The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

by Jack Campbell

  “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.”

  Tumultuous approval reigned on all sides. He let it go for several seconds, then called for silence. “The Syndics may try something else while we’re still here. Everyone stay alert. We’re expecting trouble at the jump point for Simur, but that doesn’t mean something else might not be out there. As you’ve seen, our path to the jump point is taking a wide detour from the direct route in order to avoid anything else lying in wait along the shortest-distance course. Thank you.”

  His officers jumped to their fleet, some at the far reaches of the virtual table leading a cheer, then, with salutes and determined expressions, the images of the commanding officers began vanishing and the apparent size of the room shrinking in size.

  He forestalled Badaya and Jane Geary from leaving, though, waiting until they were alone except for the real presence of Desjani. “I wanted to thank you both for having my back during that meeting. You spoke well, and you made some excellent arguments.”

  “I owed you a few, Admiral,” Jane Geary said. “And my brother Michael is out there somewhere. We need to find him.” She saluted and vanished.

  Badaya made a diffident gesture. “It just made sense, that’s all. The simple answers are appealing because they’re simple, but that means you have to look a lot closer at them, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s been my experience,” Geary agreed.

  “Well, you’ve taught us a few things.” Badaya glanced at Desjani, his suggestive smile a return to the Badaya of old. “And you, Tanya. I guess married life has mellowed you! The old Tanya would have been demanding Syndic heads on stakes every kilometer back to Varandal.”

  Geary could see Tanya tense, but she just smiled back. “If you think I’ve mellowed, try and cross me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it!” Badaya grinned in his customary oafish manner, saluted, and vanished.

  “What the hell?” Geary asked the space where Badaya’s image had been.

  “That’s what I was wondering.” Desjani rapped the side of her head with one hand. “When he chimed in eloquently about the need for thinking instead of lashing out, I thought I must have gone crazy or slipped into some alternate reality where Badaya’s smarter twin exists. Eloquent! Badaya!”

  “He’s been a bit different since Honor,” Geary said.

  “There have been rumors that Badaya tried to resign,” Tanya said, eyeing him. “And that you turned him down. That you told him that you still had confidence in him.”

  “I can’t comment on rumors or on private discussions with other officers. Not even to you. You know that.”

  “Did he try to resign?”

  “Tanya—”

  “He expected to die at Honor. Expected to die along with every person on every ship in his force,” she said. “If anything can make someone change, that will.”

  “So did Jane,” Geary said. “She told me she was scared and certain she was going to die at Honor.”

  “Yeah, well, you either die, or you don’t,” Desjani said. “If you’re lucky, you live, and try to be worthy of that.” One hand had stolen upward, as if of its own volition, and touched the Fleet Cross ribbon on her left breast.

  “What happened to you, Tanya? When you earned that award?”

  She stood up and looked away. “I didn’t die.”

  “Tanya—”

  “Not now, Admiral. I’ll tell you someday . . . maybe.” Desjani turned back to him with an enigmatic look. “If we both live that long.”

  EIGHT

  THEY had come up on the jump point from a high angle, curving the track of the fleet when close to bring the Alliance warships onto a vector aimed straight at the jump point.

  “We’re not seeing anything yet,” Lieutenant Castries reported, her voice tense.

  Everyone expected to see something. After the attacks at the hypernet gate, everyone thought the Syndics would try again here. “Mines still look like the best bet,” Desjani commented. “But we’re a little too far out to spot them if they’re just in front of the jump point.”

  Geary watched the track of a single ship ahead of the Alliance fleet, one moving much more slowly as it approached the jump point. “Are we going to overtake that merchant ship?”

  “It should jump out ten minutes before we reach the exit, Admiral,” Lieutenant Castries reported.

  “Interesting timing,” Desjani commented.

  “Yes.” He entered the commands to see the freighter’s track to this point. “A suspicious mind might wonder why, after we had swung back on a trajectory heading for the jump point, that freighter left an outer planet facility at just the right time to closely proceed us through the ju
mp point.”

  “It makes it look safe,” Desjani commented, “but that doesn’t seem enough of a diversion. Watching that freighter doesn’t require any concentration at all.”

  Geary’s attention was drawn by movement within his formation. The Dancers. Their ships had left the vicinity of Invincible, darting forward through the formation as if eager to reach the jump point before any of the Alliance ships. “Emissary Charban! Tell the Dancers in the strongest possible terms that we suspect danger at that jump point! They must not move ahead of our ships!”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Charban replied, concern and resignation warring in his expression. “They don’t always listen. I’ll tell the Dancers and leave out the suspect part. Maybe if we say we know there is danger there, it will make a difference.”

  “What do we do,” Desjani asked, “if the Dancers race ahead of us into what we suspect is a minefield?”

  “Pray,” Geary replied.

  He watched with increasing dread as the Dancers got closer and closer to the leading ships in the Alliance formation. Whatever Charban was telling them wasn’t enough. I should call Charban. Tell him to put the fear of the living stars in the Dancers and do it now. But what if he is doing that and I interrupt him and that causes a critical delay in getting the message across to the Dancers? Damn, damn, damn . . .

  The Dancer ships leaped past the forwardmost Alliance warships, weaving around each other as the Dancers aimed for the Syndic transport lumbering steadily toward the jump point.

  An urgent alert sounded, jarring Geary and everyone else on the bridge out of their dismayed viewing of the Dancers’ movements.

  “There’s a distress signal,” Lieutenant Castries said.

  Geary squinted at his own display, where a new symbol had appeared on top of the freighter. “From the merchant ship ahead of us?”

  “Yes, Admiral. They’re reporting fluctuations in their power core.”

  “What do our sensors say?” Desjani demanded.

  “There are fluctuations being detected, Captain. The fluctuations we’re picking up are consistent with a failure of power-core-control mechanisms.”

  Was it the trick they had been expecting? Or a real problem?

  And the Dancers were getting very close to the danger radius the fleet’s maneuvering systems had just illuminated around the Syndic freighter.

  “For the love of our ancestors, Emissary Charban, tell the Dancers that freighter is about to blow up!”

  Charban’s image, his face lined with strain, appeared just long enough to nod in reply. “Professor Shwartz and I are screaming at the Dancers! We’ll add that warning, too!”

  “Maybe it won’t blow up,” Desjani suggested helpfully.

  She winced at the look he turned on her. “Sorry, Admiral. But . . . there’s nothing else we can do.”

  The Dancers were now well inside the danger radius from the freighter, splitting to swing around it as they continued on toward the jump point.

  Geary watched them, glum. “The friendly aliens are causing me as much anxiety as the enemy aliens,” he grumbled.

  “Fluctuations in the freighter’s power core are growing worse,” Lieutenant Castries reported, dismay creeping into her own voice.

  “Warning shots?” Desjani suggested, sounding despairing herself.

  “They’re out of range,” Geary said, “and if they won’t or can’t understand a warning to stay away from a dangerous region, how can we expect them to understand having us fire at them?”

  Lieutenant Castries spoke up again. “Admiral, the freighter just broadcast an abandon-ship alert. The crew is heading for their survival pod.”

  Geary looked toward Desjani, seeing the stony expression with which she was now watching her display. “Are you thinking what I am?”

  “Probably,” Desjani said. “They’ll eject in their pod and request a humanitarian pickup. Then their freighter will explode. Then, when we’re distracted by both of those things and our sensors are hindered by the aftereffects of the freighter’s destruction, we start hitting mines. Assuming we’re not also distracted by watching the Dancer ships hitting mines.”

  “Yeah. Another diversion, just as Master Gioninni predicted. There goes their escape pod.”

  “And here comes the request for rescue.”

  “Freighter crew requests emergency assistance,” Lieutenant Castries said. “They are reporting seriously injured personnel. Power fluctuations on the freighter are exceeding danger levels. We are well outside the danger radius if the freighter’s power core detonates. The Dancers—”

  “Are well inside,” Desjani finished, “but they’re about to— Oh, hell!”

  Geary felt the same way as he watched the Dancer ships, which had been close to the front edge of the danger zone around the freighter, suddenly alter tracks to come swooping back toward the newly launched escape pod. “They can’t be that stupid!” he erupted. “Even if Charban and Shwartz hadn’t told them anything, the Dancers would still have been able to pick up the power fluctuations on that freighter’s power core. They must know—” He paused as a thought hit him.

  “What?” Desjani demanded.

  “Are they just messing with us?” Geary wondered. “Are they deliberately going into danger so that they—”

  “They’re heading for a minefield at high speed!” Desjani broke in. A sudden realization twisted her own expression. “They’ve got better stealth capability than us. That probably means they have better stealth detection capability than us.”

  “They see mines that are still invisible to us? Then why are they—?” Geary hit the arm of his seat hard enough to hurt his hand. “They’re warning us!”

  “Or screwing with us!”

  The Dancers, displaying a maneuverability human ships could not hope to match, had nearly joined up with the escape pod from the freighter.

  “Hold on!” Geary ordered as Desjani started to say something else. Too many things were happening, and his own thoughts were in a whirl. “I need to focus on all of these elements. Get everything straight. The minefield. We have to assume it is there, but beyond the freighter. The freighter. About to blow. We’re well outside the danger radius, though.”

  “Of course,” Desjani said. “They don’t want us altering course.”

  “Wait, Tanya, please. The Dancers. Outside our own formation, within the danger zone about the freighter but intercepting the escape pod. If they stay with it, they’ll be outside the danger radius when the freighter’s power core overloads.”

  He paused, looking for anything he might have missed. “Lieutenant, are there Syndic assets in this star system that can recover that escape pod in time to save the crew?”

  “Uh, yes, sir,” Castries replied. “There are at least two Syndic ships that could do a pickup well within the endurance of the life support on that escape pod.”

  “So we don’t need to worry about that even though the pod is requesting rescue.”

  “Clumsy of them not to forestall that option,” Desjani remarked.

  “They had to make things look normal,” Geary said. “No other traffic within a light-hour would have looked very abnormal. So, the freighter and its crew, if there was one, is not a problem. We have to assume the Dancers are picking up the danger signs from the freighter’s power core and will get themselves clear, and that the Dancers can see any mines the Syndics laid near the jump point better than we can see them.”

  “Right,” Desjani agreed. “That leaves just our own ships to worry about.”

  “But . . . Captain . . . they said they have seriously injured personnel,” an increasingly baffled Lieutenant Castries reminded Desjani.

  “Lieutenant,” Desjani replied, “odds are there are no seriously injured personnel on that escape pod. I would, in fact, be surprised if there are any personnel aboard it at all. Everything we’re seeing and hearing was very likely preprogrammed and that freighter sent out here without a human crew.”

  “Very likely,” Gear
y said. The distraction had come too close to working, though that was because the Dancers had thrown an unexpected variable into the situation. He touched his comm controls. “All units in First Fleet. Immediate execute reduce velocity to point zero zero three light speed.” Another control. “Emissary Charban—”

  The usually controlled Charban looked about ready himself to explode with frustration. “They just keep echoing back to us!” he said. “We say danger ahead, and they say danger ahead, then we do it again!”

  “I think the Dancers are trying to warn us,” Geary said. “They’re not echoing. They’re agreeing with what you’re saying.”

  “They’re—?” Charban visibly quivered as he fought to regain control. “That means I can stop trying.”

  “Yes. But I want you to tell them something else. Please inform the Dancers that we are drastically reducing our speed due to the threats in front of the fleet. Tell them they must not precede us to the jump point.”

  “Drastically reducing speed?” Charban asked. “What velocity does that mean? Never mind. I can’t convey it to the Dancers even if you told me. I’ll ask them to match our big reduction in speed. They can do that easily.”

  Dauntless’s thrusters fired, bringing her bow over and around before her main propulsion lit off and began dropping the ship’s speed dramatically. The structure of Dauntless groaned audibly under the strain, but Desjani, her eyes on the strain meters displaying hull-stress readings, watched them with a reassuring lack of visible concern.

  “Nine hundred kilometers a second?” she asked. “I could swim through space faster than that. Why are you slowing down the fleet that much? I thought you’d dodge the minefield.”

  “Too hard,” Geary said. “We have to assume the minefield is right across the entrance to the jump exit. They couldn’t keep a minefield that close to a jump point for long, but from the prior attacks on us, they obviously knew we would soon arrive at Sobek. We’ll get down real slow, crawling along, which will allow the fleet’s sensors to spot every mine in our path and our weapons to take out the mines one by one. Our warships will blow a hole in that Syndic minefield big enough for the entire fleet to waltz through.”