Jack Campbell - Guardian

To Robert, my younger brother, who kept getting back up every time life knocked him down. He was the strongest of us. And to Debbie K., his wife, who gave him what he had always sought, stayed by him, and will always be family.

For S., as always.

The admiral was having a bad day, and when the admiral was having a bad day, no one wanted to attract his attention.

Almost no one.

“Is there anything wrong, Admiral?”

Admiral John “Black Jack” Geary, who had been slumped in the fleet command seat on the bridge of the Alliance battle cruiser Dauntless , straightened up and glared at Captain Tanya Desjani. “Are you serious? We’re extremely far from the Alliance, the Syndics are still causing trouble for us, and the warships of this fleet are shot to hell after fighting our way through enigma- and Kick-controlled space, then fighting again here. The warship we took from the Kick alien race is valuable beyond measure but also a threat magnet and a drag on this fleet. We have no idea what’s happening back in the Alliance but every reason to believe whatever is happening isn’t good. Did I forget anything? Oh, yes, my flagship’s commanding officer just asked me if anything was wrong!”

Sitting in her captain’s seat next to him, Desjani nodded, eyeing him calmly. “But, aside from all that, you’re good?”

“Aside from all that?” He could have exploded, but she knew him better than anyone else. If he hadn’t had a sense of the absurd, his responsibilities would have driven him up the wall long before this. “Yeah. Aside from all that, I’m good. You’re amazing, Captain Desjani.”

“I do my best, Admiral Geary.”

The bridge watch team could see them talking, and knew what the admiral’s mood had been like, but couldn’t hear what was being said. Which was why Lieutenant Castries sounded a bit wary as well as urgent when she called out her report to everyone else on the bridge of Dauntless . “A warship came out of the gate!”

Combat systems alerts were already sounding as Geary straightened in his seat, the frown he hadn’t realized was riding his brow vanishing as he hastily focused his display on the hypernet gate that loomed at the edge of the Midway Star System, nearly two light-hours distant from where Dauntless and the rest of the Alliance fleet orbited.

“Another Syndic heavy cruiser,” Tanya commented, sounding disappointed. “Nothing to get excited—” She broke off, narrowing her eyes at her own display. “Anomalies?”

Geary saw the same information popping up on his display as the fleet’s sensors peered across light-hours of space to spot the tiniest visible detail on the newly arrived heavy cruiser. He felt keyed up despite knowing that he was viewing history. The heavy cruiser had arrived almost two hours ago, the light from that event just now reaching Dauntless , the flagship of the First Fleet of the Alliance. Everything that was going to happen in the next two hours had already happened, yet viewing it still felt as if he were watching it occur right at this moment. “They’ve rigged extra cargo capacity with life support along their hull,” he commented.

“That means a lot of passengers,” Desjani murmured. “An assault force aimed at the facilities here?”

That was a real possibility. Midway had revolted months ago, casting off the heavy hand of the Syndicate Worlds and declaring independence. The Syndicate Worlds was crumbling in the wake of its defeat in the war with the Alliance, but even with star systems falling away in many other places, Midway was too valuable for the Syndic government to accept its loss. Geary had been wondering what the Syndics would try next to regain control.

But, before he could answer, Desjani’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “He’s running.”

Sure enough, the heavy cruiser had seen the small Syndic flotilla still hovering near the hypernet gate and, instead of altering course slightly to join up with them, had twisted about and accelerated away.

“They’re not here on orders from the Syndics. It’s another breakaway,” Geary said. One more element of the armed forces of the Syndicate Worlds that was responding to the erratic fragmenting of the Syndic empire by taking off on its own, probably for the home star system of the crew. “Or does he belong to the authorities here at Midway?”

“Not if they told us the truth about how many warships they have.” Desjani paused, grinned, then laughed with a mocking edge. “Did you hear what I said? I wondered if a bunch of Syndics had told us the truth.”

The rest of the bridge watch team laughed along with her at the absurdity of the statement.

“Midway revolted against the Syndicate Worlds,” Geary pointed out though he had to admit that Desjani’s ridicule was justified. He had encountered a few Syndics who had dealt straight with him, but most of the Syndics he had met (especially Syndics at the CEO level) seemed to regard the truth as something to deal with only after all other possible alternatives had been tried and failed.

“So they painted over the stripe on their tails,” Desjani replied. “Does that mean they aren’t still skunks?”

He didn’t answer, knowing that argument would resonate deeply among everyone in his fleet after a century spent fighting the Syndics in a war that had seen behavior on both sides spiral downward through the decades. But the Syndicate Worlds had always led the way down, their leaders hesitating at nothing to pursue a war they could not win but refused to lose until Geary himself had smashed their fleet.

The commander of the Syndicate flotilla, their old acquaintance CEO Boyens, had reacted to the heavy cruiser’s arrival almost as soon as the flotilla had sighted it. The single battleship forming the core of the flotilla had not altered its orbit, but the majority of the escorts had rolled down and over and were accelerating on curving vectors, aimed at intercepting the new arrival.

Desjani shook her head. “He’s sending all six of his heavy cruisers and all nine of his Hunter-Killers? Overkill.”

“We know Boyens is usually cautious,” Geary said. “He’s not taking any chances, and he has to worry about the locals intervening.”

“The locals can’t get to that new heavy cruiser before Boyens’s ships do,” she pointed out. “If the cruiser wasn’t burdened with that extra mass, he might get clear. But as it is, he’s toast.”

Geary stared at his display. The combat systems aboard Dauntless were presenting the same assessment that Desjani had made. The physics of the situation were not complex, just a matter of mass, acceleration, and distances. Curves through space projected courses, with the points where different weapons would be within range of their target clearly marked. The newly arrived heavy cruiser had only been going at point zero five light speed when it left the gate, a fairly sedate pace for a warship, probably intended to conserve fuel. Even though the new cruiser was now accelerating for all it was worth, it would be overtaken by Boyens’s heavy cruisers well before any help could reach it. Those heavy cruisers were already pushing up toward point one light speed and would surely keep increasing velocity to at least point two light. “I wonder who the new cruiser is carrying with them that required the extra life support?”

“More Syndics,” Desjani replied in an uncaring tone.

“More people fleeing the Syndics,” Geary said. “Maybe families of the crew of that heavy cruiser.”

She looked down, lips pressed tightly together, then glanced his way. “Maybe. The Syndics killed countless families during the war. They’ll kill these, too. I had to stop thinking about things like that, especially because at times like this there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop it.”