Jack Campbell - Imperfect Sword

“You start to get used to it after a while,” Drakon said. “Just to be all formal and everything, are you submitting yourself and the soldiers under your command to my authority?”

Gozen took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“We’re still sorting out things inside the base. I want you to get in touch with Colonel Malin in about half an hour. Here’s his comm ID. Let him know what sort of support you need. Shelter, rations, that sort of thing. If you can tell us where other nearby stockpiles of such materiel can be found, it will help. How are you fixed for medical?”

“We can use any medical help you can provide, General,” Gozen said.

“We’ll get that moving.”

“Thank you.” Gozen’s control finally cracked a little, but she straightened and nodded to him again. “It’s been a long day, and I’ve got a lot yet to do.”

“No rush. We’re not going anywhere until our warships round up any of the freighters that brought us here that didn’t get destroyed.”

Gozen looked surprised. “You’re not going to take the troop transports?”

He tried not to look surprised in turn. “What troop transports? The ones that brought you here? Those are gone.”

“No. They’re not. I told you we got dropped here just a short time before you showed up. Troop transports aren’t the slugs that freighters are, but they weren’t fast enough to clear the star system before we were told you might show up. If you had seen them, it would have ruined the trap. Plus the CEO wanted them close. They were told to park themselves with the star between them and any of your ships until they got a recall.”

“The star?” Drakon said.

“Yeah. You know, that big, glowing thing up there? The star.”

“Troop transports are still there?” Something else that Gozen had said registered on him. “Why did the CEO want them close?”

“From what I heard,” Gozen said, “after we rolled up you guys on the ground, and the Syndicate flotilla wiped out your mobile forces, the plan was to load us up again fast and head for the star system that you came from. Us in the transports and the Syndicate flotilla as escorts. We were to hit whatever guys you’d left back there before they could even hear about what had happened to you and put an end to your revolt.” She concentrated. “I think… I remember hearing they were to stay within ten to fifteen light-minutes from us.”

Drakon stared at her as what Gozen had just told him filtered through his brain. “That was a pretty good plan.” Far too good a plan. “I’ll let you go now. Thank you, Executive Gozen. You’ve got my comm ID. Contact me directly if there are any problems.”

The moment her image vanished, Drakon made another call. “Kapitan Mercia, I have some very important information that you will want to relay to Kommodor Marphissa.”

Mercia blinked at him, trying to focus. There must have been some long days for the mobile forces as well. “What happened?”

“There are a bunch of Syndicate troop transports hiding behind the star, the same transports that brought the Syndicate ground forces division here. If they lifted an entire division at once, I’m guessing there will be between ten and twelve of them. They are supposed to be maintaining position within ten to fifteen light-minutes of this planet.”

Mercia froze for a second, then looked impressed. “Nice. Do you want working transports or wreckage?”

“As many working troop transports as possible.”

“I’m sure that the Kommodor will be happy to accommodate your request, General. She’s been coming on behind me with the cruisers that got beat up fighting the Syndicate, and our Hunter-Killers, and is almost here. Do you have any idea why the troop transports haven’t run for it already?”

“They had firm orders to stay near this planet, orders from that CEO whose shuttle you destroyed a short time ago. Now they’re probably hoping we go away without spotting them.”

“That could have happened if we’d stayed fairly close together,” Mercia said. “They could have just kept changing their positions to stay behind the star relative to us as this planet we’re at orbited. I’ll notify the Kommodor, General.”

That task done, Drakon finally sat down again, the chair creaking under the weight of his battle armor, and realized that he could finally take off his battle gear if he wanted. But first he keyed his general command circuit. “To all personnel. The fight is over but for the mopping up. Ulindi is ours. We’ve won. Well done. All of you. Very well done.”

“Execute Maneuver Tango Victor,” Marphissa ordered her warships, then settled back to watch as all of her cruisers and Hunter-Killers accelerated away from the habitable world and toward the star Ulindi. Only the battleship Midway remained in orbit about the planet, an intimidating source of firepower should General Drakon need to either overawe or destroy any Syndicate holdouts.

Marphissa glanced to one side of her display, where a virtual window showed a dramatically different picture. In that view, all of her warships remained clustered near Midway , maintaining sedate orbits about the planet. “Confirm that the links and false feeds are stable,” she told Kapitan Diaz.

Diaz waited while one of his specialists ran checks. “All stable, Kommodor. The link data and access codes the ground forces found in abandoned equipment at the Syndicate ground forces headquarters all look solid.”

“Keep a close eye on it. It would be just like the snakes to plant something like that to fool us.”

“Yes, Kommodor. But everything is going great,” Diaz said. “Those snoop sats near the star that the Syndicate troop transports are using to keep an eye on us are showing the transports what we want them to see, thanks to that link data and those codes that let us access the sats and covertly mess with them.”

“Everything was going great a few days ago,” Marphissa reminded him, “right before a Syndicate battleship jumped out at us.” Still, she had to admit that the operation was proceeding flawlessly. Reverse-reading the snoop sats gave her warships views of the transports that were depending on the sats to watch Marphissa’s ships and stay hidden. Even though the troop transports remained behind the star relative to her warships, thanks to the snoop sats, Marphissa could see them maintaining orbits about three light-minutes on the other side of the star. The ten troop transports looked like a pod of immense whales swimming placidly through space. “We turned their snoop sats into traitor sats,” she remarked.

“Kommodor?” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla asked. “Is this similar to what the enigmas did to us for so many years?”

“No one has briefed you on that?” Marphissa asked, giving Diaz a look.

Diaz shook his head. “It’s not authorized. Classification Level Two, Special Circumstances.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Marphissa said. “Who are we keeping it secret from? The Alliance told us about it, the Syndicate got the same information from CEO Boyens, and the enigmas certainly already know all about what they were doing. Someone must have classified it that way when we first learned of it and never reviewed the classification level even when things changed.”

It would be half an hour before her ships got close enough to the sun to see around it and get visuals on the transports. Plenty of time to explain things to the specialists so they would understand their jobs better. She turned in her seat to look at Czilla and the other watch specialists. “What we are doing here is close to what the enigmas did to us, but not the same. We are feeding the Syndicate transports a false picture of what we are doing by using worms we inserted into the snoop sat control systems. The enigmas had placed worms into our sensor systems as well, but those worms completely blocked any detecting or sighting of enigma ships. That’s why we couldn’t see them at all. And the enigmas use some sort of worm that we can’t copy. The Alliance can’t copy them, either. They learned how to spot the enigma worms and cancel them out, but they can’t make anything like them.”