Guardian

Six

“What did you say?” Desjani asked. “Something about Invincible?”

“Never mind.” Geary had to pause to control his voice before he replied to Lagemann. “Where is she? Do we know where this commander and her nuke are?”

Major Dietz answered, sounding grim. “Our best guess is in this area,” he said, indicating a spot aft of amidships and near the centerline of Invincible. “You can see the blocking forces we have stopping any movement along these lines, and as our patrols confirm areas are clear, the blocking forces establish new positions. We’re not encountering any more Syndics moving alone or in small groups, so it’s a reasonable guess that their commander figured out that the only way to prevent them from panicking was to pull her force together.”

Dietz highlighted a grouping of compartments. “We think they’re here. That’s about where the transmission originated, and this block of five compartments offers a compact defensive position with limited access from above and below.”

“How long until we know?” Geary asked.

“I’ve instructed the patrols to move faster and converge toward the suspected Syndic location. Once we have them localized, I can send in some look-sees to get a better idea of how many and whether there’s actually a nuke in there with them.”

“Ten minutes?” Geary pressed.

“Half an hour,” Major Dietz said, visibly bracing himself as he delivered the information.

Geary took a long, slow breath as he considered his options. “Get Emissary Rione and Emissary Charban on the line with that Syndic commander. Their instructions are to spin out negotiations and discussions as long as possible.” Technically, he didn’t have the right to order around either Rione or Charban since as representatives of the Alliance government, they were outside his command authority, but neither of them had made an issue of that lately. He doubted they would in this situation, either. “Let that Syndic commander think we’re right on the verge of agreeing to her demands while you figure out exactly where she is, get forces into position around her, and try to determine whether she’s bluffing about having a third nuke.”

He mentally pulled back from the situation aboard Invincible, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Tanya? What’s the big picture look like?”

“Nothing new happening that we can tell,” she replied. “Eleven stealth shuttles have been spotted and destroyed. There hasn’t been a new detection for some time, so we might have gotten them all. What happened on Invincible?”

“We’ve got two nukes, but there might be a third, and the Syndic commander is threatening to use it.” He shifted back to General Carabali. “Eleven Syndic shuttles have been confirmed and destroyed so far. Does that help estimate how many Syndics came aboard?”

“It gives us an upper limit,” Carabali said. “The shuttles might not have been full. An operation like this usually has some excess lift capability in case some of the shuttles develop problems. Unfortunately, it tells us nothing about how many nukes they might have brought aboard.”

“Do you think they would really detonate a nuke, if they still have one, when they’re also in the blast zone?”

General Carabali frowned. “Admiral, these are Syndic special forces. Not fanatics from the Syndic security service.”

“Major Dietz thought they might be fanatics.”

“It was a reasonable guess, but from what I’ve seen of their equipment and tactics, they’re soldiers. Syndic special forces are highly trained and reliable, but I can’t think of any cases where they conducted deliberate suicide attacks during the war.”

“You don’t think their commander will carry through with her threat?”

“I don’t know, Admiral. It’s not typical of the Syndic special forces, but it’s not impossible. The Syndics seem to be falling back on suicide attacks out of desperation. An additional factor is that the, uh, atmosphere aboard Invincible is extremely unsettling. What impact that might have on the Syndics’ decisions even in a larger group I can’t say.”

“Make sure we keep offering to let them surrender.”

Carabali nodded, but she did not look hopeful. “They can’t assume if they do surrender that we’ll treat them as prisoners of war, Admiral.”

“I have never authorized—”

“That’s true, Admiral. But those were prisoners who were unquestionably Syndic military personnel. They had uniforms, they were part of units, they carried all the necessary official identifiers. In this case, the woman we’re talking to who claims to be the commander of this group isn’t giving a rank for herself. The Syndics we’ve killed, and in a couple of cases captured, have no military insignia or identification on them. They’re equipped with Syndic special-forces gear, but the equipment has had all identifying information scrubbed out and filed off. Even the implanted chips that contain medical and other information have been removed from their bodies. There’s nothing tying them to being part of the Syndic military and nothing giving them any official status at all.”

Geary stared at Carabali. “Are they trying to claim they’re pirates or something?”

“Private individuals,” Carabali said in a flat voice, “on a private venture. That’s all we’ve gotten out of the one prisoner who is able to talk.”

“Do you think they’ll stick with that even if it means they face death for terrorist actions?” Geary demanded.

“It’s hard to tell, Admiral. We’re in unexplored territory when it comes to that. Before, they’d be Syndics, and we were at war, so we’d treat them all as combatants. For better or worse. Now that we’re officially at peace, technically the official Syndics have protections as prisoners that freelancers do not. However, they don’t seem to have anything on them that would prove any claim they made to official status, if they tried to make one, and I think it’s a reasonable assumption that the Syndic CEOs here will deny any knowledge of them and their actions, which means that no matter what they said, we could legally, officially, and with honor execute them all.”

And these Syndics surely knew that. Had they known it going into this operation? Or had they only realized it when trapped aboard Invincible, their initial attacks foiled and their numbers rapidly dwindling, while the Kick ghosts gnawed at their minds?

“Offer them a chance to live,” Geary said slowly. “Tell them I will give my word of honor, officially and on the record, that any of them who surrender and cooperate will not be harmed.”

“I’ll make sure that offer gets to them,” Carabali said. Her expression hadn’t wavered, but her tone of voice was that of someone agreeing to a course of action she had no expectation of working. She paused, frowning to one side as she listened to a report. “Admiral, the prisoner who is being interrogated shows signs of having been subjected to mental conditioning.”

Why did news like this continue to surprise him? “What kind of mental conditioning?”

“It’s not clear yet. Any discussion of a military background generates responses consistent with mental conditioning. They may be incapable of admitting they are, or were, special-forces personnel.” Carabali grimaced. “They may also be incapable of surrendering. If they won’t, or can’t, surrender, we’ll have to take whatever actions are necessary.”

“I understand.” Having seen the impact of such conditioning on Commander Benan, it was easy to understand that the Syndics subjected to it could not override the blocks implanted within their minds. He also understood why the Marine had raised that issue with him. He was in command, and he had the responsibility to either clearly rule out all necessary actions or to clearly order that they be taken. “Your orders are to take the necessary actions to eliminate the threat those Syndics pose to Invincible and our personnel aboard the ship.”

“Yes, sir. Preparations are under way. We’ll notify you before we go in.”

Once he had finished speaking with General Carabali, Geary sat back, trying to ease tense muscles. There wasn’t any need for him to lean forward while viewing the Marine action, no need for his body to be ready to leap into action, but instincts were not easily overridden. Besides, it would feel somehow wrong to be leaning back in a relaxed posture while watching men and women risk death not in a video production but for real.

“When are the Marines going in?” Desjani asked.

“How did you hear they were going in?”

“It’s all over the fleet’s back channels. This is ironic, isn’t it?”

Geary glanced at her. “How so?”

“The Syndic plans are getting messed up because the Kick ghosts freaked out their boarding party. The Kicks are helping us defend that ship.”

“Too bad the Kick ghosts can’t disarm nukes. Were there any survivors off the Syndic shuttles?”

Desjani shook her head. “Nah. Not surprising. When a shuttle takes hits from warships, there’s usually not a lot left. I told some of the destroyers to recover debris, though. It might help as evidence that the Syndics did this.”

“Can’t hurt. Thanks. Don’t be surprised if there’s nothing, though. All of the equipment belonging to the Syndic soldiers on Invincible had been completely sanitized.”

“Word is we got at least one prisoner.”

“And initial results indicate the Syndic soldiers themselves were sanitized. Mental blocks.”

She stared at him. “Ancestors preserve us. Why the hell haven’t the people living in the Syndicate Worlds risen up and torn their damned CEOs into tiny pieces?”

“Damned if I know.” He thought about some of the star systems they had seen. “I guess some of them are, in some places. Maybe that’s why the Syndic CEOs are doing anything and everything against us. They have to be terrified of what will happen to each of them if they show the slightest sign of weakness.”

“Trying to save their hides by making their own citizens even madder at them? Yeah, that’ll work.”

He shared her opinion of the spreading revolts that the Syndic government’s tactics would eventually lead to, but in the short term, that still left him, and this fleet, facing the problem of dealing with the increasingly desperate and increasingly vicious tactics the CEOs were adopting to try to save themselves.

Geary scanned his display. The fleet was moving away from the hypernet gate, the destroyers and light cruisers still arrayed around Invincible and down along Invincible’s track. Nothing lay before the fleet… no, nothing could be seen before them, Geary corrected himself, except some Syndic merchant traffic, the nearest of which was still nearly two dozen light-minutes distant. “Tanya, work up a course to the jump exit for Simur. I want to go wide, using a longer path than required, just in case something else is waiting along our path.”

“No problem, Admiral. Do you want that implemented right away?”

“No. Hold off on it. I want to avoid moving Invincible around until the Marines have finished their job.”

His gaze went back to the display. Sobek only had the one jump point, so anyone arriving through the hypernet gate who didn’t also leave that way en route another destination could only go to Simur. From Simur, the fleet could jump to Padronis, and from there to Atalia. The Varandal Star System, in Alliance space, could be reached from Atalia. Not that long a path, but one all too predictable if the Syndics had laid other traps. It’s not just Sobek, it’s that our options from Sobek are so limited. Sobek to Simur to Padronis, if we want to get home. Atalia wasn’t cooperating with the Syndic government anymore when we last went through there, but every star system until Atalia is going to be a gauntlet to run.

Another call brought him out of his worried thoughts about their route home. Rione was wearing the icy look that meant she was extremely frustrated, but fortunately the frustration wasn’t aimed at him.

“If you were counting on diplomacy or negotiations resolving the matter inside Invincible, you might want to consider other options,” she said.

“I wasn’t counting on it. More like it can’t hurt to try,” Geary admitted. “You don’t see any hope for ending this with words instead of actions?”

Rione shook her head. “It might be the environment in there, or it might be the result of finding themselves cut off in a hopeless situation, but the woman I’m talking to isn’t giving any ground even though she seems rattled. It’s like talking to people with their backs to the wall. They know they can’t run, but they won’t give up. I was informed that you were willing to promise that we would treat them as military prisoners if they give up. I’m not so sure that you could make that promise stick once we returned to Alliance space, but that doesn’t matter because the offer did not make any difference. They don’t seem inclined to believe promises from senior officials.”

“Of course not. They’re Syndics. Did General Carabali tell you that there are indications they may been mentally conditioned?”

“Yes. I can’t say from my conversations whether that is true or not. It’s not really possible in cases like this to tell the difference between someone who had a mental block implanted and someone who is so certain she is right that she has blocked her own mind,” Rione added.

Geary ran one hand through his hair, considering his options. “Do you think they’ve really got a nuke, and if they do have one, do you think they’ll actually detonate it?”

“Those are good questions,” Rione said. “I don’t have good answers for them.”

What else? “Did you get the impression that they still expect some form of rescue? Do they know we’ve destroyed all of their shuttles?”

“They know what we’ve told them, Admiral. I doubt that they believe us.”

Geary nodded, feeling exhausted. “Keep talking to them. Please.”

“Since you ask so nicely, I will.” Rione’s mouth moved with distaste. “I will keep talking to them until the Marines kill them. Perhaps it will distract them and make the task of the Marines a little easier. Have you ever been speaking with someone at the moment they died?”

“No,” Geary said.

“Neither have I. Until today. I suspect I will soon know how it feels.”

He closed his eyes tightly, grimacing, after Rione ended her call. After a long moment, he straightened and refocused on the Marine situation map.

Aboard Invincible, the Marines had closed and tightened their spherical cordon around the area where Major Dietz had estimated the Syndics would be holed up, sealing off passageways and compartments on all sides and above and below the enemy-held compartments. On Geary’s image of Invincible’s deck plan, those five compartments were now marked as enemy-occupied. “We know that’s where they are?” Geary asked Major Dietz.

“Yes, sir,” Dietz reported. “We managed some recon, but with the Syndics still in stealth mode, it’s hard to get a good count. Our best guess is about twenty of them are in there, Admiral.”

“Good call on where they would hole up, Major. Do we know if they’ve really got a third nuke?”

Major Dietz flushed slightly at the praise from Geary, then hesitated. “Admiral, we’ve sent in gnat sensors, which were all we could get in through the bug-netting countermeasures the Syndics have hung across the accesses into there. The gnats aren’t picking up any extra radiation that would indicate the presence of a nuke. But gnat sensors are limited because of size and power issues, and if the Syndics have the nuke under extra shielding, it would be very hard to spot even with better gear.”

“What would it take to be sure?”

“To be absolutely sure? Fight our way in there and look, Admiral.”

Admiral Lagemann was studying the deck plan for the Invincible. “I was thinking about something,” he said. “We’ve got a good picture of how Invincible looks inside because it’s based on our patrolling of the ship and automated mapping drones. We’ve got a solid picture of the deck plan. Watch this.”

On the deck plan, dots began appearing. “Each of these,” Lagemann said, “is an indication of Syndic presence. If you look at how the detections develop, they show us where the Syndics went initially.”

“What are these detections based on?” Geary asked.

“Lamarr sensor spoofing and fragmentary indications picked up by other sensors,” Admiral Lagemann explained. “Not a perfect picture, but the best we can expect when dealing with stealthy opponents in an environment like Invincible. Watch the paths the Syndics followed. They converged on the decoy main engineering control and the decoy bridge simultaneously, using a variety of routes that in some cases must indicate backtracking because the Syndics knew nothing about Invincible’s layout. But, as spread out as they were, everything we spotted was headed for those two compartments. After they occupied the two decoy spaces, they spread out again and moved along this axis.”

Major Dietz nodded. “Roughly toward the living and operations spaces we actually occupy. The emissions from the Donkeys helped mask our own actual presence. The Syndics must have picked up some trace indications of our real location on board once the Donkeys were shut down.”

“The point being,” Lagemann continued, “they only went for two locations initially instead of a third grouping trying to also seize the weapons control compartment they would have expected to find.”

“Which would argue in favor of their only having two nukes?” General Carabali asked. “That analysis makes sense, but do we want to bet the farm on it?”

Lagemann smiled crookedly. “If we’re wrong, and they do have a nuke, I’ll be buying the farm.”

“We wouldn’t be in this position if they hadn’t tried to farm our ship,” Dietz pointed out.

“Are you all done?” Geary asked, exasperated.

“Sorry,” Admiral Lagemann said. “Those jokes weren’t exactly breaking new ground. Sorry, sorry. But I think I can be forgiven for a little levity to distract me from the possible consequences for me and the rest of my crew of urging you to order the Marines to go in.”

Geary let his eyes rest on the deck plan of Invincible. “Does anyone think time is on our side?”

Only Carabali answered, and that was in the negative. “No, sir. If they’re ready to die carrying out their mission, and if they’ve got a nuke, we need to hit them as soon as possible before the nature of Invincible drives them crazy enough to just set it off.”

“They can certainly feel the ghosts in those compartments they’re in,” Major Dietz agreed. “Since we powered down a lot of the gear in here and shut off life support, they’ve been crowding in with us. Having a bunch of people here helps, but it doesn’t stop the spooky sensation.”

“Go ahead and power up your gear again,” Carabali ordered. “Get your life support going, too. If there are any Syndics who avoided the Marine sweeps and haven’t been driven crazy by the ghosts, they might come your way once your emissions get stronger. That will give you a chance to take them out. Admiral, I want to go in after those twenty Syndics forted up in those five compartments as soon as we’re ready.”

Geary had to pause to think. He couldn’t spend too much time dwelling on the consequences if the Syndics did have a third nuke and did detonate it, because visualizing that would be certain to unnerve him. Part of him remained very angry with the Syndics, determined that they not win in any way, shape, or form as a result of their sneak attacks here at Sobek. He knew that was also the wrong grounds for making the decision, though.

Invincible was immensely valuable to humanity, even if the cost to this fleet in the taking of the superbattleship from the Kicks wasn’t counted in. Dared he risk the destruction of everything humanity might learn from Invincible?

On the other hand, did he dare give that up? Suppose Invincible did hold somewhere inside the secret to the Kick planetary-defense system? Suppose the Syndics acquired that? The same Syndic CEOs willing to order suicide attacks and willing to threaten the destruction of Invincible’s trove of knowledge?

“Go in as soon you’re ready,” Geary said. “If you can take any more prisoners, it would be nice because I want living bodies who can hang this operation on the Syndicate Worlds, but the primary goal is ensuring a quick takedown, so if they do have a nuke, they don’t have time to activate it.” He didn’t ask what the odds of success were, knowing that any reply would only be guesswork.

Major Dietz saluted. “Five minutes, Admiral. We’ve already prepared the assault plan. We’ll hit them from every direction at once.”

“Good.” Geary pulled himself back to awareness of the larger situation again, trying to block out mental images of what might soon happen if he had decided wrong. “Still quiet?” he asked Desjani.

“Yeah. I ordered a saturation bombardment of the primary inhabited world. We launched that ten minutes ago, but it will take another half a day to get there, so there’s nothing to see yet.”

He glared at her. “That’s not funny. Is there a reason why everybody has suddenly decided to start making bad jokes?”

She met his eyes. “Because we’re scared.”

“Oh.” Geary couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“They’re hitting us in unusual ways,” Desjani explained. “We don’t know what’s coming next. We don’t know if all of the sacrifice required to get possession of Invincible is about to be negated by a little fusion star blooming inside the ship. We want to get home, and we don’t know what else the damned Syndics have thrown in our way. All right?”

“All right.” He made an apologetic gesture. “I’ve been too busy to think about those things.”

“Too busy commanding? You’ve got your nerve.” Desjani smiled briefly. “We’d be a lot more scared if you weren’t in command.”

“The Marines are going to take out the remaining Syndics on Invincible in… four minutes.”

“Should we move the destroyers away from her? There are still several real close in that search pattern.”

He had to think about that, balancing the possible risk to the destroyers against the impact on morale of those aboard Invincible if they saw such tangible evidence that Geary suspected the worst. If people were already scared, it wouldn’t do much good for them to see that their commander was worried that Invincible would blow up. “No. The Marines will take care of the threat.” Besides, there are four battleships literally tethered to Invincible. There’s no time to get them loose and away.

“Go ahead and get back into the Marine situation,” Desjani urged. “I’ve got the bubble for the fleet.”

He gave her a startled look. “Wait a minute. Are you acting as second in command of the fleet?”

“Duh. Did you just figure that out, sir?”

“No one is objecting?”

“And why would they object?” After waiting a couple of seconds for Geary to search in vain for a safe reply, Desjani went on. “Badaya, Tulev, Duellos, and Armus are fine with it, and as long as they accept it, no one else will complain.” She paused again. “Jane Geary is not objecting, either, so I’ve got the Gearys backing me. I almost feel like family.”

“Uh-huh. Well, uh, keep on doing… what you were doing.”

“Yes, sir, Admiral.” Desjani glanced at the time. “You’ve got two minutes before the grunts go in.”

“Thanks.” He focused back on the Marines, identifying the unit leaders among those ranged near the Syndic stronghold and choosing one at random.

It took a few seconds to orient himself to the position of the Marine lieutenant whose view he could now see. Finally, Geary realized that this platoon was positioned above the Syndic-occupied compartments. A couple of combat engineers were finishing up laying hull-breach tape to frame a large area on the deck in the center of the compartment the Marines were in. The platoon, weapons at ready, were ranged around the top of the compartment, drifting weightlessly above the outlined center section.

A timer was running down, second by second, on the lieutenant’s helmet display. “One minute,” she warned her platoon. “You know the drill. Prisoners if possible, but priority is keeping anyone from setting off a nuke.”

“I don’t think they’ll have any trouble staying focused on that, Lieutenant,” the platoon sergeant remarked. He looked around, the motions a little jerky. “Let’s get this done and get off this ship.”

“They’re not real, Sergeant,” the lieutenant said in a voice that sounded as if she was trying to convince herself as well as him. “Remember, all of you,” she added, “don’t touch any equipment. It’s Kick gear.”

“No problem, Lieutenant,” a corporal said with his own nervous looks around. “Last thing I want is to make ’em madder.”

“Ten seconds, people!”

The combat engineers had pulled themselves back down to the deck and were holding the tape detonators while counting off the last seconds. “Fire in the hole,” one announced, then punched a detonator while the other engineer did the same.

Brilliant light flared where the breaching tape lay, almost instantly cutting through the deck. In gravity, the severed section would have dropped down to the next deck, but at zero g, it stayed in place until the entire platoon of Marines pushed off hard from the overhead, their armored boots slamming into the loose deck section so that they and the severed deck piece dropped through fast into the compartment beneath them.

Shots were blazing on all sides as the Marines faced outward and pumped out rounds at any indication of enemies. The deck section they were on was tilted up on one side, where it rested on a Syndic whose armor’s stealth features had failed when the mass of deck and a platoon of Marines in combat armor had landed on it.

“Got us a prisoner!” one of the Marines shouted, placing a rifle barrel against the helmet of the helpless Syndic.

Geary stared at the bolts of energy blazing through the compartment, through the hatches and through the compartments next to this one, wondering how anyone could remain standing in the blizzard of fire as Marines came in shooting from all sides. Then he saw the lieutenant’s weapon sight blink red as she tried to fire a shot and realized the Marine armor’s friendly-fire inhibitors were preventing anyone from shooting where another Marine was or would be.

The action lasted less than a minute as the Marines stormed into the compartments in overwhelming numbers. “Is there a nuke? Find the nuke!” someone ordered.

“Cease fire! Everyone cease fire! They’re all down.”

“Any left alive?”

“Just one. He’s not talking.”

Another shot went off. “I said cease fire, dammit!”

“I thought I saw— It’s those ghosts, Sarge—”

“Safe your weapons! Does anybody see a nuke?”

“Compartment alpha clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment bravo clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment cable clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment delta clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment echo clear. No nuke.”

Geary slumped in relief, taking a deep breath. The Syndic commander had been bluffing.

Somewhere inside those five compartments, that Syndic lay dead along with the rest of those who had followed her into Invincible. Had Rione still been talking to the Syndic commander when Marine firepower had put an end to the commander and the negotiations? The alien warship had picked up more scars and more internal damage, but in every way that counted, Invincible was still intact.

Your attack failed, Geary thought, imagining he was speaking to the Syndic CEOs. How many times do we have to beat you before you stop trying?

There were still two captured Syndic nuclear munitions to dispose of. Geary looked at his display of Marine icons, choosing Corporal Maksomovic again.

Someone had vacuumed up a lot of the dust in the air created by the bounce grenades. Without that housecleaning, the dust would have drifted indefinitely like a slow-moving sandstorm through the compartments and passageways without working life support and made Invincible’s interior even more inhospitable.

Geary couldn’t see Maksomovic’s face, but he could sense the unhappiness of the corporal as he hung in midair right next to the Syndic nuke. How long had Corporal Maksomovic been babysitting the infernal device?

“Corporal.” Captain Smythe had linked in, too, and was speaking to Maksomovic. “Commander Plant is here. She’ll walk you through disarming the Syndic nuke. Do you recognize the munition, Commander?”

“Oh, yes,” Commander Plant said cheerfully, “I recognize it. A standard Syndic Mark Five Fusion munition. Mod… three. Exactly like the other one that we just disarmed while everyone else was busy wiping out the last Syndics. A really nice piece of weaponeering. The Syndics can do some good work.”

“Can we render it safe, Commander?” Admiral Lagemann asked as he joined the conversation.

“Yes. Of course. Mostly safe, anyway.”

“Mostly safe?” Corporal Maksomovic asked hesitantly. The corporal had to be intently aware that not only was he floating beside a nuclear weapon but that an entire bevy of senior officers had come to watch and listen to him.

“Absolutely,” Commander Plant said. “Do you see an access panel with eight fastenings near the top? There? That one.”

“This one?” The Marine corporal’s hand reached toward the indicated access.

“Yes. Don’t touch that one.”

Geary watched the corporal’s hand jerk back as if a cobra’s head had just emerged from the bomb casing.

“Try to find an oval access with five fittings. It should be about midway up the casing. That’s it!”

“Am I supposed to touch this one?” Corporal Maksomovic asked.

“Yes. Pull the fittings. Don’t worry. The Syndics hardly ever booby-trap those.”

The corporal’s armored hand, which seemed to be trembling slightly, pried open the fittings.

“Now,” Commander Plant continued, “pry open the access. Not the top! Bottom first!”

Corporal Maksomovic’s hand jerked back again. He was mumbling something inaudible as he reached for the bottom of the panel and popped it up. A mass of wires was visible inside, reaching from above the access and leading down to separate locations below its rim.

“All right,” Plant said, “reach in, grab as many wires as you can, and pull them out.”

The corporal’s hand froze in midmotion. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Reach in, grab as many as you can, and pull them out. One yank.”

“Uh, ma’am, I was sort of expecting some directions that were a little more detailed. You know, like find this one wire labeled this way that’s this color and carefully snip it without damaging anything else.”

“Oh, no, no, no. That would be way too risky,” Commander Plant insisted. “It’s much safer to just yank them all out at once. It won’t explode if you do that. Well, it might explode. But not very much.”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, this conversation is not doing my morale any good at all.”

“Trust me! I’m telling you to do exactly what I would do if I were there. The first one we disarmed didn’t explode, did it?”

Despite the commander’s last statement, the corporal didn’t seem eager to follow the instructions.

“Corporal Maksomovic, do as she says,” Major Dietz instructed.

“Yes, sir,” the corporal replied in the fatalistic tones of a man ordered to jump off a high cliff by someone holding a gun on him.

Geary watched the corporal’s armored fist reach into the access and gather a thick cord of wires in its grasp.

“I just yank ’em out?” Maksomovic asked.

“Yes,” Commander Plant said. “All at once. Give it a good, hard yank and pull as many as you can out of there.”

Geary noticed in the periphery of the corporal’s view that his companions were edging gingerly away, as if an extra meter of distance would offer some sort of critical defense against a fusion bomb going off this close to them.

“Here goes nothing,” Corporal Maksomovic said, then tensed for his pull. The augmented strength of the Marine combat armor allowed the corporal to give a very powerful yank. A rat’s nest of wires came completely free in his armored fist, leaving broken ends and connectors inside the bomb.

A single spark flared among the torn components visible inside the access. Geary realized his breathing had stopped the moment that spark snapped. But when nothing else followed, he managed to draw a deep breath.

The Marine corporal sounded as if he hadn’t been breathing, either. “Now what, ma’am?”

“Recycle the wires,” Plant replied, as if she had been directing the repair of nothing more hazardous than a balky bicycle. “I’d recommend putting the munition on a lifter and tossing it out the nearest air lock. You might still get a little explosion out of it, and there’s no sense risking that.”

“A little explosion?” Admiral Lagemann asked, clearly wondering what level of violence the munitions engineer would classify as “little.” But if he meant to ask, he changed his mind. “Do you need it for any kind of study or exploitation?”

“No, thank you, Admiral. We’ve captured a few of these. I doubt there’s anything we could learn from this one.”

“There aren’t any technical issues we could glean from it,” Captain Smythe corrected, “but we should still examine both nuclear munitions for any serial numbers or other data that might link them to a particular Syndic source. If you don’t object, Admiral Geary, I’ll have a shuttle sent over from Tanuki to collect both disarmed munitions.”

“Admiral Lagemann?” Geary asked.

“I think I speak for everyone aboard Invincible when I say we can’t get rid of those nukes any too soon,” Lagemann replied. “Captain Smythe is welcome to them.”

“Good work, Corporal,” Major Dietz said to Maksomovic.

“Thank you, sir. I’ve gotta confess, I would have been pretty nervous if the timer had been counting down while I was working on that thing,” Maksomovic admitted, as if he hadn’t actually been nervous as it was.

“The timer?” Commander Plant asked, surprised. “Oh, you wouldn’t have to worry about that. The timers on these Syndic munitions are fakes. As soon as you arm the weapon and activate the timer, the weapon goes off immediately.”

A long pause followed her words.

“Really?” Admiral Lagemann finally asked. “I’d heard rumors about that, but…”

“The rumors are true. Think about it, Admiral. You’ve got a target important enough to smuggle a nuke into it. Are you really going to risk having someone come along and deactivate the weapon while its timer is running?”

“What happens to whoever set the weapon and activated the timer?”

Commander Plant sounded puzzled by the question. “They’re standing next to a fusion event, Admiral. They don’t even have time to know what hit them before they’re gone. And I do mean gone. There’s nothing left. Plasma, maybe. Some charged particles. That’s it.”

“But…” Corporal Maksomovic said slowly, “we’ve got munitions like this.”

This time the pause was even longer and more awkward.

“We’re not the Syndics!” Captain Smythe declared with what seemed an excessive amount of jovial nonchalance. “Let’s stop all this chatter and get that disarmed weapon out of there, shall we?”

Recalling the old saying about not asking questions that you don’t really want to know the answers to, Geary exited the link and looked at Desjani. “All right. The situation is completely secure aboard Invincible. Let’s get back into a regular formation and head for the jump point for Simur. What kind of route to the jump point did you work up?”

She grinned as she sent his display the planned maneuver.

Geary looked at it, looked again, then nodded appreciatively. “Instead of cutting across the edge of the star system, you want to dive toward the star, then loop back up to the jump exit?”

“It adds about a light-hour to the trip, but there’s no way they’ll have any surprises along that path,” Desjani predicted.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t have gone that far off the optimal trajectory, which might have given the Syndics here a chance to adjust another attack. We’ll go with this. There’s one more thing I have to check before we head out, though.”

He called Captain Smythe again. “We’re getting ready to leave this area. Have your engineers completed their inspection of the hypernet gate?”

Smythe sighed heavily. “Yes, Admiral, and I regret to say that the gate was damaged extensively. Oddly enough, the damage could only be detected by a very close examination, but it is serious enough and extensive enough that the hypernet gate will begin to collapse… thirty-seven minutes and twenty seconds from now.”

“That’s a remarkably precise estimate,” Geary said.

“I’m a remarkably precise engineer, Admiral. I have a report you can pass on to the Syndics here. I made sure to emphasize that debris from Orion and from some of the courier ships was responsible for the damage. And don’t worry about the Syndics analyzing our report and reaching erroneous conclusions about the cause of the gate’s collapse. I had Lieutenant Jamenson prepare the report using her skills to the best of her ability.”

“Thank you, Captain Smythe.” Lieutenant Jamenson, the officer whose gift was to confuse things so that they were technically accurate yet also effectively indecipherable. The Syndics would never be able to produce any meaningful evidence from a report she had put effort into. “I’ll get the fleet moving.”

Roughly thirty-seven minutes later, with the fleet’s warships still taking up their new positions in the formation and the entire force accelerating back up to point one light speed, Geary watched the hypernet gate collapse behind them. The devices called tethers, which held the linked energy matrix in check, failed one at a time or in groups, the entire process occurring in a complex sequence that would prevent that energy matrix from erupting in a burst that could sweep all life from this star system. The ebb and flow of vast forces inside the collapsing gate as the failure sequence balanced and canceled out the contending waves of energy produced distortions in space itself that could be seen with the naked eye.

He had felt those forces, close up, while trying to keep the hypernet gate at Sancere from annihilating that star system. He had no wish to ever be that close to a collapsing gate again. Even now, from this distance, the vision created a queasy sense of viewing something humans were never meant to see. It was one thing to know the science that said how tenuous “reality” was, how bizarre the shape of what lay behind the physical universe, and another thing to actually see the strangeness and instability behind the curtain.

But for all that, there was still a great satisfaction in watching this gate die. It would not bring back Orion, but it would put a price on her loss that the Syndics could ill afford.

The final death throes of the hypernet gate were peaking. The size of the distortion in space shrank rapidly even as the energy levels in it grew frighteningly intense, then the last bursts of energy collided, waves canceling each other, and abruptly nothing remained but a few scattered pieces of equipment drifting through space.