Guardian

Two

It would require about two weeks for the plan proposed by the rulers of Midway to come to fruition. Two weeks during which the fleet should have been heading toward home. But scanning down the long, long list of repair work still required on many of his ships, Geary tried to make the best of it. “What ever happened to those plans for fully automated nanobased repair systems on ships?” he asked Captain Smythe, commanding officer of the auxiliary ship Tanuki and senior engineer in the fleet.

Smythe mimicked choking. “The same thing that always happens. The last test, to my knowledge, was about five years ago. The second generation of nanos started attacking ‘healthy’ parts of the test ship, except for those nanos that developed into nanocancer and began replicating out of control and harming critical systems. It took about two days for the ship’s repair system to turn it into a total wreck.”

“The same problem as a hundred years ago,” Geary agreed.

“And for long before that. We’re still working on trying to keep the repair and immune systems in our own bodies from going haywire and killing us quickly or slowly,” Smythe pointed out. “And those had who knows how many millions of years to develop. Making something that fixes anything that goes wrong but doesn’t damage things that are fine is not a simple problem.”

“What did they do with the last test ship?”

“An automated tug towed both test ship and itself into the nearest star. Good-bye nanos. Nobody wanted to risk them infecting other ships. You could lose a fleet that way before you knew what was happening.”

“How long before we can leave?” Geary asked.

“Today. Or tomorrow. Or a few months from now. Admiral, there’s only so much my auxiliaries can do. Some of the damage our ships have sustained requires a full repair dock. The longer we spend here, the better condition all of our ships will be in, but we’ll never hit one hundred percent until we get home.” Smythe cocked a questioning eyebrow at Geary. “Do you expect to face more fighting before then?”

“I have no idea. I hope not, but I don’t know. We’ve got the biggest threat magnet in the human-occupied region of space with us.”

“Ah, yes, Invincible.” Smythe looked both unhappy and enticed. “Have you been aboard her? There are so many puzzles inside that ship. I wish we could dig into them.”

“We can’t risk it, Captain.”

“I may be able to isolate something so we can at least try to figure out how it works,” Smythe pleaded. “My people will work it up on their own time. They’re itching to get their hands on that Kick equipment.”

“Send me your proposal,” Geary said reluctantly, “and I’ll think about it.”

Have you been aboard her? No, he hadn’t. The chance to visit a truly alien construction, to see the work of intelligent, nonhuman hands, and I’ve only seen as much of that superbattleship as could be seen through the views of numerous Marines during the capture of it.

Once we get Invincible home, odds are the ship will be completely isolated, only high-level researchers allowed aboard. Invincible will be taken far from any star system that I am likely to visit.

He called Tanya. “I want to see Invincible.”

In her command seat on the bridge of Dauntless, Desjani nodded absentmindedly. “They’ve got enough systems hooked up for you to do a virtual visit?”

“No. I figured I’d go in person.”

She jerked in surprise, her lips moved as she visibly counted to ten, then Desjani recited her next words in resigned and mechanical tones. “I must advise you of the dangers involved in physically visiting an alien warship containing unknown threats including but not limited to possible pathogens capable of infecting human hosts, equipment which works in unknown ways and which could reactivate at any time with unknown consequences, and aliens who could have survived the battle and remained hidden from our security sweeps and could still emerge to strike at a sufficiently high-value target.”

“Your concerns are noted,” Geary replied.

“And you’ll do it anyway.”

“This will probably be my only chance to visit that ship, Tanya. Once we get back to Alliance space, Invincible is sure to be quarantined.”

She put on a look of exaggerated wonder. “You don’t suppose there’s a reason they’ll put that ship in quarantine, do you?”

Seeing that Desjani wasn’t about to abandon her line of attack, and knowing that she indeed had a point, Geary played his last card. “Tanya, there are sailors and Marines aboard that ship by my command. I sent them there. Are you saying that I should avoid doing something I am willing to order those under my command to do?”

This time she gave him an aggravated look under a furrowed brow. “Using good leadership principles against me? That’s low.”

“If you really want me to be a bad leader…”

“Oh, knock it off!” She tapped some commands. “You’ll be using one of Dauntless’s shuttles.” That came out as a statement of fact rather than a question.

“Of course.” He knew better than to point out that she had given in. “Do you want any souvenirs?”

“From that thing?” Desjani’s shudder didn’t seem to be feigned. “No thanks.”

Admiral Lagemann met him at the main air lock into the occupied area aboard Invincible. Lagemann saluted briskly, grinning at Geary. Next to him, a Marine major saluted as well, the Marine’s gesture far more polished and precise. “Welcome aboard Invincible, Admiral Geary,” Lagemann said. “This is the commander of my Marine detachment, Major Dietz. I have to confess the ship is not quite ready for inspection. There are a few discrepancies.”

“Oh? Discrepancies?” Geary asked, picking up on Lagemann’s joking tone of voice and trying himself to sound like certain self-important inspectors he had dealt with in the past.

“All ship systems are nonfunctional,” Lagemann explained cheerfully. “There is extensive unrepaired battle damage in most areas. The ship cannot move under her own power, and in fact has no power except for portable emergency systems. Most of the ship is uninhabitable and requires survival suits or combat armor for access. The crew is a tiny fraction of that necessary for safety, security, and operation. As you can tell, there’s no working gravity. And, um, the brightwork hasn’t been shined.”

“I can understand the rest,” Geary said with mock severity, “but unshined brightwork? Where are your priorities?”

“My priorities have always been misplaced,” Lagemann confessed. “I volunteered for duty on this ship when I could have stayed comfortable on Mistral. I did spend quite a few years in a Syndic prisoner-of-war camp, though, which wasn’t all that comfortable, and at least Invincible doesn’t have Syndic thugs watching my every move.”

Geary finally smiled. “How are your crew holding up?”

“Could be worse. They volunteered, too, which I remind them of if the complaints get too loud.”

“What about the Marines, Major Dietz?” Geary asked.

The Major made a gesture of nonchalance. “They’ve been in worse places, and they all volunteered, too, Admiral. Of course, the Marines did that volunteering the day they joined, so we didn’t ask regarding this particular assignment.”

Admiral Lagemann and Major Dietz led Geary through the compartments occupied by the human sailors and Marines, everyone pulling themselves along through zero gravity by means of handholds either put into place by the Kicks or fastened on by humans since they had moved in here. Temporary cable runs carrying power, communications relays, and sensor data were strung everywhere, as were larger tubes that provided ventilation, heating, cooling, and recycling of the air inside this small part of Invincible, so that the atmosphere remained breathable. As Lagemann had warned, there were a lot of places where overheads came down too far and threatened to dent skulls. Geary also found numerous spots where the accesses narrowed enough that he had to move through them with care, scraping slowly past the life-support tubes and cable runs that made the openings even tighter. “This brings home more than anything how much smaller the bear-cows are than us,” Geary commented.

“Fortunately,” Lagemann replied, “it’s actually a little easier for us to get around without gravity. We can wriggle through some places up high that would be a pain to reach if we were walking. And the Kicks may be small, but this is a damned big ship. I’ve been on my share of human battleships and battle cruisers, including a Syndic battle cruiser that picked me up when I was captured by them. You know some passages on those seem to go on forever. But Invincible… I swear that sometimes it feels as if the bow is in one star system and the stern is in another.”

The small group had paused at one of the temporary air locks leading into the rest of the ship. “How are you keeping an eye on things outside this area?” Geary asked.

“We’ve got sensors strung into some portions of the ship,” Lagemann replied. “For the rest, patrols.”

“That is,” Major Dietz continued, “security patrols that follow paths worked out by our systems to cover every compartment and passageway at least every few days. Some of the patrols take more than half a day.”

“How big are the patrol teams?”

“Full squads, plus one or two sailors. They do full safety and security scans.”

Geary felt his eyebrows rising in surprise. “That’s a lot of people for patrols of empty spaces. Has there been trouble?” One thing he had learned early on as a junior officer was that sailors could be counted on to seek out compartments where they could find privacy for various activities prohibited by rules and regulations. On most ships, compartments like that were hard to find, but on Invincible there was a remarkable number of them.

Major Dietz and Admiral Lagemann exchanged glances. “There hasn’t been any problem with people wandering off on their own,” Lagemann explained. “Not after the first few days.”

“Why not? Even if people didn’t plan doing something they didn’t want to be caught at, I’d think there’d be an urge to explore.”

“Not on this ship,” the Major said. “They’re out there. In the passageways.”

“Who’s out there?” Geary asked, feeling a slight chill.

“The Kicks,” Lagemann said. “I don’t think I’m particularly sensitive or superstitious, but I can feel them. Thousands of them died on this ship, and if you go out there in the rest of the ship, you can sense them crowding around you. They know we took their ship, and they don’t like it.”

Major Dietz nodded. “I’ve been in abandoned enemy installations before, the kinds of places where you keep feeling like whoever left will come back at any moment and be really unhappy to find you there. That’s a little spooky. This ship is a lot worse. We send out squad-strength patrols because that’s the smallest group that can keep from going buggy while they’re out there. We tried fire teams for a while. A couple of Marines. They ended up firing randomly, running back to the occupied area with stories of hundreds of Kicks still aboard and alive, that sort of thing.”

“Was it worse in jump space?” Geary asked.

“Now that you mention it, yes, sir. But even here, in normal space near a star, it’s spooky. Nobody goes off on their own. Not more than once.”

“That’s strange. We’ll get this ship back home and let the scientists and techs dispute control of it with whatever remains of the Kicks.”

“We’ve speculated,” Admiral Lagemann said, “that it might be some sort of side effect of some Kick equipment that’s still running somehow. Like the way a high-pitched whistle can make a dog unhappy, only it’s something that works on human nerves in an unpleasant way. Like virtual fingernails scraping on an imaginary chalkboard. Or it could be ghosts. Damned if I know.”

“Be sure you put your speculation about Kick equipment into your report when you leave the ship,” Geary directed. “Could it be some sort of last-ditch defense? Some means the Kicks could activate that would make occupancy of this ship untenable for their enemies?”

Dietz and Lagemann exchanged intrigued looks this time. “That’s possible, too,” Lagemann said. “But since it makes sense to us, it might not be the real reason.”

“I understand,” Geary said, thinking of what he had seen of Kick technology. Much of their equipment used methods totally foreign to the conventions of human thought and equipment. “Where should I see next?”

Lagemann pointed toward the temporary air lock. “Out there.”

“You’re kidding. I believe you about the ghosts. Or, at least, about something unnerving out there.”

“It’s not to show you that. It’s something the Marines came up with in their spare time.”

Another half dozen Marines had joined them, all in full combat armor. Geary’s lingering suspicions that his leg was being pulled by Lagemann and Dietz dwindled away as he noticed the wary manner in which the Marines eased out into the unoccupied portions of Invincible.

Warnings flashed on the face display of Geary’s survival suit as he pulled himself down the passageway with the others. Poisonous atmosphere. Toxic trace elements. Temperature barely within human-survivability range. Those factors alone would have discouraged explorers among the human prize crew.

But he could feel something else, something that didn’t register on his suit’s sensors. A feeling of something just behind him, ready to leap. Of other things moving just out of the range of his side vision. Shadows, brought to life by the lights on the human suits, that jumped around in ways those shadows should not.

And, with every meter farther away from the area occupied by humans, the sensation of being surrounded by something hostile grew.

Admiral Lagemann began speaking with forced casualness, his voice across the comm circuit between suits too obviously trying to sound relaxed. “We’ve had time to think, Major Dietz and I, and here’s what we’ve been thinking. We’re behind an awesome amount of armor, and we’re linked to four battleships, which are towing us. Beyond that, you’ve got an impressive even if damaged fleet. That’s good. But Invincible, as the first nonhuman artifact controlled by the human race, and an incredibly big artifact at that, packed with nonhuman technology, is the most valuable object in human history. Anyone who sees it, or knows about it, is going to want to get it for themselves or at the least destroy it to keep us from learning whatever we can from the ship.”

“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.

That information had been chillingly confirmed by an incident on one of the assault transports.

Dr. Nasr looked worn-out, but then, he often did these days. “We have had an incident with one of the Marines that I wanted to be sure you were aware of.”

“Corporal Ulanov,” Geary said. “General Carabali already told me about it. Ulanov took a weapon and tried to shoot up his troop compartment but failed because his platoon leader had deactivated the weapons available to him.”

“Yes. Corporal Ulanov.” Nasr stared at nothing for a moment before refocusing on Geary. “I thought you would want to hear the results of the medical exams.”

Geary sighed, making a helpless gesture. “He’s faced too much combat, and he wants to get home.”

“Yes. And no.” Nasr smiled thinly. “He does want to get home. But the actual reason for the attempted rampage was that Corporal Ulanov is also afraid of getting home.”

“Afraid?” When a piece of information was so different from what you expected, it took a while to absorb it. Geary found himself repeating the word. “Afraid? Of getting home?”

“We’re seeing more cases like that, though Ulanov is the worst,” Nasr observed. “Admiral, what will happen when we get home? What will happen to these ships and these Marines?”

“As far as I know, they’ll remain under my command.”

“But perhaps not.”

“I don’t know.”

“That is the problem,” Nasr said. “You don’t know, I don’t know, no one knows. Corporal Ulanov kept telling his medical interviewer that he was afraid. It took a while to realize that what Ulanov feared was uncertainty. He is comfortable being a Marine. He knows he can face combat, though the physical and mental stresses from the combat he has experienced have done damage that Corporal Ulanov does not acknowledge. But he fears being cast aside like a machine designed for a purpose that is no longer needed. He wants to get home, but he fears what might happen when he gets there. That internal conflict is what made him snap.”

Geary slumped as he thought about Ulanov and the many others in this fleet who shared the same worries for their future. “I can get them home. We won’t wait here much longer before leaving. But there’s not much I can do about worries over the future. I don’t have the answers to those.”

“There is something you can do, Admiral. Tell them you will look after their welfare to the best of your ability. That may not seem like much to you, but to them it will mean a great deal.” One corner of Dr. Nasr’s mouth tilted in a small, sad smile. “As a doctor, it is all too easy to see people as a collection of parts that either work right or need to be replaced or repaired. You can forget the human those parts make up if you focus too much on the parts. I have seen those in command positions look upon people the same way, as parts in the organism they rule over. Parts that exist only to serve the organism. If a private fails or dies, the private is replaced by another. That’s all. We all fear being seen as parts, expendable and replaceable, don’t we?”

“We do, Doctor, because we’ve all seen it happen to others and sometimes felt it happen to us. All right. I’ll find a way to let everyone know they won’t just be cast aside.”

He was reaching to end the call when the doctor spoke again. “Have you seen the reports from the ships of the Callas Republic and the Alliance?”

Geary nodded. “I’ve looked them over. There don’t seem to be any problems on those ships. I know they want to be detached from this fleet when we get home, and I’ll do all I can to make that happen.”

“There don’t seem to be problems,” Nasr repeated. “But there are. Those men and women expected to go home when the war ended, to have their warships recalled to their republic and their federation. That didn’t happen. At the moment, they are all outwardly doing fine. But do you know how a person can be just walking along, or working as usual, no signs of trouble, then suddenly they snap because of hidden stresses? That describes those ships. Be careful of them, Admiral.”

“I will be, Doctor.” He sat for a while after ending the call with Nasr. There’s nothing else I can do about the Callas Republic and Rift Federation ships, and I’ve already told all supervisors to watch their people carefully and refer for evaluation any who seemed marginal. I need to make the supervisors’ job easier, though. Geary straightened in his seat and tapped the record command on his comm software. “This is Admiral Geary. I want to give everyone a situation update. We will be departing Midway soon, returning home. We’ll stay at home for an extended period because even though you have all put in amazing efforts to keep our ships going and repair the damage they’ve sustained, this fleet will still require a lot of work at the maintenance facilities at Varandal.”

How do I say the rest? “I want to offer my personal assurances to all of you that I will make every effort to look out for you, to ensure that when we return home, you are treated as you deserve after your service to the Alliance.” That isn’t enough. Of course I’m going to look out for all who have served under me. That’s my responsibility. But I can’t promise there will be no problems once we return. What else do I say to let them know I won’t abandon them?

Oh, hell. Just say that. “We did not leave anyone behind anywhere in alien space. No one will be left behind after we return home.”

He ended the recording, then called the bridge. “Tanya, could you look over something for me?”

“You mean since I have nothing else to do but oversee a battle cruiser and her crew?” Desjani asked.

“It won’t take much time,” Geary promised.

“Gee, I’ve never heard that one before. All right, Admiral. Will you be coming to the bridge soon?” she added pointedly.

He glanced at the time. “I’ll be up there in a while. There’s no rush, is there?”

“No, of course not,” Desjani agreed.

Neither of them knew exactly when things would begin happening. There were too many uncertainties about travel times within the other star systems a certain ship had been transiting. But sometime within the next twelve hours, the plan proposed by General Drakon’s representatives would either succeed or fail.

Geary made a show of wandering up to the bridge of Dauntless. He stopped several times to talk with members of the crew. Most of them asked variations on “when are we leaving?” He replied with variations on “soon.”

On the bridge, Desjani nodded to him, gesturing to her display. “Good update, Admiral. Do you want to send it?”

“You don’t have any suggestions for improvements?” Geary asked as he took his seat and called up his own display showing the situation in this star system.

“Nope. This is one of those times when unedited words from the heart are best.”

“Then please transmit it to the fleet, Captain.”

“Certainly, Admiral.”

“Anything new from CEO Boyens today?”

She made a gesture of indifference. “Just another complaint about provocative maneuvers on our part. He seems to feel threatened by the fact that you’ve moved so many warships to an orbit only ten light-minutes from the hypernet gate.”

“And only eight light-minutes from his flotilla,” Geary said. “Did we send him the standard response that the authorities at Midway have given us freedom to maneuver within this star system?”

“You’d have to ask our emissaries,” Desjani said, now disdainful.

“I will,” Geary said. His annoyance with Boyens had been growing, as the Syndic CEO had sent repeated messages supposedly about negotiations but mainly containing thinly veiled derision of Geary’s inability to budge him from this star system.

But while the Syndic flotilla had stubbornly held its position near the hypernet gate, the Alliance presence near that gate had grown to include seven battleships and eleven battle cruisers, along with dozens of heavy and light cruisers and eighty destroyers. Few of those warships were in perfect condition, but all of them had the propulsion, shielding, and weapons if necessary to go on the attack. Geary had designated them Formation Alpha and arranged them into a single, giant fist aimed toward Boyens’s Syndic flotilla.

As the Alliance warships took up position, Kommodor Marphissa had taken the remaining warships of the Midway flotilla out and around, forming a small pocket of defense that still blocked any movement by the Syndic flotilla toward the star and also further limited possible movement by the Syndics by threatening their route toward the nearest jump point.

“He’s got to know what we’re doing,” Desjani commented, her posture and tone of voice now that of someone who did not expect anything to happen today that hadn’t happened yesterday and the day before. “Boyens isn’t stupid, even if he is a Syndic CEO.”

“He thinks we’re trying to bluff him into leaving,” Geary said.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” she asked with exaggerated innocence.

If he had been drinking something, he might have choked on it at that moment. Fortunately, any need for a reply was eliminated a second later.

“Another ship has arrived at the gate,” Lieutenant Castries said, her voice perking up as the identity of the new arrival became clear. “It’s the heavy cruiser belonging to Midway that escorted that other cruiser out through the jump point for Kane.”

“He came back through the gate?” Lieutenant Yuon blurted out. “That’s—”

“Not very bright,” Desjani said, still calm and composed. “They must have thought the Syndic flotilla would be gone. Look, they’re coming around and heading for the rest of the Midway flotilla.”

“Not very fast,” Lieutenant Castries muttered. “Captain, fleet sensors estimate that the heavy cruiser has lost a main propulsion unit. No damage that we can see, so it might be an equipment failure.”

“Syndic ships have much less onboard-repair capability than we do,” Desjani replied.

“He’s in trouble,” Lieutenant Yuon confirmed. “Maneuvering systems estimate that with that much propulsion out, the Syndics will be able to catch him before the rest of the Midway flotilla can join with him.”

“You sound perplexed, Lieutenant,” Desjani said. “Why?”

“I…” Yuon licked his lips, then made a helpless gesture. “I sort of feel like they’re on our side, Captain. Even though that’s a Syndic cruiser. I mean, it used to be one.”

“It’s not a Syndic cruiser,” Geary agreed. “The Syndics built it, but somebody else owns it now. And the cruisers that still answer to Syndic authority are going after it.” He didn’t need to rerun the maneuvering system’s conclusions. Even judging the movement of the ships on the display by eye, he could tell that the heavy cruisers and HuKs leaping away from the Syndic battleship would get within weapons range of the lone Midway heavy cruiser at least half an hour before it reached the company of the rest of the Midway flotilla.

Geary tapped his comm controls. “All units in Formation Alpha, prepare for combat.”

He could feel the startled stares of the rest of the bridge crew on him, even Desjani feigning surprise. With the exception of Desjani, they had no idea why he had given that order. Not yet. We can’t let the cat out of the bag quite yet.

“Assume full combat readiness,” Desjani ordered her watch team. Alarms blared, summoning the entire crew to action stations, while Geary watched the movements of the other ships and judged the right time for his next communication. “Captain Desjani, I see that the Syndic cruisers and HuKs aiming to intercept that newly arrived Midway cruiser will be within weapons range of their target in eight minutes.”

“That’s what our combat systems say,” Desjani confirmed.

“Set me up for a transmission to the Syndic flagship.”

The Syndic battleship with CEO Boyens aboard was eight light-minutes from Dauntless. The heavy cruisers and HuKs that had raced away from that battleship were now nearly a light-minute from the battleship and rapidly closing on the lone Midway cruiser at a high angle from above and behind. The Midway flotilla had surged into motion but was still several light-minutes away from where the Syndics were about to attack their lone comrade.

Now. Geary tapped his controls again, choosing the one prepared for sending a message to CEO Boyens. He had assumed a puzzled and angry expression and spoke with the same mix of emotions. “CEO Boyens, this is Admiral Geary of the First Fleet of the Alliance. You have sent forces to intercept a ship chartered by and operating under the authority of the government of the Alliance. You are to cease any actions aimed at an Alliance-flagged ship and withdraw your forces immediately. Geary, out.” He deliberately left off the formal ending, giving the message an abrupt tone.

The bridge crew was staring at him again, but their gazes shifted as Emissaries Rione and Charban walked onto the bridge. “Admiral,” Rione said, as if genuinely surprised, “we chartered that ship for Alliance government business. Why are Syndicate warships pursuing it?”

“I don’t know, Madam Emissary,” Geary replied. “I have informed the Syndics of the ship’s status and told them to veer off.”

Desjani once again pretended to be startled. “We chartered that Midway cruiser? The Alliance government?”

“That is correct,” Charban said. “We judged it to be in the interest of the Alliance that we be on good terms with the home star of that heavy cruiser.”

“But if it’s under Alliance government charter, it is Alliance property during the period of the charter. If the Syndics attack it—”

“They will be attacking an Alliance ship,” Geary broke in. “All units in Formation Alpha, immediate execute accelerate to point two light speed, come starboard three two degrees, up zero six degrees.”

“You will have to act if they attack an Alliance ship,” Rione agreed, sounding as upset as if this had not all been arranged in advance.

He had timed his message as well as possible. The Syndic heavy cruisers and HuKs had surely been sent out with orders to attack the lone Midway heavy cruiser. Having been humiliated once before, Boyens would be determined to ensure that this time his prey did not escape. They would launch that attack unless Boyens countermanded his earlier orders. But Geary had sent his message to Boyens so that it would arrive before the Syndic ships fired but too late for any message from Boyens to reach the Syndic attackers telling them not to fire. It was a simple matter of geometry, the three sides of the communications triangle adding up to less time than Boyens needed.

CEO Boyens would be realizing that right about now. Geary found himself smiling at the thought of the Syndic CEO’s becoming very, very unhappy as he spotted, too late, the trap laid for him.

“The Syndic heavy cruisers have launched missiles!” Lieutenant Castries said, as alarms from Dauntless’s combat systems accentuated her report.

“CEO Boyens must have received your message before those ships fired,” Desjani said, the words going into the official record as she spoke them.

“That’s right,” Geary agreed. “We have to assume that he has deliberately attacked an Alliance ship, and we have to make sure the Syndics don’t get away with such an act of aggression.” He tapped his comm controls again, this time pretending only anger. “CEO Boyens! Your forces have fired on a ship after you were informed that ship was operating under the Alliance flag! This is a hostile act, a clear violation of the peace treaty the Syndicate Worlds pledged to observe. Under the terms of that treaty, I am authorized to take all necessary measures to protect Alliance life and property. I will now do so and eliminate any threats to the Alliance within this star system! Geary, out!”

Just to add to CEO Boyens’s headaches, the apparently crippled main propulsion unit on the lone Midway heavy cruiser suddenly came to life at full power, dramatically boosting the acceleration of the warship. “That,” Desjani observed, “will create some serious problems for the missiles the Syndics launched based on their earlier assumptions of the maximum acceleration that heavy cruiser could achieve.”

“But they’ve still got two dozen missiles coming at them,” Geary said.

“They’ll be all right,” Desjani said, her eyes on her display. “If they listen to Captain Bradamont. She’s aboard that heavy cruiser, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” It had not been easy to arrange Bradamont’s transfer to the Syndic ship without her movement being detected, but routine resupply operations could mask a great deal of nonroutine activity. “Her presence on the heavy cruiser establishes clearly and legally that the ship is temporarily Alliance property. The authorities on Midway,” Geary added, “also assigned a Kapitan-Lieutenant Kontos to ride the cruiser while it was under Alliance charter.”

“Kontos?” she asked. “Do we know him?”

“He’s the one who thought up fastening the battleship to the mobile forces facility so it could tow that facility out of the path of the enigma bombardment,” Geary said.

“Oh.” Desjani smiled knowingly. “And now Captain Bradamont can provide us with detailed observations about this Kapitan-Lieutenant who is such a quick and innovative thinker?”

“That’s right,” Geary agreed.

“Well done, Admiral.” She tapped her weapons controls. “We’ll be within range of Boyens in forty-five minutes if you hold us at point two light speed.”

Geary nodded, gazing at his own display again. What will I do if Boyens doesn’t run? If he stands his ground? I’ll have to engage that battleship and take out the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and HuKs escorting it. It’ll be a massacre, but they could still inflict damage on some of my ships, and when I get home, it’ll be a lot harder to explain annihilating a Syndic flotilla than it will be to explain chasing one away.

Boyens had a limited period of time in which to act. Battleships excelled at firepower and armor, but not at acceleration. If Boyens wanted to avoid the Alliance attack, he would have to head for the hypernet gate soon enough to overcome the Alliance advantage in coming up to speed first.

“The gate’s his only option,” Desjani commented. “If Boyens heads toward the only jump point he could reach before we could catch him, he’ll run right into that Midway flotilla.”

“Isn’t that a lucky coincidence,” Geary said.

“We need to keep after him,” Desjani added in a low voice. “Boyens isn’t going to enter that gate if he has any doubts that we might veer off. We need to stay on a firing run, maintaining our velocity, until his flotilla leaves. If we bobble at all, if we slow down, if we give him any reason to doubt our intent, he’ll veer away from the gate. Then we’ll have to destroy him.”

“You’re right.” He had been trying to estimate when he could order his attack force to break off, but Desjani was correct. “He’ll cut it as fine as he possibly can, to see if we actually open fire.”

“Count on having to open fire,” she said.

“I hope you’re not right about that.”

But as the minutes went by, Boyens’s flagship remained stubbornly in the same orbit. Geary checked the combat systems readouts, seeing the steady scrolling down to the time when the Syndic battleship would be within range of the weapons on the leading Alliance warships. One number for the specter missiles, another for hell-lance particle beams, a third time for the ball bearings called grapeshot used at close range, and finally a time for the very-close-range null-field generators carried by the Alliance battle cruisers and battleships.

Desjani shook her head as she studied her display. “If he doesn’t start moving in the next five minutes, we’ll catch him before he reaches the gate.”

Rione spoke from where she had come to stand on the other side of Geary. “Why hasn’t CEO Boyens tried to communicate with us?” she wondered. “Accused us of setting him up, tried to apologize, anything at all? Ah, I know.”

“Do you feel like telling me?” Geary asked.

“Certainly, Admiral.” Rione held out her open hand, palm up. “Syndic CEOs hold their positions through fear. Subordinates know they cannot cross their CEOs. But if a CEO is seen to be weak, subordinates will see wounded prey.”

“And an apology, an attempt to deflect our attack, would make Boyens look weak.”

“Extremely weak, as well as foolish.” Rione closed her hand into a fist. “He knows we set him up. To openly admit that he fell into a trap we set might drive the last nail into his coffin.”

“Do you think he’ll stay and fight?”

“That would be suicide.” She made an uncertain gesture. “But the price of failure here for him might be high, and his own anger at being humiliated might drive him to fight a hopeless battle. I don’t know.”

“Two minutes left for him to start running,” Desjani said. “We need to see thrusters firing on those Syndics ships within the next thirty seconds to get them faced on a course for the gate.”

Thirty seconds to wonder if the cunning and twisted plot dreamed up by the rulers of Midway would blow up in everyone’s face. On the main inhabited world light-hours from the hypernet gate, President Iceni and General Drakon would not see what happened until a long time after it took place. Thirty seconds to wonder what they would think as they saw the same limited time rapidly running out. CEO Boyens must be angry, frustrated, knowing he was trapped, knowing that failure would be punished by his superiors in the Syndic hierarchy but knowing also that if he lost that battleship, the punishment would certainly be death. Thirty seconds to wonder if Boyens would choose to risk that rather than fail here.

Ten seconds.

Five.