Jack Campbell - Guardian

Geary didn’t answer, wanting to deny that reality but unable to muster any arguments. Something nagged at him, though, one more thing that might help but remained stubbornly just out of his mental grasp.

Then he got it, barely in time to do anything about it. Geary’s eyes fixed on the estimated time to intercept with the courier ships, a number that was sweeping downward so fast the digital readout seemed to blur. “All units in First Fleet, execute Modified Formation Foxtrot Three at time four one.”

“Mod Foxtrot Three?” Desjani asked, her own eyes not leaving her display. “Oh. That might help.”

“It can’t hurt.” Geary paused, trying to time his next command, then tapped his comm controls. “All units in First Fleet, immediate execute accelerate to point one five light speed.”

They wouldn’t make it. Even the ships capable of the fastest acceleration, Geary’s battle cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers, would barely have begun leaping forward at increasing velocities. But space was very wide, even the largest human ship was very small in that vast emptiness, and at the speeds the Alliance ships and Syndic courier craft were rushing together, even the tiniest difference in a projected track could mean the difference between a near miss and a collision.

Dauntless shuddered slightly as her thrusters fired at time four one, kicking her onto a new vector, while her main propulsion units kept shoving her ahead faster. The entire Alliance formation was splitting into three parts, each group heading outward from the other two, the mass of ships spreading off from their original vectors like water spraying outward in a cone. With vectors for each ship changing by the moment, the oncoming attackers would have to guess where the ship they were aiming for was going, further complicating their deadly task.

The Dancers were staying with Invincible , a threat magnet near a threat magnet, and in the last seconds before intercept, Geary could see the twenty-three courier ships bending their own tracks over and down to head where the Dancers and the lumbering mass of Invincible were moving. Even with four human battleships towing the mass of Invincible , the captured Kick superbattleship seemed to be changing its velocity and course at a snail’s pace.

He had eight battleships there, too, moving along with Invincible , four actually tethered to Invincible and four more escorting her. A fraction of a second before the forces tore into contact, something in Geary’s mind noted something about the movement of one of the battleships that seemed slightly off. Orion ’s vector had altered in an unexpected way.

There was no time to ask Commander Shen what he was doing, no time to even understand what about Orion ’s movement felt odd.

Even when warships limited their engagement speeds to point two light, the meetings were far too fast for human senses to register. Geary saw the twenty-three courier ships almost upon the portion of the Alliance formation holding Invincible , the assault transports, the auxiliaries, and the Dancer ships, then he saw four courier ships that had missed their targets and been missed by the avalanche of fire which the Alliance warships had pumped out under the control of automated systems able to react much faster than any living creature.

“What the hell happened?” Geary demanded. Something looked very wrong now. Something was missing in the Alliance formation.

The answer appeared on his display.

Orion.

Geary barely noticed as the last four courier ships tried to claw around for another run at the Alliance formation, did not feel any elation as specter missiles pursuing those four ships caught them in their turns and blew them apart.

His display replayed a slow-motion re-creation of the instant of contact. Some courier ships vanishing into irregular blots of dust and energy as lucky shots scored hits, others coming onward, aiming now clearly for the Dancers, who, damn them, seemed to be almost motionless as they hung near Invincible , and the rest targeting the assault transports and auxiliaries, the Dancers darting aside at the last moments to frustrate the attackers trying to hit them, Titan , Typhoon , and Mistral almost lined up relative to the attackers and twisting too slowly to evade the courier ships whose vectors aimed at them, hell-lance and grapeshot fire pouring from every Alliance ship in a last-ditch defensive effort, Orion rolling slightly in her track, coming over just a small amount, just enough that five surviving courier ships heading for Titan and the two assault transports instead struck Orion either glancing blows or direct hits.

Even a battleship couldn’t withstand that number of impacts by that much mass at those kinds of velocities. The energy liberated by the collisions was vast enough to reduce Orion and all five courier ships to gas and dust.

Orion was gone, along with Commander Shen and his entire crew.

“All attackers destroyed,” Lieutenant Castries reported, her tone not jubilant but rather stunned. “ Orion has been destroyed. No other damage to fleet ships.”

“Damn them,” Geary whispered. He could understand the hate Desjani still felt for the Syndics, understand why the Alliance fleet had retaliated and retaliated for such acts, losing track of its own honor and morality along the way, understand why the need to do the right thing had been forgotten in the desire for revenge.

“They’re going to claim they didn’t know anything about this,” Desjani said in a low, savage voice. “The Syndics in charge here. They’ll say they had no idea whose ships those were. You know they will.”

“Yes.” And there was no proof to the contrary. He was certain of that. The courier ships and their one-man crews had been blown to pieces. Dead men and women tell no tales.

He wanted to hurt the Syndics in this star system, hurt all of them, not just those who gave the orders but also those who stood by and let such things happen, whose own actions and passivity supported their leaders.

Don’t. Don’t do anything that will make this worse.

But Orion was gone, victim of an attack that could not possibly have accomplished anything but destruction.

“Admiral.” Rione’s voice broke through his rage. She sounded odd, too, as if emotions were boiling just beneath the rigid mask of her face. “I wanted to ask, Admiral, if the hypernet gate had been damaged during the fight so close to it. It would be a great loss to this star system if their hypernet gate was damaged so badly during this unnecessary and brutal attack that the gate collapsed.”

It took him several seconds to get it, then Geary felt a cold resolve warring with the heat of his anger. He touched a control. “Captain Smythe.”

Tanuki was only a few light-seconds distant, so the reply came quickly. “Yes, Admiral?” Smythe asked in a subdued voice.

“I am worried that the hypernet gate may have sustained damage from stray shots or from debris from some of those courier ships. I want it inspected at close range to make sure it has not sustained the level of damage that would cause it to collapse. Even though the safe collapse mechanism will prevent a devastating pulse of energy from being emitted by the collapse, such an event would still cripple commerce through this star system for the foreseeable future.”

Smythe pursed his lips. “Admiral, the fight wasn’t that close—” He hesitated, a light of understanding dawning in his eyes, then nodded. “But the gate still might have sustained damage. Damage we can’t see, except up close. Catastrophic damage. It would be… so unfortunate for this star system if the gate were to collapse.”