The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

by Jack Campbell

  She just nodded slightly in reply, eyes still on her display.

  Yet another reason why I love that woman, Geary thought, trying not to get angry at this unexpected delay or too worried yet about the consequences if this fleet had to jump star by star back to Alliance space.

  “Admiral,” Captain Hiyen said as his image appeared in a virtual window before Geary, “a hypernet cannot be reprogrammed. Not unless everything we know is wrong.”

  “You’re saying the problem cannot be with our key, or with the Syndic hypernet having been set to not accept our key?”

  “Yes, Admiral. Not unless the key has failed, and we would know if that had happened because a broken key wouldn’t even link to the gate here.”

  Commander Neeson’s face had appeared next to Captain Hiyen’s. “I agree, Admiral. I suggest a test, though. Try a gate near here, somewhere not too far from Midway.”

  Geary frowned, turning to Desjani. “What’s the closest hypernet gate?”

  “Taniwah.” She tapped in the commands. “Nope. No access.”

  “Admiral,” Neeson said, “try the ‘gate listing’ command.”

  “There’s a gate listing command?” Desjani asked. “What do you know. There is. Admiral, when the Syndics told you they had a device to keep anyone like the enigmas from collapsing their entire hypernet by remote signal, did they say they had actually installed that device?”

  “Yes,” Geary said. “Aren’t there any gates showing up?”

  “One. Sobek.”

  “Only one? Sobek?” Not remembering from the name where it was, he had to enter that one into his display, seeing a star illuminate in response. “That’s not too far from the border. Not as close as Indras, but only . . . three or four jumps from Varandal.” His relief rapidly sank beneath a wave of anxiety. “How could the Syndics only have one gate left in their hypernet? Two, counting this one.”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Captain Hiyen said. “If the Syndics have lost the rest of their hypernet, it will have catastrophic impacts on their economy as well as on their ability to move military forces. They could not have deliberately done that just to limit our options to only Sobek.”

  Neeson shook his head. “When that Syndic flotilla used the gate to leave here, they didn’t seem to run into any difficulties.”

  “Then what is going on?” Geary demanded.

  “I don’t know, Admiral.”

  Wishing for the thousandth time that the brilliant theorist Captain Cresida had not died during the battle at Varandal, Geary hit a different comm control. “President Iceni, we have encountered an unusual situation.”

  —

  HYPERNET gates were always positioned near the outer edges of a star system, and Midway’s was no exception. It took several hours for Geary’s message to reach the primary inhabited world and an answer to be received.

  With a restive fleet at Geary’s back, eager to head home and abruptly stymied in its departure, it was amazing how long that period of time could feel.

  When her reply eventually showed up, President Iceni did not look any happier than Geary felt. “A freighter arrived two days ago from the gate with Nanggal and did not report any problems. I assure you that we are extremely concerned by the news you have given us. We cannot explain the problems you are having accessing gates elsewhere in the Syndicate hypernet. My information prior to our break with the Syndicate was that every standing gate had already been equipped to prevent collapse by remote means. I cannot believe that the new government on Prime would have deliberately destroyed almost all of their hypernet. The impact on corporate activity and profits would be incalculable.

  “That said, we have no idea what has happened. There are no indications that our own gate is suffering any problems or malfunctions. We have closely monitored it for any signs of software or hardware sabotage, especially during the period when CEO Boyens’s flotilla was in this star system.

  “If you discover anything, or find any anomalies in the operation of the gate, we would be grateful if you would provide us with that information. For the people. Iceni, out.”

  Geary rubbed his mouth and chin with one hand, trying to think. “Emissary Rione, I would appreciate your assessment of President Iceni’s latest message.”

  “She could be lying,” Rione began, “but I don’t think she is. Iceni does appear to be genuinely worried.”

  “They want us to stay here,” Geary said. “This problem with the gate could offer them the means to keep us here.”

  “She asked us to tell her what was wrong,” Rione reminded him. “She did not say they were working on it, did not claim any malfunction here, did not do any of the things someone would do if they were trying to string us along. Moreover, one other gate has been left accessible. Why would they allow access to any gate, especially one in the region we wish to go to, if they wished to keep us here?”

  “Admiral,” Emissary Charban began diffidently, “if this is the work of the Syndic government, and if it were a ground forces situation, and if all paths in the direction I wanted to go but one were blocked, I would wonder why that one path had been left open.”

  Geary lowered his hand and gazed at Charban. “A trap? An ambush?”

  “I would expect such, yes.”

  “He’s right,” Desjani said. Her once-low opinion of Charban had improved a great deal lately. “As much as I don’t trust the used-to-be Syndics here at Midway, I can’t think of any reason they would leave us a path out if they wanted us to stay.”

  “And we know,” Charban continued, “who controls the gates to which we no longer have access.”

  “The Syndics,” Geary said. “But that comes back to the initial problem. How could slowing us down, or luring us into an ambush, possibly be worth the cost to the Syndic government of destroying almost their entire hypernet?”

  “We can’t know the answer to that,” Rione said. “Even the presence of the captured Kick warship and the Dancer emissaries with us could not explain it. I agree that whatever led to this, it appears designed to force us to go to Sobek. We have to assume that something awaits us there.”

  “But what?” Geary demanded. “The Syndics couldn’t possibly have enough warships to threaten this fleet.”

  “They still have the gate at Sobek,” Desjani pointed out. “They could collapse it and wipe us out, along with the Dancer ships and Invincible.”

  “Which would also render the hypernet gate here at Midway useless,” Rione said. “Since it would no longer be connected to any other gates. Yet such a strategy would be like committing suicide to prevent your enemy from killing you. Without the Syndic hypernet, the Syndicate Worlds’ government would have no hope of holding together what is left of their empire.”

  “The Syndics have done stupid things before,” Geary said.

  “Such as starting the war that only recently ended?” Rione replied. “That is true. But the CEOs ruling the Syndicate Worlds a century ago could have deluded themselves into believing they could win that war. There is no possible scenario in which the Syndicate Worlds today could survive the loss of its entire hypernet.”

  He glowered at his display. The commanding officers of his ships were reporting that their crews were restless, agitated over the abrupt halt to their voyage home. Even if that weren’t a consideration, even if morale were excellent, it would leave the same dilemma. The only Syndic gate they could access was at Sobek. If they didn’t use Sobek, they would have to spend several months jumping from star to star to reach Alliance space again, opening themselves up to additional obstacles and dangers at every star. “What is your recommendation, Captain Desjani?”

  Tanya made a face. “We have to go to Sobek. But we need to be ready for a fight there.”

  “I agree,” Charban said.

  “Emissary Rione?” Geary asked.

  She took a moment to answer, gazing fixedly outward, then nodded. “I cannot see any alternative that is realistic. I agree we must go to Sobek.”


  “We could wait here,” Geary pointed out.

  “For how long, Admiral?”

  “That’s my concern. If the gates except for Sobek are gone, sitting here won’t buy us anything. It will just delay our getting home. But I wanted to hear someone else say it so I’d know it wasn’t just my impatience talking to me.” He gestured to Tanya. “Captain Desjani, enter Sobek as our destination. I’m going to arrange the fleet in a combat formation.”

  “Sobek entered,” she replied. “What do you think might be waiting at Sobek?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe nothing is waiting there for us. There’s always a chance the enigmas figured out a way around the Syndic anticollapse gear, and Sobek somehow didn’t get the message.”

  “If that were the case, Midway didn’t, either,” Desjani pointed out. “And Midway is the closest to enigma space.”

  “Yeah. Sort of weakens that theory, doesn’t it?” How do I arrange the fleet to deal with an indeterminate threat? “Maybe we’d be best off staying in this formation and doing an evasive maneuver as we leave the gate at Sobek.”

  “Maybe. Which way do you want to evade? You can be sure the Syndics are trying to spot patterns in which way you go.”

  Geary hesitated, then looked at Charban. “Pick a number between one and three hundred fifty-nine.”

  Charban raised his eyebrows in question, but after a moment spoke up. “Two hundred six.”

  “Down and to the right,” Geary said to Desjani as he input the maneuver. “Is that random enough?”

  “Asking a politician who’s a retired grand-forces officer? Yeah, that’s random.”

  He got the fleet turned around again, accelerating toward the hypernet gate once more. “We’ll be just under point one light speed when we enter the gate. I guess I should tell Iceni what we’re doing.”

  “Or you could let them guess,” Desjani suggested.

  “Not this time.” Geary sent off a brief message to Iceni, then sat back to wait.

  He felt a growing tension as the fleet approached the gate, wondering if Sobek, too, would suddenly show up as unable to access. That would leave two alternatives, neither of which would be good. Funny. I never wanted to go to Sobek. But now I want to get there very badly. “All units be ready for combat when we exit at Sobek. Any ship facing danger upon exit is authorized to fire immediately.”

  Charban sounded worried. “What if the Syndics at Sobek have a picket ship at the gate? A HuK or light cruiser?”

  “Then I’ll apologize for my fleet having destroyed that picket ship,” Geary answered with a glare at Charban. “I didn’t create this situation. They did.”

  “They may want you to do that, Admiral.”

  “I’m sorry, but you were right earlier. This smells like an ambush. I won’t tie the hands of my ships when we’re heading into something that stinks as bad as this does. Have the Dancers been warned?”

  Charban shrugged. “As best as we can communicate such a warning, Admiral. Their ships are ready to enter the gate along with ours. I do want to talk to you about the Dancers when you have the time.”

  “Here we go,” Desjani announced. She sounded cheerful, as she usually did when Geary decided to go weapons free on anything that looked Syndic. “Request permission to enter the gate, Admiral.”

  “Permission granted.”

  There was no disorientation like that felt going into jump space. The stars vanished, replaced not with the gray nothingness of jump space but by literally nothing at all.

  Geary slumped back, wondering if he would see Midway again. “How long to Sobek?”

  “Twenty days,” Desjani said.

  They were going an immense distance even by interstellar standards. Long ago, it seemed, when he had assumed command of a trapped fleet in the Syndic home star system, she had told him that with hypernet travel, the farther you went, the less time it could take. It was still jarring to be reminded of that, and disturbing not to see the familiar if uncanny gray of jump space or see the unexplained lights of jump space growing and fading randomly around them. It’s strange how Nothing can be more upsetting to me than the weirdness of jump space.

  Charban shook his head. “It’s hard enough for me to grasp the velocities that spacecraft travel within star systems. Tens of thousands of kilometers a second is just too fast for my planetary-surface instincts to visualize. What sort of velocity are we traveling now, to go such a distance in such a span of time?”

  “We’re not actually going any speed at all,” Desjani said with a smile. “That’s what an expert told me.” Her smile slipped, and Geary knew why. Cresida had been that expert, and a good friend of Desjani’s. “We’re at one gate, then a bit later we’re at another gate, but, technically, we didn’t travel the distance between them. We just went from being in one place to being at another.”

  “Does anyone actually understand things like that?” Charban wondered. “Or are we still children, surrounded by things we don’t really grasp and poking at a few of them to see what happens?”

  “I don’t know,” Desjani said, turning back to her display, which now showed nothing but the situation aboard Dauntless. “I just drive a battle cruiser.”

  —

  THE enforced isolation of hypernet travel, or that in jump space, left a lot of time to get backed-up work accomplished. Geary, sitting at his stateroom table and sourly eyeing the long list of backed-up items he still had to go through, was trying to decide whether that was a good or a bad thing. Why did I want to be an admiral? Oh, yeah, I didn’t ever want to be an admiral. I just wanted to do my job and do it well. Rise to command of a ship. But command of a fleet? A fleet far larger than the Alliance fleet that existed before the war? And be responsible for every man and woman, and now Dancer as well, who is part of that fleet? Nope, I never wanted that. But I’ve got it.

  His hatch alert chimed.

  Trying to not look too relieved at the diversion from administrative tasks, Geary spun in his seat to face the hatch and tapped an entry authorization.

  He had half hoped it might be Tanya, visiting to snatch a few moments of being together without being under the eyes of the entire crew, or maybe Rione, ready to spill a few more clues about her mysterious secret orders. Instead, the hatch opened to reveal the earnest and melancholy face of Emissary Charban. “Have you a few moments, Admiral?”

  “Certainly. Come on in.” He didn’t hesitate to offer his time, as he would have much earlier in the mission. Charban had come aboard Dauntless tagged as an aspiring politician, a retired general who had been sorely disillusioned about the usefulness of violence in accomplishing anything as he watched men and women die and little change. But Geary had come to see that Charban was not a fool or a phony. He was a tired man who had seen too much death but could still think and reason well enough to spot things that others could not.

  Increasingly, Charban had emerged as the primary point of contact with the Dancers, even Rione giving way to him. Dr. Setin had complained about that before the fleet entered the gate at Midway. “Why is an amateur being given preference in dealing with this alien species?”

  “Because the alien species keeps asking specifically to deal with him,” Geary had pointed out. He knew that thanks to reports from Setin’s associate Dr. Shwartz.

  “He is an amateur. We have spent our entire academic careers preparing for communication and contact with a nonhuman intelligence!”

  “Yes, Dr. Setin, I understand. I will look into the matter and see what should be done.” Dr. Setin had spent an academic career preparing to communicate with a nonhuman intelligence but, ironically, wasn’t able to identify a classic human bureaucratic brush-off when he received one.

  “May I speak with you about the Dancers?” Charban asked Geary as the emissary entered the stateroom.

  “Have a seat. I hope this is good news.”

  Charban grimaced as he sat down opposite Geary. “The experts tell me I am wrong.”

  “Then you’ve got good groun
ds for thinking you may be right,” Geary said. “Dr. Shwartz told me those academic experts, herself included, spent their entire careers up until now theorizing about intelligent aliens, and now that they’ve finally encountered the real things, they’re having trouble adjusting to the fact that the realities aren’t matching a lot of their theories. What in particular is this about?”

  “Our attempts to communicate better with the Dancers.” Charban’s expression shifted into exasperation, then worry. “I am not certain they are being cooperative.”

  Having had the same suspicion growing in him for a few weeks now, and not happy at all with the idea that the Dancers might not be playing straight with their human contacts, Geary was less than thrilled to hear that someone else shared his worries. He took a deep breath. “Explain, please.”

  “It’s hard to explain an impression,” Charban complained. “Not scientific at all, I am told. You know we have been making slow progress in communicating with the Dancers. Very slow progress.”

  Geary nodded. “They’re so very different from us that the slow progress isn’t surprising anyone. We have such a huge gap to cross between our species in order to establish the meaning of words and concepts. But I have been wondering why even the basic concepts are coming so slowly.”

  Charban smiled crookedly. “You’ve been reading the reports from our experts,” he noted. “That is all true. But . . .” He paused, frowning in thought. “I have the impression that the Dancers are deliberately slow-pedaling the process, that it is taking far longer than it could if they went at the pace of which they are capable.”

  “Do you have any impression why?”

  “You’re taking me seriously? Thank you.”