Jack Campbell - Guardian

“Maybe it won’t blow up,” Desjani suggested helpfully.

She winced at the look he turned on her. “Sorry, Admiral. But… there’s nothing else we can do.”

The Dancers were now well inside the danger radius from the freighter, splitting to swing around it as they continued on toward the jump point.

Geary watched them, glum. “The friendly aliens are causing me as much anxiety as the enemy aliens,” he grumbled.

“Fluctuations in the freighter’s power core are growing worse,” Lieutenant Castries reported, dismay creeping into her own voice.

“Warning shots?” Desjani suggested, sounding despairing herself.

“They’re out of range,” Geary said, “and if they won’t or can’t understand a warning to stay away from a dangerous region, how can we expect them to understand having us fire at them?”

Lieutenant Castries spoke up again. “Admiral, the freighter just broadcast an abandon-ship alert. The crew is heading for their survival pod.”

Geary looked toward Desjani, seeing the stony expression with which she was now watching her display. “Are you thinking what I am?”

“Probably,” Desjani said. “They’ll eject in their pod and request a humanitarian pickup. Then their freighter will explode. Then, when we’re distracted by both of those things and our sensors are hindered by the aftereffects of the freighter’s destruction, we start hitting mines. Assuming we’re not also distracted by watching the Dancer ships hitting mines.”

“Yeah. Another diversion, just as Master Gioninni predicted. There goes their escape pod.”

“And here comes the request for rescue.”

“Freighter crew requests emergency assistance,” Lieutenant Castries said. “They are reporting seriously injured personnel. Power fluctuations on the freighter are exceeding danger levels. We are well outside the danger radius if the freighter’s power core detonates. The Dancers—”

“Are well inside,” Desjani finished, “but they’re about to— Oh, hell! ”

Geary felt the same way as he watched the Dancer ships, which had been close to the front edge of the danger zone around the freighter, suddenly alter tracks to come swooping back toward the newly launched escape pod. “They can’t be that stupid!” he erupted. “Even if Charban and Shwartz hadn’t told them anything, the Dancers would still have been able to pick up the power fluctuations on that freighter’s power core. They must know—” He paused as a thought hit him.

“What?” Desjani demanded.

“Are they just messing with us?” Geary wondered. “Are they deliberately going into danger so that they—”

“They’re heading for a minefield at high speed!” Desjani broke in. A sudden realization twisted her own expression. “They’ve got better stealth capability than us. That probably means they have better stealth detection capability than us.”

“They see mines that are still invisible to us? Then why are they—?” Geary hit the arm of his seat hard enough to hurt his hand. “They’re warning us!”

“Or screwing with us!”

The Dancers, displaying a maneuverability human ships could not hope to match, had nearly joined up with the escape pod from the freighter.

“Hold on!” Geary ordered as Desjani started to say something else. Too many things were happening, and his own thoughts were in a whirl. “I need to focus on all of these elements. Get everything straight. The minefield. We have to assume it is there, but beyond the freighter. The freighter. About to blow. We’re well outside the danger radius, though.”

“Of course,” Desjani said. “They don’t want us altering course.”

“Wait, Tanya, please. The Dancers. Outside our own formation, within the danger zone about the freighter but intercepting the escape pod. If they stay with it, they’ll be outside the danger radius when the freighter’s power core overloads.”

He paused, looking for anything he might have missed. “Lieutenant, are there Syndic assets in this star system that can recover that escape pod in time to save the crew?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” Castries replied. “There are at least two Syndic ships that could do a pickup well within the endurance of the life support on that escape pod.”

“So we don’t need to worry about that even though the pod is requesting rescue.”

“Clumsy of them not to forestall that option,” Desjani remarked.

“They had to make things look normal,” Geary said. “No other traffic within a light-hour would have looked very abnormal. So, the freighter and its crew, if there was one, is not a problem. We have to assume the Dancers are picking up the danger signs from the freighter’s power core and will get themselves clear, and that the Dancers can see any mines the Syndics laid near the jump point better than we can see them.”

“Right,” Desjani agreed. “That leaves just our own ships to worry about.”

“But… Captain… they said they have seriously injured personnel,” an increasingly baffled Lieutenant Castries reminded Desjani.

“Lieutenant,” Desjani replied, “odds are there are no seriously injured personnel on that escape pod. I would, in fact, be surprised if there are any personnel aboard it at all. Everything we’re seeing and hearing was very likely preprogrammed and that freighter sent out here without a human crew.”

“Very likely,” Geary said. The distraction had come too close to working, though that was because the Dancers had thrown an unexpected variable into the situation. He touched his comm controls. “All units in First Fleet. Immediate execute reduce velocity to point zero zero three light speed.” Another control. “Emissary Charban—”

The usually controlled Charban looked about ready himself to explode with frustration. “They just keep echoing back to us!” he said. “We say danger ahead, and they say danger ahead, then we do it again!”

“I think the Dancers are trying to warn us,” Geary said. “They’re not echoing. They’re agreeing with what you’re saying.”

“They’re—?” Charban visibly quivered as he fought to regain control. “That means I can stop trying.”

“Yes. But I want you to tell them something else. Please inform the Dancers that we are drastically reducing our speed due to the threats in front of the fleet. Tell them they must not precede us to the jump point.”

“Drastically reducing speed?” Charban asked. “What velocity does that mean? Never mind. I can’t convey it to the Dancers even if you told me. I’ll ask them to match our big reduction in speed. They can do that easily.”

Dauntless ’s thrusters fired, bringing her bow over and around before her main propulsion lit off and began dropping the ship’s speed dramatically. The structure of Dauntless groaned audibly under the strain, but Desjani, her eyes on the strain meters displaying hull-stress readings, watched them with a reassuring lack of visible concern.

“Nine hundred kilometers a second?” she asked. “I could swim through space faster than that. Why are you slowing down the fleet that much? I thought you’d dodge the minefield.”

“Too hard,” Geary said. “We have to assume the minefield is right across the entrance to the jump exit. They couldn’t keep a minefield that close to a jump point for long, but from the prior attacks on us, they obviously knew we would soon arrive at Sobek. We’ll get down real slow, crawling along, which will allow the fleet’s sensors to spot every mine in our path and our weapons to take out the mines one by one. Our warships will blow a hole in that Syndic minefield big enough for the entire fleet to waltz through.”

“While they watch?” Desjani grinned. “They’re going to be real unhappy at us thumbing our noses at them like that.”