Invincible

THIRTEEN

Geary glared at Rione. “Are you certain they just want to visit? They don’t want to take control of it, or take things off it?”

“I am certain, Admiral. They want to look around.”

Desjani was looking upward, pretending not to have heard. Well, this was entirely up to him. “All right. Tell them they can send some teams aboard,” Geary told Rione before tapping another control. “Admiral Lagemann, are you prepared for visitors?”

It took another half an hour before one of the spider-wolf ships slipped next to one of the air locks human engineers had installed where the Marines had blasted their way inside the bear-cow superbattleship. By then, a reception committee was waiting, including Admiral Lagemann, the senior Marine aboard the captured ship, and some of the engineers in the prize crew. Even though all of the humans were in survival suits or battle armor, and the spider-wolves were themselves encased in their own armor, the spider-wolves still offered greetings that consisted of cautious “air hugs” that avoided actual physical contact with the humans.

Looking over the human party, Geary saw one of them identified as Lieutenant Jamenson, though, of course, he couldn’t see her bright green hair under her survival-suit helmet.

He called the head engineer on Tanuki. “Captain Smythe, I thought Lieutenant Jamenson was on Orion.”

“She was, Admiral. I directed her to do an individual movement between ships so she could be part of the welcoming committee.”

“Why?”

Smythe grinned. “First of all, to see how the spider-wolves would react to a human whose physical appearance doesn’t fit the, uh, pattern that they are used to. That will only work if they go into an area where Lieutenant Jamenson can remove her helmet, of course. But it also occurred to me that Lieutenant Jamenson’s particular talents might be useful as she watched the spider-wolves in action. Perhaps she’ll see something the rest of us miss.”

“Two inspired ideas, Captain. Thank you.”

Desjani looked skeptical. “That’s the lieutenant who confuses things, right? I mean, on purpose she can confuse things.”

“Right,” Geary confirmed.

“And this helps with the spider-wolves how?”

“It’s the flip side of that which could prove useful,” Geary explained. “Lieutenant Jamenson can also spot information that is related but buried among lots of other data.”

“You mean like patterns?”

“Sort of.”

“Maybe she is a good choice, then.” Desjani settled back in her seat, touching her internal comm controls as she did so. “We have a little more than nineteen hours of travel time to the hypernet gate,” she told her crew. “Let’s get cracking on external hull work.”

The spider-wolves spent six hours aboard the captured bear-cow warship, focusing attention on areas like the control and engineering spaces while the human fleet focused their attention on what the spider-wolves were examining. Lieutenant Jamenson did get the opportunity to open her helmet at one point, but if her green hair surprised the spider-wolves as much as it did the average human, no one could tell.

Data poured in from fleet sensors examining the inhabited worlds. Grateful that he didn’t have to analyze threat activity, Geary left most of that to the civilian experts and Lieutenant Iger’s intelligence people. Occasionally, he would view areas of the planets that had come into view of the fleet’s full-spectrum sensors, seeing cities and towns that spread widely and seemed thinly occupied by human standards. The spider-wolves had plenty of population here, but they must prefer spreading out rather than concentrating into dense urban centers. Unlike in the bear-cow star system, the planets here had a wide variety of vegetation and a lot of it even within the spider-wolf cities.

Four hours after the spider-wolf team had left the captured bear-cow ship to another round of air hugs and with ten hours remaining before the human fleet reached the hypernet gate, Rione called Geary in his stateroom. “I need to brief you on a few things.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“In person.”

He sighed. Late at night. Rione in his cabin. Admiral Timbale had warned him that people would be watching for any signs of unprofessional behavior by either him or Desjani. “Madam Emissary—”

“Commander Benan can escort me.” She said it ironically, as if they were sharing a joke.

Naturally Commander Benan, her husband, wouldn’t be thrilled by this, either. “All right,” Geary said.

She showed up in only a few minutes, Commander Benan walking stiffly beside her as she entered. Once inside, he looked around, narrowed-eyed as if searching for dangers, then saluted with a rigid arm before pivoting and walking out of the stateroom to stand by the hatch as it closed.

Geary waited until the hatch had sealed before speaking. “How is he doing?”

“Better since that talk you had with him.”

“At least now we know what the root of his problem is and at least now I know how you’re being blackmailed.”

She didn’t answer for a while. “Without confirming the last part of your statement, it’s unfortunate that neither piece of information offers much in the way of immediate benefit,” Rione finally said.

“Yes. You’re right about that. But you say Commander Benan is more stable now?”

“I said he was better.” Rione walked to a chair and sat down, her gaze now on the star display. “More stable? A little. He’s still dangerous.”

“Be careful.”

“I’m always careful. Let me inform you of things I have learned from conversations with some of the spider-wolves while General Charban and the civilian experts talked with others.”

Geary sat down opposite her. “Were you talking to the one in charge? How senior in rank are the spider-wolves who have been talking to us?” The question had kept occurring to him but never when he was speaking to anyone who could answer it.

“I don’t know. We don’t know.” Rione spread her hands, palms up. “Whatever organizational structure the spider-wolves use is too complicated or too odd for us to grasp as of yet. One of those experts, that Dr. Shwartz, thinks the organizational diagram itself may resemble a web. She could be right. Whatever way they are arranged in rank, we haven’t been able to figure it out even though it seems clear enough to the spider-wolves.

“Now, there are things I have been told that you must know. I do not know how much of this should be known to others in this fleet, which is why I am briefing you in this manner.” Rione spoke briskly but matter-of-factly. “First off, the spider-wolves have informed me in a manner that cannot be misunderstood that when we encounter enigmas, they will not aid in any attack on the enigmas; nor will they help defend us against the enigmas. They will defend themselves, but they will not otherwise engage in hostilities.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Absolutely. We’re on our own when it comes to hostilities with the enigmas.”

“Has General Charban discussed with you his feelings about the spider-wolves and war?”

“Yes.” Rione shook her head. “It’s a possible explanation, but we don’t know it’s true. All I know is that they will not fight the enigmas except to save themselves.”

“At least they told us,” Geary said. “Do you think there might be a nonaggression pact between the enigmas and the spider-wolves?”

She started to reply, stopped as a thought hit her, then gave him a slight smile. “Because if there were such an agreement between the enigmas and another species, it might hold out hope that we could reach such a pact with the enigmas?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out.” Rione tapped the controls on the star display, leaning in as she did so that she was close to Geary.

Even though they didn’t touch, he felt her closeness, memories coming unbidden of times they had been together in this stateroom before he and Tanya had known their own feelings for each other.

He gave Rione no sign that he had felt that, remembered those things, and she also did not react at all, her voice remaining composed and unemotional. “We’re going to come out of the spider-wolf hypernet at this star. It has a human designation but no name. The Syndics didn’t get that far when they were pushing into that region more than a century ago. From that star we will jump a short distance to this star. Again, no name from human sources, but when the spider-wolves spoke of it, they used the same symbol as they used for the star Honor even though this is a different type of star.”

Geary looked steadily at the display as he thought. “A symbol, a label, not for the star type, but for something else? They had a defensive force at Honor, guarding against the bear-cows. Does that star serve a similar purpose against the enigmas? That symbol might mean fortress or stronghold, or something like that.”

“It might.” Rione pointed again. “From that star, we jump to this one, which the Syndics named Hua and may have reached before the enigmas knocked them back to Midway. I don’t think the Syndics got that far, though, because the spider-wolves indicated that Hua is an enigma strongpoint of some kind. They signified some danger there.”

“Hopefully not an enigma hypernet gate,” Geary said. “I don’t want to have to run that kind of gauntlet again.” His own hand went out, tracing a path on the display. “And Hua is within jump range of Pele.”

“And from Pele we get to Midway,” Rione finished.

“Thank you. That’s all very important—”

“There’s one thing more.” She held out her data pad, revealing that it was displaying the symbol used by Syndicate Worlds’ ships to identify themselves. “I showed this to the spider-wolves I was talking to. They recognized it.”

Geary stared at the symbol. “You’re sure?”

“They told me they recognized it.”

“They spider-wolves know about the Syndics? They’ve had contact with the Syndicate Worlds?”

“I don’t think so. I think the Syndics are just as oblivious to the existence of the spider-wolves as we were. But here is the thing, Admiral. I asked them what this symbol represented, and they used the symbols for ‘enemy of your people.’”

“How could they—” Geary’s stare shifted to Rione. “The border with the Alliance is a very long distance from here. There haven’t been any Alliance ships in the region of Syndic space nearest here for at least a century except for our fleet. There certainly haven’t been any battles fought anywhere near that region. How the hell could they know that we were fighting a war with the Syndics?”

“That’s a very good question, Admiral.” Rione rested her chin on one hand, looking pensive. “We have learned that the enigmas had been spying on us long before we knew the enigmas existed. Perhaps…”

“The spider-wolves have been in Alliance space?” He forced himself to consider the idea.

“The enigmas planted worms in our sensor systems that hid them from us,” Rione said. “Could the spider-wolves have done the same?”

“If they have, they’re using yet another totally different principle. We’ve scrubbed those systems using everything we could dream up and found nothing else.”

“Have you ever heard of something like a spider-wolf ship being spotted in Alliance space?”

He searched his memory, finding nothing specific. “There are always false sightings. We call them that. Sensors say there’s something there. We take another look, and maybe that next look doesn’t see anything. Or we send a ship to investigate. Sometimes it finds something that was just hard to spot.” That had been how the Alliance fleet had found him, frozen in survival sleep in a damaged escape pod, its beacon inoperative and its power levels failing, so low they barely showed up on the latest fleet sensors. If they hadn’t spotted him then, if they hadn’t recognized that this wasn’t just another piece of lifeless debris, if a destroyer hadn’t taken a good look around and found him… Geary tried to banish the memory of the ice that had once filled him. “Usually, most of the time, whatever gets sent to investigate finds nothing. That’s called a false sighting.”

“What causes them?” Rione asked.

“Every system has glitches. Gremlins. Loose electrons. The name varies, but it means that something that isn’t there shows up as being there, or something that isn’t happening shows as happening, or something sticks where nothing should be able to stick. The same sort of tick that impacts everything that uses electronics and coding. That’s why we have human overrides on all of our systems.”

She nodded. “I did a little research before coming down here. There have been examples of such ‘false sightings’ all through human history, dating back to Old Earth. Most were easily explained. The others were dismissed. But if we knew such things happened, then it would too easily explain events that might not all actually be the result of glitches or gremlins. If the spider-wolves have decent stealth technology—”

“They have excellent stealth technology.” He thought of the mines at Honor.

“Then, Admiral, we must conclude the real possibility that while humanity tended to its own issues and bemoaned a universe empty of other minds like ours, more than one set of such minds may have been snooping around to learn what they could of us.”

He dug his palms into his eyes. “But why wouldn’t the spider-wolves have contacted us? We know why the enigmas didn’t. Why not the spider-wolves?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would they have done if our colonies, our exploration, had reached their boundaries before this?”

“Perhaps just what they did with us,” Rione said. “For whatever reason, they waited for us to get to them. The reason or reasons must have made sense to them. In practice, the enigmas were along the paths that humanity was expanding through in that region, so the enigmas blocked human contact with the spider-wolves.”

Geary sat looking at the display, trying to think. “If the spider-wolves know that the Syndics are our enemies, were our enemies, why do they think that we’re so eager to get to Midway before the enigmas?”

Rione smiled again. “The spider-wolves believe that we are helping our brother-enemies against our not-brother-enemies. They appear to be extremely impressed by that.” She stood up. “I shouldn’t spend too long in here.”

“I understand.” He stood as well, but as Rione turned to go Geary spoke again. “Victoria, I’m going to help him. I know what needs to be done, and I will make sure it is done when we get back to Alliance space.”

She watched him, then slowly nodded once. “Let us hope that he lives that long.”

Rione had barely been gone for a minute before Geary’s comm panel buzzed again with a familiar pattern. “Oh, you’re still up?” Desjani asked.

“As if you didn’t know. Are you calling to find out why Emissary Rione was here?”

“Was she?”

“Yes. Briefing me on items she has learned from the spider-wolves.” Items that Desjani needed to know as well. “Since I’ve already fed the gossip-beast enough tonight, I’ll let you know about it all tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Admiral.” Desjani gave him a curious look. “Whatever it is seems to have impressed you. Is it something we have to worry about?”

“I don’t know. For tonight, let’s just say that for some time now, humanity has been congratulating itself on how much we knew about the universe. And all that time it seems the universe has been laughing at us and making faces behind our back.”

He didn’t know why he had expected the spider-wolf hypernet gate to look different from the ones humans and enigmas had constructed, but he had. And in that, Geary wasn’t disappointed. The spider-wolves had crafted the tethers in ways that evoked the webs Dr. Shwartz kept using as metaphors. To Geary, the spider-wolf hypernet gate looked not only like a great feat of engineering (just as human hypernet gates did), but also like a work of art. Nonetheless, it was still a hypernet gate.

“I don’t like hypernets,” Geary mumbled just loud enough for Desjani to hear. He didn’t want to share his feelings with everyone on the bridge.

She looked up from checking the status of Dauntless to ensure her ship was ready for the transit. “Why not?”

“It feels unnatural.”

“Compared to what? Jump space?”

He glowered at her. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Desjani replied. “Seriously. If you want to travel from one star to another, you can’t do it in less than decades without doing something weird. Personally, I think hypernet space isn’t as weird as jump space.”

He didn’t reply, feeling grumpy. Rione’s information was weighing on his mind, worries about Midway kept rising to the surface, the lack of solid information about what the enigmas had at Hua meant he had to worry about that—

“The spider-wolves want to know if we’re ready,” General Charban said.

Geary ran his eyes down the fleet status readouts. It could be better. A lot better. Too much damage, not enough time or resources for all of the repairs that needed to be done. But they were ready to go. “Yes. The fleet is ready. Will the spider-wolves give us a countdown?”

“I’m not certain,” Charban said after passing on Geary’s reply using the coordination circuit. The words had barely left his mouth when the universe twitched and the stars disappeared, leaving only darkness around Dauntless. “Correction. The answer is no, they will not provide a countdown.”

“Thank you, General.” Geary looked at the different kind of nothing that surrounded ships during hypernet transits. A bubble of nothing, Desjani had called it, in which the ships were suspended. According to physicists, they didn’t actually go anywhere, but at the other hypernet gate they would drop out into normal space a very long ways from where they had entered the gate here.

“Four days, the spider-wolves said,” Charban reminded Geary.

“We’re going a long way,” Desjani commented. “Did I tell you that the longer the trip in hypernet space, the less time it takes?”

“Yes, you did.” He remembered that moment vividly, waiting to go into the fleet conference room on Dauntless for the first time to assume command of a trapped fleet. It had been the first time he’d really met Tanya, and she had frightened him with her expressions of faith in his ability to save them all.

She had been right, but he still thought that luck had played far too large a part in that.

Maybe it was being in hyperspace, which—being nowhere—shouldn’t cause any discomfort but still did as far as Geary was concerned. Maybe it was the many unknowns he had to face. Maybe something had reminded him of past trials.

In the middle of the ship’s night he woke up, sweating heavily, his eyes on the overhead reassuring him that it was intact. The clamor of alarms, the crash of explosions, and the screams of the dying still echoed in his head, but his stateroom was quiet with the hush that came during nights, even when those nights were artificial on ships far from any planet.

Geary sat up in the dark, rubbing his face with both hands, feet on the deck to reassure him with the solidity of the ship and the countless small vibrations transmitted through Dauntless, which told him that the ship lived.

“Admiral?” Desjani’s face was on his comm screen, her hair disheveled from sleep, her eyes still focusing as she came fully awake. In hypernet space, like jump space, even a battle cruiser commander could try to get a decent night’s sleep.

He took a deep breath before answering. “What is it?”

“‘What is it?’” You called me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She frowned. “I can call up comm system records if you want. Maybe you hit the hot button to call me in your sleep, but you hit it.”

Feeling guilty, Geary looked at the controls ranked beneath the screen at his bunk. He could have accidentally hit the one that went direct to Tanya, especially since it was the closest one to where he might have flailed an arm while fighting battles in his sleep. “I’m sorry. It was just an accident.”

Instead of ringing off, she studied him. “You look like hell.”

“Thank you.”

“Nightmare?”

“Yes.”

She just waited, watching him with the patience of a cat standing sentry at a mousehole, ready to be there all the rest of the night if necessary.

“There was a battle,” Geary said. “That’s all. The usual.”

“The usual?” Tanya sighed. “You’re not the only one to get flashbacks. And I know about the nightmares about Merlon, remember? One of them woke me on our honeymoon. Was this just reliving Merlon’s last moments?”

He could have said yes, but she probably would have known he wasn’t being honest. “Partly. It was mixed in with other stuff.” She was still waiting. “I have these dreams sometimes. I’m on the bridge of Dauntless, or Merlon, and I’m in command of a fleet, and I’m not paying attention for a moment, just for a tiny moment, and all of a sudden enemies are there, right on top of us. Overwhelming numbers of them. I send orders, but they’re late, and they’re wrong, and ships get destroyed. Ships are being destroyed on all sides, and the ship I’m on is getting hit hard, and I know it’s the end because I know how that feels when a ship has lost, and it’s all my fault.”

“All right,” Tanya said. “Been there, though not the fleet commander part. Have you been getting stress therapy?”

“Yeah.” He felt a little better just from talking to her, though that had also brought back vividly the images of destruction from his nightmare. “They make it easier. They don’t make it go away.”

She laughed, low and soft and bitter. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been fighting longer than you have, sailor.”

“I was hoping the treatments had gotten better in the century of the war.”

“They’ve had plenty of guinea pigs to practice on,” Desjani said with dry and dark humor. “But, no. Humans are complicated. When something goes wrong in our heads, recalibrating is not easy or simple. The docs these days can help us keep going when by all rights we should be unable to function, but they’re human, too, not gods. Stress and trauma are two of the never-ending benefits of military life, just like bad food, too little sleep, lousy living accommodations, and long separations from our families.”

He smiled wryly. “With benefits like that, you wonder why they have to pay us, too.”

“It is a puzzlement. Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Geary said.

“Liar. What else is there?”

He ran one hand through his hair. “In the nightmare, I saw you… die. Tanya, I swear that I don’t know what I’d do if—”

“If I died?” She said it in a hard and blunt way. “If that happens, you will suck it up and keep on doing your duty and living your life.”

He stared at her. “You think it would be that easy?”

“No, but that’s not the point. Do you think I’d want a memorial that consisted of a ruined man? ‘Yeah, that’s Black Jack. He used to be a hero before she died and destroyed him.’ Oh, yes. That’s what I want everyone thinking about me when I’m gone.”

“Tanya—”

“No,” she interrupted again. “Not negotiable. If it comes to that, you will live the rest of your life. You will find happiness again, and you will continue to do the things you must do and should do. Is that clear?”

“Very clear,” Geary said. “Will you do the same?”

“What, if you die? The legendary, idolized hero of the Alliance? I’ll probably write a tell-all memoir and make more money than I can count. Don’t forget that my uncle is not only a literary agent, but he has yet to be caught doing anything unethical. Sleeping with Black Jack. How’s that for a title?”

He felt himself smiling. “Can you at least avoid calling me Black Jack while you’re making your money by selling the story of our time together?”

Tanya shook her head. “Nope. I’m sure marketing will insist on it. I can just imagine the kind of book cover they’ll insist on. Some really heroic pose by you doing something you never did, probably. Maybe in battle armor. With a gun.”

“Like that would ever happen. So if I die, you’ll just write a memoir?”

“No. I’ll probably get a cat, too.” She peered at him. “Now do you feel better?”

“Yes, Tanya, I do. Thanks. Are you going back to sleep now?”

“I’ll try.” Her expression went serious. “See the docs in the morning to find out if you need any extra therapy or stuff. This junk isn’t easy to live with.”

“I will,” Geary promised.

After his comm screen blanked, he lay down again, looking upward, wondering where he would be if he were facing all of this alone.

The unnamed spider-wolf-occupied star system at the other end of the hypernet journey wasn’t the paradise the other star system had been, but it still offered a more-than-decent collection of planets and resources as well as plenty of spider-wolf towns on the single inhabited planet. Geary and the rest of the fleet didn’t see much of that star system and what it held, though, since the jump point the six escorting spider-wolf ships headed for was barely a light-hour from the hypernet gate. His lingering worries that the spider-wolves might take them somewhere else far from the promised destination dissipated as the fleet’s sensors scanned the heavens and confirmed that the stars were in the right places for them to be where they had expected to be.

Though Rione, Charban, and the civilian experts waited expectantly for communications from the spider-wolves, nothing came from either local sources or the escorts until the fleet was almost at the jump point.

“They want to know if we’re ready,” Charban said.

“We’re ready,” Geary replied, grateful that this time he would control when his ships jumped.

After the jump, Desjani eyed the gray emptiness around them. “The next star should be easy. The one after that might have trouble.”

“And the one after that will have trouble,” Geary said.

Geary wasn’t too surprised when they arrived at what he thought of as the spider-wolf fortress star to find the same massive and stealthy mines lurking near every jump point, as well as another gorgeous formation of spider-wolf warships positioned where they could block any force coming from either of the other two jump points here. “Whatever the spider-wolves think of the enigmas, they clearly don’t trust them.”

“Look at this.” Desjani tapped the readings from the star with her forefinger, then indicated what the sensors were reporting of the four planets in this star system. “The star is showing erratic output. Something has disrupted it. And those planets have been swept hard by something more than once.”

“An erratic star could have thrown off some outbursts…” Geary studied the readings. “But that star isn’t the right type to be naturally erratic, and its rotation isn’t unusually fast.”

“Where have we seen this kind of thing before?” Desjani asked, her voice sounding chill and distant.

“Kalixa,” Geary said. “And Lakota. Though Lakota wasn’t as bad as this.”

“They’ve used those mines here.” Desjani swung her hand across her display, studying it intently. “More than once. The enigmas must have tried to push through here repeatedly.”

“I wonder what this place was like before that.”

Rione had come forward from the observation seat, staring ahead of her. “What happened here?”

“Hypernet gate–scale mines,” Desjani answered shortly, rattled enough to speak directly to Rione.

Geary nodded to reinforce her words. “The spider-wolves play for keeps when it comes to defending their space.”

Rione shuddered, closing her eyes. “How fortunate that the spider-wolves decided we were friends.”

You could almost feel the emotions on the bridge, the withdrawing within everyone from any sense of connection or trust in the spider-wolves. The Bubs. Any species that would routinely employ such weapons…

“Hold on.” General Charban had stepped forward as well, his intent gaze on the bridge displays. “What tactics would the spider-wolves use? Am I right, Admiral, that their ships here could simply withdraw toward a jump point, then leave as the mine was detonated to destroy all enemies in the star system behind them?”

Geary met Desjani’s eyes and saw the agreement there. “Yes. The spider-wolf ships are fast enough to make that tactic work against any enemy we know of.”

“Then, if we hadn’t been there at Honor,” Charban continued, “the spider-wolves could have done that. They didn’t need to fight the bear-cows. They could have gone to a jump point and waited until the bear-cows either got too far away from any other jump point to escape the blast, or the bear-cows gave up and went home. But the spider-wolves didn’t do that. They stayed and fought because we were there. They assisted us and took losses even though their own tactics wouldn’t have risked any of their ships or people.”

“You’re right.” Geary had been feeling a growing horror of the spider-wolves for using such weapons, but Charban’s idea countered that. “They chose to help us fight the bear-cows. Hell, they could have withdrawn and wiped out all of us, humans and bear-cows.”

Desjani blew out a long breath. “I am really glad I didn’t realize that at the time. Things were interesting enough as it was while we were fighting the Kicks.”

Low, harsh laughter came from Rione. “I have been worried. I have been concerned about what the Syndicate Worlds’ government might do. Would they try to launch attacks on the spider-wolves? I do not think I have to worry anymore.”

“Not about what might happen to the spider-wolves,” Geary agreed. “But we still have to worry. These defenses, and the fact that they’ve been used more than once, argue that the enigma presence at Hua is very strong.”

Desjani pointed ahead. “Our escort is heading straight for the jump point to Hua. They don’t seem to be worried.”

“Good for them.” Geary gave the orders to his fleet to follow in the wake of the six spider-wolf ships.

It took three days to cross almost the full width of the star system and reach the jump point for Hua, three days spent viewing the awful aftermath of repeated subnova bursts of energy from the spider-wolf mines. Repair and resupply work went on within and among the human warships, but with a somber determination rendered grim by the devastated star system around them. Shuttles crisscrossed through the fleet, bearing fuel cells, parts, weapons, and personnel.

“The stocks of raw materials on all of my auxiliaries are growing very low,” Captain Smythe reported. “There aren’t a lot of loose asteroids in this star system, so restocking with local resources isn’t much of an option.”

“I don’t think we would want raw materials from here in any event,” Geary said. Fleet tracking systems had identified quite a few distant asteroids that must have once orbited this star but had been blown outward by the repeated mine detonations and were now dispersing into the dark between stars. Some of those asteroids might once have been moons about the surviving planets. The smaller asteroids must have been pulverized into dust by the same explosions. “Captain Smythe, we’re getting close to Midway. We can get new supplies there. Until then, I am actually grateful that your auxiliaries are carrying a lot less mass. That will make them relatively more nimble if we face a fight at Hua or Pele or Midway.”

“No one really uses the words ‘nimble’ and ‘auxiliaries’ in the same sentence,” Smythe pointed out. “Admiral, my reports have listed the steady decline in raw materials stockpiles on the auxiliaries. I know you have been kept aware of that. However, I must insist now on pointing out how perilously low levels of raw materials have become. According to my projections, Witch will run out of critical materials before we reach the jump point for Hua. Her personnel can still make repairs using what parts they have, but they will be unable to manufacture new components or new fuel cells or weapons. By the time we reach Pele, assuming we charge right through Hua, Jinn, Alchemist, and Cyclops will also be out of critical materials, and stockpiles on Titan, Tanuki, Kupua, and Domovoi will be within days of exhaustion.”

“Captain Smythe, I appreciate the seriousness of the supply situation,” Geary said. “I do not believe that we will have any prospect of getting raw materials at Hua. The enigma presence there will make that star system too perilous for mining operations. If we weren’t heading for Midway as quickly as feasible, then I would agree to stop at Pele in order to mine asteroids for more raw materials. But speed is of the essence now. We need to get to Midway in time to prevent the enigmas from devastating that star system.”

“That’s your call, Admiral,” Captain Smythe said, his customary cheery nature markedly subdued. “I have done my duty by ensuring that you know the consequences of your decision.”

“Thank you, Captain. Your engineers have done a remarkable job. I will be having a fleet conference this afternoon and will ensure that everyone is aware of the state of your supplies.”

Geary sat, looking at nothing for a while after Captain Smythe’s image departed. Being forced to acquire raw materials from Syndic sources, to acquire anything from Syndic sources, was a bad position to be in. The only good thing about it was that the Syndic CEO he had dealt with at Midway had given the impression of being… he couldn’t say trustworthy, not when it came to a Syndic CEO. That would be ridiculous. But CEO Gwen Iceni had struck him as pragmatic enough to know how important good relations were and how important his fleet would be to the safety of her star system.

Though if the fleet got to Midway too late after the enigmas did, there might well be no Syndics at all left there to deal with.