Jack Campbell - Guardian

Shots tore through the dust, a wild volley, followed by several more Syndics, who fired in all directions as they erupted into view. The Marines fired back, hitting all of them and killing all but one. The last Syndic special-forces soldier, wounded but still alive, reached the edge of the air lock and locked armored hands on it, facing outward as if fearing he would be pulled back inside Invincible .

A Marine slapped a tap onto the Syndic, allowing comms with him. “Stand down now, man! Deactivate your systems!”

“No!” Geary could hear the Syndic’s answering howl. “They’ll get me! Just let me go! Out there, where it’s safe!”

“There’s nothing out there! We already blew away your shuttles!”

The Syndic continued to grip the air lock edge, ignoring other attempts to get him to surrender.

“Crash his armor’s systems and sedate him,” the platoon sergeant ordered.

“If we hard crash his armor’s systems, we might kill him,” the lieutenant objected. “Our orders are to try to get some prisoners.”

“Sir, if we don’t crash his armor and knock him out, he’ll kill himself. You can see the hits he took. We treat him, or he dies.”

“We’ve got an exploitation team on the way,” General Carabali broke in. “Wait until they get there and can question the Syndic. They’ll have a medical team with them.”

“Who cares whether another Syndic dies?” someone muttered.

Carabali answered, her voice cold. “We care, Private Lud, because we need to know how many Syndics came aboard that ship and how many nukes they brought with them. Understand?”

“Y-yes, General,” the unfortunate Private Lud stammered, doubtless anticipating further pointed conversations with his sergeant and lieutenant once the general had finished.

Marines were flooding into Invincible . Given the ship’s size, and the need to keep the new arrivals into platoon-sized units, they couldn’t cover anything like most of the ship, but they could cordon off and begin sweeping the decks near the air lock and the areas around the decoy engineering control and bridge compartments. “I think we’ve just about got Invincible secured,” Geary said to Desjani.

As if the living stars had been waiting for his statement to punish his pride, Admiral Lagemann’s urgent voice came on the heels of Geary’s words.

“Admiral Geary, we just received a communication from a woman claiming to be the commander of the boarding force. She says she has a nuke and demands we halt operations and evacuate Invincible , or she’ll detonate the munition.”

“What did you say?” Desjani asked. “Something about Invincible ?”

“Never mind.” Geary had to pause to control his voice before he replied to Lagemann. “Where is she? Do we know where this commander and her nuke are?”

Major Dietz answered, sounding grim. “Our best guess is in this area,” he said, indicating a spot aft of amidships and near the centerline of Invincible . “You can see the blocking forces we have stopping any movement along these lines, and as our patrols confirm areas are clear, the blocking forces establish new positions. We’re not encountering any more Syndics moving alone or in small groups, so it’s a reasonable guess that their commander figured out that the only way to prevent them from panicking was to pull her force together.”

Dietz highlighted a grouping of compartments. “We think they’re here. That’s about where the transmission originated, and this block of five compartments offers a compact defensive position with limited access from above and below.”

“How long until we know ?” Geary asked.

“I’ve instructed the patrols to move faster and converge toward the suspected Syndic location. Once we have them localized, I can send in some look-sees to get a better idea of how many and whether there’s actually a nuke in there with them.”

“Ten minutes?” Geary pressed.

“Half an hour,” Major Dietz said, visibly bracing himself as he delivered the information.

Geary took a long, slow breath as he considered his options. “Get Emissary Rione and Emissary Charban on the line with that Syndic commander. Their instructions are to spin out negotiations and discussions as long as possible.” Technically, he didn’t have the right to order around either Rione or Charban since as representatives of the Alliance government, they were outside his command authority, but neither of them had made an issue of that lately. He doubted they would in this situation, either. “Let that Syndic commander think we’re right on the verge of agreeing to her demands while you figure out exactly where she is, get forces into position around her, and try to determine whether she’s bluffing about having a third nuke.”

He mentally pulled back from the situation aboard Invincible , rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Tanya? What’s the big picture look like?”

“Nothing new happening that we can tell,” she replied. “Eleven stealth shuttles have been spotted and destroyed. There hasn’t been a new detection for some time, so we might have gotten them all. What happened on Invincible ?”

“We’ve got two nukes, but there might be a third, and the Syndic commander is threatening to use it.” He shifted back to General Carabali. “Eleven Syndic shuttles have been confirmed and destroyed so far. Does that help estimate how many Syndics came aboard?”

“It gives us an upper limit,” Carabali said. “The shuttles might not have been full. An operation like this usually has some excess lift capability in case some of the shuttles develop problems. Unfortunately, it tells us nothing about how many nukes they might have brought aboard.”

“Do you think they would really detonate a nuke, if they still have one, when they’re also in the blast zone?”

General Carabali frowned. “Admiral, these are Syndic special forces. Not fanatics from the Syndic security service.”

“Major Dietz thought they might be fanatics.”

“It was a reasonable guess, but from what I’ve seen of their equipment and tactics, they’re soldiers. Syndic special forces are highly trained and reliable, but I can’t think of any cases where they conducted deliberate suicide attacks during the war.”

“You don’t think their commander will carry through with her threat?”

“I don’t know, Admiral. It’s not typical of the Syndic special forces, but it’s not impossible. The Syndics seem to be falling back on suicide attacks out of desperation. An additional factor is that the, uh, atmosphere aboard Invincible is extremely unsettling. What impact that might have on the Syndics’ decisions even in a larger group I can’t say.”

“Make sure we keep offering to let them surrender.”

Carabali nodded, but she did not look hopeful. “They can’t assume if they do surrender that we’ll treat them as prisoners of war, Admiral.”

“I have never authorized—”

“That’s true, Admiral. But those were prisoners who were unquestionably Syndic military personnel. They had uniforms, they were part of units, they carried all the necessary official identifiers. In this case, the woman we’re talking to who claims to be the commander of this group isn’t giving a rank for herself. The Syndics we’ve killed, and in a couple of cases captured, have no military insignia or identification on them. They’re equipped with Syndic special-forces gear, but the equipment has had all identifying information scrubbed out and filed off. Even the implanted chips that contain medical and other information have been removed from their bodies. There’s nothing tying them to being part of the Syndic military and nothing giving them any official status at all.”