Jack Campbell - Guardian

“And we’ll come out the jump exit at Simur still moving very slow,” Geary added. “That’s important. The Syndics are setting traps based on the paths we have to use and our normal methods of operation. If there’s a trap set up at Simur, they might have prepared for us evading immediately upon exit. They might have prepared for other actions we could take. The one thing they won’t be prepared for is us going at such a slow velocity because we never do that.”

“Not until now,” Desjani agreed.

“Power core overload imminent,” Lieutenant Castries said.

The Dancers, along with the escape pod, were still within the blast radius, but as Geary watched, the six Dancer ships leaped ahead, tearing past the escape pod and into the clear.

The freighter, now less than a light-minute ahead of the fleet, exploded as its power core overloaded, producing a burst of energy as well as a sphere of fragments ranging from dust specks to large chunks, all fouling the vision of the fleet’s sensors. As the globe of the explosion rapidly expanded, the escape pod reached the edge of the danger zone, taking enough impacts for damage to be visible.

“Good work on that,” Desjani admitted grudgingly. “They timed it perfectly, so the escape pod got hit but not destroyed, making quick rescue seem all the more critical.”

“And it looks like the Dancers did always know what they were doing. We’ve been breaking our backs worrying about protecting them, but then they went out of their way to protect us from a threat they saw.”

Desjani grimaced. “I want to feel like the senior partner when it comes to the Dancers. I’ve got this feeling that they consider themselves the senior partner, though. Older and wiser than us dumb humans.”

“I’ll ask Charban about that,” Geary said, realizing that the idea bothered him, too. It’s one thing to accept powers beyond human comprehension that know more than we do, but another thing entirely to accept another living creature as superior to us in any way. Has Charban picked up any signs of superior attitudes in the Dancers? Or would we even recognize superior attitudes in something so different from us?

But now was not the time for that discussion. His attention needed to remain focused on events outside of Dauntless . And Charban deserved a bit of a rest after the recent attempted-communication-with-aliens fiasco.

Dauntless didn’t feel any different when traveling at point zero zero three light speed. Space didn’t offer obvious signs of slower or faster movement, the sort of things you would experience on a planet, like air turbulence and noise or nearby objects whose own motion relative to yours would change as your speed did. The battle cruiser felt exactly the same as she did when moving at a velocity of point zero five, or point one, or point two light speed. Endless space outside of Dauntless ’s hull looked the same. But on Geary’s display, the speed vector for the fleet had shrunk to a tiny stub, and that reduction in velocity had thrown off the calculations of those preparing this trap. The fragments of the exploded freighter would keep spreading, their density thinning with every cubic meter the sphere of wreckage expanded. By the time the Alliance warships actually reached the region of the explosion, there should be very little hindrance to their sensors.

“Nice,” Desjani approved.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“But don’t get complacent. There might be a trap within this trap.” She hit her comm controls. “Master Chief Gioninni, congratulations.”

“Excuse me, Captain?”

“You called it, Master Chief. Now I need to know what sort of fallback you might have created in case the mines failed.”

Gioninni sounded dubious. “A fallback to the fallback to the diversion?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Captain, I have no idea. There’s no room or time left for them to hit us with something else in this star system. Now, the next star system. I’d keep an eye out there. But you’d need someone with a lot better, um, strategizing mind than mine to come up with another trap here before we jump.”

Desjani smiled, though it was hard to tell whether that was because of Gioninni’s statement or because the fleet’s ships were beginning to spot mines and detonate them using hell-lance shots. “No one’s better than you at that particular type of strategizing, Master Chief. You just out-thought some Syndics.”

“Well, hell, Captain, that ain’t nothing. Syndics are as dumb as dirt. That’s why they’re Syndics.”

“Good point, Master Chief. Stay out of trouble.” Desjani ended the call and leaned back in her seat, grimacing even though the destruction of mines was happening with greater frequency as the fleet moved into the minefield at a velocity that in space terms qualified as plodding. “If I never see this star system again, it will still be too soon.”

“We’ll never have any reason to come back here,” Geary said.

“We never expected to have to come here in the first place,” she reminded him. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

“What?” Geary searched his mind frantically for any possible threat he might have missed, any option be should have considered, any—

“The jump pool,” she explained. “You slowed us down so much, it’ll throw the jump pool off completely.”

“Tanya…”

But even he felt his spirits growing lighter as the First Fleet finally jumped out of Sobek Star System.

Four days to Simur.

Four days to second-guess every step he had taken since leaving Varandal.

Four days to dwell on the losses the fleet had suffered as it went through enigma space, into the Kick star system, then fought the Kicks at Honor Star System, before returning to human space through Dancer territory and fighting the enigmas again at Midway. And now the losses at Sobek.

He had thought it was over. That no one else serving under his command would have to die, that no more ships would be lost. But the enigmas, the Kicks, then the Syndics again had proven him wrong.

The enigmas had been beaten once more, and some little bit learned about them, but there had been no visible progress toward mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence. How many of his decisions in enigma space had been wrong, had led to more problems instead of any solutions?

Had he made the right decisions at Midway, or had he backed a couple of dictators who would rule as badly as the Syndic CEOs they had once been?

The last two surviving Kick prisoners continued to hover on the edge of death as Dr. Nasr tried to keep them sufficiently sedated to remain unconscious so they wouldn’t will themselves to death, yet not so heavily sedated that they would die from that. Medical calculations that even now sometimes went wrong with humans were much more difficult when dealing with living creatures with which human medicine had no experience.

And they had been forced to kill so many Kicks. Small wonder that Invincible felt like she was packed with angry ghosts. There had to be some material explanation for the ghosts, some Kick device, but he couldn’t imagine what could create such sensations, and part of him could not help wondering if the ghosts aboard Invincible were exactly what they felt like.

If Charban was right, even the Dancers might be playing some subtle games with humanity.

Getting home would offer little respite. If his guesses were right, powerful factions of the government and within the Alliance military were scheming and maneuvering against each other and against Geary and this fleet.

He didn’t really know anyone here, in this future a century removed from when he had once lived. Those he had known well, people who had shared the same life experiences as he in an Alliance at peace for the most part, were long dead. In their place were strangers who had grown up knowing nothing but war more terrible than Geary had once thought possible.