Jack Campbell - Guardian

Major Dietz saluted. “Five minutes, Admiral. We’ve already prepared the assault plan. We’ll hit them from every direction at once.”

“Good.” Geary pulled himself back to awareness of the larger situation again, trying to block out mental images of what might soon happen if he had decided wrong. “Still quiet?” he asked Desjani.

“Yeah. I ordered a saturation bombardment of the primary inhabited world. We launched that ten minutes ago, but it will take another half a day to get there, so there’s nothing to see yet.”

He glared at her. “That’s not funny. Is there a reason why everybody has suddenly decided to start making bad jokes?”

She met his eyes. “Because we’re scared.”

“Oh.” Geary couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“They’re hitting us in unusual ways,” Desjani explained. “We don’t know what’s coming next. We don’t know if all of the sacrifice required to get possession of Invincible is about to be negated by a little fusion star blooming inside the ship. We want to get home, and we don’t know what else the damned Syndics have thrown in our way. All right?”

“All right.” He made an apologetic gesture. “I’ve been too busy to think about those things.”

“Too busy commanding? You’ve got your nerve.” Desjani smiled briefly. “We’d be a lot more scared if you weren’t in command.”

“The Marines are going to take out the remaining Syndics on Invincible in… four minutes.”

“Should we move the destroyers away from her? There are still several real close in that search pattern.”

He had to think about that, balancing the possible risk to the destroyers against the impact on morale of those aboard Invincible if they saw such tangible evidence that Geary suspected the worst. If people were already scared, it wouldn’t do much good for them to see that their commander was worried that Invincible would blow up. “No. The Marines will take care of the threat.” Besides, there are four battleships literally tethered to Invincible . There’s no time to get them loose and away.

“Go ahead and get back into the Marine situation,” Desjani urged. “I’ve got the bubble for the fleet.”

He gave her a startled look. “Wait a minute. Are you acting as second in command of the fleet?”

“Duh. Did you just figure that out, sir?”

“No one is objecting?”

“And why would they object?” After waiting a couple of seconds for Geary to search in vain for a safe reply, Desjani went on. “Badaya, Tulev, Duellos, and Armus are fine with it, and as long as they accept it, no one else will complain.” She paused again. “Jane Geary is not objecting, either, so I’ve got the Gearys backing me. I almost feel like family.”

“Uh-huh. Well, uh, keep on doing… what you were doing.”

“Yes, sir, Admiral.” Desjani glanced at the time. “You’ve got two minutes before the grunts go in.”

“Thanks.” He focused back on the Marines, identifying the unit leaders among those ranged near the Syndic stronghold and choosing one at random.

It took a few seconds to orient himself to the position of the Marine lieutenant whose view he could now see. Finally, Geary realized that this platoon was positioned above the Syndic-occupied compartments. A couple of combat engineers were finishing up laying hull-breach tape to frame a large area on the deck in the center of the compartment the Marines were in. The platoon, weapons at ready, were ranged around the top of the compartment, drifting weightlessly above the outlined center section.

A timer was running down, second by second, on the lieutenant’s helmet display. “One minute,” she warned her platoon. “You know the drill. Prisoners if possible, but priority is keeping anyone from setting off a nuke.”

“I don’t think they’ll have any trouble staying focused on that, Lieutenant,” the platoon sergeant remarked. He looked around, the motions a little jerky. “Let’s get this done and get off this ship.”

“They’re not real, Sergeant,” the lieutenant said in a voice that sounded as if she was trying to convince herself as well as him. “Remember, all of you,” she added, “ don’t touch any equipment . It’s Kick gear.”

“No problem, Lieutenant,” a corporal said with his own nervous looks around. “Last thing I want is to make ’em madder.”

“Ten seconds, people!”

The combat engineers had pulled themselves back down to the deck and were holding the tape detonators while counting off the last seconds. “Fire in the hole,” one announced, then punched a detonator while the other engineer did the same.

Brilliant light flared where the breaching tape lay, almost instantly cutting through the deck. In gravity, the severed section would have dropped down to the next deck, but at zero g, it stayed in place until the entire platoon of Marines pushed off hard from the overhead, their armored boots slamming into the loose deck section so that they and the severed deck piece dropped through fast into the compartment beneath them.

Shots were blazing on all sides as the Marines faced outward and pumped out rounds at any indication of enemies. The deck section they were on was tilted up on one side, where it rested on a Syndic whose armor’s stealth features had failed when the mass of deck and a platoon of Marines in combat armor had landed on it.

“Got us a prisoner!” one of the Marines shouted, placing a rifle barrel against the helmet of the helpless Syndic.

Geary stared at the bolts of energy blazing through the compartment, through the hatches and through the compartments next to this one, wondering how anyone could remain standing in the blizzard of fire as Marines came in shooting from all sides. Then he saw the lieutenant’s weapon sight blink red as she tried to fire a shot and realized the Marine armor’s friendly-fire inhibitors were preventing anyone from shooting where another Marine was or would be.

The action lasted less than a minute as the Marines stormed into the compartments in overwhelming numbers. “Is there a nuke? Find the nuke!” someone ordered.

“Cease fire! Everyone cease fire! They’re all down.”

“Any left alive?”

“Just one. He’s not talking.”

Another shot went off. “I said cease fire, dammit!”

“I thought I saw— It’s those ghosts, Sarge—”

“Safe your weapons! Does anybody see a nuke?”

“Compartment alpha clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment bravo clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment cable clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment delta clear. No nuke.”

“Compartment echo clear. No nuke.”

Geary slumped in relief, taking a deep breath. The Syndic commander had been bluffing.

Somewhere inside those five compartments, that Syndic lay dead along with the rest of those who had followed her into Invincible . Had Rione still been talking to the Syndic commander when Marine firepower had put an end to the commander and the negotiations? The alien warship had picked up more scars and more internal damage, but in every way that counted, Invincible was still intact.

Your attack failed, Geary thought, imagining he was speaking to the Syndic CEOs. How many times do we have to beat you before you stop trying?

There were still two captured Syndic nuclear munitions to dispose of. Geary looked at his display of Marine icons, choosing Corporal Maksomovic again.

Someone had vacuumed up a lot of the dust in the air created by the bounce grenades. Without that housecleaning, the dust would have drifted indefinitely like a slow-moving sandstorm through the compartments and passageways without working life support and made Invincible ’s interior even more inhospitable.