Jack Campbell - Guardian

“Yes, that’s why the Syndics here are so upset about—” Geary stopped speaking as he realized that something major didn’t fit.

Captain Hiyen grasped just what that was before anyone else. “Why are the Syndics here so upset about losing their hypernet gate if the only other gate they could access was Midway’s? The gate was already effectively almost useless.”

Emissary Charban had his eyes on the star display positioned above the conference table. “If they are that upset, it argues that the gate was still useful to them, that there were other places they could access through it.”

“We ran the checks,” Desjani insisted. “The only gate accessible was Sobek.”

Hiyen shook his head. “The only gate accessible from Midway when we tried to access the Syndic hypernet was Sobek,” he said, carefully emphasizing certain words. “We know that is true.”

Commander Neeson was staring at Hiyen. “Have the Syndics developed some means of selectively blocking access to gates within their hypernet? Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know,” Hiyen admitted. “I don’t know that anyone has ever looked into it. Why would we?”

“Why would the Syndics have done that? Tried to develop something like that?” Badaya demanded.

“Oh, hell,” Desjani said with disgust. “The answer to that is aboard Dauntless , and has been ever since we got the Syndic hypernet key from that damned supposed Syndic traitor.”

Duellos looked pained. “Of course. As soon as we escaped the trap intended for us at Prime, the Syndics knew the Alliance fleet was loose with a key to their hypernet. We assumed they were trying to counter that by catching and destroying this fleet. But why would they stop at that? Why wouldn’t they also start trying to figure out how to limit the usefulness of the key to keep us from going anywhere we wanted within their hypernet?”

“They’ve been working on it ever since we escaped Prime,” Neeson said angrily. “And it never even occurred to us.”

“We won,” Charban said. “Why should we have looked for new capabilities?”

“We do not know the Syndics have done this,” Tulev cautioned. “It is a reasonable guess, I agree. But it is not confirmed.”

Geary looked toward Rione. She nodded, so he turned to face the whole table again. “We do know the Syndics conducted some new research into the hypernet. They developed a means to block the collapse of hypernet gates by remote signals, the sort of thing that destroyed Kalixa. I don’t know whether or not the Alliance has engaged in similar research.”

“We didn’t have the same incentive, did we?” Duellos asked. “We didn’t have a star system turned into a charnel house like the Syndics did at Kalixa.”

“The enigmas tried to do the same thing to Petit Star System in the Alliance,” Desjani pointed out.

“But they did not succeed thanks to the anticollapse device created by our late and very lamented colleague Jaylen Cresida. A star system without a hypernet gate is a far cry from a star system destroyed by its hypernet gate.”

Geary glanced around, but no one else seemed to have any suggestions. Is this somehow related to fleet headquarters’ attempt to pull anyone with hypernet expertise from this fleet prior to our departure from Varandal? I thought it might be to keep us from learning about the possibility of the entire Syndic hypernet being collapsed by remote signal, but was it about more than that?

Jane Geary looked up with a stunned expression. “Lakota. Didn’t you tell me, Admiral, that Syndic reinforcements showed up at Lakota and were surprised to be there because they had entered a different destination into their controls?”

“Yes,” Geary said.

“How much do the Syndics know about that? The Syndics at Lakota had time to report it, didn’t they, between the time our fleet left Lakota and returned to fight the second battle there? The Syndics would have learned then that there was some means of altering the destination of ships that had already entered the hypernet. What if they’ve been trying to learn how to do that as well?”

“This just keeps getting better,” Badaya said in disgust. “Our trump card, the ability to use the Syndic hypernet while they can’t use ours, is turning into a wild card.”

“Maybe the Alliance government is researching the same things,” Charban suggested. “Perhaps when we return to Varandal, we will find that countermeasures have already been prepared.”

There was a slight pause, then scornful mirth rippled around the vast, virtual table.

“With all due respect to your record as a ground forces officer,” Duellos said, “are you proposing that we should trust that our government has anticipated a problem and worked to correct it before it went nova?”

Charban had the good grace to smile slightly. “That does sound like a reach, doesn’t it? But don’t forget that the Syndic system is plagued by many problems, not the least being its own leaders, and still has apparently managed to produce some results.”

“We’ll find out some of the answers when we go through other Syndic star systems,” Geary said, “and when we get back to Varandal. Whatever state the Syndic hypernet is in, whatever the Syndics can do with it, doesn’t matter for us now that we’re this close to Alliance space. We’ll be using jump the rest of the way home, and it’s not that far. We don’t know what else the Syndics might try along the way, but they lost a lot of courier ships in the suicide attack, and a lot of elite special forces and stealth equipment in the attack on Invincible . They won’t be able to replace those easily, and they won’t be able to use them against us again or against their own people.”

“That’s not enough,” Captain Vitali of Dragon said. “We lost a battleship and her entire crew. To an unprovoked attack conducted without warning. We can’t lose sight of that just because of our speculations about the Syndic hypernet.”

The murmur around the table this time was more of a growl as the reminder of the circumstances of Orion ’s loss generated renewed rage.

How do I respond to that? Geary looked over toward where Tanya Desjani sat. She was looking back at him with an aggravated expression, as if the reply was obvious, and he was taking far too long to come up with it.

Oh.

“It’s not the first time I have dealt with an unprovoked attack, conducted without warning,” Geary said. The reminder that he had faced the first attack of the war, a surprise assault that he had led a last-ditch defense against at Grendel a century ago, brought everyone up short. “The question is, do we do what they want us to do or what we want to do? Do we let them win, even though we beat them both times they attacked us here?”

The argument was logical but was warring against emotions. He could tell that his commanders, for the most part, wanted to buy into it but were reluctant to.

While he was trying to come up with points to reinforce his position, Captain Jane Geary spoke up. She had been quieter since the desperate fight at Honor, usually watching and listening instead of commenting, but now she spoke with an intensity that held everyone. “As long as the peace agreement stands, the Syndics are required to return all prisoners of war to us. They are required to allow us to enter their space in order to recover prisoners of war. Consider the cost to those men and women still trapped in Syndic labor camps if we play the Syndics’ game now.”

It was the emotional counterpoint he had sought, and Geary could tell it had hit home.

Badaya nodded firmly. “Captain Geary is right. We could kill every Syndic in this star system, and it wouldn’t free a single Alliance prisoner held elsewhere. Hell, we tried killing every single Syndic, and all we got for it was a hundred years of war. Let’s honor the sacrifice of Orion ’s crew by vowing to recover every Alliance prisoner no matter how the Syndics try to provoke us. We’ll kill anyone they send against us and get our people back!”