The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

by Jack Campbell

  “It will be a pleasure, Admiral,” Jane Geary replied. If anyone could use battleships in an active defense role, it would be her.

  Desjani, sitting on the other side of the admiral, was trying not to let her displeasure show at the lesser role of the battle cruisers.

  Orion had been destroyed. Relentless, Reprisal, Superb, and Splendid were tied to Invincible, not only towing the superbattleship but also providing point defense for her. That left Geary with eighteen battleships, many of them scarred by fighting against enigmas, Kicks, and Syndics. Those battleships also lacked the maneuverability and speed of other warships, but all were massive, heavily armored, and bristling with weapons. Nothing but superior firepower, and a lot of it, could best them in a fight.

  Armus would have Colossus, Encroach, Amazon, Spartan, Gallant, Indomitable, Glorious, and Magnificent. Jane Geary would have Dreadnaught, Dependable, Conqueror, Warspite, Vengeance, Revenge, Guardian, Fearless, Resolution, and Redoubtable.

  The images of the two battleship commanders disappeared. Geary called Carabali. “Are your people ready to go, General?”

  Carabali saluted formally. “Yes, Admiral. Twenty-nine Marines, and one fleet engineer. Commander Hopper has received a crash course in stealth armor operation and employment, as well as planetary infiltration, and has received emergency certification as qualified for this action.”

  To say the Marine force-recon scouts had been less than thrilled to have a fleet engineer tapped to join their mission would have been seriously downplaying their reaction. Geary could have sworn he heard their chorus of protests even across the empty space separating ships. But the Marines had been forced to acknowledge that none of their personnel had a fraction of Hopper’s expertise and experience with the sort of challenge the trigger would pose, and she had completed the necessary simulator work.

  “Launch your people on schedule,” Geary ordered.

  He sat back, trying to relax, studying his display. The globe of the inhabited world slowly grew closer. The fleet had drastically scaled back its speed again for this operation and to achieve a stable orbit about the planet. That would give the Marines a little less than two hours after launch to reach the surface, reach their objective, infiltrate it, and seize control of the trigger before the fleet made its second orbital pass directly above the Syndic version of a Continental Shotgun.

  “Tanya, I want you to be ready.”

  Desjani perked up and looked at him. “For what?”

  “If necessary, or if a good opportunity offers, I’m going to set loose the battle cruisers by divisions to chase off or chase down those Syndic warships that have been hounding us.”

  “That just leaves escorts and the four battleships tied to Invincible to protect the assault transports and auxiliaries,” she pointed out.

  “It will depend on the situation,” Geary said. “And I’ll keep Adroit within the formation as a last-ditch defense, too. Just be ready to go all out if I give the order.”

  Desjani grinned like a wolf. “I’m always ready to do that. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  Geary smiled back, then called Captain Tulev on Leviathan, Captain Badaya on Illustrious, and Captain Duellos on Inspire to pass on the same heads-up.

  The four Syndic warship groups had come within several light-seconds, teasing the Alliance warships and forcing the Alliance fleet to remain in a tight defensive formation. Geary smiled as he watched them. It won’t be too long before you have to react to us. Then we may finally get a chance to grapple with you.

  A soft alert tone notified Geary that the Marine scouts were launching from some of the assault transports, using special launch tubes that ejected them without using any energy or propellant that would alert watching Syndics that anything had happened.

  He gazed at the planet turning below the fleet, the north pole currently behind the fleet to the right, and the south pole ahead to the left. The city holding the Syndic command and control center, and the site of the trigger, was off below and to Geary’s right. Just coming into view again on the globe’s horizon was the prison-camp location slightly to Geary’s left. On the planet’s surface, the trigger site and the prison camp were far apart. From this high, they could both be seen at once.

  The Marines were dropping toward that surface now, in suits equipped to slow and conceal their descent while preventing detection by any available sensor. The suits weren’t foolproof. Good enough sensors focused on the right spots at the right times would pick up indications that something unusual was going on. But right now every available Syndic sensor and set of eyeballs would be focused on the Alliance fleet as it headed for the vicinity of the prison camp and began launching shuttles.

  What would it be like for the Marines? Falling for kilometers toward the planet, the land growing in size beneath them, knowing that hostile eyes, ears, and weapons were on the lookout for intruders. The inside of the armor becoming uncomfortably hot as the suits absorbed heat they could not radiate without betraying the location of the wearer. Heavily armored and armed Marines planning to hit dirt after a kilometers-long fall in such a gentle way that even seismic sensors would not spot anything untoward.

  And Commander Hopper among them, doing something she had never trained for except in a few hasty simulator sessions.

  He couldn’t activate links to see through the eyes of the Marines. Not this time. The scouts would maintain silence except for occasional low-power microburst transmissions among their own force.

  “All shuttles launched,” Lieutenant Castries said.

  Geary nodded. “Very well.” He hoped his voice sounded steady, in contrast to the tightness strumming through his nerves.

  Eighty shuttles fell toward the planet, their descents graceful and oddly like the birds they were nicknamed for. Unlike the Marine scouts, these shuttles carried only standard detection-avoidance gear, and were visible to a variety of sensors.

  Geary’s eyes went back to the four groups of Syndic warships. Still close, still not getting closer. “That should have been a hint for us the first time. Why didn’t those four groups of ships try to hit the shuttles or at least disrupt their movement? Because they wanted to make sure we didn’t halt the recovery or break up the fleet to chase them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Desjani said.

  “I can’t even imagine going on an operation like those Marine scouts. The trip down, the attempts to avoid detection while walking among alert enemy sentries, everything.” Geary knew he was talking too much, but it helped relax his nerves as he waited. “I don’t know how they do it.”

  Desjani glanced at him. “They do it because they’re crazy. All Marines are crazy. Force-recon Marines are even crazier than other Marines.”

  “How do you know so much about different kinds of Marines?”

  She looked back at her display. “There are parts of my dating history that you probably don’t want to know about.”

  “You’re . . . probably right.”

  He was saved from further comment by a call from intelligence. “Admiral,” Lieutenant Iger’s image reported, “the drones we have on the planet are spotting an unusual level of activity at and around the trigger location.”

  Trying not to let that news rattle him, Geary looked at the images Iger was forwarding. “Is this some sort of alert? Extra security?” If the Syndics have picked up the Marines coming in . . .

  “No, sir. As far as we can tell, it’s just extra traffic into and out of the trigger location. They’re definitely gearing up for something, but there’s not increased security activity. If anything, the sentries are being distracted by checking the visitors in and out.”

  In a normal operation, that information and those images would be forwarded to the Marines. But not in a stealth op. That kind of comm linkage would all too easily betray the presence of the Marines. “Make sure General Carabali sees these images.”

  “Yes, sir. The Marines should be on the ground now, so the lack of reaction by the Syndics is a good
sign.”

  Iger’s image had no sooner vanished than Rione’s image appeared. “I’ve heard from CEO Gawzi again. An explicit warning that if we do not go through with the pickup this time, there are no guarantees for the safety of the prisoners. That confirms how badly the Syndics want us to go through with this. The fact that it wasn’t CEO Gawzi speaking to me, but a digital avatar instead, confirms that the Syndic internal-security forces are calling all the shots now.”

  “How certain are you that it was an avatar?” Geary asked.

  “Completely certain.”

  He didn’t question her assessment any further. Machines could be easily fooled by digital avatars, but people rarely were. No matter how perfect the illusion, people sensed something that couldn’t be detected by equipment. He had read speculation once that this skill had developed after the creation of nearly perfect digital-avatar technology, but no one really knew if that was true or if humans had always been able to feel the difference between the fake and the real.

  “Gawzi may well be dead,” Rione continued. “Her level of nervousness in our last few conversations told me that she was very unhappy with the Syndic plan here. Maybe she attempted something to stop the plan. Maybe she was blocked, and the extreme horror of the information she could not divulge caused her to lose her sanity in fairly short order.”

  Geary felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for the elderly Syndic CEO. Perhaps she had cared about the people in this star system, cared about them the same way that the manager at the facility near the gas giant cared. But she had been able to do nothing to help them, nothing to prevent tragedy. She had spent her life supporting a system which in the end had repaid her with callously efficient betrayal. Maybe she deserved such a fate for a lifetime of work in support of a system she must have known was capable of such deeds. But perhaps she hadn’t had any choice, and had done all she could to protect those under her. I don’t know. It’s not my place to judge her. If she’s already dead, that judgment is being rendered by those far wiser than I’ll ever be. My job is to make sure the Syndic plans fail. “Thank you for the update. The Marines should be on the surface. Keep your fingers crossed. They are running incredible risks.”

  She nodded slowly. “They will have my prayers. As does everyone else in this fleet. Is it not amazing, Admiral Geary, what remarkable efforts some will go to in order to save the lives of their fellow humans, and what remarkable efforts others will go to in order to take the lives of their fellow humans?”

  He was still fumbling for some kind of reply when Rione’s image disappeared. “Tanya, I was wondering at one point how to explain what’s going on to the Dancers. Now I’m wondering how to explain it at all.”

  Desjani lowered a furious brow at him. “I should never let you talk to that woman.”

  “She’s an emissary of the Alliance government!”

  “And I’m . . . the commanding officer of your flagship! The first wave of shuttles is hitting dirt.”

  The Marines would not need his personal oversight of what was becoming a routine for them, recovering Alliance prisoners under nonpermissive conditions. He could have tapped into the Marine command and control net, seeing events on the ground in the prison camp, but not this time. General Carabali will notify me if anything goes wrong on the Marine end, and the watch-standers here on Dauntless will tell me if anything happens to the shuttles.

  Instead of focusing on that, Geary looked to other parts of his display. The four groups of Syndic warships had not yet moved. They shouldn’t move until it became apparent that the Alliance fleet was not playing the game as the Syndics intended, but those warships remained an unpredictable element. If they started moving before any other signs of problems below, it would be a sign that the Alliance plan was in trouble.

  The Marine plan allowed half an hour for the scouts to assemble at the trigger location and infiltrate close to the entrance, and another twenty minutes to actually penetrate the installation and gain control of the trigger just before the fleet approached the region above the prison camp on its second orbital pass. If anything went wrong, Lieutenant Iger’s drones would spot the uproar before the Marines could report in.

  “Loading first wave of shuttles. No problems reported with crowd control,” Lieutenant Castries called. “Prisoners report no Syndics in the camp or nearby for the last twenty-four hours.”

  The fleet had crossed over the nighttime southern portion of the globe and was now climbing back over the sunward side. The shuttles, when loaded, would lift to meet the fleet as it crested the top of the globe and headed back down, on a path aimed to go straight over the prison camp in low orbit.

  The Syndics plotting this attack must be watching the fleet’s movements like gamblers following each turn of a card. Just keep on going. Finish the orbit. Get into position. And then . . .

  “Admiral!” Lieutenant Iger couldn’t suppress his excitement. “Look.”

  Geary peered at the image of one of the Syndic sentry posts near the trigger.

  The sentry wasn’t there.

  “The sentry must have spotted something,” Iger explained, “and the Marines took them out before they could sound an alarm.”

  “Why aren’t the sentry alerts sounding? Aren’t those set to go off automatically if anything happens to the sentry?”

  “Yes, sir. They can be spoofed—”

  The feed from the drone blanked for a moment.

  “—but not for long,” Iger continued, as the drone feed came to life again. “The Syndics just lit off jammers, and our drone had to work around them.”

  Extra security lights had flared to life near the trigger installation, and nozzles were pumping out a fine mist designed to reveal anyone in a stealth suit. Geary couldn’t hear alarms sounding but knew they must be. Syndic ground forces personnel and security guards were running about, weapons at the ready. “Where are the Marines?”

  “We don’t see any being engaged by the Syndics, sir. That’s a good sign. It means they’re inside.”

  Inside an installation of unknown design, with unknown security features, and an unknown number of armed defenders.

  Geary’s eyes went back to his display. How long until the Syndic warships reacted? The Syndics would be rushing additional ground forces to the trigger site, trying to figure out what had happened, whether there was a real threat, how serious the threat was—

  “Shuttles docking,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “The prisoners are being dumped into quarantined loading docks until full medical and security screening can be conducted. Screening on the way up didn’t find any threats in or on the prisoners. Estimated time to shuttles heading back down is two minutes.”

  “Why bother sabotaging the prisoners when the Syndics expected them to be blown to atoms?” Desjani commented.

  Geary didn’t reply, looking at the globe scrolling by below, the location of the prison camp directly ahead of the tight fleet formation.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that they didn’t know if the particle beams were rigged to fire straight up, or at a slight angle to catch an orbiting formation just before it reached a point over the camp.

  It’s time. “Captain Armus, your force is detached to proceed on previously assigned duties. Captain Geary, your force is detached to proceed on previously assigned duties. All units in the First Fleet, immediate execute, come starboard five degrees.” Enough to get the fleet out of line with those particle beams but close enough for the shuttles to be able to make the second drop and recovery.

  Eighteen battleships swung away from the fleet formation, ponderous and majestic. Armus kept his eight battleships close together in a roughly circular arrangement. Once positioned over the trigger site, they would all be able to fire the majority of their weapons downward. Jane Geary sent two battleships to hover just above Armus’s grouping, the other eight arranged in pairs around the ground-support battleships.

  “Shuttles launching,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “Second wave on its way
.”

  Alarms chirped as a hell-lance battery lost power on Revenge, partial shield failure afflicted Colossus, and the forward part of Fearless suffered spot power interruptions in a score of places. Geary glowered at his display, knowing the systems had failed as aging components on ships which had exceeded their planned hull lives were brought to full power for the action. I guess I should be glad there weren’t more failures. “All ships in First Fleet, bring your systems up to full power now.” If there were going to be more failures, better to have it happen right away, so there would be time to try to fix or jury-rig the problems.

  Something caught Geary’s eye. He swung his gaze to see explosions erupting on the drone image of the trigger site.

  “Our people are inside and holding the entrance,” General Carabali said as her image appeared. “The situation farther inside is uncertain. I don’t know if we have control of the trigger. Request all available fleet ground support as close to the trigger building as possible.”

  “Captain Armus,” Geary ordered, “you are cleared to engage any target and lay down a suppression barrage. Don’t hit the trigger building. General Carabali is linking to your coordination circuit.”

  “Understood,” Captain Armus said as laconically as if Geary had just ordered the fleet to stand down for the night. “Opening fire.”

  The image from the drone wavered as dozens of hell-lance particle beams stabbed down from high above, hitting targets with pinpoint precision. Armored vehicles and bunkers shuddered as the hell lances tore large holes completely through them.

  Alerts were popping up all over the fleet as minor and major systems on a few dozen warships suffered failures or partial failures. Not nearly as many as at Honor, and nothing that would render any ship unable to fight at all, but still a concern. Ironically, but understandably, many of the ships suffering system failures now had avoided major damage during earlier fights. Without immediate need to repair and replace battle damage, their older systems had remained in place and were now showing their age.