Jack Campbell - Guardian

“We’ll go through carefully anyway,” Geary said. He turned at a sound and saw that Rione had come onto the bridge. “Have we heard any more from the Syndics?”

“No,” Rione replied. “Aside from two fragmentary messages using the avatar of CEO Gawzi that complained of unprovoked aggression, there’s been nothing else. They can’t complain about the warships we destroyed since they insisted those weren’t under Syndic control, and I suspect the Syndics in Simur are too busy with internal matters to pursue further complaints about events we were involved in.”

“Internal matters? Internal revolt, you mean.”

“Of course. There’s no telling who will win this one. We don’t know enough about the Syndic security forces here and what the locals might be able to muster. Did you want me to look into getting supplies from anywhere within this star system? Some of the facilities in the outer reaches of the star system might be willing to deal.”

“No,” Geary said immediately. “We don’t need anything they could provide, and there’s no source here we could trust. Even the people fighting the Syndic security police might see us as still just another enemy. In any case, I don’t want to linger here. That would just give the Syndics more time to prepare surprises at Padronis. What have you heard from the Dancers? Emissary Charban says the Dancers have been singularly uncurious about everything that happened here.”

“Yes. Strangely so,” Rione agreed. “Either they understood it all without our having to explain it, or it was so incomprehensible to them that they aren’t trying to understand it.”

Geary gave his display a glance as it beeped for his attention. “The last shuttle run is complete. I thought we’d never find room for all of those prisoners we liberated. Let’s hope we don’t have to go into battle with all of those extra people clogging our ships.”

That reminded him of something. He called Tanuki . “Captain Smythe, how is Commander Hopper? Home safe and sound?”

Smythe grinned. “And happy to be home. We had some trouble prying her away from the Marines. They wanted to keep her. I think the stock of fleet engineers has risen considerably among the Marines. They really did need her. She says that trigger was an impressive mess of misleading circuitry, false mechanisms, and trip wires, all of it designed to fool anyone trying to disable it or override it by standard methods.”

“I’d like to see Commander Hopper’s postaction report when she completes it,” Geary said. “Oh, you can have Lieutenant Jamenson back full-time. Have her destroy all intel files she was sent.”

“Of course,” Captain Smythe said.

“We’ll know if they aren’t destroyed,” Geary added casually. “Special tags embedded in the files.”

“Why would that be a problem?” Smythe asked heartily. “Speaking of Lieutenant Jamenson, she’s being harassed by some fellow named Iger.”

“Harassed? Is that the term she is using?”

“Possibly not. I can’t spare her, Admiral.”

“Understood, Captain, but we have to think of her career and well-being, too. I won’t hijack her. But if she wants to move on, I hope she’ll get the assistance in that effort that she has earned from both of us.”

Smythe sighed dramatically. “You’re right. Keep good people in servitude, and you end up like the Syndics. We’ve almost completed repairs on Revenge , Colossus , and Fearless , by the way. They’ll be fine before we jump. Until something else breaks on them or other ships.”

“We’ll be home soon and have time to work on everything,” Geary said. “Everything except my report on what’s been going on from the time we left Varandal, since I have to turn it in as soon as we arrive. That’s going to be a book before I get everything into it.”

“Too bad we don’t have a faster-than-light message system like the enigmas, isn’t it? Not having to physically send ships with messages could be useful at times.”

Or a pain in the neck if it allowed fleet headquarters to reach across the light-years to try to micromanage us in real time. “If you come up with one, or figure out how the enigmas do it, let me know.”

After talking to Smythe, and before he could forget, he called Lieutenant Iger. “Just for the sake of observing all of the formalities, let me know when Lieutenant Jamenson has destroyed all the files she was sent and signed off on all of the debriefing and disclosure paperwork.”

Iger nodded quickly. “I don’t anticipate problems with that, Admiral. Shamrock is extremely professional in her work.”

“Shamrock?”

“Uh… I mean, Lieutenant Jamenson… of course, sir.”

Geary made sure that he didn’t smile. “Then all of your misgivings regarding her have been put to rest?”

“Absolutely, sir! Lieutenant Jamenson has requested to visit Dauntless and tour the intelligence spaces here once we return to Varandal. With your permission and approval, Admiral, and that of Captain Desjani.”

Apparently Jamenson wasn’t really feeling harassed. No wonder Smythe was worried about losing her. Geary hoped for Lieutenant Iger’s sake that her interest wasn’t entirely in the intriguing new world of intelligence. “I don’t anticipate any problem with that, Lieutenant.”

Nor was there any problem at the jump exit. Perhaps the Syndics had temporarily run out of mines in this region.

Geary felt relief as the stars around Simur vanished, and the gray of jump space appeared. Not just relief, but a sense that the last major hurdle had been crossed for now.

They would learn whether that was true when they reached Padronis.

There was almost nothing at Padronis.

The fleet came out of jump space prepared for surprises, for threats, and found only two ships in the star system.

Under normal circumstances, even that would be surprising. A white dwarf star, Padronis had no companions in space, no planets or asteroids in orbit. White dwarf stars slowly accumulated helium in their outer shells, causing them to go nova at wide intervals. If anything natural had once orbited Padronis, it had been blown away long before humans reached this part of space.

The formerly Syndic light cruiser that had mutinied was trucking at a good rate toward the jump point for Heradao, already far from where Geary’s warships had arrived. The light cruiser’s crew clearly wanted nothing more to do with fighting the Alliance.

The abandoned Syndic station they had seen when last passing through Padronis was still here, circling in lonely orbit about the star, which would someday in the distant future blast it apart. That’s where the other ship was, a single freighter docked to the emergency rescue station the Syndics had built at Padronis over a century ago, before the hypernet, when ships had to jump from star to star to get anywhere, including stars with nothing at them like Padronis. The station had been decommissioned decades ago, everything shut down and left in place because it would cost more to move it than it was worth.

“What’s the freighter doing?” Geary asked. Nothing else was visible in the star system even though the fleet’s sensors were looking for anything, even the tiniest anomaly. “Make sure nothing unusual the sensors spot gets stuck in the noise filters. I want even junk that looks like junk to be checked carefully.”

“There’s nothing,” Desjani said, shaking her head. “That freighter at the station is three light-hours from us, so it isn’t any possible threat.”

“Captain?” Lieutenant Castries said. “We’ve spotted material being loaded on the freighter.”

“Material?”