“You’re right. We should have suspected that nonhumans were involved right from the start when the activation process didn’t involve a lot of arcane commands that had to be done in just the right order, and the destination was displayed as a name rather than using some counterintuitive code. No human software engineer would produce a device that easy to use.” Desjani grinned and indicated the fleet. “You’re happy with the formation?”
“Yeah. This formation can deal with anything we encounter if the Syndics are waiting at the hypernet gate at Zevos. But that’s really unlikely.”
Desjani looked over at another part of her display. “The key has activated. Do you want to punch in the data?”
“No. Go ahead, please.”
Her hands danced across controls, then she frowned at the display. “Operations watch-stander. Confirm transport field size is correctly entered.”
After a moment, that officer nodded. “Confirmed, Captain. The field will include the entire fleet.”
“Confirm destination set as Zevos.”
“Destination confirmed as Zevos.”
Desjani looked at Geary. “Request permission to activate hypernet key for transport to Zevos.”
“Permission granted.”
Desjani tapped a couple of more times, then the stars vanished.
Geary had barely remembered what the view looked like within a hypernet channel. “There really is nothing to see.”
“No.” Desjani spread her hands. “The scientists say we’re in some sort of bubble where light as we know it doesn’t penetrate. So it’s just dark.”
Just dark. No sensation of speed or any movement at all. “How long again?”
“Eight days, fourteen hours, and six minutes for this trip. The farther you’re going, the faster the speed relative to the outside universe. It’s sort of weird, but this is a long haul, so we’re going faster than if it were a short haul on the hypernet.”
“A shorter trip can take the same amount of time as a longer trip?”
“Yes. Or more time.” Desjani waved at the darkness filling the display of outside conditions. “Like I said, it’s sort of weird. You’d have to ask a scientist to explain why, though I’ve never been sure they really understand it. They have some impressive names for what they think is happening, though.”
Even if a straight-shot journey had been possible, covering that distance by jump drives would have taken at least a couple of months. Yet at the moment, with a battle that might finally end the war looming, those eight days, fourteen hours, and six minutes seemed far too long a time. “I want this over.”
“Yes, sir. Me, too. Just remember how long it’s been coming for the rest of us.”
The war had begun a hundred years ago. Desjani and the rest of Dauntless’s crew, everyone in the fleet except Geary, had been waiting for this as long as they’d been alive.
Looked at that way, he could wait another eight days.
If the aliens could still divert the fleet, they didn’t do it. Zevos boasted a star system with two marginally inhabitable worlds, a very large population, and a lot of colonies and outposts elsewhere on moons, asteroids, and near gas giants. Not a single Syndic warship was visible to the fleet’s sensors as the Alliance warships popped out of the hypernet gate. “They’ve pulled any mobile defenses into the home system,” Desjani suggested. “Probably a lot of the fixed defenses were pulled up and shipped there, too.”
“Probably.” A Syndic traffic-control buoy near the gate was squawking at the Alliance warships, trying to direct them into proper, approved traffic lanes for progress in-system. “Diamond, kill that buoy.”
“Diamond, aye,” the heavy cruiser acknowledged. “Buoy will be destroyed in approximately thirty-five seconds.”
The jump point they wanted was only a light-hour and a half distant from the hypernet gate. Geary got the fleet on a course for that point, taking some glee in knowing that the Syndic authorities in Zevos Star System would only see the Alliance warships in several hours, just before the Alliance ships jumped out of Zevos. Since the Syndics had forgotten how to use extended-jump-range capability, they’d think the Alliance fleet was bound for another star named Marchen, which was more distant from the Syndic home star system than Zevos.
“What do you want to do about those merchant ships approaching the hypernet gate?” Desjani asked.
Despite his deception maneuvers, Geary didn’t want word of his arrival at Zevos spreading through Syndic space too quickly. He used the maneuvering display to check some solutions as fast as he could tag some Alliance units and ask for an intercept. “Twentieth Destroyer Squadron, you are to intercept and destroy the designated Syndic merchant ships. Do not pursue or engage other targets without orders. Rejoin the fleet prior to jump.”
“Twentieth Destroyer Squadron, aye!” Gleeful at getting to hammer the Syndics while the rest of the fleet just transited to the jump point, the destroyers in the Twentieth Squadron leaped forward after their prey.
Geary watched the destroyers charging off in pursuit, then went over his formation choices again. He figured the Syndics wouldn’t be anywhere near where the fleet came out of jump space at the Syndic home star system, but he wanted to be ready in case he was wrong. “Captain Smyth, I want your auxiliaries to top off the fuel-cell reserves on every ship as well as their expendable armaments. Let me know if you’ll have any trouble getting that done before we jump.”
Fifteen hours to the jump point. Ten days in jump space. All to get back to where his command of the fleet had started.
SIX
A collective sound like that of a pride of lions sighting prey came from the watch-standers on Dauntless’s bridge as the Alliance fleet arrived in the Syndic home star system. The fleet had fled this star system six months earlier, running for its life in the face of terrible losses and overwhelming enemy superiority in warships. Now it was back, and the wreckage of those Syndic warships littered space along the path the fleet had taken home. “We’ve got them,” Desjani whispered, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.
Geary paused to savor the moment despite his own resolve not to be distracted. The Alliance fleet had arrived at an angle relative to where it had been when Geary first assumed command, about a quarter of the way around the outer extent of the star system from the jump point the fleet had once used to flee to Corvus. Three light-hours away, the hypernet gate for the star system hung in space. Even from this distance the fleet’s sensors could pick out the thick walls of minefields hanging just outside the gate, their numbers and the density with which the mines were laid going a long way toward negating the stealth characteristics of individual mines. Just outside the minefields, another mass of merchant ships waited, hundreds of FACs visible attached to them, ready to launch and strike as an attacking force staggered clear of the minefields. Behind the merchant ships, only fifteen light-minutes from the hypernet gate, the main body of the Syndic defenders waited, a mere twelve battleships and sixteen battle cruisers, but accompanied by sixty-one heavy cruisers, fifty light cruisers, and one hundred ninety-seven HuKs.
Most importantly, the Alliance fleet’s sensors confirmed that the hypernet gate had a safe-fail system installed. Not that anyone on the Alliance side had doubted that protection would be in place, but actually seeing a safe-fail system present relieved any lingering concerns.
Elsewhere in the system, there were a few light cruisers and HuKs transiting between planets, and far off, almost opposite the position of the Alliance fleet on the other side of the star system, a single battleship and three heavy cruisers hovered in a small group.
“I know many of those battleships and battle cruisers are new construction, but where did the Syndics get that many escorts?” Geary wondered.
“They must have stripped system-defense forces from a lot of star systems,” Desjani suggested. “If we’d run head-on into that trap, it would have been a repeat of the fleet’s last visit here. By the time we cleared the ambush, we would have lost
so many ships that the Syndics could have won.” Her gaze wandered across her display. “Everything in fixed orbit in this star system has rail guns or particle-beam batteries on it. Good thing you saved our rocks.”
The Syndic home star system certainly constituted a target-rich environment. In addition to the fixed defenses, the planets in the star system boasted many cities and colonies, though the primary inhabited world also had vast stretches of what looked like parklands, with grand lodges set within them at such wide intervals that nobody in one of the lodges could have seen another lodge. “Nice place,” Geary commented.
“The main inhabited world eight light-minutes from the star is almost perfect,” Desjani agreed. “The planet four and a half light-minutes from the star is way too hot, but the one at fifteen light-minutes must be nice enough since there are a lot of enclosed cities on it, and that gas giant only thirty-two light-minutes from the star is really convenient for mining. It is a good star system. Can we break it?”
“Yeah. Let’s start with the fixed defenses. We’ll save industrial and transportation targets as leverage and take them out as necessary to goad the Syndics into negotiating seriously.” Geary entered commands into the combat systems, tagging as targets the enemy defenses mounted on planets, moons, asteroids, and artificial satellites in fixed orbits, as well as the command and control locations and sensor systems associated with those defenses, then asked the automated systems for a bombardment plan. The number of targets was so great that the fleet combat systems actually required a noticeable blink of time before they produced a solution. Geary didn’t quite suppress a whistle as he looked at it. “I’ll have to make certain the auxiliaries are manufacturing more rocks for us. This will seriously dent our inventories.”
He moved to confirm the command, then changed a setting and looked at Desjani. “You do it.”
“What?”
“I passed approval authority to you. Go ahead and launch the bombardment.”
She slowly smiled at him. “You do know how to make a woman happy. This woman, anyway.” The smile changed, taking on a feral cast as Desjani looked over the bombardment plan. “Thank you, Admiral. This is for the comrades we lost here last time,” she announced, then tapped the approval command.
All over the Alliance fleet, warships began hurling out kinetic projectiles. They would take hours and days to reach their targets, but the intricate network of Syndic defensive batteries would be junk once they had all struck.
Throughout the hundred years of this war, the Syndic home star system hadn’t directly felt the impact of the war. Now it would, and Geary felt some satisfaction in that. “Let’s go hit that Syndic flotilla. All units in the Alliance fleet, come port four two degrees, down zero one degrees at time three zero.” He would hold this formation for a while, until he saw what the Syndics were doing. Despite how well things seemed to have turned out, he had a nagging worry that the Syndics had placed some other traps within this star system that hadn’t been spotted yet. “Maintain an alert watch for any signs of other minefields within the star system.”
Now that immediate actions had been dealt with, it was time to address the reason the fleet had come here. He called the intelligence section aboard Dauntless. “Lieutenant Iger, how precisely can you tell me where the Syndic Executive Council is located within this star system?”
Iger had the look of a subordinate who knew that his answer wouldn’t satisfy a superior. “It’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to give you an exact location. We’re scanning all unencrypted Syndic communications right now for any information, and we’ll break out what segments of encrypted comms we can, but it’s likely that our only indications will be transmission priorities on the star-system comm web.”
“You can read message priorities?”
“No, sir, not exactly, but we can tell which transmissions are being given priority by routers throughout the star system. By tracking those transmissions to their origin, we can identify the general location of whoever has the authority to issue the highest number of high-priority transmissions.”
That sounded good. “How general is a ‘general location’?”
The intelligence officer’s discomfort grew. “Once messages get within a closed transmission system, we can’t track them anymore. That would be, say, an orbital installation. Or a planet.”
“A planet?” Geary stared at Iger. “You could only narrow it down to somewhere on a planet?”
“Possibly, sir,” Iger explained. “Once on a planet, there are all kinds of transmission methods we can’t monitor from out here. Buried cables, for example. Command nodes on planets tend to use remote sites for actual wireless transmissions to help hide their location. But we should definitely be able to tell you which planet the Syndic Executive Council is on.”
It was obviously an explanation, not an excuse, so Geary nodded. “All right. How long will it take you to get me that?”
“It depends on how tight the Syndic net is, sir. A few hours to less than a day on the outside. Admiral, if some Syndic source provides better information, we can localize the Executive Council better. We just can’t count on that happening soon.”
“Understood. Have you identified any POW camps, yet?”
Iger shook his head. “No, sir. Nothing that looks like a POW or labor camp, and no comm traffic obviously associated with such a thing. But we’ll keep looking.”
“Good, but the priority task is finding the Syndic leadership’s location. Let me know when you’ve got that, and get it as soon as you can.” He had enough experience with Iger to know the wording he used would be all that was needed to get the intelligence section working at full speed.
Less than a day, or at least a few hours. That seemed far too long to wait, to allow the Syndics to plan more attacks, before offering to open negotiations. Long experience had taught Geary that it was easier to stop a plan from being formed than it was to stop a plan in the process of being carried out.
He couldn’t yet target his message on one location, so he would have to broadcast it. Geary sat straighter before transmitting this time. “To the members of the Executive Council of the Syndicate Worlds, this is Admiral Geary, commanding officer of the Alliance Fleet. We are here to end this war on terms both sides can accept. We will end it by negotiation if possible, or by force if necessary. Attached to this transmission is a list of proposed points to form the basis for a peace treaty. I urge you to review that list and respond positively as soon as possible. Alliance forces within this star system will continue offensive operations until a treaty is agreed upon.” Rione had suggested that as a way of ensuring that the Syndics wouldn’t try drawing out negotiations as long as possible. “To the honor of our ancestors.”
As he finished, Geary heard a noise at the back of the bridge and turned, annoyed. Besides Rione, the other two senators stood there as well, crowding that particular area. All three politicians seemed to be arguing, and Desjani appeared to be trying to decide whether she could get away with arresting them all. “Excuse me,” Geary said, a little louder than usual. “But we are still facing strong Syndic military forces in this star system and anticipate combat. We’d prefer not to have distractions on the bridge.”
“Even though we’ve had to live with them for some time,” Desjani muttered too low for any of the politicians to hear.
Senator Costa frowned importantly. “Admiral Geary, we’re simply working out a fair rotation for occupying the observer position on the bridge.”
Out of sight of Costa and Sakai, Rione made a defeated gesture to Geary before speaking. “Perhaps this discussion should be held elsewhere,” she suggested to the other two politicians. “Someplace quiet, where we won’t disturb the crew.”
“The brig is nice and quiet,” Desjani grumbled under her breath.
“Tanya,” Geary warned softly before raising his voice again. “That’s a good suggestion, Madam Co-President. Work it out among yourselves, please.” He didn’t want to get involved
in this because he was afraid if he did, he would eventually lose patience with the politicians and order them to follow a certain arrangement. Ordering politicians around could very easily become too comfortable a way of handling them. He couldn’t afford to become comfortable with that, not when the fleet and the people of the Alliance would be all too happy to urge him on.
Sakai’s feelings were hard to determine, but he nodded. “All right, Admiral. We trust that we will be notified as soon as the enemy combat forces are eliminated?”
The senator made the elimination of the Syndic flotilla sound like a mere formality, Geary thought. Outwardly, all he did was nod. “Certainly.”
“I am very proud,” Sakai added, “to see so many brave citizens of Kosatka here, playing such a critical role in this fleet. We could not be here without their courageous sacrifices.”
Unseen by Sakai, Desjani rolled her eyes, but her voice sounded respectful. “Thank you, Senator.” The watch-standers on the bridge from Kosatka all uttered brief but polite responses as well before the three senators left the bridge.
Geary wasn’t surprised when Senator Costa showed up a short time later to somewhat smugly take a seat in the observer’s chair. He had expected Rione to agree to let another senator sit there for a while, since Rione already knew from her own experience that nothing would be happening for hours. It would still be over two hours before the Syndic flotilla guarding the hypernet gate even saw the Alliance fleet, and close to three hours after that before the Syndic reaction would be seen.
After the first hour had gone by, with the Alliance fleet steadily heading toward the Syndics but little else occurring except for kinetic bombardment rounds hitting a couple of the closest Syndic defensive installations, Costa had grown a little fidgety. Another hour, and not much else had changed. Point one light speed sounded fast, and it was. At that velocity, the Alliance warships were covering about thirty thousand kilometers per second. But given the immense distances in space, even that could feel like a crawl. With ten hours required to cover a single light-hour of distance, and the enemy close to three light-hours away, it would be well over a day before any prospect of battle arose.
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