he had used that term while it felt like Kick ghosts were hovering around.

“Then what’s the threat? I’m not discounting the impact on you if an attack force boards, but how can they take
Invincible
? All you have to do is hold out until we put reinforcements aboard.”

Admiral Lagemann waved one hand around them. “The threat is to the most valuable thing in human history. What can you do to keep someone else from using it, from learning from it, from putting aboard new forces to contest your control of it?”

The ghosts felt like they were crowding closer as the answer came to Geary. “Threaten to destroy it?”

“Give that man a prize. If they bring nuclear weapons aboard and set them off inside, they could turn this invaluable alien artifact into a giant stubby tube of armor containing radioactive slag. What would we do to keep them from doing that?”

He hated to think of the compromises that situation might require. Perhaps even surrendering
Invincible
to keep her interior intact in the hopes that she could be recaptured. “You think this will happen?”

“We think,” Major Dietz said, “that it’s the only possible way to threaten our control of this ship. But they’d have to eliminate my Marines to prevent us from stopping them from carrying out that kind of threat.”

Geary shrugged irritably, trying to ward off the ghosts his senses claimed were bunching around him as he moved. “Do you want reinforcements now?”

“We can’t use them, Admiral,” Dietz explained. “The safe area on
Invincible
can’t support many more humans. We’re better off with a smaller force that knows the ship fairly well and can hit attackers where they least expect it.”

“And where would they least expect it?” Geary asked.

“If they come, they’ll be Syndics. Or people who were trained as Syndics. That means they’ll follow standard procedures in their planning.”

Geary shook his head. “Surely they realize that the deck plan for this ship doesn’t match anything built by them or the Alliance.”

“Yes, sir,” Major Dietz said, then continued in very diplomatic tones for a Marine. “These plans will be very important. They’ll be drafted by the Syndic high command. Not by any field forces. By the highest-ranking CEOs in the Syndic military hierarchy.”

“Which means,” Admiral Lagemann added, “that any relationship between reality and those plans will be purely coincidental.”

“That’s the way it tends to work,” Geary agreed. “Those high-ranking planners far from the scene of the operations will use standard assumptions, so any attack force will come in and try to locate the three critical areas. I have to admit I have trouble believing that they could manage a boarding operation without our spotting it.”

“It is possible, sir.” Major Dietz spoke with authority but no hint of boastfulness. “As I said, lurking at full stealth near the path they expect us to use, so they’d only have to use minimal power to bring about an intercept. I’ve done it to their ships. I’m force recon, Admiral.”

“I see. That makes you a much bigger expert on the matter than I am.” The group had reached another temporary air lock blocking their path. “What is this?” Geary asked.

“The fake main engineering control,” Admiral Lagemann advised.

“You’ve made a fake main engineering control?”

Lagemann opened the air lock and stepped inside.

Geary blinked at the lack of clean atmosphere on the other side of the air lock. “A fake air lock, too?”

“Naturally.” Lagemann waved around him. “This was some kind of Kick recreational area, we think. Mostly empty except for what looks like sport equipment sized for Kicks. General Carabali sent over two Persian Donkeys at the request of Major Dietz.” Lagemann pointed to a squat device resting in the center of the space. “Here’s one of them. Have you been briefed on what the Donkeys do, Admiral?”

“Yes. We used them at Heradao.” Geary came closer to the device, which didn’t look at all like a real donkey. “Marine deception gear. They can send out full-spectrum signals and signatures to mimic just about anything.”

Major Dietz nodded. “Anything from a headquarters complex to a dispersed armored ground forces unit on the advance,” he said. “Each Donkey isn’t very big, but they each carry scores of little subdecoys that can be sent out and generate all kinds of signatures that someone is there. Communications, bits of spoken conversation, infrared signatures, seismic thumps to match steps or equipment moving, other sounds of weapons and other equipment, you name it. This particular Donkey has been set to generate fake indications that this compartment is full of power-core-control equipment and people operating that equipment.”

“Nice,” Geary approved. “Where’s the other Donkey?”

“In the compartment a ways from here that will look like a bridge area to Syndic sensors,” Dietz said a trifle smugly.

Geary smiled despite the sense of disapproving ghosts hovering nearby. “A fake bridge and a fake main engineering control. These Donkeys will lure anyone sneaking onto the ship toward a place where you aren’t. Can you spot them moving here?”

“If they’re in full stealth mode?” the Major asked. “Not easily, sir. That’s why we’ve got all of the approaches to these areas laced with sensors to spot anyone coming in. We can’t cover the whole ship with what we’ve got, but we can cover the two areas that are baited.”

“Sensors can be defeated,” Geary said, recalling some of the things he had seen Marines do during their operations. “Can the Syndics spot your sensors and disable them or spoof them?”

Major Dietz definitely sounded smug this time. “They can, Admiral. But we have a sergeant who’s a bit of a tech genius in her spare time. She’s always fiddling with stuff. Sergeant Lamarr came up with
decoy
sensors.”

“Decoy sensors? Fakes?”

“No, sir. Much better than fakes. They look just like regular sensors of certain types. Externally, no matter how good you check them, they look like regular sensors, and if they’re active, they send out the same indications. But inside, the guts aren’t designed to do what that sensor would do. Instead, they’re designed to detect all of the ways that type of sensor could be bypassed, spoofed, or disabled without alerting people.”

Geary almost laughed. “They are designed to detect nothing but methods of defeating sensors? Methods which can usually be undetectable?”

“Exactly, sir. Normally, that sort of stuff is piggybacked onto the sensors, which means it has limited capabilities since it’s a secondary function. But on a Lamarr sensor, it’s the primary and only function. A Lamarr sensor can’t spot anything
unless
someone messes with it.”

“There’s a risk with using those,” Lagemann added. “If you put one of those Lamarr sensors on a hatch, and someone just opens the hatch, you don’t get any warning. But if someone spots the sensor and tries to defeat it before opening the hatch, you are sure to know. Oh, actually there are two risks. They’re unauthorized and unapproved modifications to existing equipment. We could get slapped on the wrists by fleet headquarters.”

Geary let out an exasperated sigh. “Sergeant Lamarr’s chain of command hasn’t approved that type of sensor?”

“Up to a certain point,” the Major said. “All field commands approved. But when it hit headquarters and the design-and-acquisition bureaucracy, it got shot down.”

“Surprising, isn’t it?” Admiral Lagemann murmured.

“Shocking,” Geary agreed dryly, thinking of the problems he had been having with fleet headquarters. As much as he looked forward to getting this fleet home, he also dreaded having to deal with fleet headquarters again. “As fleet commander, I hereby officially authorize a field test of modified equipment required in light of unique circumstances. I can do that, can’t I?”

“I think so, but you don’t have to attract their wrath,” Lagemann protested. “I’m retiring the day we get home, so I have no problem having my name attached to the sensors.”

“I think Sergeant Lamarr has her name attached to the sensors.”

“That’s true. Rightly so. In any event, the good ship
Invincible
,” Lagemann said, patting the nearest bulkhead affectionately, “is ready for any attempt to prevent her from reaching Alliance territory. You’ll keep warships away, and if the Syndics do the only thing that might work and come aboard by stealth, we’ll handle them.”

“Good job. Very good job.” He hadn’t considered the possibility of
Invincible
being boarded, hadn’t had time or the leisure to think about such a threat, but that was why a commander needed good subordinates. And the effort of putting together these fake command nodes on top of the routine patrolling had kept Major Dietz’s Marines occupied instead of bored.
There are two things that worry me the most,
one of Geary’s former commanding officers had once said.
The first of those things is the great minds at fleet headquarters and whatever they might decide is a good idea. The second thing is bored Marines and what
they
might decide is a good idea.

The zero-g swim/pull back to the human-occupied portion of
Invincible
seemed much longer than the trip to the fake main engineering control. Without Admiral Lagemann and Major Dietz explaining their concerns and plans, Geary had nothing to distract him from the strange feeling of invisible others gathering around. He had to repeatedly fight down an urge to spin and look behind him as the skin between his shoulders crawled. A sense of being unwelcome, an intruder, seemed to fill the toxic air about him. If this was some normal Kick equipment, they could endure things humans could not. If it was a countermeasure to keep enemies from enjoying their conquests, it was fiendishly effective.

Invincible
was not a happy ship. Usually that referred to the morale of the crew, but in this case the sailors and Marines were doing well enough. It was the ship herself that felt surly and ill-tempered.

Shuttle pilots usually left their hatches open into the ship while waiting for passengers to return, often coming out to stretch their legs and chat with any personnel at the air lock, but this time the pilot had stayed inside the shuttle and sealed the inner and outer hatches. Geary had to wait a few moments for the hatches to reopen and spent that time talking with the squad of Marines on sentry duty here. Normally an air lock like this might have one or at most two Marines guarding it, but after moving through the passageways of
Invincible
, Geary didn’t feel like questioning the number of sentries.

“Something about the air in the ship’s lock didn’t feel right,” the pilot apologized by intercom to Geary as he took a seat in the passenger deck.

“Did your sensors spot contaminants?” Geary asked the pilot, already guessing the answer would be negative.

“No, sir. Readouts said everything was fine. But it didn’t feel right,” the pilot repeated. “I thought it was better to keep the hatches closed until you got back.”

“You didn’t feel like looking around an alien warship?” Geary pressed.

“No, sir. That is, yes, sir. I was thinking about that, and the Marines there urged me to go ahead and wander around a bit, but when I went close to the air lock leading into the ship I . . . uh . . . it didn’t feel right. Especially since those Marines seemed real eager for me to go in on my own.”

Bored Marines.
Definitely something to worry about.

—

THE
number of people in the fleet who knew the precise reason why the fleet would remain at Midway for the next couple of weeks was limited to four—Geary, Desjani, Rione, and Charban. Continued repair work provided justification for the delay, but feedback to Geary from his commanding officers and the senior enlisted told him that his crews were getting increasingly restless.