Jack Campbell - Guardian

A roar of welcome sounded as Captain Desjani entered the shuttle dock. She walked past cheering sailors and Marines until she reached Master Chief Gioninni and fixed him with a warning look.

But Gioninni just grinned. “Captain Desjani! Your reputation proceeds you!”

Senior Chief Tarrini nodded. “Queen Callisto can find no fault with Captain Desjani.”

“She is judged worthy to enter your realm by Davy Jones,” Gunnery Sergeant Orvis added.

Gioninni’s smile faded, and he cocked a stern eye on her. “Captain Desjani, you are hereby sentenced to command of the battle cruiser Dauntless , the finest ship in the fleet, but one crewed by the biggest band of slackers, misfits, scoundrels, deadbeats, and slovenly sailors ever to sail the stars! Can you turn such a crew into real sailors, Captain?”

Desjani’s reply could be heard easily over the laughter following King Jove’s sentence. “I already have!”

“Then enter into my realm of Sol Star System, Captain Desjani, and be a member in good standing of the ancient and revered order of Voyagers!”

Amid renewed cheers, Tanya walked out past Geary with a salute and a wink. He returned the salute, then looked over at Charban and the senators. “You’re welcome to meet the King and Queen as well.”

Charban squared his shoulders with dramatic exaggeration and marched toward the Royal Family of Sol, but Costa and Suva hesitated. Sakai, after a few seconds, shook his head. “This is an event for the military, Admiral. We should not intrude.”

“This is an event for anyone who travels in space,” Geary corrected.

“We’re not… like you,” Senator Suva said, her voice tinged with what sounded like regret.

“Are you sure of that?” Geary asked.

The senators looked back at him as if they had never considered that question before.

The next day, they arrived at Sol.

All signs of merriment and celebration had vanished except for a single stuffed bunny that a hell-lance battery had adopted as a mascot. But those weapons were powered down for arrival, as were all other weapons aboard Dauntless . The shields were at full strength, because that was a necessary secondary protection against radiation and other hazards to navigation, but otherwise the warship was in as peaceful a configuration as a battle cruiser could be.

“I don’t like it,” Desjani grumbled for the hundredth time as she sat on the bridge.

“The requirements for entering Sol don’t allow for exceptions,” Geary reminded her for at least the fiftieth time. “And Sol Star System is demilitarized. There are no weapons and no threats.”

“There is no place where humans are that fits that description,” Desjani objected.

“Two minutes to hypernet exit,” Lieutenant Castries announced.

Near her, the three senators jostled each other for position near the single observer seat on the bridge. Rione and Charban were also on the bridge for the historic moment, but well off to one side where Lieutenant Yuon had made some room for them.

The last minute passed in silence, everyone lost in their own thoughts.

Nothing was abruptly replaced by Everything as they left the hypernet. Off to one side, a distant spark of light marked Sol, the home star of humanity.

But Geary couldn’t spare time to sightsee. Instead, his eyes went to another part of his display, where warning signs had sprung to life on a dozen warships of unfamiliar design.

“I told you!” Desjani said. “It’s a good thing they’re too far away to pose an immediate threat!”

“They’re not Syndics,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, bewildered.

Orbiting half a light-hour past the gate, the strange warships were too distant to attack, but their presence here was inexplicable.

Aside from those ships, all of the other space traffic in Sol Star System looked routine. Merchant ships swung between planets, faster couriers and passenger ships were on flatter trajectories, and near most of the worlds orbiting Sol smaller craft could be seen dipping into and out of planetary atmospheres.

Geary sat, his eyes on his display, letting his thoughts settle as he took in everything, trying not to be distracted by the names of the planets, which had assumed the status of legend. Mars. Jupiter. Venus. Old Earth itself. Dauntless sailed among the monuments to humanity’s first achievements, mankind’s first steps into space. But amidst those fabled names and worlds were warships of unknown origin and intentions. “Does anybody know what we’re dealing with here?” he finally asked.

Senator Suva sounded and looked bewildered. “Sol Star System is neutral and demilitarized. Only… only ceremonial military forces are ever allowed here.”

“These do not appear to be ceremonial,” Rione answered. “You do not recognize them, Admiral?”

“No. Neither do our combat systems.” Dauntless ’s sensors were evaluating everything they could see on the mystery warships, but even though tentative identifications of sensors and weapons sites were appearing on their hulls, the SHIP TYPE and SHIP ALLEGIANCE tags on the displays remained blank.

“Syndics,” Costa declared. “They modified some of their designs—”

“Our systems could spot that easily,” Geary said, trying not to sound dismissive of the senator. “They are not Syndics.”

A virtual window appeared near Geary, revealing Lieutenant Iger. “Sir, nothing matching those warships is in any of our intelligence databases.”

“Are they human?”

“Definitely human, sir. Even though we can’t identify the ships, there are some design features on their hulls that hint at their origin.” Lieutenant Iger looked unhappy as he spoke his next words. “Sol.”

“Sol?” Geary did his best not to sound angry at Iger. “Everything human came from Sol. Are you saying these warships belong to Sol?”

“No, sir. But they are human in origin.”

Geary glanced at the six Dancer ships surrounding Dauntless . Iger’s information wasn’t as useless as it had seemed at first. “That’s as near as you can identify them? Just a common origin at Sol?”

“If the design features we see are being interpreted correctly,” Iger said, “the design of those warships and the designs we’re familiar with diverged at Sol.”

“There is nothing unusual being broadcast in the star system ‘notices to shipping,’” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “The notices provide the same language about the star system being demilitarized that we have in our procedures for entering Sol Star System.”

“And yet there they are.” Desjani grimaced. “Six of them are big, but smaller than us. Not heavy cruisers, and not battleships. Sort of like those scout battleships the Alliance tried.”

“The ones that got wiped out in battle?” Geary asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Yeah, those.” She tapped a quick command. “Whatever these are, they’re a bit smaller than the Alliance scout battleships. Hard to tell yet what kind of armor they’ve got.”

“We’ll have to watch how they maneuver,” Lieutenant Iger chimed in. “That will give us some means to calculate their mass. Any mass in excess of a reasonable estimate for that size ship will likely represent armor.”

“What about the smaller ships?” Geary asked. His display was rapidly filling in details on the six escorts with the six bigger warships, showing barracuda shapes reminiscent of Alliance destroyers and Syndic Hunter-Killers, but not as large as either. “They’ve got less mass than even Syndic HuKs.”

“Corvettes?” Desjani guessed. “No. They’re even smaller than the Syndic Nickel corvettes.”