Fearless tlf-2

by Jack Campbell

  Cresida looked to her fellows as she spoke. “Most scientists believe the energy output would fall somewhere between less than that of a supernova and more than nothing, but no one’s been able to confidently predict how much that would be.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s the best science can offer? And those gates got built knowing they could potentially blow the hell out of this part of the galaxy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They let you go really fast,” Commander Neeson noted.

  Geary stared at the representation of the hypernet gate at Sancere, wondering just how many disasters traced their origin to the human desire to travel faster than before. I’ve been wondering if nonhuman intelligences might be tied somehow to this horribly destructive war we’ve been fighting for the last century. But I ought to know by now that humans don’t need nonhuman intelligences to influence us to do something stupid.

  Hey. Wait a minute. “Why is it we don’t know more about this? We designed and built the hypernet system. How could we be so uncertain about important characteristics of it?”

  Commander Cresida exchanged glances with her comrades again. “I can’t answer that exactly, Captain Geary. I know the practical breakthroughs that let us build the hypernet came ahead of the theories that explained it. A lot of the theory is still being worked out. That’s not the first time that sort of thing has happened. People often figure out how to do something before they understand why it works.”

  “Us and the Syndics? We both made these practical breakthroughs at about the same time?”

  She shrugged. “The Syndics stole the knowledge from us, sir. That’s what we assume, though I don’t have the security clearances to know for sure.”

  Or we stole it from them. “The bottom line is, you’re telling me the Syndics won’t dare destroy that gate?”

  “Uh, no, sir. We don’t know. They may have decided the risk is acceptable.”

  Geary tried not to let his feelings show. We don’t know. What if the extreme guess is right, and this fleet causes the Syndics to do something that fries not only Sancere and this fleet but a lot of nearby star systems? And even just having this fleet appear at Sancere might cause the Syndic commanders to destroy the hypernet gate as soon as they spot us. But I can’t afford not to go to Sancere and attack. This fleet needs the supplies there.

  There’s no alternative. I have to hope for the best, that the energy release won’t be so large it threatens anything, either nearby stars or just my ships.

  Oh, hell. I know what they’ll do.

  “We have to assume the Syndics will plan on waiting until our fleet is near the gate, then destroy it,” Geary announced. The other ship commanders stared at him. “They’re going to hope the gate releases enough energy to fry us but not enough to fry Sancere or anything beyond it.”

  Cresida nodded in agreement. “And if it does fry Sancere, then that’s just collateral damage in their eyes.”

  “But then what do we do?” Neeson asked. “We can’t just ignore the gate.”

  “I’ll think of something,” Geary promised. I hope. “If this diversion plan works, we can keep the Syndics from having forces in place to actually blow the gate. Now, it sounds like we’re in agreement on the best course of action for Task Force Furious. Break from the formation, charge at the Syndic defenders, make a high-speed firing pass, look like you’re heading for something very valuable, but divert after the Syndics commit to an intercept.” He paused. “I’ll send orders what to do after that, based on the situation. The most critical thing is that I don’t want you to actually dive into the heart of the Syndic defenses all by yourselves. Get back out of there so I can employ you in conjunction with the rest of the fleet.” Everyone nodded. “I’ll ensure orders are sent to each of you. Thank you. Commander Cresida, please wait.”

  After the virtual presences of the others vanished, Geary turned a serious face to Commander Cresida. “You’re going to be a good ways away from the fleet after you charge the Syndics. You could easily be more than a light-hour distant from the fleet. That means I won’t know if you get into trouble until an hour after the fact. I’m trusting you to fight smart, Commander. Keep the Syndics occupied, keep their attention on you, but don’t get yourself shot up. Can you retreat when it’s the best course of action?”

  Cresida seemed to ponder the question for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you alive and fighting, not proud and dead.”

  She grinned. “Sir, you’ve demonstrated we can be proud, alive, and fighting. I’m still trying to figure out how you managed to bring everything together at Kaliban to smash the Syndics.”

  Geary smiled back at her. “Do a great job at Sancere, and I’ll give you personal lessons on how to do it.”

  “That’s a deal, sir.” They both stood, and Cresida rendered a precise salute. She’d obviously been practicing. Geary didn’t tell her that fleet salutes tended to be sloppier than that and as a result she looked more like a Marine. Come to think of it, maybe Colonel Carabali had been the one teaching her how to do it. Geary knew the Marines had been deriving considerable amusement from watching the sailors’ attempts to deal with Geary’s moves to reintroduce saluting to the fleet.

  He sat down again after Cresida’s departure, gazing at the display, especially the representation of the hypernet gate. It hadn’t occurred to him before now that the gates were potentially dangerous. Potentially extremely dangerous.

  Potentially by far the deadliest weapons mankind had ever built.

  And he had no alternative but to charge most of his fleet right at the hypernet gate at Sancere.

  FIVE

  The communications alert chimed urgently, bringing Geary to full wakefulness. He rolled and hit the accept-message control automatically, fearing to hear that some more of his ships had bolted the formation.

  “Captain Geary.” Commander Cresida seemed both anxious and excited. “I’ve been doing some thinking. Odd concepts. But it occurred to me that since the hypernet gate matrices are suspended between so many tethers, maybe a matrix would respond somewhat like a net or sail, which means exactly how it collapses would depend upon exactly how the tethers release.”

  Geary tried to get his mind around that. Fortunately, Cresida’s analogy wasn’t too complicated. “What does that mean for us?”

  “Well, sir, if the way the matrix collapses affects the amount of energy released, which it should, and if the way the matrix collapses is dependent on how the tethers fail, then in theory it should be possible to use selective failure of the tethers to regulate the amount of energy released.”

  “Sort of like a nuclear weapon with a selectable yield?”

  “In a way … though the physical processes involved and the science are completely different.”

  “What would you need to pursue this?” Geary pressed. “Can you get a workable answer?”

  “Maybe.” Cresida shrugged apologetically. “I’d need priority access to the entire fleet-distributed network, sir.”

  “The entire thing?” The amount of computational power in the network was far beyond Geary’s ability to grasp. That gave him some idea of the complexity of what Cresida was proposing. “All right. You’ve got it.”

  He sat for a while after Cresida’s message ended, wondering if he really wanted her to succeed. But if she was right, he couldn’t afford to not find out.

  The combat simulations Geary ran as the fleet headed for the jump point to Sancere went well. But at the subsequent fleet conference, he found the absence of officers like Numos and Faresa to be jarring instead of welcome. Their absence only emphasized that forty of his ships had gone off to a fate Geary worried he could too easily predict. The way many of his remaining commanders kept looking around as if seeking familiar faces who weren’t present made it obvious that a lot of his officers were also aware of the absences.

  It couldn’t hurt to try distractin
g people from that. “Has everyone received and entered the modified settings for their jump drives so we can make it all the way to Sancere?”

  All of the officers ranged along the apparently huge table nodded, but their nervousness on those grounds was now easily apparent. He knew why they were worried. Leaping into battle against human foes was one thing, but jumping too far in the weirdness of jump space was another. Ships that jumped too far had never come out of jump space, though Geary knew sailors told stories about long-lost craft appearing suddenly at lonely star systems, their crews long ago dead in some particularly horrible ways, or simply haunting the ship still, changed by the strange nature of jump space into something no longer alive but unable to die. He’d heard the stories in bars and while standing watches late during a ship’s night period, when the darkened and deserted passageways of a familiar ship somehow became eerie in their silence. Geary wondered if the old, cheap jump space undead horror movies of his youth were still around in newer versions.

  “I assure you,” Geary emphasized, “that the settings will work. I’ve personally made jumps of this distance more than once.” That didn’t seem to provide as much comfort as Geary had hoped. “You don’t have to take my word for it. If you search the fleet database, you’ll find accounts of it. I can show you the references.” The accounts were otherwise too easily lost in the mass of information available. He’d only found them because he’d known exactly what to look for since he’d been on some of the ships involved. Geary sometimes wondered just how much accumulated knowledge mankind had hopelessly buried within databases collecting and endlessly storing everything possible. In ancient times, knowledge had been lost because copies no longer existed. Nowadays it was lost because copies of everything existed and finding a particular piece of information made the old needle in a haystack look like an easy task, even if you knew the information was there to begin with.

  The knowledge that they could find proof of Geary’s assertions cheered them up a little. “Believe me, the Syndics are going to be very unpleasantly surprised when we pop out of that jump exit at Sancere. As far as they’re concerned, the Alliance fleet will have done the impossible.” Geary finally saw smiles breaking out along the long, long virtual table. “We have every reason to believe we’ll achieve total surprise. That will give us an important window to act before the Syndics command authorities in Sancere even realize we’ve brought the war to them.”

  “The shipyards at Sancere produce many Syndic battleships and battle cruisers,” Captain Duellos observed.

  Geary gave his ship commanders a grim smile. “It’ll be a target-rich environment if even half of what we expect is there. That’s why it’ll be critically important that we coordinate our attacks. If ships start blazing away at the most attractive target they see, it could easily result in one Syndic ship getting blown to atoms while a half dozen other Syndics get away. We don’t want any of them getting away.” They liked hearing that, he could tell. It should go a long way to keeping them in check when confronted with a wealth of targets.

  “Captain Tyrosian.”

  She nodded.

  “The fast fleet auxiliaries in your division have done a fantastic job of fabricating new kinetic bombardment rounds and getting them distributed to the other combatants. The crews of Titan, Witch, Goblin, and Jinn are all to be congratulated on their hard work and dedication.” Tyrosian looked pleased, which she had every right to be. Thank the living stars none of the auxiliary ships was foolish enough to leave with Falco. I need those ships and what they can do for this fleet if I’m to get it home.

  Captain Tulev frowned. “While we have every reason to assume the Syndics will be caught totally unprepared, we have to also assume that defenses in the Sancere System are up-to-date and numerous.”

  “Agreed,” Geary stated. “We’ll have the fleet in a general-purpose attack formation when we jump, but we’ll modify it as soon as I get a feel for the best way to take out the defenses. As you all know from the battle plan outline I provided, the ships in Task Force Furious will be pretending to break formation. They’ll hopefully draw any Syndic warships after them and leave us free to seize the hypernet gate.” He paused, not wanting to crush the enthusiasm he saw at the idea of reaching that gate. “We also have to assume that the Syndics will try to destroy that gate before we can use it.”

  “The gates are very robust,” one of the other ship commanders pointed out. “They can take a lot of damage because of redundant components.”

  “Yes,” Geary agreed. Built that way, I now know, because if they did fail, the consequences could be huge, but if I tell everyone that, I might end up with panic at a crucial point. “But they weren’t designed to withstand deliberate attack. It may not be possible to get to that gate in time. But we’re going to give it our best shot.”

  Several seconds of silence passed, then one of the destroyer commanders spoke up. “Sir, what about the ships that left at Strabo?”

  Geary clenched his teeth before he could answer. “There’s not much we can do. Hell, there’s nothing we can do. We couldn’t even go after them to help, because we didn’t know which star they were jumping for.” Because I’d blocked their communications, in which Captain Falco was doubtless trying to tell everyone exactly that, along with his brainless call to battle. “I believe they’re going to run into a Syndic buzz saw and get cut to ribbons. Fighting spirit is all very well, it’s absolutely critical in fact, but it’s a lousy shield against enemy weapons.” He paused, hating to have to say that out loud, but feeling he had to state a truth they all knew anyway. “But they do have one chance.”

  “Ilion?” Captain Duellos asked. “You gave them the name of that star system before they jumped from Strabo. I couldn’t help noticing that it’s within jump range of Sancere.”

  “Yes.” Geary pointed at the star display over the table. Of course Duellos has already researched that question. “If we can’t use the hypernet gate at Sancere, we’ll jump to Ilion from Sancere.”

  “Why Ilion?” the captain of the Terrible demanded. “It’s not the best route back toward Alliance space from Sancere.”

  “That’s true,” Geary stated calmly, “but it’s the only star system those ships that left the fleet could reach if they turned back and tried to rejoin us. If they manage to escape the Syndics, they can backtrack to Ilion and rendezvous with us there.”

  Captain Tulev was gazing at the display, his face somber. “You mean if any of them manage to escape the Syndics.”

  “Yes. If they do, they know where to find us.” Geary looked around the table, meeting everyone’s gaze. “That’s a risk to us. As noted, it’s not the best route back to Alliance space, and we’ll likely need to hang around Ilion longer than I’d like to give those other ships a chance to meet up with the fleet again. But it’s the only thing we can do, and I made the decision to run those risks for the sake of those Alliance ships and crews.”

  There was another pause, then Terrible’s captain nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Captain Geary. I know you don’t have votes on decisions, but I’d have voted for that.”

  No one contradicted him. Geary nodded back. “Thanks.” What else do I say? Please, no other ship captains take in your heads to run off for another star?

  But nothing else seemed to be needed. The uncertainty Geary had felt earlier had been replaced by varying degrees of enthusiasm and resignation. The meeting broke up, virtual presences vanishing until only Captain Duellos remained. He gave Geary a stern look. “You should have told them about Ilion right off the bat. I was going to bring it up, having guessed what it meant, but Terrible beat me to it.”

  Geary shrugged. “I wasn’t sure how they’d take it, how they’d take anything regarding those ships that followed Falco.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s scared, Captain Geary.” Duellos smiled very briefly as Geary gave him a startled look. “Oh, you hide it exceptionally well, but I know, because I know enough about you by now to read the s
igns. Don’t be fooled by the brave talk of my fellow captains. We’re all scared, all wondering if the next system will be our last, all wondering if our best possible future involves a Syndic labor camp like the one we found on Sutrah Five.”

  Geary sat down, rapping his forehead with one fist. “They needed to hear that I was still thinking in terms of everyone getting back, even the ones who took off.”

  “Exactly.” Duellos exhaled a long, low breath. “That’s the only hope for those forty ships, by the way. That they’ll run.”

  “I know.” Geary ran his hand through the star display, watching his forefinger spanning constellations. “But I’ve been told the fleet never runs.”

  “Ha! Let me guess. Desjani?”

  Geary bent one corner of his mouth in a smile. “No.”

  “Ah, that’s right. She’s been watching you and learning. Let’s see … oh, of course. Cresida. Our little firebrand from the Furious.”

  “The other captains seemed to agree with her,” Geary pointed out.

  Duellos smiled. “The ones from Task Force Furious? Naturally. Because you handpicked them for their quality. But if you weren’t in command, even they would waver if things got bad enough, as they certainly will when Fighting Falco hits the Syndic ambushes you and I expect him to meet.”

  Geary toyed with the controls, his mind not on them. “What do you think will happen? What will Falco do?”

  “Fall apart,” Duellos stated matter-of-factly. “I mean it. Once he was a capable if unimaginative commander at his best. At his worst, Captain Falco assumed the enemy was as impressed by him as he himself was. The enemy didn’t always accommodate that assumption, to the sorrow of the Alliance forces entrusted to Falco’s command.”