The Lost Stars: Perilous Shield tls-2

by Jack Campbell

  “That’s an old snake trick,” Diaz agreed.

  “And they don’t know why we’re going to Atalia, and I will bet my life that the snakes have no idea that we intend going to Alliance space from there. They’ve probably got hidden agents in Atalia, and they’ll find a way to get those agents to report on what we’re doing.” She turned a triumphant look on Diaz. “But we’ll have more firepower than anyone else in Atalia if Captain Bradamont’s information is still good. We’ll block anyone from leaving Atalia for Indras until the freighters return from Varandal and we jump out. The snakes won’t know what we were up to until we get back here; and then it will be too late for them to interfere with us.”

  I hope.

  Forty minutes later, they reached the jump point. “All units in Recovery Flotilla, jump now,” Marphissa ordered. She barely felt the mental jolt of entering jump space, barely noticed the stars and blackness of normal space replaced by the unending gray sameness of jump space, and only noted in passing the blooming off to one side of Manticore of one of the strange and unexplained lights that came and went in jump space. “I’m getting some sleep. So are you, Kapitan Diaz. Make sure I am notified of any emergencies,” she added to the watch specialists, then marched off the bridge toward her stateroom.

  THEY had to go through Kalixa to get to Atalia. Kalixa had been a fairly well-off star system, bristling with defenses and home to many millions.

  Then the enigmas had caused Kalixa’s hypernet gate to collapse in hopes that it would set off a wave of retaliatory actions by the Syndicate and the Alliance against each other.

  “There’s nothing left,” Kapitan Diaz breathed in shock as he gazed at the dead remnants of the star system. “Even the star has become unstable.”

  “You can still see some ruins on what used to be the habitable planet,” Marphissa replied somberly. “There’s not much atmosphere left to block our view of them. If the enigma plan had succeeded, a lot of star systems belonging to the Syndicate and the Alliance would be like this.”

  They couldn’t rush through Kalixa, not with the freighters along, but they made the best time they could to the jump point for Atalia, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the gray of jump space replaced the dead remnants of Kalixa.

  CAPTAIN Bradamont’s information about Atalia was still good.

  Marphissa relaxed as her display updated to show only a single Hunter-Killer orbiting near the star system’s primary inhabited world and a single Alliance courier ship hanging near the jump point for Varandal. Getting out of the eerie gray isolation of jump space, returning to normal space, where stars glowed all around once more, was always a relief. But it was often also rendered tense by wondering what might be waiting outside the jump exit.

  “That’s it,” she told Bradamont, who had come to the bridge to observe the entry to Atalia just in case other Alliance ships were present. “Let’s get you over to that freighter. I’m going to keep Manticore and Kraken here near the jump point for Kalixa to keep anyone from going on to Indras and taking word to the snakes of what’s happening. The light cruisers and our HuKs will escort your freighters to the jump point for Varandal, then wait there for you to return.”

  “For me to return with your shipmates,” Bradamont corrected.

  “If it can be done, you’ll do it,” Marphissa said. As she stood to accompany Bradamont to the shuttle, Marphissa was surprised to hear the senior watch specialist call out to Bradamont.

  “Good luck, Kapitan!”

  “Yes,” another specialist agreed. “One of those guys from the Reserve Flotilla owes me money. I hope you bring him back!”

  Bradamont grinned, waved, and followed Marphissa off the bridge.

  “That was surprising,” Marphissa muttered, as they made their way toward the air lock.

  “They must be getting used to me,” Bradamont offered. “And they idolize you—”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “They do. So when they see that you trust me, it rubs off a little on me.” They reached the hatch, and Bradamont paused. “If Admiral Geary is already at Varandal, this will be a piece of cake.”

  “And if he’s not, you said this Admiral Timbale will cut a deal,” Marphissa said. “Be careful. I don’t want to lose you. And you and Colonel Rogero behave yourselves once you’re on the same ship. No sneaking off for a little private recreation.”

  Bradamont laughed. “That’s unlikely. You are the only other person in this flotilla who knows about Donal Rogero and me. He thinks his soldiers will take it all right, but we don’t want to create too many problems with the Reserve Flotilla survivors when they get on the same ship with us.”

  “Smart move.” Marphissa hesitated, feeling unusually diffident. “What do you say? May the stars protect you? Something like that?”

  “Something like that. May the living stars watch over you.”

  It was only after Bradamont had sealed the hatch behind her that Marphissa realized that she had not simply given Marphissa the correct phrase, but spoken the wish on her behalf as well. Good luck, you Alliance scum. Come back safely to us.

  Several hours later, Bradamont called Marphissa from the freighter she was on. The freighters and their escorts had left the two heavy cruisers behind, plodding at the best rate the freighters could manage for the jump point for Varandal.

  Bradamont looked unhappy. “The courier ship confirmed that Admiral Geary has not yet brought the fleet back through Atalia en route to Varandal. That’s not unexpected since he had to go to Sobek, then transit a number of star systems and jumps before getting here, but it means we’ll get to Varandal before he does. We can’t wait around since it could be days or weeks before Admiral Geary makes it here hauling along that Kick superbattleship, which makes these freighters look like racing yachts by comparison. We’ll continue on to Varandal.”

  Black Jack is taking longer to get back? Marphissa thought. We did expect that. But I’m worried. The Syndicate wanted him to go to Sobek, and the Syndicate never plays fair. Ha! Listen to yourself. You’re worried about the safety of an Alliance fleet.

  But I am. Things have changed.

  COLONEL Rogero had been careful to act toward Bradamont only in the most professional and impersonal of ways. But once they returned to her tiny cabin on the freighter after sending her message to Kommodor Marphissa, alone with no one else around, he gave her a concerned look. “You’re worried.”

  “I’m some Alliance officer that you never met before, remember? You’re not supposed to know me that well, Colonel,” Bradamont replied with a small smile.

  “But I do, Honore. Do you expect trouble in Varandal?”

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “There shouldn’t be. But. These freighters are Syndicate Worlds’ construction. You and your soldiers are former Syndicate. Someone might throw up obstacles.”

  “What are you still not saying?” Rogero pressed.

  “Oh, hell, why do I try to lie to you?” She sat down on the single chair in the cramped cabin. “You’re the senior officer. You may have to sign for the released prisoners. And you’re . . .”

  “A man in whom your intelligence people might be interested?”

  Bradamont nodded unhappily. “If they have files tying Colonel Donal Rogero to the Alliance source known as Red Wizard, they might insist on taking you into custody. They wouldn’t call it that, but that’s what they’d be doing.”

  “But what of you? What did Alliance intelligence call you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “White Witch.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Don’t. Make. A. Joke.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Rogero protested. “But that means that Alliance intelligence might have a great deal of interest in you as well.”

  “Yes.” She grimaced. “I’m going to need to communicate with Admiral Timbale. Admiral Geary provided me with some special codes I can use to do that. But it would be wise to avoid letting anyone else in Varandal know that I’m along for this ride
. The wrong words in the right ears could cause me and you to be hauled off and detained, along with perhaps all six freighters. It’s going to be interesting, Donal. And even though we’re on the same ship, I can’t even touch you.”

  “Our dreams kept us going for a long time. What’s a little longer? Do you think that Alliance intelligence or the snakes can beat me and you together?”

  Bradamont smiled and rendered him a casual salute in the Alliance style. “No, sir. We are going to get this done.”

  IT was hard leaving behind the light cruisers and HuKs when the freighters entered the jump for Varandal. They were, after all, not just jumping to an Alliance-controlled star system but one that was a military stronghold crawling with defenses. Even though the freighter supervisors and crews were not military and usually regarded Syndicate mobile forces as only one step better than Alliance warships when it came to rapacious threats, even they were rattled by the prospect of arriving at Varandal completely unescorted.

  Colonel Rogero listened carefully to the conversations around him during the four days in jump space required to reach Varandal from Atalia. He tried to talk to the freighter supervisors about jump space, but they knew little of the theory behind it and the jump drives. Practical men and women, they knew how to keep their equipment working and what that equipment should do. But they didn’t know whether jump space truly was a different universe in which no star or planet had ever formed and in which distances were much shorter than the human universe. It was something they went through to get where they needed to go within a reasonable period of time. That was all they needed to know.

  He didn’t have a lot of ground forces on each freighter, just a platoon per ship. As much room as possible had to be left open for accommodating freed prisoners. Rogero’s troops were leery of Bradamont, but the knowledge that General Drakon had ordered her to be along on this mission (for that was what Rogero told them) led the soldiers to accept the odd presence of an unconfined Alliance officer among them.

  Bradamont had also arranged to “accidentally” reveal in the presence of some of the soldiers the place on her arm where the Syndicate labor-camp mark was still visible. Anyone who had been through a labor camp and survived automatically earned some degree of sympathy and respect from those like Rogero’s soldiers, who had lived under the Syndicate.

  But now that period of waiting was coming to an end. Rogero had escorted Bradamont to the cramped bridge of the freighter, where the freighter executive waited with ill-concealed nervousness for the exit from jump space.

  “They won’t shoot?” the freighter executive asked Bradamont for the third time despite her having said no the first two times.

  “Probably not,” she replied on this occasion, without visible concern. “If they do, we’ll probably be able to make the escape pod before the ship blows up. We won’t all fit, though, so I hope you’re a fast runner.”

  Behind the freighter executive, Rogero grinned at Bradamont, but she kept a serious expression.

  The drop out of jump space interrupted whatever reply the merchant executive might have mustered.

  Two Alliance destroyers were within five light-seconds of the jump exit.

  Rogero felt his breath catch as instinct born of a lifetime of war warned of serious danger.

  But Bradamont gestured to him with an encouraging look, pointing to the freighter’s transmitter. All right. Let’s see how good I am at talking to the Alliance. “This is Colonel Rogero of the independent Midway Star System. We are here at the invitation of Admiral Geary, on a peaceful mission to recover prisoners of war from the Syndicate Reserve Flotilla. Please notify Admiral Timbale that we have information regarding Admiral Geary and the success of his mission, and would like to speak with him.”

  Bradamont made a quick warning gesture and Rogero managed not to speak his next intended words. “Rogero, out.”

  “I should have warned you earlier,” she said. “Saying for the people would tag you as Syndics.”

  “They’ll probably tag us as Syndicate, anyway. But, with any luck,” Rogero commented, “they’ll be curious enough about the information on Black Jack to avoid destroying us.”

  “They know that Admiral Timbale will be curious,” Bradamont replied. “And they won’t want to make him mad.”

  Rogero watched the freighter’s limited display update, an apparently endless array of warships, support craft, civilian ships, repair facilities, and defensive installations popping up in fits and starts. “Black Jack isn’t even here,” Rogero murmured. “And look at all of it.”

  Bradamont heard. “There aren’t that many warships present, and those here are cruisers and smaller.”

  “That’s more than big enough for us to worry about,” the freighter executive grumbled.

  Less than thirty seconds passed before a reply came in from one of the destroyers. “This is Lieutenant Commander Baader of the Alliance destroyer Sai. Your status and your political allegiance are unknown to us, Colonel Rogero. You and your ships look Syndic.”

  Bradamont made an encouraging gesture, and Rogero tapped the controls again. “I am a colonel in the ground forces of the free and independent star system of Midway. My allegiance is to our President Iceni, and to my commander, General Drakon. We no longer answer to the Syndicate. The Syndicate is our enemy. We are at peace with the Alliance and have fought alongside your Admiral Geary at Midway.”

  This time almost a minute passed before Lieutenant Commander Baader’s image once more appeared. “We have forwarded your message to Admiral Timbale, Colonel Rogero. Your freighters are to remain in this orbit until we receive clearance for you to proceed farther.”

  “More waiting?” Rogero asked.

  “More waiting,” Bradamont agreed. “They’ve bumped the matter upstairs, which was the smartest thing they could do.”

  Light crawled across the light-hours to the massive orbiting Ambaru station where Admiral Timbale had his headquarters, then crawled back. Awoken from a restless sleep by the freighter’s second officer, Rogero returned to the bridge, collecting Bradamont along the way.

  “This is Admiral Timbale.” The admiral looked thoughtful as well as suspicious, which Rogero thought a good sign. “We would of course be happy to repatriate the Syndic prisoners currently held here, especially to representatives of a star system that has thrown off the Syndic yoke. But this is a delicate issue given the history between our two peoples. I will need to request guidance from higher authority. Your ships will have to wait here until I receive an answer, which will require at least two weeks.”

  Rogero looked over at Captain Bradamont, who made a face. “That was worst case,” she said. “But now we have a transmission ID that I can send a reply to. Can this ship’s comm gear handle a tight beam, secure, eyes only send?”

  “It couldn’t before we installed some upgrades for the mission to Taroa,” Rogero replied. “That’s not standard freighter comm gear. But to use the upgraded equipment we’ll need to go to a compartment we rigged up for that.”

  He led her along the passageways of the freighter, nearly empty at this hour of ship’s time, to a hatch leading into a small compartment which from the smells still lingering inside had once been used to store potatoes and onions. One of Rogero’s soldiers maintained a lone watch over the equipment despite the unlikelihood of any messages coming in aimed at its parameters. “Are you going to send it in the clear?” Rogero asked Bradamont.

  She held up a data coin. “This contains the necessary Alliance codes. Admiral Geary provided me with them in case I needed to send an encoded message through your channels.”

  “Very well.” Rogero gestured to the comm operator. “Up and out.”

  The operator stood, saluted, and left the compartment without a word.

  “Your people don’t tend to ask questions,” Bradamont observed as she sat down at the comm station.

  “The Syndicate hierarchy frowns on workers asking questions,” Rogero replied as he closed and locke
d the hatch. “For my soldiers, it’s a lesson learned over a lifetime and not easily broken.”

  She looked at him for a moment, a brief smile showing. “You don’t seem to have learned that lesson.”

  “No, and you saw what happened to me. I went from being ordered to labor-camp staff to being one step from becoming the occupant of a labor camp myself. If not for General Drakon, I would have probably died in one.”

  “Me, too,” Bradamont said, her eyes back on the comm gear. “Until you told me, I never realized that he was the one who suggested to the snakes that our relationship could be used by them. If not for that, the snakes wouldn’t have leaked the information about my transfer to another labor camp to the Alliance, so I could be liberated.”

  Rogero nodded. “He is a good man. He no longer believes he is a good man, but I believe it.”

  Another short pause as Bradamont looked at him. “Why? Why does Drakon have such an opinion of himself?”

  “He was a CEO. To reach the ranks of a CEO, to survive in such a system, requires doing things that would eat the soul of any person. I have met all too many CEOs who showed no signs of missing their souls. General Drakon somehow retained most of his.” Rogero tapped his chest. “But that means he also knows in his heart the wrongs he did.”

  “Ignorance is bliss,” Bradamont muttered. “It was an ugly war. Has any war ever been anything but ugly? We all carry scars inside us from that.”

  “It wasn’t just the war, Honore. It was the system. The Syndicate system. You ate others, or the system ate you.”

  She nodded, not looking at him this time. “But you got rid of that way of doing things. You’re going to make a better way. If General Drakon and President Iceni don’t screw it up.” Bradamont sat back, running her hands through her hair. “It’s ready for the transmission. How do I look?”