Guardian

Ten

His head beginning to throb in time to a familiar headache, Geary rubbed one hand hard against his forehead. “There wasn’t before.”

“Not the last time the Alliance attacked this star system, no, sir.” Images appeared next to Iger. “This is new. Recent construction on the habitable world.”

Geary studied the images, seeing large barracks and warehouses arranged in a pattern that had become familiar. The new camp was located far from any of the cities on the planet, in an especially desolate region of the generally desolate planet. That also matched Syndic practice, which placed their prison and labor camps either close to a city or in the middle of nowhere. “It looks like a Syndic POW camp,” he conceded.

“We’ve also intercepted Syndic communications that indicate the camp was recently constructed as a central location for housing Alliance prisoners of war brought from smaller camps in other star systems,” Iger continued.

“They’re supposed to be turning those prisoners over to the Alliance as part of the peace agreement,” Geary said. “Why build a new camp here?”

“Admiral… perhaps the Syndics don’t intend to honor that part of the peace agreement.”

If that was so, it would be part and parcel of Syndic behavior as far as every other portion of the peace agreement was concerned. “How many POWs are here?”

“As many as twenty thousand, Admiral.”

“Twenty thousand?” Finding room on his ships for that many liberated prisoners would be extremely difficult.

“That’s the top end, Admiral, what the camp was designed to hold. The Syndic comms we’ve intercepted since arriving at Simur indicate thousands of Alliance prisoners are there, but we don’t know how many.”

Thousands. That was enough. Hundreds would be enough. Maybe even a couple would be enough. There is so much we can’t do, but we can liberate prisoners still being held after the war that justified their imprisonment is over.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Geary sat back, rubbing his eyes with both hands, after Iger’s image vanished.

Desjani’s voice came from beside him. “This really stinks.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Thousands of Alliance POWs. In a new camp. In a star system we had to come home through.”

It stank as badly as any bait could. “What’s the trap, though?” Geary asked.

“Do we want to find out?”

“Do we have any choice?” He called Rione. “Madam Emissary, we need to talk to the senior Syndic CEO in this star system about a prison camp.”

It took hours for Rione’s message to reach the habitable world where the Syndic CEO was probably located, and hours more for a reply to be received. Geary made good use of the time by heading his fleet inward toward the star and the habitable world.

The four Syndic ship groups made repeated passes at the fleet during that time, trying to provoke some response from the Alliance formation, but Geary held his fire, waiting for the Syndics to come in close enough to be attacked. They didn’t come near enough, and he didn’t let any of his ships leave formation to pursue the Syndics, so the stalemate continued. The fact that the Syndics were also being frustrated provided only a marginal sense of satisfaction.

The fleet had started out near the edges of the Simur Star System, about five light-hours from the star. The habitable world orbited about seven light-minutes from the star, so the curved trajectory that would intercept the habitable world was five point one light-hours long. Geary held the fleet’s velocity to point one light speed, which produced a travel time of fifty-one hours. Even at a speed of thirty thousand kilometers per second, the distances inside star systems took a while to cross. If the fleet had been limited to that velocity in journeying to the closest star to Simur, it would have required thirty-eight years of travel to reach Padronis at a distance of three point eight light-years.

“We have a reply,” Rione’s image said, her voice giving no clue as to the nature of the reply. “Do you want to see it?”

He was on Dauntless’s bridge, so Geary activated his privacy field, making sure it included Tanya so that she could hear and see the message as well. “Sure. Relay it to me.”

Another virtual window appeared next to the one that held Rione’s image. Geary found himself looking at a very stern-faced, elderly woman in a Syndic CEO suit. The suit, while immaculately tailored as CEO suits always were, appeared a bit worn, betraying how long it had been since the senior CEO at Simur could afford to replace her outfit.

The female CEO spoke in clipped tones, as if biting off the end of each word. “I must protest the aggressive actions of the Alliance armed forces in this star system. Only the commitment of the Syndicate Worlds to honoring the letter and spirit of the peace agreement between our two peoples restrains me from ordering an appropriate response to your fleet’s movements.”

He tried not to get angry, which would only make it harder to spot subtle clues in the words and actions of the Syndic CEO. But even through his attempts to stay calm and observant, Geary noticed that this CEO sounded slightly different, her posture not the same. She was speaking, he realized, not just to him but to some other audience.

“The mobile forces whose actions you protest are not under my control,” the Syndic CEO continued. Somehow, those words held an uncharacteristic ring of truth. Had there been a tiny extra emphasis on the word “my”?

“I can do nothing to stop them, I have not ordered them to harass you, they are not Syndicate Worlds’ mobile forces, and therefore I regard this as a matter between you and whoever commands those mobile forces.”

The CEO gestured impatiently, one hand flinging outward in a practiced move that must have terrified her subordinates for decades. “As to the prison camp, I am aware of the obligations incurred by the Syndicate Worlds under the peace agreement. I am nonetheless extremely unhappy to have you demanding the release of those prisoners instead of offering to discuss the issue. You have doubtless seen that we have inadequate defenses in this star system, so I cannot resist your demand to yield the prisoners of war to you. However, neither will I cooperate. Bring your fleet here, use your own means to lift the prisoners to it, then depart, the sooner the better. I will be just as glad not to have six thousand additional mouths to worry about feeding.

“For the people, Gawzi, out.”

As was usually the case with senior Syndics, the phrase “for the people” was uttered like a single, rushed word, lacking any meaning or feeling. Geary had almost stopped noticing that, until hearing the phrase recited with enthusiasm at Midway had reminded him that it could mean something.

Rione was waiting for his comments, looking mildly impatient. “What do you think of that message?” Geary asked. “That CEO sounded a little different to me.”

“That’s because someone is holding a gun to her head,” Rione replied.

“In what sense?”

“In a literal sense. There’s someone near her, but outside the transmission image, who is threatening her. It’s obvious.”

There were times when Rione’s ability to recognize situations could be disturbing. He couldn’t help wondering where she had gained experience in this particular situation. “Those internal-security people?”

She nodded judiciously. “Most likely. The ones the Syndic citizens call snakes. We can safely assume that they are running this star system right now. Not simply pulling strings from behind a curtain but overtly forcing actions.”

“If that’s so,” Geary said, “the internal security here is forcing the CEO to invite us to come get prisoners out of that camp.”

Rione nodded again. “It wasn’t a very nice invitation, but the way she formed it as a challenge to us was interesting. And she sent confirmation that Alliance prisoners are indeed there. Six thousand of them.”

“They want us there.”

“Indeed. But from what I understand, her statement that she lacks the means to resist us is accurate. The prisoners had better be very carefully screened for pathogens, nanoparticles, or any other form of human-transported sabotage.”

“Thank you.” Geary drummed his fingers on the arm of his seat for a few seconds, frowning, then glanced at Desjani.

She shrugged. “That’s as good a guess as any. They can’t do anything else, so they’ll try to sneak some kind of plague aboard our ships.”

“Isn’t that too obvious?”

“They’ve got four groups of obviously Syndic warships attacking us. and they’re claiming they can’t control them because they’re not really Syndic warships,” Desjani pointed out. “Obviousness doesn’t seem to worry them.”

“Yeah.” He hit another control. “Lieutenant Iger. Do we have anything new?”

“No new threats identified, Admiral.” Iger smiled slightly. “There are a few messages we’ve intercepted that indicate the locals are not happy about what the Syndic authorities are doing. This one from an orbiting mining facility near the gas giant is typical.”

Another image, this of a middle-aged man in a shabby executive suit. “They’re leaving us wide open for retaliatory bombardments! We received no warning, no opportunity to evacuate, and we don’t have enough lift capacity here to get everyone out! Am I just supposed to abandon half of my workers and their families? We don’t even have any defenses since they were never rebuilt after the last Alliance attack! Can’t someone stop those Syndicate mobile forces from provoking the Alliance?”

Geary didn’t feel like smiling. He knew why Iger did, and why Desjani probably would have grinned at the Syndic manager’s distress. Serves them right, those who had endured a lifetime of war would think. They started it, they bombarded us countless times, they killed countless numbers of our people, and now they deserve to sweat as they wonder when our rocks will come down like vengeful hammers from the sky.

But he didn’t feel that way. As much as I wanted to get back at the Syndics at Sobek, they had been cooperating with the attacks on us. Or their leaders had been doing that, anyway. But these people are helpless. That Syndic manager is worried about the people who work for him. He and they are just pawns in whatever the Syndic government is doing. Even the Syndic CEO here is being coerced into something.

“All right,” Geary said. “Is that all?”

“There are other messages like that,” Iger offered. “Otherwise, just the usual welter of fragmentary information. We can break out portions of coded messages and pick up open conversations where individuals talk about classified matters, but none of that adds up to any threat that we can identify.”

“Master Chief Gioninni hasn’t come up with anything else,” Desjani noted. “I was going to give him access to the intel summaries, but it turned out he’d already read them.”

“What was that?” Lieutenant Iger asked, alarmed. “The access list for Dauntless doesn’t include Master Chief Gioninni.”

“Isn’t that odd? Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant.”

“Maybe what we need isn’t just a scheming mind,” Geary said, before an aghast Iger could ask more questions about Gioninni. “Maybe what we need is someone who can spot—” Someone who can spot patterns in a mess of data. Someone who can see things concealed in a confusing welter of detail.

And we’ve got that someone.

“Lieutenant Iger, you are to transmit to Tanuki all intelligence collected within this star system since our arrival. Mark it eyes only for Lieutenant Elysia Jamenson.”

Iger, appalled this time, stared back at Geary. “All intelligence? Admiral, who is this Lieutenant Jamenson?”

“An engineer.”

“An engine—” Iger caught himself and spoke with forced control. “Sir, the classification on some of this material—”

“I am aware of the classification and security concerns. On my authority as fleet commander, I am authorizing Lieutenant Jamenson access to any necessary level of data effective immediately. Make sure she sees everything you’ve collected here. Send to Tanuki any necessary read-in documents and security agreements she has to sign. Get this done quickly, Lieutenant Iger.”

“Quickly. Yes, sir.” Despite his words, Iger hesitated. “Admiral, I feel obligated to advise you that this action may result in serious ramifications when we return to Alliance space. Even though you have authority to do this, there may be strong questions raised as to the appropriateness of your decision.”

“I’ll assume that responsibility,” Geary said. “And, for the record, I want it to be clear that you properly advised me regarding your misgivings and that I acknowledged them. This is my decision.”

“Yes, sir. We will get the information package together and have it sent to Tanuki as soon as possible.”

“Make it quick,” Geary emphasized again.

Desjani was giving him a fish eye, but he ignored that for the moment as Iger’s image disappeared, instead calling Tanuki. “Captain Smythe, I need Lieutenant Jamenson. Don’t worry. It’s a temporary assignment, on my word of honor. There will be a package of intel information coming to Tanuki soon, eyes only for Lieutenant Jamenson. I want her to go over it and tell me what she sees.”

Smythe’s expression had shifted through worry to puzzlement and now surprise. “Intelligence material? Lieutenant Jamenson is very good at what she does, Admiral, but that is not something she has experience with.”

“I’m aware of that. But we’re dealing with new tactics by the enemy, and I want to see what a new perspective might spot among the information we have.”

“Very well, Admiral.” Smythe had a calculating look in his eyes. Geary could guess what he was thinking. Is Jamenson even more valuable than I thought?

“Thank you, Captain Smythe. I have every confidence that I can count on you,” Geary said, emphasizing every word.

Smythe jerked as if the phrase had stung him, then smiled. “Of course, Admiral.”

Geary ended the call, then looked at Desjani, who was giving him a flat look. “Lieutenant Jamenson?” she asked. “The one with the green hair?”

“You remember her?”

“She’s hard to forget. What’s the idea?”

“Exactly what I said,” Geary explained. “Maybe she will see something going on in this star system that the Syndics have tried to hide.”

Desjani considered that, then nodded judiciously. “If the Syndics can get something past Gioninni and Jamenson, we might as well throw in the towel.”

Geary took his time preparing for the recovery of the prisoners. He brought the fleet, still in the Armadillo, over the inhabited planet at a slant angle from the prison camp, letting his ship’s sensors scan the entire area while the Marines launched surveillance drones to drop down and check out the camp from low level and at ground level.

Carabali briefed him personally, her image standing in his stateroom before a series of close-ups of the prison camp.

General Carabali pointed to the images near her. “We couldn’t find anything with the remote-surveillance equipment. Nothing is there that shouldn’t be there, as far as we can tell. But remote surveillance can’t be exhaustive. There are too many ways to block signals and signatures, ways often configured to match weaknesses or limitations in remote-surveillance equipment. That’s especially true in a camp that was newly constructed. One of the things we look for is new features. New concrete slabs, newly turned soil, new patches on walls, new underground cisterns and other storage areas, things like that. But the entire camp is new, so that offers us no clues. We know the camp isn’t surface mined because we’ve seen people walk around freely, and command-detonated or -controlled mines could be spotted by the gear we had to check out the camp. Still, the Syndics are very good at booby traps. To be certain that there wasn’t anything hidden, we would need to put a few hundred engineers down there and give them a couple of weeks to probe, dig, and examine with the best gear we’ve got.”

The old headache was back. “But the surveillance confirmed the presence of Alliance prisoners of war,” Geary noted. He could see them in the images, some of them clearly enough that expressions could be identified, clearly enough that friends and relatives could easily know them. The expressions of the Alliance prisoners reflected wariness, hopefulness, disbelief, and other emotions. Very likely, the Syndics had not told them that the war was over. They did not know what star system they were in, and they had never expected rescue.

“Yes, sir,” Carabali agreed. “Roughly six thousand. We talked to some of them through the surveillance gear. They were hauled out of prison camps in other star systems without any notice and dumped here within the last few weeks.”

“What else?”

Carabali gestured to the images again, her expression dissatisfied. “There’s been a lot of activity outside the camp-construction area. The ground shows signs of a lot of activity for a radius of about seventy kilometers around the camp, but, again, our sensor sweeps found nothing of concern. There’s a dense web of paved and unpaved access roads crisscrossing that area, most showing heavy use from what must have been construction equipment and loads intended for the prison camp. We’d have to go in and dig extensively to see if there was anything under those roads or elsewhere.”

“Seventy kilometers?” Geary asked. “Outside the camp?”

“Yes, sir. It doesn’t correlate to any kind of threat I know of, and my engineers say when a project is being rushed, they tear up everything around it instead of being careful with grass and trees and stuff.” Carabali sounded as if she herself wasn’t too sympathetic regarding the fate of “grass and trees and stuff” if important work needed to be done fast.

How could something seventy kilometers outside the camp threaten a recovery operation? If the Syndics wanted to nuke the recovery force, they just needed bombs within the camp. “What’s your gut feeling, General?”

Carabali paused, looking at the images. “I don’t know of any reason not to go in,” she finally said.

“That’s not exactly a strong endorsement of that course of action,” Geary observed.

“It’s not my call, Admiral.” Carabali frowned. “I’m dodging the question. If the decision were mine, I’d go in. I can’t offer any reasons not to go in except for a total lack of trust in what the Syndics might do.”

Geary snorted a derisive laugh. “Anyone who did trust the Syndics at this point would be crazy. What about buried nukes?”

“If they’re there, those nukes are buried deep and heavily shielded.”

The plan called for eighty shuttles, almost every one available, which would each have to make two trips to get all of the prisoners up to the fleet. “What’s the absolute minimum number of personnel I can send down to do the job?”

Carabali considered the question. “Zero personnel. Send the shuttles on full auto, programmed to land, pick up the prisoners, and return. But that runs the risk of the Syndics subverting the systems on the shuttles since they’ll have physical access to them. Worst case, they could load them with nukes instead of prisoners and the shuttles would tell us everything was fine until they docked in our ships and went off. Not so worse but still bad, discipline could break down, the prisoners could stampede for the shuttles, killing any number of their own as they all tried to cram on board, and possibly disabling some of the shuttles. Even in the best case, where the Syndics didn’t try anything, any major system failures on any of the shuttles could result in loss of the bird and any prisoners it might have picked up.”

“How many Marines are required to avoid that?”

“Enough to operate and conduct emergency repairs on the birds if needed, and enough to provide security if the Syndics try to board a shuttle or if crowd control of the prisoners is needed. Shuttle pilot. Copilot. Flight mechanic. A fire team of three Marines for security. Six per shuttle. That is the minimum I would recommend, Admiral.”

Six per shuttle. Eighty shuttles. Four hundred and eighty Marines. Geary studied the images for several seconds, thinking. “All right. I think we have to try this. Those six thousand prisoners are counting on us. Put your plan together. I’ll have the fleet in position to provide fire support if needed and to provide cover if any of the Syndic warships pretending not to be Syndic warships try to attack the shuttles.”

From orbit, worlds displayed different personalities. The ancient standards were living planets like Old Earth, blue and white, with patches of different colors on the landmasses. Geary had heard of the Red Planet near Old Earth, and had himself seen countless planets that revealed different personalities ranging from the multicolored clouds of gas giants to the bare rock of small, hot worlds.

The habitable world in Simur Star System seemed to have been painted by an artist who had nothing but shades of brown. Even the small seas looked like muddy expanses of rust. The stretch of sand dunes at the hot northern pole were a lighter terra-cotta shade. Near the equator, some patches of green could be seen, where farms clung to the planet’s narrow temperate zone. The few cities, barely large enough not to be classified as towns, were also near the temperate zone. The prison camp was located halfway down toward the south pole, the construction scars around it a multishaded tan/khaki/beige patch in the middle of a vast, empty plain. At the cold southern pole, the land was a murky chocolate color, like thick mud, interspersed with streaks of dirty ice that was so dark as to be nearly black.

“What a hole,” Desjani muttered, putting into words what nearly everyone in the fleet must have been thinking.

“Let’s get this done and get out of here,” Geary agreed. “General Carabali, begin the operation. All units in the First Fleet, be prepared to engage any warships that threaten the shuttles or the prison camp.” At least with the fleet in this tight a formation, communication delays were too tiny to be noticeable.

The four groups of Syndic ships were all less than a light-minute distant, close enough to be worrisome but not close enough to justify postponing the recovery. The guards at the prison camp had fled in the few available vehicles, leaving the prisoners no longer watched over but still effectively imprisoned by the wasteland surrounding the camp.

The planet scrolled by beneath the fleet as the shuttles launched, coming down toward the camp in waves.

Geary, his nerves keyed up to highest alert, watched his display, waiting for something unexpected to happen, for some threat to materialize. The first wave of shuttles were penetrating the atmosphere of the planet, the site of the prison camp becoming visible on the planet as the orbiting fleet approached it from high above.

The high-priority signal that blared at Geary came from an unexpected source. Why would Tanuki be calling—?

Geary hit accept, his worries multiplying rapidly.

Instead of Captain Smythe, he saw Lieutenant Jamenson, her green hair contrasting vividly with a face gone pale. “Admiral! You have to call off this operation! They’ve got the mother of all traps down there!”

Jamenson didn’t wait for a reply, but kept talking, the words spilling out of her so fast that Geary could barely understand them. “I just put it all together. I’m sorry… I… there are two engineering units identified in the Syndic comms. They were in this star system recently, and I know those unit designators. They’re both the equivalent of what the Alliance calls planet-breakers, engineers who use large and superlarge munitions for certain specialized tasks. Two of those units, Admiral. And the only major new construction in this star system is that camp.

“There was lots of large excavation gear here, and a very large amount of drilling equipment. I recognized the Syndic equipment codes. They dug some big holes and did a lot of drilling very recently.

“And there are some strange materials identified in cargo manifests or off-loading documents or transportation requests or gossip between individuals. Individually, those materials have a few uses, but together they are very reminiscent of an Alliance research project five decades ago. The code name… never mind the code name… the nickname for the project was Continental Shotgun. Bury a lot of very powerful nuclear munitions and use their energy when they explode to pump a huge field of single-use particle beam tubes. The research project aimed to turn a section of a planet about a hundred kilometers square into a one-time-only dense field of particle beams that could annihilate an invasion fleet when it passed above that region of the planet.”

Jamenson gasped a deep breath before she could continue speaking. “But it was abandoned because the weapon effectively destroyed the planet it was supposed to defend. The seismic impact of that many explosions that massive, the amount of material hurled into the atmosphere, the huge amount of nuclear contamination, it all combined to inflict massive damage and render a planet almost uninhabitable. That, and the target had to pass over the weapon, which was hard to guarantee.

“And there are several indications that senior security-force commanders have left the planet within the last few days. They and their families. Supposedly some expensive off-site gathering at what passes for a luxury resort on the largest moon of the habitable world, a moon that never orbits near the segment of land centered on that new camp.”

Geary wondered just how pale he looked. Iger had passed on the reports of the senior personnel leaving the planet, but that was common enough behavior for high-ranking Syndics when danger threatened and hadn’t aroused special alarm. The four small groups of Syndic warships, he now realized, were not positioned anywhere near a line drawn upward from the center of the prison-camp location. The hit-and-run attacks by those Syndic warships and their near presence had kept Geary’s ships in a tight defensive formation, and the tight Alliance formation would form a perfect target for a dense, wide field of particle beams as it swung above the prison camp to provide protection and orbital-firepower support as the Marine shuttles landed.

Landed on the center of a region rigged with massive nuclear munitions.

He was barely aware of his hand hitting the emergency comm overrides. “All units, this is Admiral Geary. Immediate execute, abort the landing operation. I say again, abort the landing operation. All shuttles are to return and be recovered as fast as possible.”

Can I alter course before the shuttles get back? How long do I have? I can see that damned camp. Will the Syndics trigger that continental shotgun if they see us aborting the landing so they can get as many shuttles as possible, or will they wait and see if we’ll come back?

They need to think we’ll come back.

“Emissary Rione, immediately contact the Syndic authorities and tell them we have to postpone the landing and recovery operation because of… contamination issues. We think there might be an unknown disease among the prisoners and need to recheck the test results before conducting the landing.”

Rione watched him, obviously surprised by Geary’s anxiety and frantic words. “Immediately? I’ll send the message now and ensure they receive it. How serious is this?”

“About as serious as it gets, but don’t let them see that you’re worried. Make it seem like a bureaucratic holdup.”

“I’m a good liar,” Rione said. “Consider it done.”

“Tanya, how hard would it be to… double the size of this formation? Increase the distances between ships by that factor?”

Desjani had already been focused on him, not having heard what Lieutenant Jamenson said but well aware that something had badly rattled Geary. Now she didn’t hesitate. “Not hard at all,” she said, her hands already flying across her display. “Done. I can transmit the modified formation whenever you ask for it. Let me know what’s going on when you can.”

“We underestimated them,” Geary said, his eyes on his display. The shuttles were turning around and coming back, some of them having already entered atmosphere and having to climb out. Another urgent message came in, this one from Carabali.

“What’s going on, Admiral?” the Marine general asked. “Why did we abort the landing?”

“I’ll give you the details when I can. Just get those damned shuttles recovered as fast as you possibly can.”

Rione was back. “CEO Gawzi has been informed. She wants to know how soon we will carry out the recovery operation.”

He checked the orbital data. If the fleet held its current path, it would swing over the prison camp region again in… “One and a half hours. Tell her one and a half hours, then we’ll conduct the recovery. Make sure she feels confident we’ll go through with it.”

Victoria Rione also knew when not to ask questions but just do as he asked. “Yes, Admiral.”

What else could he do? “We have to look like everything is routine except for aborting the landing operation,” Geary said out loud. “Until we get the shuttles on board. Are there any orbital changes I can make that won’t mess up the shuttle recovery but will alter our track over the planet?”

“What are we trying to avoid?” Desjani asked.

“A region about seventy kilometers across centered on the prison camp.”

“Seriously? Swing our orbit a couple of degrees toward the planetary equator. That will actually assist recovery of the shuttles and allow us to skim the edge of that region you’re worried about.”

Geary gave the order, then sat staring at his display, watching the shuttles approach, the closest wave nearly back among the fleet.

“Admiral?” Desjani prompted.

“Admiral!” Rione said, as her image reappeared. “That Syndic CEO is more nervous than she’s been before. Very nervous. But she said they would expect us to conduct the recovery in one and a half standard hours. If I know why I’m lying, I can do a better job for you,” she added pointedly.

It would take half an hour, a very long half an hour, to get the shuttles recovered. Geary keyed in Carabali and Rione, then spoke so Desjani could also hear as he described what Lieutenant Jamenson had found.

“The entire landing force would be wiped out,” Carabali said grimly, “and every prisoner down there would be blown to atoms as well.”

“We’d take a lot of damage,” Desjani said. “It’s hard to say how many hits they’d score, but with our ships in this tight a formation encountering a dense field of powerful particle beams, we’d very likely lose dozens. Not to mention damage to ships that weren’t a total loss.”

“And they would blame us,” Rione said. “Count on it. The Syndic rulers on Prime would announce that we had bombarded that planet, causing all of that damage. No wonder CEO Gawzi looks so nervous. Her planet is about to be shaked and baked, and most of the remaining population killed.”

“An expendable planet in an expendable star system,” General Carabali agreed. “It’s logical enough if you’re cold-blooded enough. When will we be clear of this threat?”

“When we get the shuttles aboard and take a course away from the planet,” Geary said.

“What about the prisoners in the camp?” Rione asked.

“If Lieutenant Jamenson is right, the only way to keep those prisoners alive is to stay away from the trap. We either get the Syndics to lift them out to us, or we leave them.” The words had no sooner left his mouth than Geary felt bitterness fill him. Leave them. Leave Alliance military personnel taken as prisoners, who might have been held by the Syndics for several decades, who knew Alliance ships were here because of the Marine surveillance drones, who might have seen some of the Alliance shuttles high above them turn about and head back for space. “We’ll do everything we can to get them out of there.”

It sounded weak. It sounded bureaucratic.

I’m getting too good at saying bureaucratic things.

“Ten minutes to complete recovery of all shuttles,” Lieutenant Yuon reported.

“Admiral,” Rione said, “CEO Gawzi is on the planet. Do we know where other senior Syndic personnel are?”

“We know the senior internal-security officials have gone off planet.”

“Do you remember Lakota? Where a Syndic flotilla was ordered to destroy a hypernet gate at close range?”

“And not warned about what would happen,” Geary said. “Yes. I saw a former Syndic officer at Midway saying no one was warned by the Syndic leaders.”

Rione nodded, smiling unpleasantly. “You can be certain that the junior Syndic internal-security personnel holding guns on the CEO and other important officials on the planet, and the people who will trigger the weapon because that is too important to risk a malfunction in an automated system, have not been told what use of that weapon will do to the planet they are on. Perhaps we should tell them.”

“But the CEO knows?” Carabali asked. “Why wouldn’t she tell them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she knows it will be bad but doesn’t know how very bad it will be. Maybe she has had a mental block implanted to keep her from talking.”

“Barbarians,” Carabali spat.

Rione slid her eyes toward Geary, but instead of pursuing that dangerous subject, her next words referred back to her earlier statement. “Shall I work on an announcement to the people of the Simur Star System?”

“Yes,” Geary said. “But don’t send anything until I clear it.”

“What about the expanded formation?” Desjani asked.

“Let’s hold off on that. We’re about to get far away from where that Syndic continental shotgun is aimed, then our main threat will still be those four groups of ships. The Dancers are staying tucked in close to Invincible, thanks be to our ancestors, and if we’re lucky, they’ll remain there.”

Seven minutes later, the last shuttle had been docked. Geary took his fleet out of its close-in orbit, aiming for another orbit out past the moons that kept the Alliance warships far from the region of space above the prison camp. The Dancers maintained their positions near Invincible, for once offering no extra complications for Geary to deal with.

“What are we going to do?” Desjani muttered. “The Syndics in this star system can’t revolt, not with all of those Syndic warships free to bombard them. We can’t go anywhere near that prison camp. The Syndic warships can’t hurt us as long as we stay in this formation, but as long as we stay in this formation, we can’t hurt them.”

“Stalemate,” Geary agreed. “Even worse than before. I don’t know, Tanya. The Syndic CEOs are playing a game as ugly as it gets. How do we counter that? How do we get those prisoners out of there when they’re sitting on top of a huge weapon?”

She started to shake her head, then straightened, eyes intent. “What fires the weapon? If we can break the trigger, we can get the prisoners out.”

He felt the first sense of hope in a while. “That’s an idea worth checking out.” It was time to call Lieutenant Jamenson again.

“But, first,” Desjani suggested, “you might tell the rest of the fleet’s commanding officers what’s going on.”

The small conference room didn’t require the software to make it appear larger for this meeting. Besides Geary, Desjani, Rione, and Lieutenant Iger, who were physically present, the other attendees were limited to the virtual presences of Captain Smythe, Lieutenant Jamenson, General Carabali, and a Commander Hopper, whom Smythe introduced as “a wizard, or a sorceress, at anything to do with comm linkages, coding, and remote signals.” Whether that was true or not, Hopper, lean and middle-aged, radiated a reassuring aura of competence from where she sat.

“Have you found anything else?” Geary asked Lieutenant Jamenson.

Jamenson shook her head, her eyes slightly glazed from tension and work, her green hair still vivid against skin still pale. “No, sir. Was I right, sir?”

“We all think so. Captain Smythe?”

Smythe smiled crookedly. “I wouldn’t have seen it. I’d never heard of the Continental Shotgun. But I’ve reviewed Lieutenant Jamenson’s findings, and I agree with them.”

Lieutenant Iger nodded unhappily. An engineer had discovered a major threat that Iger’s office was supposed to have spotted. But, to his credit, Iger hadn’t tried to discredit Jamenson’s conclusions. “Nothing about that program was in the intel files, but from what the engineers have provided us, it all fits, Admiral. Either the Syndics learned about the Alliance’s experiments with the concept or they came up with it independently.”

“You think the Syndics could have thought of that by themselves?” Rione asked.

“Oh, yes,” Smythe said. “In engineering terms, it’s a really cool concept. The BFG to beat all BFGs. I’d love to build one and set it off just to see the fireworks. But, uh, you’d need a spare planet. That is, a planet you weren’t planning on using for anything else.”

Rione raised one eyebrow at Smythe. “My reading of the Syndic CEO also fits our conclusions. From the beginning, she seemed oddly encouraging in our desire to recover the prisoners at the camp, and has been just as oddly nervous when we halted our recovery, repeatedly asking what the delay is and making vague warnings about what might happen if we don’t recover the prisoners soon.”

“They want us back there,” Iger agreed.

“What do we know about the trigger for the weapon?” Geary asked. “There’s no way to strike at the weapon itself without killing the prisoners.”

Smythe spread his hands, looking to either side at Jamenson and Hopper, then to Iger. “The few records we have available on that concept don’t specify design features like that.”

Hopper made a face. “The trigger is the weak point,” she said. “You cannot afford to have something like that go off by accident. Or not go off when you want it to. The trigger has to be extremely reliable and extremely secure.”

“Landline?” Smythe said.

“Armored landlines,” Hopper agreed. “Buried. Redundant.”

“Wouldn’t there be one place from which the fire command was sent?” Jamenson suggested.

This time Hopper nodded. “A single location. Multiple locations would drastically increase the risk of a stray signal or of someone’s tapping into the extra cables required. Most of all, a single location can remain firmly under control. That trigger has to be accessible only by the highest authority. It really is a doomsday weapon.”

“What are the odds we can locate and cut or subvert the comm cables?” Carabali asked her.

“Astronomical,” Hopper replied. “These wouldn’t be standard cables. They’d not only be heavily armored and shielded against radiation, but also coated with multiple layers of intrusion-detection material and surrounded by other intrusion-detection sensors. I am certain that you couldn’t even get a nanoprobe near one of those cables without setting off alarms.”

“That leaves the trigger,” Carabali said.

“Yes. If you get to the trigger, you can either set off the weapon prematurely or keep anyone else from setting it off. But you have to find the trigger, then you have to get to it. It’s going to be the most securely guarded spot on the planet.”

“Can we get an attack force down to the surface undetected?” Geary asked.

“Yes, Admiral,” Carabali said. “The Syndics left most of the defenses in this star system unrepaired, so we wouldn’t suspect what defensive work they had done. Their orbital and atmospheric sensors are few and obsolete. Normally, I wouldn’t want to drop scouts in stealth armor through atmosphere onto a heavily guarded area, but under these circumstances, they should be able to reach the target undetected.”

“But where do we land those scouts?” Desjani wondered.

Lieutenant Jamenson looked surprised at the question. “At the most heavily guarded spot on the planet, of course.”

Iger grinned at Jamenson, his earlier gloom replaced by enthusiasm and perhaps something else as he looked at the green-haired lieutenant. “And we already know where that spot is.” Iger worked his controls rapidly, until sharp images appeared above the table. “Not new construction, but recently modified, and close to the main command and control facility on the planet, which is also close to the main Syndic administrative offices. See where the paving is widely cracked along this route leading toward the site? They brought in heavy materials. And these signal signatures indicate an extensive localized sensor net using state-of-the-art Syndic equipment.”

Carabali nodded, her eyes studying the images. “New defensive bunkers, too. Automated, from the looks of them, but there are at least three occupied sentry posts. Layered defenses, heavily camouflaged. How did you get these images?”

Iger swelled with pride but kept his tone of voice matter-of-fact. “We identified the Syndic headquarters and sent down stealthed drones for close-in collection when we first approached the planet. That’s standard procedure. We had planned to recover the drones during the prisoner pickup, but when that was stopped, and the drones were stuck down there, we took advantage of the extra time to conduct more in-depth surveillance.”

“Well done,” Carabali said. “Where are the drones now? Still active?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Iger was clearly trying very hard not to smile widely. Praise from operational commanders for fleet intel did not come all that often. “The drones are flying random, low-observable patterns, conserving power.”

“The Syndics haven’t spotted the uplinks from the drones?” Geary asked.

“No, sir,” Iger replied confidently. “If they had a decent satellite net about the planet, they would have a good chance of picking something up even though we’re using highly directional burst transmissions. But the sat net is old, with a lot of holes in it.”

Desjani tapped one finger on the table, looking dissatisfied. “Isn’t it a bit obvious? Why didn’t they fix the cracks where the heavy stuff was brought in?”

Smythe smiled indulgently. “Not in the task order, most likely. Someone would have had to anticipate the pavement there would crack and write in that the cracks needed to be repaired in ways that weren’t easily detected as new work. Someone probably did spot the need for that after the pavement was cracked, but fixing that would require a task order modification, which would need approval from all the right authorities up the chain of command, and—”

“They’ll probably get approval to fix the cracks in another couple of years or so,” Geary said.

“At best,” Smythe agreed. “If it gets approved at all. Most of this work we’re seeing is pretty good. A few sloppy places, but they must have been terribly rushed. Those sloppy places are what keyed Lieutenant Iger’s drones to focus on particular spots. I keep telling you, Admiral, that it is always a good idea to give engineers enough time to do a job right.”

“When I have the luxury of having enough time,” Geary said dryly, “I’ll give you enough time as well. Can we do this with a reasonable chance of success? How many Marines can you send down, General?”

“Same as before,” Carabali said. “Thirty. That’s how much stealth armor we have. Can thirty do the job? Looking at these images, I think so, but I’ll have a talk with my most experienced force-recon officers and senior enlisted and see what they say.”

Desjani made a face. “We’ll have to coordinate the drops of the Marines and the movements of our ships and shuttles so that everything happens within an extremely precise timeline. I don’t like timelines that require that kind of precision, that don’t have room for the unexpected, but I guess we don’t have any choice. How do we get those Marines out after we’ve pulled up the prisoners?”

“I think our battleships can handle that,” Geary said. “General, consult with your experts, give me a firm go/no-go, then get me a plan. Emissary Rione, please contact the Syndic CEO again, tell her the military bureaucracy and regulations are still holding things up but we’re planning on heading back in soon to get the prisoner recovery done. Lieutenant Iger, have your drones keep a close eye on that area and collect any more information they can without compromising their presence. Ensure that Lieutenant Jamenson is kept apprised of new information. Lieutenant Jamenson, keep doing what you’ve been doing. Commander Hopper, anything you can tell the Marines about the likely configuration of the Syndic trigger will be a great help. Contact General Carabali directly but keep Captain Smythe in the loop.”

Commander Hopper sighed, her eyes reflecting fatalistic acceptance. “I need to go along with the Marines when they drop.”

“What?” Geary, Smythe, and Carabali all said the same word at the same time.

“There are too many uncertainties about the trigger, and comms may be interrupted when the Syndics realize what we’re doing. You need someone there to look at that trigger and figure out what to do with it.”

“My scouts—” Carabali began.

“If they do the wrong thing, we lose six thousand prisoners,” Hopper said. “This trigger is going to be unique. It may have been designed to thwart the usual disabling techniques. The training and experience of your scouts won’t be sufficient to deal with it.”

“Can you do a stealth landing?” Smythe asked. “Keeping up with the Marines?”

“I’ll have to.”

Carabali eyed Hopper, nodding. “Let’s see whether you can. I’ll need you on Mistral as soon as possible, so we can see how you do in the simulators.”

“She’s even tougher than she looks,” Smythe offered.

“Let me know how it goes,” Geary ordered. “Let’s get to work.”

After the images of the others vanished, Lieutenant Iger lingered. “Admiral, about Lieutenant Jamenson…”

“Are you still concerned about her access to intel materiel?” Geary asked.

“No, sir! Absolutely not. She would be—she is—a tremendous asset. If she could be transferred to the intelligence office aboard Dauntless, I am certain that we would, uh, work very well together.”

“I see.” Unseen by Iger but visible to Geary, both Desjani and Rione grinned, though as soon as each realized the other was smiling both changed their expressions. “Don’t you think Lieutenant Jamenson’s hair would be distracting?”

“Distracting?” Iger asked. “I, uh, didn’t… really… notice… That is, no, sir.”

Geary nodded solemnly, grateful that a career of dealing with sailors had taught him how to keep a straight face in situations like this. “I will consider your recommendation, Lieutenant. However, I did make Captain Smythe a firm promise that I wouldn’t poach Lieutenant Jamenson from his staff, and she is carrying out some extremely important tasks for me aboard Tanuki.”

“Oh. I see, Admiral. I wouldn’t—”

“But I didn’t promise Captain Smythe that you wouldn’t offer her a different position. Feel free to speak to her about it.”

“Yes, sir!” Iger saluted hastily and rushed from the compartment, pausing only to hold the hatch as Rione followed.

Desjani waited until the hatch closed before she laughed. “A tremendous asset?”

“She would be,” Geary said.

“And I’m absolutely sure that’s all that Lieutenant Iger is thinking about.” Her smile faded again. “This op is going to be a bitch to carry off successfully.”

“I know.”