Jack Campbell - Guardian

Desjani ended the call and looked pointedly at Geary. “What do you think, Admiral?”

“About the jump pool, the booze, or the Syndic plans?”

“I told you that you had to keep an eye on Smythe.”

“Which you are doing a good job of,” Geary pointed out. “Did you know that the auxiliaries also acquired some important rare-earth materials while we were at Midway? They didn’t get those from any asteroid mining, but we needed them, so I didn’t ask inconvenient questions. Smythe has probably broken half of the rules in the book, but a lot of the time he’s breaking the rules to get the job done.”

“And you’re willing to look the other way at the other times because of that?”

“Yes. As long as he’s not hurting the fleet. I will ask some leading questions about Syndic booze to let him know he’s being watched and had better not play any criminal games with it.” He could see she was getting ready to argue the point. “It’s just like your not asking certain questions of Master Chief Gioninni because his particular skills can be very useful to you and to Dauntless .”

She paused in the midst of starting to say something, then nodded ruefully. “You’ve got me there. What about the master chief’s guess about what the Syndics will do?”

“I think he’s very likely right,” Geary said. “You and I should have seen that, but we were too focused on threats along the path to that jump point to realize that the final approach to that jump exit is the only place left in this star system that we have to go.” He ran a quick query on his display. “There have been a couple of merchant ships seen leaving via that jump point since we arrived, but those ships could have been sent through on purpose on paths to avoid any mines so we would think there’s no threat there.”

“But there has to be a diversion to distract us when we’re near that jump point. What would work? Stealth shuttles aren’t cheap or available in large numbers, and we put a decent dent in how many of them the Syndics must have in this region of space. And that boarding operation only succeeded as much as it did because we were already distracted by another attack.”

“Something different,” Geary said. “They’ll know we’re watching for the same things coming at us. They’ll want to do something we’re not watching for. Whatever that is. All right. I’m calling a fleet conference.”

He never looked forward to conferences like this, even when there was nothing but good news or routine events to discuss. So far, Sobek had provided nothing good or routine, so this virtual gathering of the fleet’s ship captains promised to be the same.

Geary stood in the fleet conference room, looking across the assembled images of his ships’ commanding officers. A rather small compartment in reality, the meeting software made it seem vast enough to hold everyone, the table in front of Geary virtually expanded to seat hundreds of men and women. The most senior officers, the captains and commanders in charge of battleships and battle cruisers, General Carabali of the Marines and the senior fleet engineers, were “seated” closest to Geary, with the others farther way in descending order of seniority and the size of their command. He could look at any one of them, though, and the software would automatically zoom in on that individual, displaying name, rank, and command.

It all made meetings very easy to hold. For the most part, Geary considered that a negative aspect of the software. As a rule, he thought that meetings should be hard to hold and hard to get to, crowded into stuffy, uncomfortable rooms where everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible.

But sometimes even he had to hold meetings like this, and at those times the software was a very nice thing to have.

“You’re all familiar with the situation,” Geary said. “The loss of Orion was a terrible blow, but her crew died with honor, doing their duty, and will surely be welcomed by the living stars.”

“A terrible loss,” Captain Duellos of the battle cruiser Inspire commented with unusual harshness. “We have lost too many comrades in battle. I wish Orion had been able to take more of the enemy with her and that we had more means of making pay those who ordered that attack. What a shame that the hypernet gate here was so badly damaged as well in that action.”

“Yes,” Captain Badaya of Illustrious agreed, his face reddened with anger. “But not enough of a shame. It’s too bad a few stray bombardment projectiles didn’t put craters into a lot of important Syndic facilities here.”

A low rumble of concurrence sounded around the huge, virtual table.

“Why not?” Commander Neeson of Implacable asked. “Why not make them pay a higher price? They attacked us. They destroyed Orion . Why not retaliate?”

Geary waited for another burst of agreement to subside instead of quelling it using the meeting software. Let them blow off a little steam. We all need to. “I haven’t ordered that kind of retaliation because that’s exactly what the leaders of the Syndics want us to do. They want us to break the peace agreement in such a way that they can claim we attacked them first.”

That statement brought silence, finally broken by Captain Tulev of Leviathan . “Why would the Syndics seek war with the Alliance again when the Syndics do not even have the military means left to force all of their own star systems to remain loyal to them?” Tulev sounded questioning, not challenging.

“Because they want an external enemy again,” Geary said. “The Syndic leaders know they can’t hold what’s left of the Syndicate Worlds together by using the force available to them, but they also know that fear of the Alliance provided a powerful reason for star systems not to revolt during the war. They think if we attack them, if the Alliance can be painted as an aggressive enemy that everyone must fear, it will again give the Syndic leaders a strong tool for keeping star systems loyal to them.”

Badaya shook his head. “That genie is out of the bottle. Even if we came rampaging through Syndic space bombarding right and left, the Syndic empire isn’t going to reconstitute itself.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” General Carabali said, her words coming slowly and carefully. “As weak as they are in the wake of the war, the Syndicate Worlds can still offer a greater degree of security to individual star systems than those star systems can muster on their own. That greater security against external threats and the promise of internal stability are the only things the Syndics can offer those star systems now.”

“It creates a choice of enemies again,” Duellos said. “At this time, with the Alliance at peace, the only enemies those star systems see are the rulers of the Syndicate Worlds. Their own rulers. Start the war again, and there are other enemies to worry about. It might work.”

“It might,” Tulev agreed. “If only a little. But from small advantages, large changes can grow over time. I see your logic, Admiral.”

Badaya was still angry, but he was thinking. “They are goading us to attack. Why would they do that unless they want us to attack? I see your point as well, Admiral. But it is still a very bitter thing to leave this star system with only the loss of their hypernet gate to avenge the loss of Orion .”

“I agree,” said Geary. “It feels like far too little. Yet the loss of the hypernet gate here will have a serious impact on the local economy, as well as on the ability of the Syndics to move military forces quickly.”

“As far as we know, this was their last functioning hypernet gate, except for Midway’s, which they no longer control,” Neeson pointed out.