Jack Campbell - Perilous Shield

“I’m sorry, but you’re right. It will be safer.”

“I can’t complain. If there were a Syndic officer on an Alliance warship, she or he would face the same attitudes.”

“I’ll find out whether President Iceni wants you picked up by a freighter on a regular supply run or sent on a Hunter-Killer or other warship.” Marphissa said. “Until then, I’ll post a guard outside your stateroom. I hope you understand.”

“You’d better post a guard at that Kapitan’s stateroom as well,” Bradamont said.

“I’m sorry you saw that.” Marphissa made a muddled gesture, half-angry and half-frustrated. “Why did he make it so hard?”

“They always do,” Bradamont commiserated. “The ones who can’t do their jobs always make everything as hard as possible for everyone else as well.”

“He was my friend.”

“Ouch. You got promoted pretty fast, didn’t you? Welcome to the joys of higher rank. Being willing to do what you have to do, but don’t want to do, is a big part of it. Some people can handle that. Some can’t.”

Marphissa grimaced. “I’ll miss you, Captain. Good luck once you leave Manticore .”

“You’ll see me again, Kommodor. We’ll need to convince your bosses to let you recover some prisoners of war even though it will mean sending some of your warships a long ways away. That’s going to be a harder sell now. Admiral Geary is going to be leaving this star system soon since the Syndic flotilla has been chased off, so Midway will be on its own again as far as defenses go.”

“President Iceni, we have encountered an unusual situation. We can’t access the hypernet gates at Indras, Praja, Kachin, or Taniwah,” Black Jack said. “CEO Boyens warned that the Syndicate government would make our journey back harder than we hoped, but we didn’t expect that they would drop the Syndicate Worlds’ hypernet system. According to our hypernet key, the only gate now accessible is at Sobek.”

Drakon, who had come to the command center to watch the departure of Geary’s fleet, shook his head in disbelief at the message. “Prime dropped almost every hypernet gate? That will cripple what’s left of the Syndicate Worlds. The economic impact alone will be huge, but it will also seriously hinder its ability to shift military forces to deal with internal and external threats. Did they kill their chances to hold some stars together in the Syndicate Worlds just to make Black Jack’s journey home more difficult?”

“It does seem like tearing your hair out to avoid going bald,” Iceni agreed. She knew she had been moody lately and had been trying to shake it. But Boyens had escaped instead of having his flotilla destroyed. Black Jack’s fleet was leaving, taking with it all the protection for Midway Star System that such a mass of warships could provide. There was at least one snake agent still hidden close enough to plant an agent inside the planetary command center. On top of all that, she had found herself increasingly bothered by a vague sense that there were other plans under way, involving people and events she wasn’t even aware of, like the slow movements of continents that you did not feel except when earthquakes suddenly and devastatingly brought it all to your attention.

And now this.

“Where is Sobek?” Iceni asked, her brow furrowed with concern. The answer popped up on the display, a window showing a region of space much closer to the Alliance. “Why would Sobek’s gate be spared?”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Drakon said. “Maybe Prime ordered it and something went wrong at Sobek, so its gate didn’t collapse as ordered.”

“But that doesn’t make sense! Prime ordering the elimination of their own hypernet? Why not just commit suicide outright?” She lowered her head, fighting for control with an effort she knew must be obvious to those around her. “Do you have any idea what impact this will have on us? It means our gate has become nearly useless.”

“We still have all the jump points,” Drakon pointed out.

“Yes. Relatively speaking, that will leave us with an advantage, but… damn them.”

“Could Black Jack be lying about this?”

“Why would he? The instant another ship showed up from another gate, it would tell us he had lied. Togo, I want our techs checking that gate. I want a full, remote diagnostic and a check of accessible gates using our monitoring software.”

“Yes, Madam President.” Togo paused in a listening attitude, one hand to the phone relay in his ear. “I had already ordered our technicians here to check on the remote status signals from the gate. They indicate no problems with the functioning of the gate.”

“If there’s no problem with our gate, then all of those other gates really are gone!” Iceni said. “Get a ship out there. I want techs checking that gate in person, not remotely. Boyens was near that gate a long time. Maybe he managed to sneak something onto the gate-control mechanisms that is producing this problem.”

“In theory,” Togo said, “such a mechanism would be detected due to its interference with the gate-control mechanisms.”

“I didn’t ask for a lecture on theory! According to what the Alliance found, the technology for those gates came from the enigmas. We know far too little about the hypernet and the gates. Do as I have instructed!” Iceni turned a furious look on Drakon. “What have those bastards who rule the Syndicate Worlds done to us? Are they pulling everything down around them just to ensure we lose as well?”

But Drakon wasn’t really listening to her, instead gazing at the display intently. She managed to damp down her anger before it exploded. “Is there something up there I don’t see?” Iceni asked through clenched teeth.

“No.” Drakon shook his head, still half-lost in thought. “There’s only one gate left, at Sobek. Why Sobek?”

“I already asked you that.”

“This means Black Jack has to take his fleet to Sobek,” Drakon pointed out.

“Of course, it—” Iceni halted in midsentence as she realized the point of what Drakon was saying. “Prime wants Black Jack to go to Sobek, and only to Sobek.”

“Yeah.” Drakon frowned and shook his head. “That would explain why Sobek was the only gate left standing, so that Black Jack would be forced to take a path home that Prime wants him to take. And he has no choice, the way I read it. He has to stick his head in that lion’s mouth in order to get back to Alliance space in any reasonable amount of time. Using jump drives all the way back would take way too long. But it doesn’t explain why Prime would take the extreme step of dropping the rest of their hypernet in order to force Black Jack to go to Sobek.”

“The Dancers?” Iceni felt a coldness sweep through her at the thought. “Would stopping them from reaching Alliance space be worth that cost to the Syndicate Worlds?”

“That’s possible.” Drakon looked even grimmer than before. “The first human contact with a nonhuman intelligence, if you don’t count the enigmas, and I don’t think you can. There’s no contact with the enigmas. Just war. But the Dancers are different. It would be just like the CEOs on Prime to want to destroy the Syndicate Worlds if necessary in order to keep the Alliance from gaining friendly contact with an alien species.”

“That could explain it. There’s also that superbattleship. Boyens kept pushing for access to that long after it was clear that Black Jack would never allow him within a light-hour of it. All Black Jack told us was that there was potentially new technology on that Kick ship and, hopefully, more information about the Kicks themselves. Maybe that’s all he knows. But that Kick technology could be of immense value, and Prime would want to deny that to the Alliance as well.” Iceni made a fist and rapped it against her own forehead. “But, all of those are long-term concerns. Short term, the impact on business in the Syndicate Worlds would be catastrophic. I just don’t see how they could do that. I’ll tell Black Jack we have no idea what the problem is but that we’ll do all we can to find out.”