Jack Campbell - Guardian

Armus nodded, stolid and unperturbed. This fire-support mission was right up his alley.

“Captain Geary,” Geary continued, “your part of the battleship force is to keep those four groups of Syndic warships off Armus’s units and off the shuttles going down to pick up the Marines. Anticipate the movements of the Syndics and be there first. They don’t have the muscle to stand up to your ships, and if they try, I want them shot to pieces.”

“It will be a pleasure, Admiral,” Jane Geary replied. If anyone could use battleships in an active defense role, it would be her.

Desjani, sitting on the other side of the admiral, was trying not to let her displeasure show at the lesser role of the battle cruisers.

Orion had been destroyed. Relentless , Reprisal , Superb , and Splendid were tied to Invincible , not only towing the superbattleship but also providing point defense for her. That left Geary with eighteen battleships, many of them scarred by fighting against enigmas, Kicks, and Syndics. Those battleships also lacked the maneuverability and speed of other warships, but all were massive, heavily armored, and bristling with weapons. Nothing but superior firepower, and a lot of it, could best them in a fight.

Armus would have Colossus , Encroach , Amazon , Spartan , Gallant , Indomitable , Glorious , and Magnificent . Jane Geary would have Dreadnaught , Dependable , Conqueror , Warspite , Vengeance , Revenge , Guardian , Fearless , Resolution , and Redoubtable .

The images of the two battleship commanders disappeared. Geary called Carabali. “Are your people ready to go, General?”

Carabali saluted formally. “Yes, Admiral. Twenty-nine Marines, and one fleet engineer. Commander Hopper has received a crash course in stealth armor operation and employment, as well as planetary infiltration, and has received emergency certification as qualified for this action.”

To say the Marine force-recon scouts had been less than thrilled to have a fleet engineer tapped to join their mission would have been seriously downplaying their reaction. Geary could have sworn he heard their chorus of protests even across the empty space separating ships. But the Marines had been forced to acknowledge that none of their personnel had a fraction of Hopper’s expertise and experience with the sort of challenge the trigger would pose, and she had completed the necessary simulator work.

“Launch your people on schedule,” Geary ordered.

He sat back, trying to relax, studying his display. The globe of the inhabited world slowly grew closer. The fleet had drastically scaled back its speed again for this operation and to achieve a stable orbit about the planet. That would give the Marines a little less than two hours after launch to reach the surface, reach their objective, infiltrate it, and seize control of the trigger before the fleet made its second orbital pass directly above the Syndic version of a Continental Shotgun.

“Tanya, I want you to be ready.”

Desjani perked up and looked at him. “For what?”

“If necessary, or if a good opportunity offers, I’m going to set loose the battle cruisers by divisions to chase off or chase down those Syndic warships that have been hounding us.”

“That just leaves escorts and the four battleships tied to Invincible to protect the assault transports and auxiliaries,” she pointed out.

“It will depend on the situation,” Geary said. “And I’ll keep Adroit within the formation as a last-ditch defense, too. Just be ready to go all out if I give the order.”

Desjani grinned like a wolf. “I’m always ready to do that. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Geary smiled back, then called Captain Tulev on Leviathan , Captain Badaya on Illustrious , and Captain Duellos on Inspire to pass on the same heads-up.

The four Syndic warship groups had come within several light-seconds, teasing the Alliance warships and forcing the Alliance fleet to remain in a tight defensive formation. Geary smiled as he watched them. It won’t be too long before you have to react to us. Then we may finally get a chance to grapple with you.

A soft alert tone notified Geary that the Marine scouts were launching from some of the assault transports, using special launch tubes that ejected them without using any energy or propellant that would alert watching Syndics that anything had happened.

He gazed at the planet turning below the fleet, the north pole currently behind the fleet to the right, and the south pole ahead to the left. The city holding the Syndic command and control center, and the site of the trigger, was off below and to Geary’s right. Just coming into view again on the globe’s horizon was the prison-camp location slightly to Geary’s left. On the planet’s surface, the trigger site and the prison camp were far apart. From this high, they could both be seen at once.

The Marines were dropping toward that surface now, in suits equipped to slow and conceal their descent while preventing detection by any available sensor. The suits weren’t foolproof. Good enough sensors focused on the right spots at the right times would pick up indications that something unusual was going on. But right now every available Syndic sensor and set of eyeballs would be focused on the Alliance fleet as it headed for the vicinity of the prison camp and began launching shuttles.

What would it be like for the Marines? Falling for kilometers toward the planet, the land growing in size beneath them, knowing that hostile eyes, ears, and weapons were on the lookout for intruders. The inside of the armor becoming uncomfortably hot as the suits absorbed heat they could not radiate without betraying the location of the wearer. Heavily armored and armed Marines planning to hit dirt after a kilometers-long fall in such a gentle way that even seismic sensors would not spot anything untoward.

And Commander Hopper among them, doing something she had never trained for except in a few hasty simulator sessions.

He couldn’t activate links to see through the eyes of the Marines. Not this time. The scouts would maintain silence except for occasional low-power microburst transmissions among their own force.

“All shuttles launched,” Lieutenant Castries said.

Geary nodded. “Very well.” He hoped his voice sounded steady, in contrast to the tightness strumming through his nerves.

Eighty shuttles fell toward the planet, their descents graceful and oddly like the birds they were nicknamed for. Unlike the Marine scouts, these shuttles carried only standard detection-avoidance gear, and were visible to a variety of sensors.

Geary’s eyes went back to the four groups of Syndic warships. Still close, still not getting closer. “That should have been a hint for us the first time. Why didn’t those four groups of ships try to hit the shuttles or at least disrupt their movement? Because they wanted to make sure we didn’t halt the recovery or break up the fleet to chase them.”

“Uh-huh,” Desjani said.

“I can’t even imagine going on an operation like those Marine scouts. The trip down, the attempts to avoid detection while walking among alert enemy sentries, everything.” Geary knew he was talking too much, but it helped relax his nerves as he waited. “I don’t know how they do it.”

Desjani glanced at him. “They do it because they’re crazy. All Marines are crazy. Force-recon Marines are even crazier than other Marines.”

“How do you know so much about different kinds of Marines?”

She looked back at her display. “There are parts of my dating history that you probably don’t want to know about.”